Travel Biography - Week 72.

Meeting Up with a Friend from the UK.

Not all of the five days I spent in San Francisco was I alone. There was a day when I got together with a friend who used to live near me in Bracknell, my home town, before moving across the Atlantic to San Mateo, a small Californian town around 20 miles south of San Francisco. He was friends with all my other church friends - mainly Keith, Gareth, Tim, and others. They were the same friends with whom I enjoyed a cycling trip across Holland, Belgium, and Germany in 1987, as described in Travel Biography: Week 40.

His name was Bill, and his move from the UK to California was connected with his occupation. This meeting reminded me of my other friend I stayed with at Walnut Creek in 1977, Valentine Orlando. After arriving in San Francisco, I made contact with him and a date was arranged for us to meet. 

One morning, he arrived at the hostel reception foyer and we met. After talking and finding out each other's welfare, I agreed to a car ride out from the city to call first at his home, where he lived with a female partner, and then onward along the Californian Pacific coastline.

Footbridge to Strawberry Hill, Golden Gate Park.

San Mateo looked to be a quiet residential area on the San Francisco Peninsula. San Mateo looked quite different from the bustling streets of the city. The town sits on the San Francisco Bay coastline, facing northeast into the bay. However, a 13-mile car drive southwest from San Mateo and one arrives at Half Moon Bay, on the Pacific coastline. This goes to show how huge the whole of this 60-mile-long bay is, even 20 miles south of San Francisco. From San Mateo, the bay extends further south until it ends at the city of San Jose. Hence, the whole bay, including Pablo Bay towards the north, is considered the largest coastal inlet in America. 

After socialising at his house, the two of us set out into the countryside whilst his girlfriend remained at home. Along the way, we halted at San Andreas Lake, a ribbon body of water which sits directly over the San Andreas fault line. Here is where the two tectonic plates rub against each other, causing earthquakes like the massive 9.6 magnitude one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 - the Pacific Plate slowly moving northwest against the North American plate. This means the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego are moving very slowly northwards. 

After a while, we arrived at the Pacific coastline, and Bill drove further south until we arrived at a beach car park. After stepping out of the car, we had to walk along a footpath that passed through a thicket of bushes whose leaves left irritated the skin when touched. Bill knew about these bushes and warned me. With caution, we managed to navigate our way through safely.

The beach was sandy with some rocky stretches. There was no one else around, just the two of us as we strolled leisurely along the beach. Neither of us bathed in the sea. Despite the calmness and the sunny sky, the sea didn't look that inviting. Furthermore, and what I had considered a deterrent from any attempts to swim, were the decomposing bodies of dead seals lying here and there on the sand. One of them had its ribcage fully exposed to the air, indicating that it had lain there for a considerable time and was well advanced in decomposing.

By looking down at the corpse, my mind was brought back to Sea World in San Diego. There were seals there, all of them well-fed and looked after. How these seals died in their natural environment and then washed up on the beach, I would never know for sure. Instead, I could only theorise that they might have been infected by a seaborne virus. The very sight of several corpses lying washed up on the beach seems to support the virus theory.

Bill and I spent much of the day together on the Pacific coastline. It was so peaceful, so quiet and serene when compared to the bustle of the city, especially San Francisco, laden with tourists visiting so many of the attractions. Eventually, Bill drove me back to the city and to my hostel on Market Street, where we said farewell. The next time I heard his voice was over the phone in a restaurant a few miles from home, wishing me all the best in the future during my stag night in the autumn of 1999!

The rocky Pacific Coast

Rocky coast of North California.

Preparing for the Flight Home.

While Bill and I were strolling along the beach, deep in my heart I felt sad and my friend noticed it. When he asked what the matter was, I admitted my sadness at the thought of the need to fly back home. He understood, and he was sympathetic. This was the beginning of an emotional disorder known as post-holiday blues. Both backpackers and beach sunseekers can suffer from it. There was even an article about it in a travel magazine. One travel agent, Trailfinders, the agent I booked this holiday with, had just opened a department for counselling backpackers suffering from the blues and guiding them back to normal day-to-day living. To me, post-holiday blues means that I can't resume work for several days after the touchdown at London Heathrow Airport.

Hence, in 1995, 1997, and even after our honeymoon, I avoided the "Touchdown Sunday, back to work Monday" ethic. But that was the advantage of self-employment, to be my own boss, and leaving me to decide when to resume work without any risk of a reprimand or even dismissal. However, a hidden danger within this way of thinking was that not showing up for too long a time would encourage my clientele to lose patience and switch to another window cleaner.

