Day 28

The day begins paradoxically at night, half way over the Pacific, we cross the International Date Line and Saturday 6th November 2010 vanishes, never to be seen again.
The night doesn’t drag quite as I had expected.
Whilst not comfortable, I do manage some sleep. It’s hard to stretch out, so my legs extend into the aisle. I get kicked all the time, which prompts me to pull my legs in.
They then threaten to cramp which would be worse. Thankfully, they don’t.
I wake or whatever at about 5.30AM. That is of course San Francisco time and we are over Fiji. I think we have been up for about 20 hours now, though the maths is too hard.
Even though it’s 5.30AM SF time, it is not that in Auckland and we have 3 hours to go.
Suddenly the crew bring us breakfast which goes down quite well and wakes us all up.
For airline food it’s not too bad. Omelette with hash browns and tomato, OJ and coffee.
We then settle in for the flight into Auckland which thankfully is quite soon.
We arrive at 4.35AM local time, sweaty and feeling lived in.
Off course the transit lounge has no shower, so we stay dirty.
Auckland Airport is just waking up, and most of the shops are open. Three hours to our departure, so we stroll, have a coffee, stroll, sit and generally just hang about.
Our seats on the flight to Adelaide are 3A and 3B which excites us as that means we are in Business Class or near the front.
Of course we hope we have been bumped to BC.
They call our flight, starting at the back of the aircraft so we wait and wait and wait until they call our rows.
At check in our Boarding Passes, issued at San Francisco, flash “invalid Seats” and we are sent to the back of the bus, 28A and 28B.
All is not bad though as the last 2 rows either side, except for us are empty, so we can spread out.
I finish Chris O’Brien’s book, I had to put it down two pages from the finish, as I was close to tears. I knock it off, and is does the same thing, though it’s a bit more private down the back.
I start my new book, another Bill Bryson on the development of the English language. It’s good and I get halfway through by Adelaide.
The flight is bumpy out of Auckland, settles down and I manage to see the Murray mouth as we descend.
It’s bumpy into Adelaide over the hills and I am surprised how green it all is, still.
Suddenly, we are down and home.
The baggage is slow coming off the plane. So slow in fact we think it may have got lost between Detroit and Adelaide however it finally appears and we tackle Customs.
We have declared all the food items we have, however this just smooths our path and finally it’s all over.
Eight countries and over 26.000km’s.
Welcome home.

