Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • The Second Best Time is Now

      “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

      Today is June 15th, which is the halfway point of the month that concludes the halfway point of the year.  The first half of 2020 felt like a decade with the massive shifts happening in the world.  I won’t subject you to a retelling of the tale now as you’re quite familiar with the journey we’ve been on.  If there’s a silver lining during this first half of the year, it’s the re-focusing on what’s important.  It’s the time with family and friends and looking at the simple things we’ve taken for granted, like going out for dinner or to a concert.

      I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with immediate family, regret the opportunities lost, and look forward to getting back to it when there’s less risk to others.  Risk to others is always the calculus, not risk to myself.  I wear a mask in crowded places and wonder at the growing crowd of people who aren’t wearing one.  We aren’t there just yet folks, as much as we want to be.

      I’ve completed a long list of home improvement tasks and find that the list doesn’t get shorter.  Still, I walk around and I’m less inclined to say to myself I need to get to that someday when I look at a wall or ceiling or some other nook and cranny of this place I spend so much time in now.  Better weather has opened up an entirely new canvas for improvement.  It’s all a work in progress, and will continue until the pandemic releases its hold on us.

      I’ve taken to rowing 5000 meters at lunchtime every workday.  Weekends are reserved for other activity with the nicer weather.  Rowing replaced walking at lunchtime because it’s more efficient and there’s a timeless feeling I get when I’m on the rowing ergometer.  It could be 2020, or it could be 1990, the only thing that changes are the splits and the soreness afterwards.

      I’m ever so slowly learning French, and I’ve added Portuguese as well.  I have an eye on the world and will return to travel again someday, and speaking one language is simply not enough.  There are place to visit far from the tourist traps, where people expect some measure of knowledge of their language.  Je dois les rencontrer à mi-chemin – I’ve got to meet them halfway.  France is to be expected, but I also feel the pull of Portugal and Brazil.  And so I’ve added a third language, even before I’ve mastered the second.  Aprendi a seguir uma paixão e ver aonde ela leva – I’ve learned to follow a passion and see where it leads you.

      I’ve checked a few important boxes in my job that I’m pleased with and see all that might have been if only the world were normal. But it’s not normal and time flies relentlessly by anyway.  Some of the biggest project I was tracking have stalled in the quicksand of social isolation.  Even as things ramp up they may be a long way from where they should have been.  I’m grateful to work for a company that views the world through a long lens and measures its value by the people who work for it.

      And so we approach the second half of 2020, and more epochal moments are surely in store for us all.  There’s an election coming up in America.  Professional sports are tentatively starting up again.  People are dipping a toe back in the waters to see just how cold it really is.  And I find myself thinking about the trees I haven’t planted:

      When I was 18 I was a certified SCUBA diver.  And then I went to college and discovered rowing and girls and I gently tucked away the mask and fins and never went back to it again.  I’m told that the sport of diving is suffering a decline as people find other ways to spend time and disposable income.  I recognize the pull away from the water that’s held me away since I was a teenager, but also hear the siren call of the deep dive.  I’m going back to the deep water again, and depending on restrictions around COVID-19 I’ll do it in the second half of 2020.

      There’s another siren that’s been calling me for years, and it’s hiking.  I’ve long talked of hiking the Appalachian Trail and hold that out as my 60th birthday present to myself, when I get there.  But in the meantime I’m not hiking any other trail most days.  This won’t do at all.  I’m going back to the mountains in 2020, but not chasing others around.  I’m going to return to the 48 4000 footers in New Hampshire at my own pace, and check this box that’s been nagging me since I was a kid.

      So there you go: My own small version of Navy SEAL training.  Top of the mountains to the bottom of the sea.  Self-paced and documented.  Multilingual, multidimensional and adventurous in spirit.  Beats painting another room.  As my son would say, let’s go!

       

    • The Bay

      “But water is a question, so many living things in it,
      but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming
      generosity, how can they write you out?”
      – Mary Oliver, Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

      These past few days I’ve gotten re-acquainted with our old family friend Buzzards Bay.  This particular body of water has always been a living force that demands attention. And I’ve paid attention. A steady stream of boats and ships and barges move across the surface. Osprey hover above until the thrilling moment they plunge to the water for a fish. Cormorants work their drama under the surface, swimming about in our world until they suddenly dive underwater in search of fish, then surface in unpredictable places that betray the chase that happened below. There’s always something to pay attention to around the bay, so full of life and activity in the warmer months, but especially I pay attention to the Bay itself.

