Back in KSA

OK, you already know I've been back for over a week, but I want to close out the journey travelogue, if y'all don't mind. Beyond a couple of regulars, I don't know who reads this, but it's fun for me and I get to make stuff up if I want to, so I'll keep it up. This then starts on my flight from Dallas to Dubai:

I'm at FL330 (33,000 feet) in a Boeing 777 over northern Canada, approaching the North Atlantic coast. The ground is covered in snow and all the lakes are iced over at the end of April. It just seems surreal. It's beautiful, but a strange contrast to where I've been for the past year!

Earlier I left DFW and we flew right over Northwest Arkansas, and I could see Fayetteville out my window, and later we flew north of Montreal on a great circle route to Dubai. (below, Fayetteville and Springdale)

I left Saudi Arabia 3 weeks ago to go home, and the long, pleasant, mild Saudi spring was nearly over. Since then the temps have returned to upper 90s and low 100s every day.  I arrived in Arkansas to a glorious spring of mild temperatures, beautiful blue skies, and stunningly clear night vistas, which you don't see in KSA because there is so much light pollution. Here's the Arkansas forecast I left:

 Dharhar forecast (what I came back to!):

 

The 14.5 hour flight DFW to Dubai was uneventful, and I actually got about 6 hours of sleep - something of a record for me. Generally I cannot sleep on planes. My pilot senses just never let go of what's going on and I can't relax enough to sleep. I was so tired this time it wasn't too hard to rest. The following shots are approaching Dubai - one of them what it looks like everywhere here. It is a land of brown. The other shows a small town outside Dubai, and folks that's about as green as it gets here.

I took pictures on the ground in Dubai, but nothing new from my trip home except for this one, from the subway between terminals. I just like it, and am pleased that the iPad camera captured this motion so well.

I'm now boarded for the final leg of this journey, from Dubai to Dammam, and I'm sitting in a non-window seat for the first time in years! Hopefully I'll make it ok! Here's what business class looks like on a Boeing 777 with Emirates Airlines, in case you've wondered! It's a snug fit for someone my size, but it still stretches out full length which is wonderful on a 16+ hour flight.

We touched down at Dammam at 1700 local (0900 cdt us), just under 24 hours for the trip from XNA, and in 25 minutes I was through immigration, had my bags, and on the way out the door with my taxi driver - gotta be some kind of record! 

I do want to add a word of praise and appreciation for Dana. This past year was tough for her. While I was gone, she shot a busy schedule of portraits and weddings without me, dealt with significant health issues and problems at home and difficult people. It was hard, but she managed it, issues were dealt with and the work got done. Many women have told me they could never do what Dana is doing, and many men have told me their wives could never do it. I'm so proud of you, sweetheart. 

The night after I arrived we had a big storm here. Guys who've been here for 20 years say they've never seen anything like it. The damage looked like a tornado hit - signs bent over, panels stripped off buildings, walls stretched on the inside, and hundreds of trees broken or uprooted. Luckily this is a very green oasis and will recover. Many of the downed trees have been cleared, but there are still areas without water, and our building has very low pressure so there are some restrictions while things get repaired.

But then yesterday I was walking and came across this little lovely in the afternoon sun! It looks and smells like a magnolia - must be from the same family. Whatever it is, it made me smile! 

This weekend I'm taking a local excursion to see what could be an amazing place. I will post pictures when I have them ready. Here is a link with some information if you're interested!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mada%27in_Saleh

Best to all!! Mark

What I did on my trip home

Written weeks ago while home:

It's great to be home surrounded by green! I miss green in the desert. It's wonderful to be with Dana, and Sunday was Darby's birthday and we got to spend some time with her. Next weekend we'll see the comedian Sinbad at the Walton Arts Center, a comic we've always enjoyed and laughed with - what a treat! Lots of landscaping and planting and yardwork to do, which is great! I love being outside working with rocks and dirt and green things!

Written today to explain what I wrote weeks while home:

It was lovely to be surrounded by green!! I had no idea, before living in the land of brown, how refreshing, positive, and rejuvenating it is to be surrounded by green, luscious, living things! And as a bonus, I was home during spring when so many things were blooming!

I took these pictures with my iPad just to see how it would do to capture some detail. Then I went in and got my big camera to get some better shots. Sadly, I forgot to download those pictures and bring them with me, and somehow while home I managed to disable the utility that let's me connect to my home system from KSA. At some point I'll get Dana to help with that because I'd like to see those shots and share them. For now, though, I hope these will do!

And everything was blooming! The dogwoods, redbuds, daffodils, and wild flowers everywhere. We live in the woods and there is an amazing variety of beautiful little flowers that come up out of the leaves. 

Another thing hiding under the leaves is rocks! Our hillside grows them better than anything. The layer of topsoil is relatively thin over a layer of stone, and when the oaks and hickory trees push through they break up the layer into smaller stones. Sadly this also means we have many mature trees that souls live for another 50 years in good soul, but that have reach their limit in the fragile foothold they have at our place - they tend to blow over at some point, and we have several we'll need to remove soon. 

But Dana and I have been planning some landscaping projects for years that are finally underway! A big part of that involved me moving several tons of rock that I dug up to make a new walkway and rebuild a wall.  We also moved part of our fence, put up some lattice to cover the area below a deck, and planted a whole bunch of flowers, but sadly we ran out of daylight and energy before we could get them all in the ground. 

