Packed and ready to go, We are excited to finaly be heading home. A stop at Starbucks for some “go juice” and onto the bus with our packs along with all the other monday morning riders. Funny how we have gone from several days without seeeing anyone to now being constantly surrounded by droves of people in close proximity. Things seem to be moving way too quickly and we’re not sure we like it. We take the downtown bus where we will transfer to the SKYtrain, which will take us to the airport. The mass transit is easy to use and for the most part stress free. Did I mention how polite they are here? Even their buses that are out of service scroll an apology for not being in service as they pass by…”Out of Servce…Sorry” We get to the airport and complete our check-in, drop off our packs and head through customs. I sail through without an issue. Paul however, is held up for a bit as it appears that the customs agent can’t believe we actually “walked” here and now wants to examine our papers. I almost get pulled back into customs as I stand and wait for him to clear before going through the one-way door. An agent sternly barks at me, “Ma’am, you need to keep moving,”. I tell him I am waiting for my husband, to which he replies tersely, “Ma’am, you need to keep moving”, accomplanied by the “don’t make me get out of this chair” look. Sooo, I keep moving ever so slowly. This man is obviously NOT Canadian. Paul finally clears customs and we head to our gate, Our gate is located next to the airport’s sticky children get your wiggles and screaming out of your system before you board the plane, play area. We remark how ironic it would be to be seated next to the only crying and/or teething baby on the flight. And waala, one screaming teething baby row 6 seat F. Awesome! This is where I wished I had ny noise cancelling Bose headphones. Looks like we will be consuming our little bottles of alcohol earlier on the flight than we thought. Our flight home is to be 2.5 hours. Fascinating that it took us nearly 5.5 months to get here and now will only take less than 3 hours to get home. So I think the formula goes a little something like this. What you can walk in a week, you can drive in a day. What you can drive in a day you can fly in an hour. We certainly did not pick the most time efficient route to Canada, but we certainly picked the most scenic. As we soar high above terra firma, we wonder in what condition we will find out home as our college age children have been living there unsupervised for the summer. Luckily we have good kids, who have appropriate fear of their parents.

When we land in Orange County, we switch to our recently purchased Canada t-shirts and wait on the curb, as planned, for the arrival of our kids, to include the dog. In no time it is a joyous reunion. They deliver us home with everything intact. I find that I am surprised at how small our back yard feels now, as the “backyard” we have spent our time in over these past few months was enormous. In so many ways we feel as though we never left. The neighborhood is essentially the same. Some of our neighbors acknowledge our return, and graciously give us some time to “acclimate”, while others wondered why they hadn’t seen us in awhile, and probably based on our change in appearance, suspected we went to a “fat camp”. In any event we are glad to be home. Our feet still have some residual soreness, and we look forward to NOT sleeping on the ground, running water, flushing toilets and fresh fruits and veggies. We are not sure how the next few days, weeks and months will progress for us, as the days we have not been walking feel more like “zeros”. I can tell you one thing, we will not be taking any long walks for awhile as the beach and pool are calling.