´Raise em!´ I gaze down the long barrel of a .45 leveled at my chest. ´You have the wrong man.´ ´You may not be the guy I’m lookin’ for, but you’re close enough.´ The old codger on the Los Angeles sidewalk takes a step up and spews cheap wine breath, ´I was a bank robber. [...]
´Railroad bulls drag hobos like you out long past lookin´ blue!’ a Grand Junction, Co. brakeman cautions gesturing grandly along the transcontinental rail toward the 6.2 mile Moffat tunnel that pierces the west flank of the Rockies. But I´m green and eager to chew up and spit out challenges, if need be, and climb aboard [...]
The Kenya Serengeti hosts the largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world that is a smorgasbord for the king of beasts. Tonight I am on the menu. The high diversity of animals relates to the diverse habitats that our 8-person safari truck has bumped about for a week ranging from grassy plains where we see [...]
There isn´t much to this story, actually. I am slipped a Mickey or food laced with poison in a skid row room at the Los Angeles Rainbow Hotel and minutes after the person leaves descend into an abyss. It proves nothing to detail the pain and awareness. However, I am found by a housekeeper and [...]
At high noon on a clear summer day a mile above the Arizona desert a single engine Cesena drones, suddenly stalls and goes into a nose dive. To my left my racquetball partner pilot operates the pedals and levers like a mad drummer as the G-force turns his face into a squirrel. The destination is [...]
One early March I set the left boot on the Pacific Crest Trail at the Mexican border. This path runs the Sierra Nevadas for 2600 miles through California, Oregon and Washington to touch the Canadian border. The aim to hike border-to-border in one season requires starting in spring and risking snow in the Sierras. Mountain [...]
Given last year´s last record summer daily highs of 120F or greater in the shade that dropped chickens, dogs, the great-great blind grandson of Secretariat, and killed 20% of the humans in Sand Valley, Ca., I made two little moves. Neighbor Fred had fallen out of bed with heatstroke and died of a heart attack [...]
The Indian Ocean surf on the white sand beach of Bali is cold between my south of the equator toes after a sunrise jog, and the unpeopled shore slopes sharply to the breakers. I backward walk through the rollers, dive through higher ones, and the first blow of a powerful offshore current carries me a [...]
On a deserted Sira Lanka beach a flute charmer slowly plays his 12´black king cobra out a wicker basket, its tongue flicking until it reaches my sternum. I am fatigued from the long walk in soft sand, and stroke its brow to which it nudges me affectionately like a puppy that I pet repeatedly. So, [...]
I draw an assignment to seed capitalism around the globe. One of the early stops is Caracas, Venezuela where an applecart salesman who is writing an English teaching manual is to be handed $2000. My capitalist benefactor will take a receipt for 15% off the annual gross, and then it´s on to the next stop [...]