kicking it old skool

Africa, that is.

But before I go there, I should just mention that I have now been (rather successfully) married for all of 18 days and 21 hours (give or take). I think I deserve my own program, like Sky News following Obama around for his first 100 days in office. Wouldn’t be as gripping though. to be sure. It’ll go probably go something like this. But being hitched doesn’t feel any different. I chalk that up to having a fantastically healthy and fulfilling relationship to start with.

So, Africa. A while back my wife mentioned that the now parents in-law wanted to embark on a 4 month tour of Africa. This would involve a couple of 4x4’s, lots of camping, out doorsy shit and wide open spaces. So while we where down in CT for the wedding we had a sit down with the organiser and decided that we would indeed love to go on this epic adventure!

That means quite a bit. From a planning perspective, it is a logistical exercise of at least 2 factors of magnitude to anything I’ve had to plan before. This includes the wedding, which we organise remotely, from London. What to take / what to leave behind for everything from food to shelter to tech and toys. It’s extreme camping and I don’t say that lightly. Just add a few terrorists to this package, and you have quite a bit to think about.

On the first-world side of that equation, we need to let go of our apartment, basically sell, store of give away the bulk of our possessions, pack what ever is left and fly out into the unknown. Ok, the “unknown” bit is a bit dramatic: we know EXACTLY where we’ll eventually end up. But I was on a roll there…

On the positive thinking side, it’s an incredibly exciting prospect! And I truly do feel it’s a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity. Personally, I’m approaching it as a photo documentary project. And I’m told the photo opportunities are infinite.

My dream was to setup this site in a way that would make posting easier. I’m going to play around with the email posting feature a bit more. It would be interesting to see how it handles the formatting and say a few pictures. At present, I always have to reformat my posts once it’s been cut and paste from word.

Along with this I dearly want to do Geo-tagging! I think it would be a rotten shame not to. I’m in two minds about posting these locations live though. This is for total paranoia and security reasons! I watch too much TV. Won’t matter much, since internet access isn’t really an option in some areas so we will be long gone by the time the emails finally get though.

Anyways, lots of work to do. So far I have not had a single weekend to myself. I’ve been catching up with the day job, and then have quite a few photo gigs lined up, first one this Sunday. It’s a boat party down the Thames, just in time to catch the races! I will need to heavily sedate myself though, since I get seasick. Should make for interesting angles and weird pictures though…

[G], out

You’re still my sunshine