The rest of the trip was fairly boring. I slept as much as I could, but the seat was cramped, and it was difficult to get comfortable. Scott had taken a lengthy nap at one point, leaving me with no one to talk to, but I still had my music to keep me occupied. I dreaded the first time I needed to use the bathroom, about four hours into the flight. The toilets were occupied and there was a line of about a dozen people waiting to use them.

Forty-five minutes later I was trying to squeeze my ninety kilogram, hundred and eighty-centimetre-tall arse into the tiny closet of a...