Day 27

After a late night there was no chance of a sleep in.
Carol, Mike’s wife, is up early as she has to go to college for an exam, and we will not see her again this trip.
I did not sleep all that well, no particular reason, as we are all set to go. So I am tired.
There are tears as Carol leaves. She has been a great host.
We do the final pack. As we have some time we also wash all our dirty clothes, so are going home with clean stuff, other than our travel clothes, which will be on the nose by Sunday.
Sue’s brother Percy has promised us breakfast from Tim Horton’s a take –out coffee place.
We wait, and wait, and wait until Mike decides that we should have breakfast and makes some BLT’s.
They go down well, and of course just as they’re being digested, Percy arrives with coffee and the breakfast sandwich. Pretty much like a McDonalds breakfast burger. OK but not really needed.
By this time the three last to leave last night are in the house.
Thank full our lift arrives. We are heading across the border to fly out from Detroit Metro and have to cross into the US.
At the border, we get the usual, where are you from, how do you know each other. We are ten told to park the car and wait, as they want to do further checks.
So there we are with about a dozen other vehicles in our car, with a yellow sticker on the windscreen.
A guard comes and takes the car keys and puts them on the roof. We wait and wait, then the sniffer dog comes around, does over all the cars.
They then come by and ask for the trunk (boot) to be opened. The sniffer dog comes around again and jumps in all the car trunk.
We wait. The guards lead off some guys behind us, in hand cuffs, and we are handed back our passports and released.
The trip to Detroit Metro takes quite a time, it seem far out. When we arrive the airport is almost deserted.
He check in is simple, we are the only ones in the line.
Luckily the bag going for the holiday is checked right through to Adelaide. It just gets in under the limit at 50lb.
We also have all our boarding passes right through as well, and we are sitting together.
Security is at level Orange, so it’s off with the shoes, coat, take off any belt. Pockets empty and into the full body scanner, which we survive without embarrassment.
Of course in spite of the drama at the border crossing, we are 2 hours early.
The place is deserted, there are no planes at the gates and none come and go.
A policeman on a bike circuits along the concourse zigzagging back and forth it is so empty.
Surprisingly, Qantas flies out of here to Dallas Texas. Now that’s odd.
The plane arrives and we are together in two seats. The flight is uneventful, other than being late to arrive for us and late arriving at Chicago.
So late we have to run. The Chicago to SF flight is from another terminal, and as luck would have it we have to catch a shuttle bus.
The shuffle bus is empty as we get on, with the prospect of having to wait whilst it fills.
No as soon as we are on off we go, across the airport to Terminal C.
Our plain is boarding as we arrive so there is a rush to get on board.
No time for a pee.
Our seats are terrible. The plane is a Jumbo 747 and we are in the middle of the middle row. That means climbing over people to get out.
Crap.
That wouldn’t have happened had I been able to get my seats on line.
My travelling companion (the aisle person) gets up to go to the toilet, so I grab the opportunity and do likewise.
The flight is predictably boring, however I do start a new book. Chris O’Brien’s Never Say Die about his life and then being struck down with malignant brain cancer.
We buy some snacks and wine and guess what the wine is Australian red and white. The exported brands we have seen in our travels often bear names that no one would recognise like Walleroo Creek, which we see advertised on a huge billboard just out of Quebec.
It’s a good read.
The flight attendants are cheery with the trash man moving down the aisle collecting trash with a happy demeanour.
The flight ends in San Francisco and we have a 3 hour stop-over.
SF is quiet, with Mexican the meal of our choice with a Corona.
You get quite dry flying, so the beer was quite welcome, wet and cold.
Even though we have our boarding passes from Detroit we are called to exchange them for Air New Zealand ones.
Sue deals her best hand. It’s my birthday! Can we get an upgrade? Sorry there are no upgrades as the flight is full, though I will make a note and maybe they will give you champagne!
We board in a most peculiar process. They call for the rear end passengers first, which makes sense, however just about everyone boards with that call.
We are in the middle and board as instructed, however all the previous boardees are still in the aisles. It takes a long time. There is no room in the overhead lockers.
We are in the middle, with one aisle seat.
I am disappointed, however it actually works quite well, but more of that later.
It is good to hear some Australian-like accents again.
The flight briefing, safety stuff, is very entertaining. The Air NZ people have taken a humorous approach, and nearly everyone watches. A first.
It’s now 8.00PM local time. We have been up for about 18 hours.
The ANZ staffs are airy smiling, happy people with a great mix or ethnicities, Maori, Chinese and Anglo. They all look like they enjoy their work. It all helps.
We get fed of course, so we eat twice tonight and then settle in for the night.
I manage to chew through Chris O’Brien’s book. I am glad the lights are low as it is quite sad and brings tears to my eyes.
Sue gets enveloped in a movie, has noise reducing earphones that make person to person communication difficult.
We are in the aisle behind the babies. There are three and one cries as soon as we get pushed back from the gate and cries continuously for the next 15 minutes. I think we are in for a noisy trip however she stops and is quiet for most of the trip. The other two are obviously great fliers as they hardly peep, and we don’t detect if they poop either. Poop is the North American version of shit. Shit is impolite!
It is now about 10.30PM
But more of that later as we cross the date line and it is now Sunday 7th November.

Day 26

It’s the penultimate day, we are out of Detroit Metropolitan tomorrow after lunch.
Tidy up time. Pack time.
We have gifts coming out our ears.
We have invited a large suitcase to come for a holiday in Australia. It accepts the invitation with alacrity.
All the stuff we need to pack is laid out.
It includes three pieces of lead light that Sue’s brother Randy has made for us and others. These have to be packed so they don’t break, obviously.
Then there’s the Halloween stuff, bags of lollies, packets of this and that, some rather odd things too, that I can’t mention, as they are a surprise.
Then there’s the extra clothes we have been given, which includes three pairs of mittens, so thick and warm, they will be virtually useless in Australia.
There’s the Canadian stuff, T-shirts, and various sweater type things.
There are the Maple Syrup cookies (read biscuits) and a couple of books, which I found at a bookshop here.
Both Bill Bryson, and at a very good price.
Today, we also visit the cemetery to see some family graves, Sue’s father and brother.
The big thing here is to buy a plot well before it’s needed. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of cremation here. Many of the population are good French Catholics.
The other thing is have your headstone done before you die, with all your details, plus those of your spouse already engraved, leaving only the inevitable date of death blank. See Photo.
It’s all rather odd really.
The rest of the day we pack, and of course the new passenger AKA suitcase gets filled to over flowing. It finally weighs in at 19 kg.
We are allowed 26 so we’re pretty happy, though it does seem heavy.
Yet another dinner at more relatives, with more pizza then the farewell drinks, don’t they know we have a plane to catch.
A couple are fairly hammered so catch a taxi home.
One of Sue’s old school mates does a traditional Canadian farewell and moons us, having written on her bum “Down Under Eh!”

