.c.h.a.n.g.e.l.o.g.

it's like I don't know how to do anything else anymore

2010-08-02T12:04:00.000-04:00

      Hiked up the southern mesa today. All the geology here is this great deep red igneous lava rock. It's just super fun to climb on these giant rust-colored porous rocks with loads of traction and infinite handholds.
      From the top, you can really see how oasis-like the town is. Nestled between the huge mesas and separated from the main road by a couple miles of thick palm forest, it's really a gorgeous little settlement carved out of nowhere.
- 19 March 2010, San Ignacio, Mexico

      We got up early with the intention of hiking out to the bus station, but just outside town, this old geezer pulls up in an astoundingly decrepit beater and offers us a ride. He takes us out as far as the highway while I practice my crappy Spanish on him. We manage to catch an earlier bus. Go geezer!
-----
      Stopped in Santa Rosalia for a couple hours. With rickety old wooden buildings, paint peeling, and mariachi music wafting through the air from the open doors of tiny shops, it's an endearing little rundown western town, this breezy Saturday morning.
      Plopped down at one of the many taco stands for a couple tacos. For $1 each, they're pretty delicious.
-----
      Okay, screw the tacos in Santa Rosalia. Asadero Danny's in Mulegé has the best carnitas tacos, full stop. This is some serious slow-roasted deliciousness right here; it could be very dangerous if it ever fell into the wrong hands.
- 20 March 2010, Mulegé

      After dinner, a pleasant, light fatigue sets in, just a hint of a thing in the shoulders, not real tiredness, only a touch of warm weariness. That sense of an imminent good night's rest.
- 23 March 2010, La Paz

      We drop camp so it'll be ready for later. Our bright orange tent is pitched in the middle of a deserted beach. Our front door (tent flap) opens on to white sand and three different shades of blue ocean.
      Kayaking amongst the insane pink bulbous lava formations out on the absurdly blue Sea of Cortez in the afternoon's ridiculous golden light might as well be full-dose hallucinogens, compared to your average reality.
- 24 March 2010, Isla Espiritu Santo

      Strong winds make the buildings here rock, gently.
- 19 April 2010, NYC

      Chloe: It's *really* easy to make a new human. I mean, with the whole creating-a-new-life, a-new-person, an-entirely-new-existence-you're-responsible-for thing, you'd think it should be harder. All you have to do is *have sex*.
      Me: You should have to climb something.
- 21 April 2010, NYC

      Etienne: Dreams shouldn't be about wanting to *be* something. Dreams should be about wanting to *do* something.
- 8 May 2010, Boston

      It's mind-boggling the volume of people moving, always moving, though this city, on its face, under its skin, in its guts. Corpuscles drip, drip, dripping into stretched metal boxes rushing through this connective tissue just beneath the surface.
      The trains are quite beautiful; silver streaks racing through their dark tunnels.
- 11 June 2010, NYC

-----

I'm off to Palau. Farewell. I will miss you all.

It's just appalling, really

2010-05-01T15:28:00.006-04:00

Is it a sign of old age to become sickeningly lazy? I mean, look at me. I've got all these great stories, but rather than sit down and edit them properly and weave an enchanting narrative that gently strings them together into a humorously self-deprecating yet deeply moving saga, I'm taking the easy way out. Straight from the journal. Again! Geez, I disgust me.

14 December 2009 - on the way to Swakopmund, Namibia

It's refreshing having your own wheels. Detour where you like, blast your own ipod, put your feet up on the dash, kick back, and stretch out.

21 December 2009 - Etosha National Park, Namibia

Apparently, when driving in the reserve, you're meant to remain in your vehicle at all times, as there's always lions about, seen or unseen, and chance encounters with wild cats don't usually turn out so well for humans.

Of course then, during our game drive, when an unusual screeching noise begins wafting up from the port bow, we cheerfully hop out of the car to investigate. I end up having to jack up the car and pop the wheel off, as the others stand guard with watchful eyes. Not that you'd be able to see a lion coming anyway, (it'd pretty much be like, "Hey, what was that nois-AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGHHHH MY SPLEEN!") but it gives us a nice comfy false sense of security, and we snuggle right up. After getting the wheel off, I dislodge a pebble that was grinding the brake disc, and sweat a bit more as I reassemble everything. So, after some exposed roadside repairs, no mauling or dismemberment. Sweet!

22 December 2009 - near Rundu, Namibia

Peacocks are wandering through our campsite.

[ed. We never get to find out what roast peacock tastes like. Horrible, I hope.]

23 December 2009 - Caprivi Strip, outside Popa Falls, Namibia

They have these thorn trees here in Africa. Full, tall trees, with nothing but huge, gracefully slender, terribly vicious thorns as long as a finger and as sharp as a needle. What the heck's the point of that?!?

[ed. I was digging those blasted thorns out of my hand for *days*.]

25 December 2009 - somewhere in the Caprivi Strip

After dark, I'm headed to a friend's camp (now equipped with proper light and an appropriate conscientiousness about where I step), when I see three guys we're traveling with, three grown men, ahead on the path. They jolt to a stop, a momentary confusion, and suddenly start fleeing towards me with distinctive hints of panic mixed with stupid glee. As they near, they slow, out of breath, and crowd in next to me like children, pointing and giggling and whispering. There's a frickin' hippo up ahead. We debate silently about what to do before we tiptoe back to the spot (I mean, obviously we have to go back and check out the giant dangerous wild animal. We'd never forgive ourselves if we didn't). We shine our lights into the darkness. They whisper in awed tones about how huge it is. I still don't see it. I don't see anything. All I see is black, nondescript night. I say so. "You don't see it because it's so big," my mate whispers. I pull my frame of reference back, and I realize that what I thought was "just more night" is actually the bloody thing's massive torso. Not ten feet in front of my nose is a two ton hippo, pretty much engulfing my entire field of vision. This is an animal the size of a Volkswagen. <aside> Hippos are notoriously aggressive and kill more people in Africa than any other mammal. </aside> About one and a half breaths after my eyes focus on the enormous beast, it starts moving and rustling, and I'll tell you what, I was back down that path and out of there before you could blink. And we'll try to pretend that at no time did I scream like a little girl. Merry Christmas.

3 January 2010 - outside Grootfontein, Namibia

The clouds threaten us all day, and the further we drive, the more distinct the storms ahead and around become. With the help of the broad African sky, at one point I count five separate storms in the surrounding skies. We manage, however, to avoid most of the rain all day. Until, of course, we turn off the main road, and the angry, menacing clouds finally have their way with us. The rain comes down in sheets on the mud road. We watch the car ahead slide from side to side in the muck as we too wiggle our rear end. In certain places, the uphill road has just given up and become a river. We arrive in good spirits, as only playing in the mud can bring, and on cue, the moment we find shelter, the storm passes. Our cars, which used to have colors, are now all just brown.

