the trip from melbourne was actually pretty good. i was up at a reasonable, showered, breakfasted and dressed, and all by 7.30-ish. time enough to go out to the tram stop, miss the tram by seconds, then decide to walk to the station anyway.
when i reached the station, i found an express train was due in a few minutes and almost faster than you could say, "jack robinson", i was at southern cross. return ticket to the airport was $26 and it doesn't expire until november. (fear not, dear reader, i expect to return to our fair antipodean shores far sooner than that!)
melbourne to sydney goes a lot faster in an international-route-flying plane and i think i could safely say that i spent longer checking in and going through international departures than i actually did on the plane from tullamarine to kingsford smith.
the trip to san francisco started well enough but i never sleep on these long-haul flights. the best i can manage is a kind of doze and so, like a shark, i'm not quite asleep and i'm not quite awake. we made great time, leaving sydney a mite early and arriving in san francisco almost half an hour early... only to find there was no room for us at the gates and we had to wait until we were expected to arrive! there was a lot of cloud cover and some fog, i think, and so, for whatever reason, almost every connecting domestic flight out of sf was late. my theory, which seemed to be borne out by the announcements that were being made, was that the weather was making it hard for aircraft to land, hence none to make the return trips.
once i was on the plane to portland, however, things went along fine. i bought a weekly ticket with no fuss and that will cover me until i head off to astoria on the 11th.
unsurprisingly, i met heaps of aussies and kiwis on the flights over but even once i was here i kept running into more. it's a bit frightening.
anyway, i'm going to sign off now. i'm exhausted.
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