Just Keep It. I wrote the other day about my burglary. The police were called and the Crime Scene Technician did a great including providing a series of helpful tips, like: you will continue to realize missing items. Truer words… I realized they had absconded with my worn and worthless messenger bag that was […]

have been working these past few years as a Washington, DC, city guide. It’s a bit like working for the fire department.

  Now, That’s a Workout.   I spent part of this past week near Miami, Florida, sailing on Biscayne Bay.  The Bay separates the mainland from Miami Beach where the smart set go to trendy clubs. The Bay is large and full of manatees, dolphins and rays.  This time of year the wind is good […]

  Stepping Back in Time During my recent trekking trip to northern Nepal we found ourselves well off the beaten track in a world largely untouched by electricity and completely free from mechanized agriculture. Fields are cultivated, sown and harvested using only human or animal power.  It’s early 19th century farming alive and well in […]

Traffic in the city is horrible and is compounded by the fact that many side streets are unpaved mud paths.

  Half the Fun is Getting There? I am on the way to the Himalayas for a month to trek and spend time in Kathmandu, if I ever get there. This is my fourth trip to Nepal but it’s been sometime and I guess I forgot that it is not around the corner, by a […]

  Boston Resident, Returning From Japan, Detained Suit case contents: “Knives, body bags, a hatchet, a collapsible baton, a biohazard suit, a full-face respirator, billy clubs, handcuffs, leg irons and a device to repel dogs” (NYT) (and a smoke grenade.) Yongda, a US citizen, was also wearing a bullet-proof vest and flame resistant pants. In […]

This past week I visited friends in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego, a place with virtually perfect weather and stunning outdoor scenery. After a few days there, perhaps to remind myself of what I was missing in DC, I made a trip east over the mountains to hike in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.  […]

This coming Sunday, April 15th, marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, an event which captures the collective imagination as few others do. The facts are simple enough: big ship hits ice, 1,500 die, but they fail to explain our endless fascination with the event.  The sinking of the Titanic may rival […]

Dude, you are so Schettinoed. Ask any “hoodyed-up” , skateboarding twenty-something all the way up to a 95-year-old triathlete who is the last person off a ship and they will universally exclaim, “Why, the captain, of course!” Apparently not so, in what now passes for the Italian Navy.  Last week as the Costa Concordia cruise […]