Alaska to the City of Lost Angels and Beyond
I was in Alaska for about a month just trying to figure out my near term future plans and didn’t really come up with much. I felt a little lost until a friend of mine came up with a project that perked my interest. We had to meet face to face so off I went for San Francisco to see family and friends before meeting up in San Luis Obispo, California.
I saw some rare old friends and family from Tiburon and San Rafael to downtown San Francisco. I took a wander through China Town looking for good deals on cameras but found nothing better than at Best Buy. Besides friends the highlight was going to Yoshi’s and seeing Tommy Igoe and the Groove Conspiracy. Yoshi’s is a music venue/restaurant that has been bought and will most likely keep the bands coming while the decor and the Japanese culinary influence are either removed or lessened. Their sushi was to die for.
I hopped an Amtrak bus train combo and headed south for San Luis Obispo for a few days to see an old artist friend of mine I met in London. We had time to catch up over good food and an outdoor Reggae show in Los Osos in the heat. We stayed a little longer than we should have because playoff game two with the San Francisco Giants were on after the music so we stuck around and waited for a home run by Belt ending a lot of extra innings and extra beers.
The next morning we made a quick stop at the Del Monte Café for a late breakfast and two out of three of us got on the train and headed for LA to fine-tune some project perimeters and see if we can get a company to sign off on it, if so, I’ll be in Paris in May and England even sooner.
Between now and then I’m doing a short and sweet friendship tour. I probably will not stay in the states but I can’t make up my mind on that one just yet. My options are endless and all sound good. I’m toying with staying in Alaska, working a bit and finish a manuscript, OR go to Nepal and finish it there, OR head back to South Korea for book translation publication arrangements, then to the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi for more diving. A friend thought I should go to Belize and dive there. I just can’t decide, nor do I have to at this point and probably shouldn’t. Talk about a free spirit.
I was in Burbank for a couple of days and nights touring around Mulholland Drive, Ventura Blvd., peering into Warner Brother studio lots finally ending our time with a meeting at 2 o’clock with Papa’s Pilar Rum Company from the Caribbean that went pretty well. I think they’re interested in what we are planning to do and they want to tie in a charity, which doesn’t bother us. It’s just working out the final details. I can’t really bring it all up just yet because it isn’t finalized but it looks positive. See you in Paris.
Hermosa beach is bustling with remodels and tare down construction of multi-million dollar properties. Excavators can be heard and seen pulling out dirt and sand, pile drivers setting I-beams for shoring up new construction and all the while the sun is shining and volleyball tournaments and pick-up games simmer on the beach. The waves were good due to a storm off the coast of Mexico. Whales are migrating south in droves and dolphins swim along the coast with paddle boarders. Paddle boarding seems to have become the rage for an alternative activity since I was here last. I’m sure it’s a decade old practice by now.
Vegas Onward
I took a bus from Burbank to Vegas and had a complimentary 3-night stay at the Rio including food and gambling money through Total Rewards. The weather was great and 3 days in Vegas seems like a week anywhere else in the world. It was a successful time, saw some shows, played some good cards and got out of there before falling into the abyss of ‘Lost Wages’.
I flew to Tulsa Oklahoma to see a friend and watched the Giants shoot down the Cardinals in the playoffs on their way to the World Series against Kansas City Royals. I did manage to get out to the Blue Turtle and play some pool with a couple locals. The women were not nice until the matches were over. On the table they are all business.
I took a bus from Tulsa through Saint Louis Missouri and on to Chicago. I arrived at 6 am and went straight to a coffee shop and checked in with people on my path back towards Alaska. Some of my friends were out on holiday and so I decided to fly to Anchorage versus push on into Saint Paul. I still have captain license stuff to renew, hopefully its all been sent to my P.O. Box so I can grab it and be done with it before the next adventure heats up, there’s always one on the horizon, as it should be.
On my return to Alaska I knew what I had to do to get all my projects sorted before the next thing comes along. The plan is simple; after the World Series was over, cut up all the downed trees from the last storm 3 years a go, re-carpet the downstairs, re-trim, finish the house once and for all, vacuum and stay as long as it takes to finish the next manuscript in relative peace. It shouldn’t be long before I’m back at the KGB Bar in Incheon, South Korea chatting up the Russian Korean ladies and listening to foreign engineers and project managers tell wild stories of the ‘outback of Mongolia or some other exotic industrial focus then I’ll probably head to the Philippines for more diving.
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