We started at out in Mandurah by leaving an hour earlier than planned. We had to rise at 3:30am to get to the airport in time for Patricks flight. In setting the alarm however, I somehow managed to put the time ahead an hour without realising it. So we ended up rising at 2:30 am and we were well on our way to the airport before discovering my error. And Patricks lack of sleep was to continue as you'll hear.
After a rather lengthy meander at the airport, it was finally time to say bye-bye to Patrick. As expected I choked up and had tears running down my face as I hugged him and wished him "Happy Birthday", "Merry Christmas", and "Happy New Years". He then seemed to disappear very quickly beyond the security gate. I'm not sure if he was embarrassed by his mother, or needed to leave before he got weepy too...
His first flight to Singapore went smoothly as did the connecting flight to Los Angeles. That's when things went awry. After more than 24 hours in transit at this point, they landed about 1/2 hour late. But then they were held on the runway for over 5 hours due to a problem with the customs computers. Since it was Saturday evening in LA, I'm sure that contributed to the lengthy delay. By the time Patrick got into the airport, he had missed his connecting flight and the place was deserted since it was the small hours of the morning. Unlike Hong Kong and Singapore airports, LA has no public internet access computers, so Pat had to make phone calls to let us know what was going on. Patrick left a message with Mikes parents (Marucia and George), but of course they were already at the airport, and then phoned us to give us an update and let us know "I'm not dead...". He had to wait for the Air Canada booth to open at 4 am to make alternate arrangements.
He managed to catch the 7am flight to Toronto and finally was picked up by George & Marucia around 3 pm on Sunday. They of course had been expecting to pick up Patrick earlier and had been back and forth to the airport twice by this time. So after 40 odd hours in transit, Patrick had a nice steak dinner and then crashed. I hope to talk to him later tonight when he wakes up!
And once again, here are some remnant photos to round out the July trip selection. These include the menu at Monty's Cafe in Darwin, Mike donning his dust protection gear, another drive past a bush burn off, and Steve holding a long neck turtle which we encountered on one of our journeys near a swamp.
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