A Little Concept Called Home

It's been some time. Probably no one reads this now that we've caught up in person. Perfect. I'd like to say some things to the wide open nothing, the potentially grand non-audience of the Internet. (If the ocean is an empty auditorium, what a frame to this story- large spaces of blank. Natural and man-made! Somebody write a high-school English essay!

If I had more time, I'd describe the 3-week passage or maybe talk a little bit about the Marquesas. That's okay. Fast forward. Air Tahiti. LAX. Chicago.

School visits were great. I felt a lot of pride in what we have done, satisfaction in the students' responses and excitement for my own upcoming year with the program in Chicago. The week after, I started part-time at my old job with a new excitement for my work there as well. The truth is, it was very easy to transition into normal life. We re-activated cell phone service and were swiftly reunited with unsalted clothes, pizza, apples and ice cream.

Somewhere in the next days, Ryan, Stuck, Jake and I went for a swim in the then 56-degree Lake Michigan. Stuck and Jake had been making a habit of this lately. The task involved sipping a plastic cup of orange juice and vodka (with ice!) on a tender barefoot trek to the beach, a solemn disrobing (to bathing suits) and the removal of prescription eye wear, then a stunning, somewhat introspective paddle to a nearby buoy.

My feet touched sand in little hops as I struggled with the pressing chill and lack of salty buoyancy. My arms and legs were inefficient flippers; I was paddling a canoe with a fishing pole. The water sucked at my body, probably not the best ointment for remnants of the flu, it occurred to me, but it left a clean numbness I told myself was nourishing. A thought of pleasure began to settle into an icicle. I liked my blood shrinking from the surface of my skin, the sharp feeling around my eyes, the tightness. My thoughts were frozen to the inside of my skull. My skin was vividly numb.

Chicago. Tahiti. The puerile desire to suggest that a bartender accept French Polynesian francs for the Bud Light special. "You can see me now because I'm here," I wanted to say to people on the train platform that day, "but very very recently I was one of very few gringos for miles.

The swim, 'twas a facetious tussle with the idea of danger. I have no interest in dipping below, losing my hold on oxygen. I am far too in love with the ice and the shore's blooming streetlights. It's animating, this need to continually prove my devotion to breathing. I sputtered on involuntary sweet tastes of water and made my way to the buoy and back to the soft cold sand

Then I went bridesmaids dress shopping and nearly shot myself. All this time, I've been excited for girly things! And what have you boys done to me? I have no patience! Later that day, I attended the bachellorette party. We had a nice dinner, went to a wine bar (rented out for the occasion), (tasty new trendy sparkling Shiraz!), were given chocolate, headed to a street fair, obtained huge gaudy temporary tattoos, sang karaoke, looked at lingerie, the whole nine. It was really quite fun. Before this point in our time back to Chicago, I had felt completely, almost alarmingly normal. However, in the company of these older girls (who, whether in my mind or in reality, seemed to ask boat-related questions with an air of disbelief, a zoo-going curiosity at the stinky, wet, wind-blown life I had recently claimed to love) l could feel something start to fray in a corner of my mind.

What happened next: a discussion about counter tops, a disguised tear behind a tanned hand, a trip to the bathroom, another beer, a renewed face towards life, these things can and have just been condensed.

Sad to miss the variety of each day. Sad not to see the stars, steer the boat, feel the wind. Sad to have pressurized hot water. Sad to be close to a familiar vibrant culture. Sad to be able to run farther than 43 feet. Sad to be able to write without worrying about amps. Sad to see my family and friends and be able to communicate with anyone anywhere for simple, easy American currency ... Hmmm... Ahh yes, accept and embrace a dual citizenship in the foreign world and the immediate one. Fit in with the color pink as easily as the bed of a pickup truck. So many gosh darn adventures. It may not be easy to argue with the gray of a cubicle wall, but here's to trying and The Next Chapter, whatever form it may take.

Thumbs up for iguanas! AND The Next Chapter

Into the Nada

I guess our Galapagos experience was changed slightly by the fact that when we leave, we won’t see land for well over 20 days. We’ve spent a great deal of time finalizing details for the Marquesas, doing things with the engine, finishing up the provisioning and writing and compiling the pictures we need for a month’s worth of writing. I like seeing places in this context of real-world tasks. Somehow I feel like I learned something after buying a stalk of bananas from the local store.

Have a good month! I bet you ten dollars yours will go faster than mine.

In the immortal words of Styx,

I’m sailing away. Set an open course for the virgin sea,
Because I’ve got to be free,
Free to face the life that it’s ahead of me,
On board, I’m the Production Manager, so climb aboard,
We’ll search for tomorrow on every shore,
and I’ll try, oh Lord, I’ll try, to carry on.

I look to the sea,
Reflections in the waves spark my memories,
Some happy, some sad,
I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had,
We lived happily forever, so the story goes,
but eventually we’ll have to return to the real world,
But we’ll try, best that we can, to carry on. (sweet guitarness)

A gathering of angels appeared above my head,
They sang to me this song of hope and this is what they said. They said:
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me, that’s
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Meeeeeee

I thought that they were angels,
Much to my surprise,
they climbed aboard their starship and headed for the skies.

Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me
Come sail away, Come sail away, Come sail away with Me


Signing off,
A. M.

One more thing. It’s been emotional.

Galapablog

I can see why you would think I was joking if I told you, “A sea lion took a dump in our dinghy.”

I’m not.

