"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page."
Thus quoth the great St. Augustine, North African theologian and arguably the father of the Protestant Reformation.
So if Augustine recommends travel, who am I to argue?
Kyle Aikema and I have therefore undertaken a serious burden-- to travel to two continents in two months. This would have been perhaps suicidal in Augustine's time, but now the only place we feel the pain is our chequing accounts. I'm sure that many of you want to share our burden, and so I will be maintaining this blog on a regular basis over the coming weeks. I hope to provide page-by-page abstracts for "those who do not travel" among us so that you can all skim through the chapters beyond your immediate vicinity.
Right now the plan for our trip is as follows:
1. This Saturday, we will be leaving out of Buffalo airport and flying down to JFK airport in downtown New York.
2. From there, we will mosey on down to Newark airport, from whence we will leave for Amsterdam on Saturday evening.
3. On June 10, we will be leaving Amsterdam for Nairobi.
4. . . backpacking through East Africa. . .(we've clearly done a lot of planning).
5. On July 31, we will depart from Nairobi, and land in Paris just in time for breakfast on the Champs D'Elysees. 6 hours later, we will be off again to JFK.
6. After spending the day in New York City, we will jet back to Buffalo to resume our normal lives.
In total, according to Google Maps, we will have traveled over 17000 miles. Since most of you use the metric system, you might be chiding me in your head for adopting the imperial measure as part of the blog address. Well, think of it this way: I saved you five characters of typing. On a related note, I think I now understand why the Americans hold the imperial system so dear to their hearts-- think of the old "Proclaimers" song "500 miles". Would a woman really be impressed if you said you would walk 804.7 kilometers for her? And 804.7 kilometers more?
I will write again soon,
-Josh
