Category ►►► GlobeLoping

July 18, 2008

Horsefeathers

If you're wondering why the posting schedule has been so flakey (as opposed to the posting subject matter, which is just naturally flakey, nutty, fruity, and in general, like a box of libertarian-conservative granola), it's that we're currently on holiday in the Great White North.

(We once went on holiday in the great white whale, but it was too damp.)

At the moment, we're in Calgary, just back from the last two days of the Calgary Stampede. The Stampede calls itself in the "greatest outdoor show on earth," hoping this will be sufficiently different from another slogan that Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey won't sue. Unquestionably, however, it's the largest and most famous rodeo in the world; and I've wanted to see it for decades.

We finally seized the lariat this year, and a stint for the final week-end occupies the first part of our holiday. The second part, which takes place at the very moment you're reading this (unless you're a very slow reader), comprises a six-day horsepack trip through the Canadian Rockies, of which the kindest thing to say is that they look remarkably like the Colorado Rockies, except whiter and somewhat more socialist.

Last night, we watched the finals of the chuckwagon races, which were followed by a massive show that was a bizarre interbreeding between a rowdy nightclub act, a show at Disneyland, a 4th of July fireworks display in a smallish town in Ohio, the Circue du Soleil, a junior-high glee club, and a 1970s performance by Up With People.

(Today we saw the finals of the rodeo competitions: the rope and tie, bareback bucking bronco riding, steer wrestling, saddled bucking bronco riding, and "bucking" Brahma bull riding -- how come nobody ever says bucking anent bulls? -- but I'll talk about that in a day or two.)

The chuckwagon races were a new experience to me; I've watched rodeos on TV and even a couple of small ones around where we live; but I've never seen hot-rod chuckwagons before.

For those of you who have never watched Wagontrain or Bonanza or Gunsmoke, or indeed any Hollywood western made between the 1960s and the days of Tom Mix and Cheyenne Harry, a "chuckwagon" is the transport vehicle that followed along behind the drovers and the cattle on cattle drives, carrying the food, the cookpots and implements, and the cooks. Linguists believe this gave rise to a common expression for something that typically happened after the chuckwagons did their magic; but what do linguists know? They also claim, the cads, that the line "out, damned Spot" from the Scottish play refers to Lady MacBeth's pet leopard.

I suppose in days of yore, chuckwagon races used real chuckwagons; but nowadays they race specially designed wagons with little mini canvas coverings, all painted and bedecked in the logos of the traditional corporate sponsors of the wild west era -- Tellus Long-Distance Phone Service, the First National Bank of Canada, Canada Dry, and the Liberal Party.

In a very Canadian touch, the wagons all begin facing the opposite direction from where they're headed; at the sound of the horn, the first thing they do is turn around, attempting to smush various barrels dotted strategically around the start-finish area. They're usually unsuccessful, leaving many of them standing.

The wagons tear off down the course, each trailed by three hysterical cowpokes on laconic cowburros whose job, apparently, is to race after their wagonmaster with items and stuff he forgot; the sight of the red-faced, whip-wielding pokes spewing violent profanity as they try to move their lazy asses brought tears of joy to the audience's eyes.

There appears to be some rule that the pursuers of the winning wagon must stay within 150 feet of the chuckwagon itself -- that is, close enough that with a titanic heave, they can hurl the forgotten goods ("Those Left Behind") onto the chuckwagon's tailgate. Judging from the triumphal parade after each race, these goods include each wagon's "backup driver," or else the driver's wife (who would be the backseat driver)... or so I surmise, since the wagons only have one driver during the race; but when they come round again, he has a somewhat flustered and rumpled wife or perplexed partner seated next to him.

I forget who won. I doesn't make any difference anyway, because the chuckwagons don't have any food in them.

Speaking of food, we did remarkably well at the Stampede: We only ate a single bison rib each, and then we split a barbecued beefwich... spending a mere $70 Canadian. Oh, I forgot to mention: Sachi had a lemonade, whilst I drank a cup of peach juice; this accounts nicely for the money spent.

The chuckwagon races began at 8:00 pm sharp and finished at 10:30 dull; how many times can you watch little horsedrawn wagons fling themselves around a track at breakleg speed, with cookery and crockery strewing out behind like Toyota engine parts after you go over a speedbump, before your mind begins to wander?

So we were rather pleased when the rilly big shoe started about 11:00; it ran until midnight; then some more until about 1:00; then they decided they had a few more acts that hadn't had their chance yet -- did I mention the motorcycle stunt jumping on stage? -- so they continued on till about 2:00. By 3:00 am, we decided we had had enough, even if they hadn't... so we firmly turned our backs on the Bavarian yodeling society, the Chinese acrobats, the full-scale reenactment of Noah and his ark (the unicorns didn't make it aboard; so now we know), three guys named Pete who were having a beer-drinking and rump-kicking contest, a piper named Johnny Bagpipe who played Van Halen on the pipes, and an international chess championship -- all performing simultaneously with the Greek chrous, to general befuddlement -- and we wended our way to bed.

