Back from Oz

Mr. Improbable and I are back from our trip Down Under, and are glad that we have a long weekend in which to unpack, acquire groceries and clean laundry, and get back in sync with Eastern Standard Time.

I have lots of thoughts and observations to share about our trip, which I'll be posting in the next week or so. I did a lot of writing for the blog while we were gone, but although beer and hospitality flow freely in Australia, internet access runs $1/minute, so I had to wait until I got back to post them. No adorable pix of local fauna this time, sadly; we didn't see a single kangaroo, although we did see a dead wallaby by the side of the road. But you don't want to see a picture of that, do you?

While our 2004 trip was better marsupial-wise, it also featured a horrendous series of delays, luggage mishaps, and vertebrae-dislocating attempts to sleep in airport terminals. This trip was happily free of such unpleasantness. If I had to choose between seeing kangaroos and having all three legs of the return journey (Hobart to Sydney to LA to Boston) go smoothly, I'd choose the latter.

Still, it took us about 30 hours to get home, which is a long time to spend in the air and airports, and which gives you a lot of time to philosophize about things. The key to happy air travel, I've decided, is to give up the notion that the goal is to arrive at a particular place at a particular time. Transcend the idea of arrival; your goal is only to keep yourself as clean and comfortable as possible in the moment.

Keep these two ideas firmly in your mind and do not be distracted by the mirage of reaching your destination. Cleanliness and comfort is all. Detach from the hope of arrival and, instead, savor small victories: an extensive and diverse in-flight movie selection (Mr. Improbable and I finally caught up with the rest of civilization and saw "Borat," which we thoroughly enjoyed), a relatively uncrowded Wolfgang Puck pizzeria in the terminal, finding a discarded New York Times with the puzzle still undone. Take the small defeats--a restroom with only a hand drier and no paper towels, running out of reading material at a foreign airport where an English-language paperback can cost $20 or more, losing the coin toss and having to take the middle seat while your spouse gets the window--in stride, like the enlightened travel yogi you are.

Life is a journey. We may not be able to control when we reach our destination, but we can try to be as tidy and well-rested as possible when we get there.