What a great, amazing trip! Four weeks exactly from departure on Monday, July 25th to return on August 22nd, although it started oddly enough.
First, the shuttle service I called is one I'll never use again (kind of a generic service) - first, the driver was late and couldn't find my house. He phoned from in front of my neighbor's house and I told him to drive down to the first driveway on the right hand side, which he never did. In the meantime I was schlepping my bags to the front of the house - then I walk outside my fence and see him down in front of the neighbor's house, looking wistfully over the fence - bozo, there is NO driveway there! I wave and yell and finally get him to drive down to my place - and there's an extra person in the car - turns out it's his *girlfriend* - NEVER tolerate a driver who is your private car who brings his *girlfriend* with him! Flakey. He needed help getting through downtown L.A. and getting to the airport; just not a good driver.
Once on the plane everything seemed fine: I had dinner and a little wine and set about trying to go to sleep, as my approach to international travel is shifting into the time zone of the target airport as soon as I board the plane. I slept for awhile and then woke up, not quite sure what awakened me, but I sat there with a particular praise song fixed in my head, so I sang it softly (nobody can hear soft singing in the ambient noise of a jet!) - and then the pilot came on and announced that we had a navigational equipment failure and it wouldn't be safe to cross the Atlantic in that condition and we'd be setting down in Boston, shouldn't take long to repair and be back in the skies.
A few minutes later he came back and added, "When we land in Boston, please remain seated with your seat-belt fastened." Okay. Perhaps five minutes later, another member of the flight crew came on and made the same announcement and I think, "wait a minute, something's going on here." But I dismiss it; I'm just being dramatic (moi? dramatic?!). Then the same "remain in your seat with your seatbelt fastened" announcement is made a third time. Then a fourth time. By now I am quite certain something other than a navigational equipment failure is up and, sure enough, when we land, the first people on the plane are carrying assault rifles - which I expected. What I didn't expect was for them to remove a man from my own row (he was seated by the window and I was on the far side middle aisle). Then another man came on and tore apart his seat and environs. We're all sitting there, watching... turns out there were two more men taken out of coach (I'd upgraded to business class). FBI and Transportation Security Administration and local law enforcement are all talking, interviewing flight crew in the doorway, planning to bring in dogs to search the toilets.
Somewhere in there United Airlines and the feds decide to put us up in hotels for the night - it's now 5 a.m. in Boston and it takes them about an hour to get hotel vouchers arranged. I decide to leave my bags on the carousel and just take my carry-on (it contains all I need for the moment), which will give me an extra hour in the morning. We'll fly out at 11 a.m., so I need to be back at the airport by 10 - I got 3 hours sleep in a bed (yay! horizontal!), took a quick shower, and then from the airport I call Colin and Marjorie, my friends in England - we'd planned for me to take the airport bus from Heathrow to Gatwick (!!) and Colin would pick me up at Gatwick; there are no really convenient ways to get from Heathrow to Southeast England (Kent, basically) without going into London and I'd decided to avoid the Underground - at the moment, they're not allowing bags and I'm coming in with two pieces of checked luggage and a carry-on bag and I've DONE that in the past, jockeying for space on the crowded tube, trying to get from Paddington to Charing Cross. There is a stationlink bus which circles the city, stopping at every train station and the Central Bus Terminal (I have a cool story about the first time I used that bus - maybe I'll tell it later, if you're interested) - it's cheap and convenient for bags but it's sloooow. Now, arriving so late at night, it's unworkable and our plans to connect via coach from Heathrow to Gatwick is the best option - so I promise to phone when I arrive at Heathrow so Colin can get in his car and drive the hour or so up to Gatwick.
It's a zoo re-boarding the plane because, as far as the computer is concerned, we've already embarked so it can't generate a new boarding list - they finally generated an alphabetical list and we boarded alphabetically (!!) and took off closer to noon than eleven a.m. Considering that we should have landed in London seven hours earlier, we are running seriously late, but there's nothing I can do about it so I try to sleep a little on this second leg of the flight.
--It made a very strong impression on me that the captain apologized for lying to us about why we were landing in Boston; he explained that he didn't want to alert the passengers in question that they were under suspicion. He made it clear that it was his call to divert the flight, based on the concerns of passengers and flight crew, and he apologized for the delay in our travel.--
We arrive at a very empty Heathrow about 11 p.m. and clear passport control and customs very quickly; I hoof my way to the Central Bus Terminal (it's all underground and it sits between Terminals 1, 2, and 3 - it's probably close to a mile of walking). I've been informed that the bus will run until 1 a.m. or so, but it's now running once an hour, so I'd rather catch it sooner than later - I find the quay where the coach will load in 15 minutes so I call Colin and he says, "Don't get on the bus! Daniel (his son-in-law) should be there to pick you up!" So I ask him to phone Daniel and let him know I'm walking back to Terminal 3 and to wait! I am thrilled - how nice to have someone you know greet you at the airport (even if they initially miss you) after such a goofy flight experience. Sure enough, I come back up the ramp into the terminal and there he is, drinking a coffee and pacing.
It's raining lightly and it's nice and cool - we pile into his car (yet another in his collection of spiff Jaguars; he runs his business well and enjoys his perks) and drive down to Colin & Marjorie's - Colin is wearing his bathrobe and Marjorie is already upstairs snoring (it IS 1 a.m. by now, so that makes sense) - he makes me a hot chocolate, heaves my bags upstairs, and says goodnight.
Next morning I go online and read the coverage of the flight (United 934 on July 25th) - turns out passengers and flight crew were nervous about the behavior of these 3 Pakistani gentlemen (because one was in business class and the others in coach, they kept going back and forth between cabins, following each other in the toilet, etc.) and the captain make the call to divert the plane. They were questioned and released, put onto an earlier flight to London (so they got there before we did!) - I can't blame people for being nervous and I think it's better to be "safe" than "sorry" - but I never felt at risk, personally. The AP story follows...
More later--
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