One of those is a real act from the show. I won't tell you which, but it turns out I actually knew him from 27 years ago, when I marched behind him in greatkilt and pike while he played a medley of "Scotland the Brave," "the One-Shoed Policeman's Jig," "the Flagellating Lepers' Reel," and "Star Wars."

This being Calgary in the summer, the sun was just setting as we staggered out the gates and into the waiting arms of a "courtesy bus" to downtown; due to traffic, we arrived only a little later than if we had walked. But all in all, a wonderful time was had by all, especially the Bavarian yodelers, who got the Chinese acrobats to bounce over the heads of the guys named Pete and beernap their kegs.

In the distant future of Sunday or Monday, I'll tell you about the strange scoring system of Canadian rodeos, in which everyone gets the same number of points, no matter what. I hope this little chat has been informative, and that you don't ever do it again or you'll be grounded, young man.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 18, 2008, at the time of 11:30 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 7, 2006

Upcoming on Big Lizards

We just put up our first movie review in the Movies section of the website; but regular readers of Big Lizards have already seen it.

It's my review of the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, appropriately titled King Kong Died For Your Sins. I also added a new drop table on all of the pages in the Movies section to take you to the Dragon's Eye Movie Reviews page or Der Krapp, and a drop table under the Dragon's Eye to take you directly to various reviews as they're ready. (Naturally, it only takes you to Kong right now; "patience the way of the Jedi is.")

Our co-author, Brad Linaweaver, has just become the publisher of a magazine called (I think he said) Cult Monsters, which I imagine must have sprouted from Cult Movies -- though I'm really not sure. He is currently in the process of negotiating the electronic rights to his several decades of political and other nonfiction writings that have appeared in the National Review, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Chronicles, and many other publications. As he gets permission to do so, we will be adding these articles to the Big Lizards website as part of the Memorial Brad Linaweaver Historical Preservation Project.

And this weekend, we'll be adding Sachi's "Underway" travelogue to the English-language travelogue pages under the Sachi-Land section of the website. I will be flogging the poor girl until she gets busy translating her wonderful Grand Canyon travelogue, hitherto only available in Japanese, to English for the rest of us. I'm dying to read it myself... I want to know what happened to us!

In the meanwhile, we just came back from the pseudo-Danish village of Solvang (right next to Buellton, home of Anderson's Split-Pea Soup), where we spent a very pleasant couple of days and took lots of pix, testing out our new Nikon D50 SLR digital camera (for which we just got a 2 GB memory chip). We ate at A.J. Spurs, where they served me the best steak I've ever eaten.

We took a memorable horseback ride for a few hours through the hills and forest about thirty miles south of Solvang; it included too much trotting for Sachi, but she might write a post about it this weekend anyway. Here is a visual sample to whet your appetite:

Busy times here at Lizard Central!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 7, 2006, at the time of 3:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 21, 2005

Underway: This Ship Rocks!

"Secure all your items. We are expecting rough seas." The Project Engineer, a no-nonsense former Navy chief, warned us repeatedly before this voyage about how bad it could get where we were going. But this was my fourth underway (hey, I'm an expert!), and I had never experienced anything worse than little bit of wave action. None of my equipment had ever so much as shifted. He's being a little overcautious, I thought.

Then, on the fourth day of our voyage, bang, it happened: the ship began doing some sort of acrobatic manuevering. It rolled violently, and unsecured stuff started to cascade to the deck, crashing and smashing and bouncing around the room where I was monitoring some equipment.

A huge ring binder full of paper, weighing two or three pounds, tumbled from above me. It would have crashed directly onto my head -- except that the "unsecured" lawn chair I was sitting on started to slide across the floor with me in it. The binder thumped to the deck exactly where I had just been sitting.

I was sliding so fast, I was afraid of slamming into the bulkhead, which had a number of pointy things sticking out. I grabbed hold of the handle of a piece of equipment and jerked myself to a stop. That was close.

On previous ships, I've seen a chief ream a sailor out for having an open liquid container inside the computer room (or a loose item anywhere). The chiefs always seemed unreasonably anal about this... until that fourth day. But I want to make one thing clear: the unsecured items that fell in my workstation were not mine. My stuff was totally secure... except for my lawn chair and myself, that is!

(I have to bring my own lawn chair, because all the chairs in the room are bolted down, and none is bolted down next to where I put my equipment, of course. So unless I want to stand for hours at a time, I have to bring along one of our fold-up lawn chairs that we use when we go horse camping.)

