Monday, March 19, 2007

California dreamin' on such a winter's day

One of the things that gets me through a typical week of bureaucracy is the prospect of escape, and especially when the weather outside is vaguely unpleasant, as today has been, that prospect looms ever larger. And so, what is a bureaucrat to do, but seek inspiration in song?

Most of my trips tend towards the complex, and I'm not very good at staying in one place for very long, so I often find myself poring over timetables and airline websites in an occasionally frustrating mission to go somewhere new. In the past, this has led to classic trips such as London to Quito via Washington, Buenos Aires and Bogota, or London to Nadi via Luxembourg, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City, Seoul, Kyoto, Rotorua and Auckland.

This time, my dilemma is related to what to do during a particular week in late April, and I've just spent a very cheerful if rather fruitless hour talking to United Airlines somewhere in the Midwest, and Air New Zealand in Auckland, attempting to discover how a plane can only have two business class seats when the seat map shows eight (answers on a postcard to...).

So far, I've got a seat from London to San Francisco, a hotel room there for three days, an onward flight to Melbourne via Sydney, and a seat back from Melbourne to London via Sydney and San Francisco. It's the bit in the middle that is the problem...

Time to go and sleep on it, I think...

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