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The Explorers Club Annual Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York...March 2013

It’s not surprising I feel at home in New York. Family associations reach back to 1653 when early namesake Claus Van Schoonhoven (most changed on the 1700 US census to Schoonover) clomped in wooden shoes into New Amsterdam. A developer, he purchased and built on three (perhaps four) plots, three on what is Wall Street today, then the outskirts and cheapest. It was then a town of 1200. For those of you geographically challenged, New Amsterdam is known as New York today.

Two sites have disappeared under high rises but the third is where the doors to Trinity Church open at the head of Wall Street.

Actually, my blood line through the notorious Kit Davids arrived even earlier, on Aug. 4, 1638, when there were only 80-90 structures and 400 people. A founder of Kingston, he was often at odds with Peg Leg Peter Stuyvesant (seen here) for selling whisky to the Indians but when there was an uprising, it was Kit Peg Leg turned to. Kit became a hero of the 1663 Esopus Indian uprising and massacre when he paddled his birch bark canoe down the Hudson to Manhattan to raise the alarm with Peg Leg Pete. And it was Kit, who spoke the language and knew the injuns, who negotiated the release of prisoners. The wild Kit warrants chapters in two books and references in at least one other. Ben Brink in 1914 in Olde Esopus wrote: “One of the most colorful personalities of the 17th century in the Hudson valley was Christopher Davis, English-born, known to the Dutch as Kit Davidtsz. Kit might well have served as the proto-type for Rip Van Winkle, for he hunted the woods, fished the streams, acted as interpreter between indians and whites, drank heavily, engaged in numerous brawls, was in jail for contempt of court and wandered hither and yon throughout a romantic career in which he was both the tool and the despair of the authorities.” Goes a long way to explain my gggrandfather Will's wild behavior while fighting in the Philippines during the Spanish-American war in 1898, as seen in the following Blah blah.

It was Kit's daughter Debra who yanked my line sideways. Although she had married Claus' son Hendrick Van Schoonhoven/Schoonover, she carried on an affair with Peg Leg Derrick Van Vliet (his leg was shot off during a drunken New Years party when he was 17) and had a bastard son by him. It’s in court records. She raised the boy, Nicholas, with the Schoonover name and he launched the famous Bastard Line, which comprises 20% of Schoonovers living today, including me. If people say I’m a genuine bastard, hey, it’s true. Or at least of a line of bastards.

That’s okay. The Bastard Schoonover/Van Vliet line is as illustrious as the so-called "legit" Schoonover one, the latter with its historic author Lawrence Schoonover and illustrator Frank (who did Call of the Wild). And that brings us back to my New York connections, which includes Mayor John Lindsay (his mother a Van Vliet). Van Vliet morphed to Van Fleet in one branch and that includes cousin Jo who won the 1954 Tony for Best Actress for Trip to Bountiful with Eve Saint Marie - which is in revival on Broadway as seen in this poster I snapped in the subway. This led to Jo's movie career, launched by picking up the Best Supporting Oscar after working with James Dean in East of Eden (see the following

San Fran Blah Blah). Captain Beefheart was a Van Vliet but I haven’t been able to tie him in directly, although I enjoyed his eccentric music. As you may have gathered, societal/legal/religious "approval" of a union means less than zero to me. This April Su and I will have been happily unmarried for 25 years, and it just gets better and better. I have no time for politically correct convention.

Blood cousins also includes General Jim who was honored with a ticker tape parade and this strip on Broadway. He also led charges at Utah Beach, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, founded the Green Berets and somehow lived to be 99. There was a lot of military on this side and, I'm ashamed to say, lawyers galore.

I'm standing on cousin Jim's strip coincidentally within spitting distance of Trinity Church, enveloped in scaffolding behind me.

But we’ve come home to attend The Explorers Club Annual Dinner at the Waldorf. What is The Explorers Club? We're 3,000 adventurers, individualists and eccentrics worldwide with oversized curiosity genes in our DNA, filling up the field sciences - the ologies like archaeology, anthropology, oceanography and so on. This is our incredible Clubhouse on the Upper East side. It was built in 1912 by Stephen Corning Clark, grandson of the man who built the Dakota where John and Yoko live(d). The Clark fortune began with Stephen Clark’s grandfather who was also the business partner of Isaac Singer who invented the sewing machine. Tudor style. Incredible interior as you'll see when I take you inside.

Our members have numerous firsts. Name the famous explorer or adventurer in the last century - from Teddy Roosevelt, Peary and Shackleton to Lindbergh, Yaeger and Hillary to Armstrong, Goodall and Ballard - and they were or are all members. It's filled with a Who's Who of names like Cousteau, Leakey and Piccard - and those names, in turn, filled up my Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives book (indeed, Meave Leakey wrote the Foreword). 120 of them described when their own youthful dreams were born launching their own adventurous lives. I first read in Readers Digest about the Club when I was a skinny kid of 12 in 1958 in Carrot River and it launched a dream that I, too, would become a member, and a vow to live as adventurous a life as I could. I was elected a Fellow in 1986 for my ethnological collecting for museums around the world and related writings. It's a great honor to belong - it's one of the world's most exclusive clubs, with very stringent qualifications - and it's a major component of my life. Hey, I get to hang with all these fascinating people that share as many esoteric passions as I do. We're essentially all just a bunch of ten-year-old kids who never grew up, though hoards have PhDs, IQs going through the roof and are household names.

Now I've been advanced to Fellow Emeritus status. That means I'm turning into a geezer. This was taken in the famous Trophy Room. My adventure-thriller (which conveys what I think is an important point) The Manila Galleon starts and ends in this amazing room - my favorite in the world. (BTW, all my books are now available inexpensively on Kindle and Amazon and the other ebooks sites, though hard copies are available in many cases, including The Manila Galleon).

Here's the view in the other direction. Unfortunately, just out of sight in the dark corner right is our 3 foot whale penis.

This is the famous globe that one of our greatest stars - Thor Heyerdahl - planned his electrifying Kon-Tiki adventure over.

Matter of fact, here he is doing just that, second from the right. The recent Norwegian movie Kon-Tiki about the voyage is very much worth seeing, BTW. Great homage to a great explorer. Capt. Hook aka Norm Baker has told me many wonderful, respectful stories about his great friend Thor ("Tor"), that he was a great leader, internationalist and visionary. And Thor, in his book The Ra Expeditions, writes just as highly of Hook. And I've seen many of those great traits Thor wrote about - like when Norm finished his chores, he immediately went looking for something else to do. He's that way on our expeditions and canoe trips. A great asset. (Scroll down to the Red River dino expedition with Phil Currie.)

The Club was famous throughout much of the 20th century, but its profile dipped during the late '60s and '70s - it's partially because major explorers like Neal and Buzz and Cousteau and Goodall and those at that level stopped identifying publicly with the Club although all were (and in Jane's and Buzz's case, are) proud members. It just wasn't fashionable for the times. But its profile is rising with a vengeance of late. In recognition of this sea change is that even Johnnie Walker has begun distributing two brands in our name. While Red is undrinkable in my opinion (especially since it's apparently Dick Chaney's favorite), Black is a damned clean blend and I hope one or both meet this standard. (Although a single malt aficionado I'm not among the snob mob most of my friends belong to, as I know some decent blends. Shackleton drank a blend and that's good enuff for me.) I look forward to test driving both which are apparently only available at duty frees.)

The Dinner is a black tie affair and heavily covered by the media. If I look stupid happy, it's because I am. Indeed, fashion legend Bill Cunningham shot The Dragon Lady and BJ Mikkelsen and they landed on the society pages of the New York Times, along with Treasure Trader's Jessica Lindsay Phillips (see the following San Francisco Blah Blah for more on our wonderful Jessica). They're respectively #16 and #14 below and, for a larger picture, please go to http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/03/24/style/24PARTY.html?ref=fashion. I'm not surprised. Madame Su is an incredible clothes horsette, and BJ's silk hat is always a hit.

The evening started with the (in)famous Exotics Table put together by our great "Exotics Chairman" Gene Rurka. The wokked earthworms were excellent, as was the camel. The kangaroo was a little too gamey and tough for my tastes and the alligator was a bit swampy. It all goes to prove, as our close Bangkok friend Jerry Hopkins wrote in his classic Strange Foods, that what is disgusting in one part of the world is merely lunch in another.

The Madagascar hissing cockroaches were delicious though, sweet and liquidly, though the exoskeletons were bony. That's old friend BJ, a long time transplanted Dane/New Yorker who now lives on a farm upstate. We met in 1984 when I was in Manhattan and he set me up for a month long junket in August touring the four Scandinavian countries, writing travel stories for the newspapers coast to coast in Canada I strung to, and a few in the US like the LA Times, Boston Globe and SF Examiner. That was back when one could string travel and actually have it pay for one's trip around the world, which it had done for me in '78-'79. Then newspapers began their decline in '82, which is accelerating, and that great source of freelance publication virtually dried up. (Actually, in '84 I flew from Helsinki via Moscow back to Bangkok, and then on to Canada, completing my second circumnav. I swung around a third time just a year ago.)

After bugs and champagne, a guy from that part of northern England where men wear dresses blew into his funny sounding bag and we followed him into the Grand Ballroom.

