05/19 Los Angeles, California

Imprisoned by my own curiosity. I felt as if I was looking up through trees that encircled my view, staring at the many branches and the fruits suspended beyond my grasp.  I knew I could no longer be satisfied simply to lie here on my back, closing my eyes and dreaming of things out of my reach.

…

07/26 Hamburg, Germany

We rolled early into Hamburg.  Since we had reduced our load to just the essentials, we could now fit all of our belongings into a single locker.  We wandered about Hamburg searching for a suitable place to put down some breakfast and a few early morning beers.  That day had been earmarked as a day to relax, to kick back and enjoy the city’s parks and its many bridges.   …

06/19 Ring of Carrie, Ireland

We woke to another picturesque day and it wasn’t till we began driving the Ring of Kerry that we realized it was also a lucky day.  We were heading clockwise, south to north and every possible tourist and circus was traveling in the other direction.  This gave us the ability to stop and enjoy the scenery and not second guess our place in line or force us to let others dictate our pace. …

05/25 Bath, England

We caught a morning bus into Bath.  There was such a beautiful view out the window I hardly noticed any of the other passengers.  I could almost imagine hearing the hunter’s horn heralding from the hills, the sound of dogs running alongside the hooves of horses.  I gazed at the many sheep spattered like white paint against the green, divided by a patchwork of trees and fences.  …

06/17 Cliffs of Moher, Clare Ireland

This world was filled with small narrow roads hidden by hedge groves, secluded lakes, isolated rivers, hills to climb and valleys to explore.  Tracking down a castle, graveyard or whatever we had earmarked on our map of antiquities was like our very own secret treasure hunt.  Then at the end of every one of these little adventures, we found ourselves staring again at a wonderful pint of local ale, in a small pub in the center of whatever it was the center of.  …

11/28 Pamukkale, Turkey

Walked up one of the local hills and watched the sun rise over the valley.  Then I took a trek back to the pools to get a few pictures without people climbing all over in them.  They were so beautiful and unique.  Shallow petal shaped pools with large expanses that had the texture and the look of snow.  I expected the crunch of snow but was met with the resistance of rock.  I sat alongside them for rest of the morning, just day dreamed and enjoyed the view. …

08/23 Algarve, Portugal

Thank God everyday was a sunny beach day.  I began the day with some hair of the dog in a small grass shack that hugged the sand leading toward the water, just like yesterday.  I struck up a conversation with a young lady who had given me a strange gesture after a fly had landed on her shoulder.  We all look from different angles don’t we?  She was disgusted with the idea that the fly was attracted to something on her body.  I on the other hand would be more concerned with what the fly might have brought to me.  It’s a wonderful world that has more than one color.  …

06/21 Northern Ireland

It was raining a bit and we had a couple of open containers.  The roads were narrow with no extra space to speak about.   I knew if we got stuck behind another logging truck we could be here for weeks.  Once we managed to pass a couple of these trucks we began to make up for some lost time.  Jim began complaining that his bladder couldn’t take much more of this abuse but before I was willing to pull over, I wanted to put enough distance between ourselves and the logging trucks.  …

11/01 Crete, Greece

A bunch of us from the night before had agreed to gather for a late breakfast and had earmarked today as a moped day.  We all kinda wandered up at the same time around lunch.  Brad and his sweetheart, Elspeth and Dave were all I managed to convince that it would be a worthwhile experience.  Elspeth had never been on a moped before but wasn’t shy about taking on new challenges.  During her learning phase either Dave or I would tag along side.   …

11/24 Selesck, Turkey

As the storm cleared we helped put things back into place and decided to hang around another day.  About midday we took a walk into town and bought two bus tickets north toward Ephesus.  Our bus was scheduled to leave early the next morning.  All in all this was good company and I had enjoyed the time off the road.  I didn’t know what to expect heading into Turkey’s interior.  I was never taught in school much about Turkey.  …

05/23 Londond, England

Over these last few days, I don’t think there has been a single street or ally way we didn’t accustom ourselves to.  Most pubs we stopped in for a pint, maybe even two.  About midday I ended up lying out in the middle of Hyde Park, looking up through the trees, day dreaming under the blue sky.  It was another gorgeous day.  …

11/11 Bethlehem, Israel

I wasn’t sure if our bus could make the trip but luckily Bethlehem was not that far of a ride.  Bethlehem was rather small and unexpectedly vacant.  Typically I liked to walk around the outskirts and then worked my way back toward my destination.  That gives me a better feeling of where I am.  The church was also empty and there was nobody inside its wall but the two of us.  It was kind of a shell of a church with an altar at the far end.   …

10/12 Napes Italy

When I woke up I notice that my knife was unchaperoned, sitting all by itself.  Most likely it was pushed away by me while I slept.  There were two elderly gentlemen sitting alongside the same bench staring at me and the knife.  I had gotten less than an hour of sleep and was still very tired and in need of a shower.  I followed those two gentlemen back into the heart of Naples.   …

08/06 Lienz, Austria

In front of the morning sun we departed toward Lienz.  We were lucky to have the company of a pair of young ladies traveling in the same direction.  An interesting conversation made the time disappear and before we knew it our train had come to a stop.  I needed to exchange some traveler’s check for cash and explained to Jim and the two girls that I would be a few minutes inside the bank.  Once I exited the bank the three had vanished.  I spent well over an hour checking one shop after another, up and down just about every street.   …