If you missed my day 6, you can view it here.

My Oracle CloudWorld trip is now well and truly over, and all that was left, was to return back home to the UK. I had a 3 leg journey home, Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Paris and finally Paris to Manchester. Despite the 3 legs, it was the shortest route back that day.

Return Journey

My flight wasn’t till 3pm, so I spent few couple of hours packing, watching Manchester United on TV and having breakfast.

On the way to the Harry Reid International Airport, I could still see the strip as the airport is only 3 miles away from the strip.

Check in was relatively simple, so I spend a couple of hours browsing the shops to try find gifts for the family. No joy, so decided to have lunch before boarding the plane. When I asked for a large meal I didn’t realise the drink is a whooping 1 litre! (excuse the punt)

Once boarded the plane, the pilot mentioned it was a really choppy flight in from Los Angeles and expected it to be the same if not worse going back. So we was instructed to not leave our seats and keep belts on whole journey. It had been pretty sunny and hot for the whole week but that morning it was cloudy and pretty windy. A concert that people all over US had travelled to see got cancelled, quite a lot of guest were in my hotel for the concert and were not happy. I was gutted for them but I didn’t think anymore, clearly it was getting worse as I looked out the window and I couldn’t see the strip anymore as visibility reduced.

Still looking gloomy and we’re stuck on the tarmac as air traffic control staggers the flights in and out.

Then my iPhone and Apple Watch went berserk to get my attention. It was an Emergency Alert, I didn’t event know these existed! Was quite a scary message with emotive words of “Stay Alive!”.

Clearly a dust storm was approaching. We was delayed by an hour and I was getting worried as I was scheduled to land in Los Angeles at the point but was still in Las Vegas! I only had 1.5 hours to get my flight to Paris! We eventually took off at that point as we flew out the dust storm, but it was a pretty hairy take off with the plane immediately banking 20-30% and then the pilot correcting with it banking the other way. Pilot ascended pretty rapidly with a lot of stomach churching drops as the turbulence was the worse I’ve ever experienced.

We arrived at Los Angeles and I had only 30 minutes to get my next flight. I truly believed I wouldn’t make it, but I had to give it a go and pretty much legged it all the way to the gate! What a huge airport as I arrived at the gate 5 minutes before takeoff. At this point I was adamant I had missed the flight, but to my surprise they were still boarding. So I managed to make the flight, albeit a bit bothered and sweaty 🥵

It was a long 11 hours flight, but it wasn’t too bad as I manged to have dinner, then get about 4-6 hours of broken sleep before having breakfast. Arrived in good time at Paris, did some more browsing and managed to get the family some gifts this time. Then it was on to the final leg to Manchester!

I had clearly made it onto the flight to Paris within the 30 minutes I had but my luggage clearly didn’t as it was still showing in Los Angeles via Apple AirTag.

The final flight from Paris to Manchester was pleasant and quick. And I was finally back to home town of Manchester 😎 I filled in the form for delayed baggage and left the airport to go home. Was really looking forward to seeing the family.

It been a brilliant trip, many thanks to Oracle Ace Program for the CloudWorld ticket and to my employer Version 1 for covering travel, accomodation and time out the office.

Till CloudWorld 23, take care and I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post series and apologies for the delay in writing it all up 🙄

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Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)