New Zealand

Well, here I am, blogging to you live from the very boring LAX Terminal 2 lounge. The time here is 19:21, which is already 22:21 your time. I left for the airport in Ottawa quite a while ago already, yet have many more miles to journey before I get to Nadi, Fiji. My flight leaves here at 22:15, and it’ll be after 6am on Wednesday before I finally reach my final destination. To get there, I travelled west only. You know what the funny thing is? Well, to get to LA, I’ve travelled “back” in time 3 hours, but ther further I fly west, I’ll eventually flip forward in time, landing on the other side of the international date line. Weird stuff, isn’t it? Let’s flip back to earlier today, and you can catch up to my journey thus far.

Well, the bags have been packed, re-packed, weighed, and re-weighed. I’m now at my maximum allowable size and weight for pretty much everything. It’s after 11pm the night before I fly out for Fiji, and it still hasn’t sunk in. What am I embarking on? What will I discover? How will this change me? How will this bring me closer to my own realities? I have no idea, but I also have absolutely no fear. My life thus far has been as rewarding as anyone could possibly hope for. You could say that I have everything I need right here. And yet, this idea to get away and undertake an adventure on my own has been germinating within me for as long as I can remember. I already wish that I was going for longer, even though this is the longest trip I’ve ever taken, and I will be doing it all on my own, while Jody minds the ranch.

Hey gang! I just thought I’d bring you all up to speed on how my trip preparations have been going. As I sit here writing this post, I realize that in 14 short days, I’ll be heading to the airport for my four month trip-of-a-lifetime to Fiji and New Zealand. Although I’ve been saying all along that I’m not planning my trip in any detail, there is still a fair amount of preparation to undergo in order to make sure that all the loose ends are tied up. In this post I’ll try to give you folks a sense of what’s been happening on my end. I’ve also put up a folder of pictures on flickr to show you some of the stuff in detail. Head on over to the flickr folder to see them. On with the tale.