Shiftless, smiling, initial summarizing

Yesterday morning, after a night of sleeping with my cell phone at bedside (on call), having worked from noon til 10:30 pm; I awoke with no more shifts to work. The contract completed. Medicine a bit different from my training, learned and experienced. This was goal one.

The adventure, the new territory to explore - been here, done that. Amazing. And awesome.

New peoples met - conversed with; friendships made. So many stories about unique characters - Kiwi uniqueness: (Example - An eleven year old boy, knocked off his bicycle (here called a "push bike") and run over by a car. When asked what is your biggest problem; responds in no panic, with no tears but with a true Kiwi/British accent, "I can't breathe quite proper." - Both lungs were punctured and bruised as well as a bruise to his brain. His phraseology, demeanor, uniqueness - just memorable. He did well, I'm told - was flown to another trauma center after stabilization.)

Having experienced the different, somewhat exotic now we return; anxious to resume the familiar.

From a book just read, "Everything You Need to Know About Retirement" (paraphrasing): "The adventure can be listening and hearing, finding the rhythm in each new day - the adventure that waits there; it can be more than enough." These are to be our next adventures.

And they begin.

Winding Down

Just sent Ralph off to work his last shift here. This is an historic day for us as it's also his last shift before retirement. And he's got call tonight.

We have 48 more hours before we leave for the airport to start our long trip home. We arrive at the Orlando airport in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the 27th, then will spend the rest of the night in an airport hotel. Raymond and Faith will pick us up late morning and take us to Brooksville where we will stay with my parents for a couple of nights. Our house is rented in The Villages until April 1st. We will head north on Tuesday the 29th, stopping to visit some friends and family along the way, before arriving in Knoxville Thursday. The plan is to get our sweet Charlie (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel for those who don't know him) back from friends who've been keeping him since September. Back to Florida on April 1st, and getting our belongings out of storage. Then we will fly out to California 6 days later for David's wedding. Not sure that we will feel like we've gotten "home" until mid-April!

Really going to miss NZ and the people we have met and the friends we have made. We'll be trading the threat of earthquakes for the threat of hurricanes (at least hurricanes come with plenty of warning!), and open screenless windows for central heat and air. We've just finished with summer here, but get to experience it again in the US.

I've been treated to lunch twice this week by some very special friends. Yesterday two of my friends from church took me out to a cafe. The picture was taken by a waitress.

Continuing travels - National Park

Traveling in New Zealand, North Island, must include Tongariro National Park. Only about 2 and half hours drive, we have been trying to find that difficult moment when weather, time and absence of other priorities converge to make it optimal - (possible would be too easy, we go for optimal). And so it was yesterday. I drove up, northwest. Mary drove back. We did it in a single day.

Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe were awesome, majestic, huge and all those other words that describe individual mountains. Ruapehu is the tallest with multiple peaks at about 2900 metres (note the British spelling - we're Kiwi's now). Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom) is a classical volvanic cone. Though there was a fairly magnificent eruption of Ruapehu in 1995, these mountains behaved themselves while we were there.

We tramped (the Kiwi word for hiking) about 6 miles (kilometre is just too hard to spell, to get better views and go by Taranaki and Tawhai Falls. Taranaki Falls is the taller seeming to come right out of the rocks to fall as a wide curtain in front of a cave like area into a green pool. Tawhai Falls is shorter and is more like a stream coming over a classic pastoral falls. Tawhai reminded me very much of Abrams Falls in Great Smoky Mountain National Park back home (home - yeah thinking more and more about home - 2weeks and we'll be there). But this park is not comparable to anything back home. The mountains, the falls, the green rolling hills and mountains on the drive.

Privileged to be here, now.