Re:Whatever

It's January in Alaska. The Weather is here. Wish you were beautiful.

2012-01-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

Who cleans their hot tub in a blizzard? It's my fourth January in Alaska, but I still am not proficient enough at drinking or domestic violence to pass as a local. So, I find myself outdoors, orally siphoning dirty water out of a 250 gallon tub in what I think is a window of good weather. The window was a lot smaller than anticipated, and due to the effects of freezing on drains, this chore wasn't one that could be left when the snow and sleet started falling again and the wind picked up to 30mph.
The next day, I settled for a more locally-themed indoor activity, and went to watch a jury trial. I learned another lesson from this activity that will stick with me as long as "don't clean a hot tub in a blizzard." No, it's not "don't go watch jury trials," if they weren't entertaining, there wouldn't be so many TV shows and movies based on them. The new lesson is: "If you ever get in trouble in Homer, AK, immediately seek outside legal counsel."
The legal masterminds of our day are obviously not working as public defenders and state prosecutors in rural Alaska, but the circus I watched was a comical reminder. The undisputed facts of the case were these: the defendant and the victim had both been drinking and yelling at each other in the victim's residence; the defendant threw a coffee mug* from a second story loft that hit the victim, who was downstairs, in the head; the victim sustained a head injury that required 22 stitches; the victim waited for an ambulance and police in a nearby vehicle; the police arrested the defendant; the victim did not press charges, but was subpoenaed as a witness for the State. The charge was assault in the 4th degree (which is a misdemeanor that the State of Alaska defines as "recklessly causing physical injury to another person"); the defendant plead 'not guilty'.
The defense was multi-faceted razzle-dazzle to shame Chicago. The argument made by the defense attorney was four-pronged:
1) *It wasn't really a "mug" it was a "teacup." Aesthetically speaking, It certainly sounds like a teacup would feel a lot better on the forehead than a mug, but not as nice as a facial massage. If either one is gonna result in 22 stitches, getting hit with kitchenware is getting hit with kitchenware. Also, fair or not, the entire jury was composed of sighted individuals and the prosecution presented an exact match of the shattered mug/teacup as evidence.
2) At some point in time the victim asked the defendant if they would be interested in swinging. Amazingly, the prosecution never objected on the grounds of 'irrelevance' and the defense attorney was able to make multiple witnesses on the stand define 'swinging' (exchanging spouses for sex) when she brought up the request as an element of defense for the assault charges. This was funny to watch, as no one is really comfortable defining slang terms for sex in front of a well-lit room of strangers. Never mind that the defendant and victim are not married, because we're not trying to stay on the topic for which we were called to court anyway.
3) The victim had been drinking and was sitting in a car after the alleged assault, so they should have been charged with a DUI. This would be an interesting point to watch debated if I was present at a DUI trial, as it can be argued that if you are "controlling" a vehicle if you are in it with the keys. But, as far as I knew, the only defendant in the room was the one on trial for assault. No objections from the prosecution though. At this point, I started to question if Alaska state law or court procedures really have any bounds of relevancy at all. If I'm charged with a crime, can I sight the last time my victim lied to their mother as a defense? Maybe we can also discuss the manner in which the parties involved pick their teeth.
4) When the victim called 911, they flirted with the dispatcher. Since this call, like the alleged DUI, occurred post-assault, and off-crime scene, I questioned its relevancy. The prosecutor did not, but she did offer a tape of the 911 call as State's evidence and played it for the courtroom. I was pretty excited to hear if the defense's remarks were true, as I would love to know how you go about hitting on someone in the course of an emergency phone call (everyone's interested in a new angle for an eligible date in January in Alaska, after all). Disappointingly, the 911 caller just sounded nervous and a little intoxicated, more or less as expected from someone that is stunned, uncomfortable, and has their own blood on their face.
More than 40 minutes were spent on each of these arguments. The victim and the cop that responded to the scene testified. The cop was so obviously annoyed and bored with the defense attorney that he barely kept from rolling his eyes. Due to many recesses & continuances, The jury made multiple trips in a blizzard to hear the elaborate details of the case and random details of peoples' lives that they probably didn't care to hear. I tried to keep from laughing out loud by admiring the architecture and paint job in the courtroom, and thinking about how much money the state of Alaska has to spend on public buildings.
Speaking of public funds, this case, by court calendar, took up at least a week of the court's time. The final verdict was 'Not Guilty.' I'm certain the prosecutor was paid for her work, even though any citizen off the street could have shot cannonball holes in the defense's case using a feather duster. The defense attorney probably sleeps fine, as many people are required to hand in their scruples when receiving their law degree. No one seems concerned about the use of public funds or the state of our legal system. And I say 'no one', because the same number of people show up to spectate at court cases as clean hot tubs in blizzards.

Hindsight is 20/20

2012-01-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

I rang in 2011 with a good friend and good food in a new country: Argentina. One thing this friend taught me was to go through your pictures at the end of the year and choose 10-12 that capture the highlights. It's a bit of time travel that serves a really good reminder of how far a year can take us. I rang in 2012 a lot closer to home and with a lot more friends. I miss the adventures of travel, but relish the days of home and friends and snow. Here's what some of my last year looked like.
I made some bold resolutions for 2012: 1) get 15% better at love; 2) write a letter to someone each week; 3) buy a small plane. I don't have the best track record on resolutions, but anything worth trying is worth trying... Happy New Year!

Playing with rocks in the deserts of Argentina

Moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where I built schools, learned Spanish, and lived with a host family that I miss dailly

Celebrated Carnaval in Oruro, Bolivia

Got in WAY too many interesting situations involving buses

Visited Salaar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flats, with the friends I made at Sustainable Bolivia

Steller Air Service expanded to two airplanes and added another pilot and a staff and a whiskey bar

Basically ran a hostel at "the campus" where I live. Taylor and Alice lived here for the summer, and myriad friends visited, which made every single moment of summer busy, fun, ridiculous, and memorable.

4th of july in Spicer, MN... need I say more?

Learning to hunt wih the Fonkert brothers, Cody & Jedd: a week of perfect Alaska nature after a spin-cycle summer

Killed a caribou hunting on the Alaska Peninsula... not bad for 2nd try ever

Aubrey & Elyse.. my new nieces: the prettiest chicititas in the world

Settling in for a season of winter sports in Alaska: starting with the Wilderness Women's Competition in Talkeetna

Committing to the Crash

2011-12-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

In the Peanuts comic strip, they have a Kite Eating Tree, in Kachemak Bay, we have a Plane Eating Runway. The FAA calls Nanwalek's airstrip at about 800 usable feet, but the pilots that operate there know to eek out extras from the ends. All flat-ish surface is stretched parallel to the beach in a curve, and a mountain of reckon-able size looms on one end. The strip is surrounded by water on three sides and a village at one end. If the excellence in urban planning were not already apparent, a manhole cover sticks up about a foot above the gravel at one end, driving the obstacle course home. So, properly done, you have two options to get to Nanwalek: a steep turn on short final to avoid the mountain; or, from the other direction, landing on one wheel, in a turn, avoiding the manhole cover and stopping before the mountain.
Of course the prevailing wind is from a lagoon on the wrong side of the curve, constantly pushing aircraft towards a very cold ocean. In the winter, the gravel strip is covered with ice, snow, and slush. Any time of year there are dogs, children, and four-wheelers running across the strip. Almost all supplies and passengers in and out of this small village go by small airplane.
On Thursday, three pilots were in Nanwalek in 206s, there was a lot of slush on the runway and a crosswind out of the lagoon. One of those 206s didn't make it out. Conditions were worse than "normal" and we could conjecture for hours on the how and why of the crash, but, the basics are: the airplane got off the ground, lost flying speed over the water, and went into the ocean with four souls on board.
The initial gossip was that the pilot "stalled into the water," but those of us who know what a stalling aircraft looks like can't reconcile that with how upright and gently that plane touched the cold ocean. All passengers were unscathed, and everyone climbed out of the aircraft and was able to swim safely to shore.
I had the privilege of talking to the pilot yesterday and I learned something: he said when he knew he was going to hit the water, he committed to the crash, pulled the power and flared. He landed that plane in the water. He didn't crash it. I was amazed. Why? Because I don't think I ever would have done that.
We all know I have a fear of commitment, and committing to crashing seems difficult indeed. But, it might have been what saved the passengers. My instinct would have been to keep trying to shove the power past the firewall, asking the airplane for just a little bit more than it had to give; to keep trying to save it beyond the point of hope; to ask the impossible from a piece of machinery. What beautiful grace: to accept that you are going to fall out of the sky, and be able to turn your attention to landing on your feet.

A Weekend in the "Wilderness"

2011-12-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

The men of Talkeetna, AK (pop. 772) decided long ago that all an Alaskan male needs is "a woman and a truck, both that work." After slapping each other on the back, laughing uproariously, and ordering another round of beers, they hatched the idea for the 'Bachelor Auction & Wilderness Women Competition' to scour the Alaskan darkness for one of the two. 31 years later, the Talkeetna Bachelor's Society is still luring scores of single females to Talkeetna in the middle of winter to compete in a ridiculous obstacle course for their affections.
What a perfect venue for Homer Women's Nordic to see how tough they are. Four of us drove the 7 hours to Talkeetna and arrived just in time for the qualifying event: hauling water. In a series of heats, women race 5-gallon buckets down the main street of town. For every inch of water spilled, 10 seconds is added to your time. The estimation of total contestants was around 45, but bachelors apparently aren't really big on numbers, so who can say for sure? The only qualifiers for the competition are that you be female and single. None of the events move you farther than whisper-distance from the bar, but all are designed to simulate something you would do as a homesteader in the Alaskan bush. Since most cabins in Talkeetna don't have running water, it's pretty normal to haul water from a creek nearby. The top five water haulers advanced, one of which was me.
The next two rounds were performed one at a time, and I had to go first, starting with making a sandwich and opening a beer and serving it to a bachelor as he lounges by the bonfire. Technically, 'serving' is defined as you have to 'get the sandwich TO the bachelor', so I chucked sandwich and beer at the lad as I ran past to throw a pile of firewood in the sled at the back of a snow machine. Then I had to pick up a handsaw and saw a board (surrounded by a group of bachelors all giving conflicting directions, increasing the authenticity of the event).
I jumped on the snow machine and hauled the load of wood around the park to drop it off at the appointed area. Timer stopped. I then got to stand by the bonfire in the building blizzard conditions to watch the other finalists perform the same tasks. One of them ran a handsaw like the proverbial hot knife through butter. I asked her later: "Any chance you built your own cabin?" Of course the answer was 'yes.' Alaskan chicks are tough. After Miss Saws-a-lot, I finished second on that round. The boys started setting up for round three.
The final round took a little more imagination to transport you from the center of town to a land of true 'survival skills.' The timer started when you were handed a casting rod and asked to catch a fish. Since you were still standing in front of the Fairview Inn, there was a velcro tennis ball at the end of the line, and strewn a ways down the snowy street were a handful of wooden 'fish' with velcro attached. The weight of casting a tennis ball is something to get used to, and the first girl managed to wrap the line around herself, one of the judges, and a parked vehicle all on the first cast. After a fish was caught, it needed to be put in a pack and the contestant had to don snowshoes to go to the next station. Next up in this hunting round was to kill a "Ptarmigan," a common Alaskan bird represented here by a balloon. After running on snowshoes with a pack, the girl was handed a BB gun and given as many rounds as needed to kill the bird. (I've been gun slinging lately, so it was a one-shot, clean kill). Once fish and bird were 'dead,' the contestant continued on snowshoes to a tree at the top of which she needed to ring a bell. I couldn't get the snowshoes off fast enough, so I attempted to climb with them on, which is not very easy or graceful. Luckily, I am tall, and the bell wasn't really that high. I only had to get a few feet into the air to slap it and then fall to the snow below. One of the bachelors handed me a nerf handgun that I would then use to 'protect myself' from 'moose' on the trail. After shooting a bachelor in a moose costume at point blank range, I sprinted for the finish line and dove across, again only finishing second, impossibly behind the girl that, as far as we know, was still tangled in fishing line.

That's it. Then darkness sets in on town and everyone retires indoors for the bachelors to cloister themselves and do complicated math to determine which lady is the top Wilderness Woman in Alaska, or at least in Talkeetna, or at least at the bar that day. The winner was announced at the Annual Bachelor Auction, at which dances and drinks with 36 single men were auctioned off to raise money for the local women and childrens' shelter. The girl that handsawed her own cabin won the prized fur hat of victory. I, normally completely biased for myself in competitions, would have voted for her as well. And then had her come to my house to do chores.
The boys raised tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone danced at the bar until morning. The next day, we woke up early and drove back south to start the season of ski racing, and I sleepily thought to myself: "Why would anyone wonder why people want to spend winters in Alaska? When left to our own devices, look what we get up to."

...And we did NOT die!

2011-11-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry to leave you in suspense. Anna and I got in and out of Canada, no problem. The Canadian border guard on the way in told Anna: "You are REQUIRED to have a valid passport to enter Canada." Then he waved us on. This made me question whether Canadians have a different meaning for 'required' than we do in standard American English.
On the way home, the US Customs and Border Control didn't even notice Anna's expired passport, which made me wonder if all the people paying attention at our borders are too busy building walls in Arizona.
Anna polled all the employees at the rental car counters before we left Seattle and every one of them said we would never make it. Lesson: if you are looking advice for international travel regulations, Hertz and Enterprise night shift workers are not the answer.

Another typical Steph/Anna international travel debacle

2011-11-16T22:40:00.000-08:00

Anna & I are going to Canada tomorrow. We've done this before. More than once. Last time, she forgot her passport at her apartment and missed her plane. This time, she packed her passport weeks ago. This morning, she sat up in bed and realized: My passport is expired.

Anna is a champion of internet research. She was able to tell me how much of what kinds of frozen Alaskan fish and game I could bring through customs, and she never missed a beat on Facebook. But even Anna doesn't need the Internet to know that she can't renew her passport in 18 hours. But she did find a place on the Canadian government website that states they will accept an expired passport with another form of ID. Anna's driver's license is valid, but for good measure, she's bringing her library card, her lease agreement, her electric bill, and a bank statement. She also printed out the Canadian website and underlined and circled and starred the word 'expired.'

Problem is, Anna's not certain she can return to the United States on an expired passport. In fact, she sounds fairly sure it will be a problem. But we talked ourselves through it:

Anna: "It doesn't explicitly say on the US State Department website that expired passports are NOT accepted."
Steph: "It just says you need a 'passport'? So really it could be from a crackerjack box?"
Anna: "It could be homemade."
Steph: "I guess the wording is in your favor. Did you print that out too?"
Anna: "Of course. My dad is a lawyer, and your dad is a lawyer, so between us, we are basically one whole lawyer. I don't think we will have a problem arguing this."
Steph: "Actually, my mom is a lawyer too, so between us, we are really ONE AND A HALF lawyers."
Anna: "That's right. We're well-represented. No problem."

That solved, we're meeting in Seattle tomorrow, and driving to Vancouver. Sunday, Anna's dad may get a call from a Canadian customs detention center... but, my dad's gotten a call from me in jail, so I can tell you first hand, lawyers can handle these things.

Ode to Homer Women's Nordic

2011-11-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

I went skiing for the first time this year and it felt so normal. I guess that comfortable feeling compares to flailing around at hockey as opposed to going back to something I've been at since I was three. Because, in reality, strapping boards to your feet and holding sticks in your hands and waddling through the snow is not really "natural" behavior for humans.
But that's what I do, six days a week if I can, with a training team here in Homer. They have become my closest friends and the highlight of my winter. The team is 5 years old and led by an Amazon named Megan who organizes training for the group like we're olympic athletes instead of a group of varying skill levels, ages 24 to 65.
If the hockey team is "cool," the nordic team is tough. (Not that I'm saying the hockey team is not tough. I would not say things like that and still have as many teeth as I do.) These ski women show up in 15F (-10C) degree weather when it's blowing 30 knots. They circuit train in the rain. Megan tells them to ski interval sprints uphill and they do. None of this behavior is "normal."
If the hockey team are the girls I want to hang out and party with, the nordic team are the women I want to be when I grow up. Who can ski everyday from 11-1? These women own businesses, run fishing operations, direct non-profits, teach, practice medicine, make art, host exchange students, donate kidneys, have great fashion sense, and can probably even check in to a flight online and get an aisle seat in an exit row without paying an extra fee. And, in their free time, they ski. It's an individual sport: their competing only with themselves, and they couldn't ask for tougher competition. This group lives up to the bumper sticker: "Alaskan women become the men they thought they wanted to marry."

Some things DO get better with age

2011-11-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

The first time I bought a mattress, it made me a little sick to my stomach. Why? In general: people with wanderlust do not own furniture. My mattress only held me in place for about 7 months, and I managed to keep crossing borders and oceans for years, despite owning my own bed (this must have been before TSA got really restrictive). I bought that mattress 7 years and 11 months ago (but who's counting?). Last I checked, it was growing mold in my brother's garage.
Sans moldy mattress, I just hosted another Chili Cookoff at a house I own in Homer, AK: at a property that houses 6 mattresses (7 if you count the futon). Knowing my squeamishness at giving my life any kind of anchor, imagine the mental turmoil of planning a fifth annual something. I never really imagined being here this long. I never really imagined being anywhere this long-- because I really like new places: New places, new people, new events, new jobs, new adventures.
But, there is something really fun about being able to collect this many friends in your garage on a Sunday night.
My ex-boyfriend and I started this chili cook-off tradition together, and the terms of our break up were that we would keep co-hosting it. Homer has a lot more interesting "ex" transactions than this one, but we still managed to butt heads once or twice getting things together. I resorted to my Midwest passive aggressive roots, which he was mature enough to completely ignore, and we managed to pull off the biggest chili feed yet without a hitch.

There were 24 chilis and around 120 people in total, and if you don't believe me, come smell the garage. All sorts of meats were represented and a few veggie chilis were presented as well. The guys that won the Golden Crockpot (our judges' award) were complete strangers to both of us and to most of the people in the garage. They were a pair of Coast Guard guys ("Coasties" as they're locally known) named Tim and Colt, who heard about the event through a friend of a friend. The Golden Ladle (the prize awarded by vote of the masses) went to Zach Brown for his "'Cause Beans are for Poor People Chili", which was a meat-only event that I would have given a prize for name alone.

Kelly Snow won best presentation for use of PBR logos: we really promote infringement of trademark laws. And, Randy Pine won spiciest for a rabbit chili that sent me running outside to refill my beer. He and his roommates just went into their yard, killed some wild rabbits with a .22, and made chili out of them.

Bill & Judy Steyer won the Golden Peeler for best veggie chili with an Indian kick. Megan & Jan Spurkland made Ginger Moose Chili and won the Golden Nut, which, as it sounds, is a totally made up award for a chili that was very interesting and that we didn't have a prize for, specifically.
The best chili, in my personal opinion, was called Chuck Norris, and was made from slow-roasted pork ribs and cherry tomatoes.
Greece, and Africa, and the Maldives had to wait, but I've definitely bookmarked a spot in this little community, if only by one annual event. Hospitality is hard to practice as a rolling stone: its just really difficult to pack an adequate number of mattresses or crockpots.

Advertising Christmas? Already?

2011-11-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

I know it's early, but I went to the post office yesterday and the clerk tried to sell me yuletide stamps. On Halloween! I mean, I know Halloween was on a Monday so we were all done celebrating it anyway, but that doesn't mean October is over and I am ready to talk Santa Claus.
...but, what do you want for Christmas? I want a new vacuum cleaner. One that actually vacuums. The service mine performs is to take dirt off the floor in front of it, and shoot it out the back. After running this piece of machinery around the room, not only are the floors still dirty, but so are my feet and ankles.
I want one of those vacuums that they advertise building a hovercraft out of in the back of Boys' Life magazine. There is no way my vacuum could be turned into a hovercraft.
Of course, we shouldn't get everything we want. If I could turn my vacuum into a hovercraft, I would. Then I would have a hovercraft AND the same old dirt-spraying vacuum. And, I don't really need a hovercraft. So, bad idea. Good thing it's too early for Christmas wishes.

Fighting another round outside my comfort zone

2011-10-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

Even with my penchant for trying anything once, I knew that there must be a reason that people don't start playing hockey at age 32. I was wrong, there's lots of reasons.
I already play two winter sports: nordic skiing and broomball. But in Homer, the cool girls play hockey. I would like to say that my adult choices have different influences than the junior high lunchroom, but they don't. I want to sit at the table with the cool kids. God put 24 hours in a day, and there must be time to squeeze in hockey.
It's actually pretty impressive that I grew up in Minnesota, where every neighborhood has a rink, and I have never ever played hockey. I tried to start in high school, and my parents said it was too expensive. Eighteen years later, in Alaska, it's still expensive, so they were right about that. There's a lot of gear involved, ice fees, etc, etc. But the cool girls give it a hard sell: half-price ice fees, free loaner gear, and a complimentary PBR. Sounds good, right?
Well, I love Homer Women's Nordic, and I'm not going to give that up, so I'll just have to make them jive. Of course, the nordic practice before my first hockey practice is running 8.5 miles and biking 8.5 miles. I hadn't caught my breath from that before I gathered my broomball helmet (my only piece of overlapping gear) and headed to the hockey rink.
First thing I realized is that I will need to hire a valet to haul my gear and help dress me. There is even a specific order to put the gear on in. My valet could remember this for me as well. If you put your skates on before your shin guards, you'll fall down trying to start over. Trust me. You also have to tape a bunch of stuff on. The loaner socks I had on over my shin guards were bright pink. My jersey that I only got half way on over my shoulder pads before I had to enlist outside help (where is my valet?), was bright green. The girl next to me passed me a roll of pink tape to strap the bright pink socks onto my thighs with. The hole-y red and blue gloves I used are like wearing lobster claws. I could neither open or close my fingers, so I threaded the bright pink stick I was given carefully through the holes in the claws and headed onto the ice.
Very quickly, you see who is a good skater. Ironically, they are the ones who move like they are not even wearing skates. They casually turn and stop and go and can even turn their heads a different way than they are moving. Somehow, these super-mortals start from a complete stop and you never even see them do it. As I understand the laws of physics, they must push off at some point to start motion, but I dare you to catch them. They just float away in any direction at will. The one skill I gleaned was that if you keep your stick on the ice, it's a third point for you to lean on.
You're getting the picture: I'm padded up as a big bright pink and green blob using a pink hockey stick as a cane as I limp around the ice. The thread on the toe of my borrowed right skate is unraveling and a wad of string drags along the ice like a black ball of snot coming off the nose of the skate to complete the outfit.
Practice starts with skating drills. The coach yells out each new drill when it starts, but it echos off every surface of the arena like we are in a cave and the only sounds that reach me are like those from the teacher's desk in a Peanuts cartoon: "Wah wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah." All the women on the ice instinctually know what he says and switch back and forth between impressive puck juggling and line jumping routines. I just try to maintain forward motion and stay upright.
We moved into keep-away drills and I was paired with a tall girl from Maine. I never got the puck from her. When it was my turn, I didn't even finish starting the whole skating thing before I realized I no longer had the little black disc. After a few rounds of this, I subconsciously stopped trying. The junior high lunchroom took over again: We both know you are going to get my milk money, so why fight again? I'll just give it to you. I spent the rest of the practice avoiding anyone from a state that begins with an 'M', or anywhere in Canada, for good measure.
Once, during scrimmage, I fell and realized my valet's absence had failed me again and my shinguard had not been properly pink-taped to cover my knee. When I limped back to the bench, I slumped down and noticed the girl next to me used skull and crossbones tape to affix her socks. Nothing she wore was pink. The next girl I talked to introduced herself as 'Jim'.
Back in the locker room, I could barely hold up my PBR, even after removing the lobster-claw gloves. The cool girls all said I did really well, which is probably part of the hazing lingo that I don't understand. I promptly spilled half my beer on the girl next to me.
I'm as good at quitting as I am at saying 'no' to something in the first place, so an adult-sport disaster is in the making. Hopefully, hockey can be approached like any other challenge: one thing at a time. So, I'd better get on Craigslist to advertise for a valet.

"Come on in. There's room enough in here for one more sinner."

2011-09-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

I believe in God, but I don't believe in illegal immigration. One is just much more plausible than the other.
I can back up and tell you that my book club started this line of thought. That I'm in a book club is also hard to believe. My family doesn't have a very good book club record, as my mom has been kicked out of the same book club at least twice, and I'm not really known for my capacity for reasonable, open-minded discussion. But, I weaseled my way into a book club, and once a month, I read a book chosen by other people, whether I want to or not, and then tell that group of people what I thought of it. I try to listen to what they thought as well.

Last time around, the club read Little Bee, which is a novel about a girl who escapes violence in Nigeria for a time, but ends up getting deported from the UK (yes, I just spoiled the end, sorry). The conversation evolved from our opinions on the book, to our opinions on immigration. Most of my friends were appalled by the treatment the women in the book received at a fictional detention center in the UK, and were horrified by the thought that such places may actually exist outside of novels.
None of this was surprising, but when things got cloudy was when I found out that these same people thought that these "illegal immigrants" needed to be stopped from invading the western world. This seemed a contradicting opinion to me: Should they just not have to endure detention centers on their way back to the living hell they came from?
I've been 'round and 'round this issue. I've traveled all over, met all sorts of people, and I've even worked 'illegally' in two foreign countries (I don't think their governments read this blog though). I can debate ad nauseam about how the process should be changed, but after a bit a reflection and some critical analysis of the book club conversation, it was obvious that the base of my opinions on the subject is that I don't believe in "illegal" immigration. In fact, I'm even more laissez faire about people than about economics.
Who are we to say that people have to stay within the arbitrary borders they were born in? My ancestors did not. I haven't. If we're all God's children, my brothers and sisters from Bolivia have as much right to work and live in Alaska as I do.
My book club told me that this violates the social contract that we have with our governments to abide by certain laws. Just because social contracts exist, doesn't make them correct or even operable. Humans get government wrong all the time: you don't have to read many books to know that. So, I believe in something more constant: a loving God, that would like to see us eventually create a world where I can get a really good taco at a dogsled race. Amen.

The One That Got Away

2011-09-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

We're back from hunting. I'll save you the suspense and tell you that we didn't shoot a moose. But, while I've got your attention, I'll go ahead and tell you how all that not shooting happened.

Jedd was the mastermind of the operation, and his version of Microsfot Excel is a small yellow notepad. He had a comprehensive list of everything we needed and made Cody and I make similar lists. I followed mine religiously. Cody lost his immediately, but zeroed in on the important items on our group shopping trip to Save-U-More, Homer's knock-off Costco.

