Alright, the day has finally arrived!

It’s time to make my way back home again.

After 3 1/2 weeks on the road, I was ready to sleep in my own bed again tonight.

Of course, I had a wee bit of traveling to do before I got to rest my head on that pillow cuddled up with my two cute little cats.

After another very late bed time of 1am last night, I was surprised that I still woke up an hour earlier than I intended this morning.

It was 8am when I got out of bed and I found that I had the room to myself.

Ahhhh, nice.

The only other guy in the dorm had checked out while I was still sleeping.

No need to sneak around in the dark and be quiet.

I got ready, took a nice long hot shower, packed up my things and I was out the door at 10am.

It was pretty straight forward to get to Heathrow as the Underground takes you straight out there in about an hour.

Breakfast at Heathrow

There were a handful of places in the Heathrow airport I had been told had gluten free options.

I decided I was going to go for another full English Breakfast at Spuntino restaurant.

I asked if they had gluten free bread and, after a positive reply, I stood in line to enter.

This place knows that alot of people are in an eat-and-run mode so they actually have a little sign outside the host stand that said that 6 minutes was the average time for meal service to the table.

Impressive.

There were about 10 of us in line and the host came up to each of us and asked how many people were in our group and whether we had any allergies.

Also impressive.

When I sat down, I found out that while they could replace the toast, unfortunately I couldn’t have the black pudding, hashbrown, or sausage.

Well, that’s like half the breakfast, right there.

I ended up just ordering a burger and asked her if they could put it on a couple slices of gluten free bread instead.

There was another man sat across from me who was led in at the same time as me and we ended up talking.

Andy was here on business from Phoenix and works with IT for infrastructure around the world.

From the sound of things, it sounded like he was pretty high up there and probably one of those casually dressed millionaires jetting around teh world on business trips.

The people you meet along the way, eh?

Anyway, my breakfast, well, I guess lunch, was actually pretty decent.

I ordered the bacon and swiss burger.   It came with a side of fries and cost the token airport price of £25 ($50).

Yeah, you read that right.

A $50 burger for breakfast this morning.

Probably shoulda just picked up a couple protein bars at Sainsburys along the way to the Underground this morning.

Oops.

A laptop hiccup

After a nice chat with Andy and the most expensive burger I’ve ever had, I headed to the gate at 12:15 which was an hour before we were due to take off.

I opened my laptop for the first time today and I was met with the blue screen of death.

Yikes!

I turned off my laptop and turned it back on and I soon discovered what the issue was.

At some point, it decided this morning, of all mornings, it would do an automatic update for Windows 11.

Problem was, I didn’t have internet connected to the laptop so it just went through an endless cycle of an updating bar followed by the blue screen of death.

Reality sunk in that I would soon be boarding a 10 hour flight unable to type up blogs or watch any of the multiple TV shows and movies I had downloaded for today’s flight.

I mean, it wasn’t the end of the world, but a nuisance to be sure.

I could still watch some movies on the individual screen at my seat.

We soon boarded my first of two flights today.

The first flight was a 10 hour flight to Seattle where I had a two hour layover, followed by a short 1 hour flight to Vancouver.

For the long haul flight, the seat I had selected was waaaay in the back of the plane.

In fact, it was the 2nd last row.

I like picking seats in the back because usually there’s some empty seats still back there and, who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and get a row to yourself.

No such luck as we were all shoulder to shoulder with each other back there.

And the guy beside me was coughing.

And I lost the arm rest battle to him.

Sigh.

And then the guy in front of me lowered his seat all the way back so I couldn’t see my screen properly.

Only 10 hours to go…

Things take an amazing turn

Just after take off, I just wanted to ask the flight attendant if my arm rest by the aisle lifted up.

Her response was that some of the seats don’t allow the armrest to go up but I could move seats if I wanted.

I didn’t really think the arm rest was a big deal so I declined her offer.

She then came by a bit later and said there were a bunch of seats in the middle that were empty.

Well, now I was intrigued.

Sure enough, there were multiple rows where no one was sitting.

A whole row to myself on a cross Atlantic flight!

Oh yes, oh yes please!

I moved all my stuff to my new seat and was even able to move my bag from the overhead to one by my new seats.

Things were turning up!

I booted up my computer just as one last grasp and, miracle of miracles, it got out of the endless cycle and I was able to signin.

Soon after the flight attendants came by with drinks and a little bag of nuts.

Usually I can’t have the little snack but this bag of BBQ crunchy corn nibbles had the glorious words “gluten free” written across it.

Wow, this is amazing.

