13 July 2010...

Ok - so here's the start of this adventure. WOW - what a long journey from Cleveland to Melbourne, AU!!!

The start in Cleveland on 13 July was about an hour delayed due to bad weather to the East where the flight originated. But, no worries, I was to have a three hour layover in Los Angeles anyway. Just before the flight was to board, the TSA decided that the flight was to be one they would randomly check by hand searching carry-ons of various passengers. That's right, you guessed it, I was one of the randomly picked passengers. Luckily, the check was pretty cursory and quick, so no major imposition.

Flight to LA was uneventful - of course, it was nice to be flying first class. The food in first class looks nicer but tastes just as bad. What else? - CHICKEN!

Once in LA - needed to walk quite a distance between terminals for the flight to Sydney but that killed part of the long layover.

Now - here is where things get interesting. About an hour before flight was scheduled to leave, it was announced that 75 passengers needed to volunteer to take another flight due to weight restrictions. (No way that I was going to volunteer!) A lot of people did volunteer, BUT 75??? So, now all the volunteers needed to be processed off the flight, and by the time we were an hour past the scheduled take-off, another announcement was made that - NEVERMIND, everyone would be flying as planned, but that the flight would be stopping off in Hawaii for refueling. It was going to take several more hours for the volunteer processing to be done and only an hour or so to make the stopover in HI, so the stopover actually saved time. Anyway, by now it is...