My work on the ship is not especially physically demanding; I don't have to haul heavy equipment across the ship or bend steel with my bare hands. But just walking around inside a vessel underway requres you to be reasonably fit.

Counting from my work station, the bridge is five decks above us. The stairways connecting these floors are steep, almost like ladders. At the top of the each stairway, there is a hole called the scuttle, about the size of a manhole. Every single time I went up the stairs, I banged my knee on the edge of the scuttle.

Sometimes, the scuttle is closed, and the stairs are not accessible; you have to use actual ladderways. If you thought the staris were steep, the ladder is, well, vertical. Before exiting, you have to spin a wheel or move a latch to heave open the very heavy hatch above your head. Throughout the course of a day, I go up and down these stairs and/or ladderways many times. Since I have weak knees, I have to watch out.

Travelogue detour: Once, I was hiking in the Grand Canyon, along the South Kaibab Trail from the south rim down to the Colorado River (about 4000 feet of vertical descent over seven miles). I was wearing a pack that was way too heavy. Steps had been carved in the trail, but not for us humans; the steps were there to make it easier on the mules that also used this path. They were mule-sized steps, which means very much too large for people.

Not knowing any better, I went down the steps. Worse, I stepped down with my right foot every time, instead of alternating. Dafydd was walking around the mule steps, but he didn't think to warn me and I didn't think to ask him why he was doing that. After a few miles, my right knee started to ache so bad, I could hardly walk. So naturally, I started thumping down with my left foot each time!

You can guess what happened: by the time we reached Bright Angel campground (just near Phantom Ranch), both my knees were in total agony! They didn't stop hurting for days. When it finally came time to hike out back to the rim, I said "thank God we're going uphill for a change." Everybody thought I was very strange, but my problem wasn't lack of strength or running out of breath; it was my knees, and especially banging down on them while descending. Going up just didn't hurt so bad.

So the moral is, when you come to mule steps, just walk around them. But let's get back to the ship.

The passageway is very narrow. Two people cannot walk side by side; therefore, when someone approaches going the opposite direction, one of you has to flatten himself to the bulkhead. But you have to be careful where you do this, because pointy things are usually poking out from the wall. If you're not carefu,l you can stab yourself in the back. Since my berthing, where the ladies' head (bathroom) was, was far from my work station, I had to negotiate this narrow passageway back and forth a lot.

I kind of enjoyed this little bit of exercise. When you're stuck in the bottom of the ship, it's good to get out and walk around sometimes.

But it does get a little tricky when the ship starts to roll. Walking on a rolling, pitching ship gives you a strange sensation: as your foot comes down, you expect it to hit the deck at the certain time. However if the ship is pitching up, your foot smacks the floor sooner than you expect, and it feels like you're climbing a hill (and you are). When the ship tilts downward, you step out, but suddenly there is no deck! Untill you get used to the rythm, you stagger around like a drunken sailor.

Taking a shower in rough seas is also interesting. There is a handle inside the shower stall; I often clung to this bar and braced myself against the back wall.

I've heard that Japanese ships of this type have huge Japanese-style bathtubs. I don't see how they can use that; wouldn't the water slosh out with every roll and pitch? The waves would be worse inside the tub than out on the ocean! But since all Japanese military ships ban women anyway, I'll never find out.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 21, 2005, at the time of 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 19, 2005

Underway: Living Quarters

When I ride on a co-ed ship, I sleep in the same room with enlisted girls. In quarters the size of a typical living room (they call it "berthing"), about thirty girls sleep. There are ten three-decker beds, two tables, one TV, two toilets, and a shower.

The beds are narrow and only six feet long (if you are a tall guy, you have to sleep folded up). The ceiling is so low that you cannot sit up without splitting your skull. You literaly have to crawl into and out of the bed. They don't call these racks "coffin beds" for nothing!

Most sailors don't want to sleep on the top bed. Therefore, when a civilian like me comes aboard, that's where she is most likely to be assigned. This was actually fine with me. Although climbing a ladder up and down while half asleep is not a easiest thing in the world, the top bed has much higher ceiling. For a claustrophobe like me, it is actually better. (Besides, I don't have to worry about somebody above me getting seasick in the middle of the night, if you know what I mean.)

When that many people live in such a small room, you notice a lot of things: smell, sound, lack of privacy. Even though the berthing is cleaned every day, the odor of thirty people can get overwhelming, especially as I have a very acute sense of smell. There are cans of air freshener everywhere, and the girls use it obsessively; but it only masks the smell and makes it even worse! Also, everyone uses her own flavor of perfume and deodorant, so that the room is always filled with some sort of weird, sweet odor, like rotting flowers. A dog would go crazy in there!