As Communications Director (though I anoint myself CommCzar) of the Canadian chapter, I organized the Canuck table, though we had close friend Capt. Norm "Hook" Baker of Thor Heyerdahl's Ra, Ra-II and Tigris fame, left of Su-san, with us as a guest. Capt. Norm is one of our living treasures and on the Board of Directors. Then Cam McNaughton, lads Max and Jonty with proud dad Chris Considine, Treasure Trader's Jessica, Angry Planet's and now the Weather Channel's George Kourounis and BJ. No room for them although Canucks were Amanda and Barry Glickman who were at Snorkel Master's North West Chapter table next to us. Many thanks to a lovely and smiling Su for gifting me my $375 dinner ticket.

With 1200 guests, the dinner was sold out. It's been held in this very same ballroom, always black tie, since forever.

This is the what the same ballroom for the Explorers Dinner looked like in 1909. Wall-to-wall penguins.

The program is always fascinating. Jim Cameron received The Explorers Medal for his solo dive into the Mariana Trench and gave an excellent and long speech ("I'm not known for being humble, but...."). He was a table guest at Club sponsor Rolex’s table hosted by Rolex rep Colette Bennett and husband and past president Dan Bennett. As a favor, Dan asked Jim if he’d straddle our Canadian chapter as well as his primary California one. Other honorees were John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. I remember clearly in Grade 10 our old battleaxe French teacher Hop-a-long suspending one of her mind numbing, soul destroying "lessons" so we could follow John's flight on a transister radio. The arc of it was riveting.

I also remember in Grade 9 in 1960 being galvanized by pictures in Life magazine which greatly influenced me, of the submersible Trieste bobbing on choppy waves after ascending from the deepest trench in the world, the Mariana. It also pictured its handsome young captain, Don Walsh, and I thought, "Wow, what an incredible life! And what a great adventure!"

Here, Don annotates his contribution to Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives in my author's copy. In Pre-Expedition Notes, my preface, I found myself quoting Don more than any of my other 119 contributors, I think three times. His succinct definition of exploration as "curiosity acted upon" was repeated by Jim three times in his speech. Don had graciously and generously mentored Jim on his great solo dive and, appropriately, Don's was the first face Jim saw when he emerged from his dive capsule after his solo conquest of the same trench Don had descended to over 50 years earlier with Jacques Piccard.

Afterwards The Dragon Lady and I and George and Snorkel Master (blonde with paper) through Amanda and Barry Glickpersons were invited to an 8,000-square-foot penthouse party on the Upper West Side. Everyone seemed to be 37-years-old and worth hundreds of millions from high tech, bio and films, though one unassuming lad, a cofounder of PayPal, was probably worth in the low billions. Good for them. We had a lot of interesting conversations. The next day everyone met here (this picture) at the Clubhouse, jampacking it for brunch and, for some, lectures. There's 25 chapters worldwide and regular canoe and expedition buddy Snorkel Master - sometimes known as Lynn Danaher - is chair of the Pacific Northwest Chapter. She's a major Polynesian explorer and more fun than, than...there just ain't nobody more fun....

A highlight of the dinner presentation was mountaineer and photographer David Breashear's presentation on the big screens of Rivers of Ice, utilizing the latest still-in-development video software from microsoft. From crystal clear wide angle shots of Everest taken from helicopters whizzing around the massif, he would zoom into the smallest bit of grit in ice with the same outstanding resolution. David (on left), of course, shot IMAX's biggest hit, Everest, with mutual friend and star Araceli Segarra and was a hero of the 1996 disaster on the mountain when he suspended shooting to throw every resource he had into the rescue (only then did he finish the climb and shoot). After Sunday brunch, some of us were invited to past president Dan and Colette Bennett's apartment overlooking Central Park where David expanded on his brilliant work in the private screening room. And Don, our Honorary President, was there too. He's such an incredibly understated and down-to-earth gentleman. I told him that Jim had borrowed his definition of exploration and he replied modestly that it wasn't really his, that Scott Carpenter and John Glenn had said the same thing, just in different words. Yeah, well I know where they got it from.

Then a handful of us sat around sipping wine, enjoying Dan and Colette's two boys, and kicking back until closing in on the pumpkin hour. As I say, hey, where do you get to hang with your youthful heros like Don and Norm Baker and many others than in a Club like this? I call Dan (far left) The Savior because, while president, he took on the unpleasant, often misunderstood and thankless task of flamethrowing a large cabal of lazy and inept Club employees who had gathered like a ball of leeches over the years - and through not processing dues and unbelievably incompetent office mismanagement threatened the very financial underpinnings of the Club. I could see this only too clearly from my many years on the Canadian executive and was his biggest cheerleader. Dan got the Club humming efficiently again. He's one of our greatest presidents. (Yes, David is doing his imitation of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still. He's a man of many talents. Just don't piss him off or he'll vaporize you. )

During the week, we were house guests of Maura Moynihan, daughter of the late Senator Patrick and a one time Warhol Girl. She's brilliant, a multi-talented author, singer/composer, dancer, model, designer (Saks), hilarious and dead on mimic, dear friend and gawd knows what all else - a beautiful person with an overflowing heart, and amongst the greatest of the Renaissance women I know (and I know several, like Milbry Polk, Catherine Cooke, Anne Doubilet, Snorkel Master and many others just to name a very few, all members of the Club). Maura, it turns out, also knows David, but then she knows everyone from the Dalai Lama to David Rockefeller to the Kennedys to several presidents to Oliver Stone and Mick Jagger and the list never ends. Although spending as much of her time as possible in Kathmandu as a leading voice of the Free Tibet movement, she's part of our Bangkok gang. With Maura as guide we checked out Asian Art galleries - it was Asia Week in New York and, as with San Francisco a month earlier, I was feeling out the biz to see if there was interest in our collections, but Gotham is all about high end art, not tribal, as it turns out. We also checked out Christies where one 12th century bronze went for 2.4 million. Man, there's money in this town.

She has fascinating insight into her mentor, Andy Warhol, who had put her on the cover of his Interview magazine when she was fresh out of Harvard. She worked with him at the mag for five incredible years. I led, "Warhol had this reputation for being monosyllabic...." "Oh, NO! That was just his persona! After a reporter would walk away frustrated, he'd turn to us and giggle and say, 'They swallowed it again!' And then he'd continue" - Maura made a chatterbox action with her hand - "until 5 in the morning. He was a non-stop talker, always cracking little jokes and making observations. He was a very hard worker - everyone I knew who was successful was a very hard worker. Andy took a real interest in people. It didn't make any difference if they were famous and worth a billion dollars or a beggar on the street he showed the same respect and interest. He was also small and delicate, my height." Maura's 5'5". You can see photos of her dad on the wall. Her Yoga Hotel, as she calls her apartment (named after one of her books), is decorated in Himalayan, let's call it. Great vibes. It's impossible not to love Maura. She's just so full of it.

She's sold all her Warhols to fund her travels but she still has Avedons on the walls. She was married for a time to Richard's son and they had a son Michael, just finishing studies in photography himself.

Su and I love great dining and grand old bars and Manhattan has both. This is the oldest bar in town, Pete's Tavern, opened continuously since 1864. During Prohibition it was a speakeasy protected by Tammany Hall just around the corner on Union Square. (That's where one of Warhol's reincarnations of the Factory was, BTW.)

What a great ambience. I'm not much of a beer drinker but I had two of their excellent in house brand. I hated to leave and I'll be back. All the stars have been here and it's been the NY hangout of Johnny Depp for 20 years. But the bar is more famous because of O. Henry, one of the greatest of the short story writers.

And we got to act like dumb, hick tourists, hitting the Frick to check out the Impressionist show (they even had a Brueghel the Elder, though insignificant, that I wasn't aware of, in their permanent collection) and the Met. We also hit the American Museum of Natural History where I was keen to study what they had on Paleo- and Neolithic man. At Dan and Colette's that evening of wine and relaxation we had met their close friends Mark Siddall, head of invertebrates at the AMNH, and attractive wife Megan Gavin. They generously supplied us with tickets for several shows at the museum, which was much appreciated. And we wandered through Times Square again. If you look carefully on the big screen above, you'll see that I made the big time. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere....

Can't see me? Here. I'm up in lights twice. Ain't that acting like a real hick from Saskatchewhat...?

The following weekend we caught the train upstate from Grand Central up to Poughkeepsie ("Puh-kip-sea") and BJ's farm. When we're with BJ we always seem to laugh until our faces fall off. (Though here it looks like a scene from Wuthering Heights.) When he had a place on Bank Street in the East Village (where we used to stay with him and his wonderful and much missed late wife Maria), John and Yoko lived a couple of blocks down in the 1970s in a dingy basement suite before they moved up to the Dakota.

The Hudson Valley is home turf. BJ drove us up to Kingston, which my wild ancestor Kit was one of the founders in 1652. He owned the Strand - the shore on the left - along Rondout Creek which runs into the Hudson a quarter mile down. Kingston town is up the hill to the left. My forbearers escaped being massacred by injuns three times over the centuries. Once was here in Kingston. Claus, the first namesake referred to earlier, croaked in his early 40s but not before having a son, Hendrick. Claus' wife remarried and had a second baby. During the 1663 massacre in which 18 people were slaughtered, she lost her new husband and the newborn. Her two-year-old, Hendrick, who survived, become Hank the Cuckold after he married Kit's wild daughter Deb and she took a shining to Peg Leg Derrick's other peg leg, resulting in Nick the Bastard, my ancestor.

