The National Geographic hosted a reception and dinner last night to kick off our expedition. Mike says it seems funny to call it an expedition, as he thinks of that as a term for camping and roughing it in the wilderness.
I think of expeditions like in the Hollywood movies - with porters and cooks and transport all arranged for you. This trip definitely has all that. The plane is a 757 that's charted from an English based company. There are 17 staff traveling with us: 3 pilots and our own traveling mechanic, a private chef aboard the plane, a full time physician (an ER doctor from Northwestern!), 3 staff that handle all our luggage, a senior trip leader who coordinates all the trip arrangements, and others who functions remain a mystery at the moment.
We met the NG experts at dinner last night. There are 4: Rob Hernandez, the NG host and senior editor for the National Geographic magazine, Jan Nijman, a geographer from Holland; David Harrison, a linguist from Swarthmore College, and Jay Dickman, a Pulitzer Prize winning photo journalist. They all will be giving lectures along the way, including on the plane. And they all made remarks at dinner last night.
My favorite was David Harrison, who said (about our trip experience), "You"ll see amazing stone buildings along the way, but the most important human achievement is the intangibles - it's about the ideas and the application of those ideas that are the truly remarkable achievements."
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