The ship is always noisy. Different pieces of equipment are making all kinds of noise all the time. Our berthing was right next to the engine room, so we heard the lullaby of the ship's engines clanking and grinding all night long. Also the berthing was same level as the ocean surface, so I heard the waves lapping at the hull, which was actually rather soothing.

None of these sounds bothered me. After a while, I forgot they were even there. I sleep very soundly anyway (Dafydd sleeps with one eye open, and he's never totally asleep, it seems).

The only thing that really bothered me were the gazillion alarm clocks. Sailors have many different shifts: some get up at midnight, some at 3:00 a.m., and so forth, and everyone sets his alarm accordingly. From midnight through six a.m., I was awakened every hour, on the hour, by somebody's stupid alarm clock. And of course, since each person's clock is slightly off from all the others, a bunch of alarms go off within few minutes, creating a bell curve of sleep deprivation.

Some people don't wake up right away, and their alarms keep ringing or buzzing for seemingly minutes. For god's sake, get up already! I thought to myself. It was impossible to sleep through the night even for me. And of course at 0600, the good old reveille sounds!

I never set my alarm. What's the use? With all those bells and beepers going off, I couldn't tell which one was mine anyway. So everytime I woke up, I checked the time and just got up when necessary. I was never late.

For some people, the lack of privacy is really an issue; but it turned out for me it wasn't. When ten people try to take a shower, go to the bathroom, and wash their faces, all at the same time, you cannot be embarrased about anything. Girls burp and fart in front of everyone and don't care. (I did try to avoid eating anything that could produce gas.)

Some people just put on headphones and zoned out, hiding in their racks with the curtain drawn... did I tell you each coffin bed has a curtain? Me, I just sat at the table and read. I finished three or four books, so the underway wasn't entirely wasted!

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 19, 2005, at the time of 7:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Underway: Seasickness

I work for the United States Navy as a civilian engineer. What I do requires me to be on ships a lot, but most of the time, I simply visit the ship at a port or shipyard. In fact, in four years of my Navy career, I never had to go underway untill this fiscal year started, and I joined a new project team.

When I thought of riding a ship, the first thing that worried me was seasickness. I am prone to some types of motion sickenss: I get car sick, air sick, and even a Disneyland ride can make me sick. I heard horror stories from my co-workers, some of whom said they carried around "barf bags" everywhere they went. Some guys were sick even before the ship left the harbor, and one guy was actually helpless with seasickness while the ship was still tied to the pier!

One of my co-workers got so dehydrated, he had to be treated with an IV drip. Needless to say, this job is not particularly popular amongst many of the engineers... and I think some of them use their weakness as a weapon: since they get seasick, they don't have to go underway for weeks at a time, without even being able to call home, like I have to.

The problem with getting sick on a Navy ship is that, for obvious reasons, you can't get off the boat. If the ship is not too far from land, they can helo you out; but otherwise, you're just stuck. And the on-board medical personnel cannot do much for a civilian; they're not authorized to give you anything much more than aspirin, unless it's a medical emergency.

The first time I went underway, I was really worried about being seasick. I brought enough Bonine pills to last for two weeks and took them religiously for the first week. Although Bonine is not supposed to make you drowsy, I felt like I was half asleep all the time. Every time I sat down, with the combination of the Bonine and the rocking motion of the ship, I was out like a light... and the Navy takes a dark view of people falling asleep on watch, military or civilian.

I finally had to give up and stop taking the pills -- and then it turend out that I don't get seasick at all! Even in a rough ocean, when some of the sailors themselves were down on the floor holding their heads, I was perfectly fine. At one meeting, a young officer was giving a presentation. Suddenly he stopped in the middle and fled to the bathroom. (What do you do if you find out you're prone to seasickness after you enlist in the Navy?)

Dafydd tells me ginger pills work well, according to Adam and Jamie on the show Mythbusters: they were the only non-pharmaceutical cure that actually worked for Adam Savage, who has a terrible problem with seasickness. I should recommend that to my coworkers. That way, they will have no more excuses for not going underway, and I won't have to go so often.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 19, 2005, at the time of 6:49 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 13, 2005

Hawaii Blogging 3: Kayaking in Kaneohe Bay

On the last weekend before I had to sail away again (I'm still working, you know), we decided to do something adventurous: we would kayak on Kaneohe Bay and visit an island a ways offshore. I made a picnic lunch, and we started off.

Dafydd always talks me into these "adventure" things. I would be happy just lying on Waikiki beach for a week! There was the time we collapsed from heat exhaustion on the North Kaibab Plateau in the Grand Canyon, in 120+ degrees in the shade (no shade, of course). Or the time we were riding over the crest of the Fernandez trail in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, and it was so steep that as we descended, my head was actually hitting the horse's butt. That was the same trip where a bear prowled around our campsite during the night; I woke up Dafydd and told him there was a bear outside, and all he said was "let it get its own tent." He thought that was hilarious. Our nature trips are always... interesting.

