Forty Years, if There's No Traffic. And a Million Birds.

"Fifteen minutes, with no traffic." "Forty five minutes, with no traffic."

No one in Stiletto City will ever give you the real amount of time it takes to get from Point A to point B. Distances are given in minutes, not miles, and the distances always carry the addendum: “…if there’s no traffic."

If Moses had come from S-City he would have said: "The Promised Land? From here? Oh, I'd say forty years, if there's no traffic."

And the amazing thing is that yesterday there actually was no traffic on the Santa Ana Freeway. Plot, Duck and Mummy P. got down to Schmeckl Plotnik's house in Once There Were Oranges Here County in less than an hour.

Baby I still hasn't found Forward. She only crawls in Reverse. So for her to get anywhere, while crawling, it would take forever, traffic or no traffic.










What a beautiful day. Little Bear-Nik is feeling much better and she played with Baby I most of the day.

Then, last night back in Stiletto City, sitting in Mummy P’s kitchen, Plotnik found himself missing BZWZ. So, he sent her a text message in Kenya. A few minutes later, he got this text back: ‘In Kisumu, leaving for village later. Woken up by a million birds.’

Wow, a million birds. Wow, Africa. Wow, what a tiny and huge world we live in, both at the same time, moving at high speed and low speed and no speed at all, and, in the end, it always comes down to missing the people you love, and what you've got to do is find them, visit them, hug them, and when all that fails: text them. Hi, BZ.