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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. I have gone off on this topic before, but that's not going to stop me from going off again: . . . I don't think Americans appreciate how big Europe is and how long it takes to travel from place to place. And in complete fairness, that goes both ways. I know people in Europe underestimate how big America is. So I've had friends from Europe say "we'll be in Los Angeles on May 15--you ought to pop over and we can have lunch." No, you stupid fucking limey--that's a three-hour flight for me, each way. So same thing here. London and Paris are not Dallas and Fort Worth. And traveling intercity is a pain in the ass. It's not just the time the train takes to get from London to Amsterdam. It's that you have to get up in the morning and get all your bags packed and clear out of the hotel, take a cab to St. Pancras, and clear security and customs. And then once in Amsterdam get to your hotel, get checked in, and get settled into your hotel. It's at least a half-day ordeal. But more than that, it's an ordeal. Nobody wants to go out and do shit after spending all of your morning and at least some of your afternoon traveling. You want to get a bite to eat, get into your jammies, and dial up Netflix. And I don't know how old your kids are, but it's all even worse if they're little. +++++++++++++ Let me say this--I sympathize with your wife. I really do. I used to be exactly like her. To some extent, I still am. Time waits for no man. And who knows when I'm going to be back. As I mentioned up-thread, I'm going to London in three weeks to see Spurs. It's a quick four-day trip--leave Austin Wednesday and fly back Monday. So really just Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in London (and Thursday not being a real day). But even so, I am half-inclined to take the Eurostar over to Paris because I can't want to see re-opened Notre Dame. So I get it. But it doesn't make sense. Paris is still going to be there next year or the year after or the year after that. And it deserves its own time. As does London; as does Switzerland. Amsterdam is kinda mid, tbh. But whatever--these are all different trips, in just the same way that New York, Miami, and Las Vegas would all be different trips for a European visiting the United States. eta: One other thing to add that I don't think enough people appreciate--Europe isn't just castles and museums. There's also pubs and parks and cafes. Part of traveling to Paris or London is just taking time to "be" in Paris or London. Sure, you can hit a checklist of 1) the Tower of London 2) St. Paul's and 3) the British Museum in one day. I mean, you could. It'd wear you out, but those things are easy walking distance from one another. But you'd have no time to sit and just be. My best day in London was checking out the Tower and contemplating that the White Tower has been there for nearly a thousand years. And then walking outside and seeing the Roman Wall, which had been there a thousand years when the White Tower was built. And then just walking along Watling Street, which was a roadway for a thousand years by the time the Romans arrived, and stopping in at a couple pubs as they filled up with bankers and lawyers and other assholes getting off work in the City before heading home. My best day in Paris was going to a grocery store and grabbing a bunch of cheese, sausage, a baguette, and a bottle of wine and going over to the Tuileries Garden and having a little picnic and just spending an hour reading a book and dozing in the sunshine. And then after a while walking across to the Left Bank and strolling along the River until it was time to sit down at a cafe and having a cup of coffee and watching Paris. Rushing around trying to see everything leaves you no time for that. And paradoxically, I think you end up coming away without any real "experience." I mean, yeah, you saw the Tower of London. But did you really get the experience that you can't get by watching a documentary about the Tower of London? Slow the hell down and experience shit.
