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As you race to the edge of a precipice one MUST believe that you can find your way, there is no other option.  Be it a hang glider, skiing, diving, sailing, love or life.  If you are not racing to the edge, you are not believing in the life you have now.  Wake up, it's happening now.

Moments of discovery.  On the beach of Baie St. Jean, St. Barthélemy, FWI.  July 16, 2009.

An adaptation of my photograph from 1969 in Pelican Bay, Santa Cruz Island, California.  Santa Barbara 20 miles away on the horizon.  Every weekend we would come, my teenage friends and I, in my father's 29 ft. sailboat, SEA COLT.  We brought half the food we needed and spent the rest of the day in the water catching the rest.  This is now part of the Channel Islands National Park, but in the '60's this was a glorius rare day warmed by the Santa Anna winds from the mainland, crystal clear skies.... and the sea was all ours. So I remember my father on this day for his generous granting of my freedom to have this day, he reveled in such places.

June 10, 2009

    I am only 21,547 days old. I can remember many of them, starting with swatting mosquitoes on the screen that covered the top of my baby crib.  I can recall slithering out from under it and grasping the white crib's round rails as I slid to the floor landing atop the shag rug on which I loved to play.  It was my first solo adventure and I didn't even know how to talk.  
    Of those thousands of days, the ones that are etched in my memory most, are days that I was traveling, changing my environment, making forays into areas beyond my comfort zone.  By the time I was 30 years old I realized that a true adventure was one from which I might not return, but just that remote possibility excited neurons to forever sparkle in my memory.  As a younger man my youthful eye was blind to many dangers in trips to places that now I give more thought before proceeding.  Sometimes I escaped tragedy just by sheer luck, wandering into places and environments that I was not prepared to see and experience; I was fair game for the seemingly predatory nature of a sometimes harsh planet and her lurking inhabitants.  But go I did, and I still want more.
    With time however, the "comfort zone" changed too.  I am tall, so I no longer am keenly excited to get in a sardine can of an airline for hours on end to get some place.  A few years ago one such flight caused a DVT in my leg that brought all travel to a stop for four months.  It is the terrible trick of nature that I still think more/less like I did when I had just 25 years behind me, but the body fails to keep up occasionally.  So a little more caution was added to my travel potion but it generally the results in experiences continue to be just as exciting.  I no longer SCUBA dive in 44 degree F. water as I did as a teenager, in fact many years later I came up with the lame formula of one's age plus 25 or 30 should be the minimum water temperature one should plunge.  It does seem to work.  I still go, but not on moonless nights in waters that Great White sharks are known to inhabit (it's too cold for me now! ;-)
    My first parentally-sponsored solo travels came as a preteen, learning to sail in South San Francisco Bay.  I had an eight foot El Toro with 45 sq. ft. of magnificent sail.  It was my ticket to freedom within my small world.  At 12 years of age, I commandeered this vessel across the full width of San Francisco Bay, probably about 6 miles further than I was allowed to go by my parents.  So I found out that if I didn't tell them, and I made it back, then it was probably OK.  So I didn't tell them for at least a dozen years.  But in defense of my voyage of discovery, I was in my mind, fully prepared.  Every bit as prepared as I have been on every trip since, it's just that my level of awareness of what preparations DO need to be done has changed.  In retrospect as an adult I know I was woefully unprepared for that trip across the bay... I had not done a weather check, only told one friend, he was 11 years old, and really was just as clueless as me, I had no back up plan should something have gone awry (like the boat flipping and not being able to right it), many things left out.  Fast forward many decades and a million miles.
    My latest long solo journey was to Antarctica.  I decided to go on the trip after I heard of a cancellation that freed a berth on a tired Russian ship that would be full of other like-minded photographers.  I had nine days to prepare.  Most on this trip had been preparing for well over a year!  I had to move very quickly.  I had gear arriving hours before my departure, and I would be gone over a month.  Baggage checked, boarding pass in hand, I cleared security, only to see CANCELLED above my flight's gate.  An ice storm in a connecting airport had brought down the whole house of cards.  A day later I was back at the same gate, but this time I made it.  I had prepared a cushion of several days in Buenos Aires for just such an emergency, and it paid off.  I was booked in a cabin for two, but I had replaced a couple, so there was an extra bunk.  I tried to get several friends to join me, but no luck.  However one friend it turned out had a ranch in South America which I ended up visiting at the end of my voyage, a sublime experience that I will not elaborate on here as it is well documented already (search my web site for Estancia Alicura).
    My point is, be persistent in your quest for new places and experiences.  At first you might be alone, but soon enough you'll be with new friends enjoying a whole other world from their viewpoint.  These events will alter the course of your life.  My lost night before the start of my journey south cemented my relationship with my girl friend.  We'll be married in two weeks.  Hello world, here I come.

