So let me start at the beginning, rocking up at Melbourne Airport I realized I thought my plane left at 12 it actually left at 1. My Mum made very little of a scene, when she said goodbye with a 30 second hug on the curb, while parked in a taxi zone…I'm sure she saved her tears for the long trip back to Sunbury without my constant rambling in her ear to keep her company. Anyway so eventually I leave Melbourne, fly into Auckland, with very little incident in the constant battle that I'm having with travel sickness, score one for the travel sick pills and the fact I was sitting right by the emergency exit, with a flight attendant, who was obviously concerned by my white knuckled grip on the chairs as we took off and landed that he felt it necessary to remind me my time on a plane was only just beginning. While in Auckland I sat around in the lounge waiting for my LA flight beside an Aussie woman from Queensland whose thumb looked like it was a big toe, her Texan husband, who thought it necessary to express his disgust that there was no longer a smokers lounge at Auckland airport obnoxiously and repeatedly for 3 hours, and my favourite, a woman who was doing a circuit of power walking around the entire departure section.
Eventually I find myself on the plane, beside a New Zealand man and his British wife. It so far seems as though everyone is involved in cross cultural marriages. For the first half of the flight across the Pacific I'm loving the travel sick pills, so much so that I'm not even afraid to tell them I love them…in retrospect I'm now pretty sure that was my down fall, I let my guard down for one second, next thing you know we hit some turbulence, and I feel that familiar wave in my stomach that says anything you've eaten in the last two years will be extricated from you by the time I'm through.
So I stumble down the aisle, lock myself in the toilet and proceed to relive every meal I've ever had, not content with that my nose begins to piss blood profusely from both nostrils, so now I'm trying to hold myself up, with one hand, trying to tear toilet paper and tissues from anywhere, with blood spurting all over the bathroom, thinking to myself I'm gonna end up smacking my head on the toilet only to be found hours later dead in a pool of my own blood and vomit. Eventually I somehow stumble back to my seat holding my nose, the turbulence still reeking havoc on my stomach, my throat burning from the nice mixture of vomit and blood running down it. I sit back in my seat and the nice couple beside me call the flight attendants, who are put to work, cleaning up my nose, sitting me back in my seat, jamming a bag of ice on my forehead, and sticking an open vomit bag in my blood stained hands. Somehow the nose bleed stops, but team Air New Zealand is worried about my breathing and so out comes a full sized oxygen tank, I spend the rest of the trip sucking back oxygen and vomiting up blood, the whole time thinking lucky me I get to be the freak on the plane who can't handle to trip. Some girl up the back tries to rival me by having a panic attack, but she obviously has no idea who she is dealing with and gives up soon after.
Finally we arrive at LAX, where I'm told I must wait until the plane is empty so I can be helped from the plane, they say they're not so sure I should be allowed to continue on with my domestic flights, but there's no way I'm not getting to Tulsa tonight. Instead I get escorted through the US citizens section of Immigration, the guy asks me the standard questions stamps my passport, looks at me and says…
"Welcome home…"
I guess that means I can stay as long as I want now. I'm pretty happy once I've cleared customs and immigration in what must be record time for a foreigner and decide even my six hours of hell did have some spoils to be happy about.
While waiting for my plane to Vegas I see C grade celebrity, that guy that was Eddie Munster in the newer TV version of The Munsters. LAX at this point is rocking and rolling like the Pacific, and the same five Christmas carols are playing on repeat for the three hours I'm there. But the flight to Vegas is vomit and blood free, but it was only as hour, I did take another travel sick pill and was feeling some love for them again, but not to the point that I will ever express it verbally. Then my plane to Tulsa is delayed by an hour and a half, and I'm thinking great now I have to let Mrs. Lawson, who was nice enough to offer to pick me up at the airport at 11:30 know that it'll be more like 1:30. She was keeping track of my flight on the internet already and said she'd be there no matter what, but I had to spend the next hour and a half watching propaganda news reports American style, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, which it turns out is curiously more entertaining without Eddie McGuire hosting it.
When I arrive in Tulsa I've convinced myself I'm not getting on a plane ever again, and if that means that Immigration is gonna have to track me down and drag me from the country they either better send me off on a boat asylum seeker like, or find a way to get me back to Australia by car. So I drag my sorry body through the now empty corridors of the Tulsa airport, and see a mass of people waiting for this one plane to arrive, I'm just hoping one of the faces will look familiar so I don't look like a loser who has no one to pick them up when they arrive home. I see Mrs. Lawson grinning in the distance, and as I get within three steps of where she's standing around turns Nip, whose face turns to stunned mullet. It turns out her parents got her to the airport by telling her that they had to go see a family friend at the airport, and that she had been so frustrated that she had spent the last few hours yelling at her parents, thinking they were crazy because they wanted to go to the airport at 1 in the morning. In another surprise all of my luggage arrives in Tulsa unharmed, which is somewhat typical now that I actually know people in the country and have people to pick me up from the airport and clothe me if need be until the suitcase shows up.
The surprises kept coming when Nip's parents instead of taking me home drove us to what will be referred to as the rent house from now on, and told us it was our pad for a week until I booted off to Florida, since Nip had yet to clean up my room in the Lawson house, despite constant pleas from her mother and me, but hey she didn't know I was coming so early so I guess score one for Nip's procrastination, we had our own pad.
