Fly Away Paragliding

Yelapa 2011

2011-02-22T09:02:00.000-08:00

Yelapa 2011
There's is low fog bank over town tonight. A full moon above that layer illuminates sky in one pale glow. From the open front porch of our room, I can see across the bay to the far side of town. The lights blink and shutter at times as the power comes and goes. There is the sound of the ocean. It is not the far anyway, white noise ocean sound but the close up sound with the surges and ebbing of the surf as it crashes against the beach. The world seems very close. It's day five of the trip. Sleep is stalking me, I do not resist.
I got off the plane last Friday in PV. Darren, Trang, other Bill and I all flew together. The rest of the gang, Jeff, Sandy and Eck came in the next day. Us early birds, threw our bags in the hotel and scrambled off the fly the local site. After a hellish hike we arrived at the smallest most misbegotten launch ever. There is such a small area to take off that the launch has been extended by a metal mesh platform. The bitch is the platform doesn't follow the slope of the launch but flattens out. So just as you start to get your three steps running in, the glider unweights. The flights are ridge lift and light thermals capped hard by the inversion. The air is thick, warm, moist and full of frigate birds and turkey vultures.
That night we walked in town along the ocean. Venders were selling colorful junk for us tourist. There was a mime doing an act which we couldn't make sense of off. On the beach a man balanced huge rocks on each other. The disks in my lower back trembled in fear as I watched him lift hundreds of pounds and then slowly balance them.
The next morning I took the bus back to the airport to collect the rest of the group. After an eye ball rattling ride I stood in a thicket of arm waving taxi cab drivers looking for the new arrivals.
The next step was to get on the boat to Yelapa. These boats are maybe twenty five feet with outboard motors. They pull up on the beach, you roll up your pants, time the surf and make your best attempt to get in with the minimum of a soaking.
The boat ride is a little over a half an hour. The boat bangs over the water while the jungle drift by on shore. As you pass each bend of the coast line small beaches are revealed. Some with resorts, others small villages, others yet have the abandon wrecks of someone's dream house gone wrong. Rounding a steep point of land we drop into a deep bay. The mountains here a a few thousand feet tall. The town is sparsely scattered up high growing ever thicker as you descend to the ocean. There are roofs of palm fronds contrasting the ones of corrugated steel. No point of glass in the windows. The outside is not something you need to keep out here.
The boats bobs around in the surf as we, once again, time when to jump off. I wait till the wave recedes before leaping out to find my stuff on the beach that the boat driver has piled up. Our rooms are right on the beach. I'm two floors up.
After showers, unpacking, turning slowly in circles, talking... The group is ready to head out for dinner. A paraglider favorite is Pollo Bollo. So up the stairs, down the hill, into town we go. Once into town proper I'm hoping I remember the twist and turns through the maze of walk ways to the restaurant. There are no cars and if there were they wouldn't fit on the "roads" anyway.
A restaurant here is a roof with chairs and tables under it. There is a waist high wall on one end with a kitchen behind it. The garlic fish is a favorite. I like the breaded chicken. Dogs churn around the place being unobtrusive but just in case you have any spare food you wouldn't want you know it would have a home.
On the way back to our rooms I stop by Alan's place. Alan is a local pilot. Darren describes his place as Gilligans island with computers and flat screen tv. We say hi, catch up a bit and arrange for the truck to take us to launch the next day.
Morning here goes like this, breakfast at the Vortex over looking the lagoon. Pancakes are favorite. Seagulls spin around in the air crying, turkey vultures pick the unfortunate out of the debris on the shore.
The next part is hiking to the truck that will take us to launch. All through town we go. Over the bridge, past the bright blue post office and then follow the equally bright blue water pipe up the hill. (Watch out for donkey shit!)
The truck gets jammed full of paragliders and pilots and then is off up the hill. The road winds around sometime super steep at others merely steep. Bends and ruts, a few streams and rocks, dust flying, a dog chases us for a miles before the climb and dust snuffs out his ethusiasim.
Launch is over two thousand feet up. The beach is a far away strip of tan. Between the launch and the beach is a lot of jungle. Macaws go squawking past, one squawk per flap.
Launch is short. It's a big run and then you lift off and fly out over forest. You either find lift or not but either way it's beautiful flight. It's not been too lifty but people get to hang out for a bit. My flights were pretty lift free so I either tour over town and see the water fall or head out over the ocean and hang out.
After landing there's lunch to find before we hike up for the evening flight. The hike is a bit sweaty before you get to launch. We did find out that launching into a light right cross isn't a good idea. There was even a long time professional paraglider instructor who said it was a bad idea. After getting a couple of slow learners out of the trees (and gettin scratched and bitten and poked by thorns...) we had dinner.
It's been the coldest I've every seem it in Yelapa. For someone who had just left twenty eight below weather it wasn't very cold. Still one wrapped up a little in the evenings. In the morning you just needed to sit in the sun for a bit while eating breakfast and all was good. The first day of the SIV clinic started, as all such things do, with a briefing. All of us have towed before but a boat tow is a little different. The boat moves and so needs to be followed. There is trick to this. Next was going throughout the maneuvers that would be done on the first round of tows. These start simple and then advance till you decide to do the optional stuff or not. The basic idea is to put your glider into situations over water and then sort them out. The most important are the things that could happen to you as you become a more aggressive thermal pilot. So the first set of maneuvers were big collapses, pulling in half your wing and then flying it, keeping control. Then frontal collapses. For each set of maneuvers the pilot is towed to two thousand feet or higher. The collapses are pulled while you are way out over the ocean. If you do really goof something up you splash into the water. Some of the Mexican pilots threw their reserve parachutes for fun, but rising the salt water off your gear and getting it dry is not so much fun so no one in our group did this.
Brad G instructed this part of the trip. Brad is an excellent Arco and cross country pilot. He is a member of the U.S. National team for the worlds paragliding championships. Not only has he found time to be at the top of these two disciplines of the sport but also become an excellent instructor. Brad ran the group through the days maneuvers. A day is usually three tows with multiple maneuvers on the way down. Day two was more folding spindling and twisting of the gliders but this time with the speed bar on. The real cool thing was that you could fly back to the mountain after doing your maneuvers and soar till your next turn came up. That afternoon after we were done for the day certain members of the group were confronted with the margaritas of doom. Some simply stumbled around for a bit while others went missing till the next morning.
The third day the group split up a bit, some did stalls and asymmetrical spirals while others twisted up in their lines and tried to steer their gliders.
Bill Lhotta who has already sen through a number of SIV clinics worked on his helicopter. A maneuver where you get your wing to whirl around like a helicopter blade.
That night the margaritas of doom were avoided, seems everyone had had enough. It was jam night in town. The local musicians get together and put on a show. There was a whole lot of butt wiggling going on as the band ran through a quite reasonable rendition of Sympathy for the Devil.
We made a lot of new friends in the pilots from all over the world. There were people here to fly the sites, others who would be in the next clinic. We all hung out, told stories, danced or and drank as one pleased.
Our final flying day Darren and I headed up the hill in the truck to fly. Eck headed home on the boat. Jeff and Sandy tool another boat out to some islands. They have great pictures of whales breaching! Darren got an extra tow to work on his asymmetrical spiral. One of The guys in the next clinic really botched his maneuver and had to full stall out of in to recover. He was so frazzled after that he ended his flight with a spot landing on the lagoon.
I had one last flight off the lower launch. I was soaring around as the winds picked up but it got more and more cross so I landed.
There was one last dinner to be had. Brad joined us and so did Edith a gal pilot from Mexico city. Brad talked about about going the world championships, coming is year on Spain. We all talked about our flights, maneuvers and got one last chance to tease the consumers of the margaritas of doom. The night ended with salsa dancing in the moonlight at the yacht club.
The last morning we got breakfast and got on the boat. We headed out of the bay. On shore, far away on a balcony we saw Brad waving goodbye. We went around a bend and Yelapa disappeared behind us.

