Yesterday among the cartload of ubiquitous smiling brown boxes from brazillian-river.com[1] that the UPS driver lugged to Joe’s door was this mysterious priority package:
The mysterious UPS Priority package
Upon closer examination (which really didn’t have to be that close), Joe found that the three-pound package came from AHI, the organizers of the upcoming trip. After Sherri finished with work, we opened the box and found all sorts of wonderful things inside:
The Trip in a Box from AHI with the main contents labeled.
The contents were our trip in a box. Everything we needed was there, except for our passports (which we have) and some spending loot (still in the bank). Some unexpected extras were included. The leather wallets (one for each of us) will hold a passport, driver license, and credit cards easily. There are plenty of helpful hints on what to pack and do for the upcoming vacation.
Nice touches were the two blank journals. Well, not completely blank – each page is lined and every few pages has a quote, ranging from Yogi Berra’s famous
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it”
to this one, a bit more obscure:
“I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m going to see the world.”
Can you guess who said this? The answer is in the footnotes[2] below.
Sherri also liked this quote from Paul Simon:
“I’m more interested in what I discover than what I invent.”
But more to the point was Oscar Wilde’s quote:
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”
AHI provided some great extras for our travel. The wallets appear durable, and the journals enable us to create our own sensational reading material.
However, our handwriting isn’t as legible as it used to be. We also type faster than we write. We started wondering – isn’t there some electronic approach we could take to keeping a journal instead of writing it in a book? Some way we have of documenting our experiences using a computer? Wouldn’t it be great if we could then share our thoughts and stories with others, maybe via the Internet, without having to pass around our hard copy journals?
Boy, we sure hope we can find such a method!
Two Who Trek 