I finally had enough time without Internet that I wrote about the past year.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KS33OORXxTkxBktkolo4rbifPPcNdy7n-OTpz0tNsYk/edit?usp=drivesdk

Enjoy!

And if you need something to read look up the books of Miriam Lancewood.

Offices where it was written:

Along the Rio Neuquén

And here as well laying on the plastic with one foot up in the air in my stretchy band, the other end of the band around the back of my head. The keyboard held against my raised leg and the phone resting below that in the hip crease.

And in or near the drain pipes of highway 40!

Maybe the only place I'll get writing done. We'll see.

Until next time!

About another year from now.

(A komainu)

Here's the text on Google docs!

Enjoy.

First I went to Bansko, Bulgaria via Slovenia (to meet Bozena) then visit the Bansko Nomad Fest, where I stayed for 10 days or so before flying to Barcelona for EthBarcelona.

Then I went to Toulouse via a Buddhist Retreat Center in the Pyrenees (met Frances), took a train to Arcachon, and visited the coastal pine forests during a heat wave and briefly swam in the Atlantic, before taking the train back to Toulouse and then flying to Dubrovnik.

Then I bicycled back to Sofia over the Accursed Mountains (took a train and bus in Kosovo and to North Macedonia, and a train in Bulgaria) to spend more time with Mariana, who I met at Bansko.

Then I went to the Black Sea by bike and train (met Betsy and Lazar) and then to the European Rainbow Gathering in the mountains about 80km from Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Then I returned to Sofia and then to Bansko for a few nights and then back to Sofia and then began making my way to Mantova, Italy to meet Heather. From there I bicycled to Genoa and took trains to Orange (near Avignon) and joined the last three days of the Ecotopia Bicycle Tour.

Then I took a Flix Bus from Marseille to Barcelona and a train & bicycle up into the hills to meet Lea. Then I came back to the coast near Tarragona and caught a train from Cambrils to Valencia.

Along the coast south of Valencia I met Abby, and we bicycled together for ten days (three days of which Lilly also rode with us) to a cave where Abby was going to house sit for a week or so after I left.

Then I bicycled and took a train to Madrid before flying to Dubai, where I had a 21-hour layover so I took a bus for two hours to Abu Dhabi to visit Saad/Mike before catching the next flight to Taipei.

In Taipei, I stayed with Malcolm from couchsurfing and warmshowers for four nights during the mandatory quarantine for new arrivals still in effect at the time. And I’m currently very slowly bicycling around Taiwan.

So that is a fair amount of the where and the how. Very little about the why or about how things felt and nothing about what, if anything, might have been learned or about what my plans for the future might be as a result.

A lot of that story can come out from the pictures which I’ll include links to here soon.

I suppose I could do as I did last time, and include selected pictures in this post. . . but I think a lot of what is going on this time is forgetting and including pictures will not help forgetting. Forgetting is one reason I took so long to write this update. I wanted life to be boring and uneventful and a lot of the emotional content far in the past. And so it is.

And there’s not much (emotion?) left to be honest. Just today I saw that I could go back to LA from Taipei on 21 November for $350. Rather unbelievable that it’s that inexpensive to get back there.

And then? Back to the old rut / enjoyable routine? That might be fun for a while. Really hard to say.

At any rate those are some things I’m pondering. I do like the ecotopia bicycle tour a lot. I might like to spend more time with them and time my Schengen entry some year so I can spend more time with them.

I can’t really say I’ve failed this time.

I’ve met more people, made some new friends. I’m just not feeling very enthusiastic or driven. That’s not horrible. It can be pleasant and relaxing.

Perhaps I’ll get into reading more and that will be my new occupation.

Most likely I’ll flail around a bit as usual until the next avenue becomes more clear.

To get to this point though, the point of writing this, certain progress has been made. In forgetting, in getting through procrastinating, in changing habits, at least for now. I mean I was playing a lot of polytopia not that long ago. And more recently I’ve begun to read again.

Not sure where I’ll find the next exciting adventure.

Now, you’ll probably guess I _was_ organizing my travels around meeting women. For better or worse at the moment I seem to not really care (about meeting women?) and I don’t know how or if I can change that.

I did just reinstall the dating apps after a brief break and message a few earlier today and have some friendly responses. I did have one date in Taipei maybe four weeks ago.

Part of the issue may be that while I like Taiwan well enough I’m not thinking I’ll stay here.

And on the off chance I meet another bicycling nomad, I suppose that’s why I took a look at the apps again.

It would be good to spend more time lifting weights and doing calisthenics. It might be nice to be back at the UCSB pool.

I’ll just leave it at that for now. I don’t know what’s next. I do have a ticket to Vietnam for 30 December.

If you want to follow my travels more in real time, look me up on the polarsteps app.

Until next time!

Colin

If you do look at the photos as I just did again you’ll notice that Abby (who took many of the photos in the second file) was one of the best things that I found on this trip. I haven’t been doing much to keep up the relationship now that that trip is over though. I don’t know if more will happen there or not. But our trip together was the most meaningful part of the last five months I think. Time with Mariana was also very meaningful and I could say more about that. She gave me some very helpful feedback and an interesting example of a way to be in the world. I’ve thought about including a letter she wrote to me here. Because it says a lot. And it informed my actions going forward and Abby and I studied that letter several times—

I could also include a link to the love song playlist. . . First made in response to one Efrat sent me when I was still in Israel.

Yeah. What happens next. Do I really have no intentions? Abby is awesome but I don’t seem to be in love. Not yet at least.

(The above was a first attempt at writing about the time period, I made another more successful effort here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-XtmpzypNovHNuBq8_TPnxjQZmXLGyXwgqYBtuG6yd8/edit?usp=drivesdk )

And to give you an idea of where this is going:

That was a little less than three months ago.

Seems far longer.

I bicycled south and camped near Rishon LeTsyon. My first night in the hammock in three weeks.

The following day, I bicycled most of the day and then, after dark in the rain, Tamara (a cyclist & runner and swimmer met on Bumble) picked me up in Beit Kama, put my bike on her bike rack and then I rode most of the way to Elat with her and her coworker John (an American). John is a bit of a motorhead and used to write a blog called The Driver’s Headspace. He hadn’t even started college yet I believe and was doing research at Tamara’s marine biology lab in Elat.

I spent my first night in the desert in the lee of a bush and the next day moved into an Airbnb/hostel sort of place because the wind was intense and I decided to stay in Elat a week for the weather to get better and to see who I could meet.

I met one person from Dahab (on the Red Sea coast in Egypt/ Sinai) via Hinge—I have yet to meet her in person but we’ve kept in touch and if I get to Thailand in the winter there’s a chance to meet her in Bangkok. I met a British/Israeli woman at the hostel who has a place in a village in France I might stay at should I ever head that way (Fresnes-Sur-Apance, between Zurich and Paris). I met the two Moldovans who worked at the hostel (Ann was tall, beautiful, graceful, helpful, and friendly—). I met Tamara and a bit of her family and we went on a bicycle ride together one morning. And that same afternoon we went to her marine biology lab and I went swimming there.

You can see the runs and rides from that time (and some of the photos) on Strava.

When my week was up, I rode north. Finally I was riding again. The first night was in a date plantation. The second night was at Tzukim with Jasmin from Tinder (just friends). That was a very good meeting—except that she smokes a fair amount. I knew that would be an issue with meeting people in Israel so I was sort of testing my tolerance for that since she was upfront about it. But I really can’t deal with it in spite of us getting along well otherwise—so I left.

By that time I had also continued to speak with Efrat from Tel Aviv met via OkCupid. She seemed to want to bicycle with me to Haifa, so that was an interesting possibility though I would have been pleasantly surprised if that came to pass.

In addition, by that point I started to feel that I had plenty of people to meet if I wanted to and if I went back to Tel Aviv, so I was feeling a bit less lonely and rootless maybe than I had in my first two weeks in Israel.

Plus, once I’m in my slow-travel-by-bicycle mode I seem to keep relatively content socially vs when I’m waiting out cold weather indoors in a city. Though it’s hard to say what exactly causes the feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness to flare up. I’ll get them after enough solo wandering as well so just bicycling around in nice weather with books to read isn’t really enough for contentment either in the long run.

I seem to need to have some possibility of deeper in-person relationships to look forward to really be at peace.

At the moment I have a few things socially to look forward to: (1) possibly meeting a woman in west Slovenia (Bovec) around June 15. (2) the Bansko Nomad Fest in Bansko (west Bulgaria), (3) EthBarcelona possibly after that, (4) a woman in Turkey to meet and maybe bicycle with after that (5) my mom to visit in Iceland after that (6) and Efrat from Tel Aviv to video call with from time to time. Also I’ve still messaged Daphne from time to time when I come across something she might find interesting, so that’s another nice bit of continuity from the past.

However Saad has gone silent. My California connections are weakening. I’ve still talked with Andrea from time to time and that has been nice. So some connections have faded and new ones have formed but I am primarily a solo traveler for the most part here—it's just me and the voices in my phone I suppose.

And I’m lucky to still have my parents and even one grandparent to talk to also!

And there’s the relationship with the land—I found Crete was a very good place for me. I’m now in Venice (my third day here? seems longer), a place I’ve long wanted to spend more time in. And the land brings forth friends too—In Crete I met a 22 year-old cyclist from Belgium and bicycled & ferried with her for three days before she split off to head to Turkey, and I keep in touch with her via the app Polarsteps now. And at the campground at the mouth of the Samaria Gorge in Crete I met a friendly therapist closer to my age, Cristina from Austria, so should I head toward her small town (Wölbling), that’s another possible connection.

And needing to write this up is also a kind of company. I could let this slide I suppose—But I don’t seem to want to let everything fade into oblivion.

Also, in Israel, I got to walk with Anat along the Golan Heights Trail for three days, and we’re still in touch. The only one I’ve managed to consider a lover for a while was Efrat—And I did get to visit my oldest Israeli friends Gilad and Galia and Ela (and now they have two more children besides Ela) up in Yodfat.

And there was a state department employee who I had a great phone conversation with when I was staying in Jerusalem—and had I stayed in Jerusalem longer there were more people to meet—but I left early to go walk with Anat.

So, socially, I’m not starving. I’m grateful for that.

Much of the relationships are phone-mediated. Between the whatsapp messages, Signal, Messenger, the various dating apps, and video calls—I just walked with the woman from Turkey (Her name is Tansuk, which has a good meaning I’m forgetting) using the whatsapp video call to share the streets & bridges of Venice with her. Turns out some people set their location to Venice to meet people who are here—

So I’ve been working with what comes via phone & apps in some cases vs. what the land brings, but not always (like in Crete with Cristina from Austria and Sein from Belgium).

And instead of writing this straightaway I’ve spend quite a lot of time procrastinating. Using the phone and my internet connection.

Ah yes, there was also some conversation about meeting the son of a San Diego friend (she, my friend, now lives on Hawaii Island) for a bicycle trip in Europe soon and we chatted on the phone about that when I was in Eilat.

Just having people to talk to especially those who have some connection to a shared past helps a good amount to give me a sense of meaning—

Because I think I’m on a somewhat magical path connected with the great mystery as I wander in this way.

I was also able to get back in communication with Heather from North Carolina now (formerly from Santa Barbara) who is now walking the Appalachian Trail.

I think Israel may be too difficult for me to make a long-term home—so that is one realization from spending 2.5 more months there and getting to visit the south and the north and see my old friends and make new ones there.

Crete was a very nice change. Lots of room, lots of empty, rocky coastline, empty roads in the south, easy to find places to hang my hammock in olive groves or other pleasant places. It got hot though, and I found someone to visit in Slovenia (via Fairytrail), and the path of most interest and excitement seemed to lead to Venice, so I rode a 36-hour ferry from Patras to Venice.

I got a room on the ferry for an extra 85 euros. And the room came with a roommate from Amsterdam who had just finished law school and one of his masters degrees was in European Constitutional Law. His other is in Tech Market Regulation (that is the one he plans to pay the bills with). He had figured out how to get a special ferry pass from interrail, so his bunk had only cost him an extra 40 euros.

Should I say any more about my Tel Aviv friend Efrat? She has asked to be notified once I finish this. There’s really no one I’ve ever met like her. Nor would I have ever imagined meeting and loving someone like her. Each one of these relationships is very much like visiting and attempting to be at home in another country—and her country is a fairly different one than mine.

But it could work. It was partly her enthusiasm for the the show “Lives in the Wild” that might have made her interested in someone like me. One of the first things we did together was watch two of her favorite episodes. (The one about the guy who made himself a tiny hobbit hole house in a remote spot in Oregon near a creek and mountains, and the one about the couple who lived on a fairytale (purple & blue) art sculpture & garden built on top of discarded fish and oyster farm floats in an inlet in remote British Columbia.)

