I should add...

In less than 24 hours, I’ll be hitting the road on the way to Algonquin Park, which I’m hoping will be bear-free (yes, the entire park) and somewhat cooler than the nine-thousand degrees it currently is in Ottawa (yes, just in Ottawa). Characteristically, I’ve left everything to the last minute: the packing, the directions, picking up beer, gassing up the car... Hopefully Isha won’t read this before we leave. I’d like her to maintain some level of confidence in my ability to drive somewhere without Sarah prompting on every turn.

It was this same trip a year ago where I first met Isha. We’d never even seen each other before (having been set up as travel pals by other friends on the trip), and while the ride got off to a rough start—with my almost driving straight into the gaping jaws of hell… twice—we had a great time. I don’t think I’ve ever realized I had so many common interests with another person so quickly in my entire life. Now a year has passed and I'm afraid there’s nothing left to say. While the 2005 trip was filled with musical taste comparisons, short autobiographies, and celebrity gossip, this year may just be three hours of stony silence.

Not true at all. Isha will complain about her hangover (induced by the one Mohito she drank the night before), we’ll both defend the personal choices that make up our mix CDs, and I’ll make stale Mel Gibson jokes while sharks successively jump over one another until the Earth finally explodes.

I’m going almost directly from a cruise ship… to sleeping in the woods. From five course meals… to eating vomit from a bag (tasty vomit, he said, giving credit where credit was due). From having flush toilets to… not so much with the flushing or the toilets. But hey, I’m doing it with some very great friends. Enough to make it more than worth it. See you in a few.