Off the bucket list (Day 1)

The plane ride wasn’t that bad.

Okay, it was bad, but I think because I had prepared myself for the worst, it could do nothing but exceed my expectations.

My day of travel, which of course started after a 12-hour day of travel on the bus ride home from New York City, began with a two-hour drive to pick up my mother and grandmother so they could take me right back two hours down the road and drop me off at the airport. This was in an attempt to save my car over the Canadian winter months. The old Sunfire is now under the care of my mom. I don’t know who I care about more (just kidding mom).

When we made it back to Toronto and to the airport we were separated almost immediately by customs. This was preceded by hugs and a little crying from Mama B. Pretty obvious stuff.

The three-hour wait I had at Pearson Airport seemed like nothing in comparison to what I was prepared for. The upcoming journey was one that I had heard was pretty much horrendous. Obviously, I couldn’t wait.

Heading to LAX, I had a whole row of three seats to myself. I sprawled out and still barely took up the whole thing. Okay, my feet probably didn’t even reach the end. But that’s not important. What is important however, is the fact that despite my luxurious surroundings, I couldn’t sleep. That was the worst. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be in the same kind of seating arrangement situation on my flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane and wanted to sleep as much as I could. Impossible.

I spent my time reading and watching House DVDs until my computer died. Not exactly ideal activities when all you want to do is get some shuteye.

As I suspected, I did not in fact have three seats to myself on the way to Australia. Instead I was stuck in the middle row on an aisle. I should be grateful that I at least had an aisle seat, but without anything to really lean on, anytime I started to fall asleep my bobbing head would wake me up.

I was a little worried I wouldn’t even be able to get some mediocre sleep when the guy next to me started up a conversation. I didn’t think getting into a chat during the longest flight of my life was the best idea in the world. It’s hard to stop talking and just close your eyes when the person next to you wants to know where you’re from and what you do and why you’re traveling and more.

It turns out the guy next to me was also Canadian. It’s probably almost worse when the person you don’t really want to talk to has something in common with you. Of course he wanted to talk about hockey immediately. I shut that down almost just as quickly as he brought it up.

For my fellow Canadians or those of you who think I should care more about hockey, don’t sweat it. I still enjoy hearing about when the Leafs lose or how close they are to playoffs in a league where half the teams make it. I just wanted to keep my focus on baseball though. You know me, never thinking about baseball enough.

My seatmate, who did tell me his name, though I’ve since forgotten, was from Edmonton. He was indeed an Oilers fan. Not a CFL fan, though, so we didn’t have that to talk about either. He has two children, a boy and a girl, and was coming to check out Australia because he is moving here for two months in January. See? At least I listened. And then I went to sleep.

As unsuccessful as I thought I was at sleeping, there was a moment when I was rudely awakened by a food cart running over my toe because I had stretched my leg into the aisle. Epic fail. That was pretty disappointing.

The rest of the plane ride was pretty much a repetitive cycle of watching part of a movie, trying to fall asleep, sleeping through the last 10 minutes of the movie and going to the bathroom. Good times.

Before I got off the aircraft I had to fill out a customs form. I was a little worried about all the blanks I had left, including where I was staying, what my phone number was, who to contact in Australia if something happened to me and all kinds of things like that. You know. Minor details.

None of that seemed to matter though. The Aussies are obviously as reluctant to let people into their country as the Canadians are. I felt right at home right away. Colourful money, words spelled with Us, z pronounced “zed”, dollar and two-dollar coins. Perfection.

I was off the plane and in a new continent. Cross that off the bucket list.