Downstream 28 miles is where I'm standing, on the wharf at Newburgh, shooting across the enormous Hudson. Newburgh is where Nick the Bastard's grandson and my gggg-something-uncle Christopher mustered out of the Revolutionary Army in 1783. His younger brother, Richard, my ancestor, was too young to join and fight. Directly across the river in the middle you can see the white outline of a town.

It's Fishkill. ("Kill" in Dutch means "stream," like the nearby Catskill Mountains, where Kit also owned land.)

At this church in Fishkill in 1750 Uncle Christopher and Grampa Richard Schoonover's dad Jonas Van Schoonhoven married Engeltje Van De Water. It's in perfect condition. Jonas was Nick the Bastard's boy. Poughkeepsie is half way between

Kingston and Fishkill and BJ has the great honor of living there, surrounded by all this fabulous Schoonover history which bored him (and Su) probably as much as it's boring the hell out of you. I wrote an enormous 880 page (with photos, maps and diagrams) book on my genealogy, Westward from New Amsterdam, that actually sells more copies in DVD than some of my others. We advertise on my website and on the enormous Schoonover Family website at https://sites.google.com/site/schoonoversinamerica/ which cousin Mary in Milwaukee rides herd on. I spent thousands of dollars, hours and miles since 1968 pushing my line back 13 generations. It was quite an adventure! (Actually, it still is, one is always learning new things.)

The church was also used prominently during the war with the dastardly, chinless, warm beer swilling Limeys.

With ethnological collections piling up The Dragon Lady and I flew from Bangkok to San Francisco, the heart of the tribal art scene on the left coast. The '08 recession whacked it badly and I was hoping it had recovered.

Alas, the curator of the giant Asian Art Museum was apologetic: still no acquisition budget. And the same would go for the other giant, the de Young, though while there we checked out the current display of Dutch paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, among my favorites. Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring is his masterpiece and it's a beautiful work, blowing Mona Lisa off the wall. I overheard a patron remark, "The Dutch are a good looking people." "Thank you," I rejoined, and we all laughed.

We timed our visit to take in the annual Tribal Art Show. Dealers report sales still down 50-60%. Still, it was a pleasure, and enlightening, to see what was on offer and values. Mostly African, not that much from South and Southeast Asia which is our main area of interest, though my eyebrows bobbed at the prices of the latter. The one item outrageously priced at one vendor were small Thai wooden penises (they provide magical protection as well as aid to barren women and can be very elaborately carved, by monks, with Pali writing - we have a considerable and varied collection, the largest over a foot long). These were simple ones with very little age that cost in Bangkok $3-4 but were tagged at $150. A distinctive, very primitive Himalayan mask in our personal collection that I paid $5 for 30 years ago in Kathmandu had an asking price of $20,000, though another dealer had it at a more reasonable $6000. Another item in our personal collection, a century-old Igorot (Luzon) headhunting shield flanking our fireplace I paid $50 for in '82 was asking $800, but that price made sense. Genuine tribal art with age and patina is exceedingly rare in the field these days (unlike the Golden Age of collecting, which ended in the late '80s), causing a legitimate escalation in prices.

I literally bumped into Jessica Lindsay Phillips, co-star of Treasure Trader. She and her late fiancé Billy Jamieson generously hosted the launch of Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives in Toronto, an incredible affair with oysters on the half shell and 250 in attendance, with chapter contributors flying in from all over North America. Jessica will be one of my argonauts in Turkey in September. I've chartered a 31 meter luxury gulet, or yacht, and The Dragon Lady and 12 of our friends will spend two weeks exploring old Greek and Roman routes and ruins along the Turquoise Coast. The other chap is Joshua Dimondstein of Dimondstein Tribal Art of LA. I did business with his late dad Morton, a great guy, back in the 1980s. (That's not my gut sticking out, BTW, my thick passport pouch under my shirt is, well, mostly responsible.)

We also explored Beat history in North Beach, surprisingly little changed from the 1950s. Here's the most famous bookstore in North America - and responsible for freeing speech through owner Ferlingetti's (still alive at 92!) censorship battles starting with Allan Ginzburg's Howl. Ginzburg gave a poetry reading at SFU in the late '60s and I sat directly in front of him, he on a mattress on a slightly raised dias in a packed auditorium. Balding and bespeckled, he seemed like a neat guy, though his poetry, laden with Eastern mysticism, was beyond me. The Beats have always fascinated me because I've never been much for living conventionally either, it bores me. Also, there were just a handful of them really, like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty of On the Road). Yet, they caused a significant cultural ripple and were progenitors of the massive Hippie "flowering" here during the Summer of Love, 1967. And I'm always interested in other writers' lives.

City Lights is everything a book store should be. Cosy, lived in, and comfortable. Su bought me two books on Kerouac and the Cassadys.

Just across Kerouac Alley from City Lights is the Vesuvio, one of the all time great bars on the planet, and I'm a connoisseur. Madame Su is generously trying to give another iPhone away, like she did in Buenos Aires in October (when a sleazebag on a bicycle sped by and apple picked it...).

Here Kerouac got pissed one day when he was supposed to jump up to Big Sur to visit Henry Miller. Kerouac called every hour saying he was coming, but he never made it. You can see the original gas lighting.

Out the window you can see the Hungry I where Lenny Bruce was heard to say the nasty f-word, leading to his long battles with censorship that led ultimately to his death in an LA bathroom with a needle sticking out of his arm. My friend Jerry Hopkins of Bangkok, then writing for Rolling Stone, witnessed the scene. I think way back in the '60s I had an album, Johnny Rivers at the Hungry I (or was it at LA's Whisky a-go-go?). I always liked that name, Rivers. That's where I lifted it for the protagonist, Lee Rivers, in Thai Gold. Lee has a nice east-west ring to it and was the name of a good friend during my university days. The Beat Museum next door features, among much else of interest, the '49 Hudson used in the screen adaptation of On The Road released a year or two ago.

Lonely Planet is wrong: Jack Kerouac didn’t write the famous endless scroll version of On the Road here at 29 Russell Road atop Russian Hill. Ginsberg says that version was done by the time Jack moved in with Neal and Carolyn Cassady in 1952. She pens in Off the Road that he only tweaked it and massaged the ending, when she was being poked by both husband Neal and Jack, while Neal was poking anything in a skirt (and Allan occasionally who had major hots for him). Visions of Cody was the book Jack concentrated on while here.

Jack and Carolyn used to take long walks, including Washington Square which anchors the top of North Beach, which runs along Columbus. If I lived in SF, I'd live in North Beach.

San Franciscans like abbreviating. Thus, San Francisco shrinks to Frisco, Marinated County distills to Marin County and, here, Coitus Tower becomes just Coit Tower. Carolyn and Jack used to climb Telegraph Hill to enjoy the view.

The Trieste is a famous cafe where Ginzburg, Ferlingetti, Kerouac and the Beat poets hung out. There’s even a framed picture of Coppolla working on The Godfather script, as well as other celebs like Bill Cosby prepping his own coffee.

The Trieste name intrigued me. Curious, I emailed Don Walsh who, with Jacque Piccard, in 1960 descended into the Mariana Trench in their bathysphere Trieste, asking if that’s where he borrowed the name. Don's a “Babylon by the Bay” boy, as he fondly calls his hometown of SF. He replied, “Wish it was. I could have scored a lot of free drinks over the years. No, it was named after the city in Italy where the major components were built in the Adriatic Shipyard." Don's a fellow member of The Explorers Club and contributed to Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives.

I was about to swing in here but then Su disappointed me by informing me they just gave manicures. Damn.

We also explored family roots. Su's grandfather Onishi was an adventurer who sailed here from Japan in 1895. He would have gravitated to Chinatown (besides Japantown), because of the Asian connection. He later moved up to Vancouver and launched a strawberry farm in the Lower Mainland and was there in 1918 when his wife was swept away in the Spanish Flu, leaving him to raise eight kids, one being Su's Mom who passed on only a couple years ago at 96. And then along came Pearl Harbour and Strawberry Hill was "appropriated" and they were shipped to the beet fields of Alberta (a Mission shopping centre now sits where it was...we're talking millions lost). Her family didn't have an easy time until she met me, and since then her life has been idyllic, of course.

I also have SF connections. My g-great-grandfather William Leonard Schoonover II answered the call to “Remember the Maine.” This pillar, dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt, another Dutchman whose family also has been in North America since the 1600s, anchors Union Square. Our hotel, the highly recommended Andrews, is two blocks away. They even serve complimentary wine at 5:00pm. That's civilized.

It commemorates the launch of .the American Empire - their acquisition of the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.

Born in Minnesota in 1860, in Missouri 1870-1885, Wild Will was in the Dakotas when he signed up with the 1st Regiment, ND Infantry Volunteers in 1898. To cheering Fargo crowds he boarded a train to San Francisco’s Presidio for training here at Fort Merritt. It's covered by houses now. There's every chance that both ancestors - Su-san's and mine - could have been in SF at the same time, perhaps sharing an opium den together, in one of those great coincidental moments..

