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Springtime in Georgia: Part Five, Terminal A-West, Philadelphia Born and Raised

A trip report documenting my March 2010 visit to Katie.

1. Purpose and Planning
2. Getting Started
3. To London, Sir
4. Back in the US Airways
5. Terminal A-West, Philadelphia Born and Raised

Although my aeroplane had just landed in Philadelphia, I was in the curious situation of not technically having arrived in America yet. Right there inside the city limits of one of the country’s founding cities lies a corridor which is not in any country’s borders. At the end of the corridor would be a man with a gun who’d look at my documents, ask me some questions and decide whether I am worthy of visiting his fine country or not.

I’d been to America twice before and, like a pop-star watching some African kids dying on the news, decided I was an expert on the subject. I’d done my ESTA, brought my passport and drank a can of Relentless to make sure I was alert and would answer the border agent’s questions with something other than snoring. I mean, what else needed done?

The last time I’d been through Philadelphia’s border control I’d been one of the first off the plane and had absolutely bolted down to immigration ensuring I got through really quickly. There were probably about ten or so people in front of me in the entire hall. This time I had a 5 hour layover though and was in no rush. I figured if I got through fairly quickly I’d catch a train into town and get some dinner there.

My complacency led to me sauntering up to immigration, and even taking some time out for a toilet break. And not even the quick kind of toilet break at that. I rued that decision as soon as I reached the actual immigration hall. Place was jumping, yo. It was the sort of crowd levels that would look good on television at a music festival, but not what you want ahead of you in a queue for, well, anything. Maybe being executed, I guess, since you’d live quite a while.

Philadelphia has individual queues for each booth, unlike Atlanta which has one large queue that is then distributed evenly among the booths as you get near the end. This means that in Philly you look for what you think is shortest, and then you pray. I am glad I had a book, as it took probably 30-40 minutes before I got to speak to an agent. He started asking me the usual questions. “How long are you visiting?” – two weeks, “What’s the purpose of your visit?” – visiting my girlfriend, “Any money?” – about two hundred dollars or so. That kind of thing. He then asked me when my flight was, and I told him not for five hours which might have been a mistake.

He asked me if I had a printout of my itinerary, which I did not. My handwritten copy was apparently not good enough. I guess if I ever plan to stay in America unlawfully I’ll knock something up in Word and print it out, and then I’ll get through. Unfortunately my lack of itinerary printout meant I wasn’t allowed to progress into the US at that point. So he took my fingerprints and photo, put my passport into a red folder and told me to walk down to the end of the hall for “secondary screening”. I strongly suspect that I was chosen for it because he knew I had a five hour layover and wasn’t going to be too inconvenienced.

Clutching my red folder, I headed for a packed waiting room. Seeing how crowded it was, I figured it was a good idea to sneak back out, go to baggage claim, claim my baggage, and sneak back in. I hadn’t actually been told what to do with my red folder, and it was only as several other people entering the room took it up to a guy behind a desk that I realised I was supposed to give it to the guy behind the desk, which I did.

There weren’t enough seats for everybody, so despite being repeatedly urged by the border agents to take a seat, I kept standing. I figured I was young and virile and could take standing up a little bit easier than some of the older people in the room. It was interesting overhearing why other people had been kept back for secondary, from the Italian pair whose passports had been reported counterfeit by Interpol (who were admitted anyway, but told to get new passports when they get home) to a French lady who was visiting her boyfriend in the states but due to poor English had accidentally said she was “coming to stay with” her boyfriend to the agent. They went through everything in her three suitcases in the public area which she bore with admirable stoicism.

I was mostly kept amused by watching a particular border agent walk past now and again because his name badge said “Cock” on it.

Eventually my name was called, and I was one of the few taken into an actual office to be interviewed. Whether this was because I was seen to be more dangerous or perhaps I was being accorded more respect for some reason (I had noticed I was one of very few white people in the room, though I’m not trying to imply that border agents in Philadelphia are racist. Indeed, the agent dealing with me was an obvious immigrant herself). She asked me the same questions as my first agent, and I gave her the same answers.

