New toys, plans, and all that jazz...

I have, again, been up to my eyeballs this last week with work, planning, organizing, phoning, emailing, and all that other ... stuff... that goes along with leaving a place for 6 months or more...

I had my first dental exam in far FAR too long done today, $200 down the drain, but it was worth it to know that I likely won't need any work done by Siberian dentists... not that I have anything AGAINST Siberian dentists, if there are any reading this, but I'd feel more comfortable having my own dentist work on me. As it turns out, my OLD dentist has retired since the last time I went to visit and his practice has been bought out by a new guy, Dr. Krieger. Seemed like a very nice chap all in all, though a couple of his dental assistants were a bit shy on the experience side (Having the person polishing your teeth talking to another person and commenting on how exciting it is to polish teeth because she "almost never gets to to do this" doesn't do a lot to instill confidence in me, but I survived, and everyone was quite nice and competent, so ...

My dad returned home on Friday from a few weeks in the UK doing family research and the like. We've jumped straight back into a routine of doing Hume & Hume's as fast as we can to get a nice buffer built up before I leave the country... There's a few fun / interesting characters coming up, so it'll be a nice change from politicians too (not that I mind politicians, but it's nice to get some variety :) )

As far as travel stuff goes, I've had a few minor-to-major developments as well. Notably, I now have a new backpack that actually fits me properly... it's an 85L Osprey Aether (The Osprey website is kinda broken, but you can at least see the thing) and I swear I don't even know I'm wearing it, even with 60 lbs or weight in the thing... I'm also well on the way to having some customized GPS software that's more suited to the type of application that I want. A friend of mine, Evan Willms, is coding it for me in exchange for my Lego Mindstorms NXT set, that I never had the chance to play with anyway. Basically the program is a fairly simple/small/light app. that spurts out GPS coordinates in a Google Maps URL so they can be easily incorporated as a link into my blog posts. Check out the bottom of this post for an example. It's pretty spiffy really. He's also got the thing rigged up to record trip-data while I'm offline, and output KML files that can be dumped into GoogleEarth later on if I want...

I've also finally made solid contact with Don Weber's fixer, Vladimir, in Ukraine. He seems like quite a nice guy, and has asked me to try and bring some Kraft Dinner cheese packets and Pepsi along with me when I go. Apparently neither of these things are readily available in Ukraine... It seems a BIT odd to me to be, in effect, including KD Cheese as part of a payment to get me Exclusion Zone access, but I think it's a good sign that this guy is on the same wavelength as me. I like him already :)

On a final note, I've finally set a good-bye party date... May 25th, at the Union Pacific (see map below...) ... Jimmy, the owner, has agreed to go so far as to post a world map and track my progress with pins while I'm gone... I think it's his way of keeping track of how long his primary source of revenue will be out-of-country, but it's kinda cool too...

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Nic's Current Location:
Union Pacific Coffee, Victoria, B.C.
+48° 25' 48.40", -123° 22' 6.59"

Life is too busy...

I've been lax about posting here lately, largely because I've been running my head off all over the place for the last week or two. I was in Vancouver over the weekend attending the WCNPA conference there, then up in Kelowna visiting an old friend for an evening, then back in Victoria and straight into a couple of days of work at the Metro... Throw in trip planning, an insane 23-hour day at the beginning of last week, a smattering of shoots for corporate clients, and trying to cram in errands / visits with friends while I was in Van. and you've got a pretty busy week all in all.

In the Good News category, I now have my Chinese visa in my Canadian passport, and my Russian visa in my British passport. Still waiting on the Mongolian one; it will get sent in to the embassy on May 15th, and I should hear back from them by the 23rd or so. If I *DON'T* get a visa I've decided to just drop it and head straight to China from Russia... I'm keeping my fingers crossed though...

There's been so much other ... well... stuff... going on these last few weeks that I'm not even going to try and cram it all in. None of it is particularly significant but it's totally drained me. One addition to my arsenal of gadgets that *IS* worth noting is my brand spankin' new GlobalSat USB GPS receiver. Each blog post I make from now on will include my position, down to around 50ft accuracy or so, so those of you who *ARE* interested can keep track of where I am. I'm looking for a software solution that will let me provide a link to a satellite view / map of where I am. I haven't found a simple / clean solution for that yet, so for now, you're stuck with just the numbers :)

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Nic's Current Location:
Union Pacific Coffee Company, Victoria, B.C.
48º25.81'N 123º22.08'W

The trials and tribulations of facebook...

So, I finally broke down and created a facebook account about 4 or 5 days ago. It's been quite a trip down memory lane, touching base with old friends long-forgotten, and people I went to pre-school with...

It's also been a very, very sobering experience.

In the last 24 hours I've connected and reconnected with the two people I least expected, one, an old Camosun friend who shall go unnamed, has had a rough time of it since I saw him last. Health problems abound, and he's still fighting the ghosts of a failed steroid-treatment for an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder, and withdrawal from the medical morphine that was given to help him with the pain. Either of those things on their own, I suspect, would be more taxing than most of us will ever know; I feel glad that the worst I ever have to deal with is a particularly bad cold.

On the other side of things, I received a message out of the blue from a niece (by marriage), Yolanda, that I didn't know I had, and saw pictures of my two great-nephews for the first time ever... I didn't even know their names until today (Indeo and Ryven). Oddly enough, this latter connection happened through entirely non-family channels. It seems Yolanda is friends with the Cheimak family, the younger members of whom I went to SMUS with. We're going to try and set up a meeting of some kind before I leave on my trip, so I can meet Indeo and Ryven, and their dad Jubal, who I've only heard passing mention of until now.

Facebook is a strange, strange place. I've gone from getting horrible news about good friends, to being connected with "new" family in the space of one evening. I don't think I've had this much of an emotional up-and-down day in a long time.

