Another birthday has come and gone. 66 years as an earthling. It was nice in this far away land of Roatan to get emails from my son and daughter, niece and sister and brother in law. The internet tap root survives. Along within the well wishes came also came news of another incident of my Mom's 87 year old struggles with age. Viruses caught in the PI turning into flu that settled in her chest then prolonged dehydration that turned into loss of any appetite and weakness and anxiety to fear. Thankfully my daughter Lisa was there on Maui to get her into the hospital to find out that a PA had subscribed massive amounts of antibiotics for what he thought was pnemonia thus leading to her inability to eat followed by dehydration. A doctor cut her off the excessive medication and my mother finally relented and let my sister know about her weekness and they hopped on a plane and flew over to help take care of her with liquids and coconut water. She's better now. But the age old questions about our mortality and generational passage again comes to the fore and we reacess our present states, review the past and try to see our futures. It's a never ending human process that we put off dealing with as if we had all the time in the world until we know we don't.
I've had some major adjustments to make here in Roatan to the incessant winds,and driving rains followed by stiffling humidity and heat. We go to the other side or end of the island. I've made adjustments to my expectations of reasonable quality and design and lack therof in all that is around me: wrong fixtures for this climate rusting away into corroded hollowness, a rental house with a 2 1/2 gallon water tank, property managers that don't know the first thing about electro mechanical devices and instead depend on local plumbers that also know nothing,
hoards of taxi drivers in identical little white Hyundais that slew about passing on every narrow blind curve and playing "Lets hit side view mirrors." I've adjusted to all these insults but still have to shake my head or wince and gasp up a "Yikes" or "Shit!" It's the best I can do to save this vacation and to try and make it better for JoAnn as well.
Still, I long for Washington state and the possibilioty of ensconcing myself in my wood "boat" shop. Also, there's a May "Pig Roast" to plan for in celebration of our youngest sister's graduation with a Doctorate in April. And I hope to spend a week or two watching over my Mom on Maui if she recovers enough to decide to stay. By then the year will be half over. Time again to plan to be away for winter 2012's approach. There will never be enough time and what time there is per Einstein's Relativity moves toward the speed of light as we come around the last corner. So we continually adjust to the changes that keep coming.
The winds howled again last night followed by driving rains that drenched the floors and furniture around windows we neglected to close. What a wet sticky mess. Adjust Tony, adjust.
I think this will be a pool day.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Friday, March 9, 2012
Becalmed in Roatan
A strange meteorological event happened this morning. There was quiet. The banshee winds left and were replaced by a sudden stillness that left one listening and waiting for something else to happen. We felt becalmed. As if our torturing inquisitor left the room and what remained was a soundless padded cell. Even the birds were momentarily silenced. The trees were dead still and the oceans dimpled but flat. The sea skys were a silver grey and the rising sun a diffused light. This was not going to be good as the heat and humidity crept upwards with no sign of a breeze. What a serving of nature we have, intolerable gale force winds the night before and dead calm in the morning. It has twisted me around and around. Give me a soft Hawaiian breeze laden with plumeria, gardenias and tuberose. This Roatan is a different Atlasntic bird.
It has been two days now of this becalmed situation interspersed with sessions of rain that tend to cool things down a little until they stop then the humidity soars. We've had a couple of power outages in the night which turns all the overhead fans off and skin sticks to all the bedding and our faces to the pillows. And surprise, as in Costa Rica we have a dog here that barks at the same time each morning before Jo is ready to get up. Usually I am already awake so it's just irritating. Dog owners with no control over their barking dogs should be submitted to all sorts of heinious torture.
Today, the trades should return hopefully more moderately. This morning it is quite nice on the deck. However when we went to start the little rental the air conditioning crapped out. There is no way to drive around Roatan in this heat and humidity without AC. It is a primary failing of small 4 cylinder engines with small small compressors. So if you want to be sure your AC doesn't go out on you in the tropics you are better off with a large V8 with its also large compressor. Of course the larger rental car will cost you a lot more. In trying to save money we used these local rent a car agencies who don't seem to have offices but instead meet you in the airport parking lots in the heat and wind and try to conduct business on the hood of your rental. Of course the deposits are hefty and the cars must all be pre paid and they all speak little English. Why is it in the US all phone operators ask you to press one if you would like to converse in Spanish. Down here good luck.
As an example of incompetence. The property manager, an Italian, who has a beautiful home here in Turtle Crossing does not know the difference between a hot water heater and an on demand water heater. This unit has a 2 1/2 gallon hot water tank. Try showering the salt and sand and sweat off with 2 1/2 gallons of water. It runs out in 2 minutes while your head is still in a foamy shampoo helmet. He insisted there are many other on demand heaters of different sizes in this complex. He brought over a local plumber to look at it who obviously did not know anything and could only deduce the tank needs another part to make hot water! Christ it makes hot water, only 2 1/2 friggin gallons of it! "There was a family of 5, and the owners were here several times and they never complained." Funny that's not what the neighbors told us the last family who were here said to them. And would the owners themselves complain about their own ignorance? You know this all my fault really. JoAnn made all the reservations and I just went along with everything she did. I should have participated more and asked the "pesky" questions that car rental agents and vacation rental agents don't want to hear. So I take full blame for the misery they have wrought and tell you it will be different next time. For one thing, no more Central America. Well, Machu Pichu might be nice, then there is Eastern and Southern Argentina. But that's South America and they are different right? But really, enough of this third world stuff. Next I hope it will be an apartment overlooking one of the canals of Venice or the Plazas of renaissance Florence. If I don't get a dose of culture and art and intellectual stimulation I think I will go bonkers. My brains have been beach baked enough.
Seriously I am tempted to stick with the Western Coasts of North America from Big Sur to the SanJuans to Ketchikan. Lots of opportunities of exploration there. And let's not forget our Airstream trip, its hard to beat even the minumum of North American standards. In this we are indeed fortunate.
In the mean time there is nothing definite or positive about weather they can find another rental car for us or if they will send someone to come out to look at the car. Nothing definitive, nothing absolute, no commitments, just swaying in the tropical Central American breeze, maybe si, maybe no.
Man`ana, man`ana
Antonio
That is why I want to build a boat. Once started, it will be so!
I am obviously not hitting the right countries at the right time or with the right frame of mind. I miss the comforts of our house in Washington and the dryness of the moisture. Here the moisture is plaster you wear. I am hoping this is the last third world country I visit.
The sun burning beach thing is vastly overated. To be warm and dry sounds better. I understand the moisturizing effect is good for those skins that benefit from plumping up. I guess I just don't need that.
I am a snowbird. Give me a dry heat!
It has been two days now of this becalmed situation interspersed with sessions of rain that tend to cool things down a little until they stop then the humidity soars. We've had a couple of power outages in the night which turns all the overhead fans off and skin sticks to all the bedding and our faces to the pillows. And surprise, as in Costa Rica we have a dog here that barks at the same time each morning before Jo is ready to get up. Usually I am already awake so it's just irritating. Dog owners with no control over their barking dogs should be submitted to all sorts of heinious torture.
Today, the trades should return hopefully more moderately. This morning it is quite nice on the deck. However when we went to start the little rental the air conditioning crapped out. There is no way to drive around Roatan in this heat and humidity without AC. It is a primary failing of small 4 cylinder engines with small small compressors. So if you want to be sure your AC doesn't go out on you in the tropics you are better off with a large V8 with its also large compressor. Of course the larger rental car will cost you a lot more. In trying to save money we used these local rent a car agencies who don't seem to have offices but instead meet you in the airport parking lots in the heat and wind and try to conduct business on the hood of your rental. Of course the deposits are hefty and the cars must all be pre paid and they all speak little English. Why is it in the US all phone operators ask you to press one if you would like to converse in Spanish. Down here good luck.
As an example of incompetence. The property manager, an Italian, who has a beautiful home here in Turtle Crossing does not know the difference between a hot water heater and an on demand water heater. This unit has a 2 1/2 gallon hot water tank. Try showering the salt and sand and sweat off with 2 1/2 gallons of water. It runs out in 2 minutes while your head is still in a foamy shampoo helmet. He insisted there are many other on demand heaters of different sizes in this complex. He brought over a local plumber to look at it who obviously did not know anything and could only deduce the tank needs another part to make hot water! Christ it makes hot water, only 2 1/2 friggin gallons of it! "There was a family of 5, and the owners were here several times and they never complained." Funny that's not what the neighbors told us the last family who were here said to them. And would the owners themselves complain about their own ignorance? You know this all my fault really. JoAnn made all the reservations and I just went along with everything she did. I should have participated more and asked the "pesky" questions that car rental agents and vacation rental agents don't want to hear. So I take full blame for the misery they have wrought and tell you it will be different next time. For one thing, no more Central America. Well, Machu Pichu might be nice, then there is Eastern and Southern Argentina. But that's South America and they are different right? But really, enough of this third world stuff. Next I hope it will be an apartment overlooking one of the canals of Venice or the Plazas of renaissance Florence. If I don't get a dose of culture and art and intellectual stimulation I think I will go bonkers. My brains have been beach baked enough.
Seriously I am tempted to stick with the Western Coasts of North America from Big Sur to the SanJuans to Ketchikan. Lots of opportunities of exploration there. And let's not forget our Airstream trip, its hard to beat even the minumum of North American standards. In this we are indeed fortunate.
In the mean time there is nothing definite or positive about weather they can find another rental car for us or if they will send someone to come out to look at the car. Nothing definitive, nothing absolute, no commitments, just swaying in the tropical Central American breeze, maybe si, maybe no.
Man`ana, man`ana
Antonio
That is why I want to build a boat. Once started, it will be so!
I am obviously not hitting the right countries at the right time or with the right frame of mind. I miss the comforts of our house in Washington and the dryness of the moisture. Here the moisture is plaster you wear. I am hoping this is the last third world country I visit.
The sun burning beach thing is vastly overated. To be warm and dry sounds better. I understand the moisturizing effect is good for those skins that benefit from plumping up. I guess I just don't need that.
I am a snowbird. Give me a dry heat!
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Turtle Crossing, West Bay, Roatan
AAfter a fitful nights sleep I awoke as usual at 3:AM to read and await dawn. These damnable winds no small part in my fitful rest. The tree tips are shredded from their violent thrashing to and fro in these awful trades. From our perch on the hillside we are only 200 feet back and 50 feet above the ocean. In this constant wind the waves roll and hollow at a turbulent swell while the crests spume off in caps of white. It is a roiling immensity, a "horizontal violence" from horizon to horizon, from the curvature of the earth to the east to the pale blue shadows of Honduras across and away to the South. An immense caldron of constant motion. Like the winds.
In this elemental intensity, windblown, I have stepped outside on the deck to stare and marvel and anger at this unmindful and uncaring imminence. I am pitifully insignificant by the scale but giant in my outrage of impotence.
Merely 50 feet below me, along the shore the closely spaced roofs of houses almost buried amongst the palm fronds seem to jut out into this sea. In futile bravado they seem to shoulder forward, as waves kill themselves upon the rocks in thunderous walls of liquid lace and drench the seward walls unseen from my vantage. It is all too much. As I watch the roofs appear to roll and surge into the oncoming waves I feel the wooden deck beneath my feet go along for the ride, vibrations amplified by the winds forcing my stance. I understand the tempestuous manners of the sea sailing captains of old needing to pace the decks in the fury of such uncontrolable force.
Finally the heavens begin to lighten as the sun prepares its rise from the eastern sea. Will this event bring a momentary abatement to the wind and the waves ? Of course not. Hope can be blind. But there's always one more song.
A strange respite. This morning I put on my earphones to listen to some iTunes while I read, usually I can not mix the two and need silence to read. But for awhile I did not hear the wind and it was a brief relief.
Today we drove over the ridge and down the west side to the beaches and eateries. Much calmer.
The waters were almost still and of that pearlescent jade blue associated with clear sandy benches beneath the waters. It was not too crowded today as the cruise ships were not in today to disgorge their tens of thousands. So we enjoyed ourselves. However, JoAnn for the twentieth year in a row neglected her sun tan lotion and proceeded to burn herself again despite my yearly admonitions of every tact. This time it was to not use lotion in order to save the reefs from all the bodies oiled up. So she chose the reefs over the real potential of skin cancer after all those years or burns. We make our choices. So now she again suffers lobster red and radiating solar burn and heat.
This evening we checked out a restaurant, Smugglers, down the road and discovered a beautiful isolated cove fronting the place just as that sunburn sun sank. Unfortunately the cove outshown their menu so we motored west again back to Infinity Beach Resort and were surprised by the huge burger we shared, dripping with sauteed onions and mushrooms and a hand packed patty. Always a surprise somewhere. Sometimes its as plebeian as a hamburger. Back home to the wind.
