Come fly with me. Come fly, come fly away…

Up at the crack of the middle of the night (okay, about 6am!) showered, dressed, wrestled the 4 giant cases, and 2 laptops downstairs and waited for the taxi…and waited, and waited…it turned up about 20 minutes late just as we were contemplating getting the shuttle bus. That’s a whole 20 minutes extra I could have had in bed!! Still, it got us to the terminal in good time and, after nearly mowing down Ian Botham on our way in (trolleys loaded with 2 giant cases and a laptop are difficult to steer you know!), we made our way to the Virgin check in exprecting to see a queue a mile long….no, just a couple of people. Then onto security (we had fast track thanks to Virgin! – we love Virgin!), where there was a small queue, but nothing extra-ordinary. Didn’t even have to be strip searched this time!!

The flight was fine. I don’t think Stephen and I spoke to each other the whole time!! We both spent practically the whole flight passed out (and not through drink! – although the G&T was quite strong!). When we weren’t asleep, we watched Blades of Glory which was hysterically funny (refer back to the G&T here!). I had real problems with my ears on the decent – if anyone on the flight thought there was a baby crying – there wasn’t it was me!! I was in agony!!

The Air India flight obviously got into Dulles shortly before we did. Which meant, in the current climate, that the queue to get into the country was slooooow…. Which meant that after standing in line for over an hour I had a) an overwhelming need to pee and b) biceps like Arnie from carrying the exceeding heavy laptop case!!

We loaded up 2 trolleys with the exceedingly heavy suitcases and laptops and headed off to where you catch the bus to the car hire place. This is down a slope, and I was wearing heels and there aren’t brakes on the trolleys…momentum took hold and within seconds I was hurtling down the slope, clinging onto the trolley for dear life and in no way in control! I passed Stephen on the way down doing about 40mph, my little legs doing 40 to the dozen trying to keep with the trolley which had reached critical velocity!!

After a small panic about the Compact size car that Avis tried to give us (we couldn’t fit the cases in it, so they gave us an FOC upgrade!), we hit the Beltway and made good time to the hotel, where we dumped the cases, had a quick shower and then made our way to Morag and Simon’s for our Welcome to America champagne supper!