As we settle back to life here in Canada, its been pretty evident that we’re all suffering from Jet Lag and time zone changes. There’s the waking up in the middle of the night, the not being able to get to sleep, and of course there was Thomas in the Kitchen, dressed, ready for school, stumbling around bleary eyed looking for something to have for breakfast …
at 11:30pm
Apr 27, 2009
Universal
I left the last post off at that point in time where we all happily boarded the A380 in Melbourne. We were a little late getting on board the plane and hence taking off, but given that we had a long flight and no connections at the other end, it really didn’t impact us.
Flying on the A380 was a nice treat. Nice shiny new entertainment systems with more options that I think I’ll ever need on a plane and friendly Qantas-style service. Possibly the best innovation as all as far as I am concerned is the self-service points about the plane that you can go to in order to pick up a can of soft drink and a small snack. It meant you could get one when you wanted without having to call an attendant only to find out that they were busy preparing for food service or the like (Or in the case of Air Canada, get a death-stare that makes you think twice about ever hitting that little attendant button again!)
The only issue that I had with the flight was that by leaving in the morning, there was no real immediate desire for sleep and by the time I should have been sleeping rolled around, I just couldn’t quite manage to get there. Oh for the luxury of a sky bed (one can wish).
Other than Emily, the kids weren’t particularly successful at sleeping either. And of course for the time that she’s awake, Emily manages to make a 1.5 hour movie that you’re trying to watch last at least 2 hours as she asks for assistance to play her game or do something with her. It meant that when we did finally hit LA we were all on a bit of a short tether, especially at that point when we collected all our luggage and did the bag count only to come up one short!
We waited patiently, but of course, because it takes us so long to fill out the forms and get through customs, we weren’t exactly competing with a crowd to seek out our luggage. Fortunately, just at that point when the last couple of bags on the conveyor had gone around 3 times without ours and the stomach started sinking, a helpful airport employee (not an oxymoron after all! – you know you’re not in Canada when …) came and asked us if we needed some assistance. A few minutes and radio calls later and we found out that some kind soul had picked up our bag for us.
Amazingly, they hadn’t managed to leave the airport with it though and we were able to collect it on our way out. They’d even taken the pesky nuts through customs for us!
And then there was the taxi. We managed to cram all of us and our luggage into a mini-van sized taxi. Four kids across the three back seats and luggage jammed into every conceivable space that there was and at that point Michael announces that he’s really not feeling very well. Of course. Well there was no option but to fish out a plastic bag as we zoomed off down the LA highways.
It wasn’t long before the complaints from the back started. Everyone was squashed and Michael started filling up the bag, much to the delight of us all. I think a combination of lack of sleep and not much of substance in his belly had him doomed before we even got off the plane.
The fact that our taxi driver would have felt quite at home in the streets of Jakarta didn’t help the poor tike and I lost track of the number of times I tried to stop the car Flintstones style as he careened up behind the car in front to seemingly randomly brake or swerve around them to the left or right.
Importantly though, we made it to the hotel and grabbed a couple of hours sleep. Somewhat rested and with no plans, we grabbed a cab and headed down to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to check out the hand prints in the concrete and the stars on the sidewalk. Apparently Hugh Jackman had been imprinted in the concrete that very morning, at about the time we risked life and limb on the highway, but wherever they hid his prints, we didn’t see them or his contemporaries, finding only the very obvious place where some of the older stars were immortalized.
And of course the whole time that we walked around, Michael and his little bag of vomit accompanied us, not a good sign for the following day when we were going to Universal Studios for the day. I did have to take him out of the supermarket at one point. It just didn’t seem right to drag a kid past people shopping for food when he liked to stop every couple of minutes and gag in his little bag!
We had some dinner, returned to the hotel and went to bed nice and early, ready for our Universal Adventure the following day.
Universal was more than enjoyable, though somewhat of a test for poor Emily. The park really is designed for someone older than her and after having the pants scared off her on the Backdraft set, in the monsters special effects demonstration, the Jurassic Park ride and again on the Simpsons ride, I think she would have been more than happy to have pulled up stumps and headed off home. Lucky we never took her on the Mummy ride! She survived though, as did we all, even Sam, who just wanted to go back down on the rides rather than see all the shows.
