Rock Me On The Water

The Budget Travel Olympian

Milford Sound, New Zealand, a majestic fjord with waterfalls

A person posing in front of a scenic ocean view, possibly from a cruise ship.

No matter how low the budget bar gets, I always manage to limbo my way under it. I'm the Wilt Chamberlain of shoestring travel—putting up numbers so unthinkable that mere normals will never, ever reach them: **300 ports in 38 months.**

As the Morgan Freeman of travel writers, everyone recognizes me but I never gain any due recognition. **Hotel @nyware** (edreif.com) hasn't exactly been the Edgar Allen Poe of knock-outs, the Emily Dickinson of ground n pound, the Robert Frost of woopings.

So I shoot pictures and videos and post them for the auditory and visual crowd—I call it CNN versus the alphabet.

The IN to my Sane

It's just me, born with a Ph.D. in throwing junk up against the wall, and seeing what will stick. Looking back, it's been the Colonel Kurtz of experiences. I've gone native and insane so many times, but in a Lance Armstrong Barbara Bush sort of way.

Sometimes I am the census taker, sometimes, the cannibal psychiatrist. Margaret Thatcher once said "Any man beyond the age of 26, who rides a bus, should consider himself a failure." I would add to that, any man working on a cruise ship. It's good to know, however, that failure is always an option.