Home.

Just a quick post to let everyone know I made it back to Portland without a hitch.



I was in the air today for nearly 15 hours...three planes, four cities and nary and missed connection or even near freak out.



I did get held up for a second at U.S. Customs in Denver. Those guys are serious man. Serious. I would be nervous to come into the country if I wasn't from here. On the flight they showed us a video of how to properly fill out all the claim forms, even going so far as to remind you that in the United States we do NOT place a little horizontal line across the body of our number seven, so you better not do it on your claim form. DON'T DO IT!

Once I got through the first customs desk I was wandering around, kinda stretching my legs after the 10 hour flight from Frankfurt and waiting for my backpack to come off the carousel. A really, really tall guard came over to me..

"maam, you doing okay? You look a little confused."

"No..no, not confused. Tired from the flight, just...stretching my legs."

"Mmmhmm. After you get your bags, why don't you step on over here to the search area and we can have a look through your belongings."

Lesson #2 - DO NOT WANDER IN THE BAGGAGE CLAIM AREA.. Apparantly, this is a Red Flag, so I suggest simply standing at the unmoving baggage carousel...at attention...and wait passively.

But, all was well since I wasn't smuggling live animals, meat, weapons or anything else considered unsavory. I did have some nice cheese from the farm, which I mentioned and they didn't care about that, so I got to gift that to my cheese freak friend Gwennie. She was really happy about it.





The flight from Frankfurt was actually just fine, even for the length. They have little viewing screens on all the seats now, with dozens of movie and television selections to choose from, so if you didn't want to read...you could while away the time watching all kinds of stuff. I chose Mary Poppins for my first selection, which was fun.



Anyway...it was an incredibly long day, but now I'm here at Gwen's, comfortable and happy and ready to sleep for days.

I'll be putting loads of photos up here in the next days, some I'll probably put in with the stories and others I'll just randomly show you so go ahead and check back here soon.

Lots of love, thanks for comments and I look forward to talking to you all on the phone soonly!