In this elemental intensity, windblown, I have stepped outside on the deck to stare and marvel and anger at this unmindful and uncaring imminence. I am pitifully insignificant by the scale but giant in my outrage of impotence.
Merely 50 feet below me, along the shore the closely spaced roofs of houses almost buried amongst the palm fronds seem to jut out into this sea. In futile bravado they seem to shoulder forward, as waves kill themselves upon the rocks in thunderous walls of liquid lace and drench the seward walls unseen from my vantage. It is all too much. As I watch the roofs appear to roll and surge into the oncoming waves I feel the wooden deck beneath my feet go along for the ride, vibrations amplified by the winds forcing my stance. I understand the tempestuous manners of the sea sailing captains of old needing to pace the decks in the fury of such uncontrolable force.
Finally the heavens begin to lighten as the sun prepares its rise from the eastern sea. Will this event bring a momentary abatement to the wind and the waves ? Of course not. Hope can be blind. But there's always one more song.
A strange respite. This morning I put on my earphones to listen to some iTunes while I read, usually I can not mix the two and need silence to read. But for awhile I did not hear the wind and it was a brief relief.
Today we drove over the ridge and down the west side to the beaches and eateries. Much calmer.
The waters were almost still and of that pearlescent jade blue associated with clear sandy benches beneath the waters. It was not too crowded today as the cruise ships were not in today to disgorge their tens of thousands. So we enjoyed ourselves. However, JoAnn for the twentieth year in a row neglected her sun tan lotion and proceeded to burn herself again despite my yearly admonitions of every tact. This time it was to not use lotion in order to save the reefs from all the bodies oiled up. So she chose the reefs over the real potential of skin cancer after all those years or burns. We make our choices. So now she again suffers lobster red and radiating solar burn and heat.
This evening we checked out a restaurant, Smugglers, down the road and discovered a beautiful isolated cove fronting the place just as that sunburn sun sank. Unfortunately the cove outshown their menu so we motored west again back to Infinity Beach Resort and were surprised by the huge burger we shared, dripping with sauteed onions and mushrooms and a hand packed patty. Always a surprise somewhere. Sometimes its as plebeian as a hamburger. Back home to the wind.
First Night Roatan
Turtle Crossing, a group of perhaps a dozen, identical chalet style homes spread about the hillside facing the ocean to the S.E. The trade winds come from the E.S.E. unhampered and unhindered by any land mass, constant, steady and with house quaking vibration and heavily salt laden. All accompanied by howls and rattling vegetation. How does one shower that salt off with a house that only has a 2 1/2 gallon hot water heater? What am I doing here!
Apparently it is calmer on the West side of the island. Always two sides to every deal, right? This deserves a note about the web site VRBO, Vacation Rentals By Owner. VRBO gets a cut from every owner from the rental income. Thus it is not in their best interest to post any negative reviews or disclosures. They are a huge company and like any corporate structure their secrets are deep and hidden. Several times we have been burnt, twice on this trip, by non disclosures.
There have been a few times when our expectations have been exceeded. Count those on one hand. It has led me to entertain the notion of no more tropical clime trips and to stay home to build wooden boats in my shop. Which will bring with it the craftsmanship, the artistry and the engineering. What could be better.
Do not use VRBO unless you are willing to ask and they are willing to answer straight questions such as: Is the home screened for insects and mosquitos, Is the plumbing in good shape, Is there any corrosion with the plumbing, Is there good flow with the faucets, If gas fired do the stove burners work with enough gas pressure or is the flame yellow instead of blue (sign of low or improper gas pressure which will soot up all the pots and pans, Is the place quiet, Are there any barking dogs or children on the premises, Does the wind howl and blow constantly and with a vengence, is there good and strong internet, Is there telivision and dvd service, is there a radio, Is the house next to the parking lot or a long ways away up a steep hill, how many steps will luggage and groceries have to be lugged?
Now these may seem like picky questions but if you have saved your hard earned money for a vacation of peace, quiet, serenity and maybe healing or are elderly or infirm these things matter.
It may sound as if you are looking for isolation from the world well you should have the option to have it if you wish. This is particularly true if you are staying more than a week where in a week you can just "gut it out." If you are staying for a month or so these intrusions can easily drive you crazy. Especially the absentee owner's loud barking (right outside your windows) dogs. Barking most of the night and all times of the morning from midnight untill dawn will steal your sanity. Again, we were locked in for a month!
Then there's the howling trade winds of Roatan's East side, also constant, 24 hours a day, another receipe for maddness.
Must "buyer beware" govern all aspects of our lives?
We shall see if I can take it here on Roatan for more than a week. These things don't bother JoAnn as much so she might tough it out for the whole month. I don't think I can. The problem is they have our money and our deposits, VRBO, and will make no refunds. Don't you hate being screwed by the white handed money corporaes? They will not even print honest complaints or reviews on their web sites. Thus the scams self perpetuate. I guess there is just no end to the vast pool of suckerss such as ourselves. Ask those pesky questions.
There are places of sublime beuty, moments of memories to hold to tightly in this world. Its a drag to be pessimistic about the human race but how frustrating and impossible it seems when one tries to be accommodating and trust that your trust will be returned only to find our fellow man excercises ulterior motives to your negative end. To give of yourself expecting nothing in return is altruistic and pure but to give and have more than you thought fair and then some taken almost everytime is misplaced martyrdom or sainthood. Beware the money lenders and takers.
The world is just as viscious as it is beautiful. Sad to say, sad to say.......How best to survive, to live daily with grace and happiness.....?
All right, enough of this downer. "They" have taken from me yet again even in my late years of "experience" but tomorrow is a new sunrise and somewhere I will find refuge from these howling winds. Somewhere in the now.
Down to a bare main save for the storm jib on it's third reef,
Tony
Apparently it is calmer on the West side of the island. Always two sides to every deal, right? This deserves a note about the web site VRBO, Vacation Rentals By Owner. VRBO gets a cut from every owner from the rental income. Thus it is not in their best interest to post any negative reviews or disclosures. They are a huge company and like any corporate structure their secrets are deep and hidden. Several times we have been burnt, twice on this trip, by non disclosures.
There have been a few times when our expectations have been exceeded. Count those on one hand. It has led me to entertain the notion of no more tropical clime trips and to stay home to build wooden boats in my shop. Which will bring with it the craftsmanship, the artistry and the engineering. What could be better.
Do not use VRBO unless you are willing to ask and they are willing to answer straight questions such as: Is the home screened for insects and mosquitos, Is the plumbing in good shape, Is there any corrosion with the plumbing, Is there good flow with the faucets, If gas fired do the stove burners work with enough gas pressure or is the flame yellow instead of blue (sign of low or improper gas pressure which will soot up all the pots and pans, Is the place quiet, Are there any barking dogs or children on the premises, Does the wind howl and blow constantly and with a vengence, is there good and strong internet, Is there telivision and dvd service, is there a radio, Is the house next to the parking lot or a long ways away up a steep hill, how many steps will luggage and groceries have to be lugged?
Now these may seem like picky questions but if you have saved your hard earned money for a vacation of peace, quiet, serenity and maybe healing or are elderly or infirm these things matter.
It may sound as if you are looking for isolation from the world well you should have the option to have it if you wish. This is particularly true if you are staying more than a week where in a week you can just "gut it out." If you are staying for a month or so these intrusions can easily drive you crazy. Especially the absentee owner's loud barking (right outside your windows) dogs. Barking most of the night and all times of the morning from midnight untill dawn will steal your sanity. Again, we were locked in for a month!
Then there's the howling trade winds of Roatan's East side, also constant, 24 hours a day, another receipe for maddness.
Must "buyer beware" govern all aspects of our lives?
We shall see if I can take it here on Roatan for more than a week. These things don't bother JoAnn as much so she might tough it out for the whole month. I don't think I can. The problem is they have our money and our deposits, VRBO, and will make no refunds. Don't you hate being screwed by the white handed money corporaes? They will not even print honest complaints or reviews on their web sites. Thus the scams self perpetuate. I guess there is just no end to the vast pool of suckerss such as ourselves. Ask those pesky questions.
There are places of sublime beuty, moments of memories to hold to tightly in this world. Its a drag to be pessimistic about the human race but how frustrating and impossible it seems when one tries to be accommodating and trust that your trust will be returned only to find our fellow man excercises ulterior motives to your negative end. To give of yourself expecting nothing in return is altruistic and pure but to give and have more than you thought fair and then some taken almost everytime is misplaced martyrdom or sainthood. Beware the money lenders and takers.
The world is just as viscious as it is beautiful. Sad to say, sad to say.......How best to survive, to live daily with grace and happiness.....?
All right, enough of this downer. "They" have taken from me yet again even in my late years of "experience" but tomorrow is a new sunrise and somewhere I will find refuge from these howling winds. Somewhere in the now.
Down to a bare main save for the storm jib on it's third reef,
Tony
Friday, February 24, 2012
Dawns Early Light
Before the dawn arrives there is a restless limbo in one's dreams. Perhaps it has slid into consciousness by the clacking call of a gecko somewhere on the blackness that is the ceiling. You know it is still the time of night before the dawn. The stars and moon are about to cede their hold in the firmament and fade stage center. So begins my favorite hour. The real show is about to begin. It only lasts about 45 minutes but in that time all time measures itself forward in a delicious, excruciating slow dance. It is now semi dark as the sky takes on a faint lightness like the thinest celestial gauze seen only at the edges of your vision. Just enough light exists to shuffle your way to the coffee maachine with care so as to not stub your toes on the furniture formless below your knees. That done you slide outdoors to the deep, teak, adirondack chairs and listen with ears awakened by the quiet. For you are here above the the beach, the Playa, of Camaronel in Costa Rica and where between your perch and the beach there extends more than a mile of valley floor.
Still in darkness all you first pick up are the sounds of night, the ever present distant roar of ocean waves exhausting themselves on the sands as they have since the beginning of time. Then you feel the warmth of the breezes wash over you to the clicking sounds of fronds of the date palm just off the terrace. Holding motionless and quieting your breathing to sharpen all your senses, the other harbingers of dawn space themselves out as if waiting their turn to speak.
The sky is a silver gray now and the first tints of peach hint at upper strata of denser air, clouds. Then across the valley, anchoring the far end of the beach, the headland and its outflowing spine like ridge begin to loom as a muscled mass of shadow. Skies turning silver white outline the bristled fuzz of treeline on the ridge's razor and all vestiges of the night and its stars though unmoved are now unseen. And just above the headland's hogback lie a bilious strata of cloud that will pre-announce the sun and the coming of its warming gifts. Is it any wonder that past civilizations were sun worshipers? It keeps all life alive within such a narrow range of temperature between freezing or boiling to death. Yet here it arrives as it has since the beginning to let us try again to make the best of its warmth.
Now the birds begin their songs, the howler monkeys tentatively clear their throats, even a far off rooster claims his share of the air. And the clouds above the mountain tell us the sun is coming by glowing their undersides with the reflected colors of radioactive oranges and pinks from the orb still unseen. All color intensely reaching their climax as the flaming fire breaks the ridge. It rises slowly and inevitably but you cannot watch it continuously as its power almost lazily climbs. You know you will sooner or later avert your eyes to such blinding force lest you sear your sight forever. Such is the magnitude of the sunrises' messenger. And with it's nuclear flare fully round the clouds now bleach themselves white and the valley floor gives up all its shadows and reveals their thousand shades of green.
You sigh at the wonder of this beginning, this gift of an awakening, of a fresh start and begin to breath more deeply and ponder what does this newness hold in store for us. Let us get busy living. But first that second cup of coffee.
Still in darkness all you first pick up are the sounds of night, the ever present distant roar of ocean waves exhausting themselves on the sands as they have since the beginning of time. Then you feel the warmth of the breezes wash over you to the clicking sounds of fronds of the date palm just off the terrace. Holding motionless and quieting your breathing to sharpen all your senses, the other harbingers of dawn space themselves out as if waiting their turn to speak.
The sky is a silver gray now and the first tints of peach hint at upper strata of denser air, clouds. Then across the valley, anchoring the far end of the beach, the headland and its outflowing spine like ridge begin to loom as a muscled mass of shadow. Skies turning silver white outline the bristled fuzz of treeline on the ridge's razor and all vestiges of the night and its stars though unmoved are now unseen. And just above the headland's hogback lie a bilious strata of cloud that will pre-announce the sun and the coming of its warming gifts. Is it any wonder that past civilizations were sun worshipers? It keeps all life alive within such a narrow range of temperature between freezing or boiling to death. Yet here it arrives as it has since the beginning to let us try again to make the best of its warmth.
