Day 17: Auckland briefly, jumbo jet longly

We have returned to our native soil now. Currently I am drinking some tea, taking some sleepy vitamins and steeling myself for my return to work in the morning. Everything about the return was pretty uneventful. It was a long flight from Auckland to LA but not as long as LA to Melbourne was. Neither one of us got much sleep so a lot of movies were watched on the in flight monitors. I think I watched Angels and Demons, Adventureland, and something else but I don’t recall what. I may have been awake but I doubt I was coherent. Customs in LA was a breeze. I guess the trick is to declare anything that you possibly can and then the customs agents won’t feel the need to invade you. We also had pretty good train karma coming back from the airport with only one snafu at the Lawrence St. station which was closed for the weekend. Fortunately that only ended up being a two block detour to the 2,3 train that took us to Atlantic.

Auckland this morning – way way way back this morning was surprisingly nice. Most people say they find it bland and I suppose it was, but it was bland in a rather comforting way. We didn’t see much, just puttered around in Wendell through the downtown area and then up to Mt. Eden for a view of the city. Mt. Eden is actually a dormant or extinct volcano, I don’t recall at this point, but you can drive to the top and they have a nice path walking around the rim. No going down into the crater though as they had signs warning against it saying that the ecosystem was very fragile. We obeyed but it would have been cool to go stand at the bottom of a volcano crater.

From the rim of Mt. Eden you can see a 360 degree panorama of Auckland and it’s obvious that the area was once a hotbed of tectonic activity. You can see the volcanic cones rising all over the place. We counted at least ten but the guidebooks say there are many more. It was a very interesting landscape and much different than the general mountainous-ness of Wellington and the rest of what we saw of New Zealand.

From here we drove to Auckland airport, dropped off Wendell the rental, and got situated for our long flight. Thus concludes our honeymoon. We had an awesome time, had so much fun, and made so many great memories. It was fun to write up these entries each night and we hope you all enjoyed reading along. Until next time. . . .

Day 1: Flying Forever and Ever

5pm EDT

There is something wrong with this picture:  Kyle’s carry on is bursting at the seams and weighs a metric ton while his actual checked luggage is half full and tips the scales at under ten pounds.  We’ve brought a lot with us to keep us occupied for the impending 20 hour flight.  Perhaps too much?

The trip out to JFK wasn’t eventful aside from a VERY full A train and a glut of confused tourists at the Airtrain station.  Terminal 7 is nice but small as seems to be the case at JFK.  Terminal 7 is one of the original 9 but has been recently renovated so it looks new and gleaming.  We’re really digging the retro collection of chairs they have accumulated in the airside waiting areas! They also paged someone named Christian Buns over the loudspeaker which is a great name.

Somewhere over Wichita

Man, 747s are big!  It really hit me when I was on the jetway looking at the size of the engines and the wing.  It’s no C-5 Galaxy but it’s certainly big!  The flight to Los Angeles went well.  We ended up sitting next to the same guy who deeply offended Kirsten at the McDonalds in Terminal 7 at JFK for not bussing his table (“Aussie culture” sez my Australian expert friend, Spuhler), pretty small world, right?  Anyway, we found that pretty funny and he was polite enough on the flight.  In fact I think we were probably annoying him watching the Australian television shows that are shown on demand in the Qantas seatback screens.  Everybody should check out Thank God You’re Here if you happen to be a Whose Line Is It Anyway fan.  I was laughing so hard that I was crying at times.

The meal was decent and there was plenty to eat.  Kirsten had the beef thing and I had the spinach cannelloni thing.  We also had a Greek salad, cheese and crackers, and carrot cake.  I also had some wine with my meal.  I also went back for a beer on my bathroom break (yes, first time using a bathroom in a plane!  They’re so small and efficient!).  They gave me a choice between a few Australian beers and a Heineken.  I tried something called James Squire which was good but made me gassy.  I won’t get it again on a flight.  Burping loudly is fun and all but the tail end of a 747 is no place for things that are that fun.

10:30 PDT

So this is also my first time in California as I’m writing from our layover in LAX.  The landing was pretty cool as the lights of LA go on forever until they hit the mountains which are dark except for the wildfires that are blazing in areas.  They’re really bright!  We were quite surprised how big and bright they were.

The terminal here is so bland.  I used to think that Atlanta was a bland airport but LAX is blander.  It’s Blandy McBlanderson Blanding his Blander with a Blandifier if you get my drift.

Somewhere over the Pacific

Alright, this is the longest night ever.  We took off from Los Angeles hours ago and I’ve even been sleeping for some time and it’s still pitch black out.  Looking out the window I can see nothing but blackness and I’m reminded of Stephen King’s short story The Langoliers where somehow an airliner flies through a hole in the time continuum and find out what happens to the past.  Without giving away too many details, at the end of the story the plane is just flying through black nothingness.

But it isn’t quite nothing, as I stare out the window the stars start to come into focus and I can immediately pick out the southern cross.  It’s much smaller than I figured it would be but it still reminded me of that Crosby Stills and Nash (and Young?) song.

Earlier we were served dinner number two.  We had a choice of chicken or fish (Leslie Nielson had the lasagna).  I went with the salmon which was served in a japanese sort of way with soy sauce, rice, and scrambled eggs – yeah I don’t know either.  Afterwards I sipped on a glass of very heavy shiraz while I watched an Australian mockumentary called Kenny about the port-a-john industry.  I made it all the way through before nodding off which brings us to now.  And I’m going back to sleep.

Later

The sun finally caught up to us again at 4:00am Melbourne time and they began serving breakfast.  Spinach quiche with ham, sausage, and tator tots, a mystery muffin that was quite good but we couldn’t figure out the flavor, and multiple mugs of tea and coffee.