She kept hinting that she might leave her nest (a top-floor apartment among and under tall treetops and surrounded by other plants she grew herself and with her two cat family members and near her other Tel Aviv family and friends) to try traveling with me, but ultimately I realized I needed to go to her to get to be with her and so I did.

And naturally we had communication issues, misunderstandings, things we wished the other did differently, and at any rate we’re still talking and both of us are still meeting other people. So different though we are (she prefers to wake up at 2pm and go to bed at 2am or so & though she smokes less than Jasmin did, she has no intention of stopping either), there is some underlying mutual appreciation & value I think—I like some of what she has and vice versa? Or I’m just a lonely guy and she’s a friendly and responsive and appealing face to talk to on my phone? No—it is more than that—she's very affectionate and enthusiastic and open. She's good to be with. And we have a similar kind of emotional sensibility and appreciation for certain writers. She had me listening to _the loves of Judith / the four meals_ by Meir Shalev. The Israeli crow is a theme.

Every partner teaches me in her own way how to be better for them and (as a result) for the next one—and there’s a chance I actually do get better for my next partner from all of these shorter-term ones.

There are mistakes I’ve made and things I’ve put them through that future lovers will probably get to avoid. And some of the things they’ve had to deal with, well, the others still will also (my features rather than solvable bugs—like my ugly toenails and one fingernail, like how I don’t listen to music in the background and prefer silence, and how I nearly always wake up by 5 am). Most of all, for the moment, it is nice to have someone to video call with who knows me a bit and who is happy to talk and to listen.

I guess that’s all I’ll say about that.

I think I want a longer-term relationship with one person and possibly with a place/land/region as well. However, I was lucky to have a date with Athena on Crete who introduced me to the term solo polyamory, which seems like something worth contemplating.

I’m curious who I could meet if I travel like this in Japan, in Thailand, in northern Europe. Maybe I’ll be to some degree like Morgan Painter Hatch / footloosefemme who straight up labels herself a “solo traveler” (though there’s often a guy or two around).

I’m afraid I may not be thinking about what I’m doing relationship-wise very much and instead will just figure things out with whoever also feels like using their time with me to figure out where they might be being called to go as well.

There’s already a fair amount to narrow down the possibilities. Like no biological children. At least from me. No smoking. A preference for no cars.

As for what positive gets created from interacting with me—And what I hope gets created when I spend time with her, well I’ve got a bit of that on the dating profiles I suppose.

I think it is a bit about finding a home in a person. But what if I become one of these relatively exuberant people who sort of makes a home wherever they go?

Enough of that. Perhaps at the Bansko Nomad Fest there will be some further discussion of relationships among people freed from living in a particular place. But for now it is just a lot of words and my thoughts about the possibilities seem a lot less relevant than just meeting someone and seeing if there is any attraction or interest in finding a way to spend more time together.

Were I a theorist about human relationships perhaps really thinking through what is going on here, writing about it, becoming known for my ideas, meeting with others who also explore this stuff more thoroughly—that could lead to some interesting romantic connections.

But I tried that in the past with “the experience of meaning in life” and I don’t really want to do that with relationship, with intimate relationships.

I’d rather just work with who is here for me, who is responsive to me, and who I respond to—

To an extent it really is just whoever comes along and has the openness and intent. Then we meet and see how far we manage to travel together.

Yeah. Not a lot more to say there.

Ok. What about the land and all the pictures I took and any disasters I dealt with and any reflections on a country’s culture or how it was to be a bicycle nomad in those places?

And what about all the time I spent staring at my phone, or listening to audiobooks, or maybe even reading something?

That’s all a bit less interesting than the relationship end of things perhaps to me at the moment.

I think it’s time to call an end to this update. I’ve covered here roughly what’s happened and some upcoming plans.

Maybe I’ll sort through some photos tomorrow and see if any stand out.

Until next time,

❤️,

Colin

Download pdf of 380 photos (176 mb):

• Mega or

• Box.com

Strava has some of the photos and comments.

Polarsteps.com/colinleath has the more recent path and comments.

YouTube has a few videos from the past three months too.

Note that one of the first photos in the pdf is of the receipt for the redmi note 11 and redmi buds pro (bought in VAT-tax-free Eilat). That converts to less than $300 USD for the phone most of the photos were taken with and for the noise cancelling (anc) earbuds, phone case, charger. A very few of the photos were taken with my Samsung fold 2 (see, for example, the second bathing suit photo of me around page 100). So it would seem the redmi note 11 does alright. I wanted a lighter phone than my old note 9, better earbuds for phone calls, and the note 9 screen had burn-in. The Redmi note 11 has two sim slots, an sd card slot, a headphone jack, and perhaps the best battery life I've ever had in a phone, but it is not water resistant to 1.5m depth like most flagship phones these days.

One more note: in Israel, effectively unlimited mobile data costs less than $18/mo. In Crete with Vodaphone I think I paid 40 euro for 30gb for one month. In Italy I went in an SME store in an American-style big box shopping area (with a light rail stop that connects to Venice) and got a 70gb/ mo plan for 1 euro. And to renew it costs ten euros/month. And it should work anywhere in Europe. It's with Windtre. So far it has worked quite well and better than the WiFi in the Venice Airbnbs. Apparently I can even call the US and many other countries without using VoIP/Google voice, but I have yet to try that.

So it seems the US is rather behind in mobile phone plan competition and innovation. That said, perhaps there's some catch with this Windtre deal i have yet to discover.

So there it is, the work of December 26 to February 20. It’s more cluttered than previous maps becuase I marked my rest spots on there also and didn’t start changing the color of the marker until the end. Were I consistent, night camps would be green and day beds yellow.

So I finally left my friend’s hospitality. It was time to go, I could tell. I was slightly afraid to set out on my own. He encouraged me to make myself at home as long as I wanted. Yet I sensed an annoyance in response to a question or two of mine about his holiday activities. And to be fair, I sort of expected I’d get annoying at some point. I am or have been the kind of guest who through laziness or fear of the unknown or avoidance of the exigencies of aimless travel might overstay a welcome and then use the resulting tension as a motivation to depart.

And he had another couchsurfer coming through, a woman from Germany who liked to surf (waves). He was cool with three people in that tiny room. Me not so much. I did some odd things like bought a ladder so I could climb up the shelf above the door and potentially sleep there. But upon testing out that idea, decided against it.

In addition, this was the time of Omicron. My friend had been being a social butterfly, heading to various christmas parties and visits with friends. “If anyone would get it, he would,” crossed my mind. (Turns out he definitely caught something harsh that I avoided as he reported a few days later.)

So, early on the 26th I packed up. said goodbye and set out. He said, “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” I couldn’t be sure. Possibly I’d stay away only until the new couchsurfer left.

Possibly I’d go to the east coast of the UAE and then cross into Oman, and then head to Salalah as my one Dubai bumble date (an airplane pilot from Spain) had suggested I do. So I took everything, though I forgot my black diamond carbon Z hiking pole, left up on the ledge I had considered sleeping on.

I rode about 65km that first day. I booked it over the flyovers (no bicycles allowed) past many skyscrapers and survived. Stopped in Sharja to ask about booster shots (not here, she said, maybe Dubai or Abu Dhabi). I had a goal in mind—an open space away from buildings, roads and air pollution, with some trees. And I made it to the place I had in mind as the sun set. After getting some food and water I found a road that went away from the coast. There was a youth road cycling group out exercising, trailed by a protective police truck. Nice to see some other cyclists. I scoped out the empty / more wild landscape to the north of the road, and eventually schlepped the bike through dunes and across a packed sand road to where there were some trees and not many tracks of offroad vehicles.

It was very nice to be in a relatively peaceful place alone for the first time in a while.

Now, what is the point of all this wandering? Part of it is a running away from things I didn’t like. That doesn’t really lead to much of a story line.

But at the most simple level, living this way prevents being stuck. Forces a degree of physical activity and forces encounters with new environments and people. Ideally I’ll become comfortable in more places. And Arabia was actually rather comfortable until I heard more of the perspective of longer-term women residents via my bumble dates mainly.

Forced vaginal inspections of women on departing flights from Qatar after an abandoned newborn was found in the airport for example. Risk of imprisonment in Oman due to a few school parents percieving a poster advertising a fundraiser to be a political statement. Discrimination in prize money and respect against women participants in races. Rigged race results to allow particular imposters to win. Attempts to prioritize Omanis and Emiratis in employment (extended nepotism vs. a meritocracy), which on the plus side puts the colonialists in their place, but in practice harms entrepreneurs. Difficulties for women in progressing to the higher levels of business or technical positions.

But for an oblivious male western bicycle tourist it can feel relatively nice, though something is obviously lacking (freedom of speech, empowered women, what else? Non-geometric art?)

I met an interesting European—Raffi. Or Rafael Talbi Criado. The Europeans get 90 days visa-free upon entry to the UAE and this man seemed to specialize in travelling the world to warm places where he could live inexpensively and do long walking trips. At the time I met him he was camped in an uncompleted wildlife park not far from a neighborhood of primarily abandoned half-completed palaces. We talked in the sun for an hour or more. He recommended some places to visit. Malaysia in particular I believe. Philippines were inexpensive but too crowded in his opinion.

Here is the abandoned palace I explored before meeting him. Last I heard he was headed to Sudan.

I pedaled off to find a place to sleep. I went inland for a while, probably using satellite view to aim for some trees.

I did find thorn trees, which was a good thing. Since a rather intense storm came through. I believe I spent three nights here. I applied for my visa to Oman online, which cost about $50 for one month. In the night there was some disruption from motorheads who used vehicles that made a lot of noise as they drove about on the generally abandoned nearby road or in the desert.

I finally emerged from this spot after three nights / days of relatively little exercise. So far I had yet to establish much of an exercise routine when I was camped away from everyone and everything. So, this laying about is not exactly healthy. What did I do in those three days besides apply for a visa? My screenshots give some clues.

Watched the markets, read twitter, played with cryptocurrency (d)apps, studied Arabic in duolingo. I think I actually managed to swipe through all the women on Bumble in the UAE/ Dubai at one point. . . So, to be fair, passing the time somewhat aimlessly but not unenjoyably. And there was enough sun to keep my batteries charged between clouds and storms. And I cooked food from time to time.

Not every night did I manage to find trees. This night I had hung my hammock from these poles. I’m not far from a place I had swum the day before. This is just before Ras al Khaimah I believe. There is a Shiekh’s palace not far away (I’m facing it and the wall around it). and there is a friendly guy from Bangladesh who was making sure I didn’t camp in the grove of trees next to the palace. The palace is waterfront on an inlet.

I’m in the Al Jaziraah Al Jamra Ghost Village. I stopped in there to get out of the rain and wind for a brightID conference call to prove that I’m a human. I haven’t got further with brightID than that. . . and from the recent Eth Denver conference there was a yet another ID solution discussed among others (Disco). If you want to help me finish my BrightID connections (need two more), let me know. As with many of these things you might make some coins from completing the process. ProofOfHumanity.id is another. In any event, I was the only North American on the call, it being 2 pm here and 2 am there I think. So it was many people from India I think. . . well, all over. I think Latin America too? Philippines. It’s good to see how many people worldwide are learning to use blockchain dapps, and are able to make meaningful amounts of money from doing so from time to time. Here’s the newsletter reporting on some of eth denver.

This was actually a great spot where I stayed two nights, less than 3km from the ghost village a short walk from the Al Aswaq supermarket. I’m maybe 250m from the sea where I swam twice. People from the town nearby would walk and drive slowly along the coast here but no one bothered me. I did some jump rope and various other exercises. So managed to workout even though I wasn’t bicycling anywhere.

This is Jisal from Kerala. He said hello after I had replaced my chain near this shopping center in Ras Al Khaimah. I also had to buy more data for my Du Mobile sim. He offered to get me lunch but I was happy just to talk to him and his coworkers. They ran the kayak rental place on the inlet/ harbor that we are facing. Ahmed (or Iljas?) and Alex were also there. The chain I replaced thanks to Ashley’s example (I met him in Sicily) I’d been carrying the new chain for a while.

After that I went to a pharmacy / Amazon counter to pickup a new battery charger since my portable mini Olight one broke (the Olight ones do not seem to last long even if babied). Then I headed for the relatively wild places in the hills east of town and on the other side of the highway (and got food and water on the way).

Among the things I did while here for at least two nights was to browse the instagram of Teresie Hommersand, who bicycled from South Africa to the very north of Norway. After this I was finally heading into mountains for the first time since Sicily. I got a flat at some point the next day also.

