We made it to the airport early. We dropped our rental car off, and “B” had to spend almost an hour with Hertz dealing with them. There was a crack in the windshield that happened day one. (remember that 24 hour drive from Brisbane to Cairns?). For that 24 hour period we had 100% coverage, and then our regular rental that started the next day we waived coverage and allowed our credit card to do the coverage (if needed). Well, apparently when we kept the car in Cairns the agent just shifted the dates on the original rental to include the extra day at the beginning, and whipped out the first rental. So, she had some back and forth with that. I stayed out of the way and hung out with the girls. Got into the airport and then through all the security stuff. I accidentally left a small lunch box at security after we had gotten through but before passport control. I was concerned a little about getting it since it had emergency snacks in it for the plane, but they found it quite quickly. Then we got on a place to fly home. The new flight was to LAX instead of San Francisco and it was only 14 hour long. The flight was pretty good. The seats were nice in the premium economy section. The food wasn’t that great on the flight, and the attendants were a bit scatterbrained. There were some who were offering some food options to one side of the plane and others were offering other options to the other side, and when one was asked about the other options they were like, “oh yeah we have that too.” I watch “The Hobbit” trilogy. I had only seen the first 2 parts years ago, so I decided I had the time and watched all three parts. We listened to The Hobbit during our time in the car driving in Australia, and there was a lot of the movie where I was saying to myself, “I don’t remember that in the book,” and “That wasn’t how it was done in the book.” It was also way too long. I know this has been said before about these movies, but now that I have seen it all I must agree. WAY TOO LONG. I also watched a 50-minute documentary about Evanescence the band and an album they worked on during the covid pandemic. It was interesting. I may look more into their music. I had heard of them before, but now hearing more of their music I liked some of it. I also finally watched Interstellar. When it came out I heard from many people that it wasn’t worth seeing, and I wasn’t watching many movies at that time so I never saw it. But I have had many students over the years tell me that I needed to see it. So, I did. I will say that the physics wasn’t too bad in it (well the end stuff was a little bit out there), and as a movie it wasn’t too bad either. I liked what they did in places. Overall, I would give it a B-. I am glad I finally saw it, but I don’t feel my life is better for seeing it and if I had never seen it that would have been fine with me as well.
With everything else that has happened flight wise on this trip so far, I will say this flight did have its issues and it was that this flight ended up leaving over an hour late so that meant our 1.5hr layover in LA wasn’t going to work to get us home to Phoenix. But my father-in-law realized that as well and worked with United to get us onto a new flight once we landed. He got us on a 1:25pm flight and seats that were nice and together. It was a bit of a long time at the airport, but at least it was the same day. When we checked in for the PHX flight there was another flight option that was saw. “B” and I both read it as 11:01 in the morning and thought that was a great option since it would get us in earlier. So we picked it, but then we realized it was 11:01pm with a 12:30AM arrival on Saturday. So we tried to change it back, but we couldn’t, at least not on the automated kiosk, and the United helper also couldn’t do anything. We had to see an official service person. We waited in line and I was a bit stressed that I had messed things up even more. Once we got the person at the desk she heard us out, but there was nothing she could do, and she tried. We were crushed and I felt awful for what I had done. But then she tried calling someone else on the phone. She talked to that person for a few minutes, and when she hung up she said we were back on the 1:25 flight. We were relieved beyond anything. Then we had to hang around the airport until that flight. We read and relaxed.
Then it was time to fly home. The flight was great out of LAX, and it went very fast. There was a bit of turbulence on the decent into PHX but that was fine since we were home. We got picked up by my father-in-law. When we got home, I was happy to be home. Yes, there was a lot to do once we were home, but it was a relief.
And next week you will get a conclusion writing on the trip.