The Scurvy Dog’s Logs Chapter 1

It was time to roll. Layla was getting on my case, Sin Wu wasn’t satisfied with just lunch quickies, and Coral, well, I won’t go there. It was time to pack my sea bag and make for the coast. I hadn’t hit an airport since the terrorist attacks and completely agree with what the government is doing to develop proper security measures. I was searched three times and my bags were ineffectively searched. It prompted an idea for a business. It may be that in the future the baggage search business will need to be taken off airport sites. Here’s my idea: What if you had your bags searched, certified and taken to the airport by another company? Then when you get there, you’re body searched and you go. As in the past, the people doing the searching are far too overwhelmed to handle the job effectively. I was also searched before boarding the plane, again ineffectively.

When I arrived in Houston, the cabby didn’t want to admit thathe knew where the port was or how to get there. He nervously drove through the gates and down to the docks. It was dark and the docks were poorly marked, so we had to find markings on some of the ships. Actually, some were such rust buckets that markings and names were difficult to find. We finally reached the scow Leon, which was tied up beside collapsing buildings and next to a dock strewn with busted pallets and battered fork lifts. Some military construction equipment painted a dark green with camouflage treatment sat next to the ship with flat tires.

The cabby nervously waited beside his van as I unloaded my bags. Three short Filipinos in grease-soaked overalls ran down the rattling gang plank to snatch up my bags. I asked the cabby to hang to take me to town for grub, but he refused. As soon as my last bag was gone, he jumped back in his vehicle and split without even charging me. I didn’t even have a knife on me; they were still in my bags.

The gangplank was the first indication of the quality of vessel I was escaping on. It was constructed from aluminum angle iron some 30 years ago. The damn thing was only about a foot and a half wide. As it deteriorated, pieces of mild steel angle iron were bolted across it for strength and to keep crew from slipping. Even wood was screwed to it to fill holes. There were no railings, just rope pulled through rings and old netting that wouldn’t prevent anything from falling into the oily sewage between the ship and the pier.

The ship is 584 feet long and 85 feet wide. It belongs to the historic Rickmier line out of Hamburg Germany, but doesn’t carry a usual Rickmers name. The more I saw of the ship the more I knew why. Tramp Steamer is an accurate description. The first night aboard someone left the air conditioning on all night and we about froze to death. The next night the crew tried to cook us in our cabins. The officers are polish and the crew Philippino. The Captain speaks broken English and so does the steward. The Phillipinos don’t speak Polish and the Poles don’t speak Phillipino. This particular ships has six cranes and the same number of holds and each hold has several layers. It’s a general cargo ship which means it packs anything and everything all over the world. If they can hoist the motherfucker on board, they’ll take it. If there’s not room in the holds and they can strap it to the deck, they will. This in not generally a container ship, so it usually spends more time in port off-loading and loading more goods.

They were scheduled to depart on Tuesday and I was originaly planning to arrive on Monday and going to have dinner with Billy Tinney, the editor of Tattoo Magazine Monday, who lives in Houston and should be editing a magazine on antique gun sales. It’s better that I arrived on Saturday. Sunday after setting up my cabin I took a bus to downtown through the ghetto to the upscale shopping area to buy some much needed communications equipment and gym equipment for my cabin. Monday afternoon the Captain anxiously announced with five minutes notice that we were pulling out. We yanked for the docks by a tug and headed out the canal past Galveston and the Battleship Texas Memorial and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Now go for a ride and have a beer on me, goddamnit.

–Bandit

I don’t where to start or how far to go. Hell, I don’t know what you want to hear. I don’t even know where I am from time to time, but fuck it. I’ll tell you what I know and take it from there. I’m in Baltimore, one of the more beautiful ports around. We rolled up the Chesapeake Bay just like in that old war movie, “Run Silent Run Deep”. It was creepy, as if we were steaming over a flat lake in a dense fog. But as we reached Baltimore, a horseshoe of harbor lights engulfed us until we pulled into the dreaded Lazaretto Warf, Berth A.

