the photo one: August 6

So we left for France on this day, but we were to arrive the next day. It was only about noon when the plane took off, and the flight was about 12 hours, but seeing as how the earth turns, it was the following day when we arrived.

The terminal. It was in this ridiculous, remote part of LAX with boarded-up walls and things like that. I felt like I was in Calcutta or something. Not like I'd know.

I wanted to make a phone call, but I had to go about 6 gates down from ours because there was this religious group, maybe Mormons, who had clearly been somewhere else (I think it was Japan) for about eight months so they were ALL making hour-long phone calls on almost all of the payphones in the terminal. I was lucky to find one.

We flew Air Tahiti Nui, which I highly recommend.

On every seat back was our own TV monitor, where we could watch movies, play games, watch Tahitian television, watch our flight trajectory and equivalent location on a map, or watch a live feed of one of two cameras, one pointed at the ground and the other straight ahead. That is what is currently depicted on the monitor, but this is a terrible photo.

Every seat also had a game console, which I thought we'd have to pay extra to use, but was just standard. I played some Solitaire, some Tetris, and monkeyed around with some games that I had never heard of that ended up being strange and made no sense.

It was also a very aesthetically pleasing airplane, with this lovely marine-like color scheme. It also had a lot more leg room than any Air France jet I've ever been on. (Not that it's a real problem for me, Ms. Stumpylegs.)

My mother with her airline pillow, which I don't believe she ever inflated.

My brother reading maybe?

Goodbye Los Angeles. (PS: I really hate sitting over the wing. I know most seats are over the wing, but one time, I picked a seat near the front, and it was like a universe of difference to not have that giant obstruction in my line of sight.)

Hours later....