If I could summarize in two words what best describes why Caribbean cruising appeals to me, I’d utter strongly “Go Natural.” For I cope with so many others each day at home in South Florida in what I call unnatural survival confusion. How refreshing then that our first stop in Falmouth Bay, Jamaica seemed to be the ideal antidote in the tropics to reassess such an urban crisis of the mind.

Consider then how this beautiful island shrowded by “Blue Mountain” mysteries and lonely Caribbean shorelines evokes for me a much calmer state of mind. Or perhaps, it’s my admiration for the chosen dialect of many “locals” who speak in plain talk about making life less complicated than it is. Such common phrases as “No Problem”, Ya Mon”, and “Bless Up” thus resonate with me as a way to simplify decision making, worry less and just be myself at all time. Under such casual circumstances, I struggle less understanding for instance why in Jamaica a popular Catholic Church lies next to a beer factory, to what extent looking black or white matters, or how risky it might be to try natural herbs from the jungle to ease pain in my aching knees.

Perhaps most of all, the issue of unity comes to mind when I reflect on Jamaica’s authentic influence on my life. For as I gaze wondrously at how life here flourishes with so much diversity of plant, animal, and humankind here, isn’t it more natural then for us to similarly co–exist peacefully in “One Love” as Bob Marley once uttered in a soulful reggae song? Enjoy my latest photos.

Have you given much thought lately about how to deal with those idle times in travel when you just feel really bored? What are you usually doing for example during those potentially long wait times at the gate when your flight takeoff’s been noticeably delayed? Or what about those seemingly endless sea days on cruises when there’s nothing but ocean to surround your view? Furthermore, does your attention span drift off in dullness as you sit in a car as a driver or passenger too long each day on road trips?

Maybe it’s time then to “shake matters up” a bit during such frustrating slowdowns and get more creative to productively pass the time. For in fact, a recent poll by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) found that engaging in more feel-good vibes of creative action can directly improve your physical and mental health at anytime.

No, that does not mean you should just text away or chatter with your friends on social media when you’re feeling bored. But what you choose to do creatively as I’ve often found fun to do makes for a more positive handling of these tediously challenging, travel moments.

1. Listen and sing along to the lyrics of some of your favorite radio and streaming enabled songs.

2. Act like a kid again and create simple mind games with words and/or numbers.

3. Draw, doodle or brainstorm in writing about a topic you love.

4. Create something real with your hands like a blossoming paper flower, funky neck pendant or a colorful holiday ornament from scratch.

5. Use silence to inspire short spurts of meditation, visualization, or chanting to quiet your mind chatter.

6. Dial up your favorite podcast to arouse a cathartic release of a laugh, or cry.

7. Playfully interact with animals feeling how they view the present moment.

8. Utilize special effect tools  on your I-Phone Camera to make your photos more visually appealing. 

In my lengthy history of travel, I’ve often found there’s oftentimes nothing to do but wait in potential boredom for a transportation or booking task to proceed. Yet I’ve usually created beforehand a positive mindset strategy to think and act creatively for experiencing these slowdown waiting experiences as the present moment calls. Observe then the creative potential in the following photo set taken from our recent travels.

My current Jet Pack blog primarily features personal recollections of the present moment in travel. So it’s quite clear that the following assets I possess as a person enhance efficient use of my time, energy, and finances where and when I wish to go. So consider the five examples demonstrating these qualities below taken from recent roadtrips. 

Strong Defensive Outlook – As the old adage goes “it’s better to be safe than sorry” when it comes to location time and place. Witness the quick decision, for instance, I once made to evacuate a rustic lodge location when experiencing first sight of a raging wildfire spreading nearby in Granby, Colorado.

Ability to Improvise – For each vacation, I typically consider, various time and distance routing itineraries that can be reasonably accomplished. For example, notice whether a clockwise or counterclockwise plan would have best covered the circled destination items in the map below pre-planned for a recent road trip last year.

Keen Situational Awareness – It’s rarely enough for me to just show up and read about past history as it supposedly happened. For I like to feel the sensation of living those times instead using all of my senses. Notice the awkward heaviness then that I experienced in holding a real musket used in the Revolutionary War period in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Striving For Inner Peace – Wherever I am at home or abroad I prioritize showing up for serenity when I can. In this Northern California photo taken in a friend’s backyard, I could clearly envision this spiritual backdrop as an impetus for my yoga and meditation practice.