Now the birds begin their songs, the howler monkeys tentatively clear their throats, even a far off rooster claims his share of the air. And the clouds above the mountain tell us the sun is coming by glowing their undersides with the reflected colors of radioactive oranges and pinks from the orb still unseen. All color intensely reaching their climax as the flaming fire breaks the ridge. It rises slowly and inevitably but you cannot watch it continuously as its power almost lazily climbs. You know you will sooner or later avert your eyes to such blinding force lest you sear your sight forever. Such is the magnitude of the sunrises' messenger. And with it's nuclear flare fully round the clouds now bleach themselves white and the valley floor gives up all its shadows and reveals their thousand shades of green.
You sigh at the wonder of this beginning, this gift of an awakening, of a fresh start and begin to breath more deeply and ponder what does this newness hold in store for us. Let us get busy living. But first that second cup of coffee.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Keeping Lethargy at bay
When one finally stumbles out of bed here and the sun has already been up for half an hour and you pull the sliding doors apart and step outside to the whooosh of escaping air conditioned coolness slipping out past you from behind, your frontal half is enveloped by heat and humidity. For a moment you think, "Jeeze, perhaps I'll just go back inside, shut the doors to save some of that cool air inside and just stay there!" So you stagger back inside telling yourself, "But wait, I can't just go back to sleep, at least not until high noon when the idea of siesta begins to make sense." So to avoid the spectre of lethargic numbness I'll draw and blog. Saved for the next few hours!
The day before yesterday we were up by 5:30 AM to get ready to head into Samara to meet with Corey up at his subdivision project, to check on the window installation in the model home and to show him another sketch of a condominium tower for lots 5 & 6 combined. The windows were of a high quality buy the false wood grain finish looked false. During the installation into the metal jambs the contractor used impact drills or hammers for the screws and the stucco was spalled in many areas. Corey was not happy. On a brighter note he was very pleased with my building and site concepts even though I had no topo to work with save my recollections of what the grades were doing during my previous two visits. Consequently I could have sited the subterranean garage in a couple of other places. Also I need to work on possible compensation proposals before I do too much more work. Corey has a couple of his supervisors coming over from San Jose next week and would like us to all get together for some wine and possibilities.
After review of the site plan Corey drove us over the hills to another teak farm site that is earmarked for future development and is looking for ideas there as well. We could also look down into the huge valley on the way to Los Vegas (4 buildings). They also want to develop that valley for the local market. Smaller lots at lower prices. That could be trickier to keep it from becoming a blight with pit bulls and fighting cocks. Perhaps a large choice of pre designed modest homes, like a dozen designs might be enough to keep it from looking too shabby.
Reminds of days with the Betsill Brothers on Maui when at one point we had the largest construction budget of all the outer islands with 4-5 subdivisions building 6-8 houses at a time in more than one subdivision at a time. Maui was peaking then. The development crew and permanent work force was 60-80 plus specialty subs. Too much work.
After the hillside visit JoAnn and I stopped in town for a few staples, but by then the heat drove us back to our pad in the hills of Camaronel and AC.
Yesterday began liesurely enough with a plan to head back to Carillo and the deserted beach cove below Villa Playa El Robles up beyond the mango farms. We had it to ourselves the entire morning. It is not a large cove, perhaps only 200' wide and enclosed on two sides by rocky outcrops with a short forest drop from landward. The pleasure was in the very rocky waters that took the full force of the non reef impeeded wave sets sending crashing walls of white skyward. To our surprise we saw our first flights of Pelicans in "V" or straight formations using this bay as part of their fly over pattern. In flight there is no bulbous bill sack hanging down only the long streamlined beak pointing them forward. The wave crash and turbulence, though beautiful to watch in transluscent jades and white, left no swimming places between the rocks. So after an hour and a half of reading, basking, walking, photographing and hydrating (very important here) we pulled up stakes and crept further down the road to look at another private cove but with a swimming spot or two.
Back at the main road, since we were so close to Carrillo Beach we headed there for a swim.
JoAnn is such a confident swimmer,always heading out for the deep water where its cooler and cleaner; Me you will find in the sandy froth and in front of the breaking wave fronts trying to keep my trunks from coming off with each crashing wave! After almost a month here we are beginning to recognise some of the local regulars, always a good feeling.
On the way home we stopped in at the Suenos Tropical for a recommended scratch pizza. It was good but the Canadian bacon in a Hawaiian pizza here is, 1/2" wide, thin and curled, otherwise? There's one more pizza place in Samara we've yet to try but time is running out, only 8 more days in Costa Rica, then its off to Roatan where I expect things to really slow down? Found one little market still open during 1/2 day saturdays, siesta time anyway, for a stick of butter then guick home before it melts. Note to self: Permanent vehicle here should include a small electric cooler for bopping around. I hear VW makes a small twin turbo diesel pick up truck but not available for the US. Back in the US we get almost none of the good diesel stuff.
Gas guage is down to 1/4 so I think we will stay close to home tomorrow and head in for gas on Monday. There is only one station here and it is over $5.00/gal.
As I said at the beginning, tomorrow, Sunday, will be a day of rest: sketching, blogging, eating, pooling, showering, sucking AC and maybe a late afternoon walk down a grassy 4 wheel trail to the beach?
Vaya con Dios, hasta la vista, Oh Cisco, Oh Pancho, Oh Leo G.Carrillo !!
Antonio e Josepha Anna
The day before yesterday we were up by 5:30 AM to get ready to head into Samara to meet with Corey up at his subdivision project, to check on the window installation in the model home and to show him another sketch of a condominium tower for lots 5 & 6 combined. The windows were of a high quality buy the false wood grain finish looked false. During the installation into the metal jambs the contractor used impact drills or hammers for the screws and the stucco was spalled in many areas. Corey was not happy. On a brighter note he was very pleased with my building and site concepts even though I had no topo to work with save my recollections of what the grades were doing during my previous two visits. Consequently I could have sited the subterranean garage in a couple of other places. Also I need to work on possible compensation proposals before I do too much more work. Corey has a couple of his supervisors coming over from San Jose next week and would like us to all get together for some wine and possibilities.
After review of the site plan Corey drove us over the hills to another teak farm site that is earmarked for future development and is looking for ideas there as well. We could also look down into the huge valley on the way to Los Vegas (4 buildings). They also want to develop that valley for the local market. Smaller lots at lower prices. That could be trickier to keep it from becoming a blight with pit bulls and fighting cocks. Perhaps a large choice of pre designed modest homes, like a dozen designs might be enough to keep it from looking too shabby.
Reminds of days with the Betsill Brothers on Maui when at one point we had the largest construction budget of all the outer islands with 4-5 subdivisions building 6-8 houses at a time in more than one subdivision at a time. Maui was peaking then. The development crew and permanent work force was 60-80 plus specialty subs. Too much work.
After the hillside visit JoAnn and I stopped in town for a few staples, but by then the heat drove us back to our pad in the hills of Camaronel and AC.
Yesterday began liesurely enough with a plan to head back to Carillo and the deserted beach cove below Villa Playa El Robles up beyond the mango farms. We had it to ourselves the entire morning. It is not a large cove, perhaps only 200' wide and enclosed on two sides by rocky outcrops with a short forest drop from landward. The pleasure was in the very rocky waters that took the full force of the non reef impeeded wave sets sending crashing walls of white skyward. To our surprise we saw our first flights of Pelicans in "V" or straight formations using this bay as part of their fly over pattern. In flight there is no bulbous bill sack hanging down only the long streamlined beak pointing them forward. The wave crash and turbulence, though beautiful to watch in transluscent jades and white, left no swimming places between the rocks. So after an hour and a half of reading, basking, walking, photographing and hydrating (very important here) we pulled up stakes and crept further down the road to look at another private cove but with a swimming spot or two.
Back at the main road, since we were so close to Carrillo Beach we headed there for a swim.
JoAnn is such a confident swimmer,always heading out for the deep water where its cooler and cleaner; Me you will find in the sandy froth and in front of the breaking wave fronts trying to keep my trunks from coming off with each crashing wave! After almost a month here we are beginning to recognise some of the local regulars, always a good feeling.
On the way home we stopped in at the Suenos Tropical for a recommended scratch pizza. It was good but the Canadian bacon in a Hawaiian pizza here is, 1/2" wide, thin and curled, otherwise? There's one more pizza place in Samara we've yet to try but time is running out, only 8 more days in Costa Rica, then its off to Roatan where I expect things to really slow down? Found one little market still open during 1/2 day saturdays, siesta time anyway, for a stick of butter then guick home before it melts. Note to self: Permanent vehicle here should include a small electric cooler for bopping around. I hear VW makes a small twin turbo diesel pick up truck but not available for the US. Back in the US we get almost none of the good diesel stuff.
Gas guage is down to 1/4 so I think we will stay close to home tomorrow and head in for gas on Monday. There is only one station here and it is over $5.00/gal.
As I said at the beginning, tomorrow, Sunday, will be a day of rest: sketching, blogging, eating, pooling, showering, sucking AC and maybe a late afternoon walk down a grassy 4 wheel trail to the beach?
Vaya con Dios, hasta la vista, Oh Cisco, Oh Pancho, Oh Leo G.Carrillo !!
Antonio e Josepha Anna
Friday, February 17, 2012
Crescent Moon Rocking
It's another perfect morning. Last night I watched the new crescent moon climb upwards on its sickle back. The stars down here in this southern sky seem so foreign or out of place to me telling me I need to learn why. It's not even a warm breeze this morning, more like air moving around and about you that you can feel but yet are not sure as its temperature matches your skin.
Yesterday JoAnn and I woke before dawn to make the 15 minute drive north to Playa Carrillo to watch the sun rise and that I might take some photos of the dense coconut lined shore in the morning rays. There were already a few people walking the beach in the dim light. I think people here in Costa Rica tend to be more naturally health conscious. As a country newly rising from third world status they benefit from the lack of fast food saturation.
After JoAnn walked the 2.5 kilometer beach from the south end and I photographed the north end
we met up and declared if we lived on a beach like this on mornings such as these then perhaps we could live longer in Costa Rica. We will never be able to leave for long our Pacific Northwest with its spring and summer. We enjoy JoAnn's flowering gardens too much as well as the natural wonders of the region. Yet this weather, this beach ......
After a morning of skipping away from the advancing surf's froth we headed up some back roads, dirt of course, up into the hills above Carrillo's own headland to look for the immense mango
orchards as seen on Google! We found them. Massive dense green trees on rolling hillocks. We also came across an isolated architectural delight above the waterfront's rocky coves. Villas Playa el Roble. Behind a trim yet substantial layered granite half wall topped with fine and delicate wrought iron fencing sat a pristine white structure in the Colonial style with all the right detailing. From the real clay tile roof (much of CR now affects plastic tile roofing) to the profiled window and door trims sharply expressed and the delicate railinged balcony above the front door and the short eaves with supporting volutes every three feet all in a cohesive, tropical/colonial design with glazed stone fore court and side yard trellised private areas. Once in awhile each trip we come accross architectural work where someone's vision and craftsmanship stand out and it does my heart good.
After the morning's exploration we went for breakfast at Leylande's hotel and restaurant along the road back home. Quality was very good and fresh hot coffee individually brewed per customer. On the way out through the grounds JoAnn discovered a palapa with a pool table so why not. Then it was back home early enough for a swim and a nap. Good day. Tomorrow its up again at 6:AM to drive back in town for a meeting with Corey at 7:30 to show him my site plan and to look at more hilltop properties. It should be another interesting day.
Hasta la vista
Yesterday JoAnn and I woke before dawn to make the 15 minute drive north to Playa Carrillo to watch the sun rise and that I might take some photos of the dense coconut lined shore in the morning rays. There were already a few people walking the beach in the dim light. I think people here in Costa Rica tend to be more naturally health conscious. As a country newly rising from third world status they benefit from the lack of fast food saturation.
After JoAnn walked the 2.5 kilometer beach from the south end and I photographed the north end
we met up and declared if we lived on a beach like this on mornings such as these then perhaps we could live longer in Costa Rica. We will never be able to leave for long our Pacific Northwest with its spring and summer. We enjoy JoAnn's flowering gardens too much as well as the natural wonders of the region. Yet this weather, this beach ......
After a morning of skipping away from the advancing surf's froth we headed up some back roads, dirt of course, up into the hills above Carrillo's own headland to look for the immense mango
orchards as seen on Google! We found them. Massive dense green trees on rolling hillocks. We also came across an isolated architectural delight above the waterfront's rocky coves. Villas Playa el Roble. Behind a trim yet substantial layered granite half wall topped with fine and delicate wrought iron fencing sat a pristine white structure in the Colonial style with all the right detailing. From the real clay tile roof (much of CR now affects plastic tile roofing) to the profiled window and door trims sharply expressed and the delicate railinged balcony above the front door and the short eaves with supporting volutes every three feet all in a cohesive, tropical/colonial design with glazed stone fore court and side yard trellised private areas. Once in awhile each trip we come accross architectural work where someone's vision and craftsmanship stand out and it does my heart good.
