Gremlin's Tall Stories

The alarm rang at 7am, but I was actually already awake, waking with a start at 6.55am, thinking I might have slept in. I wanted to sleep however, so I snoozed the alarm twice. Fortunately, I didn’t sleep any more, getting up, having a remaining apple from a previous breakfast, for breakfast. I chucked all my gear into my combination of bags, as I needed to re-pack at the warehouse anyway.

I was down at the bike and ready to go by 8.15am and we left at 8.30am for the warehouse. I went last, just before the van, with the GPS, in case we got split up. As expected, we did, the last 5 bikes having to stop for a red light (where Murray duly did his best to create as much smoke while braking). Murray locked up his rear, sliding to a stop just behind the two in front. I lost sight of them all, they couldn’t see me either.

Roger’s GPS was telling him to zigzag all the way to the warehouse, so I took the lead briefly, to show where to go, then went to the back again. Finally reaching the warehouse, we go into the loading area… no-one there. Roger rings Steve, the guy working for Kiwi Shipping, and we find out we’re supposed to be somewhere else. It’s a few roads over, so off we go again. Down the correct road, we ring Steve again, we’ve gone a bit far, but he can see us. Back we go, and eventually we’re at the warehouse, and the rest are all there.

We find out the hard way that they’ve only just moved into the warehouse a week prior, all our gear, crates and materials, plus parcels we’ve sent are at the old one, so Steve eventually heads off to collect gear. A lot of time passes, we get some of it, but poor Steve is a busy man, having been up since 4am. Once the crates and luggage are brought over we can strap the bikes onto the crates, but we’re still waiting for the parcels we’ve sent during the trip.

Ken talks to him and I head off with him and Steve to collect all the parcels. It involves a lot of hunting through many shelves to locate all the parcels. The girls have been busy, and as a group of 20 odd people, there is about 2 pallet loads worth of parcels. I end up in the shelving, passing out some of the boxes. We return to the warehouse, the rest of the group wondering where we’ve been, and Murray is anxious to get going as he has a 3pm flight to Hawaii.

We sort through the rest, complete the packing and we’re all done at 2.30pm. Jan brings the van back after the first load back to the hotel (another group left by taxi) and we return to the hotel. Ken had spoken to Steve, and my bike didn’t go on a pallet, instead being put into another container and going direct to Auckland, and it should be a bit quicker, arriving early October, while the others will only leave LA in late September.

The advantage for me was very minimal prep of the bike as it didn’t go into a crate, so instead my time was taken up helping others and re-packing my gear.

I’m hoping the bike arrives as planned, as the Grand Challenge is the last weekend of October and being a 25th anniversary, I’m hoping like hell I can do the whole ride (900km ride on Friday and 1600km on Saturday to Sunday). The bike will need a service prior… so we’ll see how we go.

I drop my gear in Gary and Barabara’s room and while wanting a shower, I figure food is probably best, as we’ll be fed on the plane shortly after take-off and just before landing, so eating too late will mess things up. I ask for the California Club sandwich, which looks like good value, and when it arrives, blimey, it’s huge. I also give in to the carrot cake, which is pretty good.

In the room, the shower, while weak in pressure is fantastic after a very hot and sweaty time packing up all the bikes. Stepping out, blimey, it’s 5.30pm already, we have to vacate the room by 6pm. Didn’t know where all the time went, but so much for a casual afternoon spent blogging. I make sure stuff like my pocket knife is in my checked baggage.

We head downstairs, just missing one shuttle, but since my flight is only at 10.30pm there is no rush. A group of 6 of us get the next free shuttle to the airport (they run every 20 minutes or so) and even find another Kiwi on business and I’m dropped off at the United terminal (the others had Air NZ flights). Check-in is quite easy, I hadn’t even read my sheet of paper finding out which terminal, flight or destination I had, but pulled out the sheet at the check-in desk. The check-in lady is pulling all sorts of faces, which is a little alarming, and questioning her, no, it’s not me (wonder why I ever thought that) but rather a young adult lady whose throwing a tantrum complete with tears (on the phone to daddy who’s a lawyer who might have something to say) that a two year old would be proud of. For some reason she’s been stopped from flying, but what would I care… I’m going home (and even if they prevented me for some weird reason, they’d get rid of me anyway at some point).

The security check wasn’t that easy. Being a novice when it comes to flying, perhaps checking in with a crowd of others may have been a better bet, but they were all bored when I arrived, so I suspect I was the source of amusement for a few minutes. Shoes and belts off, nothing in pockets, hold up your pants while you walk through and get an intimate full body scan by a machine. The guy wants a better look through my bag, and it turns out the extra laptop battery and packet of fudge puzzled him. He locates it all in the end, makes himself happy, and lets me re-pack my bag (after it was almost empty of stuff going through the scanner several times).

It’s a bit of a walk to my gate, so on the way I find a little shop, locate a drink, snacks and some sleeping tablets. The tablets are a precaution to make sure I sleep well on the plane, as we leave at night and arrive in Sydney at 6am, so sleeping the whole night should actually help my body clock quite well. I didn’t suffer any jetlag going east, so aiming to not have any going west.

