geekyOn Friday, August 27th, I left work to head for Kate's house, since she (and her wonderful car) was going to get me to the airport. My flight, I said, left at eight, so I needed to be there at six. I was quite confident on this point. There will be more on this later.
Even after driving to Concord, packing the last of my things, brushing the cats in a guilty "please don't hate me for leaving you" manner, and stopping at Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, we got me to the airport by four. Being the sort of person who'd rather be horrifyingly early than five minutes late, I was cool with this, hugged Kate, and went to check in with the calm serenity of one who is four hours early for their flight. Everything went without a hitch, including security, which was a glorious wasteland, free of congestion. Things were looking up.
Jeanne was already at the gate when I got there. "Wow, you're early," I said. She gave me a funny look.
"I'm two hours early for our flight," she replied.
"...what?" Apparently, I had been basing my internal flight time off the time we would be arriving in LAX for our transfer. Because sometimes, yes, I am very, very blonde. Coyote was clearly already getting involved in the trip; that's the first time I have ever made a mistake like that about flight times.
The first flight was relatively painless (I slept the whole way, which always helps), and our luggage was checked all the way through to Melbourne. So we located our gate, confirmed that there was no way for Qantas to shuffle things to seat us together, and then adjourned to the airport bar to make offerings to Coyote in the form of overpriced cocktails. Hooray for an excellent Mai Tai!
On the plane (a new Air Bus the size of an entire wing at my high school), we were seated literally sixty rows apart, so we bid each other a fond farewell and went to our respective homes for the next seventeen hours. Now, the nice thing about the Qantas Air Bus is the self-serve mini-bar between each section of the plane. They don't contain alcohol, thankfully, as an entire plane of drunk tourists would suck, but they do contain a nigh-infinite supply of Diet Coke. I drank a lot of Diet Coke. I also slept, a lot, and watched several movies, including Iron Man 2, which no one had been willing to see with me in the theater. Hooray for trans-Pacific flights!
Blah blah blah, time passes, blah blah blah, airplane food, blah blah, landing! In...Sydney. Because, see, Melbourne? Was enshrouded with fog, preventing us from landing, and after flying from California, we didn't have the fuel to circle. So we had to divert to another city altogether, which delighted the flight crew to no end. (It actually did delight the rest of my row, as they'd been going to Sydney, and were allowed to deplane. With their luggage. Lucky bastards.)
Eventually, we got back into the air, and were able to fly, finally, to Melbourne, where we had to go through Customs. First question on the card they make you fill out, no shit, was, "Are you carrying any weapons, illegal drugs, or prescription medications?" So the first question I was asked by the Australian Customs Agent was which of these things I had. I replied that I had legal medications. Also food. She sent me to Quarantine, while Jeanne went off to not be Quarantined.
At Quarantine, I was asked, "What kind of food are you carrying?"
Honesty is the best policy with Customs: "A pound of chocolates and five pounds of candy corn."
Blink. "What's candy corn?"
"Honey, mallow, and canuba wax."
"How much is five pounds?"
"I don't know. Two and a half kilos?"
She blinked again, and then waved to the door. "Just go."
Jeanne, meanwhile, was being poked and prodded to confirm that she wasn't secretly smuggling strawberries in her pants. The moral of our story is? Carry confusing candy.
Australia!
September 15 2010, 17:51:05 UTC 6 years ago
Honesty is the best policy with Customs:
Except sometimes, when agreeing with them even though they're wrong is the best policy. When I was in high school, I ended up embroiled in a discussion with a US Customs officer in Miami as to whether Phoenix or Nogales was the capital of Arizona. (In long retrospect, I think he may have been teasing me, but I was way the hell underslept and way the hell underfed and wired on way the hell too much coffee and sugar to pick up on that at the time.)
He finally said something like, "I'm from Nogales and I should know."
To which I blinked, considered briefly, and said, "You know, sir, you're absolutely correct and I was confused. Nogales IS the capital of Arizona."
He then waved me and my entire party of 20+ underslept, underfed, and wired teenagers through the checkpoint.
October 21 2010, 20:27:36 UTC 6 years ago