
At the Harley-Davidson dealership in Beirut, Lebanon, getting ready for a ride with the Lebanon H.O.G. chapter. That's my blue 2006 Heritage Softail Classic that I bought for cruising the countryside and city for the year I was stationed there. The dealership officially opened for business in September 2010, but the owner, Marwan Tarraf, had been selling motorcycles in Beirut for years before that. Harley heard about him and asked if he was interested in opening a franchise. The rest is history.
Marwan is a class act. If you watch old episodes of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, Marwan is in the second program filmed in Beirut (the first episode was interrupted by an Israeli invasion and the Parts Unknown crew had to flee the country). Bourdain is riding on the back of Marwan's bike as the second episode begins.
I really liked the Lebanese people, their food, wine, and the beautiful, scenic country. I served there from January-December 2010 as an instructor in the police academy.

The Catholic Church in Wau (right and below) an imposing structure built by the Italians in the early 20th century.


Celebrating birthday 57 at the Amarula Lodge in Wau, South Sudan.
The bar at the Amarula Lodge. My sleeping quarters were about 60 steps away. Remember, it is not spending your money uselessly in a bar, it's intelligence gathering!


Heading 2
Afghanistan 2004. The photograph below is a selfie taken in my 8x10 plywood room. The plywood was so thin we could hear each other snore, cough and fart. The photo to the right is at the Kabul shoe market, next to the Kabul River.

Getting ready to board the Antonov 32B for a flight to Mazar-e Sharif.

A couple of Afghan lovelies. We had a standing joke in Afghanistan about the abundance of "T & A": Toes & Ankles.

One burro for riding, one for carrying the groceries. All the conveniences of home.

KOSOVO! Where the overseas assignments started in 2002. This is in Pristina, probably KFOR (Kosovo Forces) Hill, which was HQ for the NATO forces. Cold winters, hot & humid summers.


'merica!! I got promoted and it came with a basement room big enough to use this cool flag as a divider (my bunk is behind the blanket). The flag was sold to me at Camp Phoenix by an Afghan boy who had to be the best salesmen I've ever dealt with (been screwed by). At one point I unslung my AK-47and presented it to him, saying, "Here, take this. If you're going to rob me I want you to have a gun." He got $25 of my hard-earned money and smiled the whole time.

Our improvised shooting range off the highway between Kabul and Bagram. Afghan boys would pick up our brass to sell. It's wide open country so finding a place to shoot is easy, just make sure it's not a minefield you're walking into. Remember, walk where the locals walk.

It's not a building under construction, just one of thousands in Kabul destroyed by war.

This is the view from the farm house I rented in Kosovo, in the Serbian village of Čagliviča. The village in the background is Gracaniča. I liked the Serbs, they treated me extremely well.

Liberia!!
A market on Bushrod Island north of downtown Monrovia during the rainy season. There are two seasons in sub-Saharan Africa: muddy & dusty.

Pavement in the middle of a fairway? No, it's a putting green. The greens at the Firestone Golf Course are made of sand that is held together with oil. The greens are fast, almost like rolling a golf ball across asphalt.

Heard of Firestone tires? Harvey Firestone started his operation outside of Monrovia in the 1920s. He built this nine-hole golf course in the 1930s and I'm on the patio of the clubhouse. He also built schools, hospitals, roads and even a railway (to get his rubber to the port). Liberia was critical to allied forces in WWII after the Japanese captured rubber plantations in Southeast Asia.

I served two tours in Liberia, 2005-06 and back again in 2013. The first tour was by far the better one. I was stationed in Harper, which is on the coast just north of Côte d'Ivoire. It's a small beach town without the hustle and bustle of Monrovia. The photos you see here are from the second tour, when I was stationed in Monrovia. I love the Liberian people. They are genuine, open, and sincere. They've made a lot of progress, but nearly every business of any significance is owned by the Lebanese. I met a Lebanese man on my first tour who had been in the country since 1935. Anywhere you go in Africa you will find Lebanese people engaged in some sort of enterprise.
Nepal is a gorgeous country. The winding mountain road from Kathmandu up to the police academy is filled with views like this, and when this photo was snapped we were only halfway up! Notice how the mountainside in the foreground is terraced for farming.

The photo below was taken at the Nepalese police academy, located in the mountains outside of Kathmandu. The U.N. sent me there to evaluate officers and men of the Nepalese national police for deployment to Liberia. I love the Nepalese, they are head and shoulders above most other national police forces I worked around and are genuinely kind and respectable people. They treated me like gold.

The well-trained dog of the police academy's commandant. The commandant lived in a house next to the academy.
If you guessed marijuana, you are right! This huge plant and many others like it was outside the terrace of a restaurant we ate at just down the road from the police academy. Marijuana grows abundantly in Nepal and is illegal but, as one of the cops told me, the law is seldom enforced.

The view from the terrace of the restaurant where we dined frequently, just down the road from the police academy in Nepal.


This is a typical Kathmandu street and I included the photo because it reminded me of Liberia, where people tap into the electricity available on the utility pole. I saw this in other parts of the world, as well.

