Matthew Magellan

Hiking Half Dome

2010-10-24T14:30:00.020-05:00

It seems perhaps a tad serendipitous that I should be writing again after such a long absence with the same locale and themes of my last entry. A few weeks ago, I found myself in California once more, reuniting with Semester at Sea friends, this time to celebrate one of them getting married (congratulations again, Jess). But, this being an SAS group, some of us met nowhere near the Orange County wedding, instead finding each other in San Francisco before road tripping out to Yosemite National Park, my friend Mark and I being hellbent on hiking Half Dome in the Yosemite Valley. Half Dome, for those of you not up to brush on your National Park knowledge, is the iconic rock (the term "rock" here used loosely) that peaks at an elevation of 8,836ft, some 5,000ft above the Valley floor. Oh, and with a sheer cliff face. You see the appeal.

The trail was to be an all-day excursion. It is a 17-mile round-trip hike with an elevation change of 4,800ft each way, following along a portion of the John Muir trail. By 7am Mark and I wandered out of our lodging bright-eyed and chilled in the crisp October morning, carrying a backpack full of overpriced sandwiches, Clif bars, and bottles of water. When we asked at the front desk which bus took us to the trailhead, we were greeted with,

"Are you hiking half dome?"

"Gonna try!"

"I wouldn't recommend it. Unless you have ice picks and crampons. It's slippery up there and it snowed last night."

Alarmists. By 8am we were on the trailhead, but before passing this sign, which seemed to give some credence to their warnings.

Okay. I'm a strong-headed hiker and I'm not easily discouraged once I have come a great distance to achieve a great thing. But it's not like we were the only people hiking, we could very easily turn around if need be, and I learned in New Zealand that the payoff for seeing what was possible could be fantastic.

So we hiked. Up. For five hours. Around the back end of Half Dome, away from the Valley, with almost no conception of how much elevation we were gaining. Actually, we were quite ignorant to begin with all round. Looking up at the sheer cliff faces all around us, we went back and forth on just which one was Half Dome. We had driven in the night before in the dark, you see, and so we had never even gotten a clear view of the Valley. Additionally, we never bothered to look at a trail map, assuming that such a famous trail in a National Park would be clearly marked. Which it mostly was, except for one time when we came across a few other hikers scratching their heads at an unmarked fork. Also there was the one time when the trail did a switchback and I did not, ambling right into the forest until Mark called me out on my idiocy.

And then we came to a place that essentially stopped me in my tracks as I realized what we'd gotten ourselves into.

There was no longer any question of where we were headed, and the sheer immensity of the rock put into perspective as well. We crossed an enormous, flat granite pass on the way to the base of Half Dome where the trees were more sparse, and on all sides was an extraordinary view of forests and snow-capped peaks in the background. But the challenge yet lied ahead, seemingly slowly growing in size and becoming a bit more intimidating as we came to the base of the final ascent, known as the cables route. A pool of climbing gloves marked the beginning of the end.

This all looked very exciting. I packed my camera away into my backpack, and we went up the final 400 feet along the cables, Mark leading. The excitement of the moment never dissipated, but a large portion of it transformed into doubt and anxiety over the treacherous route, because you see, this is one large, smooth granite dome. All those cracks and chunks you see slope downwards, and in no time at all I came to the anxious realization that were I to lose my grip on the steel cables or misstep and go tumbling, I would slide right to my death. Of this I am certain. Looking on either side I could see no possible place where I could grasp a rock or find a foothold. All I could see was one convex death trap that sloped off into oblivion all directions. I could see the end of nothing, just a sloping plane of granite that disappeared, with the Valley floor a few thousand feet below it peeking out from far away. I also happened to be keenly aware that earlier that same week six hikers had taken a tumble themselves and needed to be rescued from wherever they landed 100 feet away from the trail. In fact, every year people seem to fall to their deaths. Backpacker Magazine rates it as one of America's 10 Most Dangerous Hikes.

That's when I stopped soaking in the beauty of my surroundings and looked down at Mark's feet in front of my own, willing myself forward step by step on somewhat shaky legs. It was a pants-crappingly scary climb to a degree no hike has ever made me feel. The climb got steeper. People were coming down in the other direction, which meant everyone had to stop and cling for dear life to their section of cable and wait until the way was clear again. And all I could think about was, "How are we going to come down? It's steep to climb up, too steep to walk down."

But when the path leveled out I found myself on top of a surprisingly large expanse of flat granite, a plateau that sloped gently away from the valley, and with a cliff face that dropped 1300ft to anything, and another 3500ft to the valley floor.

It goes without saying that scenery was spectacularly beautiful, rather reminiscent of but far more impressive than the Great Valley from The Land Before Time. You may think that a corny reference, but consider that Yosemite Valley has been little altered since the time of the dinosaurs. And thanks to efforts of one great American hero, John Muir (whom Mark praised from the beginning of the endeavor to its very end, repeatedly citing quotes and ideas found in Ken Burns' National Parks: America's Best Idea), it should continue to change very little since its adoption as Yosemite National Park at the end of the 19th century.

With the clouds rolling in, we began our way back down.

I Went to San Francisco but Then I Got Nostalgic

2009-12-25T15:30:00.019-06:00

Last weekend I was in San Francisco. I wanted to write about that delightful little big city, about the wonderfully nostalgic Musee Mecanique at Fisherman's Wharf, about Chinatown (the very best of all the Chinatowns), about people-watching on Market Street and about the Golden Gate Bridge, but as I've now been home for four days already, it's not really any of those things that are resonating at this point.

(Well, that's not completely true. I do have a very deep fondness for bridges, as architectural marvels and simply as large things that have great aesthetic appeal to me, and to those ends the Golden Gate Bridge certainly holds its own as an iconic landmark, and I would have loved to walk back and forth across its entire 8,981 foot span, but we only had time to make it to the first tower.) But I digress.

I don't know if you have ever been one of those people lucky enough to find themselves sailing around the world with a boat load of strangers, taking classes, tasting cultures, and rocking in the midst of a few months chock so full of life-changing experiences it leaves you reeling and exhausted, taking naps after morning classes that span the entire gap between lunch and dinner, but let me tell you, in circumstances like that, lasting connections are made amongst friends in a very short time.

This is the reason I was in San Francisco. It had been well over a year since my ship friends and I had had any substantial reunion of more than one or two others. This time there were six of us, hardly the full gang, but a remarkable feat nonetheless considering all of us recent graduates or grad students are broke and/or busy as hell. Four reunions (and smaller visits in between) in the two and a half years that have passed since we disembarked the MV Explorer in San Diego in May of 2007 seems like a pretty good ratio, but I'm telling you it's not nearly enough, because:

These are the people I sailed around the world with. I know I already said that but it is worth repeating, and I also realize that I sailed around the world with about 700 other students, but these people, these few, these are the ones I experienced the world with.
These are the people I slept with in a karaoke booth in Tokyo.
These are the people I toured the Bacardi plant with in Puerto Rico, with whom I got tipsy with on a sunny afternoon. This is one of the very first things I did with some of them, actually.
These are the people I celebrated Carnaval with in Brazil. That time Fatboy Slim's music float got stuck in the crowds right in front of us, and we drank giant cans of $1 Skol beer until I burst into a laughing fit so severe I nearly doubled over and passed out.
These are the people who laughed at me when I got some kind of horrible virus after Brazil and spent hours throwing up or shitting in the bathroom. Actually, this is just my cabinmate, and then he got it, too, and I laughed at him.
These are the people who watched me get robbed in Cape Town, and then gave me hugs when they realized what had happened and felt quite foolish for not having been able to do anything.
These are the people who played the rickshaw game with me in India, who traveled with me and didn't shower for days on end in the blazing Indian heat.
These are the people who I would eat dinner with, a daily ritual that very easily could last two or three solid hours because we would laugh and recollect stories of in-port adventures, or simply talk about Fanny Pack Pete, yellow shorts, Captain Jeremy slaying krakens or other inside jokes.
These are the people I safaried with in South Africa, hiked with in Malaysia, trained with in Japan.
These are the people who helped me chase and kill giant hissing insects in our villa in that silly island-nation of Mauritius, who watched me get chased by a baboon in Malaysia.
These are the people I crawled through the Cu Chi tunnels with in Vietnam.
These are the people I went to for hugs or crying on during some tumultuous personal issues that study abroad tends to spring on travelers.
These are the people I played Risk: The Game of Global Domination with on the ship, finishing just in time for breakfast.
These are the people I played on the beach with in Waikiki.
These are the people whose goodbyes made me nauseous at a Ghirardelli chocolate shop in San Diego.

Ah, but look at us now!

These are the people I still see, still talk to, and still love two and a half years later.
These are the people who have traveled to come together in Madison, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Orange County, Chicago, San Francisco, and some other cities I couldn't make it to.
These are the people who still spend far too much time talking at meals, and who help me remember the experiences and stories that have slipped through the cracks of a memory trying to contain far too many adventures for a boy so young.
These are the people who, unquestionably, will be very near the top of a wedding invitation list some day, sharing their own table, taking too long to eat, and probably drinking too much, too.
These are the kind of friends we never forget.

Waikiki Beach, Hawai'i, 2007

(Thanks to Jess for the pic.)

Baker Beach, San Francisco, Last Weekend

(Thanks to Steph for the pic, and my apologies to those who could not make it, we missed you.)

On Writing

2009-07-14T16:17:00.003-05:00

I'm amazed to find that, according to trusty Google Analytics, people still check this blog, at least 5 people a day! Mostly they seem to be referrals from other sites or people who are looking for real experiences abroad. One query that led here was "stories from people who have hiked the Milford Track", and I cannot tell you how very satisfying that specificity is.

I'm still working on finding a life after graduation, but I've got some good leads. Soon I'm going to be writing for Examiner.com, a website with all sorts of articles by regular people. It's meant to be an insider's guide to whatever local thing you happen to be looking up. My particular niche will be Madison travel writing. I hope it pans out, and also that I can find some funds to obtain a digital SLR camera of my own to supplement anything I write here or there.

Yesterday I went sailing on Lake Mendota again. It was a warm, calm day, so we sailed lazily from one end of the lake to the other and back again, opting for casualness and Bud Light Limes over the sailing race we'd actually taken the boat out for. Can you imagine a better way to spend a summer evening?

In a bit over two weeks I'll be off to Disney World again, and I'm sure I'll have something to say about that magical place. My roommate is insisting that I supplement the trip with a copy of Carl Hiaasen's Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm still enjoying Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which has me appreciating the idiosyncratic history of science, and which has also instilled in me a very deep paranoia regarding asteroids.

Transformers 2

2009-06-29T15:19:00.004-05:00

It is regrettable that I don't have the means to finance further adventures to share with you all, but that hasn't stopped me from writing altogether.

I recently saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which was unbelievably awful, but I had the opportunity to review it for The Badger Herald, despite no longer being a student. You can read it here.

For any family and such who may not know, The Badger Herald is the University of Wisconsin's independent student newspaper. I've written for the ArtsEtc. section since the fall semester of 2008 and served as an Associate ArtsEtc. Editor in the spring of 2009. I mention this all by way of background information when I suddenly post a random article of mine, although I do take a certain pride in the Herald, as it seems far better journalistically, aesthetically, and in almost every way of the newspapers that my parents read, The West Bend Daily News (click for an entertainingly inaccessible website) and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It is also the largest independent student newspaper in the world, with a daily circulation of 15,000 during the academic year. Comparatively, the Journal-Sentinel has a daily circ of just under 220,000, but serves an area population of well over one million, as opposed to a single university campus.

I miss working in a newspaper office. It was everything you see in the movies — loud, fun, disheveled, and unpredictable. My desk was a card table and I had to provide my own computer, but I loved it. And as an editor my chief responsibility was to prove that every written word I came across was of insufficient quality, or at the very least formatted incorrectly, these duties capitalizing on skills of criticism that I've long since mastered. I even think what I write is garbage.

