This box arrived in the mail today. Prying the lid off, I found the following items:

A gold MPC Inner Circle membership card.

A welcome letter and three challenge coins.

And a t-shirt and warning labels.

So I’m a happy camper.

Me: I’d planned to wear pants today.
Harriet: Get used to disappointment.

I decided I wanted to retrace the route the Knights Templar might have taken to travel from Paris to Jerusalem during the crusades. It’s a total of 2,980 miles. When I started out 245 days ago, I figured if I walked four miles a day, it would take around 600 days to finish. Since then I’ve switched from walking to cycling, so now I average somewhere between 8.5 miles to 15 miles a day. But I also got off track after I messed up my knee and then just didn’t feel like working out for a couple of months after that. The result is that today, I’m about 12 miles behind schedule as I hit the 40 percent mark of 1,217 miles.

I’m using myvirtualmission.com to keep up with the journey at:

http://www.myvirtualmission.com/missions/6129/the-templar%27s-trail

… this tree does this and I can’t remember if it’s a pecan tree or a fig tree or something altogether different because they all grow together. All I know for sure is that eventually, I can pick the pecans and figs, then stuff the figs with the pecans and feta, wrap them in bacon and broil them. This was the lesson I took from my daily meditation: trees don’t care if we know their names. They don’t flower for us. We’re just lucky enough to be allowed to see it sometimes.

The landscape and weather in Serbia is almost identical to Mangham today. But at least I’m moving again after a long winter of slacking off.

18.8 miles in 71 minutes. But tomorrow will be hard. I may have a meeting after work and that would mean it would be 9 p.m. before I could work out.

My daughter, Emily, looking through the documentation for clues to the mystery of the King in Yellow.

Bringing in the new year with my daughter and a glass of grenache.

It’s a one-way street. We’re not sure which way, but it is definitely just one way or the other.