We left Steller Air on a sunny Friday afternoon and headed an hour west. In Alaska, you cannot fly and shoot on the same day, so we took everything we could from our flying day and spotted some moose and a camping spot from the air. Our spot on the lake was on a rocky beach by the outlet, the sun set over the mountains, Jedd caught a couple of lake trout, and, most importantly, none of my three cell phones were anywhere in sight. The start was so good, I knew immediately that it didn't matter much if we got a moose or not.

Saturday morning, we started trekking through the brush to the area we had seen moose the day before. The going was rough, a lot of thick Alder and a lot of uphill, and some very tricky creek crossings, one of them dubbed "the raging river of death." After more than an hour's hard hiking, we got to a meadow, settled in to be quiet and watch, and Jedd did some calling. After two hours of nothing but sunshine and light breeze, a cow moose stepped into the meadow, followed by another, followed by a bull moose. Regulations for my hunting permit say I can shoot any size bull moose (many areas require kill-able moose to be over a certain size), but this moose blew any size restrictions of any area out of the water. As with any good fishing story, he gets bigger every time we talk about him, and now his rack was 80 inches if it was 5. I laid in the prone position and tried to line him up in my scope.

Jedd and Cody are both experienced hunters and great shots, but Jedd was adamant that I kill the moose. He really wanted me to have the full experience. He made his brother agree that no one would fire until I did. I protested, but like I said, Jedd was the mastermind.

So there we are, 150 yards from the biggest bull moose any of us have ever seen, and I can't get a bead on him before he walks behind the next tree. The thought flit through my mind that if I just pulled the trigger and missed, the boys would have the go ahead to kill him anyway. But that didn't seem sporting, so, I didn't shoot and proved that cliche about how many shots you miss that you don't take. One of the cows crossed our trail on the other side of the meadow, caught our scent, spooked and the trio took off. I apologized to the boys, but Jedd shrugged: "No biggie. It's only the first day."

Now let's talk about my preconceived moose hunting notions that probably could have been cleared up by a few questions that I never asked. In Alaska, hunting and fishing are really common. People subsist by them. And, by tales and experience, they are fairly easy. If you go halibut fishing, you catch halibut. Salmon fishing, same. People go hunting and come back with bears and moose and goats and caribou like some people go to the supermarket.

Moose hunting is so common that the state is broken up into a billion different areas all with their own complex regulations regarding the size of moose you can hunt, based on the size of the antlers, or the number of something called 'brow tines', whether you can hunt males or females or calves, how many you can shoot in a year, etc. It is a standard road trip pastime to take a copy of the hunting regs and try to figure out what is legal on the roadside as you cross hunting area boundaries. In the drugstore in Homer there is a big display of 'legal' and 'illegal' antlers. With all this hair-splitting and nit-picking, I figured that moose hunting was pretty much like an episode of MTV's "Singled Out" and all sorts of animals paraded by and you just had to be skilled enough to pick out one that was legal. Turns out, moose apparently don't even watch MTV, and that gi-normous bull was the only moose we saw all week.

Another thing I know now that I only sort of knew then: Jedd is so mellow that even if he was absolutely certain that that bull was our one chance at surviving the winter, and we were facing freezing and slow starvation, he would've said, "No Biggie."

We hunted the entire week in wind and rain on the remote lakes of the Alaska Peninsula. We saw porcupines, owls, eagles, and lots of bugs. We moved location once, and spent a lot of time hiking and sitting in silence in the rain. All the time to think was a good bout of detox after a fast paced summer. We had cards and dice, but we all preferred to play "The Time Game." Jedd was the only one with a watch, and we never tired of seeing who could get closest to guessing the correct time. With simple finger signals, this game can be played under tactical field silence as well.
On our second to last day, the rain really started falling and gale force winds blew for hours. Jedd's tent flipped over, everything was soaked and the lake rose over a foot in 8 hours. We hunted on. The fall foliage was beautiful and to witness the change one storm could have on the landscape was humbling and spectacular. After eeking out our last minutes of the hunting season in Area 9B, completely eluded by moose, we flew back to Homer. I would've stayed and enjoyed the wilderness, the peace, and the company... even if we didn't have a chance at a moose.
Among a slough of thoughts and ideas I had while being quiet and watching, I learned an important lesson about partnerships: I had an experienced hunter with a great attitude, willing to teach me; and he had a float plane pilot, willing to take him to any new hunting venue. Both of us thought we had the best end of the deal, and were each ridiculously thankful. This new appreciation of a 'good trade' might be more valuable than a freezer full of meat.

Proving Cartoons Wrong

2011-09-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

I learned from Animaniacs that "It's a great big world, and we're all really puny." Animaniacs was a very intelligent show. So, imagine my surprise when I'm sitting at the Salty Dawg Saloon the other night with a friend, and I vaguely recognize someone at the end of the bar. Vaguely.
Can't really place him, so I ask my friend if he's local. She says she doesn't know, but, at that moment, he looks down the bar, meets my eye, walks over, and says: "I'm Eli. We met in Bolivia." I immediately remembered hanging out with him at Sustainable Bolivia and saying goodbye to him in Oruro after Carnaval... he was headed off on a year-long South American adventure or something.
But apparently not. Apparently he got a job guiding for a bike tour company in Alaska and has been around the state all summer. It was his last night in Alaska, and he stopped in the Salty Dawg to buy a souvenir. He asked me what I was doing there and I said, "I live here!" and he confessed to remembering that I was a bush pilot somewhere in Alaska, but he never knew where.
Weird, right? But wait, don't buy it yet. I found and "friended" him on Facebook so I could share this photo of our weird coincidence. Facebook, which knows way more about us than we know about ourselves, informed us that we have a mutual friend, in the Netherlands, who he met in Boston and I most recently traveled with in Argentina.
Next time I run into Yakko, Wakko and Dot in a bar, I'm going to tell them that the world is itsy bitsy, and if you can walk down the street without running into a friend, you're doing something wrong.

Guns and Gifts

2011-08-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went to my fifth Alaskan wedding. Correction: Not MY fifth wedding, but the fifth wedding I've attended as a guest. Of the five, one of the weddings was in Anchorage, which is more of a suburb of Seattle than part of Alaska, and another one of the weddings was on a difficult-to-reach glacier, but the other three have all featured guns and dogs. Two of them I arrived at by floatplane. These are the glaring differences between Alaskan and other American weddings.
As we got ready, my friend questioned my choice of wearing boots with a sundress as a little too casual. Turns out, most of the guests were in Xtra Tuffs and raingear. The dogs usually wear flower leis, which make them fit in stylishly. Many of the guys wore guns. This is strange mainly because none of those guys wear guns at any other times. Nor do they even use guns as far as I know. But, for a dress-up event, when most men are finding that suit at the back of their closet and ironing (or just using the tumble cycle on the dryer), Alaskan men are dusting off their gun belts. Also worth noting is that everyone in Alaska can officiate a wedding once, so rarely are people married by preachers or judges when a friend will do. Traditional wedding vows must have been lost on the way through Canada, because everyone here writes their own vows, most of them have some poetic allusion to nature. No one mentions the guns.

Outside of wedding circles, I have been talking guns lately. A few weeks ago, I decided that I would like to learn how to hunt. I work in remote areas where I could see this becoming a useful skill. I also am an omnivore who thinks that if you are going to eat meat, you should be able to kill it. Beef and other commercially produced meats are very expensive and fairly poor quality in Alaska, not to mention the 'carbon footprint' of getting it here and the chemicals used in mass meat production and distribution. Add to that that a hunting trip would be a good wilderness experience, and I just needed to find a willing teacher. Luckily, I hold the trump card to convince an outdoors man to ruin his fall hunting trip with an inexperienced girl: a float plane.
My coerced guide and tolerant friend Jedd made sure that I was outfitted with the right rifles (a .30-06 and a .338, we'll see which one works best) and hearing protection for target practice. He recommends I use a .338, but I'm Annie Oakley with the .30-06... not so much with the bigger weapon. Two weeks to go...we'll see.
This isn't my first rodeo as far as guns are concerned. My dad insisted that we take a gun safety course as kids. I don't remember much from that besides that the girl who sat next to me wanted to change her name to "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and the instructor only had stubs for fingers... but could still pull a trigger. Luckily, the Army brushed me up on the M16 in college, but that was the last time I shot a rifle: more than 10 years ago, and just using the post sights on the barrel. Turns out, hunting rifles have a lot more kick, but really fancy scopes. If you can hold marginally still while looking through the scope and pulling the trigger, you will hit what you're aiming at.
I'm not thrilled about attempting to murder an animal, but I am excited for the experience of this hunt and have been talking about it to anyone who cares to hear. Surprisingly, hunting talk is not always well-received, even in Alaska. The other day, at a remote lodge, I announced I was going on my first moose hunt, expecting to be as lauded as a toddler's first trundling steps. Wrong. Another Alaskan pilot and two German lodge patrons read me the riot act and accused me of being a trophy hunter: something that would be funny to anyone who knows about my deep seeded fear of taxidermy. My list of reasons for wanting to learn to hunt certainly sounds a lot more "eco-friendly" than buying all-organic foods shipped in from Denmark... what's more organic than hunting and gathering? None of my critics claimed to be vegetarians, but one of them justified himself by saying that he doesn't eat animals with fur. Apparently my willingness to shoot Bullwinkle is morally abhorrent, but God condones carving up Big Bird or Nemo. So, I need to re-sight my scope, and my moral compass, but then, what do you expect from a girl who wears boots to a summer wedding?

If you've got the money, I've got the time

2011-08-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

The federal government classifies what I do as an "on-demand air taxi." In practice, this means that someone can walk in the door, say, "I want to go here, now." and, we take their money and take them there. Usually, people don't want to go very far, as we charge $450/hr to carry them around by small aircraft. However, we are clear that our "on demand" service will go 'anywhere in the state of Alaska.' Because of this flexible policy, last week, Steller Air was the chariot for the world's most ridiculous beer run.
A guy came into the office, dressed all in motorcycle leathers, and introduced himself as "Radar." He claimed his brother was a seismologist working remotely in Alaska and he pulled up a map on his iPhone to ask how much it would cost to bring his little brother beer. Mark and I debated whether the islands he pointed at, way out near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, were a three-, or four- hour flight away. We quoted him the price to charter the aircraft. He didn't flinch. We said we would have to leave early. He said, "I'm not afraid of getting up."
So, with the main fuel tanks and the tip tanks loaded, along with 34 gallons in jerry jugs in the floats, Radar and I met on the dock at 7am and launched southwest. We stopped in Kodiak because even 134 gallons of fuel would not be enough for me to make the round trip, and because Radar needed to pick up 2 cases of Rolling Rock, as the liquor stores in Homer had not been open early.

The only thing stranger than someone from a California biker gang wanting to charter a small float plane for a distance of almost 400 miles, was the weather being good enough to go that far. We cruised along over miles of cold water and along the dramatic desolate coastline alternating between conversation and napping (well, I wasn't napping... I'd just turn up my iPod while my passenger slept). Radar taught me what different patches mean on motorcycle jackets (or "cuts") and which ones people get killed over. He also regaled me with tales of all the bar fights he's won.

When we arrived at Simeonof Island, the weather was sunny and warm. The winds were fairly calm. We found a group of five tents, the only sign of human life for hundreds of miles. After judging the bay was deep enough and obstacle-free, I touched down and taxied as close to shore as possible. Due to a shallow beach and fast moving tides, I couldn't get the plane all the way in, and we would have to wade. Radar had refused our first offer of rubber boots at the Steller dock, as he had his biker boots, but we insisted. So, he was able to wade to shore with his beer while I anchored the plane to float in the bay.
Once she was secured at anchor, I opened up the floats and started hoisting fuel jugs up onto the wings and funneling fuel into the tanks. I saw heads popping up in the water around me, and every time I looked down at the fuel tank and then back up, a ring of fur seals moved creepily closer. Seals are sneaky and curious, and these ones probably don't see many humans, let alone float planes. By the time I emptied the last jug in the wing, they were close enough that I could look into their eyes. When I jumped down and started to wade back to shore, they spooked and disappeared.
Radar was standing at the tents when I caught up with him. No one else was around. Apparently the brother was out in the field. Agreeing that they must have heard us come in, we decided to wait for them to come to the tents. Meanwhile, I waded back out to check the anchor. Halfway to the plane, I noticed a bill floating by. I reached into the water and pulled out a fifty dollar bill. Wow. Much more exciting than finding the twenty bucks you left in the pocket of your winter coat. A few steps later, another bill: another fifty. I figured they must be Radar's, we are miles away from any form of civilization, and the seismologists don't have any kind of boat. I re-tied the plane and waded back to shore. Radar said the money wasn't his, and I offered to split the treasure with him, after all, he was the reason I was there.
We watched salmon struggling up a spawning stream, ate lunch on the beach, and waited for scientists that never appeared. Radar drank a Rolling Rock. I waded back out to the plane, and as soon as I stepped in the water, saw another bill. Picked it up. Another fifty! I found two more fifties, and then, when I saw another bill float by, I was actually annoyed that it was a twenty. Imagine my dismay when the next bill out of this remote stretch of ocean was only a ten! I tried to split the whole $280 haul with Radar, but he said the rest was mine because of my good karma for sharing the first fifty.
I was two-hundred-thirty dollars richer, no brother was showing to accept his beer, and the tide was going out. Radar tucked the beer under a rock in the creek for it to cool, and we waded back out to the plane. As we climbed away from this seal-and-money-infested island, we took a few more turns, but caught no sight of the seismology crew. Radar seemed only mildly disappointed. He slept most of the way back, and I made the straight shot to Homer in less than four hours.
Back at Steller Air, Radar paid his bill for an eight hour aircraft charter, changed back into his biker boots, and walked out the door. I made a note in my logbook. This was the most expensive beer I've ever delivered, the first sunken treasure I've ever found, and the only time I've ever tipped a customer.

Do you know about 'Planking'?

2011-07-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

How do you answer a question like that? When you understand all the individual words, but they don't make any sense? I went with 'no'. This didn't stop my last customer this afternoon from asking me: "Can I plank on your plane?" She rambled on to describe a trend that apparently began in Australia and just involves lying face down and taking pictures of yourself. What will those Aussies come up with next? She finished her request with the phrase "planking for peace," which made as much sense as the original question.

Wikipedia describes this trend as "the lying down game." They claim it was "invented" in 1997, but took 12 years to really catch on. So people have been lying face down and being ignored since I was in high school, but it's finally making news in Homer, Alaska.

It was a long day at Steller Air and I can't think of a way a routine scenic flight could have ridiculously been more entertaining. It takes hipsters from LA coming on vacation to Alaska to keep us informed about what the kids Outside are up to these days.

Cloudly with a chance of...

2011-06-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

People everywhere talk about the weather. It's lazy, and fairly uninteresting conversation, but it's a guaranteed go-to. I might not know you well enough to tell if you want to talk about airplanes or ice cream, or if you hate the Yankees, or if you think Mark Twain is the greatest writer of all time, but all these topics aside, I can assume that you, in your short or long life, have experienced weather. Weather: the great leveler.

In Alaskan air taxi business, people lie about the weather. Specifically: clients lie about the weather. Oftentimes, flying in Alaska is prohibited or delayed by the weather. If people really want to get somewhere, or, more often, really want to be picked up from the wilderness where you left them, the weather miraculously becomes beautiful, by the mere power of their words.

This was the case this last week. We had dropped off a guy to camp for four days. He had 350 pounds of gear. I just rode along as the copilot, in order to check out the logistics of the area and the drop off, and to be an extra set of hands, in the rare case they were needed. I was so into my spectator role, I didn't even wear hip waders. I was in Chucks and Carharrts, not even wearing aviator shades. This wardrobe guaranteed that I would get wet. I ended up jumping off the plane and standing in waist-deep, freezing cold water to hold the plane upright in the swell rolling into the beach.

When it was time to return for the pickup, the client would call with a weather report on his satellite phone. I told him that if the water was not calmer than on the drop off, he would have to hike his gear to the nearby lake and get picked up there. Of course, his report the morning of was calm seas and beautiful outlook. On the other line, the local surfers were requesting a charter to the same beach because of rumored swell. But we decided to believe the guy on the ground with eyes on the beach. The one that wanted to get out of the wilderness. Amateur call on our part.

I was riding co-pilot again, this time in fly-fishing chest waders, and we took off over the icefield. The swell was visible from the air, and we landed anyway to explore a way through the waves to the beach. The client had his mound of gear stacked where the breaking waves were smallest, but they were still breaking... not something to which a Cessna 206 takes kindly. We taxied as close as we could and just pointed towards the lake... over a mile away.

We landed on calm waters in front of a glacier and decided to start hiking through the woods looking for this guy and helping him pack his gear. We pulled the GPS out of the plane to use for land navigation to the spot where we had seen him in the surf. Miraculously, in the spiderweb of trails, we had both picked the same one and met up within a half hour. Even more miraculously, he found an old timer with a cabin and a four wheeler who would shuttle his stuff to the plane (Alaskan Bush motto: "If your neighbor needs help, help him. If he doesn't, leave him alone.")

The client was dripping sweat and a little exhausted from hauling his gear all day-- first to his "calm" spot on the beach, and then to the lake. I believe that you don't learn to pack light until you carry your own gear far enough, and I sincerely hope the angelic four-wheeler didn't stunt that lesson. We loaded the plane without incident and had a perfect take off and beautiful flight home from a pristine, safe lake.

My question is this: is it not obvious that weather minimums exist for small planes for safety reasons? We are not just worried about breaking the plane, we are worried about breaking the plane with you in it. This should be something most people are adverse to, but surprisingly, they are not.

Don't Ever Let a Straight Man Cut Your Hair

2011-06-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

Right now, the status of my haircut is, as quoted by my house guests: "Don't worry about the back. The front looks good, so people will just assume the back does too." It took 4 haircuts and $38 to get this way. I'd say I miss living in a big, salon-filled city, but then wherein would lie the comedy?
The first haircut was by actual appointment, shortly after I had changed into dry clothes after jumping in the 40 degree ocean to push my plane off a remote beach where it was being pummeled by waves. After the adrenaline, and then the cold, subsided, the next thing on my mind was grooming. Natural, right?
The guy asked how I wanted it cut, and I answered "long layers." Forty-five minutes later, after he advised me that I would look great with a spiral perm (the 1980s called, they want their style advice back), I emerged with a blow-dried version of a Darth Vader helmet: tragically un-layered in a distinct A-shape around my head. I paid him.
Blessed with an 18- and a 20-year-old cousin staying with me for the summer, I came home to two hip college girls who told me that my hair looked horrible. Thanks, I know.
After contemplating this problem for a day, the older one, Taylor, announced that she thought she could fix it. And, truthfully, Homer doesn't have a lot of options for emergency stylist services. Given a half hour on my lunch break, Taylor cut my hair into two distinct layers: kind of Darth Vader gets a wedding cake, which, we can all agree, is better than a grumpy, single Darth Vader.
Hats can work wonders, and I had other things to worry about, mainly that I had just found out from his housesitter that the guy I work for left town for the summer. Back at work, trying to finish up the pilot training we started before the boss left, we jumped in a plane and headed west. An hour later, after talking the ears off remote park staff, we realized the plane was stuck. The tide had gone out while we jabbered.
In the water, well over my hipwaders, I shoved the plane into deeper water. The other pilot started the plane while I held onto the float in the propwash, and hoisted myself in the cargo door. En route back to Homer, we congratulated ourselves on another ridiculous adventure where no one got hurt, no metal got bent, and we didn't have to use my new satellite phone. I also wrung the water out of my socks.
Finally back in dry clothes, I settled in for a quiet night of reading at home when my cousins blasted in the door. Taylor announced that she had thought about it all day, and could 'definitely' fix my haircut. She took a full hour and produced many many many more layers than the two she had left me with this afternoon. In fact, now the number of layers was insane. I've seen children give sheepdogs better haircuts.
I was forced to take matters into my own hands. Floatplanes and air taxis are simple, compared to attempting to cut your own hair. But, armed with desperation at how long I would have to wear a hat, and emboldened by the fact that just last week I cut my own lawn (how much harder can hair be?), I stood in front of a mirror in my living room and started snipping. The results are short, but acceptable-- in the front. I can't see the back, and when I asked my cousins how it looked, they said, "people will assume the back looks as good as the front."It's 11:30 at night, too light to see a lunar eclipse, and there's a good chance I'll end up in the ocean again tomorrow-- people's assumptions will have to do.

Justin Bieber and the Ogre of the Fairview Inn

2011-05-25T23:53:00.000-07:00

A friend photo-texted me an invite to a "Tropical Hotdog Party" in Talkeetna, Alaska. Talkeetna is a two-hour flight from Homer, but Justin Bieber was on the invitation.
Three ladies flew to Talkeetna to see what the Bieb was up to and what this hippy summer town was all about. The party was great with bands and games, and even beach volleyball. There were hotdogs and chicken and white bread. I ended up thinking that the BBQ sauce on the chicken was so good that I just spread it on the whitebread like peanut butter and ate BBQ sauce sandwiches. Even at a Tropical Hotdog Party in interior Alaska, people notice that white bread/BBQ sauce sandwiches are pretty white trash-y. I wonder what The Bieb would think.
With a full belly, I retired with my friends to the Fairview Inn, a typical Alaskan bar with lots of old stuff and dead animals on the walls. We learned that at the Fairview, you can behave as badly as possible, but they won't ask you to leave. They will just stop serving ill-behaved parties alcohol. This makes for a very volatile bar environment. A poor girl from Nashville was on stage trying to croon country tunes while everyone screamed around her. Just when the scene couldn't get more comical, a boy known only as "Coniferous" asked me to dance.

We camped for the night with our sleeping bags laid out in a 3-walled cabin, waiting for an ogre or a bear to walk in the open wall. It would have been scary, except we couldn't stop laughing about combined scene of Tropical Hotdogs and ill-behaved locals at the Fairview.
On the flight home the next day, Mt. McKinley was clearly visible. Our heads full of jokes, the last night full of new friends, and the Susitna Valley stretched out before us... lesson learned: If a teenage popstar that you don't know a single song by invites you to something, get in a small plane and go.

America! Land of the free and the customer coming first...

2011-05-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Blogging is so much easier when you have something else you should be doing. Right now, I should be working on running my own business, so I choose to blog about how someone else runs theirs.
In Homer, there are almost as many coffee shops as there are bars and churches, but I have a couple favorites. One of them is on that short list because of their tasty and quickly-served sandwiches. However, the owner of said shop can throw down quite an obstacle course for you to put money in his pocket. From just the last week, here are my examples:

Monday, at 7am, I stopped in to fill my travel mug with brew on my way to work. At around 1pm on the same day, I walked into the same coffee shop to order a sandwich. The owner took one look at me and growled: "There are other businesses in this town you could give your support to." In a rare moment of thinking on my feet, I replied: "I come here for the friendly customer service."

On Friday, at about 7:15am, I walked in and ordered a breakfast sandwich. The owner, who was manning the counter, growled, "No food orders! I'm working alone. Coffee only!" If you have ever had your heart and mind set on a delicious breakfast sandwich in the wee hours of the groggy morn, you will understand why this nearly brought me to tears. I was the only customer in the shop. I just stared pathetically across the counter and said nothing until the bell jingled on the opening door behind me. A friendly, chipper, non-breakfast sandwich-needing voice said, "Hey Steph! How are you this morning?"
"He won't make me a breakfast sandwich!" I wailed to my friend.
The grey-haired ponytail on the other side of the counter softened. "Well, I'll make you a sandwich, but you'll have to wait." Gleeful, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down.
While he assembled my sandwich, he growled for all to hear: "You can make these at home. You just get some toast, put some eggs in the microwave, add cheese.... this is something you could do yourself."
When the next customer clanged the bell on the door as she walked in, I was halfway through my sandwich. She stepped up to the counter and said, "I'll have a coffee and a breakfast sandwich on a jalapeño bagel."
"No food orders! Only coffee!" he shouted, louder than necessary to communicate with someone 3 feet away. She pointed across the room at me. "Steph has a sandwich." Grumbling, he walked over to the kitchen and got out the bagels, proving, once again, that if you cajole enough, you can get people to take your money.
Now, if only someone would walk into my work and start whining for floatplane service, maybe I could get something done.

Honestly?

2011-05-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

The cliché sitcoms and dramas are accurate, because being a single girl in small town Alaska is pretty much like severing your femoral artery and then paddling your surfboard out into a shark-filled break.
It's not that attention isn't nice, but one of my friends explained the operations principle: "As a guy in Alaska, you have to hit on every new single girl immediately. She's not gonna be single for long, and the pickings are slim."
Apparently, this rule is followed by the majority of the male population: single, married, old, young, eligible, and ridiculously ineligible alike. Add that it's just not that flattering to be one of "slim pickings," and you create myriad awkward social situations.
My softball team has made it their mission to find me a boyfriend. A whole team of matchmakers is pretty hard to defend against, and I keep thinking that if I'm polite about it, maybe I'll get more playtime. That's a pretty pathetic confession of how much I like softball.
These days, a social calendar has to be managed in all sorts of medium. I didn't even know people outside of TV actually went on "dates," but apparently they do, and they plan them via Facebook and text message. When I got a text from an unknown number asking me out, I wasn't sure if I should ask who it was, say 'my dance card is full', or tell my softball teammates to stop leaving my number on windshields in bar parking lots.

My life's not romantic enough to make it on a Discovery Channel show about Alaska

2011-04-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

I don't quite know how to explain this, or even if it warrants telling, but, I guess I'll start at the beginning, and when I get to the end, I'll stop. Read it like a time-lapse, or like Faulker-esque stream-of-consciousness. I don't care, I'll just blog the words out.... it's a bit of self-centric writing therapy, but honestly, what do you think blogs are anyway?

When we last spoke, my house was spewing bubbles out the roof. That was Monday of last week.

Tuesday-Thursday: Uncle Ole actually talks me into "waiting it out"... there's just ice in the pipe, and it will thaw as it gets warmer... temperatures through the week hold at around 40 degrees and sunny in the daytime.Things don't really improve, besides that we get fairly good at speaking positively about the no-sewer situation.

Thursday: In between wrenching on the airplane, I start calling around. The city. The septic pumper. The plumber. Some guy with a camera that can look inside pipes. I talk to all these people more than once, and the camera guy agrees to come take a look. I can't leave the hangar, so Ole handles communications at the house. They have to call me once. I am upside down under the airplane when camera guy asks me where my septic tank is. I don't know. Isn't he the one with the magic underground camera? He says he didn't bring his camera, something I immediately recognize as a flaw in someone whom I have never met in person, but have been referring to as "the CAMERA guy." He'll be back in the morning with the appropriate tools.