At first when we saw sea lions it was completely novel. “OH BOY! OH GOSH! Guys! Guys!! GUYS!!! There’s a SEA LION over there!” somebody would say. Thump, thump, thump. People ran topside. Cameras snapped right and left. People pushed each other into the ocean to get the best shot. But then we got to the Galapagos: Sea Lion Central. Sea Lion City. Sea Lion Station. Sea Lion Playground. The Frickin Sea Lion Line at the DMV.

Oh they’re cute as can be. They swim with you, blow bubbles, lounge around the beach, flop up and down to the water. They make creative belching noises. They are EVERYWHERE. I watched one walk all the way from the beach to the road, then settle down in this tree planter in the middle of a town square. I also watched as one attempted to board someone else’s sailboat. How cute, I had thought. How funny. How hilarious. That sea lion is trying to get on that sailboat. (That squirrel can water ski). Little did I know the gravity of the sea lion situation. Later that day, we all drew sober faces upon viewing our dinghy full of sloshing brown excrement. One might even guess there was a whole sea lion potty party while we were gone. The dang things hung out on the dinghy all day, relaxed, took naps, read books, then, whoops, gotta go… oh well, getting back in the ocean, where we normally poop, is just too damn hard.

On Day 2 I decided to go for a run while George followed up on some business early in the AM. Excited to explore sights in the dawning light, with a snazzy new playlist, I began to run away. Nanoseconds later, a series of loud grunts and yelps beckoned me back. Sea lions? Nay. Lately, things had been going wrong at regular intervals, the solutions for which usually required teamwork, responsibility and fun-sacrifice. I turned my head back in what was probably one of the slowest most begrudging looks of anger I could paint over with a plain expression. George was beckoning. I turned, surveyed the damage, sighed and told myself not to be a child. As it went, one of the garbage bags had leaked oil all over the dinghy. Charming. The non-profit educational company shows up in the Galapagos and creates an oil spill. George began to emit louder and louder noises. Children wept. Somewhere, an angel lost its wings. In all, this episode lasted about 7 minutes. In fact, I’m not even sure why I’m telling this story. We took care of everything, and I eventually got to go on my run.

The run turned out to be one of the raddest experiences. I quickly passed out of the tiny town into the real Galapagosian existence. It was a lot like Ecuador – half-finished houses, dirt alleys, colorful laundry hanging in front of grey cement and pushy cab drivers. The cab drivers all seemed to think I needed a ride somewhere. Why else would I be running? One cab followed me slowly, its passenger yelling out the window. They followed me into a dead end. I was slightly alarmed and felt a bit trapped when he yelled, “Where you go, chica?” in a kind of taunting voice. Just then I saw a small path on the side of the road. “This way!” I muttered and sprinted off, disappearing into thick forest. I think I was right in the chorus of Ok Go’s “It’s a Disaster,” at that very moment. So I turned that up a few clicks and flew down a small valley, letting my feet have some extra airtime.

After a few more steps, I was facing one of the most beautiful ponds I had ever seen. There were mangroves on one side and these huge walls of bright green vegetation on the other. It looked like a little inlet of some kind, but I couldn’t see the ocean. The water was exceptionally clear and there were sea turtles paddling around. I had fallen through a choice rabbit hole.

Later that day, I saw a lot of iguanas. They were black and blended in very well with their lava perches. I felt like I had stepped into a Nature special, except that in T.V., you don’t get eaten alive by giant man-eating bird-flies. I got these big purple spots from their bites. They’re gone now. Don’t worry. Don’t worry; the giant welts are gone now. I’m absolutely fine. Giant fly bites = thing of the past.

We went on a few really awesome tours. One was of lava formations. Our guide gunned it over the break and we hurtled towards lava bridges at mach 9. He was probably the best outboard driver EVER. We maneuvered through the most intricate, shallow, sharp, rocky small spaces – sometimes sideways, sometimes backwards, sometimes there was a small reverse, followed by a graceful swing of the bow. It was dressage with twin 75-horse engines and he was quite the equestrian. He didn’t speak any English, but he also didn’t really speak Spanish. When we got to our destination, he waved us off with the back of his hand and lit up a cigarette.

We also took a trip to Kicker Rock (pictured here!!) and drove our dinghy around this little shark-infested area to take pictures. I also walked over LAVA with BARE FEET!! It was a couple of decades after the eruption, so I didn’t get burned.

The Galapagos really lived up to expectations. There really are these amazing animals just hanging out all over the place. I thought there would be a more regimented atmosphere. It was great to explore even if I can’t take home a tortoise.

004 Regretfully informs, "Mission: Obtain a Tortoise" Incomplete

It started out incredibly hopeful, as you can see from the picture on the left of my negotiations with their chief, Shellakattack. It was a very serious operation, as you can see from the picture on the right (also known as the 5th documented photo of me not smiling ever).

I started to get excited.

"Yes! Yes!" I said (in tortoise). "and they can stay at my place, and I´ll make them a GREAT nest, and take them to the Shedd absolutely whenever, and we can go for walks in Lincoln Park, and oh, no, no, I would never put them on a leash, never. and when we get to O´Hare, maybe one of them would let me ride him through customs..." I trailed off.

Well anyway, I don´t really want to relive this conversation. We left on great terms, exchanging Skype info on his suggestion. It just didn´t make sense to send anybody to Chicago, he explained. They needed their entire breeding population on home soil, he said.

Peeling Carrots into the Ocean Makes Me Feel Free

[About this picture: the sun was inspired by Rothko, or more accurately, a seat cushion.]


