Welcome to Living Barge – my travel blog which will chronicle my adventures around the world and on my barge, The Rabelo! Feel free to weigh in, ask questions and enjoy the blog!
-Tom Miller
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5
JAN
JAN
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Categories: Blog
It’s Thursday May 17th and we are still tied to the dock. Everyone has been working long hours. A great deal of work has been completed since we arrived last week, but we still don’t have an emergency steering system. This morning we cruised down the canal a few hundred yards to turn Rabelo around in an area that was only 41 meters wide. Remember Rabelo is almost 39 meters long, and we had to maneuver around a bunch of ...
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17
MAY
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MAY
The adventure re-boots. It’s Wednesday morning 2:15am, and the alarm clock just went off. Our flight leaves in less than four hours, and the house isn’t ready for our departure. Wilco has been working long days, and we haven’t heard from him in sometime. We don’t know what condition Rabelo is in, but hopefully she will be ready for us. Lisa and I have a bet as to when we will be able to leave the dock.
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14
MAY
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MAY
Categories: Blog
Our bags are packed. The refrigerators and freezers are empty, and everything in the house is in its place ready for our departure. The last couple of weeks we’ve been going out to dinner virtually every night with friends and family to say one last goodbye. It’s been very hectic, and we can’t wait to get back to our big baby.
This year we are headed to Burgundy. We spent a week there on a charter barge ...
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7
MAY
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MAY
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In just over a week Lisa and I will be leaving for Europe. We’re not sure where we will meet Rabelo. We don’t even know if she’ll be ready when we get there, but it doesn’t matter. With our imminent departure we don’t have time to worry about mundane things like will we have a bunk, bathroom, or kitchen when we arrive. . With all the scurrying about, packing and saying our goodbyes I couldn’t help but do ...
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30
APR
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APR
Categories: Blog
Just before we purchased Rabelo Lisa and I took a trip to Israel. I had recently completed the manuscript for my next book, which takes place in this ancient part of the world, and had to go there to do some research. The title of the book is “When Stones Speak.”
The story is about a brilliant physicist, Dr. Michael Hannigan that has been working on a very special camera for the past 60 years. The camera ...
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23
APR
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In addition to diving with whale sharks we took a day off so that Randy, Robbie and I could tour the local rain forest. We were looking for monkeys, but found much more.
Edmond, our guide, placed the outboard in gear, and we headed into the heart of the Belizean tropical rain forest. If we got lucky we’d find monkeys along the rivers. Unfortunately we were not that lucky, but there was plenty of other wild life ...
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16
APR
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Categories: Blog, Gallery, Homepage Slider
One of my more memorable recent trips was to Belize with my two sons. I have been scuba diving for over 50 years. God that makes me sound old?! Yet I’ve never seen a whale shark. Every time I visited a place they inhabited, it was always “you should have been here last week.” Finally I’d had enough. Belize is famous for the Whale sharks that congregate just offshore from April to June. It happens during the full ...
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9
APR
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Over the last six months, though we were only traveling for 4.5 months, we covered 1952 kilometers (1210 miles) of rivers and canals. We past through 455 locks, and at our highest point we were 280 meters (918 feet) above sea level. It would be interesting to see how many total vertical feet we negotiated. I would estimate 4500 feet. I’m not sure how many miles of tunnels we went through. It was probably around 25. We did ...
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2
APR
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Categories: Blog
Wilco picked us up at Charles De Gaulle and drove us to Rabelo. The weather had turned dreary and overcast. It was as if we were being told it was time to leave. After all, our other home was in Southern California. The temperature was 80, the skies were clear, and we were looking forward to seeing our family and friends. It had been four months since we had last seen them. Now that we had spent six ...
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26
MAR
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MAR
Categories: Blog
With our stomachs turning at a T’ai chi tempo verses the mixed martial arts we had been dealing with Bilbao proved to be a delightful adventure. The next day I wanted to drive into the mountains behind San Sebastian to visit the Basque Country, but the concierge recommended we head up the coast to Hondarribia.
Founded in the 6th century AD by the Visigoth King Richard, Hondarriba is a small fishing village set at the mouth of ...
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21
MAR
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MAR
Categories: Blog