The film didn't work. I stayed awake all the way. Should have gone for the Temazepam after all. Mrs Seat Napper spent the whole journey playing poker on the entertainment system, which I didn't mind in itself, but she had huge, manicured nails that were tap tap tapping on the touch screen so loud I could hear it over my headphones. I was so glad to see the back of those two.
Off the plane I was reunited with my scooter which had been disassembled in ways which I didn't even know it could be and even when put back together didn't want to work. Fortunately I knew that plugging it in could reset it and that worked. A very nice assistance lady then escorted me over to the next terminal and pointed me at the gate. By then I had only 20 minutes before boarding the next flight, so much for having a bite to eat and a spot of gadget shopping. I had just enough time to locate a certain piece of technology I wanted to bring for Debbie, then we were off again.
This time I had a very nice Norwegian couple sitting beside me and they were quite chatty and very obliging when I needed to get out to the toilet, unlike the seat nappers who looked at me like I was asking them to eat their own babies whenever I wanted to get up. Again I tried to put myself to sleep with movies but it didn't work. The Last Airbender was nice though, plus several episodes of Big Bang Theory, Karate Kid and a few more I can't even remember and then, at last I was in L.A.
Arriving at L.A. wasn't what I was expecting at all. I thought I'd be coming into a great big airport, kind of like Bristol but bigger - and it is bigger obviously - but there's so much of it that each arrival terminal has its own building and I was discharged from the baggage reclaim straight onto the road outside. I still had nearly an hour to go before the shuttle and I'd thought that I would be able to find a wifi spot and get hold of Debbie by Skype but there was no wifi, or none I could get onto and nowhere obvious to go. Nor was there any shops and I was gasping for water by this time, not just thirsty but in need of something to take medication with. I asked at an information stand and was told that no, there really was nowhere to get a drink. Amazingly though, a driver who was standing by with a pick-up sign said he had bottles of water in the car and he'd go and get me some if I held his sign. He came back with a bottle of lovely cold water 5 minutes later much to my gratitude. Somehow I don't expect people in cities to be so kind, so it was a nice surprise.
My next problem was getting myself out to the shuttle. Despite my careful planning about how to strap Rolley and the giant oversized suitcase onto the back of the scooter, I had tried it out using an empty suitcase. The full suitcase at a shade below 20kg was not nearly as obedient as it was when empty. I tried all sorts of strapping but it kept sliding sideways and being a right pain. Fortunately it wasn't far to the shuttle pickup.
By this time I had tried a phone box to get hold of Debbie and failed miserably. The shuttle was due any minute, so I had to do something very brave (for me) and ask someone to send a text message for me. She looked alarmed and seemed not to know how to do such a technological thing, but was happy to give me her phone to make the call. Debbie wasn't far away and pulled up only a few minutes later. I was ever so glad to see her and she was just as lovely as she had sounded the one time we had spoken by Skype. She had apples and pears for me and I filled my pockets with fruit.
The shuttle arrived after not too much longer and I got loaded on. We pulled away and set off for Buellton, with a change to make two hours down the road. I'm not a great passenger in a car, I can't sit in the back seat without getting sick and even in the front seat I get nauseated very quickly. I haven't been on a bus for years and years but I used to take the stagecoach to and fro between London and Edinburgh a lot so I thought I'd be ok. Oh dear how wrong I was and how glad I was that the bus had an on-board toilet.
Having lost my last dose of medication to the bus toilet and 46 hours after getting up on Sunday morning I was in not a great state by the time I got off the final bus. It was cold and I was feeling like crap and worried that we'd never get the scooter into the car. As I'd read Monty's book on the plane about his Join-Up in the wild with Shy Boy, and the physical endurance he went through with that, I decided that I could probably hang on in there. There was no sign of Debbie but fortunately the bus driver gallantly refused to leave me there and after waiting a few minutes he offered to call Debbie and she was just around the corner and arrived 30 seconds later. The next step was getting the scooter into the back of the car. That was quite some effort but with determination we did it. I was pretty glad as I'd thought I might even have to drive the scooter behind the car for the 2 miles we had to go.
We pulled into Flag is Up somewhere around midnight and Debbie showed me into a beautiful room covered in drawings and paintings of horses, Cowboys, Native Americans, deer and spirits and two sculptures, one of which I particularly like of a mare that has just given birth with the foal laying behind her, looking like it just dropped out that second and the mare is looking over her shoulder at the little one that she just splatted out behind her. The house is full of Pat's own sculptures and there's something about the life in them that just makes me want to touch and stroke them. I hit the bed a few minutes later and that was the end of my 46 hour day.
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