We ended the last blog post with our crew departing from the marina to start our five days of sailing school. Aboard our 45′ Beneteau we had Paul, our instructor; Jess, his Thai girlfriend; Rudy and Tom, beginner sailors taking […]
Travel reflections
Sailing school 1: sailing into trouble
It’s bad luck to whistle on a ship – you might call up a storm. But there’s another historical reason not to whistle. The British Royal Navy used whistled patterns to communicate. The thoughtless whistle of a crew member might […]
Coffee, salt, and a culture of ‘we’
For generations, marriages in this and many other parts of the world were arranged. There were very good reasons for this: financial, political, practical . . . Besides, why would you trust a twenty year old with such a huge […]
Lifestyle withdrawal: the pain of leaving “normal”
Working in the ER, I used to see people in withdrawal all the time. They were a mess. Whether it was alcohol or opioids, their substance of choice had induced a certain abnormal chemical balance. The mind and body adapted […]
Travel does not equal happiness
[Apologies for the delayed post. A rogue drop of water on the trackpad of my MacBook has disabled the keyboard, so I had to locate and procure a bluetooth keyboard . . . a little clunky, but it’ll have to […]
How not to write a travel blog
As I write this, the wind is howling outside our Airbnb in Italy. We are in a town south of Naples called Castellemarre di Stabia and the wind has been gusting for over twenty-four hours. The furniture on the terrace […]