Day 25

The holiday is running down. We are chasing up some last minute shopping, catching up with last minute relatives and generally getting ready to leave.
Our friend Terryll of the Detroit expedition is corralled into taking us shopping, so we trawl the local shopping centre.
It’s all same same! However I do see a little article I am tempted to buy. It’s a small hand held pocket loud hailer. Perfect for addressing walking groups at the briefing. It’s about 4 inches long and 3 inches in circumference.
I resist temptation. It’s not in our bags.
Lunch is a nice salad once again. It’s so good having crispy crunchy stuff after so much soft, pizza-ish sort of stuff.
Nice and fresh and very refreshing.
Early in the afternoon we are picked up to go to Danny’s house for supper (tea). He lives out at Amersburg, someway away. It takes about 40 minutes to get there.
He’s a maintenance electrician for a printing company; his wife is a trainee social worker.
We do not make jokes about social workers and Rottweilers.
Their meal is humongous, with steak the size of the plate and an inch thick, prawn and vegetable kebabs, rice, coleslaw, green salad, rolls and a fruits salad eaten with the savoury stuff.
The table is just covered in plates. There is no room for anything else, other than the 6 varieties of dressings for the salad.
They are wonderful hosts, and their kids are quite delightful, in a controlled sort of way.
We leave for home after dark and guess what, when we get back to Mike and Carol, it’s time for more wine.

Day 24

Today, we are off to Chatham, a small city towards Toronto, pronounced Tronto, where two of Sue’s sisters live.
Its population is about 59,000 to give you an idea of its size. I think that compares with 25,000 for Mount Gambier.
One’s husband manages the Holiday Inn, in Chatham, the others husband works as an electrician in some factory.
The drive to Chatham takes about an hour, is along some back roads that parallel the 401.
The 401 is the main highway from Windsor to Tronto and carries all the big trucks that are making for the border crossing at Friendship Bridge.
It is busy, hence our being on the old road.
It is flat, I may have mentioned that previously. Is that a hill? No just a clump of trees.
It’s all corn country; the farmers are ploughing for their winter crops. They get three crops a year here.
There are more wind farms, this time the towers are painted green at the bottom, gradually getting lighter green, then gray for the remainder of the tower, the turbine and the blades. Looks OK, though I think our white ones are better.
It’s yet another family gathering, with lots of kids given the day off school.
I won’t bore you with the details.
We head home just after dark. The drive is cold, as Jim, Sue’s brother has the sunroof open. The temperatures hovers around 3C then 2 C then 1C, then soars back to 3C. It’s chilly, Billy.
We almost don’t make it home as at a set of lights Jim decides to carry on through, as the lights go amber and a man turning right, thinks Jim is going to stop, and turns in front of us.
It wasn’t that close in the end, however gives us a mild fright.
Jim is a behemoth of a man, no neck and huge belly. He has had a couple of heart attacks, bypass surgery, a stroke and has an aortic aneurysm, a prima candidate for sleep apnoea, so I furiously chat to him all the way back.
We survive.
Our hosts, Mike and Carol, are just having their second wine, so we join them, as one does.

