Allen, Nathan, and The Road to Santiago

The first of many obstacles on the longest day! We arrived at London´s Heathrow Airport at 7am London time, a full 30 minutes ahead of schedule, however, security would not let us off of the plane until almost 8:00 a.m.. We were then transported to the Customs and Immigration area you see here. It took us 2 hours to get through Immigration. By the time we left Immigration, our bags had already been offloaded, and were waiting in the farthest corner of the baggage claim area. We grabbed our bike boxes and began to run through the London Underground to the bus depot that would transport us to Stansted Airport and our flight that was only 3 hours away...We missed the bus...we turned around and ran back through the London Underground to the Heathrow Express, a high speed train that would take us directly to London´s Paddington station. At Paddington station we learned that the Circle line, the most direct route to Liverpool St. Station and the Stansted Express train was closed! So we took the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus where we ran through tunnels carrying our boxes, knocking over innocent Brits, on our way to the Central Line to Liverpool St. Station. Upon arrival at Liverpool St. Station we learned that the Stansted Express had been momentarily converted to a SLOW bus. After an hour, we arrived at Stansted Airport with 15 minutes to go before our flight, then we saw the lines...suffice it to say we spent the 7 hours in a Stansted Coffee shop waiting for a flight to Bergerac France...