The Adventure Begins

On January 25, 2008 I will be flying out of sunny Tampa, FL to embark on what I'm sure will be an epic adventure that will take me literally half way around the world to the land down under...New Zealand and Australia! A land known for spectacular scenery and every sort of outdoor amazing adventure you can imagine - from rock climbing, to surfing, snowboarding, bungee jumping, sky diving, tramping, white water rafting, caving, and checking out some seriously cool volcanoes, to sipping on some very fine locally produced wines and enjoying the well known hospitality of the Kiwis - all of which I plan on doing and more! Unfortunately, in pursuit of such an adventure I will be leaving behind friends and family whom I will miss very much. As I am traveling pretty much by the seat of my pants i.e. having no idea what location I will be staying in much less what the accommodations will be (tent, back seat of a car, some strangers couch, hut, with the occasional hostel thrown in so that I can get take a shower every now and then) I have no way of estimating how much contact I will have with the outside world. This is still a predominately rural nation whose sheep population outnumbers its human population 20 to 1! That said I would love to promise that I will be in touch on a regular basis and be able to update everyone in person about how things are going but taking a pragmatic approach it is unlikely that this will translate into reality. Therefore it is my hope that by starting this blog I will be able to update it from time to time (likely those rare evenings when I get to take a real shower and sleep in a real bed albeit a bunk bed in a room with 10 other people) and those of you who are interested in checking out what I'm up to or maybe to just find out if I'm still alive can do so in a (hopefully) easy manner (I'm sure there area few of you who won't be able to figure this whole "blog" thing out before I'm back...you know who you are, lol)!