RIdge soaring '10

2010-07-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

It's the fourth day of the clinic. I'm driving to the site with the windshield wipers going to fend off the mist. A big jet materialises out of the gloom overhead, flaps downs, contrails spinning off the edges. It's setting up a landing approach, east to west. That's not a good sign as I'm looking for west winds, soaring, west winds.

This is the trip of anomalies. There's never been a trip before that has had three days of no soaring. Now there is. Then again I've never had a trip where most of the people's names start with "J". (Jeff, Joan, John, Jon, Johannes, Janel.) Or where twenty percent of the pilots are women. Or where so many people lose their phones.

I've gotten a bit despondent. The beach is where you go to escape flakey weather. Hot land, cold water, these are big powerful weather influencers. Even as I drove that morning I could see the branches of the trees bent from the trunks to the east. This is the sculpting of the westerly sea breeze day after day. It's what happens most of the time, west wind, why can't it happen now?

It's not that we're not flying at all. There are short flights off the dunes. People are working on spot landings and kiting skills. The group has been hiking at point Lobos and up into the redwoods. But as the organizer of this I'm starting to twitch. All these people have taken off time for work, bought plane tickets and paid me to take them ridge soaring but the weather won't let me do my job.

Janel was the victim of the weather's rude humors. She just getting back into flying after a serious accident. She could only get time off for half the trip. And it was, to the minute, the bad half of the trip. After days of short flights and hikes back up the dunes, Janel's last day had come. She hung out till she had to pack up and leave. The winds were still light. Twenty minutes later the winds finally starts to pick up. It's a bit cross and it's already late in the day so we decide to scramble down to the far end of the dunes where the curve of the bay would hopefully make the winds straighter. Wind chasing in usually a goose chase but this time it works. The more experienced pilots are launched immediately upon their arrival. I start getting the newer pilots flying. And then the phone rings. It's Janel, she's driving down the highway seeing us all in the air. If only the wind would have held off five more minutes at least she wouldn't had to see everyone else getting the flights the weather wouldn't give her.

The winds are medium strong so everyone is getting plenty of height and there's lots of room as the lift band is fat. I'm playing air traffic control. The new guys need a some time to fly without traffic and get use to soaring the dunes. I give each new pilot a piece of dune to fly alone, then one of the other pilots flies the rules of the right of way with them. I then send them further down the dunes to fly with the rest of the group before launching the next pilot. Soon everyone is up. The group is now spread out over the entire five miles of dunes. I keep the newer folks closer to my end of the dunes to keep an eye on things. I find a good place to sit in the sand and feel an incredible sense of relief. If nothing else, everyone will go home with a great flight. I give some occasional input over the radio as the flights turn from minutes to hours.

With the sun getting lower in the sky the winds lighten a bit. With five miles of dunes to explore some of the pilots have landed out on the beach. The dunes are not a consistent wall, there are gaps that have to be crossed to get to the next section. With the lighter winds some of the crossings are getting harder to make. After a bit all the newer folks are on the beach. This my chance to get in the air. I launch and head south along the dunes. I soon find the whole group, either airborne, packing up or hiking back. Bob is down on the beach. I see his back pack was left behind on launch. Hmmm.. Could I....? I swoop onto launch, pause for an instant to grab the bag between my feet, kangaroo launch back into the air, fly down to Bob and drop the pack.

Now the day is giving up and everyone is landing. There will be a bit of the "who can stay up the longest" game but our day is not over. There is a picnic to be had in the redwoods. I land and call my sister Martha and tell her we are on the ground and packing up. They have the grill lit. We now have to collect everyone, pack gear, get in the cars, drive to the store for supplies and get to the picnic. This group had a tendency to come unraveled, but we finally get everyone in the cars with food bought and head down the Big Sur coast.

Right before the the Bixby bridge is the turn off, one dirt road to the locked gate, then down the narrow track carved into the hillside. The flowers have stayed in bloom late in the year. It's evening but still light, colors surrounded by shadow make up the hills, the bridge is a black silhouette with the ocean brilliant in the low evening sun. Our wagon train of cars poke slowly around the bends in the steep road. Then we enter the redwoods and it might as well be another world, tall trees, ferns, the stream.
The cars are parked, stuff unloaded. The dogs barks as we approach. I can smell the grill going.

