It had been a good week here a few hundred miles north of the Antarctic Circle, having followed Cape Cod’s John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition to their landing spot on the first-ever voyage ‘round the world.

The next day, Friday, we were to catch the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS) bush plane back to the capital of Stanley, and then the weekly LAN Airlines on Saturday for the journey home. Friday was my birthday, too.

Departing on Friday.

Friday the 13th.

So that didn’t work out. Fog crept into the Falklands, and FIGAS used to flying in the prevailing weather of high winds balked at doing the same in fog.

We were stuck, missed the LAN flight home and were stuck for one more week in the Falklands. Over 7,000 miles from home. Happy birthday.

I really do like my birthday, though. It’s May and typically the tulips are all out here on the Cape. Except for this year when they bloomed soon after St. Patrick’s Day. I heard that while I was gone, the weather here was similar to that in the Falklands, the seasons being reversed so that down there it was like November here. Except here was like November here. Or perhaps more like May here, which usually involves week-long nor’easters that blow the blooms off the trees and have us back in our winter parkas for a week or more.

There’s annual town meeting, too, which I have always been pleased Chatham tries to schedule for my convenience. As a student of political science, my point of view was informed by the purest form of direct democracy in the world. And who doesn’t want to cut short their birthday dinner to go sit on a hard chair or bench for four hours of discussion – less than five minutes on a multimillion dollar budget, but perhaps an hour for an article of a thousand dollars or less? Except as a single parent, the real imperative in recent years is to get nine-year-old Sofie to bed on time.

Well, at least there’s a town election we can go to. She loves elections, and always asks me why I chose the person I did, and what job each person is seeking. Having been a selectman, I can kind of describe what it is, but it usually comes out sounding less important than it is. “We sit around a table and talk and vote to ask people who work for the town to do things.” No wonder only three people are running for two spots. It is still three, yes? It’s hard enough to explain all this to her.

But while other people get free drinks on their birthday, fate often conspires against me. Aside from being stranded far from home last year, when I turned 16 a Winnebago hit me in a VW bug in front of the Cape Cod Mall, and years later someone hit me and tried to run me over while I was already on crutches. I was thinking that this year I just ought to wear a helmet and hole up in the basement with some delivery pizza. Except there is no delivery pizza in Chatham, and I’m not so sure about taking the risk of heading out to pick one up.

I’ve been hoping that bad fortune used up all its firepower last year with the stranding. Some years, all I do is sprain my ankle. But that’s more of a sure sign of spring. With big feet and small ankles, I only need to get out on uneven pavement after months inside for me to soon end up face down in the street. Doesn’t count.

Same goes for the recent profile of me in this year’s Chatham Magazine. Written by The Cape Cod Chronicle’s Jennifer Sexton, her words were later changed at the editorial offices of the Hyannis-based publication to claim that I am “currently a Chatham selectman.”

In reality, it has been 10 years this May since I was on the board of selectmen. If it weren’t for the fact that this erroneous correction reflects poorly (and without merit) on Ms. Sexton, or that they misspelled Sofie’s name wrong despite having the correct spelling also provided by Ms. Sexton, I would almost laugh. Could I use this to get a better table at CBI’s Mother’s Day brunch?

But absurdities don’t count. I’m watching out for something seriously bad.

The suspense has been killing me. I really have grown fond of all 10 fingers and all 10 toes, and seeing through both my eyes, and more often than not having the ability to put a couple words together coherently enough to order that pizza. I’d hate to lose any of these.

Especially the pizza. Deliveries gratefully accepted at my bunker through Monday. Drop it and run for your life.

The crew of Hit and Run History leaves their home on Cape Cod to return once again to the track of the Columbia Expedition. As a Falklands Island Radio Service interview plays, we follow the intrepid Gumshoe Historians on their journey south. We hear HRH’s plans in the Falklands, and what brought Columbia there in February of 1788.

During a brief layover in Santiago, they meet University of Chile History Department Head Celia Cussen. Then it is back to the skies, with HRH winging their way down to Punta Arenas in Patagonia, then east to the Falklands, and finally a long, rugged drive from the airport at Mount Pleasant across a vast, barren landscape to the capital of Stanley.

It’s going to be a long week.

Get the episode on iTunes here -http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hit-and-run-history/id519420962.

Or watch on Hit and Run History’s new Blip show page blip.tv/hitandrunhistory.

Thanks to LAN Airlines, Ocean State Job Lot, Turismo Chile and the Hotel Orly for helping make this series possible.

A century or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a young Cape Codder to head off around Cape Horn to China.

