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

-*

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Santa Monica- Out To Launch

Alpha Testing Our New On Demand Luxe Valet Parking Ap

Dumb and Dumber-We are smiling on our Razor Kick Scooters.
..as we are about to get run over by a Mack Truck.

This is not your everyday on-demand job; a Luxe agent is a Valet, Rideshare and Taskrabbit all in one. We change the way people park by collecting, storing and returning vehicles for customers

NYT Blog: When I describe it to you it will sound crazy, bourgeois and inefficient, and your first instinct will be to dismiss it. Don’t. Luxe works amazingly well, and as it and other similar services expand nationally — Luxe is starting up in Los Angeles this week — they could radically alter how large cities work.

Luxe is an on-demand valet parking service. When you need to drive somewhere where parking is tough, like pretty much any part of San Francisco, open up the app and tell it where you’ll be going. Then start driving. When you get to your destination, a valet will be waiting for you on the side of the road. He’s wearing a blue jacket bearing the Luxe logo, and he greets you by your name, so you know he’s legit.
Hand him your car keys. Yes, don’t worry, it’s fine. Luxe is insured for $1 million against theft and damage, and it tracks your car with GPS. So, as I said, hand him your car keys. Tell him how long you’ll need your car parked. Watch him drive away with your car. If you want, you can look at the app to see a little icon representing your car making its way to a parking lot.

That’s it. Your car has been parked.

Later on, when you need your wheels, open up the app again and hit the button to call back your car. Luxe will assign you a valet, and you’ll see the return play out right there on you phone’s screen — a valet approaching your parked car, and then the car heading to you. In about 10 minutes, your car arrives. One nice perk is that your return destination can be anywhere in Luxe’s service area, not necessarily the place where you originally parked your car. You can drive your car into the office in the morning, then have it returned to you that night after dinner in another part of town.

But here’s the best part. Luxe costs just $5 an hour, with a $15 maximum daily rate. If that doesn’t sound freakishly cheap to you, you haven’t parked in San Francisco

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Friday, December 26, 2014

Venice Beach- Here Come The Bikes

Today In Venice Beach-
The Epicenter of Narcissism 

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), .This is my Carbon Offset

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 luckiest guy in the world. Don.'t buy upgrades, ride up grades! SUVLUV is so stone age, so pre September 11th. 

One seldom exchanges anything but "the finger" or names of insurance companies with another driver. Cars inhibits human connection. 

There is an excuse, however, to be made for driving 4x4's. It can be summed up in three words: "This is America." Make it big. The love of bigness, whether we are talking houses, breasts, meals or vehicles, the 'magic' of thinking big is as American as apple pie. 

The Metal Cowboys-Fooled By Randomness 


Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world. It is anarchy without malice It gets you there and more.... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive.It is not so much a way of getting somewhere as it is a backdrop for randomness; it makes every trip an unorganized tour. 

Life is too random to be left up to chance.Work to Eat. Eat to Live. Live to Bike. Bike to Work! 


When I ride a bike, I no longer despise the human race. I still must use the rules of the road, of biking, of Einstein's gravity. 
Stockholm

But I am mentally far away from "civilization". The world is breaking someone else's heart: Somebody stuck on the 405 Freeway in Los Angry Cars (L.A.). Land or trying to find a frickin parking spot for 20 minutes.

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride. - John F. Kennedy.
Northern Europe is Bike Friendly too
Stockholm
Forget about the Suicidal winters and the reputation for the safest cars on earth. SAAB and Volvo can take a back seat. Stockholm has bike paths everywhere. It's easy to get around the islands that make up the city.

cOPENhagen-Everbody Rides


Amsterdam- Cyclists are everywhere--and you are more
 likely to get hit by one than a car as everybody has a bicyc

Estonia What Am I On? I'm on my bike!


Warnemünde, Germany-the little bike that could
 A LITTLE NostalGIA--- ON THIS DAY- In Year's Past

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Friday, December 19, 2014

The Georgraphy of Bliss

When you revisit the past, make
sure you come back in time
 
“You should  write a book”  I rather  shoot a movie, with Sequels.  A  Show rather than Tell-All.

How can I compose a story big enough, deep enough and broad enough to encompass the reality of my life? When I’m at sea, immersed in action, I am the protagonist,You can't create experiences like this, you undergo them.