I wish I had taken the photos presented here, alas I did not.  I was just a recipient of the marvelous eye of Dwaine Gaeke via a forwarded email from a mutual friend.  Dwaine gave me permission to publish these as an example.  I just wanted to demonstrate that anyone can capture these images if you have an eye for composition and vary the exposure.  As soon as I saw them I realized that they were virtually identical in framing, just different exposures with a Panasonic Lumix point-n-shoot camera.
I aligned them in Photoshop CS4, then used Photomatix to create an HDR image, which I subsequently reimported into PS CS4 to paint the HDR image over part of the darker original to remove some parts that were too light.  I ran the Noiseware Pro filter on the result to reduce digital noise, then saved and imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 for final tweaking.  Here is the result.... almost mystical.  Great job Dwaine.

2009 is a great time to be in photography.  The quality of the equipment and the software to process images has improved dramatically in the past 15 years.  I find that my mind coached with training of what these tools can do, has even altered my perceptions of the way I see the world.  I now look for things that often I cannot see, but that I know are there.  Very exciting stuff in that the end resulting image is often analogous to what Forrest Gump said, "it's like a box of chocolates, you don't know what you are going to get."  But usually one knows that you'll get something that you will like.  The other day I was showing some rowing images to a very experienced friend in the sport.  She saw things in the image that I could not see: wrist position, back inclination and elbow angle of the various rowers that told her information about what was going on in the boat.  Oar positions and alignments that meant nothing to me, but to her trained eye, it was a wholly different plane of observation.  It is like this for me when I photograph a subject.  Many times I have been asked "what are you photographing?" and I have difficultly explaining that I am not quite sure, well, completely anyway.  I am sure it sounds like a stupid answer to the questioner.  However the same thing has happened to me a lot with other photographers.  We'll be in the same place at the same time, and looking at our pictures later I'll think, "were we on the same trip together?"  My point is people can and do see things differently and can be trained to see them in a certain way.  Not so different from doctors studying x-rays.

One of the tools that Adobe Systems has added to the quiver of Photoshop CS4 Extended Edition in recent years has been the "stack mode" and its special filters.  If images are captured with precise alignment, Photoshop can take this "stack" of images and process the individual pixels.  A maximum filter will  yield the brightest value of that pixel position from all the images in the stack.  The minimum filter will do the opposite, while the median filter falls in between.  The latter is of great use when you want to photograph a subject that has people or objects moving within the frame.  With enough exposures, you can make them all disappear from the final output image.

These three images here are of some rocks off Point Lobos, California (near Carmel).  A series of nine images stacked together.  Everything about the images is identical, save for the TIME that they were taken.  The first is with the maximum filter applied, and all of the surf (bright white) and the white birds show up in abundance.  Remember the birds have been multiplied as they were flying, so it is likely nine times as many birds as in a single photograph.  The median filter leaves the image in a slightly more natural state but removes much of the chaos of the image.  

The minimum (bottom left) shows the darkest part of the rocks without the white surf, and a few dark birds as well.  Of the three I find this one the most interesting as brighter objects tend to be retained on our retina and memory longer than do the darker ones.  That is to say we can imagine the maximum and median images easier than the minimum, dark image.  I think it has become my "art" at this point, it is mine.

Last week I did a short "BBQ Tour" with my friend Mark to sample the spiced cuisine in the Austin region of Texas. Unfortunately we did not have the discipline required for what I am sure will become many forays in multiple compass directions. We were overcome with the aromas offered at our first stop, Smitty's Market, in Lockhart, Texas, and ordered too much.


It was only 10:30am and we had the full day before us. I was doing well up until the moment I snapped the photo of the BBQ on the butcher paper in front of me. Carnivore instincts set in and we seemed out of control for a short time. Smitty's got four greasy thumbs up in the end. The sweet ribs were our favorite. We pressed onward to Luling after walking around the heart of Lockhart.



The smoke stained sign in the interior of the Luling City Market was ominous. But our quest for food that only a cardiologist could appreciate was not over yet. We did the "usual" at this point, one link of sauage, four ribs, and a few slices of brisket. Since this was "lunch" we even threw in a Shiner beer too. The line was out the door by the time our eyes glazed over with a coating of cholesterol and we muttered the words "I'm done" and "me too." Wrapped up what was left just in case, and took it with us. Mark and I agreed it wasn't exactly fair to judge the Luling Market in our sated state, but we gave the edge to Smitty's.


