Day 21 - Wednesday, August 10

Day 21 - Wednesday, August 10 - Returning home

August 11, 2022

Things went pretty smoothly most of the day, up at 6:00, breakfast at 6:30, leave hotel at 7:10, get on train at 7:20, arrive at airport at 7:40 and complete check-in, security and passport control by 8:40.

We go on the train seconds before the door closed. It is an exceptionally smooth and fast ride with the speed up to 120mph for the middle of the trip. It probably takes 5 minutes to get up to speed and 5 minutes to slow down. The train goes right into the airport terminal so one just needs to take the escalator upstairs.

The flight departed about on time and was pretty smooth although there was a strong headwind which reduce the ground-speed to only 480mph at times - it was about 525mph when the wind letup. We splurged on business class which is very pleasant with lie-flat seats, free beer/wine and food at least as good as any we had on our trip.

The complications started when the plane landed. There was congestion which kept the plane from reaching the gate for a while. When I turned my phone on, there was no Verizon signal so I couldn't submit the Mobile Passport to speed going through customs. Once inside the terminal, I could connect to the Newark airport free WiFi and submit our Mobile Passport for processing which was accepted. But when we got to the immigration line, there was no separate line for Mobile Passport and we had to wait with everyone else. When we finally got to the immigration counter, the agent there said that Mobile Passport was no longer being used - although we still saw ads for it in the terminal! It took about 10 minutes for our luggage to arrive.

I was able to call the airport parking service and after about 15 minutes a shuttle came to pick us up. Fortunately, the WiFi calling service worked in the terminal as we still had no Verizon signal.

A bigger problem was that when leaving the off-off-airport parking, the GPS on the phone was not working without Verizon and we didn't know how to get back to I-78 to return home. We wandered through Newark until we found a policeman who gave us directions. From there it was a smooth trip home arriving just before 5pm.

We were surprised to see a truck in our driveway - our friend Rory Smith and his son Corbin were over mowing our lawn as we had requested them do to while we were away.

The plants on our deck were pretty dry but most of them should survive. The deer had somehow gotten into our pond garden area and had completely stripped the tomato plants bare and the nasturtiums had disappeared. In the main vegetable garden, the tomato plants were ok and I picked a handful of cherry tomatoes. The birds had been pecking on the full-size tomatoes and something had chewed off the zucchini plants so nothing there. There was a huge new burrow for a woodchuck - I setup the trap just outside.