San Francisco to Glasgow to Stornoway

I’m actually writing this in Glasgow although it will not get posted until I arrive in Stornoway and I have settled into my Eagleton home. I can’t receive the wireless signal in the departure lounge for the Islands flights which is tucked away.

My flight from San Francisco to London was booked through Air New Zealand but they had put me onto their code-share partner Virgin Atlantic. These pictures of the inflight display in the screen in front of me were taken on my phone so are not of good quality. In any case neither the quality of the screens on the Virgin plane nor the quality of their display of inflight information and maps was a patch on the Air NZ ones. The display does show, however, that our flight path was, as I had anticipated, to the North of my United States readers.

When we arrived in London Air New Zealand hadn’t unlocked my London to Glasgow e-ticket which was with another code-share partner, British Midland. A couple of years ago I waited 1 hr 20 mins for it to be sorted. Today I waited about the same. I definitely feel a complaint coming on. Waiting at an airline desk after travelling half way around the world is not fun.

Then British Midland failed to deliver my croquet mallet to Glasgow. Ah well. It'll probably be delivered to the house in the next day or so and I won't have had to have paid for it on FlyBe from Glasgow to Stornoway.

I was pretty tired by the time I got onto the Stornoway flight. I do love flying above the clouds and although this was not particularly spectacular it nevertheless was beautiful. Even more would it be so if you hadn't experienced it. So especially for Heather I took the following with my phone (in flight mode I hasten to add!):

It's a long way from Rotowhenua Road to Eagleton!

An Update From San Francisco

Hello folks. The flight from Auckland to San Francisco was good and seemed to fly by (sorry about that). Thank you for your comments and wishes. I'll take them on board for the second leg of the flight to London Heathrow. I'll still have two flights after that mind you. To Glasgow and then to Stornoway.

It seems really odd. I left Napier at 1750 on Sunday 26 April. I arrived in San Francisco at noon on, guess when, Sunday the 26 April ie nearly six hours before I left. It doesn't matter how many times I do this it still seems strange.

The other odd thing is that I cannot send texts from either of my mobile phones yes when I arrived in S F texts arrived for me. Anyway I managed to log onto T-Mobile's hotspot with my laptop for half the price of a cup of coffee.

Just to add another oddity to this posting I am now nearer to some of you than I usually am. I won't fly over Texas or Oklahoma or Vermont I don't think but this message is being penned from the States. Actually I wonder how much nearer to Vermont San Francisco is than London is. Not, I suspect, by a huge distance.

Take care my friends.