USA Holiday, October 24 (The Departed)

So thanks to going against the timezones, time basically stands still on the flight over to LA (and it sure felt like it), such that I landed almost at the same time I departed. Adding an additional flight through to SF though meant that the rest of the afternoon and evening was taken care of too.

Anyway, some notes about the flight to LA with V Australia:

• I got maybe a couple of hours sleep at best, I just couldn't get my legs to be comfortable enough that I can relax and get some sleep. Once the chair in front of you reclines you basically have no room to move. The fact that the person in the middle and window seat can't get past you unless you get out of your seat as well is never a good sign. For some reason Jason thought it would be a good idea to get the middle & window seats for our flights - I don't know why as you'll just be looking at the top of clouds for hours on end - so I was stuck with the middle seat, the worst seat ever.
• The food and drinks service could have been better. Maybe once for the flight they came past offering drinks - you can just press the service button for drinks at any time I suppose - but the worst thing was that they don't come and collect the food trays for at least half an hour after you receive your meal. With such small meals (more on this to come) it's not possible to take anywhere near that long. Also if you have a special meal you get yours first, so you have to wait even longer!
  
• I was signed up for the vegetarian option - or vegan, or whatever classification they use - but as it turns out I would have been much better just grabbing the least meaty option from the regular choices at each meal service. My dinner meal ended up being an almost identical pasta meal as Jason had, but the breakfast meal (and after being on the plane for about 10 hours with little sleep I was more than a little hungry) was terrible. It included some weird brown patty thing, but I don't even know what it actually was, next to a big lump of mashed potato (I absolutely hate mashed potato), half of a tomato (not a huge fan) and a bit of spinach. They were literally just placed next to each other in a container. Strange. For comparison, Jason gets pancakes, a croissant and yoghurt - I could have had all of that ffs!
  
• I decided I'd take it easy on the drinks so I didn't have to keep getting up to go to the bathroom, particularly when the person in the aisle seat is sleeping. It sounded like a good idea in principle, and was successfully carried out, but I probably reached a level 7 on the dehydration scale. I should have taken that into consideration...
• The "Red Entertainment" system was ok but could have been better. There weren't too many good movie selections but the TV selections were just strange. They'd have 2-3 episodes of various TV shows, but they were just random selections. Like three episodes of Family Guy from a couple of seasons ago and such. The games were the biggest disappointment though. When I flew to India on Singapore Airlines I think I was playing actual NES and SNES games, but here everything was just junk Java-like games. I'm sure you know the types, the fairly uncomplicated type games you can play anywhere on the internet, like Pac-Man and Tetris rip-offs. By the way, the only movie I got around to watching (most of) was I Love You, Beth Cooper and it was pretty bad.
  

Despite the nagging complaints above, the flight wasn't terrible, and I landed on time. Getting through the initial customs line was quite slow because they have to take fingerprints and photos of every person in line. Then one of the two people serving our queue started having computer troubles - awesome!

Walking out of the Tom Bradley International Terminal (should be renamed Tom Brady) for the first time into the outside world (the sidewalk outside the airport terminal at least) the very first experience I had was seeing a group of cops questioning and handcuffing a woman sitting on the sidewalk. Just like a scene out of COPS! and I'm not exaggerating. Also I'm 99% sure that the recorded announcements playing throughout the airport are done by the same guy that is the narrator for the Mythbusters TV program. I need to look into this...

The layout of LAX airport is pretty crappy (and the condition of some parts not a whole lot better - although the airport security was making his was around on a Segway), it's such a long walk from terminal to terminal. I think we walked up and back past at least two terminals before realising all of the arrival stuff is on the lower level, and you need to take elevators up to the second level to see the exact same airport layout, only for departures. I must have missed the signs explaining all that...

Finally made it to the gate for the San Francisco flight with enough time for food. Not many options but there was a McDonald's - I know them! I haven't studied the Australian menu in a while, but I'm pretty sure they don't have these Cinnamon Melts that most USA stores have. They are simply fantastic and a close second to McFlurry's.



Compared with LAX the SFO airport was very impressive. From the outside in particular it was very nice. We're staying in San Bruno which is close to the airport - as opposed to the downtown area of SF, so it was nice to be able to get back to the hotel so quickly and easily - and finally get some sleep!