Last morning

It's nearly 8.30am and today we will be heading home. The camera is packed so this is a shot out of the hotel room window taken with my phone, showing the Free State Brewery to the left of the theatre; a rather good bar! It's snowing fairly heavily and we have around 40 miles to drive from Lawrence to Kansas City airport for the flight home, so we will allow plenty of time. There are no direct flights so the return leg is via Dallas with only a short time to change terminals so I hope everything is on time. Even so, we won't land in London until 9.20am Tuesday morning, so it's going to be a long journey. It's been a good week and there's also been a not entirely flippant suggestion that W comes back here to work for a couple of years on a project that needs her skills, but I can't see it happening.

I've added an extra (which admittedly was taken yesterday) to show that I can usually find a steam engine wherever I go! An ex Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe engine on display in a local park.

And whilst I'm not big on poetry, as we will be travelling for the next 18 hours or so, here is a poem about travelling, Ithaka by C.P. Cavafy, that I rather like.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.