Homebound, Part III: finally.

On the plane, just after I finished the second post in this series

Hi, friends.  Here's the last part of the story for you...

The rest of the flight went surprisingly smoothly...and I will admit that when I felt the wheels hit the ground, I bounced in my seat like a small child.  "I'm home!" I squealed to my seatmate, a graying old codger who surveyed my glee with obvious amusement.

In hindsight, perhaps having my camera out at Customs and Border Control wasn't the wisest decision...but hey, I was excited.

I have never in my life seen customs at JFK that empty.  I made it through that line in five minutes, and then found that a porter had already taken my 50-lb (23-kg) bag off the carousel for me.  That's never happened to me before.  On top of all this, my flight had landed an hour ahead of schedule...so my dad hadn't even left the house yet!

So as I waited and breathed the smoggy New York air, I ran outside to capture the moment.

Near one of the taxi stands

I wasn't kept waiting for very long...and to my surprise, my dad had brought my brother and my sister along!  While the men sat in the car, my sister and I charged into one another and hugged for about ten minutes straight.

Here she is.  Isn't she a bombshell?

My dad had a few errands to run while we were in Queens...so he let my brother tag along.  After all, his girls were happy to gab while they waited in the car.

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My sister snapped this from the backseat.

I was so gleeful about being back in my city that I couldn't help but whip out my camera and take approximately a bazillion photos like these.

This is somewhere on 34th Street, I think.

And I'm not posting any more because they're all embarrassingly touristy.

I'll bet you're wondering why we made the detour into Manhattan.  Well, my sister needed to catch a train back to Philadelphia that very afternoon...which had me quite dejected.  No matter, though; she'll be back this weekend.

As she crossed the street to enter Penn Station.  She is too beautiful.

After we dropped her off, we sailed onto the West Side Highway.  I was so ready to see my mother at this point that I could barely hold it together.  So to distract me, my brother - who used to be quite shy about singing in front of people - sang me that song Adele performed in the new Bond movie.  We're big Adele fans, the two of us.

He's grown so tall since I last saw him!

There was no traffic.  None.  On the West Side Highway, this is a rarity.  So it was only fifteen minutes before we turned into the driveway...

Home.  Finally.