Throwback Thursday - When Sarah Met Brenda, part I

My flight to San Francisco took a whole Friday. My Dad picked me up to take me to the airport at 7:30am. It's an hour's drive away. For an international flight, I needed to be there 3 hours before -- I think my flight was at 11:45am. There was a long flight across the Atlantic Ocean, that arrived nearly an hour early, which made my wait in the east coast airport around two and a half hours. Of which I spent nearly two hours waiting at the wrong gate! Fortunately, I became suspicious of the only 20 minutes left for the supposed turn-around for my flight from the one currently boarding, and went to investigate, making it to the correct gate just as they started boarding. I was desperately ready for a sleep at this point. I'm blaming that for me mixing up Gate 20 and Gate 30, which both look and sound alike in a weird American accent to someone who had been up a full day already and is confused by the fact that there's so much daylight it's still clearly afternoon.

Praise God, I made my flight! Unlike the first flight where I spent hours talking to my neighbour across the aisle, I introduced myself to the man in the next seat but spent most of the flight looking out of the window. I think I dozed a little. Maybe. On and off. I find it difficult to sleep if other people are awake even in a house with people I love, because I don't want them to be watching me, so sleeping in front of strangers, even if the seats were comfortable enough to be conducive to it, was unlikely. It did get dark not very long before we landed, though, which I was glad about. I had had enough of The Day That Lasted Forever. Just as I reached breaking point, the plane landed and I became super-wired. I was going to see Pete! Very soon!

It was now about 8pm? 8:30pm? local time and I'd been up for 20+ hours. 22, 23 hours, something like that. I was so out of it I couldn't even do the maths. Pete wouldn't let me go straight to bed. He insisted I stayed up just a little bit longer and go to bed at a reasonable hour for the time zone I was in; he dragged me off to a diner and tried to make me eat sourdough bread (a local delicacy). I love sourdough bread, now, but that first night it was a hard enough task not to doze off in the diner, so I wouldn't eat it. Sorry, honey!



Right now, I'm also approaching a very tired state, so call by next week for Throwback Thursday - When Sarah Met Brenda, part II.