Today, we are flying home. We will cross the International Date Line again and I never thought I would cross in my lifetime. We also cross the equator twice on this trip. We were up and heading to the airport for our flight by 7am. International flights require 3 hours pre-flight check-in and security. Our cab was quick to show up and we headed out with lots of traffic. Our fair was $46 but it was on the meter so it was accurate. The Sydney airport is enormous. Where we were dropped off was the far end from where United check-in was so we had a long walk past all the international airlines some of which I did not even recognize. The agents at the United desk helped us through and on we went to security. It went quicker than expected so we got to our gate pretty early. Plenty of time to get something to eat and some coffee. The Australians are very picky about coffee. Even a coffee truck vendor will have a full on espresso machine or they are out of business. They also like it very strong and crazy hot. A large coffee is “Long Black”. Terms like Flat White (coffee with milk/cream...), Long Black (two espressos plus scalding water), double sweet, … Once it arrives be careful or you will burn yourself. I watched lots of planes from every place on the planet. China, Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar, Emirates, Japan, Korean, India,… There are more than 30 different countries airlines that fly out of Sydney. The biggest passenger plane seemed to be Emirates where the plane has two floors. A top floor of 100 seats of 1st and Business class and a lower floor with economy. This is definitely an airport focused on the very wealthy. As we walked to our gate we passed some very interesting shops. The departures board showed flights just about everywhere. Finally, we boarded but only a few minutes late. Our plane is big and a bit cramped for our seats. Interestingly, the plane was far from full. There were at least a dozen people in economy who had 3 seats together to lay down during the flight. Lucky them. We got little or no sleep on the 15 hour flight. It was pretty crazy flight. After flying a couple of hours, we got a hot “dinner” of chicken and rice or pasta with sauce. The after the lights were dimmed and windows darkened. This plane has electronic windows. They can be controlled by the crew or by a button to change the opaqueness of the window. The idea was to get us used to the idea of the change of internal clocks. BTW, it did not work for us but sitting up and not sleeping for that many hours can mess you up. About 8pm, the lights came up a bit and a small sandwich “snack” was passed out. After about 30 minutes, the lights were dimmed again and stayed that way until about 1:30 am our time for breakfast. An omelet and blueberry muffin. Our last food made in Australia. The reason was that we were less than 2 hours from Houston and the time there was 7am. On food from outside the USA. IT IS BETTER. We have found that the food is usually better made and higher quality than what we have in the US. Even a fast food restaurant will be better. People outside the US do not tolerate thrown, sometimes literally, together food. If it does not look like the ad, the company finds out really fast and fixes the problem or closes up. Another thing is that you do not need a chemical degree to read the ingredients on anything from a soft drink to a candy bar. Here we have a long string of chemicals in everything. Outside of the US, they have a simple list that only has the things you expect to find. Look it up sometimes. You will find the ingredients list to be down right simple overseas. We put up with way to much crap in our food. When we arrive, we are EXHAUSTED and our internal clocks are a mess. We left Sydney at 12:45 PM on Feb 14th and arrived in Houston at 9:45 AM on Feb 14th. We time traveled back in time by several hours. The Houston is under construction and a mess. Very confusing but we made it to Customs and were practically waved through. Then security which also was no problem but a bit slower.
The flight data is crazy. Most of the time we were flying at 39,000 feet, outside air was -50 or lower, our ground speed was over 600 mph and we regularly had 100 plus tail winds. As a result we arrived 45 minutes early to Houston. Very little turbulence. Off to our gate to take the last flight of the trip. As we arrived in Amarillo, I looked out the windows and my first thought was “Why do all the roads have really white sand along the sides?” Then I realized that it was snow. Welcome back to winter. We left Australia in the upper 70’s and low 80’s with a warm breeze and arrived with low 50’s and cold winds. James picked us up and we moved everything into the Betty’s car for the two hour drive back to Logan. There were several times I was really having trouble staying awake but we made it. Back in Logan we Un-Winterized (is that a word) the 5th wheel and turned on the heat. It took us about 20 minutes to get everything working. Phyllis cooked a dinner for us and we all headed for bed. Shawna and I were up by 2am. Yep, fully awake. Our internal clocks are going to take a while to reset.
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