I was accused of lying at one point. Asked “When were you last here?” I’d answered “August and September,” which prompted the accusation as my passport stamp showed “July 31st”. I mean, come on. Still, once I’d accounted for that her attitude changed completely, and my passport was stamped. Unfortunately though, I’d bought two packets of beef jerky to eat on the plane, and had eaten only one.

This meant that I got to tie up resources in the customs department as well. I was certainly getting good value for money out of my U.S. immigration fees. Luckily the customs lady was pretty much the nicest person in the entire world. A really short, bubbly woman who made the entire process really easy. We ended up having a really fulfilling conversation about Christianity and our respective churches, before she stole my delicious Beef Jerky and threw it in the bin. Unlike the last time I’d travelled through Philadelphia though, my bags were not scanned for smuggled goods (which is lucky, as I was attempting to smuggle in some Kinder Surprise Eggs, which are illegal in the states. Silly Americans.

Customs dealt with, I checked my luggage back in and headed for security where, just to keep up the delaying me theme, I was “randomly” selected to be swabbed for traces of explosives. I say “randomly” since I was the only person who wasn’t TSA in the entire security area, everyone else having gone through literally hours ago.

I still had a few hours until my flight left for Atlanta. I was glad I hadn’t chosen to add in an extra segment through Charlotte or Chicago, as I’d have missed them by now. In a way my misadventures with immigration had kept me from sitting bored in the airport for five hours. Now I only had two and a half extremely wearying hours to kill. My first port of call was Chick Fil A to remind myself why I love America. Seriously good Chikin. Unfortunately they were sold out of their equally good home made lemonade. I made do with a Dr. Pepper, or Katie Juice as I like to think of it.

Dinner consumed, I retired to a restroom to change my shirt and have a shave. It’s surprising how something as small as changing your shirt can make you feel so refreshed. I’d learned to pack extra clothing in my carry-on after being delayed for 26 hours in Philadelphia the summer before with just the clothes on my back. I pitied whoever had been forced to sit next to me on the plane to Atlanta then, I must have smelled awful. I didn’t want to smell awful this time.

I walked to the end of every terminal, apart from F since I couldn’t be bothered catching a bus, in the hope of spotting interesting planes, but the entire airport seemed to be dead. It was as though there are no flights after 7 P.M. or something. Apart from in A-West, where the Transatlantics were preparing to leave, I saw almost nobody apart from cleaners. Eventually I got bored of wandering this post-apocalyptic wasteland so went to my gate. I got a new boarding pass, since my old one had no boarding zone on it, being BMI stock.

Flight: US1469 PHL-ATL
Date: 8th March 2010
Scheduled Departure: 2030
Scheduled Arrival:2250
Equipment:Embraer 190
Seat:8F
Miles: 665 flown, 666 earned

There’s not much to report about a domestic US flight, especially not one which was almost entirely slept through. I did wake up in time to consume a can of coca-cola, but honestly that’s all I can say with certainty happened in flight.

We arrived about 30 minutes early into an almost equally deserted Atlanta Airport, an airport I’m becoming really quite familiar with. Probably about five minutes after disembarking the aircraft, I was at baggage claim waiting for my bag to turn up. I was more impressed that I’d reached the airport sooner than my girlfriend, who only had a 70 mile drive compared to my 4000 mile journey.

She hadn’t felt comfortable driving in the Atlanta airport at night on her own, so had borrowed one of her friends to act as chauffeur for us. I shall call her Erin, since that is her name. It was about ten minutes before Katie walked into the airport accompanied by a pyjama wearing Erin. It didn’t take too long for my baggage to arrive, and we headed to the car.

An hour later we had dropped Erin off at her house, and I finally got to claim the kiss I’d flown 4,000 miles and 24 hours for, suddenly making it all worth it.

