Sunday, September 3, 2017: Long Valley, NJ

Only 3 days and a wake-up to go....  Excitement is building, along with our anxiety (over the whole North Korea problem) with our travel itinerary.

Our over-water legs to Sydney, Australia, are with Air China:  ~12hrs flight time from San Francisco to Beijing; ~7hr layover, followed by another ~12hr flight to Sydney.  China is North Korea's only ally and the country lies directly along our projected flight path from San Francisco to Beijing!  With great circle navigation, we will most likely skirt right along the northern border of North Korea.  I fervently hope we don't go 'blowing' up the rogue nation/leader before we transit through and make it down to Sydney.

I'm just a bit conflicted about feeling more concerned about the possible impact to this 'bucket list' holiday we've had planned for a while -vs- the rising tensions between our Country, our Ally's and, Pyongyang's demonstrably unstable Dictator.  Fingers crossed for an easing of rhetoric, saber rattling, and lots of prayers.

All that not-with-standing, Rosie and I are making good progress with all of our prep for the trip. Made a huge dent in our packing today - we are packing very light, knowing we'll probably make that up in souvenirs we lug back - and are working on sorting through what we'll need in our carry-on for the ~44hr trip from Newark to Sydney.  Both Rosie and I will be checking 1 mid-size bag and carrying on a personal item and bag.  My personal item will be a camera bag.  My other piece will be a 'skinnied-down' backpack that will be home to 2 laptops (work and personal); a heavy duty portable charging device; mobile 'hotspot' from Skyroaming; International power converter; my music iPod, a small journal to jot down our observations and thoughts throughout each day, and; all the needed power cords for the various devices.  It might sound like a lot but, all will fit nicely into my backpack.  I'll also be carrying enough toiletries to freshen up along the way.  Rosie will have a purse of some sort and a very nice Vera Bradley bag with rollers on it.  The bag was purposely designed and built to comply with any U.S. Airline's hand carry-on luggage rules.

My biggest remaining concern is to make sure our honey bees are in the best possible situation while we're gone for the next 2 weeks.  It's been so unseasonably cold and wet up here that we haven't been able to really give the hives a good once over, treat for any maladies I may see and, to ply them with a couple of gallons, each, of sugar syrup to help bridge them into Fall and not deplete their honey supplies.  Those honey supplies will be crucial to their survival, or not, over the Winter months.  I won't be doing any winterization of the hives and apiary until sometime after we get back from this trip.

We're certainly glad this is a long, 3 day weekend!

Fuji