Arrival

The French philosopher Pascal, claims that 'All of man's misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room'. I think it's probably a good starting point for a quest to find out why we are restless creatures. Home for a week and then off again to the other side of the world, to the USA, land of the free and in my case home of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe!
The trip was long and uneventful, exacerbated by a delay at Heathrow due to a lightening strike on our incoming plane. This meant a thorough check by the maintenance staff at Heathrow to ensure everything was ok for the plane to take to the air again. We were lucky enough (not) to be sat on the plane while this hour's lookover took place! Delta airlines is not the most inspiring of airlines to travel on and apart from the excitement of travelling to see our daughter and son-in-law, I would definitely have preferred to give the long journey a miss.
Arrival at the twin cities of Minneapolis/St.Paul gave us the usual view of American security, lots of questions, lots of disinterest, but generally trouble free and relatively quick this time as we were a pair of foreigners in a plane full of Yanks, so it was them that were waiting at passport control. We walked straight through.
The journey up to Brainerd with Emily's father-in-law was trouble free in his comfortable Buick, the only hold up being a stop to buy the inevitable coffee and cookie.
The surprise for Emily of us being there for her birthday, registered the correct effect and then after being on the road for some 15 hours and a time change of 6 hours back we thought that sleep was now in order.