Mombasa, Kenya is my next port of call. Due to recent terrorist activity, namely grenades being thrown into nightclubs supposedly by al-Qaeda-linked Shebab fighters, in retaliation for Kenya's military invading southern Somalia, the United States has pulled out all of their embassy personnel, and along with Canada, have recommended their citizens avoid Kenya. I doubt I'll be able to stay out of the nightclubs. Rumour is that ex-navy Seals will be providing security for us. Might not be a bad idea to drag them to the nightclubs with me....
It was the first time I've had a full six weeks off, as I generally have to extend my tour, or run guys through the Super Puma simulator in Norway on my time off. I enjoy instructing, or I wouldn't have taken it on in the first place, but it's nice to relax for a spell. Considering it was my daughter's summer vacation, the timing was perfect. We went to quite a few movies, out for dinner and lunches, the beach, mountain biking, zip lining, rented a jet ski one afternoon, mud sliding in tidal waters, afternoons downtown, and a memorable trip to the Grandparents, where my Dad had some chest pain the day we left and went in for an emergency quintuple bypass the next day. Tough old nut, he was home before the week was out and is probably mowing the grass now. My daughter and I have had fun, I'm going to miss her something terrible. And, I bought a new guitar.....
Gibson Les Paul Traditional
Packing is going well. I'm foregoing my love of cotton for synthetic, warm-weather specific clothing. I love linen in warm climates, and the linen shirts I picked up in Turkey are going for sure, but cotton gets so wet from either the rain or my own sweat, and never dries, so I'm going with Underarmour/Nike/Columbia/North Face technical fabrics across the board. I might be stinkier at day's end but hopefully more comfortable.
There wasn't much free time. My kid kept me hopping throughout, but I did manage a couple of new songs. Commercially not really viable, which is a nicer way of saying they aren't very good, but I have a blast making them, it's just fun, plain and simple. I know what I like to listen too, and that's the sound I'm after, but I'm well aware that dreams and reality rarely coincide in this life. My guitar playing was waning and a new axe inspired me to tackle it yet once again, learn some new riffs, develop my theory abit more, and looking for Les Paul players to compare my new tone, I did manage to discover some new music, which is always a good thing. Check out "The Best of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac", a far, far cry from their later years.
As usual, lots of reading. Helicopter pilots read alot. It's a part of the job, as generally you fly guys to someplace where they have something to do, and you wait, or you're on standby for a medevac call, or waiting for weather, or you just aren't scheduled. There is tons of waiting. I tend to go from quality literature to fluff and back again depending on my mood. I find light reading like Tom Clancy, Andy McNab, Richard Marcinco and Chris Ryan and military action adventure books are great, interspersed with travel logs of those going to way out there spots, hopefully delving into the emotional aspect and cultural depths of their travels; Redmond O’Hanlon and Paul Theroux ("Dark Star" is East Africa travel) are favourites, and specifically any place I'm intimate with; "Crazy River" about travelling a river in Tanzania, the diaries of Stanley and Livingston and Burton, or "My Friend the Mercenary" and hiking and filming through war torn Liberia, with botched coup attempts in Guinea, and old ivory hunting stories of Karamojo Bell and others from the 1800s and early 1900s, and always a page turner, Wilbur Smith's stories of Africa, and you are thoroughly entertained and learn some history along the way. Peter Capstick's books of hunting in Africa and South America are some of the funniest reads I've ever come across. But then my mind needs some stimulation and I turn to the deeper writings of VS Naipaul (Africa again), everything written by J.M Coetzee (Africa again...seeing a trend here??), Knut Hamsun, pre-World War Two Norway (written before he befriended Hitler, which friendship cost him the respect of his countrymen), and Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" will haunt me for the rest of my days. Cormac McCarthy is my favourite, bar none. It's a good deep story that puts you there, every smell, nuance and emotion, but it's his frequent philosophical ravings that keep me coming back. Anyone with wanderlust will love settling down with Bruce Chatwin, from Patagonia to Benin (his "Songlines" was a pivotal book for me), Henry Miller's daily rantings of everyday life in the heart of Paris of course, and Jack Kerouac, whose iconic "On The Road" pales next to his "Dharma Bums" in my opinion, but those were all read years ago. Hemingway is always a favourite, but having read them all, there's little to look forward to, the same goes for my other favourites; Joseph Heller, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Stephan Leacock, Salinger, Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Gunter Grass, Orwell, Joseph Conrad, Faulkner, Mordecai Richler, etc.. There's always new authors to look out for, fresh perspectives to tackle, as I doubt I'll get to experience enough to get a full dose of what this life has to offer. I will try though....
Back to packing, I'm Kenya bound Sunday.....
Back to packing, I'm Kenya bound Sunday.....
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