tbaroundtheworld

Most of you who know me might say that I am the kind of guy that can make a decision. And usually not a bad one; I collect the facts, I mull them over and I decide. This applies to everything from what bike to buy to whether term life insurance is good for married couples not yet out of their mid-twenties. I can get my mind made up. So you might think that the never ending tooth pain I’ve had over these past six weeks would be a strong enough suggestion that I might need to do something about seeing the dentist. By way of a little history, before moving to China last month I set a sort of regional record for the most voluntarily self-inflicted pain of the medical nature by having two crowns replaced in one week. I lost count, but I’m pretty sure I had more shots of Novocain than could be tallied on all of my digits, and I’m not missing any. But my goal, the product of careful consideration and pondering, was to avoid an air-evac to Beijing for root replacement therapy where melamine se...

After another shabby tropical sunset characterized by good Green Flash (a refraction phenomenon where the green/blue wavelengths linger a bit longer than red/yellow and a flash is seen as the sun sets), a sky full of golden rays and a mysterious dark shaft of anti-light, we went off to satisfy one of our annual traditions – dinner at Blackie’s. Blackie’s is one of the nicer places in town, a round building with a palapa roof and a decent menu. They used to have a guard in the parking lot that did little more than wave you in and out and then collect a tip for his careful space management. I used to fix him up pretty well monetarily, but he’s not been around for the last couple of years. The inside of the restaurant is really what makes it worthwhile – a giant mural of the local landmark – Tetakawi – and a wall of interesting paintings and photographs included that particular Frida Kahlo of her with the monkeys sitting on her shoulders. There is also some sort of stylized representation...

The surf was rough again today; the trailing edge of the storm was now affecting the weather about the same way that the leading edge had a couple of days ago. Crashing waves meant it was too hard to safely put the two person kayak into the ocean, so I opted to take my single person Folbot Cooper out into the estuary for some peaceful paddling. This boat is really ideal – it can easily be carried by a single person, well, a big strong person like me, it has great performance in the water and it’s even easier to put together than the two person Greenland. It’s a bit more of a challenge in terms of handling, acting much more like a traditional sea kayak in terms of speed and stability, but in idle waters, it’s simply a nice boat to float around in. My Lovely Wife was kind enough to help me carry it around back, and even though I could have easily just thrown it over my shoulder, big strong guy that I am, I welcomed the help knowing full well I’d be lugging it alone on the return trip. I ...

Today day was a rainy day on the beach and so one of reading, wandering around in the scrub looking for those last few birds, walking through a big spider web and having to remove its owner from my leg and listening to another vacationing couple have a big fight down by the sea wall. The big news though concerns water, more specifically the lack of it - somewhere down the line the water stopped flowing, or in the words of the gal at Rosa’s “Los machinas de limpiendo no estan trabajado.” It sounds to me like the water treatment plant was on the fritz. We discovered this at morning face washing time when the faucet provided the sound of rushing air instead of a stream of water. Checking at the office we were given a schedule which suggested that it would be available for an hour at a time, three times a day. All this brought to mind a week long water outage many years ago that gave us the term “sculptable hair” due to the condition of our coifs after 5 days on the beach without a shampoo...

Monday was boat building day. We have two kayaks, Folbot by brand and folding by style which allows us to store them in duffle bags instead of hanging them in our garage (which we don’t have.) Folbots are great, all the benefits and performance of a sea kayak without any of the real estate problems. Except for their one downside – they have to be put together. The Folbot designers took the traditional Inuit seal bone and walrus skin design and translated it to aluminum and Kevlar, creating a boat that can be broken down and carried over long distances across the ice cap (in our case the Sonoran Desert) from open water to open water (in our case from no water to the ocean). They really are the ideal solution for someone who kayaks once or twice a year and lives far from places to do so. But you can’t just grab them off the top of the SUV and drop them in the sea; you have to lay all the parts out on the Bermuda grass, find the instructions, build the thing and then drag them down to the...

The last two days have been devoted to a bit of exploration. This place changes so much that each time we’re here we devote a couple of hours to just cruising around looking at the sights and assessing how things are evolving. The weather was a bit marginal due to something going on out in the Gulf and so we decided to put the time to good use by sitting in the car. We started on Sunday, combining it with a trip down to Emplame to put the scope on whatever shorebirds might be scurrying about on the mudflats. On the first pass the tide was too high and the high areas were flooded and so after almost getting hit by a slow moving train making its way, unannounced, across the major north-south route through the Americas, we pulled behind a couple of open air restaurants to discover that one of our most reliable spots was now a shanty town dedicated to drying fish nets. So much for that, our best place for Marbled Godwits. We went back across the highway this time avoiding the now returning...

I’m making a play on words with the title for the next couple of Blogs using that from one of my favorite books -The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Back in 1940, John Steinbeck crewed out on a scientific survey expedition from Monterey to the Sea of Cortez. He told the story of visiting the ports and counting the fish, plants and mammals of the region, highlighting the ongoing destruction of the resources and the fishery in general. It’s a great little book if you have interest in the natural world and the region in particular, and I highly recommend it. Probably the most interesting thing about the drive from Tucson to San Carlos was the police and military presence in places we had not seen it before. There have always been a few checkpoints here and there, mostly on the way back and those have often grown with time from a single Federale sitting in a lawn chair in the center of the road to small towns with tire repair stations, convenience stores and tiny, smoky food shops serving up g...

