atlastrekker.com

The life of a sailor is pretty interesting. I’m sure you’ve heard me complain about it, and speak highly of it all in the same paragraph before, but I’m going to do it again today. In a strange way, I both hate it and love it at the same time. My world is filled with many “firsts and lasts”, whether it’s the first trip of the Baja season or the last trip of the Alaska season, what it amounts to is that I am always moving, constant motion. This makes life interesting, for sure, but it also is hard as well.
Why this lifestyle is so hard, are the people. I’m constantly dealing with “firsts and lasts” when it comes to the people that I work with, and that’s not so easy. People come into my life for short bursts of time, and whether I hate them, befriend them, or fall in love with them their short stint in my life is filled with “firsts and lasts”. It’s not so easy to deal with sometimes.
Here I am again, right in the middle of my “first trip of the season for me in Baja” and I’m dealing with all the heart ache of several “lasts” right now. Many of the people that I have befriended over the last few months are either ending their contracts right now or are just plain moving on. It’s an interesting time. On top of that there is a whole rotation that is leaving this weekend, being replaced with a bunch of folks who I haven’t met yet, because they are so new.
It really is sad to see my friends go, but I know that I will have them as some type of friends for a long, long time and that the next wave of folks that come through will probably bring some more as well. At least it’s nice to think that they will be. It’s both a sad and happy time, all in one.
I really hope that all of the folks who are heading out, know that they are appreciated and will be missed. Somewhere down the road, I hope our paths cross again.

After several failed attempts at the last theme, I’m going to give this one a try for a bit. Any feedback?

I took the kids down to the Santa Cruz, California area to see the ocean and some redwoods last weekend. I’ve been wanting to get back to this area for some time, it really is a beautiful place. For a short part of my childhood I lived in Santa Cruz and we would visit the redwoods occasionally, so I knew that my kids would enjoy the visit as much as I used to.

As is normal, I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I would have liked, but take a look at the ones I got and enjoy.

Half way through my few trips here on the river, and I’m having a pretty good time. All is as well as can be expected, and I’m not totally wore out, yet. I expect that to happen here any minute.

I have been sneaking in some pretty good pictures, here and there, the lighting has been pretty amazing lately.

Who is that masked man?

I made the successful journey out to Denver to drop my son off yesterday, and am now on my way up to Sitka.

My first time flying out of the Reno airport was a pretty good experience, small airports are so much better! It’s nice to not have to go a mile just in the airport. Plus they don’t have the full body x-ray machines yet and that’s just fine with me.

I ended up with a pretty nice hotel out here in Denver as well. The hyatt place hotel here in Aurora is quite a bit better than I’m used to, but I’m not complaining. I got it for really cheap on travelocity, so I don’t feel too bad about it. I’ll have to try and stay out here again next time…

Somehow I ended up with a 5 hour layover in Seattle today. I’m not sure how I’m going to pass that time, I hope they have a good book in the bookstore for me.

I got my handy dandy iPhone all tuned up now, so hopefully I can do a bit of a better job here now. Funny thing is that the boat has kept me VERY busy these last few weeks.

I’ve only managed to snap around 500 pictures in the last 5 weeks, and that’s about what I’ve done historically a week in the past. Sometimes I’d shoot that a day.

I have taken a few pictures with the phone and I’ve been impressed with it to this point.

When I get home I’ll go through and sort out some good ones for you to see. Until then….

I went ashore for a bit on Magdelena Island and managed to snap some pretty good pics of the sand dunes out there. It was pretty windy, so I had to be very careful of the sand blowing into my camera!

Please take a look at the new Baja Pics up there. If you hover over them you can scroll through by clicking the arrows. There are about 15 of them, please let me know what you think!

Well….. My trip to the Bahamas is off with a bang. Literally. The plane out of Columbus this morning broke down, so they canceled the flight and stuck me here in Ohio. I can think of worse places, but it sure isn’t the Bahama’s!

So tonight I’ll make it to Atlanta, then over night there. From there I’ll make it to Nassau just in time to get on the boat. Wish me luck!

I hope this ends soon. My plane was two hours late leaving out of Salt Lake today! They got me on a later flight, and luckily my bus from Cabo to La Paz wasn’t going to leave until later anyways. At least I have that going for me.

The good things is, at least the weather here is nice. It was snowing like crazy in SLC. I’ll take the 60 degrees and sunshine for now. It’s helping my attitude.