The weekend back in Wellington - eventually

Hi,

We got up early (5am Sydney time) on Saturday and said our goodbyes.  Everyone got up to give us hugs - aren't they crazy?  I hope they did get back to sleep.  Karen had a big day ahead of her with the school fete she was running.

Mike had hired a rental car for the drive to the airport because the rail engineering works meant a bus replacement service.  Unfortunately, he only found out after he collected the car that our wee section of railway was still open.  But the car drive was fine!

We drive into town via Leichardt (I think that's how it is spelled but I might be making it up) to collect Christine from her sister's place.  We made it to the airport well before our 7.20am check-in time.  Mike had to go and find petrol though - bit of a blow.  Still, we had checked in and just waited for him.

Through to our gate and waiting.  And waiting.  Uh oh.  Apparently our plane touched down and the nose wheel steering broke and they couldn't steer the plane to the gate.  It sat for about 1.5 hours on the tarmac before it was towed to our gate.  This meant delays to our departure.

Mike fast asleep

Killing time

Mike was feeling a bit sick and he slept in a quiet corner on the floor.  I noticed ground crew checking him out to make sure he was still breathing.

We had an announcement to say we might be departing at 11.30am.  We spent our food vouchers in anticipation.  I noticed the board changed our status to canceled.  Hmmmm.  Sure enough, in 10 minutes they announced our flight was canceled and we were being re-scheduled onto later flights.  Ours was the Qantas 1805 flight.

We had to clear customs again and get our bags.  No check in until 3pm.  So we went to McDonalds and set ourselves up for a while   Christine bought playing cards with her vouchers and Mike and Christine settled in playing 500.

We bumped into a work colleague from London.  Duncan and his wife Rachel.  They now have two children and are living in Kuala Lumpur.  We chatted for a while, marvelling at the coincidences in life that meant our paths crossed.  They were delayed because they had left their car seat back through customs when they collected their luggage.  We should have already been touching down in Wellington!

Mike sleeping in his seat airside

Sydney in the distance

At 3pm, we checked back in and went airside to fill in more hours.  I did read a lot.  Hopped on the flight (delayed by an hour) and had an uneventful flight home.  So happy to see Sally and Andrew there to meet us.  We piled into the Mighty Red Galant and went home.  The neighbours were having a huge party and the music was very loud, even at 1.30am.  But it didn't bother any of us!

Sunday was quiet.  We woke up very late.  Didn't get to the Scots Gala because we were all tired.  Stayed at home most of the day apart from grocery shopping and William coming to play.  We did have a fright when Mike went up to the garage to get the car and discovered it was missing.  We looked at each other trying to remember what we did with it on Friday.  Had we left it for 7 days in the car park near work?  Jeepers - that would be expensive.  We decided it was most likely at the Wadestown library so we jumped in the car to check.  Sure enough - we found our car abandoned outside the library.  Unloved for the week.  Hahahah.

 I went out to the Paul Kelly concert without Mike (Alistair came instead) and enjoyed that immensely.   The concert, not the fact Mike was missing.  The venue was the Old St Pauls church and it was lovely.

Time for work!  Have a great week!
Love,
Angela