Well, I've meant to tell the horror story of my return flights to the new country for two weeks now. Perhaps the trauma has subsided enough finally that I should do so before I forget any more details.
Things that were good:
Having a couple of days following the load and send-off of the shipping container to 'chill' (being 96 fahrenheit, that's all one could do anyway) with my great friends, the Sheridans.
Relatedly, having all day really before my flight left to figure out the dismantling of the vintage Nishiki roadbike into a box for transfer. With my friends (they're always up for a challenge--they've two boys!).
Flight seating: I must have had some karmic backlog here because despite the circumstances my legs and I fared well.
As I get older I find that saying goodbye never gets easier; though I can count on subtle differences to 'keep it real'. Doing so this time around was harder knowing how much is not known about the trajectory of all of our lives. But there'd have been no goodbye without time spent!
Things that have given me more gray hair:
The baggage folks at Denver United did their best with my freakish load. They were capable, smart, patient and empathetic. They walked the line between cutting me slack and 'toeing the line' of their newly amended baggage rules.
I'd known it would be harder then ever (in our short memory) to buck the system or make good with the goods I was bringing. The bags and cartons were carefully selected for their qualities:
--multiple small bags for transfer\fold-up\strap to one another utility--these became a single carry-on with room to spare.
--A cheap ($5) cardboard carton (well the brand rocked--CAnnondale) reinforced to contain the aforementioned road bike in the cargo hold. Tommie and I worked for over an hour to take off various protruberant sharp bits and fit them in the carton. We did real good!
--A hardcase ordered special by Beth to protect and to carry her smaller(!) keyboard to New Zealand. Stuffed--to the chagrin of Customs I'm sure--with chocolate and other contraband.
--Two quite large, quite heavy checked bags (one a padded backpack, one a huge duffel) on which I'd spent at least two hours shifting the loads that morning in the Sheridans basement. Containing many winter clothes and other useful items. The scale at the counter started out saying 57 and 47 pounds, but in five minutes I was within legality and without penalty. It was stressful but amusing.
We negotiated the business end of things and (tho I knew it was coming) I payed several hundred dollars for the overweight and oversize keyboard in a case to make the flight. I was, of course (whose?) packing for two.
So I was through! It was almost as relieving as signing off on the container! With two hours to kill, I had a couple of microbrews and used the free wi-fi before I went through security (minor search) and caught the flight to LA. Step one down.
We were delayed on the tarmac for nearly an hour and the pilot gave contradicting explanations until we took off. The flight was quick (two hours and some?), and I was glad to have an hour and a half layover there instead of the EIGHT AND A HALF I'd had coming through before. Fatigue was apparently already creeping in, as I was confused by the time zone changeover, factoring in the delay, etc. Never the less, content that I did not have to collect my bags for transfer from domestic to International, I settled into the wi-fi area of THE International terminal where I'd spent the above mentioned day. After double checking the fact that I did not have to collect those checked bags with a concierge.
An hour or so later I sauntered (as much as one might through the JFK-ian tunnel that led to gate D-23, quite a walk actually) to find that it did not exist. Or rather it did, as I'd been assured along the (temporary construction) way, in fact it was the last gate. Except that at the end of the line, there was an escalator down to another level. No signs save the dividing up of 23 to B and C (A was nowhere to be seen). There was no staff at either gate, so I verified that the teens at gate B were catching a flight to Australia. Up and down the escalator to no avail again, and back out through the two security checkpoints in that tunnel asking all the way. Panic now rose, as the flight would leave in 15 minutes and I had no reason to believe that it existed in my vicinity. Authorities did not exist, only TSA 'specialists', all of whom assured me that it was over there somewhere. At this point a half dozen persons had looked at my ticket and could not diagnose where from the flight left. I was sweating.
No longer interested in being so helpless, I went ignored these assurances and pushed back out to the main (Penn Station-esque) hall. Swarming now with travellers to destinations all over Austral-Asia, I had to push my way through brazenly dull stares to get to the door or the terminal. Here, a venerable LA concierge looked at my ticket and said, "Air New Zealand, they leave from terminal 4, way over there"! He pointed around the u-shape to the end. I ran.
I pushed past the passengers dis-gorging from their petro-mobiles and sprinted around the U. I paused, and said 'there's no way', and then I ran on. It was close to a mile when I saw the ANZ signs. I ran into the nearly deserted door and around and through all of the dividers to...another security checkpoint. Sweat now poured off of me, having run through the LA evening dressed for a Southern hemisphere winter. I begged the staff to cut me some slack as we went through the x-rays. Off came the shoes. Beep. Violation. They marked me for search.
As I'd run into this terminal, my name was announced with the warning 'final boarding call'. Now I was soaked through my clothes, belongings spread out on a table, trying to find my passport and tie my shoes while a 20 year old young man went through the duty of asking me why I'd stuffed power bars in my coffee cannister. I beseeched him to free me as they made another announcement. That's me I said, brandishing my passport and noticing the time. He glanced around at his peers, and let me go.
Streaming items stuffed back in my bag, clothes flying I ran headlong for the gate. This terminal was wide and finished, which meant I could juke and cut around people as I went. I now had a feeling simultaneous of despair and great humor, like a cosmic joke was being played on me. On the long mile run outside between terminals, I'd played likelihoods in my mind and determined that I really did not want to spend 24 hours at LAX, miserable and unpaid by work. That is why, when I came around the corner and saw the correct effing gate--I knew they would let me on. Even if they had to ferry me across the tarmac on a baggage truck to a speeding jumbo jet. I was getting on the plane. The staff didn't bat an eye. They radio-ed through to the locked and loaded plane that I'd turned up and I was sped onboard. Fellow passenger did bat an eye at the sweaty, disheveled guy with the half-cocked grin who got on the plane. Especially the two lovebirds I was seated next to--in the emergency aisle.
Fourteen hours later we arrived in Auckland at dawn. We were late, there was weather (winter had truly begun while I was in the States, as it has continued in that globally warming way), and I thought I was meant to collect my checked baggage for Customs. I waited for an hour at the carousel, another half hour at the claim area, and then I ran (yes to another terminal). Through the rain. It was cold--in the forties. Apparently I do clearer thinking at that speed.
Not only did they not have my bags (though only after time spent waiting did I find that they were to have gone on though to Wellington without collecting), but that they were not in the country. No one could tell me where they were.
So I ran to catch my connection to Wellington, because I had to win some battles, right?!?
I missed the plane. Directed to a ticketing desk, I was first made to understand that I would have to pay for another. I begged to differ, and they relented. An hour later I was on the last leg into Wellington.
In Wellington, the howling winds brought it below freezing. The seas had no regard for any of this, and as much as I was able, neither did I.
A new set of challenges had to be dealt with.
Postscript: The bags arrived two and a half days later.
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