In Philadelphia...day one

It's great when I visit somewhere new and Philadelphia is somewhere new. Up until this point, the only thing I knew about Philadelphia was soft cheese. Cream cheese, is that right? Cream cheese and a guy called Martin, my old pal, who lives here and I'll be seeing him later today, just as soon as I've had some breakfast and acclimatised myself to the fact that I'm five hours behind UK time.

I flew yesterday afternoon on BA0067 from Heathrow Terminal Five. The flight was delayed about three hours thanks to a fuel leak of some sort. I thought we were going to be taken off the plane and flown out on another one, but the engineers did their job and we eventually left the UK around 1530hrs, a good three hours after our scheduled departure time.

BA0067 at Philadelphia airport – three hours delayed!!!

The flight was good, very smooth, and I enjoyed (as always) the inflight meal. I have the chicken every time and it was fantastic, nice and tender, just how I like it and rounded off with a chocolate mousse dessert, the obligatory hard bread roll and some cheese crackers, not forgetting a chunk of cheese. I ate the lot, plus mineral water, plus tea, and anything they gave me basically. Eating passes the time and, as you know, boredom induces a kind of faux hunger. Later we got a chicken sandwich and a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk and one of the cabin crew secretly fed me with a couple of Mini Heros, or whatever they're called. I'm still not drinking (as you all know) but I was tempted by the free mini bottles of red wine (and managed to resist). In fact, this is the first transatlantic flight I've done without alcohol and I must say (rather smugly, perhaps) that I feel a hell of a lot fresher than I normally do. I mean, it's a quarter to six in the morning, I've been up since around 1630hrs (after about five hours' sleep) and I feel fine. I'm looking forward to breakfast and in a second or two I'll probably take a shower and go exploring (there's a pool on the fifth floor). I'm on the 17th floor so I get a good view of the city, although, oddly, it's still dark here.

On the flight over I watched Blade Runner 2049; it was good, but not a patch on the 1979 original. I just managed to finish it before we landed.

Immigration, normally a problem, was smooth and so was baggage reclaim and then it was a shortish cab right into downtown Philly, a late dinner (late on UK time) and then time to hit the sack. And now I'm awake, as you all know because I'm sitting here typing this; it's now 0550hrs and there's not a great deal to talk about right now as I haven't really done a great deal. Martin turns up at 1000hrs, which will be great, and we'll probably drive around town, have some lunch, that sort of thing, and then work kicks in around 1500hrs.

Annoyingly, the weather in the UK is really nice and guess what? I'm here in cloudy old Philadelphia and not riding a bike. I bet Andy went out. Hopefully photographic evidence will follow.