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Nick Ellena is no armchair traveler. The veteran journalist and adventurer trekked to some of the more remote areas of the globe. Along the way the accomplished writer and mountain climber scaled high peaks and recounted stories about the colorful figures he met. Nick subsidized his trips by selling accounts of his travels to national magazines. After more than four decades as reporter for the "Chico (California) Enterprise Record," Ellena has encapsulated many of his adventure stories in a weekly column titled, "Flashbacks From Here and There." Now he has compiled some of his most personalized and interesting columns and photographs into a book of the same name, to be released in early 2007. Nick started as a sportswriter for Associated Press wire service headquarters in New York before moving to California in 1956 to take the job on the Chico daily newspaper. Editor Bill Lee said he hired Nick after reading his sports pieces. During an unpaid sabbatical Nick persuaded his editor to allow him to cover the Vietnam War in the late '60s. He filed observations about the fighting to help local parents know what was happening to their sons and brothers. While covering local courts and crime, Nick and fellow reporter Bill Talbitzer sold accounts of some of the more lurid criminal cases to detective magazines under the pseudonym "Nick Talbott." But Nick's real love was going anywhere he had never been before. Travels chronicled in weekly columns and in his forthcoming book took him to the globe's farthest reaches. The Himalayan region of Nepal, Tibet, India, China and Pakistan were on his itinerary. He also traveled widely in Europe, including an emotional return to his Italian birthplace in Alice Castello, near the foot of the Alps. Nick once drove a Volkswagen Bug from Oroville (California) along the Pan American Highway to Santiago, Chile, where he climbed Tocclarahu (19,000 ft) and Urus West in the Cordillera Blanca. A kindly policemen let Nick lodge in the county jail when no other lodgings were available in the area. With friend Heinz Khal, Nick made the first ascent of the snow face of Mt. Stanley in the Canadian Rockies. He climbed and then named a peak in the Coast Range of British Columbia, "Cimarosa." The peak's name has a double meaning - referring to a little-known Italian composer, plus the combination of the Italian words, "cima" for peak and "rosa" for pink. Nick's travels also took him to Ecuador, Peru, Kenya, Argentina, Patagonia, Sudan and Uruguay. Upon reaching his 70th year, Nick tossed aside the idea of growing older and joined a group headed to the 18,000-foot level (Kala Patar) above Everest's base camp. The book is a travel memoir, as much about the people he met as the locales he visited. A keen observer of the human condition, Nick uses his quiet humor and easy-going manner to engage and record tales of fellow travelers and others he encountered. Nick recently said he chose to reprint some of his 300-plus columns in a book to share his adventures with a wider audience. Flashbacks From Here and There... |