Hotel @nyware

Las Vegas-Heads Up

2012-01-16T16:45:00.001-08:00

I resemble
those guys.

Headlines-Q Balls by choice

In the beginning, there was Michael.Jordan was the poster guy for the perfectly bald man. He made shaving cutting edge.

He took 'the shaved skull' from social outcast to rock star chick magnet status. The follicly challenged started doing the numbers .

Shaved head= Shiny, Smooth and Sexy. You could count on being noticed. Just ask

Me no hair

Is bald beautiful? Perhaps. Is bald a high end haircut? Maybe. One thing for sure,(Listen up Blue Man Group) Bald is a hair color. If you want to make the statement that says, I run my own life. Shave your head and join the Union! Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil is a card carrying member

Me no hair is a walking, breathing billboard and bullhorn that shouts, "I've got other plans" to the "Have a nice day" retail speak, and the SNL's (Saturday Night Live's) flight attendant "Ba-Bye" sketch.

Be Brave and Shave!

"Getting Kojack-ed" was made popular by 1970's TV star, Telly Savalas. Who loves ya baby? We do---the perfectly bald.

Yul Brynner was the quintessential Fuzzy Wuzzy when it wasn't (very) fuzzy. to "go all the way", back in the day, when Mr Clean, a household brand was the only game in town. Now we have MiliTerry O'Quinn.

We have yet to see a celebrity call a press conference to deny they are wearing a wig (David "Weave" Roth did it on radio). If indeed, there were such a day, Sir Elton John, William Shatner, and my all-time favorite, Burt Reynolds, would have what ---I Love Lucy's Ricky Ricardo--- would say, have some "splaning to do". The Donald's cover up has an honorable mention for all of its dishonesty. Rosie trumped that.

Life is too short for hair. In fact, a BBC survey says men who shave every day have a lesser chance of stroke than those who shave infrequently We are not skinheads, or Chemo patients, but would we shave our head for cancer, research, a cause? You know, get people to sponsor you, and the biggest donor gets the honor of the first cut.

Nowadays, Celebrities, Politicians , Athletes, and folks just like us are all saying, "Me No Hair".The ten "baldies" you H8 or dig in this world---who are they? Post your comments here at Hotel @nyware. If you need any ideas, check out my jumpcut music video.

We, the "young and the ruthless" who were growing too tall for our hair, started conforming to the idea that we could be running our own show; and rebelling against the $2 Billion Dollar hair "restoration" industry of plugs, rugs and drugs.

The tragedy really was not in something that was, but in something that wasn't. Drinking the kool-aid of late-night infomercials that going "hair-free" cost too much was bunk. The fear merchants put the con back in confidence with "Wayne's World"-style public access shows and 1-800 numbers.

They tried to make us afraid, and take away the "pain", the pain of once parted hair that now was de-parting, cutting "itself". As if it was happening to us, and keeping us separated from looking good. It was just exchanging an I for an I, and keeping us blind to the fact that hair "loss" is no loss at all, and, more than that, the upside of shaving it all off, is all gains, in street cred and social and spiritual capital.

Then Of Course, there is Dr Evil--

The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery...

Apocalypse (Not) Now- Santa Monica

2012-01-04T11:26:00.000-08:00

Rest In Paradise

The future is so bright even for dogs
who have to wear sunglassses

Let this blog serve as a guide to surviving the 2012 Mayan apocalypse.If they only knew how many people they freaked out by running out of room to write on that rock. I gotta wear shades. Why wait for 2020 to have a perfect vision:

The whole aim of travel is not to set foot on exotic land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as an exotic land...

Video Thilled the Radio Star ---2011 Roll Tape:

And I thought 2010 was a good year: When I wrote Santa Monica-Whip It Good

The future is full of possibilities that I must constantly shoot in the head, because if you want something GR8, you must be able to limit yourself.

Normal people need three things to travel-Time, Money and Opportunity.

As an abnormal person doing abnormal things---It has never been about resources. You see, I am the Bobby Fisher of resourcefulness, the Cosmo Kramer of planning , the Curious George of predictable unpredictability. >note to self< Rock on man with the yellow hat, rock on.

No matter how low the budget bar gets, I always manage to limbo my way under it. If you think about it, I am the Wilt Chamberlain of shoe-string travel. I'm putting up numbers so unthinkable that normals will never, ever reach them.-300 ports in 365 days.

Why Be A Man When You Can Be A Success?
As the Morgan Freeman of travel writers , if you will. Everyone recognizes me but I never gain any due recognition., Hotel @nyware hasn't exactly been the Edgar Allen Poe of knock-outs, the Emily Dickinson of ground n pound, the Robert Frost of ass-kicking.

It's just me, born with a Ph.D. in throwing junk up against the wall, and seeing what will stick.Looking back, it's been the Colonel Kurtz of experiences. I've gone native and insane so many times, but in a Lance Armstrong Barbara Bush sort of way. Sometimes I am the census taker, sometimes, the cannibal psychiatrist. Roll Tape...

My Top Ten World Tour 2010 YouTube Videos

When a good time turns around, You must whip it , You will never live it down, Unless you whip it. No one gets their way, Until they whip it-Devo

#1 BUI: Embracing The Life Forced Upon Me--OMG! WTF? I have nothing in common with myself anymore

#2: Insulin Shock and Awe, eating the Celebrity Solstice

#3.Acropolis Now-Ed Reif and James Hopkins; making the world safe for Hypocracy..er ..I mean Democracy in the cradle of Western civilization---Athens, Greece

#4 Buddha Boy Ed Reif ---From Monk to Millionaire--- in Sint Maarteen--It ain't much if it ain't Dutch

Success is continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure

#5.The Importance Of Being Ernest (Hemingway) without having ever read him-Never go on trips with anyone you do not love

#6 You(th) are as young as your spine is flexible.

#7 What color is your Parachute Money?

#8 I am at one with the chainsaw. British Virgin islands

#9 Have A Cigar-And did we tell you the name of the game, boy We call it Riding the Gravy Train.

#10 Put That Coffee Down-Ed Reif, former NYU classmate of Alec, and Starter for Team Baldwin, votes for Starbucks today, where life changes instantly, as he drinks from a paper cup.

Honorable Mention

#1 Regular-- Kissing a stingray while being filmed in Grand Cayman Islands Extra Crispy- Going out old school Steve Irwin Style-Being fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming in GB Reef

#2 Eminem has 8 Mile, Bob Marley, the small village of 9 mile... Bob,just sMILE.

#3 Container Cargo Cult Madness

Happy Last Year-Write? Right!

2011-12-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here are my accounts of the last 364 days-Once around without leaving the ground.