The power of narrative comes forth  when I am engaged in the telling.(or selling) of these accounts.





Jumeriah Beach






Don't Stop Believin'
 There are 3 versions, First, the edited “inside version”,  Secondly, The story I tell the world, and Thirdly, my created self- or RL Real Life (story). Depending on my audience, my motive, or my mood at any given time. . . The countless possible versions of (my story) can vary widely.


Bucket Listed

“Whoever authors your story authorizes your actions.” 



Enter Sand Man (Dubai)
When we tell our own story—and write our own autobiography, we truly begin to live more consciously and unfold our own myth---with  us as producer and director, going out to sea , in an infinity of hope, it's life's coming attraction, where we have final cut. There is, indeed, the uniqueness of inhabiting our own life when we follow our bliss and tell our own story. I think that the majority of people never get inside their own lives.   Read More Here

That is the difference between living mythically (The American Dream)  and living autobiographically (The  YOUniverse) where your wishbone becomes your backbone. 

"That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen" Ernest Hemingway 
The Year Of
Magical Thinking
Read More Here

Write? Right!

One-Man-National Geographic on that everywhere trip.


Yangoon-One Hand Clapping
The earth school kills all of its students. Life is like rowing out to sea in a boat that has a hole in the bottom. Have as much joy and fun and  fulfillment- because success without fulfillment is failure. This is known as Present-Moment Hedonism; conservative risk-averse types call it PoiZen. Traveling, is like shaving my head-if I'm not doing it everyday I start to feel like a bum.  I use traveling  as a medicine to feel differently. Traveling is a drug that gives me  a fix when I'm  down and  turns feeling normal into a buzz 

Unlike retail therapy that  ends up  being  buyer's remorse, the cure  IS the poison, and  the  fool, who persists in his folly, becomes wise. The  pressure of modern life  (or as it's also known, being lucky enough to be born in the USA) seems tiny compared to some of the beauty in the world. Seeing it all at the slower  speed  of nautical miles, magnifies it 10x, to the nth degree.

Action Plan
Doing  the right thing at the wrong time equals pain- Someday, the busiest day of the week, is the wrong time. It is never about the claim to finite resources..."not enough time, money, opportunity". It's about resourcefulness.

Long Term Travel
If travel is your dream, then live your dream now, not your back up plan. I would recommend that everyone who wanted to travel, do it immediately. Sooner  rather than later. Gather no moss. Time Marches  on. Start Now.The winds of grace always blow for us but we  have to raise our sails and just go. Read More Here
Proust decided he’d done enough living by age 30 and decided to spend the rest of his life processing the life he’d lived in a book called Remembrance Of Things Past.  I do not suffer from the "dis-ease" of more, but I still see myself traveling by cruise ship in the present perfect tense- as in: "I will have booked another world cruise by age 60."



Hooked-My Life
Based On A True Story
The  reason why I haven't written a book, is because I'm still processing it all! Looking forward to the day when  I have more PAST than FUTURE, and my experience catches up to my imagination, as the quotidian, intimate and overlooked aspects of ordinary day  become more extraordinary.
Narrow Road to The Interior

Everyone's life is either a warning or an example, but nothing is so irritating as a good example.  Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the people. Hell is other people and you usually meet them on a cruise ship---I write my own rules for nautical success: continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure.  


The Accidental Sailor
Despite the undoubted camaraderie, the laughs, the jollies and the sense of tribalism that attends any cruise contract or  project, the profession remains a notoriously lonely one. FriendSHIPS are intense but brief; when the gig ends or the curtain comes  down, you can soon find yourself back home staring at your cell phone and wondering if any of it really happened. Memories are short, time moves on, "fame" is transitory.Read More Here


Everyday Epiphanies


You Do What On A Cruise Ship?

Los Angeles-To London in 110 Days-

 Let The Orinoco Flow- One Year @Sea

Tranquility Base-The Ego Has Landed

Further Up and Further In

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!"    C.S. Lewis


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The Summit-Is The Half Way Point

10/14

It took 4 hours to climb to the top of Fuji San and 14 hours to defend.
Going downhill takes longer!
08/91

The opening track on Into The Great Wide Open, the eighth studio album by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, 'Learning To Fly'  goes like this...