After the morning's exploration we went for breakfast at Leylande's hotel and restaurant along the road back home. Quality was very good and fresh hot coffee individually brewed per customer. On the way out through the grounds JoAnn discovered a palapa with a pool table so why not. Then it was back home early enough for a swim and a nap. Good day. Tomorrow its up again at 6:AM to drive back in town for a meeting with Corey at 7:30 to show him my site plan and to look at more hilltop properties. It should be another interesting day.
Hasta la vista
The Valley of Camoronel
I've been up since 1:AM this morning, after only 3 hours of sleep, reading and waiting for the dawn. Morning has always been my favorite time and the sunrises here in Playa Camoronal are exquisite. I feel no fatigue. It is almost as if the awakening valley floor seeps all the nourishment into ones body and soul needed to chase away the tired post mid night impatience.
So I spent the pre dawn hours designing a multi unit complex site plan on a hillside way above the beach town of Samara. It was good to stretch my sensibilities in the quietness. All I had was a sheet of tracing paper, a 50cent plastic ruler and a fistfull of #2 Faber Castell pencils. I think I enjoy site design most of all. Must be from my years working in Bill Talley's Landscape Architecture firm. It's the complete inseparability of potential structure with landform, movement, rest, the ecology of biology and botany.
After a few hours of design I took a break to watch the sun rise from behind the mounded hills to the east. As the light suffused into all the shadows the valley floor molded itself into a dense savannah like tableaux. One end of the bay sticks out a forested headland bluff, two maybe three miles away, 400 feet high shaped like a Dorado's head pointed back out to sea anchoring one end of the distant beach with its three advancing white surf fronts to die into the sands. I can watch and listen to this for hours and not feel any loss of time. It is a glorious yet soothing window of infinity.
My restfull platform rolls down and away to the valley floor. On the distance, no larger than specks in my eyes moves a line of cattle beneath the palm and dried acacia like trees. The stock is too far away to discern any form or even legs. They are just white micro spots gracefully moving about the tan colored fields.
The cicadas are slowly and in the sonic distance beginning to warm up. The ocean's hiss rolls up toward me in rhythmic doppler. Unknown birds with small and large voices call out. Howler monkees tentatively clear their throats. Palm fronds rustle and clack like soft castanets. The warm breezes up from the valley are more noticeable now, unscented but strangely clean and washing.
Today we will practice the acceptance of doing nothing.
So I spent the pre dawn hours designing a multi unit complex site plan on a hillside way above the beach town of Samara. It was good to stretch my sensibilities in the quietness. All I had was a sheet of tracing paper, a 50cent plastic ruler and a fistfull of #2 Faber Castell pencils. I think I enjoy site design most of all. Must be from my years working in Bill Talley's Landscape Architecture firm. It's the complete inseparability of potential structure with landform, movement, rest, the ecology of biology and botany.
After a few hours of design I took a break to watch the sun rise from behind the mounded hills to the east. As the light suffused into all the shadows the valley floor molded itself into a dense savannah like tableaux. One end of the bay sticks out a forested headland bluff, two maybe three miles away, 400 feet high shaped like a Dorado's head pointed back out to sea anchoring one end of the distant beach with its three advancing white surf fronts to die into the sands. I can watch and listen to this for hours and not feel any loss of time. It is a glorious yet soothing window of infinity.
My restfull platform rolls down and away to the valley floor. On the distance, no larger than specks in my eyes moves a line of cattle beneath the palm and dried acacia like trees. The stock is too far away to discern any form or even legs. They are just white micro spots gracefully moving about the tan colored fields.
The cicadas are slowly and in the sonic distance beginning to warm up. The ocean's hiss rolls up toward me in rhythmic doppler. Unknown birds with small and large voices call out. Howler monkees tentatively clear their throats. Palm fronds rustle and clack like soft castanets. The warm breezes up from the valley are more noticeable now, unscented but strangely clean and washing.
Today we will practice the acceptance of doing nothing.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
How to do nothing
How to do nothing? It is harder than it sounds. After taking care of your morning absolutions, perhaps a little coffee and breakfast, maybe a dip in the pool, a quiet contemplation of the incredible view, watching the two banking graceful black buzzards that claim this valley, taking a pass on another paperback, you look at a clock and its only 7:30 AM, according to the sun and the temperature, it should be the middle of the day!
After about 4-5 of days that begin like this you ask yourself, "Is this boredom?" How will we fill out the day in this country? I can start with what I do not want to do. I do not want to ride a zip line, or horseback on the beach, or hike through the jungle to a mediocre waterfall while spraining my ankle on roots that look alive. I do not want to go shopping for groceries in town, I don't mind looking at the hippy ladies but not too closely, I don't want to look at the hippy guys even from far, far away. There is only so much ocean swimming that will serve as an alternative to a real washing. There is only so much Euro tongues one can listen to especially guttural German, sorry Marie Ann, and the old hairy and over weight Euro males in Speedo trunks with their hairy guts hanging over their "goods!" What are they thinking, I don't really want to know !
I am a dud. I want to do nothing and I have tried my best on several occasions to accomplish just that. Then in the deep limbic furrows of my brain the nagging creeps outward and begins to manifest itself first in a lethargic disquiet, past general malaise and then into an antsyness that more often than not ends up in pacing the floors. Now I've got it bad and I must do something, anything. Its jump into the 4x4 and off into town or a restaurant sending a rooster tail of dust along the dirt roads. Try to mellow out. This is a vacation afterall. We are pleased to be going anywhere in spite of the broken AC in the car.
The day before we drove to Playa Garza north of Samara and reaquainted myself with an 18 mile stretch of road that JoAnn reminded me I had said on our last trip that I would never drive again less I suffer kidney failure. Ah yes, it all comes back to me now in jolts. Too late
we are on it now.
Garza beach still was as beautiful and unspoiled as I remembered, but the town such as it is of mostly abandoned courtyards and shacks, is worse than I remember. Still it was nice to take a nap in the car on the beach with all four doors opened.
We decided to proceed another 7 clicks north to the euro surfing town of Guiones and treat ourselves to pastry and ice cream. The heat just about did JoAnn in so we anxiously headed back just to keep moving.
The day before yesterday we tried the highly vaunted El Colibri Argentinian Grill House for some T-bone.
Don't bother.
Through the local realtor we met a local developer who showed us some beautifull hill top sites with views of the bays and beaches. The road up into these hills was the worst so far requiring 4wheel low. It was up in a teak farm. As it turns out the developer with PanAmerican Woods is looking for an architect for general and conceptual design. I prepared him a few sketches on notebook paper and he liked it all so we may be doing something for all the condominium developments planned for their thousands of acres available. He has one ridgetop he wants to show us Thursday from which you can see 7 separate bays. I don't know if we or I can handle the commute but there may be at least some property trade in kind for my services. JoAnn really wants to speck a house down here and maybe get a small condo. We shall see.
Right now its back to the beautiful guest house to fend off boredom once again. I will succeed, perhaps now that I have some sketching to do!
Vaya con Dios muchachos
Antonio
After about 4-5 of days that begin like this you ask yourself, "Is this boredom?" How will we fill out the day in this country? I can start with what I do not want to do. I do not want to ride a zip line, or horseback on the beach, or hike through the jungle to a mediocre waterfall while spraining my ankle on roots that look alive. I do not want to go shopping for groceries in town, I don't mind looking at the hippy ladies but not too closely, I don't want to look at the hippy guys even from far, far away. There is only so much ocean swimming that will serve as an alternative to a real washing. There is only so much Euro tongues one can listen to especially guttural German, sorry Marie Ann, and the old hairy and over weight Euro males in Speedo trunks with their hairy guts hanging over their "goods!" What are they thinking, I don't really want to know !
I am a dud. I want to do nothing and I have tried my best on several occasions to accomplish just that. Then in the deep limbic furrows of my brain the nagging creeps outward and begins to manifest itself first in a lethargic disquiet, past general malaise and then into an antsyness that more often than not ends up in pacing the floors. Now I've got it bad and I must do something, anything. Its jump into the 4x4 and off into town or a restaurant sending a rooster tail of dust along the dirt roads. Try to mellow out. This is a vacation afterall. We are pleased to be going anywhere in spite of the broken AC in the car.
The day before we drove to Playa Garza north of Samara and reaquainted myself with an 18 mile stretch of road that JoAnn reminded me I had said on our last trip that I would never drive again less I suffer kidney failure. Ah yes, it all comes back to me now in jolts. Too late
we are on it now.
Garza beach still was as beautiful and unspoiled as I remembered, but the town such as it is of mostly abandoned courtyards and shacks, is worse than I remember. Still it was nice to take a nap in the car on the beach with all four doors opened.
We decided to proceed another 7 clicks north to the euro surfing town of Guiones and treat ourselves to pastry and ice cream. The heat just about did JoAnn in so we anxiously headed back just to keep moving.
The day before yesterday we tried the highly vaunted El Colibri Argentinian Grill House for some T-bone.
Don't bother.
Through the local realtor we met a local developer who showed us some beautifull hill top sites with views of the bays and beaches. The road up into these hills was the worst so far requiring 4wheel low. It was up in a teak farm. As it turns out the developer with PanAmerican Woods is looking for an architect for general and conceptual design. I prepared him a few sketches on notebook paper and he liked it all so we may be doing something for all the condominium developments planned for their thousands of acres available. He has one ridgetop he wants to show us Thursday from which you can see 7 separate bays. I don't know if we or I can handle the commute but there may be at least some property trade in kind for my services. JoAnn really wants to speck a house down here and maybe get a small condo. We shall see.
Right now its back to the beautiful guest house to fend off boredom once again. I will succeed, perhaps now that I have some sketching to do!
Vaya con Dios muchachos
Antonio
Friday, February 10, 2012
The hills above Playa Camaronel
Settled in for the next 4 weeks. Having met the rental owner, Jerry, in Samara we drove to his home above Camaronel Bay. We thought it was going to be close to town a mile or two at the most. It was instead more than 7 miles back south with the final 2 miles back on dirt roads and across one stream. Typical. The last pitch of dirt was coccyx busting. We were greeted by two howling dogs and a staff of housekeeper and gardener that live on site. It was quite the place with the guest unit downstairs with its own private lanai teak Adirondac type chairs, local wood beams, bamboo ceiling treatment and teak floors. Very tastefully done. Very upscale forest safari like but without the animal skins. Lots of granite, slate like tiles and vessel sinks. Oh also a long pool overlooking the vally and the beach of Camaronal close enough to see and hear the breakers. Very few other homes here in this large valley and bay and they are well hidden. A few lights in the hills at night is all that gives them away.
This will be a very pleasant place to stay in spite of the distance to Samara. All in all very contemporary indeed.
10 days later we are still here. Done this and that, a lot of grocery shopping, looking at property, a lot of pool time and finally a little ocean time. These beaches here, though plentiful and long, have no public amenities. There are no restrooms or showers. Consequently a day at the beach usually involves a lot of salty sticky skin and swimming with that organic seaweedy smell we all love but cannot wash off. It does not help that this week is a week of temperatures in the high 80's with little breeze. It is before 8AM and already in the 80s. The heat is intense, the air unmoving and the cicadas send a ringing into your brain that seems to only amplify the slow burn.
Our rent a car's air conditioning does not work and we are thinking of driving 27 miles, one way, to a quaint beach, Playa Garza, we came accross many years before. There is nothing there save a single grass hut stocked with coolers beneath a few palm trees serving beer. The last time we were there a half dozen laborers and drivers were lying in the shade on logs sleeping. That was it save for a boat or two bobbing inside the reef line difficult to focus on due to the brightness and reflectance of the sunlight. It might be worth the drive anyway. Beats sitting around here with even the howler monkeys too hot to howl.
The pool needs a netting but since the owner headed back to the mainland Santos the gardener seems to have slipped back into Rican time. I would do it myself if I knew where the equipment was as a dip sounds good. Ah life can be so hard eh?
Speaking of "eh" we met a Canadian developer who is interested in some architectural design for his residence and condo projects. I'll meet with him again come this Monday but I'm not too sure about coming out of retirement just yet. We shall see.
Hasta la vista
This will be a very pleasant place to stay in spite of the distance to Samara. All in all very contemporary indeed.
10 days later we are still here. Done this and that, a lot of grocery shopping, looking at property, a lot of pool time and finally a little ocean time. These beaches here, though plentiful and long, have no public amenities. There are no restrooms or showers. Consequently a day at the beach usually involves a lot of salty sticky skin and swimming with that organic seaweedy smell we all love but cannot wash off. It does not help that this week is a week of temperatures in the high 80's with little breeze. It is before 8AM and already in the 80s. The heat is intense, the air unmoving and the cicadas send a ringing into your brain that seems to only amplify the slow burn.
