The calm before the storm. No, more like the calm before the story.

I love these moments at the edge of the precipice. We teeter back and forth, our heart bungee jumps to our head, our palms sweat, our voice trembles, our hands shake, and the unknown bares its teeth and invites us to tumble onward.

Welcome back.

I’m facing about thirty hours of travel time before I enter a brand new world where “I” becomes “We” and “my” turns to “our” – a change reflected in Manny and I’s new joint venture – SuperGrilledTravels.

Super Manny will supply the media – photos, videos, drawings – and I, the words, and the idea being that we can force each other to keep posting. Will it happen? It’s certainly, most positively, a definite maybe.

Manny and I met in Morocco about a year ago, in a small beach town’s only hostel. I thought she was cute, she thought I was loud, we were both correct. Over the past ten months, we have been able to meet up for two weeks in Hong Kong, three weeks in New York City, and five weeks traveling to Berlin, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Not bad for living 12 time zones apart.

We’ll spend five days in Guangzhou, China celebrating Chinese New Year with her family (I’m expecting a long drunken blur since I don’t speak enough Chinese to have a conversation and they almost all don’t speak any English, so the normal manner of conversation will be replaced with…. additional booze!), and then head to Belgrade, Serbia to meet up with her international crew of friends.

Next, down to Delhi for the brilliantly colorful Holi festival, and the rest is mostly unplanned. At some point we need to leave India and get over to Sri Lanka, from which we will fly back to the States right before my great friend Mr. Patrick Bieger will be getting married – and I will be officiating!

Marriages, babies, houses, helpless hangovers: our thirties are upon us. Am I scared? Of course! Not of growing older (As my dad always says, “You are lucky to get older. Some people are not so lucky.”), but the fact that things are much too good right now. It’s terrifying. It’s an imbalance. Whose good fortune have I mistakenly stolen and added to mine?

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Sending love from one end of the world to the other.

Talk to you all in a bit.