One of these men is my ancestor but which one? He was described in military records as 5’8”, sandy complexion, blued eyed with light brown hair. He was an engineer and "37 10/12" years while half were 21-25.

We know what his late wife, my g-great-granny looked like. Mattie nee Baker was a good lookin' broad! She unfortunately died (birthing problems?) in her early 20s in 1884 leaving two boys which Will farmed out to his mother Almira to raise. He then sold the Missouri farm and galloped out into the Wild West (Jesse James was gunned down just 65 miles away, in 1882). Never to remarry. The love of his life? Is this why he became a carouser? Although he also became an engineer and in the 1920s had enough talent that he held a US patent for a "piston position indicator," when he died in 1924 in Washington state he did so broke. The years from 1885-1898 are lost.

He shipped out for the Philippines aboard the Valencia June 27 and would have seen Fort Point while passing, here below this arch of the Golden Gate Bridge (made famous in Hitchcock’s Vertigo with Kim Novak), though it’s unlikely he was in it as the area he trained was at the south end of the Presidio. His steamers stopped in Honolulu going out, Nagasaki and Yokohama returning. (Another California connection is through Kim. She’s married to a veterinarian [now retired], whose partner [also retired] is married to my cousin Barbara whose g-great-granddad is also Wild Will. Their practice was in Monterey. Interestingly enough, my mother’s maiden name is Novak, but there's no connection. It translates in Ukrainian as Newman, ie the "new man" in a village.)

After winning the mock Battle of Manila the volunteers expected to return home—but DC ordered them to stay another year! This led to mass insubordination and resulted in 563 court marshals and summary court trials for 7,090 among the then 21,000 solders. Co. I had the worst record—remember, they’re from the Wild West, the Dakotas—and amongst these Wild Willy had to be a leader. Obviously a long time hellraiser, he was up on seven charges and five court marshals. He was twice charged with disobeying orders, breaking out of the guard house, drunk and disorderly, being AWOL, twice for creating a disturbance, larceny (stole a dozen eggs from a Filipino) and making threats (I know, that's nine, but that's what the records say). One led to 30 days at hard labor. What a guy! A great Schoonover! A chip off the ol’ block of earlier and colourful ancestor Kit Davids, a founder of Kingston, NY, on the Hudson River in the 1600’s who has chapters in two books about him, and who was constantly at odds with Peter Steyvesant for selling whisky to the Indians and the like – but, when there was injun problems, it was Kit Peg Leg Pete turned to for help because of his knowledge of them same redskins, their ways and language.

However, while waiting in the monkey house for his last trial, the Filipino insurgency broke out and Will (that's what he went by) and 16 others were released to take up arms and 13, including Wild Willy, had their charges dropped because they put up a good showing (note the 1st North Dakota {ND} positions in the map above on Feb 5, lower part, advancing from Fort San Antonio to the Pasay to Macati line). He fought in three engagements. He would have been left speechless to learn that 90 years later his g-great-grandson would set chapters of an adventure-thriller, The Manila Galleon, in the very fort, Santiago, he defended. I was taken aback myself for when I was writing the book I didn't know about Will's Asian adventures. I thought I was the first Schoonover to come to Asia.

August 30, 1890, after the Grant landed at Angel Island he marched up Market Street to cheering crowds, back to the Presidio. He was mustered out Sept. 25. And I’m sure promptly got drunk and laid. (A cousin a few times removed, George Van Fleet, earned a Silver Star fighting during the insurrection, but this was later.)

Incredible! I was about to send this Blah Blah out when an email came in from cousin Milwaukee Mary, who runs the massive Schoonover Family Website at https://sites.google.com/site/schoonoversinamerica/index. She found a photo of Wild Willy taken when they reached the Presidio! He's #40! We've been searching for decades! Now she'll try to track down that original newspaper and hopefully a clearer picture! Such is geneaology...one is never, ever finished, and I've spent thousands of dollars, hours and miles so far pushing mine back 13 generations to the 1600s and Holland. (His hat's pulled down to the left...was he a southpaw...?) Now we can restudy that earlier class picture.

Another cousin with California credentials is Jo Van Fleet who picked up the Supporting Actress Oscar for portraying James Dean’s estranged mother in East of Eden. Among others, she was in Gunfight at the OK Corral and Cool Hand Luke. Another Hollywood connection was Gloria Jean Schoonover who acted with W.C. Fields in Never Give a Sucker An Even Break, co-starred with Bing Crosby in Going My Way, and Copacabana. Two Schoonover cousins (and also descendents of Wild Will), brothers Fred and Jim, were part of Mario Lanza's entourage in the '50s, and Jim was also a "private duty nurse" to Errol Flynn and Spencer Tracy. Wild Willy's son (and Fred and Jim's uncle) William Leonard III was a producer/playwrite/actor who, with a private train car, ran a tent show up and down the midwest out of Missouri from 1906 until the Depression literally killed him, but that's another story. No surprise I started out as a disc jockey after university; I seem to have show biz bubbling through my veins. And there's a few significant adventurers back there too.

After Su's Saudi days in the '80s, she spent a year in Japan, and her best friend was Fumiyo Noguchi, who not only generously hosted us in Marinated County but toured us around. Here atop Twin Peaks.

Geoff Alexander hosts the impressive Thai Oasis website (http://www.thaioasis.com/), and splits his time between San Jose, Cheyenne and Bangkok. He coined the term: "The Bangkok School of Writers" - writers who make the city a character, with its spooks, Air America pilots, eccentric characters, bars, backstreets and brothels most often wrapped into adventure-thriller form. There must be at least 30 writers there now and dozens of books - but guess which one launched the school back in the '80s and was first to attract an international publisher (Bantam)? Thai Gold/The Bangkok Collection/Nepal Gold (four different publishers’ titles so far with over 130,000 sold and still selling, including in ebook form). I'm flattered, frankly.

I’m always pleased when readers report they love Tysee in Thai Gold, as they frequently do. Indeed, one reader was so disgusted and angered when Tysee “dumped” Lee and disappeared from the tale that he threw it in the garbage…only to pull it out several days later compelled to finish…and learn the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. I’m pleased because I wasn’t confident in my ability to create a major, credible female character. Fortunately, I had two excellent models for Tysee, for she was a composite. The secret is out. One was a dancer at Patpong’s Superstar bar. And please meet Hiromi Nomura, equally lovely, quick of mind and wit, that mind ever positive, curious, enthusiastic, happy and open, her laugh joyous and, above all, adventurous. Doesn't that sound like Tysee to a T?

Everyone who knows me knows who the first person Lee is modeled on so you might say this is a photograph of Lee and Tysee 25 years after their fictitious Grand Adventure sweeping from Mt. Everest, across Southeast Asia to New York. Hiromi is today a renowned San Francisco floral artist (Belle Flora her company), married to dentist Gary, and the mother of twins. Shot taken at Sausalito.

The only bad thing about San Francisco is having to leave it...gawd, I love this city more each time I visit. And every time I do that tribute to the city in Tony Bennett's signature song gets stuck in my craw. It was playing in stereo in my head the entire two weeks and I've been back almost a week and he's still following me around, belting it out.... Love it. Sing it Tony!

Winging to the next adventure in December my plane passed over the route of last summer’s

Explorers Club Flag #176 paleontological expedition with Phil Currie down Alberta’s Red Deer River. Brrrr. Damned glad I’m leaving that four letter word—s-n-o-w—behind….

The study of early man along Thailand’s River Kwai started in a most unlikely manner.

Dutch POW and archaeologist H. R.Van Heekeren was literally slaving away on the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway when he stumbled upon stone age tools.

He noted the site, managed to survive the war which 2,490 fellow Dutch POWS didn’t,

It surveyed 20 sites along the river, which the railway had followed, and excavated two,

including Ban Kao which proved to be “fantastically rich,” producing 700,000 potsherds alone. The most startling aspect to me about the Ban Kao discoveries is the beautiful, highly polished carnelian and agate beads seen in the museum of that name. Early man early developed a sense of self decoration and beauty and was often buried with bracelets and beads. Why did we develop a sense of beauty? Where in Darwin does that increase our chances of survival? The excavations also turned up the first stone implements in Thailand, consisting of choppers flaked on one side only, similar to this hand axe below, one of many such we found.

While Harvard Professor H.L.Movius identified this type as the same made by Homo Erectus in Java and China about 500,000 years ago, and postulated Thailand as the migratory route leading to those countries (and, incidentally, there were other hominids in surrounding countries prior to this), carbon dating of related material on the River Kwai placed axes of this design at 10,000 BP. I'm confident our finds are in accordance with this because this design is of the Hoabinhian culture which was predominant across mainland Southeast Asia during this period (18000BP to the Neolithic).

Movius was right in that this is the natural route into Thailand. When India slammed into Asia 70,000,000 years ago, jacking up the Himalayas, it also pushed up their smaller, but still daunting, limestone karst cousins forming a fence along the Burma-Thai border and down into Malaysia. The Kwai-Three Pagodas Pass route was the way of the earliest trade and culture from India and beyond.

