- Packing
- A week of extremes
- Preparation
- Dress Rehearsal
- H6, #13, and Bo
- Vlotho
- Stockholm
- Tallinn
- Helsinki
- Helsinki II
- St. Petersburg
- St. Petersburg II
- Moscow
- Beijing
- Beijing II
- Beijing III
- Beijing IV
- Xi’an
- Xi’an II
- Shanghai
- Nara – Halfway plus one day
- Kyoto
- Back in the (Former) USSR
- Muroran
- 180th Meridian
- Seward
- Ketchikan
- Vancouver
- St Paul
- Chicago
- New York City
- North Atlantic
- 78 Days and 9 Minutes
- London
Our Russia tickets are in the US. Not in our possession yet, but much closer. The feeling of relief from knowing our tickets are almost in hand balances the stress of packing. It is not an equal balance, but it helps some.
We are applying the Michael Palin rules and packing for six days, or at least trying to. We have managed to whittle down and separate the luxuries from the essentials; what we will use and what we will use enough. Now we just need to put it in our bags. If we are lucky, we will have extra room. If we are luckier, we will be smart enough not to put more stuff into our extra space. The hardest days of most trips are the ones just before you leave and just after you arrive. The trip to the initial destination is the calm eye of the storm, between the time when you have jammed your gear into a bag and when you realize what you have forgotten or what has been lost along the way. We will have a few days in London to sort this out before our trip begins in earnest.