A Journey in Stages; Leg 1

Leg 1:
Louisville to Dallas
Dallas to San Francisco
San Francisco to Auckland

I should have let Jeremy be the one to do the first "on the road" post, because his experience was slightly different than mine. And honestly, pretty funny in retrospect.

We started out in Louisville on New Years Eve. For the record, I love our sleepy little airport. We breezed right through, with our ticket agent going above and beyond to do us a solid.

We were about 30 minutes late to take off. And we were only going to have a 45 minute layover in Dallas BEFORE the glitch. We weren't the only ones on the flight to be in a similar predicament, and our fellow passengers totally made way to help us all off the plane first when we landed. By the time we got off, we were down to about 10 minutes to make our connecting flight, and there were still the 2 carry-ons we were forced to check to collect. I had Jeremy and the girls run ahead with all the boarding passes to try to make the gate while I waited in the tunnel with the other passengers for the carry-ons. I waited. And waited, for what felt like an eternity. When they finally trolleyed up, everyone was making way for another woman and me to grab and go, with cheers of "Run!' and "Safe journey!" It was fantastic, actually.

And run we did. Onto the tram, to the next concourse, down the escalator, and to the gate. Where our husbands (and my girls) stood with shocked expressions on their faces.

Turns out, they shut the gate literally 20 seconds before we ran up huffing and puffing. But it was more than that. Apparently the gate agent actually took our boarding passes out of his and the other husband's hands, and passed them out to the people waiting to go standby, without so much as "how do you do." The men were indignant. The girls were aghast. And apparently, the standby passengers were less than grateful for their manna.

Now, Jeremy is one of the most calm and stable people I have ever known in my life. For a fraction of a second, I thought he just might express his displeasure. At this point, I think I might have even laughed a little bit at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. I went to the gate agent, who had apparently just been reamed by a different set of travelers, and kindly asked what our options were. At that moment, the stars must have aligned, we clicked, and the next thing I knew, our standby status was changed to confirmed which promptly changed again to 1st class.

I won't go into all of the wonderfulness that is first class seating, but let's just say that a warmed, moist, scented finger towel was a slice of heaven. Quite seriously, I may have had a religious experience.

So we made it to our connecting flight in San Francisco with no more to-do, and hopped on our longest leg of the trip. Now, if you've never been on a 13 hour flight, let me just say that it's a whole lot longer than it sounds. Like, you go to bed then wake up again and just when you think you can't take it anymore you realize that you still have 4 hours to go, long.

But then the sun comes up, the clouds clear and you see the first islands of the North Island, and you realize that it just might have been worth every second.

What I wish I'd done:
Pack a couple of Wisps (disposable toothbrushes)  in our carry-ons.
Brought along an expendable washcloth for the morning.

What I wish I hadn't:
Nothing. So far so good on that front.

Total travel time on the first leg:
30 hours from my door in Louisville to clearing customs in Auckland.