Today was a day I'd been looking forward to and as Tom would later describe me "you're on the verge of becoming a plane spotter" may have some truth in it.
We were off to the Everett airfield. Technically it's owned by Washington state but it happens to be the home to the biggest building by volume in the world which is also the manufacturing facility for all Boeing wide body jets. We were going plane spotting.
I'd booked a tour from the UK long before setting off on our trip and 11.30 was our time. We thrashed Sally up I5 to Everett in plenty of time and spent half an hour looking round the Future of Flight museum prior to our tour.
The tour started with a PR video about the history of Boeing and how two blokes fancied making planes 80 years ago. Then under security escort we made the short bus journey to the first hanger. This is the home of the 747 production line. They were finishing the last batch of 747-400 freighters as the 747-800 and 800F are due to start production very soon. We observed the 5th 744F for UPS sitting in the penultimate position. They explained how the line worked and how the parts moved about this gigantic building to be in the right place at the right time.
From 747 production we headed back along one of the tunnels, we noted the suitability for segway racing in these tunnels, before having it explained that Boeing a fleet of bicycles for their employees to navigate this massive building and tunnel network!
The 777 production line was next. This line is a moving line. This means the plane is progressing through the plant a quarter of an inch an hour during production as demand requires such quick turn around. There was a complete 777 for Air France sitting ready to go to the paint shop and a Qatar 777 waiting to be moved to final position.
The last stop on our tour was the 787 assembly line. An airliner set to revolutionise air travel for point-to-point routes as the A380 did for hub-to-hub. It's amazing to think that the aircraft sitting in the line here will not be delivered until Q4 2009! The 3rd 787 every built, due to delivery customer ANA was sitting by the doors having the modifications that early testing had identified as necessary fitted. This, unlike the other lines, is an assembly line and all parts are delivered on an 'as-needed' basis from all over the world. Boeing do not manufacture any of the 787 in Everett.
From the 787 hangar we headed back to the museum. On the way we passed the paint hangers. All capable of painting one of 767, 777, 747 but each designated a type, incidently all paint detail of commerical craft is applied by hand using stencils and not robots! Then we passed the delivery area, where a sellection of new aircraft were sitting awaiting delivery to their customers.
A memorable and jolly tour had, we spent some more time in the future of flight museum marvelling at the scale of aircraft technology and played in an old cockpit, and yes there is still a switch for the no smoking signs!
We returned to hill billy land contented and ready for a feast which duely followed before our exploration of Seattle starts.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Sally goes international
ROAD TRIP!
This was one of the first things we planned about this trip and both got excited about being able to get hold of a Mustang to do it in. I don't think that the tragedy of Zeebrugge was explained to the North Americans, they sail their ferries out of port with the car decks open. This had dawned on me while at Horseshoe bay and now standing in Victoria watching the motor vessel Covo arrive in the harbour I was reminded of it again.
The morning had been a brief one prior to arriving at the ferry terminal, we (well I, Tom took some convincing) were determined not to miss another ferry. Sally had whisked us down to the harbour and into the mind numbing US immigration queue. Thankfully this was no LAX and with our passports having already been Americanized we just had to entertain conversation with the woman from immigration as she visited us in Sally. The crossing to Port Angeles was uneventful however the scenery spectacular. We were soon on US soil and a guy from Customs interrogated us, satisfied we were not off to train terrorists, he let us through and we were loose with a few hundred miles of asphalt and a powerful convertible.
Sally roared into action and gobbled the miles up down the US west coast to Ocean Shores. Tom had the run of the local winding roads and his semi-permanent grin suggested he was enjoying Sally's handling. The Ramada, well the young girl at reception :), welcomed us to Ocean Shores and we were soon engrossed in American trash TV! Dinner that night was taken at the attached restaurant and I rapidly realised this was no Ramada of UK standard! Karaoke night was on in the restaurant, I requested a table "as far from that thing as possible" but that yielded little relief from bud swigging country crooners out on the coast for the Labor weekend. We escaped and headed to bed after a disappointing dinner.
With Sally's top off we drove up to the Ocean Shores headland and climbed some rocks. I didn't go to the end of this rock groyne as there was a leaking sewage pipe filling the sea and the prospect of getting sprayed by the resulting liquid was not a pleasant one. However, in the pursuit of exploring all Tom didn't hold back and off he went! A day of driving was ahead and we gobbled up the miles in style.
