The one downside of splitting my trip into two parts, flying and train, is that I’ve been traveling for two days just to get to here; Today felt a bit quiet as a result.

Not, however, in any way a bad day; Caught up with Tom in the morning, and again in the evening. Wandered through a largely-empty ICC, where they’re setting up for Gen Con.

Also, managed to get a little tripod thingy for the phone, which is really helping to make writing, and probaly video-taking, easier.

Took the opportunity to break out my Badge Wallet from last year;
The ALLY ribbon & VIG pin are 2016 vintage, the Mind The Gap pin I bought because I thought it’d be nice to have a UK thing on there (granted, a National Rail or Chiltern Railways pin would be more appropriate for Aylesbury, but I don’y know that they make or sell those), and the little robot is from the ESRI UK Annual Conference.

Going to see what else I can stick onto it this year.

Ok, so when we last checked in, I think I’d made it to the hotel & gone splat for the night?

The train to Indianapolis wasn’t until the evening, and check out was a very civilised mid-day, so I had a bit of time to kill, and breakfast to eat. 

Replace ‘cake” with ‘bacon’, and that’s more or less the situation

In my defense, this was the first hot meal since breakfast at Heathrow. Also, aside from the cookie, the first good meal since Dublin.

Stop judging me! 

I was on the Hilton Honors floor, at the top of the hotel of course

Maybe the little plaque was a thing at previous hotels? I can’t remember. In any case, the room was comfy, the bed worked, and I never ended up using the TV, sofa setting, or the bath.

Also, thanks to the odd floor plan of the hotel, I was able to photograph my room from the outside.

Took some time to archive/photograph all of the documents so far, just in case they became useful (I filled in one of those arrival card things, but never got asked for it. The same basic questions were asked by the screening robots at Dublin CBP, but none of the follow ups) 

No reason, I just liked the look of the thing

Killed some time by checking my bag & wandering over to Fashion Outlets Of Chicago, which is basically a Name-Brand Mall. They had a T-Mobile store with two staff wondering why the hell there were so many people there on a Sunday morning, so there was a wait, mostly because they were tied up with a couple of really complicated purchases.

‘Chill Traveler Craig’ came to the fore, and I mooched around until they were free; Even let someone dive ahead of me, as they’d arrived with a panicked look and a wad of cash, to pay their bill a day late.

The big annoyance of the day, aside from the frankly shit signage at O’Hare, was getting into Chicago by CTA, whose machines don’t give change & require a zip code to take a credit card.
Which is shit-all use when you’re from outside the US, using a prepaid currency card, and have no idea what zip code, if any, is the right one.

It’s an international airport, there should at least be the understanding that places outside of the US exist.

Still, I broke a 20 and got some change, and rode the train all the way into Chicago, and found my way to the Metropolitan Lounge at Chicago Union Station, with comfy sofas, a bag check, and snacks.

“Only Two Kinds Of Cheese? What Are We, Animals!?”

Also, spotted this when I took a walk around the general vicinity of the station.

Walking in off the street is kind of impressive; It’s a big damn space.
(there was an idea I pitched for the Big Red Couch episode ‘Alien Leprechaun’ which was based around train stations, or more accurately a train station, and I imagined it to look something like Chicago Union)

In the fullness of time, and with a fullness of snacks, I got to the train.
You’re not actually at river level when youre in the train, but there can’t be that much in it between water and track level.

It’s interesting to note a very big disparity between the style of the station and platform at Chicago Union; Station is all classic Big Public Building architecture, or is at least trying to make you think of that sort of thing.
The platforms are all business & function; There’s nothing decorative going on at all.
I’ve been trying, and I can’t even think of an aboveground tube station with that little in the way of aesthetics going on.

I don’t know enough of the history of the place to know whether this was always the case; Was the original assumption that folks would only see the platforms while walking to & from trains, so who gave a damn? Or is it something else?
Should find that out.

The train journey was uneventful enough.
We got stuck behind a freight somewhere in Indiana, so arrived an hour late, which is … something that’s always a risk with Amtrak.
The cafe car chap starte apologising to me on reflex, and seemed relieved when I assured him that it wasn’t a big deal for me; I get the idea that repeat customers or frequent travelers, at least ones who look my age, aren’t that common, because he did relax when I mentioned having done longer trips & watched the train get behind schedule for a while, then make it up, then lose it again.
It’s just the way things are.

Anyway, we got in at 1am, around an hour late, and the worst part of the whole thing was the dongpenguin one row back & across the aisle, who managed to make noise the entire fucking trip.

• sighing loudly
• fidgeting constantanly
• drumming his feet or hands on the floor/seat/walls
• loud conversations with someone on the phone, where he was being rational and they were being anxious. or where he was being a passive-agressive git, as an alternative interpretation
• much noisy shifting of position
• many snacks in crinkly packets, stored in paper bags

I think he had some sort of back/neck issue which was causing him pain, and I should feel sorry for him for that, but after six hours, the best I can offer is not hoping that it bloody hurt.

Still, you get that on public transport.

I’d originally planned to catch a cab to the hotel from the station, but when I got there, the dismal and desolate alley under the train tracks was actually very well lit, and it was nice night, and there were still some folks around just doing their thing (in the centre of Indianapolis at 1am) so I walked it.
Not like it’s far, and ot of a desire not to be a complete idiot I stuck to wide well-lit streets in areas were I had a solid idea of where the nearest hotel was, should I find myself with an urgent need to be in a space with security.
Probably unneccesary, but so are many things, and it did no harm.

