Traveling with Ray Owens

The dastardly deed was indeed accomplished while I was deep inside dreamland.

We boarded our fight to Australia via Qantas airlines, and settled into our business class seats. We obtained these seats during the deeply discounted prices that Qantas offered during the big anniversary sale we grabbed back in May of 2024.

I very quickly after takeoff I settled in to my comfy bed and with the help of a perhaps unnecessary Ambient sleeping pill I went to sleep on the evening of Thursday January 16. I slept about 8 hours and woke up on Saturday January 18.

I had another 5 hours before we were to land in Melbourne, Australia.

I decided to watch the movie “Back to the Future “. I have seen it numerous times. But this time I focused on watching the filming locations having just seen the Universal Studios back lot. It was fun to realize I had just stood on the courtyard square where the clock tower that lightening struck. And saw the gas station where the attendants rushed out to service the car. Also the store front that for this film was the soda fountain. I was quite enjoyable.

Virtually the entire route of our flight was over the Pacific Ocean. That fact and my unconscious state leaves me unable to describe the views out the windows. We did transverse part of the Australia countryside as we approached Melbourne. My best comparison is that it looks a lot like flying over Kansas. The farm land was very similar.

Our experience in the Melbourne airport was a mixed bag. On the not so positive end of the story. It took us about an hour (felt like more) to retrieve our checked bags. It was then a 20 minute walk to terminal 4 where we were to recheck our baggage for our trip via Jetstar to Cairns on the north east coast of Australia.

Our next not so positive experience was mostly of our own doing as we packed and repacked items from suitcase to suitcase trying to get them in the weight limits for Jetstar.

We finally got it right and checked our bags. They are serious about baggage weight. They have self weighing stations where you put your bag on a conveyer belt. If it is over weight you have to pay more or remove weight.

A positive aspect of the day then took place. After going through security we got to the gate area and met two couples who are on our flight to take the precruise extensions before our actual Viking cruise.

Sisters Marsha and Linda from Minnesota were also delightful. They have husbands who are hunters and fishers and refuse to get passports and so the sisters take a big trip just about every year.

Tom and Judy wound up also on our flight. In fact they are sitting next to Penny on our flight. We chose seats on the aisle across from each other

The perhaps horrible experience that happened or maybe just a scare. As we stood in line waiting to go on the tarmac and climb the 1950 stairs to the aircraft. Penny asked where the red folder was with all our paperwork. We search the carry on bag we had and the red folder was not to be found. This is where the old brain rears its head or perhaps more aptly the old brain takes a doze.

We both recall taking the red folder out when we were rearranging weight. We also remember Penny putting our luggage tag receipts in to the red folder at that point.

That is our last memory of the red folder. Did we leave it in a security bin? Did we drop it?

I think what I did was place it inside my to be checked bag before we submitted it to the weight police machine.

We are landing in a few minutes and will checkout our checked bags and that will either cause us to feel relief or continue the saga of trying to retrieve the red folder.