Around The World

I'm One Lucky A**hole or Reg & Max Walker: Genuine Kiwi Heroes

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:54:23 -0700

I shouldn’t be sitting in my tent now, writing this with the surf breaking in the background. If I weren’t the type of lucky asshole who shits in his bed only to discover a gold brick beneath the sheets, then I would be on a beach about 30 kilometers away, waiting to pay a small fortune for an AA truck to pull my little red Carolla out of the hole I dug for it.

This story, like so many of mine, begins with me going off in search of a local fried delicacy, in this case fish and chips. As the day was winding down and another long drive was nearing its conclusion, I pulled off the road to consult my invaluable Lonely Planet guidebook (props to Michele for the recommendation, don’t know what I’d be doing without it) and locate a place to stop for the night. I had just come through the incredible Haast pass, which was one of the most interesting and scenic drives I’ve ever made. If most of the landscapes I’ve seen so far in NZ remind me of the barren, rolling mountains west of the Sierras in California, then this was more like the jungle-covered mountains of Kauai. As I came out of the mountains, I came to Haast Junction a bit after 6:00. With just under 2 hours of good light remaining, I was faced with the choice to either push north on motorway 6 as far as possible, or head south from the junction towards a town so small that my AA map of the south island simply has a road heading towards emptiness where Jackson Bay would be. Lonely Planet, however, told me that I would find some fresh fish and chips on the water in this tiny fishing town, at a place called the Cray Pot. So I turned south, determined to locate a place to camp and then, ignoring the fact that I had perfectly good food to be cooked on my camping stove, get me some fish and chips.

Not too far past the junction, perhaps 10 of the 48 kilometers to Jackson Bay, I followed a turnoff, through a postage stamp-sized community, down a narrow gravel road to a small turnaround just off th ocean that would fit my car and my tent perfectly. I’ve read quite a bit about how friendly people are on the West Coast of the South Island and that an unobtrusive, respectful backpacker can make camp just about anywhere, but I had also just heard from my Israeli hitchhiker buddy, Lior, that that was changing somewhat due to disrespectful morons, do I decided to ask the couple who were fishing at the head of the gravel road whether I would have any trouble pitching a tent there. They told me “officially you shouldn’t camp there, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Things are different on the North Island, but this is the West Coast.”

After thanking the couple, I drove off towards my fish and chips. Knowing that I would have precious little daylight to spare, I decided to also keep an eye out for potential campsites closer to te end of the road. Just before coming to my destination, I noticed a short turnoff that ran down to the beach. I made a mental note to check it out after dinner and pushed on. A few minutes later I was pulling in to Jackson Bay.

True to Lonely Planet’s word, the first thing I saw was the pier with some fishing boats bobbing at their mooring just off the pier. The town itself was TINY, with just a handful of modest fishermen’s homes, a very small fishpacking facility, and the trailer next to the pier that turned out to be the Cray Pot.

To say that the Cray Pot has character or small town charm is like saying a Phish show has some hippies: it oozes small town charm. The entire menu is written on a chalk board outside the front door and only there. The left half of the trailer as you come in the door is the kitchen, which is completely open to the rest of the trailer. The dining space has a grand total of 5 booths and can seat only 14 people. The walls are adorned with awesome photos of various Kiwifishingboats chugging through stormy waters.

It was a one-woman show when I walked in, so I had to wait for her to finish frying up am plating the food that had already been ordered before she could take my order. My fish and chips came almost as quickly as I could take a picture outside and sign the well-worn guestbook just inside the front door. The fries were ok, but the fish itself (which I believe the proprietor named as “elephant” was light, perfectly battered and as fresh as you’d expect in such a place. Well worth the $9.

I finished quickly and after thanking the owner for a delicious meal, headed to check our my new potential campsite. I drove all the way down the turnout, realized that the “beach” at the bottom was covered in large stones, and tried to turn around and drive back up to the road. Things went smoothly until the car was pointed back up towards the road; my front tires (tyres, in kiwi) lost their purchase and began digging into the sand. Pause. Shit. Shift into reverse and try backing up slowly. Tires spinning, sand flying. Nothing. Forward again? Nothing. Shift into neutral and push? Ha, riiiiight. Fucking cocksucker, motherfucker. Definitely stuck here, I thought to myself. I took my phone (useless here, no signal for 50+ kilometers) and my keys and ran up to the road, hoping to flag someone down but bracing myself for a long walk back to town.

