I was trying to think of what our "most Safety Third" moment would have been.....nothing on this trip went as planned (and, yeah, we had PLENTY of fuel -- I took with me three fire artists) and everything turned out just right to prepare me for the year....but what was MOST.....

I did manage to catch myself on fire learning to work the fire staff. And we wound up being the floor show for New Years Eve at "the" Hotel California.

We did drive some crazy roads into great places and often managed some fairly scary feats of highway madness (those buses really do pass on turns down there.....erch!).

But hands down, our greatest Safety Third moment was to CONTINUE LOOKING for a place to camp after driving past an improvised landing strip that boasted a multi-million dollar KingAir cargo plane......past the tractor-trailer rig with the taped-off running lights.....right up to the deserted and chained hotel that had lights on in several rooms and a small fleet of triple-Evinrude sporting fishing boats drawn up on its beach. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was a fucking DRUG LORD OPERATION!!! The sentries spoke no English but were easily bribable with cigarettes and we got the fuck out of there just before el jefe (speaking over the extremely sweet military-spec radio system) "sent the boys down" to deal with us. What was our first clue? Middle of fucking nowhere.....big airplanes.....armed guards.....I'm SURE there's a place to camp here somewhere.....hey, nice engines on those boats -- how come none of the other fishing villages have those?

Sheeesh. Safety Third, indeed.