y buddy Steve is an interesting guy. Retired and funny, he descended like an angel into our train club with his electronics knowledge at exactly the right moment in our sectional layout effort. Instead of some kludgy half-thought-out-effort (since we didn’t have any sort of plan, I think that description qualifies), he came up with a bulletproof system that is one of the selling points of our sectional layout. Every show, one of us ends up sweeping back the skirts to show off what’s below track level (to model railroaders, that’s just as important as what’s on top).

As the scenery came along, he professed to not being a “scenery guy”. But as the St. Johns River / Downtown Jacksonville effort began, we were left in a ponder at how to model the Acosta Bridge (a highway bridge that parallels the railroad lift bridge (when driving through Jacksonville on I-95, look ocean-ward as you go over the St. Johns – you can’t miss it)). But Steve took that project on and produced a showpiece.

Amongst Steve’s sins is the sin of cruising. Every so often we lose him for a week or more when he bobs around on some gambling hulk, sailing in circles out in the middle of the BP plume. We have a layout to build. So you can imagine my delight when I found out he wanted to sail around the world. Really, how long can you play slot machines and look at brine?

But off he went. And now Steve’s gotten into the blogsphere. Now, I do this. I write about astronomy, about trains, about my trips, about books and about writing (I’d add a link to that last one but it would just loop back to this page). Blogging is one of the better things about the internet. Sure, there are some wildly popular pages (of which mine is not in that number). But there are also mom-n-pop pages too, little things about people’s efforts and outlooks. I love looking at some of the train ones, and some of the political ones are good too (the moderate ones that provide actual thoughts, not reheated politigunk). But Steve decided that he’d undertake blogging to record his voyage. Just imagine if Odysseus had a blog. It would be something like this.

And it works. Steve writes about his day-to-day experiences  afloat (his ship is currently nosing into the Arabian Sea and they are rigging for possible pirates). But he writes well, very Stevishly, and it makes for something you’ll want to come back to. Often, when the train club meets for dinner, we’ll laugh about something he said or did.

So, yes, I’m very reluctant to embrace new-media – things like big data, spy-feedback and amazon rankings inject a corrupting influence on the noble passion of writing. For better or worse, writing and the stories we tell have changed – drastically – over the past thirty years. But here, instead of penning three or four pages and posting to a stateside friend to read aloud or pass about through his train buddies, Steve can post daily. So I’ll give in that this is one of those good things.

Yeah, so, check out his voyage. You can follow Sindbad here.

Only don’t stop coming around here. I mean, I’ve got my own irons in the blog-fire.

>>>AND PART OF IT INVOLVES LINKS TO MY BOOKS, LIKE THIS ONE. SO CLICK ON THIS AND CHECK OUT MY TITLES AND PICK SOMETHING OUT. AND IN THE CASE THAT YOUR SHIP COMES UNDER PIRATE ATTACK AND SINKS, THEY CAN BE USED (BRIEFLY) AS FLOTATION DEVICES<<<

p.s. At time time of this posting, he’s only a day or two short of finishing his cruise, so my information is certainly timely. But a lot of the entries are well worth a look (especially for those who might consider such an Odyssey themselves.