Jake and January's Excellent Adventure

And we're back!  January and I got to spend a lovely month in the USA, visiting friends and family, and enjoying the spring as it sprang in the special way that only a New England spring can be sprung. We engaged in all the contractually obligated American activities: grilling meat, listening to Bruce Springsteen, going to Home Depot, etc. It was nice to be back on familiar ground. Our time there flew by faster than I expected. Horses, flags, mountains... America. One minute I'm enjoying a nice bike ride with my dad through rural New Hampshire, and the next thing I know January and I are on a red eye heading across the Atlantic, all 6'2" of me folded into the geometrically impossible shape necessitated by the economy class seat. I fall asleep for what feels like 18 hours but is actually 20 minutes. I look at the in-flight map and see that we are over the literal middle of the ocean, which gives me a crawly feeling in my spine. I decide that I will not look at the map a...