i was away last weekend. mrs. noz and i went to central pennsylvania to visit various family members. we were only there a short time, but it was a nice getaway. i was all but out of touch with the news when i was there. once again i came home wondering what i had missed only to find it wasn't much.
the new edition of the lonely planet guidebook to central asia is out. it's long overdue, actually. when i went last year i was disappointed by how out of date the 2000 edition was. some of the errors were so serious they probably were never right in the first place. but on one of my first mornings in tashkent i met michael kohn, the author of the uzbekistan chapters in the new edition. when i met him he was still writing it and basically doing a longer version of my vacation as his job. i was a little jealous, to be honest.
anyway, i kept in email contact with him throughout my trip, pointing out the errors i found and generally updating him on how much things cost, etc. i'm listed as one of the "fellow travelers" that kohn thanks at the end of the new edition, but i was hardpressed to find any information in the book that i could honestly attribute my emails to kohn last september as i flipped through it today. if nothing else, it is fun to read through and remember my trip. so i bought a travel book i will probably never use, simply because it had my name in it. am i a sucker or what?
