Wed Jul 19 04:24:00 2000: OLS day 0
London Heathrow -> Boston -> Ottawa
Not only am I jetlagged, I'm turboproplagged.
If like me you've only ever been on big planes, here are
some notes
you may find useful about small ones.
1) they're small. On the Saab 340, for example, each
row has seats denoted A, B, C -
you stand
almost a 70% chance of getting a window seat. Even in the
worst case
you at least get an aisle seat. Rows are numbered 3-14. Go
figure
2) they're noisy. After some half an hour zipping around
the taxiways
waiting for the weather to clear, the pilot eventually got
permission
to leave, pointed the nose down the runway and whacked the
throttles
open. Or whatever it is that pilots do, anyway. Shortly
after that
came the usual
magic-gravity-defying-hang-in-midair-moment-that-never-grows-stale
which most regular flyers sleep through (I don't care. I
still think
it's neat), and after that the road noise did _not_ go away.
Ah. Looks like that was engine noise then, not road
noise.
3) they're slow. This is actually good because you stay
long enough
at a low enough height to be able to see some scenery; not
so usual
with an airbus 300
4) they've no seat back tv. yay! where _do_ AA get the
programming
for seatback viewing? it's so bland and inoffensive as to
be
completely unpalatable - actually, now I think of it, so is
the food.
We were late out of Boston due to the weather, which was
inclement and
highly charged. Small planes have this feature in common
with big
planes: their pilots are no more willing or able to take off
during
electrical storms with quantities of falling water which
lead purple
writers to start talking about dancing raindrops. They
weren't
dancing. Just coming out of the sky, hitting the ground and
bouncing
up again.
Can an aeroplane aquaplane? What happens?
After we did get off the ground we found that we were in
the middle of
a glorious sunny summer evening, for most of the flight.
Until the
plane began final approach and we found out that everyone
actually
living here is _below_ the cloud layer. Seems odd when it's
so much
nicer above, but they probably have reasons. I'm only
visiting, what
do I know?
Nobody in airport security, customs or immigration at any
of the
airports I've been though bothered asking to see my laptop.
Given
that I flattened its battery before landing at Boston, this
may not be
such a bad thing. Canadian immigration officers are however
extremely
friendly and will talk to you for ages, given half a
chance. At 1:02
Dan Standard Time I had a difficult time excplaining what I
was doing
in Ottawa without using any form of words that could be
equated to
"I'm going to meet a bunch of people that I know from the
Internet."
Hmm.
Arrived. Found hotel, etc. Slept.