The Day Has Come!

So the day has come! (You would know that if you read that title, but I’m too excited to not remind you multiple times!) I am officially on my way to New Zealand! I have made it through two flights and got to see the Dallas airport for 20 minute (mostly sprinting and partly mentally yelling at the tram to go faster, but I did see it). My fight from Indy to Dallas had free pretzels, and my flight from Dallas to San Fran had really great cookies and apple juice (the lunch of champions, obviously). And I managed to not use the tiny airplane bathrooms on either flight (but seeing as the next flight is 13 hours I’m sure that streak is going to end). So moral of the story: so far, so good!

Picture time: Due to the aforementioned sprinting here is the only thing I saw in Dallas (Outside of a lot of Cowboys gear, but that doesn’t count because I hate the Cowboys.)

LOOK AT THAT LEG ROOM I HAD ON MY WAY TO DALLAS!!! IT WAS LIFE CHANGING TBH!! (I may have had to agree to save people in case of emergency to get the seat but it was so worth it! )

Turns out that when you bring a large carry on people don’t like you because then their stuff doesn’t fit in the overhead bin. But I feel like moving for five months gives me the right to pack a lot. So I just let the angry people walk away and find their own bins. (Also Indy to Dallas)

The flight to San Francisco gets no pictures because the seats were tiny and maybe the most uncomfortable seats I’ve ever sat in. I’m talking little league baseball games have comfier bleachers than those seats. And there was someone who started puking before we even took off, so that was fun! Plus the girl next to me had sunglasses on and looked like she wanted to die the entire time, so I did not want to disturb her with taking weird pictures. Without my kindle that flight might have killed me, but with my kindle (and iPod) it was three hours of peaceful/painful reading.

“What happens after you get off a 3 hour flight in the world’s worst seats?” you ask. Well, shockingly American Airlines does not fly to New Zealand, so I had to go to baggage claim, and I picked up my giant 42 pound duffel (in addition to the 30 pounds I had between my two carry-ons). After claiming, I obviously had to check-in for my flight to Auckland on Air New Zealand. Yes, I know my flight was 6 hours away, but the good food is past security (which I needed to go through again because I switched airlines). So I needed to check in then. Obviously baggage claim for domestic flights is no where near check-in for international, and I was not smart enough to check a map and see if I was going the right way. So this resulted in a very very VERY long walk, carrying all my bags around (because carts are for families and people I hate; plus I packed this much so I needed to deal with it). I COULD NOT DEAL WITH IT! So after 40-ish minutes and seven stops to drop my bags and catch my breath, I made it to check in. Ahhh! At last I could get rid of my checked bag and go eat! I was wrong my friend. No way it would be that easy. Air New Zealand does not fly out of SFO during the day. (Dummy why would you assume a major airline flies all day? That would be crazy.) So the check-in counter did not open for three more hours. So what then? The good food and comfy chairs were past security, and there was no way I could get up ever again because carrying my bags was too much work. Well first I grabbed a luggage cart and sucked it up that I looked like a hoarder. And I flung all my bags off it the first two times I stopped moving the cart because driving the cart is deceptively hard. And I wandered until I found the food court.

My lovely cart (still ready to fling my bags off because I cannot drive it) and the comfy(ish) chairs at the food court (where I would not be eating because Wendy’s is the only option, and I refuse to cave for crappy food now when in an hour and a half I can have the “fancy” airport food). Okay, so I’m not actually starving like it seems; I did buy a bag a chocolate while writing this.

So here we are sitting alone rocking a lot of sweat, my third layer of deodorant, and a lot of hanger. During the great hunt for Air New Zealand’s check-in counter there was some consideration that I was going to die alone in the Air China line (somehow I kept ending up there in the hunt for Air NZ), but now that I have a chair and wifi, I might just make it to Auckland.

P.S: I have come to love my horrible passport photo so much I’m now going to force you to look at it as much as I can!