UK09: Day -1/2

Today kicked off my second adventure to Europe, ever. This one was much more brief than the last (1 week vs 10... see EUR06 blog), but still quite exciting. The main reason was an academic conference in the town of Loughborough (about 80 miles north of London), but since it makes no difference to the research budget WHEN I fly over there, I bought my ticket 6 days ahead of the conference. At that time I had no idea what I would do, other than figuring something out shouldn't be too hard. Of course by now I had a much better idea, but we'll get to that as it unfolds.

Anyhow, I called this "day -1/2" because I caught an early evening flight out of Ithaca to Philly, from which I had the long-haul hop across the Atlantic. I can't say anything really exciting happened (which is good when traveling on airplanes!) other than some dozing on the flight. But things got a bit more interesting starting the next morning.