What a week - I feel like I've been in another dimension for a while, where reality as I know it doesn't apply. In a good way, I mean - and perhaps only slightly more so than usual, given the surprises that this country has kept springing on me for the last four years. I always find it strange when you finally meet people that you've been talking to over the Internet for a very long time (and I've now brought my total people met through the Internet to five if you include two that I might have exchanged one or two words with in the past) - suddenly you're talking to someone who is completely unfamiliar to you physically, and yet you know that this is the same person that you've exchanged a gigaton of words with over many years - just that they're actually human after all, despite what your accustomed mental image tries to tell you.

The first... first of this journey was travelling on a propeller plane, for a flight of a distance at which you might as well just travel by catapult. I had thought that they had stopped using those in about 1940, and had to convince myself that these things flew successfully all the time and it wasn't a case of someone having gone "Oh, we've run out of jet-powered planes but we've got this one with propellers - let's just use that" for this one journey. You can have a piece of carry-on luggage and a personal item as normal, but even the carry-on luggage is too big for the inside of the plane (which is sort of like a minibus with wings) so you have to put a provided yellow tag on to it and leave it on a trolley when you walk out to the plane, so that it can be put in the boot and returned to you at the other end. You can hear the buzz of the propellers next to you, which is a different but no less or more unpleasant noise than jet engines, and the ride is rather more... vibratey than normal, but otherwise everything was fine.

I had never seen what you might call rural America before - my entire experience of the country had been of one huge city that just changed its name every few miles, with no defined borders or gaps between them like I had been used to. Here, we were staying out in what Susi himself described as "the middle of nowhere", and I was introduced to the wildlife that populated the area, such as "Red wasps - they'll sting you for the fun of it", "Black widows - they won't kill you but they'll make you wish they had", copperhead snakes and Savatolings. I also quickly discovered why the place was called Orange County, and was worried that my new black shoes were now my new orange shoes after a few steps through the dust, but the recolouring didn't last.

The week was spent sharing our various projects, renewing my appreciation for the American invention of air conditioning, using the pool to combat the effects of dehydration in the 100-degree blaze of death that was the normal weather, and then dashing out of it quickly once the lightning started. Once again, I think that the local food was the greatest difference that I experienced in transitioning from one part of America to the other - the highlight was the Italian buffet, which was not Italian as I know it. Rather, it seemed to consist of the more stereotypical Southern diet of bits of animals cut up and fried, with a bit of salad and vinaigrette available as well. It was like Jimmy Chung's in Aberdeen, where you get a bit of chow mein and wontons next to the fish and chips. I took what I thought were some potato croquettes - they had sliced bits of hot dog in the middle. Pizza was also available, glazed with apples being a primary ingredient.

It's quite an odd feeling - but not a bad one - to supplant your real-life self with your Internet persona for a few days... where I was staying, Matrix names were used all round, and it was a bit of a challenge to adjust back to reality after taking the step beyond security at the airport after we said our goodbyes. I have a cold just now, or possibly Lyme disease - but once I get over that I'd be very happy to repeat the experience.