Waiting in LAX

As I mentioned in my last post I am going to visit my brother and sister in law in San Francisco. I left this morning (UK time at least, Pacific time it was probably still Thursday evening).

I arrived in LAX safe and sound, which is always good. I find traveling to be particularly boring, but I brought my new Mac Book Pro and the airline adapter, so I was able to watch movies most of the flight, and my Nintendo DS provided some entertainment too (as did the Philip K. Dick books I got at Heathrow).

The downside was that I had the strongest grilling by immegration I can ever recall (well except that one time in Toronto, but that is a story for another time). He started out asking me the usual, "why are you coming?", "how long are you staying?", "when were you last here?", but the final two questions really stumped me.

He asked first of all "How many times have you visited", well since 1998 I have visited at least once a year, and at most four times in one year, so I guess at least 20, but maybe as many as 30 times. I laughed, then I realized this was probably not a good thing to do, but he took that to mean, "so many times I cannot recall". The last one was "what is the longest stay you have had?", well that was easy, three weeks and that was my first visit in 1998 when I came out to visit my brother.

Yes that is right 10 years later I am returning to visit the same person, although he has lived in New York for most of the intervening time.

I wonder if my next trip will be in 2018?

Alasdair

Posted from the admirals club LAX