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September 26, 2006

Trip Report Part 1: Getting There is None of the Fun

I should have known it would be a bad trip when, even as we sat in the cavernous emptiness of Perth Airport's International Terminal at 4am, waiting for the Singapore Airlines staff to open the check-in counter, the headache was already grinding away in the front of my head.

By the time we reached the stifling humidity of Singapore, riding countless travelators to get around, and with four hours to kill, the headache was one bad mofo. I suggested to Michelle that we get some painkillers. Finding a shop in Changi Airport's extensive mall area proved more of a challenge than we expected, but find one we did, and got a packet of Panadol paracetamol. Panadol is a common brand of painkillers in Australia, and, in a place where all major signs are in three languages (English, Chinese and Singaporean), familiarity is a comforting thing. I popped two Panadols and waited for the pain to settle down to a dull roar.

At length we piled onto the flight that would take us from Singapore to Los Angeles, on which we had seats in the "Executive Economy" section up the back of the plane. Executive Economy is like a kind of upgraded economy class, where you get more leg-room, the seats are wider, and there are only two seats abreast--which means no third person sitting next to you who wants to get up and go to the loo in the middle of the night, or who insists on reading a broadsheet newspaper in the fully unfolded mode. I have to say that if you're like me, ie, calamitously overweight, the Executive Economy deal is absolutely worth it. It did nothing for the headache, but it prevented 80% of all the other aches that go with being stuck in regular economy class for more than 12 hours.

I did wonder, during the 16-hour flight, why I couldn't get any damn sleep. God knows I was tired enough. Oh well, I thought, I'll check out the inflight entertainment options, of which the most novel was the "Learn a Language" tutorial, where you get a choice of a lot of different (mostly Asian) languages. I picked Mandarin Chinese, which I'd always thought looked very interesting. Once you pick the language, you get a choice of four options, where you can choose from lessons in numbers, calendar stuff, simple words, and basic phrases and dialogues.

This was all fascinating. The numbers 1-10 were straightforward enough, and then it turned out that numbers higher than 10 were straightforward combinations of the basic ten numbers, pausing only to provide different prefixes once you hit 100, 1000, and upwards. Once you pass all the lessons and activities for this category, you then get to play a species of Space Invaders in which you get prompted with a given number in words, and have to shoot down an invading flying saucer with the matching number in digits written on the side (there are several such saucers going at once, so aim is important). I did awesomely well at this, and went on to do just as well with basic words, days and months--and only came a cropper when I tried to tackle the simple dialogues, which were way more complex than my achy head could manage.

By the time we reached LA the headache was, if anything, worse than ever, and now I was also a bit dizzy and woozy, feeling very out of sorts. Once we cleared Customs and Immigration and emerged into the main lobby area, Michelle fetched me some water and I took two more of those Panadol tablets from Singapore.

We had to get to Anaheim. It turns out that Anaheim is almost an hour away from LA. We found a shuttle bus service, bundled aboard, and, even though I wasn't feeling at all well, set off--only to stop twice more to pick up two other passengers--boon companions Kenny and Alan, who also happened to be going to LA Con IV.

At length, we left LAX and entered traffic, tooling along the bumpy roads. While we all chatted happily, I started to get a bit concerned. That dizzy, woozy feeling I already had was worsening, and starting to turn into motion sickness. This was a disaster. Once you're on the freeway in LA, it's very hard to get off again; exit points are few and far between. You can't just pull over onto the side of the road if you need to. Worse, I knew I didn't have anything on me, or in either of our carry-on bags, that I could use as a barf-bag if I needed to. Hmm. Nothing like the kind of escalating panic you feel as you start to contemplate these issues to make your existing feelings of swirling illness even worse. And at this point, we were barely even halfway there. Could I hold out? I've been plagued with motion-sickness my whole life, and one of the worst things about it is that it doesn't always happen: most times I travel just fine. But sometimes, particularly on bumpy roads, things can go pear-shaped.

