Something Rich and Strange

Having just returned from a six-week adventure through India, Jordan and Nepal (with Abu Dhabi thrown in for variety), I must confess that I had the best intentions of blogging everyday to keep my vast fan-base (I think I may be up to double digits) rapt with interest. Sadly, intermittent lack of access to the Internet, and more fundamentally, electricity only hampered my good intentions (which have always been highly hamperable at best). That and the fact that I single-handedly ensured the survival of the local mosquito population wherever I went. And I still have symptoms, which under ordinary circumstances I would attribute to the beginning of a cold, but am now sure indicate the onset of a more life-threatening DTBNL (Disease to be Named Later for all you baseball fans out there). Oh yeah. I think I got heat stroke, too. Americans are such wimps.

“An adventure is never an adventure when it’s happening. Challenging experiences need time to ferment, and an adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.”

That was the problem! The literary fermentation process, unlike that of a vat of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, cannot be rushed. So here’s what I’ve decided: blogging during travel, particularly to hot, humid, bug-infested places is unfair to my readership. Rather, I will let the recollections of my trip age like a bottle of Chateau Margaux and serve them only when they’ve matured. In a reworking of a famous phrase from vinter Paul Masson (as delivered by a sodden Orson Welles during a television commercial for the brand ), “I will blog no posts before their time.” Or something like that.