The trip started off normally enough… Emma and Josh dropped me, Bex and Bex’s mum off at the train station at 4:00 am ish.. They hung around until the train departed at 4:42 am. Josh yelled at me for having a bubble. I was a bit upset about leaving them. Bex and I (and her mum and all our luggage) made it on the train and began our journey to Sydney.
I was a mess on the way down.. An absolute mess. I kept crying and it was just generally not good. But we made it to Central with enough time for me to hobble to our connecting train. Bex and her mum were spending the next couple weeks traveling around Australia so they got off at the Domestic Airport stop. I kept going to the International Airport all by my lonesome..
I did however make it to the airport around 7:30 am, and it only took me thirty minutes to get from the train station up to the check-in counter. That’s where I started having difficulties. One of my bags was 4 kilos overweight.. and it was going to cost me $176 dollars to pay for it. I only had $113 AUD in cash, and they wouldn’t take my dad’s credit card. I have no idea why, something about it not being in my name, blah blah blah.. It has his last name on it, they have my passport with my last name on it. How many Piedl’s do they think are in the States?? Anyway, I had to unpack a couple things from my larger bag. I took out three books, a towel, and a blanket. I managed to squeeze two of the books into one of my carry-ons, and I went to re-check-in. At this point, I would like to point out that I managed to make the bag at or just over (like 0.5 lbs) the weight limit. One of the guys working the counter, or maybe it was the head person or something, but he started giving me a speech about how I should have pre-weighed my stuff before I left. Yeah, like college students conveniently have scales in their bathrooms.. And I saw the weight when it was reweighed. It was spot on. There was no reason for him to start telling me that I needed to pack less, and be more prepared. I’m quite proud of the fact that I managed to fit 5 months of my life into two carry-on’s, a medium duffel and a large duffel.
Anyway, after I checked my bags, I ran to the Post Office to send myself the blanket, towel and book. It only cost me $58 AUD… which is quite a lot, but less than if I had an overweight bag. As you can imagine, I’m running really late at this point. It literally took me about 25 minutes to get to the terminal. Granted I wasn’t walking at my top speed due to my rather bum knee, but it literally felt like I was walking forever to get to the terminal. I finally made it, and I was one of the last people to get on the plane. The guy who checked my ticket was also the guy who checked my bags (oddly enough). As I was walking through he said “Ah, so you made it!” Me, being out of breath and slightly in pain due to two extremely heavy carry-on’s came up with the brilliant response of “Yeah… Just…” haha..I’m so smart sometimes..
The flight from Sydney to LAX wasn’t that bad.. It was as good as a 14 hour flight can be. Otherwise known as, I began to lose feeling in various places in my body (my butt mainly).. I did manage to watch what felt like 8.5 million movies and take a two hour nap. I watched “When In Rome,” “Post Grad,” “A Bug’s Life,” and half of “The Aristocats.” I think that’s all. I don’t really remember.. They did give us dinner (I had pasta and spinach I believe), and a snack (it was basically a mini sandwhich), and breakfast (blueberry pancakes..). The food was okay. Not bad for airline food, but still left a lot to be desired :/ There’s not much to tell about the flight other than I barely made it, watched lots of movies, took a nap and then got off.
We got to LAX at 6:30 am. By the time I picked up my bags, went through customs, re-checked my bags and went through security, it was 9:30am. It took me three hours to do that! The line for security was ridiculously long. LAX has essentially a line to get in line for security. The upstairs zigzag area was completely full, the downstairs zigzag area was completely full, the line then went along a wall for awhile, and then continued outside for about 100 meters. That’s how long the line was!! At that point, I was just glad that I had a flight that left later. I got some chips and a large iced caramel coffee from Mackers before my flight. I think that’s part of the reason I’m still awake. I’ve had too much caffeine to not be..
The flight to Charlotte finally left, although by the time everyone got on the plane and we managed to taxi out, we were about an hour late. I was really worried that I was going to miss my connection in Charlotte. But it was okay.. We managed to make up a lot of time during the flight and we were actually scheduled to land early/on time in Atlanta. This changed however, when we ran into some weather issues. We were held about 65 miles outside of Atlanta for about 20/25 minutes and then we finally got the clear to land. I was quite excited about that. The only issue was that it took us another 20 minutes to taxi to the gate! I don’t think I’ve ever taxied in a plane that long before! It was ridiculous…. By the time I got off the plane it was 9:38pm. My flight to Charlotte was scheduled for 9:42 pm. You can imagine my panic.
It was okay though, because my flight to Charlotte was also delayed. It was delayed two hours. I’m currently waiting for the flight to Fort Myers, FL to board, so the flight from Chicago can get in, so my flight to Charlotte will leave! I have been traveling for 33 hours, I’ve been awake (not counting my three naps: 1 hour on the train, 2 hours from Sydney to LAX, 2 hours LAX to Atlanta) for 53 hours, I haven’t had a shower in almost 48 hours. I desperately need real food, a shower and some actual sleep, and I’m currently stuck in the Atlanta airport. My sleep schedule is currently really screwed. I’m wide awake. It’s 10:55 pm (Friday night) in Atlanta, and12:55 pm (Saturday afternoon) in Newcastle. I’ve had way too much caffeine to go to sleep at the moment, I’m just hoping that by the time I get to Walker’s house I’ll be tired and need some sleep. But I don’t think that’s going to happen that way. It never really does.
The current plane is to board the plane and leave for the Charlotte airport at 11:50pm. I should land in Charlotte around 12:50am. I’ll need about 30 minutes to get off the plane/pick up all my shit. Hopefully Texas will be there to help me with bags. I have too many to comfortably walk with. I then plan to get to his house, shower, go to sleep, wake up, talk to Walker about what furniture we have for our townhouse next semester and what we need. Dad will then pick me up around 1:00 from Walker’s house. We will go IKEA shopping and then drive home. I will once again fall asleep after saying “Hello” to Giles. I will wake up at some point on Sunday, say “Hello” to mum and Allie, and then probably go back to sleep. I will hopefully be able to overcome my jet lag in a week.
I’m so ready to be done traveling right now...
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