I'm aliiiiiive! or "Huffing Cockroaches"
Hello.
I live. Most often I take that for granted but it's been a fairly bad couple of days since Auckland. So, let's see: there was a 14 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles Airport. This was overnight and was very, very bumpy. How do I mean? Well, it was like the people behind me were shaking my seat vigorously every minute or so. Since they were approximately 160 years old combined I felt that this was not the most likely hypothesis. On the plus side I got to watch "Jarhead", "A History of Violence" and a short film called "Sniper 407" or similar featuring the hobbit that isn't in lost. Yay. Interesting point of note. The flight staff were all men which was unusual. The shaven headed guy with the big walrus mustache was I felt sort of an "Anti hostess". Good good I say, equal opportunities for men and women to do menial jobs can only be a good thing, right?
So, Los Angeles airport. American's don't understand "Transfer" flights. If you arrive in their country you have to go through customs. With a queue of +3 Doom and the clock ticking away, this was not seen as a good thing. So anyway, Alaskan Airlines. I abhor them. Assuming that I'd had a fantastically smooth flight with a good night's sleep, I've still spent a minimum 12 hours on an airplane. I hadn't, see above, therefore you can imagine the overwhelming joy and happiness with which I greeted the news that I had to lug some very large bags (travelling light is hard to do when you're away from home for 6 months) to a different terminal. I'm glad that I had a trolley. Then we got to the check in desks they then informed me that the bags had to go to X-ray. I see, you don't posess the technology to stick it on that conveyor belt behind you. The x-ray staff were very nearly as gormless as the check in staff. Why would anyone want a reciept for their bags before handing them off to perfect strangers? A mystery to me I'm sure. Finally, after three rows of security, who all asked to see ID and tickets, despite us having passed through the previous line in front of them, we took our shoes off to be x-rayed. Naturally, it was assumed that anyone who didn't already understand this drill was hard of thinking. My throat at this point was very, very sore. This was largely because the Qantas people just weren't making with the drinks like the BA people had been on the way to Bangkok.
So, we got onto the Alaskan Airlines plane. It's very, very packed. The airlines had adopted their usual charming practice of "overbooking" a flight, which means of course that they'd sold more tickets than they had chairs. Fortunately we'd got onto the flight. Still, sitting bracketed by noisy children for 3 hours on what was supposed to be a two hour flight, due to the overbooking they'd checked in some people's baggage and they wanted to make sure that the people sitting on the plane matched the baggage, Smooth, did not improve my feelings of well being and happiness. By this point I'd concluded I was definitely sick.
When we were at Vancouver airport I began to feel a bit better, there was every reason to believe that someone who'd promised to meet us there would be there and that they'd whisk us off to a hostel where we could sleeeeep...
No such luck. Apparently 3 months in the country is a bizarre and unexpected time, so we had to go through immigration. 5 people. 2 hours. This was largely because the immigration officers just couldn't be bothered. They weren't there for most of the time having much scurrying in the back office to do and so forth. This was before 5 pm on a weekday, so my sympathy is greatly limited. Anyway, the person who was supposed to be meeting us had decided not too. Of all the people we've stayed with, everyone has been amazingly friendly and welcoming despite having no space or time for us through no fault of their own. These people are very, very rich. They didn't have to let us stay at their mansion (though that would've been nice), they didn't even have to talk to us. But they didn't say they weren't going to talk to us, and they wouldn't return any phone calls. Gits, basically.
Anyway, I don't remember much about Jericho Beach. It's supposed to be nice. I was in a bed, fully dressed, covered in two blankets, shivering. The next day we went to another place. I was bought lots of drugs. MMMMMM... tasty ibuprofen, I <3 aminocetaphan, and of course a little pseudoephedrine just to keep me awake. So, I was on Granville Street in Vancouver, the most amazing city in Canada (I'm told). We went to the bar downstairs. Quite a good one, I got happy and drunk. The next day, unsurprisingly, I was much much worse.
Renting a car and driving across Canada did not seem like a plan. It's mostly empty in the middle, much like Australia. It was also, very, very expensive. A cunning plan was formatted, fly to Toronto and stay with people (who have returned calls and been really nice already). Truly, the kindness of strangers is something that I have concrete experience of. Anyhoo, Rent-a-Wreck hired us a car. We went to the Crazy Lady Who Lives On The Mountain. She's very nice and is letting us stay in her underground bunker. I won't speak of the drive, or at least not the bad bits. All I'm saying is that my nose has been producing a charming combination of green and red and the odd bit of black. Hence the title. I've been running a temperature and that's not what I want when I'm busy being distracted by the scenery.
The Rocky mountains are big and rocky. Well, obviously you'd already deduced that from the nature of the words "Rocky" and "Mountain". Let me try and explain. Imagine that you're walking down a path in the woods and there, in front of you, is what looks like a movie backdrop. You know those fake scenery things where you can see the line and it's just huge and awesome and you're all like, "yeah, that's not real". Well, it is. And you know it is. But it just doesn't look real, it's just so big. It fills the sky, blotting out the horizon. Mountains are very real things. Oh yes, and normally when you see one it has grass and stuff on it. These ones often don't. They're just there. Big, big, big rocks. They'll still be there when your insignificant and paltry existence has come to an end. I think that's kind of cool myself.
Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. Toodles and apologies to anyone who's been on the sharp end of my tongue lately, big T's and pain don't make me nice. Sorry.