Our rent a car's air conditioning does not work and we are thinking of driving 27 miles, one way, to a quaint beach, Playa Garza, we came accross many years before. There is nothing there save a single grass hut stocked with coolers beneath a few palm trees serving beer. The last time we were there a half dozen laborers and drivers were lying in the shade on logs sleeping. That was it save for a boat or two bobbing inside the reef line difficult to focus on due to the brightness and reflectance of the sunlight. It might be worth the drive anyway. Beats sitting around here with even the howler monkeys too hot to howl.
The pool needs a netting but since the owner headed back to the mainland Santos the gardener seems to have slipped back into Rican time. I would do it myself if I knew where the equipment was as a dip sounds good. Ah life can be so hard eh?
Speaking of "eh" we met a Canadian developer who is interested in some architectural design for his residence and condo projects. I'll meet with him again come this Monday but I'm not too sure about coming out of retirement just yet. We shall see.
Hasta la vista
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Montezuma, CostaRica
A blog without photos? With this new ipad bought to save weight in my packing, it appears there are issues with incorporating photos not only in blogs but e mails as well. I can only keep trying but the routes are circuitous and fraught with formatting peculiarities. So much of Central America is viscerally visual with riotous color that it seems tragic not to include images. But the trip goes on.
Montezuma. A frozen snapshot in time. It's a tiny village really, only a short "L" shape main street with the usual vendors squeezed and jammed atop one another in a claustrophobic melange.
The street is a two way but with space enough for only one direction. This is a real fishing village crowded with shuffling hippies lost in time along with the dreadlocks, yoga parlors, beans and rice and with the preferred way of travel being the ubiquitous quads. Ah, Tico, Tico, Tico.
We check into our hotel and trudge up a narrow flight of stairs that use to be an exterior set based on sections of the original roofing glimpsed at dead end sections of halls and wells and faded corrugated plastic panels over the stairwell. The rooms are tiny an garreted with windows that do not open. There are however air handling ac units that will chill you out placed 4' above your sleeping heads. The second night I alternated between freezing and sweating. The paperback I read had its upper edges wrinkle saturated with condensation! I'm positive it all caused me to catch a cold.
The next morning We took a walk up the beach road to find the trail to the local waterfall. After a few minutes we felt it was probably too rough, slippery, and root strewn for our flip flops. As we were debating a turnabout, along happened a local guide, Carlos, that talked us into continuing. After 15 minutes we began to question the efforts with the return slog on mind. Aroung the last bend down trails one had to sit and slide down, we came to the falls. About 80 feet of refreshment.
The signs were dire, "No climbing, No jumping, There have been deaths here!" And what were the tourists beefs doing? I guess since the signs were in Spanish they didn't apply. We lucked out, no split skulls today. There was one local that dove from 65'. That pretty much put a stop to the boisterous Haoles leaping from 10 feet. Loved it. JoAnn did go for a cooling dip. She's always game when it comes to water.
Later that day we walked 15 minutes down the beach in the other direction to one classy resort where the Eurodollars were spent at a yoga retreat. Great coffee milk shakes and a sweet little waterfall swimming pool.
Back to our little windowless cubicle with stucco walls with grit that could scour your flesh if not careful.
Tomorrow its northward along the dirt roads with streams to ford to Samara to meet Jerry who will guide us to his rental unit in the hills above Playa Camoronal. It is an undeveloped bay with only 3 or 4 homes spaced about the surrounding hills inspite of the fact that it is one the best surfing beaches in Costa Rica with 2 1/2 miles of empty beachfront. Perhaps because it is also a prime turtle nesting reserve accounts for its protection from overdevelopment. Ah but we can always get around that can't we? Just prefix our words with "eco," such as eco-lodge, eco-eats or eco-fuel station!
An Eco-adios
Montezuma. A frozen snapshot in time. It's a tiny village really, only a short "L" shape main street with the usual vendors squeezed and jammed atop one another in a claustrophobic melange.
The street is a two way but with space enough for only one direction. This is a real fishing village crowded with shuffling hippies lost in time along with the dreadlocks, yoga parlors, beans and rice and with the preferred way of travel being the ubiquitous quads. Ah, Tico, Tico, Tico.
We check into our hotel and trudge up a narrow flight of stairs that use to be an exterior set based on sections of the original roofing glimpsed at dead end sections of halls and wells and faded corrugated plastic panels over the stairwell. The rooms are tiny an garreted with windows that do not open. There are however air handling ac units that will chill you out placed 4' above your sleeping heads. The second night I alternated between freezing and sweating. The paperback I read had its upper edges wrinkle saturated with condensation! I'm positive it all caused me to catch a cold.
The next morning We took a walk up the beach road to find the trail to the local waterfall. After a few minutes we felt it was probably too rough, slippery, and root strewn for our flip flops. As we were debating a turnabout, along happened a local guide, Carlos, that talked us into continuing. After 15 minutes we began to question the efforts with the return slog on mind. Aroung the last bend down trails one had to sit and slide down, we came to the falls. About 80 feet of refreshment.
The signs were dire, "No climbing, No jumping, There have been deaths here!" And what were the tourists beefs doing? I guess since the signs were in Spanish they didn't apply. We lucked out, no split skulls today. There was one local that dove from 65'. That pretty much put a stop to the boisterous Haoles leaping from 10 feet. Loved it. JoAnn did go for a cooling dip. She's always game when it comes to water.
Later that day we walked 15 minutes down the beach in the other direction to one classy resort where the Eurodollars were spent at a yoga retreat. Great coffee milk shakes and a sweet little waterfall swimming pool.
Back to our little windowless cubicle with stucco walls with grit that could scour your flesh if not careful.
Tomorrow its northward along the dirt roads with streams to ford to Samara to meet Jerry who will guide us to his rental unit in the hills above Playa Camoronal. It is an undeveloped bay with only 3 or 4 homes spaced about the surrounding hills inspite of the fact that it is one the best surfing beaches in Costa Rica with 2 1/2 miles of empty beachfront. Perhaps because it is also a prime turtle nesting reserve accounts for its protection from overdevelopment. Ah but we can always get around that can't we? Just prefix our words with "eco," such as eco-lodge, eco-eats or eco-fuel station!
An Eco-adios
Early Starts
Southward Sojourn
Costa Rica to Roatan
February 2012
Beginning, always the hardest thing to do, especially when preceded by a healthy portion of procrastination.
Yet, here we are again. On the road to Central America and wondering why. All the usual reasons; flight from the rains and snows of the Pacific North West winter.
With this our third time to Central America all pre departure preparations were on time or ahead of schedule. Shots and meds taken care of. The usual packing and editing and lists of just in case while we are gone; things like generators ready for our tenants in case of power outages for the remainder of the winter months, Mail, banking, bills, phones and electronic gear etc., etc. It seems like the beginning does't start until the final landing at your next pause.
The trials of airplane travel and airports I have spoken of often enough that suffice it to say, here my opinion has not changed in that other than the five minutes of take off and landing, it's still a bore. I think back to Paine Field in Everette WA. where at the age of twenty I took my flying lessons from Willard's Flying Service. Darryl Williard was a slight bespectacled and shambling man with a tuft of thinning blond bangs always hanging over one top edge of his glasses. Behind those glasses his eyes held you directly but not invasively. I have had several flight instructors since but something more than his talent made him my favorite. His demeanor in the seat behind me was calming from the start. And his taps on the shoulder to point out another plane or bird in some distant quadrant made me sit more attentive to know the skys were not an infinite and empty ocean and to look everywhere even though, more than not, other denizens will turn out to be no larger than a reflective speck. But its the knowing that sharpens the edge.
How glorious were those first solos. The Kent Valley was farmland back then and the Green River below lazily wound like a silver thread undisturbed by present day industrial warehouses of mega block upon mega block. Memories untrampeled by civilization stubbornly fade away in all of us except when we take the time to sit still.
I had talked my girlfriend into taking lessons with me and we both soloed only 50 feet apart side by side smiles a mile wide and eye to eye in a pair of Willard's Aeronca Chieftans, those tail dragging high wingers one had to taxi along snaking side to side in order to be able to see forward first to the left then to right, back and forth like a slow drunken weave.
And those grassy airfields of Arlington planted seeds deep.
I had a friend in college one David MacNeil, tall, gangly, an irrepressible Scotchman who could call up a Scottish brogue that could rattle your ears. Such was his enthusiasm and zest for life that he could practically talk me into anything. Even taking out a student loan to buy an old 1958 British Morgan open sports car. It had a long tubular bonnet with a double row of louvers down its entire length ending in a low and graceful rounded grill. And the whole front end sandwiched between a pair of swooping fenders proud at the front with headlights sculpted forward and fairing downward to the rear and along the sides and below the doors to join up with similar rear fenders. A swooping and continuous curve.
After an accident I decided to rebuild it from the ground up. As a destitute student I had no choice. In my tiny garage on 40th Street there in Seattle I scraped the dollars together doing part time work as a janitor or a cook in the dorms at the UW campus. The day came to reinstall the engine. It actually stormed and thundered as I slid the hoist suspended motor into the bay. Shades of Frankenstein! It lives !! Eventually, with the help of my Dad, which I treasure, on the upholstery, we finished. The paint scheme was suggested by another good lady friend, deep chocolate body and glossy black wings (fenders.) It corkscrewed my head every time I saw it. It flew over the roads of Washington.
"Tony! Lets go up to Arlington and go flying!?" I bent over my drafting board for Cedar Homes in Bellevue working late one afternoon with MacNeil. "MacNeil, what are you talking about? I can't fly and neither can you." Ah but Dave among his inexhaustible store of friends had one who did. A young pilot who flew for Rheem airlines in Alaska who had his own low wing open cockpit hangered at Arlington. Northward we roared in Dave's Morgan a white one with red leather interior which when I saw for the first time dramatically unveiled from beneath a cover, sealed my deal and said student loan. Arlington had a grass airstrip in the 60s. You could smell it just after cutting. There in the waning light was the Ryan trainer just taxiing in from a flight as Dave ran up to his friend yelling above the engine to "Take Tony up, Take him up and give it to him". Give it to him? "Sure climb on up and put this leather helmet and goggles and scarf on." Scarf and goggles...really? Buckled into the front open cockpit with the silver mono wing beneath me and only endless sky above I stayed in front of the "Is this really happening" question. The next thing I noticed was the huge radial engine with it's massive black cylinder "jugs" not more than 5 feet away from my nose! As we taxied to the end of the aromatic grass and reved up, I felt an unstoppable smile begin to crease my face. "Is this really happening?" Slowly forward movement was jerked by each blast of a cylinder. The explosions came faster and faster and with bang my body was pulled forward against the safety harness. I was literally being jerked into the sky! The balloon tires rumbled over the tufts of grass sending up newly crushed smells of sun warmed clover and the freedom of climbing air. I settled in to the ackety pop of the big radial in its circular firing and tried to relieve my facial muscles of its stretched and frozen smile. Over the ear phones I hear, "Are you ready Tony?" I nod. And we dive and the force presses me back as the earth covers all my fields of vision. Then more pressure as the horizon rolls back down from above only to disappear under the nose. Pressure now moves to my shoulders as I realize I am upside down and look above me t see the earth! Slowly and gracefully terra firma rolls from behind my head, down my forehead and back underneath me as the horizon again takes its rightful place in front. God that was a loop 5000 feet in suspension. So began my first experience with aerobatics in an open cockpit. We moved on to stalls, spins, hammer heads, rolls until the grass fields below began to dim in the dusk and it was time to settle down with the waning light. Returning to the airfield we flared down to a three point landing to the smell of grass and pasture. After the engine shut down and the only sound was the ticks of mettalic cooling. I could only sit wordlessly until MacNeil came running up wanting to know, wanting to hear all about it. Later that night we sat outside an empty hanger with a half dozen other elderly pilots talking hanger stories drinking beer and eating clams and oil from tin cans. The next week I went down to Willard's Flying Service to sign up.
Flying has never been the same. Commercial flying is not even close. Perhaps it was for a little while during the age of the Flying China Clippers but now its your basic bus ride with screaming babies, fighting for that elbow rest between the seats and re breathing that recirculated air full of hacks, coughs and sneezes and ankle swollen feet. One prays for the flight to be over sooner than later. There is no jaw aching smile about being in this air. Don't we all pray that this pilot was not so bored that he is alert enough to land? So finally we have landed in San Jose Costa Rica and we trudge from one line to another; baggage, customs, security, immigration, taxi hawkers and car rentals. Our car rental guy meets us at the airport and takes us into the dark garage to show us the car. It is 10 years old, scratched, dented, bondo falling off and a re paint job that tried to cover crusts and rust. Five minutes down the road to our airport hotel, LaAdventura Inn, we discover the right side windows, front and rear do not work. Try that in the tropical heat. We e-mail Diego and demand another rental that works. Surprisingly he brings us another one in the morning. Somewhat soothed we next drive off to the town of Puntarenas and the ferry across the Nicoya Peninsula to the West Pacific coast and our eventual destination, a private home near Samara we have rented for the month of February.
