1:3:17

According to my itinerary, it took me the 27 hours and 17 minutes from when my first flight took off, and my last flight landed to travel back into Philly. That is the equivalent of one day, 3 hours, and 17 minutes of traveling. And during that time, there was only a short period of dark due to traveling against time, if you will.

My 39.5+ hour Friday (Dec. 11th) started at 4:15am Adelaide time (12:45pm of the 10th Philly time). After only 3 hours of sleep – it took longer to fall asleep than I had hoped, perhaps due to excitement, or caffeine, who knows what – I woke up, showered, ate, and finished packing in time to be picked up at 5:30am by the taxi that I had arranged. Two hours later, my flight was bumping down the runway. The first leg of the trip was to fly from Adelaide to Melbourne; a short flight of 1 hour and 15 minutes. After a rough landing, I quickly and easily made my way through customs and to the gate with 1.5 hours to spare for my second flight.

After going through security a second time, my second flight, from Melbourne to LA, left at noon Melbourne time (8pm of the 10th Philly time). Once again, I boarded a hulking Boeing 747-400 that is less an aeronautical machine as a magical whale – only larger. Miraculously it is able to take flight with it’s 400 plus passengers aboard. The flight was pretty good, with two or three spells of rather powerful turbulence that I kind of enjoyed. Partly by choice, partly due to the undeniable nature of human beings, I challenged myself to use the lavatory during one of these, and found it rather entertaining.

My seat was 71D, which is only two rows closer to the front than my trip in the opposite direction, and 4 rows from the back (75 rows). Seat D was the seat on the right side of the left aisle. At that point in the aircraft there are 10 seats abreast (A-K, I don’t really know how that works though); three, aisle, four, aisle, three. For my particular row (71) we were fortunate enough to have seats E and F empty, which means that I had an aisle on my left, and two empty seats on my right, one of which I filled with my stuff giving me more room to spread out and get comfy.

14 and a half hours later – after four movies (Funny People, (500) Days of Summer, District 9, and The Brothers Bloom) and some TV for a total of over 9.5 hours of cross-eyed enjoyment – the monstrous beast irrationally plowing through the sky extended its steel legs and more rationally rolled along the ground.

Going through Customs took about as long as I expected, but was much simpler than I expected. If you recall, going through the Fiji quarantine for Spring Break was very rustic: on my form I claimed I had food, had been in contact with animals and fresh water, and had a weapon with me… the Fiji quarantine looked at my form and waved me through without hesitation. My reentry into the States was only a little more formal as far as the quarantine is concerned. I was asked what food I brought (I had claimed food) and I answered “Cookies. Packaged Cookies.” He routinely welcomed me into the States and waved me through. For the amount of boarder protection I have thought the States to have, this was quite a shock that he didn’t want to see any of the other things I claimed: some of my souvenirs have raw wood or animal products… he didn’t even acknowledge it.

I make the long walk over to the appropriate terminal where I ate my first piece of food since I arrived back in the States: a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle. Then I proceeded to wait at the gate for another hour and a half before boarding my final flight of the trip.

This last leg, LAX to PHL, left about 45 minutes late because the plane we were in arrived late. Apparently the wind was blowing really strongly from East to West across America because the plane was late coming in due to a strong head wind, and the same problem benefited us on the flight to PHL with a strong tail wind. Because of that we actually landed on time after circling the airport a while.

The flight felt unnecessarily long for only 4.5 hours in the air, but I landed safely and after an unnecessarily long wait for my luggage, quickly and smoothly was picked up by Jori and Tykah for the ride to the Keals. By 9pm I was settling in and seeing the family.

Green money and correct driving rules took only moments to become familiar with again. Like my first experience in Australia, the first few turns made in the car on the way back were a little frightening due to feeling like we were turning into oncoming traffic.

I didn’t go to bed until 12:30am after visiting with family, but I didn’t feel extraordinarily sleepy despite having had only about 5 hours of sleep in the past 44 (including the 3 hours I had on the night of the 10th before my flight). However, I have no memory of being awake after closing my eyes. It was a good night.

Peace!