We’re up at 345am, instead of 4am, since we already had our bags packed; oh well. Our checked bags get marked “heavy” again, which explains why there’s a quarter of empty space in my carry-on. The stewardess says she needs to only check our boarding passes for security, no one else; usually it’s for seat assignments or ensuring the customer is on the correct flight. I don’t quite look like a zombie yet, so I’m not sure what her concern was, besides wanting to slow down passenger flow. Only to have a staff member come on the plane looking for a person who’s not there.

Perhaps their training and customer logging system is down. I see the safety issue there. We make it to Brisbane, wait on a bus because each staff bus only waits for one person, but they have so many buses running, to eventually show up and take us to another terminal. It seems a bit convoluted, but that’s what I get for being rundown already. We have to go through security again, and one man has a large full tube of toothpaste, and another has over 90 batteries. I didn’t know the limit was 24, but the agent offered to cut one of the packs in half so the guy could be on his way with his “very heavy” bag.

We walk past all the dining options and find a place to sit. Caleb will wander off to find us sandwiches and me two donuts because he loves me. He sits behind me, and that gives me an extra seat and a half to stretch out (while people walk by aggressively) in an attempt to nap, twice. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure why we didn’t ask the strangers in our rows if they would switch with us so that we could drool on each other and they could continue as they were. Caleb signed me up for Asian vegetarian meals, which was fine until I got the medu vada (lentil donut) for breakfast.

The good thing about the flight not being full is that I also got the pancake breakfast. My eyes are burning when we land in San Francisco, magically 25 minutes after leaving Cairns after 15 hours of flying. We get coffee in Denver, and then I read on the flight to Tampa, where we land at sunset. I’m exhausted and want to take a shower, but the hot water heater breaker decided to burn out, so that will have to wait… over 24 hours. I had the luxury of sleeping all but a few hours on Saturday so I could walk my neighbor’s dogs while Caleb did laundry, washed our dive gear, and made dinner. I’m up at 3am on Sunday to shower and get on with my day. Hooray for jet lag.