Sitting on the plane, I can tell that the trip is already off to a good start: there was no line at the SFO counter, my plane arrived in Chicago on time, despite large amounts of turbulence and bad weather, and even though dozens of flights have been delayed or cancelled as a result, my connecting flight for London left on time. Not only that, it left from the same terminal (a first for me, in dozens of trips to O'Hare), and the flight was barely even a third full, so I was able to take a pair of bulkhead seats and really stretch out.
Of course, things haven't been perfect: the giant Hershey's bar I was carrying in my camera case had turned to soup from sitting in my car trunk for a couple of hours. Oops.
Before moving up a row, I sat next to a 16-year old boy from London, who was returning home after visiting his just-turned-16-year old girlfriend in Indiana. Trans-Atlantic dating at age 16? Seemed pretty hard to imagine at any age, let alone as a teenager. Yet here he was, on yet another of his bimonthly flights back and forth, carrying back with him an angry-looking stuffed monkey, which he later buckled into the seat next to him.
I didn't sleep, of course, but got lots of reading in, and finally had a chance to work on my web site a little. The flight arrived in London 30 minutes early, to boot. All in all, the flights were a travellers' dream trip, if you don't count that I didn't really want to be early.