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.