28 to 30 October - day 69/70 - the long flight home

Of course, we lose a day flying home from Los Angeles.  We started off flying with Air New Zealand from Los Angeles to Auckland.  When we checked in, the lady at Air New Zealand could see that I wasn't really using the crutches and offered to check them in for me - that was really nice of her, but I wasn't sure I'd ever see them again!
Anyway, on this flight we had a Skycouch - three seats for the two of us, and with footrests that lock up level with the seats to create a couch. Success with this was mixed, to be honest.  We did manage to both lie down and even get some sleep, but Paul can't sleep on his side for too long (because of his shoulders) and there really isn't room for sleeping on your back.  I had no problem with the small amount of sideways space, but not being able to stretch my legs out was quite uncomfortable.  In the end we put the footrests up on two of the seats and took turns - one of us would sit up and the other would lie across the two seats.  It wasn't too bad, and certainly more comfortable than sitting up for 13 hours.  I'm still not sure if we'd do it that way again though.  It would be quite ok for one person, and I think still a lot cheaper than business class.
Anyway, the plane was quite clean and comfortable, the in-flight entertainment was good - basically it was as good as you can expect a 13 hour flight to be.
The transit in Auckland was fine, in fact it was excellent compared to the chaos of our transit in Dubai at the start of the trip. Of course, the fact that there were far fewer passengers going through transit may have helped.  Anyway, the flight across to Sydney was also not too bad.
Arrival in Sydney was ok - even my crutches showed up!  Only one problem - at Customs, they decided that we should use the automated arrival machines.  I don't think it's sensible to ask two 50+ year olds to use new technology after 15 hours on a plane!  We managed ok, although we had to answer 'yes' to the question about whether we had been in Central/South America in the last 7 days, and this machine came up with a list of about 40 countries and we had about 10 seconds to say whether or not we had been to one of them.  I was pretty sure that 'No' was the right answer.  The next time I was asked about this was by a person, and I used the magic words "it was on a cruise" - as I suspected, they were looking for people who had been trekking in the jungles, and she waved us on through!
After that, no dramas at all - caught a train to the domestic terminal, lazed around in the Qantas Club for a few hours (waiting for the next flight on a jet, as I had no desire to fly on one of those tiny Dash planes, and anyway I always knew our carry-on would be too big for one of those flights) then finally a pre-booked limo ride home from Canberra Airport.