My USA & UK Trip Well it is 17.12 pm on Monday the 22-07-2013, I am sitting at the Johannesburg international airport and I actually cannot quite believe it is really happening, a short while ago while walking to the departure terminal, I wondered how many people actually have a dream like I did when I was 16 years old, and they continue to follow their dream until eventually 39 years later, it finally happens. Perhaps there are more people who realize their dreams than we know, certainly I believe if it is truly a dream and they believe in it, then it will happen. A few years ago I watched a DVD called The Secret and I have subsequently made mention of The Secret on many occasions and more often than not someone will say, OH I know about The Secret but it is too hard to follow, or, yes I know The Secret but I no longer practice it. I have come to believe that it is not something you practice or have to do, you simply just have to know what it is and then make sure you continue to have dreams and a zest for life and enjoy life and the universe will do the rest. Many times people say that they believe that their lives are mapped out for them and that their destiny is pre-determined and that no matter what they do, it will simply be as it is, little do they know that they themselves are the master of their own destiny, there is no single individual sitting alongside the creator frantically drawing up a life plan for every soul who is born, instead it us who are writing our own life story but we seldom realize that the thoughts dreams and wishes we have will often become reality many many years later, and more often than not we are not even aware that it is happening. When I was 16 I had a dream to travel across America, to go to the town of Sturgis and to be a part of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, and today that dream is finally happening, 39 years later. I can remember sitting in my bedroom in Queenstown with friends and talking all night about the wonderful things we would do with our lives and our plans to see the world and how we marveled at the wonder of it all and the possibilities were endless. So often the sky would grow pink on the horizon and the new day would start with the morning air fresh and sweet and the birds signing their morning song, and we would still be talking, drinking coffee and dreaming of all the wonderful things yet to come. I wonder if young people still talk all night, have fantastic dreams without boundaries and imagine that they are capable of achieving absolutely anything and everything they can imagine. I so hope they do. My plan is to travel from SA to the UK, I will spend two nights in London and some sightseeing and soak up a little of London and then I will leave on Thursday morning for the USA, my friend Dave has offered to fetch me from the airport and I will spend a day or two with Dave while I try to find a bike to buy, and then I will make my way to Sturgis. 30 days in the USA riding bike and hopefully just having much fun. I wonder what bike I will find to buy; I hope it is a nice bike, with good packing space and a comfortable riding position like a Suzuki V-Strom, sometimes before when I have been on a road trip I experience a feeling of total euphoria, I suddenly start to feel so happy I want to burst into song and sing at the top of my voice, but I know I should not because I cannot sing for toffee and would scare man and beast away so I do not, but the feeling is there and it is so strong, I feel like jumping for joy so that the bike bounces up and down, this I also do not do for the fear of coming to a sticky end, but the feeling is there and it is wonderful. Many of my friends often talk about how scary it is to be alone for hours on end in their crash helmets, they have scary thoughts they tell me, this I have never experienced. Many times when on a trip I start to have wonderful fantasies about being on a special quest and there is hidden purpose to the trip and those who ride with me are main players in the imaginary drama which unfolds in my mind, and by the time the journey ends I often have a whole story which I could sit and tell around a camp fire or put down on paper, but for some reason I never do and it is like my own secret imaginary word filled with maidens to be rescued, ladies and knights, castles and tangle-wood forests filled with unknown dangers, secret messages and five hundred year old trees which talk and possess immense wisdom and knowledge. I think I am so lucky to have an imagination which is so powerful it is sometimes almost like another life, exciting and without boundaries and limits. I had arrived fairly early at the boarding gate, it is gate A12, a short while ago I sensed someone standing over me as I happily put my thoughts into my lap top, as I looked up the individual instructed me, you must vacate the premises in a voice filled with authority, I cannot I said, feeling irritable and pissed off because I had found a nice spot and made myself comfortable as I knew I had quite a long time to wait. I am boarding at this gate soon, boarding pass, he commands, holding out a hand. Taking it he wonders off to have a social with another employee dressed in the same uniform as he is. Eventually he comes back and from his almost non-existent communication skills I gather that the gate is being used for another flight before the BA flight I am leaving on and consequently only passengers for the flight to leave next must be in the area. I ask him where I should go because there is precious little else out there where these gates are, to the coffee shop I am told. So I have to gather up my possessions and backtrack to find a safe non-gate area. It seems that there is an almost new language with words like sharp sharp and other funny stough which I forget, although the words spoken are English the meaning is different and I find people talking to me in English but I have no clue what they actually want to say. Sitting and thinking about this for a while I eventually conclude that the entire sector of government employees and others such as the SAA employee who speak a secret language which I think they themselves do not even understand are incompetent idiots