Wherever I am…

 When my wife and I are lost in the Colorado High Country, she’ll inevitably ask me “Where the @#%$ are we?” Being the sensitive type, and picking up right away the loving tone of her question my rejoinder is always the same: “Wherever I am, that’s where I’m at.” She doesn’t appreciate my witty response as much as I do, but then, there’s no accounting for taste.

Storm clouds over the Atlantic
Made for a bumpy flight

So here I am. Waiting on my better half to get doodled up so we can head out on the town after our 24 hours of travel. Our flight over the Atlantic was bumpier than anticipated but we made it safe and sound. Tell you what - when they say people are traveling they aren’t kidding. From DIA in Denver, to Philadelphia International, to where we landed this morning, the airports and planes are packed with people. Planes are full, carry-on bags are needing to be checked, everything is rush, rush, rush at least until you wait twenty minutes on the tarmac waiting in line to take off or an extra half hour waiting for a gate to become available after your 6 1/4 hour flight. But hey, you’re jetting across 7 time zones so what difference does a little time spent cooling your jets (literally) matter?

Jet lag is a wonderful thing. We staggered off the final plane absolutely clueless as to what the local time was, though by propping our beady little eyes open we could make out that the sun was still up, the air was warm, and folks were speaking in a language totally indecipherable to us even though we had dutifully printed off the Travelers Top 20 Phrase to Know and made at least some effort at wondering how to actually pronounce things like “Onde esta a casa de Banho?” (“Where is the little boys room?) We did learn one thing for certain, and that is “Onde esta a casa de Banho?” might impress your friends with your mastery of a foreign language but it is of no help, and rather is a detriment, when going through customs.

Despite our language tomfoolery the folks of this beautiful place still allowed us to enter. And as they say in these here parts: “Bem vindo a Portugal!” Or more specifically “Bem vindo a Lisboa, Portugal!” Which was all the welcome we needed. Then it was off to the Hotel Portugal in the heart of Lisbon’s old city where we dropped our bags and promptly headed out to practice the fine art of getting lost in a foreign city. But no matter, I had an actual paper map. Only problem was the city planners in Lisboa seem slightly remiss in putting up street names on the, you know, streets. And lest we needed to be reminded, “Onde esta a casa de Banho?” was about as helpful when seeking meaningful directional advice as it had been at the airport. Man, I gotta stop learning foreign languages.

No doubt, Lisboa is a beautiful city of some 500,000 folks who all speak the same language (Portuguese) which I had so miserably failed to learn given the several hours of brain damage I had devoted to the effort. Fortunately, most of these nice people are more adept at being bilingual than I am, and what the heck, many of them actually speak better English than I do, what with using proper grammar and all. So apart from my stumbling and bumbling in not just one language but two, we eventually were able to communicate and identify exactly where “de Banho” was. And it only costs 1/2 a Euro once you find it!

One of the many beautiful squares
In Lisbon

Once the Banho search had been remedied we were able to do some real sightseeing. Lots of monuments, museums, churches, monasteries, statues, obelisks, castles, etc.Too many to name, too much history to absorb though much of the ‘old city’ really dates back to 1755 having been rebuilt at that point after suffering a major earthquake and tsunami that destroyed almost everything near the edge of the Tagus  river. Still, 1755 is far enough back to be pretty darn old to us newbie Americans (my home of Colorado didn’t even become a State until 1876). Suffice it to say, Lisbon offers a healthy sampling of everything Europe has to offer, and as I mentioned, the people really are very nice and friendly and welcoming.

The Royal Clipper all decked out

The real reason for our trip, however, has not much to do with Portugal’s capital. We’re hear to hop aboard a ship and go sailing with royalty. No, really. The ship we’re setting out on is named the Royal Clipper which is a steel-hulled, 5 masted, fully rigged tall ship. Refurbished in 2017, the Royal Clipper is 439 feet in length, has a beam of 54 feet, and weighs in at 5,000 tons. And the cabins have hair dryers which sealed the deal for the love of my life. This magnificent ship will be taking us back across the Atlantic at a far more sedate pace than the 600mph the Boeing 787 was doing way up at 41,000 feet. We’ll be making stops  in Portugal and Morocco before heading for the island of Barbados where, sadly, we’ll have to hop another plane to get back home to Denver. 

The Belem Castle guards the entrance
To the Tagus River

I don’t know about you, but as a boy I thrilled to stories like ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Two Years Before the Mast’. And lets not forget classics like ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘The Long Way’. How many hours did I while away reading such yarns smelling the salt air and feeling the sea wind in my hair. Alas, much of my childhood was spent in landlocked Colorado and though I did learn the difference between a tack and a jibe, port from starboard, true blue-water sailing was just a tad out of reach. So when the chance to sail across the Atlantic on a ship such as the Royal Clipper became available I didn’t just jump, I leaped. I might be out of pocket for the next week or so after we leave port ion Lisbon. Not sure how good mid-Atlantic Wi-Fi might be, but I’ll blog as often as I’m able. So, come on aboard and let’s set sail! And no more foreign languages for now! I’ll be busy practicing my best pirate voice (“Aarghhh!”) and relearning how to tie a bowline hitch…

The Monument of the Discoveries
Celebrates Portugal’s rich
Heritage of maritime exploration

Where to...?

Where to next? The minute we arrive seems like we start asking that question. 