The Waterworld show was certainly a standout for me and overall it was a great way to spend a day. We managed to eat some dinner before walking back to the hotel, where I managed to have a beer with a friend that I’d met over the internet some 7 or eight years ago (and who had conveniently moved from Florida) and then it was time for some sleep before our last day in LA. No need to set alarms, after all our plane wasn’t due to leave until 2:45pm.
And then Caroline was waking me up at 10:45am to say “We have to pack!” At which point frenzy began. We stuffed luggage and rallied kids from sleep and fortunately had bought a nifty luggage scale duty free on the plane because we had to juggle things around to get all the weight distributed. I tried to organize a bigger vehicle to get us to the airport, but they had to be booked 24 hours in advance, so once again crammed in the minivan, we nervously set off for the airport, hoping to make it in time.
We did that and flew back to Fort Mac via Vancouver and Calgary. Of course, when you’re expecting to arrive home at midnight and work the following day, things are never going to go smoothly.
The plane out of Calgary was delayed and we didn’t leave until after we were supposed to have arrived home. And so it was that taxiing down the runway into Fort McMurray that Caroline said to me, “you do have keys to get in, don’t you?”
Of course I did. Um, somewhere here, in one of these pockets. Or not.
So at 1:30am, with no taxis to be seen at the airport, at -4 degrees, with SNOW blowing horizontally across the darkened landscape, we pondered our choices as to how we might get in.
In the end we settled for ringing the people that Caroline had left the keys with (by which time it was after 2am) and disturbing them rather than chancing a window being open enough to break in through, or even having to smash one. Fortunately they answered the phone and we were able to get into our house without being beset by frost bite or hypothermia.
And at 3:30am we managed to fall into bed.
Oh, and I did go to work.
Flying on the A380 was a nice treat. Nice shiny new entertainment systems with more options that I think I’ll ever need on a plane and friendly Qantas-style service. Possibly the best innovation as all as far as I am concerned is the self-service points about the plane that you can go to in order to pick up a can of soft drink and a small snack. It meant you could get one when you wanted without having to call an attendant only to find out that they were busy preparing for food service or the like (Or in the case of Air Canada, get a death-stare that makes you think twice about ever hitting that little attendant button again!)
The only issue that I had with the flight was that by leaving in the morning, there was no real immediate desire for sleep and by the time I should have been sleeping rolled around, I just couldn’t quite manage to get there. Oh for the luxury of a sky bed (one can wish).
Other than Emily, the kids weren’t particularly successful at sleeping either. And of course for the time that she’s awake, Emily manages to make a 1.5 hour movie that you’re trying to watch last at least 2 hours as she asks for assistance to play her game or do something with her. It meant that when we did finally hit LA we were all on a bit of a short tether, especially at that point when we collected all our luggage and did the bag count only to come up one short!
We waited patiently, but of course, because it takes us so long to fill out the forms and get through customs, we weren’t exactly competing with a crowd to seek out our luggage. Fortunately, just at that point when the last couple of bags on the conveyor had gone around 3 times without ours and the stomach started sinking, a helpful airport employee (not an oxymoron after all! – you know you’re not in Canada when …) came and asked us if we needed some assistance. A few minutes and radio calls later and we found out that some kind soul had picked up our bag for us.
Amazingly, they hadn’t managed to leave the airport with it though and we were able to collect it on our way out. They’d even taken the pesky nuts through customs for us!
And then there was the taxi. We managed to cram all of us and our luggage into a mini-van sized taxi. Four kids across the three back seats and luggage jammed into every conceivable space that there was and at that point Michael announces that he’s really not feeling very well. Of course. Well there was no option but to fish out a plastic bag as we zoomed off down the LA highways.
It wasn’t long before the complaints from the back started. Everyone was squashed and Michael started filling up the bag, much to the delight of us all. I think a combination of lack of sleep and not much of substance in his belly had him doomed before we even got off the plane.