Multi-year voyages, these were as much education as employment, setting the stage for a career on the sea. Go out as a cabin boy, come back as a an able-bodied seaman, then leave as a seaman, come back as a mate, and then mate to shipmaster.

For a three-year voyage, that’s nine years right there. It is no wonder that sea captains typically retired, if they survived, in their 30s. With the capital they had accumulated, they might set up a store to support themselves and their families. So it was a young man’s game, a very young man’s game. But exclusively for men.

How times have changed.

Last spring, my daughter Sofie and her friend Ava took to skies, flying across the globe to visit China’s Pearl River Delta. No pleasure trip this was. That is unless your idea of relaxation is two girls, age 7 and 8, exploring and filming for 13 hour-days of nonstop movement.

Like the ships of old, this young crew were looking to bring back a valuable cargo.

In this case, the cargo was their experiences, to be shared after months of studio work, with voice-overs and film editing. Through My Eyes premiered their China series on WGBH last October as the centerpiece of their Kids’ website. Sofie and Ava’s cargo were 10 videos, documenting their firsthand encounters with the one area of China open to their predecessors centuries earlier. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau.

I had the honor to participate, and to watch my daughter visit the same places I had 13 years earlier. She had seen pictures of the Five Story Pagoda in Guangzhou, Victoria Peak, overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and swirling tiles of Senado Square in Macau. I have to admit I still get a little choked up watching the episode in the Foreigners Cemetery in the Pearl River. Having grown up exploring the cemeteries of Chatham, she learned her alphabet reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Now here she was in a place I had found hidden in the jungle a decade earlier that told the stories of the sailors who nevercame home.

She and Ava got to convey their own personal observations of the people they met and the places they visited. For the elementary school classrooms watching all across the country, what these two girls were saying and doing was gripping. Much more so than if an adult had been on-camera or off, spoon feeding the information they deemed important. Kids see things we don’t.

For centuries, those who have grown up on the Cape have learned to survive by their ingenuity. A seasonal economy in a place with few resources means you have to remain flexible, act on opportunity, and often take those skills elsewhere if you ever wish to have a life here. Yet those houses down on Lower Main Street in Chatham are a testament to the hold of the place on those who would span the globe for their livelihood. It is a good place to live, once you have the means.

That is Cape Cod’s creative economy at work. It was in evidence when Matt Griffin and I set off to tell the story of the Columbia Expedition, and its commander, John Kendrick. It continued when our Hit and Run History crew dove into Cape Verde during the dengue fever epidemic as we followed the Columbia’s track. And when we were stranded in the Falklands for an extra week last year, by making the most of it by getting deeper into our story. We seize every opportunity to increase the value of our cargo.

So these two girls, age 7 and 8, left as globetrotting newbies and returned as an experienced travel show crew. Fittingly, they’ve set their sights now on a trip around Cape Horn this spring. Natural science will be at the fore as they explore the fjords, glaciers and penguins at the very end of the Earth.

And perhaps just as fittingly, Sofie’s added another option to her career plans. Besides wanting to be a veterinarian, she told me, “Once Through My Eyes wraps up, I think I want to open a store. But when I’m older because we still have lots of places to go. Like when I’m a teenager.”

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

Following on the success of their China series as the centerpiece of WGBH’s Kids site, Cape Cod’s girl adventurers have been given a great opportunity. Their friends at Hit and Run History, headed down to the tip of South America this spring, have offered the girls cabins for a cruise around Cape Horn with Cruceros Australis.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these girls to share the wonders of glaciers and penguins with classrooms across the country. So many topics can be explored: from marine life to environmental science to culture and maritime history. Just imagine the sorts of adventures Ava and Sofie can share with children in schoolrooms back home, meeting penguins and navigating ice fields.

In exchange for the cruise, TME’s part of the bargain is to raise the money for the airfare for us all. That’s a fair trade and an excellent way to continue our series. Plus, with HRH’s professional camera crew, the quality will be even better.

In episode four, Ava and Sofie travel on a scenic ferry ride to meet Castor and Pollux, a sister and brother, and their family for lunch Hong Kong style.

The girls enjoy many interesting new foods, followed by some one-on-one conversations with their new friends. It turns out that the children have a lot in common: both Sofie and Pollux study martial arts, while Ava and Castor both play the violin. All of the children love to draw pictures and read.

Running weekly through the fall, Through My Eyes is the centerpiece of WGBH’s Kids site.  This elementary education travel series follows these two Cape Cod girls as they visit China’s Pearl River Delta in the run up to Easter.

