LA Confidential
Yesterday marked the first leg of our year-long adventure — what we idealistically hope will be a year of relative freedom, a year where we get to spend some much needed quality time with our kids (currently 4 and 6), and a year for self-improvement, reflection, and self-discovery.
But to be perfectly frank with you, we didn’t get the start that we were hoping for.
One of the ways that we have historically managed to get the best possible flight prices has been to fly out of a major hub. While our hometown of Toronto is a major hub for Canada, with the first major stop on our planned itinerary being Bali and Toronto having limited flights to this destination, we found much better flight prices to Bali by flying out of Los Angeles.
Flying out of LA would also shorten the length of our longest flight and subsidize a stopover in the city. And because we had never actually been to LA, we decided to take advantage and spend a day exploring the city.
We booked our flight from Toronto to LA on WestJet, a Canadian regional carrier. The flight was initially uneventful. That is, until our son got airsick and vomited all over himself. Not great.
The flight attendants weren’t particularly helpful with the situation — they basically just handed us some wipes and told us to clean things up, then disappeared from sight. They definitely seemed more concerned about whether the plane’s floor had been soiled than the well-being of a 6-year-old child. We definitely understood their frustration, but just a tiny bit of compassion would have gone a long way in this situation.
We managed to get Young Mister WorldSmith cleaned up before landing, and thankfully we’d had the foresight to pack an extra change of clothes in his carry on. So when we got off the plane at LAX, we were ready to start our adventure fresh. Or so we thought…
Unfortunately, our son got sick again about 30 seconds after he boarded our airport shuttle bus. All over the floor of the bus. And more voluminous this time. And while apologized profusely and cleaned the entire mess up ourselves with Clorox wipes, our bus driver was definitely not a fan of ours, and made this very clear.
Honestly, what else can you do or say in that situation? Turns out our son is prone to motion sickness, which was news to us. He rode the bus every day to school all year and never had any issues, so it wasn’t something we were expecting.
Either way, not the best start to our adventure.
Luckily, Young Mister WorldSmith was feeling back to his normal self this morning, and we spent our day checking out Venice Beach and Santa Monica. It was kind of cool to dip our feet in the ocean, enjoy the warm LA weather, and to see a bunch of the sites that you see on TV and in movies. Venice Beach was a bit seedy and overly commercialized, but that’s kind of the point, and Santa Monica was a bit nicer but still pretty touristy.
Knowing that we have a full 24 hours of flights tomorrow, we took things pretty easy in LA and spent a good chunk of the afternoon swimming in our hotel’s pool.
A long journey lies ahead of us, and this time we’ll make sure we pack some kids’ Gravol.