I love my car. Really, I do. It’s great, economical, fairly sporty, and has a load of space in the back for Aimee and her copious paraphenalia. It has lots of toys – like parking sensors, dual climate control and loads of three-letter-acronymns that I don’t fully understand (like ABS, EBD, ESP, TCS and so on), it also has a bluetooth mobile phone system, built in. The phone system is one of the reasons I bought the car – what with doing quite a bit of travelling, and the ban on using mobiles in cars. Everything is great in the car, absolutely wonderful German quality – except this phone system.

Firstly, the number of phones it supports is meagre at best – most of which are old and retired now. None of the Nokia E or N-series phones (or indeed, any Series 60 Symbian phones) are supported – though that’s a Nokia issue, rather than an Audi one, which they’ve only just fixed with the E71 and N96.

Secondly, when you have a compatible phone, and you wish to utilize the Audi’s wonderful voice-activated controls, it all turns to goopy shit. To illustrate this, I recorded my attempt this morning at trying to dial my voicemail box using the voice controls. All the car needs to do, is dial ’901′.

Apologies for the quality of the recording, it was done by using another phone’s Voice Recorder and then exporting the audio off.

Painful MP3 here. (4:19)

Didn’t really stay out late last night – got back to the hotel around 11pm, tired and with my feet aching.

Woke around 9am to another sunny morning and, my last day. I really, really need to get some presents sorted for folks at home, so I decide to make that the aim of the game for today, and, I think I’ve done ok. The weak dollar at the moment makes New York an attractive proposal – and its clear that I’m not the only nutter that’ll be going home with a shiny new suitcase, full of booty.

All the ‘discount’ electronics and giftware stores have hastily arranged ‘Luggage’ sections, with all manner of cases, from $400 Samsonites to cheap Asian knock-offs. I, obviously, plump for the cheapest bag I can find that’ll hold my stuff – $45 for a mid-sized expandable suitcase with a trolley handle. If it only lasts this one journey, I’ll be happy! Keep reading…

PS. I just looked in the mirror and realised that I am very, very sunburnt. WTF? Sunburn in New York? In October?!

Ok, so, the updates stopped. Even my mum thought I was dead, murdered by a crazy New York gangster, but, I wasn’t. I was just bloody busy. Busy, and tired, in cycles.

I went out for a quick look around when I arrived – even though I had been awake for 20+ hours by that point, to fool my mental chemistry into accepting the time-delay. This proved to be a great idea, for two reasons – 1) I have no jetlag at all, now, and 2) I found Smiths Bar, a couple of blocks from Times Square.

I like to think that I’m not the ‘regular’ tourist – sure, Times Square is pretty neat, but it’s a tourist trap ready to suck the dollar bills out of your pocket as just as soon as it can. I don’t really understand the notion of going all the way to New York to go to franchised eateries like Planet Hollywood, or movie-spinoff-moneyspinners like Bubba Gump Shrimp where you’ll eat some godawful microwaved shit served to you by a waitress that’s getting minimum wage and providing minimum effort. So, I went out on Thursday night and had a bit of a ‘recce, just to help me get my bearings. Keep reading…

I’m finally here, typing this up in my hotel room on the 22nd floor. What a pickle! Everything was going swimmingly perfectly well until I reached the check-in desk at the hotel.

Me: “Hello, I have a reservation for Mr Sheridan, for four days”

Snooty hotel man: “Ok”, tap-tap-tap-tap, raised eyebrow, “ah, yes, I see. Sir, your card was declined (equate my emphasis to his volume), so that booking is now gone.”

I’m sure I don’t need to give examples of some of the choice words I used here – I’m sure you can get the picture, and the long and short of it is, well, I’m on the 22nd floor looking out over Broadway , but I do need to ring my bank tomorrow – it looks like the card I ‘paid’ with is barred from international transactions, presumably as an anti-fraud measure. Keep reading…

The flight to Amsterdam was very, very quick – about 40 minutes, and, also refreshingly deserted. I had an entire row to myself, Not that I needed it for such a short hop.

