At the Houston airport I tried three times to call Ken and Annie Klien in England, but every time the connection went through, my microphone was muted and I couldn't talk to them! They probably thought it was a prank caller. I finally called the operator to get the charges removed and to put the call through manually and it finally worked. I gave Lacy the flight number and asked to have someone at the airport to meet me to help me find my way to Bromley. I spent the rest of the six hour layover in Houston wandering around the airport. All airports appear to be under some form of construction and/or remodeling! I had a personal size cheese Pizza Hut pizza out of the little window in the basement of the Marriot (extra income for the hotel kitchen!) I didn't know how long it would be before I had good food again when I got to Europe.

I boarded the Contnental L-1011 that evening and flew up the east coast of the US and Canada, across Iceland, the North Atlantic, and Ireland to Gatwick International south of London. The plane has a computer generated display fed to all the video projectors that shows the major statistics about the flight. It shows the plane's current position and route over maps of varying scales. Along with the in-flight movie, they showed a couple of British TV sitcoms including The Adventures of Mr. Bean.

On my first flight to Europe they had the plane so bloody hot (and since it was my first long flight) that I couldn't sleep. On this flight, however, I went to sleep after dinner somewhere over north eastern maritime Canada. I completely missed breakfast, and woke up as we were circling the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately, Gatwick (and Heathrow) were socked in with London Fog. We circled the Isle of Wight so many times that I feel I've been there and traveled each quaint little road and path. The fog finally lifted and we landed at Gatwick only 40 minutes late.