Travel
I was fortunate to get fully vaccinated before leaving the U.S. (and most of our team has been vaccinated as well.) But the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, like all responsible organizations running international operations during COVID19, requires us to complete a full two-week quarantine before we board the R/V Sarmiento de Gamboa and sail into the North Atlantic Ocean.
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I took this photo of Mt. Rainier (the view from our hotel in Seattle) two days before the wildfire smoke rolled into town.
Early morning sunlight slices through a thin gap in the hotel room curtains. As I open my eyes, I think for a minute about where I am, and how I got here. Yesterday I woke up in my bed in Carrboro. Then I went to the airport for the first time in eight months. Two flights and nine hours later, I arrived at a Residence Inn just a few miles from SeaTac airport.
And this is where I will spend the next two weeks.
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Kim Collins, Pat Hull, and Scott Collins pose for a photo in a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan.
After spending two months at sea this summer, one of my colleagues from the ship told me her buddy was planning to bring a group of American musicians to Japan for the first time. She suggested I reach out to him about documenting the tour.
A couple e-mails, two phone calls, and one very long plane ride later, I find myself in Japan, meeting Gus Bennett for the first time, along with with singer-songwriter Pat Hull and folk rock duo The Smoking Flowers. I have landed in a strange, foreign place, but I quickly come to find I am among friends.
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