SYD -> LAX -> ORD

SYD -> LAX -> ORD, originally uploaded by zuctronic.

Hopefully I'm teaching a few people something here... the title of this blog post contains the three-letter airport codes for the Sydney Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Hopefully I'm teaching even more people something with this: O'Hare's code is ORD because it USED to be called "Orchard Field" until 1949 when it was renamed after Lieutenant Commander Edward "Butch" O'Hare, USN, a World War II flying ace. O'Hare was my kind of guy... here's an anecdote about him that I fished off the internet:

"(O'Hare) was a great swimmer and spear fisherman, and he insisted that the squadron swim with him. Swimming with Butch O'Hare meant that at eight o'clock in the morning, you swam out into the ocean off Maui; he would still be out there at three in the afternoon! If he got hungry, Butch would roll over and dive, and the next thing you knew, he would come up with a fish of some sort. Then he'd just roll over and lie on his back like an otter and eat the thing raw! He really impressed us with that! One day, he came back to the surface with an octopus draped over his arm. He said, 'Now, you have to learn how to kill these things, boys: you bite 'em right behind the eye.' And with that, he chomped down! The octopus has some sort of spinal cord there, and biting it there does kill it! Then we had to go back to the beach where Butch would put these things in a frying pan with a little oil and some salt and stir them around. He enjoyed them, but they tasted like old rubber tires to me!"

Before flying out of Sydney I had some oysters and sushi in the airport. I didn't want to stuff myself because that can make for an uncomfortable flight, but I couldn't resist two of my favorite foods. The oysters were excellent and the last-minute conveyor belt sushi experience left me satisfied.

The flight back was as comfortable as I could expect. The long haul from Sydney to Los Angeles was a quick 13 hours, but I was sitting next to an Australian guy who was fun to talk to. I bought a small bottle of Bundaberg Rum in the airport duty free and shared it with him. When I offered him some his expression was hilarious, "Bundy ay... yeah why not?"

They have a small entertainment system in the seat backs, so I could watch movies and TV shows and pause things to get up and walk around or eat dinner and snacks. This helped me stretch out the first movie I watched, District 9, for about 5 hours. After that, I fell asleep for 7 hours and when I woke up the plane was flying over Catalina Island into Los Angeles.



I had a 2 hour, 40 minute layover in Los Angeles - enough time to eat a bacon cheese burger at Chili's Too. This was a perfect welcome back to America, haha! We flew away from the sunset into the night to Chicago. I was able to spend one night with her before she left to spend the month of December with her mother. I would be home for just two weeks before joining Isabelle in Europe for the holidays!