Viva Las Vegas

I am on my way to Vegas. It’s a long trip. I left work yesterday around 3 in attempt to get to London-Heathrow and catch an earlier, 8:30 PM flight instead of my 12:15 PM flight on Wednesday. I made sure that there was room on these flights, but didn’t want to book over the phone because I knew they would charge me a ton for trying to change my flight, whereas they would move me for free at the counter. In the event that I couldn’t make the flight, my intention was to stay at the airport since I didn’t want to wake up at about 5 AM to drive down from Darlington and then have to fight London morning traffic in attempt to get to the airport on time.

Well, I made great time getting down to London, with over an hour to spare before takeoff, but I learned that Continental only has a ticketing agent until around 4. I called the phone number that they had left at the desk, but, just as I figured, they wanted a fortune to change flights, so I decided to stay the night in the airport. After having dinner, I found that there weren’t many places on the wrong side of security to call a bed. I wondered over to the airport Hilton, and they wanted £165 for 1 night. £165!!!! That’s almost $250. So no, I did not stay at the Hilton. Rather, I returned to my car and decided to call the back seat a bed.

If you’re over 4 feet tall, I wouldn’t recommend sleeping in the back of a BMW 3 series. I was able to get some sleep, but woke up around 3 AM pretty cold. I started the engine and turned the heater on, but the 1.9L doesn’t warm up too fast. After about 20 minutes of idling, I killed it and went back to sleep for an hour. I then woke up, put my things back in my bag (I had watched a DVD the night before) and then caught the bus back to the terminal. I’ve been here for a while now, and I am ready for my plane so I can get some decent rest on my way to Houston.

As far as the drive down, there isn’t much to see. There are some hilly areas, but you really can’t see much beyond the edge of the road. When you can get out of the merging traffic near the cities, people drive pretty dang fast (80-100 mph). I think I only saw one patrol car the whole way, and my GPS tells me where the speed cameras are, and everyone slows down at the same time for them. This is the first time going on more than an hour drive in the BMW. I know Dan mentioned this some time back, but the gearing is really low in those cars. At 85 mph the engine is at nearing 4k, but despite that, my consumption gauge was still around 40mpg. I made the whole trip on about half a tank.