Day 2 ~ Sydney - LA - Las Vegas

Tuesday 15th May, happened to be the day that we only lived twice (in one day)!  When we woke in Sydney, all the planets seemed to be aligned for getting us to the airport in plenty of time for our flight at 10:05 am direct to Los Angeles.  Tony had warned me of the impending Customs dangers of miminal staff and long delays potentially waiting in the US to interrupt the perfect beginning of our holiday but like the carefree younger sister that I am, I took no notice as this was a whole day or more away.

What I didn't realise as we checked in our baggage filled in all the forms and cleared Customs without incident, it all seemed like the perfect start of the holiday.  Little did I know that at the boarding lounge, I would be asked to undergo a powder and bomb residue check.  What did I care, I hadn't done anything wrong and I happily obliged ... until, I tested positive for Explosives, yes, that's right, me, who as never had so much as a parking ticket in all my life suddenly finds herself the "victim" of what I could only classify as a crazy little security joke.

As I was kept behind closed partitions for them to deide what to do with me while Ian waited to board not really knowing were I was.  All I could think of were Jac's words of wisdom in her recent article (the 5Ws and the H of journalism) thinking about the "where did the explosives come from", "who planted them on me", "what kind of explosive were planted", "when were they planted", "why were they planted" and finally "how were they planted".  I was grateful to Jac for giving me these gems to think about while they left me alone with one disinterested security officer who obviously thought I was guilty.  It seemed to be forever while they deliberated on what to do with me if the final 2 tests proved positive (it also seemed they were almost tossing a coin for who would do the final 2 tests).  Obviously those final 2 tests were negative - funny that because I can't remember the last time that I was in close contact with an explosive, I even hated throw-downs (for those who can remember them) and tomthumbs were a nightmare I would prefer to forget.

Anway, we finally borded the flight to LA (a little alert but not alarmed, shaken, but not stirred).  The flight was non eventful, both of us got little sleep but caught up on a number of movies that we normally wouldn't allow the other one to watch.  The flight arrived on time and to get back to my story about Tony's advice, we disembarked the aircraft only to find that the Customs IT system had gone down.  Awesome I thought as a defender of the benefits of IT, they'd have a disaster plan in place.  As we waited in a cooridor for about 2 hrs with people of all walks of life and fading levels of senses of humour, I realised, there was actually no disaster recovery plan, or any other plan and there was talk at one stage of busing us off to another airport to be processed there (what does that sound like to you:)).  Tonight as I finish my groundhog day blog, I can't say enough for the customs folk at LA airport who processed each of us manually, one by one and we still made our connecting flight to Las Vegas.  It seems it's not a Cath and Ian holiday without the thrill of chasing that next connecting flight (just keep that in mind if any of you think you'd like to travel with us in the future).

We've had a lovely first day here in Las Vegas and have picked up our tickets for the Beatles Love Cirque on Friday night.  It's 36 degrees here so a big change from Canberra and Sydney.

So ends the longest 15th May 2013 in our lifetime.