On Broadway and Off, New York City

2009-06-22T12:11:00.026-05:00

I[heart]NY. Everyone who is going to write anything about the city does, even if they thoroughly despise it. It's such a bustling and lively place that it's chock full of interesting tidbits and good stories, even if you do hate it, and in fact sometimes especially if you hate it. There's much to be said about the cost of everything, crowds, the slowness of tourists ambling blindly about Times Square, but I won't complain much about those things because I rather love New York, a town I've found to be remarkably manageable considering its enormity.

(Well, generally manageable that is. You can find just about anything, but often not when you're looking for it, even with an iPhone. I should not have walked around midtown Manhattan for 30 minutes looking for pizza and end up at a Times Square Sbarro, even near midnight. And finding a cup of coffee that isn't from Starbucks or a deli is nigh impossible, and to this end I must extend credit to Madison for better catering to coffee fiends like myself. Also, there was the time we accidentally boarded an express subway and bypassed our intended destination of Central Park by about 50 blocks and wound up in Harlem.)

See, you can find everything.

But as I was saying, New York is a city so great that when you say you're going to New York people generally assume you mean the city and disregard the state altogether. The only other time that might feasibly happen is if you said you were going to Kansas, in which case Kansas City is probably the assured destination merely because there aren't any other destinations in Kansas to my knowledge, and even then they might think you were headed to Kansas City, Missouri.

We checked into our hotel early and found our room to be rather agreeable, if not modestly sized. My mother and I shared a queen-sized bed in a room the size of a king-sized bed, but the shower was excellent and the breakfast free, both commodities being of great value here. Although, our one, tremendously slow elevator was broken a few times, in which case we would have to take the service elevator. This was a little box that looked like a birdcage, made with thin bands of steel and a metal gate for a door, such that you could see all four sides of the elevator shaft at any given moment. Also, there were no buttons, so a mechanic was always present as a stand-in elevator operator, using a lever to make the thing go up and down and responding to bell rings on different floors, once arguing with a cleaning lady in Italian for making him stop at her floor while he was clearly busy with guests. She would just have to carry her housekeeping cart to the next floor. I tried to avoid growing old in either elevator by taking the stairs, but as our room was on the 9th floor I quickly decided that patience was the best method.

Broadway

Among the many things I love are tall buildings, bridges, and Broadway musicals. New York has all of these, and I shall talk briefly about them in due course, starting with Broadway, since it took up the most amount of our time and constituted the vast majority of our expenses. We managed three Broadway shows in just four days, which I'm rather proud of.

How Broadway is struggling as much as it is is something of a mystery to me, but it certainly isn't for lack of support from the Straub family. Did you know that your average orchestra-level Broadway seat costs $125? And somehow, despite these generally being the best seats, you can easily spend $250 for one ticket at a show if you were so inclined. We paid full-price for one show, Wicked, which was well worth the cost, but for the others, Accent on Youth and The Phantom of the Opera we got half-price tickets from the Theatre Development Fund's TKTS booths, which are probably the best thing NYC has ever done for its tourists, aside from taking the hookers off of Times Square and 42nd Street (though neither has improved in regards to character).

It's the Broadway spectacles that attract me. I freely admit to being the worst sort of cliché fan of Broadway. I like the shows that are tried and true and which have the most extravagant sets, lights, and pyrotechnics. I've seen at least a baker's dozen Broadway shows, most being the big productions everyone recognizes. [Note: A subsequent revisiting of old ticket stubs reveals that I've seen at least 16.] What's more, I've generally had remarkably good seats at these (a special thanks to my parents here). But the reason I like the elaborate shows so much is not only because they're a thrill to watch, but the mechanics involved are incredible. I spent a few years working tech crew at my own high school's musicals, and I am here to tell you that as smoothly as those shows run, nothing about being backstage is easy. It's a little like an episode of "ER." Something goes wrong and pandemonium breaks out, with people running amok, frantically trying to figure out a solution before anyone in the audience can notice, all the while the crew displacing blame to someone in the cast and the cast doing the same to the crew. It's quite fun.

But the first show we saw, Accent on Youth, was not a spectacle, as it was not a musical. Rather, it was a good-hearted, witty, subtly hilarious sort of play about growing old featuring David Hyde Pierce of "Frasier" fame. That one was especially nice because it catered to an older crowd who respected proper Broadway policies.

Call me old-fashioned (a 22-year-old should not need to use this phrase), but there are certain rules Broadway audiences no longer respect, even at $125 a ticket. For one thing, jean shorts are not acceptable attire, nor should denim be worn in any respect, excepting perhaps that a nice jacket is donned. But, far more importantly, do not bring your bratty kids or screaming infants. At Phantom of the Opera a mother-daughter pair was sitting next to me eating candies out of a plastic bag (this being explicitly condemned at the beginning of every show), while the mother narrated every damn moment of the show to the girl, who was perpetually behind on the show's events precisely because of the mother's narration, always missing what was happening and therefore needing further explanation to catch up. And then the girl began perusing the playbill during the show's climax with her mother's indiglo watch, at which point I nearly bent over and said, "You know, they have turned the lights off for good reason."

Another good example is the mother who brought an infant to Wicked. I don't mean that by way of disrespect to a toddler, I mean an infant, swaddling clothes and all. At least three times the baby began screaming and had to be taken out through the theatre's creaky doors, much to the dismay of the entire Goddamn theatre.

Anyhow, Wicked is the show I've longed to see for years, being one of very few "big shows" I hadn't yet seen and being a story that was quite fascinating to me. As a child, while most friends I know reminisce about their fear of the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys, I would fast forward to the parts with the Wicked Witch (especially when she melts!) because she was my favorite character. I had a similar fascination with Ursula from The Little Mermaid. So anyhow, the story intrigued me and I'd heard nothing but good things about the show, which lived up to my expectations in every possible way. The graphic designer in me is even mildly fascinated with the show's poster (right). I was like a kid on Christmas morning walking to our 10th-row seats, taking in the remarkably built-up proscenium and studying the map of Oz covering the stage. When the "Defying Gravity" scene began refusing to blink was all I could do to keep my goosebumps under control... Except that I thought Elphaba was supposed to fly at the end of that song. Can anyone clear this up for me? Everyone my mother and I asked who had seen the show seems oddly unable to recall. Either way I see this as a Broadway failure, whether the crew failed to get her hooked up to a rig (and it certainly looked like that was attempted) or it was not written into the song that's all about flying. Still, what a tremendous performance.

Lastly, we saw The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway's longest-running musical at 20 years, and which felt a good many years stale. I don't know if it is too recycled a show or a cast with poor chemistry and largely unimpressive voices. The opening scene with the auction and the restoration of the original theatre set was quite impressive, but the chandelier crashing back down mid-show was disappointingly anti-climactic. It's a great piece of set design, to be sure, but for a chandelier to "crash" and make no noise, just a big flash of light, is ridiculous and laughable.

But the thing about Phantom that I've always loved is the story. I read the book by Gaston Leroux years ago, and it's exactly the sort of dark, gloomy, vaguely mystical tale I love. Even if the book is somewhat dull, the story is among my favorites, but much of this gets lost in translation to the romanticized versions we're familiar with. For one, the Phantom is a stalker and killer — there's really no away around this plainly obvious fact — and to see him blubbering on stage when Christine runs off with Raoul incites feelings of awkward discomfort rather than sympathy. We should sympathize with his story, but he's not a whiner. And Christine herself is an interesting character since she seems to live up to all kinds of old-age ideals about femininity. She's a dolt, you see, who is easily persuaded by flattery and quite literally has a difficult time choosing between French nobility and a sociopathic murderer, making her decision based on sweet nothings rather than merits of personality because, let's face it, not much about the Phantom screams endearment. I guess that's another point for Wicked, one of remarkably few stories with [more than one] strong female lead.

Not on Broadway, but related, is that we also saw a live taping of The Late Show with David Letterman, who is not any funnier live. Getting into the show involved standing in a long series of lines, which usually led to other lines elsewhere in the area, throughout which time college-aged students are practicing your laughs with you and leading you to believe that if you don't laugh and cheer at everything you are a lousy audience and a boring person because you must perceive everything that happens as hilarious, even when it usually isn't. It's all a bit fraudulent.

Off Broadway

I talked my mother into walking the Brooklyn Bridge with me, although we only walked half-way because there wasn't anything in Brooklyn we wanted to see. The Brooklyn Bridge is an astounding architectural accomplishment, over 125 years old, and showing no signs of weakness, outliving most other bridges round the world built at about the same time. It is over a mile long and seems fit to hold anything you care to put on it, even in windy conditions, despite being built before much was known about bridges' uncomfortable relationship with aerodynamics and what can happen when that relationship isn't understood (see Galloping Gertie). P.T. Barnum once led 21 elephants over the Bridge in a parade during a period of uncertainty over its stability, and the Bridge was understandably packed with as much weight as it is ever likely to hold during the mass exodus from Manhattan following the closure of the subways on 9/11.

The rest of our time in New York was spent with a little of this and that at a leisurely pace. We visited not a single museum and spent less than 30 minutes in Central Park, all of which I'm quite fine with. It was miserable weather-wise, with constant rain dampening the mood and any desire to take pictures (New York loses its charm when set against a gray backdrop).

When it rains New Yorkers shuffle along drearily with their black umbrellas as if they had just come from a funeral that was of great inconvenience to them. You could tell tourists by the color of their umbrellas, which clashed with everyone else's. The volume of umbrellas moving along with the many pedestrians in New York provides for some rather dangerous obstacles as well. Many of them nearly poked me in the eyeballs (usually my mother's bright blue one), while others just redirected raindrops onto my uncovered head or shoulders. And to be sure, New Yorkers would sooner stab you in the face with the pointy ends of their umbrellas than allow for any minor variances in their route. One girl demanded that I move as she walked towards me, despite walking in the very middle of the sidewalk just as I was, as if she had the right of way simply because she'd claimed it first. But then, New Yorkers aren't known for their friendliness. This traffic problem extends to any place where there are people, including crosswalks. You know your traffic is bad when cops must direct traffic at a regular intersection, this being quite common. And speaking of cops, what is it about the NYPD? They all look as if they were cast in Hollywood, every one of them fit and attractive with a very precise degree of racial variation.

Other than that, I met up with cousins, I met up with a friend from Semester at Sea, I ate at a lovely Greek diner and a place that only sells variations of Mac & Cheese. I also boldly tried a New York Egg Creme, only to learn that it contains neither eggs nor cream.

Zombie March Chicago 2009

2009-06-16T19:02:00.013-05:00

"What do we want!?"

"BRAAAIINS!"

"When do we want 'em!?"

"BRAAAIINS!"

And so it went - Zombie March 2009 in Chicago.

I was invited by a friend to participate in this annual event, and having no job to work around of course I obliged, along with several friends.

Part of the appeal of this event is that it is large (they estimated around 1,000 zombie participants marching from Millenium Park to Navy Pier and around downtown), but it isn't really publicized, which makes it rather like a flash mob, which is a recent social phenomenon that I'm quite fascinated by. The idea behind flash mobs being that you get a lot of people to do a very unseemly, organized thing, much the surprise of everyone else. It can be anything; a spontaneous musical, a dance, a sing-along, or a zombie march.

Preparation was possibly more fun than the march itself. It's amazing how far corn syrup, Kool-Aid, tissue and crafts glue can go in the way of bloodying and goring oneself. Here's how Lucy and I turned out:

And this is after several hours of walking around. Notice I even made Homestar Runner on my shirt a zombie.

It was difficult to stay in character with people's varied reactions, and a lot of the time we were even laughing at some of the other zombies. But really it was the spectators that made it worthwhile.

When we got off the train in Chicago an old woman came up to Lucy and asked, in that sweet old womanly way, "Are you in a show?"

