Greetings from Big Bear Lake California, U.S.A.

Day after tomorrow I fly from LAX to Prague on the first leg of my long planned yearlong sojourn into serendipity. Perhaps someday I'll write the story of how it took me two years to catch this plane. But, here I am a day away from that great bungi jump off into the "Dark Continent."

My staging area for the past couple months has been a place of tight quarters hidden away in the San Bernardino Mountains. Among still packed boxes I do have a cleared desk, a telephone, my computer with cantankerous access to the Internet and even a bed. Big Bear Lake is just about the quietest place on the earth, at least between the mobbed snow frenzies, something that I had forgotten from my high school days up here.

When I do return from this next episode of learning what I can from the Africans about the human condition, quiet, uneventful Big Bear will force few distractions in the way of getting it all down on paper (Err? that is down on silicon). It sounds great to say you are writing a book, but like my philosophical musings, I really just want to see what I've learned and writing it all down provides the discipline I need to do that.

This "postcard" is the first of the new series and serves as my beta-test for the series. First, let's make sure that all the parts of cyber-technology work together and that those who actually want to see my stuff don't inadvertently let their bulk mail filters shuffle it off into limbo. In the future your address will be hidden in the bcc: field to keep the header clutter down and to minimize the work I have to do in frequently confusing cyber-café settings. Second, the picture part of our new "postcards" has taken a quantum leap into sophistication. Initially, I'll be using both a 35mm film camera and a tiny digital PenCam with remote processing and posting of picture albums on the Internet while I am still traveling. Third, I have developed an extensive website with links to material I will need while out in the field, some of which you may find interesting. My travel logistics site is located at this link, and is a good place to start learning about the advanced planning I did for Africa and how I have migrated my office activities to cyberspace. The opening page offers a starting itinerary for those of you who like to put thumb tacks on a map.

This URL gets you right to the album page. My alpha testers made me realize not everyone will know to "click" on the thumbnail images to see full screen high-resolution pictures. There is a slide show button on the opening screen of each album that allows the entire photo sequence to be briefly displayed along with my short captions, as well as buttons to move forward or backward in the collection. I chose ofoto.com (now kodakgallery.com since its acquisition by Kodak) from a field of thirteen well researched and tested contenders. I think you will agree they are a good choice for our unique requirements.

Well. This is much too long for a postcard. So I will stop the finger dancing and get on with the posting process... and then proceed with the last minute preparations for for this brash enterprise.

Cheers,
Fred L Bellomy

 

Shoreline Condos in Santa Barbara-November 2000: work area in the living room just before moving everything into the Big Bear Lake Mountain Meadows senior apartment complex for storage during my planned yearlong expedition to Africa.