Well, the day started off pretty well. I slept on the couch last night, because Ants didn’t want to sleep on the spare double bed because it was too soft, and I didn’t want to sleep in that room by myself, because that was the room that Yaya (Ants’s Grandmother) died in. So I slept on the couch, which was fairly comfortable, and got a whole 5 hours sleep.

We got up and moving, and while in the shower, I head there’d been fog in Auckland. I got Ants to ring and see what was going on, but he said our flight hadn’t been disrupted. Good news.

Celia rang on behalf of her family, and then I rang the preschool (where I was working), and the put me on speakerphone so I could talk to the children while they were at mat time. In the middle of talking on the phone, Vicky, the boys, Mum and Dad, Lincoln and Amber turned up. I felt a little bad that we weren’t completely finished packing, and Dad tried to take a jab at me, and I bit his head off. Amber goes “Ha! He got one more fight in before you leave!”

Brendan (Happy Birthday!) rang Mum and Dad and he said that the fog had been very thick. I told him that we’d rang and seen that our flight wasn’t disrupted, and we were meeting them on time.

We were finally ready to go and we were out the door at 10:45am. I went with Amber and Lincoln, Ants drove Kathy’s car, and Mum and Dad went in the truck (which was loaded with our bed, boxes, and other junk) Vicky and the boys came in her car. What an entourage!

We got to the airport, and went to check in. While there, Amber was playing with the QuickCheck terminal, which was very annoying and stressing, because we needed to talk to the people at the counter. Thankfully she cancelled the check-in. We found that our flight had been delayed to 1pm because of fog in Auckland.

We had to do some sorting with our tickets so it was off to the ticket counter. Our travel agent, who was pretty hopeless, despite being the assistant manager, didn’t change Ants’s name properly, and didn’t put on my frequent flyers points, so it was up to the ticketing lady to sort out. She had to do some cancelling and shuffling because of Amber starting the check-in process. Finally we were organised, and ready to go. I suddenly remembered that I had left my camera charger and new battery charging in the kitchen. Mum came over, and I asked her to organise going to get it, seeing as we had an extra few hours up our sleeve. Mum went over to the group and said that I’d forgotten our charger. Kathy piped up with “Oh well I’m not going to go get it, when I leave here, I’m going to work. I won’t be coming back”. Amber said “Well I’ll go get it then”. They organised to get the keys off Kathy (which she wasn’t too happy about) and Amber and Mum thankfully went and got my charger.

We hung around waiting and waiting, and Chris Wruck came. It was lovely to see him. He gave me a back massage

When Amber and Mum came back, we had lunch, brought at Wishbone. We found that there weren’t enough tables in the foodcourt, but scattered around were lots of chairs. So Anthony hunter-gathered chairs and arranged them in a circle so we all had a place to sit. After lunch Mum and I went for a wander around. We didn’t find much, but talked heaps. It was nice to have a catchup. I think she’s very worried about Ants and I. She said that if anything happened, they would put together my airfare for me to come home. Of course if anything happened between me and Ants, I’d just get him kicked out of the country lol.

Our fight (2714) got delayed till 1:45pm, and there was another one (2712) that was heading off shortly, but also had delays. We headed to the ticketing booth, and asked what was happening. She said “Quick, give me your boarding passes”
We handed them over
“Oh, you’ve already checked in your bags haven’t you?”
“Yeah we have”
“Sorry I can’t help you.”
So if our bags weren’t checked in, we would have been on that flight, except how could we not have had our bags checked in, when our flight was due to leave 2 hour ago.

So we waited, and while waiting, we took pictures.

Ampy and Bambi feeling sad;
we don’t want to leave our friends!

Dylan and Keran

What do you do while waiting?
Play scratchies of course!

Our flight was delayed till 3pm, and the 2712 flight was boarded. 2712 sat on the tarmac for about 45mins before flying, and our plane was delayed indefinitely. While we waited, people started to go. Kathy had to go to work (she left before we had lunch), Chris had to go back to work, and finally, when we realised we were going to be missing our connection to LAX, we got worried. Amber and Lincoln really needed to go, so we said goodbye (which took for ages) and Ants finally asked Lincoln to be his best man. He replied “I’d be honoured”. They had a man love moment.

So once we started worrying about our connection, we joined the now very long queue of people for an hour and a half to get to the tickets. Mum and Dad, Vicky and the boys left, because it was starting to get dark, and they needed to get back to the Naki. We said our goodbyes and good lucks and they were gone. Good thing that parking is only a max of $23.

While waiting in line, we realised that there was a lot of Hurricanes supporters wanting to go to the game. Also in the line was Angela, Ants’s cousin who’s just come back from the UK with her boyfriend from Auckland. We had spent a little while working out whether it was them or not, and while standing in line an announcement came over the intercom; “All passengers on flight 2714, your plane will be leaving at 6pm. Please collect your bags from the carousel, and re-check them in.”

