Independence Day ... Really?

July the Fourth is Independence Day in America but independence from what.  A big part of the reason for fighting the War of Independence was taxation without representation but that's happening all over again.  It was fighting against an overbearing British government and that's happening all over again too.

It's a felony to lie to Congress but James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, has done it repeatedly and Congress has done nothing.  (The Guardian:  James Clapper, EU play-acting, and political priorities)

The American government is completely out of control and yet this time no-one is talking of a Boston Tea Party.  Instead they will shoot off fireworks and talk about freedom.  The question remains, freedom from what.

There was a time when the American government was described in terms of a Keynesian metaphor as people wanted to use an economic model for it.  However today it is usually described in Orwellian terms regarding his vision of a totalitarian regime in "1984" ... and yet still no-one does anything.

People complain of the Affordable Care Act which is typically known as Obamacare by Republicans too stupid to put together a rational argument.  At the root of the problem with this solution is that it entrusts all medical care to American insurance companies which are notoriously corrupt.  There is all manner of hysteria about fringe elements of the program but no-one does anything about the insurance companies or the banks which have proven themselves time and again to be corrupt.  Whether the government forces you to these companies or people go to them on their own really makes no difference when both paths go to the same place.

The question today is not where is America as that much is obvious but rather the question is where are the Americans.

Answer:  bitching and moaning on Facebook


If America does do anything about the problems there, I hope they will do a better job than that ridiculous Arab Spring.  They credited that with being driven by social media.  It's probably not true but that's what they say.  In any case, they overthrew one government and have now overthrown another one to replace it with a military leadership.  Nothing like the military to provide a truly free government.  This is madness.  (The Guardian: Mohamed Morsi ousted in Egypt's second revolution in two years)

Finding Italia w/Pics

Now that I'm well away from the east coast, the tourist development is behind me and I'm seeing the real Italy.

Here are some pictures from Castel San Giovanni

This is the municipal building and right opposite from it is a school

These are not the oldest buildings in the city as those date back to the 13th Century but these ones are obviously quite old.

Here's a view down street to the east

And here's the view from turning around to the west

People were hanging out at each of the cafes and they weren't tourists as they obviously lived there.  This was very much how it was in Greece and it was entertaining trying to talk to some guys at one of them when they asked where I was going.  Greece is Grecia in Italian and we got it together that I started there and I'm headed for England but there wasn't much to do with what I will do after that as I have no idea I will do after that!  They didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian but smiles and hand gestures can say quite a lot.


Just outside of town I shot some pictures of the countryside.  The terrain that had concerned me appears to be not more than rolling hills.  It was my intention to drive around anything higher than that and it appears to have worked.

On the Road with a Mouse and a Chicken!  (You would have to hear my live set to have any idea what that means)

This is looking south and there are definitely higher elevations down that way but I've driven around that and I'm pleased that it has worked.


Right now I am in Tortona and I'm not so far from Genoa on the west coast of Italy.  Cat tells me I should be able to find inexpensive camping there and that will be very welcome as I haven't even seen a campground since Monday morning.

Once in Genoa, I'm not so far from Sanremo which is home to Busanna Vecchia, the artist colony.  That is not to be missed and I'm thinking that it will likely be Friday that I get there.

The Map has been updated with each location and I will continue doing that all the way along this maniac journey.  I hope you're enjoying the ride as, despite the difficulties, I am.  It's a hard ride but things don't necessarily have to be easy to be good.

On Expectations

Based on UK citizenship, I have a right to be there and I have a right to breathe the air.  Beyond that the UK doesn't owe me one damn thing.  What I hope is that I will qualify for NHS but that may not work out. However, that won't change anything as I don't have medical now.  There are two key ingredients to staying healthy and they will never change:  eat right and don't smoke.  The third ingredient is exercise and, to some extent, the moto addresses that.  It's not at all a cardiovascular drill but it sure as hell does improve muscle tone; this has been one major work-out!

