Pinkawillinie. Karkoo. Koonibba. Eucla. The names don’t exactly roll off the tongue, and seem almost comically made-up, like some down-under, straight-to-tv cartoon movie. But they’re real and really do exist – I know, I’ve been there. Let’s just pick one at random and see what we have: Gundagai.
Ok, so we’ve just had lunch at Wagga Wagga and my buddy Ben says we’ve got to take a little detour and go see the Dog on the Tucker Box, 5 miles from Gundagai. I’m like what the heck is a tucker box?
Clickety-clack here to find out >
Call me Icarus.
I love the ocean - I mean, who doesn't? But if you spent Christmas clinging to the wreckage of your capsized sailboat out in the middle of Long Island Sound like I did, you might have second thoughts. And you probably wouldn't need me to tell you that the freezing cold sea feels like a lot of icy knives trying to skin you alive, and an almost heart attack is probably not the day at the beach you had planned, so-to-speak. And no, I'm not making this story up for dramatic effect, or using my poetic license to add fancy heroic adjectives - in fact the opposite is true - I'm downplaying things so you'll actually believe I was as idiotic as I was.
Is a puzzlement.
This was originally going to be a travelly blog about Bangkok, but I’m going to try to get Doha off my chest first, and hopefully swerve back to the subject at hand before I lose you out of boredom or frustration, or hit the guardrail of sense and continuity and swerve off to a pointless head-on collision with some drunk, irrelevant digression.
The brochures never mention the suffocating dust or the flies, man. Dust and flies. And the warm, spermy smell of maize tortillas and conchas coming from the local panaderias, silkening the character of the fetid air. And the Monetesque unrefrigerated meat hydrogenating outside the carniceria. Again, with flies. The smell of gardenias, blossoming elegance, spoiled by a spiff of urine.
Click here to read all about our adventure from Tulum to Tokyo.
The Hong Kong Gong Show
Can just barely hear Retreat being played tonight, hitchhiking on a slight sea breeze all the way from the navy base - protocol (and ingrained training) says to stand and face the flag, or the direction of the music, and place your hand on your heart.
Thinking about it just now, I realize that very few people talk about sounds on the internet - it's almost all visuals, however gorgeous and enviable, and talk, tic talk, and dancing. I won't even mention the cute cat and daily adorable dog video deluge.
Come with me on a sound adventure to Hong Kong.
I was walking down Via Monti in Milan one day in 1987, minding my own business, when two women walked up to me and asked if they could buy me a coffee. I said, “Io?”
I was on my way to Stazione Centrale to catch a train to Paris, I’m not sure why, but I think it was to see Hardy, who I’ve mentioned in numerous posts before. In fact, when I started writing this last week, I couldn’t remember why I was in Milan, and I still can’t today, on this last edit.
Find out what really happened by clicking here.
An Odyssey of my own.
Can you ever read the same book twice? We were on a broad starboard reach, half a day’s sail out of Palma, Mallorca when disaster almost struck. My brother and personal attorney Joe E. Buoy and I were on the night watch, midnight to four in the morning, and we were just rounding Our Lady of the Pillar on Formentera, with me at the helm, and him filling a bucket on the aft rail, when I unintentionally jibed and then over-corrected which back-winded the sails. Luckily it was only blowing about thirty knots, and the seas were only 8-10 feet high. And did I mention it was a moonless night and I was seasick?
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