Coda

April 21, 2009

There should be no more recommendation given to me to talk about the weather rather than talk of people unless it is done behind their back. I imagine such thought came to mind in order to counterbalance admiration I felt for the countryside landscape outside the coach windows.

Beautiful weather, chronic transportation issues. It took over 20 minutes for the coach to move more than 50 meters from its parked space. At Stansted, the driver announced that M25 was closed in the direction we needed to go so we would have to weave through the countryside.

Roads and rails are so unreliable here. It is a big surprise when no problem is encountered in a long trip. I would estimate that M25 to Heathrow is problematic more than 75% of the time in my experience. In past 3 weeks, we suffered through an incident at Finsbury park resulting in 1+ hour delay, a long escalator out of action for 6 months at Pimlico tube station affecting us for 5 days, a train station closure for Liam a couple of days ago and a painfully slow drive through Bow street for Sergio and me. And then there are three out of three problematic trips to Heathrow. Maybe I should start a new blog entitled “On The Road” to detail trials and tribulations of travelling. One thing the UK has over the USA - widespread use of traffic light systems with vehicle detectors.

In the end the coach returned to a sparse M25 (J21) for the final leg of the journey. There was no problem arriving at terminal 5 before appointed time (1:30 PM). One excess weight baggage charge (25 pounds) after rearranging the bags, another Wagamama lunch, several e-mail correspondences, then boarding what appeared to be no more than half-full flight. I switched my seat as soon as possible for more space.

Once again I used westbound transatlantic flight to catch up on some film: Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Bolt – chosen in part for their length. Also about 80 pages of 2666 were devoured during the entire trip. The flight was a little slow not helped by not being able to fly through the NYC airspace. The descent was rather turbulent. The trip was generally a trouble-free.

Ross had suggested writing a book with the blog as base material on the drive back to Cambridge last night. I said immediacy is a problem – although perhaps immediacy is the current trend. I imagine the bigger issue would be interest – there simply are not that many people so interested in dance (or Salsa dance). It would have to be a backdrop rather than a main focus for enough people to be interest. And the writing would have to be pretty darn good too. All of it would take a lot of effort and time – who knows though?

In any case, no more daily Salsa blog. No more entry? - quite possibly since it agrees with my aesthetics. New blog? - to be determined. Certainly no Learning Salsa In DC.