Nevada

2010-07-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

The sea of Nevada

Why in the world do we have so much Nevada? To be fair Nevada is no larger than any other of the states that I will pass through on this trip. But, where as Colorado does have the mind numbingly boring eastern plains, they are soon enough relieved by the stunning sceanery of the mountains. After that the high desert takes over into Utah. Then, cresting over Soilder pass, one drops into the Wasatch valley all lush with streams and fields before the buzzing activity of Salt Lake City consumes everything. Then there are the salt flats. And then Nevada.
At first the grey teeth of rock thrusting up through gums of sage bush and biting the sky are yet another environment to absorb. But like a multi course dinner where every dish is mash potatoes, one soon aches for a change.
When I saw the sign pointing out that Reno was 511 miles away, I started working on a plan.
It occurred to me that there is a hell of a lot of coast south of Panama City that nobody is making much use of. What if couple of fifty miles long strips were brought up to surround a small inland sea. Then Nevada would become an attraction instead of a chore.
I stopped by city hall in Elko to see if I could talk anyone into my idea. No one could find any fault in my plan. If Utah has a Great Salt Lake why couldn't Nevada have an inland sea. There was some concerns that Panama would miss it's coast line till I explained the sea would merely move inward to form a new coast. After a few days of the waves washing against the land no one would be able to tell the difference. Sure someone might think that the walk to the beach was way too short but that could be explained away as the product of poor memory.
As there is endless money available right now for these type of "shovel ready" projects, the city officials of Elko told me that they should have the new sea in place later that afternoon. I jumped back on my car egar to see my idea realized.
I soon entered the jungles of Humbolt county. The roads were poor as of yet as the soil needed time to settle before a real road was laid. I drove slowly on the dirt road listening to sound of holler moneys bellowing at the more adgile and teasing spider monkeys. Here at the beginning of the jungle I saw Jack rabbits with swollen bellies napping in the shade. After spending their whole lives eating sage bush the rabbits had gorged themselves senseless. And speaking of pigging out, wild pigs were grunting about is a state of agitation. Perhaps the moving of the coast line beneithe there feet had been unsettling.
I drove with my head out the window looking up and all about. That is until a snake dropped off a tree on me. My flailing around only sucseeded in sending the snake flying into the car. At this point it was looped around the rearview mirror eyeing me with intent. That was the intent of where, exactly, to bite me. As I was paying very little attention my driving, I bounced off a log by the side of the road. The car heaved to one side and the snake gave me one last glaring looking as it flew passed my face and out the window.

After that excitement I was thinking of taking a break when I saw a small bambo shelter with a palm frond roof. There were hand written signs, in Spanish, hanging from it that I could make no sense of. I pulled over.
I am always surprised at how much communication can go on between two people who speak different languages. I found out that Javier would like to sell me a drink. I sat at his table drinking what I think was a banana mango smoothy. It was a buck. Obviously Javier was in need of some corporate branding like a nice logo and a uniform as then he could have easily charged four dollars for my drink. Toucans flew around looking for any fruit to job off. One actually got it's beak in my drink before I could pull it away.
Javier was surprised at how many Americanas He had seen today. While I was thinking, "Well, what else would you see in the middle of Nevada." it ocurred to me that maybe Javier had been scooped up when the sections of coast line had been removed from Panama. He may have no idea of where he was or what had happened. I decided that I would not be the one to explain his situation to him, especially when our form of communication depended on way too much arm waving.
I had finished my drink and grinned and waved my goodbyes.

Bumping along the road I came at last to the sea of Nevada. There was a fine sand beach with palm trees reaching out over it for the sun. At the water's edge there was hundreds of orange vested highway repair workers. As is well known, it is essential to the balance of the universe that these people are employed at all times. That is why they are seen all summer long dragging around orange cones placing them, seemingly at random, on the roads. Now, a hundred miles of interstate had been disturbed by the new sea. Sticking orange cones in the jungle would be pointless as would be floating them on the sea. Their new job was to ferry the cars across the sea on a large bambo raft. I drove my car up on to the raft. It sloshed back and forth violently.
A legion of orange vested people pushed the raft into the sea. Another legion picked up long bambo poles and started poling me across the water. I sat on the roof of the car. I was surprised to see seagulls had already found this new sea. They whirled overhead squawking. I sat there reflecting that my idea had been a great sucsess. This was way grander than endless miles of Nevada. I soon found out that not everyone had agreed with me. I was chatting one of the gals poling the raft. She informed me that all of Lovelock Nevada had been submerged. Houses flooded, lands lost. They were pissed. She went on about how some knuckle heads had come up with the plan in Elko and had forced it through without consulting anyone. I kept very quite as she told me about a how football rivalery was most likely behind it as Lovelock had always crushed Elko.
At the far side I waved goodbye to my orange vested friends. I crossed the beach and back into the jungle. In a few miles I saw a building going up. The sign on it said The Curved Banana Saloon. Well it was Nevada after all. The jungle ended aburuptly in a pile of mud and dirt. I drove down directly onto the highway. It had been a long time since I had been over fifteen miles per hour. The speed felt exicting. In a few minutes I saw a sign, Reno 24 miles.

Driving

2010-07-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

Day one

I headed up the Grizzly creek trail from the rest stop in Glenwood canyon. I had a large book of Jane Austen novels clutched in one hand. The path swung around like a slow motion roller coaster. There was the sound of the creek to my left, thousands of feet of orange red rock cliff over head. Purple flowers, like fuzzy antenna hovered over the tall grass over there. And over there yellow flowers huddled under the bushes. A tumbled stack of rock sloped upward to my right. But over there, some other rocks had muscled their way in amongst the soil and tree roots. Everwhere were trees and the green, angled light that was filtered through the leaves. Wasn't long before I had found a suitible place to lay down by the creek started to delve into Lizzy and Mr Darcy misrepresentation of their fellings to each other.

I have see a bunch of movies of Austen books but had yet to read any of them. Reading books of movies you've seen can have a mixed out come. On the up side the book can provide a wealth of depth of charactors you already like. On the other hand if you liked the movie but the movie butchered to book, then you wonder what the two ever had to do with each other and whether there is any point on continueing. So far I'm enjoying the book. Didn't expect the language to be as odd as it is though.

Some unknowable time later I awoke with the book laying on me. Getting up with the slouth that day time sleeping brings, I headed further up the trail. It occurred to me that, even though I had resently chain sawed my foot, that I was relatively uninjured and had no time pressures on this trip. Now was the opportunity to hike further up the trail then I had been before. Of course in Colorado, going as far as you can go and going as far as the trail goes, can be two very different things. For all I knew this trail could go on for days.

At some point it was time to turn around and start driving again. It's that time of year when we head out to Monterey to fly our paragliders. I've got nothing but hot weather and lots of desert to see the next few days.
I've got a newer car thanks to the CU police that crashed into my last one. The new one, alas does not have AC. So I built a fine evaporative cooler out of a fan, plastic storage bin and a humidifer wick. Ok, if doesn't blow freezing air at me but for $40 it's the difference between being baked alive and being reasonably comfortable. Plus the weird thing bungyed to my dash board pleases me to no end.

Got 41mpg on my first tank, full moon guitar playing in the desert, camp set, sleep comes.

Packing paranoia

2010-06-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

9:07 Saturday MOrning.

I'm leaving by 11:00 for the ridge soaring paragliding trip I teach each year.

Right now I'm twirling around trying to finish packing even though... I'm done. But it doesn't feel like I'm done yet. There is still that lingering feeling that I'm missing something. Flying in the face of that idea is that the car is packed to the ceiling. I have also made lists, and written down everything as I put it in the car. I've already checked the list for things I think I might have forgotten.

The final bit will be the, "did I lock the door" challenge.

