If you're reading this - I've survived my first transit into the United States of MURICAAA! As my first facebook status highlighted - Margie the Chair and I made it safely from Auckland to Honolulu and caught our flight (ONLY JUST!) to San Francisco where my Knight in shining armour (my Uber Driver) picked me up on his noble steed (A brand new black shiny Dodge Charger YEAHHH 'MURICA!)whisked me away to my over night AirBnb where I had the BEST shower ever and had a massive snooze. Stoked to recline fully horizontal by then haha! So, everything has been pretty smooth sailing although I may have cried in transit in Hawaii. Not because anyone was mean, or I lost my bags. It was only out of pure frustration as I was running all over Honolulu airport hoping I wouldn't miss my flight to SFO. I will explain why momentarily. Hawaiian Airlines is the tits! If you ever get a chance to fly this airline - Do it. They upgraded me to premium seating because they knew I had a connecting flight & let me off the plane first, gave me a little bag of travel goodies, a blanket & a pillow and all the perks of being literally one row behind First Class (the food was baller!) I slept 90% of the flight, leaving only 2 hours for me to sit and wait to fly into Honolulu. Bliss. Watched a movie and ate my yummo breakfast which ironically featured my fave - Baked Beans. Mahalo! Travel tip: Never travel long haul without a neck pillow or a peanut roller coz these items have saved my life this whole time. Honestly - my neck, back and ass muscles have never experienced such numbness and having the peanut to roll all my sore muscles out has been SO good. I even did this in the middle of SFO airport with many confused eyes watching me. NO RAGRETS. So the crying - long story short: I had to go to three different parts of the airport in total before I could even get on my connecting flight. ONE terminal to go through customs & drop off my luggage for the next flight. ONE to check Margie in after customs coz the connecting luggage bit wouldn’t take her coz she was too big - Fair enough coz there was no way she was gonna fit on that piddly little conveyer belt anyway! Customs was easy and stress free with the only comment from the Customs Officer letting me into the US saying two things: 1)"Nuts are seeds so you have to declare them" (lol I admit I didn't realise this. Whatevzzz haha) 2)”Why'd you bring your own chair? There's chairs everywhere!?!" LOL! I had to then go to another terminal to check the chair into oversized baggage then literally run to the departure terminal only thanks to this wonderful security guard (who saw me standing in line with some obvious angst) was like - you’re gonna miss your flight if you stay in this line. He gave me directions to skip ahead... which involved running almost 6 massive airport terminal doors from where I was. He said you’ll have to run but you’ll miss all the lines and make it on time. So I managed to find where he was taking about and I made my flight with ten mins to spare ahhhh. It was during this run - the tears started and I was cursing Hawaiian Airlines for being so darn spread out over THREE terminals. **FYI - Hawaii was hot. And I was wearing Uggboots, a scarf & a jumper. Needless to say, the sweat was real by the time I found my way to this sneaky entry by my Gate. Of course I got chosen to be randomly searched by the domestic security screening officers...I'd already been crying by this stage and I said if they didn't get a move on (I said this in a nicer way btw haha) I'd miss my connecting flight and I didn't want to cry again. This seemed to speed them up a bit with one of them showing me the direction I needed to go in - PHEW hahah. TL;DR - I made my connecting flight into SFO and went to my airbnb - showered & went to sleep. My airbnb was glorious as was my overnight layover in San Fran before I needed to head to Ohio the next day to meet Cervena & Durb for Hell City prep. Yay....more planes.... haha! Overall, I really don't mind solo travel. I love Americans because every single person who I have approached for help or directions has been super helpful & polite and have even shared a few jokes with me (aka. Security Screening Officers in SFO messing with me saying I failed the weird full body scanny gun residuey thingy and had so much pleasure in my terror thinking I was going to be carted away by the Secret Service or something haha!) - PROVIDING you are graceful and polite in the first place. I watched a woman in front of me who missed her flight (dunno why...but I was a kind Kiwi and let her in front of me in the line in a bid to help her make said flight) swearing under her breath loud enough we could all hear it and glaring at the people working at the United kiosks - they were not so inclined to be friendly to her. Then cue me - well slept (yay!) & beaming Ellie who didn't let a pesky not working kiosk get me down hahah (it wouldnt spit out my baggage tags so I had to wait in line to check these in argh). The lady serving me took one look at my steel frame of a chair & with a raised eyebrow and a heavy Californian accent she asked me: "What on earth are you doing travelling with a big ol' chair?" to which I giggled and said "I fly around on it in the air while I bend my body through it!" This only made her eyebrow raise further up her forehead as she looked at me and goes, "What." Not a question - a statement. Once I explained I was a circus artist everything clicked for her and her raised eyebrow turned into a huge smile and helped guide me to where I needed to drop Margie into the Oversized/Fragile items area (after not charging me any extra $$ to do so!) and sent me on my way to board my flight inbound to Ohio. Yay for nice people...and LOADS of coffee. I'm writing this now, stuck in Chicago,IL while I wait for my connecting flight to Columbus, OH…yay for 1.5 hour delays....NAHHT. But in the spirit of positivity, here are the good points I've enjoyed so far on my journey from San Fran to Columbus: 1) Chicago has a crazy cool airport. Like...to the point where they have a fucken full on Dinosaur skeleton in it. Baller. 2) American Starbucks is my jam. They have a million things on the menu I was salivating over drinks I never even knew existed. I got two different drinks coz i couldn’t decide which one I wanted more. 3) None of my bags have gone missing. Virtual touch wood though coz I'm still not in Columbus yet... 4) United Airlines seats are oddly roomy for a person my size & their onboard snacks weren't that shit! 5) I've shamelessly watched 14 episodes of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror specials. Only those ones, no normal episodes coz they're my fav each season. I have about 8 more to go - So good. I'm thinking of getting a tattoo filled with all my fav Treehouse of Horror characters after binge watching these episodes... Alex Heart - we will discuss hehe!! On another note... Jet Lag. It's a weird thing. I haven’t experienced any tiredness or no sleep...but I haven’t needed to poop for two days and I'm starting to feel erm...full... :D LOL. Please pray for me that I poop soon... Especially before I perform because I don’t think Contortion will really work with a "full" body very well heheh. New hashtag #jetlagbungholia (I know my mum will laugh at this haha!) Also! Each blog entry will have a song(s) of the day coz I will be having lots of music adventures while I'm on my adventure I'm sure and I wanna share with y’all what I’m jamming to… Day 1 & 2 Songs of the Day: No music. Just the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Episodes 1-14 (hehe) Misery - Green Day Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day Currently unnamed tracks by Dead Favours coz their new mixes of their new songs are sounding sweeet. But as far as I know they are called: - Pick Your Battles (Sick choon!) - On Your Own (Definite banger but should be called Gather Up Your Bones…) Also - they should defs call their new album Hot Tequila…coz…well… Tequila is just the best and the band are known for a certain Tequila consumption...just saying :D Transit List so far: Auckland - Honolulu - San Francisco - Chicago - Columbus Over 2 days of travels...sheeeesh!! Over & Out for now! EMay xx