Coming to America

Well it seems like I’ve never quite had so much to write about in such a short space of time and finally I have half a chance to sit down and write as today we went out and bought ourselves a shiny new laptop to play with. Of course, going as far as actually getting an internet connection still seems to be another step away (Though having read this, we actually have a cabled net connection in the house! It just isn’t working properly and we have to wait until the 17th to have someone come and look at it). So this will be posted at some time in the near future.

We flew out of Adelaide and really didn’t have any problems in Sydney, managing to squeeze the purchase of some duty free grog into the time that it took us to walk from the bus that moved us between terminals to the gate of our departure. Fortunately the departing plane was running a little late because there were some nervous moments as we sat waiting for our bus between terminals and the time of departure ticked ominously closer.

Finally we were underway. It wasn’t long after this that I discovered that whilst seat-back entertainment for kids might be a grand idea, the execution tends to fall a little short of one’s expectations. Ease of use doesn’t quite apply to 4 and 6 year olds and so I spent a significant amount of time getting both Thomas and Emily set up with what they wanted to watch. Which was great apart from the fact that a) Emily couldn’t leave the buttons alone and so kept upsetting herself and b) her attention span was so poor that not even the much loved and highly anticipated (for the 37th time) Happy Feet could keep her engaged for very long. Then there were the toilet trips and the food and another dozen interruptions and I managed to reach the end of the first movie that I wanted to watch at about the 4 hour mark of the journey. And yes, the film length was actually supposed to be in the order of 2 and a bit hours.

But ultimately, we arrived in LA. Neither Caroline nor I managed any actual sleep on the plane but we did at least survive.

Our first pleasant experience in America was when we were standing in the line to be admitted to the country. Because of my desire to ensure that we’d left nothing on the plane and had all of our belongings, we’d managed to be the last ones off of the 747 that had carried us that far. Add that to the flight that arrived 5 minutes before us and I managed to get about 1000 people into the queue ahead of us (clever eh?) Of course, this was only discovered at that point in time when we saw the enormous line and then had to navigate our way to the end of it. One person stood behind us. You reckon I felt sorry for her?



We managed to stand in line for about 20 minutes with various levels of threats being aimed at the bored, over-tired smalls that were accompanying us when an official of the US immigration section came out and said, “anyone in the line with small children, please come to the front,” and as simply as that, we were processed! Who would have thought it? What a great start to our stay.

We were then assisted in getting in touch with the car hire company and managed to get picked up in what can only be described as a novelty oversized van (pictures attached). This was the beast that I had hired to ensure that I was able to transport the 6 of us and the tiny little bit of luggage that we’d brought along with us from the airport to the hotel where we’d be spending our 5 days.



Finally it was time to go and at that point, as I walked around to the wrong side of the vehicle to drive, my heart started palpitating as I considered the next hour that I was about to endure driving our beast on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the vehicle.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve driven through Europe on some busy roads on the right hand side of the road. But never have I driven anything so truly and insanely large that was still considered a vehicle that my license class would allow me to drive. I mean to put this in perspective; this thing was bigger than the first hummer that we saw! I could not believe the number of SUV’s that were on the road ... and the fact that what I was driving was bigger.

Thankfully I hired a GPS unit whilst I was there as well because it eliminated the need to focus on directions from the passenger seat which may well have been correct, but which would have also been introducing a point of stress that wasn’t really required. As it was I still managed to get off of the highway at the wrong point once and the GPS was a godsend for getting us going back in the right direction.

We survived the drive and so did our luggage, though I think that Caroline may have felt a little intimidated at times as I struggled with my efforts at driving close to THAT line on the road, not the other side, which meant that occasionally she may have drifted just a little closer to the safety wall/vehicle next to her than was either comfortable and also strictly necessary.

But we got there. And the car company probably hates me because the only US money that I had was a 50 and so I didn’t tip the hulking dude who assisted in loading our tiny amount of luggage.

We did reach our hotel in Anaheim, within viewing distance of Disneyland and wondered what the hell we were going to do next. Caroline was already complaining of culture shock from being surrounded by American accents in the airport and I was just whacked from having concentrated on the drive. The kids had a swim and then there was some down time in the hotel.

I need to break this post up so that it doesn’t go on forever, so you’ll have to wait a bit for me to thump out some more!