Many thanks to CapeKids clothing store, Air Canada and the Hong Kong Tourism Board for their generous support which made this episode possible.

Boston’s WGBH is PBS’s single largest producer of web and TV content (prime-time and children’s programs), including Nova, Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Arthur, and The Victory Garden. Learn more aboutChina: Through My Eyes on their Facebook page at facebook.com/tmeyes.

The flight from Port Stanley Airport was in a two-engine, eight-seater puddle jumper. From the capital of the Falklands, we skimmed around the eastern edge of the islands in the far South Atlantic and west across the treeless open country and rocky outcroppings from field and water.

Ever since arriving here a few days prior, our crew of Hit and Run History kept remarking how cinematic the landscape was. But that was from ground-level. Now, from a couple hundred feet up, we could grasp the immensity of the place. West Falkland is about the size of Rhode Island and has maybe 90 people. Fewer trees. More cattle. And tens of thousands of sheep, at least.

The journey to Saunders Island in the remote west of the Falklands took less than an hour, giving us the time to separate from the coziness of our experience back in Port Stanley.

We were able to witness the sort of treacherous waters that our subject had encountered two centuries hence.

Never having sailed these waters, John Kendrick led the Columbia Expedition - the first American voyage ‘round the world - here in February 1788. Having left Cape Verde a couple of months before, the ship Columbia and sloop Washingtonsought a respite before the treacherous round of Cape Horn. Port Egmont, on the eastern edge of Saunders Island, offered one of the finest harbors in the world according to British explorers.

Touching down on the grass strip on Saunders, we were met by two Land Rover Defenders. The Pole-Evans family owns the entirety of Saunders, which comprises about the same land mass as the city of Boston. They told us the regular population is six. With the addition of our crew of five, we nearly doubled the population.

Soon after getting settled into our cabin, David Pole-Evans, who has lived on the island all his life, showed up to offer a ride to Port Egmont. It was just over the hill from their settlement near Sealers Cove.

Within a couple hours of boarding our flight from Port Stanley, we were standing amidst the tumbledown ruins of Port Egmont. Although the Brits had established a settlement here - their first in the islands - in 1765, the Spanish had forced them to evacuate within a decade, and eventually demolished the place. But due to the natural protection of the topography and abundant fresh water, game birds and anti-scurvy greens, Port Egmont remained for decades a popular place for sealers and whalers from both England the U.S. to use on a seasonal basis.

In the early months of 1788, Kendrick, who grew up on the shores of Pleasant Bay, felt his way toward Port Egmont. Unfamiliar with the area, he overshot the entrance and instead ended up in Brett Harbor, on the backside of Saunders. No one was here.

Making the best of it, they took on the supplies from the countryside they desperately needed. Several of his officers took the chance to make the short trek overland to Port Egmont. We were walking literally in their footsteps.

Having thoroughly documented our time all over Saunders, ranging across to Brett Harbor and down to the natural dry dock where they would have landed their water casks, we were doing what historians need to do. Getting out in direct contact with our topic. If Kendrick was the first American here, we were the first to follow him here to tell his story.

In the Age of Information, one can easily view documents from libraries across the world, or sample photos of an area. But the smell and touch of the place, and the chance to talk with a man like David Pole-Evans right on the shores of Port Egmont, is of a completely higher order. We could see where the warehouse was right on the waterfront, the dock nearby where boats would have landed, and the spot where the tripots were set up for the grisly work of boiling down seal carcasses for oil. The shore, in fact, was littered with cobblestones and the remnants of bricks.

Surveying the area together, David mentioned the bricks here were not of the same dimension as British bricks. Those are flatter than those made in the U.S. It had been determined these bricks were from American ships. Knowing that the American whale and sealing fleet had originated mostly from New England ports like Nantucket and New Bedford, we realized yet again that our path had circled back to home.

This is just the kind of discovery that we feel honored to share with our series on WGBH. This kind of natural storytelling is in the blood of Cape Codders who for centuries, like John Kendrick, ranged across the world. We are happy that we have inspired a new generation as well in the China: Through My Eyes series which premiered a couple weeks back to great public acclaim.

Bringing back stories is one thing, however. Filming our discoveries brings the story of Columbia to a global audience. But before we left Port Egmont, I asked David if I could have one of the bricks. He owns the whole island, after all, and he agreed. The most intact example traveled back 8,000, via Santiago, Chile, and JFK, home to my bookshelf on Cape Cod.

It is possible we could find out where this brick was made, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the United States Merchant Marine Academy. This simple amalgam of mud, stones and sand has gone more places than most people have. It has an amazing story to share, and we’re looking forward to finding it out.