Much to my relief, a car pulled up not 60 seconds later, with a young woman and her daughter, whom I had seen at the Cray Pot. I was actually somewhat surprised thy she stopped for me, a strange man, undoubtedly wild-looking with my wildman beard, especially since she had her daughter. In the States I doubt she would have, thank goodness I was on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand! She took one look at my car, said “yep, you’re really stuck in there” and offered to drive me back to Jackson Bay and help me find someone with a 4WD truck. “You really don’t want to call AA,” she told me, “they charge a lot.”

We walked in to the fish packing facility where her boyfriend works, she knew he (and his truck) had left but hoped that someone else might have a truck. Sadly, no one did. Upon telling tem my predicament, their first reaction was to look at the woman’s young daughter and tell her “see what kind of trouble stupid people get into when they do dumb things with their car.” Well, if I wasn’t already mortified, that sealed it for me.

“You know, it’s low tide, you could just wait for the water to float it for you.”

Are they being serious?

“Ummmm, how far up does the tide come?”

“Oh quite a ways. You’d best get out of there as quick as you can.”

Adequate profanity escaped me, perhaps a lifetime first. I offered them a meek thanks and, dejected, walked out front. A truck! Two brothers, Reg & Max Walker are securing their boat on a trailer behind their truck, just across the street. They agreed to come take a look at my situation.

On the way to my car, they also told me about the situation with respect to the tides, albeit with a bit less glee than the people back at the fish plant. It also came out that Reg’s wife’s cousin is from Chicago and lives on Michigan Avenue. “Beautiful city,” Reg says, “but damn cold and people there drive like maniacs”. I told Reg if they got me out of this they should come visit Chicago during the summer and I would show them a good time for a week, it’s the least I could do. But I couldn’t deny that we drive like maniacs, it’s true, especially when viewed from a culture where pretty much everyone drives the speed limit (I tend to do 110kph on the motorways here, all of which have 100 limits, and almost no one else is doing over 100, couldn’t be more different than the US where the speed limit is treated more like a suggestion than a rule).

When we got to the car, Reg and Max parked the truck up at the road and walked down with me. They helped me dig out my front tires and remove some large rocks wedged in my wheel wells and under my car. I was able to back up out of the holes my front tires had dug, and with a bit of pushing from Reg and Max, made it up off the beach, rocks and sand flying every which way! I tried to offer them some money for their assistance, but I think the very idea nearly offended them. “Just be sure to tell the Aussies about what great Kiwis you met down here,” Max said.

With the I80 incident, this makes two potentially disastrous car-related situations I’ve escapes from quickly and unscathed. If I were a more religious man, I’d have to say that someone up there is watching out for me. As it stands, it appears that I’m one lucky asshole with a couple of genuine Kiwi hero guardian angels.

Mt. Cook/Aoraki/White Horse Hill

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:16:51 -0700

I can hear the wind before I feel it shaking my tent, howling through the tall stand of trees on the far side of my tent. I brace for impact just before the wind squishes the side of my tent up against my sleeping bag. This gust is particularly vicious, ripping my tent’s rain cover away from the stake loosely securing it to the lee side of the tent, then pulling it back against the more securely fastened clips on the other side. They hold, but my tent is now uncovered, thank goodness it isn’t raining. Frankly I had been waiting all night for that to happen, growing a bit more fearful each time I was woken by the slapping of my poorly installed rain cover in seemingly ever increasingly more powerful bursts of wind.

There was no wind when I arrived yesterday. It was 29C and I was worried about getting too hot to sleep comfortably. Ha! The mercury has dropped to nearly 10C, plummiting as the winds rose, gathering force as they rolled down Lake Pukaki, sweeping several more miles down the valley before crashing into the White Horse Hill campsite. Needless to say, overheating wasn’t a problem.

I wish the wind hadn’t woken me repeatedly through the night, but I’m glad it has now. Staring up theough the now-uncovered ceiling vents of my tent, I can see the peak of Mt. Sefton—Cook’s less famous (though still tall at 3159m) neighbor—bathed in the fresh orange post-dawn sunlight. It’s incredibly beautiful. Most of the mountain remains in the shadow of its neighbors, but the peak looks as if it’s on fire or bathed in a coat of lava. This is a sight I could never see anywhere else; the 25 hours of mostly-sleepless travel it took to get here were completely worth it.

