Ansett held true - our flight was to be delayed for 2 hours due to some mechanical failure. They rebooked us onto a Quantas flight so we wouldn't miss our connection.
Off we went to the international terminal - a 5 minute walk to catch a flight currently on the ground, en route to Sydney from somewhere in the Orient.
Quantas proved to be no more customer friendly than Ansett.
They refused to allow our bags as carry on - actually started complaining that they were to heavy to be checked. It seems the domestic carriers intentionally make it difficult for international travelers by not standardizing on weight and size limits for baggage.
Since the flight to Sydney was arriving at the international terminal, if we wanted our bags back before leaving for LA, we'd have to clear customs, collect our bags from the carousel, go back through security, and check in for the Air New Zealand flight home. In an hour.
We re-packed our bags in the airport and begrudgingly handed 3 out of 4 of them over to be checked through to LA. I was sure that the two bottles of wine would be broken before they arrived.
To add insult to injury when I asked them to tag all the bags as fragile I had to sign a waver absolving them from responsibility if anything was broken. "It's your responsibility to pack things so they aren't broken." I wanted to strangle her.
The Quantas flight left late - shaving our 1 hour window to 30 minutes.
Ran through the whole bloody Sydney international terminal to the transfer desk - got checked in and discovered that our next flight had been delayed by 30 minutes. We made it to the gate with 10 minutes to spare before they started boarding.
Got on the Air New Zealand flight and surveyed the seating situation. Dawnise and I were an exit and an aisle apart.
We did some seat jockeying to get two together, and all looked good, 'till a bit after take off a woman was seated in front of Dawnise.
She decided, without warning, to lean back - promptly slamming into Dawnises' knees and jamming her thumb.
I pushed the seat up, explaining to this lady that there was no room for her to lean back - to which her response was "I'm very sick, I'm going to lean back." I wanted to say "you're either very stupid or very deaf - no you're not." A quick call to the flight attendant managed to resolve the situation. Apparently this lady was moments from being evicted from the plane before take off for harassing one of the flight crew. The cabin chief took her away to speak somewhere "private" and when she came back she was perfectly civil and never tried to lean back again.
The rest of the flight was uneventful and generally pleasant, save for the fact I had managed to get sick during our reef trip (warm water to AC'd boat cabin, I suspect). I was in fairly bad shape by the time we made it to LA.
We crossed the date line in the other direction coming back - so after being up and traveling for 20 hours, we arrived in LA at around 7a on the same Sunday. What a long day.
After 40 minutes we managed to get our bags (that's yet another reason I hate checking my bags) and through customs to find my dad waiting to pick us up, as promised.
He dropped us at our place, dropped the
bags immediately inside the door, and we promptly fell asleep for 10 hours.
We woke up, ordered some pizza, ate, and went back to bed for the night.
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