RAF Fairford (Day 1)

Saturday, June 21, 2008

RAF Fairford, Day 1

Today was pretty much uneventful. We woke up late. I think the sun setting around ten and coming up at five is starting to get to us. We hit the snooze every ten minutes from 7:00am to 8:00am. We got all our stuff packed and sat in the car in front of the lodging office since that is the only place on base with Wi-Fi to update our blog and check email. We ended up leaving around to 11:00am. Our next destination, RAF Fairford, is only an hour drive away. But, we wanted to drive to Stonehenge along the way, which turned our drive into three hours. The drive was great with no problems. Our friend, Judy, who you will meet later when we stay in London, email me and gave me the skinny about the driving. This is what she wrote, “(Incidentally, since the borders opened a couple(?) of years ago, we have been flooded with foreign and not very road-worthy lorries, with drivers who don't know the laws of our roads, so watch out for Polish, Romanian, Czech etc. rig-outs who seem to be a law unto themselves!) Which reminds me: if you think we're scary drivers, don't ever drive in France or Italy or even Germany!!!” I just had to share that to redeem the local’s good name. I’m not saying everything is perfect where we live. In fact we have some of the world’s worst drivers in Oklahoma. We were told that the yield sign was invented in our state and they still don’t know how to use it.

Anyways, as we got two miles away from Stonehenge we had creeping traffic all the way there. A couple of hundred yards away we saw cones and a sign that said “Stonehenge Closed.” At first we figured they were finally putting the stones back up after Chevy Chase knocked them over with his car in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. At last, we heard on the radio that it was closed due to today’s date being summer solstice. I think it a sacred day for those involved in Wicca. There were cops there to make sure no one got access to the field. We did manage to take a picture from far off. We got to the base about an hour later. And since then we have been taking it easy, hanging out in our room. This one also has a kitchen in it and we have Wi-Fi in our room. If anyone wants to video chat with us tomorrow night, we will be online. I love being in the Air Force and taking advantage of all the benefits. All over the world the lodging is so cheap and so much nicer than the regular Best Westerns back at home. After staying at AF lodging during our vacation to Colorado, we have discovered it is the way to go for vacations. Tomorrow we will be visiting the town of Bath.