Day 0, Friday, April 20 - Okay, so this is the first post from the road, from a train running north towards Aosta to be exact. Seeing how I'm supposed to be a 21st Century pilgrim doing a very 12th Century walk I figured posting from a moving train would earn me a few points in legitimacy.

First off, about the elusive professor and the bees. I tracked him down and he conceded me an email in which he refuted the whole cell phones killing bees thing and then had me speak to his graduate student because he'd had it with journalists. We can be a difficult type, that's for sure. Seems newspapers were writing about the dying bees (with scintillating titles such as "to bee or not to be" "cellular phones killing our bees, researchers say") without having spoken to the researchers in question. Journalists.

The graduate student supplicated me to set the world straight in what he promised would be the research team's last interview for ages because, well, they've had it with journalists.

So in my final attempt before my walk to help the world by setting the bee-cellular phone misunderstanding straight, I pounded away at my keyboard for a few hours this morning before grabbing the train from Milan's Central Station. Read all about it from Monday on the International Herald Tribune's website.

Onto more pressing matters, the walk. So here's the deal...arrive in Aosta sometime soon. Ride with local Rai journalist Renato Willien to Etroubles, a town just below the Great San Bernardo Pass. Ninety-minute trek up in snow shoes to the pass with Etroubles' mayor, Massimo Tamone, who will be my guide down tomorrow. We'll be sleeping at a mountain hut up at the pass, 2.500 meters, which is 50 meters into Swiss territory. I'm banking on some fatty, cholesterol-filled fonduta for dinner or something similar.

I think I may have forgotten to mention one of my main goals of this trek...to eat lots, to eat well and to return home heavier than I am now (73 kilos).