Welcome to San Francisco. Don’t get excited, we are only here for a couple of hours as we transit to NYC.
In my last post, I spoke about the odd reactions we got from people when we told them we were flying United. I’m pleased to report that my expectations were exceeded. The flight crew were lovely, the meals were good, in-flight entertainment was good, ice-cream and Tim Tams were great … pretty much 4 stars all around. They would have got 5 stars if they’d upgraded me to business class, but my expectations on that ever happening were very low.
There are a couple of things that I do need to comment about regarding United, however.
Firstly – and it may seem obvious – but United is an American airline, so the flight crew were all American. Duh!
But as you probably know, Americans talk funny. I don’t mean for that to be a criticism … just an observation. Australians all talk the same. You have no way of knowing whether an Aussie comes from Perth or Melbourne or Townsville by the way that they talk – except for the fact that North Queenslanders do tend you say “youse” (as in “do youse come here often?”), and finish most sentences with “eh” (as in “it’s hot here today, eh?”).
Other than that, we all talk the same. But not Americans.
The American flight crew also spoke quite quickly. I don’t know if that is normal, or they were just pushed for time.
So when the meal service came around, the flight crew were trying to say “we have two options for lunch today – you can have the chicken and rice, or you can have the pasta”.
What it came out as was “chickenandriceorpasta, chickenandriceorpasta?”
Our fellow passengers who are American would respond with “chicken and rice please”, or “pasta please”.
The Australian passengers mostly responded with either “yes please” or “huh?” The flight crew then responded with “no, you can have chicken and rice, OR you can have pasta.” I’m sure it wasn’t just me.
My second observation relates to the captain of the plane. I can only assume that he has a mean streak.
As we departed Sydney this morning, he announced that our flight time to San Francisco would be 12 hours and 22 minutes. Not “a bit under 12 and a half hours”, but a very, very specific 12 hours and 22 minutes. He said it twice.
He also said that we would be cruising at 35,000 feet.
So here is my issue. If he can be so specific about how long it will take to travel from Sydney to San Francisco, why can’t he actually fly the plane at 35,000 feet? Does he have no idea of the havoc that it plays with my OCD?
35,001 feet
Those of you that don’t know me well probably think that I’m kidding. Those of you that do know me well know that I’m not.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), we hit some pretty bad turbulence so he needed to go up to 37,000 feet. Do you think that fixed the problem? Nope!
37,001 feet
Then more turbulence, and up again to 40,000 feet. He’s done it again! I’m convinced that he’s doing it on purpose, but I’m trying to be “glass half full” about it.
40,001 feet
This travelling west to east is messing with my head. We left Sydney at about 10.30 Friday morning, and thanks to the mystery that is known as the international date line, we arrived in San Francisco 4 hours before we took off from Sydney. I wonder if we kept travelling around the world west to east forever, whether we would start to become younger.
You may have noticed that i have been starting each post with the first line(s) of a song.
Today’s title/song is possibly a bit obscure. Actually it’s probably very obscure, but I challenge you to try and work out the significance. You are most welcome to submit a comment with your thoughts, and the first correct answer gets bragging rights. Not a great prize I admit.
If you can’t see where to comment, you need to click on the title of the post first, then scroll to the bottom.
If you are reading this sentence, then you are almost at the bottom.
Somehow that turned out to be a very long post, which is especially surprising considering that I’ve been sitting on a plane at somewhere between 35,001 feet and 40,001 feet for 12 hours and 22 minutes, have done nothing, and actually have nothing to say.
Now that I’ve gone back and re-read it, it sounds like a bit of a rant. It’s not really – I think it’s just tiredness. I have a working theory that caffeine can be used as a substitute for sleep, but it’s not working well for me 🙁
One flight down, two to go until New York. The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was uneventful, but when they say “this is a full flight”, they aren’t kidding!
We arrived into Sydney at about 8.00pm with a pretty hard landing. Actually, I wasn’t sure if we’d crash landed or been shot down … I wanted to ask the captain but TOTIL wouldn’t allow it.
I’m no food critic, but I have to say that the meal served on the Qantas flight coming down was excellent. I had the pasta with Mediterranean meatballs, and TOTIL had the chicken and broccoli salad. So good in fact that we were offered seconds. (Apparently it’s not often that passengers eat the entire meal, and the flight attendants were SO impressed that they offered us another one each!)
The flight attendants were so lovely and friendly, it made for a great start.
