Facts from the longest business trip of my life

• Number of days on the road this trip: 20
• Number of seperate projects worked on: 5
• Total number of people hosted: 835
• Customs officials spoken to: 4
• Number of those officials who wished me a good flight: 1
• Number who welcomed me to their country: 3
• Number who have said “Welcome back to the United States, sir” to me in the past ten years: 0
• Number who did on Sunday: 2
• Aircraft flown on: 12
• Airports landed at: 8
• Number of these I visited on more than one separate occasion: 3
• Number of Kazakh pickerels eaten in Manitoba: 1
• Estimated distance travelled in kilometers by that fish: 8771
• Distance between my plate and the Red River, where pickerel can be found, in meters: 200
• Colleagues I collaborated with: 26
• Gray whales seen: 5
• Porpoises seen: 1
• Minutes it took to fly over the flood waters south of Winnipeg: 10
• Number of times pulled over for running a red light: 1
• Number of tickets received: 0
• Hours I played a talking drum and got paid for it: 2
• Number of passengers who snarked rudely at an Air Canada flight attendant when the captain of the plane was an hour late due to HIS flight being delayed: 7
• Minutes by which the delay was reduced thanks to these interventions: 0
• Approximate number of rock balancing sculptures set up by a group of us on the Pembroke, Ontario riverfront: 30.
• Number of local senior citizens who said they were going to go home and try that: 3
• Age, in years, of Highland Park Orkney whiskey served to me by Allistair Hain: 25
• Minutes it took me to drink it: 30
• Number of juggling balls I left home with: 7
• Number I returned home with: 1
• Indigenous languages heard spoken: 4
• Number of these I understood enough to talk to the Elder about it: 1
• Different guitars played: 3
• People spotted wcearing paper face masks during a three hour wait in San Francisco: 7
• Number of poems I wrote and read out as part of my professional duties: 2
• Number of pieces of olive and sundried tomato pesto stuffed calamari that come served on a roasted cauliflower and fennel salad at RauDZ in Kelowna: 6
• Number of beds slept in: 9
• Percent of annual rainfall that fell in Hoopa, CA during the two days I was there: 4
• Number of elk heads on the walls at Cinnebar Joe’s in Willow Creek, CA: 7
• Number of hockey sticks on the walls: 1
• Number of times my credit card was returned to me by a cab driver who drove 20 minutes out of his way to do so: 1