NHS is not the only reason for going to Scotland as the lady who will put me up for a while has the same blood as my mother.  This is pretty rare stuff so of course I'm intrigued.  As I said previously, this isn't some kind of con as I really was born in Edinburgh and there's something of a pilgrimage in going to see it.  I haven't the faintest idea what will happen after that but I really haven't had any idea what would happen next from ever since I got to Greece.

Life is an adventure but only if you accept it!


(You can write your own editorial on what the U.S. really did owe me and didn't pay.  I couldn't be bothered to write that one again!  The only reason it's at all germane is that it's not the U.K.'s responsibility to make up that deficit.)

Maestro Michi Renoir ist Unglaublich! (English text)

The title means that Michi Renoir is unbelievable and last night was the first opportunity to attend a show at Cat's Art MusikCircus.  I'm not sure what brought Michi to this theme but he was improvising along a Scottish vein and Cat had put up for the stage a picture of a very old tree in the mists of Scotland.

Maestro Michi's improvisation really is unbelievable both in the depth of the music and the richness of the voices he uses to play it.  Last night he was often using the huge cinematic voices that only synthesizers can give and it really was highly evocative of images of the Scottish Highlands even though, at most, only one in the audience has ever seen them!  But we've all seen "Braveheart," right?  (laughs)

It was a glorious performance and, once again, Maestro Michi outdid himself.  How he comes up with an altogether new show every week is a mystery only he can answer but he just laughs and sits down to play some more.  Unbelievable!


And Cat and I danced!

Cat ist auch unglaublich (Cat is also unbelievable)!

She has been bringing this magic to the virtual world for six years now!

Onward to Piacenza and then the Coast

I feel something like the man in the fountain as there really isn't much chance of making it to Scotland but I will keep trying and I'll bring it all to you as it comes.  The biggest problem is that I have had no luck at all finding campgrounds or even somewhere I could just unroll the sleeping bag and hide out until dawn.  If there's a day that I can't update the blog it won't mean I'm dead but rather that I was successful in finding somewhere to sleep for free!

I do confess to being a bit afraid of crossing mountains between here and the coast.  I don't think they are very high and I'm going the flattest possible way but still they are the tail end of the Alps which are some of the tallest in the world.  I have a vision of tiny twisty mountain roads.  It's probably not real but it's a formidable thought for that tiny twisty scooter!

There probably won't be enough progress today to encounter any mountains but definitely tomorrow and hopefully I will then make the coast.  There should be some photo opportunities at that point as it's not so much the tourist destination as the east coast because the beaches are rocky while the ones on the east coast are all white sand.  Cat tells me there are old villages on the coast and they could be very beautiful to see.

I'm becoming accustomed to no-one speaking English.  In Italy people will try some English if they know it but in France they won't speak any other language even if they do know it (laughs).  I ran into this once before in Quebec when the separatist movement was at its height but the only French I learned from it was 'le burger fromage' (a cheeseburger).  That will not serve particularly well now as I haven't the faintest interest in cheeseburgers!

The Map is updated with each stop.  It doesn't show the intended route as I still really don't know it except to make for the coast and then west into France where I can turn north toward England.  The whole purpose in this route is dodging mountains.  I would dearly love to visit Germany but crossing the Alps really would be suicidal.

Here we go again!  The progress each day is not so impressive but 70 kph is only about 40-45 mph!  Still, I'm making progress crossing Italy and in two more days I should make the coast.

Please do help if you can as the expense of this is very much more than I thought it would be.  Don't shoot me, I'm only the guitar player (laughs).

