RWO40 - It’s been a while…time for another adventure overseas!

Well here we are, on the road again. Ok not so much the road, but the runway and then a road trip. After a rather long break (thanks COVID!) the passports have been dusted off and we prepare to head to the USA for Ryan’s birthday. Not just any birthday, but his 40th. #oldfart.

It has been a while since we have travelled long-haul so a little more preparation was required with pre-flight COVID tests, various declarations and additional documentation checks at the airport. Nothing beats wearing a face mask for 14 hours, not only the recirculation of aircraft cabin air but also your own breath, plus a dash of nappy fumes (keep reading)...  Tasty! 

Not a bad view for a low circuit over Brisbane city.

We jumped online at -80 hours to departure to score better seats in cattle class (yep, there is an 80 hour rule where the high value seats are released for the cheap asses).  Feeling quite clever with having grabbed the 2nd row of economy.....until we boarded..... the front row of economy is where the bassinets are......

Annnnnd welcome into the picture the two year old.  The two year old who we assumed may get a little tired quickly and have a weee lil nap.  Also enter from stage right the mother and mother-in-law who appeared not to be the seasoned travelers one may expect with an infant. One may expect to have a number of toys or activities to keep the little #$%&ing brat princess busy for 14 hours.  Nope. Just one doll.  Yep that was going to do the trick.  Luckily there were some empty seats adjacent to the trio.  Yet still, after spreading their crap out over five seats across two rows plus a bassinet the little gem of a darling still needed a harpoon gun laced with heavy tranquillizers to bring it down.  I am pleased to report that success was achieved (the infant fell asleep without any harpooning necessary) at top of descent, just as the Californian coastline came into sight. Great timing! We were met with an impressive view of downtown LA and the Hollywood hills in the distance just before the Dunlops smoked up as the gently kissed the pavement at LAX.

Note to self - homeward bound seats will be no where near the bassinet section of the Airbus.

With all of that aside the flight was OK.  Not the usual service, smaller food portions but a number of refreshment offerings throughout the flight.  The NZ based crew were really attentive and we managed to watch a few movies and the usual inflight entertainment stuff.

As you could imagine we were thanking our lucky stars that we had booked a room at the Westin for our arrival and a post-flight nap was well deserved followed by a quick trip to Denny's to remind ourselves of the stunning American cuisine.

The jetlag bug bit a little harder than expected, so to counter that we had some pool deck time to get the Vitamin D up too.

Some good rest was achieved which was really important as we were readying ourselves to take on LAX again the next day for our non-stop-Embraer E175-jet-service-to-Oakland (during the Easter holiday weekend).