« Archives in April, 2014

Been There, Done That… Nairobi, Kenya

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Nairobi, Kenya…December 1993. Sande and I had been living in London for just over a year when we decided to embark on the first of what would be many holiday adventures beyond Europe. Over the coming years, these would include the faraway wonders of China, India, South Africa, Mongolia, Nepal, Morocco, Russia, and Oman, among others. The fact that we started in Africa—or frankly, that we started at all—is noteworthy given that Sande’s idea of a “travel adventure” was being in a hotel without hairdryers and my previous experience with “roughing it” was to leave Boy Scout camp several days early with a bad case of stomach cramps owing to my inability to cross the threshold of the odious outhouse, much less take a seat inside. (Thousand leggers crawling, flies swarming, bats hanging, and the smell—ugh!) Nonetheless, at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning 1993, Sande and I landed in Nairobi to go “On Safari.”

Over the next twelve days, we would track big game in Samburu, straddle the equator atop Mt. Kenya, camp on the vast plains of the Masai Mara, and snorkel in the Indian Ocean off the coastal town of Mombasa—a town we were quite fortunate to reach alive! But that is a New Year’s Eve story. »Read More

“LITTLE MAN ON THE COUCH”…On Black Eyes, Celebrity Stalkers & Hunky Cops

I thought vacations were supposed to make you feel better.

TP: Little Man, you don’t look so good. What happened?

LM: Vacation, doc. That’s what.

TP: Your parents took you on another vacation?

LM: No, no! Once was enough. No, this was just the two of them. Me? I did the Home Alone routine. Alone, that is, except for the schizophrenic alternating pit stops of the “keep it moving, convict” former prison guard/slop server in the mornings and the idyllic “I can almost see the happy birds flying merrily about and hear the Seven Dwarfs whistling while they work” Disney lady in the evenings.

TP: Disney lady? Oh, Snow White.

LM: That’s what they call her. You think I look bad now…imagine if I didn’t have her coming by each day to buck me up and offer a little TLC.

TP: Well, your parents are back now, right?

LM: More or less. Mom walked in the other night with a black eye; Dad came limping in with some foot problem and moaning that he didn’t feel good.

TP: Black eye? »Read More