However, during a very severe bout of post-holiday blues in 1997, rather than seek counselling at a London travel agency, after landing at Heathrow Airport on a Wednesday morning on a flight from Los Angeles, the silence in my apartment was overbearing! After ten weeks out of the UK, I was so used to the daily social bustle in the hostel, that I couldn't cope with the silence. The best decision I made was to phone a friend who lived a couple of miles away and announce that I had just arrived home and I felt emotionally strained. The wife invited me over. So, almost immediately, I cycled to Tim and Sharon's, and at their home, I gradually found my bearings as I shared my experience. On Monday, four days after landing, I was ready for work. 

During my final morning in San Francisco, I booked a minibus to collect me and take me to the airport. The minibus calls at the hostel every morning and I watched other backpackers carry their knapsacks as they boarded the bus. Now it was my turn. The Grand Central Hostel was the only hostel I had ever stayed in where such a service operated. For a fee, paid at the reception, getting to the airport was straightforward.

I made it to the airport for the 12:00 p.m. flight to London Heathrow. However, at check-in, I was told that there would be a six-hour delay before take-off. This was due to the plane suffering from a six-hour delay before it took off from London Heathrow to get here.

Rather than feeling frustrated over the delay out of San Francisco, Instead, I felt a degree of pity for those stuck at Heathrow for six hours when they should have been soaring high in the sky as they looked forward to the start of their holidays. However, having already checked in, I couldn't leave the airport departure lounge to return to the city. All I could do was mope around.

At last, that evening, we were called to the boarding gate. On board the plane, I got talking to a young man sitting next to me (I had a window seat) and we got talking. It was a Tuesday, and the plane was originally meant to land in London around 6:00 a.m. BST on a Wednesday. This gave the man sitting next to me enough time to get home, unpack, and go straight to work. But with the six-hour delay, he decided to take the rest of the day off. I thought, Heavens!

Thus, after arriving home to my empty apartment, post-holiday blues began to set in. It was less severe in 1995 than it was in 1997, therefore I was able to handle it adequately. Yet, in the long run, the whole trip was therapeutic after the disastrous three-month trip to Israel a year previously in 1994, when I was thrown out of Stella Carmel Christian Conference Centre, by the wish of just one hostile volunteer, Josephine. Any painful emotion I suffered during the months between 1994 and 1995 was eliminated by the 1995 trip to the USA, which so far, I rank as one of the best trips I had ever made and enjoyed.

If you wish to read again what occurred at Stella Carmel in 1994, it's Travel Biography - Week 54.

Countryside at San Andreas Lake.

Looking back, I could see how Providence worked everything out for my benefit, even if it involved a lot of emotional pain. If it wasn't for the cruelty thrown at me by Jo, and the dismissal from the Centre in 1994, this trip wouldn't have occurred. The Grand Canyon would have remained unvisited, unhiked. San Diego would remain unknown to me, and at Huckleberry Finn Hostel in St Louis, I wouldn't have met James. And what happens after that, which is still to come, will be, to me at least, mind-blowing!

Therefore, I'm not exaggerating when I say that the 1995 trip to the USA had healed my negative emotions the year earlier. Once again, I can look at the world with my eyes open and with a smile.

However, on the day I arrived home from Heathrow Airport, I was down with the post-holiday blues. It was a Wednesday and I didn't intend to resume work until the following Monday. So, that afternoon, a cycling trip to town was in order. I had some photographic film ready to be developed. For any younger readers of this site, in the nineties, all photography was with a camera loaded with a film roll or cassette. When all 36 snapshots were taken, the exposed film was taken to a pharmacy here in the UK, such as Boots Chemist. It took up to a week for the photos to come back, which I collected with the submission of a special receipt. Week 60 of this Biography has most of the 1995 Grand Canyon hike, all taken with a roll of film.

A fuller view of San Andreas Lake.

1995 was my third trip to the USA after 1977 and 1978 featuring San Francisco (Weeks 15 and 23 respectively.) At this point in writing, there will be two more trips to the USA still to come. But as for both the Grand Canyon and San Francisco, there have been no more visits to this day, mainly due to marriage. However, still to come include San Diego Santa Monica, and New York. Three places not yet visited include Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Boston. 

Here begins the quiet year, the interlude between two major trips. But I didn't spend 1996 moping and doing nothing. In the summer of that year, I attempted a hike on the West Coast Path from Bournemouth to Exeter. But I have deemed it a failure, even after arriving at Exeter. The cause of the failure? Illness.

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Next Week: 1996 - a year of contrasts. A sense of failure. And also wild excitement!

Touchdown Sunday, Work On Monday

An eight-hour delay at London Heathrow Airport must have been a torturous wait at the departure lounge for those destined to fly to San Francisco on October 4th, 1995. To others, also waiting for the same flight, they just took the delay in their stride, accepting their prolonged airport confinement as part of life. Why make a fuss?

