Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC, didn’t get to bed last night

Welcome to day 1 of our trip to the USA … or more correctly , welcome to daaay 1.

Winston Churchill once said that “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”.

I’m not sure what we have failed to learn, but we have just been condemned to repeat Saturday 23 November 2019 … all thanks to that miracle that is the international date line.

We departed Brisbane International airport a little bit later than scheduled, getting airborne at around 11.40am on 23 November.

The flight to LAX was supposed to take about 13 hours, and we actually landed in Los Angeles smack on midnight Brisbane time … and hey presto, local time became 6.00am on 23 November and we started Saturday all over again … which was actually a shame because neither of us got any sleep on the flight over and we weren’t feeling particularly chipper about having to repeat it.

So Saturday 23 November 2019 is a 44 hour day for us. Yay for us!

Hence my reference above to it being daaay 1 … because it’s a long one 🙁

I wanted to start today’s post with a puzzle, but I now realise that I’ve written probably half of the post already, so instead I’m inserting the puzzle into the middle of the post: What do you get if you cross The Beatles with Bruce Springsteen?

I’ll give you the answer to that puzzle shortly.

The excitement for MBW and I all started about 12 hours before we left for the airport this morning (that’s the first time we did “this morning”, not the one we re-started in LA).

I’d had a busy week at work, and MBW had been running around at home all week getting the final washing, packing and cleaning done … and by the time we had quadruple-checked that we had all of the important papers packed, and sufficient underwear to get us through 4 weeks in the USA, we were both pretty knackered.

What to do for dinner?

We weren’t going to cook anything (too tired) and neither of us had the energy to get in the car and pick up some take-away, so we decided to get some Bang Bang Chicken from Birkdale via Uber Eats.

Now even though one of our boys is on first-name basis with the local UE drivers, we have never used the service ourselves … sad, I know. We need to live on the edge more often.

So I tapped the screen of my phone and food was magically delivered to our door. We ate (not exactly the wonderful experience I’d always imagined for our first time Uber Eating), went upstairs and basically collapsed into bed.

Unfortunately neither of us slept particularly well … for me, it felt like my heart was going bang bang all night long. I expect that it was partly the excitement of going on holidays the very next day, but it could equally have been something to do with the Bang Bang Chicken we’d eaten …

Anyhow, the flight from BNE to LAX was uneventful. I understand that the same flight the day prior was a little more exciting, as they lined up for takeoff and then returned to the gate to disembark all passengers due to “mechanical issues”. While inconvenient, it is still probably a better option than having the plane drop out of the sky from 40,000 feet – particularly when there isn’t a great deal of places to land between BNE and LAX – and all passengers were put up in motels for the night.

Friday’s mechanical issues meant that the knock on effect was that our flight was as full as a state school hat rack.

So essentially on the flight we had lunch, watched some movies, were made to have a nap at about 3.00pm Brisbane time, had breakfast at 10.30pm or 4.30am depending on which timezone your watch was set to, and landed uneventfully in LAX at midnight or 6.00am – again depending on how you look at it.

The only movie that I watched was “Yesterday” – the Beatles movie – which was ironic in its own right considering that today was a repeat of yesterday – 23 November.

There was one funny thing that happened on the flight while we were having breakfast though … I started up a more meaningful conversation with our neighbour in seat 23A (who was himself transferred from Friday’s flight to ours on Saturday) and the conversation went something like this:

Me: “So, where are you from?”

23A: “Minnesota. Pretty cold up there. Lots of snow.”

Me: “Pretty hot in Queensland at the moment. Lots of bushfires. What brings you to Queensland?”

23A: “Work. I work for a company than owns and operates grinding and profiling machinery.”

Me (trying to remain interested in the conversation – I was tired, and grinding and profiling aren’t in my top 10 fun conversations): “What sort of things do you grind and profile?”

23A: “Railway tracks. We’ve been working with Queensland Rail and Aurizon over the last two weeks.”

Seriously, what are the odds?

We landed uneventfully in LAX, went through the border security hoops, collected our suitcases, rechecked our suitcases, and then sat and waited for an hour or so until our next flight from LAX to DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth).

We managed to persuade the check-in people to put us in exit row seats, and so we boarded that flight at 9.15am LA time.

My neighbour for this flight – we will just call him 16C – could well have been Snoop Dogg based on his looks, the way that he walked, and how low his jeans were hanging off his backside.

16C then proceeded to claim my armrest and 50% of my legroom, which meant that it was shaping up for an unhappy flight.

Fortunately 16C wasn’t particularly bright, as he soon discovered he was actually 15A, so off he went to annoy someone else. The new Mr 16C was much more of a sharer when it came to armrests and legroom.

We landed at DFW around 2.30pm, collected our hire car (that’s a story for tomorrow), and headed to our AirBnB.

When I was in primary school, I remember learning that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I thought that the same principle would have held for plane travel, so I’m not really sure what was going on with the flight into DFW (see below) when we went on a bit of a detour just south of Amarillo …

After deciding that we were hungry, we found a Texas BBQ joint, and ate ribs with a hot spicy rub on them. That should be fun in a few days as it works its way through my digestive system.

We felt a little out of place at the Railway BBQ place (have you noticed a railway theme in today’s post?) as we were the only ones not wearing boots, a big hat, and talking funny.

At least our fellow diners showed the courtesy not to bring their firearms into the restaurant.

So let me get back to the puzzle: What do you get if you cross The Beatles with Bruce Springsteen?

The Beatles gave us “Back in the USSR”, and Springsteen gave us “Born in the USA”, so I’m guessing that crossing the Beatles with Springsteen might give you “Back in the USA” … and that’s what we are – we’re back!

So let me summarise all of that for you … we did basically nothing important for the last 44 hours including getting any sleep, and that’s what we plan to do right now – let off a few ZZZZZs.

Here is a link to today’s song – sorry it was the best that I could find: “Back in the USSR” (Beatles).

BTW, and just for clarity, we:

• Didn’t fly in from Miami Beach
• Didn’t fly BOAC; but we also
• Didn’t get to bed last night 🙁

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019