Another woman waiting next to us at a crosswalk gave us a sidelong glance and said, "That must have been some party you guys were at."

To this David responded, "Yeah. It got a little out of hand." David, by the way, was shirtless and wearing a shag rug under a very wild wig as a very popular caveman zombie.

In the train station.

Sometimes when people asked about us we would just respond with, "Braaaiiiins!" and sometimes we would tell them the truth, that we were going to a zombie march. This was enough for most people, but many would then query, "And what is that?" Although it seems rather self-evident to me, so I generally could not justify answering such a silly question. Sometimes you have to do things just for the sake of doing them, and a zombie march is one of those things that is just fun in and of itself.

The train ride to and from Chicago was particularly intriguing as the train was completely full and every time people came wandering through a car that had exactly 17 zombies in it they had to respond to the odd sight in some way, which was usually by widening their eyes momentarily before looking straight ahead and refusing to make eye contact again with any of us. On the way back a mother with her little boy in front of her noticed us and went, "Ohmygoodness, cover your eyes!"

But shambling around downtown Chicago in a horde of people that usually had to cross streets in at least three groups due to its massive size and Chicago's ridiculously short crossing signals was quite a lot of fun. We left a trail of fake blood wherever we went (surely alarming Chicagoans throughout the day) and were always the center of attention, which I'm sure was much to the chagrin of the wedding party at Millennium Park, whose wedding album will feature far more dismembered, bloody corpses than a wedding album typically should.

You see, especially in this day and age, sometimes you need to do fun shit just for the hell of it. Sure, we made a few children cry, pissed off a lot of drivers who were scarcely about to refrain from going through an intersection due to a conglomeration of the undead, but most passersby loved it, and we brought smiles to a lot of faces. Even the locals were among those taking photos of us, whether from outside or through the windows of wherever they may have been shopping or eating. A few storekeepers even came outside to watch us all pass and laugh at us. It's why flash mobs appeal so much. It's totally random, nonsensical, organized events for the sake of the spectators' confused enjoyment.

Here are a few flash mob YouTube videos I enjoy:

New Zealand: Franz Josef Glacier

2009-06-14T18:03:00.013-05:00

Road trips are among my favorite ways to travel, if not my favorite. I don't know who said it, but the quote had to do with travel being so much more than being at Point B rather than Point A, because going from one to the other is part of the journey as well, and driving oneself through a foreign country on the coast, on the other side of the road, with a full day devoted to exploring when the drive itself would only take five hours was just too good to pass up. A lot of joy can stem from being in transit. So after we decided to do a guided hike on Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand and the question came up of whether to take a bus there or rent a car and drive ourselves (at a negligible cost differential), the answer was a no brainer.

So we rented a four-wheel drive RAV4, complete with chains to put on the tires if we needed them. We were told it was going to be snowy and mountainous, but of course we saw not a snowflake off of the glacier itself. Still, it was worth it to pay more for the extra space, and to feel confident about driving up mountains, which is something I would not be in a Toyota Camry, our alternate option for car rentals. We also got charged extra for renting a car over a national holiday, the Queen of England's birthday (what an occasion! Pfft.), but still scarcely paid more than a bus would have cost.

As Tyler said, the drive itself was worth the drive. It was naught but spectacular scenery the entire way to Franz Josef township, even when Tyler led us an hour down a dirt cattle road in the wrong direction.

Franz Josef itself is so small you could walk from one end to the other in less than 15 minutes, and has so few people that apparently the people it does have need to do everything. After a nice dinner at The Alice May in town, we saw our waiter the next day hauling wood for the company that did our glacier hike. That evening we saw him at one of the two bars in town with an adorable little puppy, and that night he was conversing with the front desk worker at our backpacker's lodge.

The lodge we stayed at in Franz Josef, The Chateau Franz, was among the best of the backpackers' lodges we saw. We got upgraded to a motel room because the faucet in our other room dripped loudly and relentlessly, and we watched VHS tapes at night on our tiny TV with sound nearly audible once turned up all the way. And we even got to rewind them, which was a novelty of childhood indeed. The VHS selection was comically random, my favorite tape being the one marked "95% of Kill Bill 2." But the place was quaint and the shower was hot and powerful, which is all you can really ask for in a hostel. Oh, and there was a (clothing optional!) hot tub, which felt pretty damn good after six hours on a glacier.

The Glacier

By definition, a glacier (in New Zealand, "glay-seers") is a slow moving mass of ice and snow that is compacted to some arbitrary degree. The best way to think of it is as a very large, very slow moving river of ice that may advance or retreat a few inches each day, but which are generally retreating at alarming rates worldwide due to global warming. Glaciers aren't the most stable of nature's wonders, and have been known to break apart (termed "calving") with little regard for bystanders. A few weeks earlier at a different glacier — New Zealand has nearly 3,000 of them — some Indian gentlemen touring New Zealand went past ropes indicating something to the effect of "DO NOT CROSS" to take some photos. Their comeuppance outweighed their crime; the glacier calved right on top of them, killing them instantly. I suppose this is why glacier tours are guided and tourists are not generally allowed to wander across them at their own leisure.

Just getting to the Fran Josef Glacier was a feat in itself. After being outfitted with large blue parkas, hats, mittens, boots, waterproof overpants, enormous and less-than-stylish fanny packs we took a bus out of town and then had to hike across a dried, bouldered riverbed for the better part of an hour to get to the base, where we affixed our crampons to our shoes. Crampons are those metal spiky things you attach to your shoes to climb ice, and which make walking on rocks extraordinarily unpleasant, not least of all because of the tremendously awful scratchy noise they make with every footstep, like nails across a chalkboard. This is also where I set my mittens down and never saw them again.

Hiking to the glacier.

The first portion of the day was particularly challenging for me, as my right knee had not gotten over excessive pressure from the more grueling parts of Milford Track, but I pressed on as we climbed staircase after staircase on our way up the face of the glacial brutus.

The neat thing about glacial hikes is that they are ever-changing. Our guide, Thomas, explained to us that for safety reasons they hack new trails with their ice picks once a month, but for the sake of tours they're at it nearly every day. And, since we were doing a full-day tour as opposed to the half-day tour, we got to get away from some of the paths and explore various parts of the glacier with Thomas stopping to hack us stairs into the ice as we went.

The arrow is pointing at a different guide cutting a stairway into the glacier. This gives you a sense of just how enormous the thing is.

After clambering up stairs and squeezing through passages that are just slightly narrower than one's hips I learned that one thing a glacier certainly is not is necessarily cold. I was sweating bullets. They told us to wear at least three layers, but I had nowhere to put my layers, and with an unseasonably warm, clear, windless day and sunlight coming at us from every direction on the ice my parka and waterproof overpants were trapping far too much heat.

But that didn't make the hike any less exciting. We spent nearly six full hours on the ice:

Glaciers are marvelous, spectacular, beautiful things. Parts of them shine bluer and brighter than sapphires, they form some of the most incredible natural caves, and I've learned they're good fun to climb. It's a pity they aren't more readily available to the general public, but the greater pity is the rate at which they're disappearing. They're melting so steadily worldwide that Alaskan cruises are especially popular now because tourists are more likely to see glaciers calve than ever before because it's a natural part of the melting process. And the States' own Glacier National Park in Montana is soon to be rather obsolete. If you want to see any of the glaciers you better plan your trip soon, since they'll probably all be melted away in about 10 years.

The Drive Home

On our way out of town we bought an Engelbert Humperdinck CD as a novelty for its name, thinking he was an obscure New Zealand artist from years ago and rather disappointed to learn was a lounge sensation in American in the '70s. Still, it was nice to have considering we generally only had a choice of up to one radio station for most of the drive.

The drive back was the same as the drive there, but we were much more leisurely about it and made many more stops to do some exploring and photographing, particularly along the shores of the Tasman Sea, where we acquainted ourselves with the sandfly, a nasty little insect that leaves bites that itch for days. The female sandfly likes to take your blood to incubate her eggs, you see, and I guess my blood is particularly suited to incubating because I definitely got the worst of it. Still, if sandflies are the worst to be said of New Zealand then you know it's a magical place.

Oddly enough, I didn't find it too difficult to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road/car (New Zealand was an English colony, so this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did). Rather, what was far more difficult was sitting in the passenger seat in the front on the left-side with nothing in front of me while someone else was driving. It never felt quite right, sitting there and being unable to control the car while winding through a mountain road, but I began to think of it as a little adventure, like what it would be like if cars could drive themselves, which is a little fantasy of mine that I hope comes to pass before I die.

And sadly that little road trip marked the last of our New Zealand adventures. From there it was a night in Queenstown and a late afternoon flight, and while my bank account was relieved I had no strong desire to head home just yet. I've been to many places, but I'd say that almost none of them are as agreeable for a traveler as New Zealand turned out to be.

New Zealand: Milford Track

2009-06-06T19:50:00.054-05:00

I apologize for the delay in this post. I had some serious jetlag issues after returning, then fell ill, and when I got back to Madison I found our Internet on the fritz.

Our route, Milford Track

Day 1: Te Anau, boat to Glade Wharf, hike to Mintaro Hut

This hike very nearly didn't happen for us because, as the above sign indicates, winter tramping (New Zealand's preferred term for intense hiking) over mountains is not always advisable in the snow, in unpredictable weather, and when there are 56 avalanche zones involved. The Milford Track has all of these, which is why when the New Zealand Department of Conservation told us we should bring ice picks, crampons, compasses, and have alpine navigation skills we nearly nixed the hike. The tone of voice of those unpleasant DOC employees seemed to guarantee that we would be lost in snow and fog for weeks or, at the very least, go on sliding down a mountainside on a wave of falling ice.

At the same time, the much more optimistic man who worked for the company transporting us to the track from Te Anau was very reassuring and would say, "Oh you be awright, you be awright," which for some reason was all the more comforting when laid on with a thick New Zealand accent. And he told us the weather had been pleasant and sunny lately. When I told this to the DOC employee she shook her head and said, "It hasn't."

I don't mind telling you that it was during discussions of safety, a temperamental wintertime Mother Nature with little regard for naive American hikers, and possible alternate hikes that the deepest rifts among our traveling troupe had tensions at a high. But it was worth a few tiffs in the end. We decided to go, and rented both personal locator beacons and a mountain radio to ensure safety, and there was going to be two other trampers joining us. We could always turn around and call to be picked back up where we started from, but none of us were about to wait until spring to come back to New Zealand and try again. And we were already in Te Anau, the disembarkation point for Milford. Te Anau, by the way, being the lousiest municipality in the country for sure; spread out but small, lifeless, characterless, and boring. It was a lot like West Bend. Heather preferred the term "shit-tastic", I generally proclaimed it a "miserable wretch of a town," and Tyler likened it to various forms of poop on the face of the country.

There's a good and brief story about getting that mountain radio, which obviously never left the backpacks after we got it and learned how to use it. On the morning of our hike, with less than 45 minutes before we were supposed to leave, we had our hostel's front desk worker making all sorts of phone calls trying to figure out just where Stew lived. Stew, evidently, being the only person in that town who rented out mountain radios. We finally found out where his warehouse was (earning him the nickname of Storehouse Stew), and of course it was on the far side of town. Walking as quickly as we could with 25-30 pound packs on our backs, we tried to obtain our radio as hastily as we could, but Stew needed to go through half a dozen and test their batteries, getting zapped by a few in the process. We also needed hut passes from the DOC for the track, so Heather and I split off to do that. Stew drew us a map with a shortcut over some fences and through some people's yards, but in the process blacked out all of the street names on the map with the Sharpy he used to indicate our route. Thanks to this, we took a more scenic route than we had time for.