and I realize that I am growing more and more impatient and intolerant of them as they try to act the first world part but are regressing back to the dark ages. They have no culture or etiquette and are seldom graceful in their attempts to interface with the public. There is nothing which can be done I decide as they follow the example set but out countries leaders, with a conscious effort I let the entire matter go as I know that this is not good to dwell on it. Eventually we are herded like cattle into the aircraft and I must say the BA crew were very pleasant and competent, there were a lot of American do-gooders on the plane who had been somewhere in Africa giving aid and trying to make a difference, I refrained from expressing my views and knew that they truly believed that they had made some magnificent contribution to elevating the continent to a higher level and that one day soon Africa would be a magnificent first world place, void of corruption and violence. I hoped silently to myself that they had at least had some fun on the trip and had gained some greater life experience other than solving the problems of Africa. I was truly lucky to have two open seats to my left and an Isle on my right, both advantages I put to good use during the long hours of the flight. The lady sitting to my far left was not a youngster, probably forty to mid-forties, she was attractive in her own way, but I was fascinated by her left foot, she slept and sat always with her legs crossed so I never had the opportunity to see her right foot, but her left foot only had four toes, and they were all huge, almost double the length of mine and big in diameter. The angle of her foot was also most unusual and it seemed almost to be straight in line with her leg so that there was no angel at the ankle, rather her foot seemed to almost continue in a straight line along with her leg and her heel seemed to be stuck like a growth onto the middle section of the distance between her toes and ankle. I was most fascinated, it was also very interesting that when we disembarked she walked and looked perfectly normal although I did notice that she wore shoes which were completely closed in front and had high heels. A very interesting insight and something I would have not easily believed if I had not seen it myself, four toes indeed. There was another interesting matter which I also observed, the air hostess on the same side as the four toe lady was I concluded, an ex KGB operative, she had the blond hair cut into a bob , short at the back and longer in the front with the cut following her jaw line. Her jaw was square and pronounced and her face was hard and lined, looking at her I just knew, she glanced in my direction once or twice and I could just sense that she knew that I knew. I kept well clear of her. But I must confess that she was a dammed good operative because she had managed to absolutely perfect her British accent, there was no hint at all of the Russian background. But her KGB haircut and looks gave her away. One thing I must add is that the beef casserole served for supper was really good, nice white wine as well. We arrived at Heathrow around 6.30 am and happily left the plane, the landing had been fast and we had slammed hard down onto the runway, it felt to me as though the plane was about to go into a broadslide and I instantly imagined the plane sliding sideways down the runway and then digging in and rolling over at 350 km per hour, my hair stood up and my heart raced but thankfully the pilot managed to pull it straight and then the brakes were slammed on, not a good landing at all. Our approach had also been very rough and it felt as though there was a lot of thunder storm activity and heavy air currents. I later heard on the TV news that there had been a big storm around lunch time and that a house had been struck by lightning, images of the burning house were shown. After leaving the plane we had to catch a train to the baggage reclaim area, first proceeding through customs. When it was my turn to pass through customs the official who interviewed me asked a lot of questions regarding where I was going, what I was going to do, where I had worked prior to my retirement etc., what surprised me was that she was not British and I contemplated to some degree the fact that the gate keeper to the country was actually not an English person, I am not sure if I would give the responsibility of such an important position to a foreigner, she did not even speak English very well. Looking around I then noticed that almost all the employees working at the airport seemed to be from other countries, interesting. Collecting my baggage I made my way to the underground and finally made it onto the train after very nearly getting onto the wrong train once and having been sent back upstairs to the airport terminal once by a young lady who I later realized must have thought that I was leaving and not arriving, I forgave her however as she could hardly understand or speak English. The train was fairly empty but very soon started to fill up and after some time was full to capacity. At some stages it accelerated to a good speed and we made good time, on other occasions we had no sooner started when we had to stop again. I did not check the actual travel time but I imagined it must have been about an hour before we reached Russell square. My hiking bag was almost impossible to manage among all the bustling people as I was carrying it like a suitcase and I struggled to carry my helmet and hand luggage. My hiking bag was exactly 20 kg, all in all I had more than 37 kg of luggage and I very quickly started to realize that this was a big mistake. Arriving at the hotel I was so relieved to finally put my load down and could only think of a nice hot shower and a little rest, alas it was not to be as I was told that my room would only be ready at 2 pm, but happily I could store my luggage until then. I stored most of it and made my way to a post office to post an orthopedic pillow which I had brought with for a friend who had asked of me this favor, it was for her daughter in law and previously she had posted one in South Africa but it had never reached its destination, so by posting it in London