Home!!!

In many ways it's good to be home, in other ways it's not a happy time. I came back by myself, without Jonnene, although we already knew that would be the case. The good thing is that we're on the downhill side of this immigration ride and I really think we can count her arrival to the States in weeks now!

Ah, my trip back to the northern hemisphere, 19:38 of total in-the-air time....here's one way to look at it:

Perth to Melbourne: My flight had already been set back an hour because of the time change in Western Australia, and now it was moving back another hour because the plane was late getting in from Sydney! That meant a 12:45 am Monday morning takeoff! The good thing was that it meant another hour with Jonnene and the later arrival meant that much less time spent in the Melbourne-Tullamarine Airport. I'll skip the sappy parts of my last couple of hours with my wife but it was nice....I could look into those eyes all day. My last view of her as I turned the corner on the skybridge was of her looking at me and a short wave before I went out of sight. I thought of that sight for hours afterward. I was on a 747 outfitted for domestic flying and the plane, which can seat around 340, was only 1/3 full! The flight attendents were telling us that once we were in the air, feel free to claim a row to sleep actually laying down! And we all took advantage of it! I put in about 2 hours of snooze time of the total 3:08 flight time, so I felt somewhat rested as we landed in Melbourne under a cloudy morning around 5:50 am and it was a tad chilly outside!

Melbourne to Los Angeles: I spent a lot of time on the internet kiosks letting everyone know I made it to Mel-bun....even made a blog entry. The only thing that appealed to me for brekkie (Aussie slang: breakfast) was the sausage croissant at Hungry Jack's (the Aussie name for Burger King) and I really didn't want that either. But mixed with iced coffee it wasn't too bad. Around 10:30 I made my way thru immigration so I could get my passport stamped that I was officially leaving Australia and headed toward Gate 11 in the International Terminal. Sent a final message to Jonnene after getting one from her. She had just woke up, about two hours behind my time. Because our flight was going to the USA, we had to go thru a search of our carry-on bags and a non-intrusive body search, no problem for me since I had nothing to worry about and my time wasn't being encrouched upon. The lady looking thru my pack saw the cookies Jonnene had made for me and was envious....she likes cookies! We started boarding our Qantas 747 around 11:50 am but would still be 20 minutes late leaving (so far, EVERY flight on this trip has started late!).

More, Melbourne to Los Angeles: I sat at seat 47A, a left-side window seat and the closest to the front I've ever been on these trans-Pacific flights....I liked it...only 5 rows from the front of the economy/peanut gallery section! Unfortunately, I had a couple of large people in the other two seats of my section, but they were nice folks and went out of their way to not intrude on my space. Saw two movies, "World Trade Center" (not bad at all despite it being a Oliver Stone flick) and "The Devil Wears Prada" (which I liked much more than I thought I would....Anne Hathaway is a babe, I admit it, and Meryl Streep was "delicious" as the evil boss). There was nothing else on the entertainment system that I really cared to watch...maybe because Jonnene wasn't there and I was thinking about her a lot. So I tried to sleep as much as I could but it was in fitful spurts. I did my usual laps around the plane to stretch my legs. Fourteen hours can really stiffen you up! Anyway, we came into LAX around 7:20 am Monday morning, about 5 hours before we left Melbourne (I love that conflict of the International Dateline!).

More to come!