Archive for August, 2007

Oh yeah, Jodie Foster left along time ago. But one could hope. So yesterday began the middle of the telescopic and sometimes myopic attempt to reach the Arecibo Observatory. Of course this is the place that discovered the first extra-solar planet but was also used as a film location in “Contact” and in a recent James Bond film. No wonder. This is a larger than life place if there ever was one. The radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory is the largest on the planet and is part of the Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University along with the National Science Foundation. The telescope has a 1000 ft dish and a 1,000 tone antenna clashing wildly against the dense Puerto Rican mountains. You can visit their website at www.naic.edu.The whole adventure started when I contacted the director asking permission to film. He was most agreeable however, there was going to be a new director. I would have to contact him. Every attempt to reach him did not work out. Ok then, I’d just go film what I could. So we set aside a couple days stop in Arecibo along the way. Finally when the day came, my partner was sick and I did not have access to a camera. Finally yesterday I was on my way. However, I had to pick up some gear. Of course I got out the door late and not knowing how long it would take, was late to pick up my gear. By the way as much as I’m enjoying driving my rented Ford Explorer, driving in PR is quite the challenge! So I waited at another location and in the end we never met up. So we took off for the telescope and ended up too late. Yikes! The next option was to stay near by and then go the next morning. Finally with cameras in hand we arrived this morning. I took a good hours worth of footage to show you later and got some fun little souvenirs to boot.

 Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me
- counting crows

I think I slept well last night. That’s actually quite an amazing statement. If there was one major deprivation I dealt with during the CTA trip is was sleep. When I arrived in Puerto Rico I was lucky enough to spend a couple days in a nice little hotel in San Juan. I slept like a baby. But, as you would expect soon the nice, comfortable bed and quiet rooms were soon a thing of the past. Especially after I did my Harold Loydd routine down some stairs and did some serious damage to my ribs & pulled a couple muscles under my right arm. It was impossible to lay any other way but flat on my back. I could not lay on the right side because the pressure was just too much and pain would run in all directions. If I would lay on my left side, gravity would pull downward on my ribs and muscles and a dull pain would grow into a deep throb.On a trip like this you do not get beds. You sleep wherever you land. Mostly in your tent on the sand or pulled back into the forest. Sometimes on floors. Many times we slept in or near a town where security was always in mind. We often slept with one eye open. Every sound would cause you to come to sharp attention. Then in a few minutes you would drift off a bit until the next disturbance. Paddling each day would keep the pain of my fall quite alive and it would nag at me each night.

When we got around the corner of the south coast we came to a touristy town where I decided to buy a hammock, a device native to Puerto Rico. That night though I slept on the bow of an old green boat while music played and people milled around. Oddly I did sleep a bit that night. The night I finally did get to try the hammock I slept a bit, in fits. But of course when a police officer is shining a flashlight at you in the middle of the night it does not help you sleep. LOL! The picture above gives an idyllic impression of sleeping outside in my hammock. It was a beautiful morning. However, sleeping in such a bent position made paddling the next day painful again as my ribs complained with each stroke.

Of course when not worried about security or being tortured by a plague of mosquitoes & sand flys, and when the pain was not so much in the forefront, my crazy head would take it’s turn running through thoughts of home, dealing with some of the crazy issues that came up in the trip or I brought with me from the past, plans for the next day or reliving a rough day on the water. Sleep again would not come easily. I can’t count how many nights I was just waiting for 4:30am which was the arbitrary time I set to get up and start packing up for the next day. Those people who can sleep through an atomic bomb blast are the lucky ones.

On a trip like this don’t expect that the paddling will make you sleep like a rock each night. Exhaustion is not always enough.

About 7 hours of video sit in a bag waiting for attention. Another 30 minutes sits in my camera. Sitting here today I think of the story I want to tell. What was my original impression? What did I think I would see? What would the trip be like? Who would I meet along the way? What story would I want to tell?Today my thoughts are still floating out there in the aether. I know I’m bothered by many things I’ve seen and impressed and amazed by others. I know the seas and the people were nothing like what I had expected. Yet in both cases I should not have been surprised. The sea is the sea and people are people no matter where in the world you stand. We are always more the same than different. For both good and bad.

Yesterday I walked the streets of Old San Juan. I stood where I could see a fort, a cemetery, a tourist market and great poverty just by turning my head. I stood by the graves of governors, paupers and revolutionaries. I saw needles on the beach. I drank coffee in an open air cafe, I gave change to a begger on church steps. We fed pigeons with corn sold by an old woman who smoked big Cuban cigars. I tipped they guy who took it upon himself to find parking spaces for tourists. I spent a half hour in a traffic jam. I photographed pink flowers on a purple wall.

