Home Sweet Home

Yes, this is being written from home, after about 26 hours of being in the air and waiting at airport gates for connecting flights in Los Angeles and Denver.  We're a bit jet lagged and blowing our noses from colds we picked up along the way, but we'll get over that soon, no doubt.  We and the Wingets said a hurried goodbye to one another in the terminal transfer bus in LAX as they headed for their American Airlines flight to Dulles and Susan and I to our Frontier flights to Denver and on to Omaha.

I think Susan and I along with Scott, Rebecca, Claira and Lillian will look back on this New Zealand bike tour in future years with much fondness for the time and adventures we shared with each other and our tour leader friends, Simon, Jessica, Julian, and Paula, and our new fellow bikers, Pat and Trixie.  We're very thankful there were no accidents or even close calls in all our many miles of travel.  New Zealanders were invariably friendly and gave us plenty of room as they passed us on their narrow roads.  It's hard to be grouchy when you are as fun loving as the people of New Zealand seem to be.

Here is a shot that Simon took of the group (excepting himself, of course, and Paula, who was to meet up with us after the picture was taken).  We'll get them recorded for posterity when I get through wading through a couple thousand pictures and videos that we all took and shared with one another on the last day in Oxford.  I've just started a new Flikr account and will be uploading some of those in the coming days (including live video of Claira jumping out of an airplane) so check this blog in a couple days to get the URL.

Jessica, Claira, Lillian, Susan, Rebecca, Jim, Scott, Pat, Trixie, Julian near Brunner, NZ on our last day of biking.

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