Trip home from Autralia

Yes we are home and it is so good to be able to sleep in our own bed and eat home cooked food. It was a great trip and we saw so much. I was surprised by some stuff and other things they are very similar to things we do and have here in the states. The trip home tested every once of patients I had.
Got up at 5:30am as we had to be to the airport 3 hours early for an international flight. I get that. So we get to the airport and check in, deal with baggage and find the correct gate. We decided that since we were to be fed on the plane we did not need to eat much so tea/coffee and a piece of toast was breakfast. We were to load at about 8:40, we were flying on an Airbus 380 (like the one pictured)

there was about 563 people flying (I know this as I heard one of the flight attendants talking) At 9:15 we were suppose to be taking off, at 9:30 they made the FIRST announcement saying they were working on the plane and please be seated for a bit and they would let us know what was happening soon. 20 minutes later they say the fuel regulator in #4 is not working they need to have parts flown up from Sydney and please be patient. They will give each person a food voucher so that we can get something to eat and they hope to be able to start boarding at 3:30. Oh goodie just what every one want to do sit in an airport for 6 hours. So we went and ate and then looked to see about a different flight but nothing else is leaving Melbourne for the US until the next day. 3:30 comes and goes and finally at 4:10 we start loading and I believe we took off about 4:45. Oh course this means we miss our connecting flight in LA but they assure us they will make all the arrangements for new flights. Get to LA and we are not the only late plane coming in at this time, there is a flight from Singapore that was late and have about the same amount of people which puts an 1000 extra people in the queue along with any planes that are there on time so as anyone would imagine Immigration and Customs is packed. Of course we can not go through the fast option because for whatever reason Mike's passport would not register on the machine, we had to get into the line and see an agent. Our rotten luck we get in the line with the people that are being jerks. About 20 people ahead of us was a group of 8 people led by a loudmouth women that was being a bitch. The security man came up to her and told her to please calm down and stop yelling and making a scene because it was not helping and it would only cause more delays. Well she was not having any of it she continued for a while longer and finally the agent in the booth came out and had a quiet conversation with her. We could not hear what he said but whatever it was must have finally got her attention because from then on she stood very quiet, hands folded in front of her and looked at the floor. Once that group of 8 went through everything increased in speed and we got through. That took 2 hours. Then had to go pick up bags, talk to Quantas, get new tickets and then get in the line for the baggage check at the customs desk. The new flight was going to load in 1 hour and the line to customs was massive but you could not skip it and there was no way to be taken through faster. On top of that the Quantas people had run out of new stickers for our luggage and we had to recheck our bags at the counter upstairs which meant we then had to go through TSA all over. Well the Customs people realized that unless you had declared something like food, plants, animals or something that was a red flag they were just waving you through. Up the stairs get to the counter tell our new flight, run down to the next concourse go through TSA which was fine but you had to give up belts, shoes, my bag and so on and why is it there is always 1 person that does not know how to listen??????? Grab our shoes and run to the gate on the ticket and it is empty....oh no did the plane leave already. Asked the lady at the desk, she said no the gate was moved and we had to run to the end of the concourse (oh course) We get down there and it is packed but there are 5 gates down there so is it packed because we are still there or is it from other flights. I go to the desk and hand the counter gal my ticket and before I can say anything she says "what is this" I said I would like to know if we are on time for the flight, has it loaded? She rolls her eyes and says no we are still waiting on the plane it is late you will have to wait. I would have told her off but all I could think was you want to go home not to a detention area for telling this witch off, bite your tongue. So Mike got us some water and a candy because that was the best we could find in that area. And we had not eaten since before we got off the plane and that was just a small breakfast and it is now 3:40 and it was 10 minutes past when the loading was scheduled for. Another 10 minutes and the plane shows up and they unload and then they have to clean up the plane and so about 45 minutes after we were scheduled to load we get on the plane and I think great 1 hour we will be in SFO and then home. Oh no not the way our day has gone no.................... We are sitting and waiting and waiting and the Captain comes on and says we have an issue. OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It turns out they had an APU that was not working, this is not a big deal actually because it's only job is to help start one of the motors and they can over ride it but they have to have a tech come in and test it and then cal headquarters in Oklahoma get permission to continue and then do paper work to explain all of this. But don't worry it will only take about 30 minutes. Hahahahahahahahahaaaaa yeah right an hour later we actually taxied out. We got home at 9:45 just about 40 hours after we had started this whole adventure.
So let me say I will not be doing any traveling for quite some time.