It has been a while since the last set of trip posts. So here is one straight from the plane on the way to happy San Francisco. More will follow from Phoenix as well as the Grand Canyon.
After extensive coverage of the European trip, I did drop the ball a bit on travel reporting. I had made a trip to a physics conference in Adelaide, but I never finished writing the blog post about it. In case you are wondering, in Adelaide they still party like it’s 1959.
At the start of the year there was also a visit to Hobart. But I never even got around to starting writing about that. All I can say is that a visit to the Cascade Brewery is a must and due to severely bad weather we didn’t make it to the Cadbury Factory tour.
But now I am going international again and no this is not a reference to ‘that’ Tom Jones song. It will be a short trip that will include San Francisco, Phoenix and a quick visit to the Grand Canyon. I was very busy prior to departure hence a lot of the trip will have to be planned ‘on the fly’.
Due to turbulance we were not allowed to get up so it took some time before I could get the laptop. Now there is a giant queue to the toilet as well. Surely they could keep it in for a 16 hour flight. It’s just a test of determination and commitment.
So far this trip has had a few firsts for me. I booked the whole trip over the Internet. Then before departure I did the online check-in thing. I have to say the Internet has made the whole process a lot more civilised. Then we got to the airport ahead of time without any issues, which was a first as well. But the biggest surprise was when the lady at the check-in counter changed the seat bookings to give me an ‘exit seat’ (seat next to the door which has 1.5 meters of ‘leg room’) because of my size. I had stopped asking for a special seat since the airlines were never that helpful, but the lady at United has been a life saver.
The first leg of the trip was a flight from Melbourne to Sydney. That particular plane then continues to LA and terminates in Chicago. After arriving in Sydney we decided to have lunch. This proved a costly decision, with a simple Chinese rice meal costing $14. Everything else was also ridiculously expensive, which quite frankly looks like extortion to me. However having lunch there was still a good idea since the ‘lunch’ that was to follow on the plane was more like a entree sized meal.
We boarded the flight to San Francisco, which originated in Adelaide and terminates in New York. This flight was a lot more full than the Melbourne to Sydney leg. I still have plenty of leg room which really is the only thing that matters to me. I also seem to have been given an interesting honour. When the US president flies aboard an airplane the call sign of course is Air Force One. This flight has a call sign E71-heavy, where heavy literary means the plane is heavy, clearly indicating my presence on board. For those interested in air traffic control chatter United offers a special treat by broadcasting all of the calls on one of the audio channels. However, unless one is familiar with the abbreviations and acronyms the whole conversation sounds like gibberish.
There is one more thing I might mention about flying United. Do not rely on the on-board entertainment system to entertain you. There are no individual screens and half way through the flight the system is still broken. It does have an 80 music channel though, so I am happy.
Now it’s time to get some work done. I shall report again once we get to Frisco. Yes, Frisco. I prefer that abbreviation to the one I keep hearing, namely San Fran. I’m sorry but San Fran sounds so gay.
