We just returned from an amazing visit halfway around the world to see Erika.

By "we", I mean Sheila and myself. Our other two daughters are planning to go visit their big sister in June (not my idea, and I'm not totally thrilled by the idea of sending ALL of my children that far away, but having been there I can at least tolerate the thought), while we stay here this time.

I won't be doing much sleeping during that time, but my phone bill will probably be immense.

But back to our visit...

Our plan was to fly from the DFW airport to Atlanta, then on to Los Angeles and Sydney Australia. We would spend 4 days in Sydney vacationing and getting used to the time difference. Then using industry discounts we would take Garuda Indonesian Airlines to continue on to Denpassar on Bali where we would handle the international inprocessing, and finally to the city of Surabaya on Java where we would meet Erika. I had no intention of sitting in coach for that long a flight, so I picked our dates and flights carefully, and we used a vacation upgrade with the standby travel, something that with proper planning could give us Business Class upgrades for the longer flights.

We started out by flying from Dallas Ft. Worth to Atlanta earlier than we needed to - or so we thought. Turns out that we needed Australian visas BEFORE leaving this country. I knew all about the Indonesian visa issue and had a firm grip on the solution, but the Australian one caught me off guard. Shouldn't have, but it did.

A couple of quick phone calls suggested that I check online for a solution, and amazingly there was a fairly easy one right on the Delta Air Lines employee travel website. By leaving early I had also provided myself time to use it. We were able to purchase the visas we needed right online and print out the required documentation. Next, we took all of that paperwork with our passports to the Delta ticket counter to get our standby tickets issued and check our bags all the way to Sydney.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself when Sheila and I got on board the flight to LAX. It was all taken care of now...I thought. Wrong again, it turned out.

In LAX a quick check showed we were NOT listed for the flight to Sydney. Our bags were, but not us. I kicked myself for not triple checking all the work that the agent had done in Atlanta with our reservations, but since I had made the reservations myself I thought they couldn't be modified, and any work done on them would apply to the entire trip. Now I was learning that only the domestic portion had been arranged - we needed to do this all over at the counter in LAX, and because our flight had been delayed out of Atlanta we had less than the 2 hours I had built into our travel to do it!

I hurried into the line for the Sydney flight which was 6 people long, with 75 minutes left before departure. We needed to be listed at least 30 minutes ahead of departure according to Delta's requirements. I gave a sigh of relief, but it was premature. With 45 minutes left I was still 4th in line. Between a single agent working the desk, being distracted by various other things, and a line full of people who weren't willing to be satisfied with ANYTHING she was able to do for them, it was taking nearly 10 minutes per passenger to move the line, which wasn't working at all. At precisely 30 minutes remaining I finally got to the head of the line and was able to get myself and Sheila listed for the flight, which had been boarding for 15 minutes already. Oh, and where did all those UPGRADES come from?!! The business class seats had all but disappeared!

We got into line with the sinking feeling that all my careful planning had been submarined by circumstances but fate was on our side that day. We got the LAST TWO BUSINESS CLASS SEATS ON THE PLANE!! I felt a bit sorry for a couple of other standby travelers who had been bumped from those places by our arrival, but not sorry enough to give up those seats! They were the new ones too, with the lie-flat recliners that turned into actual beds when you wanted to sleep. That made it SO much easier to adjust to the half-day time difference. The photos below show Sheila in the new seat before departure, and then fully reclined in flight.

We didn't get to sit near each other, but those seats aren't really conducive to talking anyway. You are really in your own personal space, and talking to someone generally requires that you get up and walk over to them. We spent the time (17 hours) reading, watching TV shows and movies (all free), listening to music, playing games and sleeping/eating. It was truly quite pleasant.

On arrival in Sydney it was 8:30 am local, and we had awakened just a few hours before from a reasonably pleasant sleep - although the man seating behind me had set/forgotten an alarm which went on long enough to wake me about 2 hours before I planned to get up. By the time he turned it off I was fully awake and quite annoyed, but what can you do? Fortunately the 4 hours I was able to sleep turned out to be enough.

