SYDNEY AIRPORT, AUSTRALIA - 1st February 2010
continuing from Part I...
Surprisingly enough, little has changed here in Sydney Airport in the 17 days since I was last here, and most importantly there are still free internet terminals for crucially important tasks like this blog.
The last sentence is, for those of you impervious to written irony, a total lie, made poignantly clear when placed next to the genuinely crucial task facing me presently - attempting to book my ferry from Buenos Aries to Colonia del Sacramento (in Uruguay) for this afternoon (which, adjusting for time zones, is 5am tomorrow Sydney time). Ridiculous time calculations aside, it's a simple enough job - my Qantas flight lands at 10am local time in BA, and want to get on the 4.15pm ferry to Colonia that arrives at 5.30pm. Should be simple enough task, given the sleek website and English option... but naturally, things don't work so easily.
For reasons unknown, I am able to register my name, identification details, choose my ferry crossing, and get to the penultimate page of the booking process, only to have to stupid system refuse to accept that I've input any passenger details... regardless how many times I re-type them right there and then. There's no choice but to give up... but if I land in BA in 13 hours time to discover that that ferry is fully booked, there's gonna be one angry backpacker and an inevitable literary litany to follow.
First though, it's time to cross the Pacific!
Showing posts with label flying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flying. Show all posts
Monday, 1 February 2010
The Longest Day - Part I
AUCKLAND AIRPORT, NEW ZEALAND - 1st February 2010
After staying up till late hours to watch Andy Murray get Federered in the Aussie Open final, the clock has ticked over to the early hours of the 1st February. Provided things work as they should, today will, at 40 hours in length, be the longest day of my life so far and quite possibly ever, thanks to a unique blend of flights, a ferry, and the international date line. What's more, within the confines of the 1st of Feb, I'll be setting foot in 4 different countries, spread across 2 continents either side of the Southern Pacific.
Things kick off here in Auckland where, after 3 and a half hours of remarkably comfortable sleep sprawled out along a nicely cushioned bench looking out over the airfield from the airport's observation deck (Sydney could learn a thing or two about accomodating overnight travellers), I've just checked in for my 5.50am LAN Airlines/Qantas flight back to Sydney, due to land at about 6.30am local time. See you on the other side of the Tasman Sea...
After staying up till late hours to watch Andy Murray get Federered in the Aussie Open final, the clock has ticked over to the early hours of the 1st February. Provided things work as they should, today will, at 40 hours in length, be the longest day of my life so far and quite possibly ever, thanks to a unique blend of flights, a ferry, and the international date line. What's more, within the confines of the 1st of Feb, I'll be setting foot in 4 different countries, spread across 2 continents either side of the Southern Pacific.
Things kick off here in Auckland where, after 3 and a half hours of remarkably comfortable sleep sprawled out along a nicely cushioned bench looking out over the airfield from the airport's observation deck (Sydney could learn a thing or two about accomodating overnight travellers), I've just checked in for my 5.50am LAN Airlines/Qantas flight back to Sydney, due to land at about 6.30am local time. See you on the other side of the Tasman Sea...
Friday, 15 January 2010
The Other Antipodeans
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 15th January 2010
I know a thing or two about crappy nights of sleep - aside from this trip's countless overnight buses or waking up on New Year's Day under a table in Sydney, I've had to sleep in the open desert in the middle of a sandstorm; woken up in the middle of a dancefloor on Hat Rin Beach during the Full Moon Party, and it'll be a long time before the night I slept in the middle of the GAB quad is forgotten (even if it was in my bed, complete with bedside table, right). It says something, therefore, when I say that the night I slept in Sydney airport comfortably ranks as the worst night of sleep I've ever had. Unlike the long, broad, bench-like chairs you find it pretty much every other international airport, Sydney has crappy little self contained chairs with horrible little plastic armrests between them - meaning you certainly can't sleep (or indeed sit) comfortably upright, but damnably can't lie down on your side either. They also have the audacity to charge $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. Long story short, not impressed.
One positive Sydney does have is an awesome duty free that includes an Apple store (and thus free internet for all), and was the scene of my tidy purchase of a Lumix DMC-FZ35 new digital camera. It's awesome.
Qantas flight QF43 was also awesome, featuring a fantastic meal of braised and herbed chicken with cous cous, and Qantas' state-of-the-art High Definition on demand entertainment system. Shame it was not even a 3 hour flight.