Our destination was Vashon Island and short hop on the ferry over from the mainland south of Seattle got us to some fantastic driving roads. We dived straight off the main road into the local back roads and threw Sally round the last 15 miles up to the hostel and the start of our hillbilly adventure!
Seattle and hillbillies were two things I didn't expect to encounter together, but Tom will have fun explaining them all to you!
This was one of the first things we planned about this trip and both got excited about being able to get hold of a Mustang to do it in. I don't think that the tragedy of Zeebrugge was explained to the North Americans, they sail their ferries out of port with the car decks open. This had dawned on me while at Horseshoe bay and now standing in Victoria watching the motor vessel Covo arrive in the harbour I was reminded of it again.
The morning had been a brief one prior to arriving at the ferry terminal, we (well I, Tom took some convincing) were determined not to miss another ferry. Sally had whisked us down to the harbour and into the mind numbing US immigration queue. Thankfully this was no LAX and with our passports having already been Americanized we just had to entertain conversation with the woman from immigration as she visited us in Sally. The crossing to Port Angeles was uneventful however the scenery spectacular. We were soon on US soil and a guy from Customs interrogated us, satisfied we were not off to train terrorists, he let us through and we were loose with a few hundred miles of asphalt and a powerful convertible.
Sally roared into action and gobbled the miles up down the US west coast to Ocean Shores. Tom had the run of the local winding roads and his semi-permanent grin suggested he was enjoying Sally's handling. The Ramada, well the young girl at reception :), welcomed us to Ocean Shores and we were soon engrossed in American trash TV! Dinner that night was taken at the attached restaurant and I rapidly realised this was no Ramada of UK standard! Karaoke night was on in the restaurant, I requested a table "as far from that thing as possible" but that yielded little relief from bud swigging country crooners out on the coast for the Labor weekend. We escaped and headed to bed after a disappointing dinner.
With Sally's top off we drove up to the Ocean Shores headland and climbed some rocks. I didn't go to the end of this rock groyne as there was a leaking sewage pipe filling the sea and the prospect of getting sprayed by the resulting liquid was not a pleasant one. However, in the pursuit of exploring all Tom didn't hold back and off he went! A day of driving was ahead and we gobbled up the miles in style.
Our destination was Vashon Island and short hop on the ferry over from the mainland south of Seattle got us to some fantastic driving roads. We dived straight off the main road into the local back roads and threw Sally round the last 15 miles up to the hostel and the start of our hillbilly adventure!
Seattle and hillbillies were two things I didn't expect to encounter together, but Tom will have fun explaining them all to you!
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Long Tall Sally...
She's built for speed, She's got everything that we need, Oh Baby!
That was effectively what was going through my head when we arrived at Hertz to pick up our rental car. Now this is no ordinary rental car, this is a 2008, jet black, convertible, 4.6 Lt, V6, Ford Mustang GT (hereafter called Sally). There was a queue of about 15 people waiting to be served when we turned up, however they were members of what Mike and I have come to call 'pleb class'. However as Mike has a Gold membership with them he waltzed past them to our own desk where the guy added me to the insurance for no extra cost and handed us the keys and let us free with Sally.
We stopped off in Stanley park so that we could have a play with all the buttons and work out how to tame this beast, then we were on our way. Driving over the Vancouver suspension bridge with the roof down, listening to the noise of that engine was a very cool experience (no seriously, it was cold!!!) but one that was well worth it. To quote Chris Evans ''it's one of the only cars that sounds like it does in the movies'' and for those of you that have seen Gone in 60 Seconds (the new one) will know that the Mustang sounds like no other car on the road.
Although we had a great car and not too far to go for our ferry we hadn't counted on the pure lack of any logic on the road system. We drove around following all the signs to the ferry only end up driving past the exit terminal twice with a wall between us and it! To eventually get to it we had to drive away from it on the motorway for about 3 exits and then come off, go through some road works and then drive all the way back. This left us missing our reservation by 5 minutes, and they have obviously never heard of the word 'flexibility' here and said tough, we would have to wait 2:30 hours for the next one. Fortunately, however, Horse Shoe Bay was a rather pleasant little place, so we decided to get out of Sally and make lunch down by the marina.
