Out of the way

I arrived in Boston from Seattle on Friday, later than I expected. Unable to contact the G-man, I decided that I didn't want to risk being in Montclair with no bed at a time when there was no transport anywhere anyway. (Well, there are always taxis, and there are generally hotels, but it is pretty easy after midnight to end up spending a lot on a hotel I don't want to be in anyway.) So I rang smoe friends, went to a barbecue, and had a place to stay.

Saturday I spent catching up on sleep, because it hadn't featuredheavily enough in my jetlagged week, and the email flood that eats a big chunkofmost days. And Saturday night I caught a bus to New York. Although I had paid $2 for a connection to Newark, in the end I lashed out and spent a second $2 catching the path train, instead of waiting from 6.15 until 8am. As it happened I did a fair bit of waiting anyway, but I arrived in Newark at 8am, and two buses, a bit of walking and 45 minutes saw me at Gregory's.

Only he was asleep still. A bit of bell-ringing, and running my phone dangerously close to flat had no effect, nor apparently did the old fashioned method of bouncing a few handfuls of pebbles off the bedroom window. However, i had a book, so I settled down to finish it. A couple of hours later I was almost done, the sun was getting hot, and I moved back to ring the front door again, because it was in the shade. Happily, before I finished the book a round of bell-ringing raised the not-quiet-dead, and Gregory (looking for all the world like Che in nightshirt and occluders) greeted me, somewhat sleepily still, at the door.

A few short hours later and it was another airport, this one Newark, for another flight. Somehow Air France never manage to get it all together at once. The flight itself was pretty good - not crowded, I slept, and they arrived early. But they could not get my frequent flyer number into the system, which means that at some point in the future I will have to use the semi-functional website. They could not print my connecting boarding pass, which means another round of queues. And they fly into Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, one of the worst in Europe for its sheer inconvenience to connect (it could rival any large US airport except that french immigration is efficient).

On the plus side, rather than spend four hours at the airport (the time in which it is not useful to go into town, if you have to come back and deal with security and checkin), I opted to leave a few hours later. So hopefully I get to do some work today in normal work hours, and catch up with M. Berjon while he remains a bachelor. Although right now I am simply sitting in a cafe, hoping to make contact...

Tonight I go to Luxemburg to see Eva (YAY!) and tomorrow to Oslo for meetings and to get a visa. Wednesday I go home (so does Eva), and Friday we go to Maraña, but Monday I have to be in London...

And that's about the round of a week in the life... Sometimes there are more days in one place, sometimes instead of seeing friends it is a round of hotels and dinners in unknown cities where I don't speak the language, sometimes I actually just sit at home and work, make bread, and cook while I wait for Eva to come home. Those are the good weeks.