As the morning dew lifted to a strong smattering of clouds threatening rain, we made arrangements to escape the rust, not one minute too soon. The ship was immediately swarmed with Rickmier agents, attorneys and a knock-out blonde who sold brokered yachts. It seems that when Hold No. 1 caught fire in Japan, fragments caught and burnt the top deck and interior of a 50-foot yacht and small steamer. I could smell litigation as I called a cab from the ship to pick us up on the docks.

Unlike the Savannah cabby system, these operators didn’t know where we were and could care less. Immediately they demanded a local number from me and I had to explain to every operator that I was on a ship and incapable of having a local number. Finally, I had to get my own info and map and try to explain to the operator once more where I needed to be picked up. When we finally hailed a cap, he had no idea where I was going and spoke little English. Finally in the afternoon I was forced to return to the ship.

I was somewhat relieved, yet my mission to find a whorehouse and get laid was dismally attended to.

I made it to dinner on the ship and picked at my meal like a disappointed teenager. I went to my room to write when the cell phone rang. Frank Kaisler, the editor of Hot Rod Bikes, grew up in Baltimore and I had given him a call for a connection. He told me to call Larry McCullough of Pro Paint in Baltimore and ask for his girlfriend, Debbie. She was once in the nightclub business on the back streets of the harbor city, less than an hour from Washington, D.C. The rescue call came at just the right moment as the Filipino members of the crew began welding something to the deck above the gang plank. Burning chunks of paint were blistering from overhead and falling on the deck below, creating a curtain of terror in the way of my escape. I ducked the burning shards as a crewmember sprayed my feet with what appeared to be a garden hose.

Larry came to my rescue and swept me away. His dually took us to his shop, Pro Paint, and I was blown right out of my seat.

I’d never met Larry before. His shop has been open for more than 8 years. He has a very well-organized, professional custom bike shop with a metal fabrication wing and separate facility for mixing, painting and buffing, all under the same roof. I thought I knew every world class builder in the country. Before I get to the girls, let’s get to the news: Ah, but first I must tell you that one of Larry’s creations recently won a Bikernet Bike Show and the owner’s trophy was on the counter. The name of the bike was Dawn.

We had dinner with Rob, Debbie, Christine and Sholana, great people, in a joint called Mothers, with fuckin’ wonderful apple pie with handmade ice cream. Better stop that, I’m beginning to sound like Rip’s tales. I had been at sea for 15 days and what I needed the most was the touch of a woman. Larry and Rob, one of the seven shop guys, took me to a seedy little joint called Night Spot and a totally nude bar, and I mean nude. Oh fuck, these girls were sweet, tender and nimble, crawling along the large oval bar top bare naked and moving to your licking pleasure.

Sometimes I hesitate to talk about sex on the site, because of all the weird trappings construed with sexual discussions. I believe that sex is one of the grandest things on earth. Men need sexual stimulation, and it’s not fair that we’ve got to buy diamond rings and make bullshit promises to relieve a natural tendency. It would be like telling a woman she can’t have a period without getting a job. Goddamnit. It’s fucking natural, and someday we should beat the prohibition on the oldest profession on the books so if we need tang, we can get it anytime, anywhere and go about our business without launching new children.

These girls were having as much fun as the guys and I was surprised to see three or four girls in the bar with guys enjoying the pussy-to-pussy closeness. It was a trip watching a naked stripper spread her legs in front of another woman and move her pussy confidently close to another girl’s teased grin.