Now I’ll break down my campsite, taking extra care to leave no trace in a beautiful place like this, and then I’m Oscar Mike, heading further south for Queenstown, the so-called adrenaline capital of the world. We’ll see if I cam fit a 134m bungy jump off the Nevis Highwire into my budget…

Mt. Cook

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:13:36 -0700

The DOC (pronounced “dock” by the locals, short for Department of Conservation) campsite at Mt. Cook is a great place to kick things off if you’re camping the South Island of New Zealand with a car. It’s the perfect distance driving from Christchurch in the late morning, as the extremely helpful officer at the DOC office in Christchurch told me yesterday morning. The drive also takes you past Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, which aside from having two of the most unintentionally hilarious names ever bestowed on any body of water not named Titicaca are both incredibly gorgeous, with water of a blue so bright it seems unnatural, impossible even.

Before you stop at the site to pitch your tent, you can stop at the Old Mountaineers Cafe near the Hermitage Hotel (which looks nice but well out of my budget) to take in the incredible view of Mt Cook, drink some overpriced espresso and use their moderately priced wifi, as I did. The campsite itself is very nice, though you have to walk 20-30 minutes to actually see Mt Cook. It has bathrooms and dining facilities which are both serviceable of extremely spartan (no lights, no power, need your own camp stove for cooking).

But the best thing about te site, as far as I’m concerned, is that you’ll find lots of people without it being crowded at all. I quickly befriended two French backpackers close to my own age with an offer of beers from my chilly bin (kiwi for “cooler”) and talked with them about their respective travels in NZ. One had been there nearly a year on a working holiday visa and the other closer to 5 months; both were set to head home in the next month, but neither felt that they had spent too much time in NZ, which makes me really wish I could stay more than 6 days.

The 3 of us hiked to take pictures of Mt Cook at dusk, polished off our beers, and then set out to make beans and chicken for dinner. Sadly, after several misadventures involving my new camp stove (the primary problem being that it was upside down… oops) we all decided it was too late and packed it in for the night.

Ruriko and Ella. Cute overload.

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:06:44 -0700

Ruriko and Ella. Cute overload.

Benovia Barrel Tasting & Dinner With Elizabeth

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:59:00 -0700

Sunday, March 7th was a beautiful day on San Francisco Bay. The sun was shining through clear blue skies and the weather was unseasonably warm. Unfortunately, the day started with a minor crisis. MY college buddy, Matt, was set to arrive the next day and we were to depart for Squaw Valley early Tuesday morning… or so I thought. When I got out of bed Sunday morning, I went to check on Matt’s arrival information for the next day and discovered that he was arriving at 7:00pm THAT NIGHT! My stomach fell through the floor: not only would this conflict with my plans to have dinner with my sister Elizabeth and her family that night, but it also meant that I had really dropped the ball booking Alissa’s return flight on Tuesday. Alissa would be pissed and I couldn’t blame her; she had dropped everything and flown out for 3 days together and now my blunder had cost us one of those days.

Fortunately, it all worked out: Matt stopped in the city to have dinner with Gabe while we ate with my sister in Moraga and Alissa stayed with her cousin on Monday. After scrambling to adjust our plans, we were still determined to make good use of the fabulous weather. After a brief hike through the Mt Tam Watershed, a fantastic outdoor brunch at the always delicious Half Day Cafe, and a quick tune-up of my skis at the local ski shop in Kentfield, we headed North for Santa Rosa and the Benovia Winery.

If the day had started with some potentially disastrous news, it had continued with some unexpected great news: it was Barrel Tasting Weekend in Napa/Sonoma! I discovered this after Alissa told me that JP and Meg had scolded her for going to the Bay and not going on some wine tastings/tours… of course this incensed both the perfectionist boyfriend as well as the cultured snob in me, so I decided to call Benovia (a little-known small Sonoma winemaker, but a favorite of ours since getting some inexpensive cases of their 2006 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from Perman Wine Selections in Chicago). I was disheartened when the woman answering the phone told me we couldn’t schedule a visit that afternoon, until she told me that it was Barrel Tasting weekend andthat wecould buy a ticket at the door for $30 that would give us access to their tasting as well as tastings at over 100 other wineries. Now that I know about BArrel Tasting Weekend, I plan to plan ahead and make a full weekend of it in the future; however, I knew we wouldn’t have time to go to any other tastings that day, but I figured the $30 was probably worth it for Benovia alone.

