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Back in the land of the civil. As my brother has pointed out, the strangest thing is that one day you're in the middle of nowhere totally self-sufficient, and the next you're in a restaurant eating a burger. On the drive home I think everyone was getting a little culture shocked. And we looked at each other just a little strangely and awkward, like people waking up the morning after getting drunk together. But we made it almost all the way home in one shot. At about 3:00a last night The Colonel announced he was too tired to drive on, so we pulled over for some zzzz. I was glad for it, as I'd been battling sleep for a good two hours by that point. I was in one of those states where my eyes would close even though I was watching them do it, hypnotized by the white line of the freeway but still trying like a madman to stay awake. Then when I lay down at the reststop I had to do like 20 checks to be sure I wasn't still driving and just dreaming about lieing down. My body kept shocking me back awake as if I was about to crash. But now I'm home, and it's mostly over. There's a ton of cleanup work to be done, getting the stubborn playa off everything, especially the electronics (I was told the playa is alkalai and will erode wiring), and we have much unloading to do. I'd say we still have a good solid day of work ahead. I noticed that we're all really good at working together now. We stopped in a restaurant on the way home, and we needed another couple of chairs, and it felt so normal that something would need to be done, and we quickly rounded up another couple of chairs. It's hard to describe, but there is no longer the question of whether a job really needs to get done: if it needs to be done, you do it quick. I'm not tired, but I want to get some more sleep. I guess I got 4 hours last night in the reststop, just another fucked up night's sleep, and I want to get a few more hours before I get back into the grind. Sleep will be my reacclimation back into "the other world". The expedition is over.
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