The Omani guy in the middle paid for my oranges and a watermelon from this seller (Shukran/Thank you!). Like I said it can be quite comfortable being a traveler in Arabia. People both respect your privacy and are very hospitable and there’s plenty of room. He also introduced me to a kind of fruit I had not seen before. It was green and smooth skinned, like a tomatillo but had a pit I think. Watermelons in UAE were often not so good. Many were grown in Iran and some were good, of course, but until my time here I’d never really had white flavorless watermelon.

The roads here are very well graded. And have a wide shoulder as you can see.

On my way down the hill into Dibba, I got propositioned by a gay Emirati/Omani. At least that is my interpretation. A driver pulled over. I stopped to chat. Eventually he asked if I was gay. I said no but have friends who are. Then I asked if he was gay. . . I think he said no, or I said, “If you were you couldn’t tell me I guess.” And that’s about the extent of it.

On my way to my next stop I managed to buy another bicycle tube. There was an interesting historical sight (Al Bidya Mosque) but I got chased away by an over-aggressive wannabe guide.

My next camping spot was one of my favorite. A night on the rocks will make a hammock spot that much better, but it was also oddly fun to be sort of close to a night time hangout spot. So in spite of the nearby noises and vehicles slowly driving about (I was sleeping with my noise cancelling sony wh1000-xm4) I found it all somewhat comforting and cozy I think. For one night it was fine.

At this point in the journey a few things are happening. I’m getting closer to the Oman border which I need a negative PCR test to cross and perhaps a few other things. I got the visa (a number and a pdf by email). Technically you’re supposed to register at an oman health website and upload proof of vaccination and so on. Technically you’re supposed to have insurance to cover covid hospitalization. Technically you’re supposed to have a visa ahead of time. I think you could just show up with a negative covid test and take care of all the rest there, but certainly having done the visa paperwork online and then just telling them the number of the file made my life easier getting across.

I also need to time my days so that I cross within 10 days of the 10th of January. So the next day I began looking for places to get a covid test.

I had made an attempt to renew my UAE visa online, but I can’t figure out their system. Plus I think doing so would have cost $200? Therefore it was cheaper to cross to Oman. Oman is much bigger as well. And for another $50 I could stay another month in Oman. I think a third month would cost the same but the renewal would need to be done in person. I’d say Oman is more expensive for food and other products but not for rent. And overall I like Oman better.

The first town, Badya, seemed to be a no-go for the covid test. I showed up at a health center and by the time I’d figured out what was going on they had let in the quota for the day. You had to be in line at 830am I think.

But in the next town, Khor Fakkan, a pharmacist pointed me to a health center that was open all day. I met a friendly guy in the line who I afterwards ran into and he ended up getting me lunch at a restaurant he was just leaving. He left them some cash and told them to let me order whatever I wanted. . . so instead of chatting with him I talked to the Phillipinos and the Nepali who were there.

That was in the future though. First I had to pay for the test. They wouldn’t take cash. The woman in the office said my card had been declined when I saw that it hadn’t. So I called the phone number on the back of the credit card using google voice over my Du mobile sim data. A helpful guy answered, sounded American though it was midnight or later in most of the US. He’d have to reissue the card to cancel the charge, so not much good for me (how could I get a reissued card?). But what he did do was make a note I was out of the country (at least until September I said), which would make the card less likely to be declined. So, finally, I gave the office there the debit card for the account instead of the credit, and that time it went through.

In effect I think I paid $14 twice to get the covid test. So better than the $50 in Catania, and the Muscat airport test ($50?), and about the same as the prepaid Israel entry test.

So back to the other line. Then I get the test. And a helpful woman explains to me how to get the print out of the results the next day.

Success, maybe.

I go buy another bicycle tube at a shop nearby, then get offered lunch, eat, and then head off to try to find a nice place to spend the night. & to get food and water.

The Sharjah Resistance Monument. Many people were killed trying to defend the nearby port of Khor Fakkan from the Portugese in 1507.

The oil storage and export facilities. . .

So I keep going, through the city of Kalba and cross the border. You’ve got to pay some money to leave UAE. . .

I made it into Oman as the sun was setting. Immediately there was less stuff.

It was as if I had crossed into a remote part of north Mexico. There were ample roads, but any towns, mosques and buildings were small, and there weren’t many of those.

The stars were very visible once the moon went down.

Explaining the events of the previous night. As soon as I crossed into Oman, my Du Mobile sim no longer worked. So for about 48 hours I had no internet and managed to read a bit on my kindle. Unsure exactly what motivated me to make a video. But I think I had some setting on that made mini videos with each photo taken. . . perhaps that got me started? And no internet to distract me?

My second night in basically the same spot except I took the time to figure out how to hang off two nearby thorn (mesquite?) trees.

Popcorn

First swim in Oman. A friendly guy drove by a bit later on his way to help pull in some nets. Aside from that I think only two people, a couple, walked by the whole time I was here.

I stayed here two nights as well. . . I had gotten my data sim in the nearby town. It was Haji Mohammed Abdul Mannan whose employee sold me the OmanTel sim and put the first 30GB on. I believe the cost was $50 about. Here’s a photo he WhatsApped to me:

He is from Bangladesh. I think his employee may have been as well. And he’d been in Oman for 20 years I think. Maybe longer. Shinas Souq was the town.

Sahel waved me over as I was cycling by after I managed to leave the previous spot. He is from Shinas too. One of the boys is his son. They were camped out down the hill to my right. It certainly appears to me from this that iPhones take better photos than my Samsungs. . . They gave me some juice, water, and some sort of corn or potato puff snack. Shukran!

I like the Arab graveyard aesthetic. A pile of stones and a small slab if that.

This is a few nights later, the thorn trees in the moonlight.

It appears I didn’t take photos of the coastal towns. I liked the coast north of Muscat a lot, however. Much of it was similar in style to the ghost town I attended that BrightID conference call from. Smaller, shorter buildings. Much more human scale than the palace fad in the UAE. A lot more like desert towns in north Mexico.

The coast road often wound through these old human-scale neighborhoods. Although it actually didn’t wind that much—just that rather than going straight south there were multiple little shifts to the left and right between buildings with zero setback. So—the kind of narrow relatively enclosed roads you might see in old european towns in flat places.

And there are usually speedbumps everywhere. The ruler of Oman apparently took reducing traffic deaths seriously and pretty nearly every road that is not a highway is very traffic-calmed with frequent speedbumps. They are effective. See the video of the ride into Muscat below for an example.

Where I’m going with this is that while I was struck by these coastal settlments—while I liked them alot—it was obvious that they were being destroyed. Newer developments had been built further inland, and many of the older structures closer to the sea were being demolished—or were abandoned. Though many were still lived in.

At first I thought it was some precaution being taken in preparation for rising sea levels. But finally, after coming upon yet another washed out road, a road that used to cross a coastal inlet, I realized there had been a destructive storm at some point relatively recently.

I was offered a ride as I was schlepping my bicycle along yet another sand-covered former road around one of these inlets. The driver helped me get my bike in the back of his pickup and carried me on my way. He might have taken me around three such inlets. His name was Achmad I think. He was an air traffic controller and worked in Muscat and had worked for Americans on one of their airbases as well I think.

He had been here when the storm came. It was a typhoon, just this past October. He went out to check on his car during the storm and a cinderblock wall fell over and pinned him, breaking one of his legs and I think it got him somewhere else too—he still walked with a limp.

People had died in that storm. None of his family though.

He was headed to Muscat that night and offered a ride in if I didn’t mind waiting for him to leave later. I said thank you and decided to take the time to explore since I had another day to get there.

There were interesting things to see—

There was another one of these arundo cane boats across the street. I saw several others further along the coast road too—

There is some styrofoam hidden in there—

Is it possible that the same day I got the ride from Achmad, that I stopped to take a break later in the day and this man found me? There may have been a night in between. I’d learned by that point to hide if I didn’t want hospitality and at first my thought was to turn him down and make progress to Muscat. But it was midday. It was hot. I *was* tired. And I was wondering how to get some good food I was excited about eating so I could stay motivated to keep riding. . . And he was friendly. So I followed him on my bicycle.

He let me into a large room next to his carport which had walls lined with low couches around a carpet facing a small table with a model of an ancient human or mule-powered irrigation device (for getting water out of a well and into ditches that ran from the well to nearby small fields). On the wall behind the table was a large flat-screen tv which he turned on. There was a large bathroom with a shower next to that.

He did not speak much english. But communicated for me to stay there and he left for a while and came back with a plate of saffron (?) rice with seasoned chicken on the top with some sauce. And a bowl of fruit and some dates too. He left me for a bit to eat. He came back later with one of his small grandkids who shook my hand. He made it clear I could stay the night. I said I would stay until 4pm and see—but that I hoped to continue today.

After that he left me alone and after turning off the tv and eating, I found a convenient charger plugged into the wall and plugged my phone in. I set an alarm for 4pm (it was close to 2), and took a nap.

I woke before the alarm, and he appeared soon after. I asked him about the model of the irrigation device. In the process of attempting to explain he took me out to the well in his court yard. Then he offered to show me his cow and we walked further back past small fields of grass irrigated by ditches. There was one cow and one bull and maybe a goat too. The bull was big and beautiful and peaceful and tan- (or brown blond) and white-colored, and we petted it on the nose, or let it lick our hands—I can’t remember, but it was big and close and we touched. He showed me what he fed his animals—he (or his wife?) cooked food for them—in the pot below.

Then they put this mash in a pile and later took from that to feed them.

I believe the mash comes at least partly from from what they grow in their small fields, some of which might have been sorghum? Looks like they might buy some corn too to add to the mix.

So I left soon, but not before a neighborhood kid took the photo of us two. Was his name Omar? (my host?) I’m not sure. But I could tell he was proud of his country and happy to share it. And his life appears to me to be a good one. I think I saw two of his sons, one of his grandsons. I’d guess he had 10 children or something astonishing like that—but at least somewhat common there. He seems healthy and happy, and probably not over 55?

The neighborhood kid rode off with me on a ratty excuse of a BMX bike with those wheels consisting of three or four big plastic spokes. It may not even have had a seat. It probably didn’t have brakes. It wasn’t very fast. One reason for its lack of speed is that the tires were somehow made of metal. I’m now kicking myself very hard for not having taken a photo of his vehicle. Were they layers of tin cans somehow wired on shingle-fashon?

So while slow, one advantage of his metal-clad wheels (aside from no worries about flats) was that he could drift and slide on the road at will. So he’d skid this way and that just for fun. Yeah, so anyway, how would you attach metal to a bmx bicycle rim so you could ride on them with no worries. A quick internet search wasn’t helpful.

I found a place to hang my hammock before dark and then got up super early the following morning. I doubt it was that much before 5am but it was full dark when I started and only 30min or 1hr later did light begin to appear. Here is a video from once it began to get light. The wind was in my favor as the air traffic controller friend had warned—

So I made it to Muscat by 11 or so. I couldn’t check into my airbnb until 3pm. But I found a place to nap in a wild alleyway between high walls behind a tall shrub (it was still very windy in exposed places). Then by 2pm or so the next day I met Daphne. Alas there are no pictures of us together. . . perhaps not a promising sign since we did manage to meet again the 18th to the 20th of February as well, and no picture then either! I attempted to once or twice but she protested about her own appearance not being up to it. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Feels like I’m not though at the moment. Let’s just say relationships with women far more busy and less responsive than me are difficult. They’re painful because for at least some multiple of hours in the past they were far more responsive and open to me and free with their time and themselves than I ever experience with anyone else for the vast vast majority of my life. So they do that, they focus their whole being on you and then the bright intensity of their focus moves on. . . and here I am. But what can I do.

She did let me try these moon shoes (I’m not sure what they are called). And took this picture, so that counts for something maybe.

The next day I set out for the wilderness once more but not before one more Bumble lunch date with Ece (sort of like “Asia,” she’s from Turkey), who was growing a marketing business here but with the added challenge of not being Omani or male. She suggested that Americans have more privileges in their business activities in Oman than most nationalities. I think we both had a good time but did not manage to meet again so far.

[So yes (noting I went from one date to another) anyone interacting with me romanitcally needs to protect themselves from the bright intensity of my focus moving on. . . How all this resolves itself in the long run remains to be seen. I think open communication about what we’re doing continues to be the best approach. If I end up moving on, she would know and vice versa. The less either of us is motivated to look elswere or to mess with the apps the more mature and by default committed the relationship is? Or is the best thing ENM. . . “Ethical Non Monogamy” and the communication that requires (one possibly helpful article with a TED talk link)?

From my experience, if I’m with someone and see her every day, I’m not that motivated to pursue or even pay much attention to others. It has been pretty easy to transfer and resolve any attraction or desire that might come up during the day with my long term partner who has been with me for so long and with whom I’ve gone through so much. We’ve both accepted a lot of and know a lot of each other by that point. If someone amazing came on strong and I wasn’t turned off by that that might be harder, but most amazing people are fairly respectful of existing relationships I think. The difficulty is when I’m not with my partner for long periods of time (months) and when I’m less certain of her attatchment to me—then I’m more motivated to look elsewhere too.]

