Here down under

I type these lines while comfortably settled in our Manly Beach apartment. We arrived in Sydney after a pretty arduous journey because of United Airlines and their inablity to get a connection from Denver to Los Angeles in a timely fashion. Our flight out of Denver was delayed for several hours, and when I requested an earlier flight so we could meet our overseas connection I foolishly thought I had the problem solved. Not so. The "earlier" flight did not leave until five minutes AFTER the delayed time of our original flight, which put us into the Los Angeles airport with less than thirty minutes to make our connection. If you have never been to LAX, I can assure you that it is a confusing urban complex with several different terminals, and we had no idea how to make it to the one where our New Zealand Airline flight was due to leave. Instead of trying to figure out the public transport to the correct terminal, we set offf on foot in a frenzied run of about a quarter mile, where we AGAIN had to pass through security before we could get to the proper gate. We made the flight with about two minutes to spare, and we were the last passengers allowed on board.

The flight itself was rather pleasant, and we managed to get a bit of sleep before we arrived in Sydney 16 hours later. Our friend Ronald met us at the gate, and Jayne took the attached snapshot of our meeting. Hw took us to our apartment first, and then to his home in Narrabeen where we visited the beach. Jacob soaked up a few rays with Ronald, as you can see, and Benjamin created a sandface sculpture that remained to mystified the natives.