No, I haven’t been loved up by those river women or turned into a toad by that crazy Circe. Just changing out of my cold-weather riding gear here at a wayside in Tennessee, where I’m happily heading west.

A couple days ago, however, I did have a fairly significant scare. I couldn’t access any of the 7,000-plus photographs I’ve got stored in the iPhoto library inside my laptop, including several shots I took in Virginia and North Carolina that I’m still hoping to post.

They just all up and disappeared (which explains my recent failure to be as communicative as I would like to be). Happily, though, an Apple technician was able to tell me by cellphone how to rebuild the library without losing anything. And now we’re back in business.

(And yes, I plan to buy a portable hard drive to back-up all my data as soon as I possibly can. Everything that’s been posted on the blog is safe in cyberspace, but there’s unposted content in my laptop I would really hate to lose.)

So on we go, in search of what’s to come. Now what was it again that blind seer said?

“… You will find a fortune, though it will not be the fortune you seek. But first you must travel a long and difficult road. A road fraught with peril. Mm-hmm….

You mean like Highway 40?

“I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path,  for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation….” 

OK, then. Sounds good. I think…