Chasing The Blue Beyond

DRAMATIC is the best way to describe it..Stopped by Voss for the Ekstremsportveko 2010 Basically, I have two speeds.... Hostile or smart-aleck. Your choice." Saving the world and other extreme sports From Alpha Sparkling Voss to Omega 3 Catch of the Day Salmon I am on a see food diet

If Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool, then Norway is  solitude by the fjords. It's a wonderful thing to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place like this where you don't know a soul; where,  as Mellvile said, "God's one and only voice is Silence." Progress is our own ability to complicate simplicity and castles in the air are so easy to build . Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth 'you owe me'. Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.

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  ...

Everything you can imagine is real-Picasso Everyone Wll Be Famous For 15 Megabytes Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Painting was just another way of keeping a diary. Picasso would have been huge on twitter and blogger! Afterall, Markets are conversations, and  blogs are just naked conversations.  Pablo's 15 megabytes of fame...Someday, someone of great importance would have said  to him, "You get paid for this?"... The New Plagerism- From Xerox to infinity. What's the meaning of a digital life? Get one.  I´ve alway been a cut and paste guy- a kind of cultural pludering  of whatever is happening in the internet, where the online Superpower google, delivers me an answer in less than five seconds. It´s  like an information prospector mining for gold or drilling for oil-an exploitable resource. The original is just as valuable as the copy. In fact, the copy is better than the original, especially when you don't have to pay for it....

In answer to the Question, " How long has he been drifting?" Celebrating One Year at Sea this week.  It started in Rome Sweet Rome, then Santorini...I haven´t been everywhere, but it´s on my list. Those who float away their lives on ships are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them . Basho Narrow Road To The Interior... Asleep in Germany. Summer's sea-castaway floats Awake  in Denmark. As the vagabond wind,   Whispers over the bay. Songs and Laughter Carry away in the sky. This week in Warnemünde with the Roy-ales Truddie Reif and Steffi and Captain Hops looking very stout.

Free For All- H2O In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria. Unless of course you are in  Norway-- where meltwater  is useful,  humble, precious, and pure.The best wine may be the oldest, the best water, however, is  the newest. With cupped hands, drinking  melted glacier. It's pure inspiration. We're all downstream from here!  For those at home, may I suggest VOSS . Narrow Road To The Interior... Frozen water once, Now melts into my heart. Joy comes dancing lightly

A  good poem includes a waterfall. So Norway's fjords are potery in motion .This is Norway's Ecstasy. The definition of ecstasy is that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routine....esentially stepping into an alternative reality.This is the second time I have sailed in these fjords. It's like opening a door in the middle of nowhere and all you have to do is go and turn the handle and open it and let yourself sink into it, and just float. Narrow Road To The Interior... Summer Grasses, all that remains of Viking dreams.

Chaos Theory   Paul Cézanne said we live in a rainbow of chaos. Here I am at The Hermitage in front of  his  paintings that were "transfered" after WW2. Chaos to me is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself. Seven Years in Tibet verse Seven Minutes in Debtor's Prison Better living through chaos Greetings from Somewhere Over The Rainbow--Saint Petersburg. It  is huge--there is a kind of quality in quantity. Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos. St Pete is a large-scale city of haunting magnificence, an imperial capital that Peter the Great began building almost 3 centuries ago. Yet, there is a stillness to Petersburg, unlike say an asian city like Bangkok--or  Here Comes Everywhere--- a happy chaos, completely unaggressive, you hardly hear a rude noise or anyone shouting. Nobody cares. The great mingle-mangle flows smoothly and you  wonder how so many cars and people can be ...

ABSolution Biking past the old city Gamla Stan. No Ice Bar this time, but I roasted myself in a sauna and then directly plunged into  freezing cold water.  Mama Mia...Shipwrecked! You can dance you can jive, having the time of your life- ABBA A Bike And A Prayer The bicycle was the GR8est incident of the nineteenth century; the most influential piece of product design ever and  the most civilized conveyance around. It is not brain surgery, it is rocket science---the advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored.  Screw BP (British Polluters), I am my own engine, converting calories into gas, my  bike  gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon...and no parking problems. Why waste your  life in friction (cars) when it could be turned into momentum. (Bikes).Burning Carbohydrates instead of  Hydrocarbons today. As long as I am riding a bike, I know I am the luckie...

Once Around Without Leaving The Ground  I know both sides because I am both sides: a tourist who doesn't know where I've been; a traveller who doesn't know where he's  going. I haven't been everwhere, but it's on my list.  I thought college was the longest vacation I ever took; but this DIY (Do It Yourself) 'Graduate' School  sea mester is a kind of study abroad in Nomadic Pursuits.Traveling the globe without leaving the ground (by sea and land) is 10x, to the nth degree better than commercial aviation. Airplanes, like diets,  are wonderful things for other ppl to go on. I'm drinking from the fire hose and having a Smörgåsbord of expereinces. After all,  an adventure is just bad planning--- but a great way to learn about writing. The secret is not to look back.  Having nothing to do and all day to do it, I took a GR8 bike tour today. I've been to Copenhagen so many times, and this is the first chance I got to see The King’s Garden (Kong...

I was going to change my shirt but instead I changed my mind . I have my ship And all her flags are a flyin' -CSNY The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.Norway smells green and lush....It's "down to earth" pulse is everywhere.  Most countries are designed not to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. As Tom Waits said "No one speaks English and everything is broken" Norway, however, makes everyone feel like a naturalist. Its beauty and mystery and power and vulnerability,  the wilderness as therapy. The trees, the fresh air--what's deeply personal is universal. It speaks to everyone in a slang that rolls up its sleeves, and whose silence is golden.

Norway, where's that? It is not your typical tourist trap. One thing ppl want to see if they get here is The Fjords. most famously the ones on the west coast,where I am now. Glacier Hiking -Narrow Road To The Interior...The bottoms of my shoes are clean from walking in the snow. “Alljourneys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber  “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

I won't spoil it for future visitors by trying to decribe it. National Geographic Traveler Magazine  selected it as  the top natural tourist attraction in the world.  The snow is thawing...and the water is cascading from the mountains. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese Narrow Road To The Interior... Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity, in my tiny wonderland. The Ice Age Northern Light.  It is light  until...