The unpaved beach roads are as bad as we remember but at least it is the dry season so the three streams we ford are low and slow.
Before reaching Samarra we need to spend two nights in a little fishing town called Montezuma.
Costa Rica to Roatan
February 2012
Beginning, always the hardest thing to do, especially when preceded by a healthy portion of procrastination.
Yet, here we are again. On the road to Central America and wondering why. All the usual reasons; flight from the rains and snows of the Pacific North West winter.
With this our third time to Central America all pre departure preparations were on time or ahead of schedule. Shots and meds taken care of. The usual packing and editing and lists of just in case while we are gone; things like generators ready for our tenants in case of power outages for the remainder of the winter months, Mail, banking, bills, phones and electronic gear etc., etc. It seems like the beginning does't start until the final landing at your next pause.
The trials of airplane travel and airports I have spoken of often enough that suffice it to say, here my opinion has not changed in that other than the five minutes of take off and landing, it's still a bore. I think back to Paine Field in Everette WA. where at the age of twenty I took my flying lessons from Willard's Flying Service. Darryl Williard was a slight bespectacled and shambling man with a tuft of thinning blond bangs always hanging over one top edge of his glasses. Behind those glasses his eyes held you directly but not invasively. I have had several flight instructors since but something more than his talent made him my favorite. His demeanor in the seat behind me was calming from the start. And his taps on the shoulder to point out another plane or bird in some distant quadrant made me sit more attentive to know the skys were not an infinite and empty ocean and to look everywhere even though, more than not, other denizens will turn out to be no larger than a reflective speck. But its the knowing that sharpens the edge.
How glorious were those first solos. The Kent Valley was farmland back then and the Green River below lazily wound like a silver thread undisturbed by present day industrial warehouses of mega block upon mega block. Memories untrampeled by civilization stubbornly fade away in all of us except when we take the time to sit still.
I had talked my girlfriend into taking lessons with me and we both soloed only 50 feet apart side by side smiles a mile wide and eye to eye in a pair of Willard's Aeronca Chieftans, those tail dragging high wingers one had to taxi along snaking side to side in order to be able to see forward first to the left then to right, back and forth like a slow drunken weave.
And those grassy airfields of Arlington planted seeds deep.
I had a friend in college one David MacNeil, tall, gangly, an irrepressible Scotchman who could call up a Scottish brogue that could rattle your ears. Such was his enthusiasm and zest for life that he could practically talk me into anything. Even taking out a student loan to buy an old 1958 British Morgan open sports car. It had a long tubular bonnet with a double row of louvers down its entire length ending in a low and graceful rounded grill. And the whole front end sandwiched between a pair of swooping fenders proud at the front with headlights sculpted forward and fairing downward to the rear and along the sides and below the doors to join up with similar rear fenders. A swooping and continuous curve.
After an accident I decided to rebuild it from the ground up. As a destitute student I had no choice. In my tiny garage on 40th Street there in Seattle I scraped the dollars together doing part time work as a janitor or a cook in the dorms at the UW campus. The day came to reinstall the engine. It actually stormed and thundered as I slid the hoist suspended motor into the bay. Shades of Frankenstein! It lives !! Eventually, with the help of my Dad, which I treasure, on the upholstery, we finished. The paint scheme was suggested by another good lady friend, deep chocolate body and glossy black wings (fenders.) It corkscrewed my head every time I saw it. It flew over the roads of Washington.
"Tony! Lets go up to Arlington and go flying!?" I bent over my drafting board for Cedar Homes in Bellevue working late one afternoon with MacNeil. "MacNeil, what are you talking about? I can't fly and neither can you." Ah but Dave among his inexhaustible store of friends had one who did. A young pilot who flew for Rheem airlines in Alaska who had his own low wing open cockpit hangered at Arlington. Northward we roared in Dave's Morgan a white one with red leather interior which when I saw for the first time dramatically unveiled from beneath a cover, sealed my deal and said student loan. Arlington had a grass airstrip in the 60s. You could smell it just after cutting. There in the waning light was the Ryan trainer just taxiing in from a flight as Dave ran up to his friend yelling above the engine to "Take Tony up, Take him up and give it to him". Give it to him? "Sure climb on up and put this leather helmet and goggles and scarf on." Scarf and goggles...really? Buckled into the front open cockpit with the silver mono wing beneath me and only endless sky above I stayed in front of the "Is this really happening" question. The next thing I noticed was the huge radial engine with it's massive black cylinder "jugs" not more than 5 feet away from my nose! As we taxied to the end of the aromatic grass and reved up, I felt an unstoppable smile begin to crease my face. "Is this really happening?" Slowly forward movement was jerked by each blast of a cylinder. The explosions came faster and faster and with bang my body was pulled forward against the safety harness. I was literally being jerked into the sky! The balloon tires rumbled over the tufts of grass sending up newly crushed smells of sun warmed clover and the freedom of climbing air. I settled in to the ackety pop of the big radial in its circular firing and tried to relieve my facial muscles of its stretched and frozen smile. Over the ear phones I hear, "Are you ready Tony?" I nod. And we dive and the force presses me back as the earth covers all my fields of vision. Then more pressure as the horizon rolls back down from above only to disappear under the nose. Pressure now moves to my shoulders as I realize I am upside down and look above me t see the earth! Slowly and gracefully terra firma rolls from behind my head, down my forehead and back underneath me as the horizon again takes its rightful place in front. God that was a loop 5000 feet in suspension. So began my first experience with aerobatics in an open cockpit. We moved on to stalls, spins, hammer heads, rolls until the grass fields below began to dim in the dusk and it was time to settle down with the waning light. Returning to the airfield we flared down to a three point landing to the smell of grass and pasture. After the engine shut down and the only sound was the ticks of mettalic cooling. I could only sit wordlessly until MacNeil came running up wanting to know, wanting to hear all about it. Later that night we sat outside an empty hanger with a half dozen other elderly pilots talking hanger stories drinking beer and eating clams and oil from tin cans. The next week I went down to Willard's Flying Service to sign up.
Flying has never been the same. Commercial flying is not even close. Perhaps it was for a little while during the age of the Flying China Clippers but now its your basic bus ride with screaming babies, fighting for that elbow rest between the seats and re breathing that recirculated air full of hacks, coughs and sneezes and ankle swollen feet. One prays for the flight to be over sooner than later. There is no jaw aching smile about being in this air. Don't we all pray that this pilot was not so bored that he is alert enough to land? So finally we have landed in San Jose Costa Rica and we trudge from one line to another; baggage, customs, security, immigration, taxi hawkers and car rentals. Our car rental guy meets us at the airport and takes us into the dark garage to show us the car. It is 10 years old, scratched, dented, bondo falling off and a re paint job that tried to cover crusts and rust. Five minutes down the road to our airport hotel, LaAdventura Inn, we discover the right side windows, front and rear do not work. Try that in the tropical heat. We e-mail Diego and demand another rental that works. Surprisingly he brings us another one in the morning. Somewhat soothed we next drive off to the town of Puntarenas and the ferry across the Nicoya Peninsula to the West Pacific coast and our eventual destination, a private home near Samara we have rented for the month of February.
The unpaved beach roads are as bad as we remember but at least it is the dry season so the three streams we ford are low and slow.
Before reaching Samarra we need to spend two nights in a little fishing town called Montezuma.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Motion Withdrawals
Greetings,
It has been three weeks since we have been back from our circumnavigation of these United States with an Easterly leg through Southern Canada.
For many days I felt like I was still moving down the road like a sailer from the sea trying to get his land legs under him.
It took forever to empty the Airstream of stuff and the truck still has vestiges of plastic bins in its bed. They both sit there covered with a light drift of NW snow looking forlorn and in need of purpose.
In spite of the re-shuffleing and re-stuffing of stuff back into the house and garage things are getting back to normal such as it is.
Where will we go next? Well stay tuned for a 45' catamaran trip to St. Maartens in the Caribbean this coming February.
In the mean time, often during my road blogs I spoke of motorcycles and trips around the Western regions. It sometimes seems unreal to me that I could have been riding for more than 40 years, most of it alone on the asphalt and concrete ribbons, with all that unforgiving hardness 6" away from the bottom of my boots and still be in one piece.
So let us start back in 1977. I had already been riding for a couple of years then and had moved up very quickly from a Suzuki 250 to a Yamaha 750 triple. In those days 750 was about as large as they were making. Perhaps an imprudent choice for my limited experience but I knew even then that I wanted something that would go far with long and comfortable legs. Triumph had its 750 Bonneville, Harley its 900 but with a worthless peanut shaped gas tank, Honda just came out with its huge Gold Wing and I believe Moto Guzzi also had a large displacement twin. and the Kawasakis had their 900. But that was about it.
And certainly motorcycle touring was not very discovered or popular amongst the boomers during this period. So with my Yamaha three cylinder with a full fairing and soft bags and a dozen bungee (also a fairly recent invention at the time) cords for strapping everything on I was off whenever possible.
These are excerpts from my motorcycle journals born in Washington State. hope you enjoy.
June 21, 1977
North Eastern Oregon 1:30PM. Blue skies, hot sun and a breeze that makes it bearable. Kim, Hugh and I left Seattle at 5:30 AM for Idaho and Montana on two motorcycles. It rained at Snoqualmie Pass soaking our legs. Half an hour beyond the Pass blue skies and sun dried us off. We are having lunch at Dead Man's Pass. Miles of open rolling countryside, crickets, birds and dry whispering grass.
Engines running well.
6:10 pacific daylight arrived at Weiser Idaho, 12 hours total. Stocking up on beer and fruit and heading for the reservoir outside of town, up in the hills. Water is down 30-40 feet. Pitched camp. Thoughts of my wife Lana and daughter 3 1/2 year young Lisa and brother Mike and everyone else.
June 22, 1977 "The Reservoir"
8:00AM and already the sun is hot. Time to roll out of the bag and take a cold shower. It's a little cooler outside the tent with the breeze. Crashed last night without going into town for the fiddle music. Too tired from 12 hours on the bike. Tightened bolts and checked oils. Still not much going on in town. Called Lana and Lisa. It's so hot. Bought a cooler and tied it back on the bike and headed back to the reservoir.
The clouds are so stark white against the deepest of blues. Spaced evenly across the upper hemispheres tight dense elongated and stacked balls of solid gas. It's like a Rene Magritte painting come to life. We spend the afternoon following the moving shade cast by our tents to avoid the direct sun and drink our beers and eat our fruits just silently looking at the skies and the drying reservoir below.
June 23,1977
At 7:30 AM the sun forces us out of the tents like ants jumping off a hot plate. We have decided to leave Weiser and head north to Missoula, Montana. It seems to take much longer getting ready to go on the bikes. Much packing and lashing. God its hot, in the 90s at 7:30 in the morning! Must bee the heat trapped in the hills.
2:25 PM Just made a very hot 61 mile leg most of it at 70 MPH with a 5 mile stretch at 90MPH. An amazing sensation of speed coupled with the heat. The blasts of hot air from trapped and isolated pockets of sink is consuming. There is no chance of cooling sweat as it evaporates just before it comes. We consume vast amounts of liquid and take a heat break at Riggins, Idaho.
5:30 PM We struck camp at Clearwater Park 767 miles from Seattle.
The last afternoon leg was incredibly beautiful. Wide sweeping, curving descending valleys with the wide shallow Salmon River following the road. Isolated pockets of white sandy beach and sparkling rippled river surfaces pull the eyes to these flashing vignettes you somehow feel will stay with you for a long time.
We camped along and I bathed in the Lochsa River.
June 24,1977
8:15 AM left camp with Kim as a passenger. Covered 72 miles from camp to Lolo Pass elevation 5200 feet and into Montana. Beautiful road up through the firs and pines but cold in the mountain air beside the wide running river. My Yamaha though over loaded is running well.
10:35 AM 114 miles from camp we arrive at Missoula, Montana. Three and a half hours later we arrive at Butte. The temperature is climbing.
6:00PM Set up camp at the base of the Lewis and Clark Caverns. Took the tour. Very interesting. Scenery finally picked up after Butte. More of what I expected, big shouldered rolling hills, wide valleys and plateaus. Crisply, whispering quaking aspens. I took a solo ride to the Mountain View service station and store for supplies. Soft golden light washing upthrust layers of reddish Montana rock. The Mountain View Inn had no activity. Two dogs lay by the gas pumps in the shade of the cover wait until I stop my engine before getting up and slowly loping over. Old ceiling fans are turning everywhere in the Inn. A young boy gets up from TV. Not much to buy but the kid was friendly. His parents are eating dinner in the other room his Dad still wearing his baseball cap at the table struck me as odd.
