The flight from Auckland to Los Angeles seemed a lot shorter this time, partly because it was -- the jet stream saved us an hour -- and partly because we were not fresh off a six hour flight from Boston. We turned down the ankle-high socks and the hot towels, but we accepted all food. The food was good. Chicken parmesan for a meal, fresh fruit for a midnight breakfast later on, and a packet of snacks (cheese and crackers, dried fruit, tortilla chips and salsa, and sugar cookies) in the middle.

As we were taking off, we took in every last look of New Zealand we could get. We saw the city, saw a black sand beach that might have been Whatipu, saw an island that might have been Tiritiri Matangi but wasn't, and then we passed through a layer of clouds.

Dave was in row 38. We were in row 55. The movies were "The Legend of Bagger Vance," which I had watched on the way over and didn't bother with again; "Disney's The Kid," which was decent; "Unbreakable," which I watched again (one of my favorite movies of the year); and the old Billy Wilder movie "The Apartment," which I had seen, would have watched again, but was too tired to stay up for.

It was a very hazy morning in L.A. when we arrived. The "fog" was sort of orangy. I suspect all mornings in L.A. are hazy.

We met up with Dave after we disembarked, then got in the immigration line. When it was our turn, Leen and I went up to the man, showed him our passports and the immigration forms we filled out on the plane, and he smiled and took them and processed them, and said, "Welcome home."

In this forum, we have discussed how dramatic the effect of a stranger's random, casual act of kindness or meanness can be. After the emptiness of leaving Brunnen-G, Puck, and paradise behind, how warm it made me feel to hear "welcome home" -- from a stranger in Los Angeles, 3000 miles from my house, no less. "Thank you," "good morning," "have a nice day," and possibly even "welcome back" would have all been appropriate nice things to say -- things I would have smiled at, said "thank you" to, and forgotten. But no, it was "Welcome home." You know, it isn't so bad leaving paradise if it means coming home.

After immigration came baggage claim, where we had to retrieve our checked baggage long enough to go through customs. Customs going into the United States was much easier than going into New Zealand. I expect they would have been more thorough if we were flying in from somewhere with a less disease-free reputation.

We declared Leen's riding gear and the seashells we brought back from the beaches of New Zealand. "Are the riding clothes clean?" the man asked. Yes, they were. "I'll let you go if you can say 'seashells' six times fast." Exhausted Leen, dreading having to root through our luggage for things customs would want to see, and worried that we would not make it through all the various lines in time to catch our Boston flight, very quickly obliged, happy and relieved that we wouldn't have to root through our luggage after all.

After customs, we rechecked our baggage and followed the succession of corridors through to our gate. We found seats in terminal 6. Dave's gate was 69A. Ours was 68A. Before long, we had said our goodbyes and boarded our respective planes.

The movie on the flight to Boston was "Red Planet," which I had carefully avoided on the way over and made sure to avoid again. I wanted to sleep anyway. By our body clocks, it was the middle of the night. But we had little luck. One row behind us, there was a British family with two screaming kids that kept pushing on our seats. Every time the older kid had to sit in his seat with his seatbelt on, instead of being given free reign to clamber about as he pleased, he screamed at the top of his lungs, while his parents cooed and tried to distract him with talk of happier times.

Meanwhile, two rows ahead of us, there was a kid about the same age, and we never heard a peep out of him, he was so quiet.

I cannot stand permissive parents. I cannot stand soggy hearted idealists who never discipline their children, who do not believe in correcting misbehavior, and -- worst of all -- have all these stupid hippie mystic parenting philosophies about letting children "be free" so as not to "repress their inner spirit." Idiots. All it takes is the tiniest little bit of observation in the world around you: kids who aren't given enforced limits by their parents are raging, stubborn, disruptive problems. They grow up into teenagers with attitudes and then into adults who buckle under real world constraints and emotional stresses, people who can't be responsible to anyone and can't cope with any kind of authority. The lucky ones hit rock bottom and bounce back with some hard-won lessons that could have been learned easier, and without the lingering scars, in childhood. The unlucky ones self-destruct.

Children NEED to know their limits. They test them for that purpose. Children who try to find their limits and don't find any at all become angry and lonely. No limits means their parents don't care what they do, don't care what happens to them, don't care what trouble they get into. The scars inflicted on these children last a lifetime, and, in the meantime, they scream in my ear when I am trying to sleep on the plane.

I love accents. I particularly love listening to Virginia/Carolina accents, but I could spend all day listening to almost any, except for the rather annoying, gruff inner city Boston and inner city New York accents. I've certainly never heard a British accent, posh or street, that I didn't enjoy hearing. Until I heard that family in the row behind us. I'm not good enough to place their accent. It wasn't the primmest of proper British accents, but it was a far cry from Cockney and Yorkshire. At any rate, it grated on me something awful, and I'm not sure if that's because it was truly irritating, because I had just returned from hearing the very beautiful New Zealand accent for two straight weeks, or because their child was screaming in my ear.

We left Boston after a huge snowstorm, as those of you who remember the prologue of this trip report know. We flew into a rainstorm. The rainstorm started in New Jersey and was working its way up the coast. As we were sitting in terminal 6 of the L.A. airport, we saw a flight to Newark being delayed so the arrival would be after the storm had passed. Our Boston flight flew on time, thankfully, and the hope was to beat it.

When we emerged from the airport at Boston, the air was chilly, and there was just a light drizzle. Most of the snow had melted, which was good -- neither Leen nor I were looking forward to the prospect of plowing our way into our driveway at home. (Two days after we departed, there was ANOTHER snowstorm which put another foot of snow on top of all the accumulation.)

The bus ride from the airport to Portsmouth was uneventful. At home, we discovered that a lot of snow had, indeed, melted, but there was still two feet on the lawn and more in the banks around the driveway. The important thing was that we could pull the car inside, unload, collapse in bed, and sleep for the next week straight.