      The tides sweep in and out, marked by ripples in the channel and the pull of boats on moorings. Big beach, tiny beach, big beach, tiny beach over and over again in a timeless gravity dance with the moon.  The tide is a big topic around these parts, whether people go to the beach or not.  I greatly prefer the ease of a high tide, but plunge in either way.  It only changes how far I walk.

      Above all, the Bay is a mother, birthing and hosting millions of lives every year in her nutrient-rich waters.  Like a mother she tolerates a lot from the kids playing games around her.  The Bay is a chameleon: changing colors with the sky. A palette of blue, green, silver, gold, orange and dark gray flecked in white announce the mood of this old girl, and you’d best pay attention. She has no patience for those who don’t respect her moods.  I’ve learned to give her respect, and I’m grateful for her generosity in the times when I didn’t pay enough respect. It will not happen again.

      I clearly remember the first time I swam in Buzzards Bay, tasting the saltiness of the water, and the relative warmth compared to the water north of the Cape.  I was in awe then, and still am in many ways.  I’ve raised my own children to love the Bay and hope they’ll pay it forward for future generations.  I think she’ll be in good hands.

    • The Traveler’s Ditch Bag

      Sailors know of the ditch bag.  It’s a bag filled with essential items should the worst case scenario play out and you have to abandon ship.  Food, water, medicine, communication, maybe some fishing line and other assorted things that hopefully keep you alive long enough to be rescued.  All these things assembled at the ready – to be grabbed as you reluctantly jump into a life raft.

      I’m a land-based creature at the moment, but a traveler nonetheless.  I have a ditch bag of my own, usually kept in my work bag, but sometimes relocated to my duffel bag or suitcase, depending on the nature of travel.  But it’s always there at the ready, even now.  I came across it today as I was looking for the charger for my noise-cancelling headphones, and smiled at the ditch bag that silently waits for our next adventure.  I’m ready my friend, even if the world isn’t quite ready for us.  Flexible traveling requires keeping things to a minimum, but there are some things that must always be with you.

      My traveler’s ditch bag is filled with the important items that must be with you – charging cords and plug adapters for various countries, a mini power strip, an extra watch band, a second wallet with a couple of just-in-case credit cards that I rarely use, a headlamp, a couple of pens and a small notebook, earplugs, a couple of protein bars and some Motrin and Tums.  All that is typical.  Where I might go off the path a bit is in the other things I bring with me: A sky chart that glows in the dark for both northern and southern hemisphere, media adapters for plugging a laptop into a monitor or television, a bullet journal to keep tasks on track, those invaluable noise-cancelling headphones, reading glasses and a paperback book to read just in case the iPhone with Kindle app fails me.  The iPhone has helped immeasurably in minimizing stuff jammed into the travel ditch bag.  I used to bring 3-4 books to read, now I have everything on the kindle with that one physical book.  I also have an assortment of required apps at the ready: Duolingo, Google Translate, Pocket Universe, iTunes, Aurora, Ring, TripIt, Uber, Waze and of course, WordPress.

      Toiletry kit, laptop, passport and assorted work-related items go elsewhere.  Wear an outfit that would be appropriate attire should your bag get lost.  Always carry a water bottle, sunglasses and a baseball hat too.  Good walking shoes, sunscreen and a reversible belt and you can pull off just about anything.  And that’s my travel kit, packed and ready to go, waiting indefinitely…  like the rest of us.

    • Sea Change

      “The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.” – Jules Verne

      I’ve been to the desert, and I’ve been at sea. There’s magic in both places, but give me the ocean. But what of the trees? I write this listening to the trees that surround me alive in the wind, with life stirring on all sides. Surely there’s magic here too? True, but I’m too far inland to smell the ocean, and that just can’t stand forever. And what of mountains? Aren’t they also alive, singing their siren call in seductive whispers? Indeed, but the waters of the mountain yearn for the sea and so do I. My mind’s on the sea, for I’ve grown to be a salty dog and prefer the ocean swells to the shifting sands and even tree song and mountain whispers. The sea is alive on all sides, and it stirs life in me when I’m a part of it. And haunts me when I’m away. I’ll return again, as the mountain stream inevitably does, and will rejoice in the union.

