GregWTravels

Part One - Home (SW11) to Heathrow (LHR), August 18, 2012

One should be well rested before a long haul flight, I believe. To bed early was my mantra coming up to my flight on an early Saturday morn.

Then work got in the way. Early morning appointments at the doctors followed by late nights with (oft failed) software deployments meant I was anything but rested coming up to the Saturday morning of my flight.

The Friday before my flight I got up after 4 hours sleep in daze. It was one of those mornings where I was so tired, decided not to shave. Then, it turned out I was so tired I just did my morning routine by rote so I wouldn't use any brain power, and wound up shaving without realising it.

It would be a long day ahead...

Friday was the long day it promised to be. Finally at midnight I gave up, officially passing over my responsibility for a long delayed (and yet again delayed) project to my holiday cover, and crawled into bed, setting the alarm for six hours ahead.

It came much too quick.

Awake, First thing I did was check my work email, as old habits die hard. The implementation which had already choked and been rolled back 3 times was again, at four in the morning, pulled back again. I sighed, and recalled the good ol’ days, when one could go away on holidays for a week and have no idea what was happening back in the office. I knew that I would be watching my Blackberry all week now and dealing with the fallout from the latest deployment failure.

It was Saturday, however, and I could at least put it behind me until Monday. I showered, and wandered out my front door to look for the minicab to take me to Heathrow.

6:45 AM, 15 minutes before he was due to be there, the minicab was out front of my flat. It certainly beats the last two times I called minicabs, when they didn’t show up at all or showed up 30 minutes late. Thus this specific minicab company has earned the honour of keeping their flyer attached by magnet to my fridge for future trips.

The ride to Heathrow was not without its issues. The M4 was closed due to an accident, but luckily as this was a weekend and the driver had showed up early, the ride along the side roads was quick and painless, and I was at the airport at 7:25 AM on Saturday morning, 18 August 2012.

Back in 2008, I left the consulting industry and thus the primary avenue for earning airline points. Slowly over the last four years I have dug into the vault which was my Aeroplan miles, and with this trip I was taking close to the last of my consulting-life points. I have a few tens-of-thousands points outstanding, but as I have turned my points earning to European programs, this redemption of Aeroplan would be the last of my business class trips on Aeroplan points earned as a roving consultant.

So I turned up to Heathrow terminal 1 with the swagger of a business class traveller, secretly knowing this could be the last time I pull this swagger off.

GregWTravels moves like Jagger.


As (via very permutations and combinations meant no direct flights) I was transferring in Germany, I had decided to check a bag so I wasn’t dragging a rolly behind me the entire trip. I arrived in T1 at Heathrow and found the Lufthansa check-in.

Oh, the horror.

The line up was similar to what German author Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende wrote, an Neverending Queue.

I, already checked in with my printed off boarding pass and just a bag to check, asked one of the Lufthansa agents, “Is this the lineup for Frankfurt?”

Sensing no doubt my swagger like Jagger, she asked, “are you a business class passenger?”

“But of course,” I replied. “Do I look like regular, unscrubbed travelling scum?” (Okay, perhaps I didn’t say that last bit).

“Oh, yes, then you can check in at the special check in area,” she said.

Lufthansa has an oval shaped first and business class check-in area. I walked into it, and felt that it would not be unlike walking into an enclosed Stonehenge. Perhaps, I thought, that is what Stonehenge was, a giant 1st class check-in area for the out of town horse-coaches. I dropped my bag at business class check in, and boarding pass in hand headed to the gates.

The travel gods smiled on me, as I caught a security line just as it was opening. There were two people ahead of me. The first was through quickly. The second, a middle-aged lady, was in the process of pulling out all her liquids and electronics and such as I stood behind her, metals in my bag and laptop in my hand, ready to go.

“Oh, you seem ready to go,” she said. “Please, go ahead.”

This was truly travel karma paying me back for all those mis-adventures in Newark, New Jersey. Minicab early, easy check-in and bag drop and a wave through security.

After a quick stop at the London 2012 shop to pick up a nice souvenir for my Dad, I was into the Star Alliance lounge.

It’s not a bad lounge, and I do really like the inspirational wording on the walls related to travel.



On check-in, I was given a booklet detailing things that were (similar to Star Alliance status) gold. What a waste of paper that "gold" booklet was. Things that are gold, ending with advert for gold status.. Surely people in the lounge would already know gold status?. I am already destroying the environment with my flying. Do we need to kill more trees so that Star Alliance can publish details of a benefit that most frequent fliers already know about?

For food, at this hour, there was a hot breakfast.. The scrambled eggs looked gross, but sausage, bacon and mushrooms were typical English breakfast. I loaded a plate with bacon, sausage and mushrooms. I skipped the beans, for the benefit of my co-passengers.

The lounge itself was not too busy.. There was a lot of seating, with staff picking up dishes and cleaning tables regularly.

To eat breakfast, I sat at a table along the high-bar overlooking the food area, with a nice view of the TV, which was tuned to Sky TV News.

After breakfast, I took a tour of the lounge.

The decor was average for a lounge. It felt like it was probably a few years since an update, but was generally comfortable. The toilets were clean but unremarkable. Better than you would find in the airport proper, but nothing to write home about.





They had an excellent selection of papers and magazine on offer, and the seating was comfortable.

The lounge had a good selection of drinks, but as it was early morning I refrained. I grabbed myself a Diet Pepsi (actually, four Diet Pepsis. When you serve them at 150 ml each can, and the drinker was up on a late night Skype chat regarding software implementations, more than 150 ml is probably needed to get going).



I found a seat, and settled in, connecting my phone to the free Wifi to check Facebook, Gmail, Google Reader and BBC News.

Eventually, I grew bored of staring at my phone, and looked up. Ahead of me was a flight departures board. The flight board always puts me to mind of other places I could be heading that might be more adventurous or glamorous than where I am going.



On offer today:


• Khartoum via Beruit

• Amristar via Almaty

• Bishek via Baku

• Johannesburg
• 
Auckland
• 
Larnaca
• 
Vienna
• 
Dammam via Riyadh
• 
Zagreb
• 
Tehran via Yerevan

But not today. Instead, I wandered down to the gate where there were boarding the flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt, and boarded that. Yerevan, Auckland, Baku and Almaty will have to wait for another time.