In case anyone happens to stop by wondering what’s happening to me, here’s the scoop. I survived the summer, again. I think I had a great season. The older I get, the more content I am doing things that I am content doing. Manual labour in the ‘wilderness’ counts, go figure. I shared camps with a lot of good people, and had a full share of striking experiences good and bad, and yes, planted a hell of a lot of those little green things. As Tim says: it’s a rich life.

A note to the crew(s): anyone looking for pictures from the summer, they aren’t up yet but I’ve started work on them and they will be online as soon as I find another machine with photoshop.

By now I should have been well on my way through America, bound for an internship at the Conservation Research Center run by the Smithsonian Institue in Virginia, but instead I am becalmed in Victoria. The US immigration authorities decided in their wisdom that my visa application didn’t adhere, so I am waiting on the vaguries of Federal Express to deliver some new documents.

There are far worse places to watch the sails luff. Victoria in the summer is at least as nice as Victoria in the fall and winter or spring. Many of my friends are still here, which still seems as lucky and unlikely as it did when I first noticed them converging. Because of the ferry to Port Angeles, Victoria is effectivley a border town, meaning I don’t have to commute far to my judgement at the hands of the the agents of the United States. The coffee shops are inviting, the clubs are open, the sun drips, dinner drags out into evening, the beaches are nice at sundown. I have three offers of accomodation in the interim. I am on enforced vacation, and frankly enjoying it.

Tomorrow this should all change. I will hopefully strap the bags onto the bike one last time in Canada, riff through my complete quiver of documents, pull the choke, press the starter and really really get underway. Once I get past the immigration shed, across the ferry and onto US soil I will still have an entire continent to cross. Vacation of another kind. I am looking forward to arrival almost as much as I looking forward to the the journey.