I shall skip a few days of my trip, because I doubt anyone wants to hear about people in love rediscovering what it means to have a relationship that’s defined by something other than a keyboard and computer monitor. Activities that had led, the previous summer, to a Glasgow Jakie telling us to “get a fucking room”. Bad enough to see it, let alone read about it. So for the next part of this report, I will skip ahead to our weekend away to Georgia’s coast, in historical Savannah. Until then, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you adieu.

Springtime in Georgia: Part Four, Back in the US Airways

A trip report documenting my March 2010 visit to Katie.

1. Purpose and Planning
2. Getting Started
3. To London, Sir
4. Back in the US Airways
5. Terminal A-West, Philadelphia Born and Raised

My most humble apologies for the delay in writing and publishing this part. Life, man, it just gets in the way. On with the report, ladies!

Georgia’s always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mind!

Lewis and Clark had nothing on me. Those guys had an entire team at their back, plus hot female Indian guides (assuming that the movie Night at the Museum did not lie to me). I had navigated to the ends of the Earth, or at least London Heathrow’s Terminal 1, using nothing but airport signage. Without a word of a lie, I have used the Google Maps Pedometer to work out I had to walk nearly one and a half kilometers, gate to gate.

My next flight was with US Airways, who I think can accurately be summed up as the worst of the North American Star Alliance carriers. That’s OK with me, though, as it meant my fare was cheap. I like cheap. I’d flown with US Airways before, and had not particularly enjoyed the experience. I guess I got what I paid for (except that, of course, I was flying in the summer so my fare was hella expensive, dawg).

So my last trip had been, well, dreadful. It had gotten me there, eventually (though I can’t fault US Airways for how they looked after me during the dreadful weather), but had not exactly done so in comfort. Such is the fate of choosing to fly transatlantic in one of US Airways’ rather decrepit old Boeing 752s. This time things would be better. This time I’d be flying on one of US Airways newest aeroplanes, the Airbus A330-200, a type I’d flown before with KLM. This means I have two points of comparison; different plane types within US Airways and different airlines versions of the A332. So, with that bit of background out of the way, let’s move on.

I’d walked non-stop from my Glasgow plane for what must have been half an hour or so, and finally made it to the gate area. Situated amongst quite a few United Air Lines planes loading up for their various American hubs, I found the rather quieter US Airways gate. Ahead of me was a crowd of around 20, 25 people queueing for access to the gate waiting area. Obviously as my plane was heading to The United States of Paranoia, there was extra security screening before the holding pen. It wasn’t too long before I was at the head of the queue, and showing the lady my boarding pass. She pointed me to a desk when she saw that I’d transferred at Heathrow, and I bypassed the bag-checks entirely (a handy tip there, terrorists!).

The desk lady checked my boarding pass against my passport, and then waved me through to the holding pen. I wasn’t entirely convinced that my frequent flyer number had been forwarded correctly from BMI’s stellar on-line check-in systems, since it appeared on my domestic boarding pass, but not on t’other two. Figuring that talking to somebody about it then would probably be easier than e-mailing stubs later, I went and spoke to one of the gate agents at the podium, to ask if she could add the number in. Not only had BMI not passed on the FF number, they had not actually passed on the APIS data that they’d collected from me earlier, so my heading to the desk was fortuitous. Having added everything, the agent handed me back my boarding pass and told me I could board with Zone 3.

Flight: US729 LHR-PHL
Date: 8th March 2010
Scheduled Departure: 1205
Scheduled Arrival:1439
Equipment:Airbus A330-200
Seat:25H
Miles: 3545 flown, 3537 earned

Boarding was announced shortly, and I had to stifle laughs as I heard Americans around me mangling the word envoy as the business class cabin were boarding. It wasn’t too long until Zone 3 were called. Actually, it was just after Zone 2, which came after Zone 1. It’s amazing how that works. I’d chosen a window seat in the rear economy cabin because unlike last year, I didn’t have a tight connection in Philadelphia, and the on-line seat selector on the US Airways website had indicated that row 25 was the exit row. As it turns out, the on-line seat selector was full of crap. For future reference, row 23 on the US 332 is the exit row, but the 2 seats at the exit doors on each side are blocked for crew rest, so you can’t sit there.