After we'd had a walk around and Mike had polished off a mammoth ice cream (it may have been only 2 scoops but it was more like 4 UK scoops!), we headed back to Sally and our waiting vessel. The ferry to Vancouver Island was rather jolly, great views of the mountains surrounding the bay and thankfully not nearly as rough as the whale watching trip we had had in NZ (well Mike was far more pleased about this than me :P). When we reached the island we had a short but enjoyable drive south down the cost to a town called Nainamo and onto our next hostel. A nice little place, although I have never had so much of an issue getting hold of alcohol! I went over to the local supermarket only to find that they didn't sell any and that I had to find a liquor store, following the directions I had been given by one of the staff didn't help at all, in fact rather than finding the two bottle shops that were supposed to be in front of me there was in fact a Church (maybe the guy was trying to tell me something...)
I was not to be defeated, so I set out on my own (Mike was blogging by now) to find a liquor store, in true Top Gear fashion 'How hard can it be?'. I ended up running hither and thither fort about half and our until I spotted some bright neon lights down a back ally, in retrospect, writing this now, going down a back ally at night, in an unfamiliar town, towards an neon lit store was probably not my most wise decision ever :/. Still my curiosity paid off and I wandered into what must be the only liquor store in the whole town, I looked through the cooler and picked out a local larger bizarrely named Dead Frog. Still, we are determined to drink only local beers on this trip so I went with it.
The next day we had a wander around the town's harbor and then hit the road again and headed again to the south, this time with Victoria as our eventual destination. After a long day of driving around (mainly just for the fun of driving) we went and found the next hostel and struggled to work out how the parking worked in Victoria (utterly confusing). That night we decided to head out and grab a few beers, we found a place called 'Swans' which had been mentioned by the staff, little did we know that our previous observations about Canadian women would be made abundantly clear.
We were to be served for the night by one of the most stunning women I have ever seen, let alone meet. What was going to be a couple of beers turned into the two of us staying at the pub until three or so in the morning, well some of us had rather more to drink than others (cough..Mike.....cough.....!). We had a really good night out and went out the following night to attempt the same, although this time we headed to a club where a guy we had met the night before worked as a bouncer. We weren't there nearly as long this time but long enough for us to get up and dance the night away and for me to get rather drunk, and forget to pick up my card from behind the bar when we eventually headed off. Mike had stopped drinking a few hours ago by this point and drove us back to the club (being stopped by a police patrol on the way, well you try driving through the bizarre one way system in Victoria when you are used to UK driving!!) which was an interesting experience, although not one that we want to experience again any time soon.
Well this post is beginning to become rather epic in size so I won't go into full detail of our escapades during the days in Victoria, we have enjoyed it but still look forward to blasting Sally over the long roads in the US.
That was effectively what was going through my head when we arrived at Hertz to pick up our rental car. Now this is no ordinary rental car, this is a 2008, jet black, convertible, 4.6 Lt, V6, Ford Mustang GT (hereafter called Sally). There was a queue of about 15 people waiting to be served when we turned up, however they were members of what Mike and I have come to call 'pleb class'. However as Mike has a Gold membership with them he waltzed past them to our own desk where the guy added me to the insurance for no extra cost and handed us the keys and let us free with Sally.
We stopped off in Stanley park so that we could have a play with all the buttons and work out how to tame this beast, then we were on our way. Driving over the Vancouver suspension bridge with the roof down, listening to the noise of that engine was a very cool experience (no seriously, it was cold!!!) but one that was well worth it. To quote Chris Evans ''it's one of the only cars that sounds like it does in the movies'' and for those of you that have seen Gone in 60 Seconds (the new one) will know that the Mustang sounds like no other car on the road.
Although we had a great car and not too far to go for our ferry we hadn't counted on the pure lack of any logic on the road system. We drove around following all the signs to the ferry only end up driving past the exit terminal twice with a wall between us and it! To eventually get to it we had to drive away from it on the motorway for about 3 exits and then come off, go through some road works and then drive all the way back. This left us missing our reservation by 5 minutes, and they have obviously never heard of the word 'flexibility' here and said tough, we would have to wait 2:30 hours for the next one. Fortunately, however, Horse Shoe Bay was a rather pleasant little place, so we decided to get out of Sally and make lunch down by the marina.
After we'd had a walk around and Mike had polished off a mammoth ice cream (it may have been only 2 scoops but it was more like 4 UK scoops!), we headed back to Sally and our waiting vessel. The ferry to Vancouver Island was rather jolly, great views of the mountains surrounding the bay and thankfully not nearly as rough as the whale watching trip we had had in NZ (well Mike was far more pleased about this than me :P). When we reached the island we had a short but enjoyable drive south down the cost to a town called Nainamo and onto our next hostel. A nice little place, although I have never had so much of an issue getting hold of alcohol! I went over to the local supermarket only to find that they didn't sell any and that I had to find a liquor store, following the directions I had been given by one of the staff didn't help at all, in fact rather than finding the two bottle shops that were supposed to be in front of me there was in fact a Church (maybe the guy was trying to tell me something...)