"On the road again" as Willie Nelson says in his song. We stopped briefly in Gonzales to take in the local antiques, both in and outside shops. A nice place to stop and visit the Gonzales Memorial Museum, full of Texas history. It was near here that on October 2nd, 1835 the first shot was fired in the Texas war of independence from Mexico.



Our own day was running late and we had one final destination to see the K. Spoetzl Brewery, the creator of Shiner beer. We arrived about 90 seconds before the visitor center closed, but not to late for a quick sample to end our day.

More to come....

I have had a lot of discussion about this image in my Caribbean gallery so I am going to elaborate more on it.  I did an exploratory trip of the Caribbean in 1978 on an old 1930's schooner for six weeks.  I traveled from the Grenadines to Antigua.  May 15, 1978 was the first time I saw English Harbor (I kept an extensive written log so I know the dates).  There were not any boats in the outer harbor then (lower part of the image with a lot of anchored sailboats) and I took a small dinghy and rowed over to the far end of the bay.  For the next few hours I snorkeled the entire length of the shallow bay, repeatedly diving to the bottom.  The whole expanse of water was full of shimmering schools of juvenile fish, and with each plunge toward the bottom the fish would open a "hole" to let me through and then close behind me, covering my view of the surface.  It was magical.  I was 28 years old and had been free diving and SCUBA diving since my mid-teens in California, but I had never experienced anything like this.  It was an enthralling, interactive contact with nature.   I did not visit this harbor again until 1990 when it became my first landfall after sailing across the Atlantic.  Another visually intoxicating experience with the elements. This trip was only my third visit over this 31 year history.  I knew that there were steel drum bands playing on Shirley Heights on Sunday evenings, having been there before, so we set off just before sunset in Pele's Taxi, the driver a local personality.  I knew the view, I was armed with a basket full of memories and I knew exactly want I wanted to convey in an image.   Which I might add as was quite different from the throng of commotion behind me... a hundred steel drums, children & adults dancing, beer and wine flowing to the staccato of the drums... even some palm fronds being woven into baskets. 

This image was published in the March 22, 2009 issue of the Austin American Statesman as it won their "Win in a Flash" contest.

Texas has been really dry for the past year and a half.  Austin and environs are about 24" of rainfall behind.  Here are a couple of HDR images from Dripping Springs & Johnson City, Texas.  Lastly is an image from inside the wine cellars of Pedernales Cellars (plural seems a bit of a stretch).  It's the dribble that counts.  Cheers.

Some journeys are defined by place, or perhaps the act of getting there, while others are judged by the company one keeps along the way.  It is rare when all of these factors are exhilarating at the same time.  I was very lucky, fortunate, and grateful at New Years.  My thanks to my friend Bob who made it possible. The rest of the images are here (plus video in the upper right). - rj.

I think it is the random nature of the place and it's effect on the not-so-random things we build to sail upon it.  It is magical.

Recently I have been going back and looking at some older images that I took with film.  Some of these I can photograph on a lightbox with my Canon 1Ds Mark III using a 100mm macro lens with a 12mm extension tube to get more than 1:1 and shoot within the boundaries of the slide or negative to get a "new crop".  The side benefit of this technique is I can get a RAW image of the old slide and more easily fix any color casts.  On larger transparencies I have to resort to the flat bed scanner, which isn't so bad really is the format is large enough.  The one presented here is a 50 x 120mm positive transparency from a Noblex 150.  When I took the image ten years ago I did not think much of it at the time.  However with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.1 and Photoshop CS4, I can breath new life into images such as these.  It's almost as good as going back.

I stumbled upon a few images that I took last April in Boston, MA.  Hand held HDR images of the Stata Center at MIT.  I could not resist one more try at creating something that seemed out of this world.  It looks like a wild dream of a "space port."

Another angle reminded me of the "warp drive" on Star Trek.  The place is a trip without moving.

Image at left: Anchored off Norris Point, in Gros Morne National Park on the northwest coast of Newfoundland, +49° 30' 36.70"N, -57° 53' 11.19"W, we are greeted by amazing light of the morning sun.  A lone Zodiac driver waits for his call to duty on the side of the ship.  Meanwhile, he/she was the perfect scale for my photo.  The rest of the pictures are here in chronological order.  I'll start a small gallery of the best dozen soon, meanwhile they are all included in this 150 or so.  If you want to see people and food pictures, they are found here.  Both of these galleries will be annotated as I get to it, but for right know, what you see is what you get.