The guys I was with surprised me with a lap dance from a particularly cute brunette. She was perfectly built and cute as a button as she slipped onto my lap and ground her pussy against my crotch. I wasn’t sure if this was pure torture or at least a mild touch of a woman without…

Just to show you how strange my life can be. I crawled into my bunk at 4:15, yet got my ass up at 7, worked out and had lunch with an 84-year-old retired admiral in a beautifully austere restaurant on the inner harbor. Like Savannah, this harbor is blossoming into a beautiful area of 1,700 brick row homes in some 200 ethnic neighborhoods. I only hope that San Pedro will wake up to the success some of these eastern ports enjoy. Admiral Rindskopf was the youngest skipper of a submarine during World War II, at 26. He was ultimately the captain of another sub, a destroyer and a sub tender before taking his knowledge and experience to Washington until he retired after 35 years. He mentioned that he was working with another officer, Admiral McCain, during the Vietnam War, while his son, Bob McCain, was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. At one point the Vietnamese sent the admiral a deal to release his son. The Vietnamese, much like the Taliban, were not men of their word and he was unable to implement his son’s release.

Let’s see what happens tonight. I’ll still be trapped in the god- foresaken port for a couple of days before heading across the Atlantic, through the English Channel, on our way to Hamburg, Germany, to fill this bastard with cargo for the remaining trip around the world.

Meanwhile, I haven’t been able to contact the Bikernet headquarters. The women have taken over, and although I have a signed contract from all three women in my life to be able to seek sexual release in various ports and hunt down motorcycle connections, there seems to be a mutiny afoot. Rumor has it that Coral and Sin Wu are trying their damndest to lure Layla into some sexual nirvana.

Reports are in that motorcycles have been moved in the headquarters and frilly curtains hung from the purely bachelorized windows.

I hope to have more information by News time next Thursday. Snake and Dr. Nuttboy have escaped the treachery to hide in the mountains until the dust settles.

Goddamnit, go for a ride, Bandit.

It’s wild out here.
We are trying to duck two storms coming from the north. The reports we receive are constantly inaccurate. We are rolling as much and 35 degrees on an empty stomach and we can’t risk the engines in such severe seas so we’re heading south east probably through the Azores. We just passed a container ship from Morocco. The captain pointed out that it was rolling 15 to 17 second increments. We roll twice as fast, which is much more abusive to the vessel.

The rolling severity is due to the edge of the south-bound storm we are racing away from, the fact that our ship is empty and that some container ships have anti-rolling ballast tanks and even wings that reach into the sea 30 meters off each side to slow and minimize the rolls. We have slowed to 15 knots and it feels like 5. If the storm continues to be a threat we will continue south and spend Christmas in the Canary Islands off Morocco, wait out the storm and head north along the coast of Africa, then Portugal.

We may be in the Azores by tomorrow (Saturday) night. As I sit at my desk this afternoon the skies are gloomy and the rain is spraying against the porthole. I’m working on Chapter 10 of the number 2 Chance book, and as the sea rolls my jug of water jumps off my desk and my chair is slipping away from the computer. As I reach out to maintain contact with the keyboard and grab the bottle, my notes on my left go flying. I replaced the water-bottle and turned to retrieve the notes and lose the jug again.

One of the storms is 900 miles in diameter. At the center of the storm is 35-foot swells, and at the edge is 24-foot swells. We are currently dealing with 12-foot swells. Unfortunately another storm is grouping and headed directly in our direction directly behind this one and we have another gale still on our tail. We receive reports from Miami on the storm conditions constantly, we also receive course recommendation from home base in Hamburg. Unfortunately, the directives from Hamburg are fast food quality. Yesterday we received notice from the base that the storm was turning and heading directly into the vicious weather north of it. Based on that information the Captain changed the course to head northeast again toward Europe. Later information from Miami indicated that the storm was heading south directly at us. We’ve run into the outer lip of the storm and it’s heading right at us.

Well, the initial report was from yesterday, and it was rough all night so the captain decided to have some drills today and we had to don our lifejacket and head toward the bridge where he explained the various sinking scenarios and what we were to do. He also pointed out the various gear and life boat and raft situations. The seas were too rough to test the life boat conditions but we will once through the English Channel and into the North Sea. Actually the Captain in his joking demeanor told us passengers that we wouldn’t feel calm seas until we reached the gates to the North Sea and out of the Atlantic. We’re just north of the Azores as this lumbering 584 foot vessel is tossing its cooking in the Atlantic at 17.4 knots. We watched a video on the life rafts in containers on these ships. They’re hot, but I wonder what kind of shape they’re in after 10 years of bouncing from one seaport to the next.

