Heathrow

Sorry if the last post alarmed anyone. We're just out of town for two weeks in a place with sketchy internet.

We're on a trip to Kenya to visit Gina's brother's family (he's a political officer in the US Embassy there). I figure it's worthy of at least a few blog posts, but I've only been able to write them here, not post them, because internet service in Kenya is hella slow and uploading pictures is pretty near impossible. So you're getting these all in a bunch at a later date after I've arrived home. Just like Tivo!

On the trip over, we had a long long layover at Heathrow, and the news there is all flood, all the time. Seems the UK has been experiencing flooding on a historic scale recently, and so the images on the news are all water rescue teams launching from the water's edge, people on cars needing rescue, and historic row houses under six feet of water. Remind you of anything? Wait, it gets better.

The government response to the flood has been inept, and preparations were apparently woefully inadequate. Critics are clamoring for investigation and reform. And new Labour Prime Minister Gordon "Brownie" Brown was quoted thusly:

The prime minister said the flooding had been "an emergency that no-one could have predicted".

"One of the issues that will arise is how co-ordinated the services are between the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, in this particular instance, where people have been inconvenienced using transport, whether it's the roads or the railways," Mr Brown said.

Tory leader David Cameron said a hardship fund should be set up to help those without insurance who had lost possessions.

"Of course, people should have insurance, but many don't and may be left with nothing, and a hardship fund is one way of helping these people," Mr Cameron said.

The Liberal Democrats claimed the government's response had been slow and uncoordinated.

Environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "We do not even know the areas at greatest risk, and responsibility is dangerously split between councils and water companies."

I wondered (not seriously) if I could leave the airport during the layover and help with cleanup, since I gots experience, or even a little light search and rescue, since I gots light training, but I didn't have anything dry to change into. Still, it would beat spending thirteen hours sitting around Heathrow.

Anyway, they're stupid for living there.

Thirteen hours at Heathrow is something invented by Dante. We had originally thought about taking the Tube into central London and roaming about for a while, but the Tube system was a commuter nightmare due to so many stops being flooded, so instead we used some of the money we'd saved by choosing such a shitty itinerary and spent it on a room at the Heathrow Hilton. Check-in 9am UTC, check out 4pm. Beats sitting around the terminal all jet-lagged.

The last leg of the trip was a 9 hour flight to Nairobi, then an hour getting bags and figuring out what day it was and where we were going, then an hour-long car ride through rush hour traffic. 2.3 million people in a city with no freeways can make a lot of traffic, even if the vast majority of them walk to work.

We left our house in New Orleans at 8:30 Saturday morning. Arrived at the bro-in-law's house 8:30 Monday morning. Fortunately he lives in white settler splendor.

More Nairobi next post.