My problem with most athletic challenges is training. I'm lazy and find that workouts cut into my drinking time.

I write early in the morning. I just wake up whenever I feel awake and I have to be sitting and writing pretty soon after that. If I take too long to think about the impossibility of what I'm trying to, I'll be defeated by it.

An adventure is never an adventure while it's happening. Challenging experiences need time to ferment, and adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquillity.

For me, to find a place that doesn't have an organized tour going to it is becoming more and more difficult. A lot of times it involves danger of a political nature - places where the adventure-travel trips can't go because they can't get any liability insurance.

The only use for a knife during a shark attack is pure treachery: Stab your buddy, swim like hell, and hope the munchies take him.

New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences.

The hard wind we get around here on the eastern slopes of the Rockies is called a Chinook. It's a katabatic wind and comes from mountains to the west of us and the mountains to the south.