Pre-Day One: 34 Hours total travel time, 20 hours flight time, 4 planes, 5 movies, 6 hours of TV, 1 missed flight connection, and some bad luck

I know that sentence is really long, but it completely sums up the start of my trip. For a clue: 4 movies were shown on the Sydney-LA leg of my trip (I went Melb-Syd, Syd-LA, LA-Chicago, Chicago-Atlanta), with another 2.5 hours of TV shows on top of that. The rest of of the TV/movies were shown on other legs.

Sigh… It’s a really long time. Funnily enough, the LA-Chicago leg seemed the longest. I was completely prepared for not being able to sleep on the 14 hour flight from Sydney, and was right: wired from lots of preparation and anticipation, I only managed an in-and-out ‘nap’ of ten minutes, just as everyone was waking up for breakfast. Getting off at LA - which is quite possibly the worst airport I’ve been to, including the tiny stay in Ho Chi Minh’s airport (oh, there’s a whole story to that, including a ‘problem’ with my flight and an armed guard in communist uniform). It started out ok: first thing was to go through immigration, and I had a nice little chat with the agent (agent? cop? Either seems like a good term) who was curious about me attending the puppetry festival. I got fingerprinted, which was much more digital than I imagined… don’t know why I thought they’d do it old-fashioned way with ink and paper, I guess it’s just the image that most people have of fingerprinting. 

From there I got my luggage to head through customs, which is where things started to go wrong. There were lots of people on the double-decker plane from Sydney, and we all bottle-knecked into the customs area where only two people were checking forms. By the time I got out it was well past 11am, and my flight to Chicago checked in at 10:55. I was completely lost leaving customs, with no signage to any of the gates, but un/luckily (you’ll see why the ‘un’ in a minute) there was a guy standing there to direct people. He took me outside, pointed me towards the correct building, and told me to run: that the flight has most likely closed. I ran, got into the building, ran to the first uniformed person I could see, and asked them if they could tell me whether the flight had left: they told me it had, but if I went to the counter they may be able to fix me up with a connecting flight. Then they nicely let me ahead of the line. I tried to rush through the scanners, but in the panic, forgot to take my shoes off (and ended at the back of a short line), and then got held up because I’d also put my boarding pass onto the scanners. And they don’t let you through unless you’re holding your boarding pass. 

I run upstairs to the gates, which go in two directions, and there’s no screens in front of the escalators to tell you which flight leaves from what gate. I take pot luck, go left, see some screens, but didn’t see my flight listed. I thought it had been taken off the screen, since it probably left. So I ask the next uniformed person I see to direct me to the United desk, and she mentions that my flight has left as I show her the boarding pass. 

So I get to the customer service desk, and one of the first things the woman says to me there is that the flight had just closed, and most likely had been waiting for me. She then reprimands me for not checking the departure screens, and that I should have gone to the gate first and to never ask at customer service before checking the gate (she was nicer than I make it sound, but after 15 hours of plane time, I was a little annoyed at missing my connection). So anyway, she set me up with a new flight that left about an hour later, as well as a new connecting flight from Chicago-Atlanta, since my LA-Chicago flight was later (although when I arrived at Chicago, I could see that I could have easily made my original Atlanta plane… but whatever). Lesson from this: never ask any uniformed person for info on flights, even if they apparently work for the airline/airport.

… I had prebooked a shuttle from the Atlanta airport (where I’m staying is not that far from a train station, but wasn’t comfortable taking it at around midnight when I landed), and luckily rearranged it ahead of time from Chicago. Unfortunately, the driver didn’t know where the place was, and we drove around in blocks for a while. 

My first place to stay, which is a B&B - and if you followed me on Twitter, it’s the expensive one I couldn’t decide on booking - is extremely nice, in a good location… I’ll post more about it after I’ve left, as it’s so nice I want to give them a proper plug. First thing I go to do is have a shower… but guess what? The US government, after removing the locks on my bag to check it, has placed the wrong lock. Fortunately for me, the lock is on the pocket of my suitcase that only contains my toiletries bag. I put it in a separate pocket so if the contents spilled, it wouldn’t spill into the main suitcase and ruin my puppets (and clothes). The lock is nowhere close to what I had on originally, so I knew straight away that there wasn’t any point trying any of the keys. I am fortunate that for the most part the toiletries aren’t necessities, and I have bought replacements. It’s still annoying though, because I couldn’t brush my teeth on arrival. 

Day One: Alpha Kamma What?