New Zealand immigration is like Fort Knox - their biosecurity gateway makes Australia's notoriously tight customs regulations seem liberal. Clear of food, camping/farm equipment or swine flu though, I was clear to enter.
Necessity (again, I'd hastened to book anywhere in advance) resulted in a cash splurge on a nice B&B joint that included airport pick-up, but despite being a bit of a mission from Auckland's city centre (45 mins by bus), I enjoyed a nice warm evening and clear sunset while wandering around the various waterfront piers and busy streets. Viaduct Pier in particular looked wonderful...if I wasn't on my own and/or operating on a budget! Instead, I settled for a good old Singapore-style food court and some delicious seafood fried noodles.
The over-abundance of fast food chains is as prevalent here in NZ as it was back in Oz, but it was nice to see McDonalds reunited with its old sparring partner Burger King over here after the latter's whole "Hungry Jack's" local branding nonsense in Australia. Nicer still, however, was the dreamy wafting waves of scrumptiously intoxicating cookie dough that were drifting down Queen Street, emanating from Mrs Higgins Oven Fresh Cookie Shop. Anyone who's read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince can safely assume that after inhaling this they'd know the smell of their Amortentia potion...
My extra spending afforded me an amazingly comfortable bed, so this morning's early start was not enjoyed. However, I'm now all set to head over to Mount Maunganui over in the Bay of Plenty (on the north coast) and meet up with Joe - of Judd School maths teaching/1st XI cricket team scoring fame - and her husband Simon to check out a game of domestic twenty20 cricket. The juggernaut continues...
P.S. For those of you missing me, you can take comfort in knowing that now I'm in New Zealand, pretty much anywhere I go from here will bring me closer to home!
I know a thing or two about crappy nights of sleep - aside from this trip's countless overnight buses or waking up on New Year's Day under a table in Sydney, I've had to sleep in the open desert in the middle of a sandstorm; woken up in the middle of a dancefloor on Hat Rin Beach during the Full Moon Party, and it'll be a long time before the night I slept in the middle of the GAB quad is forgotten (even if it was in my bed, complete with bedside table, right). It says something, therefore, when I say that the night I slept in Sydney airport comfortably ranks as the worst night of sleep I've ever had. Unlike the long, broad, bench-like chairs you find it pretty much every other international airport, Sydney has crappy little self contained chairs with horrible little plastic armrests between them - meaning you certainly can't sleep (or indeed sit) comfortably upright, but damnably can't lie down on your side either. They also have the audacity to charge $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. Long story short, not impressed.One positive Sydney does have is an awesome duty free that includes an Apple store (and thus free internet for all), and was the scene of my tidy purchase of a Lumix DMC-FZ35 new digital camera. It's awesome.
Qantas flight QF43 was also awesome, featuring a fantastic meal of braised and herbed chicken with cous cous, and Qantas' state-of-the-art High Definition on demand entertainment system. Shame it was not even a 3 hour flight.
New Zealand immigration is like Fort Knox - their biosecurity gateway makes Australia's notoriously tight customs regulations seem liberal. Clear of food, camping/farm equipment or swine flu though, I was clear to enter.
Necessity (again, I'd hastened to book anywhere in advance) resulted in a cash splurge on a nice B&B joint that included airport pick-up, but despite being a bit of a mission from Auckland's city centre (45 mins by bus), I enjoyed a nice warm evening and clear sunset while wandering around the various waterfront piers and busy streets. Viaduct Pier in particular looked wonderful...if I wasn't on my own and/or operating on a budget! Instead, I settled for a good old Singapore-style food court and some delicious seafood fried noodles.
The over-abundance of fast food chains is as prevalent here in NZ as it was back in Oz, but it was nice to see McDonalds reunited with its old sparring partner Burger King over here after the latter's whole "Hungry Jack's" local branding nonsense in Australia. Nicer still, however, was the dreamy wafting waves of scrumptiously intoxicating cookie dough that were drifting down Queen Street, emanating from Mrs Higgins Oven Fresh Cookie Shop. Anyone who's read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince can safely assume that after inhaling this they'd know the smell of their Amortentia potion...
My extra spending afforded me an amazingly comfortable bed, so this morning's early start was not enjoyed. However, I'm now all set to head over to Mount Maunganui over in the Bay of Plenty (on the north coast) and meet up with Joe - of Judd School maths teaching/1st XI cricket team scoring fame - and her husband Simon to check out a game of domestic twenty20 cricket. The juggernaut continues...
