I had a think and was forced to remove the heavy ice from my precious delicate fresh salmon. I couldnt throw away much else. I warned the nasty pair they better put my bag on the plane. It should be fine for sixteen cold hours at 15,000m unless they screw up again like last year and neglect to load the bag with fresh fish. Of course, last year Nina and I were a bit tipsy, celebrating our friendship, and me in trauma from caring for suddenly my deathly-ill mother on a cruise through Alaska. This year, I was trying to keep my cough in check and kept it to two glasses of wine at our incredible vego dinner.
Then the bitches made me repack my carry-on Joe's rickety trashed extra roll-aboard I had borrowed in Miami and they wanted to weight my backpack, too, even though normally carry-ons are never weighed. They need to learn customer service skills!! Socialists. It was 10pm and I am sure they wanted to go home, but there's no excuse. Looking back, I was wearing my Russian military outfit and they know I was in Russia from my itinerary. Maybe they hate Russia like the rest of us? Or maybe they were providing me down-home Russian deceptive customer service.
Bitch! I didn't realize then I was a sick and derious, which you can tell by the photo. Still, I am holding the most expensive ticket on Air Canada's longest flight, and weary RTW travellers on their final leg deserve respect, especially with the ground i covered in six weeks. The airline staff should know this since they all have my itinerary in front of them.
Yum. It's a Caesar for brekkie.
Is Sydney really that pretty? Yes? No?
Asiana FAs giggling in warm Aussie sun
Nearly home, final leg! It's nice to arrive at 730a, and even with my haul of third world loot, I jammed through Customs. It's so much better than arriving earlier with all of the others at icky 6am.
It's good to know where the ocean trenches are in case we start having an Air France over the Pacific.
Egalitarian Vancouver airport has no first or business class security bypass. Great. The hour long security line of Asian pax and the security Asians ignoring them were slow as molasses.
Air Canada closed its lounge by the time I arrived at the gate. Nice. Some local whingey schmuck tried to convince me to let him into the lounge. I gave him a comical Russian interrogation, name, age, flight, class of service. He was a grifter but why not help him out? Neither of us got in. The socialist lounge closed a full hour before the flight.
Of course, self-consciously-egalitarian Air Canada bunched me into the economy line to board the plane, which took forever and ever, and I wasn't feeling well, nor was I at all pleased with this crap departure service.
Then I discovered that on the needless mad rush to shuffle weight around my bags (there was about a zero sum hauled on the plane), I had put my Cathay pajamas in my check-in bag so had to wear my posh tight Hugo Boss outfit for 15 hours. There are No free pajamas on board this bare-bone airline, even for a fifteen hour affair. So I was wondering why I just didn't fly crap United, except for the detour to see Nina and Vancouver. The bitches had broken me, bitch, bitch, bitch, and i passed it on to the crew.
I was not happy, but had nothing to do as we took off over a dark midnight ocean, so meditated on my situation, and discovered I was the one making myself not enjoy my posh air travel experience that others would rave about.
The seat was great for lying back and watching the flight map, and it was great for sleeping- i knew this from last year, same flight, same plane- and my plague-like cough expectorated nicely airborne. I decided to undo my pants and take off my shirt to sleep, under a nice duvet, and no one in the ambient blue lit cabin could care less. I had Australian, African, and North American animals to cuddle. But first they served tasty wild salmon for dinner. I dressed for dinner. Though, sadly the stupid Socialists had no Aussie or BC wines in their pseudo-first class!! The menu proudly highlined some fat cat Aussie sommelier on the menu and gave his email address. Tragic. I wrote him a nastygram on my iphone to be sent automatically on arrival in Sydney. No Aussie wines on a flight that goes back and forth from Australia?
My trust kindly allows me to do this RTW trip in business class every year. If things get lean (and markets surge and wane), I'd rather do the trip every other year and still do it in business. I look super fit, young and strong to the public, but i am actually a mismash of nailed together gadgets and drug-induced consciousness now, and my crippled old body would be wrecked after a long transpac flight in the back of the plane.
In business class- or first or whatever that was- I don't avoid 16 hour flights, I look for them. On an unhurried flight, I can get a good eight or ten hours of snoozing in, and still enjoy the poshish amenities for a good eight or six hours on both sides. After I woke, I had warm chats in the galley with two FAs about their cool travel experiences. The older gentleman (the FAs were all senior citizens) spent a decade working for a safari company in East Africa and had seen the same sights I had on this trip. A lovely asthmatic lady was chatting to me about trekking Nepal on the route to Mt Everest that I did in 2002. I assured her she would be safe, thoough she'd have to go slowly and monitor her oxygen intake and possibly end early at Namche Bazaar or Tengboche monestary. They both still have spectacular scenery. How can you not like Canadians, even if they don't provide perfect thoughful robotic service I get on Cathay Pacific?
Go Boeing! Cool environment on 777-200ER.
I decided to make this a win and when I woke, I did my tai chi in the aisle in the large space adjacent to my bed, to center myself, then mediated at 15km high, found myself back on the mountain top in the Himalayas, and had a bloody to sooth my aching sickened body as i sat in the dim blue LED light. Air Canada conveniently forgot I am a vego so I got the normal yummy salmon for dinner (which the strict efficient Swiss would have never let me order), but of course, in the dark for my brekkie, I got some sad animal ground up in a sausage next to my pancakes in a strawberry sauce next to my pancakes. We're over Coolangata now, so I don't need to whinge about food, but thank Buddha I brought my safari torch on the plane!
Circling in over north Sydney to N/S runway, must be funny winds today. We always approach S/N over Woolongong .
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Excited to finally be home!! Where are my housekeys? Checked in my bags, arg. Glad I have a back up plan.
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