Schiphol is massive, just massive. It took me a good 20 minutes walk to get from the arrival gate, in terminal C, to the departing gate in terminal F. Thing is, there isn’t actually any seperate terminal buildings, it’s just one long, long, long concourse of departure gates and ‘retail opportunities’. It’s certainly a different approach – there’s no ‘airside’ and ‘landside’ as in most airports, security and baggage scan is all done at each individual gate. Seems a bit daft to me – especially as there’s no prior warning of this for a transiting passenger – and juding by the number of ‘Vee are in zee process of unloading jour baggage’ announcements over the tannoy, I’m not the only one with that opinion.

Comedy moment of the day – and the one I wish I’d caught on camera – the campest Dutch policeman in the entire world, zipping around Schiphol on a Segway, patrolling the endless corridors of the concourse. Keep reading…

Hello there from Terminal 4 Airside Wetherspoons! I’d been told a number of horror stories regarding Heathrow in general, and particularly T4 (and not T5, even though its opening was a failure on a purely biblical scale). Thus-far, I believe them all to be completely unfounded.

I stepped off the tube at the T4 station (though in my eagerness at Kings Cross/St Pancras, I have to confess that I may have accidentally boarded a Piccadilly train bound for Uxbridge, and it wasn’t until Holborn until I realised my faux-pas) and no more than 3 minutes later, I was airside, thru security and in a largely deserted departure lounge.

I realise I must be epically late to the game on this whole ‘online check-in’ malarky, but, jesus h christ, it doesn’t half save some fucking around. Print off your boarding pass. Walk to security. Hand over pass and passport, nice man scans boarding pass, says “Thankyou very much Mr Sheridan, have a good flight” and you walk through to the X-ray scanners. No queueing, no fannying, no fuss.

Once at security control, there are signs to instruct you to put all of your small items in your hand luggage, and to remove shoes and belts, and to have your liquids ready to inspect in the essential sealable bag. There is a small, 3-4 person queue, which is just enough time to remove your shoes, belt and to retrieve your bag of explosive potions from your hand luggage. Once at the head of the queue, you offload the lot into a tray, and it goes through the X-ray machine.

I always go ‘bing!’ when I walk through a metal detector. It’s happened for so long that I’ve convinced the security people at work that I have a metal plate in my head. So, I go through the scanner and fully expect it to ‘bing!’ and for me to get a pat-down from a surly BAA security guy. There is no ‘bing!’ – crikey! I collect up my stuff and wander into the departure lounge. I look at my watch – 3 minutes since I got off the tube. Amazing.

The lounge is very quiet, with a few people milling around, but not the vast throngs of people you sometimes see at airports. I’m so pleased with my security experience that I spot the airside Wetherspoons and have a pint of Bishops Finger, the only ale they’ve got on. So far, so good.

Thankfully, my taxi did arrive on time and I had a good half an hour or so to kill at the station before my train. Ordered a giant tea from one of the cafes at Sheffield station and imbued as much caffeine as I could muster.

The 6600mAh extended battery for the Aspire One arrived yesterday, and I gave it a little dry-run at work to see how the battery life held up. The battery reached 100% charged at around 11am, so I disconnected it and gave it some light use throughout the day – with the wifi on, and a number of sizable data transfers, and a USB flash card attached – by the time it got to 5pm, it still claimed to have over 2 hours life left and about 25% capacity. Very promising.

Presently, as I write this, I’m hurtling through the countryside on a knackered old East Midlands Trains Intercity125, playing FreeCiv on the One. I had planned on loading up the machine with as many films and stuff as I could muster, but not one of my torrents finished on time. Which was disappointing. I did have ‘Be Kind Rewind’ and the first two episodes of ‘Fringe’ from a previous haul, and I guess they’ll have to do me.

