Mike Finch Jr. was glad he was leaving America. He had taken flights before, but not as long as this one and none as far. As the plane continued to circle and climb, he could see the blaze of lights of the city he was born and grew up in, grow smaller and smaller, a string of lights for the Yuletide season. He had picked one of the worst days of the winter to fly out. It had been snowing steadily all night long, and this morning he had to help his father, Mike Sr., shovel the snow from the driveway. However he was glad because where he was going it would be summer, and warm. If only man had the ability, and of course the sensible instincts of migratory birds, he would go north to south in the winter and vice versa.

Although his mother was worried (only abstractly Mike had thought) about this trip, Mike had delibrately picked Christmas Eve for the flight. "To get away from the whole cloying Yelutide Jingle Bells drama and to begin in the new year in a new country", he had told his elder sister when she had asked why couldn't he wait until after New Year's to leave, since he wasn't going to start work until February anyway.