Travellin' On

Looks like I have a travel plan. Not exactly a trip to Africa but it should be quite an adventure nonetheless. I am taking my 15-going-on-16-year-old nephew on a road trip down the Pacific Coast. We'll head to Vancouver on August 2nd to spend the night watching the fireworks with my lovely husband Kevin and then Sean and I will hit the road in the morning. Car camping/cheap motels and perhaps the odd hostel is the plan. Head for San Fransisco and then turn around and come back. Kinda cool that a woman I recently met on the Croatia cycling trip lives north of SF, so we can visit her for a bit. As well, Liza and Paul are living down there so there will be a couple of familiar faces. I love the Pacific Northwest Coast and I know Sean will think it's cool too. It'll be good to get him out of all that is familiar. Time to shake up his known world a bit...and mine too.

Croatia

It was only a couple of months ago. Actually late May/early June I guess...Looks so far away from here and now. Viola (on the left) looks so Kodachrome with the yellow sign as a complementary graphic to go with her shirt.

It was such a good trip.

Beautiful riding, cool people on the tour and great guides.

Here's a link to some photos from the trip...

http://picasaweb.google.com/colleenfriesen.colleen/CyclingCroatia

Africa Slideshow - Click on image for enlarged view

Just a few images of the many still filed in my computer. Some captured by the camera and so many that are only memories. How do you really present a trip? A series of photos, some words and somehow you hope to convey the enormity of what transpired. But it doesn't matter. It happened. That's enough.

Back At Home

Wow.
Back from Africa. It's hard to reconcile these trips. Not really sure where to file this new information.
Where do experiences like watching a leopard haul a reedbuck carcass up a sausage tree fit in? Is it in the same category as the roasted duck dinner - served with a very fine rose wine - that Kevin & I had the other night?
Or what do you do with the memory of two young boys named Frank and Cameroon eating our group's leftover chicken carcasses out of the big oil drum garbage can? Does it belong with my latest health focus of making sure I get my 800 IU's of Vitamin D?
Being charged by elephants while in our safari jeep in the Serengeti doesn't really relate to yesterday's experience of walking to the IGA with my cloth grocery bag.
When people tell you the world is small. Tell them this. They're wrong. We are, all of us, living on completely different planets. The world is huge and diverse. It is a freakin' miracle. Every square inch of it.

I created a Trip Map.

October 11, 2007
Well there ya go! I figured out how to add a map to this blog. If I can do this, well, hello! There's hope for anyone. I've sketched out a very basic route plan cuz most African cities don't seem to have made it onto Google's radar yet. Lots of big brown space where there should be city names. But then...that's why we can't call the world small yet, can we? And all the more reason to get out there and see it for yourself.

Gearing up.

October 11th, 2007
We're home earlier than planned. Changed a few flights around and got in on the night of the 7th. Almost rid of the jetlag now. I've put away all those city clothes from our days in Quebec and stored the fleecey stuff from our time in Cape Breton.
Kevin headed off on his weekend trip today, which means we won't see each other again for 37 days. I think this is the longest time apart yet. Argh.
Karen & I are emailing and calling back & forth as we get the last of the details organized. This really is going to be an amazing trip.
The backpack stuff is scattered around the bedroom floor. Should be able to fit it all in with room to spare. Filling an extra bag with pens, pencils, paper, world maps and whatever else we can come up with to take to the schools in Malawi.
It's a silver-grey day. The water has mercury sparkles below the diffused sun in the high puffed clouds. The waves are steady today. How does that work? No visible wind difference and yet some days, it's glassy-smooth and then today, it's a steady wash on the rocks.
I would like to add a map to my website so I could share my trip route. It's times like these I wish I could get a more Internet savvy brain plopped into my head. I have such crappy patience for trying to figure these things out. I know it's probably something a 7-year old could do, but I grew up with piano lessons and pencil crayons. This stuff is too strange.

The End of Summer

You'd think I'd have this all down pat by now. But I don't.
I am packing my little wheelie carry-on for our upcoming trip to Montreal and then Nova Scotia. Kevin & I will come back from Nova Scotia and two days later, I'll be leaving for Africa with my girlfriend Karen. I'll be using the battered old backpack that I am also packing right now.
I feel like I'm on a multiple personality reality show.
Look! See the first persona try to pack groovy French city clothes for Montreal for her whirly 11-day stay in the city with her husband. The second woman needs comfy fleece & gore-tex for hanging out with Mary & Robert in their new Nova Scotian world that will include tromping about beaches and windy hikes and the Celtic Colours music fest.
And then there is the backpacker woman. She's dumping all her old cotton pants, beat up T-shirts and Tevas into the pack while trying to squeeze in the sleeping bag and Therma-rest. Is it quite mad for a 47 year old woman to go on an overland camping trip for 3 weeks? Especially when the average age for these things is around 19? Probably. Oh well...