There is no doubt about it, the exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable.

▼ ▼ January (8)

▼ February (21)

Rarotonga, Cook Islands-Come As A Guest, Leave As A Friend...

▼ March (23)

Travelling by cruise ships-12 ports in 14 days, is like flirting with life.
It's like saying, I wanna love you, but I have to go; this is just the way it is.

April (20)

Maldives-Consciousness Is Wireless

▼ May (13)

▼ June (8)

▼ July (26)

▼ August (20)

▼ September (9)

▼ October (8)

▼ November (9)

▼ December (14)

Coffee Is For Closers

Ka'anapali-Maui Grown verses Starbucks Own

That Was Zen. This is Now

California-The Coast Is Clear

2011-12-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the user-friendly universe of Southern California.
After discovering the God Molecule, flying a Russian MiG-29 at Mach 2 and Taking A World Cruise in Zero Gravity- there is something extraordinary about being an "Ordinary People", a mere civilian again; mearly walking in L.A. It's so post September 11th, so pedestrian.

Planes are like diets. I don't like being on them,

If God had really intended men to fly,
he'd make it easier to pick people up at the airport

Seattle-The Contiguous 48

2011-12-18T11:29:00.001-08:00

How to predict weather in Seattle: If you can see Mt Ranier,
it's going to rain. If not , it already is.

Aloha to No rain. No rainbows ...Passing through the Pacific Northwest. People don't age, they rust.

After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in Seattle is W T F, eh?

August 17th, I wrote:

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.

35th floor of Hotel Sheraton

Seahawks Suck.Go Rams

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 Rolling Stones-Pikes Place Market is the Keith Richards of Farmer's Markets- It's over fifty years old and still going strong despite the usual wear and tear and years of decadence.

An I For an Island Makes You Blind

2011-12-17T14:08:00.001-08:00

The Hero's Journey -Departure Inititation and now Returning-- As I go beyond following my bliss, there's nothing left to "see". I'm not screaming out like Zack Mayo in an Officer and a Gentleman-"I got nowhere else to go!" Instead, there is a someone else to be, like Chuck Noland in Cast Away discovers, stuck standing in the middle of a crossroads; finally accepting having been stripped of his old life, and suddenly finding himself not knowing his next move. And yet, that's ok.
Refusal of the Return

Campbell describes- So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?.

My ship has been unmoored for so long, I don't know where to drop anchor. I thought it would be easy to resume the 2007 Aloha, and it was. I thought it would give back the comfort of the familiar. It has not.

Has it only been three weeks?

Return-The Road Back

Refusal of the Return
So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?
The Magic Flight
Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
Rescue from Without
Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn't realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.
Master of the Two Worlds
In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
Freedom to Live
Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

Kailua Kona- Vog Index

2011-12-16T00:11:00.001-08:00

Volcanic fog or Vog is in the air today.

This is Pele,and I don't mean the Brazilian soccer pro, You've just been just been shot...by Peter Lik.watch At night the red glare was visible 7miles at sea as we used to sail past in the night to see the this force of nature, this slumbering volcano, wreathed in clouds, occasionally emitting smoke and fire; and me, like a soothsayer, attempted to interpret. The only thing I know is you can't win a Volcano.

Big Island-Walking On the Moon

2011-12-15T15:46:00.001-08:00

I'm on the Big Island again after a 4 years break; on the west side, at the local Starbucks, for some Kona Joe, sitting with my friends cream and sugar. American coffee is "dirty water" and Instant coffee takes too long. Kona, however,is not a drug.It's a vitamin.

Waikiki -Banyan Tree Hugger

2011-12-14T09:22:00.001-08:00

What is it about these root systems that socks us in the figurative solar plexus. Only Mother nature can make a tree---probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Corporation Oahu is still a goldmine for romantic twovelists and sentimental videographers, bar-room bloggers and semi-literate tourists, sociologists and U of H Ph.D. students, sailing evangelists, NGO experts.

At ABC (Aloha Bring Cash), the merchants of Paradise-Sovenir kitsch, are the memes (thought viruses) for sale- from the hilariously romantic posters through the pseudo-scholarly to the infuriatingly racist postcards; from the noble savage literary school through Margaret Mead and all her comings of age, Somerset Maugham's puritan missionaries/drunks/and saintly whores and James Michener's rascals and golden people, to the stereotyped childlike pagan who needs to be steered to the Light....and it all starts with a tree...if I could only construct the remains of the day in such a fashion.

Honolulu- Be(ing) There. Aloha!

2011-12-13T09:36:00.001-08:00

Making waves on the island of Oahu.

The way to ‘get there’ is to ‘be there’
It’s that simple.

Chancey Gardener: This is just like television,
only you can see much further.

Life of PIe-πhe United States of Unconscious Eating

2011-12-11T20:01:00.001-08:00

Life After Luau
A good-bye is never painful unless you're never going to say hello again.Aloha Maui. Aloha Oahu. I know travel zoos are no longer in my good graces.Neither is eating on a cruise ship. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. Life off the cruise ships ,however,isn't much of a culinary life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. I have to pay for stuff...as in food stuffs. This is certainly different from the luaus and eat-what-you-kill safaris and big game fishing expeditions I took this year, where no matter where I was ,the stuffed animals on display all looked the same. Staged authenicity and First rule of cruise club-never miss a meal.Second rule-don't forget the first, and don't miss the 6pm all aboard. It has been predictable as an episode of Seinfeld. Yadi yada yada. No more choc-a-holic and midnight buffets. My favorite food on the ships had been Seconds! And the desserts. It was the life of pie. Playing the game of staged authenticity in the tourist themed spaces of Tahiti, Fiji et al.,while it was't the Mcdonald-ization of the South Pacific, it played more like a Disney animated feature film The Burger and The King featuring the fat Elvis belting out his own karaoke version of My Way like a good old hound dog with a few miles left.

Mele Kalikimaka -Write About Here

2011-12-09T14:06:00.001-08:00

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off: Shoveling sunshine in paradise instead of snow in the mainland. No rain. No rainbows. No snow, however, no snowmen.
There may be some frosted flakes here on the valley isle but no white Christmas'. No worries because I have found the good in goodbye to cold weather.All I want for Xmas is a sun tan.

The Aquatic Life-Dolphin Swim Club

2011-12-08T10:21:00.001-08:00

The sum of my problems is the inability to sit quietly alone on a beach! It is easy to mistake motion for progress and no problem is so big and complicated that it cannot be run away from. I know what to do-swim with my friends the dolphins. Nothing Is The Hardest Thing To Do.

