Dana Treat – Treat Yourself

Heading to the Southern Hemisphere

Posted March 13, 2012

(Bye bye rain.  Oh, and while I am using parentheses, my new spring classes are up!  Check them out and I really hope to see you!  And another thing, the winner of the Bialetti pan is Jentry!  She loves her Le Creuset Dutch oven.)

Every October, Randy and I go to a most amazing auction for the Boyer Clinic.  It is a cause very near and dear to our hearts.  Graham did preschool and his very first round of speech therapy at Boyer and it was a beacon of light during a very dark and confusing time for us.

Because we had such an amazing experience there, we have continued to support them in multiple ways.  We attend the auction, we donate to the auction, we ask friends to donate to the auction, and Randy is on the board at Boyer.  An event like this auction is something we don’t often experience in Seattle.  People dressed to the nines in a lovely room bidding on amazing items.  Seattle is a city that is casual to a fault, so this auction feels extra fancy.

We have been going for many years and something that is always donated is a safari in South Africa.  In October of 2010, that trip came up in the live auction, and Randy starting raising his paddle.

Now, this was shocking to me.  We had not discussed it beforehand.  Usually we have a little pow wow before the live auction begins where we talk about things we are interested in buying.  We decide on what items and how much we are willing to spend.  It almost always happens that the bidding goes out of our reach very quickly.  But there we were.  Trip to South Africa on the line, Randy raising his paddle, and me asking him, “Are you f***ing crazy?”  Everyone at our table was egging us on, promising to watch our children for us, until whatever imaginary number Randy had in his head came and went and he put his paddle down.  That was when the auctioneer came over to us and asked the magic question, “If we can get you another trip for your top bid price, would you take it?”  And Randy, again without consulting me, nodded his head yes.  I was simultaneously horrified and exhilarated.

And so, we are going to Africa.  Today.  It has been a long time in the planning.  Soon after the auction, we bought our plane tickets and also secured multiple people to help watch the boys while we are gone.  (Yes, we thought about bringing them.  But ultimately decided that they are too young and it is too far for them to appreciate at this time.)  And then we kind of forgot about it.  I would look at the calendar periodically for some far off date and think to myself, “Wow, I am going to be in South Africa in March of 2012.”

And here it is.  We fly out tonight and have a stop in London.  We arrive in Capetown the morning of March 15th.  We spend five days there and then board another plane to take us to Durban.  From there we have a 4 hour car ride to a game park where we will spend the next six days.  Considering we are flying to the country that is as far from Seattle as you can get, and considering we are spending a small fortune for this trip, I know very little about what we are doing.

I know there will be a day trip down to the Cape of Good Hope and another day trip to the wine country near Capetown.  I know, once we get to the safari part of the trip, there will be elephants, lions, and giraffes.  And many other animals.  At least I hope there will be.  I know there will be an optional trip to Victoria Falls.  And that’s about it.  I know I have some new camera equipment and I hope to take a million bazillion good photos, and I hope my kids are all right without us.  I’m feeling a bit (a lot) guilty about leaving them here without us.

So, I have one food post waiting in the wings.  And I hope to be able to eek out another post while we are in Capetown.  I also hope to be able to upload photos to my Flickr account, but we shall see.  It might be that you don’t hear from me again until early April.  In that case, I’m sure I will have some stories to tell.


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