I’m terribly fond of traveling anywhere; going to Australia is always a process of hurrying, waiting, and some more waiting, so one learns to try to observe the few things in the process that are amusing or otherwise unusual during the trip. I’m going to detail below my trip this time from Sheffield, IA to Whyalla, South Australia on Feb 13th to 15th (various hours/days due to the time changes). It’s going to be long, so I apologize in advance, but I hope to have enough amusing anecdotes and quips to keep you going along the way, much like a trail of gummi bears in the wilderness (minus the ants which, although crunchy and nutritious, usually take away from the aesthetics of the snack).

The weather was foreboding; the reports on Monday morning apparently freaked out my mother who called (while I was in the shower, no less), asking if I had viewed the weather yet. I had not, I informed her, as I had barely managed to crack open my eyelids enough to avoid walls while traipsing down to the shower; news of anticipated precipitation was far from my neurons at that point.

After much back and forth, it was noted that if I wanted to get to Minneapolis, we would have to leave around 10am. This was not within my set plans, as I was supposed to be delivered to the airport around 4am the following morning, on Tuesday, and I had tons of things yet to do. My father, thankfully, stepped in and said he would be willing to leave later in the day, so we decided to play it by ear.

The morning was extremely hectic; work was hell, as I somewhat expected for the day before leaving for 5 weeks, but it was particularly incredible. Long story abbreviated, I got everything wrapped up and written out and checked off and otherwise marked by around 4pm; packing up and getting out of the house took me till 5 and we took off around 6. Dad and I picked up his girlfriend Amy in Clear Lake and then headed towards the Twin Cities in her van.

A stop at Perkins in Owatonna for some sustenance and we continued on. Our destination was the abode of one Kath, friend made through D.A.I.S.I.E. Company, and willing participant in the mission to get me on my way despite the impending onslaught of winter-whipped hydration. After missing the exit twice in St. Paul, we finally found our way to her lovely little cottage and got my bags dropped off. I said goodbye to Dad and Amy and they headed back south.

The evening at Kath’s house was wonderful, hanging with her and her granddaughters, firing the feces, and generally relaxing and hanging out. We never did go to sleep, preferring to stay awake and then leave for the airport around 3:40am.

MSP to PHX: Snow-encrusted plains to Rushed flatness in a whiz

I really thought that the MSP airport would be dead as the wet bar at an Amish buggy convention, but it was teeming with tons of people apparently intent on moving themselves around the world at the hairy, greasy buttcrack of dawn. Why, exactly, I had yet to figure out, but there were more important things to do at that moment, so waiting around to investigate wasn’t going to be on the agenda.

Check-in went great, even though the extremely nice US Airways woman had to work on checking my bags through to Sydney for ages. Security was a breeze and I was through and headed to my gate; I only had a few minutes to wait for boarding…or so I thought.

As I’m sitting there, I could hear the jet radio through to the gate and could hear them talking about some stewardess on the flight who had, “been up all night and was starving, hadn’t had anything to eat in 12 hours”. They radioed back that it wasn’t their problem, as I sat there snickering in my seat, imaging some blonde thinny standing there, about to faint from lack of peanut packs.

After a quick call to Mum to let her know that I was starting my journey, we boarded the Airbus 320 jet and I settled down into my window seat just aft of the wings on the right-hand side. A smooth taxi out to the runway and the roar of the jets and we were airborne and winging our way through the night sky towards Phoenix.

I simply love flying in the dark; it is amazing to look down upon the twinkling lights of the cities you are passing over, the rows of streetlights glowing gently in the night, the snaking lines of the roadways, the glow radiated by areas as a whole onto the sleeping earth. I think it’s one of the most serene views one can have of a normally chaotic and rushed existence. I sat transfixed by this scene until the plane climbed above the cloud layer, where I was treated to an unfettered view of the starry jewels of the night sky, resplendent in their night-blue evening wear.

