Best Wishes...

for a sweet New Year,


a happy Eid,


and peaceful remembrances on 9/11.


And may it rain torentially on the site of any holy-book burnings.
**********

And on a slightly different note -

GO TILLERMAN GO!!!


Images, er, "borrowed" from:
apples & honey: Culinate.com"
Henna'd Hands: Khalid Tanveer/AP via Life in the City
Me at the WTC: Not borrowed, that was a wonderful post-9/11 gift from my friend Omer.
Tillerman: Proper Course

Off for the next few days - it's time for Leg 4 of 5 Years Around Long Island - Orient Point to to-be-determined point west of there - we hope to make up some of what we've lost. I'm a bit handicapped this year, so we'll see how I do - that stupid cold I got three weeks ago continued to hang around, ended up in my chest & was giving me some significant breathing problems. Sunday's 16-miler was in part a test to see if that was going to give me paddling issues - I did fine, plus I finally got medical attention on Tuesday & was given a course of antibiotics & a couple of other things to ease the symptoms in the meantime, so I have my fingers crossed that all will go well.

BTW, if you've been following this "5YALI" expeditions, you may wonder what happen to the Montauk to Orient Point crossing - well, we have this wonderful group of people who have been our land support for the entire trip, and somehow the further out we got, the worse the pickup, dropoff and camp-moving logistics got. It went from them dropping us off & then having a nice day of sightseeing or biking & then coming to pick us up to them dropping us off & then somehow having to spend the entire day taking care of trip business...not so great. The Orient Point - Montauk leg was promising to be more of the same - so it was decided that the paddlers would sort things out for themselves on that one. Our land crew gets a break this year - no moving, accomodations are all properly in line & so their duties are back to drop us off, pick us up. HOORAY for our land crew!

Trip report Monday!