The fact that our taxi driver would have felt quite at home in the streets of Jakarta didn’t help the poor tike and I lost track of the number of times I tried to stop the car Flintstones style as he careened up behind the car in front to seemingly randomly brake or swerve around them to the left or right.
Importantly though, we made it to the hotel and grabbed a couple of hours sleep. Somewhat rested and with no plans, we grabbed a cab and headed down to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to check out the hand prints in the concrete and the stars on the sidewalk. Apparently Hugh Jackman had been imprinted in the concrete that very morning, at about the time we risked life and limb on the highway, but wherever they hid his prints, we didn’t see them or his contemporaries, finding only the very obvious place where some of the older stars were immortalized.
And of course the whole time that we walked around, Michael and his little bag of vomit accompanied us, not a good sign for the following day when we were going to Universal Studios for the day. I did have to take him out of the supermarket at one point. It just didn’t seem right to drag a kid past people shopping for food when he liked to stop every couple of minutes and gag in his little bag!
We had some dinner, returned to the hotel and went to bed nice and early, ready for our Universal Adventure the following day.
Universal was more than enjoyable, though somewhat of a test for poor Emily. The park really is designed for someone older than her and after having the pants scared off her on the Backdraft set, in the monsters special effects demonstration, the Jurassic Park ride and again on the Simpsons ride, I think she would have been more than happy to have pulled up stumps and headed off home. Lucky we never took her on the Mummy ride! She survived though, as did we all, even Sam, who just wanted to go back down on the rides rather than see all the shows.
The Waterworld show was certainly a standout for me and overall it was a great way to spend a day. We managed to eat some dinner before walking back to the hotel, where I managed to have a beer with a friend that I’d met over the internet some 7 or eight years ago (and who had conveniently moved from Florida) and then it was time for some sleep before our last day in LA. No need to set alarms, after all our plane wasn’t due to leave until 2:45pm.
And then Caroline was waking me up at 10:45am to say “We have to pack!” At which point frenzy began. We stuffed luggage and rallied kids from sleep and fortunately had bought a nifty luggage scale duty free on the plane because we had to juggle things around to get all the weight distributed. I tried to organize a bigger vehicle to get us to the airport, but they had to be booked 24 hours in advance, so once again crammed in the minivan, we nervously set off for the airport, hoping to make it in time.
We did that and flew back to Fort Mac via Vancouver and Calgary. Of course, when you’re expecting to arrive home at midnight and work the following day, things are never going to go smoothly.
The plane out of Calgary was delayed and we didn’t leave until after we were supposed to have arrived home. And so it was that taxiing down the runway into Fort McMurray that Caroline said to me, “you do have keys to get in, don’t you?”
Of course I did. Um, somewhere here, in one of these pockets. Or not.
So at 1:30am, with no taxis to be seen at the airport, at -4 degrees, with SNOW blowing horizontally across the darkened landscape, we pondered our choices as to how we might get in.
In the end we settled for ringing the people that Caroline had left the keys with (by which time it was after 2am) and disturbing them rather than chancing a window being open enough to break in through, or even having to smash one. Fortunately they answered the phone and we were able to get into our house without being beset by frost bite or hypothermia.
And at 3:30am we managed to fall into bed.
Oh, and I did go to work.
Apr 24, 2009
Where to start?
Well 2 weeks have whipped by in a frenzied blur of activity and so I am struggling at this point as to where to start. I guess I’ll resort to that most basic of tactics and use the beginning for it’s intended purpose.
Before I get into the whole journey part of this, I should note that whilst stuck here on my own I received an email from Caroline saying this:
“I assume that you will get this fairly soon as you should be at work by now. It is 1am and I should be sleeping. I didn't get home until after midnight tonight though because I had to take Thomas to the hospital with a door reconstructed pinkie. As it turns out it was dislocated, they gave him some pain reducing drugs and pulled it into place. He was a champ and is now sleeping.”
Poor little Thomas, struck by the Temby finger curse …again. Fortunately he’s fine. Not the greatest thing to get in your email, even if it is over and done before you even know about it.