Life on land is different from life at sea. For example, when you park your car you don´t have to think about tides. Here´s another example: on land, you can walk more than 43 feet in one direction. In sailing, everything is always moving and often in a direction which may hurt you. Also, you can throw aluminum cans right into the ocean because they rust so fast it´s better for the environment than a landfill.

Well I was sitting around on our last passage, mulling these incredible thoughts, when Aaron came down below after a satellite phone call with his parents. (I´m a terrible daughter and rarely shell out the $1.20/minute. Sorry guys, but now you´ll think twice about raising a daughter with a respect for money. Ooooh, zing.) (Aaron also has a respect for money, but that doesn´t help my case). ANYWAY, Aaron came down, and I looked up as he was replacing the gigantic receiver on the wall and he said to me, "My mother is cleaning the basement."




Ordinarily, this kind of news wouldn´t shock anybody. But this was an extraordinary situation. "NO WAY!" I thought. Right at this very second, while we are skimming about the waves in the Pacific, lacking ordinary creature comforts, a real live person is certifiably wandering about a basement in Virginia vacuuming, throwing things out, labeling things, (hopefully color-coding), and just generally existing in a completely different environment to ours. I guess maybe I was just hungry for a run or some fresh fruit or any number of things unavailable on the open water, but for some reason, I just loved the immediate novelty of land life at that particular moment.

ANYWAY (world´s longest intro), I do really like being at sea. As it fascinates me that somewhere in Bangkok, someone is walking up stairs while I type at an absurdly small desk in the Galapagos, I thought maybe it might, just might be somewhat sort of interesting to hear what life is like on a boat...

So, here is a 24-hour period, in my real life, aboard Aldebaran on this past passage: (I actually wrote this on passage; that is how authentic it is.)

Today, I:
1. Started writing this week’s article
2. Emailed Heather our position (She emails it out to friends and family so they know we’re alive) (and in the case of my parents, so they can plot us out on their wall-sized map.) (How cute!) (Come to think of it, if anyone wants to be added to the forward list, let me know)

3. Chatted with crewmates. We went over “What it means to be on watch” which was a frank plea for people not to watch DVDs at night because it endangers everyone’s lives. Everyone was okay with that. We also refreshed our “Abandon Ship Procedures” because there are a lot of killer whales in these parts that sometimes ram boats. I am in charge of passing out life jackets and bringing the ditch kit and medical kits into the life raft. (I briefly wrote about shopping for ditch kit items in one of my first posts—Hmm store brand, or name brand enema kit?)

4. Made dinner: coconut shrimp with pineapple sauce, rosemary potato bread, broccoli, brownies (I started the bread in the early afternoon) (Gosh that was an important clarification)

5. Made myself available for the 50-hour engine check because I keep missing the checks and really had no idea how to check the oil level and was growing quite embarrassed of this fact. I also changed the Racor and primary fuel filters. At last, I have been illuminated.

6. Read 4 pages in The Wealth of Nations. (Easily distracted. Vowed to read more tomorrow).

7. Finished up my day watch (Which is from 5pm-8pm). This usually includes a stunning sunset. Today there was a wide banner of purple, red and yellow as the sun simmered over the horizon. It was warm, composed and happy.


8.Took a gander at, OMIGOD, the Southern Cross AND Polaris upon George’s urging. I was steering, listening to my iPod, when I saw his head poke up the companionway. He loves to point out that the Southern Cross and Polaris are both visible in the sky from where we are. I think he’s mentioned it the last three nights. It’s still pretty cool though.

9. It’s getting late, it’s around 9pm and so I had better hit the sack. (I’m not kidding). My night watch is from 4-6am. (Shouldn’t it be morning watch?!?!) I am already starting to think of what to listen to. I’ve been trying to mix it up from the usual. Last night, I listened to Christmas music, Avril Lavigne, Weezer and The Sea and Cake. I guess you could say the night started out low and reached a significant elevation. I have really no idea how the Christmas music got in there. (Good god how embarrassing. And in April, nonetheless). I think it was on shuffle, and some Harry Connick Jr. song came on or something. After that, the obligatory Mariah Carey All I Want For Christmas is You (except in this case, it was All I Want for Christmas is Poo, because I can´t take that song seriously) induced a really stunning lip-synch with a flashlight microphone that I’m sorry to say only a few phosphorescent plankton managed to catch.

10. Instead of, let’s say, pondering some way to solve global poverty, this is what I thought about during my night watch:
(PREFACE: Being on watch, listening to music, steering while everyone is sleeping… It’s a big blank space out there, an endless white room from a dream…. And watches provide 5 hours a day for thinking about THE MEANING OF LIFE, PRECISELY HOW QUICKLY I WOULD DIE WITHOUT CONTACTS, WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER TOMORROW. Not very often in normal life do you have two solid blocks of hours to sit and stare into nothingness. So much thinking can be dangerous. This is a very up-close and personal look at what I think about when I’m alone for hours and hours. Are you ready?)

