...we gotta wear shades. (Remember that song? Timbuk 3 was the 80s band that did that one; wasn't bad actually, kinda catchy.) Here we are at GSP again, on our way to Birmingham, England, then Prague. It's late afternoon but it's still quite bright out and we're sitting right in front of the window (where I found a power outlet for the laptop).
For this trip I booked an "open-jaw" ticket, which lets me fly in to BHX but then fly out of PRG. I didn't know they let you do that, but it ended up being more convenient than having to return to Birmingham from Prague. I wish I had done this for the Zurich trip earlier in the year. Luckily European flights (in and out of smaller airports) are cheap. I booked a flight from East Midlands to Prague for 60 pounds. Not bad. The actual flight only cost 10 quid per person but they ding you for luggage, taxes, and various other "options". Prague was a kind of last minute idea, but since the conference I'm attending in Leicester was only two days and EuroGraphics in Prague ran all week, I thought what the heck let's go. My flight should be being reimbursed by the first conference since I'm delivering the keynote there. And a paper as well. The work students did last year with a prof from out west turned out pretty well and so I'll be presenting the technical aspects of the paper. The keynote is more of a review of others' work as well as a bit of my own.
I thought this was going to be my last trip this year. Turns out I have to drive down to Charleston next month. Meanwhile Rio in October is canceled due to dual paper rejections, pity. The conference I sent my paper to allowed simultaneous submission to a co-located workshop, but both venues sent back rejections, so we're not going. You can't win 'em all I guess. On a more positive note, although I'm not presenting, I do also have a paper at EuroGraphics (the educators' track) that I asked a colleague of mine to present. So on this trip I'm picking up credit for two papers. "Dziękuje i za to" as my Mom would say ("and I'll thank you for that as well").
We should be boarding soon. Next stop is Memphis, TN. Then on to Amsterdam and finally Birmingham. In Birmingham we have to take a bus and train to get to Leicester, our destination for the first segment of the open jaw. Should be a really long day. Hopefully they'll have those little private DVD players on the Atlantic hop. A couple of movies really helps pass the time. Either that or a long snooze since we're on the red-eye. Next blog entry is likely to be from Schipol since I know they have wifi in the airport and there's a nice cafe there where we'll probably grab a coffee. We'll need it after the flight. Bon voyage!
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