It may seem a little silly to still be writing about events a year in the past, but this was such a special time in our lives, that it was really important to me to record as much of it as I could. I mean, when else are we going to get the chance to just put everything aside and travel for four months. It was truly a golden time in my life, and even though it was only four months, somehow, in my memory it seems like so much longer.
I was so sad to leave all of our new friends and the constant adventuring and to have to come back to real life. The journey home didn’t make it any easier. Our flights to Sydney had been so easy! The flights back were like a brutal snap back to reality. EVERYTHING went wrong.
Our journey home can best be summed up by two clips from the Ben Stiller movie, Meet the Parents. On our flight from Sydney to Brisbane, this is basically who we were dealing with:
Rather than this brunette, imagine a decrepit Ann Coulter and age her a decade or two. The attitude, however, was spot on. Our flight attendant completely embodied this fake civility and complete lack of reason in favor of unwavering adherence to the rules, even when it doesn't make sense or serves no purpose. Now you have a picture of just who we were dealing with.
Greg had a carry on that was especially designed for overhead compartments. It however, was more cube-like than those measuring racks they have at gates. So true, it didn’t fit in that slot, but it was actually much smaller than most carry-on rollers. We’d never had a problem taking it on a flight or fitting it into any overhead bin. Still, our heroine, we’ll call her Ann, decided to take issue with the bag and hold onto it like steak in mouth of a rabid beast.
She pulled us aside, made us wait, and would not be reasoned with. She was determined to take our bag away. We tried to explain that the bag is specifically designed for overhead compartments and it really does fit – Couldn’t we just show her? If it didn’t fit, then we’ll agree to check it. NO. Then we tried to explain that the time between our flights was razor thin, and we were likely to miss our connecting flight if we had to wait for our bag – everything else had already been checked through to LA. NO.
At this point, a second flight attendant who came to the conversation late, started to agree with us. She commented to Ann, on an aside, that we really might have a problem between flights. Ann would not be deterred in her mission to screw us over.
We should have taken the second flight attendant’s doubt at the timing as a red flag, but somehow, after 15 minutes of arguing, Ann was able to pry the bag away from us. When she saw our weakness, she snapped it away so fast that we didn’t have time to think about what we’d need to take out of the bag – like for example, Greg’s laptop computer. Before we could say anything, the bag was taken and dropped down a chute.
So guess what? At the other end of the flight, no bag. It was lost. We waited and waited, but nothing. To add to the fun, we found out that our next flight was leaving out of a completely different terminal. We finally had to give up hope and book it to our next flight. The only reason we made our flight at all was because they’d implemented extra security measures for New Year’s travel and getting people through multiple security checks had caused a back up.
To add insult to injury, a woman ahead of us in the security line wheeled right onto the plane with the exact same bag as Greg.
We got on the plane, but every obnoxious thing that could go wrong to make our flight uncomfortable did. My kindle short-circuited, so I had nothing to read, Greg’s TV didn’t work, so he had nothing to watch and he didn’t have anything to read either. Seats didn’t work. You get the picture – it was going to be an uncomfortable 14 hours.
To give credit where it’s due, our flight attendant on this flight was Ann’s opposite. We had a super nice bald guy who genuinely tried to help fix the irksome little issues we were having, but to no avail – we were destined to have a shitty flight.
When we landed in LA, still no bag. We didn’t get it back for 3 days. When we opened it up, this is how we found the computer:
Of course we tried to complain to Qantas and to get reimbursed for the computer, but because a different company had delivered the computer from the airport to our apartment, liability was transferred to that company. We tried calling the delivery company customer service repeatedly but got nothing but an answering service. When we finally managed to jump through enough hoops to speak to got to speak to Qantas’ customer “service”, they just told us that they don’t recommend checking computers. Gee, really?! You forced us to check the damn bag!!!
Thanks Ann and Qantas for this absolutely awful flight experience!
Next time, I think I’ll be considerably more likely to act just like Ben Stiller in this clip:
Just as a little addendum, our friend Matt happened to be on the same flight out of Brisbane as us. When he got to customs in LA, he was detained for hours for no other apparent reason that I can see, other than that they found him to be too tall. So it was peachy keen travel experience for everyone.
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