Heathrow

As some of you know, Danielle and I flew back to Oklahoma for a weekend to be with family and remember my Grandma a couple weeks ago. While sad, it was also wonderful to learn more about her younger years, see old pictures, and be together as a big family which was one thing she always enjoyed. This post is about the eye-opening experience we had leaving London's Heathrow airport to get there.

Personally, I don't like air travel at all ... the only good thing it has going for it is the destination, the experience of traveling is usually tolerable at best. In all my years of travel, I have never seen anything like Heathrow. We got up 5:20am (or basically midnight Oklahoma time) to begin our journey, and caught one of the first trains of the day, arriving at the airport at 6:30 for our 9:20 flight. As an appetizer, this is what the check in line looked like for American Airlines after we'd be standing in line for 20 minutes:

Notice that we're standing between metal rails, this is not some freak occurrence, the line is that long regularly. They eventually called our flight at 7:40 (we were half way through the line at this point) and we got pulled into the express line for tardy people. We thought we'd be alright with an hour and a half to go, but the fun was only just beginning.

We went up the escalators to the security checkpoint, and, well, it blew my mind. The line stretched from the actual check point down the hall, past a dozen shops and restaurants, and out some doors.

We joined the procession of people searching vainly for the end of the line mouths wide open. The line went out some doors and made a sharp right, and as we rounded the corner things went from ludicrous to just comically unbelievable. The line went all the way down this hallway and out another set of doors.

We eventually found the end of it on the walkway from the parking garage to the terminal. This is a picture from the end of the security line, across a large construction site, to the Terminal where our flight was going to depart from:

And here's us at the end of line:

In that picture you can just see the neon green jacket of one of the poor people whose job it is, day in and day out to shepherd this monstrosity and explain to people that yes, this really is the security line and yes, even though it doesn't make any sense, they should stand in it. The poor man in line behind us knew what he was getting in to, he had arrived at the airport at 6 for his noon flight. It just wouldn't be complete without a little irony:

Anyway, the green jackets eventually called our flight and we joined the mad rush to the express line back out the doors, down the hall, out the other doors, passed all the shops, etc watching the poor people's faces walking the other way as various shades of disbelief passed over their faces.

The security check point as also unbelievable ... it was a huge row of 30 or 40 metal detectors all of them operating. Once we got through that, it was still over a 1/2 mile to our gate and we had to run as they said our flight was "closing." We got there, and after having our tickets and passports checked by seriously 4 different people, sat down exhausted in our seats. At which point a security guard came on looking for "Daniella" and needing to check her ticket one more time to verify that we were on the plane. Eight hours later, we had a brief and relatively painless stint at O'hare ... never thought I'd ever hear anyone say that. We were so very happy to eventually step out onto the red dirt of Oklahoma.

In conclusion, trains are much more civilized.