Day 12: Sonora CA - Larrington Towers

I find, to my considerable embarrassment, that there has been a draft post for the final period of this year's less-than-epic Automatic Diary sitting quietly behind the curtain for as near as makes no odds a week now.  Oopsie.

As SFO lies a scant hundred and fifty miles from Modesto as the toll-bridge-avoiding Yorkshireman drives a relaxed start was on the cards.  But soft! A txt frm BRTSH rwys! “Soz ur flght dlyd ntl 17:30 kthxbai”.  This is curious as my flight is departing at 19:10.  Isn’t it?  A swift rummage through half a ream of printouts reveals that no, it is not.  This was actually a Good Thing, as it meant a lot less hanging around at the airport than originally antici…

…

…pated.

It had – mercifully – stopped raining by departure time but the weather forecast was a bit of a Rubbish and, to compound the general end-of-holibobs malaise, the Blackstang's tyre pressure warning light came on after ten miles.  Bah.  Prodding buttons shewed the front left to be a whole two psi down on its neighbours and, as things warmed up, the pressure on all four increased.  Probably not a visitation from the P*nct*r* Fairy, then.  Hurrah!

With Kate the new TwatNav at the helm I actually got back to SFO on time and only slightly over budget, this latter being due to the collective robdogs of California charging a whisker over $7 per titchy USAnian gallon of the most basic rotgut petril on offer.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was calling out the “gas” station proprietor in Panamint Valley for charging $6.

Ran into the IUT Annecy team in the airport terminal, where Guillaume glumly informed me that their flight was still six hours away.  Though by the time I'd dropped off The Luggage they'd scarpered.  The camera bod attached to the LSBU team – Chris?  Mike? – also wandered past but he was heading back to Blighty with United.

Finally onto the Shiny Metal Birb.  Oh look!  There's LSBU non-Northern-Monkey Barney!  I waved, but he didn’t see me and I didn’t get to say “Hello” until the baggage reclaim at Thiefrow.  The birb-driver explained that the flight’s tardiness was because:

1. The original Shiny Metal Birb intended for the flight had broken down so they had to find another one at the back of the garage, and
2. Restricted airspace around Windsor because Missis Kwin

The replacement SMB was a cranky old grid with video screens from the mid-Cretaceous.  I think the food was of similar vintage.  I managed to fall asleep approaching Lake Winnipeg and wake up again as we crossed the west coast of Ireland.  Anglesey.  Somewhere that might have been Banbury.  Staples Corner.  Wembley Stadium and the neighbouring Happy Swedish Halls Of Joy – now my nearest branch since they just closed the one in The Death Of The Soul Edmonton – Craven Cottage, Hammersmith Bridge¹ and many other “interesting” landmarks under the starboard wing

Piccalilli Line, change at Finsbury Park.  I accidentally got on a train terminating at Seven Sisters.  Bah encore!  Bus times app claims that the W15 doesn’t stop at Walthamstow Bus Station² but natch this turned out to be made of Lie.  Larrington Towers still present and correct although The Man still hasn’t emptied the brown bin.  Switch Babbage-Stuffs back on whereupon I noted that, following this year's DETH of an entire PC, the untimely demise of a router from a blink-and-you-missed-it power cut and the about-to-go-to-Silicon-Heaven behaviours of a NAS, the network switch that lives next to the telly is devoid of blinkenlights, even after being switched off and on again.  At least this time I haz a spare.  What I don’t haz a spare of is one of the SSDs in the big PC upstairs, which is also showing every sign of dying on its arse.  I hate technology…

Also, 2D Thomas escaped from his road atlas home back in Modesto and fell in a puddle and now he looks like he’s got leprosy:

Noes! Poor Thomas!

Happily it transpires that I still have the scan I made of the original³ 2D Thomas before he went off to Captain Cook's Mistake with Professor Larrington.  So next year, when I hope to have a proper Automatic Diary once more – involving Lewis, Clark and the Mighty Missouri – we shall also have a healthy Thomas to keep us company.

1. Not, alas, collapsed on the empty head of Sebastian Fox, Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath or Grant Shapps.
2. By the following evening it had relented, though still told me I'd have to wait 15 minutes for a bus that rocked up two minutes later.  On the way back from seeing Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Electric Ballroom in sunny Camden, since you ask.  They were, natch, TEH AWSUM.
3. Who, you may recall, subsequently went off with the Ligtvoets, then spent a year incommunicado in the Caribbean before being "lost" in the Battle Mountain Civic Center.