The longest journey VF

On February 22nd I left Detroit for an early surprise visit to Auckland (I wasn't expected until March 1st by anyone, but it was to be Mother's birthday on 24th) I had calulated that I would be there by 6am on 24th Feb and then turn up to the parent's new house as a surprise for breakfast. Jamie dropped me at DTW airport a couple of hours before my flight as I wanted to see if the people at the international part would check my suitcase all the way to Auckland. And a good thing I did as they told me that they could and that I did not have to re-check them in Los Angeles (which is always such a pain). So off I went to the gate but alas the aeroplane had a mechanical problem and was delayed two hours. Not too much of a problem as it is not a good idea to fly on an aeroplane with issues and I had allowed for almost 4 hours extra time built in in LA. So eventually they got us a new plane and on we all got and we started taxing towards the de-icing area when the pilot came on and said "sorry folks, we have been informed that we are overweight and we will need to unload bags and probably some passengers". I wondered how they were going to manage to choose who was too fat to stay. It took us 30 minutes to find a new gate and then huge conveyor belts drove up and lots of random bags started being off-loaded. How we were to know whose was on and whose was off I wasn't too sure... Next our pilot's voice came on again to say that because of the delay they now had to have a crew change because by the time they would have been part-way into our 5-hour flight to Los Angeles, they would be in overtime. So instead they were all being sent to Boston and we would get a new crew soon. With that, he was off and out the door, followed by the co-pilot. By this time several people were so fed up with things they grabbed their cabin bags and left as well. The head steward got on the PA system next and announced that they would be leaving one by one once new crew arrived for their shift. And so over the next hour or so, as new people came to work one by one they would leave. In the meantime a rather large proportion of the other passengers had left because it was now getting on for 8pm, almost 5 hours later than our initial scheduled departure time. The girl behind me phoned her travel agent in Brisbane and I heard that she had been supposed to be on the same flight as me to Auckland and on to Brisbane from LA (which my now it was obvious that we were going to miss by several hours) and was told that there were later flights to Australia but she would have to pay about A$1600, so she booked for the same as our originally planned one but the next day as that would not incur a cost. Finally, just over 5 hours late, we left the gate and headed for the de-icing area where huge machines spray the plane with fluid to melt and ice and prevent build-up on take off (it was snowing lightly). And so it was a rather long journey to LAX. On arrival I leaned over the seat to the girl behind and said that I though we should run to Qantas and see what they could do for us. So off across the carpark we raced at 11pm at night. I knew that there was an 11.45pm flight to Sydney and I hoped that I could get to Auckland from there within a few hours. There was no point waiting for our bags as they had been tagged to Auckland and would be impossible to find (and for all I knew could have been off-loaded in Detroit and caught an earlier LAX flight than me and even may have made to to the original LAX-AKL flight!). I think that the combination of lots of prayer and my silver/ruby frequent flyer card, my new companion's Qantas Club card and the fact that we now only had cabin baggage meant that we were ahead of what seemed to be about 30 stand-by passengers. We ran up the stairs and made it through security relatively quickly and soon were on-board. I managed a quick phone call and text messages to Dad and to Bec & Jeremy (who were also secretly en route from Sydney to Auckland) to let them know the update and said that I was really hoping to be in Auckland before Mother's birthday was over. I was not impressed about the 14+ hour flight to Sydney rather than the planned 12 hours to NZ but there was not too much I could do unless I had wanted a night in LA. Finally we arrived and it was nice that my new friend got me into the Qantas Club so that I could have a shower before she left for Brisbane. Thankfully I only had a couple of hours before the flight to Auckland which seemed almost as long as the one from Detroit. And what a nice surprise that the father was waiting to zoom me off to see the birthday one. We arrived 'home' to the new house and had a plan that Dad would go in as per his normal after work routine and then 3-4 minutes later I would appear. But soon he reappeared in the garage laughing that the joke was on us because Mother had gone for a walk with Bec & Jeremy!! So I had a tour of the new house and then assembled myself on the new sofa for when they all arrived back home. Mother was completely surprised and so despite being 11 hours late, it was all worthwhile! We had a lovely dinner at Mikano overlooking the harbour and the rescue/police helicopter heli-pad and soon it was finally time to bed.