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Published: August 17th 2006
Right! Time to write. It's always hard to get the first words out, however as you all know, once I get started it's hard to stop me!!
I left Sydney on the 26th of July. Had an emotional farewell with my girl Sunday morning 7am at the airport. It was really sad to say bye - we were going to be apart for a whole 3 weeks, which is the longest we've ever been separated. So even though I was excited to be leaving on another expedition (yay!), I was also sad to be saying bye to my gorgeous wife (boo!).
Now I know some of you out there have spent far longer away from your loved ones than us, and so you're probably thinking that we're just a bunch of sentimental wimps. You're probably right 😊
Anyway, enough about that. So my first trip was to Boston, over several legs. First leg was to Brisbane, have a 2 hrs stopover (meeting my folks for brekka), then a leg to LA, a galling 6 hr stopover, then a leg to Chicago, 40 min stopover, then finally Boston. After which I had a 40min drive to Chelmsford, which is where my hotel is located. So that's 32 hours from start to finish - ouch!
Things started off on a bad footing. I had repeatedly asserted that my flight left at 7:30am, and so we got there 20 min before - and it was then that I realised that it was actually leaving 7:20!! Aargh! So being only 10 min before, I had to get my bags checked through all those flights to Boston, and let's just say that I made it by the skin of my teeth, and the whole plane left pretty much the moment I fastened my seatbelt!! You'll note we didn't have this problem when I was travelling with my wife 😊
Met my family in Brisbane and had breakfast. This was a nice little bonus to my trip - I had been forced to fly via Brisbane, and I took advantage of the stopover to see the family - which is nice since I don't get to see them often enough! Managed to avoid creating a spectacle which is what we normally do when we're together (if you think I'm loud, my family is WAY worse) and flew out to LA next.
When you fly into the US, you get to go through customs, typically for us Sydney folk, LAX is that friendly little place where it all happens - NOT. What's with the customs guys at LAX anyway? I mean I know security is a serious business and all - are they specifically told NOT to smile? I tried to chat my customs guy up - you know the usual banter, and I got seriously unfriendly glares from both him and the guy next to him!
Suitably chastened, I decided that I'd better make sure I declared anything that was remotely suspicious. In this case, I had 30 packets of Tim-Tams and 20 bottles of vegemite (presents for my American colleagues) - so I thought I should tell them about those! I don't think I've ever been so scared as when I wheeled the trolley up to the customs area, and was the ONLY one to go into the RED zone. Immediately about 10 guards (I kid you not, they must have been so bored before) - swarm the counter, and all proceed to ask me about my stuff, take the bag apart, sift through everything (not just the tim-tams), and eventually let me proceed. All with the usual "let's keep this unfriendly" attitude that our friends at LAX employ.
So - 6 hours at LAX. I found a powerpoint, plugged my laptop in, and worked for 6 hours. 'Nuff said.
The flight to Chicago ended up taking off an hour later. The more astute of you would have noticed that I only had a 40 min stopover in Chicago, which means I was going to miss my connection! And given that this was a 10:35pm flight, I didn't know what my chances were! Somehow the pilot managed to get us there such that I arrived there with 5 minutes to spare!! So I rushed off my plane, RAN to the other terminal, got onto the plane, took off. I was amazed that my bags followed me onto the plane. Kudos to the baggage handlers at the O'Hare airport!!
Finally got to Boston at midnight. Got my rental car, programmed my hotel into the GPS, and turned my brain off, and drove to the hotel. I'm not really sure what happened after that, I gather from the fact that I woke up in my room the next day, that I must have got there safely!
This leg of my trip is going to be very different to the normal ones you guys are used to. Because I'm initially travelling on work (the fun comes in the fourth week when I rendezvous with Catherine in China!), it's all going to be business class, eating in nice restaurants, suits and ties and definitely no backpacks, so I'm not how much I'm going to write! The weekends at least should be mine, and I plan to do some lookin' around - so stay tuned. I will write something if I can write something more interesting than 'woke up, went to work, met folk, went out for far too expensive lunch with folk courtesy of company entertainment budget, went back to work, went out to dinner with more folk, came back to hotel, did real work until 1am, crashed' 😊
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CAROL SIMISTER
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INDULGE US
Come on Dave! Indulge us. Some of us don't get to fly Business class or get to spent company money. I am sure you could make us feel like we were there!!!