Incredibly, when we showed up at the winery with only 30-45 minutes left before they closed down the tasting for the day the owner Joe Anderson—who was greeting everyone himself—told us to come on in and taste the wine without putting down $60 for two tickets. Once word got out that we were from Chicago, it felt like the whole Benovia staff took us under their wing; they thought it was amazing that two Chicagoans had found their way to BEnovia at all, much less that we drank their Pinot regularly. Mike, the winemaker & partner, remembered doing a tasting at my favorite Chicago wine retailer Perman Wine Selections, across the street from my old apartment; he eagerly answered all my questions and even snuck into the backroom and brought out some of the 2009 Zinfandel futures for us to taste! Bob, the owner’s brother in law who was around to help out with the barrel tasting event, is from Chicago and made a point of coming over and talking to us for a long time. After he heard about how nearly a case of my favorite Benovia Pinot disappeared from my parents’ whine cellar, Bob made an incredibly generous offer to give us two of his bottles of the 2007 Bella Una Pinot Noir the next time he comes to Chicago. So not only does Benovia mean great wine, it also means good people.

After trying all they had to offer, and then some, we drove off for my sister’s place with a case of Pinot in the trunk and my wallet a bit lighter. As usual, I was running on Noyes time, i.e. a bit behind schedule, so in order to dodge traffic on 580 and save some time I decided to take highway 12 across Sonoma and Napa. Not my brightest idea ever. Several wrong turns and many stoplights later, we had taken over 2 hours to drive what google maps told me would have taken 90 minutes with traffic going on the interstate. Oops. I would recommend driving highway 12 through wine country if you are looking for a scenic drive, but don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that you’ll be saving any time doing so.

Once we actually made it to Elizabeth’s place—finally—we had a lovely meal. Norayr cooks a mean filet. As an added bonus, James’ girlfriend Ruriko had diner with us. Ruriko had just spent a month at Stanford (doing what, I’m not exactly clear) and this was her first night of a week staying with Elizabeth. I’m not sure exactly how much fun Ruriko had spending a week out in Boreaga—as Elizabeth lovingly refers to Moraga—but I do know that she was a big hit with Elizabeth and particularly with her kids.

Christchurch

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:35:47 -0700

I landed in Christchurch, NZ this morning. After seeing a few sites, tending to a few errands (including hitting an internet cafe because data doesnt seem to work on my iPhone here… damn) I will be leaving for a DOC campsite at Mt Cook to spend the night.

Lagunitas Brewing Tour & Tasting The day after getting back...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:35:28 -0800

Lagunitas Brewing Tour & Tasting

The day after getting back to Kentfield from Vancouver, I went on an amazing brewery tour/tasting. Lagunitas, one of my favorite breweries, is located fairly close to Kentfield, so on a whim I called them and discovered that they do a tour with a tasting at 3:00pm every weekday! I raced up highway 101 to Petaluma and just barely made it in time.

I would strongly recommend this free beerstravaganza for any beer lover in the Bay Area. The first 40 minutes of the hour-long tour are devoted to a beer tasting in the cool loft space overlooking their bottling line. The tasting space is plastered with decorated in a style that can only be appropriately referred to as “heady”, which shouldn’t be surprising since one of their flagship ales was formerly known as The Kronik (it is now labeled as “Censored” after the California ABC forced them to change the name). The tasting encompases five beers: four of their year-round beers including The Kronik and their current seasonal ale.

The seasonal for my tour is pictured above: Wilco Tango Foxtrot (or, as our tour guide called it, What The Fuck ale). The label describes it as “A Malty, Robust Jobless Recovery Ale”; it is dark and sweet (from all that malt) but with enough hoppy bitterness to keep it from becoming saccharine; it’s a good late-winter seasonal but wouldn’t hold its own on a permanent basis. The other three regulars, aside from The Kronik, are the Pils, the New Dogtown Pale and the IPA. The Pils is a Czech-style Pilsner, their only non-ale and my least favorite of the tasting. The Kronik is a rich amber ale, which I would call crisp and sharp without being all that hoppy. Very tasty, but it could be hoppier. The Pale Ale and IPA really turn up the hop-factor, but contrary to what a knowledgeable ale drinker might expect, the Pale is actually hoppier (has a higher IBU rating) than the IPA. According to the tour guide, this apparent discrepancy is a result of Lagunitas’ decision to change their Pale Ale recipe a few years back—hence the “New Dogtown” name—while keeping their original IPA recipe. Regardless, both are fabulous ales if you’re into hoppy beers; as a bit of a hop maniac myself, I guess I’d have to give the nod to the Pale. Sadly we didn’t get to taste Hop Stoopid, their 104 IBU beer, but I have had it before and it is absolutely KILLER.

