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Dick Sutphen’s Road Diary |
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Monday, November 3, 2003: Work expands to fill the time available to complete it. In other words, if you have to complete a project in six hours, you will manage. But if you have two days, the task will expand to fill that time. We’ve been on the road for a month, home four days, and it’s time to leave for London. Tara and I have been busy all four days trying to get ready. Amazingly enough, we fulfilled our tasks moments before it was time to leave for the airport. The new suitcase weight limit for domestic and international flights is 50 pounds (down from 70). This new limit was announced after 9/11, but I suspect it has more to do with saving fuel than terrorism. When I lift Tara’s suitcase to put it in her SUV, it feels a lot heavier than mine. “Did you weigh this?” I ask. “Nah,” she says. I carry the bathroom scale out to the driveway. Sixty-two pounds. My wife looks sad. “Better here than on the floor in LAX,“ I say. She opens the bag, starts removing items. Four pairs of black boots. She sets aside one pair. I’m not about to offer suggestions. Tara removes two thick astrology ephemerises. She sighs and looks at them sadly. “Maybe I can squeeze them into my seminar bag,” I say. “Oh, thank you.” Cheyenne’s suitcase is eight pounds overweight. She volunteers to leave her school books home. We’re on our way to London, England to conduct workshops at the Mind Body Spirit Healing Arts Festival. We’ll be gone 17 days. Our daughter Cheyenne (15) will accompany us. Son Hunter (17) insists on staying home, doing school and working. When the festival is over, we plan to visit Barcelona, Spain for a week. The requested airport arrival time is three hours before departure for international flights. This is often barely enough time to make the plane. Today, we complete check-in and security clearance in 30 minutes. This gives us considerable time to eat an exorbitantly-priced salad at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant. We fly Virgin Atlantic Airlines. The flight leaves a half hour late at 5:30 PM. After watching a movie and eating dinner, Tara and I sleep three-and-a-half hours and awaken just in time for breakfast. Cheyenne has been unable to sleep. She is excited about returning to the UK, which she perceives as her spiritual home. |
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Cheyenne in Picadilly Circus, London. We’ve just emerged from the Tube and I asked her to pose by statuary in the center of the intersection. She is dressed to fit in with the locals, or so I’m told. |
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Tuesday, November 4: We arrive at noon, London time. I arranged to be picked up by a limo service, which is little more than the cost of a cab ride in London. But the driver is not waiting for us in the airport. I call. There has been some confusion. The driver is supposedly in the airport and will meet us at the information counter in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I call back. “We’re catching a cab in five minutes,” I say. “He’ll be there,” says the limo service. An East Indian driver arrives five minutes later, saying, “So sorry, so sorry.” He takes our luggage to the parking area, says, “Will get car. Be right back.” Fifteen minutes later, he returns with the car. Next time, we cab. We are staying in the South Kensington area of London. The Eyewitness Travel Guide says, “Bristling with embassies and consulates, South Kensington and Knightsbridge are still among London’s most desirable and well-kept areas. The proximity of Kensington Palace, still a royal residence, means the area has remained relatively unchanged. It vies with Mayfair as the most expensive place to live in London. The elite shops of Knightsbridge, led by Harrods, serve its wealthy residents. With Hyde Park to the north and the museums that once celebrated Victorian learning and self-confidence at its heart, visitors to this part of London can expect to find a unique combination of the serene and the grandiose.” Hardly grandiose by American standards, South Kensington does feel like home away from home. We stayed in the same apartments last year and returned because we were happy with the accommodation. Sainsbury’s grocer store on Cromwell Road has been remodeled in a GRANDIOSE manner. I’ve never seen such a variety of fresh produce. We’re trying to maintain a 70-percent raw diet and this store is Nirvana. The produce is imported from exotic places like Zanzibar. Avocados are from Chile, bananas from the Caribbean. Back at the apartment, Cheyenne tries to talk us into going to Piccadilly Circus, the city’s entertainment district with cinemas, theaters, nightclubs, restaurants and pubs. Tara and I stare glassy-eyed at Cheyenne. The girls fix a meal while I read “The Times.” We eat while watching TV, something we never do at home. The show accompanies an American lawyer and his wife searching for the perfect English second home for which they’re willing to pay $1.5 million. If my wife and daughter were not so fascinated with this couch-potato house hunt, I would search out news or music ... anything else. My love/hate affair with British TV has begun the moment we turn on the set. As we watch, the network promotes a 9 PM show called “Wife Swap,” about two couples who play switchies for two weeks. Don’t laugh. America may be the predominant force when it comes to movies in the UK, but this is the birthplace of reality TV. The shows we see here make their way to America the following year. Tara says, “Sheep dog trials have never come to America.” “Thank God,” I say under my breath. This exciting show pitted one dog against another, testing their ability to direct a flock of sheep into a pen. I don’t think Americans could take that kind of intensity. “Who couldn’t take what intensity?” Tara asks. I fall asleep on the couch at 5 PM, probably to avoid the video house hunt. I awaken to find Tara and Chey asleep in their clothes on the pull-out bed. It’s dark outside, so I crawl into our bedroom and go back to sleep. I’m awakened by Tara going through her suitcase at 10:30 PM. We eat a snack, read for an hour and go back to sleep until 8 AM. As I have overly reported in the past, every electrical socket in the UK must be switched on if you expect it to work. I report this again, because after waiting and waiting for the coffee water to boil ... I finally realize the socket isn’t switched. “Why do I resist this so much?” I ask myself. What you resist you draw to you ... and what you resist you will become in a future life if you don’t learn your lessons in this one. For a moment, I fear reincarnating as a Brit with a socket-switching obsession. Click HERE for the continuation |
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