I’m still getting reports from the front that we’re all nuts to be out here so here’s a bit of a poetry from the beginning of the 19th century about shipping out:
We went to sea in a sieve we did
In a sieve we went to sea
In spite of all our friends could say
On a cloudy morn on a rainy day
In a sieve we went to sea
And everyone said “you’ll all be drowned”
And we said “We don’t give a fig!”

Just goes to show we’re just as nuts as a guy who slaps on his vest and rides across the country in the middle of the winter. Damn I miss the babes of Bikernet, though. Have a great Christmas, it’s the only one you get this year.–Bandit

This will be scattered, but full of the heart, soul and romance of motorcycling. We spend a couple of semi-calm seas rolling toward the English Channel. At the narrowest point it is a mere 10 miles wide, but goddamnit it was good to see the coast even if it was just the glimmer of lights on the coast in the increasing darkness. Two days out of the channel and into the North Sea we got the word that we could roll into Hamburg, but just then we hit a storm. The impact of just a knot or two on the length of time it takes to travel a few hundred miles is severe. Figure it out. Damn I was horny as hell, but reports from around the world told me there was ready love waiting for the taking in the Reeperbahn area of Hamburg as prostitution is legal, clean and ready to rock. I was climbing the steel bulkheads.

After a rough day at sea on Thursday in a force 8 storm the reports from the port was that we couldn’t get in the harbor and might have to anchor at sea. At 11:30 at night in a twisting sea that had us dancing on the bulkheads the captain reported that the crowed port had no craft available to haul a Pilot to the ship and would we consider a helicopter. The Captain laughed and asked them if they were snorting glue. We have six tall cranes on this ship, cables running everywhere, and the chances of catching a harbor guide hanging out of a helicopter with some of the steel cables was 90 to one. There was no way. The anxiety level increased and at 4:00 in the morning I jumped out of the sack. I was cold but I noticed that the rocking had shut down and it felt as if we motored into a dry dock. We were in the Elb river with a pilot who was delivered to the Leon on a high speed 50-ft Hydroplane. He stayed with us until the Hamburg Harbor loomed ahead, then he was removed and we were told again that no pilots were available. Four more ships were lined up behind us. I was surprised that the Rickmers company has been home based in this port since 1834, yet had so small a handle on their own harbor. Another pilot finally boarded for the last multi-harbor maneuvering and docking. The Hamburg port is on the River Elb that consisted originally of several merging rivers into a swampy delta. In the 14th century many of the small towns used an island in the flat delta as their home protected by canals, bridges and guard shacks.

Rumor from management at the port was that there would be crews of longshoremen waiting at the Stlanerkai dock to begin to load cargo and we would be gone in two days and a half. As a passenger I wasn’t happy to hear that I only had a couple of days to roam the hinterland and find sexual release. I stood up on the bridge from 4:00 a.m. on watching a gang of ships attempt to find home in the myriad of docks, islands and peninsulas. Hamburg is a maze of fresh water canals, rivers and harbor inlets and the traffic was intense.

I was fortunate enough to have a leg up on this port. Lee Clemens knows a rider who had a shop in the Buxtehude, a suburb of Hamburg. I met George at a couple of events with Lee several years ago and he was willing to take some time out and rescue us from the ship’s docks. I watched as the first lines were tossed to the stevedores on the concreted dock 80 in another grizzly port. I understand the industrial strengths of ports and their service to the industrial side of the world, but each one I’ve had the displeasure of entering is a Siberia of metal, trash and containers. In towns smart city planners arrange industrial areas to be separated from other industrial units with residential and retail. Each port I come across could be a delight to thousands of residents and a pleasure to work in, if proper planning was implemented. It would actually boost morale within the dock worker’s community and afford the people of the community the opportunity to appreciate the work that goes on in port and how world wide shipping works. Instead it’s hidden from society by chain link fences and dirty streets that no one wants to be caught on.

