Hurry Up and Wait

So the trip got postponed, I was suposed to leave Friday.
They are now saying "end of March", sigh.

Virgin no More

I got my passport in 2001 when I was working at Morgan Stanley for the trip to England that I was to take, but the economy started to tank and that trip was canceled. Sad face. With this, that, and the other, I have never had a chance to travel. I have been out of the country 2 times in my life, the first was in 1990 for the eclipse in Mexico (9 minutes of totality!!) the second was riding across Vancouver in a bus (big trip). But now, my passport finely has a stamp in it, and what a stamp!
90 day, double entry Visa for Kazakhstan!

A Fuck Load of Work

So, not only am I working my but off at work, for work preparing for work (Yeah, in this economy nobody should complain about having too much work). But also doing a lot of work preparing for taking pix.
I bought a med format camera for the trip, and had to send it back cuz the lens mount was visibly bent. So, I got a different one and discovered that the light seals were totally degraded :(
I was pissed at the guy who took his camera off the shelf after it had been sitting for years and just assumed it was in the same condition that it was when he put it there...
Hmmm, I should run a roll through my 35mm camera.
So, the plan for this weekend is to scrape off the old light seal, clean the camera thoroughly (probably clean the digicrap too, it is looking nasty), put new light seals in, and run a roll through it to see what is what.
I'll let you know how it turns out.

Frozen Beavers

It is cold in Kazakhstan this time of year. Damn cold! And I may have to be working in the cold.
So, I am considering growing a beard for the trip.

Thoughts? questions? Concerns?

Practice, and Beginning, or 40 Below Zero

So, I am leaving for kazakhstan in a few weeks (I don't know how many, but 3 or 4 is a working number). Don't worry about breaking into my empty house wile I am gone, there will be more people here than there are when I am in town (everybody loves my cat and are queued up to house sit for her). Why am I going? Cuz I am tired of telling people the temperature and having them ask Fahrenheit or Celsius?

But anyway, I will be taking many a photo during the trip and writing about what I see. I will be adding notes as to which camera was used what day and about what I saw (this is for me so I can look back and have an idea as to what I was photographing and why) so you will see the following notes as I blog (I will have internets for most of the trip) and some pix may start showing up on my flickr during the trip. I reserve the right to change my notation.
DC: Digicrap (Nikon CoolPix)
D80: Nikon D80 Digital
F100: Nikon F100 35mm Film
120: Mamiya RB-67 Pro S(120 Film, 60mmX70mm)

Yes, there are a lot of Nikons on the list, I can swap lenses from the D80 and the F100 (Oh, and thieves, if you are trying to steal my cameras, I keep them in my bedroom next to my collection of antique bear traps)

Anyway, I have not taken any pix of the trip yet. But I did go to the doctor to get medically certified for offshore work.