The flight was sparse; I had the entire row to myself, as well as empty rows fore and aft of me. A corpulent man snoozed off right after boarding and slept almost the entire flight and a very nice family with 2 kids boarded, cute as can be, and I joked with the mother about the kids a bit. The flight staff, after serving us a meager ration of Sprite and crackers, spent the majority of the time jawing in the back few rows about whatever gossip was relevant. “Did you hear that Janet made it to the Mile High club on top of the drink cart???”

The landing into Phoenix happened just a bit after dawn, concluding after a rather quick drop through thick cloud cover and a few bumps on the way, but ultimately touching down at what has to be the flattest airport in the world.

PHX to LAX: Hollywood Never Had it So Good

Phoenix was incredibly rushed, as by the time I got off my plane, I had less than 45 minutes to the next one, meaning that I had to move my tush to get to the right gate in time. As it ended up, PHX is laid out in several different concourses, and I was in the one farthest from the one I needed to be at — naturally. A series of peoplemovers and much quick walking around the various grannies and other slowpokes and I arrived at my gate, huffing and puffing, and really needing a muffin and a sit-down.

As it proved, the rush was worth the time as I had a bit to sit and relax. The muffin was not forthcoming, even though there were plenty of overpriced juice bars around me, I wasn’t about to give them a shot given the short amount of time till departure. Instead, I wandered around my gate a bit, shooting the stern business suits cheesy grins as I beamed from behind my “travel best” of an orange t-shirt and purple, faded sweatpants. When I travel, I don’t just dress for comfort, I dress for shock-value.

The flight in the Airbus 319 was annoying at first, as we had apparently been downgraded from an A320 and numerous seats had to be reassigned, which meant lots of hassling and calling back to the gate desk of the staff as passengers arrived with outdated boarding tickets putting them in row 23 when only 21 rows existed. I was half-tempted to suggest that Row 23, Seat A was the saddle on the tail, and would they be so kind as to shut the door on their way out? Humor, unfortunately, is not regarded well by airlines in any circumstance, so I kept my musings to my own enjoyment. The other thing that was unimpressive was that the plane I was on looked much nicer than the previous bucket of bolts I had been on (really…upgrade your interior, US Air, it frightens the hell out of people to see stains on the seats), but flew much worse in my opinion. Looks like a fish, steers like a cow.

The best part of the takeoff was the fact that we were in a literal lineup of approximately 10 to 15 different aircraft, all taking off from the same runway in the same direction, about every 2 to 3 minutes. I got to observe a lot of A320s, A319s, B727s, and B737s from US Airways, Continental, Southwest, and America West all queuing up like kids in a cafeteria on make-your-own-pizza day, engines barely turning over such that you could still see the individual turbofan blades. It was really impressive. I kept wondering if the ones behind us were shaking their fists, yelling at the others to, “…get yer asses moving, ya lazy bums!” or similar rush-hour epitaphs. Nudging bumpers was not something that happened, thankfully.

During the flight we got served drinks (again, meager quantities of Sprite for me), but the guy behind me asked for a menu — ha! Where have you been? Food on airlines went out with the dodo, but apparently the memo had escaped this man and he queried anyway, sounding very disappointed when he was informed that shitty, pre-packaged food was not to be found on this flight. Much to my surprise and irritation, a few minutes later the overly-effeminate steward reappeared with a packet of peanuts for Mr. Curious and admonished him greatly that he was, “…really being a nice guy, as we don’t do this on these flights.” I was enraged; what if someone else wanted some crappy peanuts, too? The nerve, indeed.

Phoenix is really bloody huge, as it turned out — did you know that? I mean, you don’t hear it in the news. “Man really damned impressed by size of Phoenix; New York jealous. Film at eleven.” It just doesn’t occur to you, but it is so freaking flat that it stretches out for miles and miles, making even Los Angeles, with its houses winding in and amongst the hills surrounding it, look somewhat ordinary by comparison.