I bicycled out of Muscat, which reminded me of LA in how relatively car-centric it seemed, found a LuLu Hypermarket, got food, got water, and then went up this hill behind this town and finally I was free of urbanization once more.

That was the view from my hammock, further out along the road above Al Hamriyah. I was half-hoping Ece might come visit me so I sent her that photo—she didn’t make it. But to my everlasting surprise, Daphne did.

Phenomenal. Now let me spoil some of the story here. Or should I just tell it bit by bit? I hope it’s not over between us, but one never knows about these things. And unless someone gives up their old life to wander around with me, or I give up my wandering life to stay where they have settled, a lasting partnership is not so easy. At any rate, after much back and forth and a few mildly dramatic whatsapp episodes, we reunited on the 18th of January and separated again when I left Oman early on February 20. As of this writing, we continue to give each other kudos on Strava from time to time, (or at least I do to her) so that is something. Lol.

What happened next is I went quite slowly for a little while, staying multiple nights in the same spot instead of moving on from each one after just one night. Until, that is, some plans solidified in my mind. Yes, I would leave for Israel when Daphne planned to leave for Israel! The 20th of February. She planned to go there for the Tel Aviv Marathon on the 25th.

I had wanted to go to Israel even when I was still in Sicily. But it had been closed to tourists at the time. And I hadn’t been able to get a booster shot which appeared to be an entry requirement.

Daphne had told me of a place to get a booster shot. And I was successful doing that on my way to meet Ece before I left Muscat.

So once I had time to think about Daphne more and what to do next. . . I had already thought about meeting her when she went to Israel and using her going there as an excuse for me to go there (instead of just running out my visa time in Oman and the UAE where the weather would soon be getting hotter). The new thought was why not go at the same time as her on the same flights (which she had sent me a screenshot of)?

So I got the ticket for the same flights she was on. . . And let her know. . . (maybe more on that later). And then the challenge became to get to Salalah in time to get back to Muscat somehow to leave on the 20th.

(And, if possible, to get to Salalah in time to get back to Dubai to visit Saad before heading to Israel. I was forgetting that part of the drama. Getting the tickets from Muscat basically meant it was a lot less likely I’d see Saad in Dubai again in person for quite some time. Which I had really hoped to do. [Spoiler alert] We never did meet again before I left Arabia; attempts to video call before I left failed; and I thought his hate of zionism meant I was shunned for now being in enemy territory, but after a week or so in Israel we did get a video call in when he was briefly less busy one weekend. Which was good. I was lucky to have got to walk with him for a week before he got his new demanding and well-paying position. Yeah, he’s now yet another busy person who doesn’t have all the time in the world. Though I believe he plans to free himself for his next adventure by the end of the year.)

Going from near Muscat to Salalah by bicycle and then back by bus or plane in time meant doing 60km a day every day to cover about 1900 km with some buffer room.

Now there’s generally always a way to get a ride if needed in these situations but I did want to go the distance on my own if possible. So that was pretty much the end to being super lazy. I could only be mildly lazy until I got to Salalah. And that wasn’t so bad—

I stayed two nights in the spot above.

Charlotte and Jordi. They bicycled from France to Turkey, through Iran, and took a ferry from Banda Abbas to Dubai. And here they are in Oman. Currently in Uganda.

At this point I’m quite tired of working on this travelogue, so I put the remaining photos in one PDF of about 86 mb (same file is at both sites in case one does not work for you):

• Box.com

• Mega.nz

I’ll now make some notes on those photos (numbers may be off by one page):

3. shows wild mustard greens. Perhaps the only wild greens I harvested and cooked in Oman?

19. I found two large oysters which I cooked in a fire that had been left burning in the underpass. There were many fish in the Oman Sea. . . huge schools like I’ve seen in national geographic photos but the water was shallower. Plus many smaller multicolored fish as well. I didn’t get to swim again in such a good spot. And the water is warm. It is comfortable to stay in a long time.

22. This bird had appeared to be roadkill. It was on its side. I touched it and went to get out my camera. When I came back it was sitting up. There were many quite colorful birds in Oman.

23. The road system is mostly massively overbuilt. In this case I had a massive unused freeway under construction to cycle on. Near Duqm there was a dangerous stretch (no shoulder) between Duqm and the oil refinery, but aside from that Oman has some of the best bicycling road conditions I’ve found.

28. Used a dollar bill as a tire boot due to this gash.

31. There are prayer rooms usually with water, toilets, and often showers spaced throughout the desert. This man encouraged me to wash there. And to walk up the dune with him. He gave me a chunk of mashed dates and a bottle of water (better than the water from the truck in his mind and I agree in this case). I didn’t shower there but rinsed off at the next one I found further along that was in better shape.

37. I think the southern cross is visible, but I may need to double check that. (when double checking I think it is not)

39. There is a video of this mouse on Youtube:

46. Monir found me next to a grocery store in mid afternoon in the town of Hiji (or maybe it is called Mahout?) He offered me a place to rest, brought me fruit and cooked me some of the best fish I’ve eaten. I rested, but around four pm got out to make a bit more progress. Shukran Monir! He runs an electronics store almost next to the Al Baraka market.

47. There was I viper under a rock rather close to me when I woke up the next morning. Something to keep in mind.

136. The room I stayed in in Salalah (hosted by a Palestinian man who can never go back to his family’s land in Palestine. Fadi is his name. He runs a furniture store. The cost of the room is $10/ night or close to that—so he’s almost like a couchsurfing host!

145-147. The rooms I stayed in in Tel Aviv ($500 for the first 6 nights and $900 for the next 14 nights, the most I’ve paid in rent for years!!). In addition food is more expensive here than any place I’ve ever been. But it’s been good to be here.

[I neglected to make any comments about the the last Omani who hosted me for tea, milk, and dates one morning. The milk was from his own cow. One of his daughters spoke English to me and explained things more. He had ten children I think. Afterwards he went out to the beach with me where that big black rock mountain is, and then to the mosque nearby. It was Saturday. Shukran! I didn't note down his name. Ahmed? They had hosted a group of cyclists sometime in the previous year too.]

My last host has let me check out before 6pm. It is 3:35pm now. By four I should quit this and make sure I can get out in time.

It is a rather cold and gloomy day to be heading back out of doors, but after Wednesday things look good (it is Saturday now).

The Israel and Tel Aviv story I’ll save more for the next epistle.

I went back to Muscat from Salalah on the bus. I camped two nights and stayed two nights with Daphne or about that (we left for the airport at 230am or so). She drove me to get my covid test, and to pick up the bicycle box, and showed me where she works.

Her running partner with whom she originally planned the trip got covid. In order to not risk getting stuck in Israel in a two-week quarantine on the way back she decided not to go. (She had been stuck for many days in various quarantines earlier in the pandemic due to the entry requirements of Oman and Qatar I think.)

So I arrived here alone after having decided were I to die in two weeks I wanted to go to Israel first.

Was that the right decision? Had I stayed in Muscat longer—she had that week off. I could have changed flights to a later date. Gotten another covid test later. I suppose I was afraid of getting stuck in Oman longer if I later tested positive. (Jordi and Charlotte apparently had to do this before they could leave due to positive tests). In the end, neither Daphne nor I tested positive.

Plus it’s good with new relationships to have to separate and then make effort to get back together from time to time. Maybe.

It was quite a lonely time at first though. . . finally I started to make some friends from the dating apps and find company that way. No new lovers but something to keep me occupied and to help me learn more about the city and Israel. Five dates, one where we met three times, or was that just twice?

Oh yes, and, inspired by Daphne, I began to try to run again. You can look up my efforts on Strava. There are some more photos there as well.

So I wrote a fair amount about Tel Aviv already.

Going forward what do I hope for?

I’ve been thinking I might go to southern Greece after May 20 and then start working my way west and north. Ferrying to Italy.

I’ll keep trying to make more friends with the goal of finding a partner.

I’ll revisit the ones who will have me back and perhaps stay with them longer this time.

That really is pretty nearly it. Progress in fitness and good health habits. Meet my friends from my last trip here (2013-14) in the north of Israel and see what happens there.

Read more?

I listened to quite a few audiobooks on that trip through the desert. Currently on my waterproof player is _Becoming Animal_. I like it alot.

There’s at least a chance an 18-year old will come join me for a bit as I travel around until he decides what his own adventure will be. Seems rather fantastic that such a thing might happen, but you never know. I last saw him when he was 8 or 9yo I think.

It’s 4:05pm here, time to focus on leaving. Until next time—

Epilogue:

I'm out and well situated in my hammock in the coldest weather since Sicily. 9C / 48F. Between Rishon LeTsiyon and the sea.

Daphne let me know it's the end for us. Her reasons are sound. She's more of an activist and doer, I'm more of a navel-gazer. My words. My take-away? Often people project on to me what they want me to be and it takes varying amounts of time for them to realize I'm not that. Do I wish I were motivated to be more of an activist? Sometimes. I’d find more like Daphne were I to volunteer in disaster areas and war zones. Though even there there wouldn't be many like her. I'd find more like her were I motivated to pursue competitive endurance sports and bag peaks and so on, but again, not many like her even there.

To an extent it's the basic introvert/extrovert difference. Apparently in a group of good male friends a guy like me can shift more to the extrovert/activist/organizer end. . .

But you can't really argue with what gives pleasure and what doesn't, though I've tried—

So that adventure ends. It was a good one.

There is relief in no longer feeling I need to make an effort to live very differently than what I'm fairly used to.

I have ideas of where to focus next, but for now I'm more mentally free again.

So this may be an abuse of what has until now been a once-yearly list. If I keep using it this way maybe I’ll tag the year in review posts so they can still be found separate from these sort of slide show posts. For the travelog leading up to this point visit bit.ly/2021cpl.

After the last entry, I spent a night near Vibo Valente and then did a long day and caught the ferry to Messina.

(Getting close to the ferry. Maybe it is on the other side of that point in the distance.)

The Strait of Messina is where the whirlpool Scylla and the monster Charybdis are apparently. Maybe search “messina whirlpools” for more info. From a Mediterranean cruising guide I thought there were two whirpools, but wikipedia suggests that Charybdis is a monster not a whirlpool.

I found my photo of the cruiser guide:

Scylla is a monster living in/near the rock Scilla, and Charybdis is a whirlpool.

I crossed at dusk, and it was dark when I got off and I hadn’t planned any place to stay. So I ended up spending the night between fishing boats. Next to assorted trash, and other unpleasant things I discovered in the morning.

So I didn’t sleep that well.

The next morning I went through town and found a nice place to sit looking out over the strait. I think I was mostly looking at my phone, but did watch the boats from time to time.

The Millennium Falcon, were it a catamaran, passed at one point.

There was also a young African guy who showed up and did a whole exercise routine with no equipment but his headphones, a piece of cardboard for a mat for ab work, and a heavy rock. And the guy was very well built. Good inspiration for bodyweight fitness and cheap equipment. It’s just putting the time in every day. I’m not as good at putting in the time for daily exercises as I used to be, but now his example comes back to me and makes me more likely to get in some pushups, pullups, rock lifts. Inspired by a jump rope star on instagram I also found some cord for a jump rope. I’ve only used that a few times though.

I lazed about for a lot of the day on this beach, using that concrete block as a wind screen and probably for some shade too.

I could look at my screenshots for the day to figure out what I was doing probably.

That night I managed to find my kind of paradise:

Conifers along the coast. Mainland Italy had been difficult because undeveloped coastline was not so common. Sicily was basically the same. But I was very lucky to find this kind of place for my second night.

I took the opportunity to swim and to do some saltwater laundry (final rinse was with fresh water).

Looking back at paradise.

And looking back again.

Now the island of Vulcano is off this coastline, and a ferry to that island leaves from the city of Milazzo.

That island looks like the cartoon south seas volcanic island. I’m not sure why I don’t have a good picture of it, but it does make this ride along the coast more exotic. . . Apparently it is the vent from the forge of the god Vulcan.

I did take a picture of a very large smokestack on my way to Milazzo, however.

There was a posh-looking woman in a blazer with a crest near the ferry terminal. Seeing her got me imagining a different mode of travel. What if I didn’t schlep so much around on my bicycle for camping out and just paid for places to stay and got my exercise by doing exercises or running around whatever new place (Vulcano?) I happened to be visiting at the time?

The thought did cross my mind.

But I’m still biking.