Anyway, from here on out I will blogging from the, I Smear. Typos will increase.

More Fun Soon.

The last of trip.

2010-02-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

Going home, Yelapa

The plane is rattling around in the sky. Three hours and I'll be home. I awoke to the sound of the surf on the beach. I'll go to sleep to the sound of the wood stove crackeling. Sand for snow.

I had breakfest on the pier as the high tide surf tried to slop it's way over the wall onto my table. Pelicans were swarming the fishing boats. The group of us finished up and got on the boat. A hundred feet off the pier we saw Carl waving from shore. Hold on! Back to pick up Carl. The surf was really big. As we went from beach to beach picking people up, the boat would dart in and then back off. We would be lifted high as the surf sucked back under us. I'd look down at bare sand just before us, sure that we would be thrown upon the beach. But the boat pilot had it all timed just right.
Out of the bay onto the ocean, the heavly laden boat wallowed. There was too much weight for the boat to get up on plane. The boat just pushed through the water like a plow in deep snow. A few times it seemed like we might turn over.
Darren's friend Mike got us set up in the first bar he could find in PV. The long wait, till the plane left, began. For those that drank, a plan was quickly in place.
Slowly the wind shifted around into the south west. That meant the launch above Bob's house might be working. I could tell that Darren really wanted to go. Now we only had two hours till we had to get to the airport. I sort of remember how to get there but clearly remember that it is a scramble on a shitty trail and that the launch is tiny knoll that has been extented by a raised wire mesh. (really) Light wind launches are completely hairball. And I've got the sniffles. I'm trying to sinc up to Darren's ethusiasim. I'm failing but think, "What the he'll". There is concern that we will all miss the plane because of Darren and I's boondogle. But in the true spirit of paragliding priorities we go to find a taxi that has some idea of where to go. The third guy we talk to does.
After winding up the streets, I'm not sure where the trail starts. I know where the hard way is. But remember there was a better way. Time is ticking. We head up the nasty path. It's steep and lose. Soon, as I remember, it turns into some sort of water course and gets even steeper. I must use my hands to pull myself up. Then it's through the rocks and bush. I see the scaffolding that supports the launch extention. Launch extention? What the hell am I talking about? Well, there simply isn't enough room there. So a scaffold with thick wire mesh was put up to make just enough room. Indoor outdoor carparting is thrown over the back. While the front has been left open mesh to let the air through. (once again, no really) However, someone had done some work up there and there was some more room. Just enough for a forward launch. Darren is about to put this to the test. The winds are light. I stand in front so I might have some chance of waving him off if the launch is no good. It's good! I go and get my gear ready. It's hard to be patient with your glider when there is so little room. But "right" is better than "quick". And I am off. I've got houses below and below that the beach. A sea bird is turning in lift below me but it is bird lift. My flight is soon over. We pack up on the beach, catch a cab and are back ten minutes late, just as the rest of the gang are ready to leave us behind.

The rest of the story is about linking one form of transportation to another till I'm standing at my front door. It's snowing.

Darren goes flying (we watch)

2010-02-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

Yelapa day five

Darren just landed after two and a half hours. This is best day, of all days and trips we have done. Darren, without his vario, launched first and landed last, therefore out flying everyone. (The whole gang got great flights.) Darren flew out to the front ridge. At first I thought he was going to miss out. The guys that launched later got right into thermals and were flying over launch. While Darren was stuck far below. But then he got a nice thermal and flew all the way back over launch. After that, as everyone sunk out one by one, Darren just kept flying around.
I was starting to wonder if Yelapa was really the place to go. I've never been skunked here, but I've been waiting for that one great day. Now we've had one.

I missed it though. I woke up with a head full of crap. My right ear wouldn't repressurize on the drive up the mountain. Felt woozy everytime I stood up. I'm on the evening launch now. Watching white caps coming in out on the ocean.

Later, after short but reasonable flight, I'm watching Darren fly some more. There has been a lot of that today. Darren got just a little more lift than I and got into the next layer of air. From that position he could just keep boating around. It's him and the turkey vultures.

It's the last day at Yelapa. Tomorrow we get on the boat to go to the taxi to go to the... But we will try one more flying spot. Now it's off to Meme's to see the band play.

Blog blog

2010-02-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

Ok, just reread the last few blogs. The typo level is amazing! Please bare with me. I am typing on my new Ismear (ok, it's really an Ipod) and need to get used to the thumb key board. Last night I accidently pasted two copies of the previous blog smack dab in the middle of the new blog. It took me eighteen mintues on the backspace key to get rid of it. I didn't do much proof reading after that. I went into SIGB mode instead. (screw it I'm going to bed) I'll stick up another blog on this trip soon.

More of Yelapa

2010-02-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rest of day three,

Strap on the pack, duck under the clothsline, open the bungy chord that closes the gate to the graveyard, through the graveyard, up the hill to the truck. The path is a red orange dirt. Everything else is green and not sort of green, very green, lush and varied.
Today there are even more people than people that didn't really fit in the truck yesterday.
This resulted in the following reactions. Carl bagged it and headed back to the room. Four others decided to hike the launch. (their gliders where in the truck though. That's three miles and two thousand feet!) The truck was then quite roomy in comparision to the last ride. However, after a few minutes we caught up with the hikers that, for some reason, had changed their minds. Once again it was cram-o-rama in the truck. I was standing up in the back holding a rope tied to the front bumper, ducking branches.

At launch there was five mintues of perfect breeze to launch in. Darren wisely got out there right away and was rewarded with a nice flight. Soon after he got on the beach he radioing up, "are you guys coming?". The wind had turned to super fussy. Over the next few hours the wind reluctantly let a few pilots off every twenty minutes. However, as some were trying to no wind reverse launches, not every opportunity was taken. The fun really begain when one pilot did a low energy launch, bounced his butt off of the hill, sort of flew through bush and definitly did not fly through the tree. He disappeared out of sight to the sound of cracking branches. There is a moment where one askes themselves, "What will the next few minutes of MY life be like?". There is a bunch of running around, yelling and genral commotion. He is not responding. That's not good. But then... Wait there is a faint voice. He fine.
Now, going into the jungle to fish someone's glider out of tree is not something to rush into. You can come out with quite Collection of parasites. Amazingly enough he got not only himself but his glider out with minimum fuss. Finally my chance came. I bailed on my first launch. I didn't like it, I stopped. I liked try two just fine. I flew out with the clouds just few hundred feet over my head.

Back on the beach I rejoin the group. They have heard that something was up on radio. A little story telling is needed then completed. At Darren's we have some coconut milk from some coconuts Darren knocked out of a tree. And then it's off to snorkel. This time the whole gang goes. We float around looking at fish.