Often I wonder why I like to travel.  I examine, consciously, what it is that makes it work for me.  It has changed in my experience over time, decades I mean, something to do with scale and contrast, light and dark, times that we are in now and times that are forgotten, or nearly so.  When one leaves the comfort of familiar surroundings and are thrust into the world beyond your doorstep, possibilities exist for a greater chance of something unexpected happening.  Seeing, smelling, tasting or otherwise sensing a new environment.  We frame our plans around increasing the odds that what we will experience will match our expectations.  Therein lies the trap that nature has laid for us.

The conundrum is to observe but not quite participate if the activity is not what we expect.  However to truly observe, one must participate.  This seems to me to be the fulfilling act of travel.  To engage in the activity that intertwines and highlights differences with your own life experience is the plum of the event.  The act of observation in and of itself often affects the outcome of an event.  So we try to balance the expectation and the experience in our mind.  What is really important?  I think the answer is to accept the outcome of the travel experience for the plums it offers and not to twist it into something else (like what you had planned).  Sharing journeys, written, spoken or photographed (or all) helps others to reach a value in their own planning.  With each iteration the act of travel gets closer to the "planned" experience.  Which of course, if the journey is truly an "expedition" then it's purpose has little chance of occurring at all.  I think I prefer the term exploratory.

Depending upon one's life experience the simple act of just crossing a road can be a life changing experience.  Michael Fay in his epic "megatransect" of 1200 miles of central Africa several years ago was accompanied by a Pygmy crew who had never seen a road before.  As he said, they were something akin to kids on an escalator for the first time... "You can go so fast!" they exclaimed as they ran back and forth on the dirt road surface.  For other travelers, nothing short of a ride to the edge of space would be enough to satisfy their expectations.  The rest of us, somewhat thankfully, fall somewhere in between.  Michael Fay's trip, was an expedition with a defined purpose.  Silversea's PRINCE ALBERT II, was very much a luxury cruise, even calling it "expedition light" would be misleading.  It is a smallish, 354 ft., lavishly appointed, cruise ship with some Zodiacs.  I loved it for what it was, not for what I thought it was going to be.  It does not however execute a travel experience that even remotely begs for "expedition" to be included in the title.  No matter what it says on the side of the ship "expeditions" don't arrange for buses to transport you to lovely museums six blocks away from the ship.  An expedition with a purpose, would have headed north into the waves and wind from St. John's, Newfoundland, however since the purpose was not expeditionary, but moreover luxury cruising and comfortable explorations, we turned south.  Here is the story.

My friend Pam and I left Austin, Texas late morning on August 13th, 2008 for New York City and onward to St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.  My expectations were high, and that was in part to see as much of Newfoundland & Nova Scotia as one could via ship and some land excursions given a lot of time constraints by the published itinerary.  I also wanted to know about Silversea and it's new "expedition" ship, the PRINCE ALBERT II.  I am interested in the other places she is going as well.  What I learned in the process, is what I learned on my trip to Iceland last summer, to accomplish an intimate observation of the large island land masses of the Canadian Maritimes, will require a return trip and slower methods.

The PRINCE ALBERT II only went into service under this name, officially, on June 12, 2008.  The refit was begun last fall to revive a ship once known as the WORLD DISCOVERER.  I won't go into the full history, but millions have been spent on polishing her up, and by and large it shows.

We arrived in St. John's on the evening of August 13th.  Well it was actually 12:14 a.m. August 14th when we were finally exiting the airport.  My new friend, Terry Adey, was there to greet us.  A charming and talented photographer during the day, and a registered nurse by night.  He drove us to Signal Hill to the the flickering lights of St. John's harbor, then on to the Balmoral Inn (38 Queens Road).  After some sleep we were off for a walk and then met Terry and his wife Debbie for lunch and a tour of the environs.  I cannot thank Terry enough for his warm welcome and help.  On a future trip I am sure we'll have a lot of photography to share.

August 15th turned out to be a damp, cool and breezy morning, but after at least 10 hours of rain, heavy at times, the night before, it was a welcome respite to have the late morning clearing.  At least we could move our luggage from the Inn to the wharf without getting soaked.  The transition from the dock to the ship was fast and efficient considering that the PRINCE ALBERT II was receiving one hundred plus new passengers in addition to the seventeen or so that remained aboard from the sixteen day trip from Reykjavik, Iceland.  Champagne was plied upon us as we waited in line to get our room key and a quick photo taken.  In line with us was our soon-to-be new life-long friend, Dr. Arlene Segal.  A veteran of Silversea and almost any other outfit you can conjure up.  From the North Pole to the Antarctic peninsula, she has a bucket full of memories and I was eager to listen (and still ready now).  Fate would have it that Arlene was also just across the hall from us.  Perfect planning.