Read this and Andy’s other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

* * * * *

Hit and Run History is the centerpiece of WGBH’s History page.  Their forthcoming Falklands Ho! series is the third installment following the voyage following John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition around  the world. Hit and Run History thanks LAN Airlines, Turismo Chile and Ocean State Job Lotfor helping make this possible.

Six thousand five hundred miles from home, 400 miles east of South America, and only 800 miles north of Antarctica, I came to realize a few key truths.

The first was that peoples living in similar geographies can relate to them very differently. Having spent a week in the Falkland Islands, following the story of John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition, with our crew from Hit and Run History, some things felt fairly familiar. Talking about their tourist season (here in the Southern Hemisphere being November to March), we heard stories of how it was common for locals to work two or three jobs. Farmer/tour guide, for example. Or police officer/bar tender/taxi driver. Come to think of it now, that last combination makes a lot of sense.

That’s the sort of jack-of- all-trades adaptation to a seasonal economy that Cape Codders are known for. Nimble like a catboat, we can turn on a dime…typically to save one, if not make one.

On the other hand, here we were amongst these islands - their treelessness compounding their vast open spaces - and only took a boat ride once.

Yes, certainly, the weather in May was akin to late November on Cape Cod.

But we weren’t there for anything other than tracking the movements of the first American voyage ‘round the world. This wasn’t a golf vacation or a series of board meetings. We tried every chance we could to get outside into the wild. With 3,000 people scattered across a collection of islands totaling about the size of Connecticut, you would be forgiven to think you’d find a seafaring people. Instead, the place has grown up connected more to sheep herding. That and taking advantage of its location at the approach between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Falklands are pretty much the equivalent of that “Last Gas for 200 miles” sign on a lonely stretch of highway in the desert Southwest. You stop here for your provisions, coming or going, or you take your chances. That’s a very different kind of economy from ours. It also means that there’s a lot of mutton available from sheep that have outlived the usefulness of their wool. For a land whose high sustained winds and otherwise tundra-ish climate discourage a lot of vegetable farming (and ongoing tensions with Argentina complicate produce shipments), the high protein, low greens diet made us yearn for even a decent glass of orange juice. And there’s where I came to a second truth.

Having lived in Europe years back, and then recently traveled to China this April, and through Chile on our way down to the Falklands, I can say with a clear conscious: America may be falling behind in educational, economic and technological advancement, but at least we know how to make OJ.

I can’t say what it is about European orange juice except it always seems rather thin. Not watered-down maybe. Just like it had been really strained and perhaps not made with the sweetest oranges. Like something you felt you had to drink, but did not want to.As forAsia and Chile, what can I say except “Tang.” Or some drink with an orange color and a sweet flavor. Not quite flat Fanta, but closer to that than anything that actually came from a tree. As I have said about the complete inability to find decent, cheap bread in the United States versus in Europe, “How hard can it be?” In the case of OJ, the recipe is even simpler than bread (which has only been around a few thousand years).

Take an orange. Drain it. Put in glass. Serve. Let me tell you, I don’t understand it, but America needs to hold onto that knowledge. We got that down. The third truth was that, no matter that only 50 miles separated us in Port Howard from the airport in Mount Pleasant, there was just no way we were going to get to the once-a-week LAN Airlines flight. We were stuck.

And so I’m driving less again. Gas prices having topped $3.50, I was thinking about that trip to Trader Joe’s and BJ’s in Hyannis. My car gets about 25 miles to the gallon, and the roundtrip for groceries is just under 50 miles. That’s $7 every week.

This summer the same calculation was $5 for the same. So we’re paying an extra two bucks for our food.

When you look at the price for comparable quality and variety, it still works out. Two dollars for a half-gallon of orange juice from Trader Joe’s versus $3 at Stop & Shop or Shaw’s. Then there’s the whole milk yogurt, which is cheaper than the low-fat whatever-it-is nearby, or any of our family’s other staples.

Still worth the drive, for sure. But that’s $2 dollars that could have been doing something else.

So I am beginning to wonder about stagflation.

The crash of the fall of 2008 was preceded by the most devastating rise in gas prices, and I believe played a big part in accelerating the decline.

Consumers, already being affected by a slowing economy, were hit by a non-negotiable cost increase: the price of driving to work and school.

Combined with the lack of fuelefficient models out there, and the lack of sensible planning by spreading residences in one area and services and employment in others - with little if any public transportation — meant that people were tied to their automobiles. Price of gas goes up quickly equals disposable income flows out the door.

