And I'm off...

Welp, I'm leaving tomorrow. First, it's a red eye to New York, followed by a thirteen hour beast of a journey to Johannesburg and then a short zebra ride to Cape Town. And by zebra, I mean jet. All I can say is, I feel bad in advance for the poor souls sitting next to me on these flights. I don't always make a point of forcing my friendship on people, but there's just something about being harnessed into a little bucket seat, in a flying box where everyone sits facing the same direction, miles up in the sky, over the big blue ocean, in route to a foreign land, that makes me feel like connecting. The young Chinese business man sitting next to me on the flight from SFO to Shanghai in 2005 certainly ended up with one of my iPod speakers jammed in his right ear (he wanted it, I swear!), and getting a whole digital photo tour of my life up until that point in time. I think we even came out of it with a secret handshake. It's survival really. Regardless of what happens on the friendship front, I anticipate the two day trek to Africa being an interesting one. I will arrive in Cape Town on Friday early afternoon and will then be escorted to my accommodation by a man called Sly who apparently has "long dreadlocks and a perpetually large smile." Let's just say I don't think I will ever be so happy to see my name scrawled on a white card.