One of the first items of business shipboard is to have a life boat drill.  The Silversea routine was quite different from my drill on the Russian ship, PROFESSOR MULTANOVSKIY.  Silversea has you try on the life vest, secure the straps.... and you're done.  I have no idea which lifeboat I would go to should there be a problem.  The MULTANOVSKIY had us go all the way to the lifeboats, board them (it was raining too, a lot), and start the engine.  In retrospect that was a very good exercise after I heard about 3 of the 4 lifeboats from the now sunken EXPLORER last fall having engines that would not start.  So this seemed to be just Lifeboat Drill 101 on Silversea.

The first disappointment came when the ship's captain and the Silversea staff concluded that the weather system that moved in the previous night had created an itinerary-changing set of wind and swells from the north.  Rightly so, it would have been a very tough go to head north to L'Anse aux Meadows, so it was scratched.  A big blow for me as this was the one spot, along with Gros Morne National Park, that I had really wanted to see, and was much of the reason I chose this particular trip.  I could not argue with the logic however.  We turned south to the port of Argentia to visit a historic site there.  In retrospect I think this stop could have been skipped in favor of saving the time for better experiences at Gros Morne National Park.  The gritty photo opportunities that I sought were still eluding me, but I learned long ago to focus (literally) on what is in front of you when what you are expecting is not there.  I found one of my best images of the trip in a bright yellow cleat that the PRINCE ALBERT II had her bright blue "spring line" on, complete with a contrasting red edge and the uniform black hull of the ship.  I was very pleased, and it made my day.  The other good image of the day turned out to be of Camille Seaman, the resident photographer on the ship.  Unfortunately she was too preoccupied with her family and ship-board duties to talk much about photography to me, so I just took her photo and will give her a lesson on how I made it another time.

That evening we set off to the Ramea Islands, a bit of a forlorn fishing community off the south coast of Newfoundland.  It was an interesting to see, but the weather was being uncooperative during our visit.  Next we headed north to Gros Morne National Park.  Again the Silversea staff had shortened our visit here.  There is a disconnect between what is published in the itinerary (that I purchased) and what the ship's staff says we are going to do.  I provided copies of these documents to the staff leader.  He said and did nothing in response.  So much for being expeditionary.

Gros Morne provided a beautiful morning arrival for us.  It was here I took the photo at the top of this journal entry.  The best weather day yet.  I made a panorama of the morning light on the south side of the bay from 10 images.  We had a choice of a three mile hike to the foot of the Western Brook Pond (initially reached by motor coach) or just a coach ride around the park with little or no walking.  It seems about half of the ship went for the hike.  The other half, many of whom had never been in a Zodiac before, opted for just motoring around the park.  This was an out and back hike, flat, paved, gravel or board walk for the most part.  They had a nice local fellow who tried to say that he was going to walk as fast as the slowest person.  That remark pretty well eliminated Pam and me, along with my new friend Fred, from the interpretive stops as we were not going to walk at one mile per hour no matter what.  We were even told to "stay with the group" at one point, and I chose to walk on rather that to tell the fellow to "get lost" on the trail (it was impossible to get lost unless you believed you were on an expedition and had completely lost your senses).  Nice walk, too bad we had no time to do the famous boat cruise up the fjord.  Just enough time to walk back, board the bus and subsequently the ship and depart for St. Pierre & Miquelon to the south.

St. Pierre remotely reminded me of St. Barthélemy, French West Indies, albeit a lot cooler.  I think the French as a colonial power left some good systems and traditions in place in the islands.  We took a short boat ride over to "Sailor's Island" which is inhabited by summer residents now.  It was a pleasant and quiet little place but they could use a good patisserie to liven up the populace.

Soon we were sailing for Fortress de Louisbourg, Nova Scotia.  This is a very interesting cultural stop in the history books of North America.  A partially restored Fort of quite a large scale.  What has been done, is very well done, and well worth the visit.  From here we sailed to Halifax.

