Home Is Where The Ship Is

2011 Crystal World Cruise

Ill take things that I know for $20,000 Alex

2015 Holland America World Voyage

The Med, Norway And Beyond

Suez Canal Crossing

Suez Spelt Backwards IS Zeus

-*

Saturday, March 31, 2012

7 Cruises I Had To Go On Before I Died







1. Santorini, Greece

Let The Orinoco Flow




Consciousness Is Wireless

Tahiti-Stopover In Paradise

4. The Fjords of Norway

 

Mother Nature and Father Time Are Effin Special


5. The Fjords of New Zealand

Milford Sound-Are We There Yet?

6.Full World Cruise


L.A.To London in 110 Days



7. The Oasis Of The Seas

Game Changer- The Ship IS the destination. Remarkable. This  225,282-ton, 5,400-passenger colossus that cost Royal Caribbean $1.4 billion. 
 It only ends once-anything before that is just progress
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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Fiji Islands-Rocky Mountain High


Coming home to a place I've never been before. It's Fee-Gee (Fiji)
OMG I'm a Country Boy

John Denver visited this island today-Sunshine On My Shoulders.
You can't get any further away before you start coming back.Imagine sailing across the blue waters of the South Pacific, passing by idylic islands, teeming with exotic fish and majestic coral reefs--Oh wait I don't have to use my imagination because what you see is what you get. Bula.


On Fiji Islands-Suva-PineApple Express



Fiji-Dravuni- Another Day Another Island-Escape To Reality


To the east of the International Date Line lies an exquisite garland of islands known as Fiji. Dignified smiling people bid you "bula," or welcome, to their unspoiled homeland and give you bottles of water called Fiji, bottled at the "source".




Back To One (Take 2)

Country Roads Take Me Home
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Goa, India-Holy Cow!

Holy Cow- Near Miss- My karma ran over your dogma, I mean Brahma cattle
ZAMM-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance





Wack-tose Intolerant
Sacred cows may make the best hamburgers, but I don't eat my friends. As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists. As for milk and cheese- they are an utter delight.


Rules of the road when driving a motorcycle-
The horn is your friend. Use it often, use it well.Lanes don’t exist. Do not pass. Wear a Helmet! Cows have the right of way.
There seem to be cows around everywhere I go. I am not sure if they have a chamed life, the ppl don't seem to worship them. It is, however,  revered as the source of food and symbol of life and may never be killed.  They seem to be walking neglected around  Goa city streets, living on garbage from the gutters.


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Friday, March 16, 2012

Happy St. Pat's-Around the World in 80 Beers

 My Global 6 Pack Memorable Moments Drinking Beer At these fine Ports of Call.




 

 Dublin Ireland #1. Guinness Is Good For You.
An Irish Drinking Tradition.











#2  cOPENhagen- Denmark- To which I replied...: Calrsberg Weekend 
BUI-Biking Under The Influence

#3.Jamaican Me Crazy, Montego Bay -Red Stripe, plus it comes in a funny little bottle.” Yuh no dun yet?”. You're not done yet...have another.

#4 Midnight Cabo's Corona-Happy Go Local Vacation In A Bottle---Drink. Pee.Repeat.




#5 Elephant Beer- Bia Chang. Bangkok, Thailand
In dog beers I have only had one.
















#6Cape Town, South Africa's  Castle Lager--One Beer, One Goal, One Nation, One Soul-I'm not getting drunk, Im getting awesome!
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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Nuku'alofa -Where Time Begins

I've been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle 

that doesn't require my presence and I think I have found the place-at sea!


The future is already here--
it's just not evenly distributed yet.
When I think of Dateline , I think of Gotcha Journalism and the internet (Hi, I'm Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC. 
Why don't you have a seat over there)verses the inter-NOT-Here in Tonga.


This  is the International Dateline,  where time starts-Actually it's more like time standing still-one long day. No  Starbucks, no wireless, the world wide wait. 


Don't worry be happy

The Internet isn't the most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented, living on one of these islands is-the heat, the sun, the sea, Manyana never comes.Pass the poi.

