March 22-23, 2020

The Long Road Home - Part 2

The afternoon stretched on forever.  A group of us continued to sit at the Hudson coffee place.  About 2:30 an announcement was made that check-in for late evening flights would begin at 3 pm but only 10 people were allowed in line at a time.  I stayed where I was until about 3:30 and let those who always want/need to be first go through.

Once I got in line, it took only a few minutes to get my bags checked in (through to Dallas where I have to go through customs) and I was off to the departure gates upstairs.  There were 10 or so shops and restaurants and I looked through them.  I had a delicious raspberry and white chocolate muffin.  I read, walked, knitted, looked around again in the stores, walked to the attached international terminal, watched the planes, and played games on my iPad until it was 7:00.  Janet and I ate dinner together - she had a burger and I had a delicious pizza and we both had a local beer.

We were done a little after eight and after another walk around, I knitted for about an hour.  Another walk and I cleared out the emails that had come in and talked to a few people.  An announcement was made that boarding would be delayed for 10-15 minutes (it was supposed to start at 10:40 but it was a little after 11 before it did).  So another walk around before finally boarding.

I had an aisle seat but the pitch was terrible.  Even my short little legs were cramped.  I was trying (unsuccessfully) to go to sleep when they came around with food and drink.  The food was gluten free, nut free, egg free, 100% vegetarian, and horrible.  A good reminder why I am not a vegetarian.

The plane landed about on time even though we left late.  We had to take a bus to transfer from the domestic to the international terminal and had to go down an escalator to get to the bus.  Uh, oh!  No way!  I was sent to the area where people were waiting for wheelchair assistance along with my friends Linc and Stephanie.  About 10 minutes later one of the Qantas reps came and took us down an elevator with three other people to the bus which we had to ourselves.

Since we already had our boarding passes, it was a quick trip through security and into the mall, er... I mean terminal.  Just about every high end name has a shop or kiosk.

I wandered around and caught up one last time with Sherita.

It is now 9:45 and we don’t load for another three hours.  I will post this now and the next update will be from Dallas.

Smooth sailing until next time!