London to San Francisco

Posted on 2007/01/15 18:56:00 (January 2007).

[Sunday 14th January]
Swap Tokyo for London and Seattle for California, and the first month in the new job bears a striking resemblance to the previous one - after the first week in the office where I'm based, I'm required to go off to USHQ for three weeks of training, meetings, etc. So this morning I got up bright and early, got my things together and left my temporary flat, and trudged over to Heathrow.

The flight left at 11AM, it's about a 10 hour flight, and given the time difference it meant I landed in San Francisco at 2 in the afternoon.

The flight was OK I suppose (I have a feeling I always end up saying that!). I started off a little annoyed with myself, as I'd asked specially for a seat next to the emergency exits (much more legroom!) but then it turned out some guy had been seated separately from his wife/girlfriend/whatever and asked me if I wouldn't mind swapping. Albeit somewhat reluctantly I had to say yes - the alternative was to spend 10 hours sat next to a woman who would have me marked as a selfish git, with her husband/boyfriend/whatever coming over every so often to glour at me.

So then obviously I ended up sat behind the guy who put his seat right back as far as it would go about one minute after take-off, and left it there for the whole flight (even when he was eating). Git. Particularly annoying as the angle it was at, plus my height, meant I couldn't actually see the screen in the back of the seat properly - what a stupid design. Still, I suppose it could have been worse - at least I was in "Premium Economy" so comparatively I wasn't all that uncomortable, and being on Virgin meant the overall ambience was much better than other airlines I'd experienced. The food wasn't bad either.

I passed the time with the usual mixture of inflight movies and my iPod. One thing which particularly stood out was a Japanese film called Always san-chôme no yûhi, which I found utterly endearing, and made me realise yet again perhaps I had been a little too harsh on Japan during my time there. I heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in Japan.

Anyway, the flight landed at 2PM, customs/immigration/etc all passed without a hitch, and I was on to my big challenge for the day - driving.

On business trips to the US with the previous company I'd always copped out of driving. I usually went at the same time as other colleagues, and got lifts everywhere with them, or filled in the gaps with taxis and buses. This time though I had no colleagues to fall back on, and all accounts sugggested the provision of public transport was just as bad here in CA as it was up North in WA. So I had decided it was just time to bite the bullet, and hire a car.

Of course to most people this wouldn't be such a big deal, but I only passed my test a couple of years ago (see here), and have spent a large part of the intervening time in Japan where we didn't have a car. In fact even when we were in the UK I hardly ever drove, just the occasional weekend outing or trip to the supermarket. Plus I have almost never driven by myself.

So add into all of that the challenges of driving in a foreign country and you can hopefully imagine I was quite nervous about it!

Still, all of that aside I think I did fairly well on my first day back behind the wheel - despite getting horribly lost en route (I eventually realised I was trying to follow completely the wrong directions owing to the confusing way roads are named in the US) I did eventually get to my hotel.

After checking in and having a quick burst on the Internet (it seems I have a fairly respectable connection at the hotel), I heade out for dinner - leaving the car in the hotel parking lot. Luckily I didn't have to walk all that far to find a nice Mexican restaurant, where I enjoyed a very good Burrito and a couple of beers.

Not long after returning to the hotel the jetlag started to creep up on me, and I was asleep by 9.

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