Next door I pick up beers and chat with the tender. 60 cents for a cold draft of Coors.
Its an incredibly beautiful ride back to camp in the sunset.
I'm the only one on the road. Its as if this sunset were mine alone.
June 25, 1997 Saturday
5:30 AM, Gorgeous "Big Sky" morning with birds calling across the fields. After my cold wash cloth Hugh is the net to awake. We race our stoves to boil the first quart of water.
As I enter my ledger Kim, Hugh, Scott and Norma talk about their earliest memories. Scott, Kim and Hugh are brothers and Scott with his wife Norma came by car to join us at this camp.
8:00AM.
It's time for the group to split up. I have felt a suppressed current of excitement and apprehension at taking off by myself. Yet I know it is something I must do. Kim has been very quiet the past couple of days while Hugh has been his usual irrepressible and vocal self. I think Kim does not want this trip to end as he and Hugh will turn back to Seattle and work. I am finally packed and strapped and ready. Kim gives me a hug and we say all the things we are not sure we are saying. A few more words of advice from Hugh and we all swing out on the road, As I turn south on 287E and they north we wave and I watch them disappear. All of a sudden I am alone and I feel like I felt when I took my first airplane solo. As I reach the crest of the campsite's plateau the road shoots away from me into the distance and dips and climbs in a straight line rolling over the landscape to vanish in a point of light beyond the distant horizon. Velvet green new alfalfa sprinkled with yellow daisies carpets away to the far knolls on each side of this empty road. Again I am the only one in this heavenly amphitheater so I stop on the center line of the two lane and turn my engine off with no fear of anything intruding. As all noise drifts away I gaze down the long quiet expanse. This is the Montana I have dreamt about since childhood. Much rushes through my mind. I wish so many others could know this and were here to share this visage. In my mind I speak with and thank Kim and Hugh as their parting waves still remain in my eye. I thank my family and all those I have known for bringing me to and giving me this moment.
The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky clear and blue and I enter the Montana experience and it is grand.
It has been three weeks since we have been back from our circumnavigation of these United States with an Easterly leg through Southern Canada.
For many days I felt like I was still moving down the road like a sailer from the sea trying to get his land legs under him.
It took forever to empty the Airstream of stuff and the truck still has vestiges of plastic bins in its bed. They both sit there covered with a light drift of NW snow looking forlorn and in need of purpose.
In spite of the re-shuffleing and re-stuffing of stuff back into the house and garage things are getting back to normal such as it is.
Where will we go next? Well stay tuned for a 45' catamaran trip to St. Maartens in the Caribbean this coming February.
In the mean time, often during my road blogs I spoke of motorcycles and trips around the Western regions. It sometimes seems unreal to me that I could have been riding for more than 40 years, most of it alone on the asphalt and concrete ribbons, with all that unforgiving hardness 6" away from the bottom of my boots and still be in one piece.
So let us start back in 1977. I had already been riding for a couple of years then and had moved up very quickly from a Suzuki 250 to a Yamaha 750 triple. In those days 750 was about as large as they were making. Perhaps an imprudent choice for my limited experience but I knew even then that I wanted something that would go far with long and comfortable legs. Triumph had its 750 Bonneville, Harley its 900 but with a worthless peanut shaped gas tank, Honda just came out with its huge Gold Wing and I believe Moto Guzzi also had a large displacement twin. and the Kawasakis had their 900. But that was about it.
And certainly motorcycle touring was not very discovered or popular amongst the boomers during this period. So with my Yamaha three cylinder with a full fairing and soft bags and a dozen bungee (also a fairly recent invention at the time) cords for strapping everything on I was off whenever possible.
These are excerpts from my motorcycle journals born in Washington State. hope you enjoy.
June 21, 1977
North Eastern Oregon 1:30PM. Blue skies, hot sun and a breeze that makes it bearable. Kim, Hugh and I left Seattle at 5:30 AM for Idaho and Montana on two motorcycles. It rained at Snoqualmie Pass soaking our legs. Half an hour beyond the Pass blue skies and sun dried us off. We are having lunch at Dead Man's Pass. Miles of open rolling countryside, crickets, birds and dry whispering grass.
Engines running well.
6:10 pacific daylight arrived at Weiser Idaho, 12 hours total. Stocking up on beer and fruit and heading for the reservoir outside of town, up in the hills. Water is down 30-40 feet. Pitched camp. Thoughts of my wife Lana and daughter 3 1/2 year young Lisa and brother Mike and everyone else.
June 22, 1977 "The Reservoir"
8:00AM and already the sun is hot. Time to roll out of the bag and take a cold shower. It's a little cooler outside the tent with the breeze. Crashed last night without going into town for the fiddle music. Too tired from 12 hours on the bike. Tightened bolts and checked oils. Still not much going on in town. Called Lana and Lisa. It's so hot. Bought a cooler and tied it back on the bike and headed back to the reservoir.
The clouds are so stark white against the deepest of blues. Spaced evenly across the upper hemispheres tight dense elongated and stacked balls of solid gas. It's like a Rene Magritte painting come to life. We spend the afternoon following the moving shade cast by our tents to avoid the direct sun and drink our beers and eat our fruits just silently looking at the skies and the drying reservoir below.
June 23,1977
At 7:30 AM the sun forces us out of the tents like ants jumping off a hot plate. We have decided to leave Weiser and head north to Missoula, Montana. It seems to take much longer getting ready to go on the bikes. Much packing and lashing. God its hot, in the 90s at 7:30 in the morning! Must bee the heat trapped in the hills.
2:25 PM Just made a very hot 61 mile leg most of it at 70 MPH with a 5 mile stretch at 90MPH. An amazing sensation of speed coupled with the heat. The blasts of hot air from trapped and isolated pockets of sink is consuming. There is no chance of cooling sweat as it evaporates just before it comes. We consume vast amounts of liquid and take a heat break at Riggins, Idaho.
5:30 PM We struck camp at Clearwater Park 767 miles from Seattle.
The last afternoon leg was incredibly beautiful. Wide sweeping, curving descending valleys with the wide shallow Salmon River following the road. Isolated pockets of white sandy beach and sparkling rippled river surfaces pull the eyes to these flashing vignettes you somehow feel will stay with you for a long time.
We camped along and I bathed in the Lochsa River.
June 24,1977
8:15 AM left camp with Kim as a passenger. Covered 72 miles from camp to Lolo Pass elevation 5200 feet and into Montana. Beautiful road up through the firs and pines but cold in the mountain air beside the wide running river. My Yamaha though over loaded is running well.
10:35 AM 114 miles from camp we arrive at Missoula, Montana. Three and a half hours later we arrive at Butte. The temperature is climbing.
6:00PM Set up camp at the base of the Lewis and Clark Caverns. Took the tour. Very interesting. Scenery finally picked up after Butte. More of what I expected, big shouldered rolling hills, wide valleys and plateaus. Crisply, whispering quaking aspens. I took a solo ride to the Mountain View service station and store for supplies. Soft golden light washing upthrust layers of reddish Montana rock. The Mountain View Inn had no activity. Two dogs lay by the gas pumps in the shade of the cover wait until I stop my engine before getting up and slowly loping over. Old ceiling fans are turning everywhere in the Inn. A young boy gets up from TV. Not much to buy but the kid was friendly. His parents are eating dinner in the other room his Dad still wearing his baseball cap at the table struck me as odd.
Next door I pick up beers and chat with the tender. 60 cents for a cold draft of Coors.
Its an incredibly beautiful ride back to camp in the sunset.
I'm the only one on the road. Its as if this sunset were mine alone.
June 25, 1997 Saturday
5:30 AM, Gorgeous "Big Sky" morning with birds calling across the fields. After my cold wash cloth Hugh is the net to awake. We race our stoves to boil the first quart of water.
As I enter my ledger Kim, Hugh, Scott and Norma talk about their earliest memories. Scott, Kim and Hugh are brothers and Scott with his wife Norma came by car to join us at this camp.
8:00AM.
It's time for the group to split up. I have felt a suppressed current of excitement and apprehension at taking off by myself. Yet I know it is something I must do. Kim has been very quiet the past couple of days while Hugh has been his usual irrepressible and vocal self. I think Kim does not want this trip to end as he and Hugh will turn back to Seattle and work. I am finally packed and strapped and ready. Kim gives me a hug and we say all the things we are not sure we are saying. A few more words of advice from Hugh and we all swing out on the road, As I turn south on 287E and they north we wave and I watch them disappear. All of a sudden I am alone and I feel like I felt when I took my first airplane solo. As I reach the crest of the campsite's plateau the road shoots away from me into the distance and dips and climbs in a straight line rolling over the landscape to vanish in a point of light beyond the distant horizon. Velvet green new alfalfa sprinkled with yellow daisies carpets away to the far knolls on each side of this empty road. Again I am the only one in this heavenly amphitheater so I stop on the center line of the two lane and turn my engine off with no fear of anything intruding. As all noise drifts away I gaze down the long quiet expanse. This is the Montana I have dreamt about since childhood. Much rushes through my mind. I wish so many others could know this and were here to share this visage. In my mind I speak with and thank Kim and Hugh as their parting waves still remain in my eye. I thank my family and all those I have known for bringing me to and giving me this moment.
The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky clear and blue and I enter the Montana experience and it is grand.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Coasting To A Pause
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| North of Mendocino on US 1 |
Northern California Coast
Dec. 15 2010
Humboldt County, with its magnificent coastal redwood forests is the marijuana capital of North America. Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the United States, more than corn, wheat, grapes, cotton, oranges, apples or vegetables. That it is so huge and overwhelming a multi billion dollar industry is almost too hard to comprehend. For one thing you don’t see it. There are no acres and acres of cultivated fields, hills and valleys with all the trappings of agriculture, no sprinklers, tractors, field hands. It is all hidden from sight. It is green gold hoarded and protected. An entire industry exists to grow it, medically prescribe it, market it, and distribute it. The number of clinics that prescribe ( “recommend” as prescribing is still illegal ) it that are popping up in the marijuana states and the number of shops that sell to the “medically” permitted populace is runaway. More than 1000 such shops blossomed in Colorado alone in less than 2 years. It is as if the somber massiveness of the redwood trees here in Northern California hinted at another shadowy parallel world of equal immensity. And this hidden world continues to expand at such a rate that soon, very soon, it could very well be the largest industry in the United States of America. Our entire national economy could become based on a single drug product. The United States of Marijuana. We will probably ignore its existence even as it drives our entire monetary and political/social/military/industrial system. It is amazing our capacity to so completely consume yet ignore even deny the existence of the eight hundred pound gorilla sitting on our head. I am dumfounded.
As the winter season gains a dripping, gray hold we find ourselves one of only two campers here in Benbow, CA, the other also an Airstream, in this large and open field. It is in a cold wetness that we set up for the 120th day. We will not escape winter after all. Not a lot of snowbirds in the northern climes this time of year.
We left Benbow RV Resort and Golf Course relatively early, 9:30, as the weather was supposed to break clear and I suspected we might try to make the eight hour run all the way into Southern Oregon and I did not want to get into Nancy’s, Jo’s sister, after dark as they live in the boonies.
The redwoods were of course head shaking grand. How did we manage to save these from our rapacious appetites for plowing through every living thing in our way? We humans can do a few things right but it is never an easy task as we are basically consumers. We are takers. Givers are looked upon with bemusement or even hostility because we don’t believe them. Then one of us will lay down our life for another for love or war and we are momentarily lost for words at this ultimate giving. So we act a little too loudly with song or praise or even medals. I don’t know where I am going with this only that I seem to be drifting away from the sublimity and infinity of the Pacific Coast’s spray and back into the hinterlands, back into the resource consuming crush and I despair at my acceptance and participation.
All adventures, road trips, even vacations start out with the freshness of hope that a simpler life will open to us that a generous earth will welcome our untethered pause. And on the road this is most often the case. Yet we must always come back to those and that which remained. To family, friends, homes, jobs, chores and projects, the density of life that never left. Do we owe it to them to bring something back of ourselves that was changed for the better? Trinkets and souvenirs don’t do it. Gestures of considerations for sure and more on the giving end than the taking but we want to have come back with more. I know I never come back with enough gestures and I am piqued by guilt. But there must be more of something to accompany our return. More of what we have seen, done, felt. More of ourselves.
There will be some of us who are anxious to get back to the familiar, to our own beds. There will be some of us who are already thinking about their next departure even before their return. I am afraid I am of the later. Often I fear for my restless soul and wonder where it will or can find stasis. I want it to find quiet. So that I may look again with loving. Perhaps it is again a suffering of that hunger to consume all in front of me. To consume completely all of the time, all of the short life I am allotted before it drifts away like a fine sea spray over an infinite beach.
I will slip this lengthy journey by seeing my grown son in Eugene, Oregon. With this visit that is ending I will selfishly see someone of my self, love, that will continue our journey forward. That is plenty. That is everything.