Friday morning at dawn: Ole and I go skiing. He says: "Steph, this problem is probably going to take a bit to get through. You really need to ski every morning so that you have one bit of time where you aren't thinking about it." I haven't met the plumbers, and, as is my wont, I am underestimating the situation, and don't remember him saying this until days later.
Friday mid-morning: "Camera Guy" shows up at the house. He's short and fat with sporty sunglasses and a huge plug of tobacco spilling out of his lip. In every other way, he reminds me of the 'inconceivable' Sicilian guy from The Princess Bride. His assistant is tall and lanky, and from Minnesota, and I am comforted by the presence of someone from my home country. However, they both admit that they can't do anything until their dirt worker crew gets here to start digging. They leave.
Friday 12:30pm: The dirt crew shows up with a Bobcat and a Caterpillar backhoe. The start tearing into the yard. The guy running the excavator mentions that they may need to get a crane in to lift the deck so they can dig under it. They can't be serious. That sounds like something from an episode of Ducktales... and it sounds really expensive.
Friday 2pm: The Camera/Sicilian guy shows back up and starts telling me that this is the worst possible situation. The pipe was moved by a frost heave and is disconnected. When he tries to get his camera in the pipe, he only sees dirt. He also casually tells a story about a client he had whose sewer woes cost her $70,000. I go inside. Did he say "$70K"? Sicilian leaves.
Friday 3pm: Richard and Matt, the dirt crew, have successfully dug ten-foot deep holes at the top and the bottom of the yard and claim they have found the problem.
Friday 3:30pm: They reconnect the pipes and start filling the holes back in while they wait for the Sicilian to come back and test the line. I suggest that they should wait to fill in the holes. They ignore me.
Friday 4pm: Ole and I stand on the deck in the sunshine watching Matt and Richard fill holes. Ole likes Matt the best, because he is running the shovel inside the hole. I like Richard, because he has the air of knowing what he is doing. We talk about how impressive it is that they'll be done today. We take bets on how much it will cost (Price is Right rules).
Friday 5pm: The Sicilian and Minnesotan return, and run a water blaster (not the technical name) through the pipe. It stops halfway.
5:03pm:Ole goes into his bathroom, walks back outside and says, "Steph, I want to double my price guess." His shower is full of brown water.
5:04pm: I walk inside and open a beer.
5:05pm: The Sicilian: "You're gonna need more than a beer. You should get the hard stuff." Something very comforting to hear from someone you're paying to fix your problems.
5:06pm: All four workers are standing on the lawn over where they think the problem is. No one is incredibly certain where the sewer pipe runs through the yard. The Sicilian makes the brilliant observation: "We'll just have to find it where it's at." I finish my beer.
5:07pm: The Sicilian explains that he has some kind of "locator tool" that he can run underground to find the line. But he doesn't have it with him. Of course not.
5:10-6:00: We all wait for the Minnesotan to go retrieve the Sicilian's appropriate tools. Matt, Ole's golden boy and the hardest worker, gets sent home.
6:30, Friday evening: Richard starts digging into the problem spot.The line is at least 15 feet below ground. The Sicilian looks up to tell me that "This could definitely be worse." He has already told me that I was dealing with "the worst possible scenario", and I am aware that the situation has gotten worse since then.
6:45pm: Richard and the Sicilian tell me that they can't repair the old line. Most things in Alaska are "owner-designed and built", completely ignoring any existing building codes. My sewer line is no exception. None of the pipe or joints were insulated at all.The recommended downhill grade was ignored, and none of the joints were glued together. So, when the line broke, it failed in some way at every joint. They will have to re-dig the whole yard and run an entirely new sewer line.
7pm: I cancel my Saturday trip to Anchorage for a float plane conference.
7:20pm: Richard and the Minnesotan are knee-deep in a hole of raw sewage trying to decide how to connect the new line. The Sicilian says: "Now you know why plumbers don't bite their fingernails."
7:30pm: My friends show up with a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey. I have the best friends in the world.
8:30pm: leaving an open pit sewer in the middle of my yard, the workers leave for the night, promising to return.

Saturday, dawn: Ole and I go skiing with friends. The sun is out and the crust is beautiful and the mountains are awesome. We are skiing through the woods and I get a bit ahead of the group. I stop to look at the view, and breath the air, and my mind starts spinning the way it does sometimes when you are really stressed and lying in bed at night not able to sleep: ...There's a lot to do to get the plane ready...and there's a lot to do to get the business ready... and then there's the other business... and I have to finish my taxes... and there's an open-pit sewer in my yard... and I have no idea how much this is going to cost... Just before the tears slide out below my sunglasses, Ole skis up behind me and says: "Be. Here. Now."
Saturday 9:30am: Richard and Matt show up and start digging. They spend hours gutting the whole yard.
10:30am: The Sicilian shows up to watch them work, and tell me fishing stories.
3pm: I finish my taxes.
4:30pm: Matt and Richard finish the new pipe, completely to code and start refilling the dirt. They have left a slalom course of clearing pipes through the yard that they will mark so I will always know where the line is and avoid future scavenger hunts. However, I am assured, you will never need to find it, because our line will not fail.
5:30pm: The Sicilian tests the line. It works. Matt and Richard leave, taking their backhoe, but leaving the bobcat. They will be back at some point to "smooth things out." Until then, I say, I will run the backhoe around the yard with impunity.
6pm: Ole and I go flying.

Sunday, dawn: Ole and I go skiing with friends. Most of the group is on a longer route, and three of us break off to go through the woods on our own. At some point, Ole is lecturing me on medieval impalement, misses a turn, and ends up wrapped around a tree. I ski back to help him, but when I see him stuck in the hole, I start laughing, and fall over myself. I'm just that kind of jerk, but that kind of laughter seemed to clear everything up.
Sunday all day: AT&T phone service is down. No one can call me and I can't call anyone. This inconvenience is actually really refreshing.

There's still a bobcat in my yard. I still haven't gotten the bill for the new sewer line (which, as far as we can tell, works great). We're still skiing every morning, and still trying to 'be here now' in spite of the rule declaring that if it isn't one thing, it's ten, and something else ridiculous must be right around the corner.

Good thing it's Monday, because my weekend was void of plumbing fun!

2011-04-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

There are suds coming out of the roof of my house. I guess that's what I expected out of home ownership when I bought a house on Craigslist: some sort of Grimm's Fairy Tale gone askew.
If there are suds pouring from the roof of your house, you can probably assume that this isn't the only problem, and you'd be right. There I was, at 8:30 at night, talking on the phone, when I heard running water. I walked down the hall to see the toilet overflowing to flood the bathroom and sea monster its way into the hallway.
My reaction? Hang up on my friend, yell at my uncle (who was innocently watching a movie), and run up and down the hall with my hands in the air. Astonishingly, this behavior sequence did not create a sieve in my floor, or get any Disney dancing mops to the scene.
My uncle suggested that we check the vents on the roof to see if they were clogged with snow. I found the ladder, while I made a mental note that plumbing systems apparently have vents. With Ole holding the ladder, I climbed to the roof and declared one vent clear. On the other side of the house, the other vent was spewing and frothing suds.
Back inside, every towel was employed and my infomercial chamois were maxed out, despite their advertised ability to soak up a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi. The bathroom, hallway and kitchen had one inch of standing water and every sink on the ground floor was coughing suds or dirty water backwards through their drains. Ole suggested I try to flush the toilet, "just to see what happens." The philosophy that these types of ideas come from is: "It can't get much worse." I think you can guess what happened... something for which I did not have sufficient chamois.
Ole went back to his movie, I shut off any appliance that could conceivably tax the plumbing system, and, over the course of an hour, the drainage monsters in the depths of the house relented to allow the fluid in the toilet to sink. The foam on the roof is being covered by the still-falling snow.
Ole says, "See? We fixed it." and adds, "There are recorded instances of problems being solved just by sitting and praying." My version of this solution involves another chamois purchase and a morning call to the plumber.

Dog Party

2011-04-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

People in Homer LOVE dogs. Dog treats are handed out by businesses, dogs are considered invited everywhere, and leashes are considered cruel and unusual.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me that my friend hosts a birthday party for his dog. He invites all his friends with dogs, and the dogs usually outnumber the humans at the event. I don't have a dog, so my invitation had to include a waiver, excusing me for not bringing a dog, and letting me know I was a guest on probationary status.
My friend plans party games for the dogs (throwing handfuls of treats into the air and watching the dogs hunt for them), makes them wear party hats, and he even made a birthday cake. This year's cake was made of salmon and halibut. The dog needed help blowing out his candles. Miraculously, there was not a dog fight.

I don't know what else to say, besides that I can't make this stuff up.

Rubber Boots, Vocab, and lots of Parenthetical Explanations

2011-03-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

It's "breakup" in Homer, Alaska. 'Breakup' is what the rest of the English-speaking world calls 'spring,' but Alaskans like to have code words for everything, presumably to tell who has been here a while, and who hasn't survived a winter yet. For example: Trucks are called "rigs," newcomers are called "cheechakos," and everywhere besides Alaska is called "outside." (That last one gets confusing if you are indoors and start talking about 'going outside'.)
But, back to breakup: The basic explanation behind this term refers to when the weather gets warm enough to thaw lakes and rivers and the ice "breaks up," something that in ye olde days (in Alaska, that's 50 years ago) was really a herald of spring for those living in the 'bush' (term Alaskans use for wilderness way far away from roads, supply stores, or a cineplex showing the latest Harry Potter film) who relied on waterways for their supplies, and the first boat of Spring was much anticipated. Now, a lot of bush communities rely on airplanes to get most of their stuff, and thus have all the Mountain Dew and Cheez-Its they want throughout the winter. But, we keep using the term 'breakup', and we even bet on when certain bodies of water will defrost, most notably, in Nenana, where the Annual Ice Classic has a tome of rules and pays out a big cash prize.
In my life, 'breakup' means a lot of things, but most emphatically, and without exception, it means that I should be wearing rubber boots (referred to as "breakup boots" in some parts of Alaska, but in brand-conscious Homer, only "Xtra Tufs" are acceptable), even when it seems like overkill.
I haven't been here very long, and sometimes I try to get around this rule in the name of fashion, comfort, or practicality. It only shows my cheechako-ness. There are occasions during breakup where I decide not to wear rubber boots, for example, during my morning jog: Then I slip on a patch of ice and go skidding off the bike path into the sludge filled ditch. Should have been wearing rubber boots.
Or, a trip to the gas station to fill your car with $4.17/gallon gas: My car is inevitably caked with springtime mud, and I will decide to use the window squeegee to try and get a free car wash while the pump runs. The water from the squeegee will collect all the mud in its path and then ooze off the car onto my leather fashion boots. Should have been wearing rubber boots.
Or, your friends throw a dress-up party, and invite you to play kickball (this dichotomy is already an advanced wardrobe quandary, without introducing a weather element): Kickball seems like a sneakers event. Their yard is half snow and half mud. Even though you are wearing a festive party dress, your only reasonable footwear choice should be rubber boots.

The trickiest footwear decision was for the annual Sea to Ski Triathlon. I did the ski portion of the event for my team, "Vitamin B3". In most springtime triathlons around the country, the races go downhill. In Homer, we have more than our share of competitive athletes, and I think this is the reason that our whole race goes straight up the bluff. Breakup has been warm this year, and the snow on the ski trails is already fading away. Thus, the last 100 yards of the trail were down to bare road. Instead of ending the race 100 yards sooner, on the snowpack, the ultra-competitives in Homer decided racers would take off their skis and run for the finish. It makes sense that I was wearing my ski boots at the end of the 5 km ski, but sliding along the muddy road to the finish line, I realized that breakup got me again: I should have been wearing rubber boots.

Returning... "with the grace of a cartwheeling cow"

2011-03-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

Half of me was excited to come home. That half of me now wishes I was back in Bolivia.

The first news I got after de-boarding the plane to Homer was that there is a dead moose in the outfield of the softball field. A meeting is being held to figure out how to move it. Everyone in a small Alaska town has an opinion on how to best remove a dead moose from a softball field, and these are the things that are mentioned: chainsaws, four-wheelers, big trucks, large metal hooks, ice chippers, dragging, throwing, flinging, and, of course, "I'm not playing outfield this year!"

I left the moose to the softball commissioner, because I have a bigger problem. Specifically, my airplane was supposed to be through it's regular scheduled maintenance by the time I got home. If you think it had even begun, you are as much of an optimist as I am. I went down to the hangar where I had parked the plane last fall, and found that there was 3 inches of ice covered by a slick layer of water on the floor of the hangar. That's right. There was ice indoors. The three wheels of my plane were frozen into the ice. Since the ice chipper was busy on the softball field, we slipped and slid around the hangar, lashed the plane to a pickup truck and dragged it outside.

The reunion of Beryl and I, fresh out of the hangar

Once freed from her icy tomb, Beryl started right up, and she and I went for a couple laps around the field. Both she and I remembered how to fly, to our mutual relief. It felt good to once again have the throttle in my hand and watch Kachemak Bay sink below me.

After one day of work, I made a plan to meet some friends for a beer. In this small town, I know close to everyone, and had anticipated that it would be fun to go out and say 'hellos' to folks I hadn't seen all winter. This went as planned, until my ex-boyfriend's firefighter buddies sat down at the next table and announced to me, and the whole bar, how much better my ex is with his new girlfriend than he ever was with me. Oh, and welcome home.

The only way airplane maintenance would move forward was apparently if I put some time into it. It's not that I am not willing to wrench on my own airplane, it's just that I have 1001 other things to do, having just returned home. But, the expensive piece of flying metal takes priority, and with some borrowed tools, I took to removing the exhaust. I was surprised at my own efficiency at this task, except for the fact that I cut myself on something, and bled all over the white cowling. I'm certain that blood all over the hood of the aircraft doesn't instill passenger confidence.

The silver lining of being back in this beautiful town on the Bay is that there is always something to do. I'm already enlisted for a ski race this weekend, and I decided to treat myself to those new skis that are on sale for spring. The guy at the ski shop (it should be noted that, in Homer, the ski shop is also the hardware store, the pharmacy, the quilt shop, the pet store and the Hallmark Cards) invited me into the back room where he mounts bindings and waxes skis. He told me about how many and what types of skis he had sold this winter, and then gave me a bonus gift: his other hobby, besides talking skis, is tying fly-fishing flies. So, with my brand new cross-country skis, I got two flies hand-tied with polar bear fur. I have next to no use for these, especially in conjunction with my skis, but the gesture made up for the boys at the bar being jerks, and maybe even made the cuts on my mechanics' hands heal a little faster. I guess I'll give Homer another week before I buy a ticket back to Cochabamba.

Bolivia: I miss you already.

2011-03-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm headed home. In 3 days and 5 flights, I'll be back to so-called "real life." The Bolivian guard that was responsible for my drug search at the La Paz airport was really interested in how much I liked his country. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get as much as a "welcome home" from my own border guards.
I can't sum it all up, but here are some quotes and pics that capture people and moments that made up the last few months of my life...

"Nada es puntual in Bolivia, pero todo es posible." -Diego

What you get when you order coffee in Bolivia... Kbay, here I come!

"You are the least flexible person in South America." -Chris (to salesguy when negotiating unsuccessfully for a different price)

"Everything will be possible in 10 minutes." -Cameron

Salaar de Uyuni

"You can't have too many men in your basket." -Raphy

So, the Incas were so advanced that they could market urine?

"I am no longer confident in farting." -Josh

I'm headed for a land where toilets take on more responsibilities

"Remember: the birds, the butterflies, and the views all want you to die." -Leith

I've thought this through, and this country has made me a better person. I'm not sure how, but I can feel it... and it's not just indigestion or altitude sickness, because this country has taught me to recognize those things as well.

The Death Road

2011-03-18T05:34:00.000-07:00

Everyone guaranteed me that Bolivia was very dangerous, but after two months unscathed and time running out, I thought I had better try harder. The travelers on the backpacker circuit convinced me to sign up for the World's Most Dangerous Road (a.k.a. "The Death Road"). Apparently, somebody in the world keeps track of which public roads have the most deaths per kilometer, and the "highway" from La Paz to Coroico wins. Instead of closing it or putting up guardrails, they have made it into Bolivia's most expensive tourist atttraction. The road is 63 kilometers of shear cliffs and waterfalls (Yes, waterfalls: falling right on the road.), built in the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners of war. It is mostly downhill, so not a hard ride, as long as you don't go over the edge.

The ride starts at a 4700m (15,400ft) pass, and one girl in our group fainted from the altitude while getting the safety briefing. She dominoed the whole row of bikes, so everyone was off their feet before we even started downhill.

Early in the ride, there is a stretch of 8 kilometers uphill. The bike company gives you the option to throw your bike on the van and ride to the next downhill stretch. I asked myself, "What would Homer Womens Nordic (my cross country ski team) do?", and started sucking 4000meters worth of oxygen as I pedaled. All the rest of the girls in our group jumped in the van, and a German boy looked at me doubtfully and said, "If you get tired, you can just get in the van." This snide comment changed the question to: "What would Megan Spurkland (fierce coach of HWN) do?" Thus forced to beat all the boys to the end of the uphill section, I'm pretty sure I permanently damaged my lungs.

A lot of the road was in fog when we rode it, so the dramatic drop offs were obscured, but it is obvious that there really isn't adequate space for large vehicles between the mountain and the cliff. The ride is a lot of fun on a bike, but you really would have to be a muppet to stear a small, man powered vehicle over the edge.

Descending from high Altiplano with snow covered mountains into rainforest was spectacular (I'm making a judgment call that this was a 'rainforest' as it was a forest, and it was raining when I was there).

At the bottom, we visited La Senta Verde, an animal refuge that rescues illegally captured exotic animals from captivity and interns them at their refuge. I don't really see the point of moving the animals from one cage to another, but this is marketed as a pretty 'green' locale.

Track torn by a drunk taxi driver going over the edge

We drove the van back up the death road (instead of taking the new highway that was opened in 2006) and got a great idea of exactly how unsafe this thoroughfare is. In some spaces, there is no gravel between the tires of the van and the edge of the cliff. Our guide told us about every crash site as we passed, the largest single incident resulting in over 100 people dead. Why vehicles still use the road was never fully explained (don't ask 'why' in Bolivia), but by far the biggest traffic source is a parade of gringos in bright orange safety vests... better to see them as they tumble down through the trees.

Lost on an Island... isn't there a TV show about this?

2011-03-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

From the La Paz airport in El Alto, I set out to find a bus to Lake Titicaca. Everyone has told me that you have to see the world's highest navigable lake (though no one can define 'navigable') and Isla del Sol, where the Incan creation myth is born.

You would think that I have been in Bolivia long enough to know that asking a cab to take me to the 'bus terminal' probably won't work. Here, they don't always see the use for having a terminal building per se. Sometimes, the buses just park on the street and guys stand next to them yelling destinations. My taxi dropped me off on a street with a lot of buses and a lot of yellers. This system doesn't always leave room for all the buses in one location, and I quickly realized that no one was yelling "Copacabana!", the place I was trying to go. So I got into another cab and found another street of buses. Bus ticket to Copacabana: 15Bs. Cabs to get from airport to the bus: 32Bs.

The journey to Copacabana, the gringo hub on the shores of Lake Titicaca, is a few hours and the bus has to cross some water of the lake between peninsulas. They are talking about a bridge, but for now, they put the bus on a barge, and then they make all the passengers get out and buy a ticket on a boat so they can catch up with their bus. One of the bus barges was named 'Titanic'. Not comforting. I took my gear on the boat with me, rather than leaving it on the bus.

Copacabana was still having Carnaval when I arrived. This is the holiday that never ends. A little boy chased me around town with a can of spray foam. I tried to see some Incan ruins, but the gate was locked. I talked to the other travelers at my hostel, all of whom are on whirlwind tours and I quickly tired of the "where have you been?/where are you going next?" conversations.

I was still sad from leaving Cochabamba and decided to treat myself to a nice dinner. I sat down in an appropriate feeling restaurant, poured over the menu, and then decided that I deserved the "House Speciality." When it arrived, it was a cold plate of bland cheese, unsalted peanuts, broccoli and olives with ranch dressing.

Still hungry the next morning, I went into one of the many cafes serving breakfast to backpackers and was excited to see "Müsli" painted on two signs by the door, as cereals are very uncommon in Bolivia. The table I sat down at was covered with crumbs and had a dirty spoon left from the last customers. The doña brought me coffee, and it was on a filthy saucer in a dirty cup. Of course, it's Nescafe. She picked up the dirty leftover spoon from across the table and set it on my saucer. I began spinning the cup around to look for the least dirty side to drink from. I was given a piece of bread and had to clarify my "müsli" order. She apologized. Imagine how excited I when she came back from the kitchen and served me popcorn with yogurt on top.

I got on the boat to Isla del Sol and enjoyed an hour and a half scenic cruise to the island. When we got to the dock, a woman asked me for a 5B tax. I had 3.50B or 100B. The woman denied having change, even though I was the 60th person in line paying this tax. I offered to pay 3.50B. She refused and said I needed to pay 5B. I puzzled over this problem for about 2 seconds and then asked, in Spanish, if I could just pass without paying. She said fine. 'Don't ask 'why' in Bolivia.'

Isla del Sol is a beautiful mountainous island sticking out of Lake Titicaca at about 4000m above sea level (13,125ft). Some 10,000 people live on it and they all seem to be running hostals and pizza restaurants in varying degrees of mud or brick buildings. I wandered up an Incan staircase and set out to find a place to stay for the night. After an hour of aimlessly pondering which direction to go, I ran into a guy from New Zealand, who was also lost. He denies that we were lost, but I found him sitting hopelessly on a stoop asking an equally bewildered me for directions. Consulting donkey-herding locals, we made our way around a mountain, climbed through fields, and puffed over ridges. We finally (accidentally) stumbled on the hostel we were looking for, nowhere near where the Lonely Planet map said it was.

After finding a place to stay, and celebrating with a beer, we realized we had pretty much done everything Isla del Sol has to offer, and that is: wander around.

The next morning, we got a cereal-free breakfast and hiked to some Incan ruins in the south part of the island. A woman with a pad that could be purchased in any shop wrote us a "ticket" and charged us a 5B entry. The ruins were small and I asked this ticket "official" if she knew any information about them. She said she did, but she had forgotten it.

The boat back to Copacabana was just as scenic as the ride there, with just as many backpackers to chat with about all they had seen on the "gringo trail" around South America. I like lakes, but I'm not sure how this pretty island attracts quite so many visitors. But who can pass up visiting the place that the sun was supposedly born?

Wrapping things up and moving on

2011-03-14T13:52:00.001-07:00

Cochabamba was hard to leave. But good things are, I guess. The definite highlight of my time there was my host family, and knowing they can't get visas to travel to the States and having no certain plans of returning to Bolivia made the 'goodbyes' really sting. My other time in Cocha was spent with the other international volunteers I met at Sustainable Bolivia, and then I managed to squeeze in some time actually volunteering.
It really surprised me how difficult it is to volunteer. One would think that anyone could work anywhere for free, and one would be wrong. It took a lot of Internet research and following through on various recommendations of friends to find opportunities. Then it took barrages of emails, many of which were never replied to. Finally getting linked up with Mano a Mano was a blessing, but a lot of what could have been useful time was wasted.
I spent most of my time working on a school in Apote. I have moved a lot of rocks and bricks and feel that this is going to be great for my homerun-hitting stats this summer. We almost finished the first floor by the time I left, and it was cool to see the progress.
After wasting time finding a project to work on, the obstacles were compounded by things like the transport strike and then by holidays. There were weeks where I could never get to the building site. With this time, I helped Mano a Mano with some translation work, which even someone with my Spanish can do, thanks to Google Translate.
One day during the strike, I went to Solomon Klein Orphanage at the suggestion of friends. When I stepped in the door, they asked if I could help and I was put in a room with twenty 3-year-olds and one other adult. One little boy was blind, one had a club foot, one girl was dangerously skinny. All of them were only as clean as a few adults can keep that many filth-loving munchkins. I only lasted the morning. It was good to be there, as there was clearly a need, but I just kept thinking 'but for the grace of God...' It made me so sad to think that these kids deserve to grow up with as much love as I did, and they won't have that chance. Then it challenged my belief that 'God's love is sufficient,' a belief that should be and is always challenged, but when looking at those kids, was very hard to wrestle out. I feel like a coward for not spending more time with those children. It was something I did not have the strength to do.
This 'volunteering' thing is like using your fingers to stop leaks in a dam. The dam is never gonna be repaired, or even hold, but you can't pull your fingers out once you're personally and physically committed.

Luckily, my escape from town, after tears shed saying days of 'goodbyes,' was more graceful and fun than I deserve. On Aerosur, one of Bolivia's airlines, pilots can jumpseat for free. That means if a flight is not sold out, you can just roll up to the airport with your pilot's license (private or greater) and they hand-write something on a piece of paper to get you through security and you board the plane.
This is how I got to La Paz. When I got on the plane, in my jeans and Chuck Taylors, the flight attendant asked if I would rather sit in the cockpit or in First Class? Since the USA thinks that fighting terrorism means abolishing professional courtesies, I am not allowed to ride in the cockpit of airplanes in my own country. I have never been in the cockpit of a Boeing aircraft in flight, and this one was headed to the world's highest airport. Easy choice. I sat between the pilots and chatted with them as we flew over the snow-capped Andes.
Cochabamba to La Paz is just over 150 nautical miles. In the bus it's 7 hours. In a 737, it's 30 minutes.
I was mentally fighting between drinking in the views, studying the cockpit, and just thinking: "I can't believe I can do this!" What have I ever done in my life to deserve sitting in the cockpit of an airplane for free, chatting in a foreign language about my profession, and seeing views of Andean glaciers and Lake Titicaca, while studying high-altitude flight characteristics? I may never solve or even understand the world's problems, but one thing is certain: my life is a lot cooler than the cheap sunglasses I buy.

Would you rather stand in front of a crowd in your underwear or...

