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
Friday, February 17, 2012
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.
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