In 1975 a study was done prior to the building of the dam near the top of the river in which 23 more archaeological caves were surveyed, concluding man, as mentioned, had been in the valley for at least 10,000 years. The Thai Fine Arts Department returned in 1976 and again in 1980-81, surveying a further dozen or so caves. In 1984-5 Dr. Ian Glover was on the Ban Don Ta Phet cave excavation up the Kwai where all the stone tools displayed at the National Museum in Bangkok originated. This mystery tool has been stumping us and our experts. Ritual use?

The amalgamated conclusions remind me of a taffy pull, with dates and migration routes (another study sees early man in Thailand as having come down from China) being stretched in all directions. Certainly, dates are flexible and one doesn’t just flip a switch and everyone reverts from, say, Neolithic to Bronze Age in an instant. But the National Museum estimates that man has been in Thailand for up to a million years, that this early Paleolithic period lasted until about 10,000BP (Before Present). The Mesolithic in Thailand stretched until about 6,000BP with the Neolithic, or New Stone Age with the introduction of rice growing, from then until about 4,000 years ago. While the Bronze Age started about 7,000 year BP in the rest of Thailand, it only reached the Kwai at the 4KBP date - an indication of how flexible and overlapping these eras are. Indeed, one cave in Vietnam had Neolithic polished tools in conjunction with Iron Age ware. The Iron Age itself on the Kwai is dated from 500 BCE. The two big tools above, surrounded by later Neolithic polished adzes, are Hoabinhian sumatralithic handaxes (unifacial discoids) from the Hoabinhian culture overlying (primarily) the Mesolithic. Confused? That’s ok. Another reading and it’ll make more sense, or check out Charles Higham’s Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. He’s the Father of mainland Southeast Asian archaeology (though he was as puzzled by the mystery tool 2 pictures back as we were when I emailed him a jpg). All the tools above came from our Hintok Camp cave.

The goals of this expedition were two fold: to continue excavations for both POW and lithics here at the Hintok River Camp site, and to continue our investigation of the Death Cave. That's Capt. Norm Baker, Thor Heyerdahl's first mate, by the thoroughly undramatic Hintok cave entrance, though we simply call him Capt. Hook, or Hook. If you look carefully behind Hook you'll recognize that the Hintok Cave - basically a limestone drain hole - is on the edge of this:

(The cave is off to my left 50 feet, the Kwai behind me a stone's throw.) From May 1943 to February ’44 Hintok Camp was a squalid British POW camp of 300 in which 79 died, a far higher percent than the normal 20% prisoner death rate. From here it was a steep 250 foot climb to work on the railway.

It’s a tough slog for a healthy, reasonably fit person, requiring rest stops to get your breath. The rails were removed after the war over much of the line. Hook with Martin Saunders and Sir Rod behind him.

Down the line 2-3 kilometers is Hellfire Pass, the most dramatic cutting on the entire 250-mile-long railway, so named because of the oil lamps that lit up the worksite at night. Sir Rod and wife Twee singlehanded cleared this of growth - including the steep sides - years ago, as well as long stretches of line (though here often with Martin).

Today, Hintok River Camp is an upmarket tourist resort which pays homage to its predecessor in name and theme, with an old jeep on site as well as a guard tower, the entrance fenced with railway ties. The Masai Mara-like safari tents are reminiscent of the POW’s bell tents.

Mind you, our comfort level in the field was somewhat improved, thanks to the generosity of Suparerk Soorangura. A major player in the Thai tourist scene, he owns this and 15 other individually themed resorts throughout Thailand, follows our work with great interest, and pledges to refurbish a large building on site as a museum displaying our finds. And they’re substantial, both POW and early man..

This is looking up from near the bottom towards the steep entrance which requires a rope to descend. The other, smaller rope is for our bucket and the hose for water. Sir Rod originally sold the property to Khun Suparerk in order to finance his museum and research center, but before he did so he discovered the cave, one of many interlinked like Swiss cheese below the old POW camp. It became apparent that it had been used as a trash pit during POW days and was filled to the top.

After removing the first couple of feet of modern garbage, he reached the POW midden level. For five months over a year he dug and sifted through 20 feet, recovering well over 500 POW artifacts.

Many are displayed here, at the magnificent privately funded museum he built in Kanchaburi to honour the war dead. His museum and research center is open to all seeking information about lost relatives and his massive data base of 105,000 names, built in conjunction with researcher Andrew Snow (whose father and uncle were on the railway), continues to expand. But there's hundreds of artefacts left over for the Hintok River Camp Museum.

After reaching the bottom of the POW level, he kept going - and immediately hit stone tools! At first they were polished Neolithics (top eight), and they steadily got cruder towards the bottom of the shaft. At this point some 25 feet down, it flattens out and descends at a slight slope towards a narrow point about 15 feet along. It was at this juncture last year that I joined and we attempted to complete the excavation but we ran out of time and only turned up three crude Paleolithics, or early stone tools, and a few animal bones, below:

We decided to pick up next - this - year with proper lights and a water hose. Thus was born the Explorers Club Flag #50 expedition. In Grade III I read in a Grade IV Social Studies book about cavemen and couldn't wait to get to that grade to learn more. Once there I was disappointed when only about eight seconds were given over to it and, more disappointing, there were no caves at all in Saskatchewan to explore. Thus discovering Southeast Asia with its virtually unlimited limestone karst formations riddled like, well Swiss cheese as I said, with caves that cavemen actually lived in is a Grade III dream come true. This is Caveman Central. Alley Oop country.

To this point we had an inventory of 67 lithics, and 91 pottery shards, most Sir Rod had collected in the upper most layers. With water to wash away the dirt, we moved forward much faster and it was a lot of fun, getting covered in mud. We also added another incredible 101 lithics and 20 potsherds, bringing it up to 168 and 111.

The water we (and the monsoon) poured into the cave had to go somewhere and Sir Rod discovered exactly where. At the low point we removed rock and debris, revealing a largish gallery below, running off in either direction. We were able to descend by sliding down on our bellies and walk back standing upright some 50 feet to a pool, upsetting kitty hog nosed bats (the world's tiniest), but found no lithics.

Sir Rod did find on the lower floor this animal tooth locked in conglomerate. Our Explorers Club veterinarian identifies it as a herbivore and probably a ruminant. There were very few animal remains anywhere in the entire cave, only a few stone flakes, but there were two charcoal campfire lenses atop each other in this lower gallery, the first four inches down, the second 2 inches below that.

This was perplexing because water would pour into this cave like the drain hole that it is during the monsoon, it certainly wasn't a rock shelter, and even in the dry season it's wet down there. The descent is too steep and long and there isn't room at the bottom anyway and those fires would smoke even a caveman out. Both charcoal lenses were very thin, indicating likely single usage. Then why the long sequence of tools and potsherds in the main, upper cave? Did seasonal floods wash them in? Or was it used as a garbage pit by the hunters and gatherers as well? It's a confounding mystery that has the team flumoxed. On the steep slope to the lower gallery Sir Rod found the orange tool several pictures ago. That dirt slope proved to yield lithics and treasures like nothing before when he began to cut through it, back into the main cave.

One of the first was this excellent hammer stone, showing considerable use on all edges. But we had hardly begun when we had to break in order to gather together more equipment needed for excavating this level. Our greatest discoveries would come in a month's time.

Sir Rodney of Id, uh, Oz, our Knight in Shiny Mud. Because of his magnificent obsession, keeping the memory of these terribly abused POWS alive, he was knighted by the Dutch Queen. Other honors include the Australian Medal. But like every other 10-year-old boy at heart he just loves getting down and dirty.

We advanced on the Death Cave, so named because of our dangerous experience last year when we hit a CO2 layer, which sent us gasping for breath and for the entrance. This is how I looked recovering.

Years ago Sir Rod was able to get back 200 feet where he reached a narrows guarded by two animal skulls. After bellying through he found a broken secondary burial jar. This year, on our test exploration, we were able to explore back, though the air was tacky. We brought out several bones which our medical advisor, Dr. Martin Stockwell (who was on the Red Deer expedition last summer), identified as human, and of a child's.

That's a piece of the skull cap, top right. The majority of bones were on a waist high ledge, where the parents presumably placed the child's body in a jar ancient times. But some, including the skull cap, were some distance apart, found with pottery fragments with a cord pattern dating it to at least 1700BP or as early as 4000BP. Determining we needed better lighting here too and an O2 system, we broke off from here too. We didn't know it then but we would never make it back to the Death Cave, at least this season.

But it wasn't all mud and games and cheating death. It was my pleasure to sponsor Sir Rodney into The Explorers Club, here bonding him into our fraternity with the traditional sharing of a bottle of Scotch brought by the inductee. Capt. Norm Baker is on our Board of Directors in New York and I serve as the Canadian Chapter’s Communications Director, or CommCzar as I prefer to enshrine myself, since no one in their right mind would knight me. Next to Rod is his long time railway line clearing partner, Brit Martin Saunders, who was part of our team.

Explorers Club #50 dates back to 1932 and this is its first expedition back to Thailand since

then, here taken under the Bridge over the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi. It was last carried July (2012) by Explorer Bertrand Piccard in the cockpit of his history making solar powered flight from Switzerland to Morocco. L-R Sir Rod Beattie, Martin Saunders, Jason Schoonover and Capt. Norm Baker.

