AKL > SFO

Last night we flew from Auckland to San Francisco, the flight started promisingly, with several empty seats around us at take off, including the one next to Kate, however that was the calm before the storm, as our 12.5 hour flight took in some of the roughest turbulence I've experienced yet, which may or may not have led to the early demise of my laptop, and certainly contributed to Kate having a rather unpleasant flight.

After we got off the plane, we had to head to immigration, which entailed over 2 hours standing in line, slowly making our way towards passport control. This wait certainly reminded us just how good the current ESTA procedure is for Australian's entering the United States, as Kate and I took maybe 2 minutes between us getting cleared, and Darrell took about a minute on his own, while the people in front of us, mostly from countries without the same agreements in place as the US and Australia, would take 5 minutes or longer for the same interview. By the time we got through the checkpoints, our bags had been removed from the carousel and placed on the floor, as there was another plane about to unload onto the same carousel. On the upside, the customs check points after baggage pickup were a lot less crowded and we breezed through without any stress at all.

Nicole picked us up from the airport and took us back to David's place, where we'll spend tonight and tomorrow night, before heading down to Los Angeles. I also picked up the Cadillac this evening, after it had some more work done to it today, and we took it down to the local WalMart for a shakedown (and we had some shopping to do).

Tomorrow we're planning on doing a little more shopping to make sure we have everything we need for the trip, washing the Cadillac and packing for the next 3 weeks on the road.