The Man in the Fountain

The man in the fountain
didn't know what was wrong
he just knew he felt such pain
at having lived for so long.
He threw off all his clothes
as he stood there with a knife
and then it was his plan
that the blade would end his life.
The police were all around
on this gorgeous summer day.
They told him to stand down
but he couldn't hear their way.
As one of them came closer
he felt yet another threat.
Now the cop would shoot him
but it wasn't over yet.
He stepped to the policeman
but still he held the knife
and that's when he shot him
and ended his short life.
The cop said he had no choice
but he could have backed away.
The man was no real threat
but still he had to pay.
These times are very hard
on those who feel too much
and when they need it most of all
is when they run out of luck.
He lay bleeding in the fountain
as his blood flowed into the pool.
and all the papers wrote about him
was that he was such a naked fool.
But people started crying
this violence has to end
And the people will be heard
This violence has to end!


The above is a true and the following video shows what happened.  It is explicit and the man will be shot dead.  Do not watch it if you don't think you can handle it.  The violence must end!

The Art of Living Dangerously

Many years ago during one of the camping expeditions my brother used to stage at Dale Hollow Lake in Tennessee, there was quite a tribe gathered and the question of parasailing arose.  It was a large group of people but no-one had ever done it and flying a parachute behind a boat seemed like a very cool thing.  But the wimpiest girl in the crowd said it was too scary and she didn't want to try it.  That was fine for her as no-one should be intimidated into risk taking ... but no-one else did it either!

That no-one else did it was not her fault.  She set her limits and did not exceed them and this is how risk taking works without winding up with dead people.  However, for anyone else to use her limits to define their own is not appropriate at all.  If you let other people set your risk limits for you then you will likely never do anything more than sit at home and sort buttons.

This expedition isn't simply for the sake of the risk as I would just as soon do without it but risk is inherent in what I am doing.  You may wonder what this has to do with music but it has everything to do with it.  One can have all the passionate drive to play one likes but what is your story to tell if you don't live one.

Right now I'm in Ribiera which is a bit north of Modena and it appears I can manage about one hundred and fifty kilometers per day.  Don't read that as Autobahn or Interstate driving in which one comes up to speed and stays there as it isn't like that at all.  I do miss my Sprinter as I could set the cruise control for 110 kph and stay there for a night and a day but right now I don't often hit 70 kph and that's fine.  I won't even stay at that speed for very long as something Italians love is the traffic circle.  And why not.  They're better than traffic lights as you never have to change a light bulb and the batteries never run down!

From here I will head more north to Piacenza and then break west for the coast.  Cat tells me the west coast is much more attractive than the east as the latter is heavily-developed for mile after mile and really one beach town in the world is the same as any other.  So far I haven't been taking pictures as I haven't seen anything that looked all that Italian!  I do expect that will change as I head west.

There are multiple reasons for going to Scotland.  The first is obvious in the need for medical care after having none for over four years.  I understand the requirement that one intends to live there more than six months but it would be quite difficult to prove anything else for one simple reason:  I don't live anywhere else.

Another reason is that it is home.  My actual home is near Nashville in Tennessee but Edinburgh is my birth home and I have never seen it because I was so young when we left.  Scotland has been the home of both sides of my family for centuries.  It's not so much a matter of finding roots as it will be awkward meeting my relatives.  What does one to say to someone one hasn't met in sixty years!  But it's the nature of families that one does find something to say and that will be most interesting.

As with Greece, there is a spirituality to it as this really is the place that made Frasers.  I can't even begin to imagine the strangeness of seeing Frasers and Sopers all over the place but Scotland is where that happens.  It's not so much a search for the birthplace of the Celts as that goes much, much farther back in time.  Celts are all over the place: Germany, France, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland.  I don't really know where this tribe originated and perhaps that will be yet another search but Scotland is it just now.

While it's somewhat disingenuous to say I will stay in Scotland, I don't see a huge deception as it really is home.  I can't call anywhere a physical home as I don't stay anywhere very long.  For some reason, I can't!  I really need to wander.

Music will come and poetry will come but, for the moment, total exhaustion comes first!

Some Departing Pictures from Greece

Here is what an SVM scooter looks like when it is ridiculously overloaded.

