But first:  MOSCOW/WASHINGTON/KYIV >> President Donald Trump said today that Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire and an end to their three-year-old war, speaking after he held a call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Photos and a video about our departure from Vancouver on Air Canada. Air Canada Lounge cuisine of soup with beer, Bloody Mary, Johnny Walker Black Label on rocks and sparkling rosé. Our plane, showing snow still on Vancouver mountain on May 18. Airline meal. Final view of Canada. This is a weird photo of our plane right over Diamond Head. Returned home at 9:15PM.  Walked 3641 steps. Great night sleep.  So anyway, our 33-day trip was wonderful. We went to the Osaka Expo twice.   Amazingly enough, we won the lottery on both days, for we got to use their motor scooter each day.  FREE!!!  Four for four.  The odds of this happening had to be 100 to one for this to occur.   We st...

This is our our 33rd-day of our adventure.  We leave Vancouver in a few hours and will be back in Honolulu tonight.  Some thoughts about this very satisfying journey. My overriding concern was sleep.  Late last year during our two-month itinerary going east on the Norwegian Encore from Seattle to Southampton, followed by a Christmas River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, I began to have difficulty sleeping during the final three weeks.  My worry was that this trip would result in the same because the Oceania cruise was to the east, where we had to make 8 one-hour time changes, shortening the day again. Well, my body remembered that ordeal, did not want a repeat, and kept me sleepy almost all the time.  Compared to not sleeping at all, this was fabulous. Episode 22 of the Kilauea eruption sequence in Halemaumau Crater resulted in 1000-foot fountains of lava.  However, that stopped after 10 hours, which is good, for a continuous eruption can bring volc...

But first, was there any movement on Ukraine-Russia peace talks?  Well, there is this  guitar duo .  Have you seen  Zelensky, Putin and Trump entertaining  as three tenors?  Watch  We Run the World . Four of my favorite cities are Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Honolulu. We are here in Vancouver, and this stop has been mostly wet.  But I've been here around a half a dozen times, and, aside from rain and cold, this city has much to offer. Our previous trip in October of last year began in Seattle, where we caught the Norwegian Encore for a 39-day cruise through the Panama Canal to Southampton, UK.  I've also been here at least 6 time, the first for the Seattle World Expo in 1962. The Encore's first stop was in San Francisco.  The San Francisco Bay area is my second home. Graduated from Stanford University. Worked at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View on the Search Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Spent two summers at the ...