KICKOFF: Here goes nothing. Several months of mediocre planning, lots of talk, and not a whole lot of much else culminate in this series of flights. Fortunately, my kind sister Lynn has graciously offered to take me to Altanta for my departing flight to Los Angeles, home of LAX. Actually, it was more along the lines of “Lynn, take me to Atlanta.” My first flight was scheduled for 10:30 A.M. on Thursday. As always, I stayed up way too late the night before, and needed to be awake by about 7:30 am to make the flight. This marks the second day in a row I’ve had 3 hours of sleep. This will probably catch up with me sooner than later.
The Atlanta departure was rather uneventful. I stumbled my way to MARTA around 8 AM, and was at the airport by 9 AM or so. Check-in and security were uneventful. Judging by the ticket prices beforehand (this day was the cheapest to fly), this wouldn’t be an excessively busy day at Hartsfield. I got my first scare when I swiped my Sky Miles card and my reservation wasn’t found. I then realized the flight wasn’t tied to my sky miles number and I found it with my credit card.
LAND OF NARNIA: The departure gate was in the absolute farthest away gate of the airport, E35. In Hartsfield, this is a good mile or so from the MARTA station. If you go any farther on the train, you end up in the magical train turn around place (known as Narnia to some...) Regardless, I get there quickly thanks to the train. I stop by and visit a co-tripper Elisha, who’s on a sightly earlier flight with a connection in Houston. Sucker. Turns out she had just finished going up a 3-flight broken escalator carrying luggage when there was a working one 10 feet away. I ridicule her for this.
Her flight boards, and with no one else to make fun of, I proceed to my gate. Here I notice that my boarding pass didn’t have an assigned seat. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I go up to the desk and ask for a seat. They give me my boarding card: Row 6. Seat turns out to seat, I have been upgraded to first class. The guy at the front desk didn’t mention this, and I sure as hell didn’t pay the $1000 for a first class ticket. This was one of those times where it was good not to argue and go with the flow.
BLING BLING: Some interesting things about first class: They bring you hot towels. Not sure what you’re supposed to do with them. You can pick which movie you want to watch. Took me 20 minutes to figure out how to get the screen out of the arm (apparently you have to PUSH it to release…). The meal was amazing. I was actually stuffed from an airline meal. Free drinks. I had two beers but realized I was alone and anything else would get me zip-tied to my chair. Not to mention being pathetic. The lady next to me was downing some Merlot like it was going out of style. I watched I Robot, which turned out to be pretty good.
KILLING TIME: We land in LAX on schedule, and so begins my 8 hour layover. LAX is a horrible airport. There are 7 or 8 different terminals, all with their own security checkpoints. So, if you have a flight between two terminals, you have to go through security again. It helped me appreciate the magnificence of Atlanta’s airport.
Anyway, Delta wouldn’t let me transfer my bag to the international flight, so I have to retrieve it from baggage claim, and take it to the Qantas counter to recheck it. The big (*) on this is that Qantas check-in doesn’t open for 4 hours. Dammit. After a game of Marco-Polo with Elisha and other Georgia Tech people at the airport, we meet up with a few people, and settle down into the corner of the airport to kill time.
Elisha tries to get me to watch Sex and the City. Thinking no-one is looking, I reluctantly do so for a while, but eventually get bored and wander off around the airport. I realize I forgot my phone charger in Atlanta. No biggie, Sprint doesn’t exactly work in the Pacific Rim anyhow. Only need it for a few more hours. Met two more people from the trip.
The Qantas checkin makes me appreciate Delta much more. They start quibbling about the weights of the carry-on bags. I get lucky and they don’t check mine, which I’m sure is too big for their liking. It doesn’t make sense, they made some people take stuff out of the carry-ons and put it into the checked luggage. It’s all going in the same plane, geniuses… After checkin, we are required to haul our bags to another line to get them screened, and wait in a third line to retrieve our screened bags. Annoying. Who are they fooling?
LONG HAUL: The Flight itself was a first for me. We flew on a 747-300, a behemoth of a plane. If you only fly domestic, you probably haven’t been on one of these. To give an idea of scale, the body seats 10 people across, and has 75 rows. For comparison, a typical domestic 737 has 6 people across and about 25-30 rows. Oh, don’t forget the second floor for first class. The flight is scheduled to take 12 or so hours. The goodies they gave us include a little sleeping kit with an eye mask, some toothpaste and a toothbrush, a blanket, pillow, and a bunch of other nice things. The seats are still cramped as always, and they make for a long flight.
Overall, it was a very pleasant flight. There were complimentary drinks, which a lot of people thought would make this into a giant party flight with people moshing around and having a grand old time. Then there’s was really happened: everyone fell asleep after they turned off the cabin lights. Each seat had its own phone and video screen, so you could pick what movie you wanted to watch. Very nice.
