This statue greeted us at the New Zealand airport. Very friendly people here.
We got up at 6 am Sunday for our series of flights from Orlando to Houston to LA to Auckland, New Zealand. That worked out to be 28 hours of travel time through various time zones and over the international date line. I’d tried to figure out the time difference between Florida and New Zealand before we left but always got confused. It turns out that Florida is 6 hours ahead and one day behind New Zealand (this still confuses me).
The Daily Grill in the Los Angeles airport terminal 3 (LAX international terminal) serves a surprisingly good dinner (fish and chips with a Sam Adams beer) and after that we boarded a Qantas 747 for a 13 hour flight (and another dinner • I guess I though we might starve while crossing the date line). Long flights make me think of that old Twilight Zone episode where a plane is lost in time and trying to return home. Something about the isolation, being above the clouds, the droning of the engines and the vibrations make me feel I’m outside of time and space. The world could have earthquakes, floods, and insurrections which will never affect me while I stay isolated in the plane. Sort of like those tadpoles floating in bottles in high school science labs.
In spite of some pretty intense turbulence, I managed to sleep for 8 hours during the flight (must have been the result of eating dinner twice) and arrived in Auckland at 6 am on Tuesday.
