Symphonious

Seriously, catch the bus. Flying in or around America is no longer a feasible proposition. There are thousands of people milling around the front entrance trying to work out which queue to get in and where the hell the end of that queue is. Then there’s a few hundred police, customs officials and various other authority figures milling around looking for anyone who looks suspicious (which is everyone if you ask me). Then to try and sort out all the mess is one guy in a red coat with hundreds of confused potential passengers crowding around him asking where to go. It’s absolutely insane. Then when you finally get through to the security check, the metal detector is so sensitive it goes off when noone’s walking through it.

So if you do have to catch a plane in America, here’s my survival guide:

1. Wear thongs. If you wear shoes you’ll just have to take them off anyway.
2. Follow the signs that say “first class” then get into whatever line is shortest. They’ll either check you in out of pity or tell you which is the right line to get into.
3. Arrive early. Really early.

I’m also pretty unimpressed with the whole process. At 7am I got off a Qantas Boeing 747 400, went through customs, walked over to the next terminal, checked-in, came through security and at 9am finally reach my departure gate. I turn around to look out the window and see the exact same 747 400 no more than 100 yards away. Seriously weird.

Other than that I’m having a ball wandering around the airport. There’s 2 starbucks within sight of each other (I always thought people were exaggerating when they told me that) and a Burger King which is kind of thrilling for an Australian because we have Hungry Jacks and everytime you mention it some smart alec always comments about how it’s really “Burger King” but they were paid by McDonalds to change the name overseas. I know that still won’t make much sense but I get a kick out of seeing a real Burger King anyway.

Oh, and there’s an actual shoe shine guy too! I thought they were just in Law and Order…. This guys pretty upmarket though with comfy chairs and a shirt with “Marvin’s Shoe Shine” on the back.

For now though I’ve got to run off and make sure I’m actually at the right gate.

Sun Thing

Looking out the window at the moment I can see a glimpse of orange light indicating the sun is somewhere low on the horizon. I just can’t decide if it’s sun rise or sun set. It’s 10:30PM in Los Angeles and 3:30PM in Brisbane, I’m somewhere in between so I guess it must be a sun set. The trouble is I’ll arrive in Los Angeles at 7am so there’d need to be a sun rise in there somewhere and I get the impression this might be it.

I guess it’s both then.

UPDATE: It turned out to be a sunset as it then became dark and later there was a sunrise and it became bright again.

You have to be insane

I’ve been happily sitting around on the only chair in this airport that’s anywhere near a powerpoint happily passing time, airport security has set up a barricade just next to me and are prechecking passports and boarding passes before people get to the boarding gate. I swear the entire plane is full of primary school children from the US who are here on some young ambassador program. There’s probably 20 kids for every adult with them and watching them frantically trying to hand out passports and boarding passes looks like utter chaos.

It’s also amusing trying to watch the security guards sort out the mess caused by kids swapping boarding passes so that they can sit next to their friends. I guess this is the reason you have to turn up to the airport so early these days…

As I type this another mob of children from what appears to be a different group is going through the same process. I’d really hate to be on that flight…

So I’m multiple thousand feet in the air relying on a hunk of metal to keep me up here - you’d really want to have some confidence in said hunk of metal. Sadly, this particular hunk of metal seems to be doing everything possible to instill fear, short of actually falling out of the sky.

Since I’m sitting in the emergency exit isle, there’s two seats for the crew in front of me which have a phone between them so that the crew can communicate easily. As we’re beginning to acelerate down the runway, the crew tried to use it for the first time with no success. Apparently the crew’s communication system doesn’t work.

Then as we cruise happily somewhere over the pacific ocean, we discover that the toilet door is about as well made as the comms system - it fell off. Fortunately the woman inside was fully dressed otherwise it would have been somewhat embaressing. On the plus side, watching the crew try to fix it was excellent in-flight entertainment.

Sometimes it pays to be persistent. I’d called QANTAS earlier in the week to request a seat with extra leg room because I’m very tall and have problems with my knees that makes it difficult to sit cramped up for long periods. I was told the best they could do was a back seat and they weren’t even sure if that had extra leg room. I asked again at checkin if there was a seat with extra leg room available and gave my pitiful story - the girl at the checkin counter was very nice and called downstairs to see if they could free up an emergency isle seat for me and they managed to find one. Should make the 13 hour flight a lot easier.

I think the seat was really empty and was just being kept free until absolutely required but if you were told at the last minute that your seat with extra leg room was no longer available - sorry….