My last day in Cali, Rishi helped my pack up my bike, drop the rest of my crap at Goodwill, and then spent the rest of the afternoon eating Mexican and playing Carcassonne. It was a lovely Rishi afternoon. Mary picked up me and my stuff then, and we went to Caro & Thad`s for dinner. One last home-made pasta dinner with lovely people and the menagerie. Then Mary & I went up to the City one last time for a night-time view from Coit Tower, and then to the airport.
I have Silver Status with Aeroplan, which generally means that I get 3 free checked bags. I had 3 bags + my bike, and I did expect to pay for the bike, which is fine. Unfortunately I was flying United instead of Air Canada, and United doesn`t honour any of its partner airline`s perks. So my luggage was going to cost $700 to get back to Canada. $700! I`d only paid $300 for the ticket. So after some walking around between the Air Canada desk and United desks (which were in different terminals - pain!), I just cancelled my ticket with United, they gave me a voucher, and I went back to Mary`s.
After some interneting, it turned out I could book on Air Canada with points. So for $62, I got my one-way flight back to Canada on the Monday night, now direct instead of with a stop-over, and free luggage checking, including my bike. Man, United sucks so much! So gave Rishi a call, Mary took me home to my old flat, and Rishi & Amy & I hung out playing Carcassonne until about 1am. It was lovely.
I missed Oscar night with the Alexandra Ave neighbourhood ladies, but got a bonus dinner with Rishi and Amy on Sunday night, and bonus Cultural Exchange dinner with Nimali and Sarah Trosin and Helen on Monday, so that was nice too.
When I left Australia, I knew that I would be back, and the friends I made there would last forever. We were all going to scatter all over the globe - we all knew that - but the community at UNSW was such that even if you never studied together, its like you`re part of this PV club, and you`re all just one or two degrees of separation from each other, and you`ll all be friends, no matter what. Leaving California felt different. I didn`t think it would be as hard to leave as it was. Nimali came over one night, and gave me a gift and we had a bit of a cry. A lot of us had been through some very tough times over the past two years - difficult break-ups, deaths of immediate family members, the big life stuff - and we`d been there for each other through it all. It`s tough, when these things hit you and you`re far from you family and friends back home. So we`d become a bit of a California family, and it`s sad to leave that.
But, if there`s anything I`ve learned over the past 10 years, it`s that I love travel too much not to see all these lovely folks in the future. And I`m still friends with my high school friends, and uni friends, and Australia friends, and the Cali friends will be no different. Some may stick better than others, but they are definitely keepers, and we`ll be sure to have many more adventures together.
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