What a difference a Day Makes (July 19)

Posted on Monday, July 21, after finally getting email service in Paris.

[Written Saturday night, July 18] We woke up “this morning” at 7:00 a.m. in Cooperstown, NY. After a quick but thorough cleaning and packing and loading, we stopped by “Jackie’s” for breakfast on the way out of town, and then followed “Nora’s” advice (Nora is our GPS; see a prior blog about this spectacular woman) all the way into and through New York City, navigating flawlessly through the Big Apple – by LaGuardia and all the way to the Hertz return station at JFK International Airport. After a weather delay on the runway, we lifted off at about 8:00 p.m., EST, but a handsome Easterly tailwind kept us on track for a 7:25 a.m. touch down at Heathrow Airport – London Standard Time. As I type this, it’s just 4:40 p.m. according to the body whose internal clock went to bed last night in Cooperstown (actually it was about 1:00 a.m. this morning). That body slept very little over the Atlantic, and so is working on around 5 hours of sleep in the last 65… and that with all the transitions – and a full day of London Touring. (Bennett commented during the day that he was afraid to blink – because he might fall asleep!)

Since I’m an idiot with this computer, I can’t get the whatchamacallit in the laptop I’m dragging all over Europe to talk to the gizmo here at our London hotel, so at the moment, none of you knows that we’re actually alive.

We are.

Very much. Though we all had our sleep-walking moments today, as we made our way through the London Underground… the 400+-foot London Eye… some fascinating street performances (in one of which I was the star performer)… Nelson’s Column in historic Trafalgar Square… and then an incredible meal at St. Martin-in-the-field’s “Dead Body Deli.” (OK, the actual name is “Crypt Café,” because it is a café and because it’s smartly outfitted in the now-bodiless crypt of this 300-year-old structure. The boys thought it was cool to eat in a morgue, but they preferred the alliteration of the “Dead Body Deli” [my own name], to the Martin’s official name.) Anyway… it’s probably the best meal we’ll have in Europe, and now that all the sarcophagi are gone (those “flesh-eating” stone slabs), it’s a pretty appealing place to dine out.

When I can get “my people” to talk appropriately to “their people,” we’ll send this blog along. By that time, though, we’ll have taken in church at Bloomsbury Baptist and the British Museum, at least…

Somewhere in London.