The Journey, Part 2

After pulling off the personally gratifying feat of carrying all of my 130 pounds of luggage up several stairs and hallways, I made my way to the Air New Zealand gate. I was once again decently sneaky and grabbed an exciting, captivating picture of the fine ANZ employee checking my luggage. I kept worrying that I would be over the weight limit at some point in my many stopovers, but the baggage check process continued to surprise me with is efficiency and relative simplicity. My final ticket was printed out and I felt a rush of excitement to have such concrete evidence of my departure in my hands.

A note on security gates at the airport: I am not a fan. There's really no way to do it without feeling awkward. Putting my own shoes in a bin and opening my luggage to dig out electronics and metal objects in a long line of rushed people is not my idea of a fun time. I'm sure many citizens share this sentiment, but I just wanted to put my feelings out there. I've said it, and I won't say one more word about that. Not a fan.

Carrying on, L.A.X. was the first taste of an "international" flavor in my journey. I began to notice different languages in different gates, clearly reflecting the multinational hub that the airport was. I was under the impression that my plane was chartered for students only, but the crowd was far larger than I had anticipated and there were clearly more than Australearn kids journeying to New Zealand on this fine night. It was an odd sight; most people hugged a pillow or blanket, just waiting to get onto the plane so that they might fall asleep. 

I took a stealth, cool approach by quietly walking amongst the various people, waiting to overhear discussions of Australearn or studying abroad. Took a couple of minutes but I managed to end up meeting a group of kids going with the program. Conversation flowed pretty freely. I've noticed these last few weeks that when you're going through something as exciting and crazy as this with someone else, it's really easy to find things to talk about because you're going through a lot of the same interesting experiences. It's not as if you met someone at a library; the only thing you'd immediately have in common was that you're both looking at a lot of books. When you're leaving your home and traveling 14 hours to a foreign country, it's not difficult at all to find interesting common ground for conversation. I also soon realized that I should have and could have taken my guitar as a piece of checked luggage; I met at least three other people lugging their ax across the Oceans to New Zealand. 

Walking on the plane was a little bit intimidating but much more exciting. After a quick passport check (for what seemed to be at least the fifth time), I joined a long queue and found my way on board. I was greeted by a heavily kiwi-accented flight crew and began my attempt to find my seat. I had hoped to grab some of the bed seats that I had seen on wikipedia, but alas, those were reserved for the very rich people. Walking to my seat, I bumped into a middle-aged man and quickly apologized. I was quickly acknowledged and forgiven by a hearty New Zealand-sounding "No worries, mate". I subsequently geeked out with excitement for about five minutes. I eventually found myself once again seated in a regular person's plane seat. Not to complain, though, because the fates continued to be in my favor. I grabbed a great window seat and had a very nice woman across from me in the aisle seat. Not only this, but the person who was supposed to be sitting between us apparently decided he DIDN'T want to go to New Zealand that day! Because of this, we were both able to stretch out the entire flight as if we were on a couch. The first thing I saw as I sat down was the greeting screen that contained the now familiar New Zealand greeting "Kia Ora" and "welcome to our world". A feeling of relief and a new wave of anticipation shot through me. I had passed through the archway.

I will never, for as long as I live, forget how I felt as the wheels of the plane lifted off of the ground. It was surreal. I watched the bright lights of Los Angeles and of America for a good ten minutes as they disappeared into the distance. I finally forced myself to take a deep breath and to look forward and ahead. 

Quick list of things that made this flight awesome: 

1) it was very spacious and comfortable, 

2) they served hot meals that were quite amazing, 

3) people came around with drinks of any variety every ten minutes for the entire flight, 

4) each seat had a small screen that played hundreds of movies and TV shows, and most importantly, 

5) these T.Vs also had a full fledged interactive Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game available for play the entire flight. Everyone should know that after a couple hours of playing, I got to 200,000 absolutely fake dollars. I was happy with it.

Yeah, I got this one right.

Keep in mind that this was legitimately a 14 hour flight. 14 hours is a long time, and I truly believe that I exhausted every single thing I could possibly do in this time span. I watched two movies (I Love You, Man and Watchmen), Played Millionaire for a few hours, urinated, slept sporadically, stared into the abyss, Did laps around the dark and quiet cockpit, spoke to the woman next to me about Australia, read my book, wrote, ate, drank, stared into the abyss some more, and finished off the last two hours watching what had become my favorite feature on the plane: 

This program was nothing short of fascinating. Starting with the liftoff, it provided an up to date computer simulation of exactly where over the world the plane was at any given moment. It also provided our speed, altitude, Time since departure, time to arrival, and compass direction. Every once in a while it showed a satellite image of the area below us. It really helped to pass the time and to accentuate the feeling of a progressively forward-moving amazing journey.

My headphones stopped working about three hours before landing. I reserved myself to watching the movie the girl in front of me was watching through the two seats and without the audio. It turned out to be the Hannah Montana movie. I was out of things to do. Here's an exciting picture of what I watched for an hour or so. I'm telling you, I was completely out of things to do. Don't judge me.

It took up the time!

As I've said before, I got up a few times to stretch my legs on the plane. At this point it was in the middle of the night, and most people on the plane were either sleeping or were deeply involved in a movie. The knowledge that I was miles over the middle of the Pacific Ocean in this vessel suspended in the air coupled with my increasingly slipping grasp on time as a static property evoked an indescribably Twilight Zone-esque feeling. It was very quiet, very still, and very eerie. 

Around 1:00 in the morning, not long after I took the above photo, our jet passed through the earth's equator and was subject to intense turbulence. Everyone was awakened and told to fasten their seat-belts. This carried on for about 25 minutes. It was very awe-inspiring and made me aware of the power of the earth and the fragility of our seemingly indestructible, mammoth Air New Zealand vessel. Right outside of this calm, eerie environment, millions of moving pieces and powerful turbines were working to keep all of these people alive and healthy. It felt very small and ant-like compared to the earth with all its vastness and power.

I took a picture of the first toilet that I experienced south of the equator. Contrary to popular belief and teachings, it did not flush backwards. It was very, very much normal. Disillusioned by the lies of my teachers and society in general, I returned to my seat. Here is a photo of the flush that crushed my dreams.

Part Three within the day.