I had originally planned to continue on to Bali and then Lombok that same day, but Sheila had prevailed with the idea of spending those first few days in Australia. She traded in a number of Hilton Diamond VIP points for 4 days in the Sydney Hilton, a 5-star hotel. It was magnificent, the service was at a level I didn't know existed, and the location was walking distance from everything in the city. The resort I had lined up in Lombok would have been magnificent and cheap, but Sydney was magnificent and FREE. Free internet, free breakfast in the Executive lounge, free lunch, drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres in the afternoons and evenings. So that's how the other half lives! When I mentioned that to Sheila, she pointed out that far less than half of the people live that way, so I suspect that saying refers to the "other half" of the MONEY.

We did a lot of walking and sight-seeing those 4 days, but there was a lot more that we didn't see. We'll have to go back someday and spend a bit more time next time. AND go to Lombok.

After the four days in Sydney we continued our journey, taking a Zone fare ticket from Sydney to Bali on Garuda Airlines. The flight was around 4-5 hours and crossed over the middle of Australia. Talk about barren! I don't think I've seen anyplace more uninhabited; not even a road or any indication at all of human presence. We were able to get visas to enter Indonesia in Bali in around a minute - they were apparently QUITE familiar with visitors from other countries there. I suspect Australian tourists had developed that facility in Bali as it seemed to be one of their most popular tourist destinations.

A brief wait and we continued to Surabaya, where Erika met us at the airport with a ride. I'm going to try to organize the Indonesia portion of our travel into a better entry, and assuming I can I'll post that separately. Here are a few hints though: goat-brain stew, durian, bus rides, volcano damage, tofu, ants, mosquitos, bedbugs, waterpark, hired car, 9th century temples, salak (snakefruit), vascular meatballs, and more!

It's been a while, but amazingly the news hasn't changed all that much.

Kirstie's knee is getting better and better, I haven't lost nearly as much weight as I'd hoped, and Sheila is still Sheila. Mom is doing well, and Dad is making very slow progress with occasional setbacks. Erika is still far away and Tony's eye problems have been replaced by leg problems. Life goes on.

Details; Kerry has managed to do the same thing to her knee that Kirstie did, and she did it the same way - a bad landing after a volleyball jump. Her surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning, the 20th of December. We'll see if she manages to avoid the complications Kirstie had to deal with; the pulmonary embolism and 6-month course of rat poison...

Did I forget to mention about Kirstie's embolism? Yes, she had an embolism a week or so out of knee surgery in June. She noticed difficulty breathing and WALKED (can you say, "idiot-child") the 6 blocks to the hospital on crutches. It's a miracle she didn't collapse and die on the way there, because those things have a significant chance of being lethal. An embolism is the same thing as a heart attack or a stroke, except it happens in the lungs instead of the heart or brain. Dangerous. VERY.

But she's fine now, and off the meds. Our hope is that Kerry doesn't do the same thing, so given the family history she has been prescribed aspirin for after her surgery.

I've managed to lose 15 pounds and gained most (10) of it back. Exercise Kevin, exercise.

Erika is still half a planet away, but doing well for all of that. She's gotten her computer up and online (intermittent, but it was working yesterday) and we use the SKYPE program to video call her computer to computer on those occasions when things are working well. We use the same program with the computer to cellphone option (cheap compared to an international cellphone call) to reach her when they aren't. I am officially a fan of SKYPE. I even pay money for it, something I am loathe to do for any online service. Try it - you'll like it.

Time to go Christmas shopping. Sheila wants a computer, I want a big screen TV. At least one of us is getting what we want this year...

Wow, it's been a while. I'll have to get into the habit of writing here more often.

Okay, updates.

Mom is doing fine. I saw her a week ago on a Baltimore layover, and she actually treated me to dinner at the Friday night buffet that she and my Aunt Lois and Uncle Bill attend every week. More about that particular adventure later.

Dad is doing well too, just returning from visiting my brother in Baltimore (we crossed paths there) and his sisters in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He is walking more than before, but I do encourage him to get more exercise. Using his wheelchair to maneuver around his house and watching TV isn't helping his recovery, and I believe the less he uses it the better. He essentially agrees, and so keeping him moving isn't all that hard.

Kerry is nursing a sprained ankle, but she is a tough one. I would have taken at least 4 weeks to recover from that one (in my experience a sprain takes longer to recover from than a break), but she was back up in three days, and practicing volleyball again in 2 weeks.