I did stop to take a selfie though;

Last know picture of Craig, a selfie taken mere moments before he was eaten by a shoggoth he clearly didn’t know was there

The Aer Lingus aircraft … couldn’t … so we’re on a Privilege aircraft instead. Still the same flight number, but very different accents.

(not entirely sure where they’re from; Spain, maybe?)

You may now revel in the pun in this post title.

Revel, I Say!

~~~ Time Passes ~~~ Lightning Crashes ~~~

Given my limited understanding of how airlines work, I’m not sure how Aer Lingus managed to find another plane of the same layout, so that seat assignments still worked, but somehow they did. I’m also not sure how another airline had a plane they could divert onto someone else’s schedule, but they did that too.

This, I think, goes a long way toward explaining the “We Were Not Prepared For This!” vibe. They’re doing their best here, and I’m assuming that supplies were shuffled between aircraft at the last minute, because the reaction to the in-flight meal (Beef Stroganoff) was probably not supposed to be “Mmmmm, tepid”.

There are a few Aer Lingus folks on board, somewhere up the front, but the cabin & flight crew are from Privilege.

They’re playing a Kevin Costner movie about oval-ball football on repeat; Didn’t catch the name of said film.

Kind of regretting having to delete the BBC iPlayer app, with it’s wonderful download capacity, in order to make space on this phone for more immediately useful things. On the plus side, I can delete the Aer Lingus app, as it’s, in my view, useless; Airport WiFi is never a given, and is not to be relied upon, so why the hell would you make an app which allegedly stores your trip information, then make it dependent on an internet connection to function?

~~~~~

Yep, the movie is to do with the NFL Draft & the Cleveland Browns.

Sound through the aircraft system is awful, so I’m guessing on the plot. Then again, it’s just started for the third time, so I’m getting a number of chances.

It does do some interesting things to make phone conversations & simultaneous events interesting.

~~~~~

And the movie has passed (four times, and I missed the title every time) ,
I have landed, at last,
And eventually got to my bag after seing it sail merrily by on the conveyer, utterly inaccessible because of all of the folks standing four-deep around it.

Got to my hotel eventually; Finding the Bus & Shuttle Zone isn’t the shortest of processes, but it happened, and I got here, and the nice people thanked me profusely for being a Hilton Honors Reward Scheme Dooberry Member (I feel a bit odd about that; The membership was free, and all I’ve done is cross-compare between all of the other hotel reward schemes when looking for a place, to see who had the best deal. Adds up over time, I guess) , told me where my room was, and gave me a cookie.

Let’s end with the cookie.

US Preclearance in Dublin was pretty damn uneventful.

I was hazy on the photography rules post-preclearance, so I didn’t take pictures of the Last Chance To Get Your Twee Shit kiosk. I mean, it wasn’t called that on any sign, but it’s clearly what was going on.

I was tempted by a “Feck It; Sure, It’s Grand” shirt, in the style of “Keep Calm And Carry On”

It also wasn’t the last chance; There were more opportunities to purchase a plushy Leprechaun, or an actual Guinness.

~~~~~ editing to add ~~~~

this isn’t relevant in any way, I just wanted to add an image

Most of my fellow passengers for the next bit are USA-ians. When heading through to the Connecting Flights section in Dublin Airport (near as I can tell it has no specific name) I was following the crowd towards some sort of passport control booth system, but got diverted into the EU passport bypass lane by a nice pre-queue people wrangler.

I was the only one in that lane.

I’m writing this offline due to poor free wifi time-management. And because having used the free allowance for plebs in the procss of getting signed up for the longer allowance for Heathrow Rewards members, the system is sticking to “Time’s Up, Prole” and not letting me wave my “I’m A Special Snowflake” identity to get more.

Meh, such is life.

Slept pretty well in my quite purple Yotel cabin (I’d have called it very purple in the past, but then I stayed at a hostel in Edinburgh, part of the SafeStay chain, who have branded purple pillowcases, duvet covers, and bedsheets. Yotel need to up their game on the purpleness if they want to play in the SafeStay pool) and made it through eleventy-billion tunnels, escalators, and hallways to an utterly uneventful check-in.
Even got to help out some folks who’d missed the check-in robot entirely & joined the bag drop queue thinking it was check in. Granted, said help was mostly clarifying that they did need to visit those machines over there, and that the machines would give them their boarding passes.

as a side note, typing on my blootooth* keyboard on my lap with the phone balanced on one knee works surprisingly well, though I do need to adjust the keyboard every line or so.

* that was a typo. I did mean to type bluetooth, but I’m keeping it.

I should find out what gate I need for the UK-Ireland leg in the next few minutes.
Maybe Dublin airport has free wifi too?
Does Dublin airport have a name? I’d look it up, but; Living in the dark ages here. 

On the plane, in the air, flying over a sea of clouds. And maybe actual sea too, somewhere under the aforementioned clouds.

The very small carry-on bag seems to be doing the job; All it’s holding are the one vital medication, travel documents, and all of the electrical/electronic stuff. And anything with a battery. 

Fits under the seat without an issue, which is handy, as this is an all-hands gate-check-your-enormous-rolling-cabin-bag no-free-space flight. They did tell people that they’d be gate checking larger items, due to it being a full flight.

Yep; Dublin has free WiFi.

Also, the flight was routed over Milton Keynes & out over Wales, so I must have flown pretty close to Aylesbury.