2011-03-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

At the end of the past week, Mano a Mano invited me to join them in helping open a clinic they had just finished building in Aramasí. Don't feel bad that you don't know where that is. No one does. I think that's kind of the point. Suffice it to say, that Aramasí is about an hours drive from Cochabamba, and one of the most pathetically ugly villages I have ever seen. It sits in the center of an extremely flat valley and is just a very large collection of small mud huts. Approximately 10,000 people call this paradise home, and I hope all of them like brown, because that is the prevailing color.
On Thursday, we took a large crew to Aramasí to outfit the newly constructed clinic. After Mano a Mano builds a clinic, they bring all the supplies to get it up and running. We set up everything, including the staff housing, so that the final product is a turn-key operation for the receiving village. Then, on Friday, an inauguration was scheduled, in order to have a Grand Opening of the new clinic and turn over control to the village and their leadership.
Of course, Friday, after working through Carnaval and few extra days for good measure, the transportistas went back on strike. Large blockades were set up at all the entrances to the city and no public transport was running. I think the strikers got a little lazy over the holiday, as some of the found objects from which the blockades were constructed bordered on ridiculous this time: small branches, leaves, dirt and coconuts don't strike me as the most efficient way to stop traffic.
However, Mano a Mano has a four wheel drive vehicle and is not to be deterred from their mission so easily. We found back roads and tracks out of the city, and Dr. Velásquez, Mano a Mano's director/blockade-runner driver, fittingly drove like he was being chased by an naval warships.
We bounced into town just slightly behind schedule and about 300 meters from the clinic came across a bike accident. A boy had somehow fallen and gotten his leg wedged in between the spokes and frame of his bike. He couldn't get free and his foot was bent at a very unnatural angle. We jumped out of the 4WD and went to help. Dr. Velásquez used a tool kit to disassemble the bike frame and free the boys foot... basically a "jaws of life" operation, but quieter. After deciding the boy would still be able to walk, he was advised that there was a brand new clinic just down the road, and we headed that way.
The inauguration ceremony was very well attended. Hundreds of villagers were there and hundreds of students from the school arrived in a parade carrying flags. The clinic was festively decorated and huge speakers were set up. Multiple Mano a Mano directors joined the mayor of the village, the doctor for the clinic, and other local officials. Everyone took turns giving speeches and loud music was played.
I was tasked with photographing the event, so imagine my surprise when someone announced into the microphone that "Our volunteer from Alaska will now come forward and read the dedication plaque!" I think that was the last Spanish I clearly understood. My peripheral vision went white and my knees went weak. I politely tried to beg off. I am functionally illiterate in Spanish. From a distance as if thru water, I heard the man with the microphone offer that I could 'read in English if I wanted.' Since the plaque was in Spanish, that meant adding translation work to the horror in front of me.
Not wanting to be rude and not seeing a hole to fall into, I took the microphone, looked at the group of almost 1000 Bolivians gathered in the sun in front of me, and began to read, croaking out pieces of words in Spanish. I stumbled over syllables and paused at least once in the middle of every word. But that's not the bad part. Do you have any idea how many numbers are on a dedication plaque? The plaque was between 15 and 20 lines and at least every third line had a multiple digit number: my Achilles heal! I almost cried every time I came to a number I couldn't pronounce. I stupendously finished by reading the date: "Marzo de..." and having no idea how to say "2011". Someone finally whispered "dos mil once" and got me out of the spotlight just as I was thinking I would rather be standing in front of all these Cholitas (traditional Bolivian women that dress in big skirts, hats and wear braids) in my underwear.
After all the speeches were finished, it seemed that half the village wanted to say 'thank you' and I learned that in Aramasí, you shake hands, kiss on both cheeks, and then shake hands again. This is cumbersome in a crowd of well wishers. Eventually we were escorted to the market and were fed a ridiculously large 'thank you' meal. Everyone was staring at me for the rest of the day, and I figured they were all thinking: "there's that stupid gringa that can't read numbers in Spanish." But, I guess it's just as likely that they were just staring at the tall white girl, which is pretty common reaction to tall white girls here in Bolivia.

Carnaval

2011-03-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Wow. Carnaval.
I've always had a vague idea in my head of some huge celebration, but had no idea what to expect. I went to Oruro, Bolivia last weekend, home of the second largest Carnaval in South America (outdone only by Rio, in Brasil).
We arrived at our place in the bleachers on the 4 km parade route at 9:30am on Saturday, we finally left to go to bed at 3:00am on Sunday. We did not see the beginning or the end of an incredibly impressive parade that never stopped.

The Oruro Carnaval celebration is made up of around 28,000 dancers, and then add to that 10,000 musicians. The whole thing lasts 3-4 days of dancing and music and ceremony. Roughly 4% of the population of Bolivia is participating in this event and they are all dressed in amazing costumes that coincide with different traditional dances or different ethnic groups that they are representing. None of said costumes look comfortable.
Meanwhile, the folks in the bleachers and on the streets all throw water balloons at each other and spray each other with foam. They sing along with the bands and scream for 'besos' (kisses) from the dancers.

My favorite dancers were the Caporales, which are tall guys in cowboy outfits that jump a lot and swing their hats around.
But then, there were also the guys that had dead armadillos that they played as instruments. That's hot too, I guess.

I felt sorry for the osos (bears) because I can't imagine how warm it must be dancing for 5 hours in one of their suits, but they would run over and give us hugs when we screamed at them, and if they've got time for bear hugs, they must not be dying of heat stroke.

The whole parade was amazing. There was never that "float" that was really just a pickup truck with a piece of cardboard taped to the side that I have come to know from American events. Even into the wee hours of the morning, the dancers were still giving it their all and the costumes were still breathtaking. As the parade route gets dark, we were able to start to see the impressive fireworks that they had started much earlier. The dancers costumes were lit and some even breathed fire.

Reeling from just one day of festivities, in a city taxed with handling the influx of population (our group of 50 shared floor space for sleeping, and one bathroom), we headed back to Cochabamba to catch the last two days of Carnaval here.

Today is the final day of Carnaval, and it is traditional to make an offering to Pachamama (mother earth). Yesterday, Paola, my host sister, and I went to the market to buy the appropriate offerings from a lady who sells them, and also sells dried llama fetuses. Luckily, she just bought tokens and leaves, and left the dead animals where they were.
This morning was spent cleaning the house, then they called me downstairs for the ritual. They lit the offering on fire in a metal bowl and then carried it around the house, blowing smoke into each room. The smell was pungent. My host brother took a bottle of wine and poured some into the corners of the house and along the walls(right onto the freshly cleaned floors). Then the offering was set outside the front of the house to smolder. Nothing special is said during this ordeal, and the family just continued with their everyday conversations about the weather, whether or not this was particularly good wine, etc.

Of course, in my host family, this holiday is also a huge eating event. For the final feast, today at lunch we had a traditional dish made up of beef, cornmeal, every kind of potato, and garbanzo beans. All this is served in a delicious sauce and my host mom kept telling me that I would anger Pachamama if I didn't finish everything on my plate. You would think this spirit would be happy with the wine all over the floor and the smoldering bowl outside, but I did my best. However, the human digestive system has it's limitations and when my host mom stepped out of the room, Paola and I shoveled what was left on our plates out the door to the dog.
I was as full as after an American Thanksgiving. Everyone went to sleep and I sat sucking down coca tea, which is supposedly a digestive aid. However, it is going to take more than a cup of steeped coca leaves to recover from this weekend of world class celebration.

Girls gone wild!

2011-03-04T06:34:00.001-08:00

Carnaval has begun in Bolivia. The first event is called "Compadres" and it is a night where all the men go out together and have dinner and drinks. It has been a tradition for a very long time. At some point, the girls decided they could do that too (and probably do it better), so the Thursday before Carnaval weekend is now known as "Comadres."
The day began with my host sister walking into my room and handing me a condom. This is much more forward behavior than I expect from my host family, or really anyone, for that matter. She laughed at the look on my face and then said, "You need to put this on your mobile phone, to keep it dry."
For some reason, Carnaval in Bolivia is synonymous with "water fight." In the past weeks, I have been hit with water balloons multiple times by complete strangers. People even throw water into the open windows of passing cars. Spray foam is also popular. Knowing these things, I complied with her advice on the cell phone.
We joined up with a bunch of Paola's friends and attended a party at Cochabamba's Country Club (a locale that looks like a fancy American golf club, and seems really out of place in Bolivia). All the groups of girls dress in matching shirts, and Comadres is pretty much a city-wide bachlorette party.
I know that the boys of my generation labor under the idea that groups of girls, when alone together, have pillow fights in their lingerie. I can report that this is not true. Girls, at least Bolivian girls, when left to their own devices, jump in pools with their clothes on and dance like crazy in wet tank tops to the Bolivian version of the Backstreet Boys.
The hours flew by and I can't remember the last time I had so much pure fun. All the girls in my group took to calling me 'Alaska,' which is a dream come true from a Velvet Underground song. But dancing, jumping in and out of the pool, and everyone promising to visit 'Alaska' in Alaska had to end at some point, and we started to collect our belongings in the dark.
This is when I discovered my purse was missing. In reflection, no matter how posh of a place you are in, your drunk friends are probably not the best guards for your belongings when you go to the bathroom. I stressed a bit last night, but daylight proved that a few travelers tricks really are worthwhile. A few months ago, I separated my credit cards so they weren't in the same place. I also finally got to make use of those xerox copies of now missing cards that I have been carrying around for years.
Perhaps the most tragic bit of this loss was my camera, and now you will never get to see the photos of Girls Gone Wild: Bolivia, but then, that's probably for the best.
Meanwhile, someone is enjoying a new condom-waterproofed cell phone.

I! HATE! SPANISH!

2011-03-03T06:14:00.000-08:00

My Uncle Ole once carved "I HATE PIANO" into the piano when he was supposed to be practicing. I wish I could carve the same sentiment about Spanish somewhere, but a good locale doesn't really present itself.
Here's a great example of why this graffiti is appropriate:
hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablan, hablar, hablando, hablado, hablaré, hablarás, hablará, hablarémos, hablarán, hablaria, hablarias, hablaria, hablariamos, hablarian, hable, hables, hable, hablemos, hablen, hablara, hablase, hablaras, hablases, hablara, hablase, hablaramos, hablásemos, hablaran, and hablasen
ALL mean "to speak." But, choose wisely, they all have only one appropriate use. I probably missed some or haven't been taught a few more rogue tenses, as well.
In German, there are 16 ways to say "the." I used to think that was a big deal.
I got frustrated and confused in Spanish class yesterday, and my teacher threw me a lifeline: an explanation of what she was talking about in English. This is what it said:
"When the main clause is in the past and calls for the subjunctive, you will use the imperfect subjunctive in the subordinate clause."
Oh! Why didn't you just say so? Seriously, I'm still not sure if that is actually English, and it didn't clear anything up.
Perhaps I should stop accidentally saying rude and suggestive things to strangers and my host family in my attempts to communicate in Spanish, and start looking for my pocket knife to convey my feelings in a more permanent way.

Caving... and some civil engineering on the side

2011-02-28T15:05:00.001-08:00

This past weekend, I went for an adventure in Torotoro with seven other volunteers. Adventure is what we got. Torotoro is a town, and a National Park by the same name, about 100 miles (as the crow flies) from Cochabamba. The park is known for its caves, canyons, and dinosaur footprints. Tourists are delivered there on a bright yellow bus painted with dinosaurs. The one way ticket costs 20Bs (just under $3) Locals ride this bus too, and there must be some price differential, because we all got seats, but many of the Bolivians sit in the aisles, on the steps, or even on the dashboard of the bus. To cover the distance between Cochabamba and Torotoro, the big yellow dinosaur bus takes about 6 hours, on a good day. So I'm told.

Our bus there had two runners (small boys that stand the whole ride by the door and jump out to move the biggest landslides that block the road, then jump back on while the bus is still moving), we only got one flat tire from side-swiping a landslide, and we made the trip in just under 7 hours.

We arrived in the pouring rain and awoke the next morning at a trashy hostel in the pouring rain and generally had an overall negative attitude about the prospects of the weekend. Then we tracked down our guide, Mario, at his house. Mario is the short, silent type and has been guiding in the region since either 1969 or 1979 (I'm still having trouble with numbers in Spanish). He took us past dinosaur tracks and into the caves. Because of the rain, the water thundering through the caverns was deafening, and all the surfaces were slippery. Mario worked with only one climbing rope and a propane fueled flame on the front of his helmet. We climbed and descended and squeezed through tiny tunnels. I am certain that insurance companies in the United States wouldn't even let you look at the cave entrance, but, for a nominal fee, Mario adeptly guided us underground for hours. It was incredible. The most impressive thing about Mario, short of keeping us alive, was that while we slithered and squeezed through water and mud and dirt, Mario never got a speck of dirt on the dress pants and white shirt that he guides in.

On the second day, Mario showed us the canyons and waterfalls that decorate Torotoro park. We hiked 1000 steps (or so) to the base of the canyon, drank in the views and climbed on boulders. Again, the water-carved landscape was marvelous.

When it was time to go home, we paid another 20Bs for the dinosaur bus and boarded at 3pm. We stopped for a bunch of Sunday market traffic in the nearby villages. After 2 hours of driving, we got stuck in the first river we came to. (Oh, of course I forgot to mention that the road just goes through rivers.) The drop from the road into the current was decent sized, and the rear end of the bus got hung up. The people in the truck behind us got out and started to dig. They got annoyed at me for taking pictures, so I got out to help them. I waded through the river to the back of the bus, and with the shovel, crowbar, and pick ax (apparently standard issue gear for Bolivian buses), we tried to work the back end free. A mini traffic jam formed behind us including 2 trucks and a herd of goats. Our bus driver did not want to get wet, so he went back and forth through the aisle of the bus and climbed in and out of the back window, using his runner's back as a step ladder.

Meanwhile, someone decided that the water was the problem and convinced the rest of my gringo group to build a dam to reroute the river. I don't know what is funnier: that someone thought we could change the course of a raging current and that it would somehow help the situation; or, that they actually convinced us to try. So, I moved up river to join my group of friends in hauling big rocks into the middle of the stream. A couple small boys from the bus came to help, and asked us to pay them for their services. We didn't. Meanwhile, the number of other passengers seemed to somehow be slowly diminishing. It got dark.

After about four hours of futile attempts to move the bus or the river, another bus arrived and pulled us free. We climbed on board and rounded the first bend in the road to discover where the other passengers had gone: to the bar in the town a mere 200 yards up the road. We had been too busy altering the landscape to look for the nearest place to buy a beer.

We drove for another hour in the dark, all drifting to sleep after our backbreaking dam building work. At about 10pm, we came to another river. Our bus stopped. The engine was shut off. Not a good sign. In the middle of the river (which was, in this case, the road) was a large truck, buried up to its axles in mud and rock, effectively blocking all traffic. Our busdriver decided to just go to sleep until morning and laid down in the bus' baggage compartment.

Another bus, from Cochabamba, arrived on the other side of the river. Yucca and Sheylynn, my only companions that were awake, tried to convince the drivers to trade passengers and go back from whence they came. Everyone wins, and we all get home tonight, right? Our driver said 'no.'

Not accepting of the 'sleep it off' solution to river crossing, us three girls, along with two other passengers from our bus decided to build a ramp down the one meter river bank, bypassing the truck. It was a big project to attempt, let alone with simple tools (remember: shovel, pick ax, & crowbar), limited workers, and pitch darkness, but at least it wasn't raining.

We started carrying rocks, shoveling, and breaking shale off a nearby cliff face. The rest of the men from the buses, along with our drivers, stood laughing at us. But after about a half hour, you could see the machismo kick in from watching girls do manual labor. One at a time, we got the manpower we needed.

At around 1am, the bus on the other side managed to reposition itself to pull the truck out of the river. They managed to free it, but only to wedge it again, this time right in front of our ramp. But, after a few more attempts, the truck was pulled to the opposite bank just as we completed our engineering feat.

The bus from the other side crossed via the old road, but our driver didn't want to attempt it, for fear of getting stuck like the truck. He went for the ramp. It was bumpy, but operational. (ramp under the back wheels of the bus in this photo) A few men stayed outside and helped shove us through the river.

At 2am, we were across the river, just after 4am, we reached Cochabamba. I couldn't find my ticket to produce for collection upon de-boarding. I didn't feel bad about that. At 5am, I reached my bed. Today, my arms are sore. It's either from caving, or dam building, or road engineering... but, enough about 'vacationing', it's time to go back to school building.

AU! RO! RA!

2011-02-23T15:26:00.000-08:00

They are serious about strikes around here. Well, kind of serious. The transport strike lasted 4 days last week. Then all the drivers worked for the weekend, because, come on, people have stuff to do. Then they worked Monday too. But by Tuesday, they seemed to remember that they had a really important cause to fight for and better get back to it.

So, here I am in Cochabamba: Transport Strike Week 2. I haven't been able to get out to the job site to work on the school, except for Monday (a.k.a. The Day the Strike Forgot), and then it was raining too hard to pour cement. I couldn't leave the city last weekend to go hiking because of blockades set up by the strikers. While this is all an interesting insight into the political and economic functions of Bolivia, it's pretty boring if you can't go anywhere, most stuff is closed, and you don't really like TV.

Luckily, the city soccer game fell on one of the days when the strike was on break. With a friend and her dad, I went to the stadium to root for Cochabamba's Aurora when they played Santa Cruz on Sunday. I love going to sporting events in other countries. I enjoy sporting events in the US, and I love seeing the differences. There are always many.

For example: There is a big pet market outside the football stadium here in the morning before the game. People buy puppies out of crates stuffed full of puppies. While you are waiting to meet your friends for the game, men walk up to you, shove a cute puppy in your face, and offer to sell it to you for 100Bs. What do people do with the dogs they buy out on the pavement? They bring them into the game, of course! The stands are full of not only cheering fans, but also very small dogs, sleeping, chasing up and down the stairs, or just looking confused (I think, if I were a market dog, I would be in the latter group).

Another marked difference to American sporting events is that there is no alcohol allowed in the stadium. They don't sell any, and you can't bring it with you. The only drink available is pop, and it is sold out of two-liter bottles from which the vendors pour you a cup. The gap left by the prohibition on alcohol is filled with a free-for-all on fireworks. I was building a pretty strong argument for banning alcohol on the grounds of safety until I saw the fireworks. They should give you a free fire extinguisher with your pre-game puppy purchase.

One of the fans near us had a bull horn. I'm not sure if this is not-allowed in the States, or you just couldn't get away with it. The guy screamed profanities at the refs, advice to the coaches, or just chanted "AU-RO-RA!" louder than anyone else. The people in the seats directly in front of him probably had a very entertaining game, but still can't hear anything.

I've heard how excited some countries get about soccer, but I was still surprised to see that the refs had to be escorted on and off the field by police outfitted in full riot gear.

There was one similarity to American sports that I picked out. You know those guys that bring their radios to baseball games so they can listen to the game while they are watching it and make sure they don't miss anything? Well, they are at Bolivian football games too. We were surrounded by guys listening to the game on the radio, though I'm not sure they could hear anything over the bull horn.

I'm sure there's a great "bread and circuses" lesson in the fact that the city was cheering a Cochabamba win at a soccer game in the middle of an economy-crippling protest, but in the midst of the shouting, firecrackers, and puppies, who can be sure?

Could someone call me a death cab?

2011-02-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

Right now the chauffers (taxi and bus drivers) of Cochabamba are on strike. I haven't been to work in two days because I have no way to get there. They raised the price of intra-city rides from 1.50Bs to 2Bs, which is quite a price hike. The people refused to pay or ride and now the drivers are refusing to drive. Economic unrest aside, this gives me a minute to reflect on how long it has taken me to figure out the little bit I know about the transport system in this town.

The spiderweb maps of London and New York subway systems have nothing on Cochabamba. First of all, there is no map; no secret decoder ring; no signs. Public transport is an “insider” thing. Rumor is that there is a book that lists the routes, but I have never seen one, and you can bet that I have looked. You basically have 4 options in public transport here:

Micro: Ironically named, the Micro is the largest vehicle offered in the city. They are all painted obnoxious colors, as pictured. The inside is usually decorated similarly, and it is nearly enough to induce a seizure.Due to the seizure risk¨, and to the fact that I have no idea where any micros go, I never ride one unaccompanied by a local.

Trufi: A trufi is basically a minivan that can pack in more people than you would ever imagine. I think I counted 18 once. Yes, in one of these. They drive a route indicated vaguely by the construction paper sign in their window. To get any of these bus-type things to stop, you have to step into ther street and hail them like you would a cab. If you want to disembark, you just shout "Next corner!" or "right here!" to the driver. The people paying good money for public transport will not walk an extra 50 feet, so there is a decent chance that a trufi will stop 4 or 5 times in one block.

Taxi-Trufi: This "hybred" runs on similar priciples to the trufi, but is in car form. They also indicate their routes in construction paper on the dashboard. I take a taxi-trufi to work each morning. Early on, I reasoned that it would be great to get the front seat. I based this reasoning on lessons ingrained from childhood games of "Shotgun." When I waved a taxi-trufi to a stop, the front seat was open and I hopped in. In a half block, another passenger waved the trufi down and they shoved in next to me. I was pressed up against the driver and needed to self-levitate to stay off the car´s gearshift. Everytime we slammed on the breaks (which is constantly in Bolivia), my left thigh shoved the car into neutral. The driver would then have to put the car back in drive before proceeding. I sit in the back now.

Taxi: We're left with what seems like a normal form of transport the world over. However, what separates taxis from regular old cars in Cochabamba is just stickers. These stickers are the keys to the kingdom. Everyone, it seems, has a friend of a friend that has been mugged, raped or murdered in a "fake taxi." What counts as a "real taxi" is widely debated. Taxis will have one or more of the following stickers: a "taxi" sticker in the windshield, a sticker of the license plate number on the fender, and/or a sticker on the back door of anything, from a company name/phone number to Spiderman. Most people agree that any car with two or more stickers is a "legitimate" taxi. These stickers are commonly sold in local hardware stores for reasonable prices.

Once you´ve flagged down a cab and gotten in without being stabbed or rufi-ed, you have to negotiate price. It does´t matter if you called a "radio taxi" company and they sent a cab to you, or if you flagged one down in the street, you will have to negotiate. There are no meters and no set fairs. The distance, the weather, your accent, and the drivers mood greatly affect what you will pay, but, that said, the final number really is anyone´s guess, and, surprisingly, stickers are not accepted for payment.

I lived in DC when the cabs were un-metered and operated on a "Zone System." You needed a Phd and at least 6 months in the city to figure out how to use and manipulate the fares of said system, but it could be done. The taxi drivers of Cochabamba prefer to stay cloaked in mystery. And, right now, these mystery men can charge whatever they like, as the rest of the city goes into Day 3 of a transport strike.

How is my Spanish coming?

2011-02-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Yesterday, I was complaining that I could not think of words in Spanish because my 'onion' wasn't working right. The Spanish words for 'onion' and 'brain' both start with "CE." The similarities end abruptly there. I suppose it's a personal victory that I understood every word when my host sister laughingly told everyone at lunch today about my latest linguistic slip up.
I am holding my own at about 75% of the conversations around the lunch table. I even talk a bit. This is a great change from Weeks 1 & 2 when I just swung my head around the conversation like I was trying to follow a ping pong match.
It's a blessing that I am learning Spanish amongst people that love food, because this is a topic I can relate on. My host brother and I spend evenings cruising the streets for foods made from ridiculous parts of the cow and then slathered in spicy sauces. Meanwhile, he helps me practice directions between street stalls in Spanish and I quiz him on Instrument Flight Rules, as he is studying to be a commercial pilot. (Aviation is a topic about which I can discourse almost as fluently as about food.)
My host mom helps me with vocab by explaining what is in everything she cooks and telling me which town in Bolivia each particular dish originated in. She's quite the gastronomic historian.
This learning style requires a certain amount of faith. I think one of the reasons these people who love food are so patient with me is that they actually respect the fact that I will eat almost anything I am told. Reheated intestines off a dirty griddle on a street corner? I'll try it, but bring on the peanut sauce. Crumble up cheese and stir it into my hot chocolate? Well, I like cheese, and I like chocolate...
These 'feeders' have proved themselves trustworthy in the food and language departments. So an extra lesson has been learned: A person can get a decent language education for the price of a pack of Pepto Bismal and few extra pounds.

Hay Lluvia.

2011-02-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

Nobody felt great, and it was pouring down rain as we all made our way to the bus station in Cochabamba on Friday morning. The city floods nearly instantaneously, and none of the taxis have defrost. This was how, after getting my jeans soaked flagging down a cab, when we drove through a large puddle, a wave of street-water came in through the cracked window straight at my face and open mouth. No better way to start a weekend in the country than contracting cholera.

On the four-hour bus ride to Oruro, multiple men got on the bus and yelled 30-45 minute sales pitches at the trapped passengers. One of them was selling an elixir that can make your hair grow, clean blood from carpet, earn at least 8% interest for investments, and cure AIDS. One tube was only 10 Bolivianos. Not one of us bought any. We were too busy watching Jackie Chan movies on the bus TV.

In Oruro, we connected to a 7-hour train to Uyuni. I got stuck in a car by myself, directly behind the engine, thus full of diesel fumes. I shared a seat with a woman and her 7-year-old son—apparently trains don’t have the same “children over 2 must have their own seat” rule that planes do.

The hostel in Uyuni lost our reservation. Such an event is a mild inconvenience for a group of 14 Sustainable Bolivia volunteers arriving at 11pm.

The next morning, three of us shopped out the various tour hawkers on the streets in the pouring rain. Dozens of companies sell virtually the same three-day tour of the salt flats and surrounding areas. Our main priority was that our whole group not be crammed into just two 4WD vehicles. We reached a deal with “Expediciones Lipez.” Shortly after taking our money, Mr. Lipez directed the 14 of us to split into two groups of 7 and climb into 2 vehicles. The third vehicle parked out front would be full of other tourists and join our group on the tour. Three adults in the backseat of an SUV would be something we would have plenty of time analyze the discomforts of.

“The Others” consisted of 2 Russians that pretended to speak no English or Spanish and strolled into everyone’s scenic photos (I maintain that they were spies); 2 Canadians in their 60s that talked a lot; and an American neuro-scientist/mountaineer. This crew shared their vehicle with our guide.

We paid extra to have an “English-Speaking guide.” Through a few teeth, using decent English, he introduced himself as “Roberto DiNero” or “Llama.” I called him ‘Fancy Pants’: for three days he wore orange camouflage. On Day Two, he stopped speaking English. Each vehicle had a Spanish-speaking driver. These drivers formed a union and waged a little three-day war with the guide, refusing to drive to tour sites and refusing to wake up at the scheduled times.

The altitudes on the trip ranged between 4000 and 5000 meters (13,000-16,000feet). It was fairly cold. Most of us were clad in locally purchased wool adorned with 2-dimensional llamas.

So appointed, we bumped and splashed through spectacular desert scenery. There were marvelous rock formations and multi-colored lagoons. We saw thousands of flamingos and possibly more llamas. We ate llama. We did not eat flamingo. On the second day, we visited stinky, belching, sulphuric geysers. It was here that Fancy Pants pulled down his pants and squatted over the geyser steam. When we asked what the hell he was doing, butt-naked in belching clay, he said, “It’s good for osteoporosis.” We soaked the image out of our mind in thermal springs nearby, before continuing on to more scenery.

On the final day, after a 4:30am wake up call, we drove to the salt flats. It had been raining for days, and a shallow layer of water covered the miles and miles of white salt. This created a perfect, seemingly infinite mirror, and thunderheads reflected back at the sky. It was one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen. Ever. When I look out my window at home, I see glaciers and mountains. I fly airplanes over some of the most remote wilderness in the world. And there I was, ankle deep in saltwater, staring at something I cannot believe I had never heard of before coming to Bolivia, because it could be used worldwide to define natural beauty.

