Ahh... the gentle screams and thumping of children playing. This is what we've got whilst we're hanging around in LAX for about 5 hours awaiting the final flight home. It's not that bad - I think there are a few people here who are needing to dispense with a couple of hours between flights and the 5 or 6 kids who have made new friends, found a cheap, enjoyable game which doesn't require any outside implements or tools to play - "tag". Actually, the only thing they need is "home", which in this case is a pilon next to the checkin counter.

In this case, I'm quite impressed with children's ability to turn any situation into an enjoyable one given the right influence. It would have been easy to get bored with waiting in an aiport terminal, but these kids have all joined forces to play a game which looks like they're enjoying a great deal. After all, to those of us with an inner child still wanting to get out every now and then, what better way is there to spend the interval between two flights where you sit still for any number of hours, than running around laughing and dodging the carry-on luggage of fellow mopey passengers?

Hmmm... do you think I'd get some strange looks if I produced a tennis ball out of my backpack and started up a game of "brandy" with a random fellow passenger?

I guess I came to America on this trip with some high hopes - I just bought a new gadget (the atom) which I had expected would allow me to keep in touch almost anywhere, our super-duper light and portable laptop (the asus), and our new mp3 players (the creative zen neeon). Whilst almost everything worked beautifully as expected, I was a little disappointed with the wifi access as I travelled around.

(I know that has nothing to do with the mp3 player but it's so shiny and new that I had to mention it or all the other new gadgets would pick on it at recess during gadget-school)

I don't know if it's because I wasn't properly prepared in the skills of locating and connecting to wifi spots, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the case - I had two wifi seeking devices and neither were getting me connected to the big wide world out there so I could stay in touch.

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sorry for the delay.... I'll try to add a few more entries and get the travel ones out of the way so I can get back into some of the techy ones....

Well... here's the answer to the previous post. A resounding Yes! And from all accounts from our friends in New York - man did it snow! Over two feet of snow got dumped overnight in the big city (CNN report).

It seems that whilst we were looking skyward for the great big snowdump so we could run outside and frolic around, a giant blizzard was building up behind the scenes. In the end 2000 flights were cancelled out of JFK and people were delayed for around 48 hours before things got back on track.

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We're halfway into the cold section of our trip (1 week warm, 2 weeks cold, 1 week warm), and so far.. it's hardly dipped below 10 degrees celcius.

We're off to New York for a week, and if we're lucky, it might snow on our last day there...

We're taking the train from Washington to New York City today. It's a little gloomy outside but I quite enjoy a good train ride - the scenery always seems a little more interesting when it's going past the window at 50 miles and hour and you're not the one who has to worry about driving or traffic. I think it's also that the train tracks still go through all the little towns (and through the middle of the big ones) whereas these days you bypass everything in sight when you drive.

You get a new perspective on a lot of places when you go through them at ground level - some things look exactly the same as back home, whereas others are remarkably different. On top of that, it still freaks me out a little bit to see images that I grew up with which I had subconsciously placed in the "make believe zone" inside my head. For example, barns - we have sheds back home... you get little sheds, and big sheds... but barns ... man, they look just like they do in all the movies... I guess I shouldn't be surprised - I mean, it's not like they just made them up, but going through the countryside and seeing a red barn here and there is still a little freaky.

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