Lancs & Cornwall 06
Day 1 - Arriving in the UK
Friday, 15 Sep. 2006
- I landed at the Manchester Airport today after a long night on the
plane sitting beside a five year old girl who's family was returning
to England after spending two years in Canada. She took an instant
liking to me and decided that I was going to be her playmate for the
remainder of the trip. This didn't bode well for me since I was
really looking forward to getting some sleep before arriving in the
UK. Fortunately I did get some sleep on the plane despite the
excitement of traveling on my own and the attentions of the five year
old.
 I was served dinner and breakfast
in-flight that made it a lot easier to adjust to the time difference
in the UK. Fortunately, we had a really good tail wind so the plane
made it to Manchester almost an hour early. Unfortunately there
wasn�t anywhere for the plane to dock so we had to wait on the tarmac
for nearly an hour. I quickly realized that it would have been better
for us to still be in the air as the excitement and drive to get off
the plane and stretch out is infinitely worse when you are just
sitting there staring at the airport. People start to get grumpy
fairly quickly at this point.
Finally the waiting was over and it was
time to disembark the plane and go through customs. This went fairly
smoothly as we were one of the first overseas flights to arrive at
that point and there wasn�t a very long line-up for the customs
counter. I had just gone through customs and made it to the baggage
claim area when the luggage from my flight started coming in. Of
course my luggage came near the end and I got to watch everyone else
from the flight head out before me, but at least I got my suitcase and
was able to go call Andy to find out when he was going to be at the
airport to pick me up.
As luck would have it, Chris and Andy had
just arrived in the parking lot when I called him so I didn�t have to
wait around the airport for any longer then I already had. We loaded
my luggage into Chris�s car and I enjoyed a nice ride to Andy�s house
without having to worry about driving and getting lost in Manchester
as happened when I went to Scotland with my mom the previous year.
However I was a little quieter then normal during that trip and if
Chris and Andy hadn�t been talking to me constantly I would have
quickly and easily fallen asleep. No matter how hard you try, it�s
impossible to get comfortable enough on a plane to sleep well. Before
I knew it, we were at Andy�s house and unloading my luggage.
Once I got settled in, I unpacked the presents I brought over for
Andy as I really wanted to his reaction to it. Andy and I have a long
standing joke about why he doesn't want to come camping in Canada
due to the abundance of bears in the woods were I normally camp.
During one of my walks in the woods near my mom's place we came across
some bear bones and were able to salvage the canine teeth from it.
I brought one of the teeth over for Andy to see what he thought and he
was fascinated with the at the size of the tooth and the fact
that I found it fairly easily.
I had also brought some maple fudge and chocolate fudge to share
while I was there, so Andy and I went into the kitchen where I
proceeded to cut what I thought was an adequate sized slice off the
maple fudge for Andy to try. When I looked at Andy, I saw the
disgusted look on his face as though he was thinking that the slice I
cut for him was way too small and I was being extremely conservative.
I wasn't about to settle for that type of look so I said to myself
"Fine, I'll teach him!" and proceeded to cut a slice three times the
size of the first one and kept the first slice for myself as I knew
that's all I could eat in one sitting. When I handed the new cutting
to him I asked "Is this slice more to your liking?" to which he
replied in the affirmative. After sitting down to enjoy the
fudge, Andy quickly realised that his eyes were bigger then his
stomach and that the fudge was a lot more filling then he thought.
He had his fill of the maple fudge, so much so that he didn't touch
any more of it even though he liked the flavour. After that he
stuck with the chocolate fudge and I noticed that he only took small
slices similar to the size that I was initially going to offer him.
We took things easy after that, more
because we weren�t going to get the rental car until the next morning
then from anything else. Shortly after arriving at Andy�s I called
the car rental place to find out when the car was going to be
delivered so we could plan for the next day. During the conversation
with the car rental agency, I was asked if I would mind a �free�
upgrade on the car from a Renault Clio to a Honda Coupe. We agreed to the
free upgrade without really knowing what we were getting. Since
neither Andy nor I know much about different car models we quickly
went online to find out more about the car and couldn�t believe what
they offered us. We thought there was some sort of mistake but were
going to wait until the next day to find out for certain if the car we
saw online was indeed the same car we would be driving around in for
the next couple weeks. Of course we were a little excited about that
prospect, but didn�t really believe the really nice sports car on
offer.
Andy and I ended up chatting for the rest
of the afternoon and evening, mostly about what we would like to do
the following week before heading to Cornwall where the �real�
(according to Andy) vacation would start. For me that afternoon and
evening went fairly slowly, despite the company, because I was tired
from having very little sleep the night before and the five-hour time
difference.
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