FANtastic Voyage

I have flown from St. Louis, Missouri to Los Angeles, California to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and finally reaching my destination in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. I left my hometown at 7pm on January 14th and arrived in Cate's at 4pm on January 16th.

The trip started about as well as it could have. I had a six seat row all to myself! I planned to stay awake for the four hour duration of this flight to better prepare myself for the oncoming jetlag, but, of course, I fell asleep shortly after takeoff. Thankfully (sort of), a very special child in the row in front of me decided he would single-handedly assist me in my quest to regulate my internal clock. Naturally, this was no ordinary child. From my estimations he was at least 40% banshee and about 30% coyote. This little boy of six or seven literally yelled, screamed, hyperventilated, and seized in and out of his parents arms and their row for AT LEAST 40 minutes straight. I was not even mad, just in a state of disbelief! After about ten minutes the boy yelped, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Yet the boy's self-induced asphyxiation was not enough to end his reign of terror. His parents seemed utterly powerless to control this most magnificent of temper tantrums, even the unsolicited stares and help of motherly and grandmotherly strangers did nothing to quell the fury. I just put my headphones in and before I knew it, the child had stopped yelling and the plane was on the ground in L.A.

After waiting for a bit in the airport I was all settled in for the longest chunk of the journey, 13 hours and 25 minutes in the air and because we would be crossing the international date line, this one flight spanned three separate (yet very muddled) days. Even though I spent so much time on that plane, I honestly do not know how I passed all of those hours. I know I watched, "The Dark Knight" and an Australian movie, "Newcastle" but aside from reading and attempting to sleep, the rest of that leg is quite blurry in my mind. However, one thing that does stick out is the food. Perhaps Qantas airlines serves legitimately good food, or maybe the fact that I was stuck tens of thousands of feet in the airplane with no other options biased my thoughts, but I genuinely enjoyed the food I consumed on my Qantas flights. Mediterranean chicken breast for dinner, egg frittata for breakfast, and then lemongrass Halibut for lunch. ANYway... clearly nothing exciting happened here and my journaling stopped once I landed in Sydney and I anxiously prepared to board the four hour flight to Perth. To Cate.

Knowing that I was a mere five or six hours away from Cate allowed me to actually begin to get excited, but almost as if on cue from some sort of diabolical stage director in the play of my life (I do not actually believe that this happened, just to clarify for anyone who might be furrowing their brow; rest assured, I do not see God as some sort of cruel puppet master... in case anyone was curious :) my flight was delayed. The crew was attempting to restore our in-flight-entertainment system, sadly they did not succeed and I would be left to somehow stop myself from going crazy on this final and most adrenaline pumped leg. Qantas Airlines must have read my mind and gave every person on the flight a $20 voucher to one of the book/magazine shops in the airport. Unfortunately, nearly every single person from my flight crammed into one little shop and I was too afraid to venture far away from my gate because our flight was meant to board at any minute, so I just decided to be content with what I had. Unfortunately, no one else shared my sentiment of not wanting to hold up the plane. Once the flight seemed to be fully boarded the captain told us that we were being forced to wait on some of the people who were still shopping in the bookstore. Great. But, that issue was handled and we all thought we were about to taxi away from the gate when the captain informed us that we were being held at the gate because a young lady who mistakenly had her bag checked through to Perth was actually staying in Sydney. Airlines cannot carry luggage for people who are not aboard said flights for security purposes, so security officials went into the cargo bay and checked through all of the luggage to find her bag and finally we took off, just an hour late!

Again, I do not really remember what I did on this four hour flight, but I do remember that it seemed to take about eight hours! But at last, our plane circled over the brown summer vegetation of Perth and the captain made my day when he told us that it was 38 degrees outside (100 Fahrenheit)! I jumped out of my seat when he turned off the seatbelt light, dodged and juked my way through the crowds only to be forced to wait another 20 minutes to see my luggage snake around the carousal. Cate had also been traveling the past day and a half or so and was waiting for me in Perth's international terminal so I took a fifteen minute cab ride that, again, felt like it took six times longer and finally I hopped out of the cab (unthinkingly tipping the cab driver 11 dollars; this was unthinkable because a) my fare was 24 dollars but more importantly b) salaries in Australia are actually reasonable so people in service industries are not dependent upon tips like they are in America, therefore NO ONE tips except for actual exceptional service... but I was pretty amazingly excited at this point so I was not thinking about ANY of this at the time) and dragged my luggage into the arrival terminal and started frantically looking around for Cate (who had been expecting me thirty minutes earlier) and I caught a blur out of the corner of my eye and turned just in time to see my beautiful girlfriend planting to jump into my arms.

:)

And then we lived happily ever after. The end.

Haha, now the REAL journey begins.