Okay. I amused myself by:

1. Planning out a play list and menu for a party I may or may not have in the far-distant future.
2. Singing sailing-related renditions of Britney Spears’ songs:
“But wait a minute, isn't this the screw I dropped into the ocean?"
"Yeah, yes it is,"
"But I thought when it fell into 2-mile deep water, that was the end of it."
"Well baby, I went down and got it for you."
"Aww, you shouldn't have."
“OOPS I ... DID IT AGAIN. I played with your mind, oh baby baby, oops, you think that was the last 5/8ths in screwwwww, that I lost it foreeever…”

3. Getting excited for all these things I want to do at home like play more viola, create several large and impressive paintings, go to more shows, make a nicer easel, take Spanish, or maybe Chinese, take salsa, go to cooking classes, learn more about engines, study and dropkick the shit out of the GMAT, read more of gosh darn everything, read that damn book on Pi I never finished, sail more, windsurf more, do sweet things with the RTW program, think about buying another bike, make a dress out of this sweet fabric I got in Saba, save money for more travel, and on and on... and then realizing there´s no way I´m going to have time... :( :( :( :( :(

AND

3. Picturing fanciful variations on the scene at O’Hare airport when we arrive home.

a. Running over to the Hudson News stand, tearing the newspapers off, ripping apart magazines, throwing them all over, rubbing them together, sitting in a stew of current events, then yelling, “OH MY GOSH, what’s happened!?!?!”

b. Showing up wearing a combination of every indigenous costume we’ve seen on our trip, but acting as though this is just a change I have undergone. I am just worldlier now and there’s nothing funny about it. Sorry family, but if you think I’ll go back to jeans after the beaded leg-wraps of the San Blas and green leprechaun-like hats from the Ecuadorian Andes, think again.

c. After somehow managing to capture and retain a Galapagos Tortoise, attempting to pass through customs while riding it.

d. After somehow managing to capture and retain a Galapagos Tortoise, moving it in to my new apartment, casually introducing it to the roommates when they inquire. “Oh Fluffy? Yeah, he’s a tortoise. You don’t mind, right?”

e. After somehow managing to capture and retain two Galapagos Tortoises, having long-since set up a “tortoise- friendly” environment in my apartment, searching the Internet with “getting tortoises to mate,” “songs that put tortoises in the mood,” “tortoise mating in captivity”, “how to raise captive Galapagos tortoise babies”.

Yep. Yep. That’s it. Nooo string theory. Just ridiculous daydreams. I’ll think of something useful tomorrow…


Whew, so I guess the secret´s out: passages can get sliiiiightly boring.

Ecuador, Pretty Piece of Life

We should be in the Galapagos, but we haven´t gotten our alternator yet ... but who cares about that when there´s a whole country to discuss.

A day after we arrived, we hopped on the night bus from Salinas to Quito. Aside from sitting with my knees around my chin for 12 hours, the ride wasn´t too bad. My favorite part was snacktime. At 4am, I woke up as a packet of cookies was tossed in my lap. A man poured a glass of apple soda and handed it to me. He turned to Ryan. Ryan was very much asleep. "Señor!" he said. "SEÑOR!" Ryan´s eyes opened and he was quickly handed a cup of soda. There was no sleeping through snacktime. Sorry. On this bus, you eat your cookies at 4am, no excuses. I think at that point, I took some really uneventful video footage to add to my collection.

After a night in Quito, we headed to The Otavalo Market. The Otavalo Market is supposedly the largest market in South America. This means that they have enough alpaca sweaters, blankets, wall-coverings, scarves, tableclothes, table-runners, napkins, diapers and technicolar dreamcoats to build every person in Ecuador a three-story alpaca mansion. Yes. Three soft, sweatery stories of knit house per person. There is just that much alpacaness at the Otavalo Market. There were dozens of other wares for sale. You could buy an Inca vs. Spaniard chess set, hammocks, pigs, five trillion kinds of beans, jewelry, soap, cell-phone cases and armadillo-backed guitars. It was quite an experience. Bargaining was a lot of fun.

Then we returned to Quito. We toured some churches, took some photos and hiked up to a volcano called Cayumbe. The hike was great except the altitude made me sick. I took a really nice nap on the side of the glacier while everyone finished the hike. It was tough to admit defeat, but the strawberry yogurt I spewed towards a particularly scenic vista was argument enough. I settled in on a nice dry patch and cuddled up with my "when in Rome" alpaca sweater. There was something very soothing about sleeping on the side of a gigantic volcano. I felt like I was on the back of a dragon or something. Actually, a dragon is almost too close a parallel. I felt like I was curled up in the mouth of a lion; it was a dry and arid mouth surrounded by tundra and unprotected from sunburn.

Then we traveled by bus to Zumbahua, a small town in the Andes. I like that, in South America, a taxi is a person with a car and a restaurant is anywhere that has a table and some extra food. Riding in truck beds has quickly become my favorite activity. Watching the world go by from the comfort of a bouncing, speeding truck, sometimes in the company of large bags of onions or livestock, is just so terribly authentic I can barely take it. Oh my gosh! PIGS, llamas and mules just wander around the towns. My own delight and amusement at such normal parts of daily life fascinate me. Is it that novel to see a child herding a group of sheep up a mountain? I can´t inhale the experiences quickly enough.

After that, we checked out the nearby, Laguna Quilotoa, an alarmingly green lake nestled between volcanoes. It was a lovely little trek. Then I went to Baños for some white-water rafting. The guide, Fabricio, was a card-carrying lunatic. "From here, easy," he´d say. Then we´d turn around to see bubbling water, rocks, cliffs, waterfalls and ominous overhanging rocks ahead. It was pretty tame overall, but Fabricio liked the flavor of danger, or at least, propagating fear among the nice family that accompanied us.

I returned to Salinas to prepare to leave, but we´re still here.

