Well, it took a while, but I was finally able to pay off my truly excellent friend Phil (his wife Kathy is equally excellent, obviously) for winning the Trip of Mystery competition. Phil should have been celebrated for his gifts of prophecy much earlier, but the pandemic had other ideas. As we can all recall, I turned my 60th birthday into a Trip of Mystery competition, essentially not telling anyone where I was going and selling $5 bets (with all the proceeds going to our non-profit, Techdren). With about two days before departure no one was within five hundred miles of the actual 7 January destination when Phil swopped in with the exact location: Swakopmund, Namibia. It was some serious prophecy, and then I remembered that a few years earlier I had given Phil a Lonely Planet Guide to Namibia in a vain attempt to convince him to go there with me. Still, that was some serious detective work. He didn't say Namibia, he actually chose Swakopmund. That morning I woke up in Windhoek, rented a truck, and drove across the Namib Desert to Swakopmund on the coast. I have a legion of flaws, too many to detail here, but I am a man of my word. It was a delight to pay off Phil for his excellence, and, of course, I paid for Kathy's dinner as well, because, well, she's also excellent. Plus, they put me up in their basement for two months after returning from India in the midst of a global pandemic.
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