USA 2012 - Day 1 : Christchurch to Laguna Woods, CA

It was a surprisingly well organised start, all things considered. I left Christchurch at 6:50 pm on Sunday night. Bags packed, money sorted, visa waiver applied for, passport secured, flights booked, laptop loaded etc.

It had already been a very long day. I had spent the weekend cooking for 46 people for the UCanDance Hanmer trip, with maybe three hours of sleep. It had however, all gone even more smoothly than normal. At the airport, I met up with Jess, Carey and Stephen and we jumped on the flight to Auckland.

It had been a while since I had travelled and I was obviously completely out of practice - I completely forgot to not wear a belt to go through customs. What a noob! Apart from the women whose two kids spent the entire flight chucking up on the other side of the aisle, it was uneventful though watching Christchurch disappear into the distance was a little tear jerking.

The flight was 20 minutes late and it was raining heavily so we hoofed it across the tarmac to the international terminal, arriving only 3 minutes before boarding started. Good timing! We met up with Kathy and headed on-board.

The flight LA was pretty uneventful, for me at least, and I spent the time snoozing, watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Community, and The Lorax. The first three or four hours were pretty turbulent, to such an extent that they almost didn’t server dinner let alone drinks. Then a women started screaming in the front of our cabin, the call went out for a medical emergency, and the doctor sitting next to me rushed to help. The air staff were incredibly professional and organised, managing to calm people down. Lots of kudos to Air New Zealand.

It went back to normal a little after that, but it did rather feel like I was living in a soap opera.

Stretch Limo from LAX

I was also most impressed with the new back of seat touch screen - very impressive and responsive. I was particularly impressed with the satellite maps as we came into land - so much potential! So we landed and spent what felt like an hour going through customs, and then Jess' bag had been left in Auckland.

So after more delays, we stumbled out into the mid afternoon Sunday (still) summer sun. Work had laid on a rather impressively ostentatious stretch limo to take us down to Laguna Woods south of LA. We eventually got to the hotel after a slight muck up.

We headed across the road and grabbed some Subway for dinner as we couldn’t be bothered finding anything else. It was actually pretty good - more fillings like spinach and banana peppers, better tasting patties, and bread that was actually more substantial and brown than the NZ stuff. Who would of thought? Oh and they had Dr Pepper.

So we sat out under the setting sun and revelled in the pleasant summer heat. There was also a trip to the supermarket to explore all of the unique foodstuffs that make up American supermarkets - I grabbed a huge punnet of blueberries. Nom nom nom. It had been a long day!