Adventures into the Unknown

When deciding to take a long journey into unknown territories, I thought the preparations would be the easy part. It never occurred that the organizational months would throw us into total chaos the night before.  For me, the stress started a few weeks before when the girl who was all gung ho to take care of our house and dog, suddenly would write a lengthy letter excusing herself saying that the stars had the wrong constellation, and then suddenly vanished from the scene, leaving me to find another solution for our 64 pound dog. Since we had decided to leave for three months, it was clear that this would be no easy task. I wanted Rügen to live at home in his own territory and that he would get enough excerise to keep him happy and fit.Things started to looking up when a good friend of mine decided to move in while an experienced dog walker agreed to step up to the plate and deal with our crazy Rügen dog!

Weeks past and our trip was beginning to take form. I had booked all our hotels fro Namibia while Frank took care of the the car with a tent on top.  Here in Hamburg the weather was changing from cold to warm and back to cold. The leaves turn brown and were falling fast. I and my neighbors were working around the clock trying to keep the leaves under control. A day before Halloween the wind storm hit.  We lost tiles on the roof and our satellite dish was hanging upside down by on screw.  In the bitter cold, Frank and I managed to fix the tiles but the satellite dish refused to cooperate. he finally came up with a quick fix and now our house sitter gets only 10 channels instead of the 130 channels that it had previously.

Then came Halloween's Eve! Our house was set for the Halloween spirits to come by and indeed they did. 57 little screaming monsters ran up and down the street while we enjoyed pumpkin soup and sipping wine.
Our final disaster happened when the refrigerator/ ice box began groaning. After deicing it the motor quit.  On top of it, one of the hotels cancelled our reservations while at the same time I got a warning note from my mastercard saying some criminal activity was taking place due to all the crazy hotels I was booking over two continents. Finally Frank fixed the motor while I dealt with the hotel and the credit cards.

November first was a day where people came together for the final organizational talks. And we had everything together except my bacpack is still too heavy. I guess I will have to see what I can give away to lighten it up along the way.