Eventually, and only 30 minutes behind schedule, we were back and picking up Tyler and Laura at Storehouse Stew's storehouse. Of course those other trampers never showed up, and the mountain radio seemed to me such an absurdly elaborate communication device that I seriously doubted that, in an emergency, somebody would have been able to climb a tree for its antenna, then form a triangle of its many wires, grounding this and attaching that, and then find a listener at either 8:30am, 12:30pm, or 7:30pm, which was when mountaineers apparently chatter about the weather.

Additionally, we decided crampons were unnecessary, that one ice pick would suffice — this mostly being a toy for Tyler, who was certain that carrying an ice pick somehow made him cooler, or a more epic hiker — and that we'd go right on and skip the first hut of the track, completing the hike in three days rather than the recommended four, all with limited daylight hours due to the winter season. About all of this I kept my parents on a need-to-know-basis, which is to say that they didn't need to know until I'd safely returned.

View from Lake Te Anau on our boat ride to the start of the track.

Through a misty morning we boated across Lake Te Anau to the wharf where Milford Track starts. We were leaving civilization behind. When I say that Milford Track goes through a lot of unspoiled wilderness, I mean that sincerely. Part of the very immense Fiordland National Park, Milford Track extends 33.5 miles through temperate rainforest that, save for the track and its bridges and the huts you sleep at, is untouched. This isn't like the "untouched" wilderness of US national parks, which usually have highways cut right through them and visitor information centers plopped at the ends of expansive parking lots. This is serious wilderness.

And on that note, I feel like a series of photos puts the track into a better scope than I could:

Not yet knowing the joys of weary legs and sore knees that come about from carrying heavy packs over mountains, we were very excited that first day. Ten minutes into the spectacular scenery Heather was exclaiming, "So far I'm so glad we did this!"

One of the wonderful things about tracks like this is that you meet some interesting folk. We saw nary a soul that first day, until about 5 hours into our walk we came upon a middle-aged woman taking photographs. We weren't entirely sure what to say to her, as it was very odd to suddenly see anyone at all in the middle of nowhere, but we sidled up next to her and took our own photos of the same waterfall, choosing to avoid awkward introductions by just not saying anything and trying to make our presence known with noise. But here's the thing, she didn't know we were there. We were less than 8 feet from her taking photos, and she sauntered on without so much as glancing at us. We didn't know what to make of that.

Less than an hour later we rounded a bend and saw her up ahead on the trail again, only this time she was squatting in a ditch with her pants at her ankles. Heather turned around and gave me a look of such shock and confusion that you'd think she'd just witnessed the spontaneous combustion of a cute puppy, were it not for the smile that was creeping across her face. The woman was pooping on the side of the trail. Tyler, who was in front, saw fit to just keep on trucking forward. She held up her pants as we walked quietly past, avoiding the awkward obviousness of the situation. The unholy stench was so great that I almost had to stop and ask if she was feeling ill and whether she was quite fit to even do this hike.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone else was on the trail," she said.

About 45 minutes later we passed a lovely and helpful man named Ron who apparently was this woman's personal guide. We never learned her actual name, but for some reason we all settled on Penelope, I think just because it's an ugly name for an ugly woman that none of us liked. She was an irritating old bat from Connecticut who was prone to saying stupid crap like, "Holy shit, look at that waterfall!" and, to her guide, "Here, I forgot to give you this to carry," or, also to her guide, "Then can we have tea after lunch?"

But that night we made some special friends. After reaching the first hut we were to stay at after about six full hours of hiking we found a raucous crowd of about 13 already at the hut, all members of the Christchurch Over 40 Tramping Club. They were hiking the track backwards in the opposite direction of us, and had come over Mackinnon Pass earlier that day. One of them helped us with dinner (even letting us use his stove so we didn't have to burn our own fuel), one gave us salami, one came over and carefully inspected our cooking gear and took a great fondness of Laura's collapsable dish-washing thingamajig. And after pleasantries about Wisconsin and their invaluable advice about hiking over the Mackinnon Pass the next day we all sat around a cast-iron fireplace telling stories. And boy did they have some stories to tell. One Irishman told us about the time he told his boss to fuck off and about his personal experiences with the Troubles in Ireland. Their president told us a tale about drunkenly painting moving railroad cars that was so preposterous it had to be true. And they told us about Minties Moments. They gave us each a New Zealand candy called Minties and told us about an old advertising slogan that goes, "It's moments like these, you need Minties," which was to be used in any number of unfavorable times, and were given to us in case we ran into any troubles on the pass the next day.

Enough fond words cannot be said of these men (and one woman). The eldest member with them was 72. One of them had had a hip replacement not 6 months prior to this hike. And here they were, laughing and wandering through the wilderness like teenagers. One can only hope to be so amiable and so lively at such an age. They were a very agreeable clan indeed. Even the elders in New Zealand are extreme.

Day 2: Mackinnon Pass, to Mintaro Hut

The next morning we awoke cold and a bit sore, but refreshed, and after speaking with the Christchurch Over 40 Tramping Club once more were very excited and confident about Mackinnon Pass. We went to filter some water from the rain collection barrel outside of the hut, whereupon one of the trampers said, "What are you doing? Are you filtering that water? This is New Zealand, this is the purest water on earth!" I dare say they were actually offended that we were filtering their water. It was the last time we did.

Meanwhile, hopping along the water tank and biting at our water bottles were a very curious type of bird, the Kea. I don't mean to say that they're odd birds, though they are, but I mean very literally that they're curious little critters. They're a beautiful breed of parrot — one of the only alpine parrots in the world, named for the type of cry they make — and are known to tear apart shiny things left unattended by foolish trampers. And evidently, in other parts of the country, they've actually developed chemical addictions to those little rubber linings along car doors, and have taken a fondness to tearing those apart as well. I suspect they would make lousy house pets, but they are among very few animals of any concern at all in New Zealand. As far as I've been able to tell by perusing the Internet, New Zealand has absolutely no poisonous animals or insects and virtually nothing wild to be afraid of. No bears, no coyotes, just the occasional deer and quite a lot of cattle and sheep in pastures.

About two grueling hours later and 400m higher in altitude we were tramping through ankle-deep snow and looking back at the valley floor, amazed at how quickly we'd gotten so high up. It was around this time that I did my best impression of Gimli from The Lord of the Rings and said, "Why go over the mountain? Let us pass through it! Let us take the Mines of Moria!"

Now the keas flying about were generally far below us. This proved very distracting for me as I'd developed an irrational fondness of the birds and was prone to watching them more closely than the unstable, snowy footholds on the mountainside I was climbing. And as we reached the summit the snow got deeper and more unpredictable, and our feet began falling through it about every fourth step on average. Sometimes only to our ankle, sometimes up to our knees and, a few times at the top, right on up to our thighs. But we were so incredibly proud of ourselves for ascending the famed Mackinnon Pass that this was all just a novelty to us, and we were laughing hysterically every time Heather would fall up to her knees and then forward onto her face from the weight of her pack. Besides, as true Wisconsinites, this wasn't really any worse than walking to class in February, you just had more to lose if you took a tumble in the wrong direction.

And speaking of tumbling, we shortly came upon a portion of the pass that presented itself as the most ill-conceived path imaginable, pictured below.

Of course, at this point, a large cloud came blowing over the pass, limiting our visibility. Unfortunately, before this happened I noticed that the tracks you see here went along that ledge there, and next to the ledge was a good 1,500ft of sheer cliff. It seemed a bad idea to go traipsing over there, because snow has a unique quality about it, which is to say that it falls. It slides. It forms little avalanches that make it less than ideal for relying on when walking a few steps from a very long drop. And I can honestly say that this portion of the hike was far more frightening than preparing to bungy jump. People rarely die when they go bungy jumping, but people fall off of mountains all the time, and there were no guarantees on the Milford Track. It was a Minties Moment, to be sure. So we made Ron, the guide, go first.

Panorama of the other side.

The loo with a view (actual title), looking over the valley we came from.

After all that we spent a good deal of time feeling a great sense of accomplishment, and were basically ready to take on anything that came our way. We'd made the pass, and we were ready to flaunt it in the face of every damned harbinger of bad news at the Department of Conservation. The ninnies!

And then, realizing we had a good six hours of hiking still ahead of us, we headed downwards. I cannot stress this enough. After hiking upwards 400m, we went downwards 800m. Down, down, down through snow, rocky avalanche leftovers, and stairs fashioned of wood and stone for so long that my right knee was sore for nearly a full week afterwards. But what a day! We lost the trail on the side of the mountain twice in what must have been debris from a landslide or avalanche, we walked along a beautiful, brilliant blue river that had waterfalls every few feet, and always the mountains! I spent most of these days walking around with my neck craned, in awe of the immense mountains surrounding me, much like a Manhattan tourist shocked by an endless array of skyscrapers. Those mountains struck me as more beautiful than the Appalachians, the Rockies, even the Alps seemed slightly petty in comparison.

And then, lest we enjoy our accomplishments too much, it rained on us for the rest of the day and then into the night after we found ourselves overeager and venturing off on side trails to see the great Sutherland Falls. Walking through a jungle in the rain in the night is not pleasant.

Day 2 Photos

Day 3: to Sandfly Point, Milford Sound, a Reunion with the Christchurch Over 40 Tramping Club

We had a boat to catch at 2:30pm, so we wasted no time in the morning and at the crack of dawn began tramping with a brisker pace than I'd have preferred. It was a misty morning, which made the scenery resemble those Chinese and Japanese woodblock prints of mountains rising from the fog.

It felt like the longest day yet, and knowing that too many pictures, too slow a pace, or other slowing endeavors would leave us on the Track for the foreseeable future made it somewhat less enjoyable. Fortunately, the scenery was no less spectacular that day, and as we neared Milford Sound, a world-famous part of the fiordlands where Milford Track ends, the mountains got grander, the sky bluer, and the bodies of water larger and calmer.

Day 3 Photos

Then something wonderful happened. The path leveled out. The path became wider. The path became smoother and was apparently kept up in this area. And suddenly, a little yellow building came into view through the woods announcing our arrival at Sandfly Point. We'd done it. We'd finished the Milford Track. In winter.

It was a remarkably anticlimactic moment. We were greeted by one lone man with a dingy who clearly had never done the Track himself and failed to understand what an understatement and how downright idiotic it was to make remarks like, "Had a bit of a walk did you?" But that was no matter, for we had completed one of the Great Walks, earned lifetime bragging rights, and really just wanted a shower and sleep and to stop aching all over.

Then we were jettied across the sound and taken back to Te Anau.

Our first view from the boat.

Looking back in the direction we'd come from after being ashore again.

But our fun was not yet over! Wear and tired and wanting nothing more than a big ass hamburger from The Moose (our tavern of choice in Te Anau with the curious slogan of, "Where Legends Are Made."), who should we coincidentally find the very moment we got off our bus? Why, the Christchurch Over 40 Tramping Club, of course! We thanked them for their company, for their help, and for their tracks in the snow.

Later that evening, at The Moose, we saw the trampers again!

The Christchurch Over 40 Tramping Club with the Wisconsin Strictly 22 Tramping Club

Now having established a firm sense of camaraderie, we looked at each others' photos on our cameras, regaled them with the epic tales of our time on Mackinnon Pass and how we thought for sure we were going to go tumbling down the other side. Heather and Laura told them about our Minties Moment, at which they laughed gaily before making us — get this — honorary Kiwis.

"So, what did you think?" their president asked of me.

"It was incredible," said I. "It was awesome, but probably the most physically challenging thing I've done in my life."

"Really?" The 40-some-year-old's eyes widened, "This is what we call a nanny walk."

Next Post: Franz Josef Glacier

New Zealand: Queenstown, Jet Boating, Nevis Bungy Jump

2009-06-05T01:07:00.024-05:00

NOTE: I should like to start by recognizing that I've obviously fallen out of the blogging habit and failed entirely to make good on my promises of keeping this thing going following my experiences on Semester at Sea. It's been over two years since I disembarked that voyage, and since my international travels have been relatively limited. That is, until two weeks ago I spent one week in Spain and two hours in London. However, I had done some dabbling in the United States, including Washington, D.C., Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, California, and Walt Disney World. Probably some other places that I've forgotten about. So from now on this is my travel blog. First will be posts about New Zealand, and two weeks from now, New York City.

