And so it begins...

Hello friends and family, this is Ed speaking.

We're in Santa Barbara now, about to get a good night's sleep before we dip our wheels in the Pacific Ocean tomorrow morning. Before most trips, I put off packing until 2am the night before we leave, stressing myself out, and keeping Nancy up. This time she forced me to pack ahead of time. Novel concept! This morning I was running all over the house for a couple hours taking care of last minute items, and then I realized I had two hours before we were planning on leaving, and everything was done. Wow.

My dad flew with us to Santa Barbara in my plane. We really wanted to have my plane in Charleston when we got there, but it's expensive to hire a professional pilot to take your plane across the country for you. I thought to myself, "Who do I know that works cheap, has no schedule, and can fly my plane?" Then it hit me--my dad! He's a pilot too, and though he has his own plane, he likes mine because it's got lots of nifty gizmos for you to play with as you cruise along on autopilot. So he flew out here (on a commercial plane), rode with us to Santa Barbara, and tomorrow he'll take my plane home to Wisconsin. Sounds like he'll be taking the scenic route, so it may be quite a while before he's home. At the end of our trip, he's bringing the plane out to Charleston for us. How convenient!

Once we got checked into the hotel, we met up with our Trek Travel group. There are about 25 people on the trip. Nancy and I appear to be the only honeymooners. We're hoping to make everyone sick with our lovey-dovey you're-the-best-no-you're-the-best honeymooner stuff. Nancy and I both know most of our guides from previous trips--her as a guide, me as a guest. Although we plan to spend much of the trip listening to Harry Potter or the New York Times on our iPod's, Nancy and I are looking forward to getting to know the other crazies on the trip.

Alright, I've got to go, I'm keeping Nancy up. We'll let you know how the first day goes tomorrow.

Ed