So we have spent the last 3 months on Seawolfe's case about his buffer... and in an ironic twist we seem to be stuck in Dublin after not taking mr. Wolfe's buffer advice...

For those of you not in the know, a buffer is the amount of time that you insert between events in your life in order to smoothly glide between one appointment or commitment to the next. This buffer gives you all sorts of mental freedom to enjoy the passing thoughts as you traverse from one moment to the next.

Or you can schedule everything so that it buts up to the next thing and slightly overlaps all of your commitments in such a way that you need a team of stratagists in order to get you through alive.

We got greedy in our last few days and tried to pack in as much as we could before the flight home... we then bought a connecting flight to our flight home that touched down one and a half hours before our homeward flight to the states left.... should be no problem right, RyanAir is the on-time airline... well they turned out to be on time, but only after about 7 or 8 guesses.

Our flight scheduled for 9:30 did not leave until 4:00 pm

we missed our flight home...

Well in about two minutes we will leave from the Christensons in Belgium and hop on a plain to Dublin. From there it will be just a few more hours before we touch down in Chicago... marking the end of the SuperTrip '07.  We recieved one last night of unexpected reprieve thanks to the hospitality of the Chirstensons after we saw seawolfe off last night.  It was good to sit back for a moment and collect ourselves before heading home.  There are still many memories just forming and a lot of discussions caught in mid sentence... I am looking forward to putting together the story of what happened to us over the past few months into something that is worth sharing with more than just each other... it will take some time... look forward to the aftermath if you have followed us this far.

See you in the states!

Shane 

Well, the last week has come upon us.  When meeting people we now tell them that we have been traveling for 3 months and we are on our way home... indeed we have run out of time and the itinerary is getting cut short in order to meet our plane in Dublin on the 30th.

While at the Vatican it seemed appropriate to perform a few of the available sacraments in the most official church in the world.  I am not catholic.  I was not raised catholic.  I don't have any devout catholic friends.  This said I have been through many religious rituals and I thought navigating them would be quite easy.

Confession indeed came quite easy.  In a certain way we have spent a fair amount of time confessing our sins to eachotehr and the camera this entire trip.  But what authority do your friends and a camera have over your sins, I would have to say no more than any priest.  But there was something special about the process of preparing myself for a confession to someone who I knew was going to take it seriously and indeed expected me to take it very seriously.  He was a priestly figure, but the face and soft spoken broken english was all grandfather.  In the end I was proclaimed absolved of my doubt and I was given a few pieces of advice to work with.  Nothing earth shattering... but I am working them over as valuable nonetheless.  You need joy in life and faith is not something anyone can give to you... its a gift from God.

High Speed trains, effeciency, and predictable time schedules are a thing of the past.  We just got off a train ride from Bulgaria to Romania that lasted 11 hours... durring that 11 hours we had our passports checked at least 4 times and the train must have stopped for no apparent reason about a dozen times.  Needless to say, our plans of quickly getting a survey of Eastern Europe may have been a bit optimistic.  We are hoping to make it into Germany in the next few days.

After leaving Roma we found a ferry to Greece (no partying this time... pretty much just slept) that landed us a few hours from Athens by train.  Everyone told us to only spend one day in athens and then find something else to do... we believe that everyone was right.  We found the Greek people to be quite welcoming and friendly (unless they are working at one of the historical sites), but Athens itself was a bit on the scarry side.  We came out of a spotless subway station into one of the worst smelling downtowns we have ever seen.  It only took one wrong turn to end up in the red light prostitution district.  Nevertheless we found a place to sleep out at night and the worked our way through the site seeing the next day.  The Acropolis is probably one of the most impressive set of ruins available... i really need to sit down with a history book when this whole thing is over...

Then we got on a long train north to Eastern Europe, first stop... Bulgaria

I know I am not posting much for pictures (we are still taking them, just don't always have time to upload)

We have all been tired, wet, sick, and beat down the last week... but it seems as if things have turned the corner into the final descent for home. We went ahead and splurged for a hostel the last 3 nights in Roma... which is rare for us, we dont like to spend any money on accomodations and usually prefer to sleep out in the rain next to the side of the road. But the pace and 2.5 months of a beat down finally got the best of me and my body demanded a descent nights sleep. Greg did not enjoy our travel philosophy all that much and once again the remnants of the Band of Savages were unable to effectively mingle with regular productive society. Greg spent the last 2 days on his own in Roma, which was probably for the best... I trust he enjoyed himself... and we needed the sleep.

We are off to see the Pantheon today and the Vatican tomorrow... I am prepared to offer my confession directly to the Pope.

Then we will be off to Greece, some of eastern europe, back through Germany, off to the UK and a departure from Ireland... its the home stretch... see you all soon!

After several weeks in Spain we have finally moved out into France and towards Italy.

We spent a brief couple of moments in portugal and found an awesome beach to get beat down by waves at and perform some minor cliff jumping into the Atlantic... it was pretty great.

Despite all this fun we were all quite stressed on the way out of portugal and on to Italy, sitting prone in trains for thousands of miles across spain probably did not help.  We finally seem to be arriving at some direction and final plans for the last few weeks... so the future is looking bright and we are all excited about visiting Rome and the Vatican... they have english speaking confessional booths there, and we all plan on attending at least one session each.