Not long after I’d boarded and made myself comfortable, my seatmate joined me. He was a rather large gentleman. Not particularly fat, just large. Hagrid-like proportions, perhaps. I have no idea if his mother was a giant, that would purely be speculation. I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow, but when he sat down he had to raise the armrest between us, and that’s just not going to endear anyone to me.

Fortunately the rear cabin did not fill very much. In fact, it was more than half empty. My seatmate took advantage of this, and without so much as a by your leave, he’d vacated his seat in favour of one of the bulkhead seats in the centre section. Good man.

It took a while longer for the ground crew to finish loading us up with cargo. It was a cold day outside with frost on the ground and despite some of the fetching headgear they were wearing, I wasn’t jealous of them. Made me even happier to be safely ensconced aboard the aeroplane. Eventually the doors were closed, the cargo bay shut, and we pulled back to begin our bus tour of Heathrow Airport. It was pretty exciting. As a plane geek, I did have rather a nice time going “Oooh, a BA 747, ahh, an Emirates 380, gasp, a BMI 320″ and so on. Eventually we were allowed on an actual runway, the engines got louder and we were in the air. A quick 180 so we were facing the right direction, and we were heading for America!

The economy seating on the US A332 is actually pretty good. In comparison to the B752 anyway, it was much more comfortable. I think KLM have a slight edge on the seat because they have an adjustable headrest with wings that pop out to support your neck. Those make sleeping upright much more comfortable, I found. In terms of Inflight Entertainment,both KLM and US had AVOD systems but KLM had a remote control in the arm rest while US went with a touchscreen system. Personally, I prefered the remote control but I do remember seeing people struggle to understand the remote, and also remember accidentally leaning on the stop button several times while adjusting my position. The touch-screen that US were using wasn’t the most responsive, and left several large thumbprints on the screen but was much more intuitive than the remote control. Where US definitely wins is that each seat in economy has a built in USB port to power mp3 players or mobile telephones, and it uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so people don’t need to pay the $3 or however much US charges for their headphones.

Meals were served not too long after take-off, with the trolleys starting at the front of the main cabin and working their way back. The first trolley offered you a choice of meals, while a following trolley was dealing with drink orders. Due to light loads, it didn’t take long for the meal cart to reach me. I know that FlyerTalkers love them their menus to be posted, so for posterity here is the menu from my flight.

Pasta

or

Chicken

I like to think of myself as pretty much the opposite of a vegetarian. If an animal didn’t die in the production of my meal, I am not very interested. As such I went with the chicken offering, and I wasn’t disappointed. Certainly something died, though I’m inclined to believe it was the chef’s spirit when he realised he went through 4 years of catering school to prepare this.

After the meal I decided to vegetate for a while, and ended up watching Toy Story on the AVOD which was even better than I remembered it being. US had quite a decent selection of films ranging from classic to modern. Toy Story, The Informant, My Life In Ruins, The Blind Side, plus your usual selection of random episodes of a few HBO shows, Flight of the Conchords, Big Love, and some discovery channel programmes on building things, a bit of comedy with How I Met Your Mother. A decent selection of different musical styles as well. All I can remember listening to is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America while reading American Gods on the plane to America. What a random, crazy happenstance.

After the mid-flight snack I decided to take a little nap knowing how long my day was going to be. Even after I landed, there’d still be nine and a half hours until I was able to be tucked up safely in bed. Luckily with the half empty aeroplane, I had a row to myself. Admittedly the 2-4-2 seating made my economy bed just a bit too short to be lie-flat (though if I’d moved to the centre section, it would have been perfect). Still, I kicked my shoes off, raised the middle arm-rest, wrapped the blanket around myself and fell asleep with my head on the window curled up like a little ball. After a couple of hours of fitful sleep, I made myself another mid-flight snack. I’d bought a can of Relentless in Glasgow Airport that morning, so chugged that down to wake myself up and ate a packet of beef jerky I’d bought the evening before from Tesco, just because it is delicious. Mmmm, beef.

