I had the best of intentions folks of making this episode focused on upgrading and

building hunting rifles. Part of that mini-series I mentioned in the 7 MMPRC

versus 30 a06 episode, but fate had other plans.

Immediately upon returning from Spain, I was knocked flat on my back by gnarly fever and body aches like I've rarely experienced.

That was accompanied by what I can only politely call an extremely turbulent bowel.

In short order, I felt like I was, to quote a wizard in the princess bride, mostly dead.

Stubborn, I rode the waves of near delirium for two days and then gave up and went to the doctor.

Since I'd just come from the Iberian Peninsula, directly across the Mediterranean, a short

distance from Africa, right? They tested for, well, everything from malaria to Lyme's

disease in hepatitis, along with all the well everything that could be sampled.

And hepatitis, along with all the usual suspects.

We got samples of everything that could be sampled.

Turned out, I'd picked up a campilobacter intestinal infection.

A stout three-day course of antibiotics turned that long black train around and now, although I'm still weak as a kitten I'm feeling a ton better.

Interestingly even though I do a ton of international travel this is the first time I've gotten

really sick during or after a trip. I tend to be obsessively

careful about wash my hands, what I eat and drink, and surfaces I touch, water I brush my teeth with and so forth, and it's paid off.

I think, however, I picked up this particular illness from a sandwich I ate in the Paris airport on the way home or perhaps

from something on the airplane. Any which way it's something I could have gotten just about anywhere

apparently in the future I'm gonna add a course of antibiotics to the ibuprofen

mucin xd and nyquil tablets that I always carry for emergencies for sickness, right, when traveling.

Oh, when traveling in regions where malaria exists, I take along a medication called Malarone. This can give some people weird dreams, but it doesn't cause skin sensitivity to the sun like the malaria preventing antibiotics do and that's important because

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