So less than a week ago, I was still on vacation. Granted, I was flying between AZ and NJ, hoping the nor’easter coming into the East Coast would not mess up any of my flights, but I had yet to return to the UK. Allow me to give you a the nickel tour of my nice 10 days off in back in the homeland:

1. A trip to New Jersey – I got to spend some time with Carolyn and her family in New Jersey. It was also my first real chance to assist in the wedding planning. So I saw a lot of the malls of New Jersey and got to sample delicious cake and see where the wedding will be. I was happy to be a part of it, but I’m a terrible shopper, so it could be exhausting at times 🙂
2. Lots of flying. I flew from London -> Newark. Then four days later, I flew from Newark->Tucson via Phoenix. A short 5 days later, I was back on a plane from Tucson->Newark. 12 hours after that, it was back to London again. In a 24 hours period, I was on 4+ hour flights, 1.5 hours on a train and various time on buses and in cars. But it was alllll worth it.
3. Some fun in Arizona. There was still a wedding component to it, but I was able to take a little timeout and relax after a crazy year. I swam, hiked, took in the beauty of the desert, golfed and got to see this wonderful new home my parents built. And my sister came down for a visit as well which was nice since I hadn’t seen her in a year (sniffle).

There’s the quick tour. Here are some photos:

Since I missed Christmas with family this year (not to say that Dina and Adrian weren’t saints for helping me through a nasty flu), I got a nice welcome back to the US with lots of Christmas. Both the Hysons and Badanes’ kept their Christmas decorations up for me and I got a Christmas dinner from the Hysons. This is Linda and Jim wearing the crowns you get out of those Christmas popper things.

I’m very impressed with Tucson. It is obviously a very dry place, but the geography is diverse, rugged  and mountainous. My parents look out on an 8000 foot mountain, which gets snow in the winter. There are crazy passes that look out over canyons and go up into areas with skiing. And the saguaro’s are everywhere, creating a forest of cacti. This picture doesn’t quite capture that forest, but it is nice nonetheless. It was taken a wild 15 minute drive from my parents place on some cool-ass roads.

This is my parents new place. That long bank of windows in the middle is the kitchen and living room. To the left is the master bedroom area. To the right (out of this photo) are the guest rooms/lisa and my bedrooms. It’s a wonderful house. They built it from scratch (I was there about a year ago when it was in progress), but it was nice to see the mostly finished product. They did some really nice things to it and made it a high-quality, comfortable place to be.

I forgot how easy it is to eat like shit (and eat a lot of it) in the US. However, I couldn’t resist in some situations. Like the above meal I had with Lisa before she headed back home for Arizona. That’d be Jack’s Barbecue – a pork sandwich and fries. Yummy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 11:13 am and is filed under Photos, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.