On days like today I look out of my office window and watch the big jets turn across the sky and head away east towards the USA. I especially like to see the biggest of them, the Qantas A380s and 747s as the roar overhead.
I could have been on one of those flights in a week and a half's time.
Late last year I took advantage of a half points deal and booked us flights on Qantas to New York via Los Angeles and returning from San Francisco. It was done in a rush and without as much forethought as was sensible.
Despite the ubiquity of the United States on our screens, in our culture as a whole, and even having read books on its history I realised how little I actually knew of the country.
That's understandable. It's bigger than Australia with many more people scattered across its reaches. It is a country that both celebrates and fights it's diversity, takes pride in its role in world affairs but apparently suffers ignorance of them.
The flights had us flying into and out of America's most expensive cities a continent apart with only two weeks between. We weighed options, minimising time in those cities, going through Canada, catching trains (oh how I'd love to explore the railroads). But it still ended up expensive and stressful just when the last, busiest term approaches.
Fortunately it is easy to cancel points bookings. We still want to go, but with less ambition and armed with more knowledge. Off on a road trip to Victoria instead.
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