The Yanks Have Landed!

The Yanks have landed!

It seems like ages ago that we were sitting in the First Class Lounge at JFK. Well, that was Saturday, December 25^th and right now it’s Monday, December 27^th and we’re in Oamaru, NZ. We lost Sunday.

Our flight from JFK to San Francisco was very smooth. When we arrived at the gate our names were being paged and it turned out that we were upgraded from Business Class to First Class. I had brought boxes of candy for the flight attendants and while we were getting settled in our seats I handed it to the attendant in charge of our cabin. She was very surprised and pleased. During the flight every attendant from the entire plane stopped by our seats to thank us for the gift and one of the attendants brought us a gift of some games and a deck of cards. I traveled with all sorts of things to entertain myself during the flight but the only thing I used was my Kindle, which could easily have fit in my handbag. There was in-seat entertainment with movies and games and I taught mom to play Sequence.  When we reached San Francisco they called for a wheelchair escort to take us to the next gate. Mom was whisked away and I trudged along schlepping all my bags in their wake. We should have been escorted to the first class lounge, but we weren’t and by the time we arrived at the gate I was too pooped to worry about going upstairs to the lounge for the short time we had left to wait until boarding. They let us pre-board to give us plenty of time to get settled. The long haul flight was in a 777-200 with the strangest configuration in Business Premier: our seats were like little capsules with walls between each seat and the seats were on an angle. It made conversation very awkward. We forced ourselves to stay awake long enough to have dinner (we both had the lamb and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was) and then had our seats made up into full-length beds. It’s a good concept but the thin quilted pad that the placed on the base was no substitute for a mattress. It was like sleeping on the floor. But I managed to get about 6 hours sleep until my neighbor across the aisle woke up at 2:10 am and turned on her overhead light, got down her suitcase and made a considerable racket.  So I got up and went to the bathroom, found the snacks and had a banana and entertained myself watching some tv shows. Breakfast was a fruit smoothie, fresh fruit, choice of yogurt, fresh baked croissants and rolls, choice of hot breakfast items (I had a waffle) and coffee or tea. We landed in Auckland around 5:45 am and were met with another wheelchair escort. Again, mom was whisked away and I trotted after her carrying my weight in carry-on bags. It was not a short walk. The wheelchair finally stopped at a jitney. Well, one thing led to another and I wound up on my face on the floor. I’m going to have a nice bruise on my leg but I didn’t break my tooth or nose. A man rushed over and said that he was a doctor and checked me out.  Auckland had to be the worst part of the trip. We had to go through immigration, collect our luggage and go through customs, bring our luggage to another check in location (my carry-on was too heavy so I had to remove my cooler with my medication and my ugly holiday sweater to make it legal) and then catch a van to the domestic terminal. Again my carry-on was scrutinized and they decided that there would be no charge to check it so it was taken away (so why was I left carrying the sweater and cooler?)  ANOTHER trek behind the damn wheelchair through yet another security checkpoint where they had to go through two of my bags and examine my cribbage board (that I had to carry but never used) and a can of hairspray that were both determined to be innocuous but by this time the wheelchair with my mother had disappeared and I had no idea where the next gate was. I was really pissed that I had been abandoned and I was just tired enough to let the escort know that I was not happy. She felt that it was not her fault that I was held up at security and that she was within her rights to leave me to figure out how to get to the gate. Then she asked me for both our boarding passes and I couldn’t find moms. I had my boarding pass in my hand but I had no idea where the other one was. First she made it sound like an insurmountable problem and I was really stressed, then it was no problem to print a duplicate boarding pass, but just before we boarded she confessed that the original pass was downstairs at the assistance kiosk where she arrived to take mom up to the gate and forgot to pick up in her hurry to race to the gate. The flight from Auckland to Oamaru (Dunedin) was in Economy Class with a stop in Wellington. We received snacks on both flights (cassava crisps) and on both flights the snack/beverage service was suspended after they reached our row due to turbulence. It’s really unfortunate that the last leg of our trip is the one that will stand out in our memory since it was the only glitch in the entire 33 hour saga. Once in Dunedin James was waiting for us at the end of the jet way. We collected our bags (again) and James brought the car around to the curb. Our entire luggage managed to fit in his suv and we headed for Oamaru, an hour and a half away. The drive was past lots of farmland…cows, sheep, deer and assorted vegetables, and small towns. So different from Beijing that it’s hard to picture my brother settling here.  We arrived at Pen-y-bryn at 1:00 pretty wiped out. We were shown to our rooms and had a lunch of cold meats leftover from Christmas dinners. I called home and then laid down for a 2 hour siesta. At 4:00 we had tea in the lounge and then made stuffed artichokes with enormous artichokes that James picked from the garden. For dinner we had the stuffed artichokes along with left over pork belly roast, potatoes and a vegetable medley with homegrown sugar snap peas, carrots and star anise. Dessert was some of James’ homemade ice creams (salted caramel and red current). Mom turned in right after dinner and I’m going to be following her.

My room is the Elizabeth Room (mom is in Victoria, across the hall). The bed is scrumptious and the bathtub is original to the house and is big enough to swim in. I’ll write more about the house another day. Right now I just need to get into a bed that doesn’t move.