Day 23

Great day, sunny and NO wind.
Great day for a walk in fact, so that’s what we do. A long walk for here, over to one of Sue’s friends then an walk around her old stomping ground, Tecumseh.
There are the remnants of Halloween still, the autumn (fall) colours and lots of cars.
Most houses have at least two cars in the driveway, sometimes three and at least one is a SUV, van type thing. The third is likely to be a pick-up. The pick-up is like the Ford F100 we have. Large, heavy, rather like our ute’s.
Not sure quite why they are so popular, other than they’re wide enough to put a gun rack in the back window. Though not in Canada, as guns here are very strictly controlled.
This afternoon, Sue’s friend Terryl is taking us over to Detroit for happy hour at some bar she knows that has half price drinks and appetisers.
This entails crossing the Friendship Bridge into the US. The Friendship Bridge is the busiest bridge between US and Canada. The truck cross day and night taking various components back and forth. Mostly car stuff.
There are road works on it, off course, so it is particularly congested.
Terryl drives like a mad woman, signalling lane changes and then leaving her indicator on for a couple of miles.
At the crossing the customs guy, takes our passports. We then go through the where you from, where you going, business or pleasure, how do you know each other. Meanwhile, just 20 feet in front of the car, blocking our way stands another customs guy, fully armed blocking our path.
They let us through with the “have a good day.”
The half price drinks and appetizers bar is quite good. It is at Troy, a suburb of Detroit, and looks quite affluent (“But you are effluent, Kim”). It’s noisy brassy and Terryll is the only black person in the bar.
Detroit is very much a black area. Motown and all that.
The drive back is much the same as the drive out. Fast lane changing and indicators left on.
Inner Detroit is quite forlorn with old buildings, very little in the way of development and most looking unkempt and uncared for.
We survive another border crossing, this time with the Canadian customs.
Not nearly as threatening as the US, but all the same questions.

Day 22

It’s the start of our last week and Halloween.
As I’ve said previously, Halloween is big here and tonight we are going to find out at Trick or Treat.
It’s quite a nice day with sun shining but an icy wind, however the slothfulness in is drives us to take a walk around the “hill” previously mentioned.
The streets here are all very neat, however there is a sameness in all of them, as the development is quite set with a certain style of housing allowed.
Most of the houses are attached to their neighbour, with the garage being the common meeting point at the front, with a small porch to the side.
Unlike many Canadian homes these are on only two levels. The older Canadian homes all had a basement, first floor and second floor. The first floor is usually above ground level, so the basement has small windows, and you walk up to the first floor, then up to the second floor.
Mike’s home is on two levels; however his basement is as big as the floor plan of the house itself. The basement is quite vast.
Most of the walls are board with some sort of blue plastic to provide weather proofing, then clad in brick or plaster. The roofs are nearly all a tar based shingle, which is quite flexible. The closest thing would be malthoid. They have to replace them every 10 years or so.
There are virtually no tiles as in terra cotta and no corrugated iron.
We went out to Leamington, the headquarters of Heinz Canada, where they have the big tomato. That’s about 25 miles from Windsor, along these dead straight roads that cross dead straight roads.
It is on a hill, well a rise anyway, looking over Lake Eire. Lake Eire is of course one of the great lakes, and is so big you cannot see the other side. It has its own light houses.
There are lots of Mexicans on the street, as they are field workers, so Mexican food is quite big in Leamington.
They have just started putting in wind turbines, and they are not very popular, by many locals. The farmers however are quite happy as they get paid of course to have them on their farms.
The other odd thing is that some of the fields have the large oil pumps, as there is oil in the area. The farmer gets a share of that as well.
The evening is devoted to Halloween, at one of Sue’s other brothers, Randy.
They have bought about 300 lollies, chocolates and sweets to hand out. They have a Halloween pumpkin on their porch with a candle in it.
At about 6.00PM the kids start coming out, usually the small ones first with their mums and dads.
They all say Trick or Treat however all really want the lollies. There is not Trick!
Many have gone to great trouble to get dressed up. We have pirates, ghosts and goblins, the Mario brothers etc
Their parents often pull small hand carts to manage the amount of booty.
There was a pretty pink ballerina who came with her mum. Her grandma was there too, dressed as a witch with a LED red flashing cat.
When asked if she would like some treats, she replied, “No, but a glass of wine would be great.”
At some points we had kids lining up the stairs to the porch, virtually knee deep.
It was funny seeing Muslim kids, in burga’s, also dressed in Halloween gear, collecting lollies.
You can see some in Picasa right at the bottom of the Canada pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/monfries.julian/Canada?feat=directlink
Within 90 minutes all the sweets have gone.
Once families run out they blow out the candle in the pumpkin and the kids know not to call in.
It’s quite exhausting, standing on the porch, in the cold, and it was cold.
The kids loved it, though some were more into it than others.

