Sydney, Australia
The counter on my watch reads 39 hours, 23 minutes, and 45...46...47 seconds. I started this counter when my mother delivered me to the Cincinnati airport. Since then I have passed through four airports and been on as many planes. It will be at least 7 hours more until I reach my destination of Christchurch, New Zealand. I am hours past tired and now drift between delirious and slightly loopy. I sway slightly when I walk, my exhaustion throwing off my balance. My stomach twists and turns, having been fed when it should be sleeping, and not having got enough rest to complete its normal digestive duties. I have wiled away the last 10 hours in an airport lounge which thankfully includes good food, free drinks, wi-fi, reasonably comfortable chairs, and particularly delightful shower facilities. My best intentions to go into Sydney were stymied by hurricane force winds and torrential downpour. The scroll on the weather channel read: "heavy thundery downpour predicted," not exactly sight-seeing weather. And so instead, I have spent the day camped out in the corner of a lounge surrounded by fellow travelers.
Every few minutes, another delay is announced over the loudspeaker, presumably thanks to the lousy weather. So far, our evening flight has only been pushed back twenty minutes, but I expect as darkness falls and the hour approaches, that the flight will continue to slide back. With each delay, our arrival into Christchurch slides further and further past midnight.
I am fantasizing about a bed and a pillow, my need for sleep having been hardly satisfying by the drifting, restless, 20-minute bouts of sleep on the last transoceanic flight. My ability to string together coherent sentences is being seriously challenged, and I am skeptical that anything I have written here makes the least bit of sense. I'll try again after I've had some real sleep. Whenever that might happen.