It Just Dawned On Me

2011-12-04T23:14:00.001-08:00

The Hawaiian's say-Never turn your back on the ocean. It makes sense to me.
Somehow, the love of the islands, like the love of a woman, just happens. One cannot determine in advance to love a particular woman, nor can one so determine to love Hawaii.
It is the land of big dreams, for both islanders and guests. Those dreams born in Paradise can, indeed, come true.

Maui-With the Right Flip Flops You Can Do Anything

2011-12-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

These flip flops have sailed around the world with me and
I kiss the ground they walk on now here in Maui.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing., But In Hawaii, it doesn't take much. It's flip flops forever. There's Aloha Friday, and business casual--then there's extreme business casual. Going to work in flip flops. It's the closest thing to going barefoot and enjoying life.

Ka'anapali-Maui Grown verses Starbucks Own

2011-12-01T09:31:00.001-08:00

Local Coffee Is My Cup of Tea

Maui Grown is not a drug.It's a vitamin. Starbucks is karaoke coffee, a not so cheap imitation. Juan Valdez and Joe Kona better head for the hills. This is Handsome Coffee.You can take your coffee to go, but I recommend drinking in your coffee and the
morning sitting out on the lanai.

The Average Joe

Haikus are easy/But sometimes they don't make sense/Starbucks

Lahaina-Same Shirt Different Day

2011-11-29T11:45:00.001-08:00

I thought I would change my mind, but instead I changed my shirt.

Aloha!

I knew there would be days like this,
I just wish someone would have told me how many!

The La Haina means 'cruel sun' in the Hawaiian Language. describing the sunny dry climate. It received 13 inches of rain in a year.What a contrast from 2 months ago sailing in the Inside Passage and landing up in -Ketchikan, Alaska; one of the wettest places in North America- The Path of Moist Resistance .with 162 inches of precipitation per year – that is over 13.5 feet of wet !

The nose knows. I love the smell of (na)palm in the morning.

Here Today,Gone to-Maui

2011-11-19T10:24:00.000-08:00

Trying to English Aloha! These are the days when I start to think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. When I landed in Kahalui, things started to take off. I was on a different plane.I didn't wake up. I came to. Cool, unlying life rushed in. Hawaii is the canvas, throw up as much paint as you can. We are just the middlemen.
The key to island-style is not knowing where you are going, but to prepare your character for those wonderous moments of serindipity; and when they occur, you can listen to your heart and know what it is you need to do. Impossible is nothing because infinite patience brings immediate results. It is not just a state of mind but also a state of grace, a vibe.
Serindipity, I call it good luck. I am big fan of the extraordinary role that luck plays in all our lives-big luck,small luck, good luck. Luck is an art. We are like fish, the last ones to know we are in the water,and most of the time we swim right past luck , and we're looking in any direction but where luck is. We all get those moments, however, where we know how to look in the right direction.
When I go off into the quiet parts of the coastline and get very quiet, and come to understand that I am connected with everything...and no, I didn't have to do drugs to feel this ---I am drugs! When you’re in the islands, you are what you are right there and then.
Hawaii, however, doesn't have a monopoly on the Geography of Bliss for me. Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand's South Island, the whole Carribean blue turquoise, Norway's Western Fjords, the whole city of COPENhagen have done it for me too.
The Quest is in the Question -Where am I today? Paradise. I am back to that place that I have never been before. Google maps is OUT. Cosmic Cartography is IN.I'm testing/ tracking / false positive for "hanging loose" in the present tense. as I perform a life hack on my comfort zone. It's an ongoing work in progress, under construction and creative destruction.
It only ends once-anything before that is just progress because the earth school kills all of its students. The Teaches Of Beaches is that You can't "own" the beach, but you can "tune in" to the beach. and the more you know, the less you need. Shoveling Sunshine
Pizza on Earth Good Will to All!. I order a slice in Paia- "Make me one with everything" . (Very Zen). There is precip- sun and moisture all over the place. I breate right. A Rainy day in Paia is better than a sunny day at the office. Im not hearing invoices but God's only voice which is silence.

Cabo-Marlin Alley-Day 85-The Importance of Being Ernest

2011-11-17T12:52:00.001-08:00

The Hemingway International Billfish Tournament is one of
the oldest big-game fishing tournaments...and then there is Baja, Mexico After Monday and Tuesday, all that's left in Cabo is W T F, eh?

If people concentrated on the really important things they'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a large marlin. I feel like Santiago, going 84 days without catching a fish.

Cabo- First Impressionist

2011-11-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

I like writing about Mexico , I just don't like the paper work.
So I did this oil of Cabo! a second chance to make a first impressionist painting

 Self Employment sometimes made harder by difficult boss- "I am not a businessman, I am a business, man!"
That's what the locals are doing here $elling everything- It's a pain in the English. Cabo San Lucas locals speak English as a second language. Money is their first one.

The last thing a fish notices is water

I live in the geography of Hotel @nyware, the 3 pound YOUniverse, that grey matter between my (y)ears-my brain .

We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells..Without mind, matter doesn´t"matter"

There is no such thing as a bad address on the Internet, nor in this state of mind because the personal operating system that each of us inherits, creates and imposes on the world, is a virtual reality.It's location neutral user-friendly. Granted, enviornment creates mood, and I rather shovel sunshine in Paradise then New York snow.

Yet, today as I tender on the sea of cortez and observe the sun, the water, the mountains and everything in flow, I say to myself "Yes indeed, all this belongs to me!". and, more than that,I play a role in its appearance.

As I get a glimpse of the deeper, random, chance encounters of my 3 pound universe (brain), with Mother Nature and Father Time being demoted from actual reality, to my mere subjective experience of my consciousness, I feel immortal. The ephipany being: Old school selfishness says, I am the center of the world, New Wor(l)d Order says, I create the world.

Re-discovery of the obvious:

Space and time aren’t objects — they’re my brain`s tools for putting everything together. Without "me", they don't exist. Father Time Simply Reboots If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound..

It hovers in waves of probability. Thus, there is no absolute grid we live in where things occur independent of our own thinking about it.Although our body may self destruct, the 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. doesn’t go away at death. Father Time simply reboots. The universe is in our head,and not out there seperate from us. In actuality ,a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can effect that world and the world of others, even at a distance.What the bleep?

Our brain(our personal operating system that each of us inherits, creates and imposes on the world, is a virtual reality; In actuality, a world of our own making.)
is the most powerful computer. When on tilt, our brain is the most powerful broken computer. Tilt is a poker term. Tilt makes us sub-optimal for evaluating rewards, sizing up risks and calculating probabilities.

