Day 1 - Saturday, March 29, 2008
Day one was travelling to get there. Lots of travelling. Glen thought it was a 1 hour flight to Melbourne, so therefore about 4 hours to LA. We all now know that it’s longer than that…
Actually, we almost didn’t even make it onto the plane. Our changeover between our arrival from Launceston and departure to LA was ridiculously tight. By the time we collected our bags from Virgin, hired a special bus to take us immediately to International, our flight was already closed. We did some fast talking and were chaperoned to the plane by a lovely Indian employee of Untied. He was very polite. As a result, they didn’t even weigh our bags, which was a bonus! We got away with $80 excess baggage charges on the domestic leg. Compared to other GSE Teams, this was a coup!
The flight to LA was an experience. About 14 hours I think? A long time anyway. Sarah wrote down all the movie titles, so we’ll have to get them from her later. The only one I remember was named, ‘Dan in Real Life.’ It was about two brothers who compete over a girl at a family holiday. Way too close to home when you’ve grown up with as many brothers as me!
Glen’s birthday is on the 30th March, so we talked to the staff on the plane and asked them to bring us a drink at midnight so we could celebrate. Funnily enough, despite the fact that there were several intelligent people involved in the conversation, we somehow failed to remember the international dateline. Because of the dateline, we were just going back to relive 29th March, so it wasn’t really is birthday anyway! Nevertheless, we had a drink and celebrated. Vodka doesn’t like me, so I left it at about 5mL. Glen finished mine and a few others. He paid for it later that same day. He was still paying for it on the 30th too. Perhaps multi day hangovers are another quirk of the dateline??
Glen suffering from pre birthday enthusiasm
Many of the plane’s passengers were trying to sleep, so Glen had headed to the galley at the back of the plane in search of good conversation and mediocre beer. I joined him for a few hours and we entertained the locals. We met (among others) Robert the hip hop lover from Beverley Hills, Leigh the 6’5” grey haired 27 year old, Toni from Albuquerque and Betsy from Virginia.
Betsy was really interesting. She had been in Oz visiting DSTO (a major military contractor) and examining autonomous systems for managing shipping containers in Sydney Harbour. She explained to Glen that, rather than being a full time mum, she felt it was important to get out into the world, do what you are good at, and be confident you are really making a difference. Interestingly, she’s a mechanical engineer, and her last job was included helping to develop and/or building Tomohawk missiles. Figure that out. Need less to say, I immediately liked her and thoroughly enjoyed debating juxtaposition this over a VB. (Note: It was the debate I enjoyed, not United’s choice of beer…). If I meet her again, I hope it has more to do with planes and beer that it does missiles…
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