The Day Before
I had a list. It was a long list. The kind that said remove all the the plugs and check all the windows multiple times to make sure no invisible force hasn't mischievously undone all my checking. You can't be too sure. By 11 pm we were tucked up with suitcases packed by the door and the passports were still in the adventure folder (the checklists had done their job). Everyone needs an adventure folder and ours was bursting. I didn't get much sleep because I was quite giddy looking up places to explore and maybe the two alarms I had set wouldn't be enough. I would sleep in the taxi.
Travelling....
Howard picked us up at early o' clock and we chatted all the way to Heathrow only punctuated by ELO and other happy songs that made us air drum.
The airport was a blur, we chatted to some fella returning to New York who warned us about one place on our route but couldn't remember where it was. But we had to be careful. Vigilant mode engaged.
Mushrooms
We flew with Virgin and had picked seats in advance. Love flying with virgin. Three was a mushroom dish for the veggies. I am not a fungi fan. What arrived wasn't the mushroom option. Can't really tell you what it was but was tasty and mushroom free. Slept for an hour and was woken up by a grinning Matt who offered me a mini-fab ice lolly. How do they keep ice lollys frozen on a plane? Need to solve that mystery later. I was over the moon. Fabs lollys are pretty epic.
Landed, suitcases accounted for and they let us past security despite me failing the photo test. Maybe I was holding my eyes open too wide to look awake. It wasn't the eyes. It was the fingers. They wanted all my digits logged. They only wanted four of Matt's.
Waited an age for Alamo bus pick up. On arrival a ten year old boy tried selling us everything car related. We did get a free upgrade from economy to compact though. Those three inches would make all the difference later.
Matt made sure the brakes worked (the seatbelts confirmed they did) and we set off to find route 66.