Friday - Fullerton

Not all days have 24 hours in them. Today, for example, had 39 hours. Night came in the middle of the afternoon, and we arrived in Los Angeles six hours before we left Sydney.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Breakfast at Pie Face

This morning we woke at our leisure, but then we had to begin the sad business of packing everything back into our bags because the time has come to head home. We had plenty of time to pack neatly because we didn’t have to check out of the hotel until 11:00—but first we went down the street to the nearest Pie Face and ate breakfast. Michael had a ham and cheese quiche and a chocolate croissant; Nancy had a spinach quiche and a mango tart.

After checkout, we rolled our luggage to the train station five blocks away. Earlier in the week, we had found another entrance to the Museum Station that was a little closer to the Hotel Metro than the one we had exited when we arrived. And not only was this station closer, but it had an escalator, so we had been looking forward to not having to lug our bags back down the same stairs we had lugged them up. When we got on the escalator today, however, we discovered that it stopped at the shopping mall one level below the street; to get to the train tracks, we still had to descend three flights of stairs. We had just started down when a nice man who had neither gray hair nor bursitis offered to carry Nancy's bigger bag for her.

Fifteen minutes later we were at the airport. (Let’s hear it for light rail!) While Nancy was able to get through the automated emigration check points without any problem, Michael got stopped and had to wait in the "special assistance" line for about twenty minutes because the automated system failed to match the person in his passport photo with the person in the photo taken at the entry kiosk. (Apparently, the travel bag he was wearing over his shoulder today was enough to confuse robotic eyes.)

Lunch Tubs

Having cleared emigration and security with a couple of hours to spare before boarding time, we were able to enjoy our final lunch-by-the-tub at a Mediterranean deli in the airport’s food court.

Our flight back to the U.S. was nowhere near as comfortable as our first flight over the Pacific nearly a month ago, because this time we were sitting in coach instead of reclining in business class. (Our stock of Delta SkyMiles had stretched only so far). It could have been worse, however. When Michael booked our flight, he had reserved a window seat for Nancy and an aisle seat for himself, hoping that if the plane didn’t fill up no one would be assigned to the seat between us. The ploy worked, so we had some extra space for our hips and elbows. The service in coach was not as solicitous as it had been in business class, and the cuisine wasn’t as haute. A standard dinner—braised beef with mashed potatoes, carrots, and broccoli, plus a green salad, roll, and chocolate mousse—was served shortly after we took off about 3 p.m. In the middle of the night—or whatever you want to call the period when the cabin lights were kept low and the window shades were pulled down—a warmed-up tomato, basil, and cheese sandwich was served. The food wasn’t bad, but mostly it just gave us something to do when we were too restless to sleep and too bleary-eyed to read during the thirteen-hour flight.

Airline Dinner

A new day "dawns" in the coach section.

IT'S YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

When the cabin lights came back up, unnaturally cheery flight attendants passed us trays of scrambled eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, and fruit. Shortly after the "service items" were cleared away, the captain announced that we were beginning our descent into Los Angeles, where the local time was around 8:30 a.m. on Friday 28 February. We're getting a three-day weekend, and it isn't even a holiday!

Going through U.S. customs was rather easy once we got there, but it seemed that we had walked the entire length of LAX before we arrived at the immigration and customs checking area. Then we waited and waited and waited and waited on the curb outside the terminal for the shuttle from Thrifty Car Rental. (Why hadn’t we reserved a vehicle from Enterprise or National? At least eight of their shuttles went by before Thrifty’s single operating bus arrived.) Then we waited and waited and waited in line at the rental office before we finally got a car to drive to Fullerton so we could spend the rest of the day with Nancy’s dad. (Until Thrifty gets it act together, we recommend choosing a different company if you need to rent a car at LAX.)

It was after noon by the time we got to Fullerton. We weren’t really hungry, but we thought we ought to have a little lunch to help our bodies adjust to the time zone, so we stopped at Taquería la Bamba before we went to Doug’s place. Nancy had a small but satisfying taco filled with carne asada, onions, cilantro and salsa verde; Michael had a chicken enchilada. Our whole lunch cost $3.

Knowing that we would arrive before he got home from dialysis today, Doug had left his apartment unlocked for us. We let ourselves in and then collapsed on the nearest padded horizontal surfaces. When Doug came in about 3:00, we got up and visited for about an hour, and then, because dialysis is as exhausting as transoceanic air travel, we all went back to sleep for a while before going down to Morningside’s Crystal Terrace for dinner.

Doug catching up with friends on Facebook

Since our flight home tomorrow leaves at 8 a.m., we decided to spend the night at a hotel near LAX rather than stay in Fullerton so we won’t have to get up quite so early and fight quite so much early-morning traffic. So we said goodbye to Doug (happy that we’ll be returning at the end of May to help him celebrate his 95^th birthday) and drove back into Los Angeles for what we hope will be a good night’s sleep.