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John Harris has absconded from Australia for five weeks with his wife Sandy and eight-year-old daughter Eden. While the true purpose of their trip to North America is to spend Christmas with Canadian friends in the snowy suburban streets of Ottawa, they have extended the front end of the trip and the back end of the trip with so many add-ons that the Norwood City Council is considering sending in the building inspectors. This itinerary is enough to make grown travel agents shudder: Disneyland, Hollywood, the Big Easy, the Bad DC, the Big Apple, the Big Hole in the Ground, Lost Wage and that Pacific island where you get leied on arrival. Will it stand the strain? Will it collapse? Dear reader, I know not, so read on to discover how it all turns out.

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Santa was on steroids this year

Highlight of our Christmas in Canada

  •  Eden and Erin were as closely matched as if they hatched out of the same shell

  • Just four of us to eat a gigantic roast turkey dinner followed by pumpkin pie

  • The unbounded generosity of the Langes

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No need to dream of a white Christmas

Highlight of our first day and a half:

  •  Watching Eden and Erin play immediately after a two-year gap

  • Tobogonning in real snow at Erin and Marc's school

  • Walking through Canada's history at the Museum of Civilization

  • Visiting CostCo to buy cereal and finding a 52 inch LCD TV

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Towns play the soundtrack of my life

“Who do you think will win next year’s presidential election?”

I’m not sure what surprised me most: The question or the questioner.

Why, I wondered, would an American citizen ask that question of a visiting Australian about US politics? And how did this question arise from an Amtrak train attendant as I was staggering along the sleeping door corridor on my way to the lounge car?

Well, I guess the winter nights are long in Georgia and our mighty iron horse was plunging through the darkness somewhere between Atlanta and the border with South Carolina, so I treated the question as an opening gambit in a conversation.

More News...

  1. North America 2007: Los Angeles to New Orleans (11 December 2007)
  2. North America 2007: Hollywood (08 December 2007)
  3. North America 2007: Washington DC (16 December 2007)
  4. North America 2007: Seeing Neil Young in New York City (16 December 2007)
  5. North America 2007: New Orleans (13 December 2007)
  6. North America 2007: Disneyland (02 December 2007)
  7. Fighting the Fear and Loathing of my 50th Birthday (01 August 1959)