An hour into our flight I received my gluten free meal and it was the best meal I’ve had on a plane for awhile.

It was a dish of chicken and rice with broccoli.   There was also a little pack of gluten free crackers with cheese, a bun, and a gluten free cup of chocolate pudding.

The flight attendant even relabeled my meal to indicate my new seat number.

Kudos Virgin Atlantic!

So, here I was, lying across a row of 3 seats, laptop out, eating a gluten free meal.

My, oh my, how my flight experience changed on a dime!

Four hours into the flight as we were flying over Greenland, the plane started shaking pretty good.

The fasten seat belt signs came on and you could feel the plane drop down in altitude quite a bit.

We went from an altitude of 38,000ft to 36,000ft.

It was definitely the most turbulence I’ve ever experience on a plane.

Let’s just say it was enough to get my mind racing about the “what ifs” and that’s never a thought you want crawling around in your head.

Thankfully after about 15 minutes of shaking, we finally were smooth again and back to our original cruising altitude.

Ah, another good ‘ol adventure for Todd, eh?

Five hours in, more food was delivered.

While others were eating their toasties sandwiches, I was given a gluten free wrap stuffed with roasted vegetables, edamame, and sweet corn done in a tomato sauce.

Not a bad alternative and, again, it wasn’t dry or crusty.

It was a good little snack.

An hour after that they came by and passed out ice cream sandwiches to everyone.

I’ve never seen that on a plane before!

It killed me, like literally killed me, to hand it back to her because of my allergy.

But, gotta say, Virgin Atlantic was firing on all cylinders.

It was now coming up on 7pm London time and we’d be landing in Seattle in 3 hours.

And after a 2 hour layover, another hour flight, and then another 2 hours on Vancouver metro buses, i wouldn’t be home for another 8 hours which would be 3am London time.

I figured that was good enough reason to try to get in a little nap on the plane.

I mean, I had the whole row to stretch out and lie down in, right?

My experience with sleeping on planes is that I just don’t.

It hasn’t mattered what I’ve tried, I just can’t fall asleep.

I lay down with 2 pillows against the arm rest and popped on some mellow Depeche Mode to listen to and that seemed to do the trick as I got a pretty good nap in.

Mind you it was only for an hour but, still, it was good to get a little snooze in.

I woke up and I found yet another food offering waiting on my tray table.

Wow, a third meal!

This one was another wrap with a scone, and a gluten free granola bar.

Man, Virgin Atlantic, I kinda love you right now.

Before you knew it, we were touching down in Seattle and an hour earlier than expected to boot.

Almost there…

Of course, that extra hour just meant I had an extra layover hour in the Seattle airport.

Even though I was just transiting through, I still had to go through customs and then security.

The guy at customs while questioning me noticed my lack of major luggage and asked me where I had been with so little luggage.

I laughed because I knew my answer would make him even more curious.

Yeah, I was in Egypt and Jordan for 3 1/2 weeks and all with this tiny 42L backpack.

I guess I earned my backpacker badge of honor this afternoon.

Anyway, it was all pretty harmless and he let me through on to the security area.

To my astonishment, the TSA was super simple and not at all like I remembered it the previous time I went through the States.

I don’t know if they updated their systems to something newer and more high tech but I didn’t have to take out my liquids or laptop.

I just popped my two bags on the conveyer belt and that was it.

Hell, I didn’t even have to take my shoes off which I’ve always had to do in the States.

And then it was 2 1/2 hours of waiting at the boarding gate.

It was crazy to think that I was so close to home but wouldn’t actually be back in my house for another 6 hours.

Home!

At 5:30 I was back in the air again.

The big jumbo jet I had been on was now replaced by a small 78 seater E175 plane.

Despite it being so small, it had 8 boarding groups and, of course, I was in group 7.

It was kind of silly as the lady would call up a group and only 2 people would go into the line and then she’d call up the next group.

I was a little worried because they said they only had room for 25 bags in the overheads but I was able to nick one of the last spots.

My body was still a full 8 hours ahead so it was nearing 3am for me when we landed in Vancouver just over an hour later.

We landed at 6:39 and I guess we were at one of the closer gates because I was through customs and of the airport in just 20 minutes.

A new record and, after a long travel day, a nice little surprise as I still had a couple of skytrains and a bus in my future.

But, finally, after being up for 21 hours and in transit for 19 of them, I was back home.

It was quite the trip.

Like usual, there were some ups and there were some downs but, at the end of the day, I’m always thankful that I’m able to go out and explore the world.

Catch you all on the next adventure…