Purgatory

If hell was to resemble a place on Earth....it'd probably be LAX. As busy of an airport as it is, specifically for the international terminal, you'd think they'd have a layout and system that was more efficient.

Let me go back a few hours. So we spent most of the day tiring out the dogs at the dog park then driving around to the usual known LA places like Beverly Hills. We had the dogs with us in the van as to keep them awake but also just with us instead of in their crates since they would be in it for hours soon enough. So we get to Qantas Freight at 6 PM, I go in to do paperwork and Anthony is zip tying the food and water bowls to the crates then taking each of the kids for a final potty walk. There ends up being 8 dogs going to Melbourne so that makes us feel better especially after talking to the other owners and hearing they're as stressed as we were and the fact that one of the little dogs had already flown from New Zealand to the USA a little over a year ago and she was fine.

The whole dog process took about an hour an a half, which was about an hour longer than we had expected. Apparently they sent a newbie of an USDA person to seal the dogs in the crates and being there was an abnormally high number of dogs on this flight, she was in a bit of a panic. So after drilling holes around the crate doors, taping all sorts of required paperwork and signage on the crates, getting them weighed, then taking them around to the warehouse/dock area, we gave each of our kids a big squeeze and kiss then sealed them into the crate knowing we wouldn't see them until about 30 hours later.

We then rushed back to the hotel since we didn't think the dog sealing process was going to take so long and we still had to shower and pack up. Fortunately we made it to LAX with ample time. Of course 2 of our bags were over weight so we had to take stuff out and shove it into another bag so in the end it all gets on the plane anyways, don't know why they bother with an extra 5 lbs. So we check in, get our bags tagged, then we're told to take them about 100 feet away to where they are collecting the bags and x-raying them. So we're wondering, what would stop us from shoving more stuff into our check in bags since it was already weighed?? And to top it off, the checked bag drop off area was PACKED. The area was just stacked pull of bags that they were receiving faster than they could process. It just didn't look very efficient.

LAX is a madhouse of people but instead of trying to spread the people out, they set it up so that they have pockets of high concentrations of people. It was ridiculous to hear that there was no food places to eat once we got through security and was in the terminal area. So the food court area before the security check-in area was just overstuffed with people probably also stuck there for another 2-3 hours before their flight departs. We later found out once we got in that there was 1 place that was a sit down place that served alcohol and hot food. Thank you LAX personnel for telling me a lie.

So we're waiting to board this ginormous Airbus A380-800 where it has something like 500 seats. I believe it was just released mid-2008 so it's a rather new plane and it only flies out on the Wed flights to Melbourne, hence we are flying today.

- julie