Could I please have a cup of SHUT THE F*&$ UP! ---my White Angry Software- Hotel@nyware- Does it matter where I am anymore? Cruise ships are for the Newley Wed and the nearly dead, right? As the selfish brain fears death and looks for predictable experiences, cruising is a great placebo that hijacks the brain with a predictable surprise: passangers are surprised if they win and surprised if they lose, so to speak.Sometimes, the excitement is not from the winning, it's avoiding the disaster, (like last years Carnival Splendor ship fire-dead in the water for 4 days and eating pop tarts and spam).

Remember what Mr Science says about Boiling The Frog- if you drop a frog into hot water, it will jump out. But if you slowly warm up the water, then the frog will stay there until it boil. I have to get off ships!!!

@ The Pacific Ocean-One Taste

2011-11-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

I am not smart enough to be wrong all the time but whether I geographically move to Hawaii or psychologically just be reminded of what I feel when I am there, I keep breathing and keep #winning over death, not by living forever, but by living timelessly, by being present to the Present.

As I wrote in 2007...

I don't see things as they are; I see them as I am.

Right now, I don’t see the waves, I am the waves,

I don’t touch the sandy beach, I am the sandy beach.

I don’t feel the sunshine, I am the sunshine.

To live in this vastness is to bathe in the ocean that mystics call one taste.

These are the good old days--- enduring moments when I say that this is the ever "me".

I can drink the Pacific in a single big gulp, with one single big mind.

I can be happy in the world only because I am free of it. I am not addicted to experiences and memories. I don’t need to gather any more experiences . I go beyond all that.

Life is just as it is. I am as I always was.There was never any journey.
What I was looking for is what was looking---the noticer.

I can have all the love I want in the world for the asking. . Love flows through all that is—so I am that love too.

I have access to love within my self, and it says, “ I myself am beauty. I myself am joy. I myself am happiness.”

Knowing myself as myself is the ultimate intimacy. It is original love.

So what do I need of anything else in the world?

Whenever I look at anything or anyone as separate from me, I am afraid of it. Love is letting go of that fear.

My love refuses to separate, to make distinctions. The nectar of love empowers me with its message that I am, always have been, and always will be, made of love.

When I realize the depth and fullness of my love of myself, I know that every body and everybody and the entire universe are included in my affection. I love naturally and spontaneously.

There is only love, and all I can do is remove the obstacles to the awareness of this love.

I have a power which makes all things love - worthy and lovable

New York -Me No So Ho

2011-11-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

The ship has already sailed

An Art(ist) Director cannot fail because to be one is a success.

I have all the airs and graces of an investor whose ceiling has become the floor. The Warhol's and Chagall's are marketed reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale. I worship the quicksand they walk on because I am not hung up on nostalgia, but just for now, I will pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time, believing, money can't buy happiness, but it can buy art which is kinda the same thing.

The rich(er) galleries are different from yours and mine because they have more credit. And credit is is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

New York, however, without serious money is an opinion. My opinion rolls up its sleeves and spits in the street. and swears. If I attack the SoHo establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make me a member of it, right?

Selling art is easy when you don't know what you are doing and hard when you do! Beginners luck, after all, is merely freedom from preconceptions.

An Eye For An Island-Living Well Is The Best Revenge

2011-11-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. Thanks to digital, and my trusted camera, who cares. Just point and shoot, and you capture snapshots of moments. I'm an extremely talkative person. Yet I like taking pictures because they speak for themselves.

MTness-Magic Thinking @ Sea In Photos----

2011 World Cruise

Wish Fulfillment and The Law Of Attraction

My definition of Thinking is when your mind is separate from your body: Some call it dreaming. I call it using your imagination. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. That's when you can leap long distances, go forward and backward in time, walk through solid brick walls and never age,

My definition of Magical Thinking, or MT, is when we can manufacture experiences in our mind, and then later, attract these situations into our life. The mind IS, after all, what the brain DOES. Put simply, you attract into your life whatever you consistently think about. I always go back to the importance of being Ernest (Hemingway) 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 that way.
2010 World Tour Cruises

2009 World Tour Cruises

Hawaii 2007-2008

Cabo Again- The Synesthetic Experience

2011-11-02T16:18:00.001-07:00

It's Deja Vu all over again. Cabo,Mexico is No Tahiti, no South Pacific, No Fiji...But I am hearing colors and seeing sounds of Guantanamera and La Bamba!
Have you ever thought in a cross-sensory way? Have you ever tasted the universe? Synesthesia is a deeper form of regular consciousness. Of one taste.

On July 22nd I wrote: Fiji-Dravuni- Another Day Another Island-Escape To Reality

For Sale/Sail

Economics 101

Fiji has over 300 islands- I have seen about 25 so far this trip. I'm concerned that "the wow factor" no longer applies. Yet if I take an imaginary a ride down Southern California's Carmageddon- Interstate 405, breath in some smog while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I still want to escape to MY reality--being in the South Pacific! I love the Free Parking for all boats, ships and anything that floats.

The Law of Diminishing Returns is the theory that the more your experience something, the less effective it becomes. Think of the drug addict that needs more and more drugs, just to achieve the same high.

Beyond that point, more and more gains in any one particular area adds less and less to happiness.
So in a sense, you can have too much of a good thing. The more you experience of the good thing, your overall happiness will decline.

I am needing a larger and larger DOSES of paradise-Bora Bora, Moorea, now Fiji---to get the same feeling I had when I simply visited Europe or even Canada. It's STILL working!

ACROPOLIS NOW....The Horror!

2011-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

The Greek economy is so bad, the currency is no longer the euro. It's the gyro.They better not stop production of humous and tzatziki and enter into a double dip recession. Makes me think of the time and money I spent there...

Ed Reif and James Hopkins; making the world safe for Hypocracy..er ..I mean Democracy in the cradle of Western civilization---Athens, Greece.

@Sea-Emperor's New Suit

2011-10-30T06:35:00.001-07:00

The Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything Is Now In Session

Give me a wide berth, I’m a loose cannon and three sheets to the wind. Anchors aweigh.

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.

Everything you can imagine is real. Picasso said it , Walt Disney believed it and I have lived it. Yet Walt's Power of NEW is messing with my Power of NOW. "You got your peanut butter in my chocolate! Walt"

I'm Onboard,with the face that launched a thousand dreams and 3 cruise ships, I am suited and booted for formal night onboard the Wonder.
The statue is the saint as Disney is deified on ImagiNation of the United States of Unconsciousness.The menu "Seconds" is the meal at Animator's Pallet . My favorite animal is steak with extra helpings of staged authenticity. Pass the kool-aid. The thought virus It's a Small World After All is playing in my head. I am confusing those robots with human beings. Makes me think of how we have our own default modes of thinking , at times we are a strange loop of habits and the loyalty we have to the nostalgia of trival pursuits of waiting in line to buy coffee or going on a tour!Check please. For more on the Disneyland of Consciousness Read my post: The Merchants of Venice. about The march of stupidity and the routines of tourism .

