Gianna and Sam left from New York a few days earlier, and navigated themselves to the Greek island of Samos just a stone’s throw off the coast of Turkey. There, Gianna and Sam video-blogged their adventures playing Frisbee on the beach and hiking through grueling conditions to reach The Cave of Pythagorus, in which Pythagorus may or may not have taught.

 

Toni and Aaron stayed in Sebastopol for a few additional days, Departing on the 4th of July for a July 5th arrival in Athens (by way of Amsterdam).

 

I had pulled an all-nighter the night before we left to complete a last bit of work before I abandoned my job for 18 days. The long trip at an important moment – during our product’s launch, in fact, although I could not have known that when we scheduled the trip ten months earlier – was an annoyance to my boss, so I wanted to get done what I could before leaving.

 

Also, I thought some sleep deprivation might help with jet lag on the other side.

 

Delta upgraded Chiara and me to First Class, but they seated us separately, which was an annoyance, and the very definition of a First World Problem.

 

We had a 3-hour layover in Atlanta that became a 4-hour layover due to a mechanical issue with the craft, then Chiara and I were seated together in DeltaOne service on an older 767-300 (see above).  The seats lay flat, which helped us sleep for about six hours, but the layout of the trays, controls, electricity, and stowage were so strange, counterintuitive, and unhelpful that the experience was more strange than wondrous.