Well, it’s just after 7 on a sunny Friday Pittsburgh summer morning. Our time in the USA and Canada is just about through. In four hours we head to the airport and begin the trip home: four hour flight to L.A. (via Phoenix, Arizona), three hour layover at L.A. then the 14 hour biggie across the Pacific. We get in at about 5.30 am this coming Sunday 12th.
I feel this trip has been different to the many other trips to the States over the past 26 years:
- I’ve done SO much more driving – about 2000 km worth. I’m genuinely concerned that I’ll hop into the mighty Yaris on the LH side on my return and drive down the right side of the road. Serious! Dale and I have talked about a driving holiday for years. It was a blessing to have Tom & Diana’s van for the 10 days that we had it for. The American road system makes Australia’s seem so inefficient
- it’s been our most ‘unhealthy’ trip. These past days, I’ve relapsed with the hayfever/blocked ear/runny nose thing that afflicted me across the Pacific and beyond at the start of all this. I’ve been to the pharmacy several times. That said, this is nothing compared to Dale’s misadventures. Just when the rotten cough seemed a thing of the past, it’s resurfaced in recent days. The foot/ankle – after her 3rd trip to the doctor a few days back – is not broken. X-rays confirmed this, but she’s been hobbling for a while now. She would never have dreamed that this trip would have involved her moving around on several occasions by wheelchair OR motorized scooter
- we’ve had much better opportunities to connect with Dale’s family. This has been the main purposes of our trips to these shores. I have little family back in Oz … all of Dale’s are over here. That Jeremy has been able to establish relationships with his U.S. cousins etc has been wonderful. It was great having him with us for much of this trip. It’s been important especially for us to spend time with Dale’s parents – both around 80 and both (especially Mom) dealing with significant health issues. Time with them has been precious, and Dale really feels the distance half a world away.
- An aside – we had dramas two nights back after we took an anxious phone-call from Jeremy. He’d left his wallet in a cab in Montreal. he calls us quite distressed around 9 pm — so here we are calling umpteen taxi companies there. You can imagine the intricacies of yours truly in his Oz accent trying to explain things to a French-Canadian … who initially responds in French. My “3″ in Year 12 German was not all that helpful at this point. The good news is that we took a call next day with the news that the wallet was found! Fortunately, Jeremy had checked into his Montreal lodgings prior to this, so he could access some money via the credit card imprint they had for him. A big pheww!!!
- we’ve been able to delve into some of the earlier history of the U.S. Our visits to Williamsburg and Jamestown Settlement
(Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the US – 1607) were really great.
So … Australia here we come. We’ll spend Sunday on our return trying to stay awake so our body clocks can readjust, enjoying our cats, going through much mail, enjoying a Brisbane winter (after a mostly-mold North American summer). Come Monday, I’ll be back on deck at Indoooroopilly Uniting, before heading to Sydney on Wednesday for the UCA National Assembly. I’m thankful for getting my Trinity College lecturing prep done prior to us heading overseas!
For Dale, school begins again on Tuesday.
A big 6 month awaits us. By the end of December, I will have finished up at Indooroopilly UC, we will be reading to move house and ministry context to Oxley-Darra UC, Dale will be readying to move into brand-new classrooms at Somerville.
We thank God for the opportunity to spend these three weeks as we have done and thank all of those who have followed our journey and kept us in their prayers along the way.
See y’all!
