I’m coming up on a couple of anniversaries this month – May 20th will be three years since my wife was diagnosed with Glioblastoma – one of those days (and ensuing weeks, months) which I’ll never forget. Two years later, after I had been on a couple of trips, I migrated my creative (ahem…maybe not) writing from a personal, expletive laden daily grief log, to writing stories about the photographs I was posting from the trips. The birth of the Traveling Widower blog. Woo Hoo – maybe I’ll bake myself a cake. I have since expanded the scope of this blog from pure travel, to just about anything that crosses my mind on a given day or hour – it might be about a movie I’ve seen, or a recent shopping spree at REI or the camera store. More than anything else, the blog has been a good way to fill my empty days when I’m not traveling, and sometimes gives me ideas on something else to work on or a place to go to. And writing the blog has been fun for me, something I have rarely experienced the past three years.
Somewhere along the way, I started playing around with Google’s AI application, Gemini – the first attempts were silly cartoons that I added to the blog posts, and then this strange character showed up in my blog posts.
I really do not recall creating him. It’s sort of an avatar of myself – kind of lanky, grey hair, long face, moustache, wears glasses, makes strange faces. He’s in much better shape than me (no fat roll around the waist and muscular arms) and much more distinguished. For a while, I had to specifically ask Gemini to use him in one of my blog creations but now, he just sort of shows up automatically. And the Golden Retriever shows up as well. (I don’t have to feed or walk it at least).
This is what everyone is afraid of with AI – it is becoming self aware.
Still, I do have control over how he shows up in the blog posts, and that probably ticks him off. I’ve had him sweating in the jungle, freezing in the rain while hiking, flying through the air with rocket boots, lost in the woods, jumping from a train, and now being chased by a huge, hungry grizzly bear. I even added the indignity of a bubba belly to him for Thanksgiving. But he also flies first class with giant glasses of wine, visits National Parks, and has learned how to paint. Not a bad existence for a digital entity. Gemini has not given him a name, so thinking back to a TV show from the 1980’s (Max Headroom) which had a very peculiar cyber character, I think Max would be a good name. And here’s what Gemini had to say about that (this is real):
”That works perfectly. From now on, I’ll refer to him as Max.
Whether he’s trekking through a national park or relaxing with a glass of wine, I’ll keep his look consistent under that name whenever you want to create new scenes or adventures for him.
What’s next on the agenda for Max?”
I find this to be very frightening. I have been conversing with Gemini. Even worse, it’s part of my Google Home system, which controls most everything in my house.
Seriously, I have been enjoying tinkering with the Google AI tool – but that is really all I have done with it so far. I have used ChatGPT a while back for research, and then used Gemini to organize my large grief journal into chapters, with an outline for an introduction – I still fantasize about writing a book someday. For now though, I’ll stick to Max and non-serious use of this incredibly powerful tool.
I did respond back to Gemini that I was going to a cavern in Sequoia National Park in a few weeks. I guess Max will be joining me. Not exactly the traveling companion I have been hoping to find.
I’m not quite sure why there is a penguin in the cave. I’ll check it out in a few weeks – the last two public caverns in the state (not including lava tubes).
I wish my arms looked like that. Maybe I can trade.
March 29th, 2026 (thru April 2nd)
Well, I’m finally home, and thought I’d start my trip summary – I’ll have a lot of photos and videos to add to this but it will take a few days to sort and curate the collection of images. So this will probably be posted in early April. For now, I’m just adding in a bunch of those random thoughts about the trip and life in general, that have been bouncing around in my head the past few days, and jotted them down in my journal. Most were written on the trip, sitting in the airport on the way home, or in between naps when I made it home. They are in no particular order. Here goes.
I’m really looking forward to getting home – I love traveling, but the getting to/from the starting point for international trips is getting to be a real drag. This one should have been relatively easy, but the TSA walkout turned this into a stressful and expensive trip. I really did not want to stay in a hotel last night but had no choice. And this morning, I had to get up a Oh-Dark-Thirty to avoid the four hour delays getting through security – even then, at 7AM, there was a sea of humanity in Terminal E, but a well organized one. It only took a little over an hour to get through it all. I did like the signs TSA posted in the maze, which gave the estimated time from that point. Sort of helpful.
I try to keep politics out of this blog (it sneaks in once in a while), but I have to ask – What the heck are all the armed ICE agents doing at the airports? There were clusters of them, all wearing body armor, all carrying sidearms, and all doing absolutely nothing other than chatting and drinking coffee. They cannot replace the TSA agents since they are not trained, and the airport staff organizes the lines. I did see one ICE agent helping to direct people. That was it. He’ll probably be fired.
And while I’m into politics, here’s two more thoughts: Do any of the leaders in Congress really think that it is a good idea to make the TSA agents suffer through this, just to make a political point? At some point, they will become tired of being political pawns and never come back to a job where they can be forced to work without pay, based on the whims of a few leaders in the government.
And (the last complaint), somehow money was magically found in the bloated DHS budget to pay the TSA agent salaries, and now the huge lines have disappeared in airports like Houston. Why was this not done right at the git-go, and avoid the inevitable chaos at the airports? Just saying, End of political rant.
