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March 25th, 2014

3/25/2014

Hi,

Remember me? I’m the guy who used to keep you in stitches with my witty, insightful, humorous blog posts. I’m really sorry I have been absent lately, but circumstances beyond my control . . .

Dawn has been really sick for about a week. There is this terrible flu sweeping through the marina. On every boat on our dock at least one person has had it. She hasn’t gotten out of bed for days.

I’ve been totally consumed with taking care of her and let my writerly duties slide. But, the good news is that she’s better today. She got up, walked Odin and took a shower. Now, it’s ninety degrees out and she is obsessing with keeping the boat interior cool. Good ol’ Dawn is back, almost.

So, here’s where we are friends: I plan to publish The Inside Passage by Friday, March 29th. I’ll let you know when it is available for you to read. I’ll do a free giveaway in April to jump start the campaign.

Here’s the important part. If you download it for free, I expect that you will repay me for my generosity by writing a review for the book. You can write it for Amazon.com, GoodReads, or any other place you go to find books. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for giving you a free book.

In the mean time, I’m just about through with the edits on Hacker for Hire. This is the second book in the Ted Higuera series.

This time, Ted gets caught up in the world of industrial espionage. A major computer manufacturer in Seattle is getting ready to release a revolutionary new product, but someone on the board of directors is not happy. They’re leaking negative information to the press.

The CEO hires a private investigator to find out who the leak is. When she turns up floating in Elliot Bay, Ted and his friends are called in to solve the case.

It’s an exciting high-tech adventure with lots of thrills, danger and more than a little bit of sex. If you like The Inside Passage, you will love Hacker for Hire.

I’m working on the cover now. To keep with the theme of The Inside Passage, I’m thinking about having a picture of the Seattle sky line with cross hairs over it.

Hacker for Hire should be available for your reading pleasure by early summer. Watch for it.

Then what? The next book in the series takes Ted and Chris into the heart of Mexico’s drug wars. Look for this book around Christmas this year. I don’t have a name for it yet, but after a couple of months of hard writing, it should come to me. Or better yet, maybe I’ll run a contest to let you help me name the book.

Next up, my health report. My knee is actually getting better. Dr. Sanchez drained about 2 cups of fluid off of the offending knee and the pain went away immediately. I am now walking (or, gimping, if the truth be known) without a knee brace or a cane.

I have been sitting on my petite derrière (Who am I kidding, that should have read “substantial derrière.”) for so long though, that I have no stamina. The walk two hundred yards from the boat to the truck up in the parking lot exhausts me. I have to climb into the truck, turn on the air conditioning and recover before I can drive away.

I had planned on taking the boat north into the Sea of Cortez for a short cruise this past weekend, but Dawn’s illness shot that idea down in flames. I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but I would like to head out as soon as she feels up to it.

Speaking of sailing, here is a short video that Dawn shot on our last outing. I thought you’d like to see it. It gives a good feel for what it is like to be under sail on the old Victory. There wasn’t much wind this day, but enough to get the boat moving at around five knots.

The local yachtistas put on a celebration called Bay Fest in a week or so. It sounds like fun. I’ve signed up for the story hour to tell sea stories. We’ll see how that goes. There will be food, music and lots of helpful seminars. I’ll let you know how it turned out.

That's a whale shark in the foreground of the poster. And yes, the picture is to scale. These beasts are as big as many boats.

OK, that’s about it for now. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be back next week with some sailing adventures to talk about.

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Carnaval 2014

3/15/2014

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First of all, one last impassioned plea. There are only seven days left for you to pledge your support for my KickStarter project to publish a hard copy version of The Inside Passage. If you are at all interested in helping me with this, please do something about it today. Click here to find my project .

It Was One Big Party

The sun sets on revelers at the Carnaval parade

Last time I promised you an update about our adventures at Carnaval, but I’ve been so tied up doing my taxes that I haven’t had a moment to write.

So here it is:

Carnaval ran Thursday through Tuesday (that’s Fat Tuesday, Marti Gras). On Monday morning, the vendors were already setting up their stands. Five stages were built along the Malecon and activity increased its pace all week. The Malecon was shut down and converted to a block party for about five miles. By Thursday everyone was ready.

