Ewan: Our final day in Edinburgh before our grand trip. Frantic last-minute cleaning, arranging, chucking things into cupboards. And we had to say farewell to our faithful hound, Tess.
Lots of last minute decisions: have we got everything we need for 5 months? Too little? Too much?
Mimo: High in the sky just now, flying over Greenland and bopping about in some cloud turbulence. We spent almost three hours on the runway before finally taking off so it’s a relief to be in the air. It’s 11.45 am California time — long day ahead given that we went to bed at 1.30 am Scottish time and got up at 10 pm California time. Tiredness is making us a bit hysterical. I have been watching ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ and ‘Cheers’ and just failed a quiz on Maaike’s iPod. Maaike is on her third bag of crisps.
Got searched twice at the airport and the suspect was my Rescue Remedy. I had to drink some on the spot to show it wasn’t poisonous or explosive. Then each of my horn rems got studied and shaken — I wonder what it all does to the potency.
I’m thinking of my new godson, and the fact that my luggage weighed 24.50 kg, which suggests I’m carrying too much.
Ewan: We arrived about 3 hours late in San Francisco, and then tried to puzzle out how to find our way to Berkeley. After a bit of agonizing,we decided to take the BART train, and finally made it to the North Berkeley stop, in a state of severe fatigue, around 9.15 pm local time (5.15 am in Scotland). Had some trouble with our taxi driver who dropped us off with a shrug at Alameda 815, even though we asked for 851.