to begin
Smoked Tyrolean beef and Roma salami with tomato and
mozzarella; pine-nut pesto sauce

Fresh seasonal greens; Creamy Parmesan and peppercorn or
Honey Dijon vinaigrette

The beef, 5E told me, was nowhere near so spicy as it
should have been; otherwise the food was fine, and the
little blob of pesto was good enough for me to eat it
by itself with a spoon.

main course
Grilled filet mignon with shiitake port demi-glace; garlic
mashed potatoes with chives and a carrot zucchini saute

Roasted chicken with sweet chili sauce; mixed pepper
risotto and green beans with sun-blushed tomatoes

Cannelloni with spinach and ricotta; sun-dried tomato and
onions with a light tomato sauce

I had the chicken, which was quite heavily brined so very
salty but also tender. The risotto was very good, and the
beans were fine, though the tomatoes were really strips of
red pepper. 5E said that the cannelloni (his first choice!
I told you he was a newbie) were excellent.

Let his bright-eyed bushy-tailed view be a lesson! It's
not so bad as the jaded view that most of us espouse or at
least affect. Well, sometimes it is, but more often no.

dessert
International cheese selection
Bavarian Bleu, Red Cheddar

European specialty dessert

The specialty dessert was an apple tart; my seatmate said
that it was good, though it looked kind of stodgy to me.
I passed, having a Courvoisier and then a longish nap.

midflight snack
Assorted treats and sandwiches are available between
the two main meals

On my leg-stretch a couple hours before landing, Audrey
accosted me in the galley with the (sigh) nefarious purpose
of plying me with Toblerone and Kit Kats.

prior to arrival
Tuscan-style wrap sandwich
Herb marinated chicken, salami and cheese with tomato and
kalamata olives

Cheese plate with fresh seasonal fruit
Cheddar, Brie, Chaumes

I chose not to eat; 5E highly recommended the wrap, going
so far as to tell me he'd run down a FA to get one for me. I
told him I had a dinner date and didn't want to overindulge.

Channel 9 had been turned on as soon as I asked; I snoozed
of course through much of it, as it's my lullaby. There was
a bit of a scare around 1, when we were told over the middle
of Canada to turn to 290 for spacing. This put us on course
for Thunder Bay, and I wondered if something Dreadful had
taken place, especially as Montreal told UA941 that there
had been an emergency at ORD, and it was closed indefinitely
- but we were on this tack for a few minutes only and then
went back on course without being told to put down in some
out-of-the-way Canadian airstrip. During the interim I went
and told the_happiness_store to listen in on Ch9, which he
did, only to hear nothing to speak of.

The cause of the hoopla turns out to have been the AA flight
that slid off the runway during an emergency landing.

Airshow operated under the misimpression that our flight was
1160 miles.

We landed about on time, maybe a few late owing to our
brief detour. We landed at M14, I think it was, the far end
of the International facility.

C&I were quick and painless, the worst part being the quite
lengthy walk to the facility. We decided that it was as bad
as Heathrow. Said goodbye to the_happiness_store, whose
immigration was as easy as mine, and went to the B7 RCC to
get a bit of wi-fi, then back out of security to have dinner
at Andiamo with my friend Roger from U of C. Roger was off
to Boston to give a lecture about the lessons to be learned
from Xenophon about the Iraqi insurgency, and we had a fun
chat about this and about good and bad old days and our
friends in common. So, Nina, Nina, DT, and Yafo, if you are
reading, be gladdened that we had nothing but good to say
about you.

We split a starter of fried squid with a quite spicy rouille
and a fairly spicy marinara; good but no tentacles. A large
serving that, on trips past, has served as my entire meal.

Roger, worried about his health or something, ordered the
salmon; I had the pork chops, two smallish ones, one done
just right, one overcooked. Both dishes were sided with
a peculiar but not bad green-tea-infused sushi rice and
an assortment of quite good vegetables: baby zucchini and
carrots and asparagus. Roger got a celebratory sprig of
broccoli rabe, perhaps a recognition that he'd been seen
recently on the telly or something.

Rescreening through the elite line took mere moments.

We ran into a colleague of Roger's in the concourse, so
I guested both of them into the RCC, where we had cheap red
wine and gemlike blue conversation. Got Roger upgraded to
Boston: he had an E- seat and didn't realize that he could
get E+ as a Premier ... or could ask for the exit row. So
at my urging, he got the exit row, for which he was almost
pathetically grateful, and I put him on the list for F,
which he tells me cleared at the gate. We said goodbye and
went to our respective flights.

UA 766 ORD BWI 2105 2348 752 2A Ch9^ Empower^

An attentive crew. Courvoisier. Snooze. There was a
cheese plate on offer. I refused it.

When we landed, I went to the site of the former RCC, where
the hotspot was still on (they finally got round to turning
it off), and did e-mail. While I was hunched over the
computer, I heard a greeting. Looked up and found FBKsan,
who had come in I believe on the Denver flight. We chatted
briefly and he went off to meet his wife and I back to the
mail.

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