Well, I started out down a dirty road / Started out all alone / And the sun went down as I crossed the hill / And the town lit up, the world got still / I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings / Coming down is the hardest thing.

This song is about achieving a huge goal. The learning to fly without wings means learning to do something you\'ve never done before and you\'re not sure if you\'re even prepared to do

It reminds me of traveling around the world 7 times!--My Escape TO my Reality:"Coming down is the hardest thing". I got my pilots license-Now what, Land? I am sure I will sail again....because...
You know, addiction isn't the problem - it's the solution- 
When all you care about is here, this is a good
  place to be
On Devil's Island

How come you ended up in a place like this?
Favoritism.

Reprint 2011 WC-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.






I always talk in Bumper Stickers-Instant gratification takes too long



Tender Boating




Escape to Reality

Ile des Pins, New Caledonia-Papillon
“Addicted to traveling”  or for that matter “Addicted to all-non working activities” shouldn’t be  a new reason for self-hatred or a diagnosis, rather a pursuit like the arts and entertainment, that permit self-exploration and satisfy your psycho-social needs.  You see, in general, if a pastime is not classy, those who love it are labeled with the Dr Phil-Drew-Oprah Psycho Babble rhetoric of “addict.” Opera and Symphony  aficionados, on the other hand  are “passionate” and "driven".

 Loading the cultural dice in favor of “reality” over fantasy, we get the sense of   adventure beaten out of us when we ask ourselves the most irritating of the question words, “Why?”  Why do I have to live in the New York suburbs,where the weather sucks and the people are rude, and there is nothing to do? Then we just tune in turn  on the TV, and  drop out, watching one of the 1000 channels in a shared hallucination called the superstition of materialism, and fall asleep.

Then you get "The Call" and if you  wake up and answer it,  and you begin the Hero's Journey that Joseph Cambell talks about  in The Power Of Myth, with Bill Moyers, that PBS  video series that's a must for all seekers, and you follow your bliss-in most  cases your bliss follows you.

 I started to travel, as a pastime, on a shoe-string budget, labeled as a drifter, a bum, held in contempt by the  uninformed, and over educated who find themselves   sinking into the everydayness of their lives. And I didn’t care. I just did it anyway. The Calvinists say work is prayer, so is permanent traveling.
In the old days, habits of cultural consumption like listening to jazz music all day and night were considered passions, or forever going to the movies or “The Theatre”, allowing   us to create new personalities and use them to fulfill unmet psychological needs. Come to think of it, I think I have an internet addiction too! Awesome.

Seagull Management

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” Anais Nin




  • People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.~ The Power of Myth - Joe Campbell

    Reprint from 2012-
    There are three types of people-those alive, those dead and those @sea--cruising around the world  has been one  of the most rewarding forms of introspection. It is one stage of my “re-entry” in Hotel @nyware, continuing my extended break from Normal Life again to travel the world on board another cruise ship. I’m living my dream of PT-Permanent Travel, also known as "Mini Retirements". I haven’t been everywhere, but it is no longer  on my list. I "get it" now., this travel thing. On 12/12/12, Blogging is literature in a hurry-Write? Right! The quicker I go, the longer it takes, so it looks like I will be writing a few more posts on the subject.

    As I document this adventure, this  around-the-world travelogue, I say to myself "Roam Sweet Roam". Home is not where my heart is but where my computer is- I remain a digital nomad, where  Anywhere becomes @nyware, location neutral, as there is no such thing as a bad piece of real estate when you use technology and social media. As I make my way in the Caribbean (again!), in the middle of nowhere, but the center of everything, thanks to a reliable high speed Internet connection.  I am doing pretty much everything I would do in the USA, only with the economies of scale, at a less greater cost.

    Consequently, I call home a feeling not a place-I’ve never confused  a street address for where I  actually lived. My destinations have  never been  places , but  new way of seeing things:  the journeys themselves have been the destinations.

    It has never been about resources, but more about resourcefulness.We're never  too poor to buy our freedom.In fact,  we are  all “time millionaires ”and when we  who choose to use this commodity, the less  we put a cash value on travel, and  the less  we think that money is what we need to have an adventure  and live, and the less we associate money with life in general.

  • My 12 Best Days:

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