Travel Details Revealed

I leave next Friday, October 12, from Austin Bergstrom Airport at 5:12 pm, fly to Chicago, arriving at 7:46 pm. Then I get off the little Embraer aircraft and get on a 777 at 9:29 for the overnight flight to Heathrow, arriving 11:15 Saturday morning. Can I find some Ambien? Maybe my dr. will give me some. I'm thinking about it because there is some crazy business that takes place on the first day on the ship (in this case I have a day to recoup from the flight). I've been known to stare blindly all night through an aircraft's portholes, looking for the contour of a known coastline. If that happens again I'm in trouble. 

Let me try to explain what it's like to join a ship. You're confused, tired, you don't know where anything is. Your supervisor meets you at the gangway. Hopefully, your baggage arrived with you. If it didn't, you won't have a suit to wear tonight, when you play your first gig. You are shown your quarters, you meet your roommate, and you can sleep for a half hour if you choose to forego your unpacking. Maybe you take a shower. You've been given a list of inductions, important but sleep-inducing meetings for new crew members describing crowd dynamics and safety aboard the ship.

After your first induction (there will be four more on the following days) you're hungry, but of course everybody from the music cabins is off enjoying the port. You don't know where to eat, so you dig through the stack of papers you've been given for the rules and locations for eating. You're lucky if you just arrived because you haven't made yourself known on the ship, so yo can stretch the rules a little in that golden moment when the servers think you're a passenger, for whom there are no rules.

I'd like to say that this pattern won't repeat itself on QE2, but my experience tells me otherwise.