David's trip to USA

I have just returned to Australia from a three week trip to the United States. I arrived in LA the day before Thanksgiving and stayed with my uncle Tim Reiman and his family. I had a great time staying up late and talking with family that I had not previously had a chance to get to know well. I found I had a lot in common with my Californian cousins and felt very welcome in their home. I would have liked to stayed longer, but my travel plans only allowed two days, so Tim dropped me off at the airport to continue on to Minnesota. Kristin picked me up and we had a lot of catching up to do, especially since she just recently got engaged. For the next week and a half I helped my parents however I was needed. My projects included fitting a new kitchen sink, building new steps for the 4020 and 4520 tractors, hanging new lights on the star atop the 80 foot silo and of course doing maintenance on the milking parlor. I also had a chance to finish a project, building an automatic cow brush out of used parts, that I had started before we moved. In the middle of my visit I attended the Reiman family Christmas at my old school in Pease. I surprised a lot of people with my presence. Almost everyone knew that Jenny and I had moved to Australia. The get together offered a much needed chance to get caught up with relatives. Throughout my stay I received packages that I had ordered. Several packages were tools I bought online for a quarter of their cost if purchased in Australia. One package was my first order of parts for Mueller milk tanks to sell in Australia. I also grabbed a few things that I could not find in Australia such a dryer sheets. At the end of my trip was the main reason for my visit, to be a groomsman in Tony Dahlman's wedding. Tony and I are really good friends from our time in FarmHouse Fraternity at the University of Minnesota. The wedding was in Northeastern Iowa so I took care of some business in Rochester before heading to the wedding rehearsal. Of course the next day was Saturday December 11th, the day of the severe blizzard that coated the roads in ice and buried us in slush and snow. The wedding was the most welcoming and friendly I have ever been to, partly because everyone who made it knew they were not going anywhere else. It was sad to see so many empty tables in the reception hall but with a smaller group people mingled more than you would normally see. The only easy part of Sunday was getting my car out of the snow. Overnight the wind had blown all the the snow away from the car; all I had to do was scrape off the ice and drive away. It took me all day to make a trip back to Princeton. Under normal weather conditions it would have taken only 4 hours. I did slide into the ditch but only once. I was proud to have had the chance to prove I could still fight a blizzard and take stories of the weather back to Australia where no-one can comprehend what I had just survived.