Pat’s Point of View

Sydney – San Francisco

United flight 870 left pretty much on time, consider how bad the weather in Sydney was looking it’s a small miracle it wasn’t a big delay. Of course I was meant to be on flight 840 to LA but for some unexplained reason it became 870 when I checked in. I was in the arse end of the 747, but fortunately I had an aisle seat in a set of three seats and there was nobody in the middle. That makes economy so much better.

Sitting there waiting for take-off I wished I was flying Qantas, since the United plane had no personal video screens, just one TV on the roof every 5 metres or so and bigger ones on the bulkheads. So pretty much didn’t watch any films or TV. But I did end up watching two movies on my iPod; Over the Hedge (which is very cool) and The Incredibles (which I didn’t finish watching).

I was pretty knackered soon after take-off, so I decided I would try to go to sleep ASAP. The trouble is they serve all the meals in the time zone you’ve come from. That meant dinner was not far into the flight, but I wanted to sleep. It also mean the breakfast they served towards the end was at almost midday in the time zone we were going to. Don’t they know the best thing you can do is adopt the destination zone as early as possible?! :)

The ‘purser’ mentioned that crossing the Pacific is always a bit rough and unpredictable and on this occasion he wasn’t wrong. It was pretty bumpy the whole way, at some times very much so. I even got stuck in the toilet during one particularly long spurt of turbulence.

One other thing that was quite interesting was the lady sitting on the other side of the spare seat. Besides only going to the toilet once in the whole 14 hour flight, she also spoke little or no English. She was Egyptian as far as I could tell, but lives in Sydney (in the suburb I grew up in actually). She had several slips of paper with notes written in English explaining her situation and asking for assistance. The problem was the flight attendants would either ignore the notes or would read them and reply to her in English. Real helpful. Fair enough there were no staff who spoke Arabic, but there has to be a better way that simply talking to her in English. Maltese shares quite a few words with Arabic, but unfortunately my limited vocabulary wasn’t any help (strangely the phrases ‘hurry up’, ‘money’, ‘milk’ and the number 5 weren’t applicable).

One thing she needed help with in particular was filling in the customs and immigration forms for entry into the US. One of her notes dealt with this and after trying a few flight attendants she handed it to me, along with her forms and passport. I wanted to help so I filled in the forms the best I could, it was at this point I discovered she lives in Blacktown. I had visions of here getting to immigration and getting dragged off to some small room because I filled in the forms incorrectly. The fact she spoke Arabic certainly wouldn’t have helped.

By the time we got to sunny/foggy ‘cisco I was well and truly ready to get off that plane. I really don’t like the whole long distance travel. After a short stroll through SFO and a number of security checkpoints I arrived at the gate for my flight to Denver and boarded immediately. Talk about non-stop.

San Francisco – Denver

It’s still Saturday! After piling on to flight 770 it was soon apparent the flight was packed, and a 757 is quite pokey. Anyway, there was enough room to get the laptop out and write part of this. Fairly bumpy flight again, but some interesting scenery including Apple’s HQ at Cupertino (at least I think it was) and some snow capped mountains.

I could just be really tired, but here’s an observation for you. Looking at the geography from the air, it would seem that in the US they build roads predominantly in valleys, whereas in Australia roads have historically been built on ridges. I wonder why that is?

Well if the last connection was close, this one was cut-throat. As soon as I got off flight 770 I saw on the boards that my next flight was almost finished boarding! Luckily the next gate was directly opposite where I was.

Denver – Austin

Still Saturday. Another bumpy flight (lots of thunderstorm activity around Denver). I’m now wondering if my luggage made it from the last flight onto this one (UA1238). That would be great fun if I end up in Austin but my bag doesn’t. Right now I feel about as fresh as three day old pizza.

For this flight I was back onto a familiar aircraft, the 767. And I’ve noticed that all 67’s seem to be squeaky, no matter which airline or which country you’re in.

Anyway, finally got to Austin (with my luggage even!) and it seems nice enough. It’s actually quite green, I must admit I had the impression Texas was all desert-like (well not desert, but like the Grand Canyon). And I got to the hotel rather painlessly, in a cab that barely made the trip. 21 hours of travel…phew.

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