We have a bed for the night and hot showers, welcome luxuries after so many days of being out in the bush. The electric lights seem [ironically] unnaturally bright, and our group unconsciously lingers more outside than in. Perhaps the cool night is more familiar to us still; we haven't adjusted yet.

9 January 2010 - Soussusvlei, Namibia

It's just two of us now. We race the sunrise as we head into the heart of the dune sea. The looming black shapes in the pre-dawn darkness slowly resolve into massive dunes the color of rust.

We pick the tallest dune to climb, and afterwards, breathlessly rest at the top, the strong desert wind drying our sweat. We run, jump, and laugh our way down the back side into Dead Vlei, a graveyard of trees.

I see mirages out in the desert.

-----

Bonus episode:

20 March 2010 - really really early in the morning, the bus stop in Mulegé, Mexico

Leroy: "Look, a poo piñata."
Me: "A what?"
Leroy: "A Winnie the Pooh piñata."
Me: "Oh. Uh, right. Of course."

Baja overland

2010-03-30T05:37:00.005-04:00

A big map

Thanks to Marco for a killer kayaking trip out on Isla Espiritu Santo.

History of the journey, episode one

2010-02-14T21:15:00.007-05:00

A big map

A prequel, if you will. The same deluxe route map treatment for my earlier southeast Asia trip, though with less detail, as time has wearied my memory banks.

History of the journey

2010-02-13T23:34:00.010-05:00

A big map

I've put together a nifty map that traces the precise trail of breadcrumbs I followed through southern Africa. It contains places, dates, routes, modes of transport, and various significant details and events (e.g. snake bites, bungee jumps, etc). It even has pictures and blog entries linked into some of the cute little pop-up info bubbles. In fact, it likely has more detail than anyone [other than me] would ever care about. Zoom for more detail. Enjoy.

brighter excerpts

2009-11-30T08:06:00.013-05:00

Some more cheery excerpts from my journal, to leave you with a better taste in your mouth than snake venom.

18 October 2009 - Off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa

It's not until the great white's teeth are wrapped around the tiny cage you're in, the cage shaking wildly, you doing your best to keep your face out of the hulking beast's gaping maw, yeah, that's just about when things start to get seriously nuts.

19 October 2009 - Cederberg, South Africa

We drive into the mountains further and further, and the road gets smaller and smaller, as we wind our way back and forth slowly up the seemingly sheer faces. Across the plains are wheat fields upon wheat fields stretching far until they fade into distant misty mountains. We drive until the road becomes a dirt track, leaving a rooster tail of dust trailing behind us. We drive until the road becomes nothing more than a scarce rocky path, the car barely clambering up the slope. We drive until the end of the road.

At the end of the road a pale orange house sits, far from civilization. The house is ranch-like, low and wide. Completely off the grid; solar and gas powered, and fed water from a mountain stream. Nearby rock pools provide fresh, natural, swimming. The peaks surround us, the African scrub our carpet.

Even though we're pretty high up, a warm breeze keeps our company well after dark as we cook our simple evening meal over the fire.

16 November 2009 - Nkhata Bay to Chizumulu Island, Malawi

Yet another lazy day spent in the lodge, but as evening fell, we packed and escaped. We made our way aboard the Ilala, a steamship over one hundred years old. The bowels of the powder-blue beast were frenetic with human bodies and cargo of every variety, crammed into every cranny until not even a breath could pass. We crawled and inched our way through with out unwieldy packs, slowly ascending the mountain of humanity and its infinite creations. Upon reaching the top deck, the air was clear, the crowds thinned. We sprawled out for the journey.

A four hour steam through the dark waters of Lake Malawi, under a star filled sky, brought us to our destination. We crept our way off the ship in the dead of night.

21 November 2009 - Chizumulu Island to Likoma Island, Malawi

A blistering hike with all our gear took us over the mountain to the other side of the island to catch the local boat over to Likoma. Parked in the shade and waited for favorable winds as local children harassed us (marveled at our strange hair and my tattoo and piercings). A few hours of waiting, and we joined a small local boat with about forty others for brutally shadeless hour-long ride in the heat. Songs broke out initially, but as the unrelenting scorch of the sun set in, the huddled masses became more subdued. Upon gaining the far shore, we sought shade for a brief respite. If the morning walk was blistering, then the afternoon was fatal. Matters did not improve when we ran out of water half way along. The midday African sun and no water. Fucking brilliant. We arrived just on the brink of death, gasping for water. A bit of furious gulping and a quick swim, and humanity was restored.

25 November 2009 - cruising on Lake Malawi

Me: "Are we driving through that?"
Captain: "It's too big to go around."

-----

I'm well, spirits high. The current plan is to head to Namibia shortly, where I should be able to upload some more photos. Hope you're all well, and I miss you so.

48 hours

2009-11-30T07:15:00.009-05:00

26 November 2009 - Liwonde National Park, Malawi

22:20 - Walking back to camp from the showers that night after dark, I feel a strong prick on my left foot. I pause, dismayed, and shine the light down to see what sort of mischief has transpired, to find a single bead of blood growing on the inside arch of my foot. A quick flash of the light back to the scene of the crime, and laying there tense is a thin black snake maybe two centimeters wide, and a meter long, no pattern. A black mamba.

Black Mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) - Among the most venomous snakes in Africa, known for being very aggressive when threatened and will not hesitate to strike with deadly precision. Reputed to be the fastest moving snake in the world. If the victim does not receive medical attention, symptoms rapidly progress to severe abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, cardiotoxicity, and paralysis. Eventually, the victim experiences convulsions, cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, coma, and then death. Without anti-venom, the mortality rate nears 100%, the highest among venomous snakes.

</definition>

22:40 - After a mad scramble to wake the appropriate people, I get hoisted into a car off to the first of what will turn out to be many stops. I apply a tourniquet above the bite and keep it lower than my heart. (Later discovery: a tourniquet is not the correct first aid for a snake bite.)

23:05 - Liwonde Health Clinic. We arrive to a dead building. Five people running around banging on every door for several minutes manages to wake up a nurse. Meanwhile, I sit in a wheelchair in the deserted clinic halls, and light up my last cigarette, of the pack, and maybe my life. The pain is radiating up from the bite now. I can feel it coursing up my spine into my neck and out to my extremities. I ask for a beer. Because hey, if I'm going to go, I might as well go happy. No one takes me seriously, but they let me smoke in the clinic.

23:15 - I'm releasing the tourniquet every fifteen minutes or so for a bit to try not to oxygen-deprive whatever tissues down there are still alive. It does not feel nice when I do this; rather it feels like my muscles are being shredded slowly, tenderly, through a meat grinder, starting with my leg and up through the rest of my body. The local snake expert shows up. He's wasted. Completely smashed out of his mind. He none too gently prods me a couple times before I decide this is worthless and we better try the next place.

