04 April 2006:

The dreaded day has finally arrived….the vacation is over and we must return home….only a long day of travel remains ahead of us. We spend the morning with last-minute packing and re-packing until we finally have to set the bags out to be picked up. Then I try to do some updates and clean-up work on the travel website……since the hotel has high-speed internet and I still have several hours left on the 24-hour access package that I’ve paid for…..but check-out time arrives and we wander down to the main lobby to hang around for a few hours until the bus comes to take us to the airport. The original plan had been to leave our carry-on bags at the hotel and use a couple of hours to walk around the waterfront, but as we faced the reality of the long travel day ahead of us we opt to just stay inside and not risk the chance of getting sweaty or getting caught in a morning rain shower.

Note to Peggy: As we are waiting for the shuttle bus to the airport to start our trip home we are sitting in a small bar in the lobby of the Langham Hotel called "The Winery". Pam wanted me to relay to you that all cocktails here start at $16 and that 50 grams of caviar (about a teaspoon and a half) will set you back $360. Needless to say, we are sipping our own bottled water and nibbling chocolates that we pilfered from the hotel room instead of quaffing Cosmos and eating caviar as we wait.

With the typical efficiency that Princess Cruise Line has shown on this trip, the bus arrives 10 minutes early and all passengers are loaded quickly. (Note: unlike some prior trips we’ve taken, where, when the schedule says 2:00pm departure that means that people start meandering toward the meeting place at 2pm; here, when it says 2:00pm that means that the bus will be in motion at 2:00pm)

At the airport we grab our luggage and go stand in the line to check our bags and get our boarding passes. Here, we are lucky….the bus from our hotel has about 40 passengers and there are probably another 20 or so people in line when our bus arrives. But just a few minutes later two more buses carrying 50-60 passengers each pulls in, and everyone is headed for the Qantas check-in line that we are in. We spend 45 minutes in line….the people on the last bus must have spent 2 hours. Once through the check-in procedure we move quickly through the security line…..it is worth mentioning that in Australia and New Zealand we encountered friendly, helpful and efficient security people (the US Dept of Homeland Security should take notice).   The Auckland airport is a pleasant place with lots of shopping opportunities to spend those final New Zealand dollars on your way to the departure gate.

As we board our plane, a Qantas 747, for the flight to Los Angeles, once again the Travel Gods smile on us……we are again at the back of the plane where the fuselage narrows and we have just a window and aisle seat. As we are taxiing toward takeoff in the waning light of the early Auckland evening I am looking out the window, recalling some of the highlights of the trip and letting the sound of the jet engines lull me into a trance-like state that is required for long flights. Apparently I am not the only one so affected……because as I stare out the window I see the runway go by as we taxi passed it. A few seconds later the plane stops, waits for a few seconds, then makes a 180 degree turn and goes back to the runway that it just passed……Yep, the pilot missed the runway. This causes quite a bit of discussion in our little “tail-end of economy class” community. The gist of the conversations being: “If the pilot can’t find the runway…..all lit up with bright lights and flashing beacons….when he’s on the ground, then how is he going to find that little speck on the West Coast of the US, nearly 8000 miles away, that is the Los Angeles airport?”.  But before we have time to contemplate the impact of that question, the engines go to full throttle, the plane begins to move down the recently located runway and we are off on the final leg of the trip.

A couple of trip notes: Once we are at our cruising altitude the pilot comes on to make the usual pilot announcements. During this he says: “…..we’ll be leveling out at 38000 feet and during our flight into the Los Angeles area we’ll be passing over………eh,…well….ah…nothing actually…..there’s just a whole lot of empty ocean between us and Los Angeles. So, relax, enjoy the movies and take a nap, because you’re not going to miss a thing on the way there.”  At this point the bald little ferret-faced eunuch with the ugly wife who is sitting in front of me jams his seat back into the fully reclined position where he keeps it for the rest of the night until we are in the final approach to LAX. (I hope there is a special place in Hell for people who fully recline their seats in the economy section of long flights. …….”Do you hear that you greasy, brain-dead, little lint-ball !!!”)  

…..Since our seats were in a good position, it really wasn’t too bad, just a little annoying, but it would have been torture if we had been a few rows further to the front of the plane.

At LAX we cleared customs reasonably quickly and then re-checked our bags to Dallas and went to security………where we waited…..and waited……and waited. I’m not sure how long we were there, but we were supposed to have a two and a half hour layover and by the time we finally cleared security and got to the gate we barely had time for a quick bathroom break before we boarded the flight to Dallas.

Special thanks to Nelson Helm for picking us up at the Dallas airport and taking us home. Nelson, I just want you to know how secretly proud I was of how little jet-lag we experienced on this trip through so many time zones……..that is, I was proud until you rang the doorbell a few hours later to deliver the TWO suitcases that we left in your car as you dropped us off.  Maybe we were a little tired from the day’s travel after all.