Month: May 2014

Heading Home

28/052014
I checked out of the hotel fairly early. My flight wasn’t until mid afternoon, but there was another part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to visit called the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center, this one is close to Dulles airport. I arrived at the museum just after it opened at 10am.  This museum contains a SR-71 blackbird and the space shuttle Discovery, as well as many other interesting craft.

I could only spend 2 hours here before having to head to the airport. It was just enough time to walk around all the exhibits.

I hopped back in my mighty Impala and looked up service stations so I could top it up. A 7Eleven was just 3km away so I headed for that. It was certainly there, but no fuel sold there. Onto the next one which involved lots of traffic a few u turns and almost getting t-boned when someone slowed and indicated they were turning in to the driveway I was turning out of, so I went, but then they changed their mind and floored it. I eventually located a service station and as you have to do in America I guessed how much fuel I’d need and prepaid inside. You can pay at the pump, but it asks for a zip code, which has to match the code on your credit card. No good if you’re using an overseas card.

I’d dropped the car back and boarded my plane in no time. It was a day flight, thankfully without the seat back TV replaying the same advertisements. This flight was WiFi internet enabled, so I paid my $4 for 2 hours of access and enjoyed being connected at 37000ft.

 There was some lovely scenery out the window. I’ll have to come back and see it from the ground level.

I had four hours to kill in San Francisco before heading towards Australia. This turned into the ‘find the working power point’ game. There were many power points, but not many working. Eventually I found a free one that was working and charged up my phone, as it was a bit flat after the two hours of constant use on the cross country flight.
I headed to my gate and found my ship waiting.

I was almost in the same seat as the flight over. This time it was the isle seat. Some 14 hours and 45 mins later we landed in Sydney for a brief stop before flying back to Melbourne.

Home and happy and tired.

That was a fun week!

Until next time Jeffles and America!

Washington DC

28/052014

DC bound

Jeff and I parted ways at Raleigh-Durham airport, he jumped on a flight to London and I had a couple of hours wait until my short flight to Washington DC (Dulles airport).

It was a smallish Embraer 145 for the short hop, but at least it was still a jet.

Nice and cosy

I arrived at Dulles at around 9pm. There was quite the walk, up and down escalators, and even a quick train ride to get to the baggage collection area and exits. This had the feel of an older airport, not the open modern style of newer ones. My bag eventually showed up on a carousel that didn’t list my flight.

I headed for the exit, following the signs to rental cars. Most airports where I’ve picked up cars they have the offices in the terminal building and then you head off to the cars. Here you found your bus (Avis) and hopped on for the 5 minutes ride to the office. Having Avis preferred I asked which bay my car was in (19) and headed out to it. Hmm, a Kia people mover. I don’t think so. I went back in to the office to check I’d heard the bay number right. Yep, 19, I pointed out the people mover parked there. She seemed upset and muttered something about people moving cars without telling her. She upgraded me (apparently) from the Hyundai Sonata I was going to get to a Chevy Impala. This was in the correct bay.

I’d asked for a GPS as it’s easier to have a mounted GPS that you can see than using your phone. I programmed the GPS for my hotel, selected no tolls and headed off. Five minutes later I took a very quick exit off the freeway as the large sign said ‘last exit before tolls.’ Stupid GPS. I pulled over to check my settings. Yep, definitely set to no tolls, so I used my phone to navigate me to the Homewood Suites hotel. Great place to stay. Friendly staff, nice sized room and not too expensive. 
I awoke early the next morning and headed down for breakfast. Today was tourist day. I drove to the local railway station and after figuring out the ticket machine I jumped on a train in to Washington DC. My first stop was a short walk from L’Enfant metro station was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I spent the next few hours enjoying looking at aircraft, spacecraft and balloon things. 

More pictures here 

Sights

Once I had my fill of all thing aeronautical I ventured outside on to the National Mall. First thing to look at was the Capitol building. A short walk on a beautiful day, with lots of people enjoying the grassy areas.
Up close it’s quite a building.
After admiring the building for a bit I started walking back along the Mall, passing by the United States Botanical Garden, which was humid, warm and full of interesting plants.

Smithsonian Institution
Washington Monument
I found a large house that someone important apparently lives in 🙂

There was also the World War II Memorial

 
I decided to head back to my hotel after this (I later worked out to have walked around 8km for the day) so I grabbed my phone and found the nearest Metro station and headed for that. For a Sunday the trains run fairly often, I didn’t have to wait very long to catch the next one heading my way. I used a DC Metro app on my phone to keep track of train times. After a long day I walked (thankfully not far) up the road to Mikes American restaurant for dinner. Great service and nice big steak kept me happy for the evening.

