The Bottom of the Earth At -282 feet below sea level, Death Valley is the lowest elevation in North America, That compares to the lowest in the world at the Dead Sea in Israel, which is -413 feet. If you want to count water-filled depressions, then Lake Baikal in Russia is about -1,200 feet at its deepest point. But then why ignore the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean at -36,000 feet? If Zabriskie Point…
Desert Sunrise I was asked last night how I could work and still write stories every day. It’s 6am here in the desert and the sun is just rising. I am sitting and following my passion to write…each and every day. I not only write on days I work, but I write on days when I am not working (it’s Sunday today). I write in the morning. I write during breaks in the day. I…
Fire & Ice The beauty of planning an annual motorcycle ride in the Southwest in May is that you can usually count on warm and dry weather (it is mostly desert after all) and yet you are out ahead of the summer RV traffic, which can screw up any road trip. The downside of May is that those mountain passes can get pretty cold and wet and occasionally snowy and you are always fighting to…
Route 66 The magic of Route 66 is as simple as the American dream of hitting the road west. Historically, it went from Chicago to St. Louis to Oklahoma City to Albuquerque to Kingman to Las Angeles. Starting on the shores of Lake Michigan, it took you to the Pacific Coast in Santa Monica. It was a road to adventure and it was a road to escape. Some say salvation lies in the pavement and…
Hot Tub Time Machine It’s Day 1 of my May trip to California. I’ve already had two meals with relatives, catching up on life as we know it in California. I’ve woken up at the butt-crack of dawn to get on a conference call with our London investment bankers (Always Something – the name I will one day call my yacht). And now I have spent a half hour in my luxurious spa, set amongst…
American Sharia Fundamentalism is about unwavering attachment to irreducible beliefs. What is an irreducible belief? Whatever someone wants it to be to serve his purpose. And that purpose can be for the greater good or it can have a high coefficient of self-interest, usually cloaked in false righteousness. What would we define as American fundamentalism? Technically, it represents the views espoused by the Niagara Bible Conference in 1897 that tried desperately to build a wall…
The Blue Horizon Life is about setting stakes out ahead of yourself and then fooling yourself into thinking that it’s a fun game to strive towards that stake. I chose those words quite carefully because all of those elements are at play. The operative words are Setting, Ahead, Yourself, Fooling, Thinking, Fun, Game, Strive, and Towards. When I was eight-years-old I got sent west by my mother with my childless aunt and uncle in their…
Trumpster Fire The New York Times (aka Failing Fake News) has landed with both feet on Donald Trump’s neck in a big way. They have laid bare his tax record (or approximations thereof) from 1985 – 1995. The bottom line is that he was, for much of that time, THE most unprofitable individual in the United States. This Master of the Universe, self-proclaimed best of the best businessman. He wrote-off more than $1 billion…
The Pit in My Teeth Life’s a bowl of cherries and Erma Bombeck wondered if that’s so, why did she alwasys find herself in the pits. I would change that a bit (pun intended) by asking, if life’s a bowl of cherries, why do I always have the pit in my teeth? Or maybe you like a more Forrest Gump approach. Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna…
Pete Goes Berber “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Pete thought as the Air Maroc flight from JFK to Casablanca lifted off. Pete had never even had a passport before about a month ago. He had never been outside the U.S. and had only been west of the Mississippi once before. In fact, it had never occurred to him to go overseas, but when the opportunity arose, his wife Nancy and his sons…