~23:45 - Tourniquet's off now, leg's raised, on the advice of the sober nurse at Liwonde. When we roll into the Zomba clinic, the entire staff is kneeling on the ground catching dragonflies. They don't move when we pull up. They don't move when I get wheeled up. They don't even get out of the way of the wheelchair until someone I'm with starts screaming at them.

The doctor ambles up and listens for a few minutes and then ambles away for a while. This one's sober at least, but is somewhat lacking an appropriate level of urgency. Community decision: we're gone.

~00:00, 27 November - We're back in the car racing for Blantyre, the largest city in the country. I pass out from the pain.

~01:00 - Mwaiwathu Private Hospital. Possibly the best hospital in the country, at least we've finally arrived at something that resembles a medical facility.

I'm screaming in pain now, but keep refusing painkillers until I can give the doctor clear symptoms.

~03:00 - I've finally delivered my medical report, and the Vicodin is kicking in. I drift off to the doctor saying they don't have the anti-venom on the premises...

Morning, ??:?? - I come to, groggy. I'm thick with pain meds, but I can still feel the dull ache of the venom pushing through the haze. I'm only now starting to finally truly realize I'm actually a goner if that anti-venom doesn't show up soon.

I'm in pretty bad shape. Even if the pain was light enough for me to move, I wouldn't be able to for all the tubes and wires they've got hooked up to me. All I can do it lie still, and wait.

Time passes.

~10:20 - The nurse strides up and brandishes the anti-venom like a trophy. In it goes. It burns, it burns through my veins and arteries. But as its searing flows through my vessels, it leaves in its wake nothing, no pain; peace, at last. My leg is swollen to the size of a tree trunk and still immobile, but I'm free again - I can curl my fingers and turn my head and twist my shoulders. I can even sit up. Redemption. At least for a while, since I'm blissfully unaware of the anti-venom side effects yet...

11:30 - I'm well enough to take visitors, and they're a welcome sight. They've been spared the sight of me through the worst of it (or so I think). We're having a jovial conversation about how I almost died when I start shivering. I don't really feel cold. But the shivering gets worse. I'm shaking violently and uncontrollably now, and my visitors' eyes are getting wide like saucers, which, let me tell you, is not comforting. My neck is so tense, I think it's going to snap, and my teeth are chattering like a wind up toy. I call over to the nurse, she takes one look and rushes to the phone. The doc is there a minute later injecting me with something that makes everything go dark.

Early morning, ??:??, 28 November - I barely come around through thick mist. There's a machine beeping loudly near my head, and it's distinctly not a friendly beeping, not a warm fuzzy beeping at all. The nurse and doctor are there, moving and speaking over me, but through the haze I don't understand anything. Again I drift off.

~06:00 - I wake up, possibly the first time in two days. I'm still a little cloudy, but I feel okay. Nothing weird in my body; no pain except for the leg. The machine near my head is beeping in a very soothing rhythmic way. I doze.

~10:00 - Doc stops in. He looks a combination of surprised and relieved to see me perky. I try not to think too hard about that. Apparently, I look good enough to be downgraded out of ICU. I spend the rest of the day staring at the ceiling, getting measured and prodded, and slipping in and out of sleep.

22:20 - 48 hours later. I've had dinner, and someone snuck me a chocolate bar for dessert, so I'm feeling pretty good. Almost all the tubes and wires have been removed so I can sit up and write this. I'm still weak - my hands shake and I tire easily, but I feel okay.

Thanks to Doctor Leo Vigna, Peter and Maresca and everyone at Chinguni Hills, Stephan, the random french guy, and Tavis, the wandering Aussie, for driving me all over the country in the middle of the night, and of course Nadine who was there for all of it. I would be dead if not for them.

time for reflection

2009-04-24T07:50:00.002-04:00

It's been almost two years since I left home, left everything behind, abandoned material bondage, to stroll out into the world to see if there was anything worth seeing. It turns out there is some worthwhile stuff out here.

I've seen the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. From lush green jungles to pristine, indescribable blue ocean horizons. Pitch black new moon night skies filled with more stars than my feeble mind could encompass. Thunderstorms from ten feet below the surface of tumultuous, gray, rain-splattered seas. Dawn's mist caressing silent red clay mountaintops.

I have sat on planes while the Earth and familiar things spun away carelessly below. I have ridden rickety old buses through treacherous hairpin cutbacks, white-knuckled and making mental promises to sort out that final will and testament if only, please dear precious bus driver, if only I could make it through with my vital organs intact. I have floated down the most foul stenched rivers tolerable; from my journal, I quote, "...the river smelled like ass. Fish ass. Dead, rotting fish ass."

I have learned some unexpected lessons: Always carry toilet paper. Don't drink the water. Every nation in the world has translated, re-recorded, and filmed a karaoke video for the Macarena. This is as bad as it sounds.

My hair has changed color.

I have ingested some, um, interesting things. And further, I have quenched my parched throat with some dubious concoctions. One such evening was spent cavorting with Cambodian gun traffickers.

I have negotiated stupendously new levels of motor vehicle congestion insanity, and I have found quiet peace, alone, in thousand year old ruins. I have wandered far, far out of the warm little centers, out to where no one could ever find me. And it was nice, for a while.

I have seen the inescapable trough of unfathomable poverty. And I have seen happiness blooming therein.

I have saved four lives.

I have lost one.

I have several scars I didn't have before.

I have a journal full of writings, and very little of what I started out with still remains, but after all this, I have found nothing to temper that empty spot inside me, the vacuum of you, the people I've left behind. I wondered [worried?] in the beginning whether I'd miss you less and less over the passing hours and days. It turns out that no, my ponderings were groundless, after all this.

So I think of you fondly now, as I look out at an immaculate white sand beach crowned with a crimson sunset. Don't worry, it's been too long now, and it's time; I'll see you soon.

twenty five

2009-02-19T06:12:00.003-05:00

This is absurd 1982 chain letter nonsense that earned the USPS a pile of cash and made a lot of people think they were going to die within the week. However, this particular one is actually an interesting exercise.

1. I have never wanted a pony. A unicorn or a mermaid would be pretty cool, but better would be a box of infinite monkeys. Except for the poop problem.

2. I like sunsets better than sunrises.

3. I celebrated xmas for almost 10 years straight with someone else's family.

4. After 9/11, I seriously considered joining the marines.

5. I wish my French was better. (So I'm practicing.)

6. I made it 31 years before someone close to me died.

7. My favorite response to a posed, unanswerable (by choice or philosophy) question is, "I am a very small dog."

8. I can tell time by the sun.

9. If I were a vegetable, I would be a pineapple. My favorite color is blue, no, yellow.

10. I'm atheist. Really. For real. A lot. Seriously.

11. I'd like to know everything a doctor does, but I don't want to be a doctor.

12. I wear a compass on my watch band. I use it often.

13. I think about suicide at a rate of around once a decade. Thankfully, the rate of attempts is far lower.

14. I don't like sharing.

15. I think dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight sounds exquisite.

16. I'd like to go to Africa next.

17. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

18. I lie sometimes.

19. I tell the truth most times. Especially when it's inappropriate. e.g. "You are an idiot and the best thing you can do for the human race is sterilize yourself."