We pulled into Halifax in the early morning where I spied Harlan Crow's yacht, MICHAELA ROSE, stern to at the wharf.  We tied up a short distance away, then boarded buses for Halls Harbor on the north side of Nova Scotia along the shores of the Bay of Fundy where the tides range up to 40 feet or more. First was a quick stop in the old part of Halifax to visit the cemetery where many of the TITANIC victims were buried.  An odd tourist site for any "expedition."  We also were able to squeeze in a 45 minute stop at the maritime museum that was quite interesting.  In a whirlwind of bus riders we were headed north to the Grand Pre winery and a tasting.  Perhaps with time and a bit more global warming their grapes will catch up with Napa and Sonoma Valleys in California.  Meanwhile, this slowed us down so much that we had a VERY late fresh lobster lunch at 3 p.m. in Halls Harbor.  Time enough to see the water rise during lunch and refloat the harbor boats.  A nice tour for what we did although they tried to micro manage the passengers to the level of telling them how to cross the street.  I bolted again.  Back in Halifax at about 5:45 p.m. we were told that the maritime museum would be open until 8 p.m.  Sadly it was only open until 5:30 p.m. and most everything else was closing rapidly.  Why we stayed in port for several more hours remains a mystery to me. One hightlight of the departure was the bag piper and drummer that serenaded us.  They were absolutely outstanding.  I have it all on HD video.

Next up was the very pretty little town of Lunenburg, where we got a morning sail of sorts on the BLUE NOSE II.  More of a motor sail really, but that was the weather in the morning.  I had some nice chats with the crew on the vessel about their life and sailing experiences as contrasted with mine.  Always fun to talk to a sailor.  Arlene, Pam and I had lunch at the GRAND BANKER restaurant overlooking the harbor.  Then we were off for a walking tour of town.  I photographed several interesting wind vanes from quite a distance.

The next morning was perhaps the best of all, more or less an unplanned nature-in-your-face experience cruising the mouth of the Bay of Fundy off the west coast of Nova Scotia.  We saw more whales than I saw the year before in Antarctica, and ten times as many breaching whales (jumping).  I'll put the video online soon too, but the stills are in the gallery now.  We cruised into the sunset and towards America.

The morning was clear as we entered Gloucester, MA.  Captain Fabien Rocher did a remarkable job of backing the PRINCE ALBERT II down the length of the harbor to the dock as there was no room to turn around mid-harbor.  A tug stood by, but I don't believe she was ever used.  A fog bank raced down the harbor about as fast as we were backing in and reached us only as we we throwing lines out to secure the ship.  Job well done.  After the lengthy process of clearing US immigration we were able to disembark and make our way to the excellent CAPE ANNE MUSEUM.  Highly recommended.  At lunch we were off to New York City.  I made a panorama of three images of Boston which was clearly seen 19 miles away.  Passing though the Cape Cod Canal we came within three miles of our Austin neighbor Dave Welland's house near Falmouth.  A small world we live in now.

Morning twilight brought us by Coney Island and then under the Verazanno Narrows Bridge.  It was not the clearest of days, but a warm and humid one.  I made a panorama of the New York City skyline as we approached it.  We had to be out of our cabins by 8 a.m. so the staff could prepare the ship for hosting travel agents and other visitors.  We were not able to get off the ship until 11:35 a.m.  After securing a taxi we had just enough time to drive by Dean & Deluca on Broadway to pick up some lunch and then head to Newark Airport.

Some side notes:  our new friends, Fred and Julia, who were a deck above us in Cabin 411 (Silversea calls them "suites" but with only one room, again, it is a bit of a linguistic stretch) and HAD NO AIR CONDITIONING - THE ENTIRE TRIP.  The only solution by the Silversea staff was to give them a fan, and after complaining for days.... they got a second fan.  I think they could have fixed this almost immediately by switching their cabin with one of the staff members.  Several of whom I know were in cabins comparable to ours, a less expensive class from the forth deck, but nonetheless cool and comfortable.  I hope that Silversea makes some reparations with Fred.  If they do not, I will make some contract changes on any future voyages with Silversea.  It should also be known that Silversea allows smoking in the cabins.  A door away from Fred was a smoker who has his door cracked open as was polluting the hallway and their non-ventilated room.  I felt terrible for Fred and Julia with the inaction of the staff and Silversea headquarters.  

There was also a pot smoker from time to time somewhere in deck three down the hall from our cabin 313.  I never identified exactly where, but the aroma was very strong and distinct.

On deck five, there was one "suite" (and up here it really might have been one) that was overwhelmed with the odor of the head (the toilet to landlubbers).  Little was done to fix this situation either.

Cabin 313 was more or less perfect save for the television.  They seem to have a satellite tracking system for receiving live TV but the only channel they offered was FOX NEWS which is pretty much no news at all.  I thought it was so embarrassing that they should have just turned it off altogether.  That's what people say (inside joke about Fox News).  So sadly, no Olympic coverage at all on the telly.  While I am on the TV.... the movie system worked perfectly and had a wide range of choices.  I was quite impressed, no DVD fumbling or check outs, just click and play.

