The day we were dreading arrived.  Ironically, it was a dismal day, so I guess Paris was sad to see us go.  Actually, at this point I think we were ready to go home.  I was sick of living out of a suitcase and my wife was starting to miss Stuart, our Bichon Frise.  After brunch at a corner restaurant, our cab picked us up and took us out to CDG.  For me, this turned into a very exciting ride as I was able to have almost a full conversation in French with the cabbie - something I'd been trying to do for nine days!  Okay, it wasn't exactly the most enthralling conversation, but I had fun!

Up until this point, we had met all of ONE obnoxious Parisian.  Sadly, the last person we interacted with as we were leaving fit this stereotype.  As we were going through customs, my brain decided it was going to stay in Paris and checked out, just as the customs agent (make the weenie!) asked for my papers.  I promptly gave him my passport (after all, this was the passport checkpoint!) and stood there staring while he looked at me like I was an idiot before realizing he want to see our tickets as well.  My brain further refused to cooperate with me as I gave him only one ticket.  At this point, he kind of lost it, to which I tried to point out where everything was, and he retorted "I KNOW what I am doing - this is MY job!"  Trust me, it was in a really haughty, obnoxious voice.  So much so that my snobbery/obnoxiousness/whatever kicked in and I almost retorted "Yes, and that's why you're never going to be more than a lowly customs agent!" (TOLD you I was almost obnoxious!).  But, I didn't!  I'd like to say it was because I didn't want to make the image of American tourists worse than it already was, but actually it was because I realized that this idiot could have detained me for no reason until after my plane left!

We made it to the plane without further hassle, in time to experience one of the LONGEST flying experiences of my life!  We boarded on time, only to sit on the tarmac for over three hours.  THEN, as we were pulling away from the gate, the engine sucked in a giant piece of plastic that was bouncing across the runway, forcing us back to the gate to get the engine checked out.  We finally took off into a stiff headwind.  One thing that was really neat was looking out the window as we flew near Iceland and Greenland and seeing a giant ice pack on the ocean as far as you could see.  When we hit North America, we continued inland all the way to Montreal before turning south (we usually follow the coastline) towards Philly.  Outside Philly we decided to tour the Lehigh Valley north of Philly for about 30 minutes before actually lining up for our descent.  Of course by this time, it was early evening and all of the gates in the International Terminal were occupied with planes boarding to head over to Europe, so we parked on tarmac and had some of those goofy buses come pick us up.  You'd think that was the end, but as we were waiting for our luggage, one of the machines broke down, forcing us to wait an additional 45 minutes.  You'd think someone was telling us we shouldn't have left Paris…