  2. This is a positively insane itinerary. Don't do this. When are you leaving? On March 13 (which is Thursday)? And then you're coming back on Tuesday, March 25? If that's the case, let me tell you how this vacation is actually going to go, because you haven't built in any time for transit between your destinations. You're basically treating Zurich as though it is a suburb of London. Fuck--Oxford isn't a suburb of London. March 14: Arrive in Manchester mid-morning completely dog-ass tired after an overnight flight. I have flown intercontinental a few dozen times, and I'm telling you that flying west to east kicks your ass (east to west is comparatively easy). I'm going to assume you're on the Singapore Air flight from IAH that lands at 9:30. So you'll get to your hotel around noon, because it takes that long to get your bags, clear customs, and get into the city. And that sucks, because all you want in the world is a hot shower after an overnight flight, and your goddamned room isn't ready. So you drop your bags at the bell desk and go find lunch. You feel shitty. Go back to the hotel, check in, get a bit unpacked, get a shower . . . and now good luck getting the family out of the room to do anything. Maybe you go get a pizza for dinner. Day over. March 15: Match Day. It's fucking Match Day. That's your day. That's it. I'm doing that for Spurs in three weeks. And Match Day is its own day. So that's all you're going to see of Manchester. Oh, and you're still jetlagged. It's going to be early to bed. March 16: Travel day. Let's just say you're ambitious and you want to get on the 7:55 train to London. Sure. You get in at 10:10. Same deal as when you got into Manchester . . . God, was that only two days ago? It feels like a lifetime . . . you have to drop your bags at the bell desk and go grab lunch because your room isn't ready. So what do you want to do your first (half-)day in London? You want to do the typical touristy stuff? Ok--so that's the Tower, the Churchill War Rooms, the Changing of the Guard, Horse Guards Parade, the Royal Mews (the kids love that), the London Eye, Parliament, the British Museum, St. Paul's. You have time for one. Let's say you do the London Eye. That's a good thing to do with your half-day, because there's a lot of shit over there on the waterfront that is super-touristy and good for kids. Or maybe go over to St. Paul's. That's also a good thing to do because you can walk down Watling Street and visit a pub for dinner and check out the City. March 17 & 18: So these are your London days. There's no time to go out to Oxford. That's an entire day, and then some. It's an hour train each way (and that's once you get to Paddington, which is going to take time just to get there). It's not doable. And why would you want to, when you're in London and you've never been to London before? One day is the Tower and the British Museum. The other is Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Royal Mews. Those are two days that are going to kick your ass. There's really four days' worth of stuff in there. But hey--we've got to get to Amsterdam. March 19--I assume this is your travel day. It's a four-hour train to Amsterdam. And it's not like a regular train--you have to clear security similar to a plane. Zurich is no better--you have to get out to Heathrow and then you're landing at ZHR. So same deal. Let's say you're super-ambitious and you get that 7:04 departure out of St. Pancras. That puts you into Amsterdam at 1:00. Drop the bags at the hotel and grab lunch. You have time to see one thing. Maybe just walk around the canals a bit. March 20: Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum? Or the old city? I don't exactly know, because this is your one Amsterdam day. Honestly, I don't know why you would go to either Amsterdam or Zurich when any time you take in either city comes at the expense of London or Paris. March 21: Hooray! It's another travel day. It's another four-hour train from Amsterdam to Gare du Nord. It's 4.5 from Zurich. It doesn't matter. Same deal. You have a half-day at most in Paris. So what're the "usual highlights" in Paris? I guess go see the Eiffel Tower today? March 22 & 23: These are your Paris days. So the Louvre and the Tulleries and the Champs Elysees on one day, Notre Dame, the Islands, the Left Bank, and d'Orsay on the other? I mean, we're leaving out a whole lot. But that's the time you have. March 24: Travel day back to Manchester. I mean, this is a flight, right? Because the train is three hours back to London, change stations, and then two up to Manchester. A flight takes a half-day, because CDG sucks. But it is what it is. And you need to be back in Manchester by the evening of the 23rd, because that Singapore flight back to IAH departs at 10:05, and you don't have time for a connection directly from Paris. So maybe you see something in the morning, but realistically you're doing a lot of packing shit to go home. So here's what you've done: out of ten full days in Europe, you've only got six days where you're doing actual Europe stuff--one in Manchester, two in London, one in Amsterdam, and two in Paris. Realistically, I don't know why you would do that. I really don't. It'd be one thing if you were flying from the United States to Hamburg. Hamburg doesn't really have enough for you to see to spend a week there. So maybe you want to bounce around northern Germany and the Low Countries. But you're talking about Manchester and London. And there's a shitton to see between those places. London itself is a week. Fly into Manchester on March 14 and stay in Manchester to the 17th. That gives you an extra day after Match Day to see the city. Then take a train down to London and see London for the next week. With that time, you can take a day trip out to Windsor. Or maybe you hit Oxford on your way back up to Manchester. But please, for the love of all travel things that are good and holy do not do the itinerary you set out above.
