Lots of great pictures from around the world today, my friends!   And — perhaps equally important — an outstanding acronym for the trips that did not send pictures — FAIL (Fotos Are In Limbo).   Many thanks to Kate Harvey of Austin, Texas for her winning submission — Kate, your set of steak knives is in the mail!

So — FAIL (only a couple today…):

VH — Still in the woods, getting dirtier every day!

PCA — Still working through the camera issues — we hope to have a good solution in place by tomorrow!   This may or may not be a good thing, as the photos I’m promised photos of the homemade tie-dye tank tops everyone made last night.   I did talk to Danika this afternoon — she sounded great and said that the group really enjoyed their surfing lesson today.   She said everybody caught at least one wave!

CI — These guys also enjoyed their surfing.   Peter, cognizant of the backlighting issue, took this shot facing away from the sun and the water — but he said his crew was hanging ten and shredding gnarly ripcurls (OK, so my surfing lingo is a bit rusty…) by the end of the day.

VM — This is from the skyhigh campground at the top of Mt. Philo last night — it’s too bad no one is having fun on this trip.

CQA — An important crossroads — on the trip, and indeed, in life.  Why, Dear Reader, must Friendship and Freedom be in opposite directions?

CQB — The blueberry barrens service project was pretty easy for at least two of Hannah and Shem’s group…

DEX — Finally off of the water, the group enjoyed their first taste of civilization in Stonington last night.   They’re headed for the rugged coastline of Acadia National Park today where they’ll really break in their boots.

CSA — Wyatt and Heidi’s group spent the better part of the day painting a school on Vieques before retiring to La Finca for some R&R (my favorite part about this place are the tree frogs in the showers…).

MSA — Ninja by the lake!  Today these guys are on the gorgeous valley road to Augusta, MT!

TSA — Nick and Cait finally found a good chunk of bandwidth and sent a number of pictures — I thought I’d post a bunch to make up for lost time.

Our Tuscan trip is so civilized ….

And so appreciative of nature ….

And they appreciate culture, too – or at least standing in front of it… (this is, I believe, in Siena last night).   By the way, for those of you who follow crazy horse races around the world — the Pallio was run in Siena today.   It’s a good thing we were there yesterday!

ACC — A couple of bonus ACC shots today, too:

Here’s several of our crew in the post-dawn glow.

And if you look very, very carefully, you’ll see that this spells “Alabama,” and for good reason, too:   they’ve left Georgia behind.   Two down, seven to go…