A nice landing in LAX and an exit to the smog and smells of the city and we were off to the next terminal.

LAX to SYD: One small hop for a kangaroo, one giant leap for a 747.

My ticket said Terminal 4, but I had always gone to the Tom Bradley Terminal to fly out to Australia before, so I was pretty determined to get off the shuttle bus at that point; luckily I had the premonition to check out T4 anyway just in case, as it was exactly where I needed to be and I got checked in with no waiting time at all and a no-questions, no-hassles check-in and security scan.

While putting on my shoes after padding through the metal detectors, I got talking to this very nice older gentlemen from Los Angeles who was headed to DFW and then to Philly later that day. We got talking about my trip to Australia and he commented that he had been there before, and we wished each other luck on our trips. He would come by once more while I was waiting to board my plane and again wish me luck; what a nice guy!

My gate was one of the first ones, so after checking that everything was on time, I headed to the bathroom for a cleanup (quick face wash, teeth brushing, new deodorant, etc.) and then some horribly overpriced lunch at a place called “Chilistogo!”, where I mowed down a large helping of steak fajitas and called various people to let them know how I was doing.

Stalking up and down the corridors was my next entertainment, as I figured I had better walk and stretch as much as possible while I had the opportunity, before sitting on my ass for the next 14 hours straight. During my wanderings I was able to stand and take a good long look at the pretty bird that was to cart me to the Land of Roos, a lovely Boeing 747-400 ER Longreach, a truly magnificent machine. She looked “airworthy” to me, so I kept on trucking around the airport.

Eventually I boarded, standing in the wake of tons of other Australians and a few Americans going along for the ride, and got settled into my seat in row 60, seat H, which was the right-hand aisle seat on the right-hand side. Almost right after I got seated, I introduced myself to my seat mates, two very nice-looking gals of a younger age. I personally hate being on an “inside” seat and having to bug the aisle person to get out and wanted to let them know right away that I didn’t mind it at all and I was happy to move.

After introductions, we found out a lot about each other. It turns out that the two girls were American college students, headed to the southern hemisphere for study-abroad programs. Becky was from South Carolina (with a cute drawl), going to school at Presbyterian College, majoring in Christian Education, and was headed to Townsend, Qld. Christy (I think that was her name…) was from Minneapolis, MN, was a student at some college (can’t remember), a comparative sociology major, and headed to Christchurch, New Zealand. Both were juniors in college.

We had some good conversations at various intervals during the flight and I learned that neither had been out of the country before and so this was a pretty big leap for both, so I tried to tell them any relevant information about Australia (and to some extent, New Zealand) that I thought might be helpful during the travel. They also indicated that they had planned to stay at the Sydney airport overnight, which I already knew wasn’t straightforward (as the airport shuts down), so I offered to hang with them until we could get transferred to our flights the next day, as I was staying over. They happily agreed that that’d be good.

The flight was very, very smooth, one of the best I’ve had for the trans-Pacific flight. There was a bit of turbulence for a few minutes in the middle, but it wasn’t too bad all in all. I was able to get up and walk around a bit, although being in the middle I felt a bit more conspicuous standing there stretching, so I tended to do less than what I usually do when I’m near the rear and can get up and wander to the back of the plane.

The food and service were, as usual, wonderful. Qantas has by far been my best experience for flight service from any airline, period. Lunch was a fish and vegetable dish, roll, tea, a can of XXXX (4X, an Aussie beer), salad, and other things. I also had 2 cans of VB (Victoria Bitter, another brew from the Southernland), the second can brought to me because my steward remembered that I liked it a lot. Supper (tea) was a Mexican chicken dish, salad, roll, more tea, etc. A dessert served between was a wonderful honeydew-flavored frozen fruit bar, I believe called, “Melonama”, but I can’t find it anywhere and nobody seems to have heard of it. We got 2 of these, in fact, as they came around a second time. The girls and I were quite fond of them.