There’s really not much more to write about an economy class flight of eight hours. Eventually we made it across the Atlantic, hitting shore at Newfoundland. Below us was much in the way of snow, it was pretty. We were given a pre-landing snack, a warm turkey and cheese roll, which was pretty darned nice. It wasn’t long before we were heading down the shore of New Jersey, turning inland around Atlantic City, a city with continually annoys me because everytime I type Atlanta into airfare search engines they suggest I go there instead.

The flight was nearly over. We passed over Philadelphia’s numerous suburbs with their many pools while the cabin crew member sitting near me whittered on to one of the passengers about her daughter who’s in medical school. I enjoy landing at Philadelphia, more-so now that I’ve been there and can actually recognise some of the places you can see from the window. One of the coolest parts of the landing was flying over a ship-yard where a brand new ship was sitting in the dry-dock. After looking it up on-line, that ship launched the following day. I’m sad enough to find that information interesting.

The landing was smooth and it didn’t take too long to dock with a gate. We were tied up in Terminal A-West and that’s where I’m going to leave you for this segment. Until Part Five then, gentlemen!

Our Good Friend Roy

Man, I almost feel like Roy Paymon deserves his own category on this here site, what with this being the third post in a week about him.

Today, though, I have some special news about him. He’s made a video! And since I’m incredibly awesome (and slightly bigheaded), my blog has been chosen to be the exclusive world premiere for it! Well, I mean, apart from YouTube, where it’s uploaded. So, without further ado, here is Roy Paymon (who doesn’t exist) singing and playing Big Black Bell, from his debut album, Guarding Crows.

Don’t forget, of course, that I am giving away a copy of this album. All you need to do is leave a comment on this blog post to be in with a chance of winning it! I said I’d give a week for entries, but I think I’ll leave it open until Wednesday or so. Come on peeps, get commenting

Adventures with Kyle

My job sucks. There are many reasons that it sucks, from the pay to the hours to the people treating you as sub-human because you’re only a cleaner. One of my least favourite parts of the job is that I only get one day off a week. This makes it difficult to plan holidays (28 days holiday is just over 4 weeks when you work 6 days a week, whereas it’s nearly 6 weeks when you work a normal 5 day week), but it also makes it difficult to actually do anything.

I mean, let’s imagine there’s a friend who would like to meet up with me. First, I have to hope they’re free on a Tuesday, then I have to make sure I’m not booked. One friend recently had an appointment for lunch and hanging out that we’d made about a month or so in advance, as it was the only time I was free. It’s difficult.

So, imagine my surprise late one Sunday night when I realised I had nothing doing on the upcoming Tuesday. I started to think of ways to fill that day knowing that if I didn’t have anything to do I would sleep until 4 PM, then sit on Reddit until 5 AM. It’s not good.

I took into consideration a few things before a plan formed in my mind. First, I’d been on quite a number of trains in the previous month. I’d been up to Aberdeen, to catch a ferry to Shetland. I’d been to Glasgow, to watch Toy Story 3 at the IMAX with Paul, and I’d been to Edinburgh to catch up with the too posh to be my friend but still inexplicably my friend, Karen. If you look at a map of Scottish railway lines you’d notice that there’s only one line from Perth I’d not taken that month, the one to Inverness.

I tried to think of ways of incorporating a train trip up to Inverness into my day off. It couldn’t be as simple as a day trip to Inverness, because I don’t like Inverness very much. Kind of boring, really. Maybe something like train to Dalwhinnie, cycle to Inverness then train home? Maybe, but the weather was promising me heavy rain and thunder, so it didn’t sound too appealing.

