Flight to Detroit was uneventful (except for the baby in the seat in front of me that played peek-a-boo with me the whole flight) until we tried to land, where the winds forced us to try and land twice. Flew so close to the landing strip that I could see the little lights and grass before we powered up and took off again to circle and land successfully on the second attempt.Detroit to LA flight was especially boring, and so I tried to figure out who would become who if our plane crashed a la Lost....although totally forgot about the mountains near LA which excited me.
Lounged around the LA airport trying to spot celebrities or at least damn paparazzi for a couple hours (with no success) Then boarded the fateful flight to Fiji. Unfortunately sat beside the creeper who was looking at me in the departure lounge, but he was actually a nice old dude who was going scuba diving in Fiji for 2 weeks.
An hour in, after I had passed out before dinner service, the announcement came on that we were turning around to LA because of a fuel pump problem. Flew around LA to burn fuel for two hours (The map of where we had travelled so far in the headsets was amusing because it was like someone had scribbled circles over the LA area.)
Landing was quite rough, and emergency crews were waiting for us, with fire trucks and ambulances waiting. Fire trucks had to hose off the brakes because we blew them out on landing, and eventually all 16 tires had to be replaced. Had to wait in line to get hotel reservations, and made it to the hotel for 8am...at which point I knew i was not getting much sleep that night...
Only cool thing was that Tony Hawk the skateboarder was on my flight...Spotted him while waiting for my hotel room, which was the first and only celebrity spotting on my entire trip.
Woke up after an hour of sleep and tried to work things out with my travel agent, but unfortunaltely not much could be done, so a lot of waiting around in LA was done in a gross hotel room (while attempting to avoid the coverage of the plane crash that had happened the same night)
Called the Air Pacific representative and convinced him to get me onto the Quantas direct flight from LA to Auckland that night. Got on that flight and had a much less eventful and much higher quality flight. (really comfy seats, choice of meals with a full menu for breakfast and dinner, AND the cool old man who didnt take his sunglasses off the entire 12 hour trip)
So, after the insane trip to get to New Zealand Jenn and Jim picked me up from the airport and we drove off to Rotorura!
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