The Idiot donated a copy of The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean to the Redding (CA) Library and had a last summer workout in Whiskeytown Lake before flying to Geneva today to promote his latest travel narrative. But the real challenge before heading to the airport was choosing the right T-shirts and reading material for the next round of MedTrekking and BookSpieling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I regularly speak about how rich and exciting it is to read a cutting-edge, online version of The Idiot II with dozens of interactive maps, scores of intriguing links and hundreds of seductive photographs. But to my surprise many readers, including those I’ll be speaking to at a Geneva bookstore, still want an old school printed version without the bells and whistles. Although I’m carrying an iPad, I already feel like a peripatetic paper salesman on this outing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nonetheless the MedTrek will resume in Turkey on Thursday and I’ll leave the books behind when I participate in a Peace Swim from Datça to the Greek island of Symi on Sept. 1. I scouted the inviting waters from the deck of a gulet during a recent visit and look equally forward, despite the extra weight of each 1.7-pound book, to returning to hike on the rugged and mostly pathless Turkish seaside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few weeks of MedTrekking, I’ll fly to the French Riviera to be a guest guide for The Blue Walk tours, which take Idiot-reading participants from the Italian border to Cannes, for the third year in a row.

 

Then, to recover from MedTrek Madness, I’ll go on a spiritual retreat at the Abbaye des Lerins Cistercian monastery on the Saint Honorat Island off Cannes, which I described in The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean.  Once rejuvenated, I’ll MedTrek booklessly through the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations that opened in Marseille in June.