"If you're going to San Francisco...remember to put a flower in your hair..."

Well, it's late. I just had dinner with my buddy, Joe McPherson of http://www.zenkimchi.com/ fame and new visitor from the New York Times, travel writer and culinary adventurer, Matt Gross...I'll let you get the full gist of that story in the installment to be done by him for the NYT.

As for me, I'm on a plane to San Francisco on Wednesday. It has been almost a year. Many thought I'd be back in the US by summer, and at one point, so did I. But, I've found the re-education of life purpose to be truly exhilerating. I came to write a movie script (I've written, two), met and learned a lot for five months from the Steven Spielberg of Korea, Kang Woo Seok (Silmido/Hanbando: Cinema Service/CJ), trained a number of ROKAR officers from second lieutenants to Colonels, and finally got a new business going: http://www.flyingdragonsaviation.com/... and after returning to San Francisco will by the next month make it down to LA and the world called "Hollywood" with a renewed sense of confidence in the words "success engineering".

Has it been worthwhile? Well, I can't help but wonder if this what my return from Vietnam would have been like had I had the maturity and wisdom only 43 years of life can give (I just had my B-day on Thursday)....no matter having, what many told me when I returned from that prison in Vietnam at the age of 19, lived the life of a man of 60.

I'm still processing everything, but I'm not losing any sleep on it the way I did when I finally came back from the war in Central America for the last time in 1989. No, this is much better!

Yes, Asia is no longer the Asia I remember from 1983 and '84, where we were still much into the adventure, tripping and trekking that "Vietnam" created during the 1960s and 1970s...the kind that led to the likes of Sean Flynn, Dana Stone, Tim Page, and Michael Herr: men who would be my heroes for nearly a decade of adventure, romance and writing, some who I would later be honored in calling friend (Joe Galloway, John Everingham, Zalin Grant)...an Asia that is at one point, sadly lost, and another that is thankfully almost forgotten....except for the need of human beings to try that which is new and exciting...a lost image that fills trekker catalogs and the mind of the brit author who penned Leonardo Dicaprio's filming flagship shot near Phuket: "The Beach".

Yes, my mind's in a spin and I know that my renewed interest in posting will be inspired by those thoughts in the months to come....Peace.