Our trip home was long and uneventful. Well, at least once we got to the airport in Invercargill. Saturday I realized early in the day that there was NO WAY we were going to get everything into our suitcases, so I ran down to town and bought one more at the Warehouse. That made 5 huge suitcases, so we were one over and would have to pay NZ$175 for the extra bag. Each bag could weigh only 32 kg due to ACC restrictions (to prevent airline worker injury). I had told Geoff, who kindly volunteered to drive us to the airpor, to "bring the truck". He showed up in his car at 0845 on Sunday and was surprised to see that it all wouldn't fit. "Not a problem", we loaded the stuff in his car and some in the Medical Centre vehicle and after a phone call, drove out to Paul's place to gather another driver. At the airport we hauled the bags in from the carpark, and queued up to weigh them. I had used the clinic's scale the night before and was worried as all the patients say the scale weighed "heavy" compared to their home scales. Not a problem: 4 bags weighed in between 31.5 and 32 kg, and 1 bag hit 32.0 right on the mark! Liz was rather oblivious to all this, having stayed up all night with her friends, who left at 3AM, then spending the rest of the night cleaning the house and doing final packing. We said our sad goodbyes, boarded the plane, and then spent the next 28 hours in planes or airports. 
The high point was our layover in Christchurch, where it was a beautiful sunny winter's day. We went up onto the observation deck, those areas now only a memory in security-paranoid U.S. airports, and sat in the sun, enjoyed the clouds and the wind. The rest of the flight was mostly a blur of movies, sleep and occaisonal walks around the plane to prevent blood clots. I do have to put in a plug for Air New Zealand however, which has great food; the lamb supper was delicious and the eggs for breakfast were hot. Their attendants are solicitous and the plane is as comfy as it could be given the circumstances. So these things are possible after all.
On arriving in Los Angeles, the first thing Liz and I noticed was how fat everyone was. I've decided that when you travel to a foreign country, you expect things to seem strange and maybe even a little bizarre. But when you return home and things that used to be familiar suddenly seem strange and unusual, its very unsettling. The size of Americans really stood out to us after being around Kiwi's for the last 6 months, and this has only gotton progressively worse as we flew thru Chicago and have spent the last few days in the obese Midwest. The other strange thing I noticed in LA was the number of people talking to the thin air. Now in my befuddled jet-lagged tiredness, the first thing that came into my mind was memories of long-ago psychiatry rotations on the locked ward. Had someone let the looney-bin loose in LAX? No, these folks weren't schizophrenics, I surmised, once one got closer and I could see the tiny wire of a cell phone snaking up her neck into her ear. But everywhere we looked, people were yakking away on their phones, filling every minute of time with conversation. What on earth could they be talking about at 10 AM on a Sunday that was so important? The other thing I imediately noticed in the airports was the number of tobacco ads. They were on the sides of buses, the backs of magazines, billboards around the airports, and on the racks of the kiosks. They are subliminal to us, until we are away from them for awhile.
We were glad to arrive home, although the change from winter to Iowa's humid summer temperatures and the many hours of daylight have been a shock to the system. Where I was watching sunrise at 8:45 AM in Winton, here it's getting light at 5AM and sunset is 8:45 PM. I think this has complicated the usual jet lag for me, as the melatonin I tried, that worked so well on my trip to England in '99, has not worked a whit this time. And its really funny how your body lags your mind, so that I find myself reaching for the gearshift with my left hand, using the right hand to signal turns, and in my own home pushing light switches the wrong way.
After the thunderstorm wake-up call Monday, I hauled myself out of bed to find that neither Liz's nor my car would start, as the batteries were not connected. So Vicki drove me in to the hospital, where I joined the "Welcome Breakfast" for our new class of First Year residents, who began their studies that morning. My boss has been incredibly nice, giving me lots of time this week to readjust. I have joined in some teaching sessions, but mostly puttered around resetting my office computer, and opening mail. Among the first things I opened was my DEA number renewal, to find that it has expired last month. So no narcotics Rx for at least 2 weeks from me. I did however, call the DEA and discover that you can re-up online, which saves 4-6 weeks in the renewal process when compared to paper applications.
The topic of mail brings me to the biggest "first impression" on returning, which is that the pace of life here, at home, in Iowa, is just crazy. Vicki received 3 huge garbage bags of junk mail when she came home, and that was only for the first 3 months we were gone (the post office won't hold junk mail for a longer time). Each evening the telephone rings at least 3-4 times with telemarketers. We are bombarded with billboards, ads and commercial come-ons everywhere. Even the post office has teamed up to co-market passport services and the movie "Shrek-2" ("Are you going far, far away?"). And unbridled capitalism has just presented us with too many choices, and it's making us crazy. I had to buy deodorant at the drugstore tonite (another discontinuity, the drugstore is still OPEN here at 8:30 PM). Now, I've used Old Spice in the little round stick since I was a kid, and my father used the same brand before me. Tonight, I counted 17 different kinds of Old Spice on the shelf at the drugstore. That includes different sizes, different shaped containers for the same kinds, and even differences in the color of the deodorant after you roll in on, although god knows I hope no one is inspecting armpits that closely! And this is for just one brand of men's deodorant. I won't even rant about the competition in the women's shelves, or the number of choices in the drug aisles, "nutriceutical" aisles, or natural food aisles. It literally drives me to distraction, wastes time and energy to make all these choices.
And then we come to the biscuit aisle. Where we have a choice among only 3 kinds of cookies: oreos, fig newtons and chocolate chips (in about a million variations of brand, color of filling and fat content, all of which taste like cardboard.) Why, oh why, if we need so much selection in our lives, can't we at least have to spend it choosing which kind of yummy biscuit to have with our tea?
