leave a week from Monday. So hang on. This blog will improve markedly when things actually start happening. These days, I just wake up too early with a sweaty chest and one leg tangled in the sheets, wondering what kind of cell phone plan I should get or where I can buy insurance, imagining the moment when I take the car to the mechanic and he returns from the inspection shaking his head, like "Sorry ma'am, but she ain't gonna make it." Good Christ, there's so much to worry about. Blowouts, wrong turns, bad directions, talk radio. But as a famous adventurer whose name I forget once said, "Without fear, travel means nothing."