If it seems like these last day of the trip travelogue entries seem like a rush to the conclusion, I would respectfully suggest that’s very much in the nature of the beast. Given a flight that won’t be too much under the two hour mark, with transits from accommodation to the airport and from the airport to Bowen and you’ve taken a goodly chunk out of the waking hours.
And once you’re home the process of opening the place up, catching up on computer stuff that didn’t happen while the machine was turned off, unpacking and stowing away doesn’t really fit into the travelogue either.
In this case, with a one o’clock in the morning return to base and a delivery of breakfast supplies the previous afternoon there wasn’t going to be much to write about in the lead up to a ten o’clock checkout, is there?
In fact, having managed an approximation of a sleep in, followed by a leisurely Weetbix, toast and pineapple juice breakfast after the regulation cup of industrial strength coffee it was right on ten o’clock when I landed in Reception to check out.
With a one-forty flight and around half an hour’s transit time to the airport I still needed to kill around forty-five minutes in or around the hotel, and since there were no objections when I expressed an intention of sitting around in the lobby, that was what I did.
I headed across to Central around forty minutes later, and noted a couple of Bruce-themed shirts on the platform while I waited for the train. When I debouched at the Domestic Terminal the check-in process had opened, so that, effectively, was that.
There was still a good two hours before departure time, and ninety minutes before boarding was due to commence, but when you factor in lunch (a wrap from Aromas), along with a Fat Yak you can excise a fair chunk of waiting time.
Flying back into Whitsunday Coast rather than Townsville or Mackay means there’s a fair chance of running across a familiar face in the departure lounge, so with lunch out of the way that was where I headed.
As it turned out, of course, there was a complete lack of familiar faces, and the airport free WiFi coverage didn’t quite stretch that far, but George Pelecanos’ The Way It Was kept me occupied until boarding, the free Mojo I’d collected at Basement Disks did the job until the seatbelt sign went off, and attempts to identify landmarks on the descent took care of the rest of the flight once it came back on again.
Madam isn’t inclined to pay for unnecessary parking, so I didn’t expect anyone to be waiting as I made my way into the terminal, and the baggage carousel did its stop start thing, but The Black Monster came through fairly quickly and I headed out to the pick up/drop off bay scanning the horizon for familiar faces and vehicles.
We’d actually landed a little early, so the delay with the carousel had resulted in an arrival at the drop off point that was more or less on schedule. That meant it was a question of how long you were going to wait before sending the I’m here text.
There’s a tricky bit associated with that issue.
Sending it isn’t going to get anyone there any quicker if they’re out on the highway. If they’re parked somewhere around the turnoff waiting to sight vehicles heading back from the airport the text may not be necessary, and you can almost bet your bottom dollar that as soon as you press Send you’ll sight the car.
Which is why you stand around watching departing vehicles, give it around five minutes and send the text.
And the car arrives within the minute, doesn’t it?
Discussions about feline welfare and weather conditions over the past five days don’t really fit into a travelogue either, and someone had already emptied the Post Office box, so it was just after four-thirty when the car pulled into the driveway, and the rest of the doesn’t quite fit into the travelogue activity commenced.
Which, in turn, means we need to turn our attention to the concert reviews…