30. THE LONG ROAD HOME

Wednesday January 9 to Saturday 12, 2013

So our journey nears its end. Well the good bit anyway. Today we commence to fly home.

Thank you Tony for your warm hospitality and generosity that afforded us such freedom. We look forward to seeing you again one day.

And to our dear friends Mike and Linda. How can we express our appreciation for your friendship and generous hospitality. Thank you for driving us all over beautiful Quebec and providing us with such special accommodation and for introducing us to our new friend Tony. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with you once again. There is so much to do in the work of the Lord and your example of self sacrifice in Jehovah's service is most encouraging. Till we meet again, who knows where, who knows when.

From Montreal airport, we flew 2 hours to Washington Dulles airport and then 6 hours to Los Angeles. That leaves just one more flight. The dreaded 14.5 hour trip from LAX to Sydney departing Wednesday 10:15pm.

At almost half way through our flight the pilot of United Flight UA839 woke us from our not so deep economy seat sleep with the following announcement: "due to a pressurization problem with our aircraft, we have decided to return to Los Angeles. We have already turned around and will be arriving in about 20 minutes". Ohhh no. What a waste of 6 hours flying time. Well, better to be safe than sorry. Good call.

So we arrive back at LAX around 5am Thursday morning. UNITED rescheduled us to fly at 10:45 in the evening. They gave us coupons for a hotel stay and meals. So there we were waiting at the carousel 5:30am for our luggage. Jostling at 6:30am on the footpath with the entire economy class of our plane for a few shuttle buses to take us to a hotel and then queuing outside in the cold for another 1.5 hours until 8am to check in to the 3 star Hacienda Hotel. Now, perhaps staying in a boutique Quebec hotel and in the homes of so many generous friends through out our journey has spoiled us a tad... but we have stayed at better $10 per night hotels in Vietnam than the LAX Hacienda... Oh well. It wasn't the end of the world. Perhaps it was the unexpected extension of our a 30 hour trip by another 24 hours that left us a little despondent.

Whatever. We did get home safe and sound in the end. Now we wish to say thank you to all of our friends in Canada and the USA for making our visit so so so enjoyable.

Thanx for following. Love to all

Lloydnalex