Bon voyage,
Air streams from Tony & JoAnn
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| Mt. Jupiter with a dust of snow taken from our back porch, home |
Vineyards, wineries, hilltops
Vineyards, Wineries, Hilltops
12/13/10
From Monterey, where I lived as a child in the 50’s. and Carmel we drove north still along 101 with the near term goal of cutting NE into Southern Oregon. For this leg I took very little in the way of photos as my mind seemed to have drifted from the visual to the internal cerebral wanderings wherein dealing with picking up all the loose strands precipitated by our imminent returning to the NW occupies my time. So I apologize for the lack of photos for this and the next blog of this journey probably being the last one.
Connecting Cloverdale, California on 101 and Mendocino on the Pacific coast is 60 miles of Hwy. 128. Its tightly curved and a roller coaster. It goes through a vein of fabled Napa Sonoma Mendocino counties and even in the rain and the fog its beauty would not be hidden. Coursing into valleys and dales were millions of acres of grape fields folding themselves into and over the undulating landscapes, rows so symmetrical flashing by the road’s edge in a whir with the regularity of railroad ties. There was no green upon their branches but the woody architecture was still attractive to my eye.
The wineries came in all sizes from thousand acre fields with warehouses and gigantic stone chateaux with European formal gardens to small wineries in the smaller valleys of only 50 acres with small wood framed homes and stainless steel tanks in the back yards.
On this road last night the sun started to slip behind the hills by 5:00PM and not wanting to be caught like deer in headlights on these curves we pulled off the road at a wide spot on a rise. Better safe to just stay hitched up and dry camp. Besides, the view was grand, pure California. Nothing in front of us save oak wooded hills with sloping meadow pastures, the sound of a stream somewhere close below, small rolling patches of winter vineyards and tops of hills holding the last moments of light in a blaze of chartreuse pasture and patches of black oak. As darkness fell only a single small pin of light across the valley on the far facing slope hinted at some habitation. One of the sweetest places we have stayed and it cost only the nerve to be disconnected.
This morning getting up early in the damp mist we continued along Hwy 128 to Mendocino. Beyond the mellowing dreaminess of more and more rolling hills of grape vines we began to notice evergreens amongst the hardwoods. Soon,
with about 25 miles from the coast of Mendocino, we entered large groves of redwoods. The further we went the taller they got and the dimmer the light on the forest floors 200 feet beneath A damp two lane road tightly wove between and thru these massive dark sentinel trunks closely spaced. It was a woolen gothic dampness, filled with longing like the songs of RoseAnn Cash of Fathers lost. Where shadows speak your name.Prior to turning on to Hwy.128 we had spent two days in Fairfield visiting JoAnn’s brother and his wife Barbara. I did not wish to write then. A sense of writing fatigue or perhaps a general malaise of soul. Perhaps it was the weight of a sense of a journey of circumnavigation nearing attachment to it’s beginning. I want to write with information and entertainment. I really want to write with some elegance and content yet I am angered and frustrated by my lack of skills and words. But is not now the time to try ? Time is flashing so quickly that I know I could never catch up to where I should be in writing. That will remain a moving target of variable speed and forever out of range for the rest of my life. So I will line it out however it comes and trust with your indulgence you can allow me some small but cherished audience.
It was a restful two days at Fairfield with Jo’s brother except for the dinner at the Texas Roadhouse - peanut shells on the floor from the barrels of free peanuts, smokey spattering grills, loud music, loud people, loud waitresses, screaming babies and drunken oafs. Whew. Got out of there with our meals only half eaten and undigested. Otherwise we slowed ourselves down at Ash’s by diddling with 1000 piece puzzles and I powered through 300 novel pages in two days and nights at blur inducing speed..
While in Fairfield I kept Moochi the cat, that long haired shedder, company in the trailer about half the time. She has started to tolerate me after more than 3 1/2 months cooped in the same tube. She seems to survive, nay thrive, on meanness towards me and others but snuggles right up to Jo. I know its the lack of patience I emit whereas Jo is so gentle with her Mom’s old bitty cleaning her box faithfully every morning and tending to her needs and feelings. Who could resist that ? Unfair I say. A cat must meet my human demands, right? are you with me? maybe? no?... thanks a lot. Now I do stumble up to feed her most dark mornings myself but admittedly it is to silence her yowling beside my ear. She has my number. Now canned cat food such as slimy pated fish parts is made to stink. It’s the stink that gets them cats going. They love the stink. Ever try living with that smell in a 25’ trailer for 4 months? Its your last sensory input, eight feet away from your nose, as you go to sleep and the first input you awake to. So I clang around the sink and bump my head on cabinets again and again to get the smell of a fresh hot pot of coffee going. I intend to snort the coffee to counteract the latest most aromatic can of slick ground chicken tailings I had just opened. Now I can’t seem to spoon it out of those little gourmet cans without getting it on my fingers the klutz that I have become. I use to be so co ordinated, remember? So to further convince myself that I really need to wash my hands so early in the morning what do I do. Yes, I smell the slime on my fingers! Aggh! Whoweee! I need to wash my hands! I’m not too smart and don’t think very clearly 60 seconds after standing up from sleep and bumping my head, hard, again.
Travels with Moochi. Now that is a whole other story.
There are a lot more stories to tell. Of other ventures to Europe, South America, Tahiti, New Zealand, Canada and Alaska and 40 years of motorcycle trips throughout the mountains, plains and valleys of our own West. Piles of prose, poetry and photos spill onto my desk so I might as well harvest them here as I enter my “golden years.” I haven’t even started with stories about relationships yet. That one really scares me yet we must face them, yes ? I think I am still waiting for that level of maturity that will allow me to be honest without being self serving. As I said, scary. It’s like the way I tell a joke, great with the build up but often confused about the delivery of the punch line. Wait, wait, let me start over. I can’t quit while I’m behind ! Please no pity laughs.
Don’t most of us think about doing something like this ? Yet it is with much trepidation, akin to stage fright, that I would presume to embark on a path of story telling. Although story teller is less of a presumption on my part than calling myself a writer. How else can I deal with my insomnia.
See you down the road.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Moro Bay & Kirk'sCreek
Moro Bay & Kirk’s Creek State Park
Dec. 2 & 3
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| Morro Bay, CA |
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| Morro electric plant stacks |
About 75 miles further North on US 1 up the California Coast lies the little town of Moro Bay. I have been here several times. There is nothing really spectacular about the town. It has a small waterfront, an electrical plant with three outrageous smoke stacks that defy acceptable slenderness ratios and a geologic rock. This rock is big. More like a small dense mountain that pops up out of the bay like a glacier with such presence that it was used as a navigational aid for the early explorers and has been designated an historic monument. This is a singularly big rock probably 5 times larger than the one at Cannon Beach, Oregon. Breakwaters and roads are tied to it. It is the dominant piece of Moro Bay. Moro Bay also has one of the largest wildlife estuaries in Central California. With all this the town is in a time warp of about 40 years ago and its denizens are so laid back one needs to poke them with a stick to get any action. We stayed in a tiny RV park, Cypress RV, right in town. I mean right in town! One block away was Main Street. Any town with an RV Park that close to town is not moving too fast. it was a nice place but the owner had recently red bricked the entire lot except for the actual vehicle spots. That’s right, bricked the whole site with brick in a herringbone pattern no less. Felt like 20 RV’s parked on an immaculate patio. It actually was clean looking and a very straight line job with well planned drainage. And it was a quick walk to town. I walked to get a hair cut from a real one chair barber shop and was the 5th in line with two others behind me. The barber, Liz, was thin and in her late 60’s and I got the scoop on a lot of the history as each elderly customer caught up with all the doings and comings and goings of families and friends of long ago that Liz still remembered and seemed to know all about. It was a fascinating view of small town Americana.
1/2 a block away was Bottles - a liquor store/deli with burger, fries and any size soda for $3.99. That was any size soda so as I type this many hours later I still sip at a 44 oz. foam bucket of soda next to me. Its old fashioned grilled burgers wrapped in red and white checkered paper with thick fries seasoned with chili powder. Don’t miss it when you’re in town.
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| KIkr's Creek St. Park, S. of Big Sur |
Two nights of kicking back with TV! and we were ready to be moving up the coast this time a 60 mile leg up US1 that will take more than 2 hours with the narrow twists clinging to the side of the cliffs above pewter grey Pacific waters. Every now and then a “Rough Road” sign was thrown in for good measure. But we made it to another small site on the ocean side of the road. This time it was a small peninsular bluff high above the water. We won a rare cloudless and fog free day on the coast. At Kirk’s Creek State Park 60 miles South of Big Sur we lucked out and got the last spot right on the edge which I thought was the best site with our own grassy meadow to the cliff’s drop off. This outcrop was centered in a giant bay of mountain walls. A sad flimsy wire fence was all that kept one from slipping over the wet grass to the rocks 300 feet below. We are isolated. No internet, phone, potable water, electric or sewer. We are going to stay two days anyway as the site is just too spectacular. The Pacific Ocean from this vantage covers all the earth that we look upon.
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| Camp site Kirk's Creek |
Last year on my motorcycle trip down the Coast to LA I saw this site from above. It was warm then and the site looked completely filled up with tents like colored mushrooms. An emerald grassy bluff that projected out and high above the ocean. I took mental note to try and find out the name but that slid back into my memories of collective detritus. I did not realize that this was the same place that JoAnn had mapped out in her daily navigation work. A Pleasant surprise indeed.
Yesterday we just sat around and read. I have just about read everything to the point where in desperation I read maps, brochures, anything with print. W also prepared a grand Mexican feast with genuine tamales picked up in Cardenas
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| US1 Pacific Coast, CA. |
Mexican Supermarket in Indio, Calif. Jo and I had a great time in a store so large that carried so much Mexican goods. The bright colorful stacks of peppers I had never seen nor heard of. The meat counters were a little strange to my eye though as every conceivable part of animal and fowl was piled high including chicken feet. So we had last evening a great Mexican feast (sans chicken feet). We have not denied ourselves good meals on the road.
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| Pampas Grass |
Also yesterday afternoon a Saturday the whole camp emptied out. We and the host were the only occupants of this peninsular bluff. The host was a little suspect being a single guy, usually the Park Department hires only couples, with his Corvette and motorcycle parked beside a run down old motorhome and piles of tarps covering stuff surrounding his rig. I think this is probably considered one of those “outpost” assignments that is low on the desirability list. It is so isolated here. No communication, not even drinkable water in this huge bay rimmed by steep rock walls. To each side US1 on the cliffs twists and turns, appears and disappears as a thin brown cut around the ends. The few cars are seen as twin points of headlights or tail lights that move cautiously slowly downward from the South then upward on the North like tiny beetles on the walls.
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| Our campsites personal space! |
Last night we had a blow. It was the convex lens like shape of bay and walls to each side that concentrated the winds upon this grassy outcrop with a force that gusted the Airstream with slams. It was rock and roll and we were thankful that we had left the Airstream hitched to the truck for the extra rigidity and weight. There was no sleep for the couple of ours that it raged. The rains peppered and the winds howled. And who should come walking to our door in the middle of all this storm and bluster but Mr. Host. “Someone is coming . I think its the host” Jo said in the darkness. We were the only people here so what would he want at this time and type of night. I threw on my sweats and went to the door with my high powered flashlight. He hadn’t knocked yet so when I forced open the door against the wind and rain his fist was raised near my nose poised to knock and his face was about 12” away from the beam of my light. Shit! He scared the f.... out of me! in his hooded jacket and metallic object in his fist (a mini light) and a stupid grin on his face slick and whipped with rain! “ Jesus! You scared the fuck out of me! What’s up?!” I groused. “Well you did not pay for tonight.” he grinned. What the hell? In the middle of a storm he says this to the only campers in the park with a stupid/sheepish grin on his face! I told you he was strange but JoAnn again had seen something about him she liked when we first arrived.
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| Big Sur |
He had this paid deposit slip in his hand we had slotted into the metal tubes that are at the gates of all parks. The slip was torn and thoroughly wet and about as useless as wet toilet paper. I told him we paid for two night and this was our second night. Did he take into account that we only paid half price with our Golden Age discount the membership number written on that wet rag he was holding? Meanwhile the wind and rain continued to howl and whip. “Well, OK, I’ll check it again.” and he walked away trying to flatten out the limp paper.
“I told you he was strange. What the hell was that all about? He spooked the hell out of me!” I said. “Oh Tony, he was just walking up to the door when you opened it” Jo said. “A move like that could get one’s head blown off. Banging on your door on an isolated bluff in the middle of nowhere with a full storm raging”
“Oh Tony, calm down.”
“Shit.”
The morning broke much nicer and the storm made the air, if possible, even more pure and bracing.
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| Big Sur |
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