This blog post is a compendium of the last few days activities before we leave for the UK later today.

On Saturday we had a relaxing day before we took Lesley & David, with Lesley's mother Val, out for dinner to Piermont, site of an earlier blog posting.

On Sunday we went to the Raiani's house in Suffern for dinner. Jerry & Joan Raiani are friends from when we lived here from 1985-1993. Another friend from that era, Bobby Ross, came along too. It was good to reminisce about old times & discover what people were doing now.

Mileage was 15. Total (this car) 770. Total 5062.

Monday morning I got Dave's John Deere lawn tractor out & mowed all of the lawns. In the afternoon we went down route 80 (the Interstate) to my cousin Suzannes. After a little contretemps with satnav Susie we managed to find it this time. (Last time Suzanne had to come and find us). It is out in the wilds of western New Jersey & we saw several deer on our drive there & back. Suzanne gave us pork chops for dinner, from some of their own pigs. They are steadily reducing their animal count as the work involved with them is too much for Suzanne, given John's limited abilities now.

Our drive back in the dark was interesting as we had to keep a sharp lookout for animals all the time. You do see many road kills on the roadsides here, even on the Highways.

Mileage was 174. Total (this car) 944. Total 5,236..

On Tuesday we went to visit a colleague of mine from my days at SMP, (1985-1993), John Gray & his wife Tina. They have a beautiful house in Middletown, New Jersey, about 60 miles South of here. We took a roundabout route on Interstate 287 & the heavens opened on the way there. When we arrived there was no rain & they hadn't had any, but on leaving there we ran into a terrific storm again.

Mileage was 170. Total (this car) 1,114. Total 5,406.

Yesterday we visited Suffern Free Library. This is a fairly new building, dating from 2000 & is very impressive. When we lived here there was only a small library where our son Matthew was a volunteer. This new one is on a different scale altogether.

In the evening we went to the Grand Buffet in Ramsey, New Jersey. This is an excellent Chinese buffet which we had visited before. Lesley & Dave left before us to go to Newark Airport & collect Andrew & Kim, who had been to England on holiday.

Mileage was 32. Total (this car) 1146. Total 5,438.

After many fond farewells following such a long visit, all that remained was to drive down to Newark Airport (EWR), hand over the Hertz car & start the long journey back to Emma & Tony's at Manchester. Hertz were very helpful at the Airport. When they saw how much luggage we had they immediately offered to drive us round to the BA terminal, in "our" car, instead of us having to use the shuttle. This made life easy & we were very early for our flight to Heathrow. The free wi-fi in the Airport didn't work well & it was not possible to complete the blog from there. Our flights were both smooth & uneventful, although the Manchester transfer was a few minutes late. Tony & Emma were waiting at Manchester Airport to take us back to their house in Irlam to sleep off the effects of our long trip back to Blighty.

Mileage was 55. Total (this car) 1201. Total (all three cars) 5,493.