Back to the beginning — when I got to Arlanda Airport, Stockholm, I started to check in at one of the computer screens, but alarmingly my ticket number had disappeared. The roving KLM agent who herds people to the correct line told me that I’d have to talk to someone at this-and-such desk over there, so I queued up for a half-hour wait. But in a vaguely Matrix-style turn, my mobile phone rang, and it was another KLM agent, probably in India, telling me that my overseas flight had been canceled. My new instructions were to get out of line, go to another terminal, take another flight on another airline with another set of departure and arrival times and so forth. Now I was on British Airways, and my whole trip would be delayed by just over two hours. What’s more, I’d be going through Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 — built for British Airways, operated for countless duty-free goods merchants, and the bane of many travelers whose bags were lost during its first couple months. I had mixed feelings about this.

At London Heathrow, it didn’t take long to realize that this airport, just opened last year, was already straining under the weight of its passenger flow. There were three or four different checkpoints to go through, just to change planes within the same terminal. But at one of these, an agent scanned my boarding pass for my overseas flight, then tossed it into a box in a drawer inside her podium. Then a printer spat out a new pass, and she said “You’ve been upgraded. Now you’re in business class.”

It took me a couple seconds to absorb the implications of this. I’ve taken a few flights in the premium class cabins, spending frequent flier miles when all the coach frequent flier seats were taken up. But those were always on short hops for last-minute weekend trips, and they turned out to be on thirty-year-old jets that didn’t have any of the few-fangled technology and creature comforts that have been devised since. All I got for my dear mileage points was a somewhat higher-quality meal (or a meal at all, I should say), and a seemingly endless parade of complimentary alcoholic drinks to help drown away any cares I might have had about air travel.

But business class on an overseas flight, on a wide-body jet! This would be good. I was imagining a 747 now, where there are just a few rows of widely spaced, plush beige leather seats with arm-rests full of buttons, and a fold-out, adjustable TV screen with any movie you wanted on-demand, ready to start from the beginning at your slightest whim. I breezed my way  through the next couple of security points and an X-ray machine, sleepwalking through these dreamy visions, and it didn’t take long for the 90-minute layover to disappear (especially since we needed an extra 20 minutes to take a train over to Concourse B, and then buses over to where our jet was waiting, next to the not-yet-complete Concourse C).

That’s when I saw it — this was no 747, it was the high-tech 777, another step above what I was imagining. I couldn’t quite recall the implications of this until I got onboard and turned to the right. I was in Row 14, so I was looking a bit in the distance past the next bulkhead, but I quickly realized we were already in the teens, and mine was right here in what I now recognized to be that sea of elf-cubicles. I found my assigned cubicle and got started arranging things. I basically had an entire bin to myself, where I tossed my shoulder-bag and coat.

Down at seat-level, I got settled in with my book until take-off, and when we got up in the air, I started messing with all the buttons and switches. I watched two movies — Eagle Eye and Bottle Shock — and got a complex dinner that involved smoked salmon and a fish pie. I was full already after the appetizer, but the flight attendants just kept coming back with more plates and heavy tableware, finishing off with an orange-almond tart. Yes, there was the parade of offered alcohol, but I limited myself to a couple Carlsbergs over the course of the flight, since my goal was to stay awake through evening in DC.

Well alright, as the ours dragged on, I realized I just had to try out the bed setting. I pulled out the footrest, then pushed some buttons, and eventually the thing flattened completely. I had a pillow, sheet, and blanket, plus some high-tech earplugs of my own. It was nice. But it just didn’t change the fact that I can’t sleep on planes. So I gave up and watched one more movie, The Savages. Just as well, it would help my jetlag to say awake. And sure enough, hours later I was in DC, checked-in at the Omni, and even hanging out at one of the Sunday receptions at my conference. And that night I slept great.

So…buck up, and change your bookmarks—or change your RSS subscriptions—to the following:

Web Address: http://scities.wordpress.com/

RSS Link: http://scities.wordpress.com/feed/

I’ll see you soon over there!

Interestingly, I just did a web search to find a photo of my building (shown above left), and not only did I find that photo, but also an entire web site devoted to my building, Hornstulls Strand 1! A short history explains that the building was built around 1882 and underwent major renovations in 1943-45, and at right you can see a photo from 1892, on which I’ve marked my windows with a blue circle.

My new address:

Hornstulls Strand 1, 4tr
SE-117 39 Stockholm
Sweden

And, it’s easy to remember! Just take the first two cities from the title of my blog, enter their area codes in sequence (for the lazy gits among you: San Jose = 408, Sacramento = 916), then dial “JPF1″. My Skype number is in fact a San Jose area phone number.

Now, the catch to the Skype number is that most of the time it will call my computer. And there’s always a chance that my computer will be off, or I will be away from it. But there is voicemail, so if you leave a message there, then I can reply by Skype (and it’s much cheaper for you to leave a voicemail on Skype than on my mobile phone).

Happy dialing!

070819_177_midnattsloppet
Originally uploaded by hindfelt

Some of you may remember that I had this crazy ambition, when I lived in Stockholm in 2004, of running the Stockholm Marathon. Having never done a running competition before. Well long story short, it only took a 13 km training run, 6 weeks into training, to halt my training for another 6 weeks due to a strained ligament in my knee, and this put my ambitions on hold.

Three years later, after coming back to Stockholm, I arrived in plenty of time to train for a more reasonable event: the Midnattsloppet — literally, Midnight Run — which is a 10 km run around the island of Södermalm, and going right through my neighborhood (much in the same way that the Pride Parade did). Along the way, I also recruited Christina, a recovering athlete, to run with me.

As the name suggests, the run happens at night. Not exactly midnight; actually, it starts between 10 and 10:30 p.m., depending on your start group, and pretty much everybody runs it in less than 1 1/2 hours (so I suppose you could say it ends at midnight). I read somewhere that it is the run in Stockholm that draws the most spectators (probably because it’s so easy just to step out of the bar on a Saturday night to watch the runners pass by). It may also draw the most people. Certainly, according to Dagens Nyheter, one of the main dailies, 18,000 runners participated, more than in any previous year for this event.

And along the way, there are stages with live music situated in some of the main squares — everything from folk to rock to country to electronica was performed at these stages, making the run more interesting.

As for the running itself: since I’ve never participated in a run this big before, I was surprised at how big of an issue the crowds can be for setting a good running pace. I found that for most of the first half, I had a shorter stride than normal because I was often dodging between other, slightly slower runners. This is party my fault — I should have been in an earlier start group, but by the time I signed up, they were full. And I certainly wasn’t the only one doing this; there was a ton of re-mixing going on as people sorted themselves out. Anyway, the difference was only slight, but it had an effect. Looking at my stats (which you can see here), I really ran substantially faster in the second half than the first, and this is because as the race went on, the crowds opened up a bit more, and also I got more assertive in finding my way forward past slower runners.

I had simple goals for the race: beat 55 minutes, and beat Christina. On the first, I really had no idea how well I was doing. But on the second, hmm, well during the second half, there were several times when I thought I pulled ahead of her, only to realize after a few minutes that she was a bit ahead of me, so she must have been creating a temporary portal through another dimension to get past me. Is that cheating? You decide. But in the end, my time was 54:14, only beating Christina by a mere 17 seconds. So I met both goals!