How did I get here, literally?

It seems like it would be such a simple thing: You get in a big metal cylinder in one place, then get out of it in another.

That only covers the first 15% of my travel story, actually.

To be fair, if my travel plans had happened the way they were supposed to, they still would have been ridiculous.  I was supposed to fly from SAN to JFK on a redeye, spend 16 hours in JFK, then take another redeye to MAN.  Obviously not the most restful travel arrangement ever, but I’m hardy and I have mobile broadband, so I figured it would be fine.

And it was, for a while.  I did get a ridiculously expensive manicure in JFK, but the massage chair justified the enetire price.  I also enjoyed a more than reasonable amount of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and put in more than a full workday.  Not bad.

Roughly 24 hours after I left San Diego, I was asleep somewhere over the Atlantic.  I was awakened by an announcement on the plane’s PA calling for a doctor.  I swear, it’s just like they did in Airplane!  Some time later, I was awakened by another announcement, this time informing us that we had made a u-turn and were headed toward St. John’s, Newfoundland in order to get an ill passenger to the nearest medical facilities.

Now, I get that sometimes the way forward is actually the way back, but in this case, we were two hours outside of Manchester and an hour and forty minutes away from Newfoundland.

Once landed, the ill woman had to be removed from the plane (they never told us what was wrong with her, but she was barely conscious as they wheeled her off), then her luggage had to be removed from the plane, and then a broken lavatory needed to be fixed.  All of these things, as you can imagine, caused a pretty heavy strain on the resoucres at St. John’s airport, so we were lucky to be back in the air just two hours later.

The flight to Manchester was thankfully uneventful, but passport control took ages, thanks to a preference for UK passports (pffft), and a very full flight from India that arrived just before mine.

When I finally got through, I had a good cry and a shower and then a lovely wander around Manchester, followed by some local ales and a tasty dinner with three of my favorite people on the planet.  Already, the travel was worth it.