Haha! I win! When we arrived at LAX and checked our bags, the final tally was Chuck at 23 lbs and me at 20 lbs. In the spirit of full disclosure, my bag IS 2 lbs lighter than Chuck’s but nobody said things in this life were fair, so I claim the victory! Now we have to see what my sister’s bag weighed to figure out the ultimate winner.

We are now in Paris on a layover before flying on to Zurich. LAX was the usual nightmare of confusion. I pity people who don’t speak or read English – the signage is lousy and confusing even if English is your first language! We were flying Delta on an Air France-purchased flight deal so we had to check our bags at Terminal 2 (Delta), then hoof it over to Tom Bradley to find our actual departure gate and go through security. It’s hard to imagine what they could do to improve the current really confusing state of affairs since part of the problem is the distance between terminals and the lack of easy transit between them. Yes, there is a shuttle bus that circles the terminals – but what about a nifty monorail or something? I actually came up with what I think was a brilliant solution to LAX’s problems (not that I was ever consulted) – build a new state-of-the-art airport around the Imperial Highway terminal (currently used for freight/shipping) then when it’s done convert the old airport to the shipping/freight terminal. This is a cool idea because the runways would not be impacted as they all share the same runways (I think). Of course, before you ever get to the airport you have to battle the freeway and street traffic to get there and I have no solution to that problem (though I hear that there are big plans for Metro expansions ahead of the 2028 Olympics so maybe there’s hope!). Today it took us over an hour to travel the 23 miles to the airport. *sigh* If only we could fly internationally out of Long Beach!