Sunny days in November

It's been raining, but tonight I was out seeing a mate....

This is not him...

But he was there...

On the bus on the way home, over my right shoulder, this was my new friend I'd made at the bustop...


After he'd passed out and fell off the seat, forwards, when the driver hit the brakes (only to pass out again)...

He'd seen better days...

Time to put old wrongs right

As November rolled in, it had become time to put my money where my mouth was...

It's been a bit of a tedious exercise trying to buy this long-haul flight ticket. With an unlimited budget and 6 months notice, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but, where I stood, time was really starting to press and the whole circus was going to have to go on the Visa card anyway.

Having had a good look around the Internet and not having had much luck, I decided to go into town and have a chat to a couple of the mainstream travel agents. Always nice, I figured, to chat to an 'informed monkey' on such matters. As the investigation in the shop progressed it appeared that every man, woman & dog was heading to the Antipodes this December and flights were unusually full. Great.

In the end the best deal they had going was a return trip to Melbourne for £1033 (about £380 more than I was hoping to pay), whereupon I'd need to sort out my real travels from there. I had already pre-thought to myself that "if the flight was almost to cost a grand then I might as well push on and make it into a decent global trip". So, delving deeper into the computer system we looked into an itinerary that routed London - Melbourne - Auckland - San Francisco - Vancouver - London. After a bit of a search we were able to find seat spaces (but only just) and I would have needed to book it within the next 24 hours in order to secure it.

So far so good eh - except that it was going to cost £1490. It was at that point that I politely excused myself from the shop and went in search of a beer-buddy. When in doubt go and have a beer!

A couple of beers later and I was back home, firing up the computer ready to have another more 'inspired' look around the Internet. After about 4 hours I had found some flights which could get me there and back for about £870 (if I went before the 7th Dec) and over £1000 if I went afterwards.

Getting ready to bite the bullet and cough up the lion's share of a grand, I decided to do a search of mainstream airlines. I don't normally ever do this because the flight prices they advertise on their sites are normally ridiculous and your get hugely better prices through the travel sites i.e. skyscanner.net, opodo.com, expedia.co.uk.

Eventually, I got on the Air New Zealand site (the .co.uk variant) and they had some astonishing 'web specials'. It all seemed a bit too good to be true or, I figured, they would be completely sold out until Easter 2008.

Initially I looked at direct return flights for about £800 (which was still better than anything else I'd seen) and then I started to look at their code-sharing flights with Virgin. After a bit of playing I was looking at a flight routing London - San Francisco - Auckland - Tokyo - London and get this - for only £778.

I could not believe it, spaces were tight on the flight and as I started to look into it more, it stated that there were only 7 spaces left. When I first tried my credit card the system crashed and, ultimately, stated that "they could not confirm spaces on the 'SFO-AKL' leg". It gave a 0800 help number and when the cheerful girl answered she initially said 'Good Afternoon' (I realised I was talking to someone in NZ itself), which was a bit of a shock since it was then about 0430 in the morning in the UK.

They bounced me around a bit and eventually put me on hold. As I waited for them to come back on the phone I decided to try again (the error message on the screen had said my card hadn't been charged). This time the system said there were only 6 seats left available... shit (the whole thing was critical because in order to do the stopover legs, there were very few subsequent departures out available. If I couldn't get out of San Fran on the 11th, the next available departure was after Christmas, so the whole plan would have been scuppered).

Hey, hey Bingo and with a last press of the button at about 5am in the morning, I was bouncing around my flight with joy because, even despite my apathy, I'd managed to hook up a flight for under £800 and had 5 day stopovers in San Francisco & Tokyo respectively (not quite Vancouver, but, as I've said previously, I've always wanted to go to both these places anyway).

Actually, when i was first working my way through these flights, I was looking at flights returning via Shanghai (figuring I should go and make my introductions to the future masters of the planet), but they were all gone, so Tokyo was a good enough 2nd option. As it stands then, I fly out of London on the 6th December, a Wednesday, and don't leave San Fran until the following Monday.

Still buzzing about the flight today, I have already cancelled my flat, phoned the local council to tell them to shove their council tax (or, more accurately, give me some money back) and been to a bookstore to look at San Fran.

Tonight, when I got back in, I got on the Internet to look up something else and to my absolute joy I discovered that the San Francisco 49'ers are playing the Green Bay Packers on the Sunday that I am there. So, I have already been looking up tickets and there appears to be some available. Wahoo - I've only been to one game before and that was amazing. A pre-season game for the Denver Broncos in front of 79,000 people, a truly mind-blowing spectacle.

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I have actually been to San Francisco once before. It was only for a refuel and we were supposed to be legging it on to Hawaii, but there was a 110 knot headwind and our little dinosaur didn't have very long legs (not very good fuel endurance). So we just about (read: just about) got grounded there...

As the crew made its way back from flight planning / met office, the flight engineer came up to us and told us that we were parked beside the Lear Jet of the owner of the 49'ers. He had been talking to the Flight Engineer of that aircraft and when he had heard about out predicament, he had said that the 49'ers were playing that day (it was a Sunday) and that he could get us all complimentary tickets.

I was only 21 at the time and was absolutely ecstatic about the possibility (having always liked American Football and to see Joe Montana play at Soldier Field would have been a dream). As life goes, the wind dropped by a few knots and the captain decided to go (wimp, he could so easily have aborted the flight).

To add salt to the wound, on departure the American air traffic controller realising we were Antipodeans, offered us the 'scenic departure' which is flight talk for giving us the sight-seeing radar departure (in the States, and at most major locations, you're completed vectored around by radar controllers) i.e. he would deliberately vector us over the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz and all the other scenic spots.

True to form (you guessed it), old wimpy dick declined the offer and requested a 'direct' departure. So off we went leaving a bridge, a prison & the 49'ers behind.

A couple of decades later and I may finally be able to put such youthful heartbreak to rest...