Professional Eater, Storyteller, and Wine Traveler
Maroon Bells, CO
Twenty Five 25 Word Travel Essays is a quick link to the very cool-
I am # 25 and I encourage you to read them all before you get to mine. Also, please subscribe to the wonderful Your Life is a Trip experiential travel blog. I am a regular contributor.
Cheers,
Michael
A Solitary Vineyard Near Marsala
Italy Images – iPhone 5 Editing Tutorial is a sampling of my recent work editing standard DSLR images using only my iPhone 5. I am very excited about the quality and style of these photos and I want to share with you today some details on how and why I edit as I do. [Read more...]
Spaghetti with Clams – Le Marche
What a wonderful and sometimes intense set of responses from my previous post – The Italy Rules. I want to take a little time today to expand and expound on some of my thoughts and provide further insight into traveling in Italy.
1. Italy Guides – Here is my short list of who I would travel with and why in Italy.
Some Days Life is Not a Leisurely Stroll
The San Francisco bay area is considered to be one of the most dynamic, fascinating, and beautiful places to live on the planet. 99 days out of 100 I agree wholeheartedly, and enjoy my walks, drives, thoughts, meals, and discoveries. The one day out of 100 that goes south, usually goes straight to hell. [Read more...]
Abandoned Warehouse Through A Broken Barrier
San Francisco Dogpatch - A Hipstamatic Tour is a portrait of a neighborhood right along the bay and down from Potrero Hill. The name is theorized to have been derived from either the proliferation of Dog Fennel that once dominated the area (and still grows in pockets) or packs of wild dogs that used to wait outside the slaughterhouses for scraps. Until recently I had spent little time in this hood say for the occasional Muni ride to a baseball game back in 2005. Now I have a good friend who calls the place home. Dogpatch is a “cool” place to be now with flashy new lofts, great restaurants, and many artisan shops. The beauty here lies in the abandoned warehouses along the water which still dominate the acreage of the area and are some of the most starkly beautiful places I have ever seen. [Read more...]
Here is The Blissful Adventurer 2012 Year in Review Haiku. Haiku was one of my most successful creative expressions here in the blog world in 2012 I want to share some of the best of the best with you all today for my final blog of 2012; easily the most successful year I have a had as a storyteller. [Read more...]
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...]
True for me and these fine bloggers
The Most Influential Blogs of 2012 is my tribute to some of the finest work on the web done by caring curators of quality and passion. These individuals and their work gives me cause to pause on my birthday today to celebrate along with them because of what their influence means to my work. For those of you looking to find truth in advertising, look no further than these fantastic sites. [Read more...]
The Blissful Adventurer – 2012 Blog of the Year
Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link from Cara Olsen to her outstanding blog This Little Light and saw she had selected me among a few of her very talented peers as Blog of the Year for 2012. Cara herself had received the honor and as the protocol dictates shared her love and recognition with other writers she admires in the same vein. Cara, as many of my readers already know, is a novelist/blogger of exceptional mettle and integrity. Her work proves one can have faith and a firm grasp of the human condition and that they are not mutually exclusive. To be chosen by such a talented scribe is truly a blessing in these end of 2012 days. Thank you Cara Olsen. You are blessed and blessed with good taste 
[Read more...]
scratching away now
solid as before he looks
down upon us in awe