A Brief Introduction to New Zealand (Not Australia)
An odd question that I'd gotten a few times before we left for New Zealand was, "Why New Zealand?" It's important to note that nobody my age ever asked me this, because most people my age seem to know that New Zealand is the extreme sports capitol of the world, or that it's a remarkably beautiful country, or at least that The Lord of the Rings was filmed there, which seems to be reason enough for lots of folk to travel there.

The other comment people tended to make whenever I told them I was going to New Zealand would be something along the lines of, "Oh, I studied abroad in Australia, it's beautiful there!" This struck me as rather odd and started to get on my nerves after about the fifth similar incident. And there was one girl who gave Laura and I the helpful advice of telling us that since we were going to New Zealand we should go to Australia and Fiji. Because, you know, obviously the first thing to do when you're traveling to a country is to leave it for another one.

But the point remains that Australia and New Zealand are separated by quite a lot of Tasman Sea and are, moreover, two distinctly different countries. It's kind of like you telling me you're going to Morocco and me going, "Lovely! I went to Spain - it's just wonderful!" In fact, New Zealanders (Kiwis) themselves are so sick of this nonsense that when the BBC published an article on confusion over the north island's and south island's names (which apparently have never been registered as such, despite always being used that way on maps and in dialogue), one Kiwi commenter suggested new titles of "Not Australia" and "Still Not Australia."

But I digress. The answer to the original question is simply that we wanted to go to there, and we found good airfare, and the off season in conjunction with favorable US Dollar/New Zealand Dollar exchange rates effectively labeled the country as "New Zealand: Now 30% off!" So as an inordinately expensive graduation gift to ourselves, my friends Tyler*, Heather, Laura and I went to New Zealand for two weeks. _{(*Tyler is not graduating on time, but that hardly seemed relevant to buying a ticket.)}

This trip was from May 20 to June 3, and I'll be doing it in three parts:

This part, Queenstown, Shotover jet boating, bungy jumping
Milford Track, a 3-day hike through a temperate rainforest with an alpine pass, and probably the primary reason we went to New Zealand
A road trip to a hike on Franz Josef glacier

Queenstown

The airport is so small that when we reached the end of the runway we had to pull a 180 and go back to the terminal.
Given the wine, food, entertainment selection and French pressed coffee, I would never fly anything but Air New Zealand if I could help it.

We flew into a one-runway airport between two mountains, which had a friend Heather and I made on the plane rather nervous. His name was English Dan (the "English" we attached for purposes of clarification and entertainment, but he was from London) and he didn't much care for turbulence or flying close to pine trees sprouting off the side of a mountain or landing on a runway at too high a speed. Still, he was a pretty cool guy whose accent we mistook as being New Zealandish (it wouldn't be the last time), and he talked to us even while he gripped the arm rests after every bump or told us for a third time the story about how he woke up on another flight and thought he was crashing because he confused 10,000 meters on his seat's GPS for 10,000 feet. That is, until the topic of conversation turned to "I'm on a Boat", at which point Heather ceased conversing and broke into song, and then English Dan left without saying goodbye.

But there we were at the hub of our New Zealand travels, Queenstown, a quaint little town that, despite being very touristy, retains much of its New Zealand charm, and everyone we ran into was wonderfully kind and helpful, even when my first purchase of a New Zealand beanie announced us as tourists wherever we went. And you run into people often; we saw the cab driver that drove us into town from the airport about 4 or 5 times.

Queenstown is also giving Cape Town a good run for its money in terms of the most beautiful city I've ever seen, but not so much for the city itself as the scenery surrounding it. Queenstown sits in front of a few snow-capped mountains on a very blue Lake Wakatipu, with some remarkable mountains opposite, aptly named The Remarkables.

Sunset view of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu, and The Remarkables from a spectacular 3-hour hike up and down Queenstown Hill behind the city. (Click to enlarge)

Also remarkable is NZ coffee. ("NZ", by the way, is a term even sometimes used by Kiwis, but instead of "zee" they say "zet".) Almost no cafés serve filtered coffee, it's all some variation of espresso. I was even briefly in an office that had an espresso machine instead of a coffee maker. So the main drinks are either a short black (double shot of espresso) or a long black (double shot of espresso plus hot water). I never figured out how this is different from an americano, but I've seen both on the same menu so it must be. But this was good news for a coffee fiend like me, who was concerned about the availability of coffee on a Pacific island and who is too addicted to go 12 days without it.

Shotover Jet Boating

Jet boating is one of the things we were told we needed to do in Queenstown, so naturally we settled on the most expensive and extreme company, Shotover Jet, which operates on the Shotover River which snakes through Shotover Canyon. Basically, the idea here is that you take a jet boat that can operate in as little as six inches of water, take 14 paying customers, and operate it as if it were a jet ski, which means driving with reckless abandon and even doing full 360s.

The part that's most exciting, though, is not when the driver starts wagging his finger to indicate a 360 (though those were fun), it was when we'd fly down a canyon at some obscene speed, and he would veer at every possible rocky outcropping along the canyon wall, only to slide away from it at the last minute. So the extreme aspect of this particular activity is simply scaring your customers into thinking that they'll be slammed against a canyon wall, upending the boat and dropping it back down on top of them in ankle-deep water. So yes, it was fun, but by the end of the whole trip we were laughing and reminiscing, "Remember when jet boating was the most extreme thing we did?"

Nevis Bungy Jump

I'm fascinated with heights. I love being on top of tall buildings and driving over large bridges and shooting down the tallest of rollercoasters, so when the topic of bungy jumping came up I was eager and excited. To this end, of the three bungy jumps in Queenstown, we selected the most expensive, highest jump in Australasia, guaranteeing us a 134m (440ft) 8-second freefall into a nicely bouldered mountain gorge. What it turned into was a challenge of mind over instinct, because I have to tell you that when you're standing on a small metal ledge hundreds of feet from very hard ground and a rocky stream your body is telling you, "Jump? No thank you. Let's step back and go for coffee instead."

I don't know who's jumping in this photo, but it gives you an idea of scale. (Click to enlarge)

But let's go back a minute. There I was, after Tyler, Heather, and Laura had all leapt out and bounded back up successfully, sitting in a chair while all manner of harnesses and straps and velcro things were being put on me. And while the man in charge told me about how I needed to swan dive at the earth just this way or pull this red line at the precise apex of the second bounce up, I was tugging at straps because none of them felt tight enough and trying to think of a creative way to survive should the rope fail to slow me down before I went making craters in the ground.

Then I had to wobble on over to the very small ledge that you can see in the picture here, and stand there while he dropped that heavy green thing over the edge. I of course had nothing to hold onto, and imagined myself being flung into the gorge by my feet, which prompted me to say, "I do not like this ledge."

Then the guy holding my vest went "One two --"

"Nope. Hold on," I said.

"Okay. One. Two. Three."

Because, you see, the longer you stand there the more terrifying it becomes, and while every instinctive reaction was to get the hell away from there, my mind suddenly shut off, I put my arms out, I bent my knees, and did what I'm sure was a pitiful dive outward and downward.

The next few seconds were quite windy and featured a lot of brown ground coming at me at very high speeds, and of all the obscenities one would shout in an instant like this, all that came out of me was a winded, "Hoooooly craaaaap!"

And then I began to slow down. This was rather anticipated and hoped for, to be sure, but what a tremendously unusual feeling, to slow down in the midst of a free fall, and then to be propelled back up! I can't put into letters the noise I made when that began to happen, but it was much more gleeful than the intonation from the falling down part. I think I may even have giggled.

Expensive though it may have been, the adrenaline that had my leg shaking for a good 10 minutes after getting back up to the platform and the joy of falling great distances in safe circumstances was entirely worth it. We all wanted to go again, but we wanted it bigger. Trouble is we'd already started at a considerable height, so it will likely be some time before I find a bungy rope long enough to attach myself to.

Next post: Milford Track, "The greatest walk on earth."

More Queenstown photos:

A Note to Myself

2008-11-30T16:11:00.001-06:00

Definitely working on getting back into the blogging habit again...

Moving

2007-06-04T17:52:00.001-05:00

Dear Friends,

To any of you who should find yourselves meandering back to this site to see what's new with a former world traveler who has returned to the lowly existence of a typical college student and are finding yourselves disappointed with his lack of updates, you needn't worry yourselves, because I will be updating frequently again, as I have for the past 5 or so years. However, I'm in the process of moving to a new blog. Check back and I'll give you that link.

A Summer Update

2007-05-24T23:25:00.001-05:00

I've been back home for one full week now, and after about three days I did stop complaining. I'm home, I'll deal with it. West Bend isn't particularly exciting or interesting or even remotely fun, but I have to make do with what I'm given. So I've taken advantage of George Webb's 24 hours of service, and... Yep, that's about all there was to take advantage of.

Somehow, I miraculously landed a job with minimal effort on my part. Really, I interviewed and started the next day, and I didn't even need to apply anywhere! And what's more is that it's a summer job that I can stand, which is highly unusual for me. Last summer I was a janitor, and I mostly hated it. The summer before I worked in a garage and filed papers for 8 hours a day, and I entirely hated it. This summer I'm serving at the local Country Club, and I daresay I enjoy it. Sure, it doesn't pay as well as it rightfully should because they have some sort of backwards commission system for servers, but it's tolerable, and it's marvelous experience to have on a resumé if I'm ever to be someone's butler, which has long been a dream of mine - assuming I don't get hired as a chauffeur first, which I believe I'd prefer.

Other than that things have been remarkably unchanged around town. Sure, some roads have been repaved and I'm hailing the coming of Panera Breads, but my friends are the same (this is a good thing), and the city is the same. So, naturally, I can't wait to leave.

On Culinary California & Returning Home

2007-05-18T15:07:00.001-05:00

I have now been to California four times, and yet I have just learned of a side of The Golden State that I was previously unfamiliar with.

Thanks to my friend, Jess, I now have a much more thorough understanding of California's culinary delights. Since moving my brother home from Texas, I have been obsessed with the fast food chain, Sonic Burger. Sonic has more delightful drinks than Joseph's dreamcoat has technicolors. My family is particularly fond of the cherry limeades. So, knowing that Sonic also existed in California, I naturally assumed that it was the best restaurant to be found there, and it was initially the only one I was at all interested in. I was wrong.

Jess taught me the ways of a local bakery that specializes in bread and cheese, where I indulged in the best French baguette I believe I've ever had, paired with a mighty fine Camembert cheese, which - though it had the consistency of toothpaste - was also the best Camembert I've ever had the pleasure of eating. All of this was feasted on while overlooking the ocean. (And while being stared down by an especially mangy and malicious-looking seagull that had an unnaturally sharp beak.)

Next was In-N-Out Burger. This is an exceedingly popular fast food chain out West, but another one which I'd never experienced. The menu contains about a half-dozen items, none of which seem at all special. Burgers, fries, shakes. But apparently there's some sort of underground, unwritten menu. Burgers and fries come in such ridiculous ways as "protein style", "animal style", and "flying Dutchmen style". I forget what each of these are, but the "animal style" fries were rather excellent. They had cheese, onions, and "special sauce" on them. I asked Jess how all Californians knew of these unwritten methods of preparation, but she just insisted that it was something locals "just knew".

The last culinary delight was at Roscoe's, famous for its chicken & waffles. I don't mean chicken and waffles, I mean "chicken and waffles", as in, one dish. One plate, with one waffle, and one fried chicken breast. An improbable pairing, no doubt, but whoever had the seemingly stupid idea of putting fried chicken and waffles together is a genius. The waffle was excellent, and the fried chicken was of the best I've ever had. Roscoe might be giving Colonel Sanders a run for his money.

