WE HAVE BOARDED THE AZAMARA JOURNEY, AND ARE ON OUR WAY TO THE COMING TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE

There is not much military activity diirectly related to the War with Iran today, but:

• Iran insists that the U.S. agrees to all concessions before opening the Strait of Hormuz.
• No serious peace talks are occurring.
• The Houthis continue to cause problems with Saudi Arabia.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally rejected the U.S. proposal for the Gaza Strip.

In other news:

• Todd Blanche was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as U.S. attorney general.
• Typhoon Dolphin made landfall over Okinawa at 101 MPH, causing damage, but, at this time, no known deaths.  Next, on to Zhejiang. While not threatening Hong Kong, this storm was deemed responsible for the record high temperature today of just about 98.5 F.

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  As we are expecting to stop through Vancouver after our cruise ship docks in Montreal, I asked Google AI whether the latest British Columbia wild fire is also impacting this city:

Yes, there are some active wildfires and smoke in British Columbia, including a small local fire in Metro Vancouver's Belcarra Regional Park, but most large out-of-control blazes are further away in the southern interior and other parts of the province. 

So on to our solar adventure.  The 5-minute taxi ride from hotel to the Azamara Journey, as arranged for by the Hilton, was troublesome.  Bill of $40.  Recall that the fare from the airport must have been around $250.  Here is a facebook entry complaining about this problem. Not coming back to Iceland again.

All the info Azamara sent us indicated that we could check in at noon.  We got there at 12:30 and there was a long line because the door into the facility had just opened.  Was unprepared for gusty winds and 50 F temperature.  Kind of a poor start to our cruise.

The Journey was launched in 2000 and has had a checkered ownership.

• First owner , Pullmanteur Cruises, went bankrupt.
• Royal Caribbean and Oceania somehow became involved.
• Renamed the Journey in 2008.
• Now owned by an equity firm that lists a whole bunch of companies in the corporation, including Margaritaville at Sea and Walgreens.
• 694 passengers and 407 crew.
• The relatively small size allows it to sail up the Chao Phraya River all the way to Bangkok.  Almost all cruise ships need to be docked at Laem Chabang port, which is 36 miles away.

Bad omen?  Looming disaster to come?  Nah, for we had a decent lunch, and all our luggage was succesfully transferred to our cabin, which is decent.  Some photos.

Got a lot electronics with us.

A big positive is that on almost all the cruises I've been on, internet connection was a pain, requiring info tech staff assistance.  My computer linked flawlessly in seconds.  All by myself.  But this internet service will cost us more than $500, mostly to send out this blog.  I'll continue reporting on our 18-day cruise tomorrow.

I'll close with some introductory remarks for new viewers.  Readership of this blog site goes up when I'm traveling.  Three days ago, broke an all-time record by reaching 241,179 viewers that day.  Generally, this viral peak drops considerably over the next few days.  However, during this period, many new to this site don't know much about what this blog is all about, or me.

Began at the end of April of 2008, and has been posted daily, with a few exceptions, when in China, and on train trips in Canada.

• There are two sites.
• The original, which has more than 6200 postings.
• A newer version, which started in October of 2020.  Why this second one?  I ran out of labels in the original, so just in parallel began publishing #2 to better link with the world wide web.
• They are identical.

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  About me, the blogger.  I, Patrick Takahashi:
• Was born and grew up in Honolulu, mostly Kakaako, very much the seed around which Honolulu eventually grew.
• I suffer from magnificent obsessions, which led to my matriculation at Stanford, U.S. Senate staffer responsible for the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act, and through my academic career, worked on laser fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence for the NASA Ames Research Center.  27-year career at the University of Hawaii, where I directed the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, which became the national lead for the National Science Foundation in marine bioproducts, U.S. Department of Energy on hydrogen and U.S. Interior Department on marine minerals.
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  Now in my 27th year of retirement, during which time I wrote Simple Solutions books on Planet Earth and Humanity, plus Simple Solution Essays, a compilation of some my articles in the Huffington Post.  Here are some of my more relevant illusions.

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• Geoengineering of Climate Change
• What About Hydrogen?
• Why Do We Spend So Much on National Security?
• The Dawn of the Blue Revolution
• The Ultimate Ocean Ranch
• Is There An Option More Promising Than The Plug-In Electric Vehicle?
• America, Don't Copy...Build Something Better
• The Blue Revolution
• Extraterrestrial Intelligence?
• What Is The Best Biofuel?
• The Carbon Dioxide Credit Program?
• The Future of Sustainable Aviation
• The 10% Solution to Peace
• The Sustainable Expo for 2020
• The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami:  The Aftermath
• Star Power for Humanity

I should add that I've made more than a dozen global odysseys, and you can read how those two-month trips went by reading past postings.  How to find them?  Explore.  For example, I typed into the SEARCH Box Ultimate Global Adventure, and found:  AROUND THE WORLD IN 51 DAYS.  This is a trip I took in 2013.  I specialize in these, and in 2015 compared the best ones, by others.  This graphic is of the first one.

So tomorrow, the first full day on our Azamara Journey.

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