There's never enough time on one of these trips to get done everything you wish to. It's tough to jam in a year's worth of doctor appointments, dental cleaning and a new crown, work with our accountant, and re-landscape our place in a few weeks. I don't think we could've gotten much more done! And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  I loved working outside and doing hard, physical tasks. 

My next big trip away from KSA will be in August - more on that later but we're gonna have a blast! This coming weekend I'll take a short trip, though. When I was in high school I was fortunate to be able to go on a choir trip, and part of that was in Jordan where we saw the ancient city of Petra, carved out of the mountains (below).





This weekend I will go to Petra's sister city, Meddin Saleh in Saudi Arabia, at the other end of the trade route.  I planned this months ago and am now questioning my judgement to put one trip so close to the other. I'm still tired! But it'll work out and I can't wait to see what kind of images I can get - I'm a much better photographer now than I was in high school.  One of these trips home I will take a few hours to find those Petra images (which were pretty good, if memory serves) so I can have a matched set. I'll let you know!

The rest of the way home

I do apologize. I had every intention of writing a couple of posts while I was home, but it turned into quite a marathon of appointments, doctor visits, dental work, yardwork and landscaping! Dana and I only went to see one movie (Captain America: the Winter Soldier; I recommend it!), but we did hit most of my favorite restaurants!

What follows then is a description of the rest of my trip home, and some images I took along the way and at home. Most of this was written enroute on my iPad with the hope of posting blogs along the way, but I haven't found a way to upload images from the iPad to the blog server.

We arrived at Toronto after an uneventful flight, and I learned that I'd missed my American flight to DFW, but was rebooked and pre-checked in on a later Air Canada flight. All I had to do was get through immigration, collect my bag, go to get a boarding pass, go through security, and get to the gate. No problem, eh?

Well, yeah, of course there was on a Pirate day. Arrrrrr! After doing all of the above I got to the Air Canada desk to get my boarding pass 45 minutes before departure, only to be told that I could go, but couldn't check my bag since it was less than an hour from takeoff.  Aaarrrgghhh! Another good plan shot down!

At this point there was only one obvious choice - give in. I got the Air Canada agent to rebook me for the first flight out in the morning, then went to find the Emirates counter. The very nice gentleman behind the counter set me up for he night at the airport Sheraton hotel with dinner and breakfast vouchers, and started work on arranging a flight from DFW to XNA late afternoon the next day.

I checked into the hotel and it was great - the most quiet airport hotel I've experienced.  I never heard a sound all night! The room was great, and after letting Dana know about the plans I went down for dinner and enjoyed a terrific steak. BTW, if you want a taste of scotch and it isn't on the menu, ASK the price before ordering. I paid as much for a double Chivas as I did for my steak, and could've bought a bottle for that price. Silly.

Afterwards I went to the spa for a massage, which was badly needed. I've had a painful kink in my neck for weeks, and haven't found anything to take care of it, but it is amazingly all better this morning. The Chinese lady who worked on me, Angela, was brutally effective. It hurt. But she got to the root areas which were tied in knots and got them worked out. I woke up pain free for the first time in a month! Oh, so nice!

This was a long, long day.

Day two
I ended up getting close to seven hours of sleep, and got up rested and ready to go and on the local time. Check in and all was quick and easy this morning, and I am now halfway to Dallas, and will have a couple of hours before my XNA flight. 


We just flew over a small town, Mountainberg, a few miles from home! It was very easy to identify from the dam and reservoir that were completed a few years ago. From there it was nice to follow up the road and see Fayetteville in the distance! No details but lovely to see it from here. It's nice to be at 30,000 ft. The flight is smooth with just a little chop, and it's a pretty day!

On the ground at Dallas it felt  nice to be one step closer to home. There were two slightly surreal moments. On the train from the arrival terminal we went by the International terminal, and parked there was an Emirates B777 that I should've been on 24 hours ago, and that if I'd taken their first offer in Dubai I'd have come in on today.  Then, walking past a Chilis on the concourse, one of the TVs was showing the Bahrain Formula 1 auto race that I could've attended if I wasn't coming home!

The flight from DFW to XNA must surely have set a record of some kind. Maybe the pilot needed to pee, or his girlfriend was waiting, or something, but it felt like the throttle barely left the MAX setting until touchdown. With a departure  time of 1345, we pushed from the gate at 1340 - i cant remember the last time a flight left the gate on time, much less early! 

Even taxiing for takeoff it seemed we were going pretty quick; not unsafe, just rapid. As we approached the runway I could see a jet on final approach but we didn't slow down. I could imagine the clearance from the tower: "American 123, you are cleared for takeoff, expedite departure for landing traffic." We made a quick turn onto the runway with the throttles advancing, so by the time we were aligned with the runway it was a quick advance to takeoff power and we were almost off the ground, with liftoff at 1350! The published flight time from Dallas to northwest Arkansas is 1+05 hours. Today, from takeoff to parked at the XNA gate took 46 minutes! Wow! Reminds me of my days flying fast jets! 

It has always been wonderful to get home from a trip, and returning from a long overseas deployment is even better, let me tell you! And to come home to NWA from Saudi Arabia is like coming back to color! More on the that in my next post, but as a preview above is a shot of an oak tree ready to leaf out under a beautiful blue sky, and here is my favorite shot of Darby and Nyima who came to see me!