Now We're Talking...
London, England

My mind is still on the details at home; the flights were fine, but I think we'll have to be in Nairobi before the last vestiges of "home stuff" disappear and we can completely relax.

Hey, congrats to Vancouver, the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics, that was a pretty cool announcement.

Can't chat too long, Ken/Ev waiting here (sitting in a Internet cafe at Camden Market). London seems surprisingly familiar, seeing as I've only been here once before. Looking forward to dinner before going back to Heathrow to meet Anne and Dave, although I'm pretty full after fish 'n chips for lunch. Catch you later!

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Layover in London
London, UK

We're in London now, met up with my sister and Ken, had fish and chips for lunch, and soon to be having Malaysian/Singaporean for dinner. Our flight here was quite comfortable - flying business does have its perks though I'm afraid it's spoilt us as travellers now. What are we going to do when there is no lumbar massager or 6 channels of movies? Just kidding. Actually we're going to be flying British Air tonight so am looking forward to a change of airline. We're going to be meeting with Anne and Dave at Heathrow to fly to Nairobi together to begin safari tomorrow.

I have begun to feel that we're truly on a vacation, after being on the plane for so long, and wandering the streets of London City with my sister, but I don't think it has 'hit' me yet as to how long we're going to be gone. I wonder when/if that will happen.

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Doh!
Chicago, Illinois

Paul, Andrea, thanks for our going away gift! Unfortunately, it didn't make it out of SeaTac... confiscated at security. Heh, we should have thought of that, duh... ;)

Alrighty, gotta catch our flight to London! Later...

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First blog from the trip
Chicago, Illinois

We've just gotten off our first flight (stopover for 2 hours) and here we are, online.. I know, we're crazy. It's just who we are. It is very hot here - and muggy too. I've forgotten how humid Chicago can get in the summer. Oh well. Anyhow, just a short entry to say hello. Our flight here was very comfortable in business class - it's great when the seats fold out so I can put my feet up!

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Just In Case We Weren't Busy Enough...
Seattle, Washington

We're leaving for London in about three hours. We just wanted to thank everyone for the good wishes and bon voyage greetings. Sorry we haven't had time to reply to you all personally, but we will eventually, we promise!

We might not be able to access the website for a few weeks as we're going to be in Kenya/Tanzania on safari trucks for the first bit.

However, we're sending this update now because we thought you'd get a kick out of what has transpired over the last half day, merely hours before we leave on our One Year, One World trip! Would you believe that out of the 1800+ days we've owned our house, the one day that a water pipe has to burst HAS to be last night?

Yes, I was out there with Rescue Router plumbers (who are very good, by the way) until 3am, as they dug down to repair a burst pipe that had flooded our entire storm drain system, backing up into the house. Murphy's Law proves true once again, this time in a BIG way (2K). :(

Anyway, more details to come later, but needless to say, it has been a crazy last couple of hours.

Aaaaaahhhhrrrrggghhh!!!!

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Ohmigod We're Actually Going!!
Seattle, Washington

The last few days have been an absolute flurry of activity, from Evelyn's wedding to the 14 house guests to packing our entire house for a year! We and our tenants cohabitated for a few days as we moved "out" and they moved in... we had a few get-togethers as friends saw us off... and now we're about to leave our house for the last time in 365 days.

Lots of emotion, lots of excitement, lots of uncertainty... but not a whole lot of time to dwell on it! Hopefully things will slow down when we get on the plane in less than 24 hours. We're not going to have Internet access for a few weeks, as we will be on safari in Kenya and Tanzania. With luck, we'll be able to logon in Zanzibar.

Finally, before we rush off, specials thanks to Delwin and Jen's mom for taking all that time to help us pack up and clean the house... couldn't have done it without you!

Bring it on world, here we come!!!

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