July 14

We get up, get packed, drop our key in the box--the front desk is not open at 7am--and start hauling our stuff outside. Josh takes one of the bags that was holding the door open and, voila, the door closes. And locks. With most of our stuff still inside. Bang on the door, nothing. There are two room windows we can get at and I bang on them, no response. We accost someone in the street and get him to use his mobile phone to call the hotel's emergency number; he gets a voicemail (and leaves a message "Your building is on fire!"--he was sympathetic). Bang on the windows again, nothing. Our cab is arriving in five minutes. I am looking around for what Josh describes as a Camel Negotiation Interface, i.e. a rock or similar device, for purposes of Breaking and Entering, when someone finally comes down the hallway and open the door. It's a hungover Russian rather than one of the staff, so my window-thumping must have had an effect after all. We get our stuff outside just as the cab arrives, and off we go.
We leave Sydney at 10:30am and fly and fly and fly and fly. This time we're surrounded by high schoolers and the one behind Josh is a girl with a high, whiny voice that would surely be grounds for acquittal. I watch Clash of the Titans and some other movie which is even less memorable, but at least I don't quite sink to watching Book of Eli. We arrive at LA at 6:30am--yes, we get there four hours before we left. Unfortunately we then get off the plane, go through Customs, go through Security, get on another plane and go to JFK. And get on another plane and go to Toronto, although fortunately the Customs hall in Toronto is almost empty and we speed through. Take a cab and get to the house at 11pm, roughly 31 sleepless hours after getting up.