At least Ben Works

So, the good news is, I finally got to hear big Ben chime last night. The bad news is, that's pretty much the highlight so far.

Pulling up to the Toronto terminal departure line, we quickly realized that the cushion for my wheelchair seat was missing. Mom left it in her parking garage during the loading process.  Honestly, the chair is now really uncomfortable as I'm lower to the ground and sitting on a chair frame. Strike One. Flight went fairly well, but that was pretty much where our luck ended. We had to catch a train after baggage claim and after buying a ticket and making a mad dash for the train, we realized that the elevator to the platform was actually OUTSIDE of the station itself because as the staff put it 'The station is really old." It was ridiculous. Then, they loaded me on,  planting my wheelchair right in front of the doors.  As new passengers came onboard, they were stepping over both me and the chair, often with lugguage in tow. Completely awkward and unsafe.

Finally making it to our stop, we get out and find the place pretty much deserted. We are going up and down elevators trying to figure out where street level is, and where the heck the landlady of our first rental place is, as she was supposed to meet us. Mom had texted via a special phone plan, and we weren't getting an answer. This, as Mom is hauling lugguage and I'm wheeling around in circles. We finally stop two bobbies, looking for help and bless them, they actually took lugguage from Mom and walked through the streets with us, ten minutes from the station right to the front door of the place we were staying! Thank god, because between the four of us, we still had trouble finding it. I did get pics of them helping us, only humor of the day!

As I'm quickly trying to snap pics, the frigging memory card runs out! Turns out, Mom put the original card the camera came with in there, and of course there is no memory on those stupid things. She swore up and down there was a large card in her sutcase but guess what? Nope. So now we have to buy a memory card too. Fun stuff.

Place we are staying is crummy.  Good location in London, but bad logistics. More later, I'm exhausted. Mom is snoring away while I get to listen to security helicopters do flyovers what I swear is every 15 minutes. Traffic re-routed down the street too as they clear routes for athletes only, lucky them.

Walk on south bank to get out of here only highlight so far---Ben has a pretty chime for such a big guy.