    • Revisiting Belém Tower

      Perched on the Northern Shore at the Mouth of the Tagus River, Belém Tower is a time machine back to the Age of Discovery.  It was built while Ferdinand Magellan was still making the first circumnavigation of the globe, a high point on a string of maritime milestones for Portugal.  It was designed by Francisco de Arruda as a “permanent ship” to help defend Lisbon and the river, and features the Portuguese Manuelino style popular during the lifetime of King Manuel I.  That it stands largely as it was built 500 years later is a blessing.  Countless souls have walked through Belém Tower, from kings to prisoners to tourists from all over the world.  I’m lucky to have been one of those souls.  As travel remains a dream for the future, I thought I’d return once again.

      Belém Tower is an island dropped in the waters of the Tagas River. To visit it you purchase a ticket next door and go stand in line on the small pedestrian bridge that spans the lapping waters that swirl around the base of the tower underneath you and then splash up the stairs that circle the tower on shore.  Apparently the island was once further out in the river but an earthquake shifted the land and moved it closer to shore.  Better for tourism today, and it’s likely that the prisoners held in the lowest level didn’t really care about a 360 degree water view anyway.

      You enter into the bastion at the base and the arched ceilings grab your attention.  There are views of the magazine from when it was a fort, or where the prisoners were held when it was a prison.  As you climb, you visit the Governor’s Hall, the King’s Hall and the Audience Room.  I quickly learned that the staircases are very tight, and require you wait your turn to climb up or down in a controlled fashion.  I didn’t expect to be waiting at traffic lights in a building built half a millennium ago, but sure enough I did.  Great indication of just how many people visit, and how cramped those staircases are.  Like other spiral staircases built long ago, these were tight for this tall writer.  There just weren’t a lot of clydesdales walking around in 1520, something I’ve grown to accept as I duck my way through history.  The other thing you notice is the ornate gothic details adorning the building.  This was built as a fortress, but also for a king.  There are wonderful details throughout, and I did my best to take it all in.  Traveling solo, I was able to allocate as much time as I wanted for Belém Tower and managed to explore all parts of the structure open to the public.

      I fell in love with Portugal and wonder when I’ll get a chance to return again.  My visit to Belém Tower in January of 2018 capped off an incredible week in my life that marked a new beginning of sorts for me.  I visited before the tower’s birthday, before the pandemic, before a lot of things.  It would be interesting to return again someday to see Belém Tower with fresh perspective.  To feel the energy of Lisbon and the possibility that the Tagas River offered those who launched their own discoveries sailing right past the tower.  I was so busy looking back during my visit that I wasn’t fully aware of the future that Portugal helped launch for me.  My own age of discovery, if you will.  In many ways, it started right here.

      Inside the Bastion

       

    • Owning a Pool

      I dove into deep water Saturday, grateful for the pool heater and the money to pay for the luxury of it.  I’m pretty sure that if I had to do it all over again I’d never have invested in a pool. I’m not wealthy, but I might be if I didn’t have it.  And since I made the financial leap 13 years ago who am I to ignore it now?  A pool has a price that goes beyond the installation and maintenance costs.  It’s an anchor in your backyard that holds you just as firmly as a garden does.  When I installed the pool I had two young children and a highly active Labrador retriever (dog ear infections from swimming too much: yet another hidden cost).  The children are adults now, the retriever has finally escaped the fences of this world, and I’m still looking at a hole in the ground that doesn’t care whether I want it there anymore as long as I feed it money.

      To say I have a tenuous relationship with the pool is an understatement.  But we’ve recently resolved some of our differences.  It involved money, naturally.  If time is money, then I’ve given a lot of my lifetime to this pool, and I was feeling a bit resentful.  The last straw was the pool heater failing a year ago and the water never really warming up to acceptable levels for the masses.  And so it became an expensive water feature in the garden, with trees shading it just enough that it never really got comfortable, even on the hottest days.  And so this year we ponied up the cash and fixed the heat exchanger, dodging a $6000 replacement cost with an $800 repair.  How long it lasts is anyone’s guess, but the pool is warm enough for the fair weather fans.  And I danced the gleeful dance that only a pool owner can understand; I only spent $800 this time!