Last night, KLM’s online check-in system finally allowed me to check-in, so I have my self-printed boarding-pass. This should allow me to bypass the check-in desks (and the stupid “Has anyone asked you to carry anything for them in your luggage?” questions – which I’m *sure* that any terrorist or drug smuggler will answer affermatively!) and go straight through to security with my rucksack.

This will be the second time I’ve flown since the whole ‘liquids restrictions’, and this time I’m prepared – I have my toiletries (all under 100ml!) in a sealed plastic bag obtained from East Midlands Airport the last time I travelled. This bag is in a compartment at the top of the rucksack and is very easily accessible for their inspection. Now, if I get any grief from Heathrow security staff, I will be very, very annoyed!

I’m not sure what it is about the whole airport security process that bugs me. I realise it is, largely, for our own protection, but it just irks me the way you’re handled. Of course, the attitude of the staff also plays a large part – we’ll see how much it winds me up today, I guess.

Anyhow, the train is pulling into Derby, and my FreeCiv game is awaiting my input, so I will sign off now until airside at Heathrow – where, with luck, I might be able to actually post this on the blog.

Tomorrow’s the day! To say that I’m excited is probably a massive understatement!

I have a fairly mammoth journey ahead of me, starting at 7am when (hopefully) my local taxi co should be picking me up to take me to the station. From there, it’s a couple of hours on one of East Midland Trains’ finest (bwah!), then a long jaunt along the Piccadilly line from St Pancras to Terminal 4. Then, a 1.5 hr hop over to Amsterdam Schiphol airport, and then the nasty transatlantic leg across the pond to John F. Kennedy International.

Of course, that just gets me to the airport at the other end. There’s no point whatsoever in hiring a car in NY, so you have to rely on public transport to get you from the arrivals hall to your hotel. Assuming you don’t want to be stung by the ridiculous $45+tolls+tip taxi fare (so, in reality, more like $60), this isn’t as straightforward as it might first seem.

In the UK, this is a doddle – at Heathrow, you either get on the Piccadilly line and make your way into the city and get to your hotel. Or, you take one of the ‘Heathrow/Gatwick/Luton/Stanstead Express’ trains which run directly from the airports to a main station in the city (Paddington, Victoria, St Pancras, Liverpool St, respectively (I think!)) and proceed from there. It’s easy, and the Underground maps are absurdly well designed so that even the most nervous of travellers can understand things.

Compare and contrast:

London Underground

New York Subway

The New York subway map makes it look terrifyingly complicated. I suspect, and hope, that it isn’t all that bad and I guess I’ll find out when I get there. Why there’s not a less convoluted and complicated map, I don’t know, but I guess locals are completely familiar to the map, just as Londoners are to theirs, and any change would be met with much disdain.

At JFK, it’s a different kettle of fish. JFK isn’t actually on the NY Metro. Well, it is, but it’s not – there’s a couple of stations for the airport, but to get to those stations from the airport themselves, you’ve got to ride an entirely separate light rail system (called the AirTrain) which visits the terminals of the airport itself. This is, of course, chargeable, and isn’t covered by any Metro ticket you might have already bought.

Now, from looking at the map, I figure I need to get the AirTrain to ‘Howard Beach’ station, and then get an ‘A’ train (the blue line) from there to ’42nd St & Port Authority’ (my hotel is near Times Square), whereby I utilise something called a ‘free transfer’ to ’42nd St & Times Square’. I suspect that a ‘free transfer’ actually means a glorified underpass, which I walk through to emerge at the Times Square station? A bit like Bank and Monument on the London Underground?

Anyhoo, assuming that I manage that, I should end up at my hotel at around 9pm-ish, New York time, tomorrow night. This will, however be around 3-4am James-time from all the travelling! I need to adjust my body clock and combat jetlag ASAP.

I will try and write some stuff throughout the journey, if possible – no guarantees of updates at 35000ft though!