So, in the tradition of my RU write-ups, I'm going to start with the journey home. Which I've just done. The more observant among you will notice that that means I am posting *fresh information* just after the information came into being, which the most keen-eyed of all will notice is not like me at all. And breathe.

Settle down at the back.

The day begins at 9am. Strictly, it began at midnight and thanks to someone who shall remain nameless*, I was still up at 5am. Now, I know what you're thinking but no, I am not Ellmyruh. Those times I just mentioned are special one-offs, so don't get expecting any more. Ahem. Where was I?

Oh, yes. Morning. A lot of things go through your mind of a morning. Like "can I get away with sleeping longer," "uhhh," and "what the hell is this?" The first thing that went through mine was Stephen, standing in the doorway like a colossal harbinger of death and enqiring as to the location of his camera. A moment later the Stephen-shaped blackness was replaced by a door-shaped one and all seemed right with the world. Rooms seem a lot emptier once Stephen isn't in them, but that's mostly to do with the radical increase in oxygen content.

Boring
Stuff
Happened
Involving
Getting
Up (hehe, the first letters spell "bshigu")

I went outside. Ell was there, shoving body bags into her car. Rivikah was also there, being Rivikah and glaring at people who she thought might ask her to say "about." Now, this isn't going to be a blow-by-blow account of what happened that day. I am merely setting up a general atmosphere so that you can live the experience in the comfort and safety of your own home or workplace. The atmosphere I'm trying to create is one of people getting ready to leave.

They left. So did just about everyone else. Those of us that remained went shopping, perhaps to make up for the utter lack of shopping that went on at Seaport Village.

Things What Happened At The Shops And Might Be Of Interest To People Like You

- I said that the time was "half one."
- We left.

You're a boring lot.

Air Stuff

The local airport is a masterpiece of airport design, built as it is to stop you from accessing any gate other than your own after going through the metal detectors. Once again, Maryam was stopped and taken aside for questioning. On reflection, it was a bad idea to put that sticker on her back.

Flight number one was largely uninteresting, consisting as it did of listening to channel five on the radio and trying to think of interesting posts. I shall spare you, gentle reader, any more of the details because I'm sure that other RU-goers will have already written reams of text about putting on their socks. I'm all for short, sharp postage with lots of made-up words like "postage." Well, it's a real word but not in that context.

We landed on the water, which later became San Francisco airport. I had a muffin. It was not tasty. After an hour of not being told that our flight was delayed, we left.

The poor stewardess (air cabin personnel, whatever) mimed the oxygen mask thingy to thirty individuals looking somewhere else.

Eight minutes before we rose above the clouds in our little turbo prop plane thingy, the sun decided to set. Fortunately for us, that meant we got to see it and it was one of the oohest I have ever seen that didn't involve the floor. The cloud at the time was perfectly even and 100% coverage, and there was no second layer above us. It was a cloud gathering you could pack hard drives in, if you were unbelievably stupid. And I wouldn't believe you if you were.

To complete the picture, more planes appeared in the sky. One did the cool "rising from the depths" thing, and another was apparently posing for a travel agent's logo. It was only slightly ruined it spontaneously burst into flame and fell to burning agony hell death below**. Still, it looked cool.

I saw Sacramento before seeing any buildings. The now-familiar concept of smog is helping me tell when we're approaching civilisation, and I can't work out the best way to finish this sentence so I'll just say that cake is really nice.

We land, we come home, I type this. You read it. Probably. I don't know what happens next chronologically, but I do know that there's an asterisk or two to explain down next physically.

* Although not literally, she does actually have a name and so technically can't remain nameless. It is merely the metaperson, that I am generating through power of description, that has yet to be (and won't be) named and so will in many ways not be given the form required to tie them to the real Cynthia

** Lie

*** It was really only about five

Matthew