I think I’m dealing with jetlag pretty well. We took of yesterday at 550 local, 1050 in NYC, and got in at 1630 local. I slept for 4-5 hours on the plane, and managed to be tired enough to sleep from 2200-400 local. Soon I’ll need to got find some coffee. I here they invented that near here.

My American mind does not have metaphors to describe Cairo traffic. No way would I drive a car here. It’s four times the population of the Phoenix valley, a fourth the size, has a street plan that’s evolved over three millenia, and none of the mores of the road used in America are here recognized. Seven lanes of traffic merge into three with the sort of jostling that would come to pass if all traffic law enforcement in Phoenix were suspended for three generations. The main rule seems to be: don’t hit anyone or thing too hard. For a while we had four lanes of cars on a three lane road. When things got especially slow in western Heliopolis, some folks skittered onto the railbed (in the center of the road, with big concrete medians hemming them in) and took a shortcut. If they meet a train coming the other way, I guess they just honk, gesticulate, and back up.

In any case, our charming little family-run, fifth story hotel in 400 meters from the National Museum. We’ll be headed down in a few hours to get a jump on King Tut’s ornamentations. The hotel also has two very well used computers, will slow OSs and a keyboard with all the figures worn off. Blogger boots up in arabic.

No guarantees that the internet will get much attention once I have a normal sleep schedule, and I don’t trust it with photos, so we’ll see how this goes.

It should continue to be an adventure.