Day 1 – The day that occurred twice. Friday April 4th.

Yay for planes. I'm on a Qantas flight at the time of writing this, on my way to Los Angeles. Yeah.. I know what you're thinking. "Weren't you supposed to be going to Canada? You know, where this thingy is supposed to be?" Yeah well, tell Qantas that. We got up at 3 to meet a cab at the university at 4, to drive to the airport to be there for a 6:30am flight to Sydney. Our bags were checked in, there were hugs and kisses, and we said we'd see you save and sound in Calgary. That all went well, but, we go to gate 24 at around 5-ish and wait for our flight. 6am rolls around, and there's an announcement. "Attention passengers – the Qantas 6:30am flight to Sydney is now departing from gate number 21." Right, lets just walk up the terminal a bit. 10 minutes later we cross the terminal into another wing to Gate 21. Boarding is shown to be in 5 minutes. This is at 6:10. 6:30 comes around.. boarding is now at 6:40. 10 minutes later.. still 10 minutes til departure. Announcement "We are just waiting on the catering company, we apologise for the delay". Yay! We are going to be in Sydney late because of cornflakes. Wheeeee.

Anyway, we finally board at 7:20, and get in the air soon after. Our connecting flight at Sydney was to depart at 11am. We arrived at the airport just before 10, then had to wait to get from the domestic terminal to the international. Fun. Buses. We find our checkin point only to be told "Hi! Yeah.. you've missed the flight". The time is now 10:20 ish. Yay. "So when's the next flight to Vancouver?" "Oh, same time tomorrow.". Oh happy happy joy joy. Let's mosey on down to the Qantas service centre to sort this out. A few other people have missed the flight to Vancouver as well. They are offered accommodation in Sydney overnight, and a seat on the Saturday morning plane. We however, are offered a flight to LAX, then a connection from LAX to Calgary. Great! No seriously, yay. No sarcasm here. We've missed the flight to Vancouver, but going via LAX with a 2 over change over time (the same time as we had in Sydney, but that didn't turn out too great now did it. [Yes, that *was* sarcasm]).

Overall this means we *should* get into Calgary mid-afternoon on Friday their time, which means we don't need to cancel any hotel bookings. We should still be right. So it's now 2am Eastern Seaboard time, we are running a bit ahead of schedule, but I can't sleep (like you can on planes. I could, if I wasn't excited and if it wasn't only like 8 or 9pm Brisbane time or something.) Anywoo, they are serving breakfast in a few hours, and then we land and have to race around immigration, customs, get our bags from international, then get over to domestic, find air Canada, check back in for our connection to Calgary, and board the new plane – in less than 2 hours. This is going to be interesting.

Oh and in case you were wondering, we were actually waiting on the catering company. After Qantas deemed the original aircraft to Sydney unfit for use. And the replacement was found unfit as well. Apparently something to do with the tyres?  (But we all know, a plane doesn't really need tyre to take off :p ) So yeah. We nearly got overnights in Sydney (hi wankers!) but now we should be on schedule. Teehee, my laptop's the only ambient light at the moment, should switch it off. I wonder if they have any good comedy on the in flight entertainment... ooooohh. Chasers and summer heights high! Excellent.