Tonight is pizza.

Late in the night sitting on the balcony. There is the sound of the waves and rolling calls of the jungle insects. The group has split up to, walk, sleep, play poker, check out a dance. I'm sitting here writing. This balcony seems to stick out into the air, three sides of it look out over either forest or ocean. There's a little quite time now, a little time reflect. I could have gone a lot of places in life but the best of life is when you're glad you've ended up where you are.

Day four

I'm sitting on the pier reviewing the pictures I've taken today. Two little boys press up on either side of me, peering into my camera. One is blowing up and then releasing the air out of a ballon, in my ear. He names everything he can recognize as I scroll through the pictures.
I woke up to rain again today. The sky over the ocean was black to the horizon. The road to launch is wet, the clouds were often below launch. Once again, not normal. Got on the radio and started working on a plan B. There is a waterfall up the valley. I had never been there and there has been some interest in going. This became the new plan. At Darren's place we sorted out who was going, who was going back to bed and how much money was lost at the poker game last night. (not much.)
Us hikers get going. That would be Trang (name now spelled right) Darren Cindy and I. The hike is about two hours in and another two back out. The trail goes up the river. The further up we go the more we leave behind the part of Yelapa that is design to accomodate tourist and the more we enter the part that is of the locals and about the locals. The store fronts become quite funky, just the open side of a cinder block buildings. There are sad and bored looking horses tied to posts. All the chickens are free range in the fact that they are everywhere. The stone walk way becomes dirt. (The horses providing new proto-dirt.) We walk past the school. The kids, in uniform, outside playing. Further up the river the houses space out. The jungle becomes more of a presence. Trang, who is native to Vietnam, is pointing out the various fruit trees. There were a lot of mango trees. Alas, the mangos were green and the size of the end of my thumb. Now we are a long way up the river. The path is a lot smaller. The houses get very rustic and not in a quaint way. As I peer further into the brush I can see the ruins of adondon homes. One has a satellite dish attached to a pole leaned up again the side of it. Finally, after becoming tired and sweaty, we arrive at wooden gate that has "waterfall" painted on it in bright green paint. It is locked, we climb under.
Now we really are in the jungle. There are big hanging vines strangling trees, macraws squaking overhead, the soil of the poor condition of having every nutrient sucked out of it. I can hear the roaring of the falls. The trail is very indistict. We're climbing over rocks hanging onto trees. But, here in the middle of nowhere, the last ten feet of path to the water is crisply set stone stairs. ?
Darren and I strip down to shorts and pile into the pool beneithe the falls. We both have waterproof cameras and are trying to take pictures while dog paddling. I climb into a side passage that has little steam coming out of it. The rocks are slippery. In a ways there rock walls on either side. Trees are drooped over the top like wet spegetti, while their roots braid themselves down the sides. It was one of throughs rare serendipitous moments.
The hike is revesred. Thanks to clothes made out of oil I'm bone dry by the time I get back.

Yelapa trip

2010-02-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

Day one of the Yelapa trip.
After losing an epic batttle with the automatic parking machine (that left an unnecessary 10 bucks poorer) I'm on the bus, heading to the airport. This is the part of travel that is not the journey. Plane flights have become the travel equivilent of waterboarding. I am reminding myself that my opinions need not be shared with any TSA employees. I just need to keep my mouth shut and get on the plane.

The day will go like this; car to bus to airport to being frisked to plane to airport to taxi to boat to beach to hotel. Yea! Done!
I'm now working on phase three, the airport. When there I'll find two of our party, Jeff and Cindy. We'll get processed before flying off to meet Darren and Carl. Darren is bringing his wife, Tran and his friend Mike and his wife Jill. Yelapa is one of those flying sites that you would want to bring a spouse to. With a beautiful beach, palm trees, warm ocean, not to mention warm weather, who wouldn't want to go there?

On the plane now. The snow is starting to fall. We are getting out of here just time. Soon we'll take off and fly up into the murk.
I am Always surprised at the weather these big planes fly in. Before becoming a paraglider pilot this wouldn't have phased me. Ignorance was my shield and protector, However knowledge has corrupted that innocence. Flying in blinding snowstorms seems like a bad idea, but these planes fly this stuff all the time without running into problems. I realize that I am committing the crime experience creep. I am taking what I know about paragliding and trying to apply it to big jet flying. I often have encountered this problem teaching students that flown other types of aircraft. They try to use their understanding of that craft to help them learn to paraglide. The problem is that paragliding is too unique for that knowledge, beyond the fundamentals, to be of much use. I know this and yet still try to do it but the other way around. I, like everyone else, like to feel smart. My twenty years of paragliding give a level of expertise but I am the one who needs to remember that once I leave the field of paragliding, even into the relatively close neighborhood of jet planes, my knowledge fades. I think, for that reason, instructors need to keep trying to do new things. It's comfortable to hide behind ones skills, but, if you teach, you need refresh yourself with the feelings of being brand new at something. (this thumb typing is doing the trick for me right now.

Way beneith me the snow is gone. The tv screen shows me I'm soon to cross the Mexican border. The last time I was in Mexico was the final leg of the Central America TV Show I did with American Explorer. Sleepless nights of endless driving, being searched five times a day, made Mexico seem like an unending hell hole. Yelapa, however, will redeem Mexico for
me. The TV schedule was a max rush and we were two weeks overtime at that point. I am sure that we pasted by many very cool places in our mad dash Cross the country. Yelapa is Mexico experienced the right way. Slow down, get to a known cool place and stay put, soak it in. I just need to get everyone onto the ferry, (with their bags) and the relaxing part will begin.

And... We do get all of our bags! Jeff had a scare though. As the bags came around a bend in the carosel, they were falling off into a big pile. After waiting Round for one of Jeff's bags, he decided to dig through the ever mounting pile of bags being barfed off the carosel. And there it was!

Off we went in the taxi to Los Muertos Pier in Puerto Vallarta. We were treated to some Mexican taxi driver driving. My favorite was a, cross six lanes of traffic on a red light, U turn. As we got into town the road became cobbles. I took in views of jammed packed beaches with vibrating eyeballs. Kids were playing in the surf, beer was getting drunk (and so were the people.) some sort of volley ball without a net was being played.

Arriving at the pier we found the rest of our group sitting in the closest bar. No really! One thing that makes Yelapa special is the boat ride. Yelapa is not a island, but the long winding dirt road you would have to take, makes the water taxi the most sensible way to get there. This boat ride adds this sense of disconnection to the trip. There is real feeling of leaving the world behind the minute you get in that boat.

