let's recap my day. leave hilo in the pouring rain (all my luggage is wet) and sit next to a crazy hawaiian lady on the way to honolulu who only talked about how her family came from warriors and she would sometimes even stand over her husband at night and stare at him when finally he would wake up and ask her what the hell she was doing and she would just say, "i'm just thinking about how mad i am at you right now". yep, crazy lady.
then i get to honolulu with all my a million bags and try to get up to departures through these small elevators with my longboard. not very fun or easy. finally i get to air pacific check-in and they tell me that they "took the liberty" of booking me on a honolulu to sydney flight on hawaiian airlines, and then a domestic flight on qantas from syd to brisbane. great, i think to myself, not at least i won't get stuck in christmas island or fiji and i WILL meet jeni and hannah at the airport in brisbane on time. so i get everything checked in (my millions of bags and surfboard that they charge me a total 160 bucks for), and i board the plane ready to just get to australia.
little did i know the fun was just beginning. after 10 long hours of flying (but i almost finished the book bess), we landed, safely-esque and i noticed rain. lightning. etc. so of course sydney has this law that if lightning strikes 5 km near the airport they can't move the planes. so we sat in the plane, in the lightning for over an hour. by this time i knew i was missing my connecting flight, but i wasn't too worried, i just figured i would get in a little late to brisbane. i go through customs, collect all my bags and meander over to oversize baggage and wait for my boards to come out. which they never do. i waited for a long time, hours it seemed, and nothing. i file my complaint/missing baggage form and finally, finally am getting out of customs and about to hurry over to domestic qantas area and get on the next flight to brisbane.
so i rush over there and they are closed. literally i can't even get in to talk to someone. i take the elevator up to international airlines to talk to someone from hawaiian and no one is there. apparently sydney sucks and they also have a law that makes them have some curfew at 10 the airport closes. wtf. really. so i start to cry. i'm tired. dirty. emotional. knowing that i can't get ahold of jeni i call hannah's mobile and tell her the good news. i email jeni, no response. for all i know jeni is still a this moment waiting for me at the brisbane airport. horrible.
i gave in and got a hotel room at this dodgy place near the airport for 147 a night. ridiculous. and i don't even know if i'll get reimbursed for it. oh and i had to buy some 5 buck cable for internet and then purchase internet on top of that. so lame. needless to say, i am stuck in wet, sketchy sydney (at least i'm not stuck at the airport with all my luggage), waiting to see if jeni catches up with hannah or stays in the brisbane airport all night, trying to figure out when to take the $3 shuttle back to the airport in the morning to get the hell out of her.
oh australia, i'm here.
