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Published: July 16th 2010
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The toilet cleaning man waddles into the men's muttering a monotone to himself. He is about six feet tall, 60ish, overweight and plump like the Americans can be, with a dull look in his eyes. He efficiently sprays and wipes the counter and mirrors, collects discarded hand paper from the bins without changing the plastic bag.
The toilets are full of water. Like a small lake under your bum. I can't help but worry my bum will get dipped in the water if I relax on the seat too much. I definitely prefer the Aus-NZ bowl design that is deeper with less water.
An American lad stands by us, watching us play 500. Joseph is again bright eyed and smiling as he spots and fossics for coins. He's thrilled to find that the pennies and nickels are still currency here. NZ has lost the plot, almost deliberately and actively devaluing their economy by scrapping the large bold 50 and 20 cent coins for small almost fake-feeling replicas. The 5c coins are gone now, 10c coloured coppery like the old pennies.
Joseph bought a rice bubble bar like a LCM using a $1 note that I'd had since I was a kid. Have faith in your coins and banknotes and they'll last a generation or more.
We seem to be coping well after the 12-hour flight and only ~3 hours of sleep (after three movies and then being woken for a breakfast at 3am our time). I still can't sleep properly in those economy seats. These ones are better, with mor space under the seat to stretch legs out but the thigh part is too short and restricts circulation. There I'm showing my age talking about circulation while sitting. Plus I can't lean back far enough. Is there a better way? Maybe I'll try Linda's suggestion and take a sleeping pill after the meal for our LAX-AKL flight. Of course the real problem will be the LAX wait ~8 hours then hopping on a 11pm flight.
Of course we could just travel business class.
The LAX domestic terminal for Alaska airlines is cool, comfy, roomy. Seats have arm rests so you can't lay down but if you were desperate the carpet is comfy enough. Actually much better than the Continential terminal that I remember from our terrible LAX experience in 2000.
On that trip our flight from AKL to LAX was late, meaning the plane couldn't connect to a gate so we caught buses in to the immigration area. Being naïve travellers with a 1.5 year old, we waited until most other people were off the plane before collecting all our bits and getting off. That meant we ended up in a long queue to pass immigration behind the 300+ other passengers. Then because we had a connecting flight that we and ~80 others had missed we all lined up for around 4 hours (after immigration and customs) waiting to be rescheduled to a later flight.
At one stage I went up this little corridor that we'd been lining up in and right out of over the past 4 hours, and grabbed some chocolate bars to eat and deal with our ravenous hunger. On the return I was stopped by a lady security guard who hadn't been there five minutes ago, and told I wasn't allowed to return to that part of the airport. I said in terse, fatigued and stressed words that my wife and son were in there, and I was about to completely lose it, when one of the attendants who'd been helping us (the others) noticed me and arranged with the guard to let me back in.
Once we'd had our flights rescheduled and boarding passess issued, we hopped on a shuttle to the other terminal, where we found we could have gone straight there in the first place, and possible even caught our original flight. Almost exhausted from fatigue, still very hungry and thirsy we walked the kilometer along the way to the gate, Kylie carrying Joseph and us both with heavy carry-on bags. At the gate we collapsed and took turns passing out in sleep until our flight took off later that afternoon. So this time things ran a little bit smoother: We were prompt in getting off the plane,
Then at immigration we were offered a shorter line because we had the two boys in tow. The shorter line was ok but the fingerprinting and photographing took so long that it was still half an hour before we got through. I imagine the tail end passengers (from the tail to be precise) could have been there over two hours just clearing immigration. Everyone except US citizens was doing the scanning, and everyone who was digitally fingerprinted touched the green screen. There is where our next major flu outbreak will come from.
The luggage transfer was quick because by the time we were at the carousel all the luggage was on it. Customs was organised and efficient, and the transfer drop-off was literally a drop-off. The memory still haunts me, and was brought into vivid relief seeing that same spot in the corridor where I'd just about taken on a short skinny female security guard in my desperation to get back to my wife and son (I'm pretty sure I would have lost the encounter: she handled herself with great assurance). A reminder of how wring things could go. I now make it a discipline to monitor the time on long trips, and keep aware of sleep, food, drink needs while on the go.
Alaska airlines, terminal 3 was a 3min walk along the footpath outside the airport, then a new boarding pass, security screening and relax.
.. just loading up this story on the plane. Free inflight wi-fi offered by Alaska Airlines for the month ($12.95 after that). Getting with the technology. Next thing really needed is somewhere to plug in the laptop so it doesn't run out of battery so fast!
Ok nuff for now. Another update maybe tomorrow.
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