Chapter 3: No Sleep ?til Boston
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The 3.10pm British Virgin Atlantic flight to Boston was packed. The
aisle seat of our row was taken up by a man called Paul from
Vermont. “Is that where they make Vermouth” I quipped, but he didn’t
seem to get the joke and explained to me in what I considered to be
too much detail all about his State.
In an attempt to remove myself from conversation from our bushy
bearded travel companion I got my book out. The Kalahari Typing
School For Men, as recommended by Dave Hucker. Half a page in and
Paul obviously checked out the cover, telling me in what I considered
to be too much detail that he had read them all and he had actually
just returned from Botswana, where the detective tales are
set.
“Bollocks” I thought, I knew I should have brought a copy of
Stan The Man, a book about my teams manager instead.
Paul recommended several authors, though sadly only one of whom was
from Vermont.
For information, Paul is pronounced ‘Dull’.
We were given regular meals and drinks by the cabin crew, though the
coffee was truly dreadful. Paul told me that in Vermont, coffee??.?
zzzzzzzzz????..something or other.
“FUCK OFF YOU DULL LITTLE MAN”
I screamed in my head whilst smiling and nodding at his windswept and
interesting adventures, all presented with wry, quiet humour.
Quiet? Absolutely bleedin’ silent mate.
Tourist tip: Vermont sounds like a very dull place, probably best to avoid.
Ricardo’s seat TV/Entertainment screen was broken, and as the
engineer had left the plane before take off, was stuck to make his own
entertainment. He slept.
I played Super Mario [the Nintendo game, not the Salsa Dance Instructor],
watched some edited weekly news and re-watched
the weekends Premiership football highlights. Marco must be a very happy
man I thought as I watched the majestic Thierry Henry slot in another
fantastic goal for the Gooners.
After catching a few winks myself, and probably annoying my
neighbours [hopefully Paul, fingers crossed] we were ready to land in
Boston at 5.30pm. Through customs & security, which I have to say
seemed no different post 9/11 than, say, flying EasyJet to Amsterdam,
we found a bar.
I called Nik on the payphone and he told us he was still rehearsing
over at the Congress venue, The Hilton Hotel, which we could see was
only a 10 minute walk away.
Tourist Tip: mobiles in the USA are called cells. UK cells need to be ‘Tri-Band’ in order to work. My new mini-marvel and Ricardo’s old brick are not Tri-Band and we had to rely on the US phone service throughout our stay. This would cause us, and Ricardo in particular, a LOT of problems. Buy a tri-band if you are intending to stay for any length of time, also get yourself a US friendly SIM card so as to keep the call costs down.
Still at the airport, at the bar Ricardo tried, in vain, to get his
bag open.
The lock, despite being of Christmas Cracker quality, was
not budging. We tried the bar staffs bottle opener and a variety of
personal grooming implements from my travel/wash bag.
Nothing doing.
No worries, Ricardo’s first set is at least, er, two and a half hours away.
Over the walkway towards the Hilton and up towards the ballroom where
the sounds of salsa could clearly be heard??????