Getting Into The Spirit

My journey to Canada began with the safety demonstration on board a Qantas flight to Sydney. The flying kangaroo, in all its ingenuity, has capitalized on the fact this is an Olympic year by roping in some of our favourite Aussie Olympians to be in their safety video. Perhaps the most inspirational part of the video was pole vaulting hero Steve Hooker demonstrating the use of the plane seatbelt. It went a little something like this: “In the lead up to the Olympics I always like to get excited by getting into the team spirit. You can get into the team spirit too, by always having your seatbelt fastened when you are sitting down.”

That’s all it takes to get into the team spirit? Shit, Steve, where can I sign up?! The video did get me thinking, though, about how pole vaulting is perhaps one of the sports with a higher level of risk attached to it, and although Hooker is probably classed as a national treasure, it might be better to have a lawn bowler in an air safety video. And nothing says ‘team spirit’ more than an individual sport like pole vaulting. You know what I’d like to see next Olympics? Synchronized pole vaulting. That would require not only team spirit, but it would also put a firecracker underneath those synchronized swimmers. They’ve been resting on their laurels for far too long. I mean, can’t they do it without the nose clips by now? Hasn’t technology progressed far enough that we should somehow be able to swim without shoving a piece of wire covered in rubber fair up our nostrils?

From Sydney, the delightful staff of United Airlines (no hot towels) ensured our arrival into LA was delayed by 2.5 hours, meaning I was left with one hour to get off the plane, go through immigration, customs, baggage re-check, transfer terminals and go through security again to board my connecting flight to Calgary. I had managed to make it this far into my journey without having to talk to anyone I didn’t want to, except a lovely Indian gentleman who part-way through the Sydney-LA flight decided he wanted to relieve me of the three seats I had to myself, and promptly sat down and fell asleep at the end of my row. It made what was already such a pleasant journey all the more cramped and enjoyable.

The adventure across the barren LAX landscape had set my heart racing, but I can assure you it was not in a good way. The good news is I made it to my connecting flight with minutes to spare, and happily, I was able to relive my last visit to Terminal 2 at LAX where previously I had the privilege of waiting six hours to board a delayed flight to Hawaii. These warm and fuzzy memories were short lived, however, and I was soon on my way to The Big C, also known as Calgary.