Of course, we got the usual Qantas “goodie bags”, filled with pretzels, mints, a bottle of water, and some other things. New on the experience was a hot towel just before we landed in Sydney, which was ever so appreciated, and Cadbury’s hot chocolate! They actually came around and we got lovely-chocolately mugs of Cadbury’s hot chocolate, complete with a little white marshmallow floating happily in its brown swimming pool. Divine.

Our stewards (yes, both were men) were the funniest and most attentive I’ve had. They were Sydnians with broad accents and a lovely flair for their jobs — you could tell they really enjoyed serving people and making their trip good. They’d chatter back and forth to each other and to the passengers as they moved up and down with their little food carts, cutting jokes and generally having a good time. “Oi, mate, I wanna chook!” “Yah? Where ya wanna chook?” “Ri’ here, mate!” And a chicken meal would go tossed playfully over the cart and onto the waiting tray of the next waiting person.

Of course, not everything is rosy on a long flight. The couple across the aisle were these old bags that were cranky and kept giving me daggers for talking or breathing or existing, I really couldn’t tell. There were also a couple of guys that got pretty darn drunk across the aisle and a row back and were always talking loudly, even when the lights were out and people were generally trying to sleep or at least doze. Also, the guy ahead of me kept dropping his seat all the way back and extremely annoying times, and bounced a lot on it, making my screen jump around. But, apart from those few instances, most people were very pleasant. I even chatted to a Sydnian who had been in Chile running a marathon and training and was on his way home (ripped like a washboard, of course, lucky bastard). Nice guy.

We touched down after flying over a very prettily-lit Sydney in a textbook landing. Going through immigration was a breeze; in fact, they were strangely silent, not saying a word to me about anything. The luggage wasn’t the first off the rack, but me and the girls eventually got all of our bags and headed to customs. Becky somehow got questioned early about her bags and got to go past the scanners; Christy and I had to go through, but they didn’t even look at my bags, although they did stop Christy, open a bag, and pull out a pair of flipflops that had a bottle opener built into the bottom — I guess they’re a fairly popular brand in the USA. The customs guy was so impressed by it that he asked if he could show his coworker and proceeded to show the flipflops off to all the workers on the line. We were highly amused. It is a night-and-day difference between the customs and immigration of Australia and the USA, where the US definitely feels like you are a criminal trying to pass enemy lines, and Aussies are just glad you’re there.

We all got through that, and then we piled up the bags and made phone calls home to family, friends, etc., then headed to the corner on the one side of the terminal to set up camp and stay the night. They came around and checked passports and tickets to make sure we were legitimate, which was different than last time, but there were probably 30 or more people staying there, including a fair cadre of Russians and one Greek man who was ranting and raving about the Russians taking up all the seats to sleep on, but he didn’t get much action out of the guards who shrugged him off and gave him a first-come, first-serve sort of speech.

The girls cleaned up first while I watched the luggage and then I went and gave myself a thorough cleaning in the bathroom, changed clothes, and got my Birks on, as by that point my sneakers were reeking from being worn for over 36 hours straight. We eventually all settled down and fell asleep on our luggage in various odd positions but got a few hours of sleep before being woken up by the rattle of the gates being opened again.

SYD to ADL:   Goodbye Opera House, Hello Heat 

Around 5:30 we decided to part, Christy for the upstairs to catch her flight to New Zealand, and Becky and I to the Qantas transfer station down the hallway. Unfortunately, the transfer was closed and wasn’t due to be open until 6:00, which was too late for Becky to get checked in and transferred before her 6:50am flight to Townsend. So, we headed to look for a transfer bus, but they didn’t start running until 6:50, so that was out. We eventually found a barely-English-speaking taxi driver and he loaded us up and took off for Terminal 3, the Qantas domestic terminal.

