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Chasing the sun, and other adventures...
Jun. 28th, 2004 11:57 amI have experienced two gastronomic epiphanies since returning home late last night: Pagosa tap water tastes terrible and McDonald's breakfasts have way too much salt in 'em.
Yeah, I know... complain, complain, complain.
To bring yesterday's timeline up to date, the British Airways flight from Heathrow left pretty much on time, with the plane pretty much full. I had a seat on the aisle, far enough back so as to have a choice between chicken and nothing when time came to be served dinner, as all the entreé portions with beef had already been distributed. I really didn't care, as the primary purpose of the flight was not to experience gastronomic delights (there goes that word, again), but to get from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and in fact to put most of the North American continent behind me as well, as I toddled my way home.
I read and finished Dan Brown's Digital Fortress on the plane, having read his The DaVinci Code while in Baikonur and Moscow. While I enjoyed the latter immensely, I was a little distracted by the assumptions and the "substantiation," if you will, of the technical premise of the former. Neal Stephenson did a much better job on the technical end, for example, in Cryptonomicon. (This, of course, makes me wonder whether Brown's humanities-related picture in DaVinci is equally flawed.)
In the end, the distractions made it harder for me to suspend disbelief in the plot, but not entirely impossible. Brown has the ability, in my opinion, to weave a fairly intricate web of suspense and to insert an unexpected twist late in the game. The booksellers at Heathrow did feature a third Brown book, whose title escapes me at the moment, but which features the same main character as DaVinci.
The flight offered a number of films for those who could not sleep (I perhaps nodded off for 40 minutes near the start of the flight). I cannot tell you how happy I was to be able to watch Starsky & Hutch without having to pay extra for it. While the film has a few priceless moments of comedy, it is strictly a watch-once kind of flick. Afterward, I watched snippets of Cold Mountain, Scooby Doo 2 (!?), 50 First Dates, and The Last Samurai, with mixed responses.
Return formalities in Denver went about as expected, after which I rechecked my baggage for Durango and joined the line at the security checkpoint to go to the B concourse for my flight, which was packed full of passengers (probably because the previous Denver-Durango flight had been delayed to after our flight). The flight went off without a hitch (I slept through pretty much all of its 60 minutes), up until the part where I was supposed to retrieve my baggage.
My bags had not made it onto the airplane. Nor onto the plane that arrived about 30 minutes later (the one that had been delayed). Nor had my bags made it to Durango on this morning's first flight from Denver, according to the agent I spoke with about an hour ago. I contine to keep my fingers crossed, however.
There's lots to do to catch up on the past nearly two months, and Galina wants to get a move on with the eternal paper chase before events overtake us and I have to go off somewhere else to make money. Daylight is burning.
Cheers...
Yeah, I know... complain, complain, complain.
To bring yesterday's timeline up to date, the British Airways flight from Heathrow left pretty much on time, with the plane pretty much full. I had a seat on the aisle, far enough back so as to have a choice between chicken and nothing when time came to be served dinner, as all the entreé portions with beef had already been distributed. I really didn't care, as the primary purpose of the flight was not to experience gastronomic delights (there goes that word, again), but to get from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and in fact to put most of the North American continent behind me as well, as I toddled my way home.
I read and finished Dan Brown's Digital Fortress on the plane, having read his The DaVinci Code while in Baikonur and Moscow. While I enjoyed the latter immensely, I was a little distracted by the assumptions and the "substantiation," if you will, of the technical premise of the former. Neal Stephenson did a much better job on the technical end, for example, in Cryptonomicon. (This, of course, makes me wonder whether Brown's humanities-related picture in DaVinci is equally flawed.)
In the end, the distractions made it harder for me to suspend disbelief in the plot, but not entirely impossible. Brown has the ability, in my opinion, to weave a fairly intricate web of suspense and to insert an unexpected twist late in the game. The booksellers at Heathrow did feature a third Brown book, whose title escapes me at the moment, but which features the same main character as DaVinci.
The flight offered a number of films for those who could not sleep (I perhaps nodded off for 40 minutes near the start of the flight). I cannot tell you how happy I was to be able to watch Starsky & Hutch without having to pay extra for it. While the film has a few priceless moments of comedy, it is strictly a watch-once kind of flick. Afterward, I watched snippets of Cold Mountain, Scooby Doo 2 (!?), 50 First Dates, and The Last Samurai, with mixed responses.
Return formalities in Denver went about as expected, after which I rechecked my baggage for Durango and joined the line at the security checkpoint to go to the B concourse for my flight, which was packed full of passengers (probably because the previous Denver-Durango flight had been delayed to after our flight). The flight went off without a hitch (I slept through pretty much all of its 60 minutes), up until the part where I was supposed to retrieve my baggage.
My bags had not made it onto the airplane. Nor onto the plane that arrived about 30 minutes later (the one that had been delayed). Nor had my bags made it to Durango on this morning's first flight from Denver, according to the agent I spoke with about an hour ago. I contine to keep my fingers crossed, however.
There's lots to do to catch up on the past nearly two months, and Galina wants to get a move on with the eternal paper chase before events overtake us and I have to go off somewhere else to make money. Daylight is burning.
Cheers...
