Heathrow butterflies

Terminal 5. 2 hours to wait, relatively civilised. Then a flight to Seattle and a three hour wait to transfer to Portland. Flight from Heathrow to Seattle best forgotten - cattle class for hours and hours. A very expensive endurance test.

The flight from Seattle to Portland was on an Air Alaska commuter flight : flight attendants greeted regulars by name, and the safety announcement was rather informal. Especially the bit where they said that if you needed a flotation device in case of an emergency, you had to unfasten the seat cushion that you are sitting on to use as life raft (tee hee hee). Oh, and there will be no in-flight service of drinks both for your safety and ours - its going to be a bit rough!
It was like a two hour drive in an old coach on an unsurfaced road - fine until you remembered that the potholes and boulders were 'just thin air'.

Portland was raining when we arrived, but the house we'd rented was lovely, and Patrick had bought a boys version of emergency rations to welcome us, and the landlady had left us a bottle of wine.