16 juin

Boarded, and immediately fell asleep until it was time deplane. We had a long layover, but not long enough to explore the city. Slept for a while, then boarded our plane for Boston. BORING FLIGHT, crappy movies, and I had read put near everything Chris and I had with us. The transition to the States was mass confusion. Customs did not know what to do with our bikes. Chris’s bike jammed the security scanner. Some dingbat sent me to lost luggage – without scanning my bike (her boss noticed as I made my escape). Lost luggage had no idea why I was there, but was very helpful. We had to go through security again (and Boston security is now the most anal retentive organization on the planet – which is somewhat like shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped). It turns out that most of our flight from Amsterdam has been screwed by customs, and rerouted to the unsecured area of the airport. So we all now had to go back through security. It’s difficult how to describe how slow this process was, and how tense we all were since what had been an easy connection had become very tight. It turned out that Chris had left a Swiss army knife in his backpack. He had made it through security in Lyon and Amsterdam, but alas he had to give it away on the last leg of our journey. Made it to our gate in time to have a beer and buy some much-needed deodorant. Uneventful flight back to Memphis. Lisa and Jamie met us at the airport.