Healthful Habits In Travel – Why pack on the pounds as I stay idly in the car on those long road trip vacations? Instead I prefer to take time to get out and about on some walking paths around towns to allow me to make wiser food choices than just eating out all the time. Witness then the variety of healthful choice options I considered then during a visit to a weekly Farmer’s Market in San Luis Obispo, California.

Whenever I think about the boundless freedom offered in this country, I must accordingly consider what degree of “blood sweat, and tears” it took for our ancestors to achieve that objective. You see we are all ultimately immigrants over time when you consider our historic family line of descendants, many of which once crossed vast oceans or challenging land terrains under difficult circumstances to find new life meaning. So it’s nonsensical to me why so many today narrowly define their Americanism in an exclusionary and thus non-multicultural manner. As for myself, I embrace the diversity of South Florida where I live every day knowing that this cultural transition to new life in America to be hard for newcomers to handle.

So with that thought in mind, I suggest taking a close look at immigrant adjustment around your neighborhood. Who’s up early on weekdays making sure that those impressive lawns and shrubbery are shapely cut? Who’s safely driving the public school bus for children on busy highways and maintaining order? Who does your young son or daughter successfully team up with in soccer game play? Who’s running around busily taking orders at your local Mexican or Chinese restaurant? Who’s tediously picking those fresh vegetables and fruits that you love to eat? Who’s patiently attending to the elderly at a nearby senior living center? Who’s carefully drawing blood” at your next physical checkup?

We earned our right to be free. So why not let these hardworking newcomers do the same? Take a look at a few murals from my road trip travels that might offer some hope in moving immigration matters in the right direction.

The idea of traveling seems to be a “second nature” habit with me as I think back to the ease of getting away from my Fort Lauderdale home in various ways. I mean how would you react if you lived in close proximity like me to a major International airport and bustling cruise terminal as well as in close access to several high speed expressways tempting me to move in the northerly direction out of Florida each day? Picture as well my residency in South Florida almost always devoid of seasonal extreme where I can get outside most days in the sunshine to just casually dream of the freedom to play anywhere and anytime I want.

So you might say I feel best about myself during those moments of travel anticipation that I’ve frequently experienced preceding each trip. For whether it’s a cruise, flight, or road trip, my positive attitude soars, thinking in those times of an easy escape from the subtropics into pleasure filled fantasy wherever I will next be. To mark these hopefully informal occasions, I often dress down for comfort as much as possible for ease of departure in a loosely worn lumberjack shirt, matching overalls, and sturdy walking shoes. During these pre- vacation times, it’s reassuring to know as well that our trip returns will become easier,  knowing we have steady condo neighbors nearby, willing to stay in touch with us by phone and take in our mail.

I must admit, however, that the hours before we embark on any of our vacations seem typically busy with packing, finance, and health related decisions to make. But foremost in my mind then, I’m “flying high” just living in the ecstatic moment, knowing that I will soon fulfill my lifelong love of travel again. So as we soon go off our next Caribbean cruise vacation on “Princess” in early December, I hope to share some of this latest excitement with you from Jamaica, The Caymans, Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia when I can.

If you like to read, what can be better than coming on down to sunny South Florida to hear your favorite authors read from their most recent books? In doing so, you might even excite yourself further amid the multicultural stew that exists in this ever changing region. I’m talking here about the November 2023 Miami Book Fair, one of the largest gatherings of national and international book exhibitors in the United States.

Know then as former Reading and English professor, I regularly attended this annual event at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus to enhance my teaching efforts with the fair’s timely works of literature to inspire my students to embrace reading books as a lifelong endeavor. I sometimes found time as well to converse “one on one” with authors about their writing works along the “Street Fair” grounds located in the heart of downtown Miami. In addition to  book talk activities, I also found spontaneous excitement in sampling new tastes in international food, witnessing creative performances of art, dance, and music as well as exchanging views with other serious book lovers.

So in the photo set below, check out the lineup of author talks that I attended this past weekend with some brief comments about their featured books.

David Brooks – “How To Know A Person”

The talented writer of New York Times and PBS television fame offered fresh hope through storytelling about how to engage in better conversations with kind regard for others. His timely advice included looking someone in the eye, listening more and posing thoughtful questions in order to see something larger in them to thus provide a better version of ourselves.

