For many years I’ve attended a travel conference in Berlin, and on one memorable occasion, it was held around the time the Berlin Wall was coming down. I knew I wanted to see the wall again, especially as it was actually coming down, so when I was planning my trip to Berlin, I included a small hammer and chisel in my bag.

Sure enough, one day, a friend and I went to the Wall to see what’s up. Everywhere we looked, people were trying to knock out a piece of the wall. People were renting ladders and hammers from forward-thinking entrepreneurs, but I was ahead of the game.

I brought my stuff with me.

I asked one of the people there if I could borrow his ladder for a short time. He agreed, and I began hammering into the wall and chiseling pieces off. Let me say right now that was one hard wall. It was solid concrete, reinforced beyond belief.

This was Class A, East German concrete.

I was teetering on the ladder right above where my friend took this photo. I was pounding the wall, and small pieces began to fall off. I managed to hack off several pretty good size pieces with minimal damage to my knuckles.

I brought the pieces (and my equipment) back to San Francisco. As luck would have it, one of my daughters was studying the fall of the Wall in school. I gave her a handful of brightly colored concrete to take to school for show and tell. Suffice to say, she got an “A” on that project.

The photo here was taken while I was pounding away at the wall; I still have several pieces of the wall on my desk. I hope that this is the only Wall that restricted anyone’s movement anywhere in the world.

My all-time favorite airline to fly on was PanAm. As a child I watched them take off and land in San Francisco, never imagining that I’d spend many, many hours aboard PanAm flights going somewhere.

PanAm was unique in the world of commercial aviation, setting world flight distance records, developing new routes, and setting the world standard for in-flight service. I’d go to great lengths to fly on PanAm, at one point buying shares in the company. The stock certificate hangs on my office wall to this day. Too bad it’s worthless.

They had two critical routes around the world. They were designated PanAm flights One and Two, and they literally circled the globe heading East and West. Living in Asia, I was pretty familiar with Flight One, and each time I was aboard one of their trips, it was an incredible experience.

Bring the travel professional that I am, I always tried to use my Clipper Miles for upgrades and truth be told, when I hit their famed “Platinum” level I was set. I loved flying aboard their 747’s, and due to the particular configuration of their cabins, they had one extraordinary seat: 1J as shown in the above image.

I wheedled, wangled, and begged to be accommodated in that seat. It was private, quiet and for the time we were in the air, the most comfortable place on the aircraft. I should note at this point that no other person was seated next to this seat, and that was the best benefit of all. On an 8+ hour flight to somewhere you just can’t imagine how nice it was to sit in silence and just enjoy the ride.

I was (and am) so sad that PanAm is no more. When I reflect on that magical 1J seat, I am profoundly thankful that I flew aboard PanAm more times than on any other airline, then and now.

Thanks, PanAm, for everything.

When we lived in San Francisco, I decided I had to have a motorcycle, specifically a Honda 550 4 model like the one shown here. Never mind that I didn’t have 10 minutes experience riding a bike like that, nor the required license to drive one. These were minor details in my plan.

Sure enough, one day, a friend drove me to the Honda dealer in Alameda, California, which is across the Bay from San Francisco. Once at the dealership I had a brief discussion with the salesperson, signed some papers, and in a frighteningly short period, I was (with my bank) the owner of a brand new, blue Honda motorcycle. Up to that point, I hadn’t spent one minute trying to drive it.

Emboldened by my total lack of experience and knowledge I hopped on (no helmet, please) and wobbled around their parking lot for about 30 minutes. That was plenty of instruction time for me, and I shortly found myself blasting across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on my way home going at least 60 miles per hour.

Miraculously, I made it home in one piece. Everyone was astonished.

I grew to love that motorcycle, and my daughters loved riding behind me as we discovered the hills and streets of San Francisco and up the coast to Point Reyes, Bolinas, and Sonoma for top-class picnics.

Since I was now a skilled driver at least in my own opinion, I wanted a regular and enthusiastic riding partner. Who better qualified than one of my daughters? Of my three daughters, my youngest was the most fearless, and she was up for anything I cooked up for us. To her, nothing was too ridiculous or dangerous.