The train for home was scheduled to leave at 1:22am. After midnight, the train car was parked in front of the station and we all climbed aboard. As we waited for departure, tired from a long day on the road, we drifted to sleep. At 6am, we awoke, one by one, to discover that we hadn’t moved. We all climbed off the train back onto the Uyuni platform. The only worker in sight told us, when asked why the train had not departed, “Hay Lluvia.” ‘There is rain’ doesn’t really seem like a sufficient explanation for a 7-hour delay of a 7-hour ride, but apparently, in Uyuni, that’s how it goes.

Halfway through the ride to Oruro, one of the train conductors came through our car with a trash bag, politely collecting all the rubbish that people who are stuck in a train car for 14 hours produce. We all looked at eachother pleasantly surprised. This was the first time we had seen trash collection of any form in Bolivia. We also had the privilege of being in the caboose, and thus watched as the conductor carefully tied the full bag of trash after making his way through the full train, then walking to the back door, unlatched it, and chucked the bag out the door. It tumbled off the tracks and into the desert.

We finally arrived in Oruro and caught a connecting bus at 4:30pm. Two hours later, in the middle of a Jackie Chan movie, the bus broke down. We were in the mountains, 2 hours from Cochabamba, and would have to wait for a rescue bus to arrive. We had a bottle of rum, perfect for such an occasion.

I walked in the door to my house close to midnight. My host brother asked why I was so late. I was too tired to remember any useful Spanish to explain my awesome weekend, and the glories of transit in Bolivia. “Hay Lluvia.” I replied. It’s only evidence of cultural mystery that he seemed to understand exactly what I meant.

Checking in on that ´helping out´goal...

2011-02-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

I´m helping to build a school. Well, actually, we´re adding on to an existing school. I´m working in tandem with the orgnizations Mano a Mano and Sustainable Bolivia. Mano a Mano builds schools and clinics all over Bolivia, the country that has the highest dropout rate in South America, especially among girls, because many kids have a 4 hour commute to school. Mano a Mano makes it their mission to build schools (and clinics) that are excessible to remote places. They built a school in the village of Apote, outside of Cochabamba, years ago, and attendance rates have gone up so much, they need to add on. We are at the foundation level of what will, in 4 months, be 12 new classrooms.
I have spent months staring at Mexican contruction sites wondering what they could possibly be building out of a bunch of randomly cobbled together wood. Now, I am randomly cobbling wood eveyday. The construction process is much slower when you don´t have proper lumber. You just use what´s there. That means finding old ladders and pulling the nails out of them one by one. Or carrying tree trunks to the work site. You make the size piece you need. You make the plumes. It looks like a mess. There is order, but it certainly doesn´t come together like a shopping list at Home Depot.
The other volunteer from Sustainable Bolivia that I am working with is French guy named Bruce. Our common langauge is Spanish. Our boss, a Bolivian named Renee, is about 5 feet tall, works in rubber sandals, and climbs around the worksite like a monkey. His boss is a fat guy, also in sandals, that chews coca constantly and has the final word on every leveling question.
Bruce and I spend a lot of time painfully constructing sentences the other one doesn´t understand. There is a lot of ´No Entiendo´and a lot of laughter. Laughter must be good for something, even on a building site. Renee either thinks its funny or annoying that we don´t understand eachother and barely understand him. I´m leaning towards the latter.
We are raising and leveling rebar columns and the project is visibly coming along, which is rewarding. It is as safe as you would imagine a worksite where most of the workers wear rubber sandals and are climbing ten feet into the air on homemade cobbled structures over uneven gravel pits. But so far, the biggest injury is sunburn.

Coca "Chew-In"

2011-01-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, there were hundreds of people on the Plaza Principal in Cochabamba chewing coca leaf. This was part of a nation-wide movement to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans the chewing of coca leaf and treats it on par with heroine and cocaine. The largest "chew-in" was in front of the US Embassy in La Paz.
Chewing coca leaves is an ancient tradition in the Andes. The proposed amendment would still treat coca as a controlled substance, just relieve the ban.
Guess who is stopping Andean countries from amending the ban? The United States: world's largest consumer of cocaine! The US position is that coca needs to be banned because it is the raw material used for making cocaine, and lifting the ban would weaken the oh-so-important, and oh-so-effective "War on Drugs."
I just have one question: when the US banned the consumption of alcohol, did they also ban eating corn and potatoes?
Watching the US meddle with impunity in the governing and culture of smaller, weaker countries reminds me painfully of their four-star work in Haiti over the past centuries. This is one of those times that it is really handy socially that most people don't know Alaska is in the United States.

Things I take for Granted

2011-01-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

This is a list of things that Latin America makes me miss. These notes are Bolivia-specific, but I have seen this stuff elsewhere, feel free to add your own comments.

*Even sidewalks. Seriously, you need All-Terrain shoes to get around here. In one block, the path with go from dirt, to concrete, to gravel, to cobblestones, and back to concrete.

*Trash Collection. I don't mean that a service needs to come to your house to collect trash, we don't have that in Homer. I just mean "collection", as in gather in a specific area, rather than just strewn around everywhere.

*Good Coffee. Oh, Nescafe, how I hate you.

*Bus Stops. Though hurtling yourself into the street and madly waving your arms when you see the bus you want is fun, I now really appreciate the advantages of scheduled stops.

*Ashtrays. Local motto: "Why use one when the floor's right there?"

*Change for $10 (or equivalent) at businesses. If you run a store, or a restaurant and only do transactions in cash, it stands to reason that if I make a 18B purchase and only have a 50B bill ($1US=7B), you should be able to give me change. But, I am always wrong about this. And, I always get a look as if I, the customer, have just thrown raw eggs on the front door when I ask for change.

*Hair gel's place in the 80s. I can't say I exactly miss the facial hair of Homer, but I would like to see a guy without half a tub of LA Looks in his hair.

*No marketing via megaphone. The Blues Brothers proved this is effective, but it's really annoying when a guy pushes a cart down the street every morning screaming about fruit through a blown-out drive-thru speaker.

Post ethno-centric rant, I will clear my conscience by saying that there is a little flower here that I don't know the name of, but the smell is heaven. I would trade the privilege of wearing flip flops everyday combined with that smell for a lot of comforts and conveniences.

They still have food and drink outside your comfort zone

2011-01-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

I'm in Cochabamba, which besides being fun to say, is Bolivia's third largest city. I've been here less than a week, but things are coming together. I'm exploring the local markets, meeting lots of people, and, despite everyone's warnings, not getting killed. I am involved with an organization called Sustainable Bolivia, which provides services for volunteers to multiple local organizations.
My goals here are simple: 1:learn some Spanish, 2: do some good, and, as always, 3:have some fun.
So far, goals 1& 3 are getting the most attention. I am taking Spanish classes every day for two hours. It feels like what I would imagine waterboarding to be. But that's not enough torture; to stretch even farther outside my comfort zone, I decided to live with a host family. I now have a Bolivian "mom," "brother," "sister," and 3-year-old "niece." I may not learn Spanish, but no one can say I didn't try. I am improving bit by bit, but in the last week, I threatened to hit a busdriver (note to self: "pAgar"='to pay'; "pEgar"=to hit); and, when my 'brother' asked if I was married, I answered, "A little bit" (note to self: "casada"=married; "cansada"=tired).

The toughest thing about living with the host family is the food. Bolivians eat a lot-- five meals a day. And, it is marginally rude to not eat what they have given you. Well, my family feeds me as if I am in training as a sumo wrestler. When I slow down, the mom encourages me: "Comi! Comi!" I feel like Cool Hand Luke, just not as cool.
This week I am supposed to start work with Habitat for Humanity, which will fulfill goal number two and hopefully give me the chance to dodge out on a few meals.

In interest of goal three, I took off yesterday to explore one of the surrounding villages. The advantage of being a minority foreigner in a friendly country is that people include you in their parties like you are honored guests, rather than backpackers scarfing free alcohol. On the cobbled streets of Tarata, I heard loud music playing behind a closed door. For some reason, I thought I had every right to open that door and stick my head in. Apparently, I did. The senior citizens in the courtyard beyond waved me in, shared the 'Chicha' (a fermented corn drink) they were drinking, handed me a handkerchief, and asked me to dance with them. It was someone's 50th anniversary and they were all too glad we joined the party. Luckily, they weren't serving any food.

Don't Cry for me Argentina... I'll see you somewhere soon

2011-01-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

I've left Argentina, so I'd better tell you what I thought, as being in a new place takes you by the feet and shakes you upside down trying to get the old place out. At least that's how it seems sometimes. Someplaces are harder to shake out than others: Like that place you call 'home', or the places of 'firsts', or where you were when your brother threw a lit sparkler in your hair... but I digress.

I was only in Argentina for 3 weeks, so really I only know that it is HUGE and 3 weeks is not enough. My poor American geography is showing, but I just had no idea how big Argentina was. I went on multiple 20 hour bus rides and didn't cover a third of the country. Granted, I am counting some breakdown time in one of those buses just to give myself extra credit hours.

I'm impressed that a country in our continually globalized world can hold the hours that Argentina does. These people do not negotiate on their siestas. And, they eat dinner at 11 at night-- as a family-- kids and all. And, it seems to work. As long as you get used to the idea that everything will be closed between 1 and 5pm. It makes the days seem long, but also nice and slow.

Speaking of 'closed' that is the word I use to describe Mendoza. I spent two long weekends there, and many things also remain closed on the weekends. What would Americans do if they couldn't work or shop on the weekends? Argentinians go to the park and have picnics. Or play in the local creek or aqueduct ditch. We went horseback riding.

The closed-ness of Mendoza was probably accentuated for me, as I went there expecting a Napa Valley experience in the Malbec mecca. Argentinian wineries just don't work that way. You call and make a reservation. Then you show up and go on an hour long tour. Then they give you a taste (maybe two) of their most basic wines. Then you spend an hour driving around looking for the next winery. Walking or biking from tasting table to tasting table being assaulted by a waterfall of wonderful vintages is logistically not an option. And, after you have had one hour-long winery tour conducted in your third language, you've had enough. The Malbecs and the Torrentes here are great, but wine bars or restaurants are the place to have them.

Roadtripping through the Central Andes and the desert was spectacular, as I've mentioned. Then I spent my last week in the country in Salta, far in the Northwest. Salta is a beautiful, european-esque city and home to a active and fun couchsurfing population. Couchsurfing has pretty much replaced hostelling for me: not only do you get to meet other travelers, but you get to meet locals as well, and you don't have to get bedbugs in the process.

I wanted to see Patagonia, but haven't yet. From Mendoza, which is kind of in the middle, I had to choose: go North or South? I chose the North road. Another traveler I met asked, "well can't you go back and go 'South' after seeing Salta, and places 'North'? Technically, the answer is 'yes', but I have learned that "way leads on to way" and once we choose a direction, we may never find that particular fork in the road again.

Through the couchsurfers in Salta and the vineyards in Mendoza, I was taken on a triumphant parade of what this late-night meat-eating, early-morning drinking country has to offer. These people eat a lot of meat. Delicious Asados (BBQs). It is not uncommon for a dinner plate to just have a large slab of meat on it, and nothing else. Nothing else until you eat that slab of meat and they put another one down to replace it. And with that meat comes a fast running salt shaker. This is a salty place. Or sweet. Dulche de Leche (a caramel-like spread) steps into any meal where salt might not apply. I didn't ever have meat and dulche de leche together, but, like I said, I was only there 3 weeks.

P.S. I got that yellow fever shot. Out of a 85 degree box, in a run-down government building in Salta. The Bolivian immigration officials didn't even ask to see the stamp. I haven't died yet though.

Speaking of Scavenger Hunts and Charades...

2011-01-13T15:25:00.000-08:00

In beautiful Salta, Argentina, where everything is decorated with llamas, and somehow, those llamas look really nice.

Argentina is nice and all, but pretty much everyone knows where it is. This is one of the reasons I recently bought a ticket to Bolivia.
Only after making the purchase, did I bother to look at visa requirements. Thanks to what, I am sure, is stupid US policy, I need one. I looked up the location of the Bolivian embassy in Salta. It is listed at Avenida San Martin 124. I found Ave. San Martin 128 and I found Ave. San Martin 122, but 124 must be located in the same place as the train platform for Hogwarts.
I also need proof of a yellow fever vaccination. During siesta, I contemplated faking the vaccination stamp in my documents. But then I logically recalled that Tarzan's Jane died of yellow fever. I think. So I got out of my bed to see what I could do.
Most people wouldn't get up from a nap in a country where they have a severe language handicap, and barely have a clue about the government, let alone the healthcare system, and decide to go get a yellow fever shot. 'Most people' are probably on to something.
It's a good thing I spent Christmas playing Cranium with my family, as I was a dead ringer for "I need a Yellow Fever vaccination" charades at multiple pharmacies and at a clinic. I struggled with directions, because "derecho" is 'straight' and "derecha" is 'right,' and I think we can agree that those are cruelly similar words.
Eventually, I found my way to a hospital, avoided the "Emergencia" door (this is not that, Thank God), and re-performed my perfected charade at an "Informacia" desk. (Most people would have had the first pharmacist write it down, but then, we're back to 'most people.') The information woman must have sensed my 'derecho/a' handicap, because she took my arm and led me down the hall.
This was the only hospital I've even been in that smelled overwhelmingly like diesel fuel. Once I was being led down the final hall to the needle, I started getting nervous about the shot. I blame this on Anna, who has been instilling a fear of sharp objects in me since the first high school blood drive. I regretted my siesta-time snack of crackers, because I suddenly wanted to throw them up.
Informacia Lady deposited me in front of a door that read "VACUNAR," knocked twice, and left me there.
I leaned against the wall next to the door and let my stomach twist itself around my nerves. I flexed my biceps to fend off needles. I know you are thinking: "Steph! You are an EMT!" I am. I have taught classes on inserting naso-pharangeal airways. But, here is my next confession: even typing the words "naso-pharangeal" kind of makes me want to throw up.
I waited for the Vacunar door to open. I shifted my weight and looked at the white tile wall I was leaning on. It was smeared with dried blood. I moved to the middle of the hallway and tried not to touch anything. I paced nervously, but didn't want to stray to far from the door, so I pivoted and paced with just one foot. This spinning didn't help the nausea.
A girl who was really hurt, and clearly in a lot of pain limped down the hall. She looked at me sympathetically. I probably looked like I was about to cry. I realized that this spinning around maneuver was not very cool, so I stopped and looked at the door, which was in the same state of closed. Of the 89 words on the door (I counted while I was trying to stand still), I understood 5 of them, not counting the "and"s and the "the"s. I tried opening the door. It didn't budge.
A line began forming behind me and the people asked me how long I had been waiting. Mercifully, I understood this question. However, I am still struggling with the difference between 'fourteen' and 'forty,' so I settled on replying 'a half hour,' which was in the neighborhood just shy of true.
After waiting an hour, and successfully not vomiting, I turned and walked out.
On the steps of the hospital, I put my head down and caught my breath. I straightened up and promised my inner child that no one was going to put a needle in her arm today. I also promised her ice cream. I walked down the steps and promptly got lost.
I eventually found a cafe and ordered "helado sabor americano," because I wanted to know what American-flavored ice cream would taste like. It's vanilla. My inner child was disappointed.

Cultural Decorum

2011-01-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

At our final stop, in the Mendocino winery-laden village of Maipu, Susy and I somehow got our hands on an educational reference book: Argentinian Customs and Culture.
One piece of advice that someone bothered to type up and print in this book is: 'It is rude for a foreignor to criticize Argentinian government or politics. Let Argentinians talk about their own government problems, do not offer your opinion.'
We laughed. Duh. Of course that is rude. Everyone knows you shouldn't discuss politics or religion with strangers, but then I paused...
It seems that everywhere I have ever traveled, people have offered their opinion on American politics as soon as they hear my accent. For the past two years I have been fielding non-stop inquiries on Sarah Palin. Can someone please put in a book that this taboo also applies to Americans?
Currently, I am skating by on the fact that a lot of people don't know that Alaska is part of the USA, or whether Alaskans speak English or German (the only thing I have demonstrated with any competency is that Alaskans probably don't speak Spanish).

"Palm to Palm is Holy Palmer's Kiss" -Shakespeare

2011-01-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

Central Andes/ Argentine Sierras:

Mendoza-Punta del Inca-Uspallata-Valle de Calingasta-San José de Jáchal-Rodeo-San Augustín de Valle Fértil-San Juan

I have hiked into the Grand Canyon, I have been wowed by Capitol Reef, Bryce, Arches and the dry spots in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. I have stood on a precipice at Zion and might still swear it was the most spectacular vantage point in the world. I have seen the so-called “Big Sky” that is immortalized by A.B. Guthrie.

Australia’s Uluru and Olgas are amazing, as are the hundreds of miles of surrounding desert and rock formations through which I have fought flies and chased camels.

In the last week, I have driven thousands of kilometers through Central Argentina. The terrain changes every 50 kilometers. Every color of the rainbow paints the scenery. A Cineplex worth of popcorn clouds fill the sky as far as I can see; the carpet is red and white sand, as soft and fine as silk. And the rocks… rocks, rocks, rocks… mountains of them, piles of them, weird balancing acts of them. So much vast landscape you know that only God has touched each and every piece. This desert makes the American Southwest and the Australian Outback look like the places that God practiced on while he was getting ready to make Argentina.

I have a confession to make. Ever since reading Into Thin Air I have judged climbers fairly critically. I have mostly viewed the activity as self-serving and foolish. This week, I changed my mind. I found a desire to reach out and be a part of this beautiful landscape. I realized that every time you touch a far-flung stone, out-of-reach of anyone else, it is being palm to palm with the Creator.

Language Problems

2011-01-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

The Spanish speaking world needs to get together. I have recently discovered that in Argentina (and in Uruguay, for that matter) the "LL" that Spanish speakers love to sprinkle generously through their words does not make the same sound as it does in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. I learned in Mexico that when you see 2 'L's, you make a 'y' sound. Why? I don't know. That's the way it is. But not here.
Here, you make a "j" sound, as in "'J'ust a minute, I have to relearn how to pronounce this word."

Let's say you make the "y" sound, like I do. Do people realize it's just a different dialect and give you the benefit of the doubt? NO. They look at you like you are a Martian.
I know this Martian look well, as I have been getting it a lot lately. Another situation I can't get comfortable with involves restaurants. It is popular here to not have menus. They don't even have a chalkboard with specials. The waitress just comes to your table and asks what you want.
You say, 'I don't know, what do you have?' and she says, 'whatever you want.'
Really? Mac & Cheese and a Peanut Butter sandwich? No. Now, if I had enough cultural experience to have any idea what would be on a normal Argentine menu, this wouldn't be so difficult. But, I can't even make the correct sounds when the letters arrive on my tongue, so I stare blankly at the waitress, shrug my shoulders, and point vaguely at another table. She brings whatever they serve Martians in this country.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

2011-01-02T05:57:00.000-08:00

In Mendoza, Argentina with Susy:

The owner of the inn we are staying at invited us to join his big family party for New Years. We accepted. The rest of his family canceled. We had one of the best steaks I have ever eaten and all the Malbec we could drink with this guy and his parents (who live with him). We arrived at 10:30pm, which was way too early for dinner, so we were having a glass of wine and he says, 'it's kind of odd that both my parents live with me, because they are divorced.' We rang in 2011 at a small table on a porch while a violent thunderstorm raged outside. The language barrier, for once, helped make things less awkward: since we couldn't talk much, it made the fact that two adults at the table were intentionally ignoring each other a little less obvious. A little.

After dashing in and out of the rain to watch over an hour of fireworks, we went to "Willy's Bar" at about 1:30am with Toto, our host. The bar was so far from being set up that it was basically closed.

Outside of Discovery Channel nature shows, I have never before realized the NEED for time-lapse photography. Nothing could have better captured our New Years Eve. If only we had been appropriately equipped, you would get to watch something like this:

1:35am: Toto got us 'Fernet' & coke... the local drink, which smells and tastes like Coke mixed with Ricola cough drops. The bartender has a fauxhawk and a spiked belt barely holding his jeans above his thighs.

1:37am: A tumbleweed rolls through the echoing red and black painted room accompanied by complete silence.

1:47am: We watched the DJ move all his equipment inside, which included moving, and breaking the feet off of, a pool table.

1:53am: Two girls arrive. Short hair, parted asymmetrically. Short, flowered dresses: eighties print.

2:13am: More hipsters trickle in. Average age is 22, but there are some older lecherous boyfriends. Girls are in short skirts and short boots and loads of perfume. Boys are in truckee hats and tight jeans.

2:24: We talk about how old we are.

2:28am: It stops raining.
2:34am: The DJ moves all his equipment back to a tent outside.
2:46am: 8 hipsters, two with mullets and one with silver pants, fall asleep on a white leather couch, waiting for the party to start.
2:48am: Fauxhawk bartender opens up his laptop and plays Michael Jackson's extended version of "Thriller." We dance... just like they do on the video.
2:53am: Toto asks if I'm on Facebook. I say, "What's 'Facebook'?" I have had enough Fernet to think this is the funniest joke of the night.
3:01am: A guy walks in a red t-shirt and Dick Tracy hat. He's with two girls in striped shirts they stole from the set of "Growing Pains".
3:24am: The DJ finally starts playing in his outdoor tent. He starts with breakbeats (Susy is shocked) and works his way into "Indigenous techno".
3:38am: There are two pairs of silver pants on the mud dance floor.
3:46am:The stars above the "danceyard" are bright. Toto points out a 'special Argentine' constellation of "a shopping cart". It's Orion's belt.
3:53am: There is a line at the gate to get in and the bouncers are charging admission.
4:14am: the danceyard is full. We are among the best dancers there, a rank accomplished with minimal foot and arm movement.
4:18am: There is a deep crowd around the bar, clamoring for Fernet and Coke.
4:35am: We tell Toto we want to leave. He is appalled. 'Things are just getting started!'
4:38am: The three of us leave the hipsters to their dance moves and climb into Toto's 1966 Ford pickup truck.
4:57am: We laugh ourselves to sleep, visions of mullets dancing in our heads.

Back Under the Southern Kite

2010-12-29T06:39:00.000-08:00

I delayed a month and half, but have finally gotten back on the international travel circuit.
It seems I'm a bit rusty, as they nearly didn't let me board the plane in Charlotte due to visa issues. I was certain that I didn't need a visa and the gate agent disagreed. First, they argued that I couldn't land in Brazil without a visa, and then that I couldn't go to Argentina on a one way ticket. They eventually agreed to let me board, but not without looking me in the eye, giving a head shake, and saying, "This is BAD business." Bad business? Like sub-prime mortgages or working for the mob? You'd think I was boarding the plane to Buenos Aires in Nuremberg, rather than North Carolina.
My language skills also need work. I learned most of my foreign language skills as an adult. Thus, rather than compartmentalizing each language and being able to switch back and forth fluidly, I just opened up a drawer in my brain and started shoveling foreign words in. So, when I am in a situation where I recognize the foreign language being spoken, I open up that drawer that is mashed full of German and Spanish. What comes out of my mouth is a mildly unintelligible thing I call 'Germ-ish'. When I don't understand the language being spoken, what comes out of my mouth is just a high-pitched mumble/whine. I mumbled/whined my way through 10 hours at the Potuguese-speaking Rio de Janeiro airport (can't leave the airport because I don't have a visa), but more than a day after I began, I arrived in Argentina.
My only plans are to meet up with Couchsurfing friends and see where the days take me. My credit card expires in March, so I guess I'll have to make my way back to Alaska by then.
A long day of travel is the small inconvenience we pay for the privilege of buying a one-way ticket, having limited language skills, being alone in a big city, watching strange buildings fly by, and picking out the tiny Southern Cross through the smog in the night sky. Feels so acutely like life.

Make it, or Die

2010-12-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

I went into a strip mall coffee shop to have a cappucino while I waited for the liquor store to open. This says something about me, I guess... that I was at the liquor store so early on a Wednesday that it wasn't open. My shining moment was deciding to go into the coffee shop rather than just standing with my nose pressed against the glass staring at the bottles of vodka for 13 minutes... but who's counting?
Anyway, the barista was a good-looking, middle-aged guy, not on his best day. He cheerfully explained that he was hungover, over-worked, and still hadn't finished Christmas shopping for his teen-aged daughters. Even though he was behind the counter at a coffee shop, he couldn't quite have enough cups to fully wake up. He was having a bad day at work.
I sat down with my coffee by the window where I could see the door of the liquor store. I looked at the twinkling Christmas lights and thought about bad days at work.
My worst days at my current job are burned into my memory. In the winter of 2007, I got caught in a fast-moving blizzard after picking up a skier. I had to ask my passenger to help me navigate safely home through the blinding snow and wind. In the summer of 2008, I picked up a crew of fishermen in Bristol Bay, loaded to max with them, gear and fish. We were nearly forced to the ground by fog on the Alaska Peninsula and I had to scud over the tundra, navigating by valleys and the few weather reports of other pilots. Last summer, driving rain pushed the visibility and me down onto a remote lake in Katmai, where I taxied to shallow water, got out in my hip-waders and acted as a live mooring buoy for the plane, mostly so I wouldn't have to be in the cabin with barfing tourists.
Those days were my worst. I came very close to not making it. Just a little worse weather, or one wrong decision... They were all Uncle Ole's imfamous: "Make it or die" days. But, halfway to fully caffieinated and mesmerized by the blinking lights, I think I'd also count them as my best days. Because they weren't a little worse. And then the thought follows, how lucky am I, that I have a job where my worst days are also my best? Where just doing my job makes the lines a little clearer, and the sunset a little prettier, and the coffee taste a little better... Or am I just a little crazy?
Not sure. But the liquor store's open.

Rejoining Forces

2010-12-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

Steph and Anna linked back up in the Carolinas of all places. (Specifically, we were in both states, but it sounds more Northern to speak of them as if their differences are indiscernible.)

We ghost-toured in Charleston with a guide named Dan that wanted to be a golf pro. He gave us those sensors that the Ghostbusters carry. They are activated by electrical wires and by paranormal activity. They were going crazy on almost the whole walk. We didn't see any ghosts, but we did see a cat, which Dan said was carrying either a witch or a demon. He has only been guiding these tours since July, so didn't have enough experience to ascertain the sex of the feline's passenger.

Apparently a man from one of the many ghost tours photographed a ghost in the cemetery at St. Philip's church. Kodak, the FBI, and NASA could not explain it. St. Philips had to post a sign to clear things up. Anna, with 12 years of Catholic education under her belt, explained why the Church might be offended by the photographers claims: Ghosts do not officially exist. Unless they appear in the form of Mary, Jesus, or one of the Saints. Then they do. Why? Because an in-between place is not allotted for in Scripture--except in the above three forms, in which cases pilgrimage is called for. The girl knows her spectral catechism.

