DAY ONE: Arrival!

Although her frequent international travels often leave a certain aging left-hander feeling lonely and hollowed-out (and occasionally threatened by Bee Gees-loving Outer Mission bar patrons when he just wants to watch a Warriors game in peace), the flip side is the vast rewards that same washed-up southpaw enjoys when he's tapped to accompany Bullock on a trip. Consider these amenities for starters:

- TSA Pre-check
- Boarding before Boarding Group 1 (but after Global Services)
- No extra charge to check bags
- A seat in the new United Premier Plus section, which isn't Business Class but comes with a much wider seat, a bigger TV and an actual printed menu, which made this Economy-level guy pretty happy  during yesterday's hop across the pond. 

Exclusive club
or upscale cafeteria?

And finally, the United Club. This is something I wouldn't even know existed were it not for Sandra Bullock. In San Francisco it's hidden away like a Speakeasy next to Gate 98, just a little barely illuminated sign that seems to murmur, "...this sign only has meaning to those invited to enjoy its many luxuries..."  Beyond it is a world of obsequious service, where the free wine flows and the cheese cubes are plentiful, where traveling work colleagues enjoy a few casual moments before boarding their flights and important conferences calls happen over plates of carrot sticks and ranch.  Some -- people I know, in fact -- may eventually become blase and jaded and eventually say things like, "You should see the United Club in

Frankfurt," and they may not be exaggerating.  Upon closer examination, the United Club at SFO does in fact resemble an upscale cafeteria, and may indeed be a pale imitation of the nearby Polaris Club.  Just to be invited inside, though, seems accomplishment enough, a calling card telling the world that you've made it to the top of the heap, that membership in secret societies is no longer a mystery but instead part of your every day life.

Or maybe you just got in there because your wife is a 1K member. That happens, too. 

Our flight, 10 hours long, landed at Heathrow just before 7 AM this morning. Or maybe at 11 PM yesterday.  The meal they dropped in front of me two hours before landing was breakfast.  Or it was last night's dinner.  It had eggs, so breakfast?  My mistake was taking my confusion public.  

ME: "So this looks like breakfast, but it's dinner time, right?"

SB: "No. It's breakfast."

ME: "But my body thinks it's 9 PM."

SB: (the Heavy sigh of a seasoned international traveler dealing with a complete rube)  "You just have to tell yourself it's breakfast.  Don't fall into that trap."

ME: "At the very least it's a really early breakfast.  Like having 'breakfast' at Denny's after you've been out at the bars all night.  I mean, even in England it's not really breakfast time yet."

SB: (pointedly)  "It's still breakfast.  The sooner you get on this time, the better." (returns to watching Spiderman movie which, I'm later told, was just okay but really cool looking)

Only my genius.

Upon arriving at Heathrow, repeating "It's morning it's morning it's morning (it's only 11 PM) it's morning, etc."  I decide to flex my international travel muscles by insisting we take The Underground (the Tube to locals; don't get stuck down there at midnight) into London, instead of "one of those cute taxis."  It's easy.  We buy the England version of Clipper Cards, easily navigate the Heathrow station, get on an empty train with our bags, which have by now already begun to operate in the manner of a mid-1970s American-built car: very large and heavy, with a surprisingly small interior capacity.  

Everything is working fine except that it's now 8 AM and people are going to work. They're taking the Tube.  We have enormous luggage and we're the only ones.  By the time we get to Zone 2, the Tube is packed like a late afternoon MUNI. Among the passengers: Mr. Bean, or at least it looked like him, which was great.  Thank you, London.

There are approximately 8,306 stops between Heathrow and King's Cross, which is the Tube stop closest to our hotel.  Also, "closest" is hyperbole.  It's about 15 minutes walk time, which isn't much except when your body thinks it's 1 AM, you're pulling a 40 pound (18 KG) bag, wearing a 20 pound (9 KG) backpack, haven't slept or taken a shower and are slowly realizing that the walk from the station to the hotel is a long, gradual, unrelenting hill.  

We arrived sweating and exasperated.  Again, I may be speaking for myself.

I'm definitely speaking for myself when I say that our trips to the lobby bathroom to "freshen up" backfired when we realized that all of our shirts were buried at the bottom of our bag. The ultimately unsuccessful effort to get a new shirt ended with me back in the lobby, accompanied by my halfway zipped bag, still wearing the shirt I put on at 6:30 AM yesterday (earlier today?) sweating even more.  Sandra Bullock, unsurprisingly, emerged from her restroom a few minutes later, looking as if she'd just taken a refreshing, cleansing shower.  Check-in wasn't until 2 PM (6 AM if you're scoring at home), so we dropped our albatrosses of luggage and hit the London streets...

... only to realize that we had made no plans and done no research for this first day.  "What do you want to do?" Sandra Bullock asked.

"Um."

Frantic map and Google research followed.  Finally, we decided to walk to St. James Park, because my friend Ray, who lived in London, said it's the best park among many parks, because it's famous (I think), and because it gave us the chance to get our sea legs, and because it's royal.  Some people dig the royal stuff.  Not me so much, though I'd like to get a look at one of those corgis. 

8,000 steps, one art museum (the National Gallery, a stunning collection but a visit perhaps not timed by us for maximum appreciation.  Two rooms in I slumped onto a bench, barely awake, foolishly ignoring S. Bullock's advice, thinking, "So it's 11 here, which  means... my body thinks it's 3 AM!" and again, sweating.  It's not warm here.  I was just sweating.), many fine parks, including St. James, an excellent vegetarian pie and a bowl of chips that turned out to be -- duh -- french fries later, we are back in our room, checked in, showered and doing way overdue Google research on restaurants so we don't end up at some place with laminated menus.  Ray's cheat sheet email has been consulted. 

Lets end this first day in England with some numbers, like:

3 -- the number of motorized vehicles that almost hit Sandra Bullock today because she looked the wrong way while crossing a street.

1 -- the number of bicycles that almost did the same.  However,

100 -- percent of locals who jaywalk, but only after looking left, not right.

90 -- total amount of sleep, in minutes, I've gotten since 6:30 PDT yesterday, including an hour-long nap I just woke up from that made me feel like Mark Renton after that last hit of heroin almost put him in the morgue. 

7 -- number of days before our son starts the job he got today after his second interview at a production company in L.A.  The contrast between the stressed-out pre-interview FaceTime call we took pre-flight in the United Club and the joyous voicemail that awaited us upon our arrival was breathtaking. 

33 -- degrees, in celsius.  This is what our room A/C was set at when we checked in.  I hesitated to say anything, because I imagined the desk clerk hanging up the phone and saying to her colleague, "Guess what? The Americans in 169 are complaining about the air conditioning.  Figures."

66 -- approximate percentage of adult men walking around London wearing suits but not neckties.  Seems strange, since the converse of that is the percentage of young boys actually wearing neckties with their school uniforms.  You'd think they'd be used to the neckties by now.  Come to think of it, maybe it isn't that strange.  

10 -- minutes until I wake up Sandra Bullock and we head out for dinner.  Or lunch.  Maybe late breakfast?  

Tomorrow we go back at it, this time hopefully with a semi-normal night's sleep and less flop sweat.  Maybe this time we'll get to Buckingham Palace in time to see the parade of corgis. 

Still waiting on that one. 

Also tomorrow, we are hoping that A) I stop converting GMT to PDT, to give my body a break, and that B) Sandra Bullock remembers, before crossing the street, to:

,