Now I had found a new bumble date in the town of Tonnarella, her name is Cinzia. We met at the Art Cafe, and it was fun, and I found a very nice and reasonably-priced airbnb near by. So I got it for two nights and Cinzia came by for dinner later.

Her english wasn’t super good but we got on well enough. She had to go to a job competition the next day, no, two days later, we had hoped to meet the following day but it didn’t work out for her and by the time she was ready to come over I was ready to go to sleep—I live on a different schedule from most Italians.

At any rate we tentatively planned to meet again after she got back from Syracusa.

And I headed toward Palermo.

(Looking back toward Tonnarella)

(A hilltop town. Interesting to contrast with a town here in Oman I just went by:)

So, the weather turned not so good and not only that I had a headwind. I didn’t put in much mileage and after a few days decided to bike back to Tonnarella instead of taking the train to get back from further away.

Some scenery from the way.

(cactus growing out of the top of a ruin)

Part of the unfun weather that got me to head back.

There is snow back there!

Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding (language barrier—her use of english vs what I took it to mean), she wasn’t free until the day after I thought she was. And that following day, I having rested the previous day, and the weather being sunny, I was ready to try to do something hard.

So I set off to bicycle over the mountains to Taormina.

And I succeeded, and managed to get partway down the other side, but still had a very very windy night in a flapping hammock sock.

Here are some views from the top:

I’m pretty sure the other side of that tooth is visible from the coast near Tonnarrella.

And that is Mt Etna! It is incredibly windy where I’m taking the photo.

And two evenings later, that is Mt Etna from Taormina on my old Note 9 camera (Most of the others are from a Fold 2).

The night after I crossed over the mountains was my last (very windy) night in a hammock until about December 25 in UAE. I got Airbnbs in Sicily ($18-25/ night) or I was with my friend in the UAE at his small room or on our 5 day desert walking trip.

another view of etna.

There I am on December 10, the day before I leave for Dubai, after skinny dipping for the last time that year in the Mediterranean.

I set off to get my RT-PCR test in the center of Catania after that.

My airbnb host printed the results for me that night.

I also picked up a bicycle box I had asked the Decathlon by the airport to save for me. A band of wild dogs chased after me as I rode away with the folded box, but I squirted them with my waterbottle, kept ready and filled for that purpose, and I escaped after their second attempt.

The next morning I rode early to the airport and spent quite a while packing the bike into the box, and by 11am or so I was on a direct flight to Dubai via Wizz Air. I want to say it only cost $150 including the luggage fees and my RT-PCR test had cost EUR 50.

Saad aka Mike Metzger met me at the airport in Dubai and we had our first adventure trying to get back to his place with a bicycle. Turns out they’re not allowed on the trains but he thought they were.

They give you a Du mobile sim when you go through immigration. Later that night I used that sim to order an Uber XL to get us home.

That’s the outside of Ski Dubai in the Mall of the Emirates (second largest mall in Dubai) viewed from Saad’s bathroom window.

I soon figured out that I could ride my bike to a nice swimming beach.

Which I swam at every morning I stayed there.

Here, btw, is the sign Saad made to greet me at the airport:

This is where we stayed:

I think there were about 13 rooms total carved out of what was once a luxury apartment suite. Or maybe 13 people in about 8 rooms sharing three bathrooms.

Oddly enough for an outdoorsman, Saad belived the moon was never full in Arabia, hence the crescent moon motif on mosques, so I took this photo of the moon over Lulu Hypermarket from the parking garage of the Mall of the Emirates in an attempt to persuade him otherwise. Perhaps this was a hoax on his part, but with him it can be difficult to be sure.

After a week in Dubai, we set off for five days in the dunes.

Some of which is documented at http://youtube.com/colinleath

I was carrying 13 L of water and food for five days. Fortunately we generally didn’t walk very far. But when we did walk Saad walked very quickly. He is 6’7” I believe.

He was going through relationship issues at the time, exacerbated by the hope that he might hear from his sweetheart via his phone. Not at all uncommon for oddballs like us wandering in the desert I might add. . .

We survived the trip and are still speaking to each other. It wasn’t easy. But it helped me to feel comfortable in an environment I would never have otherwise considered spending time in.

It was nice to get back to the mall of the emirates and his air conditioned cave.

Soon I set out on my bicycle trip, but before I did I made one friend at the swimming beach because he asked me to film him with his camera as he swam. This is Wilberforce from Uganda (or possibly Kenya)—a very positive guy. He monitors CCTV cameras. And I believe he has a degree in communications from a university in Uganda.

I think I’ll send this now and the next entry will contain photos from my bicycle trip from Dubai to Salalah.

10000 thanks to Saad for making this whole adventure possible. I'm not generally an easy guy to put up with (so used to traveling solo perhaps) and not the best houseguest I'm afraid. Too self-centered or something. So I'm very lucky he took the time to show me around and host me.

The whole thing, if you add in the bike ride to Salalah, has certainly been one of the more epic adventures of my life.

It's been over a year and a half. In that time certain things happened it is better just to consign to that part of the mind where things go to be forgotten. And to be spoken of as little as possible.

At least that seems to be my approach. Certain more productive members of society are doing something about those things, and I'm grateful they are. While I continue to do my best to live in never-never land. Yes, if you can only take ten people along to survive nuclear winter/(disaster of your choice here), taking them would be the wise choice.

July 26, 2021, I hand wrote an update for this list. The recording and pdf can be found here (box), and here (mega). That was written in the Mono Basin, east of Yosemite, near the California/Nevada border.

Recently, freshly escaped from the US, I've been writing updates which are indexed here.

Now these updates could be a time of reflection, revaluation, conscious thought about what I've been doing and what I might do.

I used to do that quite a lot as I was reminded just today as I read some of my old website, experienceart. (But was that conscious or the ramblings of a madman?)

So maybe let's take a stab at that. I'm 45 I think. My preferred way of life seems evident from reading the recent travel updates.

No joke though, I was happier when Andrea was along though that was hard. But hard in a way that felt very alive.

It's pretty cool to think that someone's for you, even if they may just be for themselves by being with you. And it helps if I think she's cute, or for whatever odd reason “I'd be happy following her into the woods.”

I've continued to be amazed by life though. What I don't think possible sometimes happens. But to lay it all out there, I'm a somewhat lazy lover, not as capable or as motivated as others, and I have certain proclivities related to food and to the uses of my time and way of life that few potential partners look for in their potential partners.

But I know they're out there.

And I'm lazy about finding them.

Which means the status quo is really not that bad, as it must not have been since it's generally been how I've been living.

So yes, universe, find me someone I like as much as Andrea who wants to and is capable of wandering like this again. Amen. Not exactly growth motivated, but yearning-for-company motivated, but not too much so because I know how difficult and rare that can be.

I have gotten to spend good time with two friends this year, one old, one new. And a third who is old (Saad/Mike).

Yes, well, I don't know how things will pan out going forward. But perhaps there will be more.

I've also kept posting to Instagram. That's probably the place I'm most likely to update more frequently.

I do spend the vast majority of my waking hours staring at my phone. I seem to like this. If it wasn't that, it would be reading. And maybe more writing. Hence the benefit of living this way. Exercise and modicums of discipline are thrust upon me from without.

No need to emulate the gung-ho-ness of navy seal x when to find a good hiding spot in the woods sheltered from noise, from bad weather, and with a cell phone signal requires effort. . . And my time there is limited by the amounts of food and water I can bring, electricity I can generate.

And when I must leave it is always to somewhere new. No need to motivate myself to do the same beach walk and ocean swim I've done 100 times before. . .

And any annoyance with my surroundings will be transitory, not an ongoing source of stress.

And, the honest truth is, this way of life lets me live like an animal, a wild animal, or a raccoon perhaps, and that is something I seem to enjoy.

So why friends, why in this day and age are you all not giving up your motor vehicles and living this way too?

Yes, I suppose someone has to support the infrastructure and supply chains that make my way of life possible, and I *am* grateful for the free juice.

Could I ever enjoy a more civilized way? Do I need a retirement plan? I've been grateful to know plenty of old travelers. They do eventually die. Perhaps after living in a van near Isla Vista for some years. It's not always pretty but it is prettier than some more respected alternatives.

I spend a lot of time, or I have been recently, trying to figure out how to get rich. Richer, really. In all honesty more is pointless now and it's just a game, partly because in the US money is a proxy for respect and vehicle for power. (I don't need more, but in the absence of something more compelling to pursue, I pursue more money). It's sort of a base motivation and I like to work with those, simply because they're easier and simpler to sense. And, I guess, it gives me something to do that's a step up from playing mobile phone games. I sort of wish I was involved in a more elevated use of my humanity. But I'm also quite simply happy just to feel motivation. And i find reassurance or justification in Kurt Vonnegut's “we’re put on earth to fart around and don't let anyone tell you any different” quote. (Just kidding. . . Everyone wants to be a driven hero. Or at least I do.) So that's pretty much a fail for all those looking for other growth-oriented individuals. Were I to blame something in my past for this outlook it would be praise for being smart and belief that I'm smart rather than praise for hard work and belief that I'm capable of hard work. I am capable of hard work. What's relevant though is that the reward structures of modernity are different from those we evolved to work within. And we really must create our own that work for our own proclivities and accept those proclivities as worth exploring.

So I am. On that note, do you know about

OLIO? It's a free app that lets you give away (or get) free food and household items so they don't go to waste. You can also buy/sell handmade crafts & homemade food from your neighbours too. Pretty awesome! www.olioex.com

(Somehow they've got some serious venture capital funding.)

We respect more though those who live in and work with more refined motivations.

A painter, for example, or someone who writes songs, or who builds playgrounds for poor kids in Morocco or Africa. Or even someone who just wants to complete a marathon for the first time.

For me, the closest I might get to that these days is reading a book. Bicycling across countries is sort of refined. Though when I just loll about Israel for 90 days with a bicycle, if they let me, well, that's pretty much just what it will be.

Oh, and writing these updates is a slightly more refined use of mind than seeking food, money, companionship compatible with my habits. Though that latter effort is fairly complex.

So, yes, as you can see, while I have a mind, the need and motivation to use it in complex ways is relatively minimal.

Until next time.

And Ahmet, I think I may try to find you in Turkey at some point, assuming you're still there. I'm guessing next fall not this one though.

And no I have no plans to go back to the US. But it is easy enough to do so should the time come.

That is the one interesting picture I took, though there is also a neat video of a fancy hairy caterpillar for which the photo below will have to suffice for now. Those are ladybugs near Fishbowls Camp in the Sespe Wilderness, just four days ago.

Ok. Now that the update has some photos I’m free to fill in the thousands of words.

Michael Bean died in February. That was a significant event. He was a mainstay of the Isla Vista Community. Afraid of the cost of health insurance, attempting to stay off the grid and off the public dole, he waited too long to be seen for what he was eventually aware was something serious. Those who knew him who might have taken action delayed just a bit too long as well. Phyllis S. organized a memorial service for him and wrote up an obituary. I helped by designing a flyer and attempting to look up lost relatives and biographical details (no success).

At the time I was still attempting to make money with money by following some foolish ideas on r/wallstreetbets. I did make some successful trades, but mostly I lost. And that guy u/wsbgod I mentioned to some of you? Turns out he was probably a fake and his amazing record of success, fabricated. I gave up on options for a bit, went back to fiddling with ethereum-based projects. And attended a few talks and gatherings put on by Cameron and PG of Blockchain Acceleration Foundation.

I did manage one or two overnight hikes to a spot partway up the Cold Spring Trail as well.

The coronavirus shutdown came, Andrea went off to stay at her parents’ where she could work from home and she’s been gone ever since. We used to talk pretty regularly but now she’s gone silent. That’s just been for the past week and a half. We are not the best fit, it is true. So perhaps it is time we moved on. For my part, I seem to have found a new hobby that keeps me occupied, which has been at least for the past month and a week, making money with money.

This success has been thanks to my past failures and the discovery of Ophir Gottlieb. I signed up for his Trade Machine a month and a week ago, and for his CML Pro service, and in that time I’ve managed to triple my account value after having had little success and a lot of failure trying to deal with the failure of my buy and hold and sometimes trade my ether crypto non-strategy since winter 2017-2018 when the huge bubble began to pop. I came across Ophir from somehow coming across a tweet by MintDragon. You may immediately notice and be grateful that Ophir does not waste your or his time, unlike just about everyone else I’ve encountered who attempts to make money helping people trade options. For example, I’ve gotten somewhat involved with several others: Wendy Kirkland, Chuck Hughes, well maybe just those two, and attempted to implement strategies they teach, but without any deep level of diligence.

And in addition to those purveyors of options strategies, I managed to get on an assortment of stock tips lists which have this standard practice of making you watch a long video or read an endless ad to attempt to get some useful information out of it. In a happy dénouement to these clouds of obfuscation, recently I discovered The Stock Gumshoe which goes through all those teaser ads to figure out what they might be shillling and whether the trade they’re shilling has any validity.

