We last met in Paris, and when I signed off for 2021 RBD and I had not planned travel back to Africa.  Then an opportunity presented itself.  

Friends of ours who wanted to go to South Africa with us in 2021 (but decided to delay till 2022) now could no longer make any time work due to job responsibilities.  I do not understand that feeling, as I have never felt obligation to an employer outside my scheduled, agreed upon hours.  This attitude is probably why my friend runs a large organization, and I am a nobody line cook in the dilapidated, road side cafeteria of life.  I like it here, though.     

So the nonrefundable deposit would expire unused.  To waste a perfectly good deposit seemed criminal, particularly to such a lovely region of the world.  I sold a kidney, while the good people at AndBeyond transferred the deposit to us, and viola!  Now, I filter slightly fewer waste products, but we’re going to Botswana.  Win win.  

We begin our travels departing JFK and fly to Atlanta, where Delta has one direct flight per day to Johannesburg.  After flying across mostly water for 15 hours — which I find enormously disconcerting when I stop and think about it, for apparently we live on a water world — we arrive around 5 PM South African Standard Time and spend the night.  Joburg is six hours (and six months ahead, it’s Fall) ahead of The Eastern Time Zone.  The next day we depart northward to Kasane, Botswana, which is in the north east of the country, near where Zambia and Mozambique meet.  

For your photographic enjoyment, I will be supporting a Canon 5D Mark 3.  However, I have some tough news to share:  My trusty 6D has finally left us, and in this time of grief please indulge me a few, heartfelt words as its shutter clacks for the last time.  

That camera and I have traveled enough distance to circle the globe at least once.  I will never forget the memories we shared, mainly because it took pictures which live on in my hard drive that spark the memories we shared.  Some tens of thousands of images — most of which were terrible and deleted — from many parts of the world.  I know this is as much your loss as it is mine.  Never did the 6D fail me, though after we fell into the glacial lake in New Zealand it only worked again after fully drying out.  

Things and people come and go throughout your life.  Most you forget, but sometimes, something comes along and leaves a mark on your soul.  My Canon 6D will live on, I think, to a degree in all of us.  It was a lens that exposed us all to our beautiful world.  Salud, my friend.  May you find focus in the hereafter.  

All that said the 5D Mark 3 is superior is every measurable way.  So, without even trying, the pictures should look better.  6D who?       

What do cocaine and Atlanta have in common?  Find out Friday, Day 1 of our time together. 

Buckle up.