Travelling Hopefully

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Which is proof if proof were needed that all you need to do to gain a reputation for wisdom is state the bleeding obvious in a sufficiently portentous voice.  A foreign accent also helps.  If you can achieve the latter you will find yourself in the happy position of having a wide eyed pack of awestruck acolytes treating your miscellaneous collection of desk calendar quotes as holy writ.

A somewhat less well known corollary to the piece of wisdom disseminated above is that if that single step had been at Sydney Airport the philosopher in question would probably have turned around and gone home.

I actually think Sydney Airport has improved since I was last here.  It still manages to be aggressively bland (an impressive trick in itself) but it seems to have been decorated or at least cleaned since the last time I was here.  Everything is the same but it all seems a little brighter.  As I sat there I was able to imagine that my soul might not get sucked completely out of my body.  This turned out to be fortunate as I spent an hour longer there than I intended.  Apparently the stable boys had some difficulty coaxing my plane out of its stall.

Eventually though we were herded onto our noble steed of the stratosphere and catapulted in the general direction of San Francisco.  A menu was handed out offering us a choice between Texas beef and chicken cacciatore.  I received duck a l'orange and the woman next to me who had asked for a vegetarian meal was given cheese sandwiches and an apple which seems to be stretching the term vegetarian (to say nothing of the term "meal") to breaking point.  For dessert I had what was probably an ice block although it was a little difficult to tell with my tongue and lips stuck to it.

Despite these minor inconveniences (I can call them minor because I wasn't the one starving because they forgot my meal) the plane is about to deposit me on the tarmac in San Francisco.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to get from the airport to The Castro, something I might have been wise to work out earlier.  I tried to look out the window as we came in to land but all I saw was the back of my neighbour's head.  Since she was half mad from hunger by this stage I didn't consider it wise to press the point.