20. I learn more through hardship and failure than through success. I think success may make me complacent. Who's the cliche now, eh?

21. Living room fight club is amazingly cathartic.

22. My jaw really really hurts right now.

23. Living out of a backpack, lo-fi, is extremely liberating. Electricity and running water are expendable. Candles and mosquito nets, on the other hand, are invaluable.

24. I've lived the American Dream and won. Now what?

25. I honestly don't think there's an answer out there, but I'm going to keep looking anyway.

And there you go.

I wonder if moderation is naturally selected for

2008-10-23T02:04:00.002-04:00

Of all the True Things ever said about me, I still like Packer's the best. (You can ask him about that.) However, I think perhaps we might all agree that moderation was never my strongest point.

I, as is my nature, have signed on for rarely taken (but often talked about in revered, hushed tones) technical trimix (breathing a mix of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen) dive training. It is so cool. You actually use gases that would kill you if you breathed them on the surface. In normal recreational diving, the manuals always tell you (truthfully) that even if you do something horribly wrong, you'll likely live happily ever after. In my tech manual, practically every other word is "death." Yeah, and in between "death," they like to insert "permanent injury." Sweet. Sounds like a proper challenge.

The standard depth limit for normal human** diving is 40 meters/130'. With trimix, I'll be able to go to 75 meters/250' (that's approximately the roof of a twenty five floor building, in the opposite direction). There's some amazing things to see down there. In the Pacific, there's a sunken Japanese WWII carrier with planes and tanks *still on the deck*. She lies in 67 meters/220' of water. I am so all over that. At those depths, there are things that very few other humans have ever seen [and lived to tell about it]. Clearly, I totally have to go there. Yup, I suck at moderation.

It's been a while since my last missive. I left the Palau ship when the season ended in June and returned to Thailand to work on my teaching chops. (If any of you want to learn to dive, I'm a relatively slick instructor now. Well, relative to before, at least.) Teaching, while rewarding, is somewhat consistent and uneventful. Mildly unworthy of an adventure note, which is my excuse for the egregious lack of recent front line reporting. I know, lame excuse. I did teach the Captain of a US Navy rescue and deep salvage ship how to dive. I felt pretty good about myself that day. Go forth and save some lives sir.

I miss you all terribly, and I know I keep promising and bailing, but I will actually make it back to the States at some point for a visit. In the meantime, next time you climb to the 25th floor of a building, look out the window and think of me.

**I think the standard depth limit for normal chicken diving is something like 500 meters/1650', but I can't be sure. I believe it varies depending on whether it's fresh or frozen. And don't even start about feathers.

oh snap!

2008-06-16T02:43:00.004-04:00

New photos up.

I'm still floundering about a bit with the whole taking-pictures-underwater shtick, but you know what they say, practice makes a lot of deleted photos. Anyway, almost all the new ones were taken underwater, so forgive the sometimes dubious composition. Getting fish to hold still and pose while you photograph them is like herding three-year-old children who have just smoked crack and have access to motor vehicles.

One other interesting thing of note: all the main subjects of the underwater photos are animals - no plants; you'll understand why that's both cool and non-obvious if you go have a look.

Uploading 8mpix photos on a 56k dial up connection is like the least fun game ever.

It's never quite like the first time

2008-05-29T06:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was my first time in the chamber.

As I surface from a beautiful dive with two guests and my videographer, I find out there's some sort of medical emergency involving one of my instructors who was out on a fun dive (no guests). She's just gone to 366 feet (111 meters) and shot to the surface.

For reference, after one hundred feet, you start feeling a little drunk. At two hundred feet, you've just pounded the ugly half of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Past two hundred, the oxygen in the air you're breathing becomes toxic. You start losing control of your extremities; your arms and legs twitch uncontrollably. Keep going, and you lose vision and hearing. Then you have a seizure and drown.

Apparently she panicked when she went blind.

So I'm still wet from my dive, and I'm arranging emergency evac for this girl who can't feel her arms and legs, and is drifting in and out of consciousness. There are so many reasons why she should be dead, I'm actually pretty surprised she's still twitching.

An hour later, we're putting her in the hyperbaric chamber. But they need a diver to go in there with her in case she seizes during recompression. The normal tender is on holiday in Bali. The nurses don't dive. Guess I'm going in.

It's a two person chamber: a metal tube about seven feet long and five feet in diameter. It is not big. Quite the opposite, it is very very small. Over-sized coffin is just about the right image.

No synthetic fibers, no electronics allowed inside; compressed 100% oxygen is serious combustion risk. In fact, there's a hose system to partially flood the chamber in case of fire. A tiny metal tube, pressurized, with a fire inside? Not cool.

We get all cozy, locked in nice and tight. Down to sixty feet we go (pressure-wise), sealed up for a few hours.

It wasn't so bad in the beginning. Mostly just chilling out, being mildly bored (I had forgotten to grab my book when I was arranging the emergency evac, silly me).

Your voice sounds different in there. It's the density of the air, I think. Sound travels faster, everything is more high-pitched.

After a while, you start to feel like you could really go all-the-way insane in there. You completely lose track of time, except for the doctor's voice over the ancient staticky radio telling you how many hours left. Nothing to do. No space. Sit. Lie down. Fidget. Sit up. The witty banter dies out. You need to pee. But you're stuck in the chamber. Fidget. Lie down. Sit up. You're hungry. There's no food. Lie down. Sit up. Fidget. Dust off the dried salt crystals on your legs from the morning's dive. You need a shower. Lie down. Fidget. Sit up. Try not to have a seizure. Fidget. Fidget.

On the bright side, cigarettes and beer are remarkably effective after you've been chambered. Of course, if you were actually sick when you went in, those things are forbidden, so it's a benefit reserved for tenders. Zing!

Epilogue.

The girl is still having motor function difficulties in her legs, but otherwise, she's made a decently miraculous recovery, considering there's a grocery list of reasons why she should be hanging out with Davy Jones right now. She was chambered again today for five hours; I was locked out for 24 hours, doctor's orders, so some other lucky sucker won the tender prize today. But it looks like I might be headed back in tomorrow. Doh.

And one more final note for those thinking about learning to dive: please don't let this scare you; this girl didn't have an accident. She fully intended on going that deep. She didn't tell anyone beforehand (because we would have stopped her), but it wasn't an accident (except maybe for the panicking part). I suspect some serious preexisting mental health problems or unprecedented stupidity, which I guess are the same thing. She's definitely getting a psych eval before getting discharged. Whatever, the story's about me anyway, not her. Focus!

