The Flight

After we finish packing, which took a lot of time and pulling of zippers, we were on our way to the SEA-TAC airport. We left around 10am; about a half hour earlier than we had planned. We were ready and figured it might be good to have the extra time. We stopped at Walgreens to check that hopefully my prescriptions had come in early. Good news, the pills came early. Bad news, the insurance wouldn’t release it. Long story short, I was on the phone for a half hour waiting to get my pills and eventually got them. We were on our way at last.

I don’t know if the traffic was bad since I was asleep most of the way to the airport, but we made it in plenty of time. Dave unloaded the bags from the car and we said our good-byes to my mom. She drove around the terminal curve and was gone. Dragging our luggage into the airport was quite the hassle, but Dave is a strong man. Checking in didn’t take too long after they figured out that we were moving to New Zealand for a year and had valid visas. Oh but the luggage, we were 4 pounds over on one pieces, so we did a little swapping of clothes and were able to fix the problem. We made it so that three of our bags weighed exactly 50.0 lbs. Beating the system.

We grabbed a bite to eat at Burger King and munched on our whoppers and fries while a long line accumulated at the front desk. I thought it was for another flight but soon realized it was for the flight to LA. Apparently the flight was overbooked and there were many people on standby and they needed people to volunteer their seats. The thought of giving up our seats crossesd my mind but having to wait longer for our inevitably long flight didn’t seem fun.

One episode of The OC and a little dilly dallying and we were at LAX. The plane landed on one side of the airport, but our next flight was on the other side of the airport so we had to physically walk across the airport roads to terminal two. Our flight was delayed an hour, which gave us time to buy a pizza and chicken caesar salad, which by the way, was really good.

Air New Zealand. A 747. It was great. Large, spacious, and equipped with movies and games. Once we were in the air I started up a Sudoku game and won, of course. It was even on medium. A meal was served and even though Dave and I had just eaten dinner, we gave in to the free food. I had the chicken. Dave had the beef. It was all very delicious. They were even serving free wine. Dave had a glass and wanted me to get a glass as well so he could have it. He said it would help him sleep better on the flight. It was true. After dinner we went to sleep and he started twitching in no time. We had three seats between the two of us on one side of the plane. It was a little uncomfortable sleeping. We switched positions often and at one point had Dave sleeping on the floor.

Amazingly the flight didn’t seem that long. I watched “Music and Lyrics” and then we had started our decent into Auckland. We left on Wednesday afternoon and arrived on Friday morning. We are now in the future.