I was not to be defeated, so I set out on my own (Mike was blogging by now) to find a liquor store, in true Top Gear fashion 'How hard can it be?'. I ended up running hither and thither fort about half and our until I spotted some bright neon lights down a back ally, in retrospect, writing this now, going down a back ally at night, in an unfamiliar town, towards an neon lit store was probably not my most wise decision ever :/. Still my curiosity paid off and I wandered into what must be the only liquor store in the whole town, I looked through the cooler and picked out a local larger bizarrely named Dead Frog. Still, we are determined to drink only local beers on this trip so I went with it.
The next day we had a wander around the town's harbor and then hit the road again and headed again to the south, this time with Victoria as our eventual destination. After a long day of driving around (mainly just for the fun of driving) we went and found the next hostel and struggled to work out how the parking worked in Victoria (utterly confusing). That night we decided to head out and grab a few beers, we found a place called 'Swans' which had been mentioned by the staff, little did we know that our previous observations about Canadian women would be made abundantly clear.
We were to be served for the night by one of the most stunning women I have ever seen, let alone meet. What was going to be a couple of beers turned into the two of us staying at the pub until three or so in the morning, well some of us had rather more to drink than others (cough..Mike.....cough.....!). We had a really good night out and went out the following night to attempt the same, although this time we headed to a club where a guy we had met the night before worked as a bouncer. We weren't there nearly as long this time but long enough for us to get up and dance the night away and for me to get rather drunk, and forget to pick up my card from behind the bar when we eventually headed off. Mike had stopped drinking a few hours ago by this point and drove us back to the club (being stopped by a police patrol on the way, well you try driving through the bizarre one way system in Victoria when you are used to UK driving!!) which was an interesting experience, although not one that we want to experience again any time soon.
Well this post is beginning to become rather epic in size so I won't go into full detail of our escapades during the days in Victoria, we have enjoyed it but still look forward to blasting Sally over the long roads in the US.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Trains, planes and automobiles
Granville Street, the heart of the the bars and clubs it would seem we were staying right on it!
Sunday was spent stroling about Vancouver. We visited Downtown and found a great salad restaurant for lunch. Sounds dull doesn't it, but after hours on planes and stodgy pancakes for breakfast we were longing for some fresh food! Stanley Park proved to be the highlight of the day. The Totem poles were very impressive. Only Central Park in NYC is bigger than Stanley. A trip to the visitor centre that afternoon left us very light in the pocket but excited about the next day.
Whistler by train and plane. One of my previous posts talked about the abundance of attractive Canadian women all over the world that we had bumped into, one of the common themes coming from meeting them was that Whistler was worth a visit. Monday morning had us rise early, we skipped breakfast as pancakes at 06.30 weren't appealing, and headed to the Sheraton. Here we met our rather swish coach that took us to North Vancouver and the train yard.
The red carpet was out for us when we arrived at the train (we had decided to travel in "Glacier Dome" the first class service on this train). No security probing was required as this is Canada, I think Tom was greatful for not receiving the latex glove treatment! We were welcomed on board by our rather camp host Joseph. I was immediately struck by the number of old people! This was retiree turf the 2 of us lowered to the average age to at least mid 60s. Breakfast followed some bucks fizz, prepared by Joseph and we were soon crawling up the railway to Whistler.
We arrived at about midday. Downtown Whistler (the term downtown overused here perhaps!) was enchanting and almost Alpine. The striking thing was its age. Recently developed in terms of modern history and all the architecture was from a prescribed style of the time, however, still most interesting. Over lunch we decided to catch a cable car to the top of the mountain and then walk back down, however, the bloke in the tourist info centre told us it would take 6 hours! To the top we went anyhow to explore. Well the summer sun turned into summer snow! Tom had prepared to climb a mountain by not bringing suitable clothes, so we stayed in the warm til the snow subdued and we carried on to the summit in a rickety cable car.
Wonderful views from the top were shrouded in mist which cleared and reappeared in 20 minute cycles. We enjoyed cheating death (well the signs said we might die!) and wandered back down to the lower cable car station. When we got there the thunder and lightning combined with snow had set in and we were stuck up the mountain. Now usually we wouldn't mind but we had a flight back to Vancouver to catch and were starting to get quite concerned when we heard radio chatter about evacuations! As I mentioned though, the weather was changing every 20 minutes and soon we were on our way back down.