And if you were already tightly budgeted, perhaps part of your mortgage payment, too.

This is part of what I found so aggravating about the argument put forth at the time — that Americans were just scared to spend. If they had any money left to spend, I think they were smart not to spend it unnecessarily. If one of your weekly fixed costs doubles in price, you’re smart to readjust your household budget with an eye towards anything else unexpected. A financial planner would counsel similarly.

Certainly this is an analogy put forward by fiscal conservatives these days towards government spending. Well, it works the other way, too.

That this sudden fiscal prudence in consumer behavior may have hastened the collapse of the economy is not the fault of those consumers. They were behaving rationally given the uncertainty of the times.

Now we’re faced with another steep rise. Or, rather, this is a resumption of the rise that we were feeling three years ago. Beijing drivers alone are putting 1,000 extra cars on the road every day. India’s economy and that of South America are booming, meaning their people want the same conveniences we take for granted. More protein in their diet, employment beyond the farm, and a car for personal mobility. Every drop of oil produced in this country goes on the world market, and increasingly the rest of the world is outbidding us.

Again, this is also completely rational behavior. Just like when an area becomes popular, and real estate shoots up in price. But like land, oil is a finite resource - also finite in its ability to be produced, finite in its ability to be distributed. It is a delicate balance as it is. To screw up the equilibrium, all you need do is have something unexpected happen.

In this case, democratic change. Uncertainty wears many faces.

The upheaval in Libya is not the sole source for the rise in global oil prices. For sure, the North African nation produces only 5 percent of the world’s oil, with none of it going to the United States. Although, as pointed out previously, it goes into the global market and thus its withdrawal affects the total supply everywhere.

But Libya was the wake-up call to oil traders that something was going on in the Arab world. Tunisia, which started it all, doesn’t even produce enough oil to meet domestic demand. Egypt’s production is falling, and will soon match its people’s consumption, too.

It was only when things moved to tiny Bahrain, right next to Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, that markets truly woke up. Meanwhile, Libya began its own descent into violence. We paid more attention there because the man in charge in Tripoli is someone we know to be worthy of disdain, and colorfully crazy.

To be sure, the longer the conflict in Libya goes on, the longer the level of uncertainty in that sector of the market. But anything happening on the Saudi Arabian peninsula that threatens the existing governments will affect the price we pay to fuel our cars and heat our homes.

Meanwhile, signs point to a slow economic recovery in the United States. But this jolt to people’s wallets will have an effect. Disposable income will drop at a time retailers had been hoping for increased consumer spending. This will then be followed by increases in transportation costs, which will drive inflation.

If the rise in energy costs continues at the pace it has been, with $4 gas by mid April, we could see the economy not just stall, but roll backwards just as a next wave of foreclosures hits the real estate market. That’s like getting up on a wave just as it reveals the reef it is about to crash on. Afterward we could be floating crippled in the water for some time.

That’s a tough outlook, and just as I hope that events come to a speedy and favorable conclusion for the people of Libya, I hope I am wrong about this spring’s economy.

In the mean time, the only rational thing to do is cut my weekly grocery fuel costs in half - by only going every other week and buying twice as much.

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

Local Adventure-Travel Show leads on Kickstarter

Heading into this long weekend, we here at Hit and Run History thought we’d challenge our fans — especially those on the Cape — to help raise our profile on the online fundraising site Kickstarter.

After all, if you are working to follow the first American voyage ’round the world and you’re looking to head down to Cape Horn, you don’t turn down the offer of a South American cruise lineCruceros Australis to take you through the Straits of Magellan.  So we’re just looking to raise the funds to bring our crew down there.

It’s no accident that we received the first-ever Social Media Outreach Grant from the Massachusetts Humanities Foundation recently.  On Thursday, we went to work using Facebook and Twitter especially.

Now, thanks to the help of dozens and dozens of our fans, in just 48 hours we have doubled the amount of money pledged and tripled our number of backers.

And having just checked on Kickstarter’s “Boston Projects” page, you can see Hit and Run History is THE TOP FILM PROJECT IN BOSTON.

That’s right — your scrappy band of New Englanders is taking on the world and making a name for itself.

But like Captain John Kendrick and the rest of the crew of the Columbia Expedition, we still have a long way ahead of us.  So please, take a moment and pledge a buck.  Yes, just $1.00.

Help us keep the number of backers growing and push us to the top film project in the country.  That will take grassroots support.  We’ve proven this works, and we’re looking to get the attention of the larger underwriters.

Give us a look…