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All good things must come to an end.
It was hard, but Jean and I woke up early. Our flight was to leave
at 1pm. I was a bit concerned with traffic because there was a
ticker-tape parade on George Street for the Australian Paralympians.
So we were trying to leave early.
We finished packing and called the porters to come up.
Jean went down to checkout while I handled the porters. When I
came down, I made sure to ask the concierge for directions to
the airport. Even though I had a map and had a decent idea of
where to go, our previous experiences told us to ask for very
precise directions. The concierge drew a line on the map.
We got our car and followed the directions and maybe 15-20 minutes
later we were already at the airport. It kind of snuck up on us
and we didn't have time to fill the rental car with gas. Which
was probably good, since it turned out the line to check in was
quite long. The line for United snaked back and forth. Even though
it was still a couple hours before our flight was to take off,
they asked all the San Francisco-bound passengers to come up to
the front, which expedited matters for us.
We still had to go through customs and also the TRS - Tourist
Refund Scheme. Beginning in July 2000, Australia started imposing
a 10% GST (goods and services tax) on pretty much everything.
Tourists can get a refund for all those taxes if they have receipts
and the receipts are at least $300 AUD each. Now, supposedly you're
supposed to have the items you bought on your person for inspection.
We didn't actually have them with us; they were in our checked
baggage. When we went to the counter and the man asked us if we
had the goods, he kept nodding his head, telling us the correct
answer. We obliged and he started adding up the receipts. The
guy at the counter was impressed with how much we'd purchased.
Jean loves her shopping. He noticed that Jean even went shopping
this morning, and he kidded her about that.
We got a quick bite to eat before stopping by a small shop to
spend our last $16 of Australian currency. We got post cards,
magazines, and Tim Tams! As it turned out, we came up 5 cents
short, but the woman at the check out let it go.
We then went to the gate, where they were already boarding our
plane. As it turns out, we just happened to pick the same flight
as the U.S. Paralympic team again. At least this time they didn't
have to let fuel out of the plane. They did, however, have a problem
with the air conditioning unit. They left the back of the plane
open for a while before we all boarded. The power actually went
off in the plane for 10-15 minutes before they finally started
the engines and the air conditioning came on.
We took off after a short delay of 10-15 minutes which didn't
adversely affect our arrival time in San Francisco. It's about
a 13 hour flight because of the tail wind. Along the way, we gained
an hour because of the end of Daylight Savings Time in the United
States. So in the span of 3 weeks we managed to live in 5 different
time zones (3 in Australia, 2 in the United States).
We didn't get much sleep on the flight, maybe an hour. We watched
Small Time Crooks and I admit to watching a few minutes of For
Love of the Game. The rest of the time I was watching the person
sitting in the row across from me, one row up. Well, not watching
him, but watching him play DVD's on his portable player. He just
happened to be playing The Matrix. Even without the sound it was
fun to watch and look for signs of Sydney.
We landed in San Francisco at 7:20am, virtually hours before we
took off in Sydney (because we crossed the International Date
Line). Unfortunately it would be an hour before we retrieved our
luggage. After going through customs we took a taxi back home. It was raining, and the traffic was horrible.
Ah, back to life as usual.
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