We drove to a Kayak rental place called Go Bananas on Kapahulu Avenue. The store clark briefly (very briefly) showed us how to securely lash the kayak on top of the car. Then he gave us life jackets, seats, paddles, and a "dry bag," which was supposed to keep stuff inside it totally dry. He made us sign all sorts of legal notices and agreements. I foolishly read through them and started to get a little bit nervous: Kayaking can be dangerous, kayaking can be physically challenging, you can't sue us no matter what we do. etc. I asked Dafydd, "what if we capsize -- then what?" He assured me the bay was perfectly calm; besides it is so shallow, we can practically walk. We are wearing lifejackets; if we capsize, we just get wet. No big deal.

I wasn't totally reassured, but the boat was already attached to the car, so what could we do?

We found the Kaneohe Bay without incident, but hauling the kayak from where we parked the car to the pier was quite a challenge. Dafydd told me that the rental guy said the boat only weighed 70 pounds. I have had a quite bit of weight training, and have no problem carrying 35 lbs. I tell you after struggling with that thing that it ain't no measly 70 lbs!

After bitching and moaning for a while (just to get in the mood), I grabbed the lanyard at the front and helped Dafydd carry the kayak a long, long, long, long, long way to the boat-launch... only to find out we carried to the wrong place! We were supposed to launch at the "canoe beach;" but of course, we had no way to know that. I looked at the long pier and said, "since we're already here, let's just use the boat-launch. It's more convenient." My real motivation was that I was not about to carry that thing across the parking lot again. We launched and paddled furiously, hoping to avoid being run over by huge power boats. Our goal was to reach Kapapa Island about 2 .25 miles frome there.

At first, we were going pretty slow. But after a while, we found our rhythm and paddled fairly well. Dafydd told me that there was a sunken island on the way. I didn't know what he meant until I saw it: the color of the ocean changed, becoming much lighter there; and the water, which had been too deep to see bottom, was suddenly very shallow. Below us, I saw sandy beaches, coral, and some little fishes. It was like we were floating over a regular, dry-land island.

Dafydd wanted to walk around on the sunken island a bit, so he jumped out of the kayak. Big mistake! When I turned around to see what he was doing, I lost my balance, and boom, hit the water. Now we were both in the ocean.

Dafydd might have thought the water was much shallower than it actually was. It was about four feet deep. Four feet of water does not seem like anything. But when you're wearing a life jacket in the ocean with some wind, you don't have much control over your body. We bobbed around like couple of corks, and our parka, water bottles, my T-shirt, and whatever other gear wasn't lashed down went floating away from us.

We caught up with the parka we'd taken in case it rained, my shirt, and one water bottle; the other drifted off, never to be seen again. But we were still in the ocean and not in the kayak.

Getting back aboard was not as easy as we thought. First, I tried to get in it by holding on and putting one of my legs over the side. But all this managed to do was capsize the kayak. On the second attempt, Dafydd held the other side of the kakyak to keep it from capsizing while I climbed on top of it.

After a major struggle, I managed to get back into the kayak. Now it was Dafydd's turn. He told me to lean over the left (port) side when he climbed over the starboard. But when he told me to lean, I leaned too much and fell into the water again. Oh, I was so mad! We were right back where we started.

Then we thought it might be more feasible for Dafydd to climb back on board first, then pull me over. He got back in, he pulled me up... then somehow, the kayak flipped the other way, dumping us both in the drink again.

I started to get really scared. We were more than a mile out; what would happen if we couldn't get back into the boat? On the third time around, I struggled in safely (we had gone back to the mode of Sachi clamboring up first). Then Dayfdd got back in and slowly inched into position. I kept striaght up and didn't throw my weight around, and "Finally!" Then the kayak started rocking, I panicked and leaned too much to the side.....again, we were in the water.

Dafydd said to me in exasperation, "OK, Sachi. You climb back in first. When I climb in, no matter what, don't move! Stay stil." I was almost panicking at this point. I don't remember what exactly we did, but we mananged to get back in the kayak safely this time around. Amazingly, my sunglass which were not tied to anything, stayed on my face this entire time. The only thing we lost was an unsecured water bottle.

By that time, I had lost interest in going to the island. I was so scared that we were going to capsize again, that I just wanted to go back to the shore. But Dafydd would have none of that. "After all that trouble, you just want to go back? That's ridiculous. Besides," he added, "you'll be mad at yourself if you yield to your fear, just because we capsized a few times." Then Dafydd made the killer argument: we were more than half way to the island. That meant it was quicker heading to the island that going back to the shore -- and that made up my mind for me. Well, after few more minutes of coaxing and getting me out of panic mode. We headed toward the island.