With no alternator and most boat projects under control, we took off to Montanita for the last two days. I had not expected to go at all. It was pretty cool. Most of the tourists were from other parts of South America and they liked taking pictures of us. Being white and carrying a gigantic surfboard that shouts, "I have no clue what I am going to do with this thing when I get to the water" seemed to pique the interest of the South American tourist. I'm pretty sure I heard the Spanish for, "Let's get a photo of the gringos before they die surfing," on multiple occasions.

Surfing was okay. I can't really claim to have "surfed" per se. I would say I did a great job of swimming after my board. Of course, it was attached to my left ankle at all times, but I assure you, loads of skill were involved in its retrieval, namely breathing before getting smashed by more waves. I kind of almost got up once or twice. I'll have to try again some other time. Maybe a lesson would be a good idea, too. It got slightly tiring to be thrown around in the salt water like a sock on the spin cycle, but the water was wonderfully warm and the experience was worthwhile.

Other highlights of Montanita include this bar with really cheesy music videos. In one, there were two backup guitar players who leaned forward and backward in unison while playing the same chord over and over again. It was awesome.

I´m back in Salinas now and it´s almost time to set sail.  I could stay for awhile, roam around and travel in truck beds, but the ocean is calling.

It´s been awhile, hasn´t it, my dear website?

Let´s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
After Panama, we did a bit of sailing.
Somewhere in there we crossed the equator. It was a fancy affair. With King Neptune presiding, we became Shellbacks instead of Pollywogs, according to sailing lore. (It is plainly better to be more turtle-like than wog-like). This involved initiation into The Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep. I could explain more, but we´d have to be on a boat in the middle of the ocean and I´d have to paint your face with ground-up squid and make you do a cajun walz while in a hand-stand, while spinning a beret with llamas on it on your left foot, while bouncing a rubber ball with your chin and singing, "Sunshine Superman" after inhaling helium from a balloon that you fabricated and filled using only pork products. The choice is yours, but I´d recommend getting some experience before putting yourself out there. Luckily for us, no one aboard had crossed the ecuator before, so there were no unpleasant initiation rituals.

Along the passage to Ecuador, I bid farewell to my evil watch. He was buried at sea in the SS Beep, a paper boat of the shoddiest construction. In the watch´s manual, an alarm isn´t even mentioned, but I assure you one existed. That thing would go off at completely random times during the day and not shut up for many long minutes. Then it would start up again and go off once or twice, then stop and resume ten minutes later. More than likely it had some salt water in its innards, but I´d rather just say it was evil through and through. From its cheap black rubber band to its smug blue face, the thing sustained itself on the breath of my sighs and the scent of my pain ... when it wasn´t just sitting at the bottom of my locker.

After those two momentous events, and a lot of movement over water, we arrived safely and soundly in Salinas, Ecuador.

2 Unrelated Things

1. When we spent the night in Gatun Lake, in the middle of the Panama Canal, we moored on this giant buoy. Brian took this excellent picture of me, looking like a dead elf, sleeping next to it. I don´t know why it´s so funny to me. Maybe because the buoy sort of looks like a boob.

2. Everything´s super dramatic when you´re fixing something at the bow or the mast and that can be amusing.

I was just thinking about this day when we were hove-to and Aaron and I were trying to get the bowlight working. The bow was smashing up and down. We´re getting smashed with waves. The wind is only blowing 30, but I walk like an 80-yr old to the bow, clipped in, hair flying around, arms full of tools. "AAAAARON, TAKE THIS SCREWDRIVEEERRRR," I say. "IT WILL HELP YOUUUU WITH YOUR TASSSSSSSSSSK."
"OKAYYYYYYY," he says. "THANNNNNKS. CAN YOU GET ME A SMALLER ONE, SOME WD40, PAPER TOWELS, A ZIP TIE, AND WAIT, HOLD THIS" "OKAYYYYYYYYY. BE RIIIGHT BACK." ... it´s just that everything´s so noisy and wet that you can´t help but feel like you´re out there saving the world. Same goes for being up the mast. I think the lesson here is: Discomfort plus hard of hearing = drama/extreme feelings of usefulness.

For the record, I think the world could be saved with a zip tie and some WD40.

I Have a Button Mushroom on My Ankle, or Adventures in the World’s Colon

Today I decided to take action RE: the growing, pussing entity that has camped out just above my left heel. But before I could take care of that pretty little piece of business, I had to revisit the optometrist and his receptionist, Xiorhara. I had assured Xiohara I would be back at 10am, Calle 11 Ave Melendez, Colon, Panama. I had pre-paid.

The reason for my first visit to Optica Sunshine was directly related the swift removal of eyewear from my face and placement of it into the ocean. My glasses were knocked off by an indifferent Mr. Thirsty. I had been wielding our dinghy bailer with brilliant, but needless zeal. His long straw smacked me in the face and sent my glasses into the deep. After two attempts by both Aaron and myself, somebody suggested, “Let’s discontinue our efforts to free-dive 50 feet to look for glasses that have fallen in or around a 70-foot radius of the stern.”

So that had been Wednesday’s adventure – finding an optometrist in Panama. I held my fingers up to my face to look like glasses. I said things like, “lunettes, lenets, lenses, glasses, glass, can’t see, no see.” Ryan said things in Spanish to the cab driver. At some point, we were at a McDonald’s. Then we showed up at Sunshine Optica and I entrusted my vision to Dr. Humberto Schouwe. He looked at the unopened contact lens I had brought. He nodded. He sat me down. I read letters to him in English and he spoke to me in Spanish. He confirmed my prescription and sent me out to Xiohara.

