It has been an eventful few days since I arrived in America on Thursday (June 7). The flight from Australia went smoothly and on time. Although I normally fly via Qantas, this time I flew with United Airlines. Upon entering the aircraft, I was impressed with the modern upgrades to the business class section. However, stepping into the economy section was like time travelling back a decade. It's unchanged since I first started travelling overseas, and Qantas is at least two generations ahead in this area. However, because the flight was only about 2/3 full, I had an empty seat next to me, and extra space in economy is definitely a luxury.

Not happy with Immigration at LAX though. United's terminal has its own international section which has 36 counters, only 20 of which were operating though, and of those, 12 were for US citizens. Of course the non-US queue was twice as long, and I was about 2/3 down it. I was in that queue for 70 minutes, and as the US line shrank, they started topping it up from the back of my queue. By the time that I finally got processed, my line had shrunk so that I was in the last dozen people processed! I was being met by Jim and Carol Alves, and by that time, they were wondering if they had come to the wrong terminal to meet me, and Jim had gone off to check out the Tom Bradley international terminal just in case, so Carol and I had to wait for him to return.

One of the first things that I did before we even got back to the Alves place was to stop by a Verizon store and set myself up with a permanent phone account. I took the cheapest option, but for a quite reasonable price, I now have a new phone and a US phone number. No repitions of last year's disaster with global roaming! My Australian phone will remain off except in the case of dire emergency.

That afternoon, we went to a baseball game as has become my habit on each of these trips. We follow a single A team called the High Desert Mavericks who have been doing very well this season. Unfortunately they did not pull off a win for me this time, but it was still a good game.

After only an overnight stay at the Alves, they took me to Ontario Airport and I flew to DFW. Again a smooth flight, and this time my luggage was where it was supposed to be. I had to wait for Matt McCullar who was picking me up after work. Most aggravating were the half dozen people who parked their cars illegally in the passenger pick-up zone, motors running so that they could have their air conditioning running. Some were there twenty minutes or more - I didn't think to time them - and there weren't any airport staff around to move them along. Because they were there, it was hard to see cars approaching, and those that were legitimately there to pick up people who were waiting had to double-park to do so. I almost missed seeing Matt as he passed. he missed me completely, but not just because of the parked cars, but because he failed to recognise the man with the beard and the hat! This was my little joke on him that almost backfired. On his second orbit of the pick-up zone, he used his cell phone to confirm that I was there, and still couldn't believe his eyes when I started waving to him.

We stopped for food on the way to his place - they ran out of all but snacks on the flight! Lyn "Ferret" Thomson was waiting for us when we got home, and we were joined later by Gary Akins. That weekend we had many others join us for "Mattcon", including Cindy and Dirk Martine, Allen "Redbear" Fesler, and Gregg and Melissa Anderson (a.k.a. Mythril and Snowheart). Food, fun and friendship were the order of the day, and later Matt brought out his new telescope so that we couild have a look at a couple of planets. I have seen Saturn's rings directly for the first time in my life.