Day 1: Dallas

In theory we should be over the Pacific now. Dallas is not in the Pacific, but we are in Dallas. The flight from Norfolk should have left at 6:15 but was delayed for mechanical reasons. AA knew about this around 1pm but didn't notify us; if they had, we could have rerouted. So we show up the airport around 4pm and find out about the delay. No other routes will enable us to get to Qantas at this point; we decide to go for Dallas anyway. Maybe the delay won't be as much as predicted and we can make our flight, and if not, at least we'll be partway there. So our flight arrives…and sits 50 yards away from the gate for an hour, as American tries aand fumbles at getting a Miami flight off and out of the way. Our 6:15 flight, which was supposedly delayed until 7:35, left around 8:15. We missed our Qantas flight by 32 minutes.
At least the airline put us up in a pleasant hotel, beautiful view of a parking lot and power substation, nice breakfast buffet, nice airy atrium.
The flight itself was fine. We skirted a line of thunderstorms and I got one or two pics looking into the lightning from 34,000 feet.

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