 

Morning coffee and a jog around the deck

Perception of Time & Priorities: Polychronic vs. Monochronic- Doing one thing right at a time_ verses doing many things at once. Changing plans often and easily distracted, I need to get a tribal tatoo cause I'd fit right in.




The last time I had a clock in my blog was when I visited the traveling Dali Collection in St Tropez September 14th, 2009. I wrote:


What kind of vacation you’d choose to take if you knew you were not going to remember the vacation. Would you still go?
Experience verses Memory

I am really digging this world tour--It reminded me of Dali, when he said "There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction."

Hello Dali








So it seemed only appropriate that I go to a Salvador Dali Exhibition in Saint Tropez today. He knew both sides because he was both sides. Quotable Dali:

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."
"I don't do drugs. I am drugs."
Tuning in, Turning on, Dropping off the planet for a few minutes with The Dali Lhama...


Traveling is a  Life Sentence--We yearn for journeys like  prisoners dream of rooms without bars. And we all want time off for good behavior.

"We don't choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences...we don't think of our future as experiences, we think of our future as anticipated memory."Daniel Kahneman
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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Alaska's Salmon


You ain't supposed to get salmon when they're swimming upstream
 to spawn. But if you're hungry, you do

If it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger. In this case the Salmon don't make it. So much for "going with the flow".  To make matters worse, young bears bulk up with salmon for a long winter' s sleep. Why do they do it? The urge to merge-The Pacific Northwestern salmon is hell bent on its quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also... life.
Any fish  can achieve failure and get caught. But  a salmon fiasco is a disaster of epic propotions. I witness this "programming" and it makes me  feel more alive because it didn't happen to me.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Geography of Bliss-cOPENhagen

One can advise comfortably from a safe port. Søren Kierkegaard

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea....

It's fun to visit the most expensive city in Scandanavia--cOPENhagen, Denmark. Getting hygge (cozy) with the locals...




A Cup of Jonus




Not since the late 1990's, when the dollar took a beating against the Yen, I ordered two Domino's Pizza's and two bottle of Coke in Tokyo for $110 US Dollars, have I experienced "Sticker Shock" $5 Euros for a Coffee (About $8 bucks--It makes SBUXS look like a thrift shop. ( I didn't convert to Danish Kroners) etc...


The Little Mermaid is LITTLE, and ... The city is Bling.

Those who float away their lives on ships are forever journeying,
 and their homes are wherever their travels take them.
Basho


The Geography Of Bliss
Nothing is rotten in Denmark, and  Copenhagen  is perhaps the most beautiful place for Being There. Sorry Disneyworld, but this country is the happiest place on Earth simply because  Danes  have relaxed and lowered their standards .

 Depression is the inability to construct a future. Yet, for Danes, the future is not only already here, it's also evenly distributed. Paid to go to college,  state-covered health insurance, one year of maternity leave and babies so safe that they're left outside alone...Yadi Yadi Yada, folks here  have enough quo in their status and  living is as predictable as an episode of Seinfeld.

Consequently, they're lige nu.” Lige nu is a Danish phrase that means literally “just now”.  They would make good buddhists because they are not on the treadmill of  consumption or chasing the happiness jackpot. They are pragmatic and busy ppl,  tracking  high on the GNH,Gross National Happiness scale.
Reminds me of the Danish philosopher Søren  Kierkegaard, considered to be the founder of existential thought, which is full of honest angst.  For him, money wasn't the root of all evil, boredom was the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself. . Without risk, faith is an impossibility. He actually coined the words "leap of faith".

He used humor as a healthy way of feeling "distance" between himself and his 'problems', a way of standing off and looking at problems with perspective. I have been misquoting him for years, crediting Nietzche with this one instead of him -- to label me is to negate me.  For him, the cure for anything was salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Importance Of Being Ernest(Hemingway)

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. 



The Hemingway International Billfish Tournament is one of
the oldest big-game fishing tournaments...and then there is Baja, Mexico After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in  Cabo is W T F, eh?

If people concentrated on the really important things they'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
Freedom For Sail
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a large marlin. I feel like Santiago, going  84 days without catching a fish.