Walt, your secret is safe with me

Midnight Cabo Happy Go Local

2011-10-28T10:38:00.001-07:00

LG- Life is Good in Cabo. I've gone nativein a Col Kurtz sort of way, drinking tequila, and sporting a Hecho in Mexico Straw Cowboy hat--

Puerto Vallarta-Ship Happens

2011-10-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

I say to myself, what a wonderful world, Today, the song remains the same

IN Revue...a year ago, I wrote from Mexico...

I just couldn’t live with myself knowing I had just killed myself. Sure, 9 out of 10 ppl are would-be suicidal maniacs.But, it's the permanent solution to temporary problems.
Cruise Ships are the new Golden Gate Bridges

Putting the SIN in the sincerest form of criticism life can get- Why kill yourself? Life will do it for you
The earth school kills all of its students, eh? Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit..." so is jumping off the Carnival Splendor.

One of the Assistant Waiters, 27 years old, was seen shouting into a cell phone, throwing it overboard in disgust, then jumping to his death. Ouch. Taking your own life really kills 2 ppl's souls in this case, the chick he was arguing with too.Cruise Ships are the new Golden Gate Bridges

Puerto Vallarta-Miles Puerto Vallarta-Miles Away From The Ordinary-Oktoberfest 2010

Hola Coca Cola
Multi-national soul and Beerocrat Ed Reif with Deon James, from Capetown, South Africa."They who drink beer will think beer."

Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville is out , Kenny Chesney's Beer in Mexico is in

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. The Cliff notes on Corona, the gold standard for Latin American lagers.

Position in the beer category: Mexican Beer
Slogan: Change your Latitude
Mantra: Vacation, No Worries, Relax
Corona's slogans (it has had so many) convey the feeling of the brand: vacation

Oktoberfest 2009

In one year and out the other. 2 YEARS ago today...
Space travel sure is fun

Greetings from the user-friendly universe---The Peoples Republic of Santa Monica; Home of The Mac Store, and Apple, the forbidden fruit.

First in January, I was in the Majik Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a bit like Mars.

Then in February, I went to The Land of Smiles, Thailand, and walked on the moon.

Finally, 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, playing high-stakes no limit- poker, on The Hong Kong Express.

Leaving Las Vegas
In May and June, I got my Baht out of Asia and went back to the United States of Unconsciousness, playing tournament poker in the black holes of Midwest bars and Las Vegas Casinos. Spent the best part of my losing streak...in an Army Jeep, from what I can recall.

There's that line from Sheryl Crow-Standing in the middle of the desert waiting for my ship to come in...

In July, I decided to take a World Tour-Cruise (creating my own luck) to get away from the game. I had a false start with a run at Amsterdam's Holland Casino.Nevertheless, mission accomplished---I love poker but I am not in love with it anymore. Poker and I have decided to see other PPL.

Last month was the Epiphany. On a visit to Monaco , I was scheduled to level up, turning my bogus Poker PH.D. from ESPN, to the real deal in Monte Carlo. I didn't have any gamble in me and didn't even walk through the doors. After all, you can only quit once.

The last three months, I have been in Russia and The Baltics, The British Isles, Scandinavia, The Greco-Italian-French Mediterranean. Now I am here in California to re-charge before the next leg--Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific...and The Southern Cross.
Being Vincent Vega

Don't 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 sums up the differences between America And Europe:Royale With Cheese-Meet Your Meat:

Occupy Mexico-Hola Coca Cola

2011-10-23T16:08:00.001-07:00

An adventure is something more but nothing less than bad planning. I think I'll have a coke because as a Multi-national soul, I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.

The importance of being ERNEST and going to Key West, the Hemingway spirit and the fishing and sailboats, is not so important. I do like some of his quotes though:

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love""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"
Although this quote: "Never mistake motion for action" I disagree with.Motion creates emotion so Move It!

I have decided to follow the #OWL crowd and Procrastinate Now. Living at sea for another two weeks.THIS IS MY OCCUPATION

It has been a week on land, and the more I realize that I am getting farther away from my destination, the more I realize that the sea is the destination.

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those at sea.

I know both sides because I am both sides: a tourist who doesn't know where I've been; a traveller who doesn't know where he's going. I haven't been every where, but it's on my list. I thought college was the longest vacation I ever took; but this Graduate School seamester is a kind of study abroad in Nomadic Pursuits.
I am back at sea, the Mexican Riviera.
When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yes in yesterdays on the road. Life is a cereal. Joy is a detergent. And Coke is still It.
Nevertheless, je me souvien...

New Caledonia- French Post Cards From the Edge-7/24/11

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

Tender Boating

Escape to Reality

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

“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

Santa Monica - The Epiphany Chair

2011-10-17T17:33:00.001-07:00

“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.” –G. K. Chesterton. The older I get, the better my past gets. This is my magic bench, where I began my science of achievement experience of making the invisable visable and in the process have had moments of extreme fullfillment on simply advancing confidentially in the directions of my dreams, meeting with a success unknown in common hours.

Mind,Body and Cabo-Deja Vu

2011-10-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

“There must be some kind of way out of here,” I wrote last year...apparently not:
"Said the joker to the thief.".

"All Along the Watchtower" is the audacity of Dylan's hype at manipulating chronological time: "at the conclusion of the last verse, it is as if the song bizarrely begins at last, and the power of myth began again.

My own aging is regressive these days, not progressive. I am the Bob Dylan of the fifty-somethings. Growing old isn't optional, growing up is.

@Sea 4 Two Days- Same Ship Different Day

2011-10-05T08:18:00.001-07:00

I Love You

Hell is other people and you usually meet them on a Carnival Cruise Ship. My first youtube video to go Nuclear-23,700+ hits, thanks to ABC Nightline and GMA for picking the feed up.The floating mall slash casino is back in business.

Almost one year to the date, as seen from the Disney Wonder in Cabo.

San Pedro-Hotel California

2011-10-02T11:31:00.001-07:00

Normally, you need three things to travel-Time, Money and Opportunity. It's the way of the cynic who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. On a ship, you have this maliginent optimism. There is no doubt about it, the exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable-Things have a way of seeming emphasized and underlined. It´s always full speed ahead!

It has never been about resources. You see, I am the Bobby Fisher of resourcefulness, the Cosmo Kramer of planning , the Curious George of predictable unpredictability. >note to self< Rock on man with the yellow hat, rock on.

