On Fri, 09 May 2008 12:40:34 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:


I suppose it's a bit like cruising in a small boat - it's all about
the getting there and the anticipation of arriving whereas so often
the actual arrival is an anti-climax and sometimes disappointing.

I've noticed a small letdown when arriving by air, but never when
driving. When in the Navy the longer at sea the more exciting the
arrival in port. My destroyer was once at sea for 31 days (circling
Cyprus in 1964) and we practically jumped the rails upon arrival in
Bari, IT.
You may be too well traveled and have jaded yourself.
Hi Vic,

Quite possibly, but there always remains the excitement of a new place
and a need to land and explore, to eat food you don't have to cook and
to meet new people. I suppose that there is the dawning recognition
that no new port will have quite the same exoticness and magic of your
first foreign landfall or even the arrival at your first ever
destination when you first launched the boat and took up cruising. I
find now that many of the more memorable times were of the getting
there such as when you turn off everything and DR by chart and compass
and your senses and the expected landfall rises in the early morning
gloom (and of course when it doesn't and you have to figure out the
error).

I was eagerly anticipating an "anti-American" bite about the 'apropos'
and the "American coffe" comment but obviously need to try harder.

Get serious. You expect me to defend weak coffee because I'm an
American? Peter, Peter.

There goes another stereotype - that Americans have no subtlety in
their humour.

cheers
Peter

--Vic