Day 1&2 Sunday and Monday July 5-6. We’re to leave for Africa this morning. Delta flight #46 leaves SF at 6:00 am to Atlanta and from there in the evening at 8:05 another Delta flight #200 leaves for Johannesburg. Both Sally and I were up by 3:45 in the morning. I felt good and full of anticipation. I took a shower and packed my red backpack with food and some of my medications and one book Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. This bag is my carry-on, I’ll check through my green bag with my clothes and my sleeping bag. I called Sergio Torres, our neighbor; he took us to the airport. We got to the airport ahead of time and checked in at the standby counter. By flying standby we can only get on the plane if there were some empty seats. We were lucky; we got onto the 6:00 am Atlanta flight. Although we had to sit separately, we were on our way. In Atlanta we ate our sandwiches and waited, and waited, and waited. But we got lucky again, we not only got onto the Johannesburg flight, but we got seats in the Elite Business class. This was a major victory, because this means that we had a bed, so I could lie down horizontally, not to mention all of the other amenities. It started with champagne and orange juice I think they called it a “mimosa.” The dinner was also exceptional and after that I made my bed. I was reasonably comfortable and listened to some music and started to read the Gurdjieff book. This is a difficult book to read, and people who are not familiar with the Gurdjieffian system would not understand it at all. I’m somewhat familiar with his teachings, but still I had to force myself to read it. He raises a very important question “What is the sense and significance of life on Earth and human life in particular?” Wow! Very few people dare to tackle that question.
Much later I wrote the following in my diary on the plane: This is probably Monday already and we’re flying over the Atlantic Ocean close to Africa, and I just had my breakfast of croissants with butter and preserves. I had a difficult night, but I did sleep. I was thinking about the return trip already. Why am I thinking of the return trip already!? My God! The 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid” came to my mind, particularly the scene where Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) says as he encourages the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) to jump into a river way below, the only way of escape. Redford says “but I can’t swim” and Paul Newman replies “What are you worrying about not being able to swim? The fall will probably kill us anyway.” So why am I thinking about how I will be coming back? The question should really be “will I be coming back at all?”

After 15 hours in the air we arrived in Johannesburg around 6:00 pm. We easily got through emigration and as I walk out, I saw people with name cards picking up people. Nobody picked us up. I changed about 100 dollars to South African Rends with the exchange rate of 7:1 much better than I would have gotten back in Atlanta which was 6:1. I felt completely lost, but Sally was alert and was thinking about taking the local bus to downtown to our hotel, but common sense prevailed and we got a cab for 250 Rends to take us to the Formula Inn Hotel. Formula Inn is right behind Park station in the black section of Johannesburg next to the train station and the bus station. I felt very unsafe even in the car, but my fear diminished once we were in the hotel. We were 10,000 miles from San Francisco, but this was our home, because your home is where your bed is. We went to bed happy this is our first night in South Africa.