No matter how low the budget bar gets, I always manage to limbo my way under it. If you think about it, I am the Wilt Chamberlain of shoe-string travel. I'm putting up numbers so unthinkable that normals will never, ever reach them.-300 ports in 365 days.

Why Be A Man When You Can Be A Success?
As the Morgan Freeman of travel writers , if you will. Everyone recognizes me but I never gain any due recognition., Hotel @nyware hasn't exactly been the Edgar Allen Poe of knock-outs, the Emily Dickinson of ground n pound, the Robert Frost of ass-kicking.

It's just me, born with a Ph.D. in throwing junk up against the wall, and seeing what will stick.Looking back, it's been the Colonel Kurtz of experiences. I've gone native and insane so many times, but in a Lance Armstrong Barbara Bush sort of way. Sometimes I am the census taker, sometimes, the cannibal psychiatrist.

Welcome to the Hotel @nyware, located on Blogger, at the corner of Facebook and Twitter, right across from YouTube and Picasa ¨You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Cabo-LG Life Is Still Good

2011-09-29T10:31:00.001-07:00

I thought college was the longest vacation I ever took but these seamesters are better than cold pizza! Same hat different day. I was here last September and wrote about it:

Today, Sept 2011

So A Blogger walks into a bar...

¿Hay alguien que hable ingles?

Cabo San Lucas locals speak English as a second language. Money is their first one.

None of this "Starting Saturday, we will be closed Friday" No Spanglish. No pain in the English. Cabo is very "American".

Not too long ago,(1980) going to anywhere else but the USA meant disappearing from the world. With the cell phone, laptop, and a wireless connection, or ISDN, modem, depending on how wired or tired the particular place I have been in is, the locals are good to go and so I am.

Mexico on the Pacific side reminds me of Los Angeles a lot---the Valley, South Central, even the South Bay. Just another neighborhood.

LG- LIfe is Good in Cabo. I've gone native in a Col Kurtz sort of way, drinking tequila, and sporting a Hecho in Mexico Straw Cowboy hat---The Horror. The Horror. If 50 is the youth of old age, and Steffi was right-Food is the sex of old age! Analyse this: I had a guacamole-cheese-quesadilla-gasm. In some parts of Mexico I would be married to that tortilla already.

Man Of Many Hats Ed If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed- Actually, just wrapped up in a Brazilian Flag(left) More @Cabo Afternoon Cowboy.

Mexico-PV -Worth Seaing

2011-09-28T09:28:00.001-07:00

Turismo

Going through the same itinerary as last year, but now I am going beyond Puerto Vallarta. Sometimes it doesn't matter where you go but who you go with.

Mexico is an ancient thing, that will still go on forever telling its own story in slabs of color, and slices of life,even beneath my flip flops, I feel the earth move under my feet, just as today with all the vendors and the wanting.

Now that I am done with all that Alaskan weather, I can see clearly now the rain has gone.One Nation, Under Canada, Above Mexico, I am still an AmeriCAN not an AmeriCAN·T

Los Angeles-Johnny Comes Marching Home

2011-09-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

The Patron Saint of Optimism-Another dopeless hope fiend!

Geography is the topography of ignorance, a finite disappointment not only when the map becomes the territory, but when you actually visit these hole in the wall places. In most cases, it's a lot better to transcend reality with imagination, re-framing the conversation. "Melbourne was awesome", "Ghana? Amazing!" India? a magical delight".

Nevertheless, there is not one ship that doesn't sail to a port where life is not uncomfortable. The future just isn't what it used to be. Yet, you don't quit countries, you quit people, and I have to say the best ships are friendships, and I have met some amazing people while sailing around the world.

Impossible Is Nothing

Going out to sea is the infinity of hope, the preview of life's coming attractions where you have final cut in your own movie. You can lose yourself in the ocean's food for thought. Its menu is the meal, and itineraries are full of promises. It gives you a sense of destination and the energy to get started again.

The weather is here wish you were beautiful

Call it faith! A passion for the possible. I am full of it, and shooting from the hip that is to say, having an adventure is something more but nothing less than bad planning. When I cold-called for my first ship job, and got it after a 12 minute elevator pitch, I began to trust myself, and only when you trust yourself can you truly begin to live it up.

But I'm not a sailor . Maybe a sailor with a small s. Living on a ship, however, might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria. It's not real life but an alibi. It is like going out of your mind everyday- in order to come to your senses; and a fool who persists in his folly becomes wise. After 10 ships, yes ten, I no longer want to cast doubt on perfection-America. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my country , and there's nothing it wouldn't do for me. And that's the way we go through life - doing nothing for each other.

Embracing the (expat)life forced upon me, I have had nothing to do and all day to do it. An accident of birth, being born in the USA, I won the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery, and have squandered my inheritence in the United States of Unconsciousness, a shared hallucination of "any place but here" and " the grass is greener".

The grass actually is greener where you water it.

Victoria, B.C -Open Sources

2011-09-21T10:01:00.001-07:00

Natural Resources

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. Just a touch and go operation today and it's deja vu- access to thousands of acres of green spruce and fjord like glacial melt.

I am not stopping to ask for directions

Vancouver - Wonderful Tonight

2011-09-18T12:58:00.001-07:00

This is the Disney Wonder in Alaska 2 weeks ago.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” ~T.S. Eliot The Alaska season has ended and after a 30 hour ferry ride through the inside passage, I have been in Canada for 2 days. I am meeting up with the ship to take it back to Los Angeles and Mexico in 2 days.

Ed and Sarah

If You See A Fork In The Road-Take It.

2011-09-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

You ain't supposed to get salmon when they're swimming upstream
to spawn. But if you're hungry, you do

If it doesn't kill you it will makeyou stronger. In this case the Salmon don't make it. So much for "going with the flow". To make matters worse, young bears bulk up with salmon for a long winter' s sleep. Why do they do it? The urge to merge-The Pacific Northwestern salmon is hell bent on its quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also... life.
Any fish can achieve failure and get caught. But a salmon fiasco is a disaster of epic propotions. I witness this "programming" and it makes me feel more alive because it didn't happen to me.

All On The Same Boat

2011-09-11T14:31:00.001-07:00

A boat is not a ship and a ship is not a boat. Now I get it.The odds are good that you'll find a cheap boat but the goods are odd-here is my 70 year old wood ex coast guard rec one. A wooden boat, however, is the closest thing to dreams that hands have ever made, and the real ship is the shipbuilder-the creators.

People ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say 'How to Build a Boat"

Top 3 Take aways:

1. We don't tan, we rust.

2. If you have to smoke, smoke salmon.

3. We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now here in the rain forest.

I am not ready for R I P, Rusting In Peace...I´am outta here soon.

After The Deluge-One Lucky Dog

2011-09-09T09:47:00.001-07:00

“Qui me amat, amat et canem" St. Bernard
Love me.Love my dog

Finally , after three days of rain, some sunshine on the waterfront.The cliche of moving up here is not necessary. After epic rainfall and flooding, I think of this beautiful quote-Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through them.

All good things -salmon fishing as well as eternal salvation -come by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy.

This 2011 World Tour of mine has been a grace period of kindness and favor bestowed upon me, by family,old and new friends along the way,and strangers who weren't so strange after all, who assisted me--- to live the dream of world traveler. Yet, I still feel all the time I am being helped by hidden hands.

I am one lucky dog.Joe Campbell was right:the waters of eternal life are right there,when you are following your bliss. You can teach an old dogma new tricks.

The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

Docksider-Good Morning (Holland) America , How are you?

2011-09-01T07:58:00.001-07:00

Those Dam ships...

Don't you know me, I'm your native son.I'm the train they call the city of New Orleans.I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
Each day there are 6 to 8 thousand passengers that not only visit but also inhabit this small town. That is more than the actual population.These one day instant tourists will be gone a hundred miles when the day is done...with the rain it's Rinse and Repeat.

The Zuiderdam, Oosterdam, Westerdam, and Noordam respectively named for the south, east, west, and north points of the compass, Holland America names its passenger ships with the "dam" suffix. Here I am standing infront of one their dam ships!

Carpe Diem means Fish of the day

2011-08-29T14:37:00.001-07:00

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

Tongas Rainforest-The Weather-Grin and Bear

2011-08-28T20:12:00.001-07:00

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 to know your neighbors, you know?

'Off the Trail' is another name for the Way, and sauntering off the trail is the practice of the wild. That is also where--paradoxically--we do our best work. But we need trails and paths and will always be maintaining them. You must first be on the path, before you canturn and walk into the wild."-The Practice of The Wild GS

DHG When in Nome Do As The Nomans Do

2011-08-24T19:15:00.001-07:00

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 writers. We basically do nothing all day. At sea, I could do my mind no greater service than remain in my default mode of idleness.

Here, on land, in the Alaskan wilderness, is the preservation of the outter world. The sturdy distinctions between blue collar work and leisure, have been broken down by mother nature which is beautiful but will kill you if you are not prepared. (Think Deadliest Catch Meets Ice Road Truckers) So you squirrel away money for a rainy day- which is everyday here!

On a ship, it is basically traveling for people who really can't be bothered doing it. (Think Love Boat Meets Fantasy and Gilligan's Island ). The battles are so fierce because the stakes are so low- nothing happens next.

Yet it has been a salvaging of my inner life, the "right kind" of nothing, and a way to recover my whole life, a lived vocation, a principle.It wasn't the 6 or 8 hours visiting these exotic and far away places that made the experience, but my recollection of it: It was the day after day at sea, and of getting there. The endurance. The idleness that was the mother of possibility.

My idle hands, living like the idle rich, a slap in the face to blue chip ambition. Time is money, money is time, and the opposite of having is doing nothing at all. After all, the goal of ambition is sublime leisure.---where, with my 2PM power naps, I remained a well-rested being who had only to dream with my eyes wide open and behold.

If a little idleness is dangerous, the cure for it is not to be less idle but to be more idle, to be idle all the time.

I used to make things up. full of magic, innocence,
feeling, and vision, I would "embelish" on the truth, to make a better story. I was actually affirming what I wanted-state it and create it. Now as Time passes, little by little everything that I had spoken in falsehood became true. All the lies have been washed away by these last few years at sea. It's nothing but the truth.

Alaska-Ketch-ikan and Release

2011-08-22T15:03:00.001-07:00

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?

Ak-Sushi-Eat All You Wish

2011-08-21T12:17:00.001-07:00

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

Ketchikan-Let It Rain-Path of Moist Resistance

2011-08-21T10:24:00.001-07:00

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.

Alaska Ferry-The Un-Cruise Ship

2011-08-19T18:20:00.001-07:00

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

BC-Before Christmas

2011-08-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

Bellingham,Wa-Alaska Adventure Begins-Nirvana's Back

2011-08-18T11:57:00.001-07:00

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 brighter. Time for some new sunglasses. I think I'll buy them in Alaska.

Seattle-Grunge Without A Helmet

2011-08-17T10:33:00.001-07:00

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

Blueberry Fields Forever at Hotel @nyware

Pacific Northwest-I Have Reservations

2011-08-16T07:29:00.001-07:00

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"

YVR-Glamping at the Fairmont

2011-08-15T17:30:00.001-07:00

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.

Canada,BC-Black Elk Speaks

2011-08-13T19:08:00.001-07:00

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.

Vancouver- The Path Of MOST Resistance

2011-08-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Farewell To Oz-Braveheart

2011-08-09T18:40:00.001-07:00

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 follow it.

Burning My Bridges

Sunshine On The Water @Sea for 2 Daze

2011-08-07T20:50:00.001-07:00

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

Ile des Pins, New Caledonia-Papillon

2011-08-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Aussie Good Sports Art Auction@Sea

2011-08-04T16:21:00.000-07:00

Australian Cricketer and the Cricket Legend Sir Donald Bradman Gets CaffeinatEDby this Yankee onboard P&O Australia's Pacific Pearl.

"He was a great player and inspiration to millions of people including myself. His statistics are mind blowing and it's difficult to put in context -- he was a once-in-a-lifetime player and his contribution off the field is significant as well."

God help us if we ever take the theater out of the auction business or anything else. It would be an awfully boring world.

Vanuatu-Wala- Mutant Ninja Turtles

2011-08-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

With Donatello and Rapheal- Some times you have to be willing to stick your neck out

Getting in touch with my inner Tortoise but most of me is pure Hare-

Houston ,We have a Bunny! (June 27th in Santa Monica

Vanuatu - Champagne Bay- 2 Drink Minimum

2011-08-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

Cricket is basically baseball on valium and I don't do Valium very well. Here I get things CaffeinatED

But I DO lobsters

Headed back to the mainland soon if this game will ever end -48 hours long! (joking).

“Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being ended sooner.” G B Shaw

@Sea for 3 Days- Full Steam Ahead

2011-07-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything Is Now In Session

Give me a wide berth, I’m a loose cannon and three sheets to the wind. Anchors aweigh.

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.

Sydney-It's Already Tomorrow in Australia

2011-07-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sydney Harbor- Spectacular Sail Away

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.