My other two accomplishments whilst evading the return home included defeating SNES' Super Mario World, as well as donning a wetsuit for the first time ever. I felt as if I looked a lot like Spider-Man, only better.

But, here I am, in my bedroom, with the oceans behind me and clocks ticking unusually steadily - no more nightly time changes. Pulling into our driveway and walking inside was rather anticlimactic. I don't know what I expected, but what I got was an excited family dog for a matter of minutes, and then it was over. I was home, and that was that. I'm only happy to see my dog and my family, and friends this weekend when they get back from school, but about everything else I'm still not so sure.

And if you're wondering how San Diego was, I can say only that I remember it very vividly, and as a thoroughly enjoyable but exceedingly depressing evening. The ship docked, I got my luggage from a small mountain of bags and wandered through crowds of parents to find and hug my own. Then most of my shipboard friends went out to eat with some of the parents, and said our goodbyes at a Ghirardelli's chocolate shop. My roommate Rick and a friend Mark and I then wandered about looking for a café, but what we ended up doing instead was wondering around a mall, buying me a pair of shoes that I'd been seeking out for 2 continents (and finally got in America, ironically), and then settling on a Starbucks, where we reminisced and talked as if we'd known each other forever. On my way back to my parent's hotel room, my cabinmate and I randomly saw our cabin steward walking down the street. Then we said our goodbyes to the ship, goodbye to each other, and I slunk off to a bathroom stall so that I could quietly cry for a few minutes.

Fortunately I now have friends in places around the country in places that I'm anxious to visit, which will always give me a great excuse to get back out of this dismal hometown of mine.

Beach Visions

2007-05-16T02:41:00.000-05:00

I miss the ship.

Japan

2007-05-14T05:59:00.001-05:00

Ship Time: 0400

A lack of fervor in that last post and a lack of desire to sleep has me finally deciding to update on Japan. What follows are some photographs, followed by descriptive haikus.

A huge ferris wheel
Sixteen minutes of mem'ries
Night's luminescence

The Seafort hotel
Selected just for its name
(And slippers with robes)

Godzilla attacks!
Wait, he's only four feet tall?
I thought him larger

Tea ceremonies
Ten minutes fun and one cup
For fifteen dollars

Pachinko abound!
Somewhere 'tween slots and pinball
I'm confused as well

Goodbye, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen Good Night (Part I)

2007-05-14T05:15:00.000-05:00

Ship Time: 0320
Time at Home: Doesn't matter, the time is the same in San Diego
Current Location: Almost back to the States

In about 5 hours we'll be docking in San Diego. Mind you, I don't believe I'll be setting foot on American soil for another 4-6 hours after that, which I'm okay with. It'll be good bonding time with the ship. I'm going to miss the ship.

I imagine that at this point in the voyage, students' blogs are getting very deep, very profound, and very depressing. I'm sick of that. We've heard the speeches a dozen times now, about how we've changed, and no one will recognize us or want to hear our stories. I suspect these things are all true, but I'm sick of being told how I feel, and I'm especially tired of people telling me exactly what going back home will be like.

About some things I am exceedingly sentimental. Saying goodbye is not one of those things. If I had my way, all of our friends would meet up and eat breakfast in the morning, and then simply go our separate ways without excessive hugging or crying. I'm not one to write long messages on people's world maps or in their journals or yearbooks, which seems to be expected of me. I've even been under attack by some people because of my unwillingness to write down sappy memories for them. I don't even like the picture slideshows. Of course I remember those things. I was there.

I'd like to use this blog as a chance to defend myself. I'm simply not the sort of person who wants to make a big deal out of departures. Of course I'm deeply moved by our arrival in America, and I'm exceedingly sad to see the band of friends that I've made part ways. It's difficult. I'm not the sort of person who meets people very easily, and somehow on this ship I managed to land myself in a circle of friends who mean a lot to me. And God knows when we'll see each other again. It's the breaking of the fellowship.

But I still don't want to make a scene every time I say goodbye to someone. It's taxing, and so widespread around the ship that it almost seems insincere. It isn't because I'm afraid to show emotions. I know my awkward avoidance of these scenes lately makes me appear callous, but it's simply a personal preference. I prefer just to go.

I have every intention of keeping in contact with the better friends that I've made, and I'm anxious to see them all again, after tomorrow. Twenty years has taught me that you don't make many good friends in a lifetime. I sincerely believe that. Call me a cynic, you won't be the first. But, for me, that belief means that I understand the value of some of the things I'm taking with me from this voyage, probably more than many other students.

The Army of the Republic Has Fallen

2007-05-13T08:17:00.001-05:00

Ship Time: 0615
Time at Home: ???
Location: ???

At midnight my roommate, James, and myself started Risk the Game of Global Domination. The sun is rising, and they're still playing. I myself lasted 4 hours and 40 minutes. This game has been going on 5 1/2 hours or so now.

I remember some friends were meeting to watch the sunrise, so I suppose I'll just join them. At this point there's really no purpose in going to bed before breakfast.

The Last Days

2007-05-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

Ship Time: 1700
Time at Home: 9:00pm
Current Location: somewhere beyond the sea

Hello friends,

The end of the voyage draws near. I know this because I've sold back textbooks (and received almost enough from them to cover the additional cost of shipping them to the ship in the first place!), social areas of the ship are filled with more people milling about than I ever knew were onboard, and my parents have left home to begin their own journey to greet me in San Diego. This, evidently, necessitates a few days in Las Vegas, but leave it to my mother to make a trip out of everything. Like the time we drove from Wisconsin to South Carolina to buy plates.

I haven't begun to pack. I hate packing. This will be done as late as possible, and I suspect that once I'm home I won't unpack until a good week or so after I've settled in.

To clarify a few dates: we dock in San Diego on the 14th, sometime in the morning. I myself will be one of the last ones off of the ship, which has to do with living in a hall of largely untalented students. The order of people disembarking was based on our "Sea Olympics", which was a shipwide competition I'm not sure I ever actually wrote about. It was a nice day off of classes, though the festivities themselves weren't especially memorable. I suppose that on the 14th I'll spend the afternoon waving to my parents from outside on Deck 7.

Anyway, I intend on spending the night of the 14th with my parents in San Diego, but the next morning they'll be taking me to my friend Jess' house in Huntington Beach. I'll fly out of LAX the afternoon of the 17th, and return that evening. [Also, friends of mine, when will you be back in town?]

I expected that these last days would be eventless and relaxing, but I'm still only wishing for that. What I've found is that we're putting considerable effort into making our last episode of SeaTV entertaining and of some quality. This has effectively consumed all of my napping time. Still, it's a good switch for us, as almost every past show has gone unwatched by most voyagers. I feel as if we'd been better off writing an episodic sitcom. The beginning of this next episode is written like that, and I'd say we did a pretty good job with it.

Apart from that, I've been trying to spend some extra time with friends, but it's proving rather difficult. However, tonight is scheduled to yield a menagerie of festivities, including ice cream cake and Risk the Game of Global Domination. I'm especially excited for this latter part - I never got a chance to play yet. Now that I've traveled the world, it seems only fitting that I conquer it. The Army of the Republic will rise again!

To the effect of closing this unnecessary entry, I've included a list of things I want to do upon my return home:

-be less resentful about returning home
-spend more time in cafés
-read more, particularly about travel
-get back out of West Bend and travel more
-feast at KFC with Alex and Willy
-play Mario Party
-reschedule my next semester's classes, ideally to incorporate Japanese
-print out and frame some of my best photos from this semester
-frame the picture that Alex gave me a year ago
-frame the pictures I bought in ports that need framing
-drink coffee. Lots of coffee.
-sleep, for a day or so

Oh, and by the way. Don't leave this blog by the wayside once I get to California. I'll post photos from the latest countries, for those of you who won't get to see them in slideshows or whatever. Also, I'll leave a link to my other, standard blog, which records - with considerably more frequency - my hugely uninteresting and terribly boring life as a college student.

What I did in Hong Kong & China Several Weeks Ago

2007-05-09T20:04:00.000-05:00

You have no idea how embarrassed I am about the typo from the last entry. I'm a stickler about spelling, too. My bad.

Ship Time: 1420
Time at Home: 7:20pm
Current Location: Still in the middle of the Pacific

Hong Kong
What does one do with a single day in a city-state metropolis like Hong Kong? Some of my friends wasted the day at Hong Kong Disneyland. I found that my first order of business was simply finding a way to escape the ritzy mall that our ship had docked at. The ritzy mall with the KFC and the Armani stores and the fanciest Pizza Hut I've ever seen. Even after walking back and forth on both floors of this shopping plaza, I could not find an exit. At one point, as I was powering around, determined to find the cheese at the end of the maze, I even had a horde of SAS students following me. I guess they thought I knew where I was going. I led them to some locked doors.

Ultimately I escaped, and spent the first half of my day in Hong Kong acquiring a Japan Rail Pass. This pass, though expensive at about $240, turned out to be the best investment I've made in a while, as it offers unlimited use of most of Japan's rail system, including some inner-city systems, and most of the bullet trains.

I didn't get over to the main island/city until about 4pm, where some friends and I took a double-decker bus to a tram that went up a small mountain behind the city. This place was supposed to offer a magical view of the city, and we suspected it would be a prime location to view Hong Kong's nightly laser light show. Well, it turned out to be intensely foggy atop the mount, and evidently the city-wide light show somehow can't be seen at all from that angle. Still, we got a good dinner, and a bit later the skies cleared and I got a few great pictures.

Beijing
The next day I boarded a plane for the 3 hour flight to Beijing. This meant departing from the Hong Kong International Airport, which I was rather excited for, because if memory serves that's the busiest airport in the world. I have a thing for airports, you see. Though my thing for airports is nothing compared to my thing for skyscrapers and other tall buildings, which reminds me that I forgot to mention that I spent several of my last hours in the city of Hong Kong walking around aimlessly and taking pictures of buildings, especially the Bank of China Tower, which has long been one of my favorite skyscrapers. And another thing about the skyscrapers in Hong Kong - and many in China and Japan - is that quite a lot of them sport flashy lights that go up and down and around the buildings. Quite colorful and highly entertaining for people like me, these buildings.

As I was saying. I was at the Hong Kong airport, which was not at all what I'd hoped it would be. Quite large, yes, but not as busy as I'd expected.

And as long as I'm talking about people (sort of), I'd like to point out that Chinese and Japanese people are not at all as short as they're made out to be. At no point in Asia did I feel "tall". In fact, I'd say on average, Asians were about as tall or taller than I am. Not that I'm particularly tall. Still, I remain taller than Alex, and that's the important thing.

So anyway. Plane to Beijing. Three hours. Seafood lunch - wasn't bad. Then we were off to Tsinghua University. Myself and about 70 other SAS students were staying at a university guesthouse. The fact that there was 70 of us was horrible, but the fact that I was with almost 10 of my best ship friends was great.

The first thing I noticed about Beijing was that the air was positively filled with little floating dusties. Communist spores, I claimed. They get in your brain. And I'm pretty sure I was allergic to them.

So we went to the university, toured their beautiful campus (complete with ponds, fish, peacocks, and pagodas), ate an endless meal of more courses than I have fingers, and went to bed. I ate a lot in China, but you know, I was generally exceedingly disappointed. I think I prefer the lo mein from Chinatown back home.

The next morning we were off to the Great Wall. Now, Beijing is anxiously awaiting the 2008 Olympics, and that's evident everywhere you go. I even flipped through the book of officially licensed 2008 Olympics products, and briefly considered buying a pen set, or a matching set of Olympics robes with slippers, but you know, I saw the stadium (incredible), and that seemed enough. Still, even with all this excitement, I was a little taken aback by the gargantuan "Beijing 2008" sign perched on a mountain next to the Great Wall. Enormous. It practically rivaled the HOLLYWOOD sign in California. Under the city's name was their slogan, "One World. One Dream." This strikes me as a particularly weak effort on the part of the Olympics committee, and also as vaguely communist.

