Chasing The Blue Beyond

If people concentrated on the really important things they'd be a shortage of fishing poles. Carpet Diem means fish of the day around here. Pinks and Silver-Ko ho salmon. There's a fine line between fishing and just standing o n a bridge looking like an idiot unless you are in Alaska.  Fishing is actually  boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting 

 Great Black Bear is walking with us, Pink Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll Creek street...    My mind is like compost.     "What a cold and rainy day. Where on earth is the sun hid away."  I pledge allegiance to the soil of Ketchikan Island, one ecosystem in diversity under the sun With joyful interpenetration for all. ... Raindrops keep falling on my head ... I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin' Because I'm free Nothing's worrying me.. The Etiquette of Freedom  In Alaska, there are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, like me, I drink hot chocolate.   Learning about the bears and the bees  and the flowers and the trees is not just community college  science or nature boy social studies — it's local etiquette. It's rude not ...

I knew there would be days like this,  I just wish someone would have told me how many! Dutch Harbor Gear DHG rough and ready. No such thing as good weather here only good clothing! I find myself in the perpetual company of people who love the rain and love to laugh about it. This may be my definition of true happiness.It's the locals,some emos, who just get wet,others, poets, who go dancing in the rain, hoping to be struck by lightning. The song remains the same in this infinite playlist called the rainforest. Charlie Chaplin liked to walk in the rain because nobody could see his tears. I don't cry, like the Little Tramp because it's over. I smile, like the Big Kahuna because it happened. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes . Marcel Proust To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere. How I do  time, is how I create and re-create myself.  On a ship,  one lives in the grand manner of writer...

Fishing is for people who don't know how to golf. Yet, Catch and Release   fishing is a lot like golf. You don't have to eat the ball to have a good time. I'm hooked on Alaska.  Saw momma bear and baby bear, a bald eagle and ravens. And the Salmon are swimming up stream to lay their eggs. When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3000000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother's Day Yoga Bear We all know what low male on the totem pole means but have you ever heard about  low female salmon on the totem pole?

Looking For Alaska Teach a man to fish. You feed him for a day. Show up in Alaska and you don't have to teach him anything. This place is definitely awesome...and there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.   I'm taking Cruise ships off the endangered list-They are everywhere in Ketchikan

The fish are jumping out of the water. This place is a rainforest.The wetter, the better.It's what makes this place so breathtakingly beautiful. H2oh! Gotta walk between the drop with all this liquid sunshine. It is one of the most moist places in all of North America. The wilderness is therapy. Herman Melville said of the sea "God's only voice is silence", and let me add that healing rain is really a touch from God too. I have all the confidence of a guy selling snowballs to the Eskimos.

Lifesaver Leaving the dock, and the lower 48. First stop is Ketchikan. Camping out on the deck for 30 hours.This is rough and ready. Leaving Bellingham's Fairhaven Cruise Terminal Out On Deck With The Hippies

Everyday is December 25th in the North Pole! Going through the rainforest Inner Passage. Smooth is fast.

  Despite Chris De Burgh's song lyrics advice, I Payed The Ferryman...before he got me to the other side... The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land... The uncruise-by the Alaska Ferry Highway System- might not be a hook and bullet fishing and hunting narrative in the last frontier and land of the midnight sun. Nevertheless, I'd like to see an old gold rush ghost town, drink some million year old glacier water, and go on a bear safari.  The older I get, the better my past gets. Yet, I have to mention  My  Top 5 Wet and Wild Nature Places. Number 1 and 2- The Fjords of Norway. Take your pick,  Flåm   or   Geringer Number 3- New Zealand's South Island - and The 8th Wonder of The World- Milford Sound Number 4- Got Kilt? The Highlands of Scotland Number 5- The South Pacific- Bora Bora  or Hawaii's Kauai  The future, however is getting brigh...