It's hard to believe, but the most of the way to the island, the water is only a three or four feet deep. However, when we got closer to the island, we got caught in a wave "crossfire": the waves from the open ocean would hit this tiny island and wrap around, making a kill-zone of breakers from both left and right as we approached.

The guidebook had warned about this, but it's one thing to read about it and another to be in the middle of it. The waves made it really hard to steer; but at least the water was shallow, there was no danger of falling out of the boat. In fact, in another few paddle strokes, the water got so shallow we just climbed out of the kayak and pulled it to the island beach.

What had looked like nice, soft sand from the water turned out to be smashed up coral; I slipped on the slippery stuff and fell and cut my wrist. But I was happy to be on the ground again!

On the island, a young man with some sort of british accent* helped us carry the kayak out of the water, because I was too exhausted. He said he and his kayaking club members were camping on the island. When we talked about how calm the ocean was on the outbound trip, he warned us that the weather could change very quickly. Unless we were going to stay overnight on the island, we should not linger. So we quickly ate our sandwiches, took some pictures (our camera had nicely survived the repeated dunkings, being sealed inside the "dry bag;" I got some nice pix of a baby bird nesting inside a hollowed out rock), got the British guy to take a couple of pictures of the two of us, and then loaded up and pushed out into the water again.

Coming back from the island was much easier, since the current and wind pushed us towards the shore. Every so often, a wave would sneak up behind us, and we would find ourselves unexpectedly surfing! The only trouble we encountered was running aground over the very shallow part of the sunken island. Some parts were only a foot deep; I saw many tourists walking around only ankle deep in the middle of the ocean.

There is only about a half mile between the sunken island and the shore where the water is deep enough for power boats. On the one hand, this was good, because we did not have to worry about capsizing anymore. But on the other hand, the water eventually got so shallow that we could hardly move. (I think the tide had gone out since we paddled over this stretch going outbound.) This got worse and worse as we got closer to the shore.

After about four hours of constant rowing, interrupted only by the brief rest on Kapapa Island, we finally came back to the pier. We had to struggle to get the kayak up on the car roof. I especialy had a difficult time, and again, some total stranger lifted my end of the boat for me. We managed to secure the kayak (we thought), even though we didn't quite remember everything the store manager had said, and off we went. However, once on the H1 freeway, we noticed the kayak was defenitely shifting to the left. Dafydd told me to pull over, and just then, we heard a loud scrape as the kayak shifted hard left. It turned out we forgot to run the tie-in straps through one side of the kayak! After all this trouble, if we had lost the kayak on the freeway, we would have had to cough up at least $500.

After restrapping the boat right there on the freeway, we got back in the car. By mutual assent, we agreed not to tell the rental-shop manager about our screwup. "But you can blog about it if you want," Dafydd said -- and so I did.

When we got to Go Bananas again, it was 5:30, seven and a half hours after we rented the kayak. The store clerk who examined the kayak found some trivial "damage" on the rudder and immediately began talking about how we might have to replace it -- for $250! Dafydd looked at it and said it didn't look all that damaged to him. It was nothing a quick bend with a wrench wouldn't fix, he said. Dafydd and the clark argued for a while, then the clerk got the store manager, who had to make the final decision. After looking at the rudder, he went inside a shed... and came out with a crescent wrench and bent the bar back into place. No charge.

One last point: just for our future reference, we asked the manager how to get back aboard a kayak when you've capsized. It turned out we were doing it all wrong. It was amazing that we actually managed to pull ourselves aboard the way we did.

When we got back to the hotel, we both noticed that we were covered with scratchs and bruises, abrasions and bites. We were too pumped to notice them before. My muscles got so stiff and painful, it was difficult to walk to a restaurant for dinner.

But it was an adventure... and after it was over, it was really fun in retrospect!

* Dafydd says the guy was South African.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 13, 2005, at the time of 5:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 12, 2005

Hawaii Blogging 2: Manoa Falls

Before the this Hawaii trip began, we were planning on hiking almost everyday. However, one week is too short to explore all of Oahu. Not to mention that I had to show up at work every morning, only to be told there was nothing for me to do that day. Well, finally we had a chance to hike, although it was a short one.

Only four and half miles away from Waikiki Beach, toward the mountain (or hill) where Manoa Road ends, there is a rain forest. It was aptly named: as soon as the road turned upward toward the moutain, rain started to pour, startling us... the Ala Wai canal area we just left a mile back was totally sunny. We wondered if we should actually hike today; but it had been raining off and on like this every day since we got here. If we didn't hike today, we never would.

