Heading home

We had to fly from Rarotonga to LAX and then have a 5-hour layover in LAX and then go to Portland. A long night right? Glad we had all those drinks. Ugh.

Waiting at the airport, spending time in the duty-free. We didn't buy anything, but are always intrigued by smoking warnings in different countries. The ones in the Cooks are kind of grim:

On a happier note: We were serenaded again--this time with a goodbye song--by the ukulele dude as they made the announcement that our plane was boarding (I mean, come on, it's the only big flight all week, of course it's a big deal).

The good news was that our flight was pretty empty on the way home. I got to stretch out over an entire three-seat row. (Somehow this was more comfortable when I was 26.) The bad news: It was one of the most turbulent flights I'd ever been on. Having Justin across the aisle shout "Jesus Christ!" in exasperation and stress as we bobbed and rolled only made me more stressful. Boy needs a Xanax to fly next time. Not to mention there was a creepy as hell guy in front of us who was taking self-portrait photos of himself and filming every time the plane got turbulent! Uh...dude. You kind of don't want to do that in this day & age.

Back in LA, we had said layover. Luckily I had a Groupon for two passes to the Delta club. We were flying United (or, as I like to call it "Untied"), but we had plenty of time. And the Delta club had showers.

Though the food wasn't great or plentiful...it was still a good thing.

Upon arriving back to Portland, we discovered that only two out of three of our bags arrive. The third was enroute from Seattle, and would be arriving in half an hour. This was the coolest thing: They gave us food vouchers for $15 each, so we went over to Stanford's which was having happy hour and got a ton of food (Justin got a Manhattan, which the voucher did not cover but which he deemed medically necessary).

The happy hour food was plentiful, unbelievably cheap for all we got, and delicious. Stanford's at the airport: Who knew? Anyone want to go to Happy Hour there sometime?!

For some reason, chillin' out at Stanford's, drink and food in hand...well, it wrapped up the trip so nicely. This trip was one big bowl of silver lining. And that's something we needed.

Until next time...