Seahawks Suck.Go Rams Come as you are It's all sunshine and khaki dress down Wednesday in the rainy city.This little strip of land  really was the epicenter for the anti-hair bands of the 1980's era. I feel nostalgic about the road rules of dirty+beautiful =Grunge.Opting out, not caring about your clothes, the kind of car you drive.Guy-linered Curt Cobain said it best " I'd rather be h8d for who I am than loved for who I am not. After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in Seattle is W T F, eh? 35th floor of Hotel  Sheraton Treehugger-fruit-juiced-sandal wearing veganish Santa Monica Promenade's  Farmer's Market is the Mini Me of Pike's Place  Market - Pikes The gentrified Dr Evil of fresh produce and fishmongers throwing around King Salmon and Crab are whirling dervishes who leave you as confused as a bunch of blind lesbians. Blueberry Fields Forever at Hotel @nyware No, let's take that back, You've got the sun, the moon and The R...

Doing some eco-tourism in Washington State and meeting people that work for Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon ,those bio tech firms and of course Starbucks.But I would have really liked to talk story with Chief Seattle.Here is his take on real estate. It is not just location, location, location:"Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people." "Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to us but man to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself"

Glamping  is not about leaking tents. Thank you Mrs. Robinson.  I wonder where these people are from. Some Canadian dude won a contest to spend 80 days in YVR. Vancouver is nature on a silver plate, and has been voted by human beings as the most livable city in North America. I am casting my ballot for its airport too. 4 days went by quickly.  Glamping is camping but with electricity,  cellphone coverage and perpetual  Wi-Fi.

Who let the moose out? Going to Alaska ports of call in a few days. Stopping here first in Vancouver has been worth it. It is a harbor city on the scale of Sydney where I just flew in from, and Stockholm or  San Francisco two of my favorites.

 wanna free fall, out into nothin' Gonna leave this, world for awhile. And I'm free, free fallin' Knowledge isn't power but applied knowledge is. Analysis is paralysis but what you resist, persists- living on land that is. We all know the AA assertion of doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting  a new result. The in to my sane, however,  has been traveling and living on ships-Every day I got the chance to go out of my mind in order to come to my senses.It wasn't the absence of sanity but rather the judgement that something else is more important than sanity, and that is self-knowledge and, more than that, achieving a spaciousness and  liberation from the superstition of materialism in exhange for travel and new experiences. Freedom is not transactional, not a two-week vacation to be purchased, but transformational, confirmation that you are on the right path, and that all you need, is not cash, but love.

Leaving Australia now. Headed back to LA Tin  Woodman, Scarecrow And Lion Dan Peek died at 60 last week,  co-founder of  folk rock band America  who recorded 'Horse with No Name' and "Tin Man"  I remember that line from the former The ocean is a desert with it's life underground And a perfect disguise above . In the desert you can remember your name 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain and the later, But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man That he didn't, didn't already have   Ah! Australia,I remember Mel Gibson's 1981 movie Gallipoli,about two rural western Australians who slowly lose their innocense aboutthe purpose of war.In fact I thought all guys from Oz were like him. The placebo effect was in full force here. Never really needed  heart, already doing things with heart or as the French say coeurage.It is,afterall, the power to let go of the familiar. And what  was the takeaway: Our heart is free. Have the courage to f...

 Why do we love the sea so much? It is because it has some powerful energies to make us think things we like to think.  The South Pacific leg is over. We are headed back to Australia now. Looking forward to spending some time in Sydney. It’s hard for me to put into words why I like the sea so much. Everything about it is renewing for me, almost like therapy...Sea Therapy. Life is different at sea. Time doesn't move minute  to minute  but mood to moment. We live in this physical and mental inertia and follow the sun, and want  for nothing.   On the other hand, you can measure the waves not by feet or inches but in increments of fear. "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea." - e.e. cummings

 On Devil's Island How come you ended up in a place like this? Favoritism. Welcome to the penal colony at Devil's Island, whose prisoners you are, and from which there is no escape."   This was the greeting that awaited prisoners to the penal colonies. Now Devil's Island IS the escape. No escape- Condemned to be free.

Art Worth Sea-ing: A Nautical Journey Through Australia & South Pacific Art Worth Sea-ing A Nautical Journey Through Australia & The South Pacific "At Sea, Doing Business As an Art Dealer is Show and Tell, letting PPT slide. These live 'informative and entertaining' Art Auctions are fun to do." 🌊 Atlantic Ocean • 2009 The Beginning of the Journey The art adventure begins in the Atlantic Ocean, where the concept of "Art Worth Sea-ing" first took shape. These pioneering art auctions at sea revolutionized how fine art could be presented and sold in unique venues. ▶ 🚢 ...