Ok. TLDR: since following Ophir I’ve tripled my account, though the way I’m doing it could lead me to lose half tomorrow, and in fact I did have a 30% drawdown in one account just last week. But I didn’t sell, at least not right then, and today was a new high in both. I use Robinhood and ThinkOrSwim with TD Ameritrade. Both have their advantages and both fail to work from time to time, especially at busy market opens.

Also, there will be a CML Pro webinar on the 18th, basically tomorrow. Members who’ve already experienced one seem quite excited about it. (Honestly though, I don’t understand why people who find success with his system are mentioning it on Twitter. I don’t think he’s paying them. I don’t think they’re fake accounts.) So you might want to sign up and see what he has to say. If you’re not free when it is happening you’ll get a recording. You can email in questions ahead of time. If you don’t want to spend any $$ you can get a gist of what is going on on twitter. But the info on CML Pro has given me some depth of understanding and confidence that has been useful in making significant bets.

Plus the government has been supporting the market recently so there is that.

I have kept a spreadsheet of some of my Trade Machine trades (my early losses and wins are not there yet), however that does not include some heavy bets on CML Pro Picks, mainly FSLY, that has helped the account grow as well.

I also started a subreddit, r/CMLTradeMachine to discuss the use of that system.

Ok. So I left to go on my usual hike, but turned around. Not because I left a girlfriend behind—she’s been gone a while. But because I can walk on the beach to Bacara and back, (9 miles roundtrip) at low tide or even further at lower tide and look at my phone or listen to audiobooks pretty much the whole way if I want to—that kind of distracted walking is not a good idea in Los Padres NF.

Plus, I found that that routine leaves me in pretty decent shape, even though it is flat, for climbing the mountains (at least below 8000 feet).

Also, I have the option of swimming in the ocean, which I pretty much do every day if I make it out of camp.

And if I make it out of camp before the market opens, then I make it out. Otherwise I sit around until 1pm watching the prices move.

Drawbacks: the routine here is somewhat boring and I continue to eat too much while in town. However the variety of food here vs what I can carry on my hikes and find in smaller towns definitely motivates me to return here. Also we get a marine layer and gray days (May Grey, June Gloom). But one brilliant thought I had on my recent hike, why not take an Uber or a Lyft up to the top of the mountains here (just a few miles’ ride) if I want to escape the gloom and the car noise of town yet am too put off by the hard work required by biking or hiking?

Ok, That’s the story here. Also will list some of the audiobooks I’ve listened to because they are a significant part of where my mind spends time.

• Ted Chiang short stories

• The Three Body Trilogy

• _She Said_

• _Proof of Conspiracy_ by Seth Abramson

• _The Man Who Solved The Market_

• _Flash Crash_

• And others I’m not mentioning, there were a lot.

Also significant has been home improvements undertaken to make the estate a more pleasant place to quarantine. We now have a pull-up branch and gymnastic rings. We already had some dumbbells. I have a nice shaded hammock spot for when the sun is bright. I’ve continued to test solar panels, switching to Renogy from Suntatics. Suntactics S5s kept breaking and cost eight times as much, although they would replace them (if I nagged them a bit) every time they broke. Two 5-watt $10 Renogy panels replaced the two $80 Suntactics panels I had been using. For in-town use I also got two 10-watt Renogy $20 panels to use to make charging a bit quicker. I have yet to test the Renogy panels as much as I have the S5s though.

Goals for the next six months: Just keep growing the account. Money can be a kind of power and can increase one’s choices. Plus it is a bit more worthwhile and engages with the world more than just repeatedly playing Polytopia.

I think that is all I have to say. Life is decent here and this may be a new stage in life where I don’t bother to wander and have something somewhat like a regular job—watching the market. I don’t think I’ll ever be like Mark Minervini who has never missed a trading day in 30 years. I admit I think it is shallow. I left on my recent hike to see if I could leave it be and just adopt long-term strategies. And see if I could read a book. Maybe I will try that again at some point.

Also, it is a bit of a sufferfest out there in the woods—poison oak, poodle dog bush, ticks, potential rattlesnakes, bright blazing sun, heavy pack and bags, feet that dry out and crack if not cared for frequently. Sometimes it’s a good, beautiful sufferfest and reminds me I can still be somewhat tough and manly and walk 20-plus miles in a day to get somewhere if need be. It is also nice to get good and tired, good and hungry, and to sleep in beautiful, peaceful places.

I do have fun meeting some women on Hinge. That hasn’t ever gotten further than a phonecall, but still satisfies some sort of relationship need or hope. And when I go out on my rounds and my walk there are many people to see and a few friends to meet.

I’m grateful for the Black Lives Matter / Defund the Police demonstrations—I sincerely hope progress is made and becomes permanent on police de-militarization, de-lethalization, and in eliminating systemic racism. As a somewhat unusual person I have a reflexive resentment of white patri- and matriarchy which in my experience tend to want to brush aside or squash any deviation from their view of the norm, and they’ll call the cops on oddness. And the cops, if they have one, will call their helicopter. My personal takeaway: do not live anywhere where the PD can fly a helicopter whenever “there’s a weird or dangerous person on the loose.” Pretty sick how much money has been devoted to police departments. According to the latest SB Independent, police funding even here has grown to be something like 30% of the city budget (“$145 million budget, $47 million of which was earmarked for the police”). In an interesting twist, in another article a county supervisor mentions that they’re lucky they’ve got revenue from cannabis cultivation to keep the government afloat given the coronavirus’ economic impact.

Now there must be an uplifting or inspiring note to end on somehow.

It’s a poor picture, but if you squint you can see that it is Poodle Dog Bush overgrowing the trail near the top of the Horn Canyon Trail. And the Dog also is at the top of the trail on the other side of the ridge (Rose-Lion Trail). I made it through and only suffered minor rashiness this time. Even so, on the way out I didn’t go back that way and walked the road, part of it the 33, for about 20 miles to Meiners Oaks.

All in all though, I just wanted to let you know I made it back out.

I hope your summer is a good one.

Come watch the sunset with me here (~Goleta) on Tuesday January 14 from 4-6 pm or so.

Directions

It’s down a steep, precarious staircase at the south end of Anderson Ln (look up Seaview Nursery) If you drive, you may need to park by the bike trail and walk a half mile south on the road. If you bike, come all the way to the top of the staircase passing left of the closed automatic gate. Go straight into a little dirt path, don’t turn right with the road. Also, the tide may be low enough at that time to be able to bike or walk east on the sand from Goleta Beach as well. However there is one rocky outcrop to get around if you go that way.

In the photo the tide is at 2.5 feet. At sunset on January 14, the tide will be at 0. Walk east from the bottom of the staircase (a little past where this picture was taken) and I’ll be there, probably with Andrea.

If you can’t make that, I’m out walking on the beach weekend and holiday mornings 7-9am going west from Coal Oil Point—come visit then.

Photos

Aside from that, here are the photos from the past year—first from a July 20 instagram post:

Hello! Currently at Kennedy Meadows General store. I finished pdf updates from December to June:
https://mega.nz/#!vDhkSAAa!V1AXKPPndaS4-P4ClP51SIC5zjhRULjYdxDWfsb42mg

55mb

and from these last two hikes:

https://mega.nz/#!GS4k3ApR!CGP2wndQZdGVRqWtTLmLWoVLl5gG28CufaIlYH1fgdk

37mb

And here are the photos from then until now:

https://mega.nz/#!eThkwAiI!sMOc17fZ0EyYVXQxv7a8-NbIbD2Nc5FB805YREFIAbQ

34.66 mb

They are of the rest of that hiking trip, Goleta, Tennessee, Goleta, and a 5-night trip to Little Caliente in December.

bit.ly/cplbox may be an easier way to access those PDFs as well as even older ones. Just go to the folder for the year it was created.

A review of last year and thoughts about the next

I used to like to write. I almost felt compelled to write, especially during the beginning of college—every week, exploring events, feelings, discoveries: see experienceart. But eventually I came to feel I was creating mental drama to have things to write about. I may have now gone too far the other way. I’ve spent weeks of my life this past year playing Polytopia and Shattered Pixel Dungeon on my Note 9. I’ve spent weeks fiddling with cryptocurrency, banks, brokerage accounts. I’ve spent not much time at all creating anything. Aside from a few hand-(stylus-)written letters, I’ve written almost nothing.

An issue is whom do I write for. In the past, if I got any meaningful response from someone to what I put on the internet I sort of came to resent the attention. Odd, because, like now, I wanted an audience of some kind. Or I resented the feeling that I had to or should respond to someone’s reaction to what I created. That is probably a good point of departure for analysis. I have friends I enjoy writing to or even need to write to from time to time, but even then there is a sweet spot between no communication and too much.

I suppose one also has to feel one has ideas worth sharing. And one has to be persistent in wanting to share them. But at some point the possibility of success (being a part of the creation of carfree living environments?) did not seem compelling enough, perhaps when I found ways to live fairly happily without a car or job.

I did once seek attention for my ideas and attempt to organize people. But really, where is the pleasure there? The simplest possible answer is that once I have a girlfriend, that is almost exactly enough and all previous striving and organizing was to get me to that point. And now that Andrea has been here off and on for years, that is a kind of ongoing accomplishment and engagement in life. Relationship chess.

And yet what if I had a girlfriend who was as free and able to wander as I am? Andrea is not, though may be again someday, and staying in Goleta is really pretty nice. And wandering can get tiresome. And of course she may not always stay here with me.

What if I were driven by morals, ethics, faith? What if I had some cause I worked for? I did for a while. Recently I found culdesac.com which is building carfree developments in the US. I once supported something called Carfree City USA.

The issue is partly technology. I now have a computer again, a surface go and bluetooth keyboard. Last substack update quite possibly was written using my phone. Another option would be to handwrite this update. (Actually, the surface go battery life was not enough, and now I’m back to using the Note 9 with the Anker bluetooth keyboard from the thrift store.)

Another issue, of course, the main issue, is what am I for?

To some extent, I’m not for anything. I gave up on life/metaphorically died years ago (but occasionally revived when I thought I may have found something greater to organize my life around) and now I just do my best to pass my time as agreeably, if meaninglessly, as possible. Hence hours spent on games. Before the phone I’d just read, which was probably more meaningful, since I discover things when I read.

But personal contentment as a life aim is not entirely without a greater meaning. If that is all everyone did, the world could be improved. Problems arise when people are encouraged to ignore their own contentment in order to achieve some greater good, to serve their country, their god, their company, to be obedient to authority. Yet how do cathedrals get built? What would I build with my time if I had more resources, more secure indoor space, an easy place to practice a violin without being concerned about disturbing others with the noise and them then disturbing me as a result? It is so much easier just to not want very much.

But what about the fact that while I’m often comfortable, many other beings are not? I don’t know. But I don’t seem to be mobilizing to help others, perhaps not sure that I can or that I would enjoy doing so.

So—reduce one’s desires and find meaning in pursuing desires? I guess this is why we meditate in order to align our desires with the divine, with the life force. Perhaps I’ll do more of that.

Unfortunately attempting to live a life without self-discipline as I have been, discipline gets forced on me. A challenge for the year ahead is to eat less, less often, and to eat better. Turns out I can stuff myself and not get very fat, but continual overeating destroys the body in other ways. My liver in particular is not happy.

So this could be the year (as could have been many other years) of learning self discipline in eating. I suppose that is a project I could write about. Whether or not I succeed.

As for becoming more at peace with respect to investments, a goal for 2019, I have to some extent achieved that. The main thing is I can still get by with very little. So I could work a temp job for four weeks a year and have enough money to be content. I haven’t really learned any new tricks with respect to investing except to buy and hold the VTI (or other index) in order to not lose to inflation over the long haul. I may be better at managing risk now than I was when I (on screen) had ten times as much money as I do now that I’ve bungled things down to a more relaxing amount. You may have noticed that the more money you have the more things you consider spending it on. It's a lot more comfortable and simple just to have the same options to consider as always. Willful lack of discipline plus the market and my feeble human psychology and emotions and avoidance of (or skepticism in the lasting value of) hard work are a great recipe for losing the losers game. Let’s see if by the end of next year I still have what I have now.

As I write this, the sky is a brilliant blue, the grass is grass-green—as opposed to straw gold—and someone is running noisy lawncare equipment not more than 100 yards away. This sensation of being under a dentist’s drill or polisher should end at some point soon I hope.

So, why write? I’m empty, directionless, and have achieved a certain level of contentment.

The only remaining achievement (aside from organizing society to ban all cars and noisy lawncare equipment) is to not destroy my health prematurely by overeating.

