Well, I'm home again, after what felt like 250 hours of plane travel in one day. The advantage of shift work is that I apparently have no body clock anymore; I had no jet lag either coming or going, during my whole US holiday.

It was a six hour plane flight from Sam and Leen's house to LA, three hours waiting around the airport there, then 14 hours from LA to home. I got in just before 5 a.m. and adjusted to local time instantly. After getting back to my flat, I spent most of the day doing laundry and cleaning, restocking the fridge and all that boring post-holiday stuff.

I think there must be something wrong with me, because I love hanging around airports, even when it's the third one in two days' continual travel and I've been hauled out of the queue as a suspicious character and re-searched at every single checkpoint. The time I saved by only having one carry-on bag and no checked luggage was made up for by also having a foreign accent, a one-way ticket, one carry-on bag and no checked luggage.

I amused myself on the plane flight over by spotting items worn or carried by other passengers which you could potentially use to kill somebody; I was very impressed by the guy at LA airport who actually noticed and confiscated my steel-wire luggage padlock cable, which had slipped through at least ten other inspections while blatantly visible on the outside of my bag. (The stewardess kept it for me during the flight and I got it back afterwards.) I thought about writing to the airport and commending him, but couldn't think of a harmless-enough way to say I'd been interested in finding out whether the inspectors would notice it.

During the flight to NZ, I explored new ways to sleep in a recliner airline seat with the recline feature broken. It was the first time I've gone so far as to slide down between the front of my seat and the row in front, and try to sleep wedged into the minimal floor space down there. I also tried "upside down with your head hanging over the edge of the seat and your feet and legs extending partway up the wall".

Now that I'm back, I am looking for a new job so I can get off these blasted ferry boats and start saving money again. Not to mention, I'd like something which allows me to sleep at night and have evenings and weekends off. I have already found a couple of good jobs to apply for.

In case it wasn't obvious to everybody already, I should add that I had the best time of my entire life on this trip. I'll be getting photos back tomorrow, and writing a full trip report on my website some time soon, but there's a lot to write about so it might take me a while.

Brunnen-"back to winter. sigh"G