"It takes a long time to grow an old friend." -John Leonard
If that be true then I currently have in the USA, either temporarily or permanently, a number of old friends who have been decades in the making. And so in Part I of "Gullible's Travels 2011" I have decided to catch up with them in person for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, the following:
1. I have a bucket load of Annual Leave I am under orders to use by June next year.
2. I have been working some very long hours over the last 12-18 months and could use a break.
3. The good old AU$ is going gang-busters against the ailing green back.
4. "If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go the mountain".
5. To see firsthand if my "old friends" are aging any more gracefully than I am!
In relation to the last point, I'll ignore for the time being that some of these "old friends" might prefer the term "long time associates"! :-)
I am really looking forward to catching up with Phil, Susanne, Dorothy, Mark and Lee. And as an added bonus I might just be able to cross paths with Sam in NYC, just after he has finished his second season of working in a summer camp in Pennsylvania.
After my whistle-stop tour of the USA I will spend about six days exploring the fascinating landscapes of Iceland, and possibly sampling a few of the many natural hot spas along the way. Some have asked me "Why Iceland?", but I am worried that six days will not be nearly enough to explore it properly.
Iceland is followed by an 11-day sojourn in jolly olde London Town with cousin Janelle, to catch up with a few more old friends and visit some olde haunts from my salad days.
Thereafter it is on to "Gullibles Travel 2011 - Part, The Second". In this instalment I will rendezvous with Laura in Berlin (where we will meet Sam's host family from his school trip in 2008) before we set off to explore territory hitherto unchartered by either of us - namely Prague, Krakow, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, St Petersburg and Moscow.
But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. For the moment there is still the matter of four more working days in which to complete (or handover) my work on three or four projects. The countdown has begun...