The latest Wikileak

2010-12-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

In the last week, I have spent 1300 miles on America's Interstate system which means that I know the words to every popular country song. I also accidentally ran a half-marathon, and was spit up on twice.
I have visited with a diverse group of friends and family, and learned something that did not make it onto Wikileaks: My dangerously single friends told me to watch out for "Trick Dates." Apparently, besides Internet dating, the great new way to ask someone out is to pretend you are not asking them out, but you are just arranging a meeting. Then when they show up at the appointed time and place, you go ahead with typical 'first date' behavior and see how it goes. After witnessing one such event unfold at an adjacent table in Washington, DC, it seems that the warning should not go unheeded.
Also newly revealed in the Nation's capitol: another dimension. I refused to see a movie at a museum because it was advertised as "4-D." Does the Tea Party know about this? What's the fourth D anyway? A friend told me it was "time." Time? Isn't that inescapable? Wouldn't it be more interesting if they found a way to show a movie outside the time-space continuum?
There's lots to be learned schlepping around this seaboard, if you can handle repeat views of box stores and love multi-lane freeways. I have seen dozens of people who don't make it to Alaska often, and enjoyed spending time with them and meeting their new offspring.
In the in-between times, I rake. North Carolina has an infinite supply of leaves. Even though all the trees look bare, more appear on the ground every day. In my effort to corral them, I have broken two rakes. Replacing the first rake, a metal relic of a bygone era, I checked into everyone's favorite box store, Target. I was informed there that rakes are a seasonal item. Not this season. Not the season with the unending leaf deluge. No, no. It is snow shovel season at Target. I lived in North Carolina for four years and never saw a shovel-able piece of snow. Super secret documents have shown, the season of winter wonderland exists here, just only in the confines of your local Target store.
Because I have so much to learn from classified documents and classy friends, and because, right now, the leaves are winning, I have made a decision. I am certain this decision was influenced by those country songs blaring out of my borrowed Volkswagen's radio as I barrel down I-85:
"You're gonna miss this! You're gonna want this back!"
I bought a ticket to South America, but I won't leave until December 27th. My grandmother is thrilled and the leaves are terrified that I am staying in the Southeast until Christmas.

Ages and Prices: Just Numbers

2010-11-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Grandmutti told me yesterday that she and my grandfather had been married for years before she found out his real birthday. Why? He lied. She was baking a cake for a birthday celebration and his sister commented, "I can't believe Ed is 40." He's not, Grandmutti replied, he's 37. They argued, his sister was quite certain, and when grandpa came home from work, he had to fess up.
Laughing, I asked how long they had been married when she figured this out. Grandmutti replied she'd had two kids. But, she had a confession of her own. She stayed 21 for many years until her oldest son commented that he was 13 and it seemed unlikely that his mother only had 8 years on him. She then jumped to 39 and settled in there for a couple decades.
Great Aunt Myrt had to work 3 years past retirement age because she had lied about her age to seem young when applying for the job.
Age is just a number. I can't tell you what number, when it comes to my grandmother, as printing such a thing on the Internet would get me written out of the will, and I have had my eye on a set of Grandmutti's colored plastic plates since I was about 10. She said she would put them in my Hope Chest, but she might be losing hope, as she now says they're in her will.
In effort to stay in her good graces, I helped Grandmutti peel 10 pounds of potatoes. At Harris Teeter, a 4 lb bag of potatoes costs 99¢. I think that is amazing. Potatoes are full of carbohydrates and have more vitamin C than oranges.... a virtual superfood. FOUR POUNDS of potatoes... for the change you could find under the seat of your car. I don't know whether to rejoice for how fortunate we are or weep for the fact the people anywhere are starving.
But the solution isn't buying the hungry world all the potatoes at Harris Teeter. However, when the cash in your wallet could fill a kiddie pool with spuds, it's hard not to feel some conviction or take some responsibility. I don't know how that responsibility should manifest itself. For now, I think I'll just etch the price and availability of potatoes in my country into the side of my mind's storage compartment. Tomorrow, I'll hold hands with my family, give thanks, and help eat a pile of potatoes.

"Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you." -- Mark Twain

2010-11-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

I'm in North Carolina, at my grandmother's house. She's wonderful: smart and sweet... unless you tell her you might not come for Christmas, then she's just smart.
She's the oldest of eight and one of her younger sisters took decades compiling the family's genealogy. There are some famous people hanging on the branches, way back in the 1400s and 1700s, but, last night we were examining those closer to our part of the trunk. Great Great Grandpa Jesse spend quite a bit of time in jail for being a 'Tippler'... which was the 1800s Kentucky Foothills word for 'Drunk'. Great Grandpa Harvey was a school teacher, but in his spare time he charmed warts. What? Yes, he charmed warts off of people. What a handy skill.
I asked Grandmutti (a name resulting from the only word my dad learned in high school German) about the other side of the family tree: Her husband's. She said Grandpa Ed looked into it once, but stopped when he got to a horse thief.
As expected, I come from quality stock. Apparently, what the British didn't send to Australia, the rest of Europe packed off to America.
Right now, Grandmutti is cheating at TV. She's borrowing every phone in sight to stuff the "Dancing with the Stars" ballot box. Not for Bristol Palin..."because she's not that good of a dancer, it's just that all the Tea Partiers are voting for her."
You can't blame Grandmutti for cheating, it's probably in her blood. It is comforting to know that my family bears transgressions and oddities well. Let's just hope they keep this spirit in mind as I negotiate going abroad for Christmas.

Broomball Global Championships 2010

2010-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

We went all the way to Minnesota to learn that there is a "Mercy Rule" in broomball... who knew?
Duggans Pub Traveling Broomball Team is now officially either the worst team on the Globe, or the 4th best co-ed team on the Globe... glass empty or full-- you decide... as long as it's Grainbelt Premium.

Chili con Carnival Results

2010-10-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

The 4th annual Chili Cookoff took place on an October Sunday in Kachemak City. The garage was packed with almost 100 connoisseurs ready to taste Crockpot creations.

As per usual, three judges were needed, but one of the highly trained regulars was not available. Chosen to join sitting judges, Wes and Terry, was Dana Stabenow, local author.

The judges selected a 1st place chili and awarded the golden Crockpot. For the second year in a row, it went to Jess and Frog for their "Stackfire Chili."

The masses democratically choose (via secret ballot in the shape of horse stickers) the People's Choice Golden Ladle, which this year went to Amber Nieber for her Spicy Green Chicken Chili. Amber also swept up the "Spiciest Chili" award.

Because I am not accused of great sportsmanship or humility, I nominated myself for the "Best Presentation" award for my in-phone-booth Tequila Booth. I'll never have a chance at the award next time Randy enters with homemade individual bread bowls, so I feel justified taking it now.

One of the biggest hits of the night was Jim Eschenhower with his "Beer Viewing" blind beer taste-off. The big winner was Sam Adams lager... over an Olde English 40 and 2 of Homer Brewings local growlers.

The Latest Project

2010-10-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

I was so excited to put the plane on wheels. It was going to be a mechanical adventure with the new steed. A chance to learn how to best take care of her and a chance to get her ready for another chapter of life as an Alaska Bush Plane. I sold my four-wheeler to pay for a big bush wheel nose fork that I was told I could not fly without.

When the Landis nose fork arrived in Homer, the UPS man called me on my cell phone (I think when you live in a small town, the guys in brown have everyone’s cell phone number), “Steph, we’ve got something really expensive for you and don’t want to leave it anywhere you aren’t.” Usually they just drop stuff inside the garage or on the step at my work, but apparently UPS stickers boxes that cost more than people could really afford to pay.

After doing an excited inventory of my pricey delivery, I ran inside to pick out my best work clothes for the big project. Seriously? Like I am on the way to my first day of kindergarten? Well, just short of my mom braiding ribbons into my hair, that’s how I was acting. I chose faded Levis speckled with paint, a long sleeved t-shirt, a hoody splashed with the name of some sports team I’m on, and then stuffed a handkerchief in my pocket for good measure. A pair of gloves and rubber boots and I was ready for work.

I called the highly-recommended mechanic that I would assist with the gear change, and he was eating an omelet. He’d be ready in an hour “or so.”

I was anxiously waiting at the airport when he pulled up. Bob is his name, he’s probably in his late sixties, has a slight lisp, and has done gear changes on approximately one million planes since he became an A&P mechanic, which chronologically speaking was, “long before you had heard of Alaska, or had even been born, Missy.” Bob estimated the floats-to-wheels transition would take us five hours, once we got the plane out of the water. Bob works on an hourly rate.

So, first step… get the plane out of Beluga Lake. We tried to hook up Mark’s trailer, only to find the hitch rusted beyond release. Bob knew where another float trailer was located, and we appropriated it under the “Ask Forgiveness, not Permission Act.”

Bob instructed me to back the trailer into the lake, but grew quickly frustrated with my backing skills, or lack thereof. To his credit, last time I drove someone else’s trailer, I jackknifed it into that someone else’s truck. Bob and I switched spots and I ran down the road to get the plane.

I unlashed the lines from the dock and started Beryl up. As I taxied her down the lake for the last time this year, I resisted the temptation to take one last lap around the pattern, in my excitement to get to the project at hand, and because I figured Bob probably backed up trailers faster than I and had made it down the ramp before I even got in the plane.

Engine killed, I bumped the floats against the deck of the trailer and hopped out.

We stood in the water and muscled the aircraft back and forth to get her centered on the trailer, knowing that balance would be very important to keep her there on the drive over to the airport. The water felt like freeze up was only days away, even through my boots. I emptied the floats of all the lines I keep stored there and we tied one to every possible point. I was trained in the “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot” school of knot tying, and probably got close to twenty knots in on my side of the aircraft alone.

“Are we ready to take her up the hill?” Bob asked. I looked at the steep bank between trees that was our path out of the lake and tied ten more knots.

Bob told me that he had never pulled a plane with wing extensions like Beryl has out of the lake. It might be tight. We started up the hill and I ran back and forth in front of the truck, pointing excitedly back and forth, directing him to dodge the wingtips around trees.

With my Subaru as the flag car, I pulled out into the road to stop any lakeshore traffic. We got the plane around the corner and found that large pine branches blocked the right wingtip. I climbed up the first pine tree, rubber boots kicking for purchase on the sappy truck and lunged for the offending branch. Swinging from the branch, my weight held the limb just low enough for the wing to pass by. I dropped to the ground and ran to the next tree. In this way, we made it up to FAA drive, the road to the airport.

The Dept of Transportation provided an escort for our merry parade to cross the runway and we parked the 206 in a red hanger on the south side of the field to get to work. My feet were still frozen from their time in the lake, but I was still thrilled: it was noon; in five hours I would have a plane on wheels to cruise around until spring.

We lashed Beryl to a chain hoist and raised her off the trailer, and then we set to work on the bolts that lashed on the floats. The floats hadn’t come off since the previous owner purchased them in 2006. Everything was really stiff. But two set of hands helped. I could just mimic what Bob was doing on the opposite side of the aircraft. One dry bolt held in place despite all our efforts though. No matter how we changed the gravity and weight of the plane, we couldn’t get the final lynchpin loose. So, at three o’clock we broke for lunch.

Hours later, the bolt was still stuck. Greasing, bashing, wing-rocking, and pleading used up, Bob drew out his secret weapon: cursing and throwing stuff. It worked. At seven PM, the floats were freed from the fuselage. I was freezing in the unheated hangar. Bob said we would finish up tomorrow morning.

I thought back to my days at Liberty Creek on my drive home: “Every project takes three times as long and costs twice as much as estimated.” I had a couple more days of work in the cold hangar ahead. So, I recalled another Liberty Creek lesson: “Always dress like you have to walk out.”

On day two, I wore wool, which “Keeps you warm and dry, even when you’re cold and wet”(another liberty creek lesson). I managed to stay warm all morning. I learned some lessons about Bob. He works really slowly. He works even slower if you talk to him. So, in silence, I did my best as a mechanic’s helper. I usually was working too fast to stay continuously useful, and would use my waiting-for-Bob time to clean the airplane. When someone would wander down to the hangar to see what was going on, as people at airports do, Bob would stop working to talk to them. I would give them mean looks until they left or at least backed up out of earshot.

It wasn’t too hard to get the main gear in place (that’s the left and right tires). We bolted them in, checked the tension and moved to the real project: the nose gear.

My silent treatment policy didn’t work perfectly on Bob. While we were muscling the nose gear into place, he asked me: “Are you married?” No “Have a boyfriend?” No. “Kids?” No. “Ever been married?” No. He looked at me hopefully, “Any pets?” Still no. The hope turned to pity: “How old are you? 30? 32?” 31. Then Bob delivered his sage advice: “You only have about eight good years left.” He paused, looked at the nose gear, then back at me: “I have a pug you can have if you want.”

After offering me a small, ugly dog to solve my social life, Bob realized that we needed a machine shop to switch out the shaft for the new expensive nose fork. This observation easily could have been made two days ago, but the other lesson I learned about Bob is that he doesn’t consider a problem until he is upon it. I headed to Homer’s single machine shop before it closed and Bob began packing up his tools. Somehow the sun had snuck through the southern sky and we still had one whole wheel assembly to go. I was freezing cold.

On day three, I wore more wool, and long underwear, and flannel-lined Carhartts. I could hardly put my arms down as I waddled into the hangar and shimmied back under the plane. I worked all the tubes into the tires with the aide of baby powder, after Bob made a point of showing me, the old maid, how to use baby powder. I had all the tires together before the nose gear assembly was completed at the machine shop. Bob still didn’t have the float brackets freed from where the nose gear needed to attach.

I refused to break for lunch; foolishly believing the end was in sight. When Bob put the wrong bracket up into the nose gear assembly first, and the whole thing became more tightly locked up than that float bolt on day one, I said, “I’ve gotta be somewhere at six-thirty.” He looked at me accusingly, “Well, if you have to leave, we are never going to get this done today.” It was six o’clock. Bob never works past the sun. We had one hour to overcome the trickiest Rubik’s cube we had seen all week. “We’re not going to finish today Bob even if some pixies show up and magically unstick the nose gear. I’ll see you in the morning.” I left for evening Nordic ski practice, only mildly chilled. The only obvious progress made all day was that the tires were inflated to their appropriate pressures.

Before I bundled up for Day Four, I cancelled a weekend trip to Tok, knowing that I couldn’t count on having the plane ready to go by tomorrow morning. I had already had to cancel a trip to Egegik on Day Three, because I had only allotted one extra day for getting this project done. Pity, as the weather all week was clear and beautiful.

Bob must have taken his time on his omelet because he figured we had so little left to do, there was no reason to get an early start. I was hovering at the hangar at eleven, waiting for this master mechanic to do his thing. He started swearing and throwing and eventually, he had the piece he had accidentally jammed into the nose gear assembly removed. It was afternoon. We put together the nose wheel again, this time in the correct order, pumped the strut full of hydraulic fluid, and began reassembling the aircraft.

My cousin, Solveig, drove down from Anchorage at 4pm. I figured this would be a sign to Bob that we needed to hurry and finish up. Stupid me. It was a chance to talk. We finished the test flight after 6pm. I was glad to see that I remembered how to land a wheel plane, as that is an important part of each flight.

When we pushed Beryl into the hangar, she looked great on her new wheels. I still had to find a water source to finish her end-of-the-season cleaning. But, luckily, I know the guy that runs the airport fire truck.

Bob had worked his presto-chango ‘millionth’ float change in a mere TWENTY-SEVEN hours. And that’s not counting paperwork. He gets to log the hours he spends signing off the weight and balance as well. I guess the Liberty Creek time/cost formula doesn’t work on airplanes. But at the end of day four, I was still warm. It only took four days for me to re-learn to dress for outdoor work in Alaska.

What Next?

2010-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

I've had my wetsuit on twice this week and surfed none. I feel like a fish out of water. But that feeling might be a hold over from still floating from Oktoberfest beer. I do feel a bit out of my element. T minus 30 days until I leave Homer... I'm not sure where to or for how long.
On my last night in Munich, I sat with Rob and Marty and talked about Haiti. When I talk about it now, it is less detail and more philosophy because I've drawn some conclusions since then. I won't bother with them here. They are reserved for eye-contact conversations... preferably in evening beer gardens while Maroni shells fall on your head.
The one thing I will repeat in writing is that I am going back. Maybe not to Haiti, but to where ever I can find that God needs me to do something. And I'll do it. Hopefully soon.
Oktoberfest was all I could ask: a weekend with great friends where the beer could never hurt your head as much as the laughter hurt your stomach. We came by train, plane, autobahn and foot. And joined forces, linked arms, and had an international friend and family reunion. Prior, I felt a little guilty wondering if it was worth crossing the world for. It was.
On this side of that (a place I always find myself), I must choose what to do next. The only for sure at the moment is I'll pack a small bag and my book. I'll play broomball and visit family and then do something else... Suggestions are encouraged.

"Living life like it is a line of coke..."

2010-09-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

A friend used this phrase last night to describe his teenage daughter who just hitchhiked to Croatia. I think its really funny. My dad would never say that about me. At least I don't think so, but Republicans probably talk about cocaine way more than I expect.
As far as I know, the girl in question is a sober kid, but rigorous about snatching up any opportunity or experience she can. Or, as her dad described, 'getting as much off the table as possible before its someone else's turn.' I'm not trying to promote ellicit drug use (at least not on this blog), but I think it sounds like a decent way to go about things.
As some of you may remember, I was in what should have been a fatal car wreck ten years ago. Coming millimeters from severing my spinal cord really ruined any shot I had at a sensible career and the 'normal life package.' One would think that you don't need four months in a neck brace to realize that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, but it drove the point home for me. Since then, I haven't been able to leave things on the table, or say 'no', or stay put.
Yesterday, my EMT pager went off for a 'single car rollover' and the flashbacks were hard to get out of my head as I rushed to the scene of the accident. Five teenagers, one of them seriously hurt. The other four were already out of the vehicle, and on their smartphones, unimpressed. I was most shocked that none of these sub-adults knew their addresses, but secondly, how can a similar experience have such an dissimilar effect on people? I'd bet these kids won't even remember this accident next week, let alone in a decade.
I don't claim a superior amount of acuity. In fact, lately I have been disappointed with my lack thereof. Disappointment and pain make up a great parts of the human experience, but it is pathetically disappointing how incapable I am at dealing with pain and still seeing the bigger picture. But, as far as I can tell, that is the normal human condition, with few nirvanic exceptions. When we're in pain, physical or emotional, we immediately shrink our world back to our own tiny size.
Lately I've been sad, and I've been reading Strength in what Remains which is about the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda. Not exactly an 'upper'. Reading about dogs carrying severed human heads in their mouths is hardly enough to break me away from feeling sorry for myself. And it reiterates one of the protagonists points: when people are in pain or feel hopeless, they will do anything-- including genocide.

***Commercial break: I just read what I have written and am torn between 'delete' and attempting to bring this around to the original paragraph.... Hmmm... due to my short distribution list, I'll attempt the latter. Back to our program.***

So, let me draw a self-centric parallel... not by killing anyone with a machete... but by admitting that I have let my world get too small. I have let my pain get between me and that proverbial line of coke. I have spent too many precious hours devoted to self-analysis and self-pity when there are places to go, and things to be done, and people to be loved.
Because whatever life we have been given, is to be lived, and love is to be given recklessly... especially when we are hurting. If we can do just this one thing: live a life abundant with compassion and forgiveness, regardless of our own situation, we are living perfectly. Any amount of pain makes that challenging, but so does paying taxes, and television, and distrust, and violence, and gossipy neighbors, and getting ripped off, and environmental tragedy, and bad drivers, and five dollar lattes, and stupid misunderstandings.
My life will only last a few minutes. I might crash into a tree tomorrow. And, I might not. I might have millions more experiences, and the personal test is this: what experiences do I choose to have, and what do I do with them? So line it up.

The end of a Season

2010-09-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

The waves were small. Surfable, but small. And, when that is the case, you sit in your car for a while debating getting out into the 45 degree water. But, then you do. Because its the end of a season.
And, these are the first surfable waves you've seen when you've had a board and a wetsuit and not been in the fuel truck madly trying to make it back to work.
The sun is setting behind the volcanoes and a sea otter is creeping you out by bouncing up and down just beyond the break. You get to sit on your board with the cool water seeping into your booties and enjoy the not-so-coldness of Kachemak Bay.
First wavelettes of the coming surfing season and so excited, we both jumped on the first ride. Not that surprising that we crashed into eachother, but pretty funny that when I fell I landed on her board and it kept on cruisin, me, belly up like a turtle, in front of her feet. Rolled off, laughed at ourselves, and paddled back out. Frickin' crowded break.
Surfing makes me happy. Warm water more so, but only because it is really hard to get a wetsuit on and off. They just don't work like your Dungarees. But, even for a couple rides, the minor struggle is worth it. And bobbing on a board with the mountains in front of me and Beryl buzzing overhead eases a busy season artfully to a close.

Cold Beer on a Thursday Night

2010-08-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

The pilots of Homer got together at Beluga Lake Lodge again last night. We've tried to make it a Thursday ritual. Considering we all compete with each other, there are some delightfully awkward schisms at the table, but overall we learn, and we have fun, and we brag some too... because really, we're pilots. ('How do you tell the pilot in the bar? You don't, he'll tell you.')
What no one mentioned last night: Terry Smith's crash (Terry was flying the plane that Ted Stevens died in... his name doesn't even appear until the very bottom of few news pieces about the crash). Smith's crash is certainly the highest profile in Alaska this summer, but only because of his manifest. Crashes can feel unlucky to talk about. It could have been any of us, right? This is the only Alaska plane crash that has really made national news this summer, but there have been lots. I fly in Katmai almost every day, and I know of at least 5 crashes there since June. Statistics say that 75% of summer plane crashes happen in August, so we're not in clear skies yet.
There haven't been clear skies all summer, in fact. Not in Southcentral Alaska. My most stressful day so far involved 2 unscheduled landings due to weather and an unscheduled refueling stop at a remote airport. Being forced by the weather to land on a lake in the remote center of the Alaska Peninsula to wait for an undetermined amount of time is even more exciting when half your passengers are vomiting.
The guy who operates across Beluga Lake from me was forced to wait on weather on a remote lake recently. For two days and two nights. With four people on board. You know how annoying it is when Delta makes you wait on the tarmac in Minneapolis for 2 hours? Imagine 2 days in a Cessna with the wind blowing at 50 knots outside and the rain hitting the windows sideways. The pilot is embarrassed about getting stuck for two days. I'd rather be embarrassed than dead. And if that's the choice you made, it is something to be proud of. Because nothing is that important. Not bears, not fishing, not photography, not survey work. Not even med-evacs are that important. As my EMT instructor said: "It's not your emergency... don't make it your emergency."
But, bush pilots try really hard to get there. They teach us about it in flight school: "get-there-itis" is the clever name they have, comparing it to a disease... and maybe its not much more. Punching through icy overcast layers, running over the ocean at 30 feet, testing soft, sticky landing spots, pushing along for hundreds of miles in zero visibility...these are the things discussed on Thursday nights, because these are the things Alaskan pilots do. Is it for pride, or is it because if you don't do it, someone else will, and they'll get that paycheck?
There is always pressure to go. Direct or indirect. More often the latter. Because if your competition launches into questionable weather, you sit on the ground and wonder, are they one step ahead of you, or five? And patting yourself on the back for safety won't stop an irate customer from pointing at the other guy's plane as the floats or wheels lift off, demanding "why can't we go?" And for the delicate trust of those Thursday nights, and for fear of those countless wrecks on the tundra, you don't critique another pilot's decision making. You don't try to explain how many planes have disappeared in Cook Inlet. Disappeared... and never made national news. Because no one 'important' was on them. Just some fisherman, or bear viewers. Oh, and a pilot, what was her name? She made a bad decision.
Piloting has gotten safer in the last few years. We've been dropped from #2 to #6 on America's most dangerous jobs, by people who count such things. The argument is for technology, something I have read about a lot in regards to Smith's crash. But, I place a lot of value on decision making. And experience. We don't all have to get the experience first hand. We can sit down, with a beer, and tell another pilot what mistakes we made. And maybe he won't have to make them.

Girls do NOT kick ass with their hair Down

2010-06-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

I have seen a couple movies lately with cool heroines. However, Hollywood insists on laboring under the delusion that anyone could fight or labor successfully with their hair in their eyes.
I've had long hair since I was six and my mother issued some kind of biblical decree that I could not cut it. I tested this rule at sixteen and though I wasn't blinded and no coliseums fell on me, I did suffer the serious wrath of Cathy Anderson. So, for almost a quarter century, I have been employing different techniques to keep my hair out of my way. If you want to accomplish anything in life, I have discovered that while you need personal drive and a good marketing team, you also need your hair pulled back.
Hollywood likes to bend the truth for sales, and this isn't the first or last time this pet peeve will bug me. At least Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, is realistically representing women the world over.
Pet peeves wouldn't be nearly so annoying if they didn't mock you in your everyday life. Last week, Steller Air had its most successful day yet: 6 whole flights. While my personal record is 31 flights in one day, that wasn't in my own plane, and not on floats, and not desperately wishing that this small attempt at a small business is going to work. To get six flights in when you are piloting, office managing, fueling, taking phone calls and loading it feels like 65. Halfway through my 3rd flight, my hair tie broke. I landed, jumped down on the float, loaded gear into the floats with my hair in my eyes and mouth. I helped my passengers into climb into the plane intermittently ripping strands of my hair out of the velcro on my raincoat. Ow.
I closed the doors, pulled up my waders, got in the water and leaned on the bows of the floats. I blew the hair out of my eyes after inhaling for a big shove to push the plane off the gravel. I looked around at pine trees and mountains, I breathed in the scent of Alaskan summer: pine, dirt, moss, and damp cinnamon. I was thigh-deep in a cold lake, surrounded by wilderness with my wet hands on the float of my plane. I looked up past the prop at the sky, letting my hair fall out of my face, and thanked God. Even without a hair tie, this still feels like kicking ass.

Idiot Taxes

2010-06-02T19:56:00.000-07:00

I took off almost empty on Grewinck Lake today. It's the child of Grewinck Glacier which has receded a couple miles in the last hundred years and left an icy pool of water behind. I had to give the park service a bunch of documents proving I am authorized to operate an aircraft in the confines of Kachemak Bay State Park, where the glacial lake is located. I wonder if my driver's license and EMT card authorize me to take icebergs out of the lake to resell to tourists in town as Alaskan martini ice? If so, this might be a lucrative summer after all.
I waited to buy a plane ticket until the last minute. I have checked the price on it every week for the last month. It has gone up every week. I officially paid $200 more than needed by waiting. Some of you are thinking: "Pilots buy plane tickets?" Yes, we do. But I think that if the captain and the first officer have the fish for dinner and pass out and I have to take over and save the day, they will give me a $200 voucher for my next purchase, black out dates excluded.
Only in this unlikely event will I break even on spending way too much on a flight I have known for years I was going to take.
My life is not as foreign to these idiot taxes as I would like it to be. I pay a late fee on my phone bill every month. I buy new sunglasses every week because I can't find the old ones and am 'too cool' to wear one of those leash things. In the winter, I do the same with mittens. I bank at Wells Fargo, which charges more fees than a foreign ATM.
If I had hired an assistant (glorified adult babysitter) five years ago to manage the money under my mattress for me, I would have saved enough in Idiot Fees by now to pay him. So, next time I go to Grewinck, I am going to fill the float compartments with ice and test the market. I will put any earnings into an assistant salary fund. Not at Wells Fargo.