A quick tour round Whistler to buy a new golf glove and then to the shuttle to the lake. We were flying on a float plane and Green Lake was our runway! A rather 'large' american woman was on our flight and was offering round a half eaten cookie - surprisingly no one took her up on her offer! The flight was fantastic, a BA 747 it was not. We were flying only a few hundred feet above ground with superb views of the route back to Vancouver - catch the pics on the slideshow.
Towers. We have climbed many and I feel we will continue to climb more, however, Vancouver's is most likely the shortest one we will climb, so Tom felt at home! A scout over the city before a scraping of shopping marked the end to our time in Vancouver.
Onwards we must go for the colonies need further inspection.
Wonderful views from the top were shrouded in mist which cleared and reappeared in 20 minute cycles. We enjoyed cheating death (well the signs said we might die!) and wandered back down to the lower cable car station. When we got there the thunder and lightning combined with snow had set in and we were stuck up the mountain. Now usually we wouldn't mind but we had a flight back to Vancouver to catch and were starting to get quite concerned when we heard radio chatter about evacuations! As I mentioned though, the weather was changing every 20 minutes and soon we were on our way back down.
A quick tour round Whistler to buy a new golf glove and then to the shuttle to the lake. We were flying on a float plane and Green Lake was our runway! A rather 'large' american woman was on our flight and was offering round a half eaten cookie - surprisingly no one took her up on her offer! The flight was fantastic, a BA 747 it was not. We were flying only a few hundred feet above ground with superb views of the route back to Vancouver - catch the pics on the slideshow.
Towers. We have climbed many and I feel we will continue to climb more, however, Vancouver's is most likely the shortest one we will climb, so Tom felt at home! A scout over the city before a scraping of shopping marked the end to our time in Vancouver.
Onwards we must go for the colonies need further inspection.
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Torture.
LAX: Saturday 23rd August 2008.
After almost 12 hours up from Auckland, stuck in the middle of a 4 seat row, sandwiched between 2 sleepers and a crew who lacked appeal we hit LAX.
Tom and I have visited some of the more notable airports of the world and LAX was due to be a significant landmark. We arrived on board, what I have to say was a comfortable A330-200 into the American Airlines terminal at LAX (Qantas use it for this flight as it AA support the A332 there). When we left Auckland we had been informed that as we were departing on a flight from the US leaving the US to get to Vancouver we would have to disembark, and clear immigration and customs for the 3 hours we were in the US.
Tom an I have got used to the post disembarkment run, where you push your way up the queue of moving people from a flight, in the long corridors prior to immigration by walking fast. We hit immigration right at the front of the queue and thank God we did! There was an officious looking man ensuring we all understood English (touche) and had completed our forms correctly and then onto the rottweiler looking woman in her booth who would scrutinise my very existence. It has been a while since I've graced the shores of the US and since then they have introduced fingerprint scanning as well as photographing. What gives them the right to retain this information about me indefinitely? On this occasion, having been prepared and ticked all the necessary boxes, I was not there too long and was allowed to get my bag.
I waited, and waited for Tom (Latex gloves again I think). We collected our bags from a cramped carousel and proceeded to Customs. Customs was guy who was overwhelmed by people, with no queuing system so all the food based declarations we had made went unchecked!
Why is it that every International Airport in the world finds it necessary to rebuild itself every few months. And yes the next stage was to circumnavigate the hoardings telling us just how great this place was going to be, eventually, but in the mean time, tough you have to put up with it looking like a dog's arse!
Out we went into the not so fresh air, to be greeted by a charity collector who existed to tell weary travellers things they already knew about the airport and then expect them to hand over their spending money in return. Tom's lack of planning here worked wonders as all his US$ was packed away and we got off with pockets no lighter that before.
A hike amongst the strategically placed concrete pillars, that were only there to get in your way and stop you from seeing the other traveller you were about to run your baggage cart into, followed. We hit T3, for Alaska Airlines, unable to breach the doors for the herds coming out. Finally inside I was taken back to Southampton. For those of you familiar with S'oton airport, will know that it is a little gem on the south coast, great for flying from as it is a no nonsense simple airport. It is also small, it can be small as not man people pass through it as any one time. So why apply this philosophy to T3 at LAX? We battled to check in.
