What I did on my summer vacation.
 

So for those of you who don't ever look at me, I wandered away for a while. A sample of vacation photos will follow.

Don't lie, you spent the whole time creating the new avatar.

I hope you didn't have to sacrifice the cats up there in the woods. How many Ruskies did you take out?

Nude pictures only, if you please, Mr. Rain Man.

FAX

Hail the conquering......errr....

Is it just me, or over there on the left, does it look like someone is peeing out the window?

FAX

First off, you know it's a long trip when your airplane has to make a fuel stop partway through. They wouldn't let me off the plane, so here's my only photo of Dakar, Senegal.

I was on the second-longest commercial flight in the world - Washington DC to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight originates in New York, and the New York-Johannesburg route is the longest flight in the world. It was 17 hours on the schedule going out, and 18 coming back due to differences in winds. About an hour is spent on the ground in Dakar refueling.

Why couldn't they refuel in midair like the Air force does.

I got up. I went downtown to look for a job. I hung out in front of the drug store.

you take the best photos, Rain Man. Is that an expensive camera?

Another exciting part about the trip was wandering to the bathroom about 12 hours into it and seeing a guy with robes and leather cords chanting next to the emergency exit. I snuck this photo and hope it's not disrespectful to do so, but it was really interesting. Someone else said he was a Hasidic Jew, but I've never seen dress like this. If you look at his arms, he had a long cord wrapped around them. Fortunately, he didn't blow up the plane or anything.

I have a longstanding tradition of breaking my camera on the first day of vacations. In this case, though, my batteries died on the plane on the way there, so this is from my phone. My extra batteries were in my checked bag.

Seriously, I've had 7 overseas vacations, and broke cameras on the first day on two of them, and in the first week on a third.

You should have taken him down, you'd be a hero just like Tony Gonzalez.

A random street scene from Durban, South Africa, on my first day. My hotel was apparently in a predominantly African American neighborhood.

Getting ready for a boat tour of Durban's harbor. In a theme to be repeated over and over, my wife and I were the only people on the boat.