More on our trip to 2003 trip to Wales as the figurative me walks toward Lovelock:

At last, our December 4th departure date arrived. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 12:00 noon from SFO, but we were advised to get to the terminal three hours early. This timing seemed like overkill, but what the hey, it feeds my inherent nature to be early to everything. We had planned on getting to the airport by testing the new BART line which goes directly to SFO. However, over the Thanksgiving weekend, I read in the paper that some bank as a promotional gimmick was going to be providing free BART rides for all comers during the morning commute hours on December 4. I could envision overcrowded trains with little men pushing all the patrons onto the train a la the Japanese commute trains because of this little promotions. I could see our luggage being left on the Oakland 12th Street station. I decided that we should probably avoid a whole lot of cheap people taking a free BART ride. We thus called Bob, and arranged to have him take us to the airport.

We dropped Kate off at seminary at 5:59 a.m. that morning, saying our goodbyes. I decided that I should take Ariel to the dog park so that she could get one last run before we left. As usual, I was more concerned about my dear little greyhound that I was about Kate. Kate is a very independent gal. Plus, I can communicate (sometimes) with her. I could at least explain where we were going and when we would be back. I hoped that Ariel would remember me after our absence.



At the park, I spoke with Jim, the owner of a whippet named George that Ariel terrorizes, and another dog named Birdy. At Birdy’s request, no dog pays attention to her but for George. Jim was a deep sea diver who repaired ocean oil rigs. In this job, he had been around the world on several occasions. He no longer, then, has any yen to travel. But in all his travels, he never made it to the United Kingdom. It was not for the lack of opportunity, as he was contacted on numerous occasions to repair oil rigs in the North Sea. He steadfastly refused, telling me that the North Seas were simply to choppy and dangerous for him to be willing to drive there. He said that five to six divers are lost there each year. So in his retired state, he does not travel, but said that if he had to travel, it would be to Great Britain. I told Jim that we could stuff him in our luggage.

This suggestion led to our discussion about stowaways in the wheel wells of airplanes. I seem to remember reading as a kid about Cubans who used to climb into the wheel wells of planes bound for Mexico. Usually a couple of these guys would fall out of the wheel well and die when the pilot put down the wheels prior to landing. Jim said that was about the only distance that one could travel by plane in the wheel well as the planes going from Cuba to Mexico did not get enough altitude to get into the upper cold atmosphere. A person who rode a jet which travels at 36,000 to 38,000 feet would drop out of the wheel well as an ice cube. I said that beyond this, the stowaway would probably die from the lack of oxygen. I was thinking about those guys who climb Everest. If they ascend the peak without oxygen, they have to spend five weeks at the base camp getting acclimatized. How could the stowaway not die from the lack of oxygen at a height higher than Everest.

Jim, the diver who supposedly knows a few things about this, disagreed with me, but could not explain why I was wrong. All of which led me to think about the wonders of pressurized cabins on jets. Everyone has heard about the Wright Brothers and Mr. Curtis, but no one has heard about the developer of the pressurized cabin. Yet it is this pressurized cabin that made commercial travel feasible. Happily, as I pondered this matter, Ariel finished her run, and I was able to go home and wait for Bob.



I did not have to wait long. I had just sat down to listen to Dylan Thomas’ reading of his “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” to get me fully in the mood for our trip. Mr. Thomas, early in his narrative, says, “I can’t recall if it snowed six day in a row when I was 12, or 12 days in a row if I was six.” After this line, I heard Bob knock on the door. We loaded our one suit case into Bob’s beat up car, and took our 45 minute drive to the airport. That trip was uneventful but for Bob telling us that he had heard about a study of people forced to listen to Christmas music for several days in a row as part of their jobs. These people become more aggressive and violent than the average person. I was glad that I had not listened to more of Thomas’ story that morning or I might have developed a deep case of air rage.

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I have walked 618,398 steps in 51 days. I have walked 292 miles since leaving Alameda. I have 22 more miles before I reach Lovelock.