Some days the world seems huge and daunting; others it seems so small I feel like I can just reach across it. Today's been a bit of both...

Mongolia, oh Mongolia...

So... I've come to the conclusion that while the fine folks at Visa Connection are wonderful in their attempts to help me, they're not always the best at figuring things out...

First off, I received a call at the end of last week telling me that my Mongolian visa would have to be sent in as a "Double Entry/Exit" visa, valid for 180 days, because the Single Entry/Exit visas are only good for 90 days from the date of issue, and my entry into Mongolia is more than 90 days away... The *PROBLEM* is that Mongolia, apparently, is pretty picky about double entry visas and normally reject applications for them.

It took me until today to actually think about the numbers and realize that someone in Vancouver can't do basic math. If I apply for my Mongolian visa in mid-May, that means I'll have until mid-August to get into Mongolia. That's just fine, as my PLANNED date of entry is August 4... ... A couple of phone calls later and now Visa Connection will hold my British passport until May 15, then send it off for my Mongolian visa.

Again, I don't want to sound like I'm saying bad things about them... They've been wonderfully enthusiastic about helping me get what I need. Language barriers have been... problematic... with their staff though, and I seem to think that they're not used to having to do multi-country visa applications too often.

On the up-side of things, my friend Deddeda Stemler has told me that getting a Vietnamese and Cambodian visa at the border shouldn't be a problem at all. I just need to show up with cash and passport photos and it should be all good. This in itself is somewhat encouraging, and I'm finally becoming a *BIT* less worried about ending up in a Chinese or Vietnamese prison for inadvertently trying to enter a country illegally.

Also worth noting is that I've gone and signed up for my SCUBA refresher course through the Ogden Point Dive Center. It's been nearly 10 years since I went diving, but I've got 250 dives, for a total of over 200 hours of underwater time logged. Hell, I used to be a certified Rescue Diver, a-way-back-when, so I'm hoping it should all come back to me pretty quickly. My old Advanced / Rescue instructor, Erin Bradley, owns the store, so I'm looking forward to saying hi to him and catching up a bit too.

Visas are a pain...

So, already I've hit a snag with visa applications. The fine folks in Cambodia and Vietnam won't allow you to apply for a tourist visa more than three months in advance of your trip. This means that to get a visa to enter Vietnam in September (the current plan) I would have to send in my visa application some time in late June.

If things go according to plan, I'll be in Russia in June.

This could be a problem.

While the fine folks at VisaConnection were wonderful helping me out of the weekend, I have to admit to being a little bit non-plussed that they "forgot" (their word, not mine) to mention this minor detail to me while I was filling out paperwork in their offices. I got a phone call around noon today explaining things instead.

SO... The current plan is to try and apply for my Vietnamese and Cambodian visas while I'm in China, and, failing that, head straight to Thailand after China and apply for them there. I've been told the Cambodian and Vietnamese Thai embassies will not have a problem doing this, but no one seems to be really sure if you can get away with doing it in China...

*grins* ... It's a bit frustrating, but those of you out there who know me know that I love it when things get interesting :)

Paperwork's in...

So, I dropped off my passports (yes, plural, I'm traveling on my British *AND* my Canadian passports to save some time and money with the visa processing), and most of my paperwork, at Visa Connection in Vancouver earlier today... I still need to fax them my proof of medical insurance, which I brilliantly forgot in Victoria, and which is needed to enter Russia... Gonna have to do that on Monday or Tuesday... As soon as I can find the paperwork, though I think I know where it is...

It's a bit nerve-wracking to just *LEAVE* a pair of passports with a company, but these guys come very highly recommended (Thanks Brian !) so I'm not too worried... I should have my Canadian passport back on May 1, and my British passport back on May 23rd... Each loaded up with 3 visas... Russian, Mongolian, and Cambodian on the British one, and Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai on the Canadian one. The Visa Connection people seemed to think this would be best, though I'm still not *QUITE* clear as to why...

I picked up a Thai visa as well because I figure if there's anywhere I'm going to want to just crash out on a beach for a while, it will be Thailand, and the last thing I want to do is get stuck with only a 30-day limit in the country... The Thai visa was pretty cheap, compared to the Mongolian and Russian ones at least, so I figure it's probably money semi-well-spent as an insurance policy, if nothing else...

The total bill came to just over $1600, for 6 visas, all with "level 3" or "level 4" expedited processing... If I didn't fork out the dough for em', it would take about 6 months, maybe even a bit longer, to get everything I need processed and such, AND I would have had to deal with 6 independent embassies... With these guys, it was 2 1/2 hours of paperwork, in one office in downtown Vancouver, so I guess it's a worthwhile investment as much for the convenience as the speed...

More updates as they come.

T - 57 Days...

So I booked my flight to London today, and a whole schmackload (Yes, that's a noun. I don't know why spell-check won't recognize it) of hostels across Europe and Asia. Now All that's left to do is get to Vancouver, get my visas (here's to keeping my fingers crossed) and getting the hell out of here in a timely manner. I'm booked on a 9PM Zoom flight out of YVR (Vancouver International) on June 1. It should, in theory, get me in to London Gatwick at around 4PM or so on Saturday the 2nd, with a brief stop in Belfast along the way. (What kind of airline stops in Belfast BEFORE going on to London? Weird...) From there I expect to spend a week-ish in London, a week-ish in Budapest, then on to Kiev... Most of my itinerary up until I enter Russia is pretty flexible, so that's all with a grain of salt of course...

It feels good to finally be booking things, especially after the Merit Travel fiasco (DO NOT use Merit Travel if you're in Victoria. I won't go into the specifics here, but WHEW... Talk about a bad experience...)