Travelogue Day 55

17/7/06

Miraculously, it's still 17/7. We must be traveling awfully fast to go back in time like that.

I wake and watch the parts of Ice Age 2 that I slept through. Some more video gaming, then I slipped in and out of sleep for the next hour or so. It was somewhat disappointing that they didn't have warm cloths for our freshening up this time, but breakfast came soon. It was pretty good too, French toast style bread with diced cinnamon apples, a different tasty cupcake, and more passion fruit juice.

I watched a good portion of the last half of March of the Penguins before they shut down the entertainment system for final approach to L.A. Looking out the window, I couldn't help but be depressed. Before me sprawled miles upon miles of concrete and asphalt with nary a tree to be seen. The landing was one of the smoothest I've experienced, kudos to the pilot.

The trip through customs was exceptionally quick, and we made our way to the baggage claim. Devon had been seated amidst the People to People kids, unfortunately, and I did not envy him that in the least. Especially when I heard that his monitor didn't work.

Once we got our bags (after a mix-up with where they were supposed to be), we lost Donna. She had to, literally, run to catch her next flight. A.C. was next to go. She met a friend when we got to the public area and was off. I found Mike and Devon. We went to our respective terminals to check in our luggage before making our way to the international terminal's food court.

I found myself captivated by a particularly attractive woman as we approached the international terminal, and that seemed to be the order of the day. Mike left Devon and I around 15:00 to catch his flight, and my last minute attempts to reach Robert didn't work out, so Devon and I loitered outside one of the three entrances to the international terminal. We occupied ourselves by spotting beautiful women as they made their ways into or out of the building and chatting about Australia.

It was during one of these chat breaks from girl watching that I realized why I was so depressed upon leaving Australia. I realized that I was so reluctant to leave because it felt like home feels. I had been comfortable, knew my way around passably, had met some cool people, some of whom could have turned out to be friends, &c. You always hate when you're forced to leave somewhere like that.

During another low volume of pretty passersby, we spotted Forest Whitaker going into the terminal. Surprisingly enough, it seemed like we were the only people who did. There were maybe two other people who looked like they did a double take, but that was all. We were surprised. Forest Whitaker is a fairly well known fellow.

A few hours later and it was my turn to go. I left Devon to wait the extra two hours until his flight by himself and entered terminal 4. I had some chips with queso and a margarita at Chili's. It was good to have something closer to Mexican spicing. After the meal, I had only a few minutes until boarding.

I cleared my sinuses and put in some of my eye drops for good measure; then my head went numb. I tried to catch up a little on this travelogue, but I would fall asleep mid-word like a narcoleptic, so I gave up. I fell in and out of sleep for the rest of the flight.