Raleigh, NC

18/052014
Raleigh, North Carolina

It’s nice city, friendly people, just large enough that everything you might need is here but small enough that getting around isn’t too bad.

I managed to grab a few Geocaches while I was here, and dropped off a couple of travel bugs.
One of the caches was apparently 950m along a trail. Of course the trail wasn’t a straight line so you think it might be about 1km walk. Measured with Runkeeper it was 1.8km, turns out the trail went all over the place. Still it was a nice walk through the forest. Good timing as well, it started to rain just as I got back to the car.

Nice walk to the cache 
Winding track to the cache.

Toad

I stopped at a supermarket to get some supplies. By the time I came out the rain was torrential. The 30m from shelter to car drenched me. Ah well, I was heading back to the hotel anyway. Now I would just drip through reception like a fur seal.

We went out on Friday night to the Brewmaster bar & grill. Quite a few beers were sampled. We got a live episode of cops outside for entertainment as 3 police cars and a police segway turned up to detain a gentleman. After a few more beers and a whiskey to finish the night we took a cab back to the hotel.

Odd things you spot, a local service station/convenience store called Kangaroo! We don’t even have that in Australia. I didn’t manage to drop in and see if they had anything interesting. There was also a Outback Steakhouse just up the road that I didn’t manage to sample.

USA bound…So many flights

16/052014
USA 2014

Sitting at Melbourne airport, waiting for a flight to Sydney then on to San Francisco.

Bit of an odd arrangement where United actually fly you to Sydney, then you re-board and continue to SFO. Most airlines would use a local airline to feed their international flights. Ah well. At least it means not having to deal with the Sydney domestic – international transfer.
Why fly to the USA? Well you see I have a friend who’s there working for a couple of weeks. He sounded a bit lonely. So what the hell, pop over to North Carolina to say ‘Hi’ and have a beer with him. My lovely wife pretty much made me do it. Best wife ever!
Hoping for an empty seat or a ‘nice’ person next to me on all the flights.

Number one. MEL-SYD
Not too many people in the gate area for this flight. I boarded pretty quickly and settled into my seat. No one else appeared so I was happily alone for the 1 hour 10 minute flight to Sydney.

I had a quick wander around Sydney’s international terminal and settled down next to a window to wait for my next flight to be called.

Plenty of legroom at the front of the cabin

Number two. SYD-SFO

Well, this one was looking a bit busier. I walked the down isle hoping that the seat next to me would be vacant for the long flight. Alas it wasn’t to be. I settled into the same seat as the first flight.
Shortly after take off I started watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Somewhere in the middle we got lunch. I followed up with the Lego movie and then Taken 2. I checked the time after the third movie. Only halfway through the flight. What the hell am I going to do? I don’t want to watch any more as I’ll probably have the same choices to watch on the way back. I attempted to sleep for a while, but ended up just reading. Didn’t say a word to my neighbour throughout the flight.

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco. It took 45 minutes to get through customs/immigration. By the time I got to the baggage carousel the bags had been removed and were sitting in lines.
With a couple of hours left to kill I wandered around for a while before heading back through security (easy, quick and painless!!) to find my gate. I sat at the reading and making use of the free wifi when I got a text message from the airline saying the gate had changed. Turns out that the old and new gates are pretty much at opposite ends of the terminal. Ah well, I needed the exercise after the previous 14 hour flight.

SFO-RDU
This flight was packed. I was sitting in an isle seat at the front of the cabin, so I had plenty of leg room. A nice North Carolina couple were sitting in the other two seats. We boarded on time and it was looking good for an on time departure, but it didn’t happen, due congestion behind us we sat at the gate for 30 minutes.
Pretty amazing that you can get 100+ live TV channels on the flight for $7.50. A bit sad that if you don’t take it you watch the same 1 minute loop for 5 hours!
I was so tired by this stage I was struggling to do anything. I alternated reading and resting throughout the flight.

It was such a relief to disembark in Raleigh, made even better by being met by Jeff.

We headed for the hotel in his rental car. I kept trying to use the non existent brake. I’ve driven left hand drive cars a number of times, but I’d never been a front seat passenger before. I also keep trying to use the non existent steering wheel when I’m getting out.