Above us were the usual young Japanese tourists mugging at the entrance. Being taught that the bridge and railway was a triumph of Japanese engineering, pushing it through 250 miles of inhospitable jungle from Thailand to Burma in only 16 months in 1942 and ’43, they cheer. They’re not taught that to do so their grandfathers starved, beat and worked to death 12,300 prisoners of war and 100,000 Asian coolies. Germany has come to terms with its WW-II past; Japan hasn't faced it yet.

This educational process will be helped by the release of The Railway Man, the true life story of Alex Lomax, one of torture, forgiveness and redemption. I had a small part to play in having facilitated Sir Rod meeting producer Charles Salmon through my close friend and Thai Gold co-screenwriter Kevin Chisnall, the special effects and armouries man on this shoot (and who has worked with everyone from Lucas to Jolie to Gibson). That's Sir Rod with the DOP or Director of Photography.

No one could recreate the actual conditions of creating the railway like Rod, of course, the expert. Sir Rod, as technical advisor, recommended the use of this actual cutting originally dug by POWs and Asian slave labor, and these on location shots are his. With stars such as Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, it’s sure to have an impact on the intractable Japanese as well as reawaken international awareness of the horror that went on here.

As a sidebar, you’ve heard how fast tropical jungle reclaims its own? These last two pictures were shot in July. And these next two—of exactly the same site—I shot in December.

To help Colin—an unpretentious, down-to-earth chap—into his role Rod searched the data base for Firths. He not only found one but when he brought this information to Colin, the actor was further taken aback to learn that the deceased was from Yorkshire—his own region—and they thus could be distantly related. Greatly moved, Colin asked to be taken to the headstone.

The movie is in post production as I write (February 2013) and due out in the spring. Unlike the first movie on the railway, David Lean’s highly fictitious (but brilliant) Bridge on the River Kwai of 1957, The Railway Man is deadly serious and presents the period accurately. Sadly, Alex Lomax himself—both Firth and Kidman visited him in Scotland as part of their research—died, at 93, in October. By the way, Sir Rod described Kidman as basically a good ‘ol Aussie gal with a from-the-gut good ol’ Aussia gal haw haw haw laugh. He quite liked them both.

While waiting for Sir Rod and Khun Supareck to round up more gear and The Dragon Lady to arrive I jumped up to Chiang Mai to continue my Flag #112 expedition among the hilltribes. That's Capt. Hook with another Explorers Club member, Birdman Rob Tymstra, with Bucklee Bell of Kesorn Tribal Arts in Chiang Mai. A one time underground cartoonist in San Francisco during the acid days he was high from having just received a note from Haight-Ashbury period legend R. Crumb who confessed that he launched his career because of early cartoons by Bucklee. I made purchases here to add to our Hmong collection.

During the month (October) I spent shooting and documenting the Hmong collection I've been collecting for 30 years (and with Su since '94) I realized it had holes. I filled them with 80 acquisitions, and put a ribbon on the collection: 17,500 words on 606 pages photo documenting 562 pieces, which includes 12 display ready costumes. I just have to number them all back in Toontown and it's museum ready. It's the largest - by far - ethnographic collection of my life.

With Madame Su's, The Dragon Lady's, arrival and our needed gear ready we jumped back down into Hintok Cave. And so successful were we, as I say, that we put aside further investigations in the Death Cave for the season.

It started with turning up another hammer stone, an excellent find and our second. We called it the Hammerstone from Hell because of its vicious bi-faced cutting/breaking edge (top).

And then the discoveries really started to pop out of the mud! Here's one of 10 beautiful Hoabinhian sumatraliths that turned up, seeing light for the first time since it was discarded thousands of years ago by an early relative. The thrill of the find is akin to picking up an Albertasaurus tooth along the Red Deer River, being the first to see it in 70,000,000 years.

Yes, the ologies are all about having fun, feeding one's ravenous curiosity...and getting down and dirty like a kid again. As Sir Rod laughed after the steep descent into a third cave we did a preliminary dip into, "It's a good thing we're doing this while we're still young."

Because we were at the lowest level we didn't expect to find many POW finds and we didn't, two buckles, two tin cans, a blackened battery, but then - jackpot! - homemade dog tags! Washed down along the narrow track left to carry away rain. It reads **692. POW CHA*** (probably Changi, the Singapore prison) - ELLWOOD, W - 1942 16TH DEFEN** REGT, RA 831692. A check of the Thai-Burma Railway Centre data based turned up Sergeant ELLWOOD, William Jenkinson, 16 Defence Regiment, Royal Artillery. It's mystery in that Ellwood was a member of E Force sent to Borneo and he died there on 1 December 1944; so who carried his dog tags to Thailand? And why did they end up down in that hole?

Some of our second stage discoveries. Row one primarily potsherds. 2: the Hammerstone from Hell with a smashed bovine bone probably done by POWs to reach the marrow.. 3&4: Paleolithics of a primitive nature. 5&6: 6 central stones classic sumatralithis, with a jungle cat claw below and a small bovine skull above, probably from the POW period. Finally rows, flakes and small cutting tools.

The cord design on the potsherds dates them from 4000BP to 1700BP, amazing me that a design feature could last this long. Without doing an thermoluminescent dating, we won't know the exacter date.

Flag #50 with my Su Hattori and Khun Suparerk before the cave. Note that we're in our glory - covered in dirt. Sir Rod is holding the Hammerstone from Hell.

Our finds - both POW and of early man - will be housed here in what will be the Hintok River Camp Museum, just feet from the cave itself. Sir Rod is scribing and designing the POW side, because of his obvious expertise; and I'm penning the copy and handling the 'Early Man on the Kwai' display boards and concepts. "If you need more room, I can expand it," Supareck offers.

Wrap dinner on the Kwai with a most fascinating man. Next to me is 93-year-old Jack Thomas of Oz who was a POW and at Hintok (after the Brits moved on and the Aussies took over) and later worked in a coal mine in Japan. He was there half way between Hiromshima and Nagasaki when they went poof.

Jack is one of the most remarkable people I have met. He not only has all his marbles, but all his teeth and excellent health. But it's his positive attitude and happy equinimity which is so inspirational. He bears no animosity or ill feeling for his brutal treatment (it was "standard issue"). Asked how he coped on the Kwai then: "The jungle was beautiful and the birds were singing. I could have been in a 6X6 box with bars." Whereas many (most?) POWs suffered terrible long term, even life long, physical and psychological debility, he's completely at peace with the past and - talking to his son Graeme - seems to have been so all his life. Then was then and now is now. I've never met anyone whose positive attitude carried him so well through life - and a life with the most terrible challenges imaginable.

Madame Su with (Dame?) Twee and the twins, Michelle and Linda. Or is it Linda and Michelle? I'm not sure they know they're so similar. Missing in action is Sir Rod's 16-year-old daughter Tracy, at boarding school in Oz. (The girls are all in the 3.8 scholarship range.)

I’ll wrap this too long blog with an apt quote from Professor Higham: “In prehistoric research, one site imparts only limited information. Hence the concern for locating a number of sites in order to reconstruct a settlement pattern.” The discoveries from our quixotic cave/drain hole blend with other sites along the Kwai and with Hoabinhian culture across mainland Southeast Asia. Like all the other flag expeditions I’ve been on, this one isn’t limited by the stated dates in the application but rather is ongoing. Sir Rodney of Id, er, Oz and I will be back next year trying to draw aside further the curtains on our hunter-gatherer ancestors in order to let a tiny bit more light shine through the window on what are truly the Dark Ages of Mankind.

PS. And I can't wait for next year when Sir Rod and I can go out and play in the mud again.

Paleontologist and 2012 Explorers Club Medallist Phil Currie was Field Leader and I was Team Leader on a 16-person dinosaur bone hunting expedition down Alberta's Red Deer River and badlands June 23 to July 2, 2012. Nine Explorers Club members and scientists converged from as far as Massachusetts, Atlanta, Washington state and Vancouver. This is Phil with wife and palynologist Eva Koppelhus, both in Explorers Club caps, and his son Devin.

Explorers Club Flag #176 was granted. The stated objectives of the expedition were:

*Attempt to locate the site where T.C. Weston found the paratype skull of Albertosaurus in 1895;

*Attempt to locate the purported second Albertosaurus bone bed that was found and partially excavated by George F. Sternberg in 1916;

*To relocate a quarry where C.M. Sternberg collected three skeletons of Ornithomimus in 1926.

The key to being a successful team leader is to have fun and make sure everyone else does too - but that's easy because explorers are basically just big kids and so am I. Crack lots of jokes, preferably politically incorrect because explorers soar far above the petty, pathetic, prevailing winds blowing through society, and give everyone a fun river name. For example, L-R is Eva "The Danish Delight" Koppelhus, always exuding happiness and good cheer; vegetarian Julie "Meatless in Atlanta" Wallace; and Cathie "Dr. Spock" Hickson, a volcanologist like the other Dr. Spock, also a Vulcan. Behind sitting is Garth "Chicken Legs" Ramsay because, well, you gotta see his legs, pluck, pluck, pluuuuuuck. Oh, and launch with champagne! It's a Schoonover tradition to solicit virgins for the popping of the corks; failing that, as we always do, newbees to the brigade.

Also feed 'em first class - start with beef tenderloins. A happy stomach ensures a happy brigade.