Day 20 & 21

Things are pretty slack around here when not entertaining.
We get up pretty late, 8.00 ish, have breakfast, sit around talking then decide what to do the rest of the day, until the next round of entertaining.
Friday was shopping day and Mike, our host, had some things to do at work.
He has taken most of the week off to look after us and drive us around.
He drops us off at the Devonshire Mall, pronounced Devonshire, not “devonsheer”, where we patrol around looking for stuff. It’s like most malls, just the store names are different. Sears, the Hudson Bay Company, like David Jones and Harris Scarf and then all the smaller shops that mostly sell clothes. There is the mandatory food hall, where there are mostly bad things to eat. Plates of fries plastered with cheese and gravy, burgers, deep fried chicken and lots of creamy sweet things. There is a place called Cinnabon that just makes cinnamon scrolls coated in a sweet icing, and they sell lots and lots.
In this sea of gluttony, right opposite Cinnabon, is a place called Simply Salads, and there we find a very nice Caesar Salad, though they spell it Ceasar! It’s nice and crunchy and really hits the spot.
More wandering around. Previously we found a place called Old Navy that had some rather nice clothes. Being old navy myself I thought it worth another visit. It’s now rather cheap. Fleece vests for only $8.00, variety of colours, no pockets though. They are rather thin, and made in Cambodia. I buy nothing.
I’m also looking for something for Kai, my grandson, and spy something that I think he will like, so I buy it, just in case nothing better leaps out at me.
We call Mike to pick us up, and whilst waiting get a coffee. Coffee is big in Canada, everyone walks around with take away coffees, often in their own travel mug, that they get filled at the drive in coffee place.
I can’t believe how bad it is. It’s all delivered out of a pump thermos, they have flavours, and it’s usually luke warm if you’re lucky.
Mike has a coffee machine that uses pods, filled with ground coffee. That you insert into the machine and it pumps hot water through the pod. They think it’s the ants pants, yet the coffee is weak, watery and lacks flavour. They had some stronger pods the said but thought them too strong.
In Dublin the woman in charge of breakfast apologised because the coffee was too strong. Shit, apologise if it’s too weak, at least if it’s too strong you can water it down. Weak and there’s no hope of resurrection.
They don’t seem to have discovered real espresso machines here. Pity really.
(What a rant that was!!)
On our way home we stop in at the wine store and get a box (cask) of wine. A small one, only 14 litres. It’s surprisingly good. It’s blended from Canadian and imported wine and is described as a dry red wine.
Some old friends of Sue’s are coming over after supper (tea), so there will be more tears and laughter.
Guess what? There was, with much wine consumed. So much in fact that one of the guests, Jeanette, slept over on the couch.
We put a dent in the box, that’s for sure.
Day 21
It’s a late start to the day.
Jeanette woke at 6 and lay there waiting until someone got up, mainly Mike, as he had taken her keys last night.
She finally got away about 9.30AM looking remarkably good.
For our sins we had bacon and eggs for a rather late breakfast, with fried potato and toast and
Tonight is a get together at Franco’s, a pizza and pasta restaurant. It’s Sue’s birthday next week and this is the party night. We have to pick up the cake that has been ordered from a place called Costco’s, a cooperative buying store.
The place is packed, after all it is Saturday afternoon, and it’s grazing in every aisle. Small snacks of strawberry smoothy, some healthy biscuits, some dim sims and rice pudding. So after such a late breakfast the grazing subs for lunch.
The cake is monumental, it needs to be to feed about 30 people, many being children.
The store sells everything from Large screen TV’s to clothes to phone plans, fuel, groceries, fruit, well just about everything.
What is notable is the prodigious quantities that you can buy. You don’t buy one bread roll, or even 6, you buy a bag of 24. The eggs are in 24’s or 36’s, the washing liquid for the clothes in 10 litre containers.
Packs of chips in 1 kg bags!
There are people with their trolleys packed to the gunnels .
I us confess we do buy a packet of small cinnamon rolls-32 in the pack. They are nice though and don’t have that bloody icing.
Tonight we have the birthday party with 30 or so. It will be trying as I can’t remember many of their names.
I will suffer through under the haze of a beer or a red I suspect.