"Home again, home again, jiggety jig."

Not sure if that is quite right, but it's from a nursery rhyme I used to do with James.  Today is travel day back to Seattle.  James cooked me a splendid breakfast of whole wheat blackberry pancakes with veggie sausage to set me up right for the trip.  

I have traveled a fair amount of the country in these 22 days. The first two long train rides were perhaps the most beautiful -- from Seattle, along the Pacific Coast, to Los Angeles; and then from Los Angeles, across the desert to Santa Fe.  I flew to Austin, and had the chance to drive across a good part of Texas as well.  From Austin to elegant Chapel Hill, "the Athens of the South" as my friend Matt called  it.  I loved the trees and gardens.  I think it was on the freezing cold Carolinian that my cold got a lot worse.  But I still saw and did a lot while in Princeton with Mary and her family, and I'm glad for the extra time I had with them.  Coming to Pittsburgh to stay with James has rounded things off nicely.   I wouldn't have missed James and his world for anything.

Since I did business only at the front of the trip, I'll need to plot a trip back for meetings in New York and Washington DC.    

We're off now for the Carnegie Library and a couple of other visits before I leave Pittsburgh.