P.S. For those of you missing me, you can take comfort in knowing that now I'm in New Zealand, pretty much anywhere I go from here will bring me closer to home!
Friday, 18 December 2009
Dean's Aeroplane Curse strikes again
Back in October when this blog was still in its nascent form, my first post after leaving England mentioned how my British Airways aircraft had had to abort its return journey to London one hour after takeoff after the fire alarms went off.Clearly I have some sort of jinx over airplanes because today's news featured interviews with terrified passengers who "feared for their lives" after one of the engines of Qantas flight QF10 caught fire 45 minutes after takeoff from Singapore. Sure enough, that's the same Qantas QF10 from Singapore to Melbourne that I was on a couple of weeks back...
Qantas has notified Australia's air safety authorities after a Boeing 747, with 354 passengers aboard, had to return to Singapore's Changi Airport after passengers saw flames lick out of one of the engines.
The plane was flying at 31,000 feet at the time, about 45 minutes into the flight. Dylan Brady, 38, was on board when the plane ''convulsed and lost power''.
''[My business partner and I] both thought something had fallen off the bottom, or the landing gear had come undone,'' he said. ''Then we saw this orange light and we both looked out the window to see fire coming out of the back of the jet. It was pretty scary.''
It logically follows that people planning on flying from Sydney to Auckland should be aware that I'm flying on the 14th January, and should plan to leave before then...
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Floating in the Sky
TOCUMWAL, NEW SOUTH WALES - 13th December 2009
An old family friend of my cousin, John, is a big gliding enthusiast and owns a third share of a glider out at an airfield fairly near to Mooroopna (about 100km is pretty close by Aussie standards). With me being a big fan adrenaline-based activities such as these, it had been arranged as long ago as last June for him to take me for an airborne spin.
SportAviation, John's flying club, is run by a friendly couple at an airstrip in Tocumwal, just over the Murray river that divides Victoria and New South Wales. The airstrip was originally built by the Americans in the Second World War as one of the bases for an assault on the Japanese should they invade northern Australia. Subsequently, it got converted for civil use, and has vastly shortened runways now that B-12 Bombers aren't coming by on a regular basis.
Gliders, obviously, cannot take off by themselves, and so are dragged airborne by a small plane with a line running off the back of it. I took the liberty of videoing our takeoff from the back seat, which you can watch below:
When the glider pilot is happy with the altitude reached, he disconnects the cable and frees the glider into his control - usually at about 2000-3000 feet. The aim of the game is to locate "thermals" - vents of hot air rising the lift the glider higher and higher allowing perpetual flight; a good thermal can send you all the way up to 10,000 feet in a few minutes. Usually they come in vertical cylinders, meaning you have to bank go round and round in a circle in order to sustain the lift for an extended period of time. If you're lucky though, you'll get a "road", where the thermal moves laterally allowing you to continue rising while flying in a straight line.
Unfortunately for us, it was a clear, sunny day without any sort of cloud in the sky. Unlike normal aviation, clear days like these are terrible, as it means thermals are dispersed and hard to find, but the air is still turbulent due to the general heat. Sure enough, we struggled to find a decent bit of lift for a good 10 minutes, before we strayed across a small one that gave us a bit of lift. Its diameter was damn small, meaning we had to back at about 60 degrees to stay in its current... and I can tell you first hand there are few things that'll make your stomach twist more than being strapped into a seat at a few thousand feet with the blazing heat of the Sun beating down on you through the glass, all the while performing incredibly tight circles at banking of 60 degrees, with your gradual circulating ascent punctuated by periodic shudders as the glider drifted in and our of the thermal. If you don't like roller coasters or swinging ships, gliding on a day like this is to be avoided!
We eventually got up to a little shy of 4000 feet before enjoying a nice relaxing cruise over 15 minutes or so back down to land, but I was reliably informed that it had been "really hard work" - something my insides could testify to! But it was still an amazing experience - not just because of spectacular panoramic views of the Australian bush spreading out to infinity in every direction (see below). The thing that really struck me was the phenomenal force existent in simple air. As John described it (slightly paraphrased), "down on the ground we don't really see anything... occasionally we see a tornado go by and think 'wow - that's a bit strong'... but it's only when you floating in a glider that you really understand that that power is everywhere". I just finished reading "Chaos" by James Gleick, and part of its story relates to how smooth flowing air currents can suddenly deteriorate into a state of total chaos with seemingly no pattern or rules to it: turbulence. No one really understands it, but its existence is a small part of an infinitude of reasons why our actual ability to model the atmosphere (and thus forecast weather in any sort of long-term manner) is useless. Going gliding is as good an interactive example of this in practice as you could want.
