2019 Happy Last Year
2019: The Warrior Year
From Kabul to Tortola. A year of helicopters, barracks, sacrifice, blue-ocean memory, and one final morning sail.
The year ran on two tracks.
One track crossed Afghanistan by helicopter, through military compounds, temporary housing, open barracks, and long hours when routine could turn violent without warning.
The other track returned to water: Southampton, old voyages, Puerto Rico, the British Virgin Islands, and the final day of the year under sail in Tortola.
Between them was the real story. Work and life. Danger and wonder. The Warrior Year became a study in what deserves protection: family, health, friendship, integrity, and the time still available.
The quest is in the question.
Cerberus lets you into hell but prevents you from leaving—rather like the valet at the Hotel California. Hades’ hound was stamped on a Gulf War relic standing guard outside the temporary housing where I spent the week.
The desert sun kept returning me to one question: What is the one thing I can do such that, by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary?
Sharing an open barracks with one hundred men was a challenge. Reading became the route from IN to SANE. I also learned that the only normal people are the ones I have not met yet.
Alfred Adler
Work is a rubber ball. Drop it and it may bounce back. Family, health, friends, and integrity are glass.
Gary Keller / The One Thing
Health, money, and time are meant to become life—not merely balances carried forward. The challenge is to spend each resource before its usefulness expires.
After Bill Perkins / Die With Zero
Cerberus — Dog Days
Cerberus relic at temporary housing
Quiet routine under dangerous conditions
Live a life worthy of the sacrifice.
This was dangerous work: hours of quiet routine that could become deadly violence in a moment.
On August 2, two American soldiers were killed by a suicide car bomb while providing security for a convoy in Kandahar Province.
I must continue to live a life worthy of their sacrifice—with energy, intelligence, and integrity.
We Speak English or People Die
Teaching English became mission-critical work: words as lifelines, trust as an operating system, and mistakes treated as data rather than drama.
Open the Book on AmazonTeachers at War — Chapter Map20 chapters
The arc runs from The Art Dealer’s Awakening and The Cruise Ship Epiphany through helicopter pedagogy, the Afghan shepherd dogs, the Saudi crucible, controlled aggression, failure as data, the technology of trust, and the probability of survival.
Open the Warrior Year Image Archive16 images
We Speak English or People Die — audio-book cover
Military operations field note
Military strategy field note
Aircraft operations over Afghanistan
Chinook helicopter commute
Warrior Year graphic
Equipment and field conditions
War Paws — Afghan shepherd pack
Afghanistan social-media field note
Military training graphic
Training design from the field
Cerberus — Dog Days
Mission-critical training content
The Prime Directive
Cerberus relic at temporary housing
Quiet routine under dangerous conditions
Military Training Operations
Military Helicopter Operations
Military Video Content
You get there faster by plane, but farther by ship.
There is no YES in yesterday, and the longest day of the weak is someday. The secret of living the dream instead of the backup plan is starting.
I had all the disadvantages required for a successful beginning: no money, no time, no opportunities. Only acting as if. The wish was simple—travel around the world. Staying at sea for six to thirteen months at a time made the invisible visible.
I reframed those years as mini-retirements. Home became a feeling, not a place. Travel became a backdrop for the larger fact: all the significant events of life take place in the brain.
Luck is probability taken personally. Preparation and opportunity collide at the right time, in the right place, while doing the right things.
Open the Blue-Ocean Voyage Archive17 memories
Venice — Gondola Dreams and Acqua Alta
Hong Kong to Southampton 2018
Q Is for Qatar 2017
2015 Grand Voyage
Panama Canal — Aft View
The Panama Canal — 2013
Alaska — The Great Land
Let the Orinoco Flow — Santorini Memory
Consciousness Is Wireless — Maldives
Tahiti — Stopover in Paradise
The Fjords of Norway
Milford Sound — Are We There Yet?
Los Angeles to London in 110 Days
Oasis of the Seas — The Ship Is the Destination
Go Big or Go Home — Oasis of the Seas
The Hawaiian Islands — First Ship
The Hawaiian Islands
I felt as though I had stepped into a time machine.
The Eastern and Western Caribbean routes brought back an older ritual: fresh coconut water split open with a machete and served before it became another packaged supermarket product.
Sarah was the navigator—my magnetic north and compass. Old San Juan connected the 2019 voyage to the ships and island crossings that came before it.
My enthusiasm for coconuts became its own travel archive: Nicaragua, Dominica, Thailand, Barbados, St. Thomas, Jamaica, and every port where the fruit arrived directly from the tree.
Old San Juan — Caribbean Passage
Caribbean Voyage — Archive Film
Open the Caribbean and Coconut Archive15 images
Old San Juan at first light
Old San Juan street archive
Puerto Rico morning passage
A Caribbean time machine
Sarah as navigator — magnetic north and compass
Old San Juan a decade earlier on MSC
Coo coo for coconuts
Nicaragua — Coconut Quest
Thailand — Coconut Magic
Around the world in coconuts
Barbados coconut archive
St. Thomas archive
Jamaica coconut memory
Big coconut field note
An embarrassment of coconuts
What a year. The last day was spent under sail.
After the Warrior Year came the water. The final morning of 2019 was spent sailing off Tortola.
Mother Nature and Father Time. These island paradises are their offspring.
The ending did not erase the year that came before it. It placed it against a wider horizon.
Last morning sail of 2019 — Tortola
Tortola — Mother Nature and Father Time
British Virgin Islands — the final horizon
The 36 posts of 2019
The supplied Blogger index contains 36 posts dated within calendar year 2019. The annual recap published on January 2, 2020, and Decade—St. Thomas USVI, published January 1, 2020, appear below as a coda and are not included in the 36-post total.
December 20198 posts
The year closes at sea: London, Florida, Puerto Rico, the BVI, and the return of blue-ocean thinking.
November 20193 posts
Waterfront cities, farm lessons, Tahoe blue, and the quiet transition out of the war zone.
October 20193 posts
Boston, San Francisco, and Yeovilton: movement between military memory and civilian ground.
September 20194 posts
The homecoming month: boats, London, Cerberus, barracks, and the Prime Directive.
August 20196 posts
The Warrior Year at full intensity: Kabul, helicopters, Zambia, perseverance, and retiring the old self.
July 20191 post
June 20195 posts
The helicopter commute, Hindu Kush dogs, remembered hikes, and the first summer signal.
May 20193 posts
Ground school, Guernsey, France, Spain, and learning to fly.
April 20191 post
Travel becomes intentional rather than merely frequent.
February 20192 posts
Afghanistan and Zambia establish the year’s long arc.
January 2020 Coda2 posts
Warrior was never the destination.
The year began with a map drawn between Afghanistan and Zambia. It ended on a boat in the British Virgin Islands. Between those points, the old self was retired one decision at a time.
2019 / Kabul to Tortola