The Day That Happened Twice

Tuesday morning, December 15, we're out in Auckland, having coffee with Sian's cousin Phil and wife Jan whose visit to New Zealand just happens to be beginning as ours draws to a close. After that, and hour or whiled away in the tranquility of the Auckland art gallery, then it's time to board our shuttle bus to the airport to begin the journey home. It's not been quite the perfect send off - just when we were congratulating each other on getting through the whole trip bug-free, Sian gets ill - food poisoning, we think, some dodgy pub-cooked prawns top of the suspect list. Then, at the airport, our flight sits on the tarmac two hours beyond its departure time when it develops a technical fault. Maybe it's Aucklands way of paying us back for being mean about it.

Anyway, we do finally get airborne, and with the return leg of the international flights booked premium economy, the eleven hours to LA are a breeze. Eat a meal, watch a film, settle down to sleep. And then, next day, it's...

Tuesday morning, December 15 - Los Angeles. Yes, due to the foibles of the international date-line and a load of science I don't understand, this is the day that happened twice, Tuesday all over again, Groundhog Day. Ironic, really - nature dealing us a day more just at the time we could have done with one less. But here we are, Tuesday, again, this time in LA. If Auckland was big by NZ standards, LA could surely swallow it whole; a vast sea of steel and concrete as the plane drops down out of blue skies. We have just the one night here, and though it be the final point of our holiday, we have no game plan bar sitting it out until our onward flight departs 1600 next day. In the event, we dump our bags at our tired little Travel Lodge hotel, and catch a bus,or two buses down to Venice Beach. It's the one bit of LA we vaguely know, having stayed there with our friends Ruth and Len at the end of our cross-US road trip in 2002. Then, we stepped off the motorcycle and asked a passing cop to take our photo. Today we take the photos ourselves as the last of the sun goes down.