Tag Archives: Travel

BLOG 14/52

29 Sunday Mar 2026

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ISLANDS

     There are islands in all the seas waiting for us to visit if we please.

   The girls will dance

    For you each night.

    Everyone is happy

   There is never a fight

    They are so pretty

    You cannot resist

 You ask them to dance

     Again, before they

           Dismiss.   

 The sun slowly fades into the night      

The lights come on to our delight.

      The dancers glide onto the stage

         They know every movement 

         They have practiced all year

         We sit marveling at their skill

         As we eat and drink our beer. 

__________________________________

Tomorrow is Easter, April 5, 2015. This morning, I got up at 4:30 am and watched the moon hide in the shadow of the Earth, an event that helps us define who we are and what we are. It made me reflect on my life. What came to mind were the Easters I spent as a child. They were some of the happiest times in my life that we old folks who live at the end of the street still enjoy, in our journeys through memory.

            In my family, we all gathered at my Aunt Aggie’s house. There were about 20 of us. The years were in the early 1940s. She and Uncle Leo had about an acre of land right on the Los Angeles River somewhere in “the valley.” I have no idea now where that would be, but it was rural. She had a goat that she milked, and my cousins and I would go out to see if we could milk it. We were primarily city kids, and milking a goat was a skill we didn’t possess. My aunt would squirt the milk into our mouths from three feet away. Of course, it would get all over us, and that was part of the fun.

            Being right across the street from the river, the cousins (there were four of us who lived close enough to be there) were given the duty of collecting enough crawdads to put in the salad. The L.A. River was all mud banks back then, and it was full of crawdads. We even had a swimming hole in it and went swimming if the weather permitted us to, without our mothers thinking we would get too cold and get sick. My mother and all my aunts would prepare the meal, and of course, the crawdad salad was my favorite part of it.

L.A. River circa 1940

            As I write this, there are tears running down my face. These were wonderful times. Now the river is all cement. No more crawdads. No more swimming hole. No more goat milk. All of those people are dead now, except two of my cousins and me. I don’t think any of us have had a crawdad salad or gone swimming in a swimming hole or milked a goat for a long long time. What a travesty that is.

BLOG 10/52

14 Saturday Feb 2026

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A THOUGHT ABOUT THE OCEAN

In 1992, I was part of a four-man kayak expedition down the coast of Baja California from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. It was over 1,000 miles, and the coast is exposed to the Pacific swell all the way. That means there is major surf on most of the beaches, most of the time. Your first thought might be, “Who cares?” Believe me, if you’re in a kayak looking up at the waves, you care.

We went ashore every night and had to get off the beach every morning. We had one capsize, one pitch-pole (end-over-end), and one boat broken in half (with the paddlers in it!). I wrote a book about the trip, “We Survived Yesterday”, one of my Amazon eBooks. I wrote the following one evening while sitting on one of the beaches where we camped.

The ocean is a strange and mysterious place,

One with which our senses do not easily interface.

We see with our sight, and what we see is true,

 However, upon further investigation, everything appears new.

We listen to the sounds that come oozing from the deep,

But the meaning is guessed at, for its language we don’t speak.

We touch it and feel it, but hold it, we cannot.

We capture it in tanks, but it loses a lot.

Its soul has departed; it lost its song,

 It no longer sings, its breakers

 And the currents are gone.

We peek through the glass,

to see what lies beneath,

 But all we see,

 Has just been 

scrapped 

off some reef. 

The sun shines brightly for us every single day.

It is there even when clouds get in the way.

Sometimes the clouds are in the sky,

But at times, they are in our hearts.

The ones in the sky will pass by

The ones in our hearts

Will also go if we

Are strong and

Don’t cry.

Let the sunshine on you, it’s there every day.

BLOG 9/52

08 Sunday Feb 2026

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SLEEPING WITH THE WHALE                                   

When the whale speaks, the entire ocean intently listens

When he swims to the surface to take a breath.

If the sun is out, his head will glisten.

All in the sea will understand

Except you and me

Even if we 

Listen.

But in my dreams, I know it’s true

The whale loves me

And even you.

Why I Travel

I have been asked why I travel as much as I do. I try to be somewhere besides home 2 weeks a month or longer for months at a time. It is a reasonable question because it is more than most people would want to travel.

I have always traveled if I could and never thought about it. I don’t think of my traveling as vacations, but rather as field trips in the school of life. The world is my classroom, and I love to learn, so I travel. There is a Chinese proverb that is 8,000 years old, and I am paraphrasing, that it is better to take 10,000 steps to a new place than to read 10,000 pages about it. I believe that. No words can reveal the beauty of a mountain, or the odors that rise from a marsh, or the sound of a waterfall. These things should not just be learned about; they should be absorbed in your soul, and only then can they be part of you. 

