Last Flight Out: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fishing

By Randy Wayne White

Book Overview

Whether he's looking for wild orangutans on Borneo or diving off the coast of South Africa, Randy Wayne White is one of America's most adventurous travelers. Now Randy's back in Last Flight Out, a brand-new collection of essays keeping us up to date on his latest excursions.
Randy White is a "mover" and has no time for people who can't keep up. Join him as he dives in the infamous lake called the Bad Blue Hole on the desolate Cat Island in the Bahamas. Search for the perfect hot pepper in Colombia, and closer to home, go raccoon hunting in Pioneer, Ohio, where the hunted almost always outsmart the hunters. Get in the ring with Shine Forbes, an eighty-year-old fighter in prime condition and Ernest Hemingway's former sparring partner, and go on a secret mission to steal back General Manuel Noriega's bar stools. Though he rarely finds what he's looking for-such as the half-human, half-
alligator creature known as "Gatorman"-he cultivates his unique ability to revel in the unique and comical situations of each exotic trip.
From a jungle survival school in Panama to a week at a professional wrestler's training camp, White leaves the reader mesmerized by the potential of undiscovered places and the promise of endless adventure in unfamiliar territory. An icon of the new breed of thick-skinned, high endurance travelers, Randy White is the real deal.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592283349
• ISBN13: 9781592283347
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Last Flight Out of Sight!!!

Randy Wayne White is the word-smith of the century! Reading his novels and adventures are like listening to a Buffett album while sipping a tequila on a beach with a sailfish on the line: AWESOME! Great delivery.

Last Flight Out

Randy is as good at telling stories about his true adventures as he is at creating the fiction adventures of Doc Ford...each page takes command of the reader's finger and before you know it pages have been turned and you find yourself at the last story; always wishing there was just one more. Rick Magers [...]

You're going to like this

If you enjoy the Doc Ford series, you are in for a pleasant surprise. The author in these engaging true life tales charms, informs and entertains. A lot of fun, I hope to see more.

Real Adventure

This is a very nice entry by a writer better known for hisfiction, but this is a collection of "real adventure" stories,and White does a first-class job of describing some of histravels.The series of short stories relates the writer's adventures ashe has traveled to remote, and some not so remote, places aroundthe world, wherein he has been seeking adventure beyond thatexperienced by most of us in our everyday world. As such, hisstories will excite genuine interest and further curiosity onthe part of readers who wish to know more about experiencesin those areas denied to most of us.Most of his adventures are funny to read, although we can alsounderstand some of them were definitely not funny at the timeof the experience. So we can vicariously enjoy travel to distant parts of the world, as well as the encounters with"foreign" cultures. After all, even coon hunting in Ohio isforeign to most of us in our modern civilized world.Some readers will no doubt be unhappy at the "macho" aspectof some stories, but most men wish, in their hearts, for suchadventures in far-away places, and those same men wish forexciting, even dangerous, encounters without kids and womenfolk. Well, not all the time, of course, but a time or twoin their lives, and in this day and age, in the U.S., mostmen are denied even the occasional dangerous adventure.So, if we can't go to all those places, and encounter the wildand dangerous, we should be able to enjoy reading about them.And White provides some nice stories of such adventures he hastaken.Most of his encounters have been short-term, frequently verybrief, because he wrote them for a magazine and was on assignment, but, nonetheless, they are real, and we shouldenjoy whatever closeness these stories provide.As a matter of fact, one possible criticism of this work isthat the stories are too short, really, and we wish White hadbeen able to flesh them out and expand his impressions. In several of the stories, we can feel the writer's rush, and compression of thoughts, as he has to comply with a magazine'sdemands and deadlines.But settle back for some visits to strange places, and odd characters, when you read White's stories.They are a lot of fun.

You're in for a treat- read this book!

Readers fortunate enough to have already discovered Randy Wayne White will relish this collection of adventures from this very talented writer. If this is the first of White's books you read, you will become a life-long fan by the end of the introduction. Some of these accounts have appeared in previously published columns, and will trigger smiles of recognition in those who have followed the author's prolific career. Hang on for a wild ride that includes ports of call in Borneo, Costa Rica, Panama, Baja California, Key West, Idaho, Cuba, and points beyond. At times riotously funny (Survival Spanish) and patently absurd (roaming the woods in a bedsheet, sporting headgear of moss in The Mossman), it also causes poignant reflection (The Lost Divers). The book is worth the purchase price just for the inclusion of White's powerful response to the tragic events of Sept. 11th, "An Open Letter to He Who Hides Behind the Casket of Innocents". The author's unique perspective on the human experience makes this book a worthy addition to your collection.