Into the wide blue yonder…

At the moment it`s becoming very hard to concentrate on anything other than my imminent departure. H-hour of D-day is approaching fast. As I am writing this I cannot help but think that in 48 hours, I`ll be scraping the soil on a new excavation season. The waiting has a habit of stressing me out: have I got everything packed and ready for the off? I keep anxiously weighing my suitcase in order to dive the 23kg maximum set by Swiss. As for the 8kg max on hand luggage…well, let`s not even go there.

Saying goodbye is not easy on this one. I`m leaving just before Father`s Day, will not be home for my brother`s birthday (again) and to top it off we`ve just had a litter of kittens born this past week. On the other side there`s the fun times and important works in Israel. I keep getting that feeling of mild homesickness mixed with a double measure of anticipation and excitement. In the end, the latter will prevail, but for now I`m stuck halfway up the fence. So there`s nothing to do but double-checking and triple-checking everything I`ve already checked. This is dangerous because you`re bound to miss the things you haven`t checked yet and I can`t really afford to miss those for such a long time.

I`m ready to go there. Out into the wide blue yonder to get me some sun, a cold beer on a balmy night, some new friends, some answers and – most important of all – some great memories to last me a lifetime. This is where we write our very own little epic: one that only we will read in detail, of which only we see the signal importance. It will be of our good times, our hardships, our brotherhood and our burning desire to uncover the answers to our questions that will drive us – with a little help from Sirpa and whatever van she gets to race around with this season.

For now there is little more to be said. The luggage is packed and ready in the hallway, my gear packed nice and tight to the weight limit. All I need to do is get my impatient backside to the airport so I can go annoy the customs agents and the night shift workers at Starbucks. It may not be true coffee in the purist`s sense, but it is caffeine and boy am I going to need that stuff to get through the night and following day without sleep.

Just some final checks to be made and goodbyes to be said. The next time you`ll read something new on this  blog is when I am settled in at Karei Deshe. Enjoy yourselves in the mild weather while I go for slow-roast in 40-plus`. Oh, and eh... don`t do anything I wouldn`t do.

Signing off