Hurrah! Ants stayed in line, and I raced off to collect our bags. By the time I got back, Angela had realised that Ants was in the line, and had come down to talk to him. I stayed with our bags, and Ants went and met Cam, who we’ve wanted to meet for ages. They talked for a while, and then we swapped so we could meet him. All the other flights were cancelled, so Angela and Cam were credited a flight with Qantas to use within the year. Angela hung out with us until we got to the front of the line, and then it was our turn to organise things.

The deal was, the QF25 (our LAX flight) had been delayed until 7:20pm. We scheduled to leave 6:10pm. There were 53 passengers on the 2714 that needed to make that connection, so there was a chance they would hold it for 20mins for us. So fingers crossed. We were also given a dinner voucher for $30. So we had half an hour to get some kai, and wait for our plane. Back to wishbone and we stocked up. We got two hot meals (Mediterranean pasta, and a rice one), a drink each, a piece of fruit, and Jaffas! We went back to the boarding gate to eat, and waited, and waited. 6:00pm came around, 6:10pm, and still nothing. I went back to ticketing, and they said that we would now be leaving at 7:10pm, and there would be no chance of making our connection. We had asked earlier if there were any other flights going through to LAX, and we found that Air New Zealand were going that way at 9:30pm. We asked if we could be transferred to that flight. They said that they couldn’t do anything until we were in Auckland, in case there were other delays. So all we could do was wait.

Finally we boarded. Finally we took off at 7:45pm. Everybody clapped and cheered. I had a little cry as we saw Lyall Bay passing away from beside us, and tried to pick out the places near Kathy’s place. We flew over town, and soon we were in the air flying North. We passed over the Naki, and we spotted Hawera, saw Kapuni, Eltham, Stratford and New Plymouth. I had another little cry. We got a yum muffin and a drink on the plane, then all of a sudden we were touching down in Auckland. The plan was for Ants to run to international to the Qantas ticketing there. I was to get the luggage and get to international as soon as possible. So I ran and again waited. Finally the bags came. My first bag came, and then there was a jam of bags in the archway, and it was my bag and a couple of others. So I jumped over the carousel yanked out my bag out and dumped it on the ground beside my trolley, jumped down, put it on my trolley. Then our pack was out. I thought about waiting, then thought “I don’t have time for this” so I jumped back up, grabbed the pack, and climbed back down put it on the trolley. Some of the other passengers we had talked to wished me luck, and I ran out the door, and sprinted all the way to international.

By the time I got there, Ants had discovered that Qantus international ticketing had closed, and he was talking to domestic ticketing on phone supplied by a bored girl at a rental car booth. There was no luck, and we’d have to go back to domestic to get a room for the night. As we were leaving we heard an announcement that the Air NZ flight to LAX was delayed to leave at 10:00pm. We had time!! We rushed to the Air NZ ticketing, to see what could happen. They couldn’t do anything, so they sent us to the Duty Manager. The flight had been closed, but they were willing to put us on the flight if we could get the ok from Qantus. So they rang all the people that they could, but could not get through to anybody at the Qantus desks. In the meantime Hannah (Ants’s friend) turned up. I went out to see her, and left Ants with the duty manager. Ants soon turned up, and we had to go back to domestic. We got everything into Hannah’s car, and rushed off to domestic (we had to backtrack, because Hannah forgot to pay). Then we got back to domestic, and went straight to the Qantus desk. We told them the story, and asked if they could authorise our transfer to the AirNZ flight. They rang the Air NZ service desk, then the Duty Manager, and we were hopeful. Our last hope. But they couldn’t do it because there just wasn’t enough time to transfer our ticket (which would be about 15mins or so) and it was already 9:45pm.

So with a few tears, we had to settle for a hotel, (which Hannah was going to take us to) and to leave on the next flight, which is 6:10pm with Qantus. What is the deal with there not being a morning flight to LAX? Dumb stupid.

So we went to the Centra hotel which is in the middle of nowhere in a big industrial district. They kept the Buffet open for us, but the food was pretty shit. Hannah sat with us while we waited, and came up to our room to hang out. We also got a breakfast voucher and a shuttle voucher for tomorrow. Hannah left soon after, and Ants and I got ready for bed. The room is quite big, and has Sky Movies. After our exhausting day, we were both so ready for bed.

Current Mood: aggravated & bored & lethargic & relaxed

Tags: Airport, Amber, Anthony, Auckland, Dylan, Family, Friends, Keran, Lincoln, Lloyd, Nancy, travel, Vicky, Wellington