The trip home began very early Friday morning. NaYoung had volunteered to drive me to the airport, and she took me there safely through the light rain (rain is a good thing in a Chicago January, because it's not snow!).
First stop was Boston. I took a very familiar route across the Charles, carrying all my worldly possessions to Eli's place. Several people had volunteered to host me, and I figured Eli was the one to whom I would cause least disruption relative to his ordinary life. We chatted for a bit, especially about Back Bay Mobile Soup Kitchen, an endeavour that began as simply Eli's effort to bring his Christian faith into practical action in the world and has grown and grown in the last two years or so.
He had a guitar lesson to give, and I had a couple of administrative tasks to carry out on campus, which I followed by dropping into my old office. Ray and Kameron were there and we chatted for most of the afternoon. That was the kind of interaction I was hoping for: I tried not to schedule too much into my trip, but just be available to spend time with people.
I had dinner at Clover (Eli's workplace, though he was not there), then headed to Davie's for a game night, attended mostly by MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Players friends. That was very much one of my communities at MIT, as anyone who was reading my blog during the first half of my PhD will know in particular. So it was good to chat over a game of Taboo.
On Saturday morning, I walked for a couple of hours through eastern Cambridge and downtown Boston, to soak the place in before leaving for a long time. I actually found a relatively central area of Boston I wasn't familiar with: the Columbus part of the South End.
I ended my walk at Empire Garden for dim sum with ten friends. Anna, Yu Heng and I then continued the afternoon with some Chinese shopping (some of my Australian friends are surprised by how much time I've spent at Chinese restaurants, shops, etc.), and coffee (or in my case, a very good hot chocolate) at a little cafe nearby. It was nice to have the Australian trio reunited: I have seen Anna frequently and Yu Heng once in recent years, but not at the same time.
After a brief afternoon (briefer than I wished due to MBTA maintenance) singing with Christina and Eli, we went to Camille's place for a potluck dinner. This time it was mostly the MIT Catholic crowd, and it was this event more than any other where I tried my best to have a goodbye chat with everyone and didn't spend as much time with as many people as I had hoped.
Next morning, I went to play piano with the choir at 9:30 am Mass, as I had so many times in the past (though since Truc's arrival I had more commonly sung, and/or gone to 5 pm). Other than missing Fr Clancy, it felt very familiar.
I only had time for a quick chat over some doughnuts before it was time for Michael to drive me to South Station to catch the bus to New York, though in fact the drive was quick and I just slipped onto the bus scheduled to leave half an hour before the one for which I had a ticket. The trip was easy and smooth, although one passenger did complain to the driver that he was driving to fast. I arrived and headed out to Jersey City to visit Jimmy and Fan.
I had a wonderful time with them, and hearing about Jimmy's new life on Wall St. They have a lovely apartment with a view over the midtown skyline, and the neighbourhood is just a couple of stops from Wall St yet very quiet. It's amazing how attached people are to living in the city proper, when such a great place is so close. I suspect it won't be long before rents are just about as inaccessible there as in Manhattan itself.
I explained some American football to Jimmy (it was playoff time), then William joined us for dinner. It's funny how we've each gone in such different directions from MIT.
Jimmy was of course working on Monday, so I spent the day exploring Manhattan. I caught the subway to World Trade Center, where I looked around the memorial. Despite the big empty holes and all the names, the item that I found most moving was the Survivor Tree, a pear tree that survived the attacks (in poor condition), and symbolises resilience, and in my mind also people who survived the attacks but still feel the impact from injury or loss of loved ones. Because to my mind, it's important to remember the dead, but as Christians we have hope that they are now at peace. But there are so many people who live each day with various sufferings caused by the attacks, and it's these people who really need our love and concern.
I went south to the tip of the island, then walked up the east side. I walked a very long way: past the north end of Central Park. It's fascinating watching the neighbourhoods change: very poor public housing areas, regular inner-city neighbourhoods, trendy New York hangouts, tourist-only areas around Times Square, the open space of Central Park, boutique shops on the Upper East, heavily African-American areas in Harlem, a big courtyard around which Columbia University is built... I think I covered just under 20 km on the day (usually if I walk more than 20 km, I really feel it the next day, and this time I didn't). I returned to Jimmy and Fan's for some Shake Shack burgers and a quiet night: Jimmy says his hours are ostensibly shorter than when he was a student, because he doesn't work outside work hours, but he certainly works more densely!
I had a morning bus to Philadelphia, where I met Evelyn. She's getting used to work in neuroscience: it's a new field for her but she's following a path trod by many other physicists before her. Since she was at work, I took the opportunity to also get some work done, before we headed to her place to enjoy a chicken dinner and meet her friend Michael.
The next morning, after Mass and some breakfast, we went back to work: I knew that visiting people during the week, I would be catching them on work days. I actually really liked getting a tiny taste of her work pattern: we fall so quickly into our own and it's nice to get a glimpse of someone's actual life, not the "interesting" bits we see when visiting.
Next stop was Washington DC, to visit Fr John. Since he lives right near the Georgetown campus, he showed me around a bit: I always like visiting universities, and this one has quite some history. I was also interested to see that it was directly across the Potomac from the hotel where Mum, Dad and I stayed in 2012. Nik came for Mass and then dinner. It was the Trinity Jesuit community night, but all the Jesuits other than Fr John had other commitments, so it was just him, Nik and me! For a delicious (and very filling) dinner. We chatted, especially about Nik's experiences as a Marist pre-novice and about mutual friends back at MIT.
The next morning began with Mass, some work for Fr John and for me (separately), and then a trip to visit the Mall area. We unsuccessfully tried to find a parking spot near the Jefferson monument, and ended up going to the Supreme Court instead. I had visited once before, but this time visited the displays a bit rather than the courtroom itself and hearing from the docent. We had lunch at a little diner nearby, then went I headed from Reagan airport to Orlando.
Matthew met me in Orlando, and took me to EPCOT. Rather than being full of Disney characters (though they were not entirely absent), this park is all about ideas about the future (one of the rides we went on looked at information technology of the past, present and future, another was about a trip to Mars), and other countries. We looked a little around the latter, but I was unfortunately feeling sick and didn't really get to take it in properly. I think I made a bad companion for my only chance to catch up with Matthew in quite a long time! But we did at least see the fireworks show before heading to his apartment (for what was in my case, a very restless sleep).
Fortunately I was a little better the next morning and improved substantially as the day went on. That was good, because my travel didn't go quite according to plan! A storm in Orlando meant I missed my connection in Dallas, and ended up going to Oakland through Los Angeles instead of direct. I was a few hours late (Love Field airport isn't such a bad place to spend a couple of hours: I had some pretty good barbecue), so I ate dinner with Amanda, Alan and Tiffany, but they just ate dessert. Then I arrived at Max and Dasha's place rather late at night, but we still talked for a few hours over tea. Max is in faculty application mode at the moment, and they are both thinking about their elder daughter's school options for next year.
Finally it was Saturday morning, so I caught the bus and BART out to SFO. I only just made the BART, and would have struggled to catch my plane had I missed that one (it was early morning, so they were running at wide intervals), but as it was I had sufficient time. The trip to Honolulu felt long, so I worried the longer leg to Brisbane would be even worse. But I took advantage of the stop to stretch my legs, and find a TV showing the Patriots-Chiefs game: the news was good when I got on the next plane. In fact the last leg went pretty quickly (thanks to the four movies I watched), and I was back in Australia!
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