Homeward bound and reflections

4 am comes early no matter which side of the country you are on. My host managed to arrange a Lyft (similar to Uber) Taxi ride for me rather than drive me herself. I had actually been planning to take Uber, but because it's a taxi service where drivers are like you and me it's not always for sure that cars are available.
So Steve came to pick me up in his jeep (my bike box fit great :) and within 1/2 hr I was at the airport checking in.
This time I had absolutely no issues with my bike, in fact, they didn't charge me anything more than a regular checked bag! Guess that makes up for the $150 I was charged by their partner airline, Delta, coming to the States.
Then there was one line up after another, going through security.
Apparently it's Westjets 20th birthday today! Not that it made any difference to me.
Flight went smoothly and we got in 20 minutes ahead of schedule! I had to wait quite awhile for the oversize baggage to deliver my bike box, but I had time to kill waiting for my ride so it was no big deal.
So that's it. I'm back in Canada.
Saw Chef Graham Elliot at the airport as he was whisked away. I though that was pretty cool especially after seeing him on the Masterchef tv shows.
I was grateful not to have snow, ice or bitter cold to deal with on my first day back, but I'm sure I will be seeing some of that in the coming month yet.
After having lived with a "less is more" attitude for the past four weeks it is strange to come back to the life I left behind, to find I have a drawer full of socks and wondering why I have so many! But remembering I don't want to have to have to do my laundry every three days just to keep things clean! Oh the luxuries we take for granted!
I felt more content with what I had this trip, didn't miss jeans and hoodies quite so much.
Simplicity is a beautiful thing, the less you have the less there is to worry about and keep track of! It was, at times, hard enough keeping tabs on my two cycling panniers worth of stuff!
Walking into a grocery store felt overwhelming! So many choices! After being grateful for what others have provided and getting by with small stores it was crazy having to make food/spending choices on something as everyday as groceries again.
I feel very tanned in comparison to the majority of people here. And being tanned makes me feel like I'm somehow privileged, because I had the opportunity to go somewhere warm enough to be out in the sunshine!
In some ways I feel I have changed through this experience and yet I know it won't be long before I slip back into the life I left behind again and loose sight of the things I was challenged by, like paper use. After seeing truck loads of big trees that had been logged head towards paper mills, it made me realize I wanted to use less paper, waste less resources. I know the trees are grown to produce paper but still, it just seems... Like we can be better stewards of resources.
How little we actually need. If we have food, clothing and shelter we have so much! We have so much to be grateful for here in the west, and yet how often we fail to recognize how much we have and be thankful.
Seems to me it's only in seeing the depth of our need that we can truly be grateful for what we receive.