Friday, June 16th 2006
Arrived & Rested06/16/2006 05:38 PM Location : Norwood (Adelaide)
It's just after 6:00 am Saturday here in Adelaide which is 14.5 hours ahead of Chicago time. I've been able to get a good nine hours of sleep and I'm feeling pretty good for it. So, I thought I would take advantage of the quiet part of this day to catch up on our travel.
For those following the blog that may be concerned the story about the oxygen masks falling was really no big deal. Mike reported that they were just sitting there and they fell out. Even though they tried the flight attendants couldn't get them to stay back up so the moved the three people in that row out. Mike ended up getting to sit next to Bill for the rest of the flight.
Apparently, just about 20 minutes before landing in Sydney a young lady sharing the row with Erin and Bob decided to "share her breakfast" with those around her. But, other than those two incidents I think our flight to Sydney was very uneventful.
Upon arrival in Sydney we gathered our luggage and prepared to move on to our next leg after meeting up with Alan Collett. Alan is a retired Melbourne Staff Band member who will be our host throughout the tour and a few of us have met him previously when we were here (1991?) or when the MSB was in Chicago.
Doug's trombone case was damaged a bit so when the rest of us went to check in with Quantas for the flight to Adelaide he went to make his claim. Unfortunately, the desk he needed to make his claim at didn't even open until 8:00 am so we lost track of him. Mike was with him though because his ticket was a little different from the rest due to his trip following the tour and he needed to check in somewhere else. We had four hours to make the connection so they had plenty of time to take care of things and join up with us at the gate and made it easily. The Executive Officer was on a different flight to Adelaide so he moved on to his flight as well.
At about 10:00 am we boarded a Quantas 737 for our flight to Adelaide which was very uneventful. We did get to see an episode of The Office on that flight. Felt just like home!
Upon arriving in Adelaide at about 12:30 pm local time we had safely logged in excess of 27 hours in transit. We were met by a number of Salvationists including the divisional secretary, Harry Matear and the Norwood officers, Major Glenda Daddow and Major Cindy Shellenberger. (Major Shellenberger is a Central Territory officer and the two of them were stationed in Racine, WI just prior to their appointment to Norwood about one year ago.) Again we collected our luggage with the exception of Doug's trombone (again!) For some reason his horn didn't make the flight. So, after making a claim we loaded our equipment on a truck, put our luggage under a bus and proceeded to the Norwood Corps.
Once there we unloaded and set up for a rehearsal that lasted about an hour and a half. Given the fatigue from our travel the rehearsal went pretty well. We then packed up our gear to store it, had a cup of coffee and prepared to meet our billet hosts where we will actually get to spend three nights in a row.
I can't speak for the rest of the band but following tea (dinner) I did my best to stay awake before giving up at about 9:00 pm when I went to bed. I slept very well and feel pretty good at this point. But, since I have Internet access here with my hosts I wanted to be sure to write to keep people up to date.
Today we do have a tour of Adelaide scheduled and then our first concert tonight.
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