A perfect match for me.

One Saturday morning, I woke before dawn; I went to her bedroom and shook her awake. I told her to quietly dress and meet me in front of our garage. Ok, Dad, another great plan waiting in the wings.

It was just about dawn when we headed off on our adventure. She didn’t know where we were going, but it didn’t matter. We headed to the Golden Gate Bridge, which was a short distance from our house, riding up the entrance ramp of the highway.

So far, so good.

In a matter of minutes, we were screaming across the bridge just as the sun came up. It was a magnificent sight, and with very few vehicles on the road, we felt we were really flying.

We were, in a sense.

We continued our ride to Sausalito, where we stopped for hot chocolate. At that point, she was up for going to Portland, Oregon, or any other place. I sensibly turned around, and we rode back to San Francisco, stopping at our favorite doughnut place Ahren’s bakery to select a dozen of their best.

We lived pretty close to that bakery, so in a few minutes, we were back home. Everyone was still asleep when we arrived, so I put the doughnuts on the kitchen table, made coffee, and loudly announced to all it was time to get up.

Neither my daughter nor I mentioned our rip-roaring ride, so everyone presumed we walked down to the bakery. Hey, who knew that a doughnut tastes totally fantastic after greeting the dawn while blazing across the bridge.

You know, I think that’s what dads are for.

Living in Hong Kong was incredible. We were there when Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony, one of the last gems of the British Empire, with the Union Jack proudly flying from every building and the Royal Navy prepared to meet any challenge.

The British Crown Colony was well represented in the day (my downstairs neighbor at the time was Sir Ivo Rigby, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong) and I miraculously became a Life Member of the Royal Hongkong Yacht Club (I still am, by the way). Amazing, even now.

We all had weekend activities and events to attend; however, one of my favorite things to do was to take the boat ferry from Hong Kong to Macau, which was then a Portuguese Colony. It was an overnight voyage up the Pearl River and the two boats operating the service were “sister” ships, the Man Shan and the Fat Shan.

If only they were still afloat.

Traveling on either one was like being in a Sydney Greenstreet movie. Both vessels had overnight compartments, furnished with ancient wicker chairs and slatted windows. The distance between Hong Kong and Macau was about 40 miles, and the boat moved along at about 5 knots per hour. Just the right speed for an adventure.

When we finally docked in Macau, it was like we’d just arrived in Lisbon, Portugal from some faraway place. Everywhere were signs in Portuguese; the hotels had Portuguese menus and tiny rooms. Around every corner, shops sold Portuguese food and best of all, terrific Portuguese wine (way better than the Mateus we were gulping by the gallon).

Who wouldn’t enjoy this?

Here we were, 40 miles away from Hong Kong amid a tiny part of Portugal. It was a mini-vacation and every time we steamed back down the river to Hong Kong we looked forward to another river cruise back to Macau.

You know, some things were better “then” than “now.”

While we were waiting for our Thai permanent residence permits, we had to leave Thailand every 90 days and return as tourists. Then we waited another 90 days before leaving Thailand and returning with a new visitor’s temporary visa. Everyone had this process down pat and knew what to do. The Thai railway offered a route that was ideal for us (and our fellow travelers). There was a morning train that departed the Bangkok station at 0800 every day, reaching its final destination, Nong Khai, Thailand, in the afternoon. The same train left Nong Khai station a few hours later, giving all of us the chance to take a boat across the Mekong River to the Laotian side to have our passports stamped.

Once we got to the Laotian side, we climbed into one of several small taxis and sputtered off to Vientiane, where we arrived at the Lang Xang Hotel for lunch. Vientiane was once a French Colonial city, and even then, most people in the shops and hotels spoke French.

Everything about the restaurant, including the menus and food, was straight off a dusty Asian version of the Champs Élysées in Paris. Food was always great, and we washed everything down with cans of Beaujolais. Who knew? After lunch, we’d reverse the process, taking the taxi to the river and crossing back into Thailand at the ramshackle immigration booth, where we received our “new” entry stamp to stay in Thailand for another 90 days. We all reboarded the same train and wheezed our way back to the Bangkok train station some 12 hours later.

