Closing out our US Trip

The last week of our trip to the US was as busy as the first.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent in Sedona.  My daughter was very excited to climb a mountain and was very disappointed when we did not climb to the top.  She always likes our trips to Sedona and this visit was no exception....though leading up to the trip she kept telling everyone she was going to Barcelona on Tuesday.  My son took advantage of our time in Sedona to begin walking unassisted.  This newly discovered mobility has him wreaking more havoc than ever before.

Thursday, I met my good friend Peter Faur for lunch (if you have not checked out his blog, you really should - great stuff).  Pete was helping me setup a meeting with Bob Begam to discuss becoming an author.  When that meeting didn't occur, Pete and I decided to just meet ourselves and had a great discussion.

Before and after our lunch, I spent my day running errands while my wife and kids spent time with my wife's sister who also has children just a few weeks separated from our own.  I shipped two boxes back to Jakarta.  The first one contained 120 pounds of food.  Shipping it to Jakarta increased the cost of the food by 50%....which still gave me a 50% savings over what it would cost to buy in Jakarta.  When the clerk asked me what I was shipping and I said "120 pounds of Jell-O", she laughed.  Then I showed her the receipt and she realized I was serious.  Well, it was actually more like 60 pounds of Jell-O, and 60 pounds of salsa, beans, cake mix, frosting (which you cannot find in Jakarta), peanut butter, baby food and cereal.  The other box was all the toys from our son's first birthday party.

Thursday night we toured the potential site for our new store and then met my sister and her new husband for dinner.

Friday we spent the morning tying up loose ends and returning things to our house in Phoenix that we did not want to bring back with us to Jakarta.  We left our hotel around 2:30 and dropped off the rental car and made our 5 PM flight.  Walking on the plane, I noticed that our CAO was on the same flight.  We spoke briefly and discovered he would be on all the same flights to Jakarta.  We were both flying Business Class, and I was worried my son would have a repeat performance of our trip to the US and keep the boss of my boss', boss', boss awake the whole time.

We had a two hour layover in Los Angeles and took advantage of the Business Class lounge to let our son practice his new, yet wobbly, walking skills.  We hoped it would fatigue him enough that he would sleep most of the flight.  Flying to the US, we had a stopover in Tokyo.  Returning to Jakarta, we were on the new Singapore Airlines all Business Class direct flight from Los Angeles to Singapore.  The plane is much smaller (it's not a 747), but the whole plane is Business Class - 39 rows of 1-2-1 seating.  On a normal flight, we would have been a few feet from my CAO.  Thanks to this new flight option, we were 20 rows back.  Our son slept most of the flight, so it wouldn't have been an issue, anyway, but I was glad to have the separation.

For those of you who asked, we were not affected by the erupting volcano.  It is on the same island as Jakarta, but quite far south.  The airport in the city nearest the volcano (which we visited in January) was still open - and remains open even today.  Volcanoes are regionally catastrophic, but the region is small.  For Mt. Merapi, the emergency zone is a 12 mile radius around the volcano.  See the A and B points in the below map.  The volcano is over 300 miles from us.  We are very safe.


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