A New Path


It’s been an interesting year since leaving gainful employment in San Diego. And in that time, there’s been a steady theme rolling through my head: a steady flow of cliches, famous sayings and all-too-real stories of life. You’ve heard ’em before:

“Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
— Helen Keller

“Twenty years from now you will more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain

“There is magic in boldness.”
— Goethe
(Never mind that research indicates that most of these platitudes are incorrectly attributed; they’re still good sentiments.)

Throw in images of other lives abruptly interrupted by tsunamis, earthquakes and things such as diagnoses of illnesses, then mix in a year of living in friends’ and sibling’s guest rooms and out of storage units while trying to figure out which career path to pursue, and you get a heady stew with an aroma that bubbles up long-dormant dreams from the subconscious.

So into this mindset comes an interesting Tuesday in early April. On the same day that I received an offer letter for an intriguing job in Anchorage, I received a solid offer on my not-listed-for-sale home, also in Anchorage. The couple who made the offer had seen the house back in the fall when it was listed but were waiting on the sale of their condo; well, that condo was now in contract and they just wanted to take a look and see if they still liked the place. At the same time all this was going on, I’d been in contact with my friends Boogie and Marlies, owners of the Swan 51 sailboat Star Chaser; I’d sailed aboard Star Chaser from St. Maarten to Newport, R.I., in May and had a thoroughly awesome time — and now, in 2011, my friends were going to be operating the Challenge 72 yacht, Polar Bear, and wanted to know if I’d like to crew for the season. Hoo boy…what to do?

I’ve had two big dreams in my life: Alaska and sailing away. And while I pondered during that week in April, I kept hearing those great speakers, kept seeing people whose lives were ripped apart by a wall of water they never saw coming, wondered what the hell was happening with the economy (and with the value of my home in particular) and realized: wait a second. The house offer, the sailing opportunity…the universe was offering me the chance to pursue that second dream. I had hoped to be able to do so while also keeping my house in Anchorage, but liquidating in this economy wasn’t a bad alternative. And in the course of the coming year, I could work on my writing a bit, right? (OK, a lot.)

So after the hardest decision of my life, I chose to take the plunge. In a whirlwind over the next month, I sold my home, my car and three-quarters of my belongings. I shipped the other quarter of my stuff to my folks’ place in Massachusetts and used my remaining Alaska Airlines miles to get a free ride to Boston (as opposed to driving six-plus days).

And later this afternoon I’ll board an Aer Lingus flight to Edinburgh, Scotland (with a stop in Dublin, Ireland). I’ll then take a train south to Newcastle, England, where I’ll join Boogie and Marlies and the yacht Polar Bear. We’ll set sail with a gaggle of guests next Sunday, May 22, for Scotland and points north, for a series of cruises to places I’ve always dreamed of exploring: the Shetland Islands, Norway and the Lofoten Islands, Jan Mayen Island (at about 71 degrees north latitude), Iceland and Greenland. Sailing, high-latitude summer, mountain fun…it’s all on the agenda. After that kind of a summer (with a return to New England in July for my buddy Tom McLaughlin’s wedding), we’ll head back south to Scotland and on to Ireland, Madeira and the Canary Islands, where we’ll take a month off in October and November, before prepping for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers “race” across the pond to St. Lucia. At that point, it’ll be Christmastime with my folks back at Plum Island…and time for a next step, one that is still TBD at this point in time.

The bottom line (and here comes another cliche) is that I’d rather regret doing something than regret NOT doing something. So here we go. Stay tuned…

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Channeling George and Kevin


I had planned to write something a couple of weeks as I sat in the shade in my pseudo-home of the past eight months: a self-storage lot in Solana Beach, California. I sat there watching, well, my life, essentially, get packed up into three large wooden crates for shipment to my more-rooted home in Alaska and a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

The first was: “Holy shit! I need to lighten my load!” This feeling was strengthened a couple of days later when the moving company (in a turn of events as shocking as Claude Rains finding out there was gambling going on at Rick’s Cafe Americain in “Casablanca”) declared that the actual cost of shipping my stuff north was going to be a little bit more expensive than their estimate: 60 percent more expensive. Gulp. Well, what could I do? They had my stuff in the aforementioned wooden crates in a storage yard in beautiful downtown Poway, California, and I was 3,800 miles away, back in Anchorage, Alaska. I told them to get the stuff moving north.

The honesty of moving companies notwithstanding, the fact remains that I have a ton of crap that I don’t use that often. And unlike a lot of my friends, I actively purge my belongings on an annual basis. But some of the things that had always seemed so important took on a new role as I realized their density made for expensive shipping. I mean, do I really need all those books I’ve been toting with me for a couple of decades? The complete works of Jim Harrison and Tom McGuane…do I need them on hand 24/7 or will the memories of how those works moved me suffice? And if I absolutely must reference something from my collection, wouldn’t a public library (like the one I’m sitting in right now) enable me to accomplish that goal?

The second (and contradictory) thought that occurred to me as I watched those crates filling up was: “Wow. Forty-five years and that’s all I have to show for it.” I felt like Kevin Kline in “A Fish Called Wanda” when he shoots the empty safe and yells out, “Disappointed!” Friends and acquaintances have actual lives to look back upon: families, kids, homes, second homes, loves, losses, fine china, sentimental gewgaws, hand-me-downs, inexplicable gotta-haves and so forth. Me? I have a lot of toys (i.e.: sports gear), a huge bed, a dresser, kitchen tools, a gajillion CDs, a few hundred hours of Grateful Dead concerts on cassettes and a ton of books. Not much to show for 45 years, is it?

Regardless of whether I have too much detritus or not enough, the experience was profound enough that I will definitely be doing an item-by-item recalculation once everything arrives here in Alaska in another couple of weeks. Expect a few changes…

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Before and After

An era comes to a close…

I’d been thinking about a change for some time. It was like a pair of jeans that just didn’t fit all that well anymore. They were still cool — at least in my mind — but maybe, you know, it was time to get with the program, ya know?! Then, when I spent ninety-three bucks to fill the tank, all of a sudden the Super Duty, Super Cab, Longbed V-10 4×4 F-250 no longer made a lot of sense.

Yeah. I know what you’re thinking: An F-250 Super Duty, Super Cab, LONGbed, V-10 four-by-four?! Also known as: “an aircraft carrier.”

There was a time when I swore I’d never again not own a truck. Of course, that was back when I actually used the word “never,” something I no longer do. But pickups were just so damned useful. I could sleep in the back comfortably. I could haul a tank (should the need ever arise…). I could move from the Lower 48 and carry most of my stuff myself.

But once the snowmobile was gone, and the trailer too, there was absolutely zero need for the beast. In its place has come some sensibility: a Honda CR-V. Twice the mileage (and then some), fits in the garage MUCH easier, and, to put it simply, not so damned ridiculous.

Not sure what took so damned long.

Now I’m like the 17-year-old who gets his mom’s old Subaru and sits in it in the garage. I’m sitting here listening to the Alaska Aces play in the ECHL finals on AM radio in my new-smelling car with nine — NINE! — miles on it. Ahhh…

And the Aces just scored. It’s all good…

Personal, Uncategorized,