I have just returned from a 5 week road trip across the USA with my wife and 5 children. What a trip! Lots of adventures were had. Sure, it was tiring and stressful on occasion (we got lost several times), but never dull. We saw a lot of places, experienced many different landscapes, and encountered lots of different people, the whole spectrum of American society. 

And at the end there was a nice sense of achievement in getting everybody across the country in one piece!

It was great to experience all the different cultures, the small towns (mostly pro-Trump!), the big cities, and the native Indian settlements, all interesting in their own way.

But the biggest culture shock of all has been coming back to work!

Back to my cubicle, back to signing out wound swabs, back to phone calls about multi-resistant urines, back to laboratory politics, back to emails and meetings….

It all seems a bit mundane after the US. Hopefully the motivation will come back in due course.

And who knows, I might even write about microbiology in my next post!

Michael