The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

This will have to be a catch-up blog post since we have been traveling since Wednesday and I haven't been able to get online and catch up on all of my thoughts and actions over the past few days. We are finally back online in Dalby with the help of Dodo Mobile Broadband. We have a limited number of hours to use over the next 90 days so we are just relying on this to get us through the next couple of weeks until we can get actual phone service and DSL to our home.

So, the flights went well on Wednesday. Once we got to the airport in Atlanta, we found out that because Australia requires that everyone traveling there have a Visa, you have to have an actual agent check you in rather than just the online kiosk. I started to freak a little bit when we got in the line for international since it seemed not to be moving at all and we had a little less than 1.5 hours before our flight took off. Luckily, I noticed a medallion/business class check-in for international. Finally, my silver status on Delta actually did something (since I never seem to get upgraded on those flights back and forth to DCA). We were able to check in smoothly, say goodbye to my family and make it to the gate with time to spare.

We stayed up the entire flight from ATL to LAX. We both watched 'Yes, Man' on the back of seat screens and since we were in business class, decided that we should probably partake in the free dinner (even though neither one of us were hungry from having had lunch with my parents and aunt so late). We landed at LAX at 7:30 pm local (11:30 EST). Once there, we had to leave our arrival terminal and go check in at the Quantas terminal to get our boarding passes. It was there that we found out that our carry-on baggage can't be more than 7kg (~16 lbs). Uh, yeah - all 4 of ours were at least 10 kgs. So we tried to consolidate as much as possible into one of the roll-abroads and just paid $34 to check it as an additional bag. As it was, the other 3 carry-ons were still at least 8 kgs each, but the lady was nice enough to let us go ahead. So we went through security again and headed to our gate to wait out the rest of the 4 hour layover. I played some PSP, Josh read a comic book, we both drank Starbucks and started a new DVD series (Freaks and Geeks). You can tell that Roo enjoyed watching the DVD just as much as us.

The plane ride from LAX to Brisbane took off at 2:30 am EST Thursday. Unfortunately, we were in economy for this portion of the trip, but at least we were able to get just 2 seats together so it meant that there wouldn't be a window-seater constantly crawling over the 2 of us (as it was, I had to scoot over Josh throughout the flight). By this point, we were both really tired and couldn't avoid taking a brief nap for the first part of the flight. My guess is that we slept about 45 minutes to an hour. I woke up to the smell of dinner being served. After dinner, they pass out snack bags and turn off all the lights and then the plane stays that way for about another 12 hours. I've been on an overnight flight before and I think that it's kind of weird and creepy. It's completely dark and the flight attendants just walk through the aisles with their flashlights shining on the pitcher of water that they have. Josh fell back asleep, but I was good and stayed up and played the DS and watched Slumdog Millionaire. Once it was over, I was TI-RED so I put on my eyeshades and fell asleep as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep quite as readily as Josh so I probably only slept about 3-4 hours of the entire 14 hour flight. Josh estimates that he got about 5-6 good hours of sleep.

All I know is that it was the longest plane ride EVER. I've told several people that as much as I am looking forward to having them come visit, I will never lie about how long that plane ride takes. The first time that I woke up from a good sleep, I looked over at Josh (who was awake at the time) and he says 'We're about halfway there.' It had already been 6.5 hours and we were only halfway there?!? It was definitely hard. And I haven't been happier to see land than when we were going down to land in Brisbane.

So we land in Brisbane at 6:30 am Friday morning local (about 4:3o pm Thursday afternoon in Atlanta) and are all the way down to the lines for Customs when I realize that I've left our camera (in the camera bag) on the plane. I'm just lucky that I have a husband who loves me since we had to walk all the way back down the terminal to the plane only to be told that the camera had been found and was sent to baggage services where we could pick it up. Oops. So we walk ALL the way back down to Customs only to discover that it appears that there were 2 or 3 other planes that landed at the same time as ours and all of those passengers had to go through customs as well. Nice, right? So we get through the first lines where we have to show the immigration officers our passports and prove that we have a reason/Visa to be in Australia. It was a long line, but it went smoothly. Then we were able to pick up our camera and luggage and stood in another long line that put us through the Customs x-rays. Again, the line was long, but everything went smoothly. In all, it took us about 2.5 hours from the time we landed to get out to a taxi.
From the airport, we went straight to a hotel in Brisbane so that we could try to recover from the flight some prior to the drive to Dalby on Saturday. It was a nice gesture on the part of Josh's company and in retrospect, a great idea. We were able to get on the internet some Friday morning and talk to our families prior to heading out the 'The Coffee Club' for breakfast, a brief walk on the river, showers and unfortunately naps. We were really trying to be good about not sleeping until nighttime on Friday, but we were exhausted. Luckily,we woke up in time for dinner and were able to make it out to La Dolce Vita for some food prior to heading back to the hotel for more sleep. Josh feel asleep around 8 pm and I followed at 8:30 and we both slept pretty solidly through until 5 am (though we didn't get up until 7).

Dave, the site services manager from CH2M, came and got us around 9:30, took us to breakfast and we started on the trip to Dalby. We arrived around 12:30, got to see our house and car (a Holden Commodore, thank you very much) and went shopping downtown fairly quickly since everything closes at 5 or prior on Saturday and basically nothing except churches and bars are open on Sunday. I have tons and tons to write about Dalby and the house, but I think that I can parse those out into smaller posts. We are in a brand new 4-bedroom house (no trailer!), but it's hardly what you would expect in America. I'll post pics in a later post. We are settling in and were concerned about the lack of communication when we couldn't get the internet working last night, but have luckily gotten set up and I'm at least feeling a little better about our decision to come here. :)

Now, here's where the bad and unplanned news comes into play. Josh was scheduled to report to work tomorrow (Monday) morning, but he woke up this morning with a slight sore throat. We went into town to try to get the internet working and to check on a few things regarding the house (i.e. the main air conditioner not working and the cold water to the washer appearing to be clogged). During that trip, he started to experience aches and pains. Once back home, he went straight to bed and has basically been there all day. He's running a high fever, has thrown up once and seems to have all the symptoms of the flu. We emailed his manager (who stopped by last night) and he came by late this afternoon and left us with contact info and directions to a clinic in Toowoomba since he has heard that it's hard to get great if any medical service in Dalby. He also left his GPS and cell phone so that if we have any issues, we won't be stranded. It was a wonderful gesture. So, if Josh still isn't feel well in the morning, I'll be driving us an hour away to see if we can get him fixed up quickly (and yes, I have driven briefly - I just keep repeating in my head 'stay left, stay left, stay left'. The hardest part is turning on the blinker and not the windshield wipers.). So keep us in your thoughts since we completely weren't planning for this.

I'll update with another post tomorrow. I figure if I can get in a good enough habit of posting at least once a day, then it'll become second nature.