There's a whole lot of 'where to next'-ing going on right now. I'm not sure there are a commensurate number of answers which leads to some very uncertain times. From politics to sports, economics to employment, cultural fads to breaking news, looking for anything that's certain seems a lost cause. In surfing they refer to riding the wave which I guess is as good a metaphor for where we are as a nation and a world. The problem of course is that no one really knows what the wave is going to do. One of the gentlemen I worked with at my last employer, when asked how he was, would always respond with "Living the dream!" I always took that as a somewhat sarcastic response, but hey, if he's reading this blog, here's hoping that dream came true. 

I'm of an age where more often than not what's old is new again. So much of what is going on today isn't so much new as it simply hasn't been experienced before by younger generations. Whether they will truly learn any more from that experience than my generation did (or didn't depending on your point of view) is unknown but hope as they say springs eternal so I remain an optimist. I'm sure someone has observed that optimism is a wonderful thing, at least until confronted by reality. And reality today seems all about questioning whether or not anyone really knows what's going on. Thus the question: "Where to next?"

My personal optimism expresses itself in continuing to find beauty and wonder in the world around me. And that's what keeps me proverbially paddling back out into stormy seas to catch, and hopefully ride, that next wave. Fortunately I have a willing partner to join me on that wave wherever it may take us. Thanks to COVID, travel over the last couple of years has been challenging (I have a knack for understating the obvious) but now that Mr. Biden is telling us that "The pandemic is over" and most Americans are far more concerned with inflation than vaccination, my better half and I are expanding our wave riding to more distant shores. We're heading east to Latitude 38°43'0.01"N, 9°8'21.6"E Longitude to start our next adventure. I haven't been there since I was a child traveling with my folks and am curious to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. It's a beautiful place but on this trip its not so much the destination as what we'll be doing once we get there that I'm most excited about. Our return trip, at least for me, is the trip of a lifetime and something I've dreamed about since I was a young lad and first starting to read about such things. That long-ago dream never died and now I, like my work compatriot above, will be finally "Living the dream!" 

Meanwhile, it hasn't been too hard to find beauty of a natural kind in my neck of the woods (prairie?) given the kind of Fall we've been having in Colorado. Yesterday I had a chance to do some filming at South Valley Park, one of Jefferson County's open space areas which this time of year is ablaze with color set against the backdrop of spectacular rock formations. Here's the short video from that foray:

I hope your Fall allows you to find the beauty in your world. In uncertain times, the only thing I'm still sure of is that its there, if only we will look.

The future of LinkedIn... from the cheap seats

Trading in my cubicle for days on the road
was one of the happiest days of my life

I was listening to Marketplace on my local Public Radio station a couple of days ago and they ran an interesting segment between host Kai Ryssdal and New York Times reporter Lora Kelley on how LinkedIn users are sharing more and more personal stories. They pointed out that a platform originally designed to make business connections and help find jobs was now seeing an increasing number of users "open up their hearts and personal lives to their feeds." I've noticed that, and am also the first to admit that I share posts that traditionally wouldn't have fit the old LinkedIn mold. My posts tend to focus primarily on travel rather than what Marketplace referred to (somewhat condescendingly) as 'crying selfies' but truth be told I represent a hugely untapped portion of LinkedIn users that represents a golden opportunity should LinkedIn get the hint. 

I retired in 2016. I could have just walked away from LinkedIn at that point as I wasn't looking for a new job and already had a sizable network of business-related contacts. And I'm sure that's precisely what many retirees do. I didn't, because just because I had suddenly moved from workaholic to retireaholic didn't mean I no longer had anything to contribute and share with those I knew from my business life. LinkedIn, if you're listening, there's a huge untapped pool of knowledge, wisdom, insights, and experience that you're ignoring. If you could find a way to bring retirees back into the LinkedIn fold it would enhance the entire LinkedIn community. A retiree's thoughts and opinions are every bit as valid and bring with them the context of years of actual experience that others could well benefit from. Hmmm... Retireaholic... might just put that as my current position the next time LinkedIn prompts me...

I'm not suggesting that LinkedIn should turn into a professional Facebook look-a-like. Candidly I gave up on Facebook years ago even though I had been an early adopter in the early 2000's after recognizing it was likely to supplant the then-more-popular Myspace. It was probably shortly after joining Facebook that I also joined LinkedIn. Working in Human Resources it was a strategic tool for reaching out to potential candidates to introduce the company I worked for and what it had to offer. Most candidates knew next to nothing about the organization I represented, and even though most would never actually work for us, LinkedIn allowed us to get the word out about this great company. 

Let's face it - looking for a job is, for most of us, about as much fun as having a tooth pulled. Even for someone reliant on LinkedIn to do my job, I clearly recognized that LinkedIn straddled the borderline of - dare I say it - being boring. If you're not actively seeking employment, or conversely seeking candidates to fill a job, much of what was (and still is) posted could be fairly high on the Yawn meter. So I suggest that people posting a broader array of information is not a bad thing. Do the folks at LinkedIn need to continue to do content moderation? Absolutely. Yet to remain primarily a resume database ignores the platform's full potential. 

Me? I'll continue to post away though I promise to avoid the 'crying selfie'. If you like travel-related content tag along. If not, hey - that's fine too. In the words of author Karen White: "You ain't dead yet, so you ain't done." To all my fellow retirees, those are words to live by. Now if only LinkedIn is listening...