We had to check in using a kiosk - now don't get me wrong the BA kiosks at Heathrow are great, Alaska's ones not so, and we were on a QF flight code not an AS one! Having been accused of being Australian for the nth time - it's wearing thin now, it was noted we were aliens and therefore couldn't use their kiosks anyhow. We moved, missing a long queue mind you, and checked in before handing our bags to the TSA people to xray and throw on the floor. Cue the alarmed look on our faces as we prepared to lose our bags for the next 3 days.
Security, oh security, most understand it's use to protect, TSA understand it to spread terror and discomfort. A pre-security security check was next, just to make sure we were travellers and not mystical beings who frequent airports. This yielded 2 things, more annoyance but also a SSSS mark, or "Selected for Secondary Security Screening". Upstairs to security proper.
We did the airport strip, bunged our lives into plastic trays to be sent before the big moving microwave, I'm sure the bloke is watching reruns of minder and its all for show! Through the big beepy arch to collect our... no stop the SSSS has been spotted, we were put into what can only be described as a sheep pen. The most degrading part of the experience. A glass sided gated box in the middle of the security queue and a big woman shouting some incomprehensible phrase to alert all of our capture.
Thankfully for me it was a quick wipe down of my bag for explosives and with a green bar appearing on the computer (ahh its like being back running Java unit tests) I was away. Yet again however, Tom met more resistance and yes, latex gloves. I seem to spending most of my time waiting for Tom to be probed of late :s.
With that all over we decided it was high time to relax, grab a bite to eat, and kick back with the iPod. Alas this was not to be! We're in an airport, an international one at that, so you would think the amenities would cover most eventualities. Well maybe they did except for us (we'd been up for over 24hrs by this point) a hamburger, or hot dog or something else laced with salt wasn't appealing. We settled for Burger King, where I found their large meal was the same as the super size McDonalds ran in the UK for a while! They even had a triple Whopper available (I'm told by Tom that it doesn't exist in the UK!).
Having rearranged ourselves from being probed and humiliated and eaten we migrated to the holding pen, sorry, departure lounge. Now as we were quick getting to check-in, yes after all that it was still quick, we had been put on the standby list for the earlier flight to Vancouver. Checking with the departure clerk after lunch we found that we had been allocated seats on the earlier flight and we were away, not soon enough to Vancouver!
The flight was uneventful. I found myself sitting next to a young couple, and we shared a joke about the daft Canadian immigration form, then only to notice that she, Hannah, came from Gillingham, some 15 - 20 miles from me in Kent!
Vancouver was a welcome relief after the day's travels and the familiar sights of the airport relaxed me and before long we were on our way into downtown. A few days here will allow us to discover what Vancouver is all about and we are ready for the challenge, plus the weather is proving to be rather warm, which is rather jolly.
My therapist says that dwelling on the LAX debacle is not good for me so we will leave it there never to be spoken about again.
HEALTH WARNING: excessive exposure to LAX can increase the risks of suicide and alcholism.
After almost 12 hours up from Auckland, stuck in the middle of a 4 seat row, sandwiched between 2 sleepers and a crew who lacked appeal we hit LAX.
Tom and I have visited some of the more notable airports of the world and LAX was due to be a significant landmark. We arrived on board, what I have to say was a comfortable A330-200 into the American Airlines terminal at LAX (Qantas use it for this flight as it AA support the A332 there). When we left Auckland we had been informed that as we were departing on a flight from the US leaving the US to get to Vancouver we would have to disembark, and clear immigration and customs for the 3 hours we were in the US.
Tom an I have got used to the post disembarkment run, where you push your way up the queue of moving people from a flight, in the long corridors prior to immigration by walking fast. We hit immigration right at the front of the queue and thank God we did! There was an officious looking man ensuring we all understood English (touche) and had completed our forms correctly and then onto the rottweiler looking woman in her booth who would scrutinise my very existence. It has been a while since I've graced the shores of the US and since then they have introduced fingerprint scanning as well as photographing. What gives them the right to retain this information about me indefinitely? On this occasion, having been prepared and ticked all the necessary boxes, I was not there too long and was allowed to get my bag.
I waited, and waited for Tom (Latex gloves again I think). We collected our bags from a cramped carousel and proceeded to Customs. Customs was guy who was overwhelmed by people, with no queuing system so all the food based declarations we had made went unchecked!
Why is it that every International Airport in the world finds it necessary to rebuild itself every few months. And yes the next stage was to circumnavigate the hoardings telling us just how great this place was going to be, eventually, but in the mean time, tough you have to put up with it looking like a dog's arse!
