En Route to Tunisia

It has been several weeks since I have been out on the road. After summer travels in Morocco (and a little in Spain) I returned to Abu Dhabi to refresh and repack. I did some editing work while there, got to know the 2 new feline residents at my wife's and my apartment, dropped off by a cat-loving neighbor who has left Abu Dhabi for good. The two weeks were also a time to rest up, eat good vegan food, practice yoga, and occasionally do a few rounds of 15-floor stair climbing inside our apartment building. This is actually much more physically demanding than jogging, and cooler this time of year as the stairway is air conditioned.

I am currently at the Beirut airport en route to Tunisia, and had no plans to do a blog posting but I have a 7 hour layover here and free use of the Internet. Not even 12 hours into my trip and already have encountered several strange occurrences. At Abu Dhabi Airport this morning at 4:30 am I was drinking tea waitng for my flight to Beirut, while Middle Eastern Airlines was phoning my wife trying to find out where I was. It turns out oddly enough that the flight unexpectedly left before its 5:05 am scheduled departure time. Later in the morning, here at Beirut's airport, when I went through security there seemed to be some sort of problem and the security guard started searching through my bag, fascinated by my little portable iPod speaker (" Beautiful," he reverently proclaimed while holding it up and admiring it) and hinting several times that he would not mind at all if I decided to lighten my load a bit by presenting it to him as a gift.

So, 4 hours to go and then hopefully I will be out of this airport limbo and on my way to Tunis...