I tried on all kinds of frames. The choices were limited. I could go artsy, or I could go 80s. Ryan suggested basketball goggles. I narrowed the field to two and made Ryan try them on so I could see what they looked like. Then I chose these black ones and paid the $70 it cost for the exam, lenses and frames. I did a little dance in my head and agreed to pick them up Saturday, today, at 10AM.

It was determined, after this remarkable upfront success with the optometrist, that I would be fine to healthcare-treasure hunt in Colon today without a bodyguard or translator. After a $1 cab ride, I showed up at Dr Schouwe’s door and waited to be buzzed in. Part of me wished I had asked the driver to wait until I was let in. There were questionable loiterers all over the place. In a moment, Xiohara buzzed. She rose from her desk to greet me when I walked in. She met me in the middle of the store and hugged me with a large smile on her face. She made a kissing sound by my cheek. She was glad I made it back. I was glad, too, though somewhat alarmed that she would take relief in knowing I had come to retrieve my pre-paid glasses.

After retrieving the glasses, I set off to find a taxi. Hearing “Mack the Knife” in my head, my eyes darted from shady character to shady character. I scuttled along, trying to make myself as invisible and uninteresting as possible, while also searching frantically for a taxi. I waved to two without passengers. Their drivers shook their heads at me and drove past. Confused, I waved down a third. Luckily, he pulled to a stop. “Hola. Central Medical Caribe, por favor,” I said.

I passed off another $1 bill to the cabbie and waited to be buzzed into the emergency room. The inside of the building was typical, as hospitals go, but had an odd sense of being less clean than U.S. ones, though I saw nothing to give me this impression. I presented myself at the desk. In my best charades and broken Spanish, and with a little help from my friend Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, I explained to the receptionist that I needed to see a doctor. Really though, I shouldn’t give myself too much credit for communication. I think the pussing, crusty red welt on my foot spoke the international language of Nasty quite fluently.

The girl walked me down the hall. People talked to one another, looked at me, pointed at me, pointed down hallways. I was sat down in a waiting area. Less than a minute later, Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, a doctor and I discussed my condition.
“Hongo,” said the doctor. “Blahbitty blah ba blah blah hongo,” she said.

I provided her with a blank look followed by a concerted effort to shuffle pages.
“Hongo.” She said again, deliberately. Obviously she was following the classic theory, We Don’t Speak the Same Language, Which Means You Understand My Language When I speak Slowly.
She took Latin American Spanish Phrasebook from my hands and flipped to the Food section. I gestured to the back of the book where the dictionary is, but she found what she was looking for. “Hongo.” She pointed to the English definition: Button mushroom. I immediately pictured a large white plate with one sautéed morel being placed in front of me by Sascha Cohen with a French accent. No, no, button mushroom. … pause… “FUNGUS!” I said. “Si! Si!” Never before had I expressed excitement at the discovery of a fungal infection on my body. Extraneously, never before have I had one.

The doctor wrote a prescription and instructed me to lie down so she could clean the affected area. “Gracias,” I said and looked over the prescription. I wondered if it could have any interactions with doxycycline, my anti-malaria drug of choice. I pulled out Latin American Spanish Phrasebook and went to town for about 5 minutes. Judging from the doctor’s varied, but eager interest in my explanations, I think her responses went something like this. “You are already on this medication?!” “YOU HAVE MALARIA?!?!” “Oh. Si! No, no problem.”

Moments later, I was back in the waiting room, laying down a MasterCard and signing my name to a receipt for $40. They called me a cab, buzzed me out and told the driver to take me to a pharmacy. It was an efficient little operation and aside from the credit card slip, the only paperwork required was printing my name on the prescription pad. The taxi after the pharmacy came quickly and I was soon in the safety of a moving vehicle. We drove through Colon en route to the final destination: home. I had successfully obtained my new glasses and been treated for a fungal infection. Thursday was coming up roses.

In Colon, all of the buildings are in ruins and the gutters carry a stench that smells like real excrement, not just that general bad smell you say is poo when you lack a better description. The street vendors sell what looks to be lottery tickets, in addition to rolls of plastic tablecloths that can be cut to a size of your choosing. The fruit and food stands look like armored trucks, but are buzzing with flies. On another day, I had bought a new bathing suit and handed my $8 to a man behind bulletproof glass. The people don’t seem poor or hungry, but there is desperation between the lines.

My taxi pulled into the yacht club drive. It was around 2pm and the adventure concluded. When I got back to Aldebaran, I climbed aboard, displaying my fungus cream, pills and glasses with triumphant, over-the-head gestures to a crowd of clapping crewmates. Just kidding.

Kuna Country

If a picture were drawn from the collective dreams people have of paradise and landscaped from canvas to reality, the earth and water sketched into life would be the sand and palm trees of the San Blas Archipelago. It´s almost a caricature of paradise.

After a weekend with the San Blas’ inhabitants, the Kuna Indians, at their yearly independence festival, life in the islands was demystified. We ate in their huts-- hearty, piles of plantains in white broth, fried fish and lots of coffee. Their children pulled on the Beards’ beards, and we hung out in their hammocks. Even the most brawny of their men came up to our chests. By the end of it, we had friends and we had enemies.

The best part was the independence festival. The Kuna revolution from Panama was in 1925 and we relived nearly every second of it in a three-day reenactment ceremony. At one point, we were herded into a large gathering in one of the big huts. The men and women were split up, so I sat alone on the far side of the room, a literal foot taller than my neighbors. We did not share a common language, and thus had little to say to one another. However, though wrong I could be, I think I felt a bit accepted, maybe even liked by the end of it. I watched with respect and took pictures of them to show them on my camera. They laughed and handed me hand-rolled cigarettes which I accepted, but re-gifted.