Maggie Smith – “You Could Make This Place Beautiful”

Writing this latest collection of poems became a powerful tool for Maggie to overcome her emotional trauma of juggling time as a full time Ohio mother and ambitiously driven writer. This strong stand she stated to overcome her serious depression state then provided  strong support for believing in “why can’t we have it all?

James McBride – “The Heaven on Earth Grocery Store”

With relaxing ease, Mr. McBride spoke about his past experiences working with kids in challenging institutional settings. He noted how these children of “special needs” who somehow managed to survive in such crisis filled environments inspired the chosen characters for this latest book.

Carl Hiasson – “Wrecker”

Mr. Hiasson’s past career as a Miami Herald journalist dictated later on that he’d expend great effort to research the settings and characters of his humorously entertaining novels. In talking candidly with this receptive crowd, he thus revealed some startling insights about how issues of racism, environmentalism, and illicit drug trade during a lengthy stay in Key West, Florida inspired him how to write his latest book.

Dave Barry – “Swamp Story”, Adam Mansbach – “The Golem of Brooklyn”, Ben Purkert – The Men Can’t  Be Saved”

The always satirically funny writer highlighted a three person panel with other humorists that proved to be a “wild wacky, and witty” affair. Imagine each of them cracking jokes about their recent literary efforts centered around scary encounters with python monsters, time traveling chiropractors, and a giant Jewish protector called a “Golem.”

Heather Cox Richardson and Tracy K. Smith – “Democracy Awakening – Notes on the State of America”

The assault on America’s Democracy from a historical perspective sparked interesting conversations between the Heather, the syndicated columnist/History professor and Tracy, an accomplished poetess and English professor then. But most interested me seemed to be their differing views about how their writing efforts came about by either conventionally planning the various writing drafts logically step by step or intuitively shifting to unpredictable immediacy of the present moment.

T.C. Boyle – “Blue Skies”

Just one look at this lanky looking hipster and you can sense he’s all about expressing “anti- establishment” viewpoints about materialistic American society today. So I observed then an emotional talk about his latest “Eco- Thriller” to be a fierce attack on why humans appear unwilling and unable to cope with “climate change” and “global warming”, which he felt would result in the ultimate destruction of our planet.

One of the most exciting aspects of our U.S. roadtrips happens in places that provide vivid memories of happy times of mine in the past. In this case, our recent Colorado bound roadtrip from Fort Lauderdale happened during the seasonal flow of Autumn’s turn throughout October into early November. You see I’ve lived in perpetually torrid South Florida for so long that simply sighting some colorfully falling leaves in the Rockies or bundling up to enjoy a cool morning of cheerful pregame festivities before a Cleveland Browns football game resonated as a hugely “big deal” for me at the time.

Autumn also happened to be an ideal time on this latest roadtrip occasion for my wife and I to enjoy a noticeable “uptick” in leisurely concert offerings in Louisiana ,Texas , Tennessee and Colorado cities visited along the way. Two vital ways to make these experiences more enjoyable meant booking our concert tickets ahead of time as well as arriving at our motel the day before each “gig” date happened. In such case, we could take our time during daytime hours to sightsee along such interesting highway “stretches” such as the famed Route 66 corridor still surviving in small town prairie land, the “Birth of the Blues” Highway Route 61 following the Mississippi River and the eclectic street car route along the Canal Street corridor in downtown New Orleans.

They’ll be more to come in future blogs describing details about each of the destinations we visited over the last month. As for now, enjoy my  latest photo collection in the authentic spirit of Autumn’s blissful turn.

Ruth and I are well into our latest road trip and and look forward in the coming days to enjoy some cool Rocky Mountains weather. I’ve got plenty of site curiosities and beautiful photos to share with you about this vacations. But due to time restrictions, I will such blogging for when we return home to South Florida in early November.

In the meantime, I’ve made a few observations from places visited so far that maybe you could explain better than me.

1. U- turns for returning back to the other side of the highway are rare when you might need them in Louisiana. You might for instance need to drive across the entire length of Lake Ponchartrain or a long bayou bridge for miles and miles before getting an opportunity to turn around.

2. I know Colorado seems animal friendly, but how can it be expected to heed those frequent wild life crossing signs when you are going 80 mph+ with everyone else on crowded Interstate Highways?

3. For the same reasoning, why does West Texas post frequent historic marker signs shrowded by bushes on the side of the fast roads?

4. In Colorado Springs, certain waterfall sites are closed for two days a week.How is that possible? Do they just turn off the water?

