Australia - Day 00 - Festivus

“Australia”

12/23/16, “Festivus”

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

The next time I write on land, it will have a far more glamorous dateline than the one above.  I am at long lost embarking on my trip to Australia.  It will be my seventh continent.  It will be where I have visited my seventh of the Natural Wonders of the World.  Above all, in Sydney, it is where I will be able to say that I have visited every Olympic Stadium, all 27 of them.  It will be glorious to write that first entry from Melbourne, after I have set foot on my seventh continent, but, in order to get there, it will be quite a process.  I must go west to go east.

The journey from here to Melbourne, gate to gate, will take 23 hours.  It is now Friday afternoon in New York.  It will be Sunday morning in Melbourne when I land there.  The flight to LAX is 6 hours, followed by a 1-hour layover, then a 16-hour flight to Melbourne, which I think will be the longest flight I’ve ever taken.  I will spend the entirety of 12/24 on the airplane, due to the tricks the time zones play.  I have been waiting all year for this day, and, other than Rio 2016, it is easily the most anticipated trip of the year.

I should draw attention to the title in the dateline.  While not everyone is familiar with the holiday of Festivus, as popularized by Seinfeld, it is one that I traditionally celebrate, though I will not be able to celebrate it this year.  My celebrations include watching the iconic episode while I smoke a Christmas Pipe, usually smoking my last Christmas Pipe on 12/24 before I wake up on Christmas Day to a new one for that year.  However, since these flights are absurdly long and because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, I need to leave before Christmas and forego my Festivus and Christmas Eve celebrations.  I will celebrate Christmas in Melbourne, and my family did our Christmas celebration in Scarsdale exactly a week early.

I have my 2016 Christmas Pipe packed, and the other pipes will get new and exciting datelines to append to their already impressive lists.  The water bottle will have been to all seven continents, and many superlatives will be issued by the end of the trip.  It was thereby necessary to forego the Festivus traditions, though I did have a raisin bagel (no, I will not explain that reference) for breakfast, and we did some Christmas Eve celebrations in the office.  If I had waited until Sunday night to fly out, I would have had to cut out Tasmania from this trip, and I did not want to do that.  As it is, this trip is excellently designed, and it will be a trip to remember.

I suppose that I need to call this Day 00, since 12/24 would have to be Day 0, if my first Day in Melbourne is to be Day 1.  Day -1 was pretty boring, and, having gotten used to this by now, I didn’t have much trouble packing last night, though organizing my 25 Olympic Stadium pictures and other pictures I need for the collages I will post this trip were a bit of an adventure.  It was 2 AM by the time I had finished everything with my electronics and decided to finish putting the clothes in my suitcase in the morning.

I got up early and got ready, realizing that I couldn’t find my jewelry for my formalwear.  I would need to get a new set for the trip, which I could do during lunch.  It was dead quiet at the office, and I spent the day finishing up whatever I needed to do for the day.  I left for lunch, getting my jewelry, having my traditional pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, then having my usual pre-departure Cohiba before getting back to the office to finish everything up.

When I got back to the office, it sounded like someone was playing Christmas music from their computer.  I soon discovered that it was actually my coworker who was playing his guitar and singing.  I was seriously impressed.  We even sang a bit together, but he decided my singing voice was hopeless.  I soon wrapped up at the office before leaving.  There was a fair amount of traffic on the way to the airport, but I got there at 4 PM, my flight not being until 6 PM.

The check-in process was completely dysfunctional, and the line was atrocious.  I chanced waiting on the Premium Economy line, and I wasn’t busted on that, as they were training new employees (why at the busiest time of the year?!?), so they didn’t even realize I was on the wrong line.  I saw my boarding passes, Rows 74 and 87 for my two flights, but aisle seats for both, so that was a boon.  They then whisked me to a fast track security line, as the regular one was getting overcrowded.  I was at my gate about half an hour after I arrived at the airport.  The gate was crowded, but I found a seat, where I sat down and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close.  My next entry will be tomorrow, during the very long flight, and the only entry(s) will be written entirely en route.