{"id":10,"date":"2014-05-16T06:36:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T20:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2014-06-15T17:14:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T07:14:34","slug":"usa-bound-so-many-flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"USA bound…So many flights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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USA 2014<\/b><\/div>\n
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Sitting at Melbourne airport, waiting for a flight to Sydney then on to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

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.<\/div>\n
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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!<\/div>\n
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Hoping for an empty seat or a ‘nice’ person next to me on all the flights.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Plenty of legroom at the front of the cabin<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Number two. SYD-SFO<\/div>\n

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.<\/span>
Shortly after take off I started watching The Hobbit: The <\/span><\/span>Desolation of Smaug<\/span><\/a>. 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.<\/span>

<\/span>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 <\/span>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.<\/span>

<\/span>SFO-RDU<\/span>
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.<\/span>
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!<\/span>
I was so tired by this stage I was struggling to do anything. I alternated reading and resting throughout the flight.<\/span>

<\/span>It was such a relief to disembark in Raleigh, made even better by being met by Jeff.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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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… Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}