Out we went into the not so fresh air, to be greeted by a charity collector who existed to tell weary travellers things they already knew about the airport and then expect them to hand over their spending money in return. Tom's lack of planning here worked wonders as all his US$ was packed away and we got off with pockets no lighter that before.
A hike amongst the strategically placed concrete pillars, that were only there to get in your way and stop you from seeing the other traveller you were about to run your baggage cart into, followed. We hit T3, for Alaska Airlines, unable to breach the doors for the herds coming out. Finally inside I was taken back to Southampton. For those of you familiar with S'oton airport, will know that it is a little gem on the south coast, great for flying from as it is a no nonsense simple airport. It is also small, it can be small as not man people pass through it as any one time. So why apply this philosophy to T3 at LAX? We battled to check in.
We had to check in using a kiosk - now don't get me wrong the BA kiosks at Heathrow are great, Alaska's ones not so, and we were on a QF flight code not an AS one! Having been accused of being Australian for the nth time - it's wearing thin now, it was noted we were aliens and therefore couldn't use their kiosks anyhow. We moved, missing a long queue mind you, and checked in before handing our bags to the TSA people to xray and throw on the floor. Cue the alarmed look on our faces as we prepared to lose our bags for the next 3 days.
Security, oh security, most understand it's use to protect, TSA understand it to spread terror and discomfort. A pre-security security check was next, just to make sure we were travellers and not mystical beings who frequent airports. This yielded 2 things, more annoyance but also a SSSS mark, or "Selected for Secondary Security Screening". Upstairs to security proper.
We did the airport strip, bunged our lives into plastic trays to be sent before the big moving microwave, I'm sure the bloke is watching reruns of minder and its all for show! Through the big beepy arch to collect our... no stop the SSSS has been spotted, we were put into what can only be described as a sheep pen. The most degrading part of the experience. A glass sided gated box in the middle of the security queue and a big woman shouting some incomprehensible phrase to alert all of our capture.
Thankfully for me it was a quick wipe down of my bag for explosives and with a green bar appearing on the computer (ahh its like being back running Java unit tests) I was away. Yet again however, Tom met more resistance and yes, latex gloves. I seem to spending most of my time waiting for Tom to be probed of late :s.
With that all over we decided it was high time to relax, grab a bite to eat, and kick back with the iPod. Alas this was not to be! We're in an airport, an international one at that, so you would think the amenities would cover most eventualities. Well maybe they did except for us (we'd been up for over 24hrs by this point) a hamburger, or hot dog or something else laced with salt wasn't appealing. We settled for Burger King, where I found their large meal was the same as the super size McDonalds ran in the UK for a while! They even had a triple Whopper available (I'm told by Tom that it doesn't exist in the UK!).
Having rearranged ourselves from being probed and humiliated and eaten we migrated to the holding pen, sorry, departure lounge. Now as we were quick getting to check-in, yes after all that it was still quick, we had been put on the standby list for the earlier flight to Vancouver. Checking with the departure clerk after lunch we found that we had been allocated seats on the earlier flight and we were away, not soon enough to Vancouver!
The flight was uneventful. I found myself sitting next to a young couple, and we shared a joke about the daft Canadian immigration form, then only to notice that she, Hannah, came from Gillingham, some 15 - 20 miles from me in Kent!
Vancouver was a welcome relief after the day's travels and the familiar sights of the airport relaxed me and before long we were on our way into downtown. A few days here will allow us to discover what Vancouver is all about and we are ready for the challenge, plus the weather is proving to be rather warm, which is rather jolly.
My therapist says that dwelling on the LAX debacle is not good for me so we will leave it there never to be spoken about again.
HEALTH WARNING: excessive exposure to LAX can increase the risks of suicide and alcholism.
Babes, Bikes and Beer!
Our final leg in New Zealand was kicked off by a frustrating bus ride into the heart of Auckland (I was left waiting about 50 mins and Mike about 30!).
When we eventually met up there seemed to be a great gathering of people on one of the main high streets, all the way along on both sides of the road (which I thought was a little bizarre considering there was only usual city traffic moving along). We walked around for about an hour or so and more and more people were turning up all looking up the hill, apparently there was going to be some sort of parade at lunchtime. Well after grabbing a quick subway Mike and I took our place by the road and awaited this parade not quite sure what to expect. First off there was a band of police (getting slightly anxious now), then a protest group campaigning against pornography (just what sort of parade is this??). Then about 10 mins after the protest we heard the low revving of some motorbike engines just up the road, and as the drove past we realized quite why the crowds had gathered. Let me put it this way, there were lots of bikes, and on the back of each was a glamour model not wearing anything from the waist up (it was a rather chilly day as well)!! When I went out to explore the sights and sounds of Auckland that was not one of the views that I had in mind (not that I object of course ;) ).