The first step on the expedition was for P-Rex (Tyrannosaurus Phil was too long to say) to teach the neophytes how to develop a "search image" which he did with infinite patience, answering and re-answering basic questions he's heard 10 million times. Most don't know what a dinosaur bone looks like (although they're often standing on them) until shown, then it becomes obvious - thus is born the search image.

Then we scrambled over the badlands like ants on a hill. That's P-Rex climbing effortlessly towards the top, after someone discovered bones eroding out below. All seek the source.

Probably because I have a well developed search image after over 30 years of amateur bone hunting, I was fortunate in making several finds, such as this Albertasaurus tooth lying in situ on a hillock nearby. You can see the still sharp "steak knife" serrations of this smaller cousin to T-Rex.

P-Rex documenting and collecting it. By The Danish Delight's (Dee Dee for short) right toe is a large bone, perhaps associated.

This section of river has the highest concentration of dino bones on the planet and is unique in revealing the last ten million years of their existence before the famous KT Boundary, which marks their demise. We concentrated on 50 miles of river, from McKenzie Crossing to Drumheller, arguably the most dramatic and beautiful portion. During this run we descended from the KT boundary itself 65.5 million years ago back further in time. I've never been on a river with so much bird - those living dinosaurs - life. Which was to the Gov's delight, he being a birder. If this panorama appears wonky to you it's because one of us were into the champagne.

This landmark signalled that the KY Boundary (as one wag anointed it) (ahem) was just downstream. We men wouldn't have noticed this unusual formation but for the women on their knees in the mud along the river bank worshipping something.

The climb to the KY was something else because of the steep slopes, raging wind and moist bentonite, so slippery when wet it's used in everything from soap to drilling mud. The Dragon Lady's expression is telling about that climb and fierce wind. Helluva view from up here though. P-Rex said it was the first time he's been here from the river. From the prairie level, it's just a short stroll down and that's the normal, sane route.

Long on my bucket list has been to see the actual demarkation, which P-Rex is pointing to.

The KT Boundary marks the end of the Cretaceous, or the Age of the Dinosaurs, and the beginning of the Tertiary, or Age of Mammals. Consisting of fractured quartz and iridium, a rare element on earth but common in meteorites, it was deposited in a worldwide layer by the asteroid which splashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, darkening skies up to four months, and ruining everyone's vacation in Cancun. I collected a sample to study under our microscope.

Although it's widely believed that this asteroid was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs, P-Rex finds that dinosaurs were already mysteriously dying off during the last 10 million years of their 170 million year run. During this 10 million year period they reduced from 45 species found in Dinosaur Provincial Park (with the highest concentration of bones anywhere, and 120 miles downstream and further back in time) to only 25 near the top, closer to the Boundary. Indeed, there are no dinosaur bones at all in the final three meters before reaching the KT Boundary! It leads one to conclude that the dinos were not only already dying off but may, indeed, have been toast before the asteroid hit. Or, at most, it merely struck the final blow.

The flags - including our friend Milbry Polk's Wings WorldQuest - at the Boundary. Wings promotes women in exploration. P-Rex's legs (mind you, they're long) are in the Cretaceous while the rest of him and us are in the Tertiary. P-Rex & Dee

Dee, Dr. Spock, Capt. Hook and Milbry all contributed to Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives. Want to meet and hang with interesting people? Write a book about 'em. Oh, and do field work in one of the ologies so you can be elected to The Explorers Club.

The Dragon Lady and I - each with one foot in the Cretaceous and the other in the Tertiary! Bloody wind is damned near blowing us off, back to the river 12-15 million years back in time.

So steep was the climb that P-Rex wisely cut steps in the steepest portions descending. Going down is always more dangerous than ascending.

Tired of waiting is Capt. Hook aka Captain Norm Baker, Thor Heyerdahl's (remember Kon-Tiki?) best friend, first mate, celestial navigator and radioman on the reed boat expeditions Ra, Ra-II and Tigris, on his fifth adventure with The Dragon Lady and I. Capt. Hook, so named for his reputation snagging Saskatchewan while fishing, is on the Board of Directors of The Explorers Club in New York. He's fearless, bursting with curiosity, the compleat adventurer and explorer. He flies out each year in his Cessna 172 Skyhawk.

Back in the field, everyone brought their finds to the bone guru for identification. This was another old quarry site.

The more recent ones were marked thusly, though erosion sometimes left them standing on rods a meter high. We sought out several old quarries not mentioned in the Objectives, but weren't able to pinpoint one, although P-Rex had a GPS bearing. Yahoos had apparently absconded with the marker.

Back in camp, the daily ritual of examining the day's finds. Everyone was always laughing, cracking jokes and having way too much fun. I have to put a damper on this in the future. A team leader doesn't want people to be too happy. It's just not proper.

I found a digit from a bird-mimic or ornithomimus. We didn't find too much up at this higher elevation of the river, close to the KY Boundary, but that was to be expected. Mostly we picked up a lot of Tim Bits, like you see on the table. (Tim Bits for you not fortunate to be Canuck are the holes in donuts sold at Tim Horton's, a famous coffee chain up here.) The large chunk is fossilized wood with carbonization still bearing growth rings, evidence of seasons loooong past. Dee Dee will saw this and study them under the microscope.

Fulfilling one of our goals was another climb, this time to Barnum Brown's 1910 Albertasaurus bone bed in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park which P-Rex found from this century old photo in 1997. In true explorer fashion, he discovered the site the very last day of that expedition, floating down the river on a replica barge of Brown's. It was broiling hot: 42C. Everyone had all but run out of water but gave P-Rex their last dregs so he could go on one last search. He ran out and was suffering from heat exhaustion - legs cramping on the descent - when he finally discovered the site. He and Dee Dee spent 12 seasons excavating it, which revealed 12 to 26 skeletons (depending on how you count them) scattered along an ancient flood wash for 500 meters. A herd with everything from adults to youngsters had been caught in a catastrophic flood event, complete with log jams. It was the first site in the world to indicate gregarious, or social, behavior amongst raptors. In other words - a major site.

Explorers Club expeditioneers with the same background 2012, from L-R: Cathie "Dr. Spock" Hickson; Northwest Pacific Chapter Chair Capt. Lynn "Snorkel Master" Danaher; Phil "P-Rex" Currie; Eva "The Danish Delight" Koppelhus; Board of Directors member Capt. Norm "Hook" Baker; Jason "Capt. Magnus Twat" Schoonover; Atlanta Chapter Chair and Chapters VP "Governor" Alex Wallace; Julie "Meatless in Atlanta" Wallace; & James "Tipper" Anthony. With Flag # 176, a veteran of numerous expeditions around the world over numerous decades.

You're perhaps wondering where I got my river name. It's in honour of a highly respected but unknown member of the Hudson Bay Company during the fur trade. From 1771-1801 he worked mostly at Cumberland House, the first settlement in Saskatchewan and only 70 air miles from the small town where I was brought up. He died while paddling up the Carrot River, which my home town is named after, thus the connection. Although the Orkney family now spell the name as Twatt, in HBCo Journals, it's with a single 't' and that's how I spell it. Kim Twatt, author of Full Circle, is an honoured member of our Voyageur List.

On the climb down darned if I didn't spot another beautiful Albertosaurus tooth (left) - and right on the very trail we had all trodden going up! P-Rex, nearby, was hailed and he hurried over, immediately spotting a matching one only two feet away (though, ahem, his was broken). With the most delicate of care, he moved soil away from around mine with a leatherman blade before carefully wrapping each in tissue. He has grad students at the University of Edmonton who specialize in different areas of toothology, let's call it, and they'll examine them. That's the biggest and best example I've ever found. Teeth are always premier finds. It's incredible how perfectly they're preserved after 70 million years.

Then it was back on the river and down to the next site. The river was high and fast from heavy, continuous June rains, which was to our advantage as it turned out.

It sped us along like a conveyor belt, but had receded enough to expose campsites. The wild weather had me major concerned throughout June though - I feared a disaster - but we lucked out.

Well, except for one late afternoon and night. But we had a ball throwing up the tarps, and we had lots of the finest wine available in boxes along.

A brainwave of mine I have to show you. Finding rocks along the river for firepits I knew was going to be a problem so I came up with trailer stanchions - and they worked fabulously. I remember only too well several years ago poor Neal "Sits-in-a-canoe" Pennycook on the swampy Mudjatik River (one Joe Tyrrell hated, more on him later) spending a half hour a day sweating, swearing and sawing thick, living pine for firepits. These lightweight aluminum jobs I'll carry in our black bag from now on on wilderness trips. Brilliant, I must say. I only wish I could reach my back so I could pat it.

This was another old quarry, from 1959, we located, a Hadrasaur dig. As always, P-Rex was interested in determining if it should be re-opened. The Danish Delight also found T-Rex bones and broken teeth. I'm embarrassed to say I had just checked that very section - you can see her on the ledge bending over the spot - but her search image is obviously far more finely honed than mine. Even if she is a girl.

It was a particularly beautiful area. I love the badlands. I'm sure Gaudi and Disney must have celestial permission to work their wonders on the magical formations.

What a great job. Getting to play in the dirt like kids for a living. And they know how fortunate they are, which is great too.

The Danish Delight studying Tim Bits people piled up on this convenient hoo doo.