So there is one goal there you can get behind probably. I swear I think that guy must be weedeating an entire lawn. Next will be the blower.

There are noble personalities. There are people who mobilize other people. There are people other people listen to.

I may not be one of those, at least at this moment. I’m still here though. Life is pretty good.

Maybe see you at the beach next Tuesday!

Oh yes, And I do not ignore the cultural war and physical war. That’s a reason I’m living in no-person’s land relatively speaking. If you haven’t read Christopher Wylie’s _Mindf*ck_ it is a good description of how democracy has been pwned. In short, using data from Facebook and elsewhere, personality profiles are created for individual people, including you. These individuals can be targeted with ads that fit their personalities to achieve a desired aim.

For example, an individual with paranoid and aggressive tendencies (which are known due to their particular Facebook likes correlated to personality types enabled by FB users who fill out personality questionnaires) could be fed information that leads them to mistrust their leadership more than they already did and then recruit them to undermine the organization they are a part of.

In another example, say for a pro-Brexit campaign, a person who scores high on openness could be fed ads that show how Brexit is better for immigrants from Britain’s former colonies than staying in the EU would be, while those voters who fear outsiders will be shown ads about crimes commited by immigrants who would be given asylum in the UK due to Britain's EU membership.

What’s also interesting is that once rage and hate enter the equation targets become increasingly resistant to information that counters their perspective. It’s all fake news and disinformation spread by the opposition and a threat to that person’s identity.

To further elaborate on the story, Cambridge Analytica was able to field test the slogans “build the wall,” “lock her up,” and “drain the swamp” on target populations before Trump was even a presidential candidate.[1]

So the recipe to destroy an organization is to target people by personality, feeding them information they are receptive to that encourages them to demonize some other. You can get your enemy to start fighting among themselves and to cease to be much of a threat.

I’m honestly not sure how and if we’re getting out of this. Christopher Wylie however ends his book on an optimistic note and a description of a path forward. Data collection and social media need to be regulated as there are no meaningful alternatives to the large social media sites for the kind of advertising, organizing, and manipulation being done to influence elections. And, well, check out the book.

Also, perhaps like at least a few other readers, I’m pretty darn sure my own father has bought the alt-right views hook, line, and sinker. And he might say the same about me just the other direction. He was denying human causes of global warming or that it was possible to do anything about it; I think he was comparing Trump’s media difficulties with George Washington’s. Etc. And they live in Tennessee and I have to go visit them there if I want to see my parents. The following New Yorker cartoon comes to mind. I left car-based suburbia long ago, but go back to visit a past I regretted if I go visit them.

But if you look at my pictures from the visit you will see they took me to see a very progressive play about a Tennessee social justice organization. And my dad gave them $20 at the door for their organization (the Highlander Center). Was this some sort of virtue signaling? Give HC $20 and Trump Pac $1000? I can only surmise since I did not ask. I’m sort of the prototypical freeloader black sheep son (exaggeration for dramatic effect), though I don’t get to freeload much unless I visit and then they generally put me to some sort of work. It is nice to go back and have my mom take care of me a bit though of course it should be the other way around at this point.

Now I like to think that if we were a Jewish family, schooled in the talmudic debating tradition, we would argue vigorously about this stuff at the table, when, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, we should be mindfully focused on our food. But instead, perhaps because dad still expresses aggressive anger and mom still expresses exasperation, and perhaps due to biology and personality and habit, we often just sit there in silence unless there’s a fairly inocuous subject. Hey, but at least we eat dinner at a table if my mom is there to make it, which in some people’s books, aside from the male chauvinism of it, is a cultural progression from how I tend to eat now. Occasionally something more contentious comes up. It’s actually probably safer to talk about this stuff than I’m making out—but I’d rather not imagine I'm experiencing his silent simmering discontent, or something. He’s the king there, foiled only by his queen for reasons I may never understand, and I have no desire to dispute or disturb that. He pays taxes and owns land, not me as much. If they lived west of the Mississippi on the other hand I might be tempted to stay for longer—

I can also just go to Kernville for a dose of red state, but honestly that feels much less difficult to me. I have a hunch there are some well-off hippies there, and there are the Tübatulabal and other tribes with their own very welcoming community center. They have great public transit and I don’t need to fly or bicycle for two months to get there. It’s still west of the Mississippi, the mountains have pines, the air is dry, the sky is blue.

For my part, years ago I volunteered at Libertarian Party Headquarters in DC. And if there were as many people contesting the stream-front real estate here as there were in Santa Cruz County one time I visited, maybe I’d be less immigrant-friendly.

So what exactly was the point I was trying to make? I’ve found a place I like and am reluctant to leave and am fortunate I still have parents to visit, however far away physically and culturally. But really, after going there two times in 2019, I feel like waiting until I really get lonely for them and for a break from California to go again. So I may not be there for my mom’s 70th birthday in May and just go in the fall. Though even next fall feels too soon right now. Who knows. It is nice to have parents and as Tim Urban explains, even under the best of circumstances of say four weeks spent in Tennessee each year, I won’t see my parents for many more days at all.

And then when I do go visit, how much time do I actually spend with them rather than off exercising or looking at my phone or something else?

And if spending time with parents is such a wonderful thing, why have I not been motivated to do the work to be in a position to spend time with children of my own or to adopt?

Is my time really better spent writing than playing a game on my phone? Well, I’ll still get to do that plenty when I finish this. Variety of foolishness may be an accomplishment at least. As long as my writing here doesn’t disturb my peace of mind or cause me to feel bad about what I wrote because other people might feel bad. Unless of course some feeling bad is necessary to progress to a better world.

One last note. I’ve also been listening to _Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy_ by Frank McLynn. The Mongols took over a significant portion of the world in a style not unlike what happens in Polytopia: mass genocides and exterminations of those who would not immediately submit. If they decided to destroy a populace, once all the skilled artisans had been found and sent to Mongolia, and the rich people tortured to find their hoards, everyone would be killed, many would be raped, and then the ruins of the city would be watched for two weeks to kill anyone who had managed to hide. Sometimes though they used prisoners on their front lines to absorb arrow fire when attacking the next city.

At any rate, hearing about this wholesale slaughter and destruction and dominance of powerful warriors is some sort of food for thought.

One more last note: to get through the holidays here when some of my usual entertainments are shut down (the campus pool mainly) I get odd movies from the library using the Hoopla app on a cracked iPad mini. One movie was _I Am_ by Tom Shadyac. He made $$ by directing the Ace Ventura movies among others. But had a bicycle crash and had a bad post-concussion syndrome to the point where he was planning to kill himself somehow but decided to make this one last movie.

I didn’t find the movie especially wonderful, but I keep thinking about how he said the movie was about mental illness. And at the end it is revealed that it is about his mental illness, the one he once had in which he had the huge house, the private jet, the cars and so on. And now he lives in a mobile home park near Pepperdine where he teaches and can ride his bike to work. And the post-concussion syndrome went away when he was making the movie.

There were other memorable but odd movies as well, including _Hatchback_ about a woman in LA who lives in a very small car, and _The Great Battle_ by Zo In-Sung, which I watched to get an approximation of the mayhem of Mongol times. _The Man From The Earth_ I like a lot as well (another play my mom took us to see).

Also, I’ve been trying to make new rat traps since there’s a couple coming through here who have been escaping the snap traps. If you are at all interested in trapping, Shawn Woods has made a YouTube career with trapping videos. He even shows you how to cook and eat a wood rat over a camp fire. I like the mojave scissors trap the best. Some of it is a bit sick, since it’s basically become his business to come up with new trap videos—to make money from youtube ads. Currently the NewPipe app on FDroid/GDroid is working for watching and downloading youtube videos at low resolutions to save data and avoid ads.

Speaking of which, Here are other movies I watched over the holidays:

• The Act of Killing

• Jiro Dreams of Sushi

• City of God (Alexandre Rodrigues)

• The Man Who Saved the World

• Madness in the Method (Jason Mewes)

• Tucker & Dale vs Evil

All to some degree about violence. I think it is only Tom Shadyac here who argues that humans are more notable for cooperation than for violent competition—but that is a point also made by Yuval Noah Harari in _Sapiens_ (actually Harari’s point is that we’re able to cooperate in service of abstract concepts often violently).

I definitely appreciate movies that do not have horror and death and violence, but the two above where I seem less disgusted by the violence were City of God and The Great Battle. I’m not sure exactly why. I think because those were about things novel to me (multi-ethnic white-minority society and drug wars and siege tactics), and the violence was sort of artistic as if it were a ballet in the battle movie and as if it were sickly ridiculous yet possibly real in the City of God.

(I’m currently listening to Michael Pollan read his book _Cooked_, and just got through the part about cheese and the erotics of disgust and decay. More food for thought.)

A few of my readers are probably familiar with Derrick Jensen, _The Culture of Make Believe_, the sunrise movement, extinction rebellion, earth first, sea shepherd, Deep Green Resistance, and so on.

So am I blaming personality type on my life of retirement and mediocrity? What would make me want to fight and create rather than just persue a bit of contentment here in the woods on the fringe of a town?

I think things could have been different for me in a world without cars. But I’m living here quite simply because it is easy and comfortable rather than doing something like Bruno Manser who went into the jungles of Borneo to live with the Penan and later to attempt to protect that way of life. (My mom gave me a book partly about Manser to read when I went to visit in the fall: The Last Wild Men of Borneo.)

Ok, well that’s the story here.

You know—Bannon, according to Wylie, (as I remember it) was/is attempting to bring about catastrophe in the US so lives could be romantic and heroic again and unmediated and uncushioned by bureaucracy and central government. I am curious to hear more about this idea. As creepy as I found Jordan Peterson—I think he was getting at the same thing. A sort of apocalypse fetish where at least a few men and women lead heroic lives. But for every Genghis Khan there are 100000+ peasants who shuffle out to get their heads removed even though they could have fought. At the moment I’m one of the peasants I suppose. I really don’t know what Bannon is hoping to accomplish. As for the rest, oligarchy seems a pretty straightforward aim, or some sort of authoritarian patriarchy where people are white, live in suburbs, and drive cars. Also, I think fear grips minds, so people can make money selling it. I’m reflecting back to a Kernville conversation where a watcher of Sean Hannity and volunteer at the local history museum was conviced Obama was a white guy in disguise (actually that was his wife's story) and that democrats were trying to make a world goverment to depopulate the western US to make room for wild animals. And yet my feeble mind goes, “How on earth could someone come to those conclusions?” and starts to wonder, and then later to look up some of what they mentioned to find a source. And I was happy to point out that rewilding is a thing, and to protect or reintroduce large mammals by converting land to wilderness is an objective. And that there has been a dictator who banned car use except by government officials (in Transnistria Lonely Planet write-up maybe).

Shawn Woods makes trapping videos for money, Sean Hannity does the same with conspiracy theories.

Actually it was Glenn Beck and Agenda 21 not Hannity.

The heroes of this moment are probably those working to build up higher levels of human organization and cooperation and government in order to reduce the damage humans are doing to other forms of life and to each other. At the moment I’m just being a bystander. Resting on privilege, living off crumbs left by others. Thinking as little as necessary to maintain comfort.

Is refusing to play ever heroic? Only if one dies or undergoes discomfort in order not to participate in something worse. Being comfortable and not participating (much) in something worse could be considered creative though.

Some excerpts from Walden:

“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”

“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.”

“and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”

And yet like Jiro dreaming of sushi—to have some grand goal to strive for would be a great thing. You’ve got to believe the goal is worthwhile somehow, and if not achievable at least enjoyable or engaging to attempt to achieve. I now recall goal-free living self-help tips which advocate a sort of compass approach. Just point yourself in a generally promising direction. And if you don’t have worthwhile goals, you’re left where I am, building a life on basic animal motivations and cycles. Getting hungry, getting tired, eating, sleeping. Seeking long periods of mental hypnosis and thoughtless state by fiddling with a phone. Getting bored of town life and overfed, heading for the hills, returning to the comforts and generally mild annoyances of town life. Desiring Andrea, not talking to Andrea because of some slight or disagreement, desiring Andrea again, finding comfort and peace in her company.

What I do is what I do. With minimal thought. And leave it at that.

Until writing this, if this can be considered creative, the most mentally taxing and creative thing I was attempting was to devise a different way to trap woodrats than what I had been doing. It is dark now almost and they are coming out, so I’d better clean up the mess. If I remove all the food they can get there’s really no need to tax myself with cutting short their lives. Earplugs block out most of their rustling and gnawing. If I can keep them hungry enough they are less rambunctious and may eat the slugs off my fava bean plants. By the time the fava beans grow beans the rats would like to eat, the owl may have caught them or I may have. Bobcats are another possibility. . . . I'd better get them in the next three days or soon there will be more.