Meanwhile, I was enjoying the last full day of my holiday cycling around the Californian city, built on the southern peninsula of the Golden Gate Strait. Early the next morning, I vacated the backpacker's hostel for a pre-booked airport shuttle minibus ride to the airport. After I checked in, I was told that my mid-morning flight will be delayed by as much as eight hours. The plane I was due to board had not long taken off from London Heathrow.

It's rather maddening, coming to think of it. I could have spent another day enjoying the city sights, especially around the Fisherman's Wharf area, including Pier 39, which boasted restaurants, shops, various entertainments, and even a carousel. From the pier, I could relax whilst leaning on the parapet, watching the sea lions sunbathing on the floating platforms specifically built for them. Instead, I'm now confined in the airport departure lounge for the whole day as our plane soared across the Atlantic Ocean towards us. 

Sea lions were seen from Pier 39.

Onboard, I found that I was sitting next to a gentleman who was, I believe, in his late twenties or early thirties. We started talking. He too was flying home from his Californian holiday, and he felt rather upset by the delay. He wanted to go straight to his office after landing at Heathrow. But, due to his late arrival, he now feels better to return home after landing on that Thursday mid-afternoon.

Airport delays are nothing new. In 1977, I was delayed by six hours at Toronto Airport while I was waiting for a flight back to London Gatwick. This was due to a strike among the crew. Then, in 1993, I was held up for six hours at London Gatwick due to an oil leak from the hydraulics of the aeroplane bound for Tel Aviv. As we were all waiting for a new duct to be brought into Gatwick from Heathrow to replace the faulty one, I was surprised by the calmness shown among a group of Orthodox Jews relaxing in the departure lounge, some of them even sleeping through the ordeal.

However, it's the chap sitting next to me on the return flight to London from San Francisco, I would like to momentary flash a spotlight on. Had the plane taken off on schedule, he would have made his way to the workplace straight from the airport, so he tells me. Taking in both the duration of the flight and the different time zones, that would have meant turning up between 8.00 to 9.00 in the morning of the next day, Thursday. Instead, we touched down later that afternoon - by then, it was too late for him to turn up at his office.

It was my original plan to arrive back home by Thursday morning instead of Sunday. The whole of the long weekend was what I needed to readjust to the normal weekday routine. And for me, this was necessary. I wasn't yet ready to simply leave my apartment to resume day-to-day normal living.

In 1997, I took a ten-week backpacking Round-the-World trip to Singapore, the east coast of Australia, and southern California. I took off from London Heathrow on a Wednesday, and I landed back at Heathrow on a Wednesday. After a bus ride from the airport to my home, I entered through the front door and, aside from the mountain of mail just behind the door, I was hit by the silence that had hung within my apartment for the last ten weeks.

Throughout the trip, I was never alone. Right at the start, on the train heading into London, I sat opposite one of my customers as he was heading into town to do business. There were people around me as I prepared supper at the YHA Earls Court hostel on the eve of the flight. There were people around me at the airport departure lounge. There were very few people around me as I sat alone on a nearly empty British Airways flight to Singapore, but the constant purring of the engines, along with the occasional visit of the stewardess, reassured me that I was still in good company. 

Every day, every night, at the backpacker's hostel, there were always people around me - even the occasional snore from a hosteler in the next bed to mine. Each morning, before I made myself breakfast, I showered and shaved with other men around me, all doing the same. In the evening, I cooked a meal in the member's kitchen. And when you're in such an environment, you are never by yourself. Instead, pick the right time of the day to cook a meal and the chance of making new friends is almost always guaranteed.

That is why the silence in my own apartment after alighting from the bus hit me. And the silence hit me hard. I began to feel lethargic as a deep feeling of depression took hold as I began to miss all the noise, the liveliness of people talking, laughing and bustling around as each got on in what they were doing or where they were going. I must have laid on the bed inert for quite a long time. Oh, I knew what all this was. Post-Holiday Blues.

I have read at least on one occasion that post-holiday blues is a form of mental illness. I felt it after returning home from the month-long trip to the USA in 1995 and it actually stayed with me, on and off, for months. That was why, firstly, that I touched down on home turf on a Thursday and not on a Sunday. I needed the weekend to help recover. And secondly, it also explains why I was rather shocked at my companion's original intent to turn up at his office straight from the airport. Apparently, he wasn't at all affected by the syndrome.

Green Island Coral Cay, Aus. Visited in June 1997.