The rest of the day was spent getting an excellent view of the city from the Skytower (at last I have conquered the two towers!!!) we considered jumping off the tower but a storm pulled in whilst we were at the top, jumping off is one thing, jumping off in strong winds and rain is another!
We then went our separate ways and headed back to our respective families. On the last day of our stay I was invited out to my cousin's (Naomi) husband's (Anthony) brother's (Daniel) birthday gig. They are all Croatians, and although I'm relatively used to being the shortest person around it's not usually by such a large margin. Anthony is 6.4 and the shortest of his 5 siblings, and that's not mentioning the rest of the family! Still I knew I had the whole of the pacific to fly over the next day (Canada here we come) so I did the sensible thing and stayed up till 4 in the morning and got completely and totally wasted :D, I can always sleep on the plane!
Well an lie in and lots of water later, plus a great final breakfast with my family and I felt just about luke warm again :/ I said my farewells and thank yous and while Mike was doing the same with his family I wandered off to find an All Blacks shirt. My plan of sleeping on the plane utterly failed, a 11:30hr flight and not a wink - still I did manage to watch a load of films and TV shows. Due to a longer flight time we couldn't get our original connection at LA airport which meant that we had about 3hrs to kill. Unlike Cape Trib, however, when those 3 hours were up we were not pining for more time there, quite the opposite, it was quite possibly the most infuriating, intrusive, unpleasant and downright rude place I have ever been.
In fact I think Mike will enjoy picking it apart far more than me, I don't want to risk flashbacks either. So look out for Mike's: 'Guide to Surviving LAX'.
When we eventually met up there seemed to be a great gathering of people on one of the main high streets, all the way along on both sides of the road (which I thought was a little bizarre considering there was only usual city traffic moving along). We walked around for about an hour or so and more and more people were turning up all looking up the hill, apparently there was going to be some sort of parade at lunchtime. Well after grabbing a quick subway Mike and I took our place by the road and awaited this parade not quite sure what to expect. First off there was a band of police (getting slightly anxious now), then a protest group campaigning against pornography (just what sort of parade is this??). Then about 10 mins after the protest we heard the low revving of some motorbike engines just up the road, and as the drove past we realized quite why the crowds had gathered. Let me put it this way, there were lots of bikes, and on the back of each was a glamour model not wearing anything from the waist up (it was a rather chilly day as well)!! When I went out to explore the sights and sounds of Auckland that was not one of the views that I had in mind (not that I object of course ;) ).
The rest of the day was spent getting an excellent view of the city from the Skytower (at last I have conquered the two towers!!!) we considered jumping off the tower but a storm pulled in whilst we were at the top, jumping off is one thing, jumping off in strong winds and rain is another!
We then went our separate ways and headed back to our respective families. On the last day of our stay I was invited out to my cousin's (Naomi) husband's (Anthony) brother's (Daniel) birthday gig. They are all Croatians, and although I'm relatively used to being the shortest person around it's not usually by such a large margin. Anthony is 6.4 and the shortest of his 5 siblings, and that's not mentioning the rest of the family! Still I knew I had the whole of the pacific to fly over the next day (Canada here we come) so I did the sensible thing and stayed up till 4 in the morning and got completely and totally wasted :D, I can always sleep on the plane!
Well an lie in and lots of water later, plus a great final breakfast with my family and I felt just about luke warm again :/ I said my farewells and thank yous and while Mike was doing the same with his family I wandered off to find an All Blacks shirt. My plan of sleeping on the plane utterly failed, a 11:30hr flight and not a wink - still I did manage to watch a load of films and TV shows. Due to a longer flight time we couldn't get our original connection at LA airport which meant that we had about 3hrs to kill. Unlike Cape Trib, however, when those 3 hours were up we were not pining for more time there, quite the opposite, it was quite possibly the most infuriating, intrusive, unpleasant and downright rude place I have ever been.
In fact I think Mike will enjoy picking it apart far more than me, I don't want to risk flashbacks either. So look out for Mike's: 'Guide to Surviving LAX'.
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