Thursday August 17th

I had struggled to pack all the things I wanted to take with me into my case, and get it closed, but succeeded at last. Given I was starting in the US summer, and ending in almost winter, I needed to bring a fair range of things, and I had a generous 30kg luggage allowance on the flight. My main case was 28kg, and very heavy to lift, and I had my backpack as well.

I started the journey, taking the taxi to the airport. First drama: I left my backpack in the back seat of the taxi! I tried to ring the taxi company and was redirected to someone's voicemail. Meanwhile the taxi was getting further and further away. Next try I was able to get a message to the taxi driver thank the Lord, and he returned, and was kind enough not to charge anything for the return trip.

I got into the terminal, deposited my luggage, and after getting passports sorted out, headed to the international lounge.

I had bought some US money in different denominations a few days before, and I thought I had left it at home, because I couldn’t find it. (I did finally find it in my luggage, a couple of days before I left for Australia!) There was an ATM at the international lounge which dispensed US currency, so I got a couple of hundred dollars there in 50s, at a rather unattractive exchange rate.

From there I boarded the four and a half hour Air New Zealand flight to Fiji. It was pretty empty – I had a row to myself. When I we boarded I found out we had to fill out a form for customs and I didn't have a pen, so I had to borrow one from a flight attendant. The flight was uneventful, first we went over South Australia and parts of NSW, then over the sea. It got dark quickly – the sun moved faster than normal as we headed east, and we got into Fiji after dark, around 8.15pm.

We went through customs, which I think was just us handing our forms to someone, and going through, because we were only transiting, and we ended up in an international flight lounge area, with a lot of people, and a number of places to get food surrounding seating in the middle. I got some dinner at Burger King there, being glad that my debit card was working at the first international destination. I also bought a pen, for future forms that might need to be filled out. The international flight was code shared with four different airlines, from New Zealand, I think an Australian airline, British Airways and one other. People had come from a number of different places to Fiji to all make the flight to LA.

I managed to cut myself while fishing something out of my pocket, and it bled quite a bit. It turns out it was the passport protectors I’d bought. Advice was to always have your passports on you, and not leave them anywhere, so I’d bought some sleeves to protect them. These worked well, but they were quite sharp at the beginning, and liable to cut you if you were feeling around in your pocket the wrong way.

I boarded the 10 hour flight to LA around 9.40pm and we got going. We were served dinner there too but it was much later, so that worked out well. I had the window seat and there were a nice couple beside me. We chatted a bit, and they told me about being able to turn right on a red light in the US. I think they had been tooted for not knowing that and waiting to turn, or knew people who had. I tried to sleep, but every time I nodded off I came to with a start for some reason.

After a while it got light, and I saw the sunrise over the sea. The process of serving breakfast began. It was a large plane, and it took maybe an hour and a half to serve everyone. I was near the back, and was wondering if I’d get fed before we landed! I did get breakfast in the end, and saw some good views of Los Angeles and the mountains beyond, as we came in to land, towards 1pm. The people next to me had pretty much stayed put the whole flight, and I didn't need to go, but I went at the last before touchdown. This turned out to be a good idea because it was a 20 minute walk through labyrinths in the airport to get to the line to wait for customs, then it took an hour and a half to get to the front of the line.

While I was waiting I decided to get my phone sorted out. According to Telstra my phone would automatically start roaming and switch to a plan that was $10 per day, if I turned on international roaming. This would mount up over the trip, but I had planned to buy a sim from AT&T in Phoenix a few days later, rather than using roaming the whole time. I had roaming turned on, but no roaming was happening.

In the Telstra app I found that I could buy a roaming pack, and once I’d bought that, roaming did start working, which was a relief. Apparently it was a different plan that had the automatic switch to a roaming plan. The roaming packs were a good deal cheaper than the $10/day automatic plans, and this turned out to be helpful.

When I did finally get to one of the customs desks, I got a man who had lived in Adelaide, and we had a little chat. By the time I got to the luggage collection, all the luggage had been taken off the carousel (probably a long while before) and placed in groups here and there. I hunted around and eventually found my luggage. I asked where the hire car place was – I was expecting it to be in the airport, but I found out I had to walk with my luggage to a spot where there was shuttle bus to get to the hire car place.

On and on I walked along the road outside the terminal, and ducked into a Starbucks to get some water. I wasn’t sure if I was on the right track, and asked someone where it was, and he didn’t understand me, maybe because of my accent, and I think I called it a car hire and they called it rental cars or something, but we worked it out, and he told me it was further on. After about 20 minutes of walking I found the bus stop and got on. I think the bus was right there and I didn’t have to wait long for it to leave. It looked so strange to have the bus driver sitting on the left.

It took maybe 15 minutes to get to the car hire place. Once I was there, I joined the line for people who had booked their cars already, and was called by an African American lady who called me honey and said we would have a short date! She was very sympathetic to my troubles, and suggested a nicer car, first a Tesla, then (since I wasn’t keen on my first drive in the US being an electric car – sticking with what I knew seemed safer), a Genesis, which I hadn’t heard of before. I think in my state of 24 hours without sleep, my brain was working slowly, and I was thinking it might be the same price. She offered it for only half the usual extra, which was still an extra $100 a day, but I think by that time I was too tired to do anything but go with the flow!