When I was able, I went to places I had no words to describe—and slept on the ground, in a tent, or belayed down a Cliff to see what was under the water in the remote spot below. I can no longer do that—my body won’t take me to those places anymore, but I have to move on anyway I can to keep learning. 

 In an Amazon River village in the upper Ecuadorian jungle, with no roads leading to it, I was told by the shaman that the secret to long life was never to stop experiencing life. He said that when you do, you are through. You might as well. Feed the environment and do some good. Placing that advice into my world was not difficult because I already believed it. I just didn’t know it.

Now I am traveling to timeshares and on cruise ships. I can still do that with my Walker and find new things in life that I had passed by without appreciating. When the time comes that I must ride in a scooter or a power wheelchair, I will find things even closer to learn that I was unaware of, as I walk over them. An example is the bellflowers that grow in the lawns. They are so small that you have to get down on your belly with a magnifying glass to see them. They are stunning.

BLOG 8/52

30 Friday Jan 2026

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THE GHOST SHIP 

When old seadogs remember their life over a beer

With others like themselves that they hold dear

Stories are told with shining eyes and held breath

About perils at sea with ghost ships and near-death.

They were always blurry and not clear to see, but just

As they were starting to board and take over their ship

Their wives would wake them up with a sharp slap on the hip.

Stop yelling and fighting, you old fool, they would always say

So much for adventures at sea, that is all for today 

Everyone pays for their beer, and shakes hands 

And walks away, but it is ok 

There’s more adventure

Another day.

JUST HANDLE IT

When changes in my world disrupted my normal routine, over which I had little to no control, I became irritable and didn’t like where I was in my life. I try hard not to let that happen. It is controlled by my attitude and acceptance of what is happening in my life at the time.

My father told me that life will get harder, but it’s just a matter of handling it. Handling it is hard because you must decide between what you want and what you need. Often, they conflict with each other, and you must choose between them.

Most of my life, want has been my guide. I find that what I need starts taking over as I continue down my path and slow down. When need becomes your guide, you may find yourself doing things that you don’t want to do but have no choice. They say that growing old is not for sissies, but getting old will make you one. We can’t stop growing old, but we can work hard not to get old and become a sissy. Keep moving forward. Be aware that slowing down is much better than stopping.

BLOG 5/52

10 Saturday Jan 2026

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The First Tide Pool

This is neat

The water was all around my feet.

It comes in and goes out.

It climbs up my legs

Then goes away

It never stays.

 It is cold, making me scream

My limbs go numb and feel like pegs

But it is Ok, I know they are still my legs.

Adventure 552 ADD

We use the word adventure very loosely. It’s like many other words that can mean different things to different people and create a different image in the listener’s mind than you might have intended.

I believe that anything that pushes a person beyond their comfort level is an adventure. I love the phrase, “If you’re not walking on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.” The question then is, how do you know if you are on the edge or not?

If you become uncomfortable doing anything and question your ability to do it…, you are close to the edge. It might be sewing the hem on a dress or riding a bucking bronco. If you’re doubting your ability to do it, you’re on the edge. If you are successful, you have increased your world and feel proud of yourself. If you’re in trouble, that’s also beneficial; you’ve learned something.

I had a good friend who took many trips with me, who said, “Every time I take a trip with you, it’s a near-death experience.” I was having a good trip; he was having an adventure.

 We evaluate the things around us based on our own experience. It is essential to be aware that there is always someone better, so we won’t be shocked when they beat us. Walk on the edge as much as you can. Every time you do, you learn something that keeps you moving forward.

Learning something new is taking a step forward on an adventure. It doesn’t matter how inconsequential it is; it is a forward movement in your life, and that is the right direction. Be proud of it.

The only way for me to answer my own questions of what, why, and how was to become a marine biologist, so I did. Life as a scientist is, at its core, a life of wonder, because we never find the final answer to anything. Every new thing we learn or discover just creates more questions.

I didn’t realize that every time I learned something, I became dumber. Each new thing I learn creates many more questions I don’t know. I want to know everything about the latest development: how it works, where it came from, and so much I don’t understand about it. I am trying in life to get as dumb as possible.

The quest for knowledge never ends; it just expands. It has been an exciting and fulfilling life for me. I have come to realize that, like Sergeant Schultz of the old TV series Hogan’s Heroes, I “I know nothing,” but I have had an exciting and fun time trying to learn everything for over 91 years.

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