Because We Can

   Travel Day 114 - April 26, 2024 - 4,892 Steps Calm seas and the moon was once again visible in the morning sky. On board ship it's not if you eat less you'll lose weight. It's if you eat less you won't gain as much. First ship I've seen in 4 days. Today we are going to stop at null island, the spot where the equator and the prime meridian cross. Getting close, when it reads 0 0 0, 0 0 0 we are there. Using the thrusters to position the ship direct on it. Really, really close. Linda's screen shot of her iPhone when we were exactly over it. Date and time when we were there. I tried to take a photo of her with her phone at the spot, but by the time I took the photo we had moved off it. That was the spot where north meets south and east meets west and tranquility reigns. Another day, another book. Liked this one also, a humorous mystery. Dropping the book off at the library and picking out another one, I took photos of the library. While it is not very large they

   Travel Day 113 - April 25, 2024 - 10,429 Steps Calm sea below a nearly full moon. Closeup of the moon taken from the deck of the moving ship with my Nikon P950. Oatmeal for breakfast, the first of the cruise. The Chief Engineer was Kim's guest this morning. The concept of nationalism arose with colonialism. The second book in the series was as good as the first one. Seafood was the order of the day at lunch. Angola was what the Cold War looked like when it became a Hot War. Really, it was more about oil than anything else. American oil companies paid taxes and fees to the communist factions so they could buy weapons from the Soviet Union and pay Cuba for the ten's of thousands of soldiers they sent to fight against the US government allied factions who were supplied money by the US government to buy arms to fight against the communist factions. And it that sounds crazy, it was. Sunset over a still calm sea. Real comfort food, a toasted cheese sandwich. Sometimes one needs a

   Travel Day 112 - April 24, 2024 - 5,814 Steps Today we are passing through the waters off the coast of Angola. Slightly rocking has become the norm lately. This morning's presentation dealt with the diamonds found in Namibia and those trying smuggle the diamonds out of the diamond "mines" and the efforts of the "mine" owners to prevent the smuggling from happening. The photo shows how easy it was at first to find diamonds as we learned during our visit to the abandoned mining town a few days ago. There was always traffic of one type or another in and put of the restricted zone. The owners at first searched the miners. Later they began X-raying them. Since they had to X-ray everyday they had to develop less dangerous X-ray methods to prevent radiation poisoning the workers. Even going so far as developing the first portable x-ray units. The miners turned to other methods of smuggling, one to secret the diamonds on artificial limbs. One enterprising group of sm