Somewhere east of Honolulu.

Somewhere east of Honolulu at 7:30 US pacific time/2:30 NZ time, I watched Whale rider for the first time while eating some delicious carrot cake a friend had given me for the journey. Man, it was good.
--
I'm in America now! I have been for the past two and a half days. I arrived here in Longview yesterday but have a few days of travels to talk about first.

Wellington airport - the plane was slightly late leaving, but no big deal at that stage. We get given a small snack and drink and the pilot has checked that the people with connecting flights will be able to make it - definitely good news.

We arrive at Auckland about 45 mins before our flight to San Francisco was due to leave and make our way very swiftly to the international terminal. The signs on the way say "Final call" for our flight so we are getting a bit worried. When we find our gate, there are lots of people standing around and they had just started seating the people travelling with young children and those that needed other assistance, phew.

We missed out on having a snack or dinner before we boarded the plane but at least we made it. We were flying on a 777 I think, which had nine seats across the width, like ABC DEF GHI, so it wasn't very large really. I sat in the window seat A with my friend next to me, and a nice canadian man on the aisle.

About an hour into the flight we had dinner - and hit some rough turbulence. It lasted for about 45 mins on and off, and made eating a real challenge. They didn't serve any hot drinks after dinner because it wasn't safe which hopefully gives you a good idea of how it was. It felt like driving on a smooth road and then driving over four or five speed-bumps in a row at the same speed. The pilot got clearance to drop 5000 feet (or metres, I can't remember which he said) and then the rest of the dinners could be served as it was safe for the cabin crew to move around again. We didn't encounter any more turbulence after that, thankfully.

I had lamb for dinner with roast kumara and some veges. The other choice was crumbed fish with mash. Also a small pasta/pumpkin/feta salad, cheese and crackers, and a small bun, with triple choc Kapiti icecream for dessert! Mmm it was good.

I watched a few movies (The Golden Compass, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Whale rider and most of Dreamgirls) a documentary about Colin McCahon called I AM and one episode of Flight of the Conchords.

I spilled some water on me when I was getting up to go to the loo. My friend asked me to hold her cup with about 2cm of water in it while she got up and then I forgot I was holding it and threw it everywhere. Fortunately I had some other trousers in my bag so I wasn't damp the rest of the way.

I re-discovered how much I hate the dry eyes and nose I always get when travelling long-haul. It makes it pretty hard to sleep. I also found that wearing earplugs makes it easier to hear the moves through the headphones because it cuts out the noise from the engines. We were right behind the wings too.

Pancakes with apple for breakfast - mmm. We only had the two meals on the plane so the carrot cake was my saviour. The staff encouraged people to re-use their plastic cups for water and drinks to have less rubbish at the end of the flight and were happy to refill water bottles. It was announced that at the end of the flight we had a quarter less plastic rubbish that usual, so it worked really well.

I really can't remember what my stress level was, but I was very excited until I got too tired to think about anything other than how cramped my legs were feeling. We got into San Francisco on time and made it into the airport!

--

That is all for this installment, I have taken plenty of notes so you can hear about all the boring details when I have time to write them up ;-) Now I just need to find a good pav recipe...