Brisbane and Home

Friday, October 30, 2009:

Nine of us are on the 11am Quantas flight to LA, and the whole group must be ready to leave the lodge by 5:45am. That leaves a little time for one last sit on the balcony, where I add Eastern Spinebill to my lodge list.

The drive to the airport takes well over 2 hours. A number of birds were spotted along the way, but none new. We do get a good look at some Red-necked Wallabies on the way down. We got to the airport in plenty of time, and settled down to wait.

The flight to LA was fairly comfortable. I was in a aisle seat in the center row. The only other person in the center row was on the other aisle, and no one was in the seat in front of me. Nice!

Thirteen hours later we arrive in LA. Immigration is quick, baggage claim and customs less so. I dropped off my bags with American before leaving the international terminal. At present, the quickest way to get to terminal 4 for my Miami flight is to walk. The current constuction will apparently change how this works. I had my boarding pass and headed for the security line. It was slow! It was even slower when they closed one line, sent us to the other, then reopened the first. It would have been faster if they just left us in the temporarily closed line. The plane had been boarding for a while when I got to it. The flight was crowded but uneventful. I managed to sleep a little, but was getting pretty tired by the time I got to Miami (around 5 EDT). By the time I got home I'd been traveling over 26 hours. Yet it was still the same day!

Miami, Florida