So having said that, I flew out of Canada all on my lonesome, looking forward to all the wonderful airport exchanges that I was likely to see along the way. There were some tight connections and so it was with some trepidation that I approached the Air Canada portion of the flight. When Caroline and the kids flew out, they were able to have their luggage checked right through to Melbourne, which meant that they only had to collect it in Vancouver to clear customs and avoided doing so in LA.
My first disappointment of the trip was right at the start in Fort Mac when they told me that despite the fact that they’d managed to do so just a week a and half earlier, they were unable to do this for me and I would have to collect my luggage in LA. What they didn’t tell me was that I would also have to collect my bag in Calgary.
So after traipsing all through Calgary airport, following the seemingly endless path of signs for international transfers, I arrived at a point where they told me I would have to collect my luggage before re-checking it a little further on. Which was fine, except for the fact that my luggage was not there. I waited. I tried patience. I walked back outside to the Air Canada check in and asked (yes, that’s how desperate I was starting to feel). They told me that it could take 20 minutes for my bag to travel through the system and get to that point. I went back and waited some more given that it had only been 15 minutes at this point.
Some random number of minutes after that and my bag finally arrived. I rechecked it and set off for LA.
There’s a reason why when we flew back last year that we went Vancouver to Sydney, but cheap flights routed us back through LA again this year and I remembered what that reason was. LA is busy as buggery and quite simply, a nice airport to avoid. I waited for my bag to arrive … last one off the plane thanks … and then walked around to the other terminal where I could check in to Qantas. At this point they asked me when I had bought my ticket (queue nerves). I told them that it was only a month or so ago and that’s when they let me know that the luggage allowances had changed and I was over the limit. Crap. I’d made it that far … perhaps I shouldn’t have bought all that duty free icewine whilst waiting for my baggage in Calgary.
The nice aussie bloke behind the counter was kind enough to suggest that as I had only a single small carry-on bag, that I could fit some stuff in a second bag … which he actually went and got for me! I rearranged, and then was allowed to go line up to have my luggage scanned. And then of course, go line up to have my hand luggage and myself scanned. Finally I was able to make my way to the gate.
And it was at that point that the announcement came over the loudspeaker to say that as the plane was at maximum capacity (yay) they would be checking and weighing hand luggage! Oh great, so here I’ve just rearranged weight into my hand luggage and now they’re going to weigh it. Bastards. Fortunately I managed to slip through without being weighed and made it all the way to Adelaide from that point without incident.
I even managed to snatch a good couple of hours sleep on the way over which meant that I wasn’t a massive wreck when I arrived, though there’s some massive gaps in some of the movies that I watched on route.
What does one do when you arrive on a Sunday morning, hell you arrange for people to come and see you in the park of course so that you’ve a half decent excuse to get stuck into a nice cold Coopers Sparkling Ale. It was great to catch up with the people that were able to make it and a most enjoyable way to keep from going to bed too early.
Then it was a case of preparing for the trip to Pt Hughes, the holiday within a holiday. It seems rather decadent to travel half way around the world just to pack a couple of tents (just, hah, well a couple of tents and 4,000 other little items) and head off to a Caravan park for a couple of days, but it is simply a wonderful time. Family, friends and a great environment, all the reasons that one comes home for in the first place really.
This year’s addition to the packing list was an inflatable boat so that my darling wife would be able to get just that bit further from the beach in her unrelenting efforts to extract tasty morsels from the sea. Admittedly, the crabs that she managed to get hold of (because in addition to the boat we some how ended up with a crab net as well) were indeed, very tasty morsels. But it did mean that I didn’t see much of her for the first couple of days. Between satisfying her own desire to fish and the kids as well (somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to get excited about it) there just wasn’t enough hours in the day to hang around the camp site doing nothing.
We were fortunate with the weather, meaning that the kids were able to play on the beach and even swim (bloody mad I say) and we with daylight savings having finished, we were able to eat at a reasonable hour and send them off to bed without too much in the way of reluctance and protestation. Which of course left us plenty of time to play cards and drink.
Add to that the opportunity to indulge in some good Aussie tucker like kitchener buns and meat pies and life was most grand indeed.