While we were tasting our five beers, the awesome tour guide related some interesting and often hilarious Lagunitas anecdotes and trivia. For example, while they’re still named after Lagunitas, the Marin county town in which they were founded, the brewery is now located in Petaluma (in Sonoma county) because the Marin Sanitation Department gave him an ultimatum to pay or move after the dregs of his fermentation process began causing sewer problems. Also, recently they moved from their original Petaluma location to a bigger facility across the street and in order to complete the move they threw a gigantic party in the parking lot and then had all 1200 guests pitch in to carry equipment across the street, which is really representative of the freewheeling, community-oriented nature of Lagunitas Brewing. I’m sure I can’t do justice to the rest of the stories, but you can read a pretty decent if outdated article about Lagunitas here.

(Lagunitas Kegs Stacked In The Brewery)

After the tasting we got a quick walkthrough of their brewing facility, which was cool because they were actually working while we were there, but was disappointing because it was extremely brief and offered very little depth or detail on their process and equipment. I’m a nerd and a homebrewer, I need technical details! But all in all, it was a fantastic value for $0 as well as an inspiring vision of where an avid homebrewer can take their vision.

From the drive out to Whistler this morning. The entire...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:53:42 -0800

From the drive out to Whistler this morning. The entire Vancouver-Whistler drive is incredibly scenic and gorgeous if the weather is right, which it was today. The Sea To Sky highway runs from West Vancouver, where Ian’s house is, most of the way to Whistler. It juts over the water, rock faces reaching up to one aide, water stretching out to mountainous islands on the other, each vista seemingly more picturesque than the last.

The entire trip to Whistler takes about 70 minutes, which is almost regrettable on a beautiful day like today, but which would be an incredible benefit to living in Vancouver. It strikese as an incredibly urbane, sophisticated city (and not just by Canadian standards) but you can drive 30 minutes from downtown and be in untouched mountainous wilderness. Very agreeable. I still think I prefer the Bay Area, but this has moved way up my list in the 30ish hours since I arrived.

The skiing at Whistler was great—perhaps not worth the $120 that I spent on a lift ticket and equipment rental—but certainly some of the best terrain I’ve skied. We spent most of our afternoon on the back of Whistler Mountain at the Symphony Bowl. Conditions were perfect: warm, sunny, and several inches of fresh powder. There were large swaths of Symphony that were more or less untracked and it was far from crowded. It’s tough to imagine a better day of skiing.

Must. Get. To. Bed.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:51:13 -0800

I need to be out the door by 7:30 tomorrow morning to catch a flight for Vancouver, so I really ought to be alseep already, yet I feel compelled to blast Deadmau5 on repeat and bang out another blog entry, so here we are.

I’m still on the first leg of my journey, barely a week in, and yet it already feels incredibly eventful. Highlights of the trip so far: near-death accident on I80 in Wyoming, the Truckee midnight blizzard mountain crossing of 2010, Stinson/Reyes, The Day of Nothing, reuniting with several Cornellians (Paul, Tom, Gabe), mac-and-cheese bake off, FREE ROCK BAND!, dinner with the Fosters.

I could write a paragraph or much more about each of those things, but since it’s late and I must sleep I’ll limit myself to this: WOW, HE’S ACTUALLY GAY (not that there’s anything wrong with that)!

Sorry, I should back up and provide some context. An old friend of mine invited me into the city for a mac-and-cheese + jello shots dinner party the other night. The jello shots were ok, the mac was delicious, but discovering that one of my oldest childhood friends was absolutely, definitely into other dudes (or, as he referred to them, boys) was the real reason I’ll remember that night. I’m hesitant to even write about the episode here because although he’s clearly “out” in person, I don’t know how he’ll feel about me outing him to those of my readers who can read between the lines. Also, I worry about being seen as homophobic. But, it’s the most memorable part about the trip thus far, so I just had to mention it.

