I left home on friday afternoon after a week of excited planning after the last minute decision to go to Sweden to see the final concert of the tour in Uppsala. The preparations were made much easier than you might imagine thanks to a combination of perseverance, good friends and good customer service. Firstly, Thomas Evensson really came through and had concert tickets for the Uppsala show at my house in the UK by Tuesday morning (8th August) - thanks Thomas! Ryanair flights booked, hotels booked and many sessions on IRC working out transport arrangements for "Mission Uppsala" - JohnK, Vixie and I rapidly transformed from the 3 musketeers to the magnificent 7 as first Whiski joined our merry band, swiftly followed by Ezzie and Josefin, completed with a late entry from the crazy Finn himself Kompu. After about ten telephone calls Thomas from Hertz in Nyköping came through with a 9 seater van - guess it must have been a good week to be called "Thomas". By Thursday lunchtime (10th August) all was arranged and we just need to get all the humans in the right places at the right times.

I left home about 7pm on Friday evening to head for the Hilton Hotel at Stansted Airport where I arrived about 2 hours later to find a very full hotel car park. I eventually found a spot only to have JohnK and Vixie appear to tell me that there was a better spot. Car parked we checked in, had a slight "discussion" with the hotel staff about our room rates - we won!! We dropped our bags in the rooms and JohnK hadn't pressed a button for a while so he logged onto IRC with his laptop and mobile phone. Having got his technology fix he agreed that we should go to the bar for a drink and a snack. About 11pm we decided to hit the hay - after all we did need to be up about 5am the next morning.