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In Travel

/ Published on 02 December 2007

Disneyland daze and wi-fie woze

Qantas Flight 93 touched done just after daybreak. After flying backward across the international dateline, we arrived in Los Angeles about an hour and a half before we flew out of Adelaide. For the first time since I bought it, the date on my Seiko watch is correct. The Qantas queues were cleared expediently and, despite pre-departure warnings to the contrary, the welcoming US officials were neither officious nor intrusive. That may be one of the advantages of travelling with a sweet-faced eight year-old girl.

Sandy, Eden and I spilled on to the sidewalk in front of the LAX terminal about 9am. Our hotel had suggested we take the Super Shuttle from the airport to Anaheim, so we went on the hunt for a Super Shuttle dispatcher in blue shirt. When eventually we found her, she exuded an air of indifference to our desire to use her company’s conveyance. As we had nothing better to do, we loitered in the general vicinity until the dispatcher eventually grunted at us and pointed to an approaching van. As I gathered up our cases to stagger towards the blue minibus, the dispatcher suddenly became uncharacteristically animated. “Don’t you go forgetting my tip,” she hollered at my back as I scrambled aboard the bus. When I opened my wallet to extract five dollars for her unstinting service, the smallest note I could find in my fluster was a $20 note – too much for too little, I decided, and thus ran the gauntlet of her glower as our bus pulled away from the curb.

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