USA

Six months on the road seemed like a blessed eternity. With so many new experiences each and every day, I have to say that the six months actually felt like a really long time. We extracted as many hours as we could out of every day, and seized every opportunity. In short, I think we squeezed in a lifetime of travel in a compressed period of time.

Our change of address card highlighted just a few of the many places we'd been...

Back in California, our first month has just flown by, with the whole of January feeling like about three days on the "trip" clock. And, of course, it can't be a surprise that it's felt a whole lot less fulfilling than any of our last six months when we averaged 10,000 miles and four countries a month, each with innumerable unforgettable experiences. Half of me is left thinking that six months wasn't long enough. But the other half warns that the adjustment would be correspondingly more difficult if we had stayed out longer.

Who's this guy? Lloyd tells me that shoes are kind of hard to get used to again...

It might be marginally easier for Lloyd who has thrown himself back into work 110%. For me (and Lloyd kindly labels me an 'uber'-type-A), I'm doing my best to feel fulfilled by a combination of home-building, job search and CFA study, but world travel is a pretty compelling option when it's up against the best job in the world, never mind unemployment. I'm chomping at the bit to get back into the corporate world, and the 'adjustment' phase will likely endure until I'm settled in my new role. Watch this space....

Talking of home-building, we spend the first few weeks back looking at furnished homes for short-term let in the Bay Area. Ironically, we came closest to renting from a couple heading out for their own six month adventure (!), but our final walk through exposed the couple as massively uptight, with an almost obsessive compulsive disorder with regards to their home, despite the pet bird that was allowed to fly freely around the place. I guess there are cat people, and bird people. We don't understand the latter.

New apartment: moving in.

Since the bird people put us off renting furnished entirely, we quickly found an unfurnished apartment to rent in San Jose. Bearing in mind that we sold every stick of furniture with our house last May, we moved into a very sparse apartment on the 19th of January, and headed to the nearest IKEA to furnish the place. And so it is that we find ourselves living in what could easily pass as an IKEA showroom. I guess we could blame my new sister-in-law for the Swedish influence!

Anyway, look for some Trip Statistics, and Top Ten Lists in the coming days. It's a great excuse for us to relive our very happy memories.

After more than six months on the road, we left London on the 3rd of January headed "home" to San Francisco. We were excited to be headed back, but it could hardly be called "home" given that we were returning to no more than a five foot by eight foot storage unit with all our worldy belongings and a PO Box crammed full of unsolicited credit card offers.

We were convinced, however, that forces were conspiring to keep us in London. First, our taxi didn't show up to take us to Heathrow, resulting in a frantic dash across - or should I say under - London. On the bright side, we were too stressed to be sad about the end of our trip, but arriving at Heathrow with forty minutes ahead of an international flight isn't to be recommended. Suffice to say I almost concluded the trip by getting arrested for being a little too enthusiastic with my 'encouragement' for progress in the security line. But the real tragedy was that I didn't have any time for a final English Breakfast or to stock up on the British chocolates and biccies that will prove all too elusive back in the US.

Having made it to the gate in time (just), the conspiracy to keep us on the road just seemed to deepen when our 747 was grounded for almost two hours pending technical faults. Frankly, this plane seemed to have so many faults, we thought twice about staying on it - but in the event our 11 hour flight passed without incident.

Final Destination: San Francisco

I couldn't help but smile when we stepped back onto American soil. Excited about what lay ahead? Of course. Pleased that we'd soon find ourselves in the same bed for more than two nights? Definitely. Content about having to worry less about tap water, ice and ice cream? Yup. Delirious about the prospect of being reunited with my cat? Absolutely!

Lloyd's good friend, Dave, who has supported us in innumerable ways during our exodus was generous with his time - once again - and met us at the airport. If you have to return to the real world after an adventure like ours, then it's definitely better if you have a friendly face to console you in the arrival lounge.

For too many kindnesses to mention: thanks, Dave!

The weather wasn't quite as friendly and it quickly became clear that we were lucky to have landed in San Francisco at all - indeed, later flights were diverted as a ferocious storm moved through the entire Bay Area. Not quite the California sunshine we had been looking forward to! Smarter souls would stay indoors on a day like today, but Dave braved the storm to drive us the hour or so down to our until-last-June-home-town of Los Gatos.

Before I could be reunited with my cat, Lloyd had to be reunited with his baby. Would she reject him after being abandoned for six months? Would she hold it against him that he hadn't so much as let her stretch her legs during all that time? Nope! She purred right into action, with only one low tyre to show for six months in solitary confinement.

Lloyd reunited with his baby, on the left. On the right, checking to see if our worldly belongings survived...

And reunited with my baby.