Then the light bulb above my head came on. I remembered the absolutely incredible trip report by a Mr. Seat 2A, 6 Trains on 6 Continents ~ Connected by 44 Flights on 14 Airlines, Part 1 here and Part 2 here. In many ways, I like to live vicariously through the trip reports on FlyerTalk, and Seat 2A not only goes on some of the best adventures, he is one of the best at writing them up afterwards. Man’s got some serious writing skills is what I’m saying. And while I may never fly Cathay Pacific First Class between San Francisco and Johannesburg, there is at least one part of this report I might just manage to copy.

The man flies from San Francisco to London and takes the ScotRail Sleeper train to Inverness just to travel on the Kyle of Lochalsh line. Not even to go to Kyle of Lochalsh, because he spent an hour there before turning back around to Inverness. Read about it here, his pictures are wonderful. I might not manage the flying from San Francisco, nor even the train trip from London, but I can certainly go up to Kyle of Lochalsh for the day. So I went on-line and booked me some tickets, £34 for a young person railcard anytime return from Perth to Kyle.

Itinerary:
0804 - 1029, Perth to Inverness
1101 - 1326, Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh
1715 - 1949, Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness
2015 - 2229, Inverness to Perth

I must admit, I was anxious about how long a day it was going to be. I’d have to be up about half six and wouldn’t be home until eleven that night. Combined with my normally not sleeping until two or three in the morning at the earliest and I knew I was going to be tired, but I figured it would be worth it. Besides, there’s a reason they invented Red Bull.

From this point on, this post is going to be mostly photographs. These photographs are not necessarily good enough for me to post on my Flickr account, as I try to reserve that for photos that not only I would enjoy but are actually, you know, half decent photographs. Unfortunately taking half decent pictures from a train is not easy. Many of the 284 photos I took that day have reflections of the train interior superimposed on the fantastic scenery, and while that is OK for showing what to expect when taking a train trip, I don’t consider it good enough for Flickr. Nevertheless, clicking any of the pictures will open them up in Picasa Web Albums if you want to see it bigger.

When I arrived in Kyle, I had a few hours to kill. A lady had gotten on the train at Achnasheen selling souvenir maps to gullible tourists like me. With the map came free entry to the friends of Kyle railway museum, so I did that. I’d heard there was a local viewpoint, so went a-wandering up to there to get some pictures, bought some lunch from the Co-op, and walked across the Skye bridge to Skye, before turning round again and taking a train back home. Here are some more pictures.

After that, it got too dark to photograph. Although the day was long and tiring and I had to get up at 6.30 in the morning, it was an incredible opportunity. The weather glorious, the scenery fantastic. Seriously, if you’re bored and anywhere north of Scotland’s central belt, you can do this trip in a day, and I really think you should do so.

Roy Paymon Competition!

As you are no doubt aware, I am enamoured of Guarding Crows, the debut album of Roy Paymon – a man who doesn’t seem to exist. Spooky! In fact, I enjoyed it so much (and also felt a bit guilty that I got it for free) that I wrote a pitiful attempt at reviewing the album.

Mr Paymon, who doesn’t exist, was a bit chuffed that I’d written a review. His first, in fact. My words, meagre though they were, made him feel “warm and tingly inside.” I imagine that releasing an album doesn’t feel real until a stranger 3,500 miles away writes something nice about it on the internet. His gratitude extended itself to giving me two more free copies of his album. One I gave to flatmate Tom, because he’d said he liked what he’d heard.

However, that leaves me with one more copy of Mr Paymon’s fine work, and I don’t have any other friends. So, I was thinking that if anyone wants their own copy, I’d run a little competition. The prize is one free legal digital copy of Guarding Crows, downloaded from Bandcamp. To enter, just leave a comment on this blog post. I’ll give a week from the time of posting for comments, then run a random number generator and award the prize to that comment. Yes, that means if you leave twelve comments, you’ll have twelve times more chance of winning. I’ll probably delete blank comments though, so try to say something worthwhile.

Right, get to it chaps!