from the "it begins with a single step" dept.

I suppose the first step was resigning. Done. Waiting for the memo.

But reality set in: I had to do something. No waiting around. Time passes. Soon I will have no home. Soon I will have no job. Even if I wanted to maintain the status quo, the plans have been put in motion.

I've been trying to book the perfect escape. Wrestling with bus schedules, housing schedules, plane schedules and, all the while, trying to keep it cheap.

Today push came to shove. I clicked some buttons. And I now have an itinerary.

Friday Aug. 27 - Last day of work.
Saturday Aug. 28 - Bus to Calgary Airport ($90). Pick up rental car. ($156). Drive to Cochrane.
Sunday Aug. 29 - Tuesday Aug 31 - Last minute errands, relaxing, stressing and what-evering.
Wednesday Aug 1 - Return rental car. Fly to San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico at 7am. ($488)

I'll arrive around 9:30pm -- and, with luck, to the smiling faces of Dennis & Kelly - whom I met last year in Guatemala. Housing secured. Work about to begin.

And that's that. Next: Getting rid of the last of my stuff and cleaning my apartment. I begin housesitting Friday. How strange to think that Edmonton will soon be a (bad) memory.

Let the future begin!

from the "back in the ex-USSR dept.

Greetings from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

It's been a crazy trip so far and the fun has just begun.

On Friday we were in three capitals in one day -- flying from Copenhagen to Bucharest to Chisinau.

We spent a few hours wandering around the Romanian capital checking out the sights (of the revolution) and testing various beers.

Late in the day we flew to Chisinau, arriving around 10pm. Our totally Soviet hotel (with Soviet service) is outstanding. If you like bureaucracy and concrete.

It is early Saturday morning and we're heading off to explore the capital of this little known country. Then we drive to Odessa, Ukraine via the break-away Moldovan republic of Transnistria.

Longer stories to come, along with photos. However, I left my laptop in Copenhagen, so it may take a while.

That's it for now!

Cheers!

from the "on the road again" dept.

We're just moments away from leaving Jesper and Nicolette's place in Hedehusene -- next stop Copenhagen International Airport. Then Bucharest, Romania. Then Chisinau, Moldova.

The adventure has begun.

I'm still waffling about bringing the Macbook. It'd be nice to have a place to dump my photos to and to connect to the world with. But... carrying all this crap around is a bit of a drag.

So... 16 minutes to make a decision.

The thing is, I already have my camera gear, et al. So it's not like I'm not already encumbered.

How is it that I can make a decision to move to Africa in a second flat, yet it takes days to decide whether to bring my computer to Ukraine.

Anyway... I will post as I am able. Hopefully tonight from the capital of Moldova!

And with that, a little Canned Heat:



Cheers!

Doug

from the "rush to wait" dept.

I'm at the La Quinta hotel in downtown Seattle and my flight to Copenhagen takes off in about six hours. So I have a bit of time to kill -- at least until I have to check out -- at 1 pm. And then figure out how to kill five hours at Seatac.

Anywho...

It was a good weekend. I celebrated by 30th birthday Saturday with the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field. It was a dandy game and the Ms won. My buddy Randy and I consumed a few beers, hot dogs and pretzels. Mmm... ballpark pretzels!

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday except it wasn't my birthday and the Mariners lost. In between the games we hit all of Seattle's finest stores: Apple, Bottleworks, REI and Target.

Plus a NAFTA meal Sunday night (Canadians eating Mexican in America).

Randy has headed back to Canada while I get ready for the big trip. It's going to be a long haul. 10.5 hours to Copenhagen. And then I have a couple of hours to kill before my Danish friends fetch me at Central Station.

I'd hoped to get a podcast up today, but the audio editing programs are driving me nuts -- it seems like too much work for too little reward. In other words, I'm sure you can imagine the sound of a ball game.

I will capture on the road reports in the coming days... no editing required... and see how that goes.

Until then... here's a little more roadtrip music for ya:



Cheers!

from the "literary journeys" dept.

There's been a lot of discussion this week amongst the travel writer crowd about a new book by a former guidebook author.

Thomas Kohnstamm's book Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? is being hailed (by the publisher) as blowing the lid off the crazy world of travel writing. The book is the (supposed) true story of Kohnstamm's experience as a travel writer -- which we all know is incredibly exciting. Chortle.

The book hasn't yet hit the shelves (April 22) but it is already creating quite a stir.

And then someone leaked comments about the book from the private Lonely Planet authors group (which I am part of) hosted at Yahoo!.

They ended up in the New York Observer:

Over the weekend, news spread among the vast global network of Lonely Planet travel guide writers that one of their own had gone native.

His name is Thomas Kohnstamm. He worked for Lonely Planet for three straight years, contributing to guidebooks on South America and the Caribbean. Now, at 32, he has written a book of his own, to be published on April 22 by an imprint of Random House. It’s about his experiences as a delinquent travel guide writer who cut every corner because he was so short on time and money.

The main idea, Mr. Kohnstamm explained yesterday, is that “even on a good day, a fair amount of what ends up in a guidebook is arbitrary, and therefore people shouldn’t necessarily treat them as gospel.” The book is called Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? It’s Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, but with tourism.

News of Hell’s imminent release came to the Lonely Planet community directly from the company’s Australia-based CEO Judy Slatyer, who wrote a dramatic letter to the private Lonely Planet Yahoo! group. [ MORE ]

I, like every other travel writer on the planet, am certainly looking forward to Thomas's book. It'll make good reading as I head off to Ukraine, via Safeco Field, in exactly two weeks!

Cheers!