Pandemic Travel

On this trip, I’ll be doing some things I’ll never get the opportunity to do again. I’m currently taking a class with Cindy Needham, and I’ve wanted to do a class with her for years and years. This is the last time she’s running this particular class, which is the one I really wanted to do. It’s absolutely fabulous and I’m learning a lot. So it’s totally worth the hassles of traveling in the pandemic world.

Travel now is  lot more difficult than it used to be. The travel industry was basically shut down for a while and they’ve had trouble getting staff back. The staff are all overworked and new so they’re making mistakes and are overwhelmed. Also, people are now encouraged to be off work when they’re sick, so the number of workers is less consistent day to day than it was.

To get here I caught a bus to Sydney domestic  -> bus to Sydney international -> plane to Dallas -> plane to San Francisco -> car hire to here. Normally one bus and one plane wouldn’t have been necessary, but the bus only resumed stopping at the domestic airport a short time ago, and has yet to resume stopping at the international one. The direct planes to San Francisco were cancelled, and I had to go an extra three hours each way to Dallas and back. Security in Dallas only had two booths checking foreigners, so it took 3 hours to get through. The plane to San Francisco was delayed by an extra 4 hours, and the hotel no longer has an airport shuttle bus. Door to door took 34 hours and I arrived after midnight.

The next day, car hire took 3 hours although it was already booked, because they had few staff (the queue was really long), and they gave me a car that was incomplete, and incorrect information about the second car. It seemed that was happening a lot.

So I’m sorry my first post has taken a while, but I’m sure you’ll understand why it has. Since I’ve been here, four more of my flights have been changed or cancelled, so I’ve been busy rearranging things. There’s also a heatwave here. It was 111F in my car yesterday.