Jolly ol' England

Before we left the airport in St. Louis, we needed to get an idea of where we were going, so...

We also got a good shot of our boarding passes...

We had a lay-over in Chicago where we stopped and had lunch at a Macaroni Grill Express in the airport.  After that, we waited for a couple more hours to board our flight to England.

After we were airborne for a few hours, we started hearing some commotion on the plane.  A few minutes later, the captain came over the intercom and asked if there was a doctor on the plane.  A retired doctor was on the flight and he took a look at the passenger.  An older man was having what seemed to be a heart attack.  So, we soon watched our nice straight line on the in-flight map take a hard turn south.  We then learned that we were landing in Boston to have EMS crews come onboard and help the man.  Of course, all the EMS guys had Red Sox hats and spoke a little funny, but they helped the man off the plane and after a few re-checks and fuel, we were back in the air.

We landed at Heathrow on a sunny London day, however, the ground still had puddles so they weren't fooling us, it had just rained.  Just after customs, and after the coffee shop I'd stopped at 9 years prior, we saw our driver holding a sign with a handwritten "BURNESON" on it.  Colin Beck was the trusted courier of American Military members traveling back to our base.  He had a nice minivan, large enough to carry all of our luggage.  He sped through the country side telling us about all sorts of things we should do in England, none of which I could remember and hour past.  We snapped this photo of the countryside whizzing by:

We arrived at RAF Alconbury at the Brittania Inn and checked it there.  Rooms were nearly full, so we got a small room, normally given to single members.  The room did have internet access and that's all we needed to survive our first three weeks in England.  Lindsay's fancy new UK cell phone took a 180-degree photo of our one-room home:

After searching a dozen houses or so, we found one that fit us nicely.  We had to talk down the price of rent, but the owner obliged and on a foggy Friday, we moved in:

We also found a car for sale, a 2000 MG-F.  My Dad had a 68 MG, and I wanted to follow the tradition and also, buy a car of the native land.  Around the same time, Lindsay's Mazda 3 arrived and passed through customs.  They arrived just in time for our first snow.

Along with the car and house hunting, Lindsay was also job hunting, and landed a job at the RAF Alconbury Fitness Center right away.

We now lived off base, both had cars, and were both working! We made it!

~Blake