Kirstie is continuing her recovery quite well, albeit with one significant complication. If I refer to her teasingly as my rodent child, it's because she is now on a medically supervised 3-6 month course of rat poison (Warfarin) for treatment of a pulmonary embolism that occurred shortly after her June knee surgery. The teasing is cathartic - this one frightened me. She noticed a shortness of breath a week after her extensive knee reconstruction surgery and WALKED THE 8 OR SO BLOCKS TO THE HOSPITAL ON CRUTCHES!!! Yeah, exactly! Tough kid, but an ambulance would have been a better choice. PEs are serious, with the only study ever done comparing treated and untreated patients resulting in a 26% mortality rate for untreated patients. There are flaws in that study, but the mortality rate for untreated cases was SO high that no study to refine that number was ever attempted. After being ignored at the Emergency Clinic for several hours, the medical personnel there finally got around to checking and found a clot in her lungs, and two more in her leg. I found out later that her boyfriend had actually shown up and raised enough of a fuss to speed things up a little, for which I am very grateful. I couldn't talk her into doing that (I tried, but she refused to speak up), and it really needed to be done. I still get a bit hot under the collar thinking about it, even now.

She is now well into her recovery, walking normally and exercising enough to keep me mollified. I expect her recovery from the surgery to be at least as good as mine, and hopefully better.

Erika is doing well too, probably the best of any of us (fingers crossed while knocking on wood!). We have gotten better at communication and I try to Skype call her once a week at least. I think she needs - or at least appreciates - the conversations with a person back home too. She tolerates the anti-malarial meds well, and has managed to dodge or kill the occasional Dengue Fever carrying mosquito. And no, you can't tell - they look like every other mosquito. She just kills or avoids as many as she can. The earthquake at the end of September near Irian Jaya in Indonesia was at least 1200 miles away from her, so I'm not worrying about that right now. Reactions to the "pastor" who threatened to burn a Qu'ran had me more worried, but it appears that has blown over with a minimum of damage. I blame the media for giving him a voice.

Now on to my adventure with Mom et al in Baltimore.

Mostly it was about the driving. As I put on my Facebook entry,

"Aunt Lois (brain surgery survivor) was driving, Uncle Bill (blind in one eye & can't see with the other) was giving directions. Mom (the one whose neck still works) was in back calling lane changes. This was my ride to the old folks buffet..."

Truthfully it was only a little frightening, and the three of them actually worked quite well together for a safe ride to the buffet. Or maybe, as I told my cousins on Facebook, I spent the entire ride in my "happy place", blissfully unaware of the danger I was in. In either case, things went just fine.

PS. This post spent nearly a year as a draft, so it is a bit behind the times. Still, I'll post it now.

This is the first post for this blog, which will concern the family-type issues that happen which are also public enough that I want friends and family to be able to see them here.

Today is the 21st of April, and the family is having a rough month.

First, my father is recovering from hip replacement replacement surgery. And yes, I know I said replacement twice there. Not a typo.

My mother is just getting back home from a stint in the hospital for dehydration. Some kind of stomach bug that kept her from eating and drinking for a bit too long.

My daughter Kirstie just managed to imitate her father a bit too well, resulting in a "terrible three" knee injury while playing volleyball. I always knew that kid had too much in common with Rock Lee of the Naruto manga series. That type of speed only comes at a price, and this time she paid it.

And Erika is halfway around the world.

Now the good news.

We actually managed to speak with Erika for 20 minutes or so last night, so I know I got the phone number right. Hearing her voice helped me feel better about how far away from home she is. She is doing well, adapting to the new environment and having a real adventure. I know that in the long run this Peace Corps assignment will be a big positive in her life, so I'll put up with having her that far away.

Kirstie is receiving good treatment, and she is - her act notwithstanding - quite capable of taking care of herself. She seems to have good friends there in Chicago and we also have a cousin nearby who is a bit of a kindred soul with her, and who can provide a physical presence if one becomes suddenly necessary. Also, since I managed to do even more damage to my knee in college than she did, I know from personal experience that such injuries can be fully recovered from.

My mother is well, if just getting over being sick. Also, this isn't the first time something like this has happened and she deals quite well. She also has a good support system in place, with her sister and my brother nearby if she needs them.

And my father. He is back home after the surgery and 10 days of rehab, and he is recovering nicely with no complications so far. Given the pain and discomfort he was in before he had the surgery, the outlook is quite good.

I'm going to count my blessings - at least until I run out of time. I'm pretty sure that's what I'll run out of first.