The next few minutes my life flashed by as our driver ripped through the pre-dawn streets of Sydney, driving at a pace that an F-14 would have trouble matching and doing corners that few vehicles on Earth could probably match. However, we arrived in one piece and did our first pre-checkin and got in line to get officially checked in. It turned out that Becky’s flight was actually being serviced by JetBlue, although it was co-coded as a Qantas flight, so she was supposed to be in Terminal 2, not 3. We parted ways with a friendly wave and she went to walk over to her flight, as I continued to check in without any problems.

Before we parted ways, I gave each girl my webpage address on a piece of paper and said that, if they felt like it, they could look me up and I’d love to get an email from them, letting me know how they made out and how their new school was, etc. But to date I haven’t heard from them, so either they lost it or decided not to contact me. I was hoping, but….oh well. They were terribly nice people and I’m glad they were there to hang out with, it helped make a solo trip much more enjoyable.

I walked around a lot, as I was butt-early for my flight, due to worrying about getting Becky to her flight first, so I walked and looked at all the closed stores in the terminal and eventually placed phone calls home to my family to let them know that I was ok and so forth, as it was about lunchtime back in America.

I changed over my money to Aussie funny-money once the place opened and the nice Oriental woman assisted me. (Why are all money-changers Oriental? Even in LAX…) Eventually I had to get some food, so I first bought a latte for about $4 AUD and sat and people-watched while that cooled off, and then paid $10 AUD for a crappy roll with some bacon and egg on it (looked nice in the case; no such luck with the reality) and bought a Lift out of a machine. Lift is an southern-hemisphere drink, which tastes a lot like lemonade and but is carbonated and is quite nice, and I’m terribly fond of it and its sister product, Solo.

The flight to Adelaide on a Qantas Boeing 737 came soon enough and it was a nice flight in a seat on an exit row (more footroom) and a nice breakfast. The lady next to me, I noticed, was a Ruby-level OneWorld frequent flyer, which means she was pretty well-traveled (she looked pretty good for it, too.) Also, much to my amusement, one of the very funny stewards from my international flight was on mine, as a passenger. He saw me, but I don’t know if he recognized me or not; he didn’t acknowledge it if he did.

Yolanda’s brother Matt and his fiancee Nadine and my two nephews, Kailum and Reiley, picked me up from the fancy, brand-new Adelaide airport, and we headed first to the bus depot to put my bags on to Whyalla (too expensive to send on the Regional Express flight) for $26 AUD and then to their house, where I got to know the kids a bit and got fitted for my tux for Matt & Nadine’s wedding by a man named Harvey. We hung out there the rest of the day, me trying to upgrade Matt’s network setup and breaking his Internet connection completely (no clue how) and generally talking and so forth.

ADL to WYA:   Touchdown?   Check.   Sweetheart?   Check.    Luggage?   Uh…. 

That night, we had a rushed trip to the airport, as we were running behind, and I gave a hurried goodbye and sprinted to my checkin and gate for my REX flight to Adelaide.

The flight was on a Saab 340 turboprop jet and we had a smooth takeoff and a very bumpy trip to Whyalla. The guy next to me on the jet was a teacher from St. John’s College in Whyalla (a private high school, the one my brother-in-law, Sam, goes to, incidentally) and had a convention in Adelaide the whole day. He was a really nice guy and we had a good conversation on the trip there, although he squeezed a lot of juice out of the armrests as he hates flying…I was pretty amused.

We had a gentle touchdown and I finally go to see my love after going through the gate, as well as Sam and our friend Mel and her daughter, Lara. It was very nice to see some familiar faces after all the traveling and we headed out into Whyalla to start my official holiday.

Another successful trip, and I’m always grateful to wind up where I am supposed to be, even though I know I will. If you were someone that I saw or met or somehow whizzed by on my trip, I hope I left a positive influence on you, even if just for a second. To all the pilots, steward(esses), and airline people, thanks for helping get me all the way across the world to reunite with my loved ones and friends. I know, I paid you to do it, but I still appreciate it. We’re all in this big boat together, I guess.