I’m going to be adding to this as I go along, assuming airport WiFi happens.
I woke up before my alarm, which wasn’t the plan, but also wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened either?
Did a final bit of shuffling stuff between cases, so there’s now a set of laundry in each case.
The casino floor is never entirely empty here, so even at 7am there were people at the machines. Also people who looked to be making their way back to their hotel after the night before; From the look of it, they’d had a good night.
Unlike the JW in Indianapolis, there’s a taxi passenger corral at New York, New York, and a taxi was just waiting there when I wandered out, so that simplified things enormously. I’m glad the driver knew how to get out of the hotel area and back onto the strip, because I was lost within about 30 seconds in a maze of lanes between hotel buildings and carpark buildings and other hotels and possibly an ancient temple or alien spacecraft. (Fixed rate fare, so I’m assuming he took the most direct route possible)
On the way to the hotel on Monday night, I was playing some attention to the road from the airport to the strip, because I’ve been idly wondering whether it was a walkable distance or space. At that time I thought that it looked unlit and kind of sketchy, and that there’s no way I’d want to be walking it if I had any other choice. Having seen it in daylight, it might actually look worse.
I’d already checked in online, so all I had to do was print some luggage tags and drop off the bags; Turns out that Southwest have a curbside thing for that, so by the time I was in there the terminal I didn’t have anything else to do but go through security, which was a fairly chill experience all told. Not quite as chill as Indianapolis, but … pretty laid back.
Could be anticipation, or tiredness, or con crud, but I slept through most of the flight. I think I woke up for takeoff, but then the next time I was awake it was to an announcement where they were apologizing for the lack of beverage service due to turbulence, and that we’d be landing soon.
Southwest do a thing where you don’t book a specific seat; Instead you get assigned a boarding group and number, and just grab whatever seat is available, which of course means that people fill the window seats, and then the aisle seats, and then have to move to let people into the middle seats that nobody actually wants. My middle seat was between a mother and daughter who presumably hoped that the flight wouldn’t be full. (It was completely full)
LAX has no baggage storage options that I could find. There are some private companies who’ll pick up & drop off your bags at the kerb, but … I wasn’t convinced by their websites, and having dragged my cases all this way, I’m not keen on losing track of them now.
I tried checking in online, in the hope that I could print off a boarding pass & some bag labels at a kiosk, drop them off, and do something with the next 8 hours until the desk opens for my flight. Sadly, no joy, so I found a comfy spot and settled in to wait.
A slight concern is that I had to dig into my cases to find a sweatshirt, because it’s kind of chilly here; Looking at the folks around me, I can’t tell whether or not it’s just me.
One new thing at security was a dog sniffing test, where they got us to walk two by two across a space while a dog was led back and forth through the area we just walked through. I’m not really sure what they were looking for, but they didn’t seem to find it.
I set off the metal detector at least once at LAX security. In my defence, I specifically asked them about my belt, and my watch, and they said it wasn’t a problem.
In the end I went through the scanner and they patted down my hat. …. I don’t have a funny bit for that, it’s just what happened.
My flight had a huge number of nicely dressed folks with name badges on the theme of Preach/Declare The Good News, which turned out to be a bunch of folks on their way to a Jehovah’s Witness convention in Fiji. The other two people in my row were heading for this convention, as was somebody across the aisle and the people ahead and behind us, so they kept themselves amused by chatting about their personal reasons for going, and left me out of it. Well, mostly; My neighbour did give me a piece of paper with the web address for the JWs on it, followed by a business card version from her seat neighbour.
I slept a bit, watched three episodes of The Orville. (they only had the first two, but the pilot of that show is actually pretty good, so I watched it twice because it wasn’t particularly challenging and I was tired) The aircraft had, in addition to the usual map display, a couple of cameras showing views from different bits of the plane; top of the tail, and somewhere underneath the thing. Given that this was a night flight, the only things you could see were stuff happening at the airport and on the runway, but it was still kind of fun.
There was a funny ‘Boing’ noise on landing approach, which turned out to be my metal water bottle (not a purpose purchased one; it’s just all they had airside at TBIT); I’d emptied it by drinking the contents at altitude, then put the lid back on, and eventually the air pressure squished it.
Clearing customs/immigration/biosecurity took forever (1¾ hours from plane to landside, most of that spent in the line for immigration); I’ve obviously become accustomed to the faster paced way things are done at Heathrow or Dublin.
There are a number of tour company shop fronts in the terminal, most of them probably for package tours or resorts from the look of it. I didn’t sleep that well on the flight, and I’ve zoned out a few times just writing this, so I will not be doing any tour stuff this day; Too much chance that I’d fall asleep on the tour bus. 🙂
There was always a chance that this would happen, even before the Las Vegas to LAX flight got rescheduled & the background stress level of this whole thing ratcheted up by several steps, so I’m not really surprised.
I’ve put my suitcases into a Left Luggage storage place, so I’ve only got my backpack to deal with until it’s time to check in, 5¾ hours from now.
After a few more incidents of micro-napping partway through writing a sentence, I decided to get some lunch at the airport bar.
Check-in for other flights is going slowly, because there’s a problem with the baggage conveyor. Because of course there is.
On the plus side, despite my levels of tiredness, I’ve had a nice day chilling in Fiji. Well, Nadi Airport.
I’ve become used to saying Bula! to pretty much everyone, found the quieter banks of seats, gone for a walk out as far as the pavement runs in one direction, and until I was under a tree in another one. The locals probably thought I was lost.
Well, check-in took a while. The kiosk thing didn’t respond, and I got scared of it, so I checked in by queueing for the desk instead. Security was very chill, so that’s nice, and I’m currently airside, waiting for my flight to NZ.N
Not sure whether this is an “Island Time” thing, a small airport thing, or just a bad timing thing, but the processes here run slowly.
It was only a short flight, and I fell asleep a lot.
Woke up as we were taking off, I think, but then fell asleep again. Woke up to an announcement about meal service & the person next to me filling out the NZ Customs/Biosecurity Declaration; They’d tucked my form into the gap beside the seat back screen.
Watched three episodes of Person Of Interest.
I wanted to watch the city lights as we approached, but fell asleep again, and woke a few seconds before the wheels hit the runway.
NZ Customs/Biosecurity have a new (to me) system of screening; Initial check, then directed into a numbered lane down a corridor made from temporary partitions based on that check, and then on from there. I got the Biosecurity OK -> Customs -> Nah, You’re Good path.
Finding my hotel was easy enough, but thanks to construction it took a lap of the building to find the way in. There was a shorter path, but either I missed the sign or they assumed folks would use a different door to leave the Arrivals Hall.
I probably got to the room at around midnight, meaning that I’d been travelling for roughly 42 hours. Immediately had a very long ‘wash everything twice’ shower, because I’d been wearing those clothes for roughly 42 hours.
And now it’s the morning, and the view contains a familiar sight, way off there in the distance.
Naturally, it started raining immediately after I took this picture.