Introduction

Well here I finally am, sitting on the computer at Passano, Italy. Well actually, I’m sitting in a chair and the computer is in front of me. So much has happened I don’t even know where to start, though I think the beginning has historically been proven as a good spot. A note about this blog. Because generally the times that I have to sit down and write are few and far between, I have been keeping track of everything in a little black book, and then when the time comes I sit down and write two weeks worth of adventures in one enormously long sitting. Now, I realize that nobody else with any modicum of sanity in this world wants to sit down and read two weeks worth of adventures in one enormously long sitting, at least not during a lunch break at work or any other span of time any less busy than, say, a Sunday afternoon in an isolated mountain retreat with an excellent internet connection. So, in order to make that phenomenon a little more avoidable for you, I’m going to write up each little section in my book as a new blog post, the way it would be if I were actually blogging in real time. Thus this entire paragraph is really just a longwinded way of me informing you that the dates and times at the top of the posts are nothing more than a load of rubbish. They are irrelevant and they are liars. I would also like to take a moment to point out that I just used the phrase “load of rubbish.” Can you tell that the only English I’ve been hearing for the past week or two has been out of the mouths of Brits and New Zealanders? Not only that, but my reading material is Douglas Adams, an Englishman if I ever read one. And now on to the good stuff. The adventure begins.