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April 18, 2026: Canary Islands

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  April 18, 2026 Overview from deck 16 looking down on 14 Six days at sea Nine days since we left Miami Over 3,000 nautical miles traveled across the Atlantic We are approaching Europe Tomorrow we reach the Canary Islands off the Western Sahara Desert We're looking forward to having some time off the ship to explore a place we once visited before on a trans-Atlantic crossing several years ago. Passing time has been without problem. Numerous bands playing everything from hard rock to Salsa to Disco and more are available throughout the afternoon and evening in a variety of venues. Conversations with casual friendships made throughout the journey allow us time to share perspectives and thoughts as well as to recount our activities on board our ship, the MSC Divina. The food has been much better than I expected it might. Given that our last trip across the Atlantic on the MSC Lyrica was a gastronomic disaster, we are pleasantly surprised with what we are finding aboard this...
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Transitions

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  When we are old enough and wise enough to have years of life behind us, we become aware of the fact that we have lived more than one life. Each of us who have achieved this ranking can peer back at their former selves and find that, for the majority of us, we are not the same people we once were years ago. Think of your teenage years, the choices made and the actions and decisions taken. Would you truthfully say that such actions, such choices and such decisions made would be similar to those you would make as the person you are today? If you are, then perhaps you are wise beyond the ordinary, or perhaps you are not yet mature enough or sentient enough to stand in this place. But for most of us, there will be a common thread that we all share in this observation. It is here, again, that I must segway into yet another transition as we slowly find ourselves plodding away across the Atlantic Ocean toward adventures yet to unfold. Life is chock full of transitions: Our first jo...
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Even the Best of Plans Can Be Disrupted

 The title says it all.  We've waited for what seemed like an opportune time.  We have the houses sold and most of our "stuff" sold off, donated or put into storage.  What we take with us, we take as backpacks.  Imagine that, our entire world of possessions in a backpack.  Well, we don't really have to imagine it because two years ago we spent four months taking cruise ships as transportation to South America and to Spain and Africa.  We found we had enough "stuff" to either enjoy a hot-tub on a cruise ship, or enough winter clothing to manage a trip into snowy areas, enough to hike a mountain or just the right accoutrements for a formal dinner invitation by the city president of a Spanish exclave (Melilla). So packing is not our problem.  Getting our responsibilities reduced by divesting ourselves of houses (and lawn mowers, cars, hot water heaters, heating bills, etc.,) has not been part of the problem.  Money to travel is not a problem....
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Full Circle

 Someone, or to be more truthful, more than one person has noted that the times of our life and of the greater world travel in circles.  There is a certain repetition to the world, the seasons, our history, ourselves and time itself.  But, it has been said that rather than simply being a single circle, there are many circles, each one slightly offset from the last along a line of travel.  Such a diagrammatic thought experiment allows us to envision that each circle repeats, but with slight modifications, slight changes and slight perturbations that give it a unique formula, similar to the original but also slightly more evolved. We often say that the repetitions in our lives create a sense of order and, for many, a sense of purpose.  Ritual has reason and reason has its foundations in ritual.  Societies and their peoples define their lives with the cyclical natures of the sun, in separate yet similar circadian rhythms.  Waking up each morning, we submi...
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Prelude to a Journey

All great journeys start with a small disturbance in the ordinary.  It is a question that flickers in the depths of the imagination and a door that is left slightly ajar in the mind. Sometimes it arises like a curiosity trying to clear its throat Sometimes its an incessant restlessness tapping at the hands of time on a watch.  A great journey begins at the exact moment that staying put becomes the stranger choice. And that moment of wanderlust has again arrived. ..... Pull out an old fashioned globe of our planet.  For this exercise, a Google map will not be sufficient.  It is sometimes necessary to hold the tangible in our hand in order to begin to imagine the inconceivable with any sense of understanding.  Now that you've pulled out your globe, or, in the case of you, the dear reader, your virtually imagined globe, spin it and drop a finger at random at some point, stopping the spin and igniting your imagination.  Look at where your finger landed and read...
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