Heartfelt thanks to those who left comments on the previous post. I appreciated the sentiments very much.

I got back to Woodbury last Saturday evening, and actually spent much of Sunday combing through my gear, checking my notes, and beginning to put lists together for TGOC 2009. Nothing like getting an early start. Sunday evening, though, it dawned on me that this wasn’t merely obsessive-compulsive, it was impossible. H graduates med school in the middle of May next year, and needless to say, I am not going to be in Scotland on that day. So I’m thinking 2010, which means I won’t need to begin planning for a couple of weeks yet.

This has been and will continue to be a year of travel. We were in Vieques just before Christmas, and in Chianti for three weeks in January; I was in Scotland for the Challenge; I’m in Arizona now, visiting H during her surgery rotation; we’ll be in Vermont and New Hampshire for a weekend in June; we’ve got a business trip to Seattle (which we’ll extend to Vancouver or Victoria for fun) in July. Most important and exciting, we’ll be heading off to Minnesota around the beginning of August for the birth of our first grandchild, and I expect a certain amount of back-and-forth between Connecticut and there during the fall. In the interstices, ankle allowing, I am hoping for some significant time in the White Mountains.

Now if I can just get over this 8-hour time swing….