The luckiest boy in the world is about to embark on my most anticipated adventure ever. I have butterflies in my stomach and eagerness radiating from all pores in my body. This is a big deal for the same boy that has flown in a helicopter to the top of isolated, snow-capped mountains, hiked to the top of a place knows as Catz Eye, scuba dove with sharks, know people that have jumped out of planes, done a walking safari with a shotgun strapped man in Africa, taken LSD in Disney World, and even once had dinner with a couple that hiked to the peak of Mt Kilimanjaro! I am on my way to have a private magic lesson with Penn Jillette, probably our planets most interesting person. Wish me luck that my plane does not go down, and if it does, that the plane was full of fat, delicious people that I can keep myself nourished on until I am able to reschedule my magic lesson.

Poor Cin

Large amounts of freezing rain are the arch-enemy of our favorite tree. No more playing in the low hanging branches for Charlie the Dog.

Weeping willow tree killed by freezing winter

Tonight on the gondola ride from Mountain Village to the valley town of Telluride the most exciting thing in the world happened. We were riding with the newly appointed President of Telluride. That’s right, the President. We had a nice chat about everything important. He told us the story of how he was just appointed the new President of Telluride and made it sound like he fell ass-backward into the position. I am sure he was being modest. Modesty is one of those traits I most value in a new best friend. I made sure he knew that meeting him was more impressive to me than meeting the President of America. I took way more joy in this acquaintance. I am pretty sure Greg Peck and I will be having dinner tomorrow to discuss the direction we both would like to see Telluride moving. I found some proof on the internets that he was not lying, CLICKY. And then I asked him to be my LinkedIn friend. Too stalkery?

I call it that because I eat dinner with my pants off. My favorite holiday when nobody is prattling on about their god of choice, or when some supposed magical man was born, died, or came back to life as a zombie. It is the holiday I get to cook one of my favorite meals, and the only day each year I get to use my Sonic Blade. This meal is the only meal where each of the side dishes are screaming to be combined with one other. I guess the roots of this holiday are a little horrific, but if the nutty religious zealots are able to look past their history’s horrors and celebrate, I can do the same.

I spend this day with ¾ of my chosen little family. We relax, go for walks, watch movies, cook, eat, and repeat. We are in a resort town that transforms into an abandoned ghost town when it gets cold. Nobody around, we have the place all to ourselves.

ThanXXXgiving 2013

Our last morning in the Crater we decided to sleep in and had a leisurely breakfast. On our drive to the airstrip from Ngorongoro Crater the world turned back into something we had not seen for 2 full weeks. The road was blacktop, there were houses, telephone poles, and human beings living their lives. We stepped through a Tanzanian door back into civilization. We stopped at a place called The Tee Shirt Shack for a geocache. Aziza was marveled there was a hidden treasure somewhere that I knew about a million miles from home. She drives by and stops at this shop all the time and had no idea there was something else fun to do here other than spend Tanzanian Shillings. She was nervous about wandering around back of the shop, but the shopkeeper obviously knew the treasure was back there. She made us go inside and purchase some tee shirts before searching out the prize. Her eyes got big and she smiled when I said, “here it is!”

We continued our drive to the airstrip for a 1:40pm scheduled flight. We got there about an hour early. 2 hours later, no plane for us. We were stuck in Tanzania needing to get to Rwanda. Luckily for us AndBeyond has a policy not to just drop off and leave passengers before watching their flight take off. Aziza got on the phone with the lodge. They said there was a mistake by the airline, Shitty Coastal Air, and they were going to send a private charter flight to pick us up and get us to Rwanda on time. The private flight plan ultimately fell through and we were stranded in Tanzania. Oh well, there are worse places to be stranded, like….ummm….Rwanda, I guess.

We sat at the airport for 5 hours, no plane for us. Apparently Coastal Air simply forgot about us. The decision was made to bring us back to the Crater Lodge, unlucky us, what a dump. Sike. It is not what we planned or wanted to do, but at least we were somewhere safe with people that knew us. The rest is a sad story in history. We changed our flights home and had to completely miss out on the gorilla trekking portion of our trip to Rwanda. It is not the end of the world but definitely sad to have looked forward to this for so long, and no payoff at the end. I was really looking forward to being made the honorary gorilla/human ambassador.

Oh well, these things happen, even to the luckiest boy in the world. 4 days earlier than planned we started the 40-hour adventure home. We made it safely (obviously), and in hindsight we are both glad to have been heading for home. I enjoyed almost every minute of this trip, but I was getting close to tired of traveling. I think Wifey felt the same way, maybe a bit homesick. She has been anxious about the Rwanda portion of our trip since the week we booked it. All she reads is horrible novels about terrorism. Couple that with email alerts she had been receiving from the embassy saying there has been gunfire here and there, and tourists should stay away. One more reason I keep myself in the dark about anything that does not concern me. This concludes the final chapter of the African Escapade Redux. Now we sit and wait for hopefully our next adventure. Maybe Alaska? Or Yosemite?

Mt. Kilimanjaro

I made this one today while playing with contrasting color and B&W photos. I like how it turned out. This zebra was somebody’s yummy dinner. We saw a leopard not far away, I am sure it belonged to him. What you see here is the equivalent of a leopard refrigerator.

Poor Headless Zebra