One thing I know. Truth is not easy to come by. It is not written in a brochure. Every beautiful jungle is littered with danger. Some trees harbor snakes. “Paradise” as Lori Anderson once said, “is exactly like where you are right now. . . . Only, much, much better.” Film at 11.

Photos from Old San Juan – Click Here

For the last few days before my flight back to Wisconsin, I’ve been out filming the solid part of the island. From this point forward you can join our regularly scheduled program at my Quixotica Blog. Click Here!

Don’t believe what you hear
Don’t believe what you see
If you just close your eyes
You can feel the enemy
When I first met you girl
You had fire in your soul
What happened your face
Of melting in snow
Now it looks like this

And you can swallow
Or you can spit
You can throw it up
Or choke on it
And you can dream
So dream out loud
You know that your time is coming ’round
So don’t let the bastards grind you down

No, nothing makes sense
Nothing seems to fit
I know you’d hit out
If you only knew who to hit
And I’d join the movement
If there was one I could believe in
Yeah I’d break bread and wine
If there was a church I could receive in
’cause I need it now

To take a cup
To fill it up
To drink it slow
I can’t let you go
I must be an acrobat
To talk like this
And act like that
And you can dream
So dream out loud
And don’t let the bastards grind you down

Oh, it hurts baby
(What are we going to do now it’s all been said)
(No new ideas in the house and every book has been read)

And I must be an acrobat
To talk like this
And act like that
And you can dream
So dream out loud
And you can find
Your own way out
You can build
And I can will
And you can call
I can’t wait until
You can stash
And you can seize
In dreams begin
Responsibilities
And I can love
And I can love
And I know that the tide is turning ’round
So don’t let the bastards grind you down
-U2 (listen to Acrobat)

No one is a good witness at a car accident. People are pretty good at hearing the “bang” but of course before the big noise, they are usually thinking about other things and are not aware of quite why the incident happened. Their perceptions are bent by personal attractions, emotions, beliefs, environment and many other factors that can, distort their observations. This of course is why these witnesses are often deemed unreliable in court. Lawyers can pick’em apart.It’s like the water cooler discussions over the Scott Peterson trial or O.J. Simpson for that matter. People are quick to make judgments and argue them over the cooler. “He is guilty cuz he’s a jerk”. Well, that’s why we have judges and juries. Without impartial judgment we would suffer at the hands of lynch mobs. Justice is not in human nature. Very few people are truly capable of un-emotional, un-bias impartiality. Thus we fed Christians to the lions, burned “witches”, hate “outsiders”, suffer racism, sexism and all those other “isims” we ramble on so much about. Sad, but it’s the word we live in. Sometimes we have to accept that the “herd” is truly “crazy” as the cartoon once said.

The “Chasing the Ana” expedition for me was, in it’s infancy, about testing my mind as a “kayaker”. I mean, I just know too many expedition paddlers. They all take on such seemingly crazy risks. Yet, as a kayaker with some experience under my belt I know that a good paddler has done so much to mitigate that risk through training and equipment and such. Iceland can be much less risky than the interstate IF you are prepared and skilled. (Go Freya!!!) Going to Puerto Rico was a “baby step” in my mind. A place were I could stick my toe into expedition paddling, certainly not. . “pushing the extreme”. Yet as I said in the CTA blog, the sea is the sea. Some moments were pretty bloody extreme. We would laugh amongst ourselves and call CTA the “Resort to Marina Tour”. And some days we did get to find nice landings. Yet even then landing in one of these bastions of opulence & wealth, we often found no energy other than to eat and find a corner to sleep in.

In the end, CTA became not so much about testing my mind as a “kayaker”, but through the many hours of silent paddling, tight focus, exhaustion, pain, sleeplessness, fears, adrenaline & disappointments I found CTA became, for me, more about testing my mind as a human. Re-evaluations, observations, multiple futures, foggy grey pasts. So much time spent inward is bound to effect us. Certainly this will be one of the challenges to come after the expedition. Making sense and making choices. Often the hardest question to answer on any given day as you slide up to the shore is, “how do you feel?”. You sit there contemplating swirls of imagery and emotions that swirled through your mind stroke by stroke; the waves, the surf, the sun, voices, wind, home, buiness, friends, love, loss, acquaintances, childhood and a myriad other muslin thoughts. . . ”

How do I feel?

Well, I just don’t know. “

The sea does not care about last days. It goes on living and breathing long after we have turned to dust. We are of no consequence. Our petty accomplishments mean nothing to the sea.

