Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind

I am back stateside now. I got back on Saturday. The drive to Charleston was uneventful, and faster than I thought ( no I didn't speed...much). Arnold has been taking good care of me. The jet lag is almost gone. I got my first nice long night of sleep in a while last night. That should cure me of getting sleepy at 9:00, which is 1:00 AM in Europe. Arnold and I are going to Queen Anne's tonight. For those of you who have not been. It is a pirate themed restaurant. I know you are thinking "Long John Silver's" but Queen Anne's is a pirate museum in front and a high quality restaurant in back. It has really fantastic food and always has creme brulee and cheesecake.

On my last night in London, I had planned to go into downtown and see We Will Rock You, a musical based on the music of Queen, with a few of the other Clemson people. These people were not in my traveling group. My group had gone back to London a day early because Catherine needed to leave early. This worked out perfectly for me because I was not rushed to get to the theatre on Friday. Well, the other guys didn't show up in time. After much internal debate, I decided to go by myself, which meant I had to navigate all the way from our hotel near the airport to downtown London. So I called ticketmaster and reserved my ticket, got out my map of London and figured out how to get there.

The show started at 7:30. I left the hotel at 5:30. I took a shuttle to the airport, the Gatwick Express train into London's Victoria Station, the Victoria tube line to the central tube line to the theater. I managed to get to the theater with 25 min to spare. I actually made not a single mistake getting there. I was impressed with myself.

The show was awesome. It was set in a future where actual music had died and the only stuff left was produced by computer ( they called it Radio Ga Ga). There was a dreamer who would bring back really music. The lead character's name was Galileo Figaro. Ok, so the plot was a bit corny, but the show was spectacular. I bought the big program, the little program, the poster and the commemorative glow stick. I wanted to get a t-shirt, but the one I wanted only came in small baby doll tees. It had red sparkly letters and said guaranteed to blow your mind. I got all the way back to the hotel without a problem. Unless you count the shuttle being 40 min. late a problem. I got back at 12:30 and had to bang on the door to wake my group memebers up to let me in.

Our room only had one queensized bed, so at first, Thomas, Paul and I tried to sleep in it together ( no comments from the peanut gallery). However I got cold in the middle of the night and the blankets were on the floor. In my half awake state, it made more sense to go to the blankets than to bring them to me. So I slept on the floor.

Me and my genius self had packed before the show, so all I had to do in the morning was get dressed and pack my pajamas and toothbrush. We were the first of our group at the airport. Our flight was overbooked. They didn't tell us, but people farther back in line were offered $400 or 600 US Air credits to take a flight the next day. Some of our group was intrigued, but in the end everyone just wanted to go home.

And that is what we did. I was the first to get my luggage and get though customs. I waited for a bit, but the rest of the group was taking forever. When one group member came through we said screw it and just left. I wanted to see Arnold and I was tired of waiting. And I still had a 3-4 hour drive ahead of me.

And that brings me back to where I started the story.