George was ready to pick me up the moment we arrived and after 10 days at sea I was ready to stretch my legs. But I held off for a couple of hours. The crew on the docks was ready and began to load the ship immediately. Right away the deck was crowded with stevedores loading crates of copper tubing the size of houses bound for Hong Kong. We got the word right away that we were still leaving in a couple of days since the gangs on the docks would be working around the clock. We would finish loading in Antwerp, Belgium and head to Italy. When I asked about England I was told that currently the process for shipping included smaller ships that brought materials from the UK and spilled them into the free marketing zone of Hamburg to be off loaded, then loaded again on ships bound for the orient. Seemed costly, knowing that dock space and union workers pay to load and unload cargo was a high cost to shipping. What the hell do I know, except that we will not be going to see the queen? As it turns out we will be here five days since the workers took off at 10:00 p.m. and know one worked again until 6:00 a.m.

George showed me his historic town and the canals that ran through it. It’s tough to imagine that farmers harvested crops of apples and hauled them to the canals where they were loaded on small shallow boats in the 1600s and hauled to the harbor in Hamburg, then loaded on bigger ships bound for ports all over Europe. In parts of Hamburg buildings are built right on the edge of the canals and material was off loaded on one side into a building like hops for making brew. On the other side of the building lifts that reached every floor were loaded with the brew and lowered into waiting boats on the other side of the building.

George is the owner, with his wife, of five waterbed stores in the Hamburg region. Lee Clemens put it perfectly when he told me, “George Bergman is the Waterbed King in his area.” Well, he is. His stores reek of class and style, and if you live in Germany or one of the surrounding countries and would like to consider a high quality waterbed. He’s your man, his web site is www.wasserbet-city.de. Wasserbett City is the name of his business. He’s still into bikes and rides from time to time while building the business, restoring a home and taking care of his wife Cindy and his young son George, Jr. He has a couple of brothers, John and the other, Robert. I’m 6’5″, George is 6’7″ and his brother John or Jochen Bergmann is 7’0″. These guys are good looking monsters. The other brother rode some, but is currently out of the lifestyle. George has a Fatboy, and John has Heritage, and a Ultra with a sidecar.

So here’s where we touched on a little motorcycling philosophy and the real depth to the desire and need to ride. John explained it perfectly in broken English and I only wish I can paint the picture described in his big blue eyes. I could hear the passion in John’s voice and see the need for it in George’s eyes. John tried to explain something to me that we all feel but usually accept as a life long endeavor which we never talk about. It’s the will to be free and the opportunity to express that freedom. “I have two hearts,” John said, “One is for my family and the other is for my motorcycle and riding. I cannot function without my sense of freedom to ride. If when I was getting ready to marry my wife, she had said you cannot ride since we are having children, it would have been like cutting off my leg or my arm. She has grown to understand and so I still ride, but I have tried to give her the opportunity to understand by taking her and my first son on sidecar trips. She has grown to understand my need for this.”

I listened to his stories as we roamed the ancient street of Hamburg. I learned that 72 percent of the city was bombed out during WWII. Yet the entire time I spent with people in this beautiful city I only heard the word Nazis once. It is something the people of Germany would like to put behind themselves. It’s the 23rd of December today and tomorrow is Christmas Eve and this is a dynamite place to be during the holidays. It gives me a true sense of Christmas with some of the most magnificent churches on the planet and in each plaza is a group of temporary wood cabin like Kiosks, decorated in Christmas motifs, serving wine and rum drinks, selling candies and nuts, ceramic, leather or wood craft Christmas presents. As the evening fell upon us we rolled into Reeperbahn, the nasty section of town.

Beautiful prostitutes line the streets. I mean knockouts all hitting on you as you meander through. The publicized highlight is the famous street called Herbert Strasse. The window street where no children or women are allowed. Half naked women sit inside windows and try to get your attention. They even have their own website called Herbertstrasseonline.com. Unfortunately these girls and some of the others are rip offs that I was warned about. The women lure you in with big tits and promises of love for 100 marks, then once inside the story changes trying to milk every nickel out of you and you’re lucky to get a hand job.

