This coming May I'm getting my honorary membership to the Explorer's Club.
I'm not sure that my qualifications fit those of the other members; astronauts, Himalayan mountaineers, and deep-sea divers. The club was founded Admiral Robert Peary. My grandfather was his post-Arctic doctor in Westbrook, Maine, and his daughter, the Snowbird, was my grandmother's good friend, but my explorations concentrated on the social research of brothels, go-go bars, and drinking establishments around the globe not to mention how to score China White or 'Ma' on the Burma side of the Golden Triangle without being mistaken for a fucking DEA agent.
My travel days are on hold. No getting on a plane until September, unless it's deadheading on a private plane to answer the need of a Kuwaiti prince. The mission helping him not lose at cards. He's the biggest loser in the world and they love him in the London casinos.
I recall reading a passage from Richard Burton, the famed Nile explorer, about how he was stranded in England at the end of his life and feeling like Robinson Crusoe. Waiting for the next ship. Last week I spoke with my around-the-world travel agent, John at Pan Express.
"Sir, when are you traveling again?"
"At year's end and I have a plan to recreate my first trip?"
"Are you going to Biak?"
"If possible."
"Sir, everything is possible for you now." John and I go back thirty-three years.
"I'd love to stand of the veranda of the Dutch Hotel and have a European breakfast on Cendrawasih Bay."
He clapped his hands together and said, "Sir, you are back!!!"
Like Richard Burton I was ready to stand someplace far from my death bed.
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