Africa 2012: Counting Down the Days

“Ok lets do this. Please be nice, airports.”

That was Kate’s tweet this morning. Well, her morning, my late afternoon. She’s off to London today, where she’ll be spending a week with our darling friend Kelly while I eagerly await her arrival (and just as eagerly wish I was there with the both of them).

And there’s still so much to do, both before she gets here and once she does. I have yet to buy any clothes for this trip, and I’m not the kind of person who owns a lot of clothes in the first place, let alone any that would be appropriate for the tropics. At least I already have my malaria meds ready. Come at me, doxycycline! I will keep you informed of any and all wonderful side effects. At least it’s cheap, though, much more so than any of the alternatives. What isn’t cheap is pretty much everything else I’ve spent money on so far, as well as the things I still have to buy. Now I’m the proud owner of a fancy backpack, though. It’s a Lowe Alpine Annapurna, and with its 65l just barely fits my sleeping bag, thermal mat, and tripod. Somehow, I still have to fit clothes and toiletries in there, but… eh. It’ll work. And I also bought a shiny new camera bag that can be used for all kinds of things. The best part about it is that it looks fairly innocuous and doesn’t scream ‘I have an expensive camera inside me! Come steal me now!’ You know, it’s the little things…

But enough about spending money now, let’s talk about people! So far, I’ve only had contact with one other member of our tour, even though most (if not all) of us opted into sharing our contact details. Makes me wonder if people don’t really want to get to know each other beforehand, or if they’re just too busy—not that I’d blame them!

My parental units are slowly getting nervous, too, I think. They probably believe I won’t come back alive. I’ve had to give them all the contact details I could dig up, and they made me promise to email every chance I got. Parents…

By the way, Kate and I have set up a joint twitter account, @alotofafrica, that you’re absolutely welcome to follow. No idea how often we will have the opportunity to update it, but it’s there. Oh, and Kate can also be found at globe.dreamwidth.org. I will force encourage her to set up her journal properly while she’s here. (Read: Since she’s HTML- and CSS-challenged, I will most likely do the setting up while she watches television. But that’s okay because I love her.)

I do believe that’s it for now. Just one week until Kate is here! And then another nine days until we’re OFF TO AFRICA. Sorry, capslock was strictly necessary here.

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