There is also a pay as you go ($0.50/minute), or package deal, on Internet service.  It was amazingly reliable and fast, probably twice the speed of a 56 kbps dial up line at its best.  I purchased a block of 250 minutes time for $85 and by typing mostly off line and then cutting/pasting my messages I was usually off in 4-6 minutes.  I could log into my accounts when and where I wanted, respond to emails, upload photos/comments to my blog.... even look out the side window of our house with a live web cam WHILE WE WERE AT SEA.  This was pretty amazing.  I ended the whole trip with 30 minutes left over that I never used (no refunds).  Some people complained about the service but they were using the computers in the "internet cafe" in the library.  I was always using my own notebook and logging on wirelessly from anywhere on the ship.  Geeky stuff and it worked.  Also while I am on telecommunications, the AT&T cell service works with Silversea.  Once one has international roaming, taxes and fees make each minute cost about $3.50.  We never did use it, but I know it works from observing others.  I never could get Skype to show a connected signal on the internet connection or I would have tried a Skype VoIP call from the ship ($0.02/min usually, plus the internet connection fee of about $0.35).  Anyhow, I would suspect that this sort of thing could work, but perhaps they block those ports so AT&T can keep the monopoly while onboard the ship.

Lastly I have to say that the staff for the most part was exemplary.  While I've said little of the food in my notes here, but if you look at the photos of it you will see 10,000 words.  There is nothing more I could improve upon in this category.  Top drawer, A+, top to bottom, it was the best.  Cindy, our cabin stewardess was perfect.  The expedition leader did have one huge faux pas by showing an off color joke series on the LCD projector in the theater.  Very low class and out of place.  Bad judgement all around on that one.  Otherwise his bungling of Fred & Julia's accommodations was my only added complaint aside from his itinerary problems.  I should also note here that the wait staff, bar tending and wine sommelier were exceptional.  Always remembering the preferences of the crankiest "expeditioners".  Brent Stephenson, a.k.a. the Birdman, was fun and fascinating to talk to as well. The geologist, Juan Carlos Restrepo, was my favorite of all.... great story teller and no matter which passenger he engaged them in real conversations.  I would go anywhere with these two guys.

Here is the route we did take.  Just follow the green line from St. John's to New York City.  Google Earth and a GPS great for creating such maps. I left this image large so it can be seen easily.  It is 1762 x 1342 pixels.

Cheers, Rj.
September 3, 2008
in Austin, Texas.

P.S. Septermber 14th I added a ZIP file off all the Google Earth KML files with the tracks of the ship, hikes, drives, etc.  Download it here.

The trip from New York CIty to Austin, Texas is not as easy as the Staten Island Ferry, but at least it was an non-stop flight and the flight plan was accepted by the FAA's computers (big glitch today, not many hours after my flight).  I am busy working on images and will create some new galleries soon, as well as have a lengthy commentary about the Silversea trip.  It will be honest and more balanced than the Fox News aboard the ship (the only, yes, ONLY choice of news coverage on what seems to be a sophisticated satellite television system).  Lastly I have one more photo of "Mr. Ben" who was busy photographing me many times.  I would like to thank him for being such a kind and inquisitive subject.  A good time was had by all.

We left Nova Scotia last evening after a wonderful day in the port town of Lunenburg.  Today was in the Bay of Fundy whale watching and I don't think we could have seen more of them.  There were more than a dozen breaching.  We were just southwest of the Brier Island Lighthouse (right image) and it was a lovely dawn.  Tomorrow we'll clear immigration in Gloucester, MA and then transit the Cape Cod Canal in the afternoon. Perhaps we'll see some more whales along the way. These entries are short as they are all done via satellite.  I'll have more annotations about the trip after we are in America.  New York City promises to be an exciting arrival back in the USA.

Commentary on blogging:  It is best done when traveling alone.  That said, I'll do a paragraph to get from St. John's Newfoundland to Halifax, Nova Scotia where we will arrive in about 10 hours.  Ramea Islands were rainy, foggy and interesting, but not very special insofar as photography of my interests.  Gros Morne was wonderful, but we had had barely enough time to do a short walk, let alone a boat ride up the fjord and a hike at the end.... so only the former was accomplished.  I'll be back without slow moving guides.  Today we were in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia... one of the last defenses of the French.  Begun in 1713 and elegantly preserved in that period.  It was a superb historical tour of the early province.

I have new life long friends from Los Angeles and Kansas City.  Who would have known.  It's just the way the stars aligned.

