So let me tell you about the ride over. I get to the airport taking a hair raising Sydney taxi trip, what other way is there? I arrived three hours before departure, checked in my luggage, after being humbled for my technological illetracy when it came to scanning my documents, I sat down to a liesurely big breakfast in anticiplation of staving off the effects I was dreading of the onboard food yet to come.
Flying, as many of you would, know is a series of minor inconveniences that can add up to make a quite annoying time. As I was such cheapskate I was seated in cattle class, two seats in from the aisle in the center section of the A380. Despite the sucky position it turned out to be a truly magic plane.
It had been a few years since I'd flown internationally and all I remember was the relentless noise. This ride however was smooth and comparitively quiet. There were hundreds of movies and tv shows to choose from the inflight entertainment along with a very cool "tail cam" that you tune into to see what it looked like from outside (very cool when it came time to land). So I caught up with a few movies I'd missed throughout the year, watching Mad Max Fury Road and Terminator Genysis. I also watched nine episodes of "Last Week Tonight: With John Oliver". The one thing I didn't do was sleep, well you can't have everything right?
So anyway there I was jammed into the middle of the plane with sixteen hours of flying time to look forward while sharing personal space with strangers who hopefully don't have too many communicable diseases. All I can say is a I got lucky. I managed to get myself planted to next to a graduate of the Julliard Music School. A cellist from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra who while completely classical in her outlook had played with the likes of Led Zepplin, Leonard Cohen and Ella Fitzgerald along with the more traditional classical artists.
What I do have to tell you is that I don't beleive I have ever been examined quite as thoroughly as I did at both airport. I have had less intrusive Doctor's appointments. After scanning your passport and being photographed I had the pleasure of a full body x-ray along with a retinal scan. When we arrived I had to clear US customs, more scanning and collection of data was required. Firstly I went through with just my carry on luggage and answered all the questions about being from how much cash I was carrying, had I visited any farms recently and was I carrying any commercial products into the country. This time I was fingerprinted and photographed. Then I grabbed my suitcase and lined up to do it all again. I still didn't have any more money nor had I been to any farms recently and I still wasn't carrying any commercial products. Just to be sure I got fingerprinted again and with that I escaped the airport and caught a taxi downtown.
So to summarise; I got up at 8.00am Sydney time and flew out at 1.00pm on a sixteen hour flight, then cleared the airport in under an hour. I checked into my hotel at about 3.00pm Dallas time, having been awake for more than 23 hours. After a quick refresh I hit the streets, but more of that tomorrow.
I would love to say that the airline food was bad, it wasn't. I would love to tell you that staff were unfriendly, they weren't. However I will say after all the photographing, retinal scanning, finger printing and x-raying that if they want to scan or probe anywhere else they had better buy me a few drinks first and maybe a nice meal. Hell who cares about that? I don't fly out until October 24, there's still plenty to happen before then.
No comments:
Post a Comment