166. Back to Los Angeles to wait for the Earthroamer

Tuesday 7 October 2008

We woke to find another sunny 70°F day.  We drove to the airport and flew back to Los Angeles.  Being foreigners they pulled us aside at the security checks, they made us take off our shoes, belts and jackets and went through all of our hand luggage…. As Dick says, “the terrorists have won!!”  One of our bags didn’t arrive, fortunately staff were able to find on the computer that it had been missed in the plane loading.  It eventually arrived at 6.00 pm and the airline sent it to us out our hotel in Long Beach.

We hired another car and drove to Long Beach, where we would be near to the Earthroamer sitting on the docks.  Dick had more frustrating phone calls with the Customs Agent, still no vehicle, so we visited the Queen Mary.  We had lunch in one of its old restaurants on the promenade deck and toured the ship.

At 4.00pm we rang John Clarke again and he told us that the vehicle had finally been cleared through Customs.  We now had to wait for it to be transported to the trucking company and taken off the pallet, however this wouldn’t happen until tomorrow!!

We drove to the Californian Aquarium and had a good look around at all their tanks of fish – very well done.  We then drove to a nearby Circuit City store and bought ourselves a new GPS, as our old one had developed a fault of constantly turning itself off.  Using our new $129 USD GPS, we drove ourselves to the Long Beach Marriott Hotel and stayed the night.

Click here for the next entry – On our way again at last in our Earthroamer

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