More from Halifax where we will have an all day tour across the island and an evening in Halifax to catch up before leaving for Lunenberg, Nova Scotia.

Aboard the Prince Albert II, leaving the Ramea Islands off the southern coast of Newfoundland.

My first update since arriving in St. John's, Newfoundland.  Upon arriving at the St. John's airport non-stop from Newark, New Jersey on Friday night we have had a lovely welcome to this maritime province.  Terry Adey who lives and works in the St. John's - Twillingate area was there to greet us just after midnight.  We did a quick tour around town in the early Saturday morning hours, even venturing to the top of Signal Hill for a splendid night time panoramic view of St. John's.  Signal Hill was the place where Marconi received his first transmissions across the Atlantic.  

The two nights in St. John's were at the Balmoral Inn (38 Queens Road).  It has a nice self serve cold breakfast available most of the morning, comfortable rooms albeit with a small bath.  The biggest drawback is the necessity of moving almost 200 lbs of luggage (video & still camera gear is more than 60% of this) up almost two full flights of stairs.  However I survived and it was an altogether pleasant stay.

Terry and his wife Debbie were exceeding gracious hosts and tour guides on the Saturday before departure.  Cape Spear, the village of Quidi Vidi, the Battery along with harbor front... all wonderful walks on a picture perfect day.  I'll annotate these days more when I am not uploading posts via satellite and can add more pictures & text easily.

We boarded the Prince Albert II about 1pm on Friday.  St. John's is in the Newfoundland time zone, and it is 1.5 hrs ahead of Eastern Time.... so 2.5 hrs ahead of Texas time.  The night before boarding it has rained for about 10 hours and for sure the weather pattern was changing.  Once upon the ship the 3pm sailing was pushed back to 8:00 pm due to the wind, and sadly our first destination, L'anse aux Meadows, was cancelled due to the high wind and north swell bearing down on our planned course.  Plan B was to turn south and do some of the itinerary in reverse.  The small port of Argentia and some historic ruins there, then then Ramea Islands followed by Gros Morne National Park in the north, and finally returning south to the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon before resuming our original schedule toward Nova Scotia and eventually New York City on August 25th.

The photo is of port side in Argentia of the ship and one of her moorings.

Written at noon, Sunday, August 17th, 2008.

I am heading to France in a month.  Well, not the motherland, but one of the last vestiges of her colonial past, the isles de la Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.  These small islands are the only remnants of the empire of New France that extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains.  Along the way I'll circle Newfoundland and touch parts of Nova Scotia slowly heading for New York City on the maiden voyage of Silversea's PRINCE ALBERT II, their new expedition ship.  My last such adventure was onboard Quark Expedition' PROFESSOR MULTANOVSKIY in February of 2007.  Here are the two ships oceans apart and at somewhat similar scale:

The PROFESSOR MULTANOVSKIY is 256 ft. and the PRINCE ALBERT II is 354 ft.  Tonnage wise the PAII is just shy of four times the PM.  The crew to passenger ratio of the PM is 1:2.4 has been cut in half at 1:1.2 on the PRINCE ALBERT II.  The latter carrying a maximum of 132 passengers.

I had an absolutely grand time on the PROFESSOR MULTANOVSKIY, and I expect a lot more from this new ship, PRINCE ALBERT II.  For those that followed along with me on the last trip, I'll be doing the same routine this time as well.  Daily dispatches from the ship and perhaps even a few photos along the way.

The first stop after boarding in St. Johns, Newfoundland will be at L'Anse aux Meadows ("Jelly Fish Cove") where Leif Ericsson landed a thousand years ago.  Inasmuch as I visited the town (Eyrarbakki) in southern Iceland last year, where Bjarni Herjólfsson lived, who had sold his boat to Leif and given him some directions to the land west of Greenland that he accidentally  discovered (but did not land on) when he was trying to find Greenland in the year 985.  Columbus knew all of this, now you do too.  More to come....

A few weeks ago I finished a one week photography workshop put on by Jay Maisel (of Spring Street in New York City) within the parameters of the venue offered by Vancouver Workshops in British Columbia, Canada.  Jay still has me framing photos better in my mind.  I am grateful for that.  It was a week outside the envelope of my experience.  I need that too.  I have learned from that as it grinds against what is easy.

Vancouver offers a lot of easy shots for photography, not the least of which is Stanley Park on the western edge of the metropolis.  Here is my favorite sunset of the trip by the restaurant, Sequoia Grill (highly recommended).  I have posted some photos at this link.  Steve Ginn also posted his travel log here.  My thanks to Chris Ogden for organizing this trip, it was a superb learning experience.