Later, we returned to our friend and guide, Raul’s house. We paid him and bought him some drinks. Then he became rather friendly and made many joking comments about leaving his wife to go to Panama City. The neighbors threw breadfruit at our host’s house, presumably angry that he had made more money from us in a few days than they make in two or three months. Things seemed smooth by the time we left, as Raul and his wife embraced and Aaron told her not to worry, we’d ditch Raul and save her if necessary.

A touch of the 'venge is a small price to pay to see the Ciudad Perdida

There is a different sort of green to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, Colombia. The jungle is bright, but it seems to carry a rich darkness. Below the palm fronds and lazy, fanning leaves are the sounds of tucans, insects and the cracking of dying branches. The guerillas and paramilitary plot and idealize. the Tyrones indians lie mute, their hard work and craftsmanship about the landscape- glanced at, taken home in photographs and memorialized in traveling memmories to be re-told later in emails, on websites, to families and on dates. And the Kogi indiginious people farm the land, cultivating the hillsides for their bounty: coffee, chocolate, pineapple, bananas, plantain and sugar cane. Their children yield machetes, wade about in rubber boots, and carry on the ways of their ancestors. The tourists take it all in.

The Ciudad Perdida is one of the most awe-inspiring places I've ever been. I sat on one of the terraces for hours trying to cement those feelings in my memory forever. Seeing a place and knowing you'll leave it is like seeing a face and knowing you won't see it again soon. You try to study its individual features, what you like about it- the dots that form the painting, but you can almost already feel it fading. I'm really here. This is in front of me right now. For the majority of my life, this will not be facing me, posing. Come home with me, trees. Come a little closer, leaves. Let my brain study your bark and hold it in my taste buds so I'll have this flavor forever.

I want one

I'm not sure if you can tell, but this gear-shift boot is a fuzzy Colombian flag with GOOGLY EYES. When I saw this, I got so excited, I didn't notice that the rest of the cab was made of tin foil, electrical tape and dirt.

When I heard the news, I almost spewed Oatmeal with pumpkin pie spice and walnuts all over the galley

...but that was because we were in a gale 90 miles off the coast of Colombia. It had nothing to do with the news.

The boat was rocking and rolling, the winds were up to 40 knots and the men were topside, vomiting. (Not really. Only one of them puked and that was in the sink, but you can see how I'd want to say that for effect.) I opened the satellite email to send tidings of safety, and holy smokes, I got an email with HUGE news. It turns out, the man who used to cut my Lego men's heads off with his Lego men's chainsaws has declared himself fit to have and to hold, 'till death do they part, the lovely and amazing girlfriend he's so courted for the past half-decade or so: My brother is engaged! Instead of spewing, I immediately started crying.

Happiness bodyslammed seasickness and I wandered topside to share my thoughts with the crew. "I wonder where they're going to have the wedding," I said. "I wonder what the ring looks like!" "I wonder what color towels they're going to get and if they'll be monogrammed."

"My brother is getting his drivers' license," said Brian. "Oh, what? It's not family news time?"

"What should I get them? I think I'll get them a present from Ecuador instead of The Pottery Barn. What do you think? What about Colombia? Think I'll find anything good in Colombia?"

Feet from my yabbering head, the waves crashed over the deck sending buckets down my jacket. I gasped periodically as cold, wet sea flowed from my neck to my ankles through the complicated infrastructure of foul-weather gear.

"Can you believe it?" I asked. "This is the end of an era! We're really growing up."
"Yep. Wow," said Aaron.

I looked at the black waves and their white hats. A wave crashed into the cockpit, pouring me a salty drink, shutting my valve of useless thoughts. Wow. They're really getting married. Buck-teeth and double-bridged glasses, cuff-links and a white lab coat, kickball with the neighborhoood kids and cycling races-- the years have added together and their sum is somewhere along these waves. It's ever changing, rolling up and down with the wind and the currents. The area under them and the distance in front of them will always evolve.

Aldebaran bobbed around. "Odysseus," said the ocean, "calm your thoughts of forever." Crash. Splash.

"Our whole family is going to be there!" I realized. "And the flowers will be so pretty."

You ok, baby?

In the Caribbean, "You Okay, baby?" means, "Hello. How are you today?"

In the few fleeting moments before our departure for Colombia, I would like to jot down a few bright memories from Antigua. Hopefully, I can elaborate later.

1. When I heard some interesting music blasting from a bar in St. John's, I asked the bartender what it was. She walked me outside and said several things I didn't understand. Then we walked down an alley to a big gray building where she seemed to think I could find music. It was closed. She told me to come back tomorrow. I had to work the next few days, but I returned to St. John's to shop at the market this morning. I debated going back to the bar. It was apparent when I had gone the last time that they didn't see many white girls. They especially didn't see any white girls who wanted to buy the music they blasted out of 4 foot square speakers. I had to go back. She was there, and had made me a mix CD of her favorite songs. She didn't think I'd come back, but she understood when I told her I had to work. We're pretty much best friends now.