Perhaps I’ll write more about some of the other highlights later, but for now I need to get to sleep in order to make my flight to Vancouver tomorrow. I heard that they just had some sort of big sports event up there recently?!? Something about curling, or something. I’m just looking forward to checking out a part of Canada that I’ve never seen and doing some skiing at a mountain I’ve wanted to ski for many years. I’ve heard that Vancouver is the “Amsterdam of North America”; I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds fun. Hopefully it doesn’t mean that there are loads of fat, ugly hookers in the windows of downtown storefronts; that would be unfortunate.

Ghosts n Stuff - Deadmau5 I ab-so-frigin-lutely cannot get this...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:07:58 -0800

Ghosts n Stuff - Deadmau5

I ab-so-frigin-lutely cannot get this song—and several of its remixes—out of my head. I can’t believe that (a) I just heard about Deadmau5 now and (b) I heard about it from one of my sister’s facebook status updates. Sad. I used to be one of the cool kids who would have totally known about this shit months ago.

The same view, at night. The bright spot on the left is San...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:36:52 -0800

The same view, at night. The bright spot on the left is San Quentin Prison, home of California’s death row. The Richmond bridge is just beyond the prison.

How’s that for a view?!?

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:30:01 -0800

How’s that for a view?!?

The trip out to Stinson Beach & Point Reyes on Panoramic...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:17:16 -0800

The trip out to Stinson Beach & Point Reyes on Panoramic Highway. It’s an incredibly beautiful, fun drive.

The Point Reyes Lighthouse. It’s really old and has a...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:00:33 -0800

The Point Reyes Lighthouse. It’s really old and has a 6-ton fresnel lens.

Saw some interesting art at the apartment Tom is subletting....

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:33:40 -0800

Saw some interesting art at the apartment Tom is subletting. This awesome piece of pop art is a Barbara Streisand portrait contructed entirely of beans and noodles. Tom’s landlord is an actor who was in Ms. Doubtfire and The Worst Movie Ever Made (aka Star Wars Episode One); he is a very gay man and, shockingly, a huge Streisand fan. He also had an interesting image on the wall, which was clearly a severely pixilated image of two people having sex, but whether it was two men or a man and a woman was unclear. We spent a disturbingly long time staring at that ambiguously gay duo.

Went to a Mac & Cheese bake-off on Thursday. 5 kinds, all...

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:56:14 -0800

Went to a Mac & Cheese bake-off on Thursday. 5 kinds, all delicious. The best was the 4th back: pancetta, truffle & Chantrelle mac.

On the first nice day after we got here, Colin and I went out to...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:42:08 -0800

On the first nice day after we got here, Colin and I went out to Point Reyes to do some hiking. It wasn’t my first time out there, but I’m always excited to go back. Point Reyes has some of the most incredible scenery and landscapes imaginable. This is the view of Point Reyes Beach—aka The Great Beach—from the path to the Lighthouse.

You can find this picture, and the rest from my trip as I post them, in my Around The World Flickr set. I will be posting highlights from the set here, but far from all of my pictures.

From The Mountaintop

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:59:00 -0800

It’s high time that I dusted off the old blogging shoes and got my travel blog up and running, since I’m already in California and technically my trip around the world—beginning and ending in Chicago—has already begun. However, I don’t actually head overseas until I depart SFO for CHC on March 13th. Until then, I will be bouncing around between the Bay Area, Vancouver and Tahoe.

So, for the moment I’m in Kentfield, CA, blogging from the mountaintop, making final preparations for the real adventure to begin and tidying up loose ends. And let me tell you: when you’re handing off day-to-day management of your company while making final preparations to hit 7+ countries in 4 months, there are tons of loose ends. Some of them are fun/interesting, e.g. rounding out my wardrobe and supplies at REI. Many others are not so much fun, e.g. getting my final crazy-expensive Japanese encephalitis immunization, paying bills, and ESPECIALLY preparing my 2009 personal and business income taxes.

I was hoping to go camping this weekend, up in Humboldt, but instead I’ll be staying in Marin to take care of business. Fortunately, this means I won’t be spending any money on gas for 12 hours of driving and a camping permit, which is great. I spent too much money while my buddy Colin was out here; I really need to tighten the old purse strings and keep myself on-budget so that I don’t run out of money somewhere in Africa. I expect the next few days to be filled with a lot of (a) not driving (b) hiking (c) doing taxes and (d) tuna melts.