No photos, because I had to pack my cameras in checked luggage due to the insane no-carry-ons panic.
Brian and Viv were up at the crack of some ungodly hour to take me to the airport. Strange but true, they were able to drop me right at the curb, which struck us all as rather lax security considering the panic of the last two days. There was no inspection, we just drove right in, along with hundreds of other cars.
The alleged "security" precautions at Heathrow: Abysmal. Incompetent. Idiotic. Stupid.
The newcasts told us to be there 3 hours before the flight, but the airport "security" would not let us in until 2 hours before.
They were not set up to process what turned out to be a normal number of weekend passengers. It took 20 minutes just to get to the boarding pass machine - this part of the trip should have been completely unaffected by the "security" measures, except the idiocy of not allowing us in early meant everyone was jammed in there at once. We all had checked bags, and this did slow things down, but not nearly as much as the ticketing personnel, who are not trained in and should not be part of the screening process, who wasted everyone's time and made the wait longer by giving us a hard time about the meager items we were allowed to bring on board. They need to just do their jobs, and leave the screening crap to the crappy screeners. Took half an hour to get my bags checked, and I was in the express line. What should have taken 2 minutes took 10.
Then there was the idiocy of two pat-down searches. The first one all the passengers went through, done by the usual guards at the passengers-only section of the airport. The second done poorly and slowly by amateurs at the United gate.
The restrictions were Just Plain Stoopid. All we were allowed to bring were:
No books, newspapers, writing implements, food, candy. Absofuckinglutely ridiculous.
It took all 2 hours to get to the plane.
As a result of this stupidity, the plane was delayed an hour. The flight was completely full.
Other than that, it was fine. Smooth flight, except for having to make a second pass at landing, and a somewhat bumpy landing. The Obligatory Screaming Baby only made a token appearance during the descent, from the rear of the plane, and only for a minute.
Having left an hour late, we were an hour late getting into SFO. But that was okay, it was only a little after 2 pm when we touched down, and there was almost no line at customs - I was waved through since I had nothing to declare.
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