After driving a couple miles on the winding Manoa Road (Dafydd insisted on calling it "Manure Road"), we got to a dirt parking lot. There was a man sitting under a big unbrella attending the lot. The skinny Japanese parking attendant said the weather has been like this all week and would not likely change. "After all, this is a rain forest," he explained with a smile and a shrug. So we sprayed ouselves with insect repellant, and off we sloshed.

The entire trail is only two miles round trip. From the same trailhead, there is the much longer and more strenuous Aihualama Trail. But that one was closed due to the weather. Since it was a little too late in the day to start a long hike anyway (we spent longer at the U.S.S. Missouri than we expected), we were OK with the shorter.

The vegetation of this forest is like nothing I have ever seen. We felt like we were in Tarzan's forest, and at any moment, he would come swinging by on a vine. According to the guide book, the large trees are kukui, African tulip tree, guava, and mountain apple; Dafydd thought he saw mangrove, too. I cannot tell you which tree was which; but I did recognize palm grass and ferns, and vines hanging like giant Spanish moss from the trees. This really is a jungle. We are so used to a desert mountain hike, this was quite a difference!

The muddy trail follows a babbling stream on the right which makes a soothing sound. We wondered whether there were fish in the stream, but the stream was too muddy to see anything anyway. The temparature was a perfect 80 degrees, but the rain persisted and even got worse. When I saw a large palm that looked like a giant lotus leaf, I suggested we should use that as an unberella, just like the Japanese Anime monster Totoro did in My Neighbor Totoro. After a while, we could not tell if the water dripping into our eyes was sweat or rain.

The moderate slope is not a challenge for serious hikers. But the trail was wet and very slipperly. The reward for this slidey hike is at the end: the Manoa Falls. It's tall and skinny like Yosemite falls, making a perfect splash 150 feet down a sheer cliff to the pool below. We sat down on a bench by the pool and opened our lunch. At that precise moment, the heavens opened with a deluge. Dafydd covered his sandwich with his hand to avoid soggy salami, while I quickly shoveled the entirety of my own into my mouth, almost choking on it.

We wolfed down the food and decided to head back immediately. The trip back was worse than the trip out, even though it was all downhill. Especially because it was all downhill! Muddy tracks that were passable by fast lunging on the way up became a Winter Olympics slalom course heading back down. Our shoes were quickly caked with mud, and we lost what feeble traction we had. We should have worn water skis!

"We should just jump in the river and swim back," I said; "maybe it would dry us off."

The rain was heavy enough that we couldn't really even see the forest for the streams of water in our eyes. We slogged down and down, somehow staying on our feet. And finally, we reached the gravel part of the trail, then the wood planks, then gravel again... and then before we realized it, we were back at the parking lot. The Japanese man had turned into a Hawaiian girl, but she huddled under her drooping umbrella and didn't say anything to us. It was just as well. I don't think I could take another "alooooooooooooo-HA!"

Just as we got to the car, Dafydd said "oh good -- it stopped raining!" I looked up; he was right. I hadn't even noticed, because the water was still streaming from my hair across my eyes.

Everything we were wearing was soaked. We looked like big stacks of rumpled wetwash. We washed our hands with the bottled water we hadn't drunk and slid into the car, dripping all the way back through the sunshine to Waikiki. It was the best day of the vacation so far!

Tomorrow, we're going kayaking in Kaneohe Bay and the Kahana River. I bet it'll be drier.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 12, 2005, at the time of 2:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 8, 2005

Hawaii Blogging 1: the Polynesian Cultural Center

We are in the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. My work brought me here for a week. (I declined the opportunity to go to Norfolk Virginia and picked Hawaii instead. That was a hard decision.) Since I am already here and have a hotel room and a rental car, Dafydd decided to join me.

Today, we drove to the northern part of the island to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center. The main reason for the visit was to eat Luau and see a show. But on the way, we stopped to see a famous Buddhist temple called "Byodo-In."

This is a scaled-down replica of a Japanese temple found in Uji, much smaller than the original. The serene scenery was emphasized by the prosaic, almost hypnotic buzz of a gasoline-powered hedge trimmer.

The temple itself is not particularly interesting, but I was very impressed by the jagged mountain behind it, shrouded with greenery. It looked like the giant Roc from the Sindbad stories had clawed the side of the mountain! The fog over the spearhead crags reminded me of old Chinese brush paintings. The temple also has the world's largest carved Buddha not from ancient times; it was carved in the 1960s, laquered in gold, and then covered with gold leaf.

A pond curled around the front of the building like half a moat. But instead of sharks or crocodiles, it was filled with koi (big Japanese goldfish; actually, they're a kind of carp), some of them humongous. I guess tourists have been feeding them like crazy; when we stood still and looked at them from a bridge, a huge mass of them noticed us and crowded around, their mouths wide open. I imagined them saying "feed me!" like the plant in the musical version of Little Shop of Horrors.

