Outward Bound

With final preparations in place, I left my car and apartment in my sister Michelle’s hands (she will be in Austin doing a clinical rotation for her OT program during part of the time I am gone) and took off for the airport around 2:15pm. I stopped in at work to grab a few remaining items and said goodbye to those who were there working. It seems weird to think that I won’t be back in Austin for another 10 weeks. I really have no frame of reference for a trip of this length. The longest I have been away from Austin since moving to Texas was 3 weeks (July, 2008) while traveling to Hawaii for the ICOM 2008 conference and then back to PA for Skippy and Sarah’s wedding.

From Austin, I flew to Los Angeles, arriving shortly before 8pm local time. The flight from Austin to LAX was packed with Longhorn fans traveling to watch UT play Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game in Pasadena. Arrival in Los Angeles was relatively un-eventful. I like the west-bound approach to LAX since you get a great view of the city from the right-hand side of the airplane. The last time I flew into LAX (going to UC Santa Barbara for a grad school visit) we landed at dusk and the light from the setting sun on the city was spectacular. This time, it was night, but the city lights still offered a great view on approach to the airport.

Up until this evening, I would have to say that Philadelphia’s airport has been my least favorite airport to visit. Well, congratulations Philadelphia International, LAX is now my new least favorite airport. This may be somewhat unfair for reasons I will subsequently explain.

Upon arrival to terminal 4 (American Airlines) at LAX, I had to move to the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT – every time I saw this, all I could think of was TBDBITL – thus, strike one). In order to do this, passengers have to physically leave the domestic terminals (i.e. go outside) and walk anywhere from a few hundred yards to several hundred yards to get to TBIT. My first impression of the international terminal was that there were extremely long lines everywhere. Most of them were Asian people carrying probably the largest collection of luggage I have ever seen.

Passengers enter TBIT into the check-in hall. This room is a huge collection of check-in counters for many different international airlines. Since I was connecting on a Quantas ticket, I didn’t need to check-in, but I did need to find out where the gates were and I needed to determine which security line I needed to go through to get there. This was very difficult given the excessive amount of people. Signage was extremely poor and it was nearly impossible to find anyone who worked there.

Eventually, I figured out that there were two lines for security. There was a line for passengers who needed to drop off checked luggage for screening and then a separate line for just passengers and their carry-on baggage. I waited in the line of people waiting to drop off checked luggage for about 45 minutes before I realized that I had no reason to be in that line. After switching to the appropriate line, it took about another hour to get through TSA security. In this process I found out that the passenger load was abnormally high that evening for unknown reasons. Thus, my experience may not have been representative of an average trip through the LAX international terminal.

I was disappointed to find out that the gate-side of TBIT had essentially no stores or shops. Apparently, all of those were located in the pre-security check-in area. So, I had about an hour and a half to walk around and get ready for 15 hours of sitting on a plane. While walking around the terminal, I enjoyed looking at all of the jumbo jets parked at the various gates. This was the first time that I had really seen a Boeing 747 up close. The size is just amazing. I think the most striking thing about the jumbo jets is how high the cockpit is above the ground. I believe the pilots end up sitting 4 stories (more or less) off of the ground. Eventually, it was time to board Quantas flight 94 to Melbourne and I made a quick stop in the bathroom to brush my teeth before getting on the plane.