Home again, home again ....

Tom Burns is partners in a travel business with his wife, Allison. She greeted us in the hotel lobby at 6:45 a.m. and accompanied us on our coach to the Edinburgh airport ... about twenty minutes from the heart of town. Our flight was delayed about an hour because of thunderstorms in southeastern England (we needed to transfer at Heathrow), but British Air was as good as its word and we arrived at Heathrow in plenty of time to make our connection to Chicago.

The flight from London to Chicago (on a 747) was essentially full (there were one or two seats evident in our economy cabin), and we pilgrims were seated in several different blocks. But these were only minor annoyances on a largely uneventful flight.

We arrived at O'Hare only about 30 minutes later than scheduled and most of us had no trouble going through immigration and customs, clearing those checkpoints in about 45 minutes. Eight of the twelve of us waited for over an hour to be joined by the other four. Customs reported that none of the missing four had been pulled aside for "secondary" screening, and attempts to page them did not avail. Rules against reentering the screening area are strict, so we waited ... not always with complete patience ... and tried to imagine the best.

In the end the delay was caused by their search for their luggage, which had been left on the tarmac in London!

We hurried to the pick-up point for our coach ride to Milwaukee, then waited another hour for the coach to arrive. At Milwaukee we boarded the three vans that had brought us from Appleton and drove home, arriving about midnight ... almost exactly 24 hours after we had left Edinburgh.

We are all resolved not to let the rigors of our return trip blur the joys of the experiences we shared. We are definitely glad to be home, even as we cherish the memories of our time together.