Today is basically my last day to get ready, because I leave tomorrow midafternoon. Because I live practically on the east coast, I have to fly to Los Angeles to catch a trans-Pacific flight. Over the last couple of weeks I've been focusing on getting all the equipment needed to teach my classes, plus the standard tourist-y stuff. That means I'll be toting two laptops and a whole bunch of related stuff (airplane power adapters, presentation remotes, and so on), plus a bag of camera/video equipment, plus enough clothes for the trip.
Making travel arrangements for this trip has been really, really interesting. I normally fly Delta, but they don't go to Australia, so we're flying United to get there. That was the easy part; fortunately, an agency in Sydney handled booking our hotels and inter-city flights within Australia. It all seems pretty jury-rigged, and I hope that nothing got lost in the translation or time difference between here and there. I've done a fair amount of research on FlyerTalk to find out the best way to get there.
That's not all, either. My parents thoughtfully gave me a copy of Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country, which was one of the most informative (and funniest!) books I've ever read. I also checked out some guidebooks for Sydney and Melbourne; once I get there and can see how well they reflect the real cities I'll let you know.
Most of the rest of today will be given over to last-minute errands and packing. I'm also waiting for some last-minute trip gear to arrive, including some noise-cancelling headphones and an Australian-compatible cell phone (they use different frequencies than the US). I did discover one glitch with bestbuy.com: if you order merchandise on their web site and specify that you want to pick it up at the store, you have to present a photo ID and the credit card you used for the order. Problem is, they don't tell you that ahead of time, so my original plan to score some headphones from their store in Toledo and have them shipped here backfired. Caveat emptor.
I'm off to see the wizard, or to waltz with Mathilda, or something. It was hard to leave Arlene & the kids at the airport, particularly since this is such a long trip. I sent the boys an e-postcard from the website of the hotel where I'm staying, and they seemed to like it. I'll try to do something like that each day that I'm gone.
On every trip, it's inevitable that I'll leave something behind. So far on this trip, I've already spotted one thing: the power adapter for my Powerbook. Since I have 2 batteries, I can run it for about 9 hours without a recharge, and the United 747 I'm switching to in LA has the in-seat power ports, so I can find another one when I get to Sydney. Speaking of airplanes, right now I'm aboard a Delta L-1011, a very comfortable plane that was far ahead of its time. Flight attendants hate it because it's quirky, but even in coach it's as comfortable as a lot of newer airplanes.
When I arrive at LAX, all I should have to do is go to the United Red Carpet Club and chill out (when you buy a business-class ticket, you supposedly get free RCC access). I booked my own ticket on Delta's web site to score some bonus SkyMiles, but the MS travel department booked my LAX-SYD-MEL-ADL-MEL-LAX tickets. I had to get Delta to link the two when I checked in in Huntsville; that way I can avoid having to pick up my bags in LA and checking in again-- maybe. We'll see whether my suitcase is there when I get off the plane.
Travel tip: the $49 or so it costs to buy a pair of noise-cancelling headphones is money well-spent. I can actually hear the music I'm playing on the computer! The kind I ended up with are Sony NC-5s (thanks, Mom!) that look like regular headphones. Some vendors make smaller versions, but they all use the same principle-- they use a small microphone to "listen" to ambient noise, then rebroadcast it 180° out of phase, effectively cancelling out the noise. Highly recommended.
Now, on to a bit of Australian trivia. Arlene & I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every six months, there's a church conference called (imaginitively) General Conference, and we watch it via satellite, live from Salt Lake. I was wondering how that works for countries on the "wrong" side of the International Date Line. After all, the Sunday sessions would be appearing at 0300 Monday morning, hardly the best time to attract viewers. Turns out that they show them via tape delay, just like NBC did to us, in reverse, for the Sydney Olympics. Now you know.
I was going to write something pithy here, but thanks to the International Date Line I didn't have an October 8th-- I left LA on the 7th and when I get to Sydney it'll be the 9th. Technically, that's not true; if you go by Pacific time I had an hour or two of the 8th before we crossed over.
As you can see from this picture, the seats in business class on this plane are pretty nice; they recline and stretch out. Under the bottle of water, there's a control pad for audio and video; in the lower right corner of the picture, that little indented thing is a 6" pop-up LCD TV screen. Controls for adjusting the footrest (at bottom) and seat pitch, etc. are on the left armrest. Not too bad.
I was able to catch about a 5-hour nap. Unfortunately, when I woke up it was only quarter until midnight Sydney time, and I haven't been able to fall asleep since. Next time, I'll take a Unisom or a Tylenol PM or something as soon as I get on the airplane, although if I had I'd have missed dinner. Because it's such a long flight, you get dinner shortly after takeoff, a snack around 0030 Sydney time, and breakfast later. For airline food, it's pretty good.