Jumping Off Point

Here we are at the Radisson at the SF Airport, scheduled to fly out @ 12:30 PM.
We had a great send-off dinner with family last night at Frantoio in Mill Vally (Athena goes off to Peru today for two weeks too). They voiced some objections that I started my travel blog with Greek Easter, as technically I was at home, not traveling. I protest! A journey can be spiritual, attitudinal, emotional, etc. as well as geographical; a journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step, it takes a village, blah blah blah (fill in your old saw here).
The flight from LAX to Tahiti has already been delayed from 1PM to 6 PM to now 7:45 PM ETD, so it looks like we won't get there today. I haven't found out why the delay. I suppose it could have something to do with the Iceland volcano- I heard only one flight went out from SFO to Europe yesterday. More to follow.

Chaos

This is the first posting of what I hope will be many over the next year. Today is T minus 4 and counting for our Saturday, April 17 takeoff on the big adventure. The only picture posted so far was from Greek Easter, which if you were here needs no further explanation, and if you were not here it could probably not be explained. We managed to pull off hosting around 80 people during the rainstorm (there was something rather mythical about roasting the lamb in the hail).But it did represent a period of death and rebirth, certainly in our lives. There are two assessments after Greek Easter: 1) The Best Greek Easter Ever, or 2) Hell On Earth. You decide.

We are currently in the totally manic phase of trying to pack things up, mail them off, get the electronics working, deal with the telephones, etc. etc. I remain confident that everything will be accomplished by our goal we take off from San Francisco to go first to Tahiti and then a week later we go to New Zealand, to Auckland first for a few days and then to Wellington, finally arriving at our destination in Timaru on May 1.

As I said, it is crazy here. I will resume posting when I have time.