There were several variations of this immigration theme until we had our permanent visa, and we also took the Thai train several times from Bangkok to Butterworth (the arrival station for Penang, Malaysia) to repeat the process. This was just one more amazing experience in a long line of fantastic events.

We were so fortunate.

The first week our family lived in Bangkok we were staying at the then-new Siam Intercontinental Hotel until we found a place to live. We were sitting near their swimming pool on Saturday, and I was reading an article in the newspaper (The Bangkok Post) about places to visit near Bangkok.

I turned and said to my wife, “would you like to see the bridge on the River Kwai?” She immediately replied, “I’ve seen it in San Francisco,” meaning that she’d seen the movie made about building the bridge. After I explained that the actual bridge was, in fact, in Thailand near the town of Kanchanaburi, she grudgingly agreed to this expedition, and we packed up and blasted off in our tiny car, piloted by our local driver.

We were crammed into the car, and even though I was seated in front, it was a little frightening, to say the least. Suffice to say we had no idea where we were going or what to expect once we arrived. Until this point, the only things we’d seen in Thailand was the Bangkok airport and the highway leading to our hotel.

Within a mile of the hotel, we were blasting along a highway at what seemed to be 90 miles an hour, dodging trucks, cars, and motor-scooter taxis that darted around like daredevils. During the ride, our driver said very little, so we were left on our own to try to figure out where we were. We had a useless map (it was written in the Thai language of course), so we looked out the window as the countryside literally flew by.

After about 3 hours of our rocket ride, we arrived at the town near the River Kwai. We were thrilled to get out of the car, and when we looked around, the first thing we saw was a small, very well-kept war Cemetery and parts of the original bridge that was built by the prisoners of war.

We were the only people there, and we stood in the sunshine trying to visualize how that all came about and what happened to all of the men who built the bridge. We saw grave markers stretching into the distance and later learned more than 7,000 prisoners were buried there.

At that moment, we realized we were looking at something very, very powerful and it was a long way away from the movie that played when we were at home.

For the first time, we all understood we were living in Thailand, half-way around the world from San Francisco and that we weren’t tourists in another country; we were in our new home, anxious, excited and ready for the adventures ahead.

How many times in life do you start something you think is significant and then forget all about it? Well, it just happened to me, and I’m shocked that nearly two years have passed since I wrote my first post on here and nothing since. Two years is a long time, and when I think back, it’s pretty clear to me that I’ve answered the question I posed in my first post.

No, we aren’t there yet. Not by a long shot.

When I left off in 2016, I was thinking of how fortunate I am to spend an entire working career in the travel industry. When I boarded that beautiful PanAm 707 Clipper in 1966 flying from San Francisco to Bangkok, I didn’t realize that ride would last until this very day, 52 years later. So many places, people, sunrises, sunsets, and memories around the world have unfolded before me since then.

Like every journey, it has to begin somewhere. I was born in San Francisco and growing up, I was so, so fortunate to explore every part of the City. San Francisco was, and is, my favorite city in the world – as a child I explored the streets, endlessly rode Cable Cars, heard fog-horns from my bedroom in the evening, ate Dungeness Crab fresh off the boats at the wharf and knew I lived in the best city anywhere.

On one very memorable day, I sat on the grass at Aquatic Park with my mom and hordes of other people watching (and hearing) a prison uprising at Alcatraz. The prison isn’t all that far offshore, and the sounds of gunfire and activity carried across the Bay to where we were sitting. It was a front-row seat to one of the wildest experiences I’d ever experienced. Now that doesn’t happen every day.

Today an army of people visit Ghirardelli Square, which is located right behind Aquatic Park, where we sat looking at Alcatraz. The square wasn’t a tourism magnet then, and the Ghirardelli factory pumped out chocolate products 365 days a year from that location. As soon as the Hyde Street Cable Car came around the corner, everyone could smell the chocolate fragrance – even now I can remember it.

So with all that in mind, I’m going to add thoughts and random memories to keep this journey going. I hope that someone, other than myself, will enjoy my views half as much as I have.

Thanks for joining me along the way.