At 8:30am yesterday (30/4), Josie and I touched down in Sydney - after 5 incredible months, our USA is at end! Even the flight (25 hours in glorious cattle class) was something of an adventure as Josie got hit with food poisoning and had to be taken off the plane in a wheelchair. She wasn't able to keep in liquids or food down, so she was pretty dehydrated. We ended up taking her to casualty where she was put on a drip for few hours. After a solid night of sleep she woke up feeling alot better - she is able to eat without bringing it back up again, although it might take her a few days to get back to 100%!
After 5 months it was inevitable we would accumulate some luggage and with the USA being such great place to pick up a bargain, we ended up with so much stuff we turned up to the airport with 7 (yes 7!) bags to check-in for our flight home which was to take us from Denver - LA - Auckland - Sydney. Just getting the 8 bags out of the car was an achievement. Luckily for us there was a huge ass trolley that could fit all of our bags!
We flew with Air New Zealand and they have this rule where all checked in bags must be less then 50 lbs (scabby bastards!) otherwise its $50 per bag over the 50 lbs! Thankfully we knew this before hand, plus we had some bathroom scales ($10 from Wal-mart!) we could use to weigh our bags before taking off to the airport. The scale certainly did the job - all of our bags ranged between 46.5 - 50.5 lbs (they were over with being 0.5 lbs over!). In the end we had to pay $300 for excess baggage ($100 per excess bag - which we expected after checking their policies online) but we avoided any overweight baggage fees. Still it beats posting it home which would have cost at least $500. A picture of the checking in adventure. My snowboard bag is on the scales and the rest of the bags are on the trolley...
As you can guess our trip was simply amazing - 5 months of not working and having the ability to do what we wanted the entire time was like a dream I could get used to! A huge thanks to Jeff and Dave who helped us so much - without you guys, this would not have been possible!
Also to everyone who came and visited us (Sean, Matt & Sonia, Claire & Rob, etc) , the people we met along the way (Shelby & Karl, Mike & Crystal, Troy & Tonya, etc), those that let us stay with them during our road trip (Kristen, Layla, Amy & Roger, Sue & Dave, Tanya - also thanks for the lift to the airport!!), those we caught up with (Nicola & Jim, Kirsten) everyone else I know I have missed - you all contributed in a big way to our unforgettable trip. I know that I will be dreaming and thinking our USA trip for a long time to come!
I guess now that I am home, this is the final entry in our holiday blog. Hopefully someone out there is reading this still. If not, I guess at least I can use it to bring back memories when I get too old :-)
Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS