I leave this morning for Las Vegas and will stay at the downtown Circa Casino.  Took me 40 minutes from home to the United Club, which is unbelievably quick, considering that I walked almost 2500 steps (I have a pedometer).  My first Cup O Noodles in a decade.  I added two halves of boiled egg.  With a Bloody Mary, my best breakfast in a long time. 15 Craigside feature this week a Louisiana Seafood Boil and a luau. Then last night a  luau .  With the more traditional  lau lau,  fish,  lomi salmon ,  chicken long rice ,  mock bird nest soup ,  poi  and  haupia ,  I bought the  squid luau  and the ingredients for my enhanced  ahi poke , adding  ogo ,  kazunoko ,  ikura,  hot sauce, onion and  sea asparagus . The wines were both Cabernet Sauvignon, from Chateau Buena Vista in Napa and Oblivion in Paso Robles, pus Kirin Beer. -

Our journey to Sydney, Australia to catch the Seabourn Odyssey back to Hawaii begins with a Qantas flight.  This will be only my second flight on this airline, but my first one was a doozy.  Papua New Guinea was the 201st country to visit this blog site.    In 2012 I posted on a trip   I had nearly a quarter century before that year.  This adventure was published in   SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity .  Incidentally, if you haven't read this book, here is the back cover. Here is partly what the final chapter reported. I traveled to the Independent State of  Papua New Guinea  ( PNG ) in 1989, no doubt one of the three most stressful experiences of my life. Most of what follows comes from pure memory, although I do keep files of all my trips, and I did obtain a conference proceedings of why I went there, which was because a professor friend from Michigan convinced me that I should give a talk at his energy conference in PNG, where he had temporarily moved. The  U.S. State Department now

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