A Series of (un)fortunate events

Wow! What a day. or couple of days. As we sit in the LAX airport, my computer says it is 8:54 on October 1st. My body thinks it should be October 2nd. It will be October 2nd (Eastern Time) when we leave Los Angeles for Sydney… Then another flight from Sydney to Auckland. Thought I would throw in a couple of stories and pictures from our travel on Monday and Tuesday. Is it still Tuesday? Traveling is sometimes worse than being retired with trying to figure out what day it is 🤣.

Monday we drove to Calais to drop off the van at the Pratt dealership. The van has being temperamental and having some lights go on and off the dashboard and not starting, and well. we just couldn’t have that. So Jim packed up Sapphire (Mommy’s Buick) with all our luggage, rearranging about 4 times and finally was able to get all our gear and us in while still being able to close the doors and trunk lid.

Gammy trying to hold the phone and take a selfie.. That is correct I couldn’t see out the back window.

We made it to Bangor with little effort and no mishaps. Picked up Mommy’s bedspread from the dry cleaners and managed to get that safely in the car. We then headed over to the hotel. Not the hotel by/connected to the airport, but the Bangor Grande. The rooms were spacious and the front desk people were so kind and helpful. We were going to go to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, but after stopping by the lounge for happy hour, we decided we would go back to our rooms and then reconvene at 6 pm for dinner in the bar at the hotel. No one really wanted to drive anywhere.

For those of you who know her, I have to say that Dotty did not eat any of the wings. They were really good. We ordered medium and they had a nice bite to them. Buffalo would be proud. The first picture was when we first arrived and the last picture was from dinner.

Jim ordered the soup of the day, Chicken Toscana and a salad. Dotty and I both had the Bruschetta Haddock, and Mommy had a chicken salad. It was open mic night.. We didn’t stay long after dinner as we walked next door to the hotel and had ice cream. The ice cream was homemade (Fielders) and Jim is still talking about the little squirt of chocolate in the bottom of his waffle cone!

So not it is Tuesday. wE were up by 3: something to catch the 5:30 Delta Flight from Bangor to JFK. Well as we are checking in (and there are a lot of people checking in to this flight), we are told that there is no plane and it has been delayed by will be leaving by 10:24. Fine. We don’t depart JFK until 5:30 pm, so we can spend time in JFK or in Bangor. It was decided we would spend time in Bangor. All is well…until we don’t leave until 1120ish. It is still only about an hour flight.

So we get off the airplane and we have to claim our luggage and go to a different terminal taking the Air Train and check into American Airlines and the lovely American lady (Aleah, I think) in Bangor can not print Mommy’s boarding passes for JFK, LAX, Sydney… (I really hope you read that whole run on sentence without breathing ). Well we decide to stop in the bathroom before getting on the shuttle to baggage claim and Gammy realizes she left her iPad in the bathroom. So Gammy and I go back to where we started and of course the iPad is not in the toilet stall she used, but the really nice lady who works the shuttle desk looks in the rest of the stalls and we go to check with gate agents to see if maybe some good samaritan had turned it in… Lo and behold, there is a bar/restaurant right next to the bathroom and there is Mommy’s iPad. Someone had turned it in. Not only that, the lovely shuttle ladies held the shuttle for us. #HowFortunateWeAre

So Mommy and I get off the shuttle and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and we keep on walking to baggage claim where we meet up with Jim and Dotty. Just a heads up… Dotty’s luggage has followed us and has not gotten lost yet. (This piece of luggage she took to Antarctica and Iceland and both times the luggage decided to take a trip of its own. ) So far so good. I just checked, the bag is loaded for Sydney.

So now we are at the American Airlines desk. The desk agent has no problem printing out Mommy’s boarding pass and our luggage is checked all the way through to Auckland even though we are taking Jet Star from Sydney to Auckland. So maybe we didn’t have to jump through hoops to get an Australian visa, but we have one just in case we have to go through immigration and pick up our bags.

The lounge is quite lovely. Jim and I have visited this lounge before when we were flying to Italy to meet up with our very dear friends Kate and Tom.

We had a wheelchair meet us at the lounge so Mommy doesn’t have to walk all the way to the gate. And we were supposed to have a chair when we arrived in LAX, but that took a little longer than expected. We walked strait to the gate without trying to find the lounge. Right now there is a loud beeping noise that is driving me batty. Maybe someone opened a door with out the proper positive identification. oh bliss. The noise has stopped.

I will include a few photos from our trip today. The photos of Flat Jesus and the lights of LA are provided by our very own Dotty Woodworth.