scotland, at last!

alright, so the longer version of yesterday was:

(1) i was supposed to depart newark airport at 9:30 saturday night, arrive in london heathrow at 9am sunday local time
(2) then, i had an 11:50am flight from heathrow to glasgow scotland, landing me there at 1:20pm
(3) from there, me and my friend cathy were supposed to catch a shuttle bus to the main train station, catch a train to edinburgh, then another up the east coast of scotland to a small town called leuchars, and then another bus from there into st. andrews (where i currently am for a conference).
(4) all my travel supplies were supposed to work fine, i would practice my talk for this afternoon, we'd get dinner, and we'd crash for some much deserved rest.

instead
(1) the newark plane didn't leave until 10:45pm. apparently some people missed the flight connection but their bags made it through. apparently regulations said they had to take all the bags off the plane, find those to remove, and reload the plane again.
(2) because of the delay getting going (sitting for 1.5 hours next to a crying baby is NOT fun), we got into london heathrow at 10:20am... one would think 1.5 hours is enough time to transfer flights, BUT....
(3) our connecting flight was in a different terminal, and the workers at heathrow, though plenty nice are not the most efficient, so there were a lot of people missing connections left and right... we made it through express security and ticketing (after begging nicely), and got to the counter for our 11:50 flight at 11:20... they denied us boarding and scheduled us on a 3:15-departing flight instead
(4) our 3:15 flight didn't take off until 4pm due to backlogs of british airways flights taking off from heathrow... we landed in glasgow a little after 5pm
(5) already exhausted and grumpy just taking our carry on luggage, cathy and i decided that we just didn't have it in us to try 4 more kinds of transportation while lugging our checked luggage too, so instead of the 30 pound ($60) each trains/buses options, we hired a car for 105 pounds total (about $110 each) to pick us up at the airport and drop us off at our apartment for the conference. frankly, with how tired and sore we were and all the delays, the fact that we could go door to door, not deal with our luggage, and actually sleep on the way was worth it. (what i did see of driving from the west coast of scotland clear across to the east was beautiful... and there's a freakin lot of sheep around here)
(6) you'd think that that's enough of an adventure, but here's one more. i've had the same international voltage converter for 5 years, and it can deal with any kind of plug on earth. however, i never paid attention to the fact that it only accepts 2 prong american plugs (i've never travelled with anything but a battery charger and an ipod charger that needs it). unfortuately the plug for my laptop is 3 prong. i could plug it into the charger, but without the grounding prong plugged in, you could literally feel the field of static electricity around my computer if you got within a couple inches of it... so instead of practicing my talk and looking over my slides last night, i was too scared of blowing up my computer, so i crashed, and woke up super early to go buy an extra 3-prong adapter just for the week... fun, right?

needless to say, it's been an interesting start to the week. i'm glad i'm here. i'm glad to see old math friends from last year, and i'll be even more happy when my talk is over in 2 hours!

hopefully much better stories and much better pictures as the week progresses!

be parties one and all! :)