A black swan was also in the pond, pecking at something invisible on the bank. It was floating oddly higher than the waterline, and it suddenly occurred to us that it wasn't floating at all: it was standing on the backs of some koi, like they were floatation devices. The fish didn't seem to care.

We took a few pictures and moved on.

The Polynesian Cultural Center is kind of like Florida's Epcot center, separated into several different Polynesian pavillions, each corresponding to a different island: Fiji, Samoa, Aotearoa (Maori New Zealand), Tahiti, Hawaii, the Marquesas, and Tonga. We rode a small canoe on a canal that runs between all the "island" pavillions. Then we started visiting the different cultures... which seemed very similar, except they had different styles of thatched hut.

In Islands of Marquesas, we saw a couple of women, one old, the other new, teaching a gaggle of tourists how to weave long grass into some shape: it consisted of two big loops, with the ends of the foot-long blades shuttling inside and out in some complicated pattern. We moved on to Tahiti... and came across a pair of women teaching a clutch of tourists how to weave long grass into some shape: closer inspection revealed it was exactly the same as the previous "island."

We found the same teachable moment in Tonga; this time, it was two old women. Crossing over the bridge to Fiji, we saw the same pattern, but the loops and ends pointed the opposite direction. Then we saw the old Fijian woman writing something and realized she was left-handed.

This must have been basket-weaving day in Polynesia, because the next pavillion (Samoa) had an old woman and a young one teaching the exact, same patter of grass weaving (right way round this time; anybody want to bet the head woman was right-handed?) The last pavillion we visited, just before we got to the Luau, was Hawaii -- and there were no women and no basket-weaving gawkers; if they were there, they had already left. We did, however, find a single blade of long grass on the ground; it had split down the middle. We deduced that at least one tourist hadn't listened to his old woman.

Hawaii is not exactly known for great food. Oh, sure, it's better than our backpacking trip through the Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, where we hiked for five days on nothing but dried pieces of buffalo, squid jerky, and oatmeal. But you don't go to Hawaii for the fine cuisine.

The one exception to this rule is the luau. We honeymooned in Hawaii some time ago, and the luau is the only meal we can really remember. (Dafydd says he remembers every lobster from our trip to Maine a couple of years ago.) We're pleased to report that the luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center is just as good as or better than the one we had on Maui last time.

If you played a word-association game and someone said "Hawaiian luau," I'll bet the first word that would pop into hyour mind would not be "Mormons," but that's who runs the Polynesian Cultural Center: Brigham Young University. In practice, this only means that you can't drink alcohol on the premises... so if the highlight of any luau for you is a gigantic Mai-Tai, you have to go somewhere else. But the food at the Center's luau is excellent.

The highlight of any luau is the kuala pig, steamed underground in a hole that acts like an oven: they line it with heated rocks, drop the dead pig on it, toss on herbs and vegetables and other food, then bury it under cocoanut husks. Then they drape wet burlap over it, so it steams instead of burns. And then they leave it alone for about twenty-four hours.

By that time, it's done. In fact, it falls off the bone; so they serve it the only way they can: shredded, as part of a huge buffet. I didn't like the pig that much, but Dafydd said it was really good. I liked all the vegetables, even the poi (made from pounded taro root). At the end, the cocoanut cake was excellent, but I could only eat a bite. I thought I was going to explode like the anaconda that tried to digest an alligator!

The last thing we saw at the Center was the traditional dancing and singing show. It's called "Horizons;" but even with such an insipid name, it's a terrific show. The second half was a lot better than the first, with actual hula dancing (which seems to have come to Hawaii from Tahiti) and the fire dancing. The fast movement of the hips is incredible. I could never figure out how anyone can move a hip that fast without moving anything either above or below it.

The acrobatic dance using fire was from Samoa. Three guys litereary sat on fire to put it out. They were walking over the fire and torching their grass skirts on purpose.

The star of the last half was a Samoan who we watched at the Samoa show a few hours earlier. He was very funny... he knew a few words in a lot of different languages (French, Chinese, Korean, Japanese), and he knew how to make fun of people's languages without getting them angry at him. At one point, he had a stick that was burning at both ends, and he threw it high up on the stage to another guy. The guy on the upper stage caught it and started spinning like a baton. Later, he threw the torched stick back to the guy on the lower stage. I don't see how they can do all that without burning themselves!

The drive home was uneventful. We decided we had been eating too much of food that wasn't all that great to begin with; so we stopped off at a supermarket and bought fixings to make sandwiches instead, for lunch and dinner.

Yeah, right. We'll see how long we stick to that budgeting plan!

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 8, 2005, at the time of 6:01 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

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