Flying into the Land Down Under

I finally got my chair stowed on-board! And other jet-lagged thoughts

I have been on the ground in Melbourne for twelve hours and have managed to take a picture of my sister’s dog, Rex, while confronting the joys of bonkers jet lag/travel in a disabled body. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. I think even the most able-bodied would feel a bit out of sorts after a four-day respite from Europe, followed by a couple nights in Texas, followed by 16.5 hours in the air. That said, it’s all the more entertaining when your brain won’t stop wondering if using a wheelchair makes you more susceptible to Deep Vein Thrombosis (does it? I don’t know—I could Google it, but that might freak me out more). And then wondering if the fact that one leg won’t stop spasmodically jumping around might prevent DVT, since doesn’t movement help? I think the in-flight magazine said it does. But maybe just yoga?

But a couple of things for a short post. First, I got my chair put on-board in the cabin wheelchair slot! I know this doesn’t register for folks who don’t use a wheelchair, but this felt sort of like being told your puppy could ride on the plane seat next to you instead of in the luggage hold. Every time the chair disappears into luggage, the question of what shape it will emerge in, or whether it will emerge at all, is front and center. But I tentatively asked this time and after an initial “no,” the attendant said that she would actually check, and as I was the only one with a chair, and the plane was ginormous, they managed it. Super Spouse had to do a bit of fancy Tetris to make it fit, but it did. (A note: They can only take manual chairs, not power—those still need to be checked into luggage.) Apparently if you call them a few days ahead, your odds of success increase dramatically.

We boarded around 9 pm and followed my Aussie-dwelling sister’s detailed instructions on how to survive the flight, which included wearing compression socks (though my feet still swelled) and yoga pants, washing my face and taking out my contacts before boarding, and immediately trying to sleep once dinner was served. Sleep was hard and fitful but helped immensely by us having saved for two years and waited for Qantas sales so that we could fly premium economy. You get much more room. And champagne!

Flying to Australia is a crash course in the weird arbitrariness of time (I am quite sure my physics PhD brother is shaking his head at this). We left from Dallas and headed west, meaning that we were going back in time (Pacific time is 2 hours behind Central, Hawaii time is a few hours behind that, etc etc). And so you go, back and back, until you cross the International Date Line somewhere in the Pacific, at which point you leap ahead by a day. So we left DFW at 9 pm on July 30, and we landed in Oz at 5 am August 1. July 31 has disappeared entirely, never to be seen again, even though we were only in the air for 17 hours. Don’t worry though: We will get August 16 twice, when we depart Melbourne that day at 1:30 pm and land in Dallas that same day at . . . 1:30 pm.

The moral of the story is that time is weird.

We have spent much of today cracked out on too little sleep and trying to acclimate to winter. (I have discovered that my initial Google-informed formula is actually wrong, and you should add 32, not 22. SO, it was 95/31 degrees F/C when we left and 34/2 degrees F/C when we landed). So I will leave you with a video that I actually took two years ago but is still relevant because the birds here still sound like R2-D2. Be sure to turn the sound up.