Murdoch ~ verb ~ the act of complicating an otherwise simple process through absentmindedness and or stunning dumbness ie: to Murdoch the check-in process, etc.

Haven't travelled much in the last decade really, and I always get a bit flustered by the whole process. Soon as I'm out of my regular routine all sense fades away – if there's a wrong decision to be made, you can kinda count on me to choose the wrong option.

So it was with a sense of foreboding that I stuck my hand up for the first half of asl pushie duties on the North Shore this year.  I can ride a bike, point a camera, (sometimes at the same time, the prerequisite for any self respecting ASL pushy pilot) but... anyway...

So the first Murdoch act was to wisely get dropped off at the wrong airport for the flight down to Sydney. Brisbane International instead of Domestic. Still it provided a lively encounter with Maxi-Cabbie Bloke taking me to the correct terminal “Had a knife held to me farken throat last Sat'dy in The Valley... didn't phase me ... Cops asked if I was OK .... told em whan ya'v'ad someone running at ya with a machete it's all small change ... I can take care of meself .... fucken asian cabbies, look at him slam the tailgate ... ya can't put brains in statues... etc” and on, and on. Not even out of the state yet and I'm getting tall tales thrown at me.

Next Murdoch Act was to wait in the wrong check in line for half an hour. No dramas. At ‘east I was in the right airport. In my etes it’s a win. This is why I get to airports about, oh, three hours earlier than most.

Anyway, on to a few quiet hours spent in Sydney Airport with ASL's Film-making guru Talon and we're Honolulu bound. Seasoned travellers bitch about air travel but for a stay-at-homer like myself, it's all terribly exciting, the space-age buttons in the armrests, the promise of exotic foodstuffs and delights in the meal trolleys, the whoosh of the toilet flush button, and the wonderment of where does this-planeload-of-passengers-worth-of-shit end up? Is it expelled out the back of the plane? or is it carefully removed on the tarmac?

So, Honolulu airport. I manage to lose my wallet and travel documents somewhere between the baggage claim and meeting up with Talon outside, and am just commencing the total-meltdown-frisk-of-self when a nice airport employee in a hawaiian shirt  comes up with my plastic shopping bag full of best-not-lost stuff and pushes it into my hand and says “That lady said it might be yours”, pointing to a woman staring at me, shaking her head in pity.

On to the hire car place, whereupon after formalities I promptly get into the ASL hirecar to find someone's moved the fricken steering wheel to the wrong side.

Fuck, maybe it's better if Talon drives eh....

Anyways, I'll fire the ASL pushy up tomorrow, surely I can't get into too much trouble on a pushbike, can I?

cheers, Gra.