Go USA

The last few weeks before the departure for my world round rip were quite crazy. As it happens, I tried to do too much in a far too short time. All the idealistic plans about being ready for departure a week before the flight in order to take things easy turned out to be fatuous. Well, I should have expected that. At the end, I barely managed to finish most of this website and to release a new beta version of LiveGraph. The grandiose plans of writing a numerical analysis paper on holey fitness landscapes and starting the Dual Phase Evolution review paper fell sacrifice to the harsh reality and my inability to make realistic time estimates.

I prepared my two posters for GECCO'08 on the day before departure. Since there was no time to print them on poster-size sheets I ended up slicing the posters into A4-size chunks and printing them on a normal printer. My advice to everyone in a similar situation: do not try this at home! At the conference I ended up needing an hour to set the two posters up, while most people needed 5 minutes. And it still looked crap. Next time, if I cannot use a poster-size printer, I’ll design separate A4-size sheets that can be arranged on the poster wall in some visually pleasing way and tell the story in a presentation-style approach. Much less stress. Or just manage my time properly and use the freaking poster printer. A likely story!

I was flying out on Thursday morning, 10am. I got up on Wednesday at 8am after having slept for 6 hours or so and I new that a long day was coming. I still had to go to work to sort a few last things out and I had not event began to pack. It was not before 7pm or so when I started thinking about packing. With a lot of help from Maria and a bit of luck I was ready just in time to have a brief shower and to catch a cab to the airport. Check in was long, but unproblematic. The guy at the airline counter wanted to know my address in the USA. Well, going to a conference I had booked a hostel, but hell, what if I was just backpacking? I started to feel particularly welcome at my destination.

The plain was late. I did not care. At the time I was up for 26 hours and it had not been easy 26 hours. It turned out that a large group of American teenagers was on our plane and they made noise like hell. Most of the other waiting passengers looked not particularly pleased with the prospect of spending 15 hours in a plane with this charming offspring of American culture, but they kept me from falling asleep at the spot and missing the plane, which was good.

Once on the plain it turned out that I was to sit right in the middle of their group. I imagined the flight to come and decided that the best approach was to assume that this was all a bad dream and that I would soon wake up, it would be summer, and I would not have to go anywhere. I got an aisle seat, as I wanted, the kids’ supervisor was on the other side of the 4-seat row and the future of the American nation was all in front and behind us. The seats between me and the supervisor belonged to two unrelated and innocent sufferers. They seemed to have had more sleep than me the night before and more energy too, and with terrified faces these two people rushed to the flight attendant to ask for other seats. I did not have the strength. It turned out for the best. As soon as the plane left the ground someone turned a switch and the whole lot of American future society departed into a land of dreams of fat burgers, easy schools and optional dental care insurance. We had four seats for two people and no distraction for the rest of the flight.

This was the best long distance flight I had so far. They say, Melbourne - Los Angeles is the longest non-stop flight in the world. But even those 15 hours, maybe 16, were nothing compared to the 28 hours I’ve been up by the time the plane took of. The Quantas service is not famous for being particularly great, and there was nothing particularly exceptional about it this time, but somehow, I think, there was something really nice about the crew’s attitude. The answer to any question I had was YES.

– Can I have some Whiskey?
– Yes.

– Can I have some more Whiskey?
– Yes.

– Can I have more Whiskey?
– Yes.

– Would you like another Whiskey?
– Yes.

– Do you have an Aspirin?
– Yes.

After a lot of Whiskey, some good sleep and three movies we touched down in L.A. As a citizen of a NATO ally I did not have any particular problems entering the country.

– What is the purpose of your visit to the USA?
– A conference on new computer technologies.
– How long will you stay in the USA?
– 19 days. Here's the return ticket.
– Where will you be staying?
– In a hotel.
– Welcome to the United States.
– Thank you very much.
- [ ... :) ]

While we were queuing to enter the country they were lecturing us that we need to state an address in the US, otherwise we might as well get back on the plane straight away, but they did not even ask for it. Maybe it was already in the computer from the time of my check-in.

I had a short walk to the domestic terminal of the L.A. airport. I did not see much, but what I did see reminded me of a third world country like Malaysia or so. Loud, stinky, dirty, hot. Actually, Kuala-Lumpur airport was nicer. I checked in at Delta Airlines to go on to Atlanta and was told that the plain is 3 hours late. My sleeping bag will come in handy, I thought, measuring up the concrete floor and considering what might have been the most comfortable position to sleep on it. The check-in computer of the air-line selects people for a routine security check according to some undisclosed principle, and if selected, prints an "S" for "security" of the boarding card. My card had 5 big red "S". Forgetting to take of my shoes when going through the metal detection gate did not help. A bearded guy with an abdominal girth of several metres took me to a separate area.

– Open, he said, pointing towards my bag.

It crossed my mind that he could have said "open please", but I decided not to argue. The security guy rummaged in my bag for a while and then pointed towards a small dirty carpet on the floor that had two foot-like shapes depicted on it, then he spread his arms like a monkey trying to imitate a pidgin and said:

– Stand.

I assumed that the monkey wanted me to spread my arms so I can be searched, so I stand and did what he wanted. I was right. Having searched most on my surface area he pointed at my feet. This time he said nothing at all. A thought crossed my mind that the pidgin monkey may actually be a nice guy and "open" and "stand" may simply cover most of his active vocabulary, but I quickly dismissed his theory: he had had just found a bottle of water I had from the previous plane and being joyful that the effort of moving his huge body was not for nothing, he constructed a full sentence.

– This is not allowed, he said.

I was very thirsty and my brain was not working well after the long flight, so I did something stupid:

– Can I drink it now?, I said.

This was clearly too much.

– Outside.
– What outside?
– Outside.
– Outside of what?
– Outside. This. He pointed at the bottle.

I regretted having started this conversation. There must be some way to get some water before the gate, I thought, and reckoned that a shorter answer would be most comprehensible for my charming counterpart.

– Ok, I said.

My counterpart stalled for a second, but then seemed to comprehend my message and proceeded with his search. Luckily I did not have any more forbidden items.

I bought a bottle of water for 5 dollars. The charming security officers make sure that the small Chinese shop in the waiting area has good business. You need an ID to pay with a credit card. In fact you need an ID for almost everything. Indeed a free country. A couple of hours snoozing on top of my sleeping bag and I boarded the plane to Atlanta, with not even 4 hours delay. No free food on the plane, but movies like on an intercontinental flight. I preferred to sleep.

Atlanta airport was huge. I had to take a train to get to the baggage claim conveyor. A 20 minute city train ride took me then from the airport to the city. I was pleased to see a proper bed after checking into the hostel that I had booked in advance. The hostel was just a short walk from the train station and I only had a limited amount of adventures on the way there. But that is another story...