bliss Archives - The Blissful Adventurer

Trieste Canal

Friuli Friday Photos Finale is my final Friday blog of 2012. These shots are from an extraordinary spring adventure in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and one from the Veneto just next door. We are in Northeast Italy here, in a land still seeking an identity after changing hands frequently in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I never would have thought I would have eaten the best sauerkraut of my life in Italy, and I did. Tall people, Fascist art, pork in a dozen ways on one plate, my kind of weirdness shared with friends. Nicolas Emery, the famous Rubicon explorer, his fiancée Giulia Laveto (aka juujee), and of course The Schmee were all present and on board for wine, food, and Friuli. [Read more...]

The Beginning Stages of TBA (Part 2) – Woof Huntin’ in Bristol

This post contains graphic commentary and very disturbing imagery. If you are easily disturbed I would seriously consider skipping this post

This is part 2 in the series of how I came to become TBA

: A “woof”

I could feel each bump in the back of my legs, back, and neck as the 1974 Ford F250 4×4 Truck (no one in Bristol said Pickup under the age of 50) bounced along the rows in the Bristol bottoms. These river bottoms were the places where people went Woof Huntin’ or Keye-oat (coyote) Huntin’. There were no wolves in the Bristol Bottoms but woof huntin’ was what we kids called coyote hunting because to a kid a coyote looked a lot like a wolf. To the adults with the spotlights, coyotes looked like easy prey. [Read more...]

The Beginning Stages of TBA – Bristol (Part 1)

Bus Image courtesy of EISD

I moved to Bristol, TX in 1976 just before the bicentennial celebration of the USA. I remember walking across the street from our house with my Mom and Grandmother to attend the 4th of July celebration at the “ball-field” as the local baseball/softball diamond was called in that time. As I watched Jody Taylor singing Margaritaville from the back of a flat-bed tractor-trailer that stretched between 3rd and 1st bases across the pitcher’s mound I truly believed I was witnessing something great, and in relative terms I was correct. Jody was the coolest guy in glasses singing one of the coolest songs of the Dazed and Confused era.

[Read more...]

Saigon – City of Color

Interior of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City as it is now formally called is easily one of the most vivacious places I have seen in my travels.

Rising from the ashes of war and abject poverty, Vietnam as a nation is firing on all cylinders. The changes in culture, quality of life, and wealth are all over Saigon.

This is a country that has gained almost 40 million people since the end of the war in 1975. These are industrious, friendly, and perhaps the happiest people I have encountered anywhere on the planet. [Read more...]

A Photo Walk with – Mike 5Son

Their Grammar or the Door?

This morning I took a walk with Mike Fiveson, author of Mike’s Look at Life. We met in the quirky town of Ft. Lupton, Colorado. The town nor the image opportunities disappointed.

Mike as many of you is the king of door photos. I found this door to be an appropriate beginning to this little photo post dedicated to a wonderful new friend and talented blogger.

Of course the best shots I took all day with my iPhone (D7000 shots coming for Haiku Sunday) were portraits of Mike. I promised not to post any of these without his approval so perhaps they will make it in Sunday’s edition.

Cheers to you Mike! [Read more...]