In Leicestershire Ego Est

...which looks a lot better than "made it" as a title.

The journey was best expressed as a series of vingettes, really.

Sky Harbor
Two airport workers express an interest in my Kindle 2. We chat - or rather, they chat and I do a very geeky gush about the technology - and then one of the pair (the shorter, slightly more aggressive one) says how he's always two or three years behind the curve to get the cheaper kit and to let the format wars settle down, which is how he got his BluRay player for almost nothing. I nod, and tell him about Toshiba selling the HD-DVD format to China, and what this will mean for grey market imports. He leaves looking concerned.

PHX to LAX
I'm reading the Sharpe novels, in order. The guy sitting next to me on the plane tells me he likes the Kindle 2 and wants to know more. There is another geeky gush from me about the K2, and this time I manage to cover some of the downsides to the device too.

LAX
A heavily armed security guard stops me to ask questions about my bag. My carry-on luggage is a replica Mk7 gas mask bag from Magnoli, of the type sported by Indiana Jones in "Raiders". He likes it, but was more concerned with whether it was functional. I assure him not, and even so I don't have a WW2 vintage gas mask. (And even if I did all I would do is wander around asking "Are you my Mummy?").

LAX is HUGE! Bigger than that, in fact, and in a state of disrepair.

At the international terminal, which LAX uses as a last attempt at getting money out of visitors (ten dollars for a sammich? You have to be kidding me!), the announcements in English are made by a guy who has a "Welcome! to the woooorld of tomorrow!!!" voice. Don't know what that is? Watch the first episode of "Futurarma".

LAX to FRANKFURT
Any way you cut it, flying economy sucks.

The journey was made marginally less hideous by the following elements:
- the very pleasant german lady I sat next to. She spoke very little English, I spoke very little German, we found ways to communicate.
- assorted movies. I never thought I would be glad to see "Night in the Museum 2", or "The Proposal", but I was. I was also glad to see "My Life In Ruins" and a John Malkovich movie in which he plays a character based on The Amazing Kreskin.
- the Doctor Who soundtracks for seasons 1 to 4, parts of which made all the turbulence over Greenland entertaining rather than worrying. Somewhere out there, someone has to have had the idea of a Doctor Who thrill ride.

Frankfurt Airport
The taps in the Gents are rather more intelligent than I would like. As you approach the basin, the tap turns itself on. The flow is quite...forceful, one assumes to get the water hot enough to do any good, but immediately you place your hands anywhere near it, the tap slows the flow down and thereby avoids you spraying water over yourself and anyone standing near you.

This usefully entertained me for some minutes, which was just as well because at this point I was little more than an ambulatory fungus anyway.

I did another little demo about the Kindle whilst waiting for the near plane - Frankfurt to Birmingham - and the final flight I admit I spent in something of a daze.

Birmingham
My how efficient it all was. In baggage retrieval I couldn't change money in order to get a trolley, nor could I get my hands on any UK currency. No one seemed to know anything very much, so I yomped the length of another bloody airport looking for my next connection. Eventually I made my way to the station and got on the right train. I navigated Birmingham New Street with whole minutes to spare, whilst assorted Rail staff watched me being kicked around by my luggage.

To be fair, they'd no idea how little sleep I'd had in the last 24 hours and they had no idea how difficult everything had become.

Leicester
The hotel: cheap and cheerful, theIbis in Leicester has MDF tables with a matress slung on the top for beds. The showers have little or no water pressure, something of a disappointment to end the mighty crossing with.

Everything else, though, is fab.

It's good to be back.