Well, I made it back safely last night. I got in at about 10:30pm and was in bed shortly thereafter. Here I am back at work. Kind of surreal, actually. So, I’m about to head to lunch, which feels like dinner, which suggests I’m gonna get pretty sleepy pretty soon. I’ll see if I can take off a bit early today. It’s not like I accumulated anything on my desk while I was gone, or anything. Hahaha.

Oh, I should throw in this one anecdotal nugget. Two days ago (that was Monday, right?), I flew into London from Bergen. There I met Zak for one more overnight. We met up with my Dad (who happened to be in town) for a fantastic dinner, and afterwards went out for a few pints. The theory was a few drinks and a minimally abbreviated sleep would knock me out on the flight the follow morning.

Well, the plan went a bit askew and we stayed for a few + several more drinks. Problem was we found a great jazz band playing at this club, and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. So, we got home, I reckon, around 2am (though that’s just a guess). I felt I had set my alarm, but I somehow didn’t quite manage. I was planning on being out the door by about 6:15 to catch my 10:10am flight from Gatwick.

Somehow, by the extraordinary grace of god, I woke up at 7:11. I’ve never moved faster in my life. I was struggling to throw everything into my bags, standing half-naked in Zak’s living room, when his roommate walked by. I don’t know that she had a heads up that I was staying over. So, there was a fun moment.

I rushed out of the house, walked down to the bus number that I thought Zak had mentioned I should take. Ran from the stop to King’s Cross, caught the Thames Link train and arrived at Gatwick at about 9:00am. I floated around the wrong terminal for a few minutes trying to find the Delta desk. I was told I needed the North Terminal (duh, I should have known that), and made tracks for the terminal train. I got to the desk at precisely 9:15, 5 minutes past the check-in closing time. But, I played extra nice and they let me through.

For the first time in my life, I was within seconds of missing a flight. And that’s one flight I would not have wanted to miss. I’ve pretty much expended all of my travel karma. I think I’ll stay put for a while. It’s good to be home.