Diving is fun and safe. Seriously.

Wish you were here making funny faces in the tiny chamber windows.

a moment on dry land

2008-04-25T22:55:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note.

I've started working on a liveaboard yacht in Palau. It's amazing. We're out at sea for six out of seven days, and I've got about two hours off a week, but it's utterly and completely worth it. Sharks, turtles, whale sharks, mantas, crazy Superman currents (because you fly like Superman), and schools of fish so dense they blot out the sun. Ironically, I have an underwater camera now, but not enough free time to upload photos.

The ocean is so so so blue. Every beautiful shade of blue. Uninhabited rock islands coated with gorgeous lush jungle. Cruising on speed boats with the wind in your hair, a rainbow on the horizon (all the time here!), the blue ocean dotted with tiny islands as far as the eye can see, and the bright clean sun in the sky. Even when it rains, it's still amazing with the infinite drops splashing in the sea.

Come have a holiday with me. I'll be running the 150' yacht in about two months. Seriously, I'm training now to be Big Cheese.

My couple hours on dry land are nearly up, so I'm back to the ship.

Miss you terribly.

back on home base

2008-03-21T04:31:00.005-04:00

I think I'm starting to find there's actually something to that whole road less traveled thing. Walking off into the jungle has a much higher probability of maximal awesomeness than, say, taking a tour of yet another city. Or perhaps I'm just getting southeast Asian city fatigue.

Safely back in Thailand now, with a medium-sized pile of fantastically therapeutic, mildly crazy adventures in my journal, I figured I should probably report in on the highlights, lest the highlights alone grow into a novella-length monster. Well, also, of course, to let y'all know that I got out of Cambodia without further incident, and that in fact, Vietnam went quite well. That's somewhat of an understatement, I suppose.

Canyoning is bad ass. It was me, a mate (met in Saigon), two local guides, and the mountains and the river. I promise I'm not allergic to other humans, but having nature to yourself seems a certain kind of special to me. It wasn't the fifty foot rappel down that sheer cliff face that was the best. Or the eighty foot rappel *in* the crazy waterfall (hang on to that rope with the weight of all that water beating down!). The best part of my day was the free hanging inverted (yeah, upside-down) descent into a waterfall called "The Washing Machine" because it spins you in circles. I like this sport. Not another human all day, hiking around the mountain jungles in the central highlands of Vietnam, jumping off cliffs, rappelling down waterfalls, and riding rapids like water slides. Didn't suck.

The very next day, we (the same canyoning crew) did a decently serious bike trip, around fifty miles. It took us about five hours. We started in the mountains right below the cloud line, and biked up a few miles into the clouds. We're literally riding in the clouds. It's cold; we're a mile about sea level. I'm soaked (clouds are made of water - cold water, I learn). But then we start a twenty mile downhill (continuous for twenty miles!) descent. I'm riding through mist and rain and mud in zero visibility, and then suddenly, we drop below the cloud line and everything opens up. The clouds are caressing amazing, lush mountains nestled with rolling green valleys. All the while, I'm screaming down curvy, car-commercial roads, whipping around deserted mountain cutbacks at breakneck speeds (brakes are for wusses). I must've whizzed past more than a dozen crashing waterfalls cutting paths through vivid red clay. I had to constantly remind myself to watch the road every now and then, as the scenery was so gorgeously distracting. The uphill bits later in the ride got pretty brutal, but at no point did I give up, get off, and push. In the end it was all worth it. We started on a mountain and we finished at the ocean. The South China Sea never looked more lovely than after that crazy ride.

Yep, those were pretty awesome. But. If you do one thing in all of southeast Asia, if you had only enough time to do one thing here before you died, you must, without a shimmer of doubt, kayak Halong Bay. Not some boat tour, not some luxury cruise. You must go to Hanoi (or Haiphong) and book the longest kayaking trip you can find (the longest one I found was three days and two nights). Yes, the water there is the purest, clearest deep turquoise I've ever seen. Yes, the majestic, towering limestone karsts thrusting from the sea to the sky are utterly, unequivocally stunning. But those aren't the reason to go. Those aren't the reason to kayak the bay. It's the lagoons. Here, an unadulterated excerpt straight from one day in my journal.

---

March 10, 2008 - Halong Bay

I kayaked four today, each more spectacular than the last. The first one, we (you need a local guide) slipped through a meter-high archway at the base of one of the [thousands of] karsts, to find ourselves in a totally enclosed lagoon. Clear and blue, surrounded by massive, lushly coated karsts, and accessible by that small archway on the ocean. We're getting pretty close to paradise here.

Back out on the still blue sea, we paddled through a limestone tunnel maybe a hundred feet to get to the second. Eagles soaring overhead and complete silence save for the call of birds echoing off the cliffs reaching at the heavens. The unrippled, reflective water, a color that I thought only occurred in dreams.

A short cave off that lagoon took us to the next gem. A lagoon within a lagoon! Red-faced monkeys frolicked in the trees blanketing the cliffs, eating various leaves, leaping from bough to bough, and generally ignoring their brother primates gazing up at them from below.

The grand finale. From the postcard ocean, we entered a deep, dark cave. For a thousand feet, we made our way slowly and carefully through the pitch black cave (good thing I brought my flashlight), dodging jutting rocks and ducking stalactites. When the cave finally (it seemed like forever in the exhilarating black) opened out into that lagoon, that brilliant, immaculate, totally encircled pool, the beauty brought tears to my eyes. I'm serious. My eyes welled up. I couldn't speak. It was overwhelming. This unimaginable perfection, accessible only through this insane cave, only when the tides and currents are just right, it pretty much rocked my world. Hard. Then we did the cave a couple more times because it was so frickin cool.

---

So yeah, I had a decent time in Vietnam. I'm back now in Thailand regrouping and vaguely looking for a diving gig that will open a door to somewhere new. I've got leads in Mozambique in Africa, Bunaken Island in Indonesia, and Palau in Micronesia. My friends in Fiji aren't responding to my emails. Hmm. Anyway, we'll see if any of that pans out.

In the meantime, I hope you are well, and miss you ever so much.

Taking one for the team.

fate smiles on the bold

2008-02-16T04:53:00.001-05:00

Cheeky fucking bastards. I almost want to thank them. Almost. The thieves turned in my passport to the US embassy (my first time on US soil in about six months). Hopefully, I'm picking it up tomorrow morning. Too bad I had to bribe the local police $130 to sort this crap out (at least I'm getting this bribery thing down - you know, you can actually haggle a bit with the right attitude). But whatev, after a bit of a stumble, what do you do? Get back on the damn pony.