It is already tomorrow in Australia

Street View

@Sea-Navagation Map Sold At Charity Auction For Record

2011-07-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

Make A Wish Foundation Got Some Dough Today

@Sea For 2 Days Headed For Sydney Harbour

2011-07-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

February 27th of this year

Last time we docked here, was five months ago to the day, onboard Crystal Serenity. This time it's P&O Australia's Pacific Pearl.

Noumea-Bread and Chocolate

2011-07-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

New York and I have decided to see other people- I Love (French)Bread too

Charles de Gaulle said "How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese ?" but when it comes to bread everyone in France, and even its loyalty islands like Noumea agree-there’s only one, Baguette, We call it French Bread, but all the bread in Nouvelle-Calédonie is French.

Sure the whiter the bread, the quicker you’re dead, but there is this thing called the French Paradox-basically you have a grace period for your entire life where you can drink,eat smoke whatever and whenever you like, and then one day, you die peacefully in your sleep at the age of eighty-to ninety something.

Pig Farming In The Tropics (Fiji)

The D word-diets are like airplanes- I don't like to be on them-so I have been eating less and enjoying it more. I have even began eating Ham and Eggs--: a days work for a chicken; a life time commitment for the pig. Inspired by my recent visit to the island of Dravuni where I really did "Meet My Meat".

Had a Chocolate Butter-croissants too..

Dockside

The Butterfly Effect

Isle Of Pines- See Food Diet

2011-07-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

The archipelago located in the South Pacific known as New Caledonia is part of the "confetti" of the French colonial empire. What a great day today.

“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.”" Tales of the South Pacific" by James A. Michener

Powder---The Book is better than the movie but a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Me And My Shadow 'coulda had a V8'

Got Wood?

New Caledonia- French Post Cards From the Edge

2011-07-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

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

Tender Boating

Escape to Reality

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

Seagull Management

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

@Sea-Sailing Towards Nouvelle-Calédonie

2011-07-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

On Course for New Caledonia

Sunshine on The Water Makes Me Happy

There is no YES in yesterday but wow that was some island paradise!

The view from the cheap seats

Fiji Islands-Rocky Mountain High

2011-07-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

Rock Star Balacing Act

OMG I'm a Country Boy

John Denver visited this island today-Rocky Mountain High, Sunshine On My Shoulders, Country Roads, Thank God I’m a Country Boy-all that’s left is Leavin’ On A Jet Plane.

Looks Like Santorini Greece But It's Fee-Gee (Fiji)

Back To One (Take 2)

Country Roads Take Me Home

LOST

Fiji-Dravuni- Another Day Another Island-Escape To Reality

2011-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

For Sale/Sail

Economics 101

I am needing a larger and larger DOSES of paradise-Bora Bora, Moorea, now Fiji---to get the same feeling I had when I simply visited Europe or even Canada. It's STILL working!

Fiji-Beachcomber Island-Freedom For Sale

2011-07-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Mother Ship Pacific Pearl In Background-I'm wearing black from here on out, not because I'm in mourning but for 'slimming' after that world cruise-I'm the Johhny Cash of Sailing.

Beachcomber Island

Freedom For Sail on The Catamaran

Freedom can certainly be purchased in a 7 days vacation on one of these idyllic islands. I just happened to visit one of them, and stayed the day. Priceless.

On Fiji Islands-Suva-PineApple Express

2011-07-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

No Pine In PineApple

Big Slick

Ah Suva!, from sea you looks so promising, despite the oil slick (right), but in town, it looks like paradise has committed suicide. I thought cyclone season was over.

This is like if that Biggie Smalls rapper met the Afghan Kush,and they had a baby.

Many are cold but few are frozen

I don’t take issue with being the Morgan Freeman of travel bloggers, never getting the due respect I deserve. After all, “Sweet dreams are made of these-traveled the world and the seven seas”---this is as huge in a Lebron James but as annoying in a Rob Lowe sort of way.

Meet Your Meat

“Ed Reif is the Wilt Chamberlin of the high seas, putting up ports of call numbers so high that mere tourist could never come close.” Ed’s Mom Maria Reif

It is what it is yet my definition of is makes me feel like the Tupac of Paradise’s Found to the extent that I’m expected to come up with fresh new ideas about the same places I have visited after they have long been cryogenically frozen in world wide web oblivion of this blog.

This recent South Pacific run, the Tahitian Treasure 28 days voyage , went on a cocaine binge today, jacked a Benz and crashed into a pole. That’s bad, right? The Fiji Islands are nothing more than the Paris Hilton of paradises, not the best looking but certainly the most photographed for travel brochures.

On the other hand, Bora Bora is so amazing that I want to shelter it so it can live a normal island style life, away from the paparazzi. I want French Polynesia’s Bora Bora to be the Suri Cruise of islands.
Bora Bora H. Christ should be a common exclamation. Get on it humanity!

Oh well, at least they have awesome fruit and veggies.

Pigs Can Fly

Fiji Islands-Savusavu-Cue The Sun

2011-07-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

Natural, Lush and Beautiful,Where the hell's Fiji? Near Florida?

You can't get any further away before you start coming back.
Imagine sailing across the blue waters of the South Pacific, passing by idylic islands, teeming with exotic fish and majestic coral reefs--Oh wait I don't have to use my imagination because my actual perceptions of these events is the event. Bula.

Cloudy today with a chance of paradise

@Sea For 3 Daze-Somewhere Over the Rainbows

2011-07-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

No Rain No Rainbows

Lost in Space

- 17th July at 0200 hrs to GMT + 13. We pass over the international date line west bound and there fore lose a day 17th July - 18th July .At 0200 hrs on the 17th July ( Forward 23 hrs ) becomes 0100 hrs on the 18th July

Note To S elf: Ships Clocks will be advance by 23 Hours tonight

Bora Bora Bora- My Second Kamikaze Mission

2011-07-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

BBB

Going Native

Sunshine On The Water Makes Me Happy

Died and went to heaven again on this island , the Strawberry Shortcake of Paradises!

I know both sides because I am both sides:Although I feel like going native and off the reservation, like Col Kurtz, get a tribal tattoo and join the union of Pacific Islanders, I remain a good soldier like Captain Benjamin Williard (Martin Sheen's) in Apocalypse Now, on a mission to assassinate such thoughts.

How many island paradises had I already visited ? There was those six that I know about for sure. But this time it was French Polynesia and Bora Bora . That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit … charging a man with being a tourist in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?

The future is full of possibilities that
one must constantly shoot in the head, because if you want to be GR8 on a ship, you have to limit yourself.