Going Home

As departure time neared, there was a sharp increase in signs warning us about the many road closures for the morning of Sunday, August 14th, our departure date.  As I reported earlier, we had checked the road closure map and found that our "house" was completed surrounded by closed roads.  After researching what we could on-line, we sought out the police station at the near-by town of Kingston-upon-Thames, to see if they could tell us how to "escape" Sunday morning.  The woman we spoke to was very nice and sympathetic but said she didn't really have any information about the road closures other than the police would be manning them.  She said that we "should definitely NOT try to come through Kingston". 

Well, that was a little discouraging.  It appeared that we might need to spend Saturday night in a hotel in order to make it to the airport on Sunday morning.   The police had recommended that we check all the road closure times carefully and perhaps call the London Transport Office, who were in charge of the road management for the cycling event. We checked the times and called to confirm them and decided that we would simply try to leave the area before the roads closed.   Since the roads were scheduled to close at 6 am, that meant leaving the house around 5:45, which meant getting up at 5:00.  This, of course, worked, but made for an extraordinarily long day.  Our flight wasn't until 11:15.  We were all set at the airport more than 3 1/2 hours before that - I think that's a personal record.

The flight home was actually pretty good (except it was hard to get anything to drink - soda, water - so I got a little dehydrated (and alot grumpy)).  Aer Lingus has individual TVs in the seat backs with a nice selection of avialable, free current movies.  We both watched several movies of our own choosing.

We dove back from Boston to Cape Cod, reminding each other that we needed to stay on the RIGHT side of the road now.  It is funny how quickly driving on the left became an absolutely habit.  We are still working to break it every time we need to make a left or right turn.

It was wonderful to get reunited with our dogs who had stayed behind in Cape Cod .  We had lined up EJ, our dog sitter from last summer again, but unfortunately she was in a bad car accident about 4 or 5 days before we left.  We had NO back-up plan, but lucky for us, EJ's wonderful daughter, Donna, stepped right in and offered to keep them for us.  The dogs had a great time with Donna, her two boys, Ben and Sammy, and their dog Moisha.

What a wonderful trip we have had.  Now it is time to get back to life as usual, whatever that is...