SANTA CLAUS GOES TROPICAL

Somewhere in the Far Frozen North, some rather suspicious white bearded elf (and I am white bearded and I am suspicious but I ain't no elf) is warming up a bunch of magical reindeer and kicking the skids on his sled

Mr Claus is topping up his windshield wiper and getting ready for a bit of a Christmas Eve flight.

Well so am I. But instead of a sled, Collette and I will strapped into a white metal tube, not proprelled by deer, but by a couple of screaming jet engines

Posting this from the Air Tranist lounge at Pearson International Airport. Such a jolly festive place, what with the screaming babies and the tourists and the 40 dollar sandwhiches and the body cavity searches at Customs .. OK, some of that may have been slightly exaggerated

But the truth is, we are waiting for our flight to wing us to an equally less Christmas like place, the country of Panama. Well OK, they celebrate Christmas there but they don't have no snow nor ice nor howling wind .. And yeh, that's why we're going

They don't have our families either and we will miss that. No, really we will, for once that was not sarcasm. But one of us actually works for a living, deals with all kinds of levels of stress and just needs some down time ... preferably in the ocean, with some sort of adult beverage in hand

As we packed for this trip we estimated that at least a third of our weight would be camera gear. Collette is taking her two Nikon bodies, four lenses, a tripod, a monopod as well as her little Nikon underwater cam. I'm taking my Sony Handycam and my newest toy, a GoPro "sports" cam, a tiny little thing that you strap into various enclosures, including a waterproof one. It comes with a wide variety straps and attachments that allow you to take it with you in virtually any situation. It is shock proof, let us find out if it is Victor proof.

So many images will be taken and eventually processed, I will probably blog a couple of times, though I'm unsure of the connectivity in Panama.

We will miss all of you. Really we will. I will have a rum and a beer for each of you .. god I love having big families.