she thought it had a better chance of survival. I was delighted to have one luggage item less and after returning to the hotel to put my tog bag into the luggage store I set off to see the sights of London. I first made my way to Russell Square and after sitting and enjoying the wonderful summer weather and watching the children play in the fountain I set off again. I had asked a young foreign girl at the park where would be a good place to visit and she had pointed in the direction of down Southampton Row, and set off in this direction. Quite soon I realized however that I had no clue and I stopped to ask directions again, and then I saw a young girl who was a guide and she was helping visitors to find their way. I waited my turn and she gave me a map and said I should visit Covent Gardens, I asked her where she was from and she said told me she was from central Europe. I made my way down to Covent Garden where I spent a good few hours browsing in the stalls and slowly making my way through all there was to see before heading off to see the Themes, upon arriving there I could see the London eye far off in the distance and also recognized Big Ben standing proudly. I walked down the length of the river for some time in the direction away from the London Eye, looking at the passing barges and pleasure boats, it really was beautiful. At one time I stopped to take some photos and climbed up a short flight of stairs to reach a better vantage point, I was amazed to find small tents similar to my hiking tent and cardboard structures and I very soon realized that I was standing in what had become the home for a number of homeless people, most of whom were sitting around on the benches and one or two were sleeping on the ground, wrapped in blankets. I hurriedly snapped two or three pictures and quickly made my way back to the pavement feeling unsafe and uneasy while I was surrounded by the homeless people who looked hungrily at me. My festive mood was broken and it was almost 1 pm so I decided to make my way back to the hotel to check in as I estimated that it was about an hour’s walk back to the hotel. The rest of the afternoon was spent checking in, recovering my luggage, buying an adapter plug for my lap-top and basically getting settled down. A nice hot shower was wonderful beyond words and as I have always said, there is not much to compare with a nice hot shower and a good sleep, these two items certainly fall within my top ten list of things which make me happy. I waited until the sun had set and evening closed in around London, the lights shone brightly everywhere and looking out from my bedroom window it really was a beautiful sight. Making my way downstairs I again enquired from one of the hotel staff about where I could find a traditional English Pub as I really wanted to experience drinking a beer in a traditional pub, I imagined the four hundred year old wooden beams and steps worn by the thousands and thousands of visitors to the pub over the centuries. No he told me, no more traditional pub in London, only restaurant. I left him wondering where he came from and how it was possible that he was working in London when it was almost impossible to get into the country as a direct British descendent, I was sure I knew more about London than he did. Deciding to simply go with the flow I walked down past the entrance to the underground and then walked a zigzag route from there. After walking around for more than three hours I realized that there were truly no traditional pubs in London, there were also no British in London, I encountered only foreigners, many of whom were what looked like Chinese to me and then many others, perhaps people from Egypt or somewhere in Africa, and a lot of Europeans but speaking a language I did not recognize at all. Feeling cheated and let down I slowly retraced my steps and was almost back at the entrance to the railway station, when suddenly just behind me I heard a wonderful thing, it was an Englishman speaking, without even looking behind me I said, well you are the first English speaking person I have heard in over three hours, and with that he pulled up alongside me and said, no English left in Greater London I’m afraid, definitely they are in the minority now. I know I replied, I am shocked, by now we had reached the entrance to the underground and the lady with him was pulling his hand to draw him into the entrance and urging him to come along. I wanted to ask him who all these other people were, where did they come from and how was it possible that they had managed to become citizens of England, but they walked quickly away, the lady he accompanied glancing back at me with what I thought looked like fear on her face. Had my comments been dangerous I wondered. I walked back slowly and then made my way down a street just to the right of the entrance to the underground where I had earlier noticed a pub, at the time I had not imagined it was typical but now I fancied that it was possibly the most typical English Pub in the entire area. I went inside and the barman recommended a beer after I explained that I did not know the beers they offered on sale. I must admit it was very nice and most certainly hit the spot. I sat thinking about the fact that for so many years I had dreamed of visiting England and connecting with my ancestral heritage, only to find that it was completely gone. I wondered if the Queen knew that she no longer had any loyal subjects left in London, this was after all the richest part of the British heritage as I understood it and looking at the map there were many very old and significant places right within the area where I had been. The invasion of London was complete and now I am sure that the invasion will slowly spread throughout England, the British Empire is falling I thought, and they do not even know it, and not a shot was fired. I have booked to stay at the Royal National hotel on my return from the USA and I am sorry now, had I known I would have rather tried to stay at a place where there were still some English people living, this was after all why I had come to visit
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:04:47 +0000
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