Showtime!

I wanted to go to Carnaval on the first day to get a feel for what’s happenin’. There were parades scheduled for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and all sorts of activities every night.

On the first night of Carnaval, the Rey de Alegre (The King of Happiness) was crowned. They also held a trial for Bad Humor and, to no one’s surprise, found him guilty. His punishment was to be burned in effigy. Like Judge Roy Bean once said, “We’re gonna give you a fair trial, then take ya out and hang ya.”

Dawn and I headed downtown around 7 pm on Thursday. It was just getting dark, but the Malecon was lit up as bright as daylight. The street was closed and we were detoured. We finally found a parking place about five blocks up the hill. Usually, that wouldn’t be a problem, but I was still gimping around on a bum knee. (You’d love my hi-tech cane. In folds down into a 9” package, has shock absorbers and a built in head light.)

After the death march down the hill, we blended in with the crowd. We saw a few familiar gringos, but the people were overwhelmingly locals.

Our view of the parade route.

Both sides of the Malecon were lined with vendors’ stalls. There were food stalls with everything from fruit drinks to cocktails, gorditas (A fat tortilla stuffed with sour cream and Nutella) and hotcakes (an interesting combination, I thought) to taco stands. Then there was the souvenirs. Dozens of stalls were filled with trinkets that have no earthly value, and crowds of people waiting to be parted from their money. Street vendors wandered down the Malecon hawking cotton candy and cheap jewelry.

We wandered through Carnaval for about an hour, then my knee and stomach gave out. We found a taco stand with tables and sat ourselves down. The server came over to get our order.

“Do you have Margaritas?” I asked.

She had to ask her boss, then returned and said “Si.”

We ordered a bunch of tacos al pastor, one Margarita and a Diet Coke. Our server dashed down the street to a cocktail stand and bought a Margarita for me. Try that at your local county fair.

Unfortunately, it was absolutely the worst Margarita I’ve ever had in my life. It tasted more like orange juice than lime. How can they screw up a Margarita in Mexico? If there was any tequila in it, I sure couldn’t tell. However, by the time I got to my second taco we must have had an earthquake because the street started spinning.

The tacos, on the other hand, were superb. The stand had a trompa where they roasted the seasoned pork on a vertical spit. They were everything I hoped for.

There wasn’t really much more to see and I was dying from knee pain, so we headed home after dinner. We missed the coronation, but heard the music from the party until daybreak. The last band scheduled to play started at 1 am.

Fireworks lit up the night sky. Unlike fireworks shows in the US, the rockets and bombs were launched from behind the stage. I wasn’t too concerned about our safety, but I was certainly glad that our boat wasn’t anchored in front of the Malecon.

On Sunday, I had a plan. I made reservations at The Tailhunter, my favorite bar, with second story seating right above the Malecon. The parade would pass by underneath us while we sipped good Margaritas and noshed on nachos and fish tacos.

Our private parade watching party.

The parade was cool. The theme of this year’s Carnaval was “The Infinite Universe.” Most of the floats took an outer space theme.

There was a Jetsons float that I really liked and the grand prize winner was Avatar, but there were dozens of other creative, fun floats and bands and dancers as well. The poor dancers almost all had to wear weird outer space costumes and dance for miles down the Malecon. I hope they had a good time. My feet hurt in sympathy for them.

Carnaval in Mexico is a bit different from Carnival in Rio. Mexico is a very modest country and there were few bikini clad girls on the floats. That doesn’t include the Tecate Girls though. Tecate Beer sponsored a stage and had their Tecate Girls there all night long. The poor things wore heels that surely crippled them for life and not much else.

We had two other couples from the marina join us at Tailhunters and it was a grand time. By the time the parade was over, it was late and we old folk were tired. The party continued on until dawn, as it did on all nights of Carnaval, but we listened to the distant strains of music from our bunks.

It was a great week and a great party. Start making your plans now for next year. It comes at the end of February, the week before Fat Tuesday. If you can’t afford to fly down to Rio, try La Paz.

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March 25th, 2014

Carnaval 2014

It Was One Big Party

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