2022 Winter USA Tour | Back with a large vengeance
Welcome back to the blog!
It’s great to be behind the clackers again after an uncomfortably long break and I’m thrilled to take you along as we embark on a tour different from anything we’ve experienced before. It’s pretty crazy to be traveling again for us New Zealanders but we are extremely excited as well as a bit nervous. We are going to do our absolute best to make these next few weeks safe and fun so stay tuned for all the breakfast and travel updates you’ll ever need.
We flew out of a deserted Auckland Airport late on Friday night in an Air New Zealand 787. The Pilots were chomping at the bit after being confined to ground duties for the past two years and had to be restrained by the cabin crew from doing a low fly-by of the Auckland waterfront. The journey ended up being a smooth one however and Tristan and I enjoyed watching the documentary series ‘Full Custom Garage’ which follows the process of making a beaten-up old car into a nice flash old car but with a much lower roof and less room in the wheel arches.
After a solid few hours of sleep I awoke on the other side of the Pacific and enjoyed a classic Air NZ breakfast of chicken sausages, scrambled eggs, and baked beans, with a side of chilled fruit and yoghurt.
After a beautiful approach which took us all the way over Los Angeles we landed at LAX in the early afternoon and proceed through customs with only minor hassles. We then wandered over to our domestic terminal and after a 4 hour layover boarded a United Airlines Embraer EMB175 for the short journey up to Seattle.
Our last task of the day was getting to our hotel which we accomplished with style in this giant taxi.
Tristan and I collapsed into our beds and fell asleep to the gentle sounds of famous NASCAR replays.
I’ll leave you with a gentle ‘bridge of the day’ offering for this first blog of the tour. The SeaTac Pedestrian Walkway is the world’s largest structure over an active taxi-lane, and this bridge took eight years to plan, design, and construct. This iconic aerial walkway, has a length of 238m and height of 26m, long enough for two Boeing 747’s to fit underneath, wing-tip to wing-tip. It has two V-piers each weighing 130 tons (117.9 metric tons), which is as much as two Blue Whales. The middle section of the structure is as long as a football field and weighs 1560 tons, (equivalent to 14 Blue Whales).
