May 6, 2017: the day that never happened

I wanted to just make a quick note here on the bava that it is quite possible May 6, 2017 never happened for Antonella and I. Our flight to Auckland via Frankfurt was delayed the night of May 4th in due to weather. After a night in a hotel in Verona, we flew out the 5th by way of Heathrow and LAX, which was the opposite direction we were booked which was through Frankfurt and Hong Kong. The 6:30 AM flight to Munich was seamless, and we then flew to Heathrow and 9 AM. After 6 hours in Heathrow we took a 4:15 PM flight to LAX, arriving in LA at 6:20 PM. That was a smooth flight, and save some disturbing reminders of life in the USA…

…we enjoyed a short two hour layover in LA, boarding and leaving at 8:30 PM for Auckland. Now, Keep in mind we have been traveling for 23 hours at this point and it is still May 5th in LA. Given a flight to Hawaii from LA is roughly 5-6 hours and Hawaii is 3 hours earlier than LA, we mostly likely made it to that timezone with two hours of May 5th to spare. It took 12 hours in total to get to Auckland from LA, and I am guessing there are still two more timezones before the International Date Line, so it is possible we may never experienced May 6th before crossing the dateline and landing in Auckland, New Zealand at 5:30 AM on May 7th. Just in time to experience a magical sunset sunrise from Auckland’s One Tree Hill:

36 hours later, one day missing, and no worse for the wear. Auckland is gorgeous, by the way, but more on that anon.