I live. Most often I take that for granted but it's been a fairly bad couple of days since Auckland. So, let's see: there was a 14 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles Airport. This was overnight and was very, very bumpy. How do I mean? Well, it was like the people behind me were shaking my seat vigorously every minute or so. Since they were approximately 160 years old combined I felt that this was not the most likely hypothesis. On the plus side I got to watch "Jarhead", "A History of Violence" and a short film called "Sniper 407" or similar featuring the hobbit that isn't in lost. Yay. Interesting point of note. The flight staff were all men which was unusual. The shaven headed guy with the big walrus mustache was I felt sort of an "Anti hostess". Good good I say, equal opportunities for men and women to do menial jobs can only be a good thing, right?
So, Los Angeles airport. American's don't understand "Transfer" flights. If you arrive in their country you have to go through customs. With a queue of +3 Doom and the clock ticking away, this was not seen as a good thing. So anyway, Alaskan Airlines. I abhor them. Assuming that I'd had a fantastically smooth flight with a good night's sleep, I've still spent a minimum 12 hours on an airplane. I hadn't, see above, therefore you can imagine the overwhelming joy and happiness with which I greeted the news that I had to lug some very large bags (travelling light is hard to do when you're away from home for 6 months) to a different terminal. I'm glad that I had a trolley. Then we got to the check in desks they then informed me that the bags had to go to X-ray. I see, you don't posess the technology to stick it on that conveyor belt behind you. The x-ray staff were very nearly as gormless as the check in staff. Why would anyone want a reciept for their bags before handing them off to perfect strangers? A mystery to me I'm sure. Finally, after three rows of security, who all asked to see ID and tickets, despite us having passed through the previous line in front of them, we took our shoes off to be x-rayed. Naturally, it was assumed that anyone who didn't already understand this drill was hard of thinking. My throat at this point was very, very sore. This was largely because the Qantas people just weren't making with the drinks like the BA people had been on the way to Bangkok.
So, we got onto the Alaskan Airlines plane. It's very, very packed. The airlines had adopted their usual charming practice of "overbooking" a flight, which means of course that they'd sold more tickets than they had chairs. Fortunately we'd got onto the flight. Still, sitting bracketed by noisy children for 3 hours on what was supposed to be a two hour flight, due to the overbooking they'd checked in some people's baggage and they wanted to make sure that the people sitting on the plane matched the baggage, Smooth, did not improve my feelings of well being and happiness. By this point I'd concluded I was definitely sick.
When we were at Vancouver airport I began to feel a bit better, there was every reason to believe that someone who'd promised to meet us there would be there and that they'd whisk us off to a hostel where we could sleeeeep...
No such luck. Apparently 3 months in the country is a bizarre and unexpected time, so we had to go through immigration. 5 people. 2 hours. This was largely because the immigration officers just couldn't be bothered. They weren't there for most of the time having much scurrying in the back office to do and so forth. This was before 5 pm on a weekday, so my sympathy is greatly limited. Anyway, the person who was supposed to be meeting us had decided not too. Of all the people we've stayed with, everyone has been amazingly friendly and welcoming despite having no space or time for us through no fault of their own. These people are very, very rich. They didn't have to let us stay at their mansion (though that would've been nice), they didn't even have to talk to us. But they didn't say they weren't going to talk to us, and they wouldn't return any phone calls. Gits, basically.
Anyway, I don't remember much about Jericho Beach. It's supposed to be nice. I was in a bed, fully dressed, covered in two blankets, shivering. The next day we went to another place. I was bought lots of drugs. MMMMMM... tasty ibuprofen, I <3 aminocetaphan, and of course a little pseudoephedrine just to keep me awake. So, I was on Granville Street in Vancouver, the most amazing city in Canada (I'm told). We went to the bar downstairs. Quite a good one, I got happy and drunk. The next day, unsurprisingly, I was much much worse.
Renting a car and driving across Canada did not seem like a plan. It's mostly empty in the middle, much like Australia. It was also, very, very expensive. A cunning plan was formatted, fly to Toronto and stay with people (who have returned calls and been really nice already). Truly, the kindness of strangers is something that I have concrete experience of. Anyhoo, Rent-a-Wreck hired us a car. We went to the Crazy Lady Who Lives On The Mountain. She's very nice and is letting us stay in her underground bunker. I won't speak of the drive, or at least not the bad bits. All I'm saying is that my nose has been producing a charming combination of green and red and the odd bit of black. Hence the title. I've been running a temperature and that's not what I want when I'm busy being distracted by the scenery.
The Rocky mountains are big and rocky. Well, obviously you'd already deduced that from the nature of the words "Rocky" and "Mountain". Let me try and explain. Imagine that you're walking down a path in the woods and there, in front of you, is what looks like a movie backdrop. You know those fake scenery things where you can see the line and it's just huge and awesome and you're all like, "yeah, that's not real". Well, it is. And you know it is. But it just doesn't look real, it's just so big. It fills the sky, blotting out the horizon. Mountains are very real things. Oh yes, and normally when you see one it has grass and stuff on it. These ones often don't. They're just there. Big, big, big rocks. They'll still be there when your insignificant and paltry existence has come to an end. I think that's kind of cool myself.
Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. Toodles and apologies to anyone who's been on the sharp end of my tongue lately, big T's and pain don't make me nice. Sorry.