Seeing the town centre as I changed buses had brought back such familiarity. This includes the bank. No longer the tall, imposing building, worthy of a snapshot, dominating the Australian or American city skyline, but a more humble edifice in which I have to deposit my weekly income into my account to pay the bills. And right at that moment, my account was depleted of any funds. All the surroundings are so familiar - the same streets, the traffic, office blocks, shops, houses, trees, with none of the tropical vegetation that was so inspiring overseas. Nothing had changed since I boarded the train at the start of the trip. At home, everything was exactly as I left them ten weeks earlier as I closed the front door behind me to head for the train station.

The ensuing silence began to get to me. And I'm certainly not alone. I would go as far as to say that the longer the duration of the trip, the more intense the blues will be. I have also read about the same London travel agent where I originally booked the flights and purchased the tickets, Trailfinders Kensington High Street. If I recall, back then, they had opened a counselling room specifically for post-trip backpackers caught in a severe bout of post-holiday blues to receive counselling. And so, as I read, the counselling room was constantly busy.

At last, I phoned one of my friends, my accountant, to tell him that I had just arrived home. However, it was his wife who answered the phone and she invited me to come round. Immediately, I made my way to their home in their leafy district of Martins Heron. The talk we had throughout the evening was very therapeutic. Their hospitality was a much-needed boost to help me along in readjusting to normal living. By the following Monday, five days after landing, I was ready to resume work as a self-employed window cleaner.

It's these sorts of experiences that had helped me decide never to adopt the Touchdown-Sunday-Back-To-Work-Monday ethic. In keeping to my own promises, on our honeymoon, we flew out on a Saturday, and two weeks later, we landed back at London Gatwick on a Sunday morning. Therefore, we planned to take Monday as a day off, and we boarded a train to Reading to buy new furniture to suit our newly-married life. My very first day back at work as a married man was on a Tuesday.

With my PhD friend Andrew having spent a week in Cornwall with another friend has admitted, he too felt a level of post-holiday blues, although I had gotten the impression that he was nothing as intense as mine, especially after the 1997 Round-the-World trip. And that despite his love of his job as an accountant. It seems that no matter how highly educated one can be - Andrew is a doctor - this horrible malady seems to have no respect on whom it will rear its ugly head. Therefore, I can imagine the lonely office girl on her commute back to work on the first Monday morning, after a fantastic holiday with her close friends. It's raining outside, the road traffic is moving slowly, and then she drives at a crawling pace past the airport from where she took off just over two weeks earlier. And she knows that her serious-minded boss will not be in a welcoming mood if she arrives late.

One of the important life lessons was never to go on a long-haul holiday with a credit card! Indeed, it seems so easy to swipe the card over and over again whilst away. Collecting items as if they were free. Then you return home and immediately, you're hit with the post-holiday blues. Eventually, you sift through the mountain of mail that had dropped through the letterbox. Although 75% is junk mail - coloured sheets of adverts ready for the bin, among the rest of the mail are a couple of credit card statements. You know that it's time to make payment. And you also know that this could be difficult until the next paycheck comes in!

That is why that I have advised a couple of my younger friends who were about to get married - including a church elder - to destroy their credit cards once they settle down. There was a time when I was burdened with debt whilst holding a credit card. At first, I thought it was fun - walking into a shop and leaving with an item without having paid for it. But the reality soon comes home to roost!

Creditors usually allow part payment if the whole debt can't be paid off at once. Although this spreads the cost, actually, interest accumulates. I have ended up burdened under a debt of several hundred pounds. That was the state I was in during the early days of our marriage. In truth, I ended up paying far more for any specific item than had I bought and paid for it at the shop.

It was when my beloved wife was pregnant with our first daughter that I came to my senses. I could not bear the thought of raising my offspring in a house under the burden of debt. Therefore, I gathered all that I had and paid off the entire debt in one go. Once cleared, I cut the card in two and phoned the creditors, asking them to close my account. At first, they weren't willing, but I insisted on it. Since then, I had never allowed a credit card in our house. 

I believe that cutting up my credit card and closing my account was the will of God for us. Jesus didn't use credit when he purchased salvation for the world. Rather, it cost Him His life. And here is a good lesson I had to learn. If Jesus chose the hard way, the way of the Cross, then isn't it more sensible not to attempt to buy anything until you have adequate funds? This includes holidays. Since I married, we always went abroad for a holiday without a credit card.

I have discovered that I can manage post-holiday blues a lot better as a married man than I was single. This has led me to believe that the bottom cause of the blues was the sudden end of companionship that I had experienced during the trip. The sudden, still silence had brought the depression, along with the presence of credit card statements waiting for me.

With Autumn just around the corner, the kids are back at school, the swimsuit exchanged for the business suit and tie, holidays recede into both memories and photo albums, another year comes and goes. Yet God, who will never leave us, remains close to us, and we can look forward to Him to sustain us as we trust in His beloved Son.