To answer a few questions: No, they didn't have weapons (thank goodness, or things could've turned out much, *much* worse). Yes, I was somewhat, though not incomprehensibly, drunk. No, it wasn't a friendly mugging, they did actually attack first and didn't bother with the niceties of asking for my money (which I would've frickin given to them happily, stupid punks). Yes, I busted out my (albeit drunken) ninja skillz, and yes, that's why they didn't get all my valuables. I don't really condone violence, but they struck first, and by the way my knuckles look and feel, I bet they don't feel too good today. In other news, it's really hard to do shit when your hands are messed up. Fetching stuff from my pockets hurts like a bitch.

Sorry for the somewhat less-than-eloquent message this time, but I just wanted to let you all know how much I appreciated all your emails of support - seriously, it's what got me through this day. Knowing all you guys are backing me up means so indescribably much when you're this far from home. And I wanted y'all to know I'm a little shaken, but I'm shaking it off, and pushing on to Vietnam as soon as documentarily (I don't think that's really a word) possible. (I know it's a bit cliche, but those fuckers can't hold me back.) You'll have to forgive me, as Vietnam will utterly lack any visual corroboration (see: stolen camera). But I've got a new notebook, so maybe we'll have some nice pretty reports from the front again.

I'm aiming for the jungle again in the Mekong delta when I cross over to Vietnam; peace, quiet, and some immersive, enveloping nature should be just what's needed for some recharging.

Thank you all again for all the shout-outs; it means a lot, and it just makes me miss you all so much more.

Your point man on the front lines.

unexpected update

2008-02-15T05:52:00.006-05:00

I got jumped by three guys last night. Coming home from a bar. In Phnom Penh. I'm okay, except for some scrapes and bruises and bloody knuckles from fighting them off. They made off with my camera and my passport (how annoying is that). Ironically they didn't get any money or cards. But.

But.

But, they also got away with my notebook, on which all of my (hopefully) entertaining entries have been based. That really sucks the most. The fuckers.

Well, anyway, I'm now stuck in this god-forsaken place for a few weeks while I sort out a new passport, which is more an irritation than actually difficult. Drop me an email to tell me you love me in these frustrating times.

Here is the entry I was working on before this all happened. My most recent notes have obviously been lost, so, yeah, it's vaguely incomplete.

-----

Cambodia is interesting, though mostly in the sense of the [supposedly] Chinese (the true origin is actually undetermined) curse, "May you live in interesting times."

For example, Khmer (the vast majority of people in Cambodia are ethnically Khmer, to the point of synonymy) traffic is barely contained chaos. There are no obvious rules of engagement. It seems to be a moment to moment negotiation between the dozen obstacles nearest you, which are often moving in two dozen different directions at wildly varying velocities. Admittedly, in most of the region, it is acceptable to drive the wrong direction on the wrong side of the road (is that a double negative? whatever, you know what I mean), but Cambodia is insane. Like when the bad guy in the high-speed Hollywood car chase gets trapped on the wrong side of the divided highway and is forced to charge headfirst (or should that be hood-ornament-first?) into oncoming traffic. Except it's not just the one guy over there going the wrong way; it's him, his entire extended family, his barber, the guy who sold him that buffalo that one time, all the people from the next village over, etc, you get the picture. And in all that empty air between all those cars swerving everywhere, add approximately one gazillion motorbikes carrying anywhere between one and five people with optional livestock (I've seen multiple live pigs on a single bike). Finally, attempt to navigate in that mechanical death soup on a bicycle (this stuff should be on X-Games). It can be exhilarating or horrifying, depending on how in control you are of your fight-or-flight response.

Wise or unwise, I hired [The Crappiest] bicycle [In The World] to brave Khmer traffic and explore the Temples of Angkor on human power, clocking fifty-something miles over three days. No permanent injuries, and I had a frickin' blast playing chicken with tour buses (I did not win often). Angkor Wat, though worth seeing for bragging rights, was underwhelming. I expected it to be bigger, grander, more, but that might be a result of over hyping. Or perhaps it was the suffocating crowds of tourists (I'm talking Times Square levels here). There were other, far more engaging ruined temples, many with no other people around at all.

Quiet, reflective, ancient. I best liked wandering around and exploring the ruins with winding, maze-like passageways and chambers that I could explore in silence and solitude. I was astounded by the sense of peace that some of these massive, millenia-old ruins instilled in me. Overall, there's a zen Indiana Jones feeling to the whole place: you're in the middle of the jungle with (hopefully) no one else about, climbing (literally) the steep, broken steps of giant stone ruins, peering down zig-zagging halls that dance with light and shadow, slipping through narrow openings into dead-end rooms only to find the way forward is a hole in the ceiling one hundred feet up. The huge, chunky, rough-hewn stone blocks, with which all these ruins are built, also lend to the adventurous feel, offering up small handholds and footholds, enticing you to scale those walls and venture deeper.

In addition to fantastic ruins, Cambodia also has an extremely well developed sense of food poisoning, more advanced than I have yet encountered on my travels. In the span of about two weeks, I was seriously ill twice (fever, chills, the works), perhaps a result of my tendency to constantly order the weirdest possible thing on the menu (kangaroo tastes like venison). (It might also be because there's a different standard of hygiene here.) I did wuss out on the big fat hairy spiders on the snack stand at that bus stop, but I had just recovered from a two day bout of digestive apocalypse that morning, and my go-go-adventure-meter was still pretty low (I know, lame excuse, blah blah). I bet my insides are collecting a nice variety of parasites.

goodbye Lao, hello Cambodia

2008-01-30T04:41:00.006-05:00

The Mekong is a big river (my guidebook says it's the 10th largest in the world by volume). A big muddy river. Up in northern Lao where I met up with it, it carries so much silt that it no longer resembles water; it is brown and opaque. It only takes a couple boat trips on the Mekong before it starts to sink in that I'm in a totally different place now (I can barely remember where Kansas is, let alone have any illusions about being there). Whole families bathing in the river, fisherman on long boats throwing nets at dusk, small farms pushing right to the edge of the riverbank, waiting for the rains to flood their fields. And of course, the unkempt jungle in between.

Clearly, there needed to be some trekking into the jungle. I (and a mate) hired a local guide to lead us into the mountains and jungle of northern Lao. After clambering (on all fours, at times) over three mountains and fifteen miles into the jungle (and a couple swims in some fantastic mountain waterfalls), we finally stopped for a few days at a hill-tribe village. Bamboo huts on stilts with thatched roofs. Pigs and chickens and goats and the odd buffalo wandering about (get yer organic free-range right here). There was no electricity, and no running water in any usual sense of the term. It's remarkable when you find yourself without such ubiquitous things, sometimes you realize how much you really don't miss them. Going to sleep when it gets dark, and waking with the light seems so intuitive. Writing journal entries by candlelight has some kind of romantic charm. (Prehistoric charm, but charm nonetheless.)

Also, mosquito nets = awesome.