And another:

Shot of Patras, Greece, from Deck 12 of the ferry:

Yes, those big-rig trucks are tiny relative to the ferry and it can carry loads of them.  Who knows how many tons they can load onto this thing and yet it still maintained a quite surprising speed as it crossed over to Italy.


Good-bye Greece

Pulling away from Paradise.  It may well be that Greeks have a better understanding of life and human values than anyone else.  I can't know if that's final as the search continues but I do know they are the happiest people I have ever met, despite the situation of their economy.


Arriving in Ancona, Italy

It's quite extraordinary to me how it is instantly an obviously different place.  From what I've seen so far there has been a much greater drive for modernisation but Greeks did not do that and that was a great part of its charm.  One thing is for sure that you will never know Greece at all if you just visit for six or eight hours off a cruise ship.  I don't suppose you would ever get to know anywhere that way.

Yes, This is a Music Blog!

James Corachea and Lefty Unplugged were playing tonight at Cat's Art MusikCircus but I missed their performances as I'm not yet accustomed to the Central European time zone.  Greece is on Eastern European.  While I can't tell you about their performances this week, I can tell you what I have said before that each give unique performances and uniqueness is the hallmark of performances at Cat's Art MusikCircus.  I'm not trying to sell you anything but rather inform you as Cat's musical taste is pretty well-known.

A big part of this adventure is not just to keep the scooter but to keep my guitar.  While flight fares are not so terrible, baggage fees are ridiculously high and, even with my limited amount of stuff, that would be a problem.

It's probably unlikely there will be anywhere to play along the way but never rule out anything.  Life is much, much too crazy for that.  What may definitely be possible is to play at the MusikCircus.  It would be a hassle unloading the stuff but it could be done.  The biggest problem for that is the difference in electric wall plugs from one country to another.  There's no difference in power, only in the configuration of the plug that goes into the wall.

While I haven't seen anything that really screamed for a photograph yet, there is a place on the west coast of Italy that looks incredible.  It's Bussana Vecchia and it's been there for almost a thousand years.  Now it is home to a colony of artists!  (Wiki:  Bussana Vecchia, Liguria)

Now that I'm finding a better balance I can start looking around more although it wasn't my research that found Bussana Vecchia, Cat told me about it.

So, tomorrow I aim to go through Bologna, an interesting challenge in itself, and then hopefully past Modena as well.  As I'm able to find WiFi, I will plot these places on the Map so you can see where they are.  The main determinant of the path is which way to avoid mountains.

Music will come!

Bussana Vecchia:

General Prognosis is This is Suicide

Yesterday I would have agreed as that was the most dangerous ride of my when I went from Ancano to Civitanova ... right after the ride from Pyrgos to Patras.

However, I did re-balance things and abandoned some of my stuff as well with the result of a better balance and an improved riding position, both of which work to move this from suicidal to dangerous but manageable.

What I've been doing today has been working my way up the eastern coast of Italy to cut over toward Bologna at Rimini and I'm just north of Rimini now.  However it took me about seven hours to get here from Civitanova.  I'm not at all trying to break any records and I'm driving the scooter at 65% of its capacity as I rarely hit 70 kph.  I haven't found other drivers on the road to be a problem as I'm following the general Greek rule of stay right and stay cool.  It requires a good deal of attention but it doesn't require a death wish.

The biggest problem is figuring out the Italian roads as I've now got a very solid idea of who invented spaghetti, either the highway engineers or their domestic partners.  I've been lost multiple times and it's compounded by the fact that hardly anyone speaks a word of English.

The Greek license plate is already causing amusement for people as I stopped earlier and four or five people came out to meet the nutcase who drove a scooter from Greece.  I'm not offended that people would think I'm a nutcase.  In fact, I enjoy it!

While running up the coast today, I found the Scooter Capital of the Universe as it seems they really, really like to go to the beach and there were billions of them!

