Travellin' Man

This morning I got off my fourth 24+ hour flight in the past 5 weeks and thanked god it was over. The question a lot of people have asked me lately is how I can stand so many long haul trips on such a frequent basis. The fact is that while sitting on a plane with 400 other people for 14 hours or so at a time isn't my first choice of hobby, there are worse things than sitting around napping between movies that you always wanted to watch but couldn't be bothered to see in a theater or rent the DVD.

This trip was a little more interesting because I was recently upgraded another level in the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, and supposedly was meant to benefit in various ways. While I'm not sure that most of these benefits actually mean anything, one thing I was looking forward to checking out was the Qantas Club, so I did this in Sydney before flying out a week and a half ago. The whole thing would have been much more exciting if I was more of an alcoholic, since they did provide free beer, wine and hard liquor. As it stands, even I am not going to binge drink by myself at 9.30am before a 24 hour journey, and so I simply grabbed some free juice and cake and went on my merry way. A bit of a disappointment to say the least.

Coming back was a little more soul-destroying, as I had to fly from NYC to LA on American Airlines. I generally avoid any American carrier at all costs because anyone who has flown on a half-decent foreign airline knows what crap the US is when it comes to domestic flights. Sorry, but if I'm going to be on a plane for 6 hours then I don't care if it's not leaving the country, food should be provided and not charged for. Not only that, but their first and business class areas were the saddest things I've ever seen and I don't remember being completely not jealous that I wasn't sitting there until now. I really just felt bad that people had actually paid extra for it.

Otherwise it wasn't that bad, and easily the best thing was walking off the flight in LA and having Nigel Barker (of America's Next Top Model fame) standing right in front of me. I realise this will only be appreciated by people who have just as trashy taste in TV shows as myself, but I thought of more than a few people to text in Australia and across the US about my sighting. Alas, he totally saw me but didn't tell me that my walk was fierce when I passed by, so I'm trying to get past my heartbreak and move on with my life post-Nigel.

And now it's Tuesday afternoon and I'm questioning the wisdom of coming to work when my flight landed at around 9am this morning. My logic was that when you come back from vacation, your first day is going to be a waste anyway, so it might as well be a day when you're not capable of doing much. However I have spent the last 3 hours wishing for an early grave, so I'm not sure I will be doing that again anytime soon.

If I don't actually try to end my life in the next few minutes, I'll blog again this week and maybe make some mention of the most awesome trip back to New York that could ever be imagined.