  3. I think landing with the wind likely had something to do with them landing high and hot. But that raises another question of why they flew a teardrop pattern to land with the wind rather than going around.
  4. I mean--I'm not doubting you. Your explanation certainly fits the facts as we know them. But that really would involve a cascading number of fuck-ups that is almost unimaginable.
  5. By the way--who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to turn the ILS localizer into a goddamned barrier? The ILS locator needs to be at the end of the runway, and for that reason it's usually made so that it will break away in case it is hit by an aircraft that overruns the runway: Check out what they did in Muan--they built a goddamned altar for it: If this plane hits the top ILS locator, which is installed consistent with ICAO standards, the plane blows right through the array and probably just keeps skidding for an extra few hundred yards.
  6. A bird strike doesn't make just a whole lot of sense to me. If it had a bird strike on short final, then its gear should've already been down and locked with flaps set for landing. If the bird strike was on final before the flaps were lowered and the landing gear deployed, then it should've had plenty of altitude to start the APU and drop the landing gear. So yeah--I just don't get it.
  7. This game is terrible-awesome.
  8. Yeah--you know what causes vastly more food waste than tossing that last 1" of potato? Fucking bleeding over all the potatoes you already sliced.
  9. Ok, well . . . that was perfectly whelming.
  10. Maybe it's the old Notre Dame fan in me coming out, but I'm convinced that we're all dead and in football purgatory.
  11. It's exactly what I need on an otherwise dull Thursday.
  12. This is bowl-game football at its finest. It's objectively terrible football. But at the same time, it's intensely entertaining.
  13. Pilots were killed. And the flight in Iowa was filled with good old American General Electric shrapnel when Engine No. 2 blew apart mid-flight.
  14. Roman Israeli Peace: "to ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
  15. I would like to "like" this, but there's not an emoji for this. It would need something to reflect that I am so incredulous that my jaw literally dropped. I'm stunned speechless by the fact that anybody could be so stupid. And as a "retired artist"--yeah, I join @RDCanecutter in his puzzlement as to how an artist "retires"--it's not like she doesn't have time to educate herself on the issues. She was fucking willfully ignorant. And she's going to suffer for it. Not that she'll ever realize that her suffering is in any part her fault, mind you. Not for a minute. It's mine--I'm a "coastal elite," after all. And more than that, it's the fault of those damned immigrants. Fuck her. She can get tossed out of her publicly financed housing and off her subsidized food stamps and die in a fucking ditch. It's not just that she's a drain on society; she's actively trying to undermine our society while draining off it. She can die and then burn in hell. Merry fucking Christmas, everyone.
  16. It’s amazing how few people are in the stands.
  17. I'm good with the mariachi. I'm good with a live-ass fiddle going for All My Exes Live in Texas. I'm good with showing MM at least twice each game. Because those are some things that are pretty uniquely Texas. Honestly--the game presentation is pretty 10/10. Everything about music selection etc. is a matter of taste. But I get in quickly, I can get a beer quickly, there is never a serious line for the pisser (Section 3), and I'm entertained throughout. Maybe I might do one or two things differently. But on balance, it's really a pretty strong presentation.
  18. God, listening to Herbstreit call an Ohio State game is nauseating.
  19. You know, it just occurred to me that Tennessee is a lot closer to Ohio than you think it is. Between Ohio and Tennessee, you only have Kentucky. Tennessee is closer to Ohio than is Illinois. i just think that’s crazy. and yes—I’m high. af
  20. Counterpoint: Fuck Ohio State.
  21. Boy—there for a minute we were almost at risk of being at risk of losing that game.
  22. We’re getting worked worse than a 14-year old in a Penn State shower.
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