The boats are open pongos with outboard motors. You go banging over the waves for a fortyfive minute ride. The coast slips by. Jungle glad mountains rise up a few thousand feet. Ridge lines follow deep valleys. Hidden villages are revealed and once again obscured. I breathe thick warm air and start to relax. The trials of travel are almost complete. Around a point that reaches out into the ocean we go. We enter a deep bay. There lies Yelapa. Clouds twist around the mountain peaks, a cluster of houses are scattered on the hill sides. Smoke rise out from the trees, some cooking fire somewhere. Our boat weave through to moored boats to the beach. At the beach the boat leaps Around in the surf. Getting off dry is not an option, timing your departure is and decides if it's getting your feet getting wet or a full on soaking. Our bags are shouldered to shore, we have arrived!

Day two
Rain. It hasn't rained here, in February, for eleven years. This is my fifth trip and I've never seen it rain. I had just got out of the ocean from snorkeling and felt the rain start to fall.

Guess what? We didn't fly today. Plans for these trips must be made so far out that no weather report would have any relationship with what will actually happen. And the weather is changing, everywhere. A quick poll to my fellow Instructors confirms this. Everyone is seeing big changes in the weather. Whatever! If you can't wait on the wind don't become a paraglider pilot!

This year the group is housed all over town. Darren and company are right on the beach. Jeff and Cindy are are up the hill a bit. Carl and I are on the other side of town, way up the hill. We have great view of the bay once we climb aaalll the stone stairs. This morning I went out on the porch, turned on my radio and raised the troops. I can see the other lodgings way across the bay. For the morning flight there is a truck that drives up a beat up dirt road to the top of the mountain. We arrange to meet the truck at ten. For Carl and I this is a few minutes hike, for the others it's good slog across town and a good climb up the hill. See there are no cars in Yelapa. The road from inland stops just above town. Everyone walks in town or rides donkeys. However, after we land on beach, it will Carl and I that have big slog home. So it all evens out.

We wait for the truck. And wait. The locals make a few calls and find out that due to some late night partying, there will be no truck. We make a plan B to snorkel and head our seperate ways. At the preappointed meeting place there is no sign of Jeff and Darren. We wait. Finally we go all the way across town to check their rooms. Nope. I get a hold of a radio from another member if our party to find out Jeff and Darren had meet our truck driver on their way back and were now sitting on launch. I'm a bit bummed. I would like to fly and I'm not there to do my job. I am on the beach though so, if I can't be at launch to brief people on the launch, at least I can guide people into the landing zone.

The landing zone is a length of sandy beach dividing the ocean from a small lagoon. It's not a hard place to land but it does tend to focus the mind as a splash down is the reward of a sloppy approach. So I hang out on the beach. Not a rough assignment.

Soon Les, a local pilot, appears with a boat complete with a tow rig. Turns our Les, along with Brad ( who's last name I will not even attempt to spell, but he is an excellent acro pilot.) have been doing safety manuver clinics, Or towing up over the ocean and stalling and spinning their gliders. The idea is if you mess it up you go on the water. Les goes up and does a few spins. I used this opportunity to brief the members of the group on the beach about these maneuvers.

Soon I hear from Darren and Jeff, the conditions are no good, they are heading down. I can't talk anyone into going back to plan B, snorkeling. Beer and sitting on a chair on the beach have stronger pulling power. It's hard fo resist the gravity firmly pressing me into me seat.

But, if I can't float around in the sky, floating around in the ocean is a good alternative. There is great little beach at the bottom of the long stairway to my place. With my ancient contacts in my eyes and flippers and mask in hand, I wander down to the water.

I got a new camera before the trip. I'm up to about $1200 in four cameras over the last few years. All Sonys. All have died of lens drive failure. No more. I got a completely encased underwater deal. Now I knew it was waterproof but as I waded out into to the water. I had the hardest time actually sticking it in the water. I was holding it up over my head. Years of previous experience were shouting, "no! Keep the camera away from the water!". Finally in I plunged. The water was full of fish. Everywhere, every color, every size and shape.

Day three
Not only is the truck there, there is someone to drive it. Twelve pilots cram themselves and their gear in, on, and hanging off of the truck. A classic paragliding experience. Up the road we go, Bouncing around trying fruitlessly to find something better than friction and faith to keep us in the truck. We twist around bends, get thrashed by low hanging branches and vines while the truck whines along in four low. About a third of the way into the journey someone says "Are we there yet?" for the first time. Much later we are there.

The view is terrific. The curve of the bay way below, a few scattered islands on the horizon. Thick jungle drapped over ridges and mountain sides. Birds turn lazy circles or squak with every wing beat. And the wind is perfect. Gear is prepared, wings laid out, lines cleared, buckles buckled. One by one the group flys off into the sky, to turn slowly with the birds. I am almost always last. It's part of my job to see everyone off ok. I run my wing up overhead. "Man I am rusty!" The tactile response to my wing feels blind. But I launch well and am soon way out over the jungle, feet dangling. The clouds have come in so there is no sun or heat for me to use to climb higher. It's a long leisurely ride through the sky back to the beach thousands of feet below. I look at hidden houses or out over ocean or just watch the jungle pass. Then it's time to set up my landing and join the gang on the beach. We get some lunch before hiking up to the lower evening launch for a quick windless flight.

We sit around on the beach chatting till we make the way too complicated decision of where fo get dinner and then change our minds a few times. But we end up at a great place and our hostess finishes the evening with a fire dance.

Day three,
The people in the room next to mine had a very important discussion about pickles just before sunrise this morning. Beautiful morning.

Test this just test

2010-01-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

Just got an Ipod touch. Trying to see if I can use this for updating the blog when I'M
on the road.
Look's like it's working!
Bill

Last man Standing,

2009-07-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just got done cleaning out the little fridge in front of the guest house. (There are leftovers for days.) The clinic is over. Our woodstock nation of tents is gone. No one’s about. No more rustling of gliders having the sand poured out of them or the scattered conversations of the days flights and events. The dogs have a lot less to bark at. I slept ten hours last night and still feel like I could use another ten.

If I start with the first official day of the clinic, Sunday, we only had one down day where we didn’t fly. (Ok, some people got in early on Saturday and that day didn’t work.) After the last few years I was starting to wonder if the magic had worn off and Monterey would no long be the flawless flying site. After this trip however, I think I can write those other trips off as the fickleness that is always the weather’s purgative.

For those that haven’t been out yet, the beach here has an unbeatable set up for flying. The central valley of California gets very hot in the summer, that hot air rises and pulls the cooler air off the ocean to replace it. The greater the change in temperature the greater the effect. Under the bay there is a 9000 foot trench, which helps make that temperature difference even greater by circulating cold water up out of the depths. What happens then, is there is a cold, smooth wind that blows right into the dunes. This winds is deflected up over those dunes which make a band of lifting air that parallels all five miles of the dunes. If you stay in that band of air you can fly for miles and have flights hours long. That’s what we did. (The longest flight was six hours long.) The last thing that really helps make this place be so great is that the bay is very recessed. The depth of the bay helps to straighten any cross winds blowing along the shore. Those cross winds “fall” into the bay as the inland heating sucks air eastward.

Each morning the group would coleus from it’s various factions. There were the, sleep as long as you can, the go for a run, go find breakfast, groups. I set the leaving time at nine so that we would actually be under way by nine thirty. Next, we would drive out to the site. We are camped out in Carmel valley, the site is in the bay, between the two is the ridge that makes the Monterey peninsula. What ever weather you wake up in on one side has no barring on what is happening on the other. I never check weather reports here, I just go see. The first clue is from the top of the ridge, whether you can see down to the beach or whether the fog of the marine layer is obscuring everything. But the real “say so” of the weather is the flag of truth. The flag truth is right on the beach by the hotel. If it’s blowing it’s time to speed up and get your gear out to the beach, if not it’s down for a bagel in the shopping center.

On a typical day we parawait on the beach waiting for the winds to come up. Somewhere around eleven, if we’re lucky, or one if we are not the winds come up and we start to fly. Sometimes the first flight is too early and people sink out to the beach. Other times not, but once the first person is up then it’s a shark attack of pilots getting ready.

The training end of the dunes is maybe a half mile long. Everyone starts here. When they get a little altitude then people start crossing over the dune-less section of the beach to fly the other 4.5 miles of dunes. That leaves me with the newer pilots that are working on their beginner ridge soaring skills.

At some point the winds either, get too strong, cross, or too light and the day is over. Then it’s time to get as many as sixteen people all pointed in the same direction to get dinner.

This trip there were many adventures but to protect the guilty and the innocent, I can’t tell all. You can get the stories from you flying buddies.

There will be pictures going up on the yahoo group.
See you all for flying this weekend.

As of Tuesday

2009-06-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

The quick up date is...
Sunday, Monday were both great days. Flights as long as 3 hours were flown. Today was a bust for flying but we had a fantastic picnic and hike in the redwoods. Stupid football was played. (That's, throw the ball left handed with your eyes closed... Well you had to be there.)

See ya get some pictures up next time.

Bill

Day Two

2009-06-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

OK,
As your poor paragliding Instructor, it was a little weird going to pick up PV after he flew his private plane into Monterey. The kind of thing that starts one of those, “What have I done with my life.” thing. Be kind of nice to have my own plane, you know. Little did I know...
PV said he had a friend that wanted to go on a tandem flight. We waited around at the parking spot for him. When he does come, it’s in a Ferrari. So I showed him my home made evaporative cooler and said, if he wanted, I could bungy it to the dash of his Ferrari, cause I could always make another. So Ferrari driving dude and his gal come out to the beach and we have a great day, flying the tandem with them. I was now thinking, “It would be kind of cool to have a Ferrari.” ( Or more accurately, It would be great to, 1. have the money to buy a Ferrari, or 2. Have so much money that I WOULD actually buy a Ferrari)

We wrapped up the day with a few hours of flying. The new folks were psyched to fly. But, at 4:30 the gal needed to go off to the airport. There we met another former Microsoft guy, (who lends God money). She got in his twin engine $600,000 plane and flew off. At this point I’m thinking... What the fuck! And to think that just yesterday I was a little envious of PV’s plane. (Which, now, as compared with the twin engine plane, was looking like my car as compared to the Ferrari.)

Anyway, If I did have too much money I probably won’t be hanging out with all my paragliding buddies this week, which would be my loss.

PV and I flying

2009-06-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note.
Picked up PV at the airport. (He flew his own plane there) Went to the beach and got an hour of flying in. Strong winds, fat lift band and sunshine. Perfect, if you can beach launch. There was at least another hours of flying to be had but we worked a lot of those beach launches. SO, we warmed up the site for all of you and it should be ready when you arrive.

2009-06-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Road Trip 09

If you drew a straight line from my house to Dad and Barb’s, (Where we will be camping out) the distance would be 927 miles. I will drive over thirteen hundred to get there. It’s funny to watch the GPS, which gives me that straight line distance, and the odometer count down the miles from their differing references.
In my first half hour I managed to drive twenty seven miles while getting five miles further away from my goal. A bit discouraging that. At other times the arrow on the GPS would point right down the road and they would click off miles together. At other times the arrow would point off way right or left and as the odometer tumbled along the GPS would stubbornly sit there.

It’s time for the annual fourth of July ridge soaring clinic. This will the ninth year in a row that it’s been held. That we’ve come back nine years running is proof enough that this is a great place and a great time to fly.

I’ve done this drive many times. I started out going balls out, trying to get the drive over with. But the flaming eyeball feeling of too many hours on the road changed me over time. I settle on a three day trip in the end. There is now a routine of sorts but a pleasant one. A sandwich in Vale, a bike or skate along the Colorado river in Glenwood canyon, skipping rocks at the secret rock skipping place. There is no point is blasting through all these amazing places. I’m now camped out in one of my dirt bag camping sites along the road. There is a stream and it’s running hard with the snow’s run off. The highway is far off, though a slight rumble of the trucks can still be heard.

Tomorrow with be Salt lake city, the salt flats and lots and lots of Nevada.

Day Two,
About half way through day two, somewhere around Elko, the road trip looses it’s sparkle. The big mountains are gone, salt flats were an interesting change as you leave Utah, then you hit Nevada. And for a while this olive green terrain, with it’s dusty black teeth of rock is interesting also. But there is four hundred miles of it. I run playlist after playlist of music on the Ipod, then switch to book on bytes.

The heat of the day slowly ramps up but, amazingly, my homemade evaporative cooler keeps the car to, just, the warm side of neutral. My new car has no air conditioning, So, out a plastic box, a fan and wick from a humidifier I built one. It is a god awful looking contraption that I’ve bungy corded to my dashboard. What still amazes me is that it works. At 70 degrees it’s cool. a little less cool at 80. By 90 degrees it’s warm but far from that, “ I’m a pizza in an oven” feeling that you get from no air conditioning at all.

The orange cone migration is in full swing. It’s a little late in coming this year (with all the last season snows) but, finally, the orange cones are starting to leave the lower winter grazing grounds and move to their high summer pastures.

These endothermic creatures love the heat of black asphalt. You can see them for miles lined up on the interstate. Sometimes they line the edges of the road, sometimes they come straight down the middle forcing the traffic down to one lane. Legions of federal wildlife workers help manage the migration. Dressed is camouflage orange vests they wield orange diamond shaped signs directing the cones along. There are the petite females, the classic cone shape, and the big bull barrel males. Sadly, I saw few conelings. (probably yet another effect of global climate change.) It’s hard sometimes to not become annoyed at the pitiful slow progress of the cone migration, and yet we need to learn to share this world of ours. Thankfully their social structure assures that they only travel in single file, if not the road would be impassable most of the year.

Tonight I’ve packed into Donner pass. (Never gone back packing with computer before.) The bugs are swarming. (and I’m a Wisconsin boy so I know swarming.) Never camped here before. Tomorrow is the last part of the big drive I could be soaring beach by 2:00 if all goes according to plan. Coyotes howl, time to sleep.

Training Sites

2009-05-03T13:03:00.001-07:00

There is nothing more critical to this sport than training sites. If you learned to fly a long time ago you might think that there are other factors than are more important. But think of this, if no one learns to fly then, there are no pilots. This will be a fact if there is no where to train.

I hopped into Mark W’s truck this morning to head out to the western slope of Colorado. We are on a mission to find more places to train.

The front range of Colorado lost a half a dozen flying sites one day. One misguided person cut down some trees on Boulder Open space. As a community it was decided that it was better to tell the powers to be than to try to hide the fact. This was a huge mistake as the entire flying community was punished for the actions of one individual. To this day we have only be able to reopen one of the sites.

Over the years the weather has also become a lot less accommodating. I’ve seen the flying season go from close to nine months to as little as six months. I now question how viable a paragliding business really is here in Colorado. I love teaching flying too much, and the life style it affords me, to just walk away without trying everything I can to keep it. If I could find another reliable training site, I could teach more days and make up, at least somewhat, for the shorter season.

So this trip is about exploring for new sites, not for soaring or cross country, but for those small smooth hills where one can take the average person and reveal to them what it is like to leave the ground behind.

Good flying sites are not a fluke. There are very solid reasons why the best sites are so good. It starts with weather. The all essential factor is the wind must blow up the hill. The wind has to really want to blow up the hill, it has to be the easiest thing for the wind to do.

We’ve gone to the western slope because every night the air cools and gets heavy way up in the mountains. That heavy air makes it’s way down Vale pass along the Eagle river valley, passed Avon till Near Dotsero it joins up with the Colorado river. This mass of cold air drains through Glenwood canyon, then past Rifle and, at last, floods across the plains west of Grand Junction. I meet this air one morning flowing over a ridge in the desert and flew for hours. Now if there was a training site some where with that same smooth morning air flowing up it. That could be a perfect training site.

4/28/09

There is a mind numbing aspect to spending a day doing something which yields no results. And yet... Seven hours of exploring dirt roads in the desert plains, in and out of canyons, up cliff lines over looking the Colorado river, bumping along jarring roads, wild flowers blushing color into a landscape of rock, wind twisted junipers paused in a dance that takes years to perform... This is not hardship... and yet I would love to report that I found that perfect hill. I didn’t.

“Where’s that one go? I don’t know. Might as well try it as long as we’re here. Where the hell are we going to turn around. You know if there’s a place to land under that, that would be great, I can see a road over there, but I’ve no idea of how to get to it. Well that’s what the map said... ” That how the conversation went.

The wind roared all day long. I returned to find my tent, pulled free of it’s stakes, at the bottom of a three hundred foot cliff, ripped and torn after taking the only flight of the trip so far. I am a wind blown, sun dried, tired. My body stretched by the chips and chocolates that were too close at hand in the car. I saw so many things but not “The Hill”

I think we found the best place yesterday. This is an area I had check out before. But it took going soaring on another ridge, to understand that the wind could well blow up it, in a predictable matter day after day, to look again at it. First off there is a wide open landing zone. Next, a few launches of various heights. I would like there to be less rocks but it’s OK. If that perfect breeze blows up them, then great. I would like to have road up then but we have to hike everything else, so what the hell.

I have spent so many days looking for the perfect site. Rounding every bend hoping that I will find what I’m looking for. For all that effort I have found only a few sites and only one truly great training hill. There are few more roads to try tomorrow. Fingers and toes are crossed.

In the end, the place we went the first day was the best. A good training hill has to have all these factors, A nicely sloped, grassy launch, a landing zone that is an easy glide away and is open without obstacles. And most of all a consistent breeze most blowing up it. We found all of these factors but none all in one spot. None the less, though a a little rocky, there is a spot worth a trip and a try. And if the weather here stays SOOOOOO fickle we’ll have the opportunity.

Bill

2008-09-08T12:08:00.001-07:00

The hardest part of keeping a blog is writing after an exhausting day. We are on day four of the trip. That’s four days of sun, wind, hiking sand dunes and missing lunch. My lips are sun burnt. Eating mexican has mapped the degree of burning. Hmmm... lower lip is fried.

Monterey has been the miracle place. The place where the weather is always good for flying. In a sport where one becomes an expert at parawaiting long before becoming a beginner pilot, a site that works all the time is sheer relief. That is how Monterey has been. We had eight clinics without one single day that we could not fly. However our last two clinics went fifty fifty. But not for everyone if you came late, left early, you didn’t do as well.

So, I stress a little more these days. Will Monterey stop being the miracle place? Will we get flat out skunked with no flying days? So far, the site is working. Day one was a brilliant day. The wind came on nice and progressively, lightly soarable to fantastic. Alas, only Jeff made it to the full first day of the clinic. (Some people decided that stopping for lunch instead of coming out to the site to see if it was flyable was a good idea. No really!) Jeff got a hour and a half all to himself, (mostly, besides a few hang glider fly byes.) And the lift was very tall. Oh and sunny.

Day tow flopped.

Days three and four were both on. Day three being a little short but great flying. Today was strong winds but the lift band was sky high, way beyond the normal for a great day. Darren and Dean got two hour flights with great altitude. I mean real high. Oh, and it was sunny. The strength of the wind was the eventual down fall of the day. It got rough and strong and stopped being the smooth conditions you come to the beach to fly. That included some big holes in the lift that, for at once being so high, made sinking out a big surprise.

We had another sled day ride the next day. The fine art of para-waiting was starting to grind. One has to reflect that a day at the beach sitting in the sun is not exactly getting water boarded. BUT when one comes to go paragliding, sitting on the beach is NOT sitting on the beach, it’s waiting. After the briefings are done, tests are discussed, everyone’s told their stories, jokes, teased each other, buried their feet in sand, listened to weather reports, tried drowning themselves in the ocean, you are still waiting.

We were way into a parawaiting stupor on Friday afternoