It looks like I just might make it. I’m watching a small airplane icon make its way from London to Madrid. It’s very Indiana Jones, and also speaks well to the incredible disconnect between me sitting here in a cramped seat typing and the fact that I’m in a metal tube careening at 494MPH (796km/h), 37000ft (11277m) above the earth.

Considering it’s 3:25am my time I’m doing pretty well, but if we don’t consider that, oy. Having flown Midwest for my past several flights (thanks Mom and Dad), I was used to much bigger seats than they have in regular old coach. Luckily, I got a seat next to Katie, but the seats were quite cramped. Very little sleep, very little comfort. International flight in coach is not an experience I can recommend. Katie and I did manage to catch an episode of The Worst Television Show Ever. It was like a rehash of Friends with terrible writing and even worse acting; in other words, it was great. It was named after some song that I can’t remember like “The way you make me feel” or something. So that was the highlight of the trip.

Upon arriving in Heathrow airport in London, we went down the stairs outside (no tube to the terminal, it felt very presidential) and proceeded to move as quickly as we could because we were worried that we might not get to our next flight in time. We managed to without too much trouble, and got to the terminal with our boarding passes in hand. It was much different from any other terminal I’ve seen–set up basically like a mall with a ton of stores. I don’t really see how people could go shopping for perfumes and jewelry and whisky in the airport, but that’s just me, I guess.

On the flight to Madrid (also British Airways), they served “eggs and bacon” which was a cold roll with egg salad, bacon pieces, and butter. It wasn’t very good. The mango/orange juice, on the other hand, was.

According to the handy mappy screens, we’re now over Spain, just a little west of Bilbao. I don’t really have any reason to believe the screens through. All I see are clouds out the window.

The only way I can do this is by taking things one step at a time, and that is what I’m doing. This is why you don’t hear me speculating on the details of getting there. I’m trying to keep things manageable for my brain, and so far other than the damage that international travel has done to my body, I am doing quite fine.

Next step: the world starts speaking in Spanish.

Sun Jan 7 03:55:30 CST 2007