This is Unpretending Spontaneous
Remember the trials of the first day travelling day in number 3? I take back some of my discrepancies with this airline. The 16 hours flight over the Pacific Ocean was impressive.
I found my seat and discover I’m in a row of three with a lovely 79 year old lady in the aisle seat, an empty middle seat and myself at the window.
This lady I’ll call Sue, is a gem. She’s described her life to me, and by golly has her life been an exciting tale. Today Sue is heading to her son in Dallas for four weeks, then to her daughter in England.
Sue’s daughter got herself a job with this particular airline so that she could buy cheaper flights for her mother, extraordinary love that is in my opinion.
The staff treated Sue like royalty with extra care packages from business class, some pyjamas and special treats, it was a beautiful thing to behold this woman getting such special treatment. Then maybe because Sue and I had become friends, the flight crew started giving me things as well. I felt honoured and spoiled, and rather sheepish for feeling so disgruntled about the airline earlier that day.
We were fed, oh my how we were fed. The delicious food continued to come as the evening progressed, it felt like a 5 course meal. Finally at about 9:30pm we were offered Hot Chocolate, Peppermint Tea and Tim Tams. I honestly had no room for anything else so I settled back in my chair to watch a movie.
I watched a charming 2022 Aussie film called Blue Back, about a mother and daughter whose love for a local coral bay led them to fight to have the bay protected by poachers. It was touching and calming for the most part and it had a delightful ending or as Spencer likes to say “They lived happily ever after.”
Photo via https://www.bluebackmovie.com/
The night was long but manageable. Sue, my plane buddy, was happy for me to use the middle seat as my own and I could to lie down, curl up with Pookie Bear and was out like a light for about three hours. I think I had two rounds of three hours sleep before deciding day time must be here.
At about the 12 hour flying mark I decided this was as long as I could comfortably handle, however I felt much more refreshed after breakfast and tidying myself up.
Photo of the Map Screen on the TV unit on the seat in front. Photo by Unpretending Spontaneous
As morning arrived I noticed it had been dark outside for the entire flight, and I couldn’t understand how that was possible. Multiple people inside of me tried to solve the strange anomaly of night time, flying into the eastern skies. Was it the way the pilot flew? Or maybe the altitude? We did have about an hour of sunshine between 4-5pm pacific time just to confuse me even more. My brain simply could not make rhyme or reason of what was going on. It was only later that I discovered the windows could be tinted and staff had tinted them to Night Mode while we flew. A Little inside of me had also found the self tinting settings under the window and had randomly pressed all the buttons, keeping the view a blue light making outside look darker. I asked a young girl behind me to help when I discovered she had sunshine, while I still had night.
Photo in the morning of the beautiful blue ocean from my window seat. Photo by Unpretending Spontaneous.
As the plane landed I was feeling refreshed, alert and positive about the next part of my journey. However it was then that the drama began.
As I stepped out of the plane a flight attendant hands me an envelope, in it is a ticket for a connecting flight in 30 minutes! I looked at him, “What’s this?” I ask, because I had been expecting the ground crew to show me to a hotel. He said, “Your ticket, and you better skadadle because you still need to go through security.”
Panic mode hits in. I had patiently waited to be almost last off the plane knowing there were others who had connecting flights. Now however, all reasonable thinking flys out the window as I run past other passengers to line up at customs. How on earth will I get through this? I politely cut in line with another 20 others who also had very close connecting flights.
I’m shaking like a leaf as I reach the front of the line. I’ve watched way too many boarder patrol episodes, and I was so scared about going through customs. The very tired customs officer looks at me and makes a commanding statement, “Blue” I stare at him blankly. He sighs and points to a pair of blue feet stuck on the ground to my right. “Ohhh, thank you sir. Sorry sir”. I stand at attention and this tired man gets a bemused smile on his face, he looks at my passport then his computer screen for a long time, asks me where I was headed, how long I was staying and he needed to see my returning flight details.
He hands my passport back to me and pointed to the exit. I walk out thinking surely there must be another place where they going to make me take off my shoes and all sorts of things, but no I just follow everybody else out go and pick up my luggage which of course was last out because it was first in.
I was trying hard not to panic and asked someone what I needed to do next, I was told I had to check my bag with my connecting flight. I asked a security guard where I had to go and what time my flight was leaving and fortunately there was a 40 minute delay. I calmed a little but still hurried on. Somehow and I have no idea how I got there but I ended up at the correct airline with the connecting flight and was at the front of the line. Two patient ladies were sorting out the tickets for some other passengers from my flight. As I walk up to the counter I hear, “We do not have to honour anything that comes from that airline.” The Drama Person in me comes front and woes to her “What are we going to do?” And give her the entire story in quickly spoken sentences, Drama Person ends the story with a desperate, “Please help me ma’am?”
The lady is incredibly amused by this seemingly half crazed Australian as says, “May I see your boarding pass and passport?” Having felt acknowledged and understood we calm down and begin to feel as if things will actually work out after all.
I say to her, “ How am I supposed to make this flight.” She says “Oh no, you will not be making this flight. Your airline has you booked on three different flights out of Dallas and you cannot make this flight.” She picks up the phone calmly and looks very busy. I like this lady, she has a ‘I mean it sister,’ kind of vibe so I stand as quietly as I can believing she will save the day. I said “Well what they were supposed to do is put me up in a hotel and I'm gonna get the 11:20 flight out tomorrow morning.”
There was a lot of waiting and not knowing but inside I felt calm and sure it would be okay. I ended up talking to the other group of people there was four of them and an elderly gentleman and three younger people, they were travelling together and I later discovered the older gentleman was a famous Australian plastic surgeon with his team heading to a conference to teach world renowned surgeons about face transplants.
We ended up at the first airlines service desk where the people were so kind and helpful, they gave us our hotel vouchers and the transplant team decided that seeing I was travelling on my own I would share a taxi with them. I was relieved because I hadn’t even thought about taxi’s and the last taxi journey I had in a foreign place was a rather traumatic.
We finally get to the hotel 3 hours after getting off the plane, I settle into my room then walk across the road to make my debut at WhatABurger where I didn’t get a burger but the salad was fresh, crisp and delicious.
I showered, and dropped into bed to sleep for who knows how long waking with a start at 4am. Prepared for another day of the journey.
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