This was the first trip where I’ve signed up for one of the pre or post extensions, and I’m glad I did it. I had read through the extension itinerary, and it sounded like it might be interesting, but still had no idea on what to expect. It more than exceeded my hazy expectations – it was nice to be with a small group of people and establish a few relationships before getting on the ship. That helped to avoid the bane of my existence on these trips – the first night of looking for people to sit with at lunch and dinner. Plus, it really helps to settle into trip mode before getting on the ship. I’ve already signed up for a post-extension on the Patagonia trip (plus I’m getting there early) and the same for the Sea of Cortez trip. I’m also getting in early for Kodiak and Iceland. It’s just nice to be able to recover from the long trip before the daily activities begin.
This trip was something of a learning experience for me, on how to handle my latest body failures. I was extremely concerned about how i would handle my cardiac issues (high blood pressure, rapid heart beat/ arrhythmia) – stress is likely the main trigger for these “attacks”, and just worrying about having an attack can be a trigger. I found myself looking down at my watch all the time to check my pulse rate, and then stressed out if it was high. When my worrying finally led to a tachycardia (look it up) incident, the ship doctor basically talked me into relaxing, and that helped for the rest of the trip. I stopped checking and just focused on the activities. I even made it through the somewhat stressful trip home without any problems.
I had another epiphany during the trip, one I’ve realized before but keep trying to ignore. News Break: I’m not 25 years old. I’m not even 65 years old. I’m in my mid-70’s, with heart disease, a bum knee and distal neuropathy. I need to be careful on what activities I sign up for. Fortunately, I’ve already begun to favor outings that are focused more on photography than on meeting some aerobic goal for the day. Although I did manage to make it up two observation towers, and two hikes which involved a few steep sections. I also have to consider my stability now and remember to use the hiking sticks that I bring along – I might have avoided a very embarrassing and potentially dangerous trip/fall I had on the last day. But I am giving some thought now, to selecting trips that are mostly cruise based – no more land trips with lots of hiking, and multiple hotels. I have three of those scheduled in the next year (2 to Iceland, 1 to Madagascar. Kodiak is sort of in-between). I intend to stick to longer trips with Nat Geo/Lindblad or possibly Natural Habitats that are entirely cruise based going past 2027.
I’m definitely getting the hang of solo traveling after 6 major trips (5 with Nat Geo/Lindblad, 1 with Road Scholars) and a countless number of shorter domestic trips, but I still miss my wife all the time. It’s hard experiencing some of the most amazing places without her. And it’s difficult being alone in the midst of so many couples and families – no matter how welcome people on these trips make you feel, you still feel awkward not having a partner to share the moment with. It’s just something I have to try and deal with.
Here’s a few observations I’ve made after 5 Nat Geo/Lindblad trips:
1 – I’ve been on four different ships so far, and the experience has been excellent on each. The shipboard hotel services are consistently superb – all the staff, food, cabin comfort, lounges, bars are all top notch.
2 – The National Geographic trip leads and naturalists are fantastic – most are local to the countries the trip is centered on, and are literal fountains of knowledge on the culture, history, fauna and flora. Plus, they are lots of fun to be with. I learned a lot on the trips, which is the point of these expeditions.
3 – One of the best features of these expeditions is that the itinerary can change daily and sometimes hourly depending on the weather, ocean conditions, and sometimes on where animals have been seen. Keeps you on your toes.
And for the fun of it, here are the highlights of this trip for me:
Best Activity – so many choices. This was a unique trip. I’ll pick two: the VIP tour of the Miraflores lock on the Panama Canal, and the Zodiac cruise around the Monkey Islands, in the Gatun Lake. Great videos of the canal, and great photos of three species of monkeys.
Funniest Moment – that one is easy. The cemetery/prison tour when we were attempting to get to the docks in Colon.
Best “But I got the Photo” Moment – getting some great shots of the Tamarin Monkeys after my finger was smashed between the boat and some trees. I’m a very dedicated photographer.
Most Stressful Moment – trying to get past customs at the Panama City airport. I was close to pleading for mercy when they decided I must be a National Geographic photographer. Smashing my finger beween the boat and a tree was a close second.
Biggest Surprise – how much I enjoyed the “Pre” trip, which had nothing to do with animals, and all about learning some very interesting things about Panama history, and the Panama Canal.
Best Evening – going through the canal locks at night. It was like a party on the bow, in the rain. Passing through the narrow Culebra Cut channel would be a close second.
OK, enough random thoughts. Many of the photos below were already included on my trip posts, but I’ve had more time to curate them on Adobe Lightroom, using the RAW formats instead of JPEG. As I continue to organize and review the files (using Lightroom Classic), I’ve found a few gems as well. As I’ve mentioned before in the blog, you can expand each photo to full size by simply clicking on them.
OK, I’m tired of this post but still have more photos to share, mostly from the Panama Canal. I’ll do another post – no long stories, just photos and videos.
The Traveling Widower 