      Look, I know a large percentage of the population is unemployed and struggling to make ends meet.  I know that having a pool available when you’re under quarantine is surely a luxury, and don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful for it now.  I’ve been unemployed with the pool and two kids to feed and know both sides of this story.  For the moment the pool and I are peacefully coexisting, and I’m grateful for the good fortune.  With the kids home all summer, the pool may be used more than it has been in years.  But I see the pool liner fading, and the cracks in the stamped concrete, and the louder hum the pump is making, and I know that this toll road continues indefinitely.  A pool is a lot like a boat in this way, but without the travel.  If there was ever a year to have it, it’s 2020.  And so I’ll continue to throw money in the hole and hope for some measure of return on my investment.  That ROI is measured in laps, and I have my work cut out for me to make it worthwhile.  Better jump in again…

    • Not an Anchor but a Mast

      “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.” – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

      “Restless in rest” sums up my weekends, and my time on Buzzards Bay, and sailing, and in the garden and in the house… and in stillness. I need to keep moving and doing things. I’m not much of a meditator. I calm the mind through doing things. Meditate? Do the dishes! Weed the garden! Paint something!  Trim the hedges!  That’s my meditation. Rest is not in my DNA.  Even at my desk I had to put in a sit/stand adapter because I can’t sit still all day.  I guess that makes me a child of space, like a worker bee.  Worker bees don’t sit still. They fly far away, find and collect beautiful bounty, and return it to the nest.  They simply… work. And so must I.

      This concept of your house as a mast mesmerized me, for uh, verily, I’ve long thought of it as an anchor.  In normal times my career takes me to faraway places to busily go about my work and then to return home to the nest with whatever I earned along the way.  Home was an anchor that held me to a certain place, the opposite of a mast.  Wandering souls need masts and disdain anchors, like a dog tied to a tree gnaws at the rope. But don’t we need both?  A place to ground us and fair winds to fly before?

      Every night I lie down in bed with a Groundhog Day feeling.  That feeling of doing the exact same thing that you did the night before and the night before that.  That’s what staying home does to me.  And yet every day is different, full of progression and setbacks and new discoveries and familiar faces seen in a new way.  And I wake in the morning and set the sails and find new ways to move forward.  Shunning comfort.  To be hungrier.  To run lean and with an eye to the horizon.  But you’ve got to weigh anchor before you set the sails, even if it’s only in your mind.

    • Catching a Scent of Kiwi

      A flash of memory and I was suddenly on a 28 foot Islander motoring into the mouth of the Merrimack River late in the night after a long, wonderful evening ’round Isle o Shoals, music playing loud and rum flowing freely. We were lucky that night, reckless as we were, but all highly focused when it counted.  And entering the treacherous mouth in the dark is one of those times when it counted.  The entire night is a shared conspiracy between the three of us, and the stories usually come out with the rum.

      That sailboat was full of challenges and maintenance issues and most of all an unplaceable odd smell we just couldn’t get rid of. The smell was the deal breaker, and we finally sold her to an eager gentleman with resolve to bring her back. I recognized that resolve, but that boat broke me just as it probably broke him. I hope not though – I’d like to think that she got a complete facelift and is defiantly darting across the waves as she once did.  She was a great sailor, that Islander.  She had a great name too: Kiwi.  But her body odor was just too…  off-putting.

      Like a bad relationship you can’t get past, I’d like to sail again, but I’m scarred by the first one.  I know the cost of a big boat. Money is one thing, but time is another. There’s nothing wrong with spending either if you’re all in, but I’m not all in. Not now anyway.  And so I crew on other boats in normal times.  And I sail on small boats when the opportunities come up.  And I scheme and plan for ways to get back on the water again.  And follow the adventure of others who do.  When the respiratory vapor settles on this pandemic I’m picking up a small boat to sail around the bay.  One small way to stay in the game.  I know the logistics of that aren’t small either, but nothing meaningful is easy.  And sailing is meaningful.

    • Pressing On

      “The opposite of quitting is rededication. The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.” – Seth Godin

      “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” – T.S. Eliot, East Coker

      These times challenge all of us, but some more than others.  Perseverance seems a quaint notion, but really what else do we have but the courage to press on in the face of it all?  I write this knowing I’m less challenged than some, more than others.  I’m one of the lucky ones, it seems, and yet life keeps throwing curveballs at me just as it does to you.  I believe the way we react to anything is just as important as that which happens to us.  Short of an abrupt ending of our existence, we have this choice of how we deal with the cards we’re dealt in any given moment.  I hope to play my hand well today and in the one to maybe 16,000 days I have left (That’s a lot of blog posts: I hope I don’t repeat myself too much).

