I visited my physical therapist this afternoon. We were born in the same town (Duluth), and went to the same junior high school (Ordean). He was a year behind me and we didn’t know each other. My family left town, and he went on to become a ski jumping champion and twice a member of the U.S. Olympic ski jumping team. So far, so awesome.

We were talking about those faraway times, and he said, “There’s one thing that nobody ever believes, which is that the boys were naked in swim class.”

Which is true. The girls got to wear swimsuits, but the boys were starkers, as if we were all at the old swimming hole, or something.

I was not particularly interested in the sight of thirty naked boys all shivering and blue-lipped in the cold water, but as it turns out they were interested in me, because it was soon evident that I was the only one among them who wasn’t circumcised.

They asked me about it, and I told them.

“Noooo! You’re just making that up!”

“No, I’m not. That really happened to you.”

“NO WAY! MY PARENTS WOULDN’T CUT OFF THE END OF MY DICK! YOU’RE LYING!”

“Well they didn’t actually cut it off themselves, they paid the doctor extra to do it for them.”

“NOOOO! YOU’RE A FREAK! GET AWAY FROM ME, FREAK-OH!”

This was far from the last time that I was shunned for speaking the absolute truth.

My novella “Elegy for Angels and Dogs” is reviewed on Black Gate by Steven H. Silver. Also reviewed is my story’s precursor, Roger Zelazny’s “the Graveyard Heart.”

“Elegy” was the longest story ever published in Asimov’s, and may still be.

This is Prince Rupert, B.C., or so I believe. And yes, it was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, cousin of Charles I and his principal commander during the Civil War. After the Restoration, Rupes returned to Britain along with the new king, and invested heavily in the Hudson Bay Company, getting so much money and clout that a large area of southwestern Canada became known as “Rupert Land.”

While we were very lucky to have sunny and warm days for most of our trip, I could have done with a little more mist. It’s romantic and pretty and prone to stimulate the imagination. I remember stepping out onto the balcony in the early hours of the morning, seeing the mist lying heavily on the water and hearing the foghorns go off every five minutes, with the echo coming back in a long rush, like a wind in a forest. The still water was rushing past in near-silence. I could imagine the ship traveling to worlds far away, or to a magical kingdom named Rupert Land.

We traveled to the Misty Fjords, which John Muir thought was the second most beautiful place in the world, after Yosemite. The geology is very similar to Yosemite, both being a product of the interaction between volcanoes and glaciers— in fact it looks like Yosemite if Yosemite had an ocean.

We transferred into Zodiacs for the trip. I was a little worried about my mobility issues climbing in and out, but the worry was misplaced, and I navigated just fine. We zoomed up the narrow fjord, and viewed eagles, seals, and zombie salmon— the zombie salmon deserve of a post of their own, come to think of it.

I never got a good picture. There were nine people on the Zodiac, and one or half-a-dozen of them was always in the way.

I thought the Misty Fjords could use more mist— it was another bright day, and while the fjords were picturesque, I didn’t feel the enchantment that so entranced John Muir.

The whole trip was kind of an experiment. I’ve had problems with pain and balance since blowing out my knees during Taos Toolbox last year, and I wanted to go on a trip with a degree of safety built in. If I couldn’t handle the Zodiacs and the catamarans and the piers, I could stay on the MV Imperial Shadow and order another in a long series of cocktails.

In the event I handled the Zodiacs, etc., perfectly well (along with the cocktails). I got stronger, what with doing more walking than normal, but I didn’t get any better. My knees have stubbornly refused to heal over the last year, and I’ve reluctantly concluded that replacement surgery may be in my future. When you consider that my last joint replacement led to six years of chronic pain, you can maybe understand my reluctance to face this.

So the Imperial Shadow will probably be my last long trip for a while. Time to devote a year or so to recovery.

A pod of harbor seals on an outing. They were having a riotous good time, and it was a joy just watching them.

This was the same day we saw the whales doing their bubble fishing thing.