Sydney 5:00am: Woken far too early by the alarm. John drags himself out of bed, guess who goes back to sleep? A quick shower then finish packing and getting the house ready for the house minder.
Sydney 6:30am: Get into the taxi for a relatively quick trip to the airport. Only 40 minutes ...
Sydney 8:15am: Drinking a passable cup of coffee (not bad for airport coffee anyway) when the first boarding call for our 9:30 flight is made. Wonder why it's so early. Half an hour later we find out: all hand luggage is being searched. Guess who left a deadly weapon in her bag - a pair of (blunt) nail scissors ...
Sydney 9:00am: Board the plane. Sit there waiting for everyone else to get on. At about 9:25, ground power is disconnected and the APU started. 30 seconds later the APU stops. A couple of minutes later it starts again, then stops. Five minutes later (without lights or air conditioning) we're told that we're going to be sitting there for another half an hour.
Sydney 10:20am: We finally start to move, but are told that we have a new flight path that's quicker than the old one so we'll get to Honolulu on time (yeah, right).
Honolulu 12:05am: Land in Honolulu about an hour late to discover that we have to change planes (OK), clear US immigration and customs (not OK, we're only in transit) and collect our luggage and carry it 50 metres through the airport and check it in again so it can be put on the plane next to the one we just got off (definitely not OK). Surprise, surprise, the 1:00 am departure doesn't happen.
Honolulu 1:50am: We depart Honolulu for Vancouver. This time nothing goes wrong with the plane.
Vancouver 10:50am: We arrive in Vancouver half an hour after leaving Sydney. Must be relativity or something, but it seemed like a lot longer than half an hour to us.
Vancouver 6:30pm: We find an internet cafe and upload the first lot of photos. We didn't do much today - we've been up for about 30 hours without sleep and aren't feeling too energetic. So you'll have to be satisfied with a few photos of the harbour and the mountains behind.
Vancouver 7:30pm: Finish typing all this and now we're off to find some seafood for dinner. It's still broad daylight here, but it's not very warm.
Vancouver 9:30pm: Finally, it's dark.