Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
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2002.10.28 : Jungle Boogie

     This is it. I've got my last, my very last bit of gear – down to a collapsing travel toothbrush. In the spirit of my first big trip, here it all is (well, except for a few missing items, like the camera for instance).

The clothing has all been sprayed down with permethrin (mosquito anthrax).

I'm in great shape, having added in an hour of walking in the evenings (on top of the usual morning stretch/lift/run routine) – wanted to make sure I was in savannah hiking shape. I also kicked caffeine, which makes me – unless you count the weekly melfloquine (or the daily multi-vitamin) – drug-free.

The Jungle Laptop is all tricked out, redundant connections with the camera tested – and the first dispatch (this one) successfully shot off from it. Vital data (flight info, currency conversion rates, U.S. embassy and consulate numbers and addresses, lots of danceable campfire MP3s) have been loaded up.

As astute cryptologists in receipt of the last dispatch will have noted, I've got a hot date in Amsterdam (again), during my 12-hour layover. Point of fact, I've got two hot dates in Amsterdam. My awesome, Tibet-freeing cousin Maureen will be showing me her Amsterdam in the first half of the day; my personal English stage goddess comes on shift later. Yep, that's me – multiple girls in every port. (Maureen is even putting me up on my return trip, when I'm laid over overnight. What a goddess!)

Tomorrow I get on a plane. Wednesday morning, I'll be looking out over the Cape, and up at Table Mountain. And Sunday we go into the bush.

Holy heck. Holy heck!


Mom wanted my itinerary. Here ya go: Cape Town to Victoria Falls and Vic Falls to Nairobi (Word docs)

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

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ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid by Michael Stephen Fuchs
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