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    Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2: Nomad
    Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2: Nomad
    Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2: Nomad
    Ebook161 pages1 hour

    Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2: Nomad

    By C. Patrick Neagle

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    About this ebook

    This second volume of author and photographer C. Patrick Neagle's series is even bigger and better than the first, containing 36 travel-sized essays and 30 photographs from around the globe (but mostly from Arabia, Asia, and the Mediterranean). Written while the author taught college classes on board US Navy ships and originally published in a weekly newspaper column, these essays are filled with humorous and sometimes thoughtful commentary. They may even help you to avoid moped gangs in Europe, dive for pearls in Bahrain, and ride elephants in Malaysia. Or not. Pack your bags and settle into your armchair for a fun-filled journey around the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGoblinbrook Manor LLC
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9781301441211
    Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2: Nomad
    Author

    C. Patrick Neagle

    C. Patrick Neagle was born in a small town in Northern Missouri. As an undergraduate, he studied Criminal Justice and Photography at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. Later, he received an MA in English from Missouri State University in Springfield. He has written over 300 essays on a variety of subjects (travel, humor, observations, and all of the above) that are currently being collected in his "Essays in Travel and Humor" series. He also writes a variety of fiction, including contemporary, absurdist, science fiction and fantasy, and horror. He has lived in Mexico, Sardinia, Alaska, and New Orleans. Currently, he calls the Pacific Northwest home when he is not teaching college-level English classes onboard US Navy ships.

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      Book preview

      Essays in Travel and Humor Vol. 2 - C. Patrick Neagle

      PREFACE

      Welcome to the second volume of Essays in Travel and Humor. Thanks for joining us.

      A little background on how these writings came to be: back in 2001, I was living in Old Mexico and decided that I needed to get a job so that I could afford food and the occasional shot of tequila. After some hunting, I found one: teaching college English classes onboard US Navy ships. Weird job, I know. But, in addition to allowing me to earn enough money to buy food, it also had the pleasant side effect of taking me to places in the world that I might never have otherwise visited, not only because I didn't have the money, but also because I would never have thought to book Turkey as a destination on my own. Or Dubai. Or Malta, or even Mallorca.

      Often, when whatever ship I was on pulled into a foreign port, I gave my students assignments like, Meet someone you don't know and write about that meeting, or Do something you've never done before and write about the experience, or Buy your teacher a Ferrari and ship it to his home at [address deleted].

      Okay, okay, that last assignment never made it into the syllabus. Probably should have, but never did. Anyway, eventually I felt like I shouldn't give out writing assignments that I wasn't willing to do myself, so I wrote along with my students.

      Then came a day when we went to war and a friend's mother back home, a newspaper editor, decided she wanted me to be her embedded reporter. Shudder. But I did it. I wrote up a few essays about Tomahawk missiles flying off into the night and said stories got published. The shooting thing didn't go on for that very long, though, and soon enough my editor wanted more writings and I didn't have anything else to say about being on a US Navy ship during a war except, I dunno, how annoying it was when someone swiped your emergency roll of toilet paper.

      To fill in those empty column inches, I began sending in the musings that I had written along with my students for their In Port assignments.

      First of all, this taught me an important lesson about audience in that how the folk back home receive any given writing might be a bit different than how a bunch of hard-living sailors receive it.

      Secondly, I ran out of those pretty fast, too, and had to start writing more. The weekly deadline meant that I always had to be looking for the next essay subject. Sometimes it was something we did in port, sometimes I had to stretch for any idea, any at all, and so wound up writing about the history of tapioca (but in a, y'know, funny way).

      The travel-sized, travel-related essays you're about to read (sorry, you'll have to get one of the future compilations to read about tapioca) were originally published in the columns C. Patrick's Adventure Corner and The Observation Deck for the Schuyler County Times between January 2003 and December 2008. However, they have all been edited and updated (where applicable).

