I packed up tonight and now of course can't sleep wondering what I forgot. Chatted with Jake and am getting more excited to see him again. As with the motorcycle trip, I alternate back and forth with taking too little and too much (somewhere between 5 lbs and 200 lbs). Jake says the plugs sorta work with 2 prong US devices (at 240 I think) so should be ok there. Of course you realize that most of the electronic thingies I am taking were made in China and shipped here, and I am just taking them back to where they came from. I think I can buy whatever I forget there.

Every time I fly somewhere, I think how incredible what I am doing relative to people travelling in past time. The Dutch explorers, Columbus, Magellan, those Irish and German immigrants coming to America on boats, Teddy Roosevelt's vacations to Europe, all required an enormous amount of resources to travel this far, and in my generation all you do is save up, buy this little piece of paper, and 13 hours later you are on the other side of the earth. This of course coming from one of the lucky citizens of one of the countries who can afford to do this.

I am very grateful to be able to do this. I do not take this for granted.

I will also be thankful to have my very own interpreter to greet me at the airport. A long day in airports and airplanes tomorrow. Can't wait for those pretzels!!