And so.
Quick diversion: I took a train once from Edinburgh to Ormskirk in Lancashire. After traveling most of the distance to Lancaster in a top of the line - and generally fairly swanky - intercity train of some description, I was shuffled onto a connecting train which seemed to consist of a single carriage powered by a bloke at the front with a set of pedals.
Something similar happened with the connecting flight to Quito yesterday. After a very nice, comfy and generally pretty luxurious (by economy standard anyway) flight to Miami and an hour long delay thanks to an admittedly rather pretty lightening storm, we found ourselves on a plane which seemed to still be part of the fleet as part of a bet.
Warning bells were first raised by the noise from above the wings which sounded like a circular saw wielding cat being fed feet first through a jet engine. Then the pilot, who introduced himself as Captain Cox, arrived on the tanoy to announce in jovial tones that we were only going to be using one engine on our flight to Quito to "save fuel". He went on to add: "I suspect that this might worry some people, hell it would worry me if I didn't know better..."
Having already been rushed through Heathrow thanks to a bug in their baggage system (hearing that the check in for your flight has closed while you're still in the queue is a bit disconcerting, particularly given that we had been queuing for about two hours already), so the idea of concluding the trip on a plane which we might be expected to stick our hands out of the port holes and flap wildly was a little worrying.
Had anything happened subsequently, near misses with death, birds, thunderstorms or something, this would probably make a better story. As it was, the plane's one engine got us to Quito a little earlier than expected with no hitches to speak of at all. From there, everything else went pretty smoothly, the taxi that we'd been worrying about for the past few months was the easiest taxi to get in the world and the youth hostel mercifully still let us in past midnight.
Just as we were ready to pass out for the night, Garry's alarm went off, signaling that - in UK time - we should be getting up in the morning to catch the plane, as it had done some twenty four hours earlier.
I slept like a narcoleptic log, if you need to ask.
- posted by Vince @ 11:23 AM