We launched for the very last day from under the shadows of condominiums and just north of an old cemetery that now seemed so oddly out of place in this tourist’s playground on the outskirts of San Juan. I paddled out and swept my paddle on top of a small wave to again turn west. I looked over at Taino, now with his canoe paddle perched on the deck of his orange impex kayak. I thought about how different we were as people and as men. This was in many ways a solo journey for both of us. One we paddled together. Our reasons, our experiences, even our paddle styles were very different. Yet we could share the joy accomplishing our goals, traveling the same roads for a time, even if we would get off at different exits.

The ocean floor north of Puerto Rico comes in from the deepest trench in the Atlantic, then quickly rises to the island. The sea builds quickly before slamming into the rocky shoals guarding the pristine beaches. As the old forts came into view the waves began to steepen. 8 foot waves became common with 10 to 12 footers beginning to show themselves. Ahead we could see the ocean breaking on the many hidden rocks. The sound of the water crashing into stone always causes a bit of a shiver in my mind. Often you want to cling to the shore, but you must go further into the sea for calmer water. We paddled north, further into the open ocean. Beyond the green water and into the midnight blue the flow turned from south to west the waves eased into a quick but relaxing 4-5 foot sea. We moved light lightning on what I estimated to be a 3 kt current and were soon just outside of San Juan Harbor, the busiest in the Caribbean.

San Juan Harbor is deep but it’s mouth is only a bit over a mile wide. The east side was bordered San Felipe del Morro upon high stone cliffs, the west side by rocky waters and rocky shores. We paddled right up to the edge just as a large cargo ship eased out behind the cover of the fort. We paddled slowly giving the behemoth time to pass, and then we began our crossing. The water inside the channel was wild and jumping densely after the passing of the ship. We worked our way through a 4-6 bubbling cauldron catching the occasional bigger wave that would overpower everything else to push us further across the channel. To our right two large cargo ships passed, the one we had just waited for and another that was now on its way in. As we reached the other side of the channel the water swallowed again and the waves rose.

With just over a mile left we crossed the last big shallow bay. The sea came into us from our back quarter at 8-10 feet and quite steep. Still they weren’t breaking and we could easily just ride the escalator up one side, then with a quick flick and a couple quick strokes, race down the other allow gravity to do the work. We approached the last little island where we would turn and ride into the protected beach at Punta Salinas. This time around we would have to get across the breakers. Rain was spitting down from a storm that had been shadowing us all day. As was our habit, we both chose our own lines through the breakers and with a combination of surfing and back paddling we soon slid into the relaxed 2 foot rollers of the calm bay. I heard the voice of a crazy woman yelling on the back of a racing ATV taking an angle to meet us on shore. In front I could see the yellow “KayakScuba.com” tees standing out starkly against the dark trees behind the beach. I paused and let Taino go in first. I was not quite ready to leave the sea. I sat out and rolled and played for a few moments, then let the surf slide me in.

Many more stories to tell yet for the moment I want to also thank our sponsors, Carrie & Jose for traveling all over the island to provide water, food or whatever else we needed. Also for putting us up before and after the trip. It would have been a much harder task without their constant support. Special thanks to Jose as well for bringing back my gear, driving me to the airport and letting me set up a tent on his roof. Thanks to Nydia K. for her help and driving us around as well. Also thanks to Yvonne for posting pics, bringing supplies, and letting us fill her garage with sand. ( 4 buckets I’m told). Teamwork is the only reason an adventure like this works. Sure, you can go it alone. . but it’s just not the same.

Now. . . WHO was afraid of the sharks?

18 days at sea, and yes I have completed the circumnavigation of my homeland Boriken (Puerto Rico). It was the trip that I had anticipated and much more. The north coast was a challenge with quartering swells and winds, the west was dead calm; no current, but intense heat, and gunfire! The south was headwinds and more head winds and the east was beam seas all the way back to the north which bought those nice North East winds and large swells again. I have seen the coast and know the waters of my beloved Boriken and with the pace of the Indio I can truly say I have accomplished my goals. Now enough of me I would like to thank the following Nydia Kein for her friendship and support. To the gang at KayakScuba.com Carrie Media and her Fiance José Quiñones who have gone well out of their way to take care of me and I didn’t have to ask. To their children; Jose, Maria, Francisco and Joaquin. Truly a loving and sharing family. A special message to mi gente my people on the island in the various locations that we meet you were all exceptional I am truly proud. Thank you also to Derrick & Yvonne and finally Wendy Killoran who picked me for this trip.
Adios and Bomatum
Who is afraid of the surf?
Taino Almestica
Hijo de Aibonito.