Tuesday 8 November 2016

Travel planning as America votes

I noticed how much colder it felt this morning, due to the wind, when I drove to Lidl's for the rest of the week's shopping. After that I didn't have much incentive to go out, and stayed indoors, reading news articles and preparing the fourth sermon of those I'll preach in days to come. This time next week I'll be home again, in Cardiff. After discussion with Pam and Alwyn yesterday, I'll be taken to Alicante airport during the day on Monday, and stay overnight in a Hostal at El Altet. It's a short taxi ride from there to check in at six thirty, and that's far preferable than having to get out of the house and on the road by four, to be sure of getting there on time. 

I'm grateful for this. It would be awful to miss the flight, as the frequency of direct Vueling links to Cardiff drops off just at this time of year, and quite apart from the extra cost, I might have to take a train to Barcelona to get another one. I don't know why I'm so pessimistic about things. Travel by road, rail and air is so much more predictable these days than it was when I started regular flying back in the early nineties. But, I still get 'what if?' travel nerves well before I set out. Once I'm on the move, I forget and stop worrying.

I've been following coverage of the US elections during the day, wondering if I will stay up and listen, or just check the news whenever I wake up in the night. There'll be a life feed on the BBC News website, Twitter and many others, no doubt. The one that interests me is on wired.com one of the more substantial tech' blogs, which is narrating events using material from an analysis of social media exchanges, millions of them in this next 24 hours, relating to the politics of the hour. To see how this compares and contrasts with statistical presentations based on opinion polls and exit polls will be instructive. It's the first time, I believe, that it's ever been done.
    

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