The journey south : Part I

Well we're off. We have left Glasgow on another bold venture, this time targeted at the pays du dieu. Right now I am sitting by the window of our travelodge room typing this post out into OpenOffice since the only Internet connection is wireless and I haven't got a wireless adapter on this laptop.

Speaking of which, the first thing that I seem to be missing is my old work laptop. It was an IBM thinkpad, and it had wireless networking, it ran games not too badly and it had one of those trackpoint pointing devices. For those that don't know, this is an IBM device (don't know if they designed it, but they seem to be the only company that sell them) that has a dot in the middle of the keyboard, sometimes called a nipple) that allows you to move the mouse pointer around by leaning the pointer in the direction you want it to go.

At first I found it rather irritating, but I've gotten rather used to it and now think that I prefer it over a touchpad. You can just glide around the screen no matter what resolution you have without stopping and starting again because you ran out of touchpad. I also found it was ideal for gaming, particularly FPS.

But enough of that, onto the trip I hear you all cry. Well, getting out of the flat in the morning was fine, last minute cleaning and all. Then there was the first realisation of just how much baggage we had with us. Really, it is/was not much more that when we left Australia in the first place, but I'm not in as good shape as then and the weight seemed insurmountable.

Getting down the stairs was one thing, getting to the train station was another. We hefted the bags all the way down to Argyle Street and the effort was enormous, not a good sign for the trip overall. Once there, I left Annmarie sitting with the kids and the bags and ran down to the real estate office to drop off our keys. On getting back, we quickly debated how long it would take to get to the station and decided that both of us would get taxis separately and meet at the station, a scenario that would repeat itself later.

Once at Glasgow Central, we got a luggage trolley and headed in to find our train. We met Rosy, one of Annmarie's friends from Willow's school, near the platform. She had come to see us off. Funny that the person seeing us off out of Glasgow is an Aussie from Queensland. With her watching the bags we made our way up to the front of the train and stored our larger suitcases, then headed back to Rosy (who was giving the kids rides on the luggage trolley) to get the rest of the stuff onboard. Unfortunately my cousin Caroline couldn't make it to see us off as well, which is a shame.

With the rest of our stuff stored, we got into our seats for a not exactly uneventful train ride, but I'll put that into a continuation later. Right now I gotta get to sleep so we can get to my brother Paul's flat tomorrow. Gnite!