But when I found, in the top right hand corner, a vertebra on the top ledge and then a large bone growing out of the matrix just below the grass line, P-Rex's disappointment was palpable. With little overburden, there couldn't be many bones left. Nix this site. The brown detritus in the foreground are tailings from the 1959 dig.

So we mounted up and moved 'em out. And downward (the river) and upward (the badlands) to our greatest discovery!

The most important objective we fulfilled was this - finding the site of George Sternberg's long lost 1916 dig. He had taken out a lot of the big bones, now unfortunately lost - but there were still bones, bones, bones everywhere! The Danish Delight immediately discovered a skull case! "I'll bet it won't take Phil long to get up here," she laughed as he heard the news and swivelled his head in our direction. And there were bones from Hadrosaur, Triceratops and T-Rex! P-Rex isn't given to overt excitement but his eyes were gleaming and his grin was coast-to-coast. He shot a camera load of jpgs and hurried us along before we contaminated the site. (An amateur had located it, providing coordinates, thus proving the value of amateurs in paleontology.) This one is sure to be re-opened.

P-Rex and Dee Dee had to leave two days early for a fund raiser but they pointed us to another large area to investigate - and here I hit paydirt.

Between Capt. Hook and I are at least two large bones, unfortunately badly degraded, but there's gotta be more inside.

Everything and much more was lying on a horizon from The Dragon Lady, through Capt. Hook and the hairy one to Chicken Legs - and back up both gullies bordering, which were also loaded with bone, often healthy and indicating things are going on in this toe. I'm not concerned that you'll find it from this shot. As The Dragon Lady and Good Yoko say about us foreign devils: we all look alike. And so do the badlands. I was damned excited though. I've sent the jpgs to P-Rex and taken the GPS coordinates.

Unbelievably, Meatless found this in situ on the site! And gave it to me! Unlike the Dimetrodon - the "dino" - that P-Rex pulled out of a Rice Krispies box when he was six that launched his lifelong fascination, my Stegosaurus is a real dinosaur (even if it wandered out of the Jurassic). I'll keep mine in a like place of honour though.

We finished up in Drumheller, one of the most colourful, unique towns in Canada. Kinda reminds me of Moab, but with dinosaurs, like Phee Phee here, wandering around looking for handouts.

A visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum was a given. They were going to call it the House of Currie but they thought that might confuse people into thinking it was a restaurant so they settled on Joseph Tyrrell's name instead. It was appropriate. He was the first whitey to discover a dino skeleton along the river, back in the 1880s. As Dee Dee, who studies fossilized pollen, laughed to me a year ago while on a field trip: "I can put all my finds in a pill box but Phil needs a whole bloody museum for his." It's one of the most important dino museums in the world with almost half a million visitors annually..

Everyone checked into the Ramada, left bathtub rings an inch thick, then strolled next door to O'Shea's and a private room for our blow out. Our guests were Sonny Long Legs and museum techies Darren and Patty Tanke, Patty having been one of our shuttle drivers. They were thoughtful enough to bring us a case of cold beer when they picked up P-Rex and Dee Dee. I don't think it was a fair trade. They should have brought two cases.

Many thanks to whomever of you surreptitiously picked up Su's and my dinner bills, much appreciated. And to the Gov and Meatless; Snorkel Master; and Ostrich Legs and Tiny Tush for the single malts. They are also very, very, very much appreciated. Again, people are too damned happy and laughing too much. Gotta find a way to dampen spirits. Just not Presbeterian behavior or however the hell it's spelled.

The Badlands Brigade Class Picture L-R standing: Garth "Chicken Legs" Ramsay, Lorrie "Tiny Tush" Hanson; Martin "Ostrich Legs" Stockwell; Cathie "Dr. Spock" Hickson; James "Tipper" Anthony; Bev "Flasher" Pavelich; Su "The Dragon Lady" Hattori: filthy hippie who wandered into pic; Capt. Lynn "Snorkel Master" Danaher; "Governor" Alex Wallace, Julie "Meatless in Atlanta" Wallace; Capt. Norm "Hook" Baker. L-R sitting: Phil "P-Rex" Currie, Kumiko "Good Yoko" Yokoyama, Devin "Sonny Long Legs" Currie. MIA photographer Eva "The Danish Delight" Koppelhus.

To repeat what I said as I rose at dinner raising my glass to make the shortest speech of my life: Thanks for coming!

Somehow I have to weave this Chiang Rai, Thailand, hotel into the book I'm working on.... I hear it's popular with newlyweds. If you think this is delicious, check out the name of this massage parlour:

This must be one of them there rub and tug places in Thailand one hears about, with the "happy endings." Whatever - this has to be a classic. (Actually, pervs, it means "golden palace.") (I was disappointed to find out too.) I love these Asian malapropisms, like the sign at the pool in my Chiang Mai hotel: "Must dry before get out of pool." And Dewi Kunti, the heroine in the Indonesian epic the Mahabarata.

While on the subject of pervs, I've got a lead on the one messing with my camera in the last Blah Blah, the Kuta Beach one. He's shooting for the cover of Bangkok Airways in-flight mag, Fah Thai! I appeared on the cover a dozen years ago but I don't remember this babe being there.

Anyway, enough sexually inexplicit material for now. I'm really here to tell you about my hilltribe collecting expeditions this season. I made two jumps to Chiang Mai in Thailand's north (with Bali in between, to give markets time to recharge) and one to the remote northwest corner of Laos where I rented a bike to get back into the jungled hills. That's a Lantan woman behind me. If it looks chilly, it is at night at elevation and on a bike..

Here's a better shot of the Lantan, who impressed me greatly. Each of the hilltribes has individual dress, customs and language. And they all get along smoothly - unlike most other tribes on the planet. The Igorots of Luzon and other headhunters of Papua and Borneo were always whipping off heads to impress the girls (I mean it); African tribes are still at each other with machetes; and our North American tribes were also big on counting coup and taking scalps from each other. The Southeast Asian hilltribes are unique in that peaceful regard - and it allowed their individual cultures to thrive, particularly artistically.

Vietnam has the most hilltribes with 54 (Vietnam officially states 126-7 but these are sub-groups); Thailand has 7; and Laos has 47. The Hmong are one of the largest and my main focus for 30 years. They impress me so much I made the love interest, Meow, in my adventure-thriller Opium Dream one of theirs.

Hilltribes were reported in Chinese writing 5,000 years ago and they began moving down into Southeast Asia in the last 1,000 years. (No, this isn't a Hmong home; theirs are on the ground; but this is the largest grass house I've ever seen - a veritable mansion. It's in NW Laos.)

There's no adolescence among hilltribes. That's a Western luxury, now taken to absurd extremes with dependent children still living at home deep into their thirties. Here, they flow into adulthood smoothly and there's few psychological and dependency problems.

This is a Hmong woman. They have far and away the best embroidery of all the tribes. I purchase most of my textiles and ethnology at markets such as this. Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino told their story as immigrants to the US compellingly. They fought with the CIA and spooks like the legendary Tony Po and Jack Shirley against the commies in the Laotian Secret War of the sixties. Tony and Jack, the latter a particularly good friend, were woven into Opium Dream.

Although I'm wrapping on 30 years of collecting Hmong, I'm moving into the other tribes. From the French era coins in this gorgeous Akha headress, it's been passed down several generations since the early 20th century. I can't imagine what it would sell for at Sothebys. I didn't disgrace myself by asking if she would sell it - and in any case, I strongly prefer these to stay with the people themselves, keeping the culture alive and vibrant. 99% of hilltribes, I learned in my 4 season Laos survey, no longer wear their tribal dress. Laos has lost so much to globalization.

Enough of this elephant shit. Let's get back to sex. The readers are getting bored. (I was a bit jittery when I shot this picture, while motorbiking along a jungle road. I had a bull elephant charge me in the '80s in a Thai jungle, but I had huge trees to escape behind, and right now I was exposed.)

The first time I trudged, exhausted after a long day's trek, into an Ahka village in 1979 and saw this at the gate, I thought, "What he hell...?" It's to inform the spirits that people live here. They're guardian images. If he looks well endowed....

When Honey Bunch says "Wash the dishes and while you're at it, do the floor" you wash the dishes and while you're at it, do the floor....

I got some damned good collecting in - 200-300 pieces that weigh 120# - as well as writing. These two pictures above are just a fraction. Good thing I was flying biz because I needed every ounce of that 64 kilo allowance. I didn't take Scotch and cigars back this time - a massive sacrifice! Next is the equally massive job of shooting and documenting it all, though it'll be fun too. Then I'll decide which Canadian museum to donate it to.

And what does a collector do after a hard day in the jungle? Why, hang with the guys, of course. Some of the best looking women in Thailand are men. Here at the Chiang Mai Night Market.

Then grab something good to eat. Lao food is something else.

And then it's time to wave bye-bye to another great season in Southeast Asia, which I love. I flew back to Toontown April 11 via Tokyo, completing my third solo around the world. Upcoming: I'm leading in June a 14-member canoe brigade including eight Explorers Club members and with famed paleantologists and friends Phil Currie and wife Eva Koppelhus down the Red Deer River, Alberta, canyon and badlands on a sanctioned Explorers Club Flag Expedition. Captain Norm Baker, Thor Heyerdahl's first mate, will be along on his fourth trip with us. Thaz gonna be fun.