Am I seriously starting a blog? We’ll see how long it lasts or if any of you come back. Here’s the deal: I’ve decided to take a multi-week trip to mainland Asia and the Himalayan Mountain Range and want you live the next few months of training and trek vicariously.

Hopefully this will be interactive as well as informative. I promise it will not be just about me; if that were my objective, then you’d get a call, email or facebook post you. The purpose of this blog is to give you an opportunity to live and enjoy a culture that likely was completely unattached to yours or your ancestors until World War II. I want to offer you the opportunity to see Japan, meet its people, enjoy its culture and arts and, especially, sit back like other Westerners and wonder, “What the heck are they thinking?” Of course I will also share my outside-Japan experience, too, complete with a basic, real-time Cybercast during the actual trek in Nepal.

This blog—an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page, for my elder family members reading—will assuredly contain plenty of photos, links, GPS coordinates, formal names lost in translation, cultural misunderstands, grammatical mistakes, inside jokes, quirky comments, political incorrectness, detailed information among other things. This is for your entertainment and curiosity and for me a digital record that will allow me to relive the “good ole days” as I top 100 years old.

I won’t promise additions or updates at any specific frequency, but hopefully at least a couple times weekly. My blogging experience is probably the same or less than yours: Absolutely nil. Maybe it's is a tradecraft one can learn along the way.

SO, bookmark this page, create a weekly reminder in Outlook to check it for updates and teach those family members that need the lesson to turn on the computer. This should be fun.

Grant

PS Happy New Year!

Stumbling While Photographing Myself at 10,000 ft, Temps Below Zero and Winds Around 50mph on Mt. Houkendake, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.