Monday, June 22th, Morning in Hornsby and an enormously long afternoon on the plane back to the U.S.
Bob: In the morning we took on last walk around Hornsby with Neville. We saw the storefronts of "old" Hornsby and looked at some of the shops there before curling around back past the train station. But finally we couldn't put off our departure any longer and Neville drove us to the airport. |
Monika: Before driving to the airport, we had a last walked through Hornsby. We figured, we better mail cards from Australia in Australia rather than Fairfax. We enjoyed the small time athmosphere of Hornsby and admired the bricks by the station that had the names of contributors to the beautification of the station. Of course, both Lyn and Neville had a stone with their name on it. |
Bob: Neville dropped us off Kingsford-Smith airport in Sydney. We were sorry to see him pull away from the curb for his drive back to Hornsby, but it was some consolation that we would see him again in just a few weeks at our place in Virginia. The flight back to Los Angeles was very long but thankfully uneventful. We enjoyed having meals served us and a nice, attentive flight crew, especially when we compared that to what we had to endure on the domestic flight on United from Los Angeles back to Washington, D.C.. As is now in my experience quite typical on the legacy carriers in the U.S., on that flight we had no meals and only surly, begrudging service back in economy class. The coupe de grace, so to speak, was almost losing my luggage at Dulles airport. We waited and waited at the assigned carousel number 4 for our luggage, but only Monika's bag and her backpack came through with the luggage for all the other passengers from our flight. After waiting an hour, we gave up and walked over toward the office where we would file a claim for missing baggage, and there on carousel number 1 Monika found my luggage just circling around by itself. Apparently my luggage had just been chucked on the nearest available carousel rather than the correct carousel number 4, but I find that inexcusable sloppiness on the part of United Airlines. |
Monika: Finally Neville drove us to the airport. We were sorry to leave a continent where we had such a good time and met so many wonderful people and formed some new friendships The trip back seemed never to end. Remember the day we lost when we came over, well we got it back today. We again had bulkhead seats, so at least we had room to stretch out. The crew on the Sydney to Los Angeles flight was as nice as could be and fed us well. However, on the flight from Los Angeles to Washington we seemed to have the surliest crew, I have ever encountered. To top it off, it seemed that Bob's luggage had not made it back to Washington, since it was not on carousel 4 where my luggage and the rest of the luggage from Los Angeles was. I started wandering over to the "large pieces" place without luck. When I happened to look at carousel 1, there was Bob's luggage all by itself riding around the carousel. Well, we were glad to have it, but not impressed by United's domestic efficiency. |
Bob: Still, on the plus side Judson drove out to the airport to pick us up (Thank You, Son!) and we arrived home while it was still light. Sarah and our granddaughters were there to meet us, an extremely pleasant surprise. Also surprisingly, all our bushes and trees were flourishing. Our neighbors informed us that the weather had been quite wet during the weeks we were gone, and apparently our plants thrived on it. Even our grass was neatly mowed (Thank You, Pablo!). Once in the house we found that Sarah had stocked the referigerator for us (Big Thank You, Sarah!) and Judson had turned on everything so that we could take hot showers before going to bed (Thank You Again, Son!). Seeing our wonderful family effectively prevented the post-trip letdown that we sometimes get after returning from a particularly nice trip, and it was just a great end to a great trip. |
Monika: But the best part was that Judson and Sarah and family just happened to be in town. So Judson picked us up, we were welcomed by the grandchildren and to make things even more complete, Sarah had stocked our refrigerator with milk and other essentials. So it was a happy homecoming after a wonderful trip. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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