Home From The North Country

I just returned yesterday from my trip back to North America and it was quite the adventure. As we made our approach into Brisbane over the CBD, I was thinking about the fact that when I had sent my last post, I was sitting in JFK Airport, getting ready to fly to Boston and spend the weekend with our friends, the Palatines. Well, let's just say that I did not fly to Boston that evening.

About 10:30 PM, the word came over the intercom that the flight was (finally) canceled - gee, I had only been waiting for ~6 1/2 hours for that bit of good news - and I needed to figure out a "Plan B". My "Plan B" included securing a rental car and driving (with my new found friend from Brazil and fellow canceled flight refugee - Fabrizio) to Jim and Jan's home in North Andover. I made it there; after lost luggage, rental car complications, a traffic jam just outside the airport (7/10th of a mile in 30 minutes), a delicious dinner at McDonald's (at 1:45 AM) and dropping Fabrizio in downtown Boston - finally arriving at around 5:00 AM on Saturday morning.

It was great to have some time at the Palatine's home, catching up on things "face-to-face" - and then it was time to head to the airport and move on to Montreal. Editor's note: the meal shown in the photo at the Palatine's was extraordinary!! The new team I will be working with was going to have it's "kick off" meeting and I was going to get a chance to spend some time getting the preliminary planning for our team's role started. Anthony Rossi is one of the leaders of the team and he invited me to his home for dinner - quite a treat when you're "on the road" a lot. He's a new Dad with the recent birth of his second child - a son - so I got to meet A.J. (Anthony Jr.) and see his wife and daughter (Angie and Alessia) again. Montreal had gotten dumped on over the weekend and I got to experience the "fun" of winter again. Since I had forgotten my winter coat on my way out of Brisbane, I was glad that I had a chance to purchase another one while in Orlando - it was truly cold in Montreal!

And let me make something clear: we know that it has been a "real" winter that we have (mostly) missed and we have heard from many of you that, despite what people say about global warming, there has been a lot of snow to deal with back home. My brother Craig was kind enough to provide evidence of his personal snow removal issues that needed to be addressed to keep the mailman happy. We know that we picked the right winter to be gone!

I was watching the weather the entire week leading up to my departure since my experience in JFK had reminded me of how things can "domino" when they start to go wrong but made it out without any dramas. The 30+ hours of flights and layovers left with with a real sense of appreciation to be "home" when I finally landed in Brisbane on Saturday (Montreal to JFK, JFK to LA, LA to Sydney, Sydney to Brisbane). Thanks to the modern miracle of Ambien, I did get a fair amount of sleep on the way over so I got to enjoy the wonderful summer day. Today, after church, we explored Wynnum's Esplanade and had a nice lunch before our cruise ship friends departed and we got to enjoying another beautiful sunset.

It looks like there's only about 3 more weeks here in Australia for me - another week of work and then some vacation before my return. Nancy will be here longer, doing some "clean up" in preparation for the move of our stuff home and, before you know it, this chapter will be closed. The plan is that between now and then, we will have a few more adventures to report on and we will keep this Blog updated throughout that process. Thanks again to all who have dropped us a note or a comment!