2. On the bus ride back, (sidenote: buses in Antigua are about as big as a large van, but fill with about 40 people and are sometimes driven by people who look like Ali G) I learned about street names. The bus had emptied as we neared the yacht club and the driver struck up a conversation. "What's your name?" "ASHLEY!" I shouted above the lawnmower-like engine. "What's yours?"
"Robert," he told me. Then he asked what my street name was. "What's that?" I asked.
"It's what they call you on the street."
I wasn't sure if this man thought I was a prostitute; a prostitute wearing a baggy long-sleeved UV-protectant shirt.
"I don't have one," I said. "What's yours?"
"Blood," he said.
"Do you make up your own street name, or does somebody give you one?" I asked.
"NO! You can't make up your own," he said.
"How did you get to be called Blood?"
"Once I was hit by a car. The other guy everyone called Blood wasn't around anymore, so they called me Blood."

When I was leaving the cab, I asked Blood to give me a street name.
"Ok, your name is Second Time. Because you've ridden the bus twice." The bus, like the bar, isn't used to people without street names.


3. Another quick note -- Running in Antigua was amazing: the hills, the flowers in yards, the expanses of space, beach and water. On my way back yesterday, tired from the hills and afternoon sun, I finally caught sight of masts poking up over the countryside. "Ahh, home," I thought.

The Life Aldebaran

Similar to the old saying, "Cruising is fixing boats in paradise," a new axiom could be made about what we do: "Working on Reach the World is working in ridiculous situations."

Evidence:
1. Trying to write on passage = vomiting all over the galley sink. Chunks cling to the sides of the sink and slide down slowly. You can calm your flaming esophagus with the sight of a purple sunset.

2. If at all, bars are the only places with available outlets. This means:
A. Writing for kids to a soundtrack of Shakira, Kanye West and the Pussy Cat Dolls
B. Viewing "intimate" and "expressive" dancing just a stride from this very computer
C. Karaoke night: There's nothing like, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at the 6 billion decibel level when you're trying to make The Arecibo Radio Frequency Telescope interesting to 9-year-olds.
D. Someone just went by doing this intense, but very fluid air-guitar/shuffle/leap across the room.

These are memorable times. It was the air-guitar that started me thinking. We might as well relish the times we can carry our computers across dry land to a place with plentiful electricity. If that comes with a partly-out of tune, "Hotel California," and dozens of yachties, those are the breaks. Soon, it'll be back to the sea, and the next educational sojourn. Too soon, it'll be back to town; back to the 'race. You know, the place where cheeseburgers are accessable, but the tuna is expensive.

Guadeloupe, vous etes mignon

Many Guadaloupeans do not speak English. This means they are more tolerant of foreigners' feeble attempts at communication. One can converse in french and receive a smile instead of the traditional Parisian scowl.

Dear Guadeloupe, Thanks for the good coffee, french cheese and opportunity to practice ma francais. Also, thanks for the euros that are now going to sit in my wallet for months. Sincerely, Ashley

We left Guadeloupe early to get the transmission fixed in Antigua.

My bus driver looked like Ali G

This picture was taken when my bus driver left the glorified van to say hello to his girlfriend en route from Falmouth Harbor to St. John's, Antigua. I didn't mind the stopover because it enabled me to catch a photo of him in his natural habitat.

Quick notes

I'm doing work at a local restaurant right now. It has good music and that reminds me of the radio in Puerto Rico. I'm not sure why, but they really like sound effects over there. When the DJ comes on there is a cornucopia of background noise. Automatic-weapon gunfire from a firing squad in an echo chamber greets inter-galactic warfare and synthesizer-generated drums behind an enthusiastic and expedited speaker. "Dooj dooj tsewww voom Ra-ra-ra-rah dio Pweerto Rico! Feliz Navidad. Doooj doooj tsewww." Yeah, I don't really know what the deal is. Then the music comes on and every song sounds exactly the same. I love Puerto Rico, I really do. I just don't understand who's engaging in combat at their radio stations or why. Maybe that's not just my business.

You know what is my business? What parts of my undergarments are unknowingly exposed. I can be very oblivious and this is something I need to work on. People say "Oh, you're traveling with all guys. They're going to look out for you." Umm. Yes and no. Yesterday, we had dropped off our laundry and I only had one shirt left. I had never worn it before and I don't really look in the mirror on the boat. All day, I walked around exposing part of a particularly flamboyant bra. "Everyone is SO friendly here!" I said. "Hey guys, I got a free purse at the sail maker's!" --- They responded: Yeah, I'll bet you did. Look in a mirror. Ahh, lovely.

On a similar note, when we were on Saba Rock, I was carrying several bags to relocate tables for a better place to work when my wrap skirt unraveled leaving me with little choice but to display my glorious sailing team underwear to an entire restaurant full of people. So as I was turning around in an attempt to cover up, I TRIPPED and FELL on my FACE. Luckily, most people were consuming food at the time and were actually not watching my every move. In the words of the batender, "Hey nice necklace, do you want some tequila?" These kinds of things just happen to me. One thing's for sure, I'm going to wear a full-body baggy jump suit when we get to Colombia. Yes, that's right. Full-body. Baggy. Jump. Suit. Maybe burlap so I look especially unfriendly and potato-like. I'm not saying potatoes are unfriendly, per se.

Things I Like. Also, my Death List

Things I like:
1. What I do
2. Hose clamps
3. Zip ties
4. Jumping off the boat from a halyard
5. Our tiny dinghy and its 15 horse engine
6. What I will do in the future
7. The people at Tropical Sails


Death List
1. The Gusher 10 manual bilge pump, its bad attitude and all of its kin
2. Mold on my straw hat
3. When people growl while working