      I pulled this Seth Godin quote out of a draft I’d done six years ago, well before I started writing every day, well before COVID-19, well before the current political climate, and well before I became the current version of myself.  We’ve all changed, really, some in profound ways, others less so, during the last six years.  In some ways the world is worse, in others it’s steadily improving.  We can say the same of ourselves.  And for all my tongue-in-cheek humor about repeating my blog posts, I won’t be the same person next week, let alone in twenty years, so I figure the material will change accordingly.

      The other day I had a great idea for a novel.  I immediately started writing down the core plot and completed a first paragraph that stirred me.  I’ve been waiting for the muse to tap me on the shoulder and offer up a nugget like this for some time, and I hope to do it justice.  But I know it will die on the vine if I don’t chip away at it every day.  And so I’ll keep writing, keep researching, keep reinvigorating and breaking it apart.  You’ll know when it’s ready – this one will take awhile to get it right.  Anyway, I believe the idea came to me because I’m showing the world and those random muses flying by that I’m committed to seeing it through.  To doing the work that matters.  Ultimately life is about showing up, and I’ve been doing that for 702, er, 703 posts now.  And I’ve got my eye on 1000 and beyond.  Whether anyone reads it hardly matters, it’s transformative for the author.

      Shortly after that idea for a novel, I had another idea for a business.  Not a leave my career business, but a nice side hustle business that would be complimentary to my life after work.  Funny how these things all come up like this, fully baked in the mind.  It makes you wonder what else is up there between the ears, waiting to be set free.  I do know that the reading and thinking and writing all open the trap door, letting ideas out and capturing a few along the way that would otherwise drift on by.  The rest is just persistence.  Showing up and doing what must be done, today and those tomorrows too.  There are plenty of quotes out there from Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and others about the tremendous value of blogging every day.  I’m finding that value compounding, not financially, but in creative output and opportunities that open up from the consistent effort and the openness to receive the world.  That’s reason enough to press on, writing today and tomorrow too.

    • Unfinished Business

      Lately I’ve been re-building lists. Lists of unfinished business I have to get to. Things to see and do, as soon as this other business is over. You might call it a bucket list, but for me I’ll stick with unfinished business.  Take a blank map, color in where you’ve been and you quickly see that there’s so much you’ll never see.  And that’s okay, I don’t want to see everything, but I do want to see some things.  Let’s begin with these.

      The Aurora Borealis has long been on this list, dancing just out of reach with the Southern Cross on the far ends of the earth sky. I suppose I’ll get to each eventually, beginning in the north, where I sit, just out of reach, thinking about such things. I blame Crosby, Stills & Nash for sticking the Southern Cross in my head, just as I blame Local Hero for my obsession with the Northern Lights. Remove “blame”, add “credit” if you will.

      And then there’s sailing across the Atlantic Ocean (and back again on a southern route).  Long list on both sides of the pond, and of course in between.  Iceberg spotting in Newfoundland, hoisting a pint at The Brazen Head in Dublin, a fish sandwich on raisin bread at Woody’s in Bermuda, and lately, Christmas in Salzburg and Hallstatt without the throngs of tourists.  I definitely have unfinished business in Scotland, beginning with The Quiraing and the sunset at Neist Point and heading south to an immersive distillery tour in Islay. Across the channel and Normandy calls, and then a host of other Sirens scattered about Europe, taunting me; There’s no time to waste, you fool.  Don’t worry, other Sirens, I haven’t forgotten you…

      Another west coast calls me; Napa and some time with those redwoods, a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to Monteray and Big Sur and a trip inland to Yosemite.  There’s something about west coasts that draw me, I suppose. Maybe it’s that restless northeast kid longing to get out there?  I’m a sunrise guy (greet the day!), but I do love a good sunset too.  I’ll follow the sun and see where it leads me.  Perhaps it will lead me to unfinished business in faraway places like Cocos Island and Easter Island and Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Machu Picchu in Peru.  I’ve never given you enough attention South America.  That’s an omission I hope to remedy, given the chance.

      And what of the world beyond?  So much unfinished business from Hawaii to the South Pacific to Australia to New Zealand to Asia and India and Africa all stacked up waiting their turn.  So much to do, so little time…  unfinished business all of it.  So let’s get this pandemic behind us, there’s a world to see, and precious little runway to take off.  Join me?