Soar to Shore

Background Named for the town of Gilroy, California , the annual Gilroy Garlic Festiva l began in 1979 and is the town's top fundraiser. According to Wikipedia , then president of the local Gavilan College , visited a small town in France in which, as it called itself the "Garlic Capital of the World," hosted an annual garlic festival (potentially Beaumont-de-Lomagne or La Foire a l'ail Fume d'Arleux ). He brought the idea home, where the last-week-of July annual festival draws 80,000 - 100,000 people each year. If you neither live in Northern California nor are a garlic aficionado, then unfortunately you most likely learned about the Gilroy Garlic Festival in 2019 after a fatal domestic terrorist attack on its property. On its final day, shortly before closing, someone secretly entered the property wearing a bullet-proof vest, and armed with a WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle and 275 rounds. The gunman unleashed 39 rounds on festival-goers near an inflatable slide,

Tonight I was driving home at dusk with a belly full of BBQ ribs to my temporary home of small town America on the fourth of July. I had seen online that the local fairgrounds would be setting off fireworks at 9:30 p.m.; and I, never carrying cash, was seeking an ATM where I could make a withdrawal for the fee at the gate to get in. I pulled off the highway in my town, the sun gone and just a faint orange glow breaking through the incredibly tall pine trees, when I noticed that along the embankm ent, a thick entanglement of tall grass, were a conglomeration of cars and lawn chairs - in the middle of virtually nowhere. I pulled off to the side of the highway, the one open spot, and looked around. Pick-up trucks with lawn chairs in the beds, SUVS, Miatas, dune buggies, motorcycles and more were the boulders among the pebbles of families gathered on picnic blankets, staring at the burnt-orange sky in anticipation. Despite all the warnings this past week fr om locals that the dry season wo

I love to cave. Ever since my 7th grade science teacher took 1/3 of our class on my first wild cave tour (the kind that requires a head-lamp, knee pads and gloves), I've been hooked. It's a dark, mysterious jungle-gym that has new realms to explore all the time and tests endurance, creativity and grit. However, caving is not without numerous risks, or smaller frustrations, that can be planned for in advance to help you on your wild-caving tour. I'll share with you what I know/practice. To begin, and let's just be clear, when I talk about wild caving, it first means that you don't pay anyone to go into the cave. If there's an 18-year-old kid named Tim with a name tag walking you along a smooth path with rope lights along it, pointing out the paper mache jaguar, you are not on a wild cave tour. At the other end of the spectrum, I'm not going to speak to any form of caving that requires heavy-duty repelling equipment, temperature endurance clothing, or overnig

The Journey to the Amazon A sudden drop in altitude and my head shot up from a deep sleep as the little Peruvian Airlines jet bounced along. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked out the window to find a never-ending expanse of deep green jungle canopy coated with a golden sheen left from sunrise. Through the dark twist was a chocolate brown serpent slithering through the foliage – the Amazon River. I was almost to my destination….. On Friday morning, as I secured my tie and jacket for our client’s final presentation, I casually leafed through my National Geographic guide to Peru, wondering what I would do with my new-found freedom that the academic half of my spring break was about to conclude. I came upon the “Iquitos” chapter, a sleepy town buried deep in the Amazon Jungle along the illusive river – and it dawned upon me: I never knew the Amazon Jungle came through northeastern Peru, very close to my current home base of Lima. I planted the seed in my head and let it carefu