I’m off to Hong Kong

Ulp! A 15-hour flight and I can never sleep a wink on airplanes. I get in to HK 7 PM, and next morning at 9, will head out to printers via subway and shuttle. The book will take 3-4 days to print. Once the (Mitsubishi 3000 sheet-fed) press is rolling, I’ll be doing press checks every 3 hours or so, probably staying in a room at the plant while it’s rolling. I’m really excited to be at this stage, even with the weird sleeping pattern for press checks. I get to see two years’ work flying off the press. “Can we up the red in here a bit…” and etc. It always makes a difference to be there.

I’ve always loved pressmen. I like the smell of ink and the hustle and the atmosphere. It’s a highly-sophisticated skill. There’s no room for mistakes. There’s a definite brotherhood here, centered around putting ink on paper. I’ve been on the presses for the first run of every one of our color books. In the old days I did press checks on each 1-color book we printed, whether in Massachussets, Virginia, Indiana, or Tennessee.

Since I was going to be in that part of the world, I was  going to go to Borneo, or maybe to Hainan, an island off the coast of China, but a screwed-up shoulder scratched those plans. Seems to be a long healing process, so I need to get back and get it working again. Boy is it frustrating not to be able to paddle or swim. Can’t even run. I’m always impatient, but the body (just about always) heals itself, it’s always a wonder.