Gerry Adams is thinking big. And while jet lag isn't much fun, the Sinn Féin leader can look forward this week to a warm Irish-American welcome when he visits New Orleans, the Big Easy and New York, the even bigger apple.
Mr Adams will be delivering a speech at Tulane University in New Orleans, briefing the editorial board of the wonderfully named Times Picayune newspaper and laying a wreath at a memorial in the city to the Irish who perished in the 19th century digging the city's canal system.
New Orleans stands lower than sea level and is extremely vulnerable to being swamped. As such, it's on a par with the peace process which itself was swamped last week by a tide of unexpected misfortune. But there is comfort to be found even in the lowest of places. In New Orleans and certainly no less so in New York where he will preside at a party fundraiser, Mr Adams will find that his choosing of politics over armed struggle continues to pay dividends, both in political and financial terms.
Still, it's not that Irish Americans interest and patience is limitless. America, if nothing else, is a place that likes to see results for its investments.
Mr Adams has always needed to point to some progress on the political front on his visits to America. And they now stretch back almost a decade.
Clearly, the naming of a date for assembly elections will be a crowd pleaser this week. And for those Washington politicians who have sought the cover of the peace process to lend support to Mr Adams and others once banned from US soil, the fact that the IRA coughed up another batch of weapons will be especially welcomed.
At the same time, disappointment and concern were both palpable last week when the news came from Belfast that the latest peace process deal had unraveled at the last minute.
In a joint statement, the Friends of Ireland group in Congress and the Ad Hoc Committee for Irish Affairs, welcomed the decision to reinstate the election.
"We believe this action is another step in advancing democracy and the peace process in the north," the leaders of both groups said in a statement.
And they continued: "We commend Sinn Féin's recent statement stressing its commitment to peace and democracy and its opposition to the use of force. We are also encouraged by the announcement and verification of a third act of decommissioning by the IRA."
The leaders added that all parties in Northern Ireland ought not to lose sight of the basic framework that provides the way forward towards lasting peace and economic prosperity.
"We are disappointed," they said, "that the decommissioning issue has, once again, created needless difficulty and has hindered the momentum of a process that gives the people of Northern Ireland the right to decide their own future.
"We strongly encourage all sides to find the means to work through this difficulty. In our view, all parties need to simply recognise that they have nothing but a great deal to gain by resolving their differences."
The congressional leaders concluded with a call for devolved government.
"For this process to work effectively," they said, "parties from both the nationalist and unionist communities must be willing to participate and work together in a devolved government. We call upon all the parties to commit themselves fully to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and to continue to strive for peace and democracy in the north."
The Friends of Ireland and Ad Hoc Committee were once on opposite sides of the fence when it came to Ireland. In the more troubled years before the peace process, the Friends steered a course more or less along the lines of successive Dublin governments.
The Ad Hoc members were a little more risque and took an approach that was more critical of British policy and, by implication and often quite overtly, more sympathetic to the Republican view of things.
Now, five years after the Good Friday Agreement, the two speak with virtually one voice. That they continue to retain separate identities would appear to be as much a matter of habit as anything else though it also has to do with the fact that some members of Congress, though interested in Irish affairs and the north in particular, are still a little wary of Mr Adams, his comrades and the lingering whiff of cordite about their persons.
Senator Chris Dodd, an influential member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is not one of them. He released a statement of his own last week heaping praise on Mr Adams while taking a swipe at David Trimble.
"It is with great regret that it now appears that the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party may not be prepared to embrace these positive developments. I urge him to reconsider," Senator Dodd said.
On Mr Adams, Senator Dodd stated: "I commend Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams for his tireless efforts to finally remove the bullet and the bomb from Irish politics and for the IRA's timely and concrete demonstration of its decision to once and for all renounce violence as a means of redressing past grievances."
Back in the 1980s, a time when Sinn Féin was writ large in Washington's bad books, Senator Dodd proclaimed his support for the Sandinista government in Nicaragua over the Ronald Reagan-backed Contras of 'Iran-Contra' infamy.
Standing up for Gerry Adams has been no great leap for the senior senator from Connecticut, at least not since the IRA ceasefire. But that doesn't mean that Senator Dodd, along with the rest of Irish-Americans political leadership, will get by for ever on 'tireless efforts'.
While his visit this week will amount to something of a comfort blanket after the bleak hours at Hillsborough, Mr Adams may well hear it from some very good friends that the Provos need to get the lead out, literally and metaphorically.
