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I was only kidding when I suggested a European tour but now I'm seriously considering it. Not a tour actually; just Penzance.

A week ago I never would have believed that I would need to know where to get a passport, but now I guess I should start looking into it.

"Why," you ask? Because of the internet, and email, and a dear old friend whom I haven't seen in 24 years..

Of course I still have my plan to think about and Bubba's plan seems to be a little behind schedule , so who knows when I'll be free to -- and can afford to -- go. Until then, we'll just have to make do with the internet, the post office, and the telephone.

After receiving no response from that first attempt at contacting guy, I tried again three weeks ago using another new service -- thanks for the tip Kevin!

Finding only one match, but a different address than the one I found before, I again sent out my two-question hail:

"Are you the same kid who lived in Cudahy Wisconsin approximately 25 years ago? If so, do you remember me?"

On Monday morning, June the 16th, 1997 came back the response:

"Yes I am, and of course I remember you - do you still play the trombone?"

Our correspondence picked right up virtually where it had left off -- he remembered later from a letter I had sent in the sixth-grade that I switched to the saxophone -- more than twenty years ago!

Guy sent an email with the times he was home, and after figuring out that he's 5 hours ahead of us, I called him on Wednesday afternoon.

Never having made a call to someone outside of the United States before, it took me two calls to the AT&T operator to learn that you must dial "011," then the country-code which in this case is "44" for the U.K. I finally managed it, though, and after a short pause I stammered "I don't know what to say," however it didn't take long for the awkwardness to fade away. Before long we were talking about everything from McDonald's to Bill Gates like the old friends we are.

We talked for nearly an hour and a half, flipping back and forth through time, from past to present trying to catch-up all at once.

It was probably a good thing that I had to go to work when I did. I could have talked his ear off all night. We started on so many topics; any one of which I could have kept talking about. But now that we have email, we will catch-up in no time. And, we will have years and years of "remember when we...?" stories.

I had a vague memory of pressing my bleeding fingertip together with someone else's similarly injured finger. Guy confirmed the childhood ritual between us had in fact occurred. We're blood-brothers! We both remember how the needle turned black from the match which was used to sterilize it.

Guy pointed out that we never could have located each other without the internet. I wrote back "unless one of us became world famous." I thought of that when I was playing bass guitar for a local rock band. We recorded a demo and had visions of stardom. Although I was realistic enough to know not to quit my night job, I thought if we toured Europe I could send one of my people out looking for him, and if found, give him front row tickets. That dream died when the bands leader, and lead guitarist, had a fight with his girlfriend. I tried to stay out of it but he got pretty insane ... anyone who talked to him was involved.

But getting back to the story. We both had moved so many times that finding each other without the internet or some other globally accessible network would have been a veritable impossibility.

I've got a family reunion coming up next month. This could be just the example which will enable me to convince more family members to get wired.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; email rules!.

"Hey Greg, now that you're out of your cage, what's next?"

"I'm going to Penzance!"