5. Why is Bourbon Street New Orleans always so crowded when you can walk a few blocks to the safer confines of music club filled Frenchman Street nearby?

6. Why does  a landmark like Atlanta region’s Stone Mountain and Southern Colorado’s  Royal Gorge Bridge now exist as a paid Amusement Park attraction? I just want to take a few photos of the natural beauty at each site and then leave.

And finally,

7. I’ve read that the state of Florida is currently building bulletproof windows on the State Capitol building in Tallahassee Yet at the same time the Republican dominated legislature there approves “open carry” and other pro gun use laws?

My Possible Answers:

1. Police can give more speeding tickets that way to impatient drivers.

2. Colorado encourages drivers to actually go the speed limit that way.

3. It’s a way to divert one’s attention from all the ugly oil drilling and slag pile buildups throughout this area of the state.

4. This way Colorado can obtain funds from tourists who just want to look at water.

5. The tourist priority seems to be heavy drinking and unrestricted partying there.

7. The state of Florida government prioritizes allocating taxpayer for themselves  but not toward the safety needs to ensure of its citizens.

In the past two years I’ve signed up for an online Kundalini Yoga class on Sunday mornings knowing very little about what Kundalini actually means. But after taking a few classes, it did not take long for me to realize the powerful spiritual effect that Kundalini felt. I attribute this opinion primarily a result of our teacher, Marjorie Bryant, from New York City who expertly worked our body and mind through musical chanting and a set series of repetitive movement poses for one hour each week. Beyond more easily tapping into such energy of our inner soul, I’d also embraced her session introductions where she explained how Zodiac signs from Astrology combined with movement of stars, moons, and planets through time could change the future directions of our daily lives.

Thus being more aware now of my “Pisces character” through Kundalini ideals and in particular it’s meditative foundations, I feel it’s important in this blog entry to “dig deep” into my intense emotional nature. So I find it quite appropriate for me to reveal strong feelings of gratitude in remembrance of certain loved ones whose untimely demise impacted my life in the past. Thus I’ve conducted this week a quiet search in my home for some valued tokens of connection that symbolize sincere thankfulness toward each of these revered individuals who’ve produced joy, comfort, and happiness in my life. Perhaps the following video will similarly bring out that uplifting spirit of giving back somehow to those no longer alive that you cared about at some point in your life.

My wife’s brother Steve once bought me the most expensive shirt I’ve ever owned. To this day, strangers approach and compliment me for wearing such a classy garment. Thus I thank Steve for making me aware of choosing good taste in clothes to enhance my social standing and physical appearance.

Chief Wahoo, an imaginary logo figure from the long legacy of Cleveland Indians baseball vanished when the team last year renamed its ball club the Cleveland Guardians. In staring at his dining area statue in the photo below, I reject the idea that so many make that his somewhat amusing look feels offensive to the status of Native Americans in my country. So I realize I must thank Chief Wahoo wholeheartedly for inspiring me to “root” so enthusiastically for this team throughout my lifetime.

My wife’s father Ed accompanied me to Miami Dolphins games during their glory years following their 17-0 perfect season and through the exciting Dan Marino era. When Ed passed away recently, he left me some physical mementos of those enjoyable times spent cheering the Dolphins on together. So I thank him for keeping these pleasant memories of Dolphins football alive and well in this modern era.

My grandfather Eugene once allotted much of his leisure time to teach me to play a competent game of chess. Thus I thank him in remembrance of his life with me in this chess set image I found in my living room. For Eugene served me well with his patient and caring nature whom I choose to emulate in my subsequent teaching career.

My father Arthur worked long hours each week at various soft drink bottling companies when I was growing up to maintain our family’s economic survival. So I thankfully dedicate these vintage Cola bottles found in my souvenir chest to this hard working and responsible man who I similarly modeled in work “like father like son.”

Our Maine Coon cat Maxie lived in pet friendly comfort with us to a ripe old age exceeding over twenty years. Searching for some object reminders of his family friendly presence then, I discovered that these cat needlepoints made by mother on my bookshelf invoke a feeling of thankfulness for those relaxed times when we sat contentedly in the living room together.

Looking back to my inner city teaching days in Miami, I feel honored to mention a pair of running shoes stored away in my closet. For I most likely wore them on those morning occasions when I ran with my FBI agent friend Steve around our neighborhood. For during those relaxing jogs, Steve and I shared plenty of positive conversations that helped each of us escape from reality as we dealt with some very stressful times in our respective occupations.