The Jesky has landed!
From AJ:
Where did our Thursday go?!…
It’s 7am Saturday morning as I type this at Aaron shop. We have successful made it to Australia and the only thing that got lost was Thursday.
Mark Atwood’s day started Wednesday morning at 4am out to Cleveland where he was scheduled to meet us in Nashville before our trip started
Ac Glenn and myself worked a half day Wednesday then departed my house in Harvest, Alabama for thr 90 minute drive up to Nashville. Once we got to Nashville AC and Mark stood guard over the models while I went and parked the vehicle at the airport. Once inside together we checked the models in, they both were right at the limit dimension wise but we’re about 10 pounds over so each box was 100 dollars to check in. Drop our luggage off and head to the gate, once wt the gate we got notified our flight was delayed. No worries though, we had a 5 hour layover in lax. So Chic-Fil-a was on the menu to kill some time. We boarded that flight and made it to lax with no issues, still 3 hours to spare.
Once at Lax it was mainly focusing on how much that 15 hour flight is going to suck lol, we were delayed a slight bit as Sydney has a curfew for noise and we would be early getting there. So we pushed back at 11:15 Wednesday night and was scheduled to arrive Friday morning at 6:15am?! Our Thursday would be spend over the Pacific Ocean. I think I managed about 6-7 hours on the flight, ac and mark i think we’re also in that’s ballpark for sleep.
The flight was uneventful other than just being long I think the 3 of us got a decent amount of sleep and were excited to get off the airbus A350. Once off the plane we gather our luggage and made our way through customs and security. I must say everyone in Australia was 100% helpful and nice even if we were a group of Americans with large models boxes blocking up the walk ways…. Interesting to note, yes you drive on the left side of the road here which also leads to walking on the left side of the sidewalks. Plenty of sorry’s to folks as we were head on walking the wrong direction.
We checked the models domestically on our flight to Brisbane via Qantas and again the agents were nothing but helpful with great attitudes and willing to help. Once sorted we headed back to the international terminal for some McDonald’s breakfast and sat and talked about how cool and lucky we have been to be traveling for the United States and gone to so many amazing places.
We had roughly a 4 hour layover in Sydney to Brisbane which was nice to just decompress and relax at the gate. The flight to Brisbane was about an hour and we flew up the coast with stunning sights the entire way.
Once in Brisbane it was a quick call to bones who had UncleJas in the car with him to come and pick us up and show us the way to the rental car facilities. It is always great landing in a foreign country and seeing someone’s face you recognize, it’s just a nice calming feeling knowing your not tackling a lot of the unknowns that’s come with foreign travel. The model boxes went into bones trailer, we went over to the car rental place and got our van sorted out and off to bones house we went.
After about an hour trip we had arrived, again the sense of relief once you’ve reached your destination is something I cannot describe. We had a quick talk with Aaron, his mom and dad and I went and took a quick shower before heading to dinner a local pub.
The pub was nice, to sit down have a good catch-up and just relax more the anything. I think everyone’s meal was excellent and we decided to head back to the shop, once at the shop I decided to pull the models out and get them assembled. This was the last step for me to breathe a sigh of relief. The boxes were opened models pulled out and went together just like back at home. I was relieved about all of this and decided to call it a night around 9pm.
We just got going this morning as we will head out for a quick shake down flight near Aaron’s then head to Larks where we will meet up with some of the local F3A folks and have a great day of flying. We will meet up with Joseph Bradley Walker and start the flying portion of this journey.
I cannot thank everyone who donated and showed us support getting ready for this contest. We will do our best to represent the USA in the best way possible as we are all incredibly proud to get the chance to compete for the United States of America!
More to come with more pictures I promise.
