Twenty six days is a long time to be on the road. I've been away longer, but never without the most essential of traveling tools - my computer. Just one week into the trip my faithful HP gave up the ghost. No skype, no movies, no hulu, no NPR, no scriptures, no facebook, no blogging, no pre-flight planning or schedule updates; everything done by phone, my cell phone bill was not pretty. Aside from the computer problems the trip was very cool.
We were in Shanghai for the Chinese lunar new year. I witnessed one of the best fireworks displays of my life out the window of my 35th floor hotel room window.
For more than 4 hours the people of Shanghai set off fireworks all over the city. Just before midnight it started to snow and the visibility went down but you could still hear explosions from every quarter.
When we flew back to Abu Dhabi the next night, every city large and small were still celebrating. The city of Kungming: most of the lights in this picture are fireworks.
We also had the opportunity to fly to Kabul, Afghanistan (my first time, so a new pin on the map!). This normal looking Land cruiser is almost 12,000 pounds, armored and very cramped inside. The official who ordered it didn't spring for the blast shield under the vehicle - might not be the smartest decision in a IED rich environment. We took two of these cars up to Kabul.
