Update

Paris was interesting, and I’m glad I made the effort to get out and see it. However, it was not nearly as entertaining as the rest of the trip, after meeting up with Rey and Liza, and venturing down to South Africa.


This is Rey, the birthday boy. I first met Coach Rey in 1994 right after I moved to San Jose at the Benton gym where we use to play volleyball every Sunday afternoons. I took a couple of the volleyball classes he and Matt W taught, which considerably improved my volleyball skills. Not only was he my coach, but also became a very good friend. Now that he lives in Los Angeles, I don’t get to see him as often as I would like. I could not pass up on the opportunity to travel to South Africa with him for his 40th birthday.


This is Liza. When you see Liza’s photos, you will notice she takes most of her pictures this way. I met Liza for the first time in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. We fell in love, eloped, and traveled to the Jock Safari Lodge for our honeymoon. Well, not really, but that was one of the possible answers we joked about as the guests and staff at the lodge wondered who in our group was married to who. There have been a number of times this trip I have laughed so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes. One time, something stuck both of as funny at an inappropriate time. We tried not to laugh, but the more we tried to stop, the harder it was to stop laughing. That hasn’t happened to me since I was a kid with my younger brother.

We have been without internet connection for over a week. We are determined to document our adventures and post them on our blogs. It has become one of the running jokes of this trip; blogging. “I have to blog today. I have to blog today.” Every chance we get, we’re on our laptops typing up our journals while the events are fresh in our minds, even at the expense of sleep. Last night, for example, I was determined to finish an entry in my journal but was having a hard time staying awake. I fell asleep momentarily, and woke up to find several rows of a single letter filling my screen because my hands were still on the key board. Of course I deleted all of the letters and went to sleep. Today I mentioned that to Liza and she laughed and said “Oh, you should have left those in your blog.” I laughed and said “Yeah, I should have, and type: Oops, I feel asleep blogging.” Then, she had the nerve to tell the story tonight at dinner and everyone had a good laugh at my expense. (Thank you, Liza. Buy a donkey!) I’ll explain that one later, after I find out how to spell it correctly.

One only have one USB modem and limited data transfer, so we will share internet access and wait to post most of our pictures after we arrive home. We will, however, continue to blog. Rey is a head of Liza and I, so he may be able to post his journal to date. Liza and I are catching up.

Okay, it's 3:15 am here in Cape Town. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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Time to get some sleep.