Google tells me it’s 1,926 km from where I sit to go and visit my friend Robbymac out in Kelowna.

Well, come 4:00AM tomorrow, my wife’s clock radio is going to sound the annoyance tune and with any luck the wife and I will be out the door around 4:30 with both kids in tow — or bouncing off the walls already, perhaps. The car is pretty much packed, the dog is at the kennel, the kids are in bed early, and I’m doing some last-minute emails and blogging before I turn my attention to that grueling question of which books to take.

I’m very much enjoying Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t so that’s coming along, and probably Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition but after that I’m not sure whether to take some Seth Godin books or some emerging church type books. Maybe I’ll take Gibbs and Bolger’s Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, which I haven’t really sunk my teeth into yet. In some ways I’m wearying just a little of emerging bookology though.

In any event, we’ll be heading west in the direction of Kelowna. A couple of nights of hotels in or near Calgary, some camping in the mountains, and the probably head for Kelowna. My wife and I worked a summer together in Banff and although it’s changed quite drastically since then, we thought it’d be fun to show our girls — who have never seen real mountains — where we worked when we were courting that summer. And hey, once we’re that far, we might just decide to drop in on our friends the McAlpines. At the moment they aren’t even there, but should be back in town by the time we’re in the neighbourhood. Either way, it should be peach season in the Okanagan about then, and we can tour a winery or two and maybe pick up some excellent apple cider. All good excuses. The itinerary is still a bit open, we may do the return trip through Jasper and Edmonton instead of retracing all of our steps. We shall see. The budget is a little on the thin side, after all. And by thin, I mean… well, we’ll probably be able to eat a sandwich almost every day — each!

While I’m inconspicuously absent, content should continue to roll out, as I’ve future-posted a bunch of material. Trust me, you won’t even miss me. If however you think I’m ignoring you in the comments, don’t worry about it… I’m ignoring pretty much everyone and everything, just enjoying myself.