Today's preparation...

Obtained-
Shoes (serious adventure to get these, tried on some that looked like they would prepare me to go build another Panama Canal and others that wouldn't have made it out of the store.  I found a good middle ground in the end)
Backpack (so SO many buckles and straps)
Books (I find that nothing makes travel more bearable than a book to read while you wait for your plane to leave, arrive, sleep to come, etc...more on these later)

My day has mostly consisted of walking around REI with hiking boots and a backpack on while everyone else shops for nalgenes and cliff bars.  Next up: doing that around the neighborhood. God (or someone up there) save me.

My exercise today...

resembled that of a pre-season Jan Ullrich.  And not in any good ways.  But I am getting in shape for the LMT.  Very slowly.

The final two

Lots of interesting billboards in South Dakota...

The BEST stop of all :-)

if by best I meant cheesiest.

UPDATE: Rather, corniest.  Epic fail on pun making.

Home...

at M.'s in Minneapolis. It's been a wild ride of a road trip, and looking through the photos I've taken (over 600!) I certainly have some proof of that.  Don't believe?

First up, what one can see from the highway in Colorado:

From my (temporary) home outside Denver:

Yes, I went.  No, I'd never been before:

One of the best pictures from a great tour:

My favorite pictures of all, blow them up for full effect

(after the jump)

on the way home...

...or Denver as it is this year.  Stopped in Phoenix enjoying the free wifi.  Trip details should be decided this weekend.  Will post when they are finalized.

Graduation was beautiful - but bittersweet.  No worse than I thought it would be.  Missed saying goodbye to a lot of people, it was chaos afterwards.  That was the worst part.

Yes, yes it will...

Although I wouldn't officially call my trip this summer a 'vacation', I think this applies anyway.

Photo test

I update this blog through email so that I don't have to come here and click five times to publish a single post.  I want to check and make sure that email update works with a photo too.  Ok, now I'm going to actually do some real work.

UPDATE: It worked! Off to do real work now, I swear.

Pictures...

This blog's first picture was taken (if memory serves) from a bus in Ghana last summer. I think it was headed to Tamale. More importantly, I love it, and I hope you do too. I'm going to try and post pictures as frequently as possible because it's a lot easier to do than write a thousand words :-)

[In case it wasn't clear, I'm referring to the photo in the title]

Another plan

I am NOT going to one of those terrible bloggers that posts entries in full, forcing you to scroll down for miles to read the next entry. I promise to put jumps in longer entries, giving you the choice to keep reading or look just a little ways down to read a different and hopefully less boring entry.

Plans, plans, and more plans

Being necessarily narrowed down, which always makes me a little sad but I am getting excited about the few definite things I am going to do.  I am probably flying into Amman because I can fly there directly and inexpensively.  I am arriving in mid-June and coming back in mid to late August.  I am going to take trains all over Syria.  I am going to walk at least several sections of the Lebanese Mountain trail.  And I am going to become TE Lawrence.  More later.

p.s. ignore the url

I know it's lame. I had an impossible time finding an open url for this blog, and that was what I came up with.

The beginning

It might be slightly presumptuous of me to welcome you, my absolutely zero readers, to my blog but here it is. I've started. And I will continue, by god (إن شاء الله) for the duration of the summer. See you again soon!