No coffee served on the flight, and 8.00pm in Sydney airport is past everyone’s bedtime … but we were able to scrounge a cup at the hotel.
Used Uber for the first time ever, so that’s one more thing to cross off the list. Had a 4.9/5 star driver (Lee) and he was so nice and friendly, carried our bags, told us to relax … I gave him 5 stars because he deserved it 🙂
Spent a relaxing night at the Adina at Mascot. Nice, quiet room, very comfortable, GREAT shower … felt very relaxed. Then we hopped into the shuttle bus to the airport this morning and all that relaxation just slipped away.
If I described our shuttle bus drive as arrogant, aggressive, unfriendly, rude … I’d be describing his most endearing characteristics. Scary ride! Welcome to Sydney …
But here we sit in the AMEX lounge at the Sydney international airport pretending like we do this all the time, and waiting for our flight to depart in about 2 hours … then 13 hours to San Fransisco, transit for a couple of hours, and then about another six hours to NYC.
Woohoo!
The first question that fellow travellers always seem to ask is “who are you travelling with?” We answer “United” and we get a puzzled look, followed by “Oh … I hope it’s OK” Now I don’t really know what to expect, but I’m keeping my expectations low, just to be safe.
There probably won’t be another post for a couple of days as we sit on planes, try and get some sleep, read a book, watch a movie or three, and overcome jet lag … so don’t lose hope peeps, there will be more to come when we are in NYC.
Some years ago, we were involved in a mission trip to Zimbabwe with some others from our church, and we kept a blog to document our travels and give our family and friends back home the ability to follow along and keep up to date with all of the news.
This trip is just the two of us, and we are off to the USA and Alaska. When we tell people that we are off overseas on holidays, it’s not uncommon for people to ask “Just the two of you?”. Now while family holidays to the Gold Coast are traditional, I can’t for the life of me understand why we would consider dragging our boys around the world on our holiday … so I can only assume that it is a rhetorical question.
So as we have been planning for this trip, The One That I Love (TOTIL) suggested in the nicest possible way that we consider keeping a blog of this trip too … and when I say “we”, I mean “me”.
You may think that the title of this post is a little puzzling. Indeed. If I am expected to put in the effort to create a post every day, then it only seems fair that you should have to do a little bit of work yourself and try and figure out it’s meaning.
This trip was supposed to be a cruise on the Majestic Princess to New Zealand, but somewhere along the line it became an Inside Passage cruise from San Francisco up to Alaska and back. One of the things that I love about cruising is that we leave home in Brisbane, cross over the Gateway Bridge and once we arrive at the cruise terminal it’s like we are immediately on holidays – there is no sitting around in airports, flying 20 hours, suffering jetlag …
This cruise combines both – flying to the USA and cruising. So we figured that if we were going to go that far, we may as well make a real holiday of it to include New York, San Francisco and then the cruise. I’ve never been to NY and always wanted to … but never thought it would happen.
When we plan a trip away, TOTIL won’t permit getting excited about it until we are less that 100 days to departure. 99 days ago that seemed like a very long way away. Now it starts today (Brisbane to Sydney), and then tomorrow is the big one – Sydney to San Francisco, and San Francisco to New York. How exciting!
So back to the title of this post .. here’s a hint – it is the first line or two from a song by a famous Australian singer. Here is another hint – the singer is John Farnham.
The song sums up all of my emotions very well right at the moment. The next line says “I want to sail across the ocean …” and that says it all. Today is the day. The bags are packed, everything is done (largely due to the efforts of TOTIL I need to point out …), so let’s go.
But the song also talks about turning the pressure down. Ain’t that the truth. With everything going on at the moment, it’s been a pressure cooker for the last week trying to get everything organised to go. Work has been crazy, long hours, not enough sleep, stressing about stuff, awake at 4.00am … grrr 🙁
And then there is the need to finish off all of the things that have been on my list for the last 99 days and yet are still incomplete. No problems – I’ll leave a list and the boys can do the last few things while we are away.
I think that I’ve done everything that needs to be done to make sure that all of those complexities in my life are organised to keep ticking along while we are away.
Speaking of the boys, we are leaving three of them at home … although current understanding is that one will be in WA for a couple of weeks, one is house-sitting for someone else, so there may only be one still here.
If you speak with him at any time, please remind him to put on the dishwasher occasionally, the wheelie bin goes out Monday nights, put some chlorine in the pool twice a week, water the plants …
And if he looks like he is fading away, he might need a meal 🙂
