From one airport to another...

Our journey begins at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. I'm sitting in the gate awaiting boarding; the flight is running about 20 minutes behind schedule, which is like a fly in the wind given our five-hour layover at Heathrow in London. Security was smooth sailing; we've checked most of the bigger cases, but we're carrying on our camera equipment to avoid any mishaps with lost luggage. Imagine coming all that way to shoot a documentary, only to find that your cameras wound up in Bangalore instead of Bangladesh. Ouch.

Dhaka is eleven time zones ahead of Chicago. All told, we'll be traveling for about 24 hours, but we're losing a half day in the transition, so we'll arrive on Saturday morning, May 31, despite leaving on Thursday. Quite the journey. The only thing more impressive is the trip back, when we'll leave Bangladesh at 8am and arrive in Chicago in the early afternoon. At that point, we'll have been up for close to 36 hours. Talk about the longest day ever.

The boxers are antsy. Mark hasn't been able to sit down since arriving at the airport; he wants to stay standing and walking around "until the last possible moment." Tomas and Leo have been reading books while leaning against posts or standing by their bags. Bill and I almost feel like fish out of water; we're the only ones relaxed enough to sit down. That's what happens when you don't sleep the night before a shoot. The desire for sleep outweighs the anticipation, if only just so.

And, with that, I'll leave you with a particularly jarring picture, for those of you who know me. I shaved my beard in anticipation for the lack of shaving over the next two weeks, and during my search for supplies I came across a hat only Indiana Jones could love. So, naturally, I bought it and will be wearing it every day. Here's to adventure on the other side of the world. Indeed.