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Wednesday, 6 November, 2013
This was my day with two sunrises and two sunsets. I had slept poorly on Tuesday night due to some kind of insect bites on my hands and arms, and to a lesser extent, my legs. I had gone six weeks in Australia and hadn’t had a single mosquito bite, so I guess I got complacent. On my last evening at Kingfisher Park, I sat out on the veranda for half an hour or more, mainly because it was cooler than in the room. I had some time to spare for one of the first times on my trip, too. I didn’t notice anything at the time, but by morning, I had some itchy red spots on my arms. More spots continued to appear for the next day or so, and they itched like fire sometimes. I must have at least a dozen on each hand/arm, and some on my legs. That kept me awake much of Tuesday night.
My airport hotel in Sydney, the Mercure Airport hotel, was very nice, easily the nicest place I stayed on the trip. It was also the most expensive, but I’m glad I chose to stay at a nice place rather than a dump, and from what I had read, some of the hotels around the airport are dumps. Anyway, I had the Aus$27 buffet breakfast, which was excellent, and got the shuttle over to the international terminal.
My Delta Airlines flight left at 12:20PM, and I was on my way home. As I mentioned at the beginning of the trip, the Seattle to Sydney portion of my trip was business/first class, as I use frequent flyer points to get the tickets, and the extra points for business/first class make it well worth it to me. I settled into the same seat I had had on the way over, 7A, and relaxed. I had brought 6 books with me on the trip, but the first time I had time to open one was in the Cairns airport on Tuesday, and I read more of it during the Cairns to Sydney flight. I finished that book on the long flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday, and then I watched various TV shows and a movie. The movie was Jack Reacher, which was based on the book I had just finished, which is called One Shot. It was interesting to see how they changed the script to make the book into a movie. I always enjoy a book more than the movie made from it, and this was no exception. The movie had several flaws in it, as far as I was concerned, and one of them was casting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher in the books is 6 foot 5 and weighs 250 pounds. He is a very tough guy. Tom Cruise is 5 foot 7 and looks like a sissie to me. Anyway, watching the movie helped pass two hours and it was indeed interesting to see how they changed things to fit the limitations of a movie. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to follow the plot if I hadn’t just read the book, but it was fine since I had.
I ate and drank and ate again, and the time passed. While I was on the plane, the sun set and then it rose again, for the second time on November 6, for me (due to crossing the international date line). Thirteen and a half hours after takeoff, we landed in Los Angeles. I was pretty tired by then, and I felt very glad that I had arranged to stop over in LA one night, rather than get on a plane to fly to Seattle that second morning of Wednesday, November 6.
It was 7 in the morning in LA, and I called my brother Rick, who lives just a few miles from the airport in LA. He picked me up and when I got to his house, I threw my shirt and pants into the washer and took a two and a half hour nap. When I got up I felt a lot better, although I was pretty spacey all day long. We just hung out at Rick’s house for the day, and his wife, Cindy made us a nice dinner, which I ate after a couple of drinks. I managed to make it to about 8:45, after experiencing my second sunset of Nov 6, 2013, and I took half a sleeping pill and went to bed. My bites still itched, but it was better than the night before.
It had been a long long day, but I survivied it, and even enjoyed a lot of aspects of it. Flying isn’t exactly fun for me these days, but international business class makes it much less unpleasant.