the return leg

Somehow it seems that no matter what time I schedule flights, it always results in not really doing anything else that day, partly because of my (now well founded and fed) paranoia that I will miss them. I had decided, due to ever expanding baggage, to get a shuttle service to JFK that would pick me up from the hostel, rather than attempt to travel on the subway. Somehow this meant that I had to be ready at 10.50am for a 2.20pm flight however: and then they were 40 minutes late, the scum-tinged bastards, so fortunately they had only offered me such a ridiculously early timeslot or the grumpiness would have been profound and wide-ranging. But this all meant that I ended up with not a lot of time on my final morning, except to slowly absorb breakfast, and as large a quantity of the "coffee" as I could muster, so as to then filter it for any available shred of caffeine that I could eke out of it. And then bring this excess girth to bear on my suitcase, to encourage it to close. And when I was in the middle of this routine, mid-panic that in fact my abilities to reorganise physical properties of objects vis a vis my suitcase dimensions, until now a skill I was considering putting on my cv, had in fact, failed, I then took a small mental step backwards - an actual physical one being prevented by both the dimensions of the room I was staying in and the fact that I was holding said baggage together in an effort to resist its overpowering and exploding over me in a Pompeii-like manner that would fascinate archaeologists in years to come - and realised that if I released the extra storage compartment on my suitcase, I would be, in fact, home and hosed. I know, I really did just write all that to describe a three minute interaction with my suitcase. And who said blogging was self-obsession gone mad?

The flight from JFK to LAX was happily, direct, on-time, and unmarked by incident, apart from a brief vesuvial interlude with a soda bottle that erupted with a drenching over me, my neighbour and a nearby flight attendant. Tip: if you ever want to crack that facade of sociability painted onto flight attendants along with their pancake make up, spray a soda over them. I've never heard such a hollow laugh. Fortunately it was just soda water, so I didn't start of the trip sugared and coloured, because that would have truly worn thin after the next thirty hours of happy travelling fun. I arrived in LA with a four hour wait ahead of me, which did not thrill me to the core, not even a little. I did however mollify that sensation by ordering a Manhattan, which are pleasingly potent are they not? And reflected on the wrongness of drinking my first Manhattan having just left Manhattan, sitting in the LAX terminal (and never was a facility so aptly named). By the time I got on the aircraft, it took off, and all the preliminaries of snacking and announcements were taken care of, it was about 1am in New York time, which was the time I was operating on, so far as I was really aware of time by this point in the trip, and about three hours past my bedtime, in my still lagged state, so I conked into a coma for a number of hours, I'm pleased to recount. I awoke sometime around the international dateline, and pondered one of my favourite 'weird topics to ponder': where did Wednesday go? I left on the 13th, I arrived on the 15th. I'm in the future now, where's my shiny jumpsuit? I'm glad timezones exist, if only because they give me something to be all "oooh, freaky man" about, even though most people just look at me with that same "duh" expression that they get when I express my inner hunch that the only way a detailed digital image can fly through the air to my computer is via magic. Which reminds me: how weird is it the way language morphs? 'Wireless' is so hip and now, rather than Granddad listening to the races. Bring on the Bakelite laptop!

So eventually I arrived in NZ, oddly as far into the future as one could go before retreating to Sydney time, waited around, mounted a new and smaller aircraft, hoping that my baggage was similarly engaged, and discovered I was in a window seat, meaning that I got a beautiful view of Sydney flying in on a gorgeous morning. Of all the places to fly into, Sydney really is stunningly beautiful. On arrival, I got through customs with a speed that suggests the future really is bright, boarded a train and retreated to the Southern Highlands. Where I got out of the car and went, "woah, quiet". It doesn't come entirely as a shock that Bundanoon, not quite the same pace as New York, but the experience of it is like the world going through some cosmic pause before the aliens invade and the cast have some brief interlude to mount some improbable levee that ultimately saves humanity from destruction. And then you realise that the absence of 19 million souls in close proximity does tend to slow down the surrounds and remove the white noise. I was feeling quite lively during the afternoon, managing several loads of washing, various leisure pursuits, some telephone conversation, dinner, and the washing up, before my brain came crashing to a halt and demanded I go to bed, before Kerry O'Brien had even finished his day's work. The evidence would suggest that this brain crashing occurred sometime during the washing up, as I left the tap on and flooded the kitchen cupboards. Lucky Dad.

Friday morning, pre-dawn, I finished my airplane novel (reading, not writing), and then arose to a day of happy nothing-to-do-but-relax-Hurrah! Read my new novel sitting under the trees of the neighbouring state forest, and pondered the sense of dissolute fecundity that this damply humid season seems to bring to these parts. And reflected on how I could communicate to the bug kingdom "My legs, not in fact, smorgasboard." The new novel: "Bowl of Cherries" by Millard Kauffman - how could one resist the buying of a novel introduced with the phrase "the debut novel by 90-year-old Kauffman...." and the endpapers of the hardback edition confirm the choice. It is published by McSweeney's, whose book designs resurrect the appreciation of the book as an object. I nibbled a chocolate digestive and enjoyed the peaceful respite before confronting reality. Holidays should always end with a nice buffer zone. Particularly with one that involves the smells of roast currently emanating from the parental kitchen.