As previously, I'm in deep need of help to pull this off.  I'm in a hotel again but that's because I only saw one campground all day and it was €34 to stay there.  The difference between that and a hotel isn't enough to change the game although I'm hoping that will change as I get more inland toward Bologna. (The reason a hotel isn't that much more expensive is it doesn't have the swimming pools and all the deluxe stuff that Italian campgrounds have got.)

The general plan is to stick with the most level terrain I can find and then cut over to the west coast of Italy from north of Bologna.  I'm staying off the Autostrada as taking that really would be suicide but the other highways are in adequate to very good condition and running at 65 kph isn't a senseless risk.

I will stay to the west coast of Italy over to France and then cut north toward London.  There is some thinking of taking a ferry out of Amsterdam or Rotterdam to Scotland and this would cut out a great deal of the driving in England but I doubt it makes any budgetary sense to do that.

This account hasn't been too sexy so far and that's mostly as a result of trying to stay alive.  That has nothing to do with hitting on hot Italian women as I'm quite sure Italian men can do that just fine on their own and my interest lies elsewhere in any case.  Stories will come from this expedition and right now I'm trying to ensure they don't involve hospitals!

Bet the NSA is Getting an Earful Through Their Bugs this Morning

After the latest in the Snowden NSA documents revealed the extent of U.S. spying on friendly nations, there is unsurprising outrage from the European Union.  (The Guardian:  New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies)

Far from being apologetic, the U.S. came out with a response of unparalleled self-righteousness:  "The United States government will respond appropriately to the European Union through our diplomatic channels, and through the EU/U.S. experts' dialogue on intelligence that the U.S. proposed several weeks ago.  We will also discuss these issues bilaterally with EU member states.  While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations."  ( CNN: Europe furious, 'shocked' by report of U.S. spying)

They were even spying on Greece.  What the hell!

It seems there isn't anyone anywhere these creeps won't select for peeping and any idea they're doing it for world security has disappeared into absurdity.

It's Monday So I Must Be in Civitanova

Bongiorno!

One thing I see immediately is that hardly anyone speaks English.

Another thing I see immediately is that one Euro power plug is not all Euro power plugs.  I knew already that Britain uses different wall plugs but I didn't know Italy does as well.  As with anything, there are adaptors but finding them will be a challenge.  The people at the desk were very helpful last night and loaned me one so that gets the laptop charged back up again but how that will work on in the future remains to be seen.

It seems there is commercial development along the east coast of Italy that's much like Florida although not at all as cheesy and slutty.  It was built up all the way from Ancona to Civitanova and appears to continue that way on south.  I'm reviewing the map now to see my best route as I knew what I was going to do from Brindisi but I'm floundering a wee bit here.  It appears there is some difficulty avoiding the Autostrada and it's important to stay off it as it is quite fast and it seems almost all of it requires a toll.


Looking back to Minoan Grimaldi, the ferry line, I'm pleased to have made it but annoyed over the misinformation.  A little bit more accurate information on where there the ferry was going would have been kind of helpful.  That WiFi was not available was very disappointing but the biggest of all was the outrageous price of food on-board.  That behavior was very unlike Greece and, oh yes, I'm missing Greece already.

One thing I know for sure is that taking an ocean cruise would be worse than being sent to jail.  The one saving grace was that I didn't get seasick.  There was some pause for reflectiveness at the vastness of the sea ... but most of the time I was reading Heinlein's "Glory Road" and it remains the grand adventure of science fiction although written as badly as a paperback Western with enough nauseating mush to puke out a Barbara Cartland romance.  Even so, it's still worth the read, particularly if you're on an interminable sea voyage!


So, what now ...

Well, at the moment I'm really not sure but I have a few hours to review before rolling out of here.  One thing is definite, that heading to Catania is senseless as it adds two thousand kilometers and that's much more than an acceptable risk.  The object is as originally to get to the U.K.