Okay So, it's been a month since I last wrote. I have been somewhat of a busy lad, what with the deluxe tour and all. Yeah, the tour. It came. It stayed for 18 days. Then it went. That was yesterday, and 17 yesterdays before that. This is now. This is today. This is the moment I am living in even as I think of a clever way to phrase that last bit. This is also an overview of the whole thing. You know, stuff happens and you have thoughts and stuff about it at the mtime, and if you don't write it down immediately, you begin to lose it, kinda. I didn't write it down. Luckily, I have a good memory. So I will write the 18 day-and-then-some chronicle bit by bit, stop by stop (10), region by region (5), flight by flight (9), as I recall it over the next few days. It serves as much as my hard copy as for the enlightenment of anyone who may choose to read it. Enlightenment in terms of letting you in on what happened, of course;l not in terms of anything serving as a major Truth. I'm not that good, I don't think. The tale itself may contain flashbacks of other important things. It may contain lucid thoughts; dreamy introspectives, boyish enthusiasm, a taste for the bizarre. It may contain all of these things, and it may contain none. It should recall nine flights, totalling some 52 hours in the air and a further 20 hours of waiting around in airports for connections, being strip-searched and watching elderly German tourists pick a fight with safety officials. It should contain details of a gritty fake-plastic grey immigration hall on a dreary Saturday morning, a dying Pontiff, a downright peculiar interview, a camera lost on a Brooklyn-bound subway train, and a landing softer than a feather bed. It should contain a landing involving a bruised backside, a pair of lose-yourself-here blue eyes, bad navigation, hillsides and mountaintops, Barry Manilow in a CD store and a big blow-up between old friends. It should involve no trips to a famed surf-spot, some horrific hotels and a trip to a top-secret military institution, with a strange Nigerian woman in tow. It should involve a hard-to-get CD, Larry's Cookies and a shitload of Mexican food, a blue Kia Rio, a vendor calling me Sweetheart in her Bronx drawl and a quest to find a watch perfect for a sister's 30th birthday present. It will also involve many many many Reese's Peanut Butter cups. Yeah, I'm addicted. -d-