Anyway once we were all back in the hangar/office and relaxing with a couple of ice cold suds*, the proprietor of SportAviation got us to pose for a photo in front of our machine - "Golf Victor Yankee" - so that it could be recorded on website's blog, and sure enough the entry for the day has John and myself grinning away (see below).
* bottles of beer
The Daily Rod's Top Travel Tips:
#7 - There are always ways to prove the assumption that you're totally immune to motion sickness incorrect.
An old family friend of my cousin, John, is a big gliding enthusiast and owns a third share of a glider out at an airfield fairly near to Mooroopna (about 100km is pretty close by Aussie standards). With me being a big fan adrenaline-based activities such as these, it had been arranged as long ago as last June for him to take me for an airborne spin.
SportAviation, John's flying club, is run by a friendly couple at an airstrip in Tocumwal, just over the Murray river that divides Victoria and New South Wales. The airstrip was originally built by the Americans in the Second World War as one of the bases for an assault on the Japanese should they invade northern Australia. Subsequently, it got converted for civil use, and has vastly shortened runways now that B-12 Bombers aren't coming by on a regular basis.
Gliders, obviously, cannot take off by themselves, and so are dragged airborne by a small plane with a line running off the back of it. I took the liberty of videoing our takeoff from the back seat, which you can watch below:
When the glider pilot is happy with the altitude reached, he disconnects the cable and frees the glider into his control - usually at about 2000-3000 feet. The aim of the game is to locate "thermals" - vents of hot air rising the lift the glider higher and higher allowing perpetual flight; a good thermal can send you all the way up to 10,000 feet in a few minutes. Usually they come in vertical cylinders, meaning you have to bank go round and round in a circle in order to sustain the lift for an extended period of time. If you're lucky though, you'll get a "road", where the thermal moves laterally allowing you to continue rising while flying in a straight line.
Unfortunately for us, it was a clear, sunny day without any sort of cloud in the sky. Unlike normal aviation, clear days like these are terrible, as it means thermals are dispersed and hard to find, but the air is still turbulent due to the general heat. Sure enough, we struggled to find a decent bit of lift for a good 10 minutes, before we strayed across a small one that gave us a bit of lift. Its diameter was damn small, meaning we had to back at about 60 degrees to stay in its current... and I can tell you first hand there are few things that'll make your stomach twist more than being strapped into a seat at a few thousand feet with the blazing heat of the Sun beating down on you through the glass, all the while performing incredibly tight circles at banking of 60 degrees, with your gradual circulating ascent punctuated by periodic shudders as the glider drifted in and our of the thermal. If you don't like roller coasters or swinging ships, gliding on a day like this is to be avoided!
We eventually got up to a little shy of 4000 feet before enjoying a nice relaxing cruise over 15 minutes or so back down to land, but I was reliably informed that it had been "really hard work" - something my insides could testify to! But it was still an amazing experience - not just because of spectacular panoramic views of the Australian bush spreading out to infinity in every direction (see below). The thing that really struck me was the phenomenal force existent in simple air. As John described it (slightly paraphrased), "down on the ground we don't really see anything... occasionally we see a tornado go by and think 'wow - that's a bit strong'... but it's only when you floating in a glider that you really understand that that power is everywhere". I just finished reading "Chaos" by James Gleick, and part of its story relates to how smooth flowing air currents can suddenly deteriorate into a state of total chaos with seemingly no pattern or rules to it: turbulence. No one really understands it, but its existence is a small part of an infinitude of reasons why our actual ability to model the atmosphere (and thus forecast weather in any sort of long-term manner) is useless. Going gliding is as good an interactive example of this in practice as you could want.
Anyway once we were all back in the hangar/office and relaxing with a couple of ice cold suds*, the proprietor of SportAviation got us to pose for a photo in front of our machine - "Golf Victor Yankee" - so that it could be recorded on website's blog, and sure enough the entry for the day has John and myself grinning away (see below).
* bottles of beer
The Daily Rod's Top Travel Tips:
#7 - There are always ways to prove the assumption that you're totally immune to motion sickness incorrect.
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