I had about 6 hours of semi-good sleep, and woke up to a really lovely breakfast. The B&B innkeeper is very friendly, and showed me around the place (seeing as how I came so late last night), which is a really lovely restored home. Breakfast was on an outside patio, and was fresh fruit, poached egg, English muffins, bacon, marmalade, and some of the best cheese (don’t ask me what) I’ve ever eaten. (Nat, if you read this, no I didn’t take a photo of my breakfast, I’ll try tomorrow)

From there, I headed out as planned to find out where Georgia Tech University is, which is the location for the festival. As I walked down North Avenue, I couldn’t believe how many buildings made up the campus. This isn’t a campus: it’s an entire village!

A park area in the Georgia Tech campus; could quite possibly fit a third of my high school in it.

One thing that struck me as I walked throughout today: Atlanta is different to Melbourne in that it is more of a sprawling city. Melbourne is so much more compact. The streets that where marked on my maps and looked like main roads turn out to be quiet and wide lanes (technically they’re probably ‘roads’, but for a visual, they’re more like lanes). Blocks are bigger, but then, there’s less on them. Even though it’s Sunday, it’s quiet, with not a lot of people about. At first I felt quite strange about it, and then I realised that a more sprawling city means less density of people. 

Anyway, I head towards Georgia Tech, but am not doing too well. You see, I have swollen feet (again! I had the same issue in Perth), and had to stop when I reached near the Arts Centre area of the uni. Luckily, I have a book to read with me, and sat for a while. I continued on, but honestly, this isn’t a campus. This uni encompasses such a large area that I reckon I could fit my high school - considered one of the biggest schools in Melbourne - in just three of the car parks of Georgia Tech. Even my biggest campus at uni - Deakin in Burwood, a suburb of Melbourne - is tiny in comparison.

The image at right shows the comparisons of campuses. Although Deakin looks quite big, most of the campus is just land, and the buildings are much smaller than Georgia Tech. Again, my high school seems big, but it’s compact, with barely any park area, and mostly buildings. You’ll note Georgia Tech doesn’t have a top border: that’s because when I did a screen dump of Georgia Tech on Google Maps, I couldn’t fit the whole campus in my browser and keep it as the same scale as the others. I have added some additional lines at top right and top left as a rough guide of just how much more of the campus there is; hence no top border, as it’s a guess where the campus finishes.

I was going to continue walking around, but struggling with my feet, I decided just to head early towards my next activity: a Segway tour of Atlanta. And that’s when I walked down what I would call ‘fraternity road’. It was just like in the movies: lots of little houses, with Greek letters on them, small carparks, even a sandbox for beach netball. (I wish I’d taken a photo of it now, but perhaps I’ll get one later). And I suddenly understood the American phenonemon that is campus housing. Here in Australia, we don’t really do campus housing; most have it, but it’s usually used by international or interstate students. At Deakin, there were about six houses (in comparison to the whole road, both sides, at Georgia Tech). Most people live near the campus, or can easily take public transport; many drive, and even if people live several hours away, they still take PT. Many Aussies stay at home too, because of the high costs of moving out at a young age. Seeing Georgia Tech, I realised that living off campus would be ridiculously inconvenient. It truly is big enough to be its own suburb, and self-sustaining at that. And with the sprawling nature of Atlanta, it just doesn’t seem logical to be off-campus.

I finally make my way out of the bee-logoed area (the mascot for the uni), but need a rest again. So I do a quite boring thing: I go have lunch at Starbucks and read my book for an hour. As I leave, I discover my feet are incredibly sore, and realise I can’t possibly stand on a Segway for 3 hours; so I call to see if I can rearrange it for another day. Only to find out - of course - that even though I booked it for today, they’ve booked me in for the 20th. Apparently the day I booked was actually a ‘preferred’ date, but I would have had no idea that they’d held it for the 20th had I not called. Luckily for me, the things I have planned to do on the 20th are completely flexible, so I’m sticking with the tour on that day.

At this point, I make a slow path towards my B&B, which I have been at ever since. I’ve watched several episodes of Top Chef, which I love, but don’t get in Australia (our version is a cross between the UK amateur showdown, MasterChef, and our own Aussiefied crap. Not a patch on the US show). It’s hot and muggy, but it has cooled down a bit and there is now a thunderstorm outside. My feet are feeling much better, and hopefully if I rest them enough I can mitigate the swelling over the next few days.

… There’s some good news in amongst the bad. The good includes my new shadow puppet screens that I made specifically for travelling to the festival have survived relatively unscathed in my suitcase. I was worried they’d get flattened, as some of it is made of foam core, and despite a couple of creases here and there, they have fared pretty well. Likewise, my shadow puppets, which are in a thin box and surrounded by foam, are looking happy. And despite the expensive rates of this B&B, it is totally worth it. They’re ecologically aware, using recycled water, products, and solar power; service is excellent and the room is wonderfully comfortable. 

Tomorrow: more sightseeing, and possibly more lying around…UPDATE: Read the next diary post here.