I think this is the day I don’t exist.
Oct 11th Part 3
I think this is the day I don’t exist.
According to my laptop it’s currently 8:30am Oct 12th in Toronto. According to the plane it’s 5:30am Oct13th. Oh and I’m still in the air. Let me catch you up on how this super long day of travel is going.
Things were going fine until I got off of the plane in L.A.. The L.A. airport is confusing and has no helpful signage. Thankfully they have enough staff to easily find someone to ask questions.
I wasn’t 100% sure if my luggage would go directly though to my connecting flight to Fiji or if I had to claim it and go through customs again in L.a. I got off of my flight from Toronto and found a sign for the next flights and their corresponding gates. But it was only for American Airline flights and I needed Air Pacific to Fiji. Since there were not any signs other than the baggage claim (which took a couple minutes of searching just to find that) I asked a security guard lady near the escalator to the baggage area as to where I should catch my next flight. She didn’t know and sent me in a different direction down some stairs away from the baggage area to the flight ticket booth area. Anyways I spoke to them and they said I needed to go to the next building over to catch an international flight. I asked about my luggage and she didn’t know if it would go through automatically or not but said that I was no longer able to get to it since I had left the customs safe zone. Basically I’d have to go back through customs and probably miss my flight which was departing in an hour just to find out or I could carry on my way to the International building. So I decided to try to return to the security guard near the baggage escalator and see if she would remember me from a minute ago and let me get to the baggage area to confirm. (yes at this point I wish I only had carry on, but there is no way I could have done that with the lack of space on these flights). Anyways I ended up going up an escalator that was roped off, had a security lady yelling at me asking if I had an access badge an I just belined it for the security lady near the baggage escalator and thankfully she remembered me and let me go to the baggage area. I got there, inquired and they assured me that my luggage would arrive in Fiji and that I might need to claim it there.
I then proceeded to try to find this international building to catch my flight. Again super poor signage. There were no signs to say that the Departures were the second floor of the international building. It was clear that Arrivals was the main floor. So again I had to inquire.
I found Departures, found my airline, found out what gate my flight was at (since they didn’t have it on my ticket or on the large screen of all the flights in the main ticket area). And made my way to purchase a magazine and some ticktacs for the plane. I had about 40 minutes and didn’t realize that I would have to clear U.S. customs again and got stuck in a massive line. I managed to sweet talk my way through it by saying that my flight left in 30 minutes and a lot of excuse mes but the customs area was super unorganized for the heavy amount of traffic going through it. I got to the flight gate and had to wait another 40 minutes to board anyways.
The plane is pretty dissapointing so far. I’m dying to get off of it an d this is only the 9.5 hour flight. Coming home I have a 13 hour flight but it’s on differet airline so hopefully it will be better. The seat I’m in isn’t what I thought I had when I looked at what my travel adgent had booked for me online. I thought I was a few rows further back in the plane which would have been a bit better. As it is right now I am on an isle seat of a packed plane, with a baby across the ile to my right and two people that speak german to my left, so conversation hasn’t really exsisted. Plus I am basically right beside the restrooms which stink really badly. Ahh well. I’ll just cross my fingers that this flight is over soon.
When this flight lands it will have travelled 5500 miles from L.A. to Nada, Fiji. I’m not sure what that translates to in Kilometeres but I know it’s pretty damn far.
Hopefully we land soon. I haven’t been able to get more than an hour and a half or so of sleep. The one time I actually managed to fall sleep the people next to me woke me up to go to the bathroom which took half an hour by the time they both had gone and I was fully awake again at that point. I’m hoping to sleep on the last five hour flight from Fiji to Sydney but I think it might be crowded too since this plane is soo full and I can’t imagine all of these people staying in Fiji.
It’s challenging to stay positive when I’ve been up for 25 hours. This kinda feels like my film days and my all night shifts, where you are so past tired that you feel like a zombie and you’re body temperature is up because it’s working in overdrive to keep you awake, you don’t have an appetite, especially not for the gross looking and smelling, uber processed, ham & cheese on a plain white hamburger bun sandwich that they just handed to me. I’m looking forward to a shower and some sleep.
I’m probably a little over half way through my long day of traveling and I’m looking forward to arriving in Sydney. I just hope I’m not too tired to sight see for the afternoon when I arrive, so that I can try to get onto their time zone as quickly as possible.
– Bonnie :)