I like that Hemingway Vibe but without the beard-because I like #winning and winning and sailing for that matter,  is like shaving, if you don't do it every day you wind up looking like a bum.






Hey... I'm just saying 'yes' to life... cuz... you gotta say 'yes' to life...



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Monday, March 5, 2012

Louisville,Kentucky-Baseball Verses Football



Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.  Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.In football you wear a helmet.In baseball you wear a cap.


Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.

Baseball has the sacrifice. Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog...In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.

 Football has the two minute warning. Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings...

Roll Tape...



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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Yangoon-One Hand Clapping- Smiling With One Lip

Cnn verses The Alphabet
Yangoon's  analog eyes don’t see our digital world. But does it matter. Internet or InterNOT? Traveling in places with out electricity with TCN's, Third Country Nationals, are not voyages of discovery, but  rituals of reassurance- "I won the lottery". As Bruce Springsteen says, "I was born in the USA". So with,curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary, I will articulate the Myanmar sound bite.
These ppl in Burma, aka Golden land, are so sweet, Yet they are the digital homeless, who couldn’t tell you the difference between google and facebook, a laptop or an ipad. The largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had is not the internet, it's Mynmar. My conscious, however, permits me to love them.

How To Buy Nothing----DetermiNATION Mynmar.
No TV.  No Logos. No Mc Donalds's. No McDonnell Douglas. Few cell phones. A sim card costs $500 and the phone system is broken. Few  cars. There is no CNN, 24 hour news cycle, no tivoization to time shift your day, no napsterization or digital downloads-­this is the "axis of evil" the millions of ppl who make less than $2 bucks a day. Countries, like ppl however, are loved for their failures. It's a shame I can't spend any money in this place and help the dam economy. I am unable to buy anything for 72 hours.

What Happened to Downtime? Deep Thinking & Sacred Space in the United States of Uncoinsciousness is extinct  verses the real deal--- Living in a quasi  “airplane mode.”For the uninitiated, and digital homeless- setting their lives to “airplane mode” disables phone calls, text messaging, wi-fi, Bluetooth,  and GPS. It is distinct. It's their blisscipline.
 
Traveling is a  Life Sentence--We yearn for journeys like  prisoners dream of rooms without bars. And we all want time off for good behavior.
Raman Noodles 2.0 Choosing between the digital and the analog.Arguing against the laws of gravity.   If Ramen noodles are a dish of effortless purity  than Yangoon's outdoor market of fresh produce, the egg or tea,  gives you oodles and oodles of these ubiquitous states of grace with a marriage of nothing more than hot water.



#Winning is like shaving your head - you do it every day or you wind up looking like a bum-Be Brave and Shave!

I visited today one of the seven wonders of a shrinking planet-Google, and came up with this  comment,  Iw rote on my 1995 trip to Cambodia, where I made the astute comment--Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day-Give him Raman noodles and you don't have to teach him anything! 
The fact that there is no refrigeration and everybody is  hustling to eat someting for the day, Yangoon will stick with you like gum in your hair until you get it out with peanut butter.




Eat Your Colors


Cuteness
English.  I used to have a "drug" problem, but now  I make enough money, and found my voice.
Tune in Turn on Drop Out! and Be Here Now.

Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you. As I said, I was born in the USA, and being born there-my life has to be my message-Star-spangled happiness,: because love is a responsibility and I love America, and  its A list language, American.

The messianic metaphor of  the American Dream becomes the lottery and game show mentality – that outside chance that the planets will line up  to liberate us from financial worries once and for all. Yet we were all born(in America) having winning tickets as a mere circumstance of birth – and cashing them in is a simple matter of choice.

Hugs and Drugs

The joke goes, you call a person who speaks 3 languages trilingual, 2, bilingual, 1, American. What is the most powerful drug known to mankind? American English. I used to have a "drug" problem but now I make enough money, and found my voice.

Write? Right.

Blogging is literature in a hurry. People climb mountain because they are there. In blogging there is no there there. Why do bloggers blog ? Because it isn't there. It's always  shifting and changing and the searching that makes it fun.
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