Re-Entry

Our 9 am flight out of Melbourne was delayed 90 minutes and the pilot said he could "make up" some of the difference so our flight was only 13 hours instead of 14. Unfortunately, I strained by back last week and only exacerbated it while bending over to reach my bag from under my airplane seat. It made for less than ideal sitting conditions.

We arrived at LAX at 7 am, two hours before we left the same day. The international dateline is funny that way. Andy's brother Bob sent a car to pick us up and we were whisked down to Orange County to our jet lag recovery retreat (Bob and Mimi's house).

This doesn't suck.

It is pretty surreal to be back in the US. On the drive from the airport, I caught myself looking up at the eucalyptus trees for koalas and laughed out loud at myself. I also noticed we have jacaranda trees here which I never realized before. They are in full spring bloom. I can tell it's going to be fun to observe my surroundings here with a new point of comparison. I watched the birds and looked at the clouds thinking about how they were alike or different from those in Warrnambool. The familiar smell of jasmine is everywhere.

Our first night we went for Mexican food and I had my first (of two) margaritas in a year. The next morning we opted for bagels with cream cheese and the long-awaited bottomless cup of coffee. As good as the coffee was in Australia, we longed to linger over the repeated refills, prolonging the hot cup of joe (for only $2.25!). I even had a soda with lunch so I could have root beer (not common in Australia) and refill it as many times as I wanted! (Not that I wanted more than one huge cup of soda, but it's American induction.)

After some rest, relaxation, and visiting family (add Andy's nephew Dana and wife Lynn), we picked up a rental car and prepared ourselves for the other side of the road. Turning is when I get most confused about which lane we should be in. We had intended to buy a car in LA and drive it home but couldn't find what we wanted, so we're going up country in a Kia Soul. Southern California freeways, and the many many many cars on them, are definitely different from down under (three prepositions in a row, how cool is that?).

Our reason for the trip up the coast is threefold. 1) Our tenant doesn't leave our house until this weekend, so we needed to be somewhere for a week 2) We were anxious to see our friends and family along the coast and 3) We thought we'd need this time to wean ourselves off the ocean. Our plan is to reconnect to our coastline and make a commitment to visiting it more often. Our first stop north was in Santa Barbara at Bob and Mimi's beach house to visit two more of Andy's nephews (Sam and Rob).

Even though it's rainy, this doesn't suck either.

I still feel a bit unsteady, but I'm hoping that this cruise up the coast will be just what I need to slide back into my life here.