So - what's next for us? Well, Lloyd goes immediately back to work, and I start looking for my next opportunity. In the meantime, we need to find somewhere to live and - most importantly - settle back into real life. It'll be interesting to see how smooth - or otherwise - this adjustment is. We'll keep posting from time to time to let you know! And now the work begins of reviewing all the photos and videos of the trip, so you can expect some lists of favourite and least favourite things too.

At 36 and 34, we had to be perhaps more careful than the average backpacker about preparing for a variety of medical scenarios across the globe. Lloyd is carrying more injury history than a professional boxer and I have an authentic set of British teeth that is simply guaranteed to cause some trouble along the way. (Lloyd says my teeth are like a house in America (framed and made of wood): they look fantastic on the outside, but the foundations are paper thin and crumbling).

Travel insurance was easy to track down. Our policy with worldnomads.com cost $477 for the six months, and covers (among other things):
- Emergency medical and dental care up to $50,000 each
- Emergence medical evacuation up to $500,000 each
- Baggage loss up to $2,500 each

In short, the intention is that this would take care of immediate issues no matter where we are, and will get us back home if needed.

But being unemployed, we realized that even if the travel insurance policy got us home, we wouldn’t actually be covered once we got there! This took a bit longer to figure out. We wanted to be covered in the US, but didn’t want to pay the massive - and I mean MASSIVE - premiums associated with COBRA given that we weren’t even going to be in the country for the period in question.

I finally came across www.healthnet.com which offers temporary – up to 6 months – ‘catastrophic’ coverage. Basically, if we were to seek the services of a physician in the US we would need to pay a hefty co-payment, but we are covered for up to $2 million after the again relatively hefty deductible of $5,000. I figured that if we get to the stage of worrying about the $5,000 deductible then we already have bigger problems.

On a day-to-day basis, we consulted a travel physician (www.wellontheroad.com) who advised us on vaccinations and on medications to carry around the globe. Based on his advice, we were stabbed multiple times over a period of six weeks to protect against Japanese Encephalitis (three shots, each two weeks apart) and Yellow Fever (one shot), and to ensure we were up to date with our Tetanus shots. Lloyd also had to take a course of tablets to protect against Typhoid, something I had already done in preparation for my 2005 India trip.

In case you’re wondering, Lloyd and I both already had Hepatitis A inoculations. And we decided against the rabies vaccine as - unlike Japanese Encephalitis - treatments for rabies are available and effective if initiated promptly.

The vaccinations came at a higher price than just our achy arms. Japanese Encephalitis was quite pricey and – as a result – our total bill was about $2,000. $2,000! And we hadn’t even got close to leaving the country yet…..

The cost of Malaria medication was the next big shocker. Based on www.cdc.gov advice, we estimated we needed about 60 days worth (exposure was actually surprisingly limited, but you need to take a full 7 days of tablets when you leave each area). At $4 a tablet, it’s a pricey business, but again something we decided not to scrimp on.

OK, if you’re still reading (and Lloyd is convinced that I’ve now bored you to death), then you’ll probably be interested in a complete list of what I’m carrying in our medical kit. The list includes prescription and non-prescription items. Here's the actual kit:

General First Aid
- Claritin-D (for Lloyd’s allergies)
- Sudafed (for Lloyd’s sinuses and for diving)
- Aleve (naproxen sodium: for Lloyd’s arthritis and general aches and pains)
- Bayer (aspirin: for Lloyd’s headaches)
- Hydrocortisone Cream (for Lloyd’s psoriasis)
- Carmex (for Lloyd’s chapped lips . . . are we noticing a trend here . . . ?)
- Benadryl Cream (topical antihistamine)
- Wal-dryl Allergy Tablets (antihistamine)
- Sleep Aids (in unmarked white container)
- Neosporin (antibiotic cream)
- Anti-Diarrheal Tablets (it’s going to happen, it’s just a question of when…..)
- Rehydration Salts
- Laxative Tablets
- Bonjela (for mouth ulcers)
- Orajel Advanced Tooth Desensitizer (Jacquie has British Teeth after all)
- Scissors
- Tweezers
- Thermometer
- Assortment of plasters and moleskin
- Burn jells
- OFF, 15% DEET (insect repellant)
- SteriKit (sterile syringes etc for emergency medical treatment)

Prescription Medication
- Malarone (atovaquone and proguanil) for malaria – 60 tablets each!
- Amoxicillin 500MG capsults (general purpose antibiotic) – 30 tablets each, 3 tablets each day for 10 days
- Ciprofloxacin 500MG (for severe traveller’s diarrhea) – 12 tablets each, 2 tablets each day for 3 days
- Acetazolamide 125MG (for prevention of altitude sickness) – 12 tablets each, 2 tablets each day
- Scopolamine Patches (for Jacquie’s motion sickness on dive boat!) – 12 patches, each lasts three days