These past two days, we’ve connected with American history, government and a fair dose of American patriotism and pride, culminating in the traditional 4th July (yes, today) family picnic in the park, music playing and fireworks to complete the day. The past 24 hours we have been at Colonial Willliamsburg, one of the key centres in the leadup to American independence. It’s a place Dale and I have wanted to visit for many, many years. Imagine a historic centre, with streets and buildings faithfully restored to their mid 1770s style, live street theatre capturing the mood and events of the times, lots of fife & drums bands and cannons blasting, people everywhere — it’s that sort of place … and very tastefully done. The “Revolutionary City” drama component down various places of Duke of Gloucester St was superb! I never thought I’d be moved by a public reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but let me tell you, at 12.30 pm this afternoon, this born-and-bred Aussie sure was. Dale (born-and-bred in the USA) was too, mind you!
h certain unalienable Rights, that among these are 
Anyhow, apart from one significant setback, the All Aboard DC tour was superb, taking in all the obvious sights of central Washington DC: war memorials, memorials to Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FD Roosevelt, Capitol Building, White House, Pentagon, Smithsonian National Museums (so many of them – and they’ll all free), sight of the 9.11 Pentagon bombing, National Cathedral and much more.
and strikingly landscaped, complete with quotations scattered throughout from Roosevelt himself. He was clearly a great man.
The real downer 2/3 of the way through our tour was Dale’s ankle injury – we think it’s severely sprained, not broken. It happened as she was alighting from the bus which was parked a bit too far our from the footpath (sidewalk as they say here). She bent her ankle awkwardly in landing; and was in severe pain thereafter. This all meant that Dale had (quite literally) an armchair ride of Colonial Williamsburg this day just ended – through the services of a wheelchair which we needed to hire. The good news is that the ankle injury is (very) gradually improving. We pray it’s well-and-truly in 6 days time when we begin our “homeward bound” air travel.
On Wednesday, having checked out Niagara Falls from the US side, along with Ralph and Margaret W, we parked our borrowed car at the Canadian (Horseshoe) Falls – and spent the next five hours there. An absolute highlight for this trip was the Maid of the Mist boat ride Jeremy and I took right up to the “roar” and wind and spray of the Horseshoe Falls on the Maid of the Mist — a ride (and I’m no risk-taker) I’ve been wanting to do for a LONG time. It was fantastic – you get so close, and there, you are overwhelmed with the force of the water teeming over those falls (and the American Falls not far away too!). All over in a about 30 minutes, but it was, to quote from the PR guff, “the ride of a lifetime”. If you ever get to go the Falls, you must take the Maid of the Mist ride. Dale is still not well from this horrible cough of hers, so she stayed up top with Ralph & Margaret. For lunch, we dined at Tim Hortons. (take note, Glenn!) Tim Hortons is as synonymous with takeaway food in Canada as McDonald’s is in the USA (and of course, globally).
From there, the five of us drover to Hamilton, a large city just outside Toronto – on Lake Ontario, where we farewelled Jeremy. He really wants (and indeed had planned all along) to do his own thing from here – here gets back in Ox on 15 July … the day I head off to the UCA Assembly in Sydney. We’ll miss having him around. Over the next week and a half, Jeremy hopes to check out the world-renowned Montreal Jazz festival, do some couch-surfing, connect with his relations Bill Bajzek and Bonnie Bowers somewhere in eastern North America – it’s almost that vague, and spend lots of money. I just wish he didn’t have that huge suitcase to lug around. Anyhow, we wish him well.
to Washington DC . Leaving just after 8 am, we finally got to our pre-booked DC hotel at about 8.30 pm. I drove almost 500 miles (800 km) yesterday and NEVER want to do that again. I was fine for the first 2/3, but the last bit was as demanding as …. Drove through some beautiful countryside on the way down. I wonder if USA folk really appreciate their Interstate highway system. A few days travelling on Oz roads and they sure would. The GPS in Tom & Diana’s car has proved invaluable, especially in the final stage of yesterday’s journey, as we tried to find the Capitol Skyline Inn. We look out from our hotel room (a good deal at $129/night) and the famous dome of the Capitol is not far away.
Well, we can talk about two of them anyway. Finally via a Walgreens pharmacy in Cleveland, we were able to get the over-the-counter sudafed we needed to help Dale get over the nasty throat congestion that’s afflicted her most of the time in the States. We had managed on the useless versions of Sudafed purchased since our arrival. (Imagine a product advertised as Sudafed but without the essential pseudoephedrine). We pray it does the trick.