Man vs self and man vs nature. And man vs society. And man vs Andrea. There could be something to work with here. A contemplative and engaged mind could make something of these elements. I'm thinking Knut Hamsen's Growth of the Soil. Or Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Until next time,

Colin

(The image is of the sky one afternoon on the Coal Oil Point walk.)

Greetings from Anisq'Oyo Park in IV. I've spent two weeks deleting photos. Then half a week figuring out how best to share the photos. Naturally there's no best way. And then another week writing and revising this.

After Kernville, the last update on May 19, Andrea and I walked over to Kennedy Meadows South (which is on the PCT) and then back to Kernville, but over Sherman's Pass, with three hitches. Each hitch is a different world. I don't really like it. But they are memorable. Hitching is easier with Andrea than as a solo guy, generally.

Number one was with an ex-construction now tex-mex restauranteur & school administrator couple on the way to their cabin, where they harvest mesquite for their barbeque. Number two was a short one in the back of a USFS truck, and the driver told us how to find a yurt with a wood stove to stay in that chilly night. Number three was with a Bordelais bicycle enterpreneur who drives mountain bikers from LA up to Cannell Meadows and other trail heads, Xavier of Crazy Bear Bikes.

Then we went up to Alta Sierra from Wofford Heights, with two hitches. The first with some perhaps drug-damaged but friendly women in a convertible, via the lair of the buff and shirtless drug lord with a friendly pitbull who was interrupted by our arrival while having sex and wasn't happy about that. Our driver said he owed her rent. The second with a Hispanic family who squeezed in even tighter to pick us up and fed us too when we got to the top.

Then we walked to Camp Nelson through a forest partially closed because of fires and logging. On the way we met two German doctor cyclists: Laura and Christina. And a European guy cyclist, Dutch maybe, also on some stage of a world tour, but we only saw him once.

At the time I was reading Kevin Kelly's _Cool Tools_ ($5 at Amazon, free at libgen.io) and found out about and read Tom Neale's _An island to oneself_ from that. Neale's book was among a list of stories of other wilderness dwellers which included Silvan Hart and Dick Proenneke. Sarah Marquis, Nicole Apelian are some survivalist women just for some balance.

Camp Nelson has a spring of bubbly water that is very good to drink. Then we hitched down into Porterville with a Sierra Club hiker we'd passed earlier that day. Then we hitched back up into the mountains to Balch Park first with a line technician from LA who funds a small ranch his wife runs and second with a supervisor of a Cal Fire prison crew. The line technician took pity on us and stopped to ask what we were doing, we weren't actually hitching at the time. We're lucky he stopped.

I realize I've forgotten two rides: one in the minivan of an ex-military woman on the way to Wofford Heights from Kernville, and another with a Hispanic forest service fire crew member and a co-worker from Clovis to Springville. It's always a small miracle when anyone stops. Not to disregard the dangers of hitching.

Then we walked into the south end of Sequoia NP. And down into Three Rivers. Then we walked back up into the park along a very overgrown trail where Andrea got a tick bite, I a bee sting, and both of us waded, nay bushwhacked, through miles of poison oak and other brush until 11 at night. I was trying to get to a high enough elevation to be out of the poison oak before camping, which we just about managed. Oddly, neither of us got poison oak. She never has, I believe. I often do. Correction: she says she got some inside her nose from that escapade. And I had mild whole-body puffiness the following day maybe from being coated in pollen from all the brush.

Andrea also reminded me we got a ride in the back of an old Jeep from a young (19 or 21?) almond, orange, and pear farmer and his girlfriend or date on the last stretch of dirt road before the Old Colony Mill bushwhack started. This guy had previously run a dairy farm with his father and brother but they had switched to tree crops a few years back. It sounded like he owned his own orchards and had bought out his father.

He was surprised I knew about the upside-down-umbrella-style almond tree shakers, which I'd seen in Spain--he was one of the first in the area to use those. These are tractors that approach a tree, grab the trunk, unfurl around the grabber something that looks like an upside-down umbrella, and then vigorously shake the tree trunk while the almonds fall into the umbrella which then funnels the almonds into a channel near the grabber leading to a hopper in the back of the tractor. The umbrella appendage then retracts and refurls, and the tractor goes to the next tree. I'm not sure actually whether the almonds go into the chute before or after the umbrella refurls. Check YouTube. The process takes less than three minutes per tree, maybe less than 60 seconds. Most other US almond growers somehow do it with two separate vehicles, a shaker and a collector somehow it sounded like.

We kicked back at Hume Lake for a bit after getting a ride a lot of the way from Wuksachi Village from Calissa—an ecstatic-to-be-out-of-the-city-for-the-weekend neuroscientist—who was paying off years of college debt doing something for some sort of birth control pharmaceutical or appliance company or nonprofit and Gabe, who maybe was a lawyer and had already paid off his. Andrea insisted we do laundry before hitching to wash off any poison oak before sitting in someone's car. That and showering we had done at Lodgepole. We enjoyed a golf cart tour of the Hume Lake Christian camp and free ice cream. I swam while listening to an audiobook for the first time since Goleta. This book was about about timing and effects of circadian rhythms (When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I don't really recommend it, but I find it interesting I remember what I was listening to when and where). We then walked to Grant Grove Village and left the park via the YMCA at Sequoia Lake.

We got a ride down to Clovis with a CHP officer who was once a wandering hippie-ish type and was now reading Race and Economics by Thomas Sowell. He pointed out where a death-by-cop stakeout had occurred a while back, drawing officers like flies. The ride up to Shaver Lake and some breakfast at a small cafe was with with Bruce, a founder of the Aryan Brotherhood, and Chula, his small rescue dog whose former abusive owner was the only one he still had it in for. I don't disbelieve the guy. What he had to say checked out with Wikipedia at any rate.

We eventually went north from Shaver Lake to Redinger Lake, and up Italian Bar Road to the exact center of California, near South Fork. Andrea's feet hurt so we hitched to North Fork, got a bus down to Madera, then Amtrak to Sacramento and stayed at her parents' for a bit. Then I walked up to South Lake Tahoe, and she rode up later with her family for the Fourth of July.

On the way back south, we visited her great-aunt in Concord and we visited Monterey. After a month and a half back in Goleta we went to Tennessee to visit my parents and sisters.

Aside from all that? I've figured out a good way of staying warm and dry during a SoCal winter in a hammock. I got to surf and windsurf for my first time on the west coast thanks to the local Excursion Club. Having made it to the southern hemisphere last winter I'm happy to be here with lots of darkness for a change. Darkness in which to be snug in my hammock and read. And so far there hasn't been any rain of oppressive duration. I'm a bit tired of wandering to be honest, though I did see $330 tickets one-way to Santiago for a while earlier in the year when I was looking.

I continue to be focused on cryptocurrency, primarily ether, maker, and dai. Today I'm currently in the green on my first test decentralized short using expotrading.com (closed it the next morning and made $1). Yes I finally learned just holding isn't the brightest. Prices do not go up forever. One has to have good entries and exits. At any rate, my goal is peace of mind. A virtual loss of 90% of one's capital motivates even me to try to learn some new tricks for better or worse. At least until I have no more to play with.

Andrea went with me to cryptoinvest in LA, to which we had free tickets, thanks to me being on peepeth at the right time. I also spent $350 (1.1 eth at the time) to go see Vitalik Buterin and Zooko Wilcox among others at the crypto conference at UCSB.

What's in store for 2019? I may stay here until the coastal fog sets in, then go to the mountains again. Here I've found that as long as I do a six-mile beach walk most every day—out to The Spot (a cliff-side hide-away that becomes difficult to access at high tide) and back—I don't feel a need to escape here. I do wish I could get to the mountains without crossing car-land though. The front country trails would be more exercise than the beach.

So, stay here and read. Play tennis. Let me know if you want to at the UCSB courts—I have racquets. I'm not that good, maybe ten-year-old level. I like swimming while listening to audiobooks, currently _The Signature of All Things_ by Elizabeth Gilbert. David Foster Wallace has been good. _The Code of the Extraordinary Mind_ was good. It’s a great way to stop worrying about whatever it was I was worrying about for a while and spend part of the day in a different world. I listened to King Kong too, but have yet to see the film.

Long term goals: read more, be at peace about investments. “The markets are a way to transfer money from the impatient to the patient” is one quote that sticks in my mind. As does this one:

Patience… followed by pretty aggressive conduct. It is given to human beings who work hard at it—who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet—that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don’t. It’s just that simple.

- Charlie Munger

Ok, on that note, if you join Robinhood (link a bank account, maybe transferring money too is necessary) with this link, we both get stock:

• http://share.robinhood.com/colinl2

If you join this new exchange with this link:

• https://e.investvoyager.com/4TLA-326U-2KT0MQ-2WZGY-1/c.aspx (only on December 31!)

We may both get $25 worth of Bitcoin eventually. But, personally, I'm more excited about Robinhood. Charlie Shrem, a guy behind Voyager, has given me the impression of being from the Ponzi part of the crypto world. I hold no Bitcoin anyways I'd convert it to usd, ether, dai, or mkr probably.

Here are links to the PDFs of the photos. You can view the few comments in the Adobe PDF viewer and a few other PDF readers.

Mega, for the fastest downloads:

• https://mega.nz/#F!2K5i0QgR!9RlBTAIM1FUQA-Avsb551g

Box if you want to view it in your browser, but it didn't seem to allow downloads when I tried:

• https://app.box.com/s/l9q7janoetm1f8z6jcf01emrrvcuabj7

Google drive may also work:

• https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1vEnRRFTTX2XN3uYu68kzZeSUgmwZ9NIh

Andrea doesn't like some of the duplicate photos, but I left them in partly for the sense of movement they can give.

Videos from the time are at

• https://www.youtube.com/user/colinleath

By the way, I like cryptoamd and Ricky Gutierrez. And I have lists of people on Twitter who provide helpful ideas regarding trading mainly, or holding or not holding a volatile asset. Everyone seems to be wrong some of the time.

Aside from all that, I've figured out how to zero my pocket queue — I use p2k to send 20 articles a day to my Kindle.

And, did you know you can get a subscription to The New Yorker for three months for $5 on Amazon? When I get through those I read books. Most recently I was working on Branson's _Losing My Virginity_.

Some good crypto newsletters:

• Proof of work,

• Bitcoin optech,

• Week in ethereum

Hammock setup: I've got the photos and details (weights, and where to buy) collected. If you're interested, let me know. Otherwise I'll get a PDF with the info up in the directory at Box and Mega eventually.

Until next time!

Colin

While I have you: On the carfree front Pontevedra, Galicia shows some sanity: “What Happens to Kid Culture When You Close the Streets to Cars.”

January 29 may have been the last time you heard from me, just before I left Melbourne. I spent less than day in Auckland before deciding to leave. I came back to the US the next day. The cost to change my flight was $100.

I'll now just visit places with as many sunlight hours per year as LA. The tail end of a typhoon was in Auckland the day I arrived, encouraging me to move on, and I was tired of wandering.

I spent three months in Goleta and left on May 6, this time with Andrea. In that time we worked for about three weeks on another library moving project. We moved maps from storage back into the main library.

Another adventure was beginning to fill out our health care agent designation paperwork regarding what to do if we cannot speak for ourselves. AKA health care advanced directive.

Tomorrow we may be headed up the Cannell Meadow Recreation Trail. Then to Lone Pine, then to Sequoia NP, then, somehow, to Lake Tahoe. And then somehow returning to Goleta by August 6, perhaps along the coast. We're hiking. We already walked from Ojai to Frazier Park.

I’m reading books by Jerzy Gregorek, who I learned about on a Tim Ferriss podcast last summer. In particular, I plan to finish The Happy Body Book at some point. I’m continuing to read Angle of Repose and other random books. I’ve been listening to podcasts by Taylor Cowen and to audiobooks by authors who have visited UCSB as part of the Arts & Lectures program, as well as other books—The day I ate whatever I wanted, for example. I enjoyed listening as I bicycled back and forth to downtown Santa Barbara, while swimming, and while walking from Coal Oil Point toward Bacara and back.

Mid-September, Andrea and I will probably head to the Knoxville area for three to four weeks to visit Green Knees Farm.

This winter I may try to head to Chile for at least a month in search of warm, dry pine forests such as we have here above 5,000 feet. So that could be starting mid-December.

Here is the link for a PDF of pictures until March 17: https://app.box.com/s/owf38x50zhaoyq1ir8uyk2o92jy6qzq6 (126.3 MB)

Or just visit bit.ly/cplbox2018 and browse for it!

Here is the PDF with photos up to Kernville and to May 19: https://app.box.com/s/js92am9uezqu5e0j6t94h1fre3a1bk3w (161.2 MB)

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