Today we got up at 6am to clean and tidy our car. It was good to be at the circus circus rv park to be able to clean our van with the a/c running.

It was another day of putting pressure on ourselves.

We also thought we’d better book our flight to LA and a rental car at Heathrow. We booked our flight for 12.30, giving us plenty of time to drop our van off.

We had arranged to drop our van at storage between 8 and 10am but when we arrived at storage at 8.30am the guy didn’t get the memo.

Thankfully we were able to get hold of him and he arrived at 9am. Mike unplugged all the electrics and we said goodbye to Rodger.

We caught an Uber to the airport and arrived early so we asked about an earlier flight. She said one was available at 11am, so we changed to that flight. It was currently 10am.

Then we saw the queue in security. It was moving very slowly. With only 30 minutes to boarding, we were dreading changing our flights. What if we missed this one, and our original was booked out?

Finally we got our turn to show our IDs. But they didn’t accept our nz drivers licence, so I rummaged around looking for our passports.

He then sent us to a larger screening queue with extra security. Sheesh. We put our bags on the conveyer, then had to step through the 3d scanner. Something metallic showed up in my groin area. WTF????

The lady spent ages telling me exactly what she was going to do, where she was going to touch me etc. she even asked if I wanted to go to a private room!

I think it must have been a zip on my shorts that triggered it. But I got through eventually.

As it turned out, we didn’t need to run for our flight, arriving just as they were boarding.

They don’t have allocated seating on southwest, but they give you a boarding priority of a, b and c. We we’re in C, the last to board. T

here is a thing on US airlines where people take on huge carry on luggage, and if you miss out on an overhead locker, then you have to check your bag. Ours had all our camera gear and laptops so this wasn’t an option. So that added to the stress as the plane was chockers!

As we were boarding, I asked the flight attendant if there were any seats together. She said no. So I grabbed the first aisle seat I saw near the front of the plane. In front was a middle seat so I told Mike to grab that. Then a nice lady in the aisle next to Mike offered to swap with me so we could sit together. In hindsight, it might have been because Mike hadn’t showered for a week ( fyi: I had a shower that morning.)

The only problem was, we had to take our bags all the way to the back to find room.

It was an easy 1 hour flight to LA on our 737-700. They gave us pretzels and a glass of coke. We landed and had to wait for everyone to get off so we could retrieve our bags. There was a slight panic when Mike couldn’t find his. It had been moved and someone had put there bag in front of it.

We went straight to our hotel. I had a splitting headache so took a couple of painkillers and went to sleep.