Back to square one

Well, it’s not really square one, since we are not flying to New York but to Seattle, but it is the US of A.

Date: 10/06
City: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 46603
Street: City roads
Weather: Cloudy, foggy / fresh

Today is the day, we are leaving. We packed the rest of our luggage in the morning and send some parcels away, with things that we didn’t need any more. During the afternoon we had some time to spare, so we talked about our trip and we thought it would be fun to figure out some sorts statistics. Here they are:

Distance on bike:     48851 Km/bike
Petrol used:         2540 litre/bike
Speeding fines:        0
Bribes paid:         0
New front tyres:     2/bike
New back tyres:     4 (5)/bike
Bike failures:         0
Broken limbs:         2 (one per Continent, chance? 🙂 )
Continents visited:     2
Countries visited:     Sigrid 17, Bjoern 16
Border crossings:     Sigrid 33, Bjoern 33

Highest Temperature while riding:      +38C (Mojave Desert, leaving Las Vegas)
Lowest Temperature while riding:     +2C (leaving Terra del Fuego)
Highest Winds on bike:             Peaks up to 90km/h (Rio Grande, Terra del Fuego)

Three hours before departure we got in a taxi. Close to the airport we saw some fog on the side of the road… Ah well; it was only on the side of the road, the airfield looked clear. When we arrived at the airport, guess what, there was a huge long queue, the longest that I have ever seen at check-in for a flight. During the check-in we were told that we have to get our luggage in Mexico City and check it in again. No problem, we have more than 4 hours to do that. We spent our last Argentinian Pesos at McDonalds, it was just enough for a kids meal 😀

Not long after that we boarded the plane. We were sitting there for a while, then the announcement came… There is fog and it could take another 15 to 20 minutes before we would take off.

Well after an hour we got the next announcement. The airport is closed for ,at least, the next two hours. Now it started to get a bit tight for my taste ~ we might miss the connection flight in Mexico City and had to arrange something else to get to Seattle. The good news was that the entertainment system was switched on, so I could start the watching movies. I might have the chance to see them all this time 😛. After two hours the fog was as dense as before, but we took off anyway…. That’s Argentina for you. I was happy that we were in air.

Date: 11/06
City: Seattle, USA
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 46603
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny/ warm

We landed in Mexico City at 10:30 and left the plane around 10:50, our connection flight would leave at 11:40. At the gate a woman was waiting and calling our names. She rushed us to the customs area and to the luggage area, where we finally got our luggage, went through customs and put the bag on another conveyor. Then we ran to the terminal which our flight was leaving from. Lucky we got our boarding passes in Buenos Aires for all our flights, so we made it just in time.

Next stop Las Vegas!  We arrived in Las Vegas, on time and without any problems and getting through the US border protection and migration went without a hitch. From the plane we saw the hotel Luxor – where we stayed last year.

We had to pick up our luggage and check it in again, since the next flight was a domestic flight. Well, we waited until all the luggage of the luggage carousel was gone and we were the last people standing there. Hmmm, maybe our luggage didn’t make it. So we looked for somebody to talk to, and finally we found a lady looking after the luggage on the carousel. She told us that it would not be unusual that luggage didn’t make it, normally it would arrive the next day. We should put a luggage tracking request in once we get to Seattle and they would deliver the luggage to our hotel. Hrm… We will see I guess.
Walking to our gate, we saw some slot machines, well it wouldn’t be Las Vegas if you couldn’t play the slot machines at the airport 😉

The flight to Seattle was uneventful. In Seattle we went to the Baggage claim area and filled out a tracking request. It turned out, that our luggage got flown to Dallas with Delta, nobody knows why. It should arrive tomorrow evening and if we let them know where we are staying they would deliver it to our hotel. So we looked around for a hotel close by and, after making a couple of phone calls, picked one for a good price and free airport pickup.

First thing at the hotel was to have a look online where our bikes were. I found out that they have been shipped from Los Angeles two days ago, but they didn’t arrive anywhere so far. That is odd, a flight can’t take that long, except if the air plane got lost. It was too late to do anything tonight, so tomorrow morning has to be good enough.

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