Doorway to the Jungle

The adventure really begins now, here in Michael's apartment, still wearing my Christmas slippers. I began packing last night, everything I'm taking covers a minimal 3'x3' area laid out. As a comfort to all our friends and family, we've made contacts already down in Central America: one in San Jose, a couple farms in the San Isidro region, and two in Panama.... all of which we will visit on our trip. On Friday, we leave for Chicago and have a place to stay with a friend for 3 nights who conveniently lives just down the road from a train stop that will take us to O'Hare. So far, we've got things pretty figured out for the next few weeks.... except for what I'm going to wear in the dead of Chicago winter from my tropically-themed wardrobe.

Every good blog should have a picture of a cat somewhere in its archives, so why don't I get that out of the way right now? This is Buster, and when he sneezes (which, when he gets started could last a good 20 times or more), he squeaks.