It’s only 7pm, so I settle down at the gate with my laptop to write some more blogs. I hope to get them all written before arriving in NZ, so I can just post them all. By 8.15pm I’d completed the last 2 days of the trip and only had 2 previous days to do. Battery was at 50%, with just over an hour remaining which wasn’t too bad for an old machine. The only bad bit is the lounge music. I can see why you come across irate people on a plane. I’m feeling kind of angry right now myself, as the music seems to constantly get worse, trying to pass itself off as cheery (like piano type crap).

At 10pm LA time it was finally time to board and we were slowly herded on like cattle (sometimes in the past, in such queues I’ve made a baa’ing sound – always tempting, but not today). All my luck was used at once when I found my assigned seat, an aisle seat behind the bulk head, so oodles of space. It gets even better for the other bloke on the centre row (who I found out later chose the other aisle seat specially) and I, when no-one else takes the other two remaining seats.

Wheels up, and while reaching altitude I have a water leak dripping down onto my legs… ah, let the fun begin (obviously my luck has run out hasn’t it?). I signal for an attendant and show her the problem. She explains it’s condensation, nothing to worry about, so if she isn’t, I won’t. She gets some paper towel and switches things off and on, eventually sorting the problem, but still checks regularly, and it returns once or twice.

Dinner is served shortly into the flight, rosemary chicken with stuffing or a pasta, so I take the chicken, which is actually very nice. Time to have the couple of sleeping pills and kick back. Custom plugs go in, pillow around the neck. Sleep doesn’t come very fast and I wonder if these damn things work? I’d been yawning before I even got on the flight, so I expect I will go to sleep regardless. In preparation I take the seat one in, otherwise trolleys and people will be bashing my shoulder and elbow. It probably took about an hour for sleep to come, Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides starts playing, and I haven’t seen it so I’m annoyed. Sleep is more important, and sleep finally comes.

I’m vaguely aware that someone is saying sandwiches… I like sandwiches. I peer around, the attendant has just past my row so I reach up and touch him gently. He explains he tried to wake me, but no response. No problem I say, and I get my sandwich… which wasn’t much to write about, bread and cheese, but hey, I had a sandwich and the suckers sleeping didn’t. Some water, a toilet break and the TVs are saying we’re a little over half way through the 14 hour flight.

Sneaky buggers had taken the seats either side of me, the one to my right is occupied by a huge woman who doesn’t speak much English and can’t really even fit in one seat properly, but her presence actually keeps that side of me warm anyway, and I’d given up messing with my blanket and used my top instead. My original seat on my left had also been stolen, but they spent their time sleeping as well.

I was only intent on sleep again, so squeezed back in, again, it took a while, but sleep came, waking 2 hours out of Sydney. I took out the plugs, breakfast would be served shortly and no point trying for more sleep. Breakfast was a choice of French toast or eggs… urgh, who likes those nasty things, and the French toast was slightly burning and definitely uninspiring. Sausage was ok. Right after breakfast I stole my original seat back, the person had left, and it gave the 3 of us in the row more space.

I bashed the audio jack around on my headset as it didn’t like working unless you held it in the socket at an angle, and finally got it working, listening to music and reading the inflight magazine until we landed. I’d missed Pirates, Rio and presumably another movie, but had lots of sleep. A couple of attendants came over separately to apologise about the inconvenience with the water giving me a form and a URL where I could receive a token of their appreciation. Nice touch, but it was harmless water… as the guy in the row joked, I should see if I could get a free flight, but I was dry, and it’s not like I fly regularly anyway.

Deplaning in Sydney, customs isn’t necessary as I’m in International Transit, so after clearing security (some guy in front prevented me from being dragged aside I presume) it was up to the Transfers Desk to receive my next boarding pass, for a Qantas jet to Auckland. From there, I found my way to the gate, the terminal so familiar from my previous layover, but none of the dramas of last time. I found a power plug (nice to stop using converters) to charge the laptop, even free Wi-Fi, so posted up 5 days of blogs and continued typing others while eating some Fruitbursts that have travelled from Auckland, when I left. I still have about a day and a half to write.

The flight to Auckland was on one of the little planes (well, not the really little ones), ironically this one had a screen for each person (while the 14 hour flight had a set of screens for everyone on board) with the Qantas on demand entertainment. I’d already used it on the previous NZ-AU flight, and knowing if I got a move on, I could squeeze two movies into the 3 hour flight. I watched Source Code and Rio.

Lunch was served over half way through, beef and potato or chicken with rice, so I took the beef, having already had chicken on the United Flight. It was delicious and piping hot. The flight attendant asked what I would like to drink, and I said “Did I see Bundaberg ginger beer?”, She confirmed, so I eagerly took one, telling her it was the first in 6 weeks… and promptly spilled the first drops over myself while taking it from her. It was delicious.

As I first laid eyes on New Zealand it was much like flying here permanently, back in 1997. Aotearoa was predictably the land of the long white cloud. Australia and USA barely had a cloud in the sky, and conversely, I could barely see any land beneath the cloud that enveloped NZ.

I breathed a sigh of relief landing in Auckland. About 15,000km flying to the USA, 15,000km riding around the USA and another 15,000km flying home in 6 weeks, I was safely back on home soil and no serious issues to anyone on the trip. Passing through customs was unexpectedly easy, not even having my bags inspected. I suspect that countries are saying to themselves… well, if you flew out of the USA successfully, you’re fine landing here.

My parents collected me, we headed home and I spent the afternoon unpacking and staying awake.

Pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FDgX39m7EmEJXHzC6