The Great Wall itself was about what I'd expected. Mostly it's just a very long wall that's very old. Many of my friends were unimpressed by its height, and began referring to it as the "Not-So-Great Wall of China". I wasn't sure what massive monument they expected, but I must also admit that if I'd had a grappling hook, I feel that I could have easily scaled the blockade. But walking around on it was fun too, especially when we got to a staircase that was effectively a ladder, as it was so steep. I wished we'd had more time there. I'd've liked to just walk along on it, and seen how far I could have gotten in a day.

The next day we went to see Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world, which is known mostly as a place where a lot of people were brutally killed and as the place where "The Tank Man" stood, though he was actually on a street about a block away. For some reason I'd always believed that that man had been run over by that tank. Guess not. I don't know why I thought that. Maybe because I'm a cynic.

Anyway, the square itself is a very large concrete public square. On one end is Mao Zedong's mausoleum, complete with embalmed corpse, but it was closed for renovation.

On the other end was the Forbidden City, for which I was the most excited. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, which the British woman on my recorded audiotape tour insisted was "the grandest and most beautiful of all the buildings in the Forbidden City," was also closed for renovation. And covered by construction tarps. I was livid about this.

The rest of my time in the Forbidden City was spent searching for a Starbucks, where I wanted to do some filming for my documentary class. That's a point worth emphasizing. Within the Forbidden City, I was searching for the Starbucks. The Starbucks that's INSIDE OF the Forbidden City. That used to strike me as particularly disgusting, but you know, there's a million gift shops in there too, as well as 1 billion of China's 1.3 billion people. The Forbidden City was a bit disenchanting. I think the Chinese films that I love made up their own, more exciting version of it. I didn't even see ninjas.

Other memorable moments from Beijing included a visit to some emperor's Summer Palace, a visit to an extraordinary karaoke bar, and an unintended visit down an alley of vendors selling all sorts of grotesque little foods, though I really only recognized chicken feet and some large mammal's heart.

I also ate a lot of delicious pineapple. 1 Yuan for 1/4 of a pineapple on a stick. One Yuan, by the by, is something like 1/7 of a dollar. What a deal!

Qingdao
Then we flew to Qingdao to meet back up with the ship. This day was mostly a fine waste of time, as Qingdao has nothing to offer visitors but shopping. And a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Why the hell SAS chose to stop there is beyond me, but none of us were very pleased with that decision. Every other voyage goes to Shanghai or someplace cool.

In conclusion, I'd go back to Hong Kong.

A Postcard for All of You

2007-05-08T20:58:00.003-05:00

Ship Time: 1535
Time at Home: 8:35pm
Current Location: The Pacific

I belong in a travel brochure. Or on a postcard.

To Pineappleland!

2007-05-07T00:19:00.002-05:00

Current Location: Somewhere sort of near Hawai'i

I'm done.

Well, I'm effectively finished - with everything I care about, anyways. Ah, what high spirits this puts me back in.

Tomorrow we dock in Honolulu for the day. I'm considering seeking out the Dole plantation for their pineapple maze, hitting up some pancake place that's supposed to be excellent, and sitting on the beach. What I'd really like to do in Hawai'i is hop over to the island of Moloka'i, but I suppose Oahu will have to do. I can't really complain about that.

Now, how far back should I go? I've fallen rather far behind. Hong Kong? China? Japan? The charity auction? The Ambassador's Ball? That's quite a lot to cover. Let's start with this large SAS group photo, taken in Japan. In fact for now I think we'll finish with that, too:

I hope my parents weren't spending too much time stooping over that picture with a magnifying glass looking for me. It's like an evil version of Where's Waldo that's meant simply to torment the searcher. Sorry guys.

2007-05-04T05:45:00.001-05:00

Ship Time: 0140, 3 May
Time at Home: 8:40am

I'm now 7 hours behind the time at home, instead of ahead of it. We have crossed the International Dateline. I went to bed on Wednesday, May 2nd, and I woke up on the morning of Wednesday, May 2nd. And, according to my watch, I avoided getting stuck in an eternity of Wednesday, May 2nds. (Time warps at the International Dateline were my biggest fear, next to pirates, when I signed up for this voyage.)

We were told this voyage would change us. We were promised that it would. And it's hard to say whether I'm fighting that change, or if I'm simply fighting the notion of sailing home, which now seems as strange and as foreign to me as many of the country's that I visited once seemed.

Throughout the month of January and into February, the 4th of February seemed like an unattainable dream. It was not until I was in line to board this ship that any aspect of this voyage began to feel even remotely real. Even after that, I don't think I'd entirely come to terms with the magnitude of this trip until after Puerto Rico.

And now, in the middle of the largest ocean on the earth, I can safely say that the concept of returning home feels just as unreal, just as impossible.

I'm banking on the theory that if I don't write and update about Hong Kong, China, and Japan, they won't slip so easily into the past as the other ports have. Japan in particular seems too important to me to be lost in the jumbled memories I have of the world. I am at the point of recounting stories and being unable to determine which continent they took place on. How absurd is that? This voyage is too short. 100 days seemed like it may as well have been a year. Now I wish it were a year.

The International Dateline puts me almost precisely one world away from my boyfriend, who's studying in Spain this semester. The shortest distance between him and I is straight down beneath the ship, through the earth. That, is a very lonely feeling.

Continued, 2330, 3 May

I wrapped this up and slammed my computer shut last night feeling very frustrated about the nature of this week. The faculty has already begun making everyone reflect on everything we've experienced, and we still have a week and a half left! This is also entirely inappropriate because we still have a few days of classes, and these last few days are biting me in the ass like no other, particularly in regards to my documentary project, which is a great flaming ball of wasted time and effort. And what's worse is that I'm okay with that.

Of my three classes outside of global studies, I have put forth the most effort into my travel writing class. I feel that I've learned the most in this class, and I'm most proud of what I've accomplished in this class. In fact, what I've learned about writing on this ship is something I'd like to take back home with me and apply there, but I haven't yet figured out an easy way to do that. This is how I expected - and was supposed to feel - about my film class.

This morning, as if to spite me in the midst of the last few days that have been so cruel to me, I felt incredibly ill. After suppressing urges to vomit all morning, I finally gave in and thoroughly reviewed last night's dinner in the bathroom. Then I laid down for some hours, trying desperately to sleep, but not being able to given the rusty nails that seemed to be floating around in my stomach. Then I reviewed last night's dinner once more. I spent about 7 hours in bed today, which seems like an effective way to battle sickness, except for when the bed you're in is rocking back and forth, and the waves have become so inconveniently large that I'm often awoken by drawers throwing themselves open and shut.

I would rather have had somebody poke my eyes out with needles than vomit. For my money, I don't know if there's a worse physical feeling in the world than when one's stomach clenches so tight that it hurts, yet there's nothing coming out of your mouth to relieve the pain. I haven't thrown up in some years, I don't think. I wasn't at all happy to ruin that streak.

It's hard to say if the reason I've fallen ill so often on this ship is because of the enclosed space, which is ideal for viruses, or if it's simply because I've spent so much of my time here utterly exhausted. I'm leaning towards the latter. I'm now feeling so worn out that I think it might be nice to return home, after all. But I'll talk more about that when I get nearer to the west coast.

For now, I apologize, but I do believe I'm going to simply refuse to write about Hong Kong, China, or Japan. I don't have it in me. At least I don't suspect I will until some time after Hawaii, if at all. It was too much to happen in too short a time frame.

You'll just have to wait to hear about China's communist spores or when I found Godzilla in the middle of Tokyo.

Back when I was in 'Nam...

2007-04-15T12:38:00.003-05:00

Current Location: South China Sea

"Back when I was in 'Nam..."

...I turned twenty.
A Thank You to all of you who sent me birthday cards. And in fact a Thank You to all of you who've sent me any mail at all these past months. I was completely taken aback when I found 13 envelopes on our cabin door the day after we left Vietnam. A full baker's dozen! I had no idea I was so loved. Although, admittedly, three of those were from home, including one card from home that was completely blank. I'm still wondering about that one, and hoping that it isn't an indication of how old my parents are getting.

...I learned that Vietnam is not just rice fields and people wearing funny hats.
You may be surprised, as I was, to learn that Ho Chi Minh City (still referred to as Saigon by most locals) is a full-fledged city, perhaps comparable in size to Milwaukee. I mean a real city. With cars and malls and neon lights and Sheraton hotels.

Saigon is a happening place, and I feel compelled to return some day.

...I survived crossing the street.
Vietnam has crosswalks, as we do in the States, but most of the time it isn't really that simple. We were taught the art of crossing the street before we got off of the ship, which is fortunate, because I don't know if I'd have figured it out by myself. It works like this:

One stands at the edge of the sidewalk and notices a nonstop flood of cycles and other vehicles coming at you from both directions. One then takes a deep breath, looks straight ahead, and walks forward at a normal pace. The trick, here, is that the drivers go around you. For this reason, it is key that you keep a steady pace, lest you get swept away by a motorcycle that couldn't anticipate the change in your stride.

...I experienced marvelous methods of transportation.
In Saigon, the primary method of transportation is the motorcycle. The streets are a sea of motorcycles. And for one US Dollar you can get someone to drive you just about anywhere in the city. That $1 also gets you one of the most thrilling rides you'll ever have, as drivers there are quite aggressive.

Three of my days in Vietnam were spent at Cat Tien National Park, an obscure nature reserve somewhere far away from most civilization. Here we took a boat up a river so brown with mud that I felt as I were in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

There were also many drives through the jungle, going to or from points of interest, and these were particularly enjoyable. The pickup trucks were standard enough, but in the bed of the trucks were two wooden benches, set high enough so that riders sitting on them can easily see over the top of the truck. These sat two or three comfortably, but we always had four on each one. The drivers paid no mind to us as they sped down the roads. We enjoyed the ride, occasionally getting whipped in the face by passing branches, and at one point throwing our hands in the air and screaming, as if we were on a rollercoaster. That was shortly after we sped through a brief downpour. I swear the rain in Vietnam is fashioned out of something sturdier than the regular water rain we have back home, because it felt like we were getting pelted with acorns or something.

...I went trekking through the jungle.
As you might expect, the jungle was filled with all sorts of insects that had me on edge. In our bathroom (which was not quite in the jungle), I leaped about three feet into the air as a spider scurried past my feet. A spider of the giant variety, much like the one I described in Mauritius. The fabric of nightmares, those damned spiders. Of course I had a steadfast resolve to kill the beast, so that it wouldn't be crawling around my face in my sleep. And I'm pleased to report that, by hurling a shoe across the bathroom, I squashed it good.

In the jungle itself were great big millipedes, that looked like little armored death ropes. There were also cicadas aplenty, chirping up a deafening storm from time to time.

And the butterflies. Butterflies abound! A beauteous bounty of butterflies, fluttering about, especially at the hottest times of day. One landed right at the end of my nose. This also led to some highly amusing antics by one girl with us who was afraid of butterflies, and continually ran away from them, swatting furiously. As if they were bees. Silly girl. Afraid of butterflies? Really?

...I learned that Vietnam is a country, not a war.
We had been repeatedly told in our atrocious Global Studies class that "Vietnam is a country, not a war." This statement typically preempted Vietnamese war history. But for the tourist not seeking out museums or monuments, one would never guess that this place was so devastated by a war hardly three decades ago. As an American, I expected at least some degree of hostility. We are, after all, responsible for the deaths of millions of Vietnamese, many of whom were not soldiers. But no such rancor existed. We were always greeted with smiles, or things we ought to buy.

But in regards to this war museum and its gift shop, I thought it appropriate to transcribe a journal entry I wrote for one of my classes:

There was a gift shop. Of all the things. A gift shop. Amidst the tanks, planes, prison cells, and images of unimaginable violence, Ho Chi Minh City's War Remnant's Museum had a gift shop.