      Unlike the previous collection, these are in more or less chronological order. That shouldn't be too much of a bother. If it is? Well, feel free to complain.

      I hope you enjoy these meanderings.

      --C. Patrick Neagle

      Arabian Sea

      October, 2012

      ~.~

      Grab a pack and join the author

      for some travel and fun.

      Ode to Flying

      I fly a lot.

      Not only do I fly a lot, I fly on a lot of different types of aircraft in a lot of different ways.

      I've flown First Class on big commercial jets crossing the Atlantic. I luxuriated in their big leather recliner seat as my every whim was catered to by a lovely stewardess (are they still called 'stewardesses' or just 'stewards'? Or 'Air Host'?). A library-like hush permeated the setting. The cabin was quiet, the space between seats seemingly vast.

      I've also traveled coach flying across the Atlantic on a big commercial jet. My seat didn't recline very much (though the fella's in front of me certainly went back all the way), my legs were crammed up against my chest, and my every whim was most definitely not catered to. There was also a great deal of coughing and snorting added to the piercing cries of annoyed babies. More subway car than library, though a subway car has more legroom.

      I've flown on puddle jumpers whose sole purpose was to get their passengers from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible with as little loss of life or peanuts as seemed feasible at the time. Few whims (except regarding peanuts) were catered to.

      And, because of my job, I've flown on military aircraft.

      Lots of military aircraft.

      Usually it's helicopters. I'll be taken to an airstrip somewhere, or to the flight deck of a ship (depending on where I happen to be at the time), suited up, strapped in, and told that if the helo ditches, I'd better keep an eye open for sharks. And, oh, if we do crash, don't jump out before the helo hits the water or the ground, 'cause the rotors will still be spinning really, really fast.

      Very encouraging.

      I've flown on helos that traveled low over the water (it's almost always water) with their main doors open so that the passengers could get a good view of any whales that might be roaming around below. I've flown on helos where I didn't really know where I was going. Sometimes I didn't even know where I was coming from (don't scoff--you had to be there).

      I've also flown in big military cargo planes that were incapable, apparently, of heating the passenger compartment (which is in no way different than the cargo compartment, except for the addition of a few seats wedged in between the crates).

      Most recently, I was catapulted off of an aircraft carrier on a COD (Something, Something, Delivery is what it stands for, probably).

      Since it was the first time I had ever catapulted from a ship, going into the experience, I had visions of medieval castles being assaulted by cows wielding giant slingshots (I have weird visions).

      I wasn't too far wrong. Essentially, a plane leaving the deck of an aircraft carrier is launched from 0 to nearly 200 mph by means of a very large rubber band. Okay, maybe it isn't actually a rubber band, but you get the idea.

      I had been dreading it.

      We're essentially going to be launched off of the deck of an aircraft carrier by means of a giant rubber band, right? I asked one of my colleagues who was also leaving the ship. He'd been catapulted a number of times.

      Yup. Zero to two hundred in three seconds.

      Erm, what happens if we just go off the end of the ship and hit the water?

      That's happened.

      What! No, you're lying.

      Maybe.

      Thanks.

      Eventually, we got suited up, strapped in (backwards, so that various g-forces wouldn't squish our innards in the wrong direction on takeoff or landing), and told that if we ditched into the ocean we should watch out for the sharks. I anxiously awaited catapultation (not a real word, but I wasn't thinking clearly).

      Then. KABooM.

      The rubber band did its rubber band thing: we launched. My spine was pushed against my ribs and I was pretty sure that despite the fact that we were facing backwards, my internal organs were still being squished in the wrong direction, and then we were up.

      Flying.

      No sharks to contend with, after all.

      Still, I think I much prefer flying First Class.

      Back to Top

      ~.~

      The Ends of the Earth

      In the days of yore (yore being, I believe, a non-fat dairy product), when the ships of the Greeks ruled the Mediterranean (which at that time was called Bob), the edge

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