We wandered the streets and looked, but didn’t touch. On the other hand, hard working girls are out in the street, or if you have a contact, there are prostitutes who know how the oldest profession is supposed to be handled with warmth, honesty and tenderness, but I’ll get to that later. The rest of the area is packed with peep shows, titty bars, night clubs, Irish pubs, adult stores and bars with girls who will stroke your leg for a high-priced drink.

We drank traditional brews and shot the shit about riding and our brother Lee Clemens who lost his son in a motorcycle accident this year. Travis, his son, was about to take over a major part of Departure Bike Works, in Richmond Virginia. He had a small son and a troubled wife he was trying to handle when he went down in a freak accident and died. George and I feel strongly about our brother who has endured many changes in his life this year and his trying to sort out his direction within his heart.

I took another shot of Irish whiskey just to fight of the verbal cold chill that filled the bar with each of John’s descriptions. We had a helluva time in Hamburg and I’ll spill my guts about the girl I met on Thursday in the news. I’ve got to grab some shuteye. It’s been whiskey, women, pubs and German beer every night until, well, until I find my ass back on the rusting barge.

Merry Christmas everyone. This is going to be a helluva year comin’ up—

Bandit

Ah Christmas, a time of families and tenderness. Ah bullshit, it’s a time of lean budgets, kids with non-stop dreams of presents to the moon, Christmas lists that are too long and bank accounts too short. I escaped the treachery of Christmas, almost. I hope the rest of you survived.

You have stumbled into the Bikernet Twilight Zone. Just when you think you’ve come across one of the hottest bike sites on the Web, you discover that one of the bastards behind this mess is on a tramp freighter out of Houston ultimately bound for Houston some months later, and you’re forced to hear about it a couple of times a week. Merry Christmas.

So let me tell you about my Christmas Eve and Christmas on the MS Leon, a 20-some year old rusting hulk being stormed with cranes, stevedores, fork lifts and agents while it’s snowing or raining on the rusting decks in below-freezing weather. The design was that we would be in port for two and a half days, load this bastard with 8,000 tons of crap (22,000 ton capacity) and be on our way out the Elbe River by Christmas Eve. Not so, Kimosabe. We discovered rapidly that management and the union contracts are from different planets. What management plans rarely happens. On the other hand, while management and supercargo agents sit on the ship, sip espresso and eat cookies while expressing their dismay at the efficiency of the teams on the dock, there are 50 men standing in the freezing cold as the wind is blowing snow at 30 knots across the main deck of the ship. If they had ice skates, they could be practicing loops on the frozen concrete dock.

On Christmas Eve it was explained to us that since many of the longshoremen extend their days off with vacation time, the teams were dwindling. Instead of being able to work around the clock, the units could only work until 10 p.m. and started at 6 a.m. The tapering crew would knock off at 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve and wouldn’t be back until the day after Christmas. We were shut down. What was designed to be a 2.5-day in a costly port became six days. The supercargo agent also informed me that every time cargo is shifted it costs $250. It costs $150 to load a piece of cargo, but once it’s loaded, if it needs to be unloaded, moved and loaded again, that’s another quarter of a C-note. He said that much of the cargo would be removed again in Antwerp, Belgium, then replaced, and the process would be repeated in Genoa, Italy, and perhaps once more in Jakarta. I asked him how the damn company makes a profit and he threw his hands up in the air in mockery. He had no idea.

As he explained the business side of shipping, Clement, our hardworking steward, set the table for a Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. The captain, officers and crew were requested to come into the officers’ mess and have dinner, which was an assortment of many things, including whole fish and turkey. The captain explained that the real feast would start at noon on Christmas and would continue until midnight with drink and food available all day. I noticed that many of the Filipino crew were uncomfortable eating with the officers and escaped as quickly as possible to the crews’ lounge and a wild karaoke festival.

