Puerto Vallarta-Ship Happens
Cabo · Puerto Vallarta · Saudi Arabia · Thailand · Macau · Las Vegas · Mediterranean
The ElixirIn One Year and Out the Other
A restless year of ports, poker, beer, reinvention, and one recurring question: what happens when the world becomes the itinerary?
In Revue
What a Wonderful World
I say to myself: what a wonderful world. Today, the song remains the same.
A year earlier, I wrote from Mexico. The places changed. The appetite for movement did not.
Roll Video
The Song Remains the Same
A Loss at Sea
The Human Cost Behind the Headline
The original post reflects on the death by suicide of a 27-year-old assistant waiter aboard Carnival Splendor after a distressing phone call.
The loss is preserved here without the original sensational phrasing. A death like this affects colleagues, family, witnesses, and the person on the other end of the call.
The important truth is not the method or the headline. It is that temporary crises can produce irreversible harm, and suffering deserves intervention rather than spectacle.
Puerto Vallarta · Oktoberfest 2010
Miles Away from the Ordinary
Hola, Coca-Cola.
Multinational soul and beerocrat Ed Reif with Deon James from Cape Town, South Africa.
They who drink beer will think beer.
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville was out. Kenny Chesney’s Beer in Mexico was in.
You cannot be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. A football team helps. Nuclear weapons may help. But at the very least, you need a beer.
Corona remained the gold standard for Latin American lagers: Mexican beer, change your latitude, vacation, no worries, relax.
Puerto Vallarta
Oktoberfest 2010
Beer in Mexico
Change Your Latitude
Oktoberfest 2009
In One Year and Out the Other
Two years ago today, the archive was already becoming a calendar of alternate lives.
Archive Marker
Oktoberfest 2009
Space Travel
Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Macau
Greetings from the user-friendly universe—the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, home of the Mac Store and Apple, the forbidden fruit.
In January, I was in the Majik Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a bit like Mars.
In February, I went to the Land of Smiles, Thailand, and walked on the moon.
In March and April, I had my head in the clouds with The Helium Report, winning and losing the American dream in Macau every night—high-stakes no-limit poker on the Hong Kong Express.
Santa Monica
User-Friendly Universe
Saudi Arabia
The Majik Kingdom
Thailand
Land of Smiles
Macau
The Helium Report
Leaving Las Vegas
Poker and I Decided to See Other People
In May and June, I got my baht out of Asia and returned to the United States of Unconsciousness.
I played tournament poker in the black holes of Midwest bars and Las Vegas casinos.
I spent the best part of my losing streak in an Army Jeep, from what I can recall.
There is that Sheryl Crow line: standing in the middle of the desert, waiting for my ship to come in.
In July, I created my own luck and took a world-tour cruise to get away from the game. Amsterdam’s Holland Casino provided a false start.
Mission accomplished. I love poker, but I am not in love with it anymore. Poker and I have decided to see other people.
Las Vegas
The Losing Streak
Army Jeep
From What I Can Recall
The World Tour
Santorini, Monaco, and the Southern Cross
The epiphany arrived in Monaco.
I was scheduled to level up my bogus poker Ph.D. from ESPN into the real deal in Monte Carlo. But I did not have any gamble left in me. I did not even walk through the doors.
After all, you can only quit once.
The last three months had taken me through Russia and the Baltics, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Greco-Italian-French Mediterranean.
Now I was back in California to recharge before Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific, and the Southern Cross.
Santorini
Waiting for the Ship
Monaco
You Can Only Quit Once
Next Leg
The Southern Cross
Being Vincent Vega
Royale with Cheese
Do not ask me what they call a Whopper over there.
“I never went to Burger King.”
Pulp-free fiction writer and Space Sheriff Ricochet Rabbit.
This pretty much summed up the differences between America and Europe: Royale with Cheese—meet your meat.
Being Vincent Vega
Space Sheriff
America and Europe
Royale with Cheese
The Year-in-Review Equation
Movement + Reinvention + Distance = A Different Life