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Farewell family, Fresno and Frisco...

I'm at San Francisco International Airport after a rather dull four-hour drive through the early morning rush hour traffic. Relieved only by the gorgeous road through the foothills (golden, undulating, beautiful) and the San Mateo Bridge crossing (watery, scenic, stunning), which makes the otherwise endless MacDonalds-WalMart-Stripmall-farmland vista of California's Central Valley bearable.

The happy news is that I managed to get lost only once, a veritable triumph, which made the journey slightly more exciting than it otherwise would have been. After driving in Dubai for the past two-and-a-half years, the California driving style (courteous, law-abiding and s-l-o-w) takes a bit of adjustment: I have to continually remind myself that gratuitous lane-changes, driving up the a*se of the car in front of you and illegal undertaking is actually not very nice and really quite dangerous. Yawn.

Next stop: check-in, getting annoyed by the very silly taking-off-of-shoes- etc security extravaganza, bit of waiting around, a Duty Free smorgasbord and then a 16-hour flight to Dubai. Can't wait to wake my babies up from their slumber tomorrow night for a massive cuddle - I've missed them so much.

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