Finally I had no choice but to ask the driver to find some way off the freeway, and he got to work navigating across several lanes of traffic into an exit lane. Meanwhile I was quietly freaking out. The dry heaves kicked in, and I knew I was pretty much done for: it would not be long before the dry heaves turned into the main event--and we were still nowhere near an exit point.

By the time the driver found an exit point, it was, as we say in Australia, "on for young and old": with both hands clamped so tight across my mouth and nose it was like they were welded in place, I'd started actually vomiting. Fortunately, because I hadn't eaten anything on the flight, there was nothing to hurl, and I could just barely contain it.

The driver found an off-ramp and we left the freeway. I heaved again and this time, despite my best efforts--well, you get the idea. Eventually we were parked in front of a liquor store, and I was doing my best to unload into a garden bed. Kenny and Alan took off into the liquor store to get some water. Michelle stayed with me. The driver, a good guy who could not have been more sympathetic, looked after me, too. I felt wretched. Wow, what an arrival!

For the rest of the trip I sat up front with the driver, this time armed with a plastic shopping bag, just in case--and I did need it. I sat slumped against the window, wanting to die, praying I could keep from heaving again. At some point I saw a sign indicating we were in the City of Anaheim, and suddenly there were other signs promoting Disneyland everywhere. Then, even though we were nearly there, I lost it again. The bag helped, but not enough. The driver that night would have some cleaning to do, and I felt thoroughly awful about that. Once he delivered us to the hotel, and I staggered out, I asked Michelle to give the driver a huge tip. Meanwhile, my shirt and pants were a mess. Before we went inside I grabbed a fresh shirt from one of the suitcases and (since it was now nearly 10pm), went somewhere dark and changed. Alan and Kenny said they'd catch up with us later, and the driver made sure I was going to be okay before leaving.

Then we went inside the hotel. The very first thing we saw, as we entered the Anaheim Hilton, was a gigantic yellow inflatable Pikachu the size of a plane hanging in the hotel lobby. It turned out the hotel was at that point hosting the World Pokemon Championship. The place was crawling with kids and their parents. That huge Pikachu, when you're feeling sick and out of sorts, and achy, and embarrassed, was really really weird and freaky.

Michelle parked me somewhere comfortable while she went to check in. That sorted out, we headed upstairs to our room. Finding our room took some doing, but we managed. I ducked into the shower. I no longer felt sick, but I did feel shaky, and still woozy/dizzy, like I might fall over at any moment. The shower was terrifying, not because of the heat or the water pressure, but just because I thought I was going to topple over and break my stupid neck at any moment.

That all taken care of without having come a cropper, I joined Michelle back in the room, where she had made a curious discovery: those Panadol painkillers we picked up in Singapore turned out to contain caffeine. In fact, each tablet contained as much caffeine as a regular cup of espresso-type coffee. I've been off caffeine now for over a year; it was one of the things I gave up in the course of trying to figure out why I kept getting headaches. Even though it definitely looked like caffeine wasn't the problem, my blood pressure improved, so I've stayed on the decaf ever since.

I'd had a total of *four* of those tablets within the previous 16 hours. Michelle and I were shocked out of our minds. Once, some months back, I accidentally had a fully caffeinated "long macchiato", a coffee featuring two shots of espresso and a dash of steamed milk. I was sick as a dog for two days, feeling shaky, dizzy, and very very hyper. "What the hell is caffeine doing in painkillers?" we said, staring at the treacherous box. We since found out that caffeine in painkillers is actually quite common in North America; it's just not common in Australia.

In any case, we had arrived. We could catch our breath, relax, and watch local TV--the guy who falsely confessed to killing Jon-Benet Ramsay had just arrived at LAX from Thailand--and that was as bizarre in its way as the humongous Pikachu downstairs had been.

That was Sunday night. The convention was due to start on Wednesday. And, despite everything, we couldn't wait.

Posted by adrian at September 26, 2006 08:20 PM

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