I spent several minutes gazing wide-eyed at a photograph of an American soldier holding the exploded remains of a Vietnamese fighter. The fighters' head and one arm were the only clearly discernible parts, though they were all connected by an entangled mess of flesh. Less than half an hour later I was in a gift shop. A gift shop.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Did no one else see the sick irony in selling miniature airplanes and helicopters fashioned out of bullets - the same type of bullets responsible for heaping piles of dead civilians pictured so brazenly not 100 yards away? And figurines of tanks and bombers were also being sold, figurines whose life-sized counterparts littered the yard surrounding the museum. These were vehicles in which and by which many people died. Perished. Were these trinkets really the sort of thing people wanted to bring back from Vietnam? And everywhere tourists posed in front of helicopters and tanks to have their pictures taken. Why?

I have been twice to a concentration camp in Germany. I have seen the photographic evidence of what happened to those victims and I stood where many of them died. But that site is left as a memorial, and is not commemorated with any Goddamn gift shops.

Geographically, the Vietnam War was far more removed from us than the Holocaust of World War II, and yet the War Remnant's Museum hit me much harder; far more personally. In Germany I saw horrific depictions of what they did to the Jews and other groups. In Vietnam I saw what we did to the Vietnamese. Horrible things, about which I apparently knew very little. I was never taught in school that Americans wielded a guillotine as recently as 1970. I was not taught that elderly men, women, and even babies were made targets. I did not know that Americans had ever put so much effort into contriving creative ways to torture humans.

The Germans are cautiously aware of their history. They know that history can repeat itself. This is a fact still somehow overlooked by the United States. In high school we spent weeks learning about the Holocaust in different classes throughout my time there. Why is it that I never learned about the ways in which the actions of American soldiers during the Vietnam War so closely emulated the actions of the Nazis?

Somehow all of these monstrous acts get labeled as war crimes, and they are then excused as a result of chaotic times of warfare, and are packaged up in neat glass boxes and put in museums around the world. Poof! What the United States was responsible for in Vietnam less than 30 years ago is ancient history, and something worthy of mention only in Vietnam itself, where few Americans ever go.

I guess I'll close with that, because it's difficult to follow such morbid notions. That, and I'm quite tired, and have been putting off this post for a few days already.

Malaysia Update

2007-04-10T11:27:00.002-05:00

Ship Time: 8:40am
Time at Home: 10:50pm, yesterday
Current Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

On our way into port we somehow gained an hour back overnight, which was an unusual switch. Geographically speaking, that didn't make any sense at all, but who am I to complain? If Vietnam chooses to be an hour behind the rest of the Southeast Asian countries, then God Bless Vietnam.

And for those concerned about pirates; we were not attacked, but we did go full speed during night on our way to Singapore, we were stationed for a day to refuel and all that.

The Ship
I'm not a morning person. At all, really. But I love port mornings on the ship, because most people are gone, and my undying love for the ship makes our alone time very special. Especially over a breakfast of old French toast and stale Froot Loops, like this morning.

Malaysia
Malaysian culture can only be defined in terms of its being a hodgepodge of other cultures, primarily Indian and Chinese. It was curious seeing "Little India", having just come from Big India. This mix is displayed quite clearly in other ways too, as when my friend Jess and I went to a movie at the theater (for 6 Malaysian Ringgit, approximately $1.75). The film was in spoken Japanese, with three sets of subtitles. This effectively meant that if there were more than one line of dialogue, there were 2 lines of subtitles, but in 3 languages, so that there was six lines of subtitles, which meant the screen was lost somewhere behind a veil of foreign words in mismatched fonts. It was quite the experience. The languages were Malay, English, and Chinese. The film was about the worst I'd ever seen, and at one point the main character screamed, "Corpses to the left! Corpses to the right! Everywhere, corpses!" This had Jess and I disturbing the rest of the theater with our laughter for at least 15 minutes, and each other for about four days afterwards. [And for anyone who cares, the Japanese film was titled Loft, but I suggest you avoid it.]

Another curious thing about these Asian countries is that you can go to a movie in the theater, but pirated versions of the DVDs are already prominently displayed for purchase everywhere, even in mall stores. And for generally around $1 apiece, I bet the Hollywood execs are pulling their hair out, and may now search me out after I confess to having watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on DVD. But I wouldn't mind if they sought me out to punish me, because I've got a bone to pick with them. (Shredder isn't even in that movie!)

The varied ethnicities of Malaysia make for an interesting spectrum of political opinions. Of course these all reflect poorly on America, one way or another. Rick and I had a good conversation with our cab driver about 9/11 conspiracy theories, and then he asked us if Hilary Clinton was going to be the next president. In every country, it seems, I'm astounded by how much everyone seems to know about the upcoming Presidential Elections. But then I remember it's only because the entire world is anxious to see Bush abdicate the throne. Somebody was telling me about one cab driver they have who actually liked Bush. But they liked him because of "what he does to the Muslims." This is why I usually introduce myself as Canadian.

Actually, one of the best brief political conversations I had was in India. In India people get excited to meet Americans. They want to take pictures and chat with us. So I told this one guy in a second-hand silk shop that I was from the United States (because you have to say "United States," or "USA," not "America", which refers only to two entire continents). He immediately went, "Ah, John F. Kennedy! I love John F. Kennedy. He's the reason I love America. You used to have such good leaders in America... Not so much anymore. You should find more leaders like John F. Kennedy!" As I left I agreed with him, and told him that I would see what I could do.

The best thing I did in Malaysia was hike Penang Hill, which is a misleading name for a small mountain. The trail was called the "Jungle Trek", and it became quite clear why, as we were immediately suffocated by the intense humidity, and one would not have made it far if they decided to run off through the dense foliage. I chose to stay as far away from everything but visible dirt as I could, though, after seeing a monstrous centipede that has at least 6 or 7 inches long, about an inch wide, and had a small legion of wickedly grotesque, dancing legs. It was straight from King Kong, I tell ya. I never had a deep aversion to insects, but the more I see on this voyage the more all insects are beginning to bother me.

And then there was the monkey incident. DON'T FEED THE MONKEYS. People tend to ignore these signs. Monkeys, consequently, learn that people come with food, and frightened people throw food at monkeys.

These monkeys are not especially large. Walking they aren't higher than my knee, though standing they might actually be up to my waist I suppose. But I figure, you know, that because I'm three times their size, they'd scamper off up trees if I walked along down the road I was on, through a bunch of lazing monkeys. After all, roads are people places. Monkeys don't belong on roads. So I'm walking along, and I take a photo of this monkey.

He, apparently, thought the black box in my hand contained food. That, or he was outrageously offended by my picture of him. He went off like a diva. Either way the reaction was unpleasant enough, as he started following me, making the most horrendous sort of hissing/squawking/snarling noise I've ever heard a creature of such a small size make. I'd rather have a rabid dog barking at me. So he's following me, and I'm clutching my camera, thinking that this monkey wants it. And I was not going to give up the camera. Of course I didn't have any food to throw at it.

"Rick, what do I do?" He laughs, "I don't know." But by the time I had frozen in place, uncertain of where to go, and a second monkey started coming towards me, nobody was laughing. Some Japanese tourists up the way looked at me blankly while their son threw peanuts at more monkeys. (The writer here is of the firm belief that this entire incident can be blamed on that Japanese kid, who I desperately wanted to kick in the face for throwing peanuts at the monkeys.) So I was standing there with a monkey on either side of me, one hissing intensely, and less than 5 feet away from me. I was starting to think of defensive maneuvers I could make, in case this thing decided to leap at my face. Could I get my foot high enough and in time to bash its skull in? Mostly, I just clutched my camera, and prepared to kick its head if it ran at me.

But after it stood next to me for about 5 seconds without moving, I think I subconsciously determined that it was not going to jump, and if it was, it wasn't going to do it yet, so I turned around and power walked right out of there. It followed me until some bastard threw an ice cream cone at it.

That's why you don't feed the monkeys.

While in Malaysia... Post About India

2007-04-05T04:33:00.002-05:00

Written Sunday, April 1, 2007
Ship Time: 0955
Time at Home: 9:55pm, yesterday

It's not that the interport student from Malaysia is boring, and I don't mean to disrespect her by typing up a blog entry while she's speaking, but I'm finding it very difficult to concentrate, you see. I just keep thinking about how she has an uncanny resemblance to Björk in Dancer in the Dark. I wish I could show you a side-by-side picture of the two.

It occurred to me yesterday that I'm now beyond halfway around the world, which means that as we sail East, the direction we've been sailing since day 1, I'm now sailing closer to home as opposed to farther away from it. It also occurred to me that the shortest route home is now through the molten magma of the earth's mantle, at some obscure angle below me. Now that is a very strange thing to consider. It makes the world seem rather small. But the world must be pretty small if we can sail around it at 20 miles per hour in 60 days or however long we're at sea.

Tomorrow we arrive in Malaysia, and I have to admit that Malaysia is the country I always left out when I recited the places I would see before I left for this voyage. In fact, up until about yesterday, Malaysia was still the country I forgot about. I knew as much about Malaysia as I knew about Mauritius before we left (read: nothing), but Mauritius I always remembered because I didn't even know Mauritius was a place. I know Malaysia exists; I just know nothing about it. Still, I'm excited.

I'm guessing you're all wanting me to write about India, but that is somewhat of a daunting task. I don't even know where to begin. I think, perhaps, that the best thing to do is wait until I have more time, and am not in class.

Written Monday, April 2, 2007
Ship Time: 0125
Time at Home: 12:25pm, yesterday
Location: George Town, Malaysia

If this works according to plan, I'm updating this from an Internet café on our second day in Malaysia. I won't talk about Malaysia yet. Just India.

I don't know what to say about India. I haven't had enough time to digest "India", and I mean that only figuratively, because contrary to expectations, I did not get at all sick in India. No Delhi Belly. No traveler's diarrhea. No-sir-ee. In fact, I'm proud enough to say to the world via the Internet that I went 3 full days in India without defecating. (It's a little traveling trick I picked up years ago.) Anyway, I'm quite glad, because I can't imagine that taking a shit on the squatting toilets of India is an enjoyable experience.

But, in all honesty, India was was just so much that I don't know where to begin to tell you about it. So I'm just going to post a slew of pictures instead, because it seems the best way to "share" India, I actually have a chance to post pictures, and I know all of you have been clamoring for photographs.

Here are a bunch of my favorites. Enjoy.

Written Thursday, April 5, 2007

We leave Malaysia tonight. You needn't worry yourselves, photos are still following this, the longest blog entry of all time. I won't write about Malaysia yet, because I haven't given the country enough thought, because I'm still sitting in it.

In fact, I'm sitting in a Starbucks, which are well represented around the world. And I learned a little trick; Starbucks have free wireless internet. How convenient.

So anyway, I'll tell you all about Malaysia next time I write, and how I was almost attacked by a monkey.

I thought it too precarious a place to lie out, but the goats didn't mind.

I bought one of these. Guess which one!

You're familiar with the gods and idols of Vishnu, Shiva, and Ganesh? Well this one's "Jess".

We got lots of "special discounts", although it seemed everyone was anxious to give you "very good price" no matter what. But apparently our arrival was a big deal, as it was in all the newspapers, and announced on prime time television before we got there.

Inner courtyard of our homestay host's beautiful home.

Coconut water.

Look, Ma, no safety nets!

It's easy to get the kids to like you.

At the school in the village I stayed in. (Above & below.)

Lunch at our host's home.

Village Market, Part I

Village Market, Part II

Ah, finally less than a million degrees.

Hindu temple

"10 Rupees per picture!!" (I didn't pay.)

Carpet weaving.

Kids at a school for the disabled.

India will wear you out.

Saying goodbye.

Teaching the Americans how to dance.