May 24 -- The Endless Travel Day Home

We got up before 6am Sydney time for our 10am flight to LAX and arrived at 6:30am LA time, essentially arriving before we left. This is how you get a day back when you cross the date line in each direction, but it is not worth it.

Interesting diagram at the Sydney Airport ladies room
-- in the stall. Apparently many Asian visitors are
confused by western-style toilets.

The flight crew was perverse. I set my watch to LA time right away, the lights dimmed after dinner and I finished the movie I was watching around 10pm and dozed off (this was 3pm Sydney time, but the environment said "nitey night"). I was actually dreaming when they brought food around at midnight LA time and Jim woke me up. Tried to sleep again, and never got to the dream stage, when lo and behold, at 2am they thought it was time for another snack and woke us up for a 'stick' of coconut and pineapple ice cream. Not bad, but really? Feed us every two hours? Like being in a hospital where they wake you up every hour or two, apparently to verify you are still alive. After another two sleepless hours, I gave up and watched another movie.

We finally landed in LA and got to the gate 5 minutes before passport control opened, so we cooled our heels on plane til they were ready. The good news is that there were only about 2 people ahead of us so we breezed right through to baggage and got lucky again with bags that appeared quickly -- we were the first of the 9 OAT (our tour company) people on the plane to head to the customs review. Here I thought we might spend some time as I had brought back food (not fresh, but the good 'processed' stuff to share with friends) and other people had had to haul it out of their bags to display it. Plus I kind of overdid the opal purchases (thanks to Jim's efforts) and knew we had over spent the duty free limit. The agent who called us forward had literally just started, he glanced at our way-over-the-limit total and the checked 'food' box, said 'have a nice day' or some such thing and waved us on. HOLY cow! Saved us a minimum of $200 in duty.

The rest of the trip was about as easy except for the part where we were on the plane and waited on the runway for 40 minutes before we could take off. This proved to be the margin that prevented us from picking up our mail because traffic north to Marin was HORRIBLE....the 35 minute trip took an hour and a half -- must just have been Memorial weekend traffic -- no wrecks or construction that impacted where we were. Now all we have to do is recover from our 33 hour day and pick up our mail on Tuesday!

It was a fabulous trip. We have had a number of wonderful guides over the years on our OAT tours, but Vic really set a new standard in adapting to our interests and preferences and entertaining us on the road. Not only did we get history and culture, we listened to music (my favorite was a 'promo' song called Come to Australia or Deadly Animals (which gives you a clue about its content -- see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_TB6onHVE ) and ended the tour with a trivia contest. It was VERY close -- 30-31, but our team won. I know we only touched the surface of the country and could have easily spent at least twice as much time there.