Travel planning

For old readers, welcome to the new location of my travel blog and for new readers...well enjoy. My next trip is the first week of February to Congo (DRC) to pick up our 7th child - Joceline. I am also traveling on behalf of my wife's non-profit agency One Small Step (www.onesmallstepfund.org ) and visiting several orphanages and agency contacts along the way.

Being the industrious traveler, I chose to use FF miles to try and get to and from Africa - being old and fat, I chose to try and do this in Business class. 450,000 miles later; 8 flights on 3 different airlines; 27 hours of travel one way...perhaps some money on a coach ticket would have been a bit easier.

So as all trips of this nature have three counters (days to departure, number of bags to take, and number of times dates have changed) here they are for fun:

Days to departure: 16
# of bags I have been asked to carry: 3 (note to readers: I have ONE personal bag - a backpack)
# of times dates have changed: 4

Keep an eye on the counters until departure on Feb 2!