Thursday 15 May 2025
Communication. It’s important.
Like, when you are on a 9am flight from Sydney to Los Angeles that you roll into the airport at 6:00am for…only to find out it was cancelled last night, without any word.
Trust me, that is no fun.
It could have been worse, for sure – even though it was supremely frustrating at the time. I’m counting myself lucky because we were booked on a flight that left Sydney at 5:45pm that night, which would get us into Los Angeles Thursday at 2:25pm, about eight and a half hours after we expected to. Thankfully, we didn’t have anything important planned during the day.
We had a slight delay leaving Sydney due to an intercom issue on the plane that needed to be rebooted, then because of a storm that swept in and slowed runway operations down. Not the most auspicious start, I’m sure you’ll agree.
In the end, we were just over an hour later than our scheduled departure time. The pilots were able to make up a few minutes of that time, and we touched down in Los Angeles at around 3:10pm. (I slept most of the first half of the flight, and not much of the second; it was good, solid sleep, too.)
To customs we went. Off the plane at 3:25pm, and out of customs an hour later. All things considered, pretty smooth and blessedly uneventful as well. I got asked a few more questions than usual by the Customs and Border Protection officer, but nothing major, and through I went. It was nice to see my bag waiting by the carousel with all the others off the Qantas flight. After it got left behind in Sydney two years ago, it’s a sight I’ll never again take for granted.
After picking up our rental car, we endured some moderate Los Angeles traffic out to Burbank, where we visited a Verizon store and organised American SIMs for our phones, which was a little bit of a saga (as it sometimes can be) but was particularly cheap this time around (thanks to the Verizon customer service person who looked after us) because we paid for three numbers in a bundle, and then caught up with my buddy Nate for dinner.
Time flies. Nate and I have known each other twenty years now, dating right back to the “Rockstar: INXS” days. Perhaps the show didn’t rate the house down, but it did spark up a long-standing friendship, which is pretty cool. Hanging out with Nate (who is still on TV, as the house band drummer on The Voice) once or twice a year, talking Lakers basketball, USC football and all sorts of other stuff, is always entertaining. We managed to solve most of the problems of the world over Olive Garden including some very nice margaritas.
They kicked us out of Olive Garden just after ten o’clock. Thankfully, our hotel was literally five minutes’ drive away. Looking forward to a good night’s sleep. We have a 9:20am flight to Boise tomorrow.
Nice to be back.
kitchtrips 