The day begins paradoxically at night, half way over the Pacific, we cross the International Date Line and Saturday 6th November 2010 vanishes, never to be seen again.
The night doesn’t drag quite as I had expected.
Whilst not comfortable, I do manage some sleep. It’s hard to stretch out, so my legs extend into the aisle. I get kicked all the time, which prompts me to pull my legs in.
They then threaten to cramp which would be worse. Thankfully, they don’t.
I wake or whatever at about 5.30AM. That is of course San Francisco time and we are over Fiji. I think we have been up for about 20 hours now, though the maths is too hard.
Even though it’s 5.30AM SF time, it is not that in Auckland and we have 3 hours to go.
Suddenly the crew bring us breakfast which goes down quite well and wakes us all up.
For airline food it’s not too bad. Omelette with hash browns and tomato, OJ and coffee.
We then settle in for the flight into Auckland which thankfully is quite soon.
We arrive at 4.35AM local time, sweaty and feeling lived in.
Off course the transit lounge has no shower, so we stay dirty.
Auckland Airport is just waking up, and most of the shops are open. Three hours to our departure, so we stroll, have a coffee, stroll, sit and generally just hang about.
Our seats on the flight to Adelaide are 3A and 3B which excites us as that means we are in Business Class or near the front.
Of course we hope we have been bumped to BC.
They call our flight, starting at the back of the aircraft so we wait and wait and wait until they call our rows.
At check in our Boarding Passes, issued at San Francisco, flash “invalid Seats” and we are sent to the back of the bus, 28A and 28B.
All is not bad though as the last 2 rows either side, except for us are empty, so we can spread out.
I finish Chris O’Brien’s book, I had to put it down two pages from the finish, as I was close to tears. I knock it off, and is does the same thing, though it’s a bit more private down the back.
I start my new book, another Bill Bryson on the development of the English language. It’s good and I get halfway through by Adelaide.
The flight is bumpy out of Auckland, settles down and I manage to see the Murray mouth as we descend.
It’s bumpy into Adelaide over the hills and I am surprised how green it all is, still.
Suddenly, we are down and home.
The baggage is slow coming off the plane. So slow in fact we think it may have got lost between Detroit and Adelaide however it finally appears and we tackle Customs.
We have declared all the food items we have, however this just smooths our path and finally it’s all over.
Eight countries and over 26.000km’s.
Welcome home.