It was a great break and the only weather issue we had was on the night before our departure when the wind decided to start gusting and storm-strength intensity, threatening to collapse the tent on us. The tent survived, though the wind did manage to push the sand up under the fly of the tent and strain it through the fabric so that I was waking up every hour or so and dusting it out of my hair and off my pillow.
And of course with it continuing to blow maddeningly the following day, packing up was a bit of fun. We didn’t quite get around to folding our tents in any semblance of order, because it was just too hard to hold the bloody things down.
On the upside, it did remove last minute beach/fishing trips from the itinerary and we were ready to go in record time.
That left us with a couple of days back in Adelaide to track down a couple more friends, send kids all about town to catch up with their friends and even squeeze in some additional family time with my Aunty Carol having made a trip over from Melbourne to see us!
We probably didn’t have enough time to spend with everyone, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learnt from my sojourn first in Singapore and subsequently here, it’s that no visit back home will be enough to satisfy everyone. Especially not us! The two weeks were over before I knew what was happening and it doesn’t seem real that we probably won’t manage to get home again before its time for us to depart these fair shores more permanently.
And thus we were headed back to the airport, every bag we owned stuffed to the point of exploding; mainly due to the desire to bring back enough Aussie treats to see us through as far as possible. If customs had stopped us and made us pile it up, I think I would have been ever so slightly embarrassed.
But despite the early hour of the day, we managed to get everyone to the airport in a timely manner and survived the always painful goodbyes that accompany that part of the journey. Off to Melbourne, where we had a nice smooth transfer before boarding the brand new Qantas A380 for LA.
Before I get into the whole journey part of this, I should note that whilst stuck here on my own I received an email from Caroline saying this:
“I assume that you will get this fairly soon as you should be at work by now. It is 1am and I should be sleeping. I didn't get home until after midnight tonight though because I had to take Thomas to the hospital with a door reconstructed pinkie. As it turns out it was dislocated, they gave him some pain reducing drugs and pulled it into place. He was a champ and is now sleeping.”
Poor little Thomas, struck by the Temby finger curse …again. Fortunately he’s fine. Not the greatest thing to get in your email, even if it is over and done before you even know about it.
So having said that, I flew out of Canada all on my lonesome, looking forward to all the wonderful airport exchanges that I was likely to see along the way. There were some tight connections and so it was with some trepidation that I approached the Air Canada portion of the flight. When Caroline and the kids flew out, they were able to have their luggage checked right through to Melbourne, which meant that they only had to collect it in Vancouver to clear customs and avoided doing so in LA.
My first disappointment of the trip was right at the start in Fort Mac when they told me that despite the fact that they’d managed to do so just a week a and half earlier, they were unable to do this for me and I would have to collect my luggage in LA. What they didn’t tell me was that I would also have to collect my bag in Calgary.
So after traipsing all through Calgary airport, following the seemingly endless path of signs for international transfers, I arrived at a point where they told me I would have to collect my luggage before re-checking it a little further on. Which was fine, except for the fact that my luggage was not there. I waited. I tried patience. I walked back outside to the Air Canada check in and asked (yes, that’s how desperate I was starting to feel). They told me that it could take 20 minutes for my bag to travel through the system and get to that point. I went back and waited some more given that it had only been 15 minutes at this point.
Some random number of minutes after that and my bag finally arrived. I rechecked it and set off for LA.
There’s a reason why when we flew back last year that we went Vancouver to Sydney, but cheap flights routed us back through LA again this year and I remembered what that reason was. LA is busy as buggery and quite simply, a nice airport to avoid. I waited for my bag to arrive … last one off the plane thanks … and then walked around to the other terminal where I could check in to Qantas. At this point they asked me when I had bought my ticket (queue nerves). I told them that it was only a month or so ago and that’s when they let me know that the luggage allowances had changed and I was over the limit. Crap. I’d made it that far … perhaps I shouldn’t have bought all that duty free icewine whilst waiting for my baggage in Calgary.