Christmas morning we awoke and had a small breakfast as the chef and his crew were working on preparations for the noon Christmas feast. At noon the captain was successful in getting the entire crew around one long table. All the food was displayed buffet style with two turkeys a full pig, vegetables, lots of buttery rice, pasta salad, two types of gravy and two brands of whiskey. The pig was a biker’s run-feast cooked to perfection and the drinking got under way with whiskey, gin, wine and beer and some of the crew had all four.

At dinner I returned for some chow and to take score of the survivors and party animals. Since we were requested to mix the seating in a brotherly fashion, I was the only Anglo to sit with the Filipino crew at one end of the table. I spent a great deal of my Vietnam military service in the Philippines and learned to love and respect the people on those paradise islands for their kindness and pleasantness, but as I sat at the end of the table the mood changed. It reminded me of so many experiences in the past from losing a crew member on the heavy cruiser I was stationed on to the meeting of men after a gang battle or to the meeting of a family after a member has been in a motorcycle accident. Suddenly the end of the table became quiet. Two members of the crew got up in unison and disappeared up the inside stairwell. None of the crew would look at me, not out of disrespect, but out of concern for what had occurred. I was not a part of the serious nature of what took place. The concern was deep and fearful and only shared amongst the family of men who were involved.

It seems that one of the men partied too hard and drank too much. He was the one who smiled the most and sang with the best until the torment of the whiskey bottle took over and he became mad and tried to take his fury out on another member of the crew. The man inside his cabin was dismantling his bicycle for the next leg of the journey and was holding a leg of pipe as the madman stormed his quarters. He lashed out and split the angry man’s hand. I had no idea of what happened as I sat amongst the serious crew, but I had been in the midst of life and death battles and recognized the concern in men’s features, the fear in bowed faces and edgy gestures like nail biting andr nervous twitches. They spoke to one another in only Filipino except to use a term that wasn’t in their dictionary from time to time, such as: Self defense and star witness. A crewmember called to the captain finally and the captain did his duty and had the man hospitalized. His hand required surgery. He was paid and his bags were packed and delivered to the hospital. He would return to the Philippines once operated on.

On the day after Christmas it was too miserable to go outside yet the ship was in full loading swing with two cranes working furiously to load crane motors, containers and crates the size of motor homes. Hatches were clanging, containers slapped against one another as the snow blew over the bow. The rumor was that the ship would depart by 8 p.m., but at 5:30 we were told that loading would take one more hour, then an hour of lashing and one more hour to get a harbor pilot on board and have the crew ready the ship to depart. That schedule was pushed an additional hour until it was nearly midnight before we pulled away from the docks and began the 100-kilometer trip out the Elbe river to the coast of Germany, where we would turn port and head west along the coast to Antwerp, Belgium, which might be a degree or two warmer but swamped in the same drizzling rain and snow as Hamburg.

In studying a Hamburg weather chart, I found that the city faces 10 to 13 days of rain during every month of the year. Of course our visit took place during the 13-day season with an estimated one hour of sun daily during December. The temps average between zip and 4 degrees celsius. Not exactly a tropical paradise but a helluva beautiful city. Euro Dollars are going into effect the first of the year an it’s difficult to exchange money because they’re into the transition. The people of each country will have up to a year to use up their existing cash. A few countries like England, which is in financial hard times, isn’t changing just yet, but I would think it would benefit them to change as soon as possible. I’m sure opinions on that matter vary substantially.

There you have it, Christmas on the battle-worn, rusting Leon heading for a New Year’s celebration in Belgium. My next report will be in the Sunday Post in the Cantina the day before New Year’s Eve. We plan to be in Antwerp until the 4th of January. Let’s see what kind of trouble I can get in there.

Finally, I’ll report that tonight while in the North Sea I will finish my 16th chapter of my second Chance Hogan book. It’s called “Tides” and is based on this worldwide adventure. If I can get the staff to go for it, we will post all of the chapters in the Cantina for new members and members who rejoin for the new year.

May your holidays be safe, secure and packed full of warm sex.

Ride Forever, Bandit.