Of course, in the spirit of things, I had to try some of the villagers' daily chores, which generally involved watching someone do a chore for a bit, and then seeing if I could have a go at it whilst the villagers chatted and giggled amongst themselves at the antics of the silly inept foreigner. Interestingly enough, they didn't stop me from manhandling the construction of the grass broom or even the weaving of the thatch roof (I suspect those holes weren't actually supposed to be part of it, though they *will* think of me during the rainy season); they just seemed to offer up new fun tasks for additional comedic performances. Let me share with you this: it is very very fun to hack around in the jungle with a machete. It's also remarkably easy to chop your own leg off. Forget shooting yourself in the foot, machetes are where it's at for serious self-mutilation. I managed to emerge unscathed, save for some new and interesting blisters, but I hope they don't starve next winter because we botched up their teak field too miserably.

Over the past month (I don't know, has it been a month? I'm not really sure what day it is), I have ambled my way south along the Mekong through Lao; it is a gorgeous gorgeous country. Not a few days have been spent lazily reclining in a hammock, gazing at the picturesque river framed by giant karsts, and reading a book to the sounds of the gurgling water. I do find that I miss the ocean, after having spent so long in such close proximity. But it's not long now, as soon I'll be heading for Vietnam's expansive coastline on the South China Sea. But first, the Temples of Angkor await.

I've just crossed the border into Cambodia, and find myself in a small border town on the Mekong. The last five or so miles on the Lao side of the border is a dusty dirt road in various states of [de]construction. The three foot dips in the road were, well, entertaining; I'm glad my pack didn't fall off the roof. Lao immigration consisted of a small wooden hut on the side of the road with three guys inside. Not even a weak attempt at a gate or anything, though I'm sure they probably had automatic weapons in that hut, and that is gate enough for me. A bribe, a stamp, and it's a sweaty hike further down the dirt road through no man's land. About a hundred meters later, the Cambodian side of the border appears, which, funny enough, is a wooden hut with three guys inside. (I shouldn't be unfair: the Cambodian hut *was* on the opposite side of the road.) A couple more bribes, a sticker, a stamp, and I'm safely(?) in Cambodia, which has a phenomenal likeness to the dirt road in Lao. A little further on an exciting mix of dirt and paved roads, and voila! Civilization! Well, at least it has electricity, if not flush toilets. But hey, hopefully tomorrow night I'll be in Siem Reap, just a hike away from Angkor Wat, one of the seven or eight wonders of something or other.

I miss you all, and hope you are well. I do wonder now and then what it would be like to return to the States, to return home. How severe would the culture shock really be? Or would I just easily fall back into old patterns? Well, until we meet again, at least know that I think of you often.

New Years

2007-12-31T05:36:00.002-05:00

It's 88 degrees, and there's a sunset happening right now that you only see in surrealist paintings. I went diving today in the big blue and hung out with some sea turtles, who were very chill.

Since last report, I've finished my scuba instructor training, and I've been backpacking around Thailand for a couple weeks. One highlight was a beach in the southwest on the penninsula that's reachable only by long-tail boat. You get into this little port town and then board this dodgy boat with a long propeller attached to the outboard motor and ride for an hour over open ocean to arrive at a pristine white sand beach, encircled by towering, impassable limestone cliffs. There are no motor vehicles of kind (see: impassable cliffs), just some bungalows dotting the beach. The water is a beautiful emerald hue, and when you're floating in the sea, looking up at the sunset framed by the gorgeous, sky scraping cliffs, it's pretty frickin zen. I'm fairly sure if you look it up, it's the definition of Getting Away From It All.

I hope you all are well, and wish you a proper happy new year (it'll be the year 2551 by the Thai calendar), and I yearn only that I could be with each and every one of you to roll it over. It'll still be mid-morning or barely afternoon for most of you when it turns the big 8 here, but I'll hoist one for you even if I'm splashing around in the salt water (which I feel would be a superb way to welcome the new one).

In several days, I'll be off to backpack [more] around southeast Asia (Lao, Cambodia, and Vietnam next) for a few months, so comms will be even more scarce than they have been. I will post from the road when possible (though I suspect mountain villages with no running water are unlikely to have much internet).

I miss you all, and send you all the best.

Happy New Years.

PS. Next year, for xmas, I want a pet squirrel. Yes, they exist. And yes, they are actually as awesome as they sound.

mini teenie quickie

2007-09-25T04:04:00.001-04:00

There is a tradition in diving that for your 100th dive, you go naked. Well, I've known several people to hit their hundredth, but no one I know has actually pulled off the naked dive (often it's a silly costume or a wig or some such). Excuses usually run along the "There's customers on the boat" or "The water's cold." Bollocks, really. Obviously, I, being the tradition-follower I am, decided it was my responsibility to uphold this venerable practice and set a positive example for others. In consideration of the customers on board the boat that day, I unleashed my glory at depth (taking off my shorts with fins on was somewhat challenging), and regained my modesty before surfacing (putting on my shorts with fins on was extremely frickin challenging). The water was a bit chilly, but nothing unmanageable, and my dive buddy made some disparaging remarks about being blinded by my pale ass. Overall, a good time. Which may have to be repeated.

To mark the recent completion of all my pre-divemaster courses, I have once again gone platinum blond. Obviously, this has nothing to do with aesthetic appearance (yeah, right), but rather a favor to all those divers I may soon lead. They'll definitely have no trouble picking me out of a crowd now, eh? The looks I get from all the Thais are so worth the price of admission. "Wait, he's not Thai, wtf?!?" Damn tootin', I'm not Thai; whassup NYC!

In closing, a lesson for life. Swimming in the bath-warm ocean at night is wonderful. Mobile phones, however, do not enjoy swimming in salty water nearly as much as humans do. They tend to get unpleasantly (and non-functionally) crusty. Alas, another casualty of a careening drunken night. Au revoir phone, you served me well. My new phone has Thai letters above the English ones on each of the number keys. It's nuts!

Say hi to America for me, with heaping, steaming, non-crusty piles of love.

knee deep and rising

2007-09-10T04:31:00.002-04:00

I can see the ocean from my room. Heck, I can see the ocean from my bed. When it's sunny, the water is blue and clear and you can see little tiny islands miles away. I wake up in the morning and look out and think, "Today, I'm going to cruise out to *that* one and see what's *underneath*." When it's overcast, the ocean's sort of green and dismal, but hey, it's still the ocean and some damn fun to play in.

The food is delicious. I've been eating gorgeous Thai food every meal for less than $3 a pop. That's drinks and everything. I've tried scorpions ($.45) and grasshoppers ($.30 for a bag). I have not yet consumed anything that I couldn't identify, except for this weird deep-fried miniature frog thing. But I'm calling it a frog, so there, identified. Grasshoppers taste better than scorpions, which, to be honest, are a little too bitter for me. Noodle soups, curries, it's all just so irresistably good. In fact, after I finish writing this, I'm gonna go get some. And maybe a beer ($.90).

Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing) is serious. There's a bar here where they have nightly matches, and they do not mess around. I saw a guy get kicked in the head so hard, he was fully horizontal before gravity had a chance to take over and he started dropping to the mat. Ong Bak in real technicolor life. And before you even ask, no, I am not going to take lessons. That shit is way too hardcore here. They have whole new levels of violence that we don't have words for in English. I'll stick to playing with fishies. Speaking of fishies...

The diving is fun and challenging. I've done a crapload of courses since I've been here; some have kicked my ass and made me feel like a superhero at the same time. I just earned my Master Scuba Diver rating; I am fully qualified to search for and rescue you if you're unconscious at the bottom of the sea. Lifeguards? Heh, wusses. Try finding a lost diver in the middle of the ocean (it's a big place), bringing them up from 40 meters (that's the same height/depth as a thirteen floor building) without getting bent (ouch), and towing them and their fifty pounds of gear back to the boat in three foot choppy waves. I, as rescuer, am at no point allowed to drown. Oh yeah, let's not forget the CPR and first aid and 100% pure oxygen (can you say fire hazard? on a boat?) and defribrillators (large amounts of electricity are exactly what we need near the pure oxygen. "No, it's okay ma'am, I'm a trained professional") once back on board. See what I mean about having a course work me over while still feeling like Batman? Nice. I've got a wreck course tomorrow to get wreck penetration certification. And then I'll be able to save you if you're lost at the bottom of the ocean, unconscious, and *inside* a frickin sunken pirate ship (yes, only pirate ships :) ). All in all, I think it would not be a reach to say things have been fairly sweet so far.

It's not all hugs and puppies though. Other than the 90 degree F water temperature at depth (imagine the air temp if the water is 90 degs), the diving conditions here are probably the worst I've even seen: low visibility and crazy, unpredictable currents. Sometimes you'll be swimming along happily when an underwater sand storm comes out of nowhere, engulfs you, and tries it's very best to introduce you to Davy Jones. On the flip side, I feel like it's the perfect training ground, since I'm getting to be a seriously ninja diver. Hiyaa! Take that, foul sand storm! You'll never defeat me and my trusty utility belt! Now where did I put that Bat-shark-repellent?

The wildlife is vivid and completely different than the western hemisphere. I've seen a dozen types of coral I've never seen before, and countless new fish and sea animals. Like clownfish living in sea anemones. I found Nemo! So cute! They play with you like "What is this weird thing blowing bubbles? I should investigate!" Even the land flora and fauna are different. There are trees, yes, trees, that are totally different. I've been to North, Central, and South America, and I ain't never seen trees like this. I am fully convinced that this is awesome.

So, overall, life is pretty good. I like to say that any day out on the ocean is a good day. Diving, swimming, cloudy, choppy, sunny, whatever. Any day on the ocean is a good day. Lately, I've been having a lot of good days.

I miss you all like I'd miss my own damn limbs.

first post

2007-08-10T04:54:00.002-04:00

In retrospect, the 18 hour flight over was far more palatable than those six hour transcontinental suckers. Perhaps it was the all-you-can-eat Thai food, the all-you-can-drink beverages, the several dozen on-demand movies, or maybe it was that upgrade I sprang for that let my seat recline almost all the way. Or maybe it was the quiet resignation that I was going to be on that damn plane all day and there was nothing I could do about it. Regardless, kapowie, I'm here.

It's hot. And humid. About the same as a bad day in NYC, I think, but I haven't bothered figuring out the frickin metric yet, so I don't really know what actual the temperature is. (Yeah, yeah, I know. x*9/5+32. But I've got better things to do, dig?)

Pattaya, it turns out is the second largest city in Thailand. They're not kidding. There's a street here that's like Bourbon Street times one million, if you trade the drunk frat boys for Thais and Europeans. People keep warning me that I'm going to be shocked, but I try to explain that I'm from New York and that it's crazy there too, except for it not being filled with Thai people. They don't quite get it.

The diving is, well, a learning experience. I've only been out two days so far. Day One: Three meter waves on the ocean on the way out to the dive site. I almost went over the side. Very exciting indeed. Good thing I am pretty much Anti-SeaSick Man. Day Two: First dive involved less than one meter visibility. That means when you look down, you can barely see your feet. Luckily, I left my compass on the boat, so navigation was a little tricky. Lots of hot stay-close-to-the-fins-of-the-guy-in-front-of-me action. I managed to avoid getting impaled by any of the kabillions of huge, beautiful sea urchins they've got here (colors! the sea urchins here have colors!), probably due to my awesome ninja skillz. Then, same day, second dive, gorgeous clear water, and spotted a two meter long sea turtle free swimming. Two meters long! Biggest one I've ever seen. Nice.

The shop's filled with characters, as is par for the course with dive shops. Lot's of Brits, a couple Yanks, and a smattering of random other countries (Turkey? Kuwait?). The one major thing everyone has in common is they all drink like superheroes. Oh, and they dive sometimes too. Too soon to see if there's any keepers in the lot.

The battery on this computer I hijacked is about to kick, and I have to study for my Hunt For Buried Treasure course (seriously), so it's time to sign off.

Stay well, keep out of too much trouble, and damnit, miss me a bit, will you?

radio silence

2007-08-05T14:02:00.006-04:00

Moments, moments now. On the verge. Just a fistful of hours remain as I nearly complete my inevitable acceleration towards escape velocity, soon to careen free from the inertial bubble that is The States. I know that my communications thus far have been pitifully intermittent, and the horizon sees them only becoming more so. The phone is getting turned off this week, and interpoo access on the other side will hopefully dwindle dramatically (if all goes according to plan). Aloha grid, you have served me well.

After learning to surf in San Diego (surfing is fun, hard work and surfer girls are very, very hot), camping in northern Minnesota (getting lost in the cold, dark wilderness sucked, but clambering up that frickin mountain was totally worth it - also, fires should be built *before* it gets dark; it's far more difficult when you can't see what you're lighting on fire), partying in Los Angeles (they party hard, no messin around), swim training in Chapel Hill (think leaner, sinewy, and way faster than before, which, relative to now, was basically a constant state of near-drowning), and a beautiful, week-long beach wedding on Cape Hatteras (I survived unhitched), we are now mere moments away from finally achieving intraplanetary orbit. It's so close I can taste the atmosphere.

After I alight on the far side of the planet in Thailand, I'll be almost perfectly jet lagged by the twelve hour time difference (vs EST), but I'll be sure to report in as soon as I can on the trials and tribulations of life on a beach. We can shoulder our hardships together (flip-flops or barefoot? swim or dive? the blond or the brunette? both?) and rejoice.

I miss you all dearly, hope you are well, and my next toast will be to you, my absent friends.

all that has come before

2003-03-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

is here