It really didn’t take much to get me back in the swing of things, a dinner at Flying Star, a good night’s sleep and a ride on my Strong down the bike path in that fabulous New Mexico winter sunlight. I was a bit late getting off the ground in San Francisco and the ride home was a horrible combination of being cramped and trying to simultaneously find a way to stay awake and take a nap. I have to where I really hate that last leg on the Barbie Jet - it’s just punishment after being awake and in the air for so long. After visiting with my friendly United Baggage Expert and watching her shake her head at the tortuous trip my luggage had made, we went home. United called later that evening to thank me for have 1K status and to tell me that the bags would be in some time on Saturday. Well, Saturday rolled in and out and they called again to tell me that they’d be in on Sunday. Interestingly, the Barbie Jet flight on that day was delayed 3 hours, dredging up all kinds of unpleasant memories....

Another on-time departure for me and as luck would have it a nice window seat in Business. I ended up sitting next to a guy who worked with underwater robots, and he had some interesting stories about whale blubber food poisoning and trips to Vladivostok. It’s an interesting thing when ten hour flights feel short. I guess it means you have crossed some sort of tolerance threshold. Maybe it’s the comfort of Business or perhaps I am truly used to it, but it seems as the old days of panic attacks in the middle of the flight are over. Now I just look at my watch and go back to doing whatever it was I was doing. My question of the day has to do with airplane bathrooms. Why do people spend 10, 15 and 20 minutes in them? I got pipped at the line on my dash to one tonight which didn’t terribly bother me as it’s nice to stand up and have a stretch. But when the person never seems to come out, it sets you to wondering. And these are not isolated cases, it happens all the time. Honestly, it’s a 3...

Going home today – a better thought has never been thunk. And after doing my requisite packing, re-packing, unpacking, analyzing, packing and adjusting, I finally arrived at a luggage arrangement that I felt was capable of seeing me back to the west. Well, it is the west even though I will be traveling east. I have an interesting bunch of stuff today – my two trunks, nested inside each other and completely empty. My steady tree frog green Timbuk2 messenger bag is there for things requiring immediate access and I have my brand spanking new orange-lined black Binhao rolling carry-on bag from the Da Cai Shi market which by the way is a bit like saying “PIN number” or asking for the location of an “ATM machine.” Da Cai Shi literally translates as “Big Plant Market” which is an interesting name as it sells just about everything but. After one more late night meeting I crawled into bed and made it about 10 pages into the last chapter of my pirate book, Empire of the Blue Water, the story of ...

James told me today that Master Miao Xiang had called him last night to see if I had watched the DVD that one of the monks presented to me during our visit last week. He was wondering if the English was well translated and what I had thought of the production. So I sat and watched it this evening and it was pretty well done. It tells the story of how the monks live their daily lives and how the monastery had been purged by the Master years ago. The local farmers attempted to take it back by beating up the monks and driving truckloads of banned statues back into the temple. But the good side prevailed and now we are back at a period of peace. The most interesting part was the section on their annual pilgrimage which takes place around a lunar event each August 15th. The go off and wander the region talking to villagers and begging for food. The latter part was interesting to watch, for the number of people in what appear to be prosperous homes telling the monks to get off their property...

After my rather exciting weekend, it was sort of okay to ease back into my regular rut. Meetings bracketing the wee hours on both ends of the day, a hot noodle crock from my friend at the college cafeteria, hanging out in my monk’s cell trying to decide if peanut butter and jelly really counts as a dinner. In short, the exciting life of an expat. Having nothing to do but work allows you to put the daily activities in slo-mo and to observe the differences in life here in finer detail. For example, how pedestrians are treated by cars. It’s very simple, if a couple of pedestrians want to cross the sidewalk that you’re driving down, you cut them off. If a group of people on foot wants to cross a major on the green crossing sign, you put your shuttle bus into a tight u-turn and head straight into the crowd. If you are pulling out of a driveway and two people are halfway across it, you move to their outside and get out before they slow you down. If a dad is trying to get across the road with...

It was with stiff legs and a depleted spirit that I went down the lift to meet James for my Sunday adventure. I’d thought seriously about cancelling this trip to the famous temple – too tired from Saturday night – but I knew this was a big event for him and there was still the matter of the 100 pounds of rice and flour sitting in the trunk that he had picked up at his expense. I had tried to offer some financial help, but the translation was lacking and his response made the miss in communication evident, “Don’t worry Terry, they will think the gifts are from both of us.” In my last blog I didn’t give the whole tale from Saturday, leaving off yesterday’s story with the drive back. But there was more, and those events were partially the reason for my general lack of energy and motivation on this particular morning. After reaching Kai Fa Qu, it was decided that we would all go on to Dalian to have Sichuan Hot Pot. I thought I understood the whole hot pot idea, but it turns out I was wron...