FROM A TO Z-America to Zambia By Land Sea and Air, Mostly Sea
Direction Over Speed
From cruise ships to cruise missiles, one operating principle survived every border: know where you are pointed before you worry about how fast you are moving.
“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
Literature in a Hurry
Documenting travel with pictures has one powerful advantage: it has to remain true. Truth makes room for contradiction. It forces you to tolerate different perspectives instead of flattening the world into one clean story.
From Cruise Ships to Cruise Missiles
“You worked on a cruise ship and in a war zone?” Yep. From cruise ships to cruise missiles. The language was often the same: “At your service. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir.” Both were forms of hospitality. Both were twenty-four-hour work environments. In each, people depended on calm service under pressure.
Expedition history should not be distilled only to Magellan, Edmund Hillary, Lewis and Clark, or the other famous names. It also belongs to ordinary people who go out, conduct their own circumnavigations, and blog about what happened. Literature in a hurry.
The Ricochet Wonder of It All
No matter where I go, there I am. I can still look up at the same moon and stars, even from a different hemisphere. The sky belongs to all of us, the children of this planet.
I remain struck by what Diane Ackerman called the “ricochet wonder” of everything belonging with everything else. The farther I travelled, the more connected the map became.
Different hemispheres. The same sky. The same human need to find a bearing.
The Long Game
What good is having a belly if there is no fire in it? Wake up. Drink your passion. Light a match. Get to work.
State It. Create It.
We rarely see the incremental steps behind enormous outcomes. Deserving the outcome is usually a series of small actions that turn something invisible into something visible.
“I want to travel around the world” was the mantra I told myself as far back as I can remember. How did I do it? One port at a time, mostly by sea.
Direction Over Speed
If you are pointed in the wrong direction, it does not matter how fast you are travelling. If you are locked on to the right destination, every honest step is progress, no matter how slow.
The Quality of Decisions and Luck
Two forces shape a life: the quality of our decisions and luck. Progress requires decisions, and decisions are made over time under uncertainty. I call them bets.
A Decision About an Uncertain Future
Treating decisions as bets helped me find learning opportunities inside uncertain environments. It helped me avoid common traps, learn from outcomes more rationally, and keep emotion from taking over the process.
Hours of routine and drill can be followed by moments of extreme terror. The preparation does not predict the moment. It gives you a way to meet it.
Let the Future Self Vote
When the future version of you gets involved in the decisions of the present version, life takes on a more useful perspective. You release the emergency brake. When you land, things begin to take off.
You have two lives. The second begins when you realise you only have one.
The Earth School kills all of its students. That is why the present matters.
Press Play
We spend too much time in fast-forward worrying about the future and in rewind ruminating on the past. We rarely press play and live in the present.
What an extraordinary gift: the present. Plans matter, but presence is the point from which every useful plan begins. I am a time millionaire—not because time is unlimited, but because attention turns ordinary hours into a life.
One World, Many Bearings
The archive moves across continents, oceans, classrooms, flight lines, cities and field environments. Click any image to open the supplied full-size version.
South Africa / Field Archive
The Shared Sky
Fire in the Belly
Decisions as Bets
Livingstone / Victoria Falls
Afghanistan
New Zealand
Venice
Greece
Zambia
Namibia
Field Archive / April 2020
A to Z
A to Z / The Long Route
The Letter F
Victoria Falls: Putting the Awe in Awesome
The supplied Livingstone image remains connected to its original companion post.
Open Victoria FallsThe World in Motion
All supplied YouTube videos have been rebuilt as responsive, lazy-loading embeds. The repeated source video is retained because it appeared twice in the original archive.
Open the Complete Video Archive
Travel Archive / 3-UDjC7rDRc
Travel Archive / SgsrHj9EVfE
Travel Archive / 5Q956BummU8
Travel Archive / 4erH7gmcmek
Travel Archive / 6ZGI-zdinbw
Travel Archive / xpe_rc8-mpc
Travel Archive / dKzDgzLv7CM
Travel Archive / nABJwP4Si7o
Travel Archive / -0hPBJkaNA0
Travel Archive / KC8khsu4R1o
Travel Archive / XbpwmwCu86E
Travel Archive / YMrbDTbP-Ko
Travel Archive / ZalxrEkWr3A
Travel Archive / DUb-zA8yUvk
Travel Archive / S6owKDxx874
Travel Archive / vRZSTNPgX0c
Travel Archive / dWYVTAjI3Jc
Travel Archive / TS-YKrCPVr8
Travel Archive / S6owKDxx874
Legacy Blogger Video Objects
The source also contained three Blogger-native video objects without portable video URLs. Their original content IDs are preserved below so Blogger can attempt to resolve them inside the post environment.
Instagram, Stabilised
The original script-heavy Instagram embeds have been replaced with durable link cards that are safer inside Blogger.
At The Top
The original Instagram embed has been converted into a stable Blogger-safe link.
Open Instagram PostI Haven't Got a Crew
The original Instagram embed has been converted into a stable Blogger-safe link.
Open Instagram PostIt Snows Every Day in Dubai
The original Instagram embed has been converted into a stable Blogger-safe link.
Open Instagram PostA Few Good Engines
The original Instagram embed has been converted into a stable Blogger-safe link.
Open Instagram PostTravel made the world larger and more intimate at the same time. The ports changed. The uniforms changed. The risks changed. The operating question did not: Where are you pointed, and are you present enough to notice?