Arriving

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DAY 1/240 - Saturday, July 14, 2007

The morning of our departure produced many frustrating, or looked at another way, bad signs, which didn't really assist my anxiety about flying. Take off got delayed in brisbane by over an hour (sitting on the tarmac) due to a problem with some spilt hydraulic fluid from the mobile conveyor belt thing (the one that puts the bags onto the plane). However, aside from my neck pain, the strange lady beside me, and the fact that my ipod docking station wasn't working, the flight wasn't the death of me. Annoyingly, the delay meant we missed our short turnaround flight from LA to NY. The flight they put us on was with American airlines (instead of QANTAS), who managed to lose Meathead's luggage. Very angry Meathead.

Anyway we eventually got to our hotel in NY around midnight sat night local time (about 2pm Sunday, Brisbane time) - we were supposed to arrive about 7 hours earlier. The first thing i did was to take a walk to down to times square where, despite the time, there was just millions of people out on the street. Apparently there had been a baseball game, and a concert at Madison Square gardens, which would have accounted for some of the crowd, but even so there was still a huge amount of people around for 1am. The lights in time square were soo plentiful and so bright it felt like it was the middle of the day. Dad myself and meathead went for a beer and a bight to eat at a place called Fridays (went with what we knew). It was nice but hell expensive - had 2 meals (dad and meathead shared) and 3 beers and the bill was $80 USD - and also ignited my fire about tipping. I don't mind so much that tipping is obligitory, but when it's added into the bill, I get mad.

Anyway bed looks pretty good, have had around 2 hours sleep (not counting the painful few hours on the plane) in the last 50 or so.

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