The car looked quite fancy, and it felt so strange to sit on the left-hand side of the car. The rest of the car seemed to stretch in an expanse out to the right hand side. So, then I set out to drive on the right hand side of the road, starting from LAX. That was very scary. I nearly came to grief just getting out onto the main road, looking the wrong way for traffic. I had to keep trying to remember, keep right! After a while I realised that I was driving too far towards the edge of the road – sitting on that side, my judgement of where I was on the road was off. Once or twice that day I drove over a kerb getting into or out of a parking lot, because I was too far over.

There were some different road rules, and even with GPS navigation I kept taking the wrong turns and ending up on some random freeway which was then hard to get off again, or finding the lane I was travelling on suddenly turn into an exit from the freeway, channeling me away from where I wanted to go!

It didn’t help that the car navigation system was showing the list of directions to take starting with the next one at the bottom then later ones going up, which I didn’t realise for a while. Once or twice I ended up in the suburbs, and at one traffic light, people were stopped on the green while other cars were going through what I assumed was a red light. I wondered what on earth was happening, and was glad I wasn’t the first in line! Someone later suggested perhaps none of them knew what was going on either!

Somehow I avoided accidents, thank the Lord! I was heading for Santa Monica pier, which had been my first planned stop. I had planned several other stops, but with all the delays I ended up getting the car maybe three hours after I had hoped to, and then took ages to get to Santa Monica pier because of all the wrong turns! I just missed the turn-off to the pier, I spotted it just as I took a different wrong turn, but then it was too late, and I ended up on a highway along another part of the beach with a parking lot there. I pulled in there, and found there were road spikes stopping you from getting out in one place – you could only go in that way.

I debated just enjoying the beach there, and then going on, but I thought it would be nice to see the actual pier, so I turned left across the multiple lanes of the highway to go back, and navigate to the actual entrance. I finally got to the pier, and there was space in the paid parking lot. The pier was a hive of activity, with lots of people, side shows and rides. The iconic Route 66 ended at the pier, and there were people taking photos of each other next to the sign. The beach next to it was very long and wide, with a lot of people all along it. It was pretty with the mountains sitting behind it.

I got dinner at a kiosk on the pier and found a free table to eat it. It had been sunny, but mist came in quite suddenly after I’d finished eating. I left and paid for the parking, and from there I got onto Highway 1 which was just near the pier, and drove to Malibu beach. By that time it was near sunset. I drove along a suburban street which ran along near the foreshore, but with houses on the beach side. After driving for a while I found a spot where I could look at the beach itself. It was nice, but didn’t seem too special.

I drove back as it was getting dark, along the street again towards the highway, and wondered why another car was coming straight towards me in the distance. I realised that I was on the wrong side of the road! It wasn’t so bad when there was traffic around, because I just followed everyone else, but harder to remember when there weren’t other cars around. I quickly switched over, thankfully we were both going fairly slowly and the other car was still a fair way away.

I still had about three hours of driving to get to San Luis Obispo where I had booked a B&B. From about 6 I had been trying to ring and email the B&B but was getting no answer, so all I could do was drive there. That was a memorable drive. After about 30 hours without sleep by that time, I wasn't in danger of falling asleep so much as just losing focus. I had thought when I planned this part of the trip that I would be leaving much earlier, and could take my time a bit and stop for a quick nap here and there if I needed to, but it didn’t work out that way. I did the trip in 5 mile blocks: I thought, I can do the next 5 miles, then ticked it off, and started in on the next 5 miles.

I discovered that speed limits in America were very loosely adhered to. People would flash by, doing maybe even 50km/h above the speed limit, which meant you needed to be rather vigilant when changing lanes! There were sections of the highway where there were roadworks, and they had concrete barriers right next to the road with traffic cones on the other side, and while I was still getting used to where I was in the lane, and tending to drive too far to the left, I was paranoid I was going to scrape the barrier. I did clip a traffic cone at one point. When I returned the car, the running board on one side was rather black, with some orange scrape marks on it, which I think may have come from the traffic cone. I was thankful to have bought the option to cover any damage.

There were two accidents near me while I was driving. The car in front of me ran into the car in front of them, and then there was a police car just getting to a very recent accident, who then directed us by. I didn’t see any rest stops where I could pull off and take a quick nap. I tried heading off on one of the exits, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere I could stop by the side of the road, and I was only getting later. I was still hoping to be able to get to the B&B in time for someone to be awake.

I finally made it, with the Lord's help, and got to the B&B about 11, and no one answered the door. There were a couple of phone numbers posted on the door or wall, but neither of the them answered either. To this day I don't know what happened. So sleeping in the car was looking like a definite possibility. There were a couple of motels near the B&B and I rang one and they had no rooms. The other had a night bell which I pressed, and someone came out, and yes they had a room, thank the Lord.

The card the man gave me to get in didn’t work, and I had to get another one, which got me in. The room smelt a bit of stale cigarette smoke, and at 4am someone was banging on someone's door telling them to open up or they'd call the sheriff, for about 20 minutes, but it was definitely better than sleeping in the car!

When I went to the bathroom, the water in the toilet was much higher than I was expecting, and I wondered if it was blocked up, but then I had a vague memory that in the US they did have higher water levels in the bowls than in Australia. I somewhat gingerly flushed it, and it turned out to be working fine.

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