Over the Crazy Cliff

2010-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

When someone invites you to a party and tells you to bring a sleeping bag and "something you wrote," do you go?
I hardly say 'no' to anything, and the Better Offer Club (BOC) is still reviewing my membership application. That's how I found myself jumping on a seiner to spend the weekend in Halibut Cove, AK with a group of people I don't know as well as I'd like to.
And it seems this is how my life works best. Aught Ten has done nothing but take me by surprise and it has reminded me that travel, people, love, opportunities, and Cheez-Its are the things that make me feel like the world actually is spinning and that rumor is not just heretic science.
Anna, who claims to write for this blog, but in the last year has only posted a video of obnoxious birds, is taking her show on the road. I'll tell you, since she won't, that in 13 days, she's dropping her Chicago lease, throwing stuff in storage and seeing where life can take her if she occasionally borrows her parents car.
People our age are supposed to think this is irresponsible. I think its awesome...because not knowing where you will end up, but going anyway is a combination of adrenaline and faith that other people seek in skydiving, illicit drugs, or living out of cell phone coverage.
Sometimes, as I look down over the illustrative cliff where I have tossed money, future or relationships, I wonder if anything is going to bounce back up. It seems like operating without a net, but its not. It's just having a different definition of what that net is woven of. For Anna, it's knowing that as long as she has access to TV or a computer, she'll be able to watch Lost.
For me, I know that every place I end up, if I am looking and listening, there will be someone there to invite me to be a part of their tradition, once or forever. And that tradition will become part of who I am, and I'll shake my head every time I think that I almost said 'no' to that invite. This weekend that meant I put a sleeping bag in my pack, found something I'd written down, and listened to the prose of 7 friends. The weather was perfect and the mission was straightforward: hike, cook, laugh, drink, dance, and do something that people our age truly think is irresponsible: share our attempts at creativity. Outloud.

Bold Claims and Flying Machines...and some baseball

2010-05-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've been saying for years that I was going to buy an airplane. I find that making bold claims is an excellent way to force yourself to do something. Unless the bold claims are too bold, like: "Blackberry bushes are the hardest thing to kill." In that case, I put a quarter in the bold claims jar rather than crusading against plant life. Digressions aside, repeating my wish for an aircraft finally coincided with an opportunity to use one and I stopped stalling.
I picked up a 1977 Cessna 206 on Aerocet Floats in Northern Minnesota/Wisconsin on April 20th. It was fitting that I found the plane of choice in the place I learned to fly them. Not to mention that fortune coincided with being in Minneapolis for Twins home opener in their new stadium.
Wes and I flew her from Minnesota to Seattle, stopping in Bismarck, ND, Fort Peck, MT, and Couer d'Alene, ID. The North Dakota and Montana stops were not necessarily at Seaplane-friendly ports, and Wes had his co-pilot work cut out for him with a lot of research to figure out where we could buy AvGas in parts of the country not so littered with water. The stop in Fort Peck was courtesy of a local pilot that hauled 5 gal jugs of gas down to a boat ramp so we could fuel the plane (and this was the cheapest fuel on the entire route!), then he offered that we could stay at his place for the night. This somehow evolved into helping him herd his cows. So I found myself, the proud owner of a new floatplane, cattle ranching in Montana.
In Seattle, we got delayed by weather and by the FAA, who of course couldn't turn around registration paperwork by Friday afternoon, but we were not allowed to cross an international border without it. So, we hung out with Wes' brother, caught up with friends, chilled in the San Juan islands and met Ed and Rebecca for drinks at SEATAC airport.
Wes had other obligations in Alaska that couldn't be delayed, so I took on Daria, his sister-in-law, as co-pilot for the duration of the journey north. We stopped in Nanaimo, BC where Canadian customs did not even ask to see the FAA paperwork I had spent days waiting for. In Port Hardy, BC, where we spent the night, the sea lions never stopped barking at the plane. I guess they're the real customs officers.
Our port back into the States was Sitka, AK... home of my recent herring spotting exploits, and then straight on to Homer, where Beluga Lake, the official seaplane base was still frozen. We landed right on Kachemak Bay and cheekily taxied into the boat harbor... ask forgiveness not permission.
Within 48 hours, the plane had her first work: Herring Spotting off Kodiak Island.
The plane and I are safely back in Homer now. This summer I will lease the aircraft to Steller Air. I will fly for that company. Our primary business will be charters around Alaska, tourist scenic flights, and trips to see bears.
The plane is in great condition, flies well, and has more bells and whistles than a bush plane knows what to do with. I've named her 'Beryl.' After Beryl Markham... similar in travel direction and hopefully in adventure.
I'm not very good at turning cartwheels in excitement, but I have found that pretty rewarding to task out to friends. Some people in Homer that I've developed a true affinity for insisted on throwing a 'wet the plane's head' party for me. I was reminded this is an event worth noting. And friends worth keeping. For if you're not going to commemorate the milestones in your own life, it is beautiful to have friends help do it for you.

The "Superbowl" of Seining

2010-03-27T01:12:00.000-07:00

After round one, I can honestly report that herring spotting is just as dangerous and possibly as stupid as NASCAR. Fifteen to twenty aircraft are swirling around the same 500 feet of altitude in a 10 square mile area. All to talk to 52 boats and tell them where the same three schools of fish are. Every plane scrambles their radio calls so non-paying boats in the fleet can’t poach them.
The first opening of the Sac Roe Herring Fishery was Wednesday at 5:10pm. It lasted 80 minutes. In that time, the fleet caught 6600 tons of herring. Over one third of the total season quota was taken. The processing plants in the Sitka harbor are all full, and some of the tender boats were even sent to other towns. The fishery is on hold for a few days, while the fish are packed and the plants are ready to take in another catch.
If you are thinking that this could all happen without a little bit of drama, you are insane. The biggest story is that in the fray to get the nets set, one boat rammed the Shady Lady hard enough to knock the boom loose. The boats untangled themselves in time for the opening, and the Shady Lady managed to get her net out for a good set. However, as soon as she put weight on the boom to pull the net in, it came lose and the vessel listed to the port side. Way too far. A tender was floating nearby to pump the herring from the net. Shady Lady’s mast fell onto the tender. The tender was the only thing that saved her from completely capsizing. Many boats came to aid in righting the flailing vessel. Shady Lady managed to pump 150 tons of fish before going over, and she made it safely back to the harbor after taking on about 400 gallons of water. Everyone with two lips in the harbor is debating whether the Shady Lady’s crew is too inexperienced for this fishery and whether the vessel is too light or too small for these deep waters. Rumors are scathing about whether the offending boat hit the Lady on purpose, as a warning shot to the rookies.
Our boat, the Andy Sea, had trouble of her own. The fish were at 30 fathoms, too deep for a pilot to see. Dan, the pilot/spotter, directed the Andy Sea based on the movement of the other vessels, guessing at what they were looking at on their Sonar based on their movements. The Andy Sea managed to get around a big set. Possible 400 tons. The fishery closed and we flew back to harbor, feeling the weight of the bills in our pockets already. However, as we walked to dinner and thought of the boys out pumping the fish, Dan said, “It doesn’t count until it’s on the tender. There are 101 ways to lose a set of herring.”
While the tender were pumping fish, something on the boom snapped and the Andy Sea had to cut their net loose. They only got 150 tons on board. Not a bad set, but worse than it could have been. The boys are working on getting the rigging repaired before the next opening.
The largest set captured on Wednesday was by the Crescent Moon—over 600 tons of herring.
Apparently, Wednesday’s opening was a fairly large area. I can expect that for the next few openings, the plane and boat racetrack will get tighter.

Sandhill Cranes!

2010-03-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Lincoln, NE for the world's most unique bachelorette party: one where the bride-to-be and her nearest and dearest lady friends watch the sandhill crane migration on the Platte River. After a 5 a.m. wake-up call (totally painful after a night of wine in the Ramada hot tub), we got all bundled up and made our way to a bird blind at the Rowe Sanctuary. Binoculars and cameras in hand, we waited in the dark, listening to the pigeon-crossed-with-seagull call of the cranes roosting in the sandbars, just waking up themselves. Around 7 a.m., as the sun came up, *SHA BAM!* They all took to the sky, hundreds of thousands of them, and made their mass commute to the fields to chow down on corn and other farm-y stuff for the day.

Amazing!

Waiting on Fish to Spawn

2010-03-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

I left Homer at 11 Saturday morning. I flew to Anchorage, and then to Cordova, and then to Yakutat, and then to Juneau, and finally on to Sitka, 12 hours later. The total time in the air was less than 3 hours.

A Subaru, Alaska’s state vehicle, pulled up outside the airport and a tall man jumped out. Dan Beischline, the man I came to work for in herring spotting. He approached me and started apologizing. Apparently the blue truck he said he would pick me up in wouldn’t start. So he found Randy to drive him to the airport. I threw my pack in the back of the Subaru and slammed the hatch three times before I realized that the latch was broken. This must be an official Alaska Subaru. I climbed into the front next to Randy, who held his Corona between his knees to shake my hand. We bumped through the Sitka dark to the hotel where Dan and I were staying. Dan and Randy discussed the politics of the fishery, and I tried to piece together the drama of a foreign business in an unknown town.

It seems that my official title is Dan’s “Observer.” So far, I’ve done nothing but observe, so it seems a fitting title. Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then:

Dan has been flying his Cessna 180 on floats for the herring fishery for years. He has worked with different observers over the years, and was clearly hesitant when I spoke with him on the phone about switching to someone new. I am the last resort. It’s not the first time I’ve been picked last for a team. Hopefully it won’t be the last either… some of the best opportunities fall in the laps of the bottom stringers. He has already expressed surprise that he can talk so fluently with me--a girl--about airplanes.

In the last 24 hours, he has explained a lot about herring. The purpose of the fishery is to collect the herring eggs, which are a delicacy in Japan. They are fished right before they spawn, hoping for the best egg-to-body weight ratio (at least 50% of the fish females with at least 10% eggs). The boats, purse seiners, go out to test fish before the fishery opens to measure exactly how much of the fish are skein of eggs. When the fishery is opened by the State of Alaska, the boats go out to catch as many as possible as quickly as possible. This year, the quota the fishermen are allowed by the State to catch is a record high at 18,000 tons. The boats often hire their own pilots to fly above the water, spotting where the fish are and directing the boats to those spots by radio, thus guaranteeing a better portion of the quota to their boat if the pilot does a good job. The boats pay their pilots a percentage of their catch. Because each boat hires their own plane, there are a lot of planes flying in the same air over the same schools of fish around and around in circles. The pilots hire their own co-pilots, or ‘observers,’ to look for planes while they are looking for the fish. They pilots pay the observers a percentage of their percentage. If the fish are there, and the pilots spot them, and the boats catch them, and the observers don’t let them crash, everybody makes money.

The fish are processed whole and frozen, then shipped to Japan where the eggs are harvested and enjoyed on Japanese New Year.

This year, the Japanese are holding the price low on herring roe. They started at $300 per ton of herring. The fishermen have all got together and are refusing to fish until the Japanese offer more money. The fishery has a definite end, when the herring spawn out. The delicate balance is reaching an agreed price before the herring are too close to spawn so that the fleet has time to catch the record quota.

The Alaska State Fish and Game representative is out flying and boating, monitoring the herring, ready to open the fishery at any minute. He has put the opener on what they call a “two hour notice,” meaning he can open the fishery any time later than 2 hours after the notice was announced. It was announced Friday.

The fishermen are refusing to even go test fishing. No one knows what the egg to body ratio is. The fishermen will not test fish until the Japanese move on price. With this limited information, the Fish and Game guy just flies around to see where the most sea lions are eating the most herring. On his daily radio update, he reports on where mom and pop sea lion are having breakfast.

Finally, last night, the fishermen agreed with the Japanese on a price of $550 per ton. First thing this morning, all the fleet was back out test fishing. Fish and Game is still counting sea lions, but now they can test the number of females, egg weights, and fish size of the test sets the boats bring in. We spent an hour and a half in the air directing our boat around to where the schools of fish were.

Now that the price is set, everyone is chomping to GO FISH!

I have gotten two fitting comments from friends on my current choice to observe for herring spotting:

“That’s the most dangerous job in the world after crab fishing.”—from someone who has obviously not considered the dangers of taxi driving in Mumbai; and “You have a really fun job!”—I agree… in what other office do you get to wear a life jacket AND a parachute?

Ninety-five and Humid: The odds against good deeds, or "What really happened"

2010-03-07T23:26:00.000-08:00

In my real life, I’m an Alaskan bush pilot. I find lousy weather, the sudden appearance of mountains in front my plane, and temperatures that would break steel entertaining. When the request came for pilots to fly relief to Haiti after January 12^th’s 7.0 earthquake, I headed southeast. Fly some new routes, do something for my fellow man, spend some time in warm weather: it sounded perfect. I arrived in Venice, FL ready to do whatever was asked. Agape Flights, based in Venice, flies a full time service to missionaries in the Caribbean. In response to the devastation in Haiti, they had received dozens of volunteer airplanes and pilots and tons of donated relief supplies. Agape’s permanent staff is made up of year-round saints; the rest of us were trying to combine a good deed or two with a short bout of adventure.

For weeks, Agape’s pilots flew into what could only be described as "airplane soup" over Port au Prince. Military, cargo and private flights arrived and departed constantly at an airport that, as designed, couldn’t handle two flights on a Tuesday-- and that was before the destruction of the earthquake. With the port only marginally opened, the airport was the lifeline for millions of Haitians: through it flowed the generosity of taxpayers worldwide and millions of individuals. Approach control was divided between the Navy in Pensacola, FL, the Air Force in Port au Prince, and Haitian controllers in a makeshift tower. In spite of this, we all managed to get our loads onto the tarmac without bending too much metal.

As the campaign went on, I served in a variety of rolls. An aviatrix in dispatch is essential, as payloads, cruise speeds, and fuel burn all need to be considered. With the volume of donations we took in, extra hands on the sorting line were never turned down. Eventually, I got myself resourced off of home soil to fly food, medical supplies, and aid workers into Haiti out of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, on routes not unlike those I fly in Alaska. Actually, it was a little more hospitable than home: if we ended up in the ocean, we would not die from the cold in two minutes; we would last long enough for the sharks to get us.

After a month of volunteering, it was time for me to head back to Alaska. I was to jump on a Florida-bound Agape flight on Friday, February 19^th. Then, Agape called me in Santiago and asked if I would be willing to escort six orphans from Children of the Promise (COTP) orphanage in Cap Haitien, a city on the north coast of Haiti. These kids were all orphaned or abandoned before the catastrophe, and had all been in the adoption process for years. They each had adoptive parents waiting for them in the States. Jean-Max Bellerive, the Prime Minister of Haiti, had personally cleared the children to leave the country, and the USA had given them humanitarian visas.

We surveyed flooded Cap Haitien before landing to pick up the six boys (Albert, Reese, Malachi, Ben, Simon, and Jeff) from COTP. We flew on to Port au Prince, where the kids had to check in with the US Embassy. We met Maria O’Donovan, a COTP field director, and one of the adoptive parents, Sarah Thacker, at the airport. The three of us took the six babies to the US Embassy in a taxi. After a month divided between office and cockpit work, I was ill prepared for handling my third of six infants in close quarters. You can kill yourself in an airplane, but you are unlikely to get covered with projectile snot or crushed cheese crackers.

The Embassy checked all the documents for the children, confirmed that they were cleared all the way to the USA. Sarah, myself, and the six kids would all fly on a military transport that evening.

After five hours of waiting and crying (on the kids’ part, not mine), Maura, an Embassy official, finally appeared and abruptly cancelled the flight and said there was no real intention to reschedule. Years ago, I worked in Washington, DC and knew hundreds of Mauras: Ann Taylor suit, Nordstrom shoes, Blackberry constantly humming, little or no real responsibility. Maura had no idea how the 70 children waiting in the embassy were going to get to the States. She seemed immensely relieved when we offered to arrange our own transportation for our own six boys. We called Agape and, within hours, the dispatch team had a donated King Air slotted to pick up our merry little band the next morning.

Maura told us to meet her at the airport at 11:15am, where the embassy officials would hand over the children's paperwork. The Embassy maintains control of the sealed adoption papers until they see the kids board the plane. If the seal is broken, the paperwork is considered “tampered with” upon arrival in Miami.

We arrived with the children at the Port au Prince International Airport in a taxi at 11:15. Within minutes of stepping onto the sidewalk, we were surrounded by an angry mob. They tried to pull the boys away from us and yelled that we were child trafficking. Sarah was knocked to the sidewalk, trying to protect the two babies she was holding. The Haitian police intervened taking the mob ringleaders and all of us into custody. They marched us: kids, suitcases and all, down the airport driveway to the airport police station.

Our Embassy handlers had still not appeared and since they had the paperwork, the police became suspicious that the mob might be correct. One cop, with two bars of rank on his epaulettes, seemed particularly skeptical of our story.

I called Maura at the US Embassy. She was still in her office because “her car had not arrived.” I told her to take a taxi. I explained and stressed the severity of the situation. In response, she announced that she would wait for her driver.

I asked the police officers if I could walk out to the tarmac to talk to our pilots and alert them to our delay. I pulled my pilot shirt out of my pack, with four bars on the epaulettes. Two Bar scowled. I sat back down. Rebecca, a volunteer nurse from COTP, had arrived at the airport to say goodbye to the children with her friend Eric, a pediatrician. They came into the police station and fell victim to our captors as well.

An hour late, Maura and other Embassy officials arrived, US paperwork in hand. We thought we would be free to go. Despite years’ experience with the government, I maintain a remarkable amount of confidence in bureaucratic structure. I foolishly thought this situation was something like a visit to the DMV: unpleasant, time-consuming, and tiring for the feet, but we would get our documents and be on our way.

The Haitian police had a different protocol. Two Bar said the adoption paperwork was not enough. He wanted to see the Haitian Prime Minister's signature— probably just for the novelty of it. The Embassy insisted that they were under no obligation to share the Prime Minister’s signed list with the police.

The police moved us onto the street so that everyone had room to argue. By then everyone at the airport with a badge had gotten involved: not only the embassy staffers and the police on the sidewalk, but the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers, Haitian Immigration, our pilots, and a guy on the street selling gum. A man in a plaid shirt and jeans showed up, and turned out to be a police inspector, and the ranking cop on the scene. Maura looked at me and said: "I guarantee you'll be on that plane today."

As the testosterone match between agencies heightened, Two Bar threatened to arrest the men from US CBP. A yelling match ensued, between men wearing guns, about who had diplomatic immunity. When the situation had deteriorated beyond recognition, the Embassy staffers finally agreed to go get the Prime Minister’s list. Maura took me aside and said, "I guarantee you guys won't end up in Haitian custody." I think we already were.

Fax or email would not work. Inspector Plaid Shirt insisted that the police needed the Prime Minister’s original signature from locked embassy files. When Maura’s boss returned with the paperwork, the inspector took one quick look and said it was a fake. Apparently he and the PM write each other letters all the time.

Five hours later, the situation had completely stagnated. The pilots said they had to take off. The police insisted on moving us to another jail and continued arguing with our low-on-the-totem-pole Embassy team. They crammed all escorts, two Embassy people, and the six children into the back of two police cars and we bumped through traffic while the new Haiti-Relief remake of 'We are the World' blared on the cop's radio.

At the new police station, well clear of the airport, I realized I had severely underestimated the situation. The Embassy was not going to prevail. Inspector Plaid Shirt announced: the adults are free to go, but the kids are being detained.

Maura looked at me again and said, "I guarantee they won't separate you from the kids." Lady, I thought, you’re ‘nothing and two’ and, if Plaid Shirt throws the high hard one, you are not going to suddenly become Joe Mauer.

Four hours later, the police decided the children would go to a Haitian social services (IBESR)-approved orphanage for the night. We climbed back into the police trucks holding the boys tightly in our laps. No music this time. After an hour’s drive in the dark, we had no idea where we were. The police stopped at a few UNICEF tents set up in a compound and the police started pulling the kids out of the back of the truck into the dark.

Unfortunately, Inspector Plaid Shirt and the woman running the tent facility seemed to be on very close terms. Maria from COTP talked to the woman in charge. Could we stay with them? No. Could we sleep on the ground outside? No. Could we at least feed them and put them to sleep to avoid a dramatic scene? No. The police escorted us out of the compound to the tune of six screaming, terrified children. It was gut-wrenching for me, and I had only 24 hours of emotional investment in these kids. Eric used his GPS to mark the location of the tents. This would be the only way we would be able to find the children come morning.

Rebecca and Eric took us home to the apartment they shared with other volunteer medical workers. They fed us. They gave us their beds. They showed us the hospitality we were trying to show the world but had spent the day forgetting in favor of frustration, anger and fear.

The next day, after an hour and a half drive through the devastated streets of Port au Prince, we arrived to find the children still in the tent. Maria and I spent five hours playing with the kids in the dirt outside.

On the drive back to the apartment, my cell phone rang. It was a reporter from CNN, Gary Tuchman. Where did he get the story? The Haitian police. They were accusing us of forging the Prime Minister’s signature. That was a lot of credit for our clever lot: we didn’t even know the Prime Minister’s full name. The interview took place a few hours later. CNN bought us pizza and we discovered that in Haiti that means Cheez-Whiz on bread.

We asked for the Embassy to provide us with transport to see the kids. Maura said civilians can’t ride in Embassy vehicles. I doubted Maura knew what the word ‘civilian’ meant and likely thought her Blackberry came with some military rank.

As the days went by, the children were confined to the tent, where they became dehydrated and developed diarrhea. The tent compound had inadequate supplies and staff to look after the boys. Each day we called every government official we could think of and were repeatedly told that the US Embassy was “working on it.” Each day ended with the children screaming as we had to leave them in the tent. The Prime Minister was apparently on a beach in Mexico, unable to take calls or vouch for his own signature. All seventy of the orphans waiting at the embassy were prohibited from leaving the country until our situation was resolved. It’s hard to buy beer in an earthquake-ravaged city, but we really could have used one.

Back at the apartment, we watched ourselves on CNN, disappointed that they included the ubiquitous cable news commentator. A white-haired Barbara Streisand look-alike with bright blue spectacles opined that the children’s parents should be coming to pick them up. It was little concern to her that no commercial passenger flights had been coming to Haiti since the earthquake, and the US Embassy and the Prime Minister had been clearing children so haphazardly that it was impossible for parents to find timely transportation.

On Tuesday, Maria and I paid an exorbitant amount to get to the tent orphanage by taxi. I walked into the tent to see the boys. No one was there. I looked in the other tents: All older children, no little munchkins. I looked helplessly for the few adults. I couldn’t speak a word of Creole besides “Mesi” and I couldn’t ‘thank’ my way out of this. When the police took the six children from us on Saturday night, our worst fear was that we would come back and they would be gone, or that some of them would. That fear was rapidly being realized.

I looked at Maria panicked. The kids aren’t here. She ran up to one of the adults and asked about the children. I had to suffer the agonizing wait of not speaking the language when an emergency is at hand. The translation came slowly, as Maria tried to get as much information as possible. The kids were moved. Last night. Where? They don’t know.

Maria called our taxi and he had already picked up another fare. I called the US Embassy. Pius Bannis, Maura’s boss, answered on the second ring. This was the first he’d heard of the kids being moved. He said he’d call back.

Maria and I could not spend an hour staring at these infuriating people who would not tell us where they had taken the children. We walked out the gate and onto the street. We were not 100 yards down the dusty gravel when a “TapTap” came by. Maria flagged it down and we climbed into the back. A TapTap is a pick up truck that has two benches in the back. They drive in random routes through Port au Prince and you tap the side of the truck to let the driver know when you want to get out. These rickety trucks are possibly the most smoothly operating piece of infrastructure in all of Port au Prince. We rode to the nearest busy intersection, both on our phones trying to find where the kids had been moved. We called COTP, Agape, Senators, and Congressmen. I called the Embassy twice more. They replied that they were “working on it.” Work faster.

Just as we climbed out of the TapTap into the intersection, another TapTap came along, driving towards town. Maria flagged him down. He was empty. She asked how much to take us all the way to the US Embassy. It’s a one-hour drive. Way past his route. Would be very expensive. Fifty US Dollars did the trick and we were on our way. The driver, happy to have such an affluent load, showed off the amenities of his vehicle, which included tinted windows and cup holders. He cannot have realized that the two women to his right had absolutely no desire to make small talk. Drive faster.

En route to the Embassy, Maria received a call from the Consulate General. He said they had found the children and had been granted custody. The Embassy would go pick the children up in an Embassy vehicle (either no longer illegal for civilian transport, or the United States had granted our orphans much-deserved soldier status). We should meet them at the Embassy.

I immediately called Agape back in Florida and asked the dispatcher to find a plane to fly us out tomorrow, completely cognizant of my “wolf!”-crying status. Within a half hour, I got a call from the pilot, who said he needed a “$13,000 reason” to make the flight. That is about how much it would cost his company to make the donation. I told him our story. I hung up to the sound of children’s voices coming down the hall. When they saw Maria and myself, the ones that could run did. We couldn’t pick up all six of them at once, so there were kids in our arms and kids clinging to our legs. We were all laughing, even baby Albert. The pilot called Agape to confirm: he would be at PaP International Airport at 11:00am tomorrow.

The boys were all excited, but desperately needed their diapers changed. Maura gave us XL Adult Depends (size 64” waist) because the Embassy had no diapers. They came to the kids’ chins.

The Consulate General was suspicious of our private transport arrangements:

“This is a problem we have had in the past: that people arrange their own transport, and then the aircraft does not show up.”

My frustration overwhelmed my discretion. “One: that was not the problem on Saturday, sir. Your aircraft cancelled on Friday night. Our aircraft was waiting on the ground at the appointed time on Saturday. But, your staff told us to meet you at the airport rather than the Embassy, and then you didn’t show up on time.”

I was angry, and frustrated that we had apparently not all lived on the same universe for the last 5 days. I should have known better: Washington bureaucrats and Alaskan pilots never operate on the same cerebral plane. “Two: Do you have another suggestion as to how we should take these kids off your hands? The Embassy is not even prepared to provide us with transport to see them in their tent jail, let alone an aircraft to take them to the United States.”

Besides random inquisitions about transport, the Consulate General also controlled non-immigrant visas for the US Embassy. Maria was an Irish citizen. In a great quirk of immigration law, Irish are allowed to travel into the US without a visa if they are on a commercial flight. But, if they are on a private plane, they have to have a visa. I asked if the Embassy could grant Maria a visa so that she could see the children into their parents arms. The last five days of ambiguity and fear had taken more of a toll on Maria, who was the only family some of these kids had, than it had on the rest of us. She would return to Haiti the next day to resume her work at COTP.

“No.” said the Consulate General, “That reason is not compelling enough for me to grant a visa.” Apparently the US State Department required more than a $13,000 reason.

Just for fun, I asked if the Embassy would provide us with transport from where we were staying to the airport. Nope. We would have to meet them at the Embassy.

It took our taxi over an hour to get to the Embassy on Wednesday morning, a distance of less than 5 miles, not that surprising in a rubble-filled city. We stumbled up to the front gate, carrying kids and kicking bags. No. You cannot come in this way today. The guard pointed 200 yards down the street. We explained that we couldn’t walk with these kids on the street. There were child-attacking mobs on the street. The guard insisted and pointed again. We asked for someone to help carry our bags. No. Embassy employees are not authorized to carry luggage. Are Embassy employees authorized to do anything in this country besides ride in Embassy vehicles?

By employing a form of stubborn refusal often used by women and children against men, we got one Embassy guard to help carry one bag to the next gate. Juggling six children and stringing out down the sidewalk, we stumbled into a parking lot full of Embassy vehicles. Lots of shiny Suburbans: worldwide vehicle of the US government. Consulate General Moore was waiting for us.

The CG insisted that Maria, Sarah and myself all climb into the third seat of the Suburban, then the kids were piled in on top of us. In the seat two-thirds the size of the one in front of it, there were nine people. In the next row up sat Consulate General Moore and the US Consulate General for Hungary, who is in town and out for a sight-see. In the front were the driver and an empty seat. The kids were all screaming. They were piled three deep and very uncomfortable, stepping on, kicking, and hitting each other to find a space.

When we were half a mile down the road, Sarah asked from below three kids, “You do have the paperwork, don’t you?” the CG looks at Hungary, who looked to the front. “Where’s Pius?” asked the CG. “Pius was supposed to bring the paperwork. We’d better call him.” The driver asked if he should turn around. Larry, Mo and Curly are too busy looking for Pius’ phone number. No one had it. They decided to send him an email, using their government-issued Blackberries.

I shoved a kid off my arm toward Maria so that I could get to my bag. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through recent calls. I dialed Pius’ number and handed the phone over the kids and over the seatback to the CG. “It’s ringing.” I said over the crying, crowded children.

We backtracked to retrieve the paperwork that these 2-year-olds could probably have kept better tabs on themselves. We left the Embassy again, this time in a two-car convoy, Pius following with the paperwork, while three adults and six kids still remained crammed in the back of the first Suburban. Exhausted by the crying, the CG gave the kids juice and Pringle chips to shut them up. The immediately threw them all over themselves, us and the vehicle. We pulled onto the tarmac and the Embassy suits got out to wait in the shade and play on their Blackberries.

Right on schedule, the airplane sent by Agape pulled off the runway. CG Moore told us the kids had to walk in single file. We picked up kids and bags and left him to explain the concept of “single-file” to a two-year-old covered in Pringles. The Haitian government charged the pilot over $350 for the privilege of landing and taking off in their country, making his contribution to these children $13,350. We climbed aboard and Maria strapped in the kids. They started screaming when they realized Maria was getting off the plane. There was nothing to be done. Her visa wasn’t compelling enough to the adults on the tarmac.

US Customs and Border Patrol in Miami took two and a half hours to clear all six children. One of the officers that had been present at the fray in Port au Prince on Saturday had since been transferred back to Miami. I asked him, “What the heck happened?” He said an anti-American grudge of one cop started it, as far as he could tell. Two Bar. And when Inspector Plaid Shirt showed up, he basically wanted to make the boys “disappear” back into the system. Why? Because you guys were not supposed to enter the airport through the front door, you were supposed to go through the back, with the Embassy. He was going to show the US Officials who had the power. It seemed like an awful fierce punishment for going in the wrong door.

After all the kids were cleared and fingerprinted, we delivered them to five sets of parents who couldn’t contain their excitement. One mother took her baby and me in her arms at once. She was sobbing. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ll never know. Thank you.” For a hug like that, I’d fly through mountains, Alaskan weather, and Haitian police stations all over again.

Stuck in Folsom Prison...

2010-02-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

I spent the last week flying supplies out of Santiago into Haiti with a hysterical Canadian named Rick. The flying was much more like the flying I usually do... short trips around mountains and weather, and I enjoyed it very much. We shuttled orphans, delivered food and shelter. I got to see some of the smaller towns that Agape regularly services. We stayed with a local ministry team in Santiago that has been putting up anyone that asks since the earthquake.Couchsurfing at a whole new level meant th

at 28 people were our housemates on the first night. The first night, Rick had got a piece of metal in his eye from his plane's rarely opened (due to Canadian temps) airvent, and there just happened to be an opthomologist staying at the house that had just come out of Haiti with all his tools. The doc had him drugged and sorted in no time. Two eyed pilots are much more valuable (that said, I tried to get him to wear an eye patch, but he was having none of it.)

Leaving the Canadians to their own devices, I was to jump on an outbound Agape flight on Friday. They called and asked if I would be willing to escort some orphans from Children of the Promise Orphanage in Cap Haitien through the bureaucracy in Port au Prince and back to the states on the US Embassy plane. Sure, these kids have all be in the adoption process for years and have been cleared to the USA by the Haitian Prime Minister. With another pil

ot team in a C-414, I picked the kids up in Cap Haitien, where their orphanage (Children of the Promise) is, flew them to PaP, and then sent the other pilot and his plane on their way. I met Maria, a COTP field director, and Sarah, one of the adoptive parents; and we went to the US Embassy. They checked all the documents for the 6 children, confirmed that they were cleared all the way to the US, with Haitian permission and US visas.

Since the Idaho/Baptist/orphan debacle, no children have been allowed to fly out on private planes, so everyone is moved to the US They told us to wait for the embassy plane-- a military transport-- and then they would shuttle us to the airport. We waited. For 5 hours. Then an embassy official came out and said the flight was cancelled. No plane guaranteed tomorrow or the next day either. In fact, we might be done flying those planes. You're free to arrange your own private transport. Let them know and they'll approve it.

Luckily, I've been working with a flight organization. I call Agape and the dispatch team had a donated plane available within hours to send down the next day.We scrounged up somewhere for us three adults and the six kids to stay, and organized approval with the embassy for our private charter flight. They were all thumbs up. They told us not to come back to the embassy, but to meet them at the airport at 11:15am, and they would hand over the children's paperwork to us for them to clear in Miami. The embassy insists on maintaining custody of the paperwork until the children board the plane to the States.

We arrived at the PaP International airport in a taxi at 11:15. No embassy people. Within 5 minutes, we were surrounded by an angry mob. They tried to take the children from us and yelled that we were stealing the country's children. The police intervened. The police took all of us and the mob ringleaders into custody. The embassy had still not arrived, and since we didn't have the paperwork in our hands, the police were suspicious that the mob was right.

An hour later, the embassy arrived, US paperwork in hand. The police said it wasn't enough. They wanted to see the PM's signature. Back to the embassy, get that piece of paper. Nope, its a forgery... you'll have to get a new one. And guess what... the PM doesn't work weekends. There was clearly a testosterone match going on between agencies.

The woman from the US Embassy looked at me and said: "I guarantee you'll be on that plane today." Our pilots had arrived and threw their hats in the fray. Everyone at the airport with a badge got involved: now not only the embassy, the police, and the pilots, but the US CBP, Haitian Immigration, and a guy on the street selling gum.

The woman from the embassy looked at me and said, " I guarantee you guys won't end up in Haitian custody."As the situation stagnated between various opposing forces trying to prove they had more power at the expense of six scared little kids, most of the people left do do other things and the pilots said they had to take off. The police insisted on moving us to another station and continued arguing with our low-on-the-totem-pole embassy team. They crammed all the adults and the kids into the back of a police car and we bumped through traffic while 'We are the World' blared on the cop's radio.

Once they had us securely in their custody away from the airport, the police announced: the adults are free to go, but the kids are being detained. Right. Like we're going anywhere. The woman from the embassy looked at me again and said, "I guarantee they won't seperate you from the kids." Lady, that's three swings,and the first two have not made contact.

The police said we could go to a government approved orphanage for the night... Haitian jails don't accommodate crowds of two-year-olds. The embassy said we could ask permission from the orphanage to stay with the kids.Back in the police trucks. No music this time. We stopped at a few UNICEF tents set up in a compound and the police started pulling the kids out of the back. We followed them into a tent, where the kids were put on mats on the ground... where they would sleep, eat, and wait. The people at the orphanage never even asked their names. And Maria, who has been with most of these kids since they were babies, asked repeatedly that they be fed-- they had no meal since breakfast. Finally, a woman brought them a box of cornflakes.Could we stay with them? No. Can we sleep on the ground outside? No. Could we at least feed them and put them to sleep? No. The police insisted on escorting us out of the compound to the tune of six screaming, terrified children. Children of the Promise has friends in PaP and we are staying with them. The medical team at the apartment has given up their rooms and beds so that we don't have to sleep on the floor. Unlike our kids.

The Best Laid Plans...

2010-02-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

I have been working with Agape Flights for almost 2 weeks. We have sent almost 80 flights and 180,000 pounds of supplies into Haiti to provide emergency relief to the victims of January 12th earthquake. The donations are coming in faster than we can empty the hanger, and we have rented a 50 foot shipping container to take non-emergency items down to Haiti in the next week.My time at Agape has been rewarding and exhausting. Emotionally, the weight of each day's work is overwhelming. Even in the hanger, the intense implications of paperwork and cargo are ever-present. However, people have continued to work with smiles and continue to volunteer more time and more resources. My next trip into Haiti is scheduled for Thursday on a KingAir donated by a pilot from Punta Gorda, FL. Thus far, my entire experience has been overwhelmingly positive with one exception. I was scheduled to fly co-pilot on a flight last week when the pilot announced that he wouldn't fly with a female. Unfortunately, in this industry, sexism is not a stranger. However, it is disappointing that peoples' prejudices come out even in the midst of humanitarian disaster, and it felt like a sucker punch when I am down here volunteering my time, just like he is. There are plenty of male jet jockeys around to step up, and I'd rather be in a 'modern' cockpit anyway.
One of the biggest challenges is passengers. The Haitian government is still not charging customs on supplies and persons brought into devastated areas, but they are cracking down on people who are trying to leave. Many of the people that are trying to get out of Haiti right now are volunteers and aid workers that went in after the earthquake. Many people are trying to get back to their families and jobs, or even trying to return to the States to get more medical relief supplies. We are coordinating with other aid organizations to get people on outbound cargo flights. Available seats are limited, customs are a hurdle, and the airport is a confusing place to try to find the appropriate flight in. Agape is also trying to move as many orphans as possible into the US from Haiti. We work closely with Children of the Promise, who have an orphanage in Cap Haitien, a town in the north part of the country. Many of the orphans there are nearly through their 2-year paperwork process and have parents waiting in the States. The sooner we can get these orphans cleared through the final stages of their multi-year adoption process, the sooner we open up spaces in the orphanage for newly-orphaned children from the earthquake, and then they can begin the adoption process. The Haitian government keeps changing the procedures for clearing kids from the country. Just last week, they decided that every child had to be brought to Port au Prince to be 'ok'ed through the Prime Minister before being allowed to leave the country. What a great idea... fly a bunch of orphaned kids to do paperwork in a city where the airport is a mess, most of the population is now homeless and hungry, and the infrastructure is a-shambles. In the last week, we have shuttled 12 orphans with escorts from Cap Haitien to Port au Prince to make 2 consecutive days of appearances at the PM's office. Friday, former President Clinton decided to make a "good will" visit to Port au Prince. All air traffic, in what can operationally be referred to as 'airplane soup,' was held clear for the President's aircraft to land and taxi. The Prime Minister spent the day Friday entertaining his guest instead of signing orphan paperwork. Of course, the PM doesn't work on weekends, and the kids had to spend Saturday and Sunday on the streets, or where ever they could find shelter to wait for a Monday appearance. Thankfully, 10 of the 12 managed to pass all the paperwork hurdles and get out on a plane to Miami late last night. We hope that the other 2 will follow in the next days. Meanwhile, we are shuttling 11 more orphans from Cap Haitien south.Wes, upon his arrival at Agape, instantly became an invaluable help staging and loading tons of cargo in the hanger. He will fly his first mission to Haiti on Friday, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Bruce and Alice Shaw, in Sarasota, are still being our generous hosts, and if I wasn't so comfortable, I'd feel like I was imposing. I have committed to at least one more week of work at Agape, and will keep you posted. The situation here and there change constantly--for good and for ill. This is a great exercise in thinking on my toes. The Agape Staff have started to ask if I couldn't be convinced to consider a long-term position. I'm glad to be here, but Florida is wanting in the departments of ski races and short airstrips.

Return from Round One

2010-02-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Rook Nelson and I flew his Twin Otter from Sebastian, FL to Port au Prince, Haiti, on a non-Agape Flights mission. We were loaded with over 4000 lbs of tents and two passengers, who were going to help distribute and set them up. The donation was from New York and was being delivered to Son Light Missions. The passengers were wearing firefighter shirts. I asked them if they were firefighters. No. Haitians love uniforms.

We ran through some bad weather on the way out of Florida, and were thankful for each other's presence so we could split the workload. After a fuel stop in Exuma, Bahamas, we flew into Haiti. Air traffic control within 50 miles of Port au Prince is a nightmare. Imagine trying to squeeze all of LAX's traffic into Homer, Alaska. The controller can't possibly speak to all the inbound traffic, and chances are, you won't be able to key your mike without someone else stepping on you. We were able to tuck under the clouds, and then get to the airport on a visual approach, all the while trying not to have a mid-air collision with a C-5 or a UN helicopter. Getting clearance to land was nearly impossible. One pilot flies the plane, and the other pilot madly tries to make radio calls. There is one runway, no taxiways, and three ramps, which are only connected by the runway. The harbor is guarded by various battleships, red cross vessels, and cargo ships. From the air, it is difficult to make out any specific earthquake damage, however, you can see that EVERYONE is outside. The streets are teeming with people and tents and debris.

The US military has set up a perimeter around the airport, and many aide and relief workers, along with the military of various countries, have set up camps on the airfield. Near our parking space, 50 or so pallets of Red Cross Emergency supplies were sitting behind a barbwire fence, with no apparent access or use for anyone. Aircraft are coming and going constantly, fairly equal numbers of military and civilian planes. The person we were delivering the tents to (you have to have someone to receive items, you can't just dump them on the field) went off "in search of a truck." We knew we were in for a wait, and did so as patiently as possible, knowing there were storms building on our return route every moment we spent on the ground. Eventually, we let the ramp guys unload the plane and stage the stuff across the ramp for the elusive truck to collect. Rook's Saturday cargo had been unloaded and reloaded in Agape trucks within 15 minutes of landing. He wasn't expecting much of a wait. After they unloaded the plane, one of the rampers came up and asked me if we had any water we could give them. I handed over a half-full two liter that was our personal supply in the cockpit. They all thanked me profusely.

When we were finally ready to leave, three girls ran up and asked if we would give them a ride back to the States. They came down to Haiti as volunteers and none of the charter planes that brought volunteers in are coming back. The only good way to get out of Haiti is to find a bus to the Dominican Republic, then buy a commercial ticket out. All commercial flights out of the DR are booked solid for 3 weeks. Rook and I exchanged a glance, asked to see their passports, and shrugged our shoulders. They're Americans, they really want to leave, and we're going back to America with an empty plane: what's the big deal? Someone wearing epaulettes ran up and told us that, as of Friday, they re-opened immigration and customs for passengers

to Haiti (until then all controls have been suspended since the earthquake). A $10,000 fine and having your aircraft put on the US Border Patrol's black list is the big deal. We off-loaded our passengers, told them good luck, but it seems Haiti wants to keep them and the US doesn't want any people coming back across the border.

As we were sorting out the passenger drama, a man in a vest came up and told us we had to come in and file a flight plan. We both knew that we could file on the radio, even from in the air if we chose. But Vest Man was insistent. I stayed on passenger duty, and Rook went inside to sort out our flight plan. Once in the building, Vest Man explained that his family is hungry and living on the street- could he please have some money? Rook handed over a "flight plan" with a twenty dollar bill and came back to help me expel the stowaways.

Completely empty, the Otter had no problem with a short intersection take-off, greatly reducing our wait-time for the frantic runway. We headed back north. As the sun set, Miami Center radioed us to say that the Bahamas, where we needed to land again for fuel, doesn't allow flight after sunset. We spoke to Nassau control, and they confirmed that it would be illegal for us to land at Exuma. Multiple choice tests are so easy: (a) illegal landing on runway in foreign country, or (b)running out of fuel and crashing into the nighttime waters of the Bermuda Triangle. As we touched down in Exuma, it was growing dark and we got called up to the tower. We got a hand slap and were refused permission to take off. According to the radar, the entire coast of Florida was laced with embedded thunderstorms. So, we weren't going anyway. We apologized for breaking the law, and then enjoyed the rest of the evening drinking Dark & Stormys (fittingly) in a hotel bar.

Well rested, we finished our flight back to Florida this morning. I said goodbye to Rook. I hope it doesn't take an international disaster to get to see him again.

I drove back across Florida to Agape Flight's hangar and checked up on my work at dispatch. Two planes went out in my absence: the DC-6 and the Embraer. The week is filling up with flights, but most amazingly, the hangar is, once again, chuck-full of donations.

Haiti Relief Update

2010-02-02T17:43:00.001-08:00

I've finished my 4th day at Agape Flights in Venice. Yesterday, I dispatched 2 planes, a Twin Otter and and an Embraer, carrying at total of 7500 lbs of relief supplies, to Port au Prince, Haiti. The Embraer landed on Friday night, had just enough time to fuel and reload, and for the pilots to take a short overnight nap, and then they took off Saturday morning at oh-dark-early. I am becoming adept at the paperwork required by US customs. Competency doesn't make the regulations anymore reasonable though.

The Twin Otter is an airplane from Skydive Chicago, one which I am quite familiar with. The first day I arrived at Agape, they asked if I knew anyone that would be interested in donating planes. I used to fly skydivers, so I got ahold of my old boss, Rook Nelson, (using the complexities of Facebook) thinking that he might have an idea of someone that had a skydiving plane around. He wrote right back, saying, I'm available, and I have my Otters in Sebastian, which is just on the other side of Florida from Venice. Rook donated two round trips, with a 4000-pound load capability for each one. I haven't seen Rook since I left his company to go to Alaska, almost four years ago. When he taxied up the ramp at Agape Friday night, he jumped down from the Otter, gave me a big hug and said, "I always knew I would see you again, I just never guessed it would be here." Me neither.

This morning, Rook and I were supposed to turn and fly the Otter back to Haiti with a doctor, a nurse, and a huge load of medical supplies, food, and water. However, by the time the plane returned from Haiti last night, after getting delayed on the ground in Port au Prince, and then by US Customs in Key West, a ground fog had rolled in at Venice. Rook and his co-pilot, Jeff, Agape's chief pilot, couldn't land. They diverted to Punta Gorda. By the time I drove down to pick them up, it was 1am. We would have to drive back to get the plane at 4am to fly it to Venice, load, refuel, turn around, and make our Air Force appointed slot time of 1:45pm in Port au Prince. Because we knew we would both be exhausted with only an hour or two of sleep, and the round trip is an 11 hour flight, we cancelled today's trip. "Everyone's a safety officer."

Rook flew his plane back to Sebastian today, to pick up a load of tents being donated by a company from New York. He got there to find that his co-pilot hadn't shown up. He called me. I'll cross Florida again in the wee hours of the morning, to climb into the Otter for my first trip to Haiti. We'll depart the Sebastian airport, weather allowing, at 8am. You can follow our progress at FlightAware Just enter "N10EA" in the box on the left that says: "Flight/Tail #:".

I am afraid I have become much too useful at Agape, but they will survive dispatching one day without me. I am continually impressed with the generosity there. Every time we make a dent in the pile of pallets in the hanger, more donations pour in. We have loaded a DC-6 donated to depart out of Miami tomorrow morning, and our hangar is miraculously still full. We need more airplanes! I am still enjoying the wonderful hospitality of Bruce & Alice Shaw, of Homer & Sarasota, who are making me comfortable and facilitating my travel around the state.

I'll send a report when I get back to the country, and my computer. Pray for tailwinds and friendly border guards.

Agape Flights: To Haiti

2010-01-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

I am currently involved in an effort to fly relief supplies into Haiti, as part of the recovery effort from the massive earthquake of January 12th. I am working for an organization called Agape Flights, based in Venice, Florida. I promised updates as is possible, and, as I am just getting going, and time allows me, I will take the liberty to be longwinded...

"Agape" is the Greek word used biblically for God's unconditional love. Agape's regular mission is to run supplies and mail, on a one-flight-a-week basis, to missionaries in Haiti, the Dominic Republic, and the Bahamas. Since the earthquake (in the last 14 days), Agape has stepped it up to: 60 flights with 120,000 pounds of emergency supplies and 25 medical personnel into Haiti, and the evacuation of 8 Haitian orphans. Their hangar has been flooded with donations and volunteers. Everything from the most useful to the most unbelievably useful has been donated.

Two days after the 'quake, one volunteer was answering phones and kept saying to the insistent person on the other end, "I'm sorry, Sir, we are a FLIGHT organization. We don't take BOATS." And when Agape's director walked by, she just handed him the phone: "please talk to this man, he has a boat." When he had the director on the phone, the man said (in what I like to imagine as a surly Alaskan fisherman voice): "I don't have a boat, I have a SHIP!" Realizing the need for his organization to be flexible, the director heard him out. This individual donated the use of a entire container ship, which Agape filled chuck-full of supplies and the man drove (does one "drive" ships?) it down to Port au Prince, where the port had been destroyed by the earthquake, but his SHIP had a full size crane to unload the much needed relief materials. When his hull was empty, he said, "while I'm here, why don't we use the crane move some rubble?", and thus was an instrument in helping with infrastructure, including help to repair the port. If only Mick Dundee were there to say, "That's not a 'boat.' THIS is a boat."

I started my full-time work for Agape today, and I am very excited for what the next weeks will bring. It will make my mother happy to know that I am still in the United States. Unfortunately, Agape's main aircraft had a mechanical failure in Haiti the day I was in transit from Alaska, so they have lost their main relief vehicle for the immediate future. This requires that they rely solely on donated aircraft to accomplish their missions into Haiti.

In the meantime, volunteers are sorting pallets of food, water, and medical supplies; answering phones; and squinting up at the sun to watch inbound donated planes on final approach.

I started my day learning the sorting line. As fast as we can sort boxes, new piles of donations build up. Everything is sorted into "food," "medical," and "other," and then further sorted into categories of most immediate need. I was sent to the food sorting section and soon distracted my table with a debate of whether canned tomatoes should go in the 'vegetable' or 'fruit' pile. I know, I know... I'm new at relief work. They traded me to the medical supply line, who immediately questioned my credentials. Denying "RN," I claimed to be a volunteer EMT. In the eyes of the retired heavy equipment operator staring into boxes of everything from prescription drugs to catheters, this promoted me to MD. They asked me to pick out everything that needs to be sent right away. Fortunately, I can recognize the most emergent stuff as what we carry on the ambulance, and so muddled through this project. I'm just elbows deep in drug sorting, when someone comes down from upstairs and asks for an aviatrix like myself to help in dispatching flights. I spent the rest of the day learning the dispatch process for getting flights safely to and from their destinations and through the hands of customs officials. I found out how we go about collecting planes and pilots to accomplish the tasks at hand. I also started learning the paperwork ropes for when I need to start actively flying the missions. Due to the mechanical failure, my personal flight mission is on hold, and I have decided to help wherever they need hands.

It has been a fantastic start to a project that I was a bit wary about. My heart skips thinking about all the people I met today that are stopping their lives to do mundane tasks, in hopes that they will help care for someone they will never meet. And, everyone gives their time, hands, hearts and backs with smiles on their faces. I've been there one day, and I've seen people give imperative supplies, time, multimillion dollar aircraft, and thousands of dollars worth of fuel. One local elementary school raised $24,000 in relief funds in 4 days. I share all of this so that you may know, no matter what you may hear on the news: people are good, and their generosity is heart-warming.

Some of you have asked me to let you know how effective and timely Agape is at their relief effort. For that answer, bear with me for one more story. A week ago, a doctor and a nurse showed up at the hangar, wanting a ride to Haiti so they could treat victims. Until there was a plane with available space, they offered to help sort supplies. They worked on prioritizing and shipping medical supplies for two days, and then the doctor got on a flight, followed by the nurse a day later. The plane, as are all Agape's flights, was met in Port au Prince by local missionaries, they drove the doctor into the city in their own small pickup, squeezing through the rubble-filled mess like only a local vehicle could. When the doctor arrived at a hospital, he found the only supplies on hand were from Agape. He recognized his own and the nurse's handwriting on the boxes they had sorted. Why were Agape's boxes the only ones at the hospital? Every flight is met by local missionaries, who live and work in Port au Prince year round. Those people immediately take the supplies from the airports, in their own vehicles and get them straight into the hands of people that need them. At the time of these medical deliveries, the roads were still too demolished for big military trucks to get through. But, for people with small pickups, that knew their way around town, it was passable. The doctor was able to use the missionaries to get word back to the nurse, still at Agape's hangar, of what other supplies were immediately needed when she followed him down.

I am thrilled to be here, and am thus far impressed with the organizations policy of using the network they have in place to best serve the needs of the emergency. I do not yet know when I will make my first trip to Haiti, but it looks likely for this weekend. Meanwhile, I have been the ecstatic recipient of the unbelievable hospitality of friends. I have been given a ride across the state, a car, comfortable housing, and delicious food by wonderful friends, eager to help in anyway they can. A local salon owner even offered me a free massage "to help me relax from my efforts." I kid you not. However, I am pretty relaxed right now, watching people help each other, and getting to be a part of it.

Thank you for all your words of encouragement. I will keep you posted as my time here unfolds. I have made an initial commitment of two weeks with Agape, possibly more. The immediate stage of emergency is changing into finding a regular system that will alleviate the recovery needs within Port au Prince and surrounding communities, however, the disaster is still at hand, and just yesterday another survivor was rescued.