{"id":707,"date":"2015-04-08T13:01:14","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T20:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/?p=707"},"modified":"2018-05-29T12:17:25","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T19:17:25","slug":"travels-with-a-naked-parrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/2015\/04\/08\/travels-with-a-naked-parrot\/","title":{"rendered":"Travels With a Naked Parrot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring Break<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

I haven\u2019t posted anything here for quite a while. You see, it\u2019s been a long cold winter and I\u2019ve been hunkered down trying not to freeze to death. Yeah… I hear ya. I\u2019ve been in a nice warm house, so it\u2019s not really like I would freeze to death… and it\u2019s not really hunkerin\u2019 down. It\u2019s just that with the short, dark, dismal, cold days I don\u2019t go off on many adventures. And it\u2019s mostly adventures I write about. Ok… there was that short six day cruise in early January, but since that was a Pacific cruise, that hardly counts. I didn\u2019t even go in the water.<\/p>\n

But finally… FINALLY!!! It\u2019s Spring Break!<\/p>\n

The good thing about not being in college… or any school… is that I can take spring break anytime I want. I don\u2019t care how old you are, everyone deserves a spring break. For several years, I went to the Northernmost Caribbean and participated in the happy times. The good thing then was that I got to be there for all of the spring break weeks. Starting around the end of February and going till the first week or so of April, the Northernmost Caribbean fills up with \u201cSpring Break.\u201d And I got to be there for all the weeks.<\/p>\n

Yes… some years I had to go to work at a regular day-job. Just the same, the days got warmer… the water got warmer… and each year those luscious mounds of white sand got more luscious. I would go to the beach both week-end days for sure, and I would often go dip my toes in the water after work once Daylight Savings Time kicked in.<\/p>\n

And now that I\u2019ve traded in my \u201cday-job\u201d for writing, I can go anytime I want. I can stay as long as I want. Of course, there are still deadlines so I tend to cram all the stuff I can in before spring comes along. I work long days and nights… kinda hunkering down while it\u2019s cold and wintry. Then when spring breaks I\u2019m a little ahead of the game. I can spend as much time getting a fresh sunburn and having as many frozen concoctions to help me hang on as I want.<\/p>\n

The last couple of years have been a bit different. I sit here today, far from the Northernmost Caribbean, daydreamin\u2019 and wishin\u2019 I was there. I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time lately on the Internet looking at inviting pics of tropical places. What makes it worse is that the weather has turned \u201cnice\u201d where I am… and I\u2019m not in one of those inviting tropical places. So, instead of working on one of the books I am in the middle of writing, I started dreamin-n-schemin on the months ahead.<\/p>\n

First, I\u2019ve already booked a quickie. No… not that kind of quickie. I\u2019ve booked a four day cruise out of Long Beach going to Catalina Island, and Ensenada. OK, it\u2019s not the Caribbean, but this year, it\u2019s the best I\u2019m going to do for now.<\/p>\n

Then in May sometime, I\u2019m finally heading for the Northernmost Caribbean. But I\u2019m not going directly there. For some time I\u2019ve been working on a book titled, \u201cTravels With a Naked Parrot\u201d. (That was the first working title but then, aren\u2019t all parrots naked… so maybe it will be \u201cTravels With Sergeant Pepper.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cTravels With a Naked Parrot\u201d was inspired by a John Steinbeck book I read as a teenager… \u201cTravels Charlie\u201d. Steinbeck pulled a travel trailer behind his car and went all around the United States. It was a sort of\u00a0 a \u201cdiscover America\u201d journey. He took his dog, \u201cCharlie\u201d along with him; thus the title. After reading \u201cTravels With Charlie\u201d, I thought that someday I could make a trip like that and write about it. By the way… a lot of folks now believe that Steinbeck, being the novelist he was, sat in his travel trailer and made up most of the book.<\/p>\n

So… this year as I make my way to the Northernmost Caribbean, I\u2019m going to make a bunch of stops along the way. I\u2019ll be taking my time getting there doing research. No, I\u2019m not trying to \u201cdiscover America\u201d. Instead, I\u2019m going to go to all the places that I\u2019ve said, \u201cOne of these days I\u2019m going to go there.\u201d Well this year, I\u2019m really going to go there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be taking my parrot, Sergeant Pepper, with me. I\u2019ll share some of my \u201cTravels with a Naked Parrot\u201d with you here on the blog. I\u2019m going to keep kind of a journal and I\u2019ll be posting stuff here. Of course, you\u2019ll have to wait till I finish the book to get it all. Just the same, I hope you can have fun with me along the way.<\/p>\n

Next Stop – The Colorado River<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring Break I haven\u2019t posted anything here for quite a while. You see, it\u2019s been a long cold winter and I\u2019ve been hunkered down trying not to freeze to death. Yeah… I hear ya. I\u2019ve been in a nice warm … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}