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All good things must
come to an end, and our visit with Barby
and Robert was no exception. Thanks again, both of you,
for eleven fantastic days of fun and friendship.
(Barby's photos of our time together are here.)
The next morning, Wednesday 27th June 2007, we said au revoir
to Robert, and Barby drove us to Little Rock airport (you can see
some photos of us at the airport together in Barby's album) for our
flight to Los Angeles via St. Louis, and then home to Melbourne
via Auckland, New Zealand.
The first leg went to plan, and I took these shots as we were coming
in to land at St. Louis. Strangely, even though I'd never heard of
the Gateway Arch
at the time, it's visible in both these photos.
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It's in the top left corner of this one.
Here's where our next adventure began. Since we should have had
only about 35 minutes between flights, we wasted no time in locating
our gate lounge, where we expected boarding to be about to commence.
But rather than a boarding announcement, what we heard was that
the flight would be temporarily delayed due to
"maintenance".
A short while later, another announcement informed us they were
"doing
diagnostics" but should be ready for boarding before too much
longer.
At this point, I commented to Bill that I wasn't sure I wanted to fly
on that plane if they were having so much trouble working out what
was wrong with it.
Then the weather decided to play a part in our fate, as an ominous
roar of thunder seemed to shake the terminal and the skies opened.
With lightning flashing all around, a third announcement proclaimed
the airport shut down and our flight permanently cancelled !
OK... so I got my wish. I didn't have to fly on that plane. But now
there's hundreds of people rushing to the counter to find out what
United Airlines intends to do to get them to LAX.
To compound the frustration, Bill had been in close contact with
his office colleagues over a very important business deal and
they needed to fax some paperwork to him to be signed and
returned within a few hours. Have you ever tried to access a
fax machine at an airport after office hours ?!!!
Well, to cut a very long story a little shorter, after standing
in line at the counter for an hour or so, we were finally given
an accommodation voucher for a hotel in St. Louis for the night,
and tickets to LAX via Phoenix AZ the following afternoon.
This was a big improvement on the flight via Atlanta GA that
we were almost allocated. As yet, nothing available for the
home stretch though. We would need to check with QANTAS
the next day.
Bill called his office with the fax number at the hotel and arranged
for the papers to be sent through, and we jumped in a taxi and off
we went to make the most of our enforced extended holiday. The
papers came through and were signed and returned without too
much fuss, although the hotel receptionist wasn't keen on signing
as a witness. $20 helped to convince her.
There was a Denny's restaurant next door. By this time,
even that was looking good ! There was also a large sports
clothing shop just across the road, which we wandered around
the next morning before making our way back to the airport.
So it's now the afternoon of Thursday 28th June, and had
everything gone to plan, we should have been touching down
in Melbourne. Instead, we still have about 18 hours flying
time ahead of us as we take off from St. Louis, bound for
Phoenix.
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