The nice aussie bloke behind the counter was kind enough to suggest that as I had only a single small carry-on bag, that I could fit some stuff in a second bag … which he actually went and got for me! I rearranged, and then was allowed to go line up to have my luggage scanned. And then of course, go line up to have my hand luggage and myself scanned. Finally I was able to make my way to the gate.
And it was at that point that the announcement came over the loudspeaker to say that as the plane was at maximum capacity (yay) they would be checking and weighing hand luggage! Oh great, so here I’ve just rearranged weight into my hand luggage and now they’re going to weigh it. Bastards. Fortunately I managed to slip through without being weighed and made it all the way to Adelaide from that point without incident.
I even managed to snatch a good couple of hours sleep on the way over which meant that I wasn’t a massive wreck when I arrived, though there’s some massive gaps in some of the movies that I watched on route.
What does one do when you arrive on a Sunday morning, hell you arrange for people to come and see you in the park of course so that you’ve a half decent excuse to get stuck into a nice cold Coopers Sparkling Ale. It was great to catch up with the people that were able to make it and a most enjoyable way to keep from going to bed too early.
Then it was a case of preparing for the trip to Pt Hughes, the holiday within a holiday. It seems rather decadent to travel half way around the world just to pack a couple of tents (just, hah, well a couple of tents and 4,000 other little items) and head off to a Caravan park for a couple of days, but it is simply a wonderful time. Family, friends and a great environment, all the reasons that one comes home for in the first place really.
This year’s addition to the packing list was an inflatable boat so that my darling wife would be able to get just that bit further from the beach in her unrelenting efforts to extract tasty morsels from the sea. Admittedly, the crabs that she managed to get hold of (because in addition to the boat we some how ended up with a crab net as well) were indeed, very tasty morsels. But it did mean that I didn’t see much of her for the first couple of days. Between satisfying her own desire to fish and the kids as well (somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to get excited about it) there just wasn’t enough hours in the day to hang around the camp site doing nothing.
We were fortunate with the weather, meaning that the kids were able to play on the beach and even swim (bloody mad I say) and we with daylight savings having finished, we were able to eat at a reasonable hour and send them off to bed without too much in the way of reluctance and protestation. Which of course left us plenty of time to play cards and drink.
Add to that the opportunity to indulge in some good Aussie tucker like kitchener buns and meat pies and life was most grand indeed.
It was a great break and the only weather issue we had was on the night before our departure when the wind decided to start gusting and storm-strength intensity, threatening to collapse the tent on us. The tent survived, though the wind did manage to push the sand up under the fly of the tent and strain it through the fabric so that I was waking up every hour or so and dusting it out of my hair and off my pillow.
And of course with it continuing to blow maddeningly the following day, packing up was a bit of fun. We didn’t quite get around to folding our tents in any semblance of order, because it was just too hard to hold the bloody things down.
On the upside, it did remove last minute beach/fishing trips from the itinerary and we were ready to go in record time.
That left us with a couple of days back in Adelaide to track down a couple more friends, send kids all about town to catch up with their friends and even squeeze in some additional family time with my Aunty Carol having made a trip over from Melbourne to see us!
We probably didn’t have enough time to spend with everyone, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learnt from my sojourn first in Singapore and subsequently here, it’s that no visit back home will be enough to satisfy everyone. Especially not us! The two weeks were over before I knew what was happening and it doesn’t seem real that we probably won’t manage to get home again before its time for us to depart these fair shores more permanently.
And thus we were headed back to the airport, every bag we owned stuffed to the point of exploding; mainly due to the desire to bring back enough Aussie treats to see us through as far as possible. If customs had stopped us and made us pile it up, I think I would have been ever so slightly embarrassed.
But despite the early hour of the day, we managed to get everyone to the airport in a timely manner and survived the always painful goodbyes that accompany that part of the journey. Off to Melbourne, where we had a nice smooth transfer before boarding the brand new Qantas A380 for LA.
Apr 20, 2009
Still going ... kinda
Just a quick note to let those of you who check that we are in fact alive. It's been a busy and tiring couple of weeks and we're currently in LA on our way back to Candadia!
More when I am capable of stringing sentences together.
More when I am capable of stringing sentences together.
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