The Kimbells: Back to Reality (Day 9)

Well, our trip is finally reaching an end. We hit the road at 7:30am to drive back to Sydney to catch our flight. Fortunately for us, we met another young couple who was really nice and offered to let us follow them back to Sydney. They live by the airport, so we were able to follow them almost the entire way. And since our Garmin GPS stopped working for us on our trip back, it turned out to be even better. I can’t believe we forgot to take picture of our car and me driving. It completely slipped our minds.

Surprisingly, we made it to the airport, turned the car in, and checked in without incident or delay. We also caught another break when we found out we were going to be flying on Quantas’ new A380 aircraft (http://www.qantas.com.au/info/flying/A380/index) back to LA. For anyone that travels a lot, or internationally, this was without a doubt the best airplane we’ve ever flown on. First of all it was massive (seating 450 passengers). But second, even in coach, the leg room was noticeably better, and the seats were far more comfortable. One of my favorite things was the touch-screen TV everyone had in the back of the headrest in front of them. We had this on the 747 we took on the way in, but this was far more advanced. There were over 1,000 movies, TV shows, music, video games, and books on tape to choose from. Aside from recently released movies, they also had one Oscar category that allowed you to watch any of the Best Picture winning movies from the last 40 years (starting with Midnight Cowboy [1969] to Slumdog Millionaire [2009]). I finally watched The Sting…as well as a bunch of other movies and TV shows. The other cool thing was that they had a special “Information” tab. On it you could view video of outside the plane from a special video camera that was attached to the tail of the plane. It was really cool to watch take-off and landing from an aerial view, as well as views of the coast. There was also another button that allowed you to track where the plane was at any given time, the distance and time left to reach your destination, and other information. It was really cool to be able to track everything, as well as see outside the plane on your TV in front of you. I attached a link to the web site, and anyone interested in planes should check it out. If nothing else, it’s worth looking at the video of first class and business class seating. Sadly we weren’t able to enjoy those accommodations, however we saw them and they were incredible.

Tina slept for a few hours on the way back to LA from Sydney, but I couldn’t. The time change had me all mixed up, so I decided that I’d just try to stay awake and try to get to bed early when we got back to Dallas. But Tina and I did manage to fall asleep for about an hour on our LA to Dallas leg of the trip. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted when we returned.

So that’s about it. We’re hoping to get some more pictures and video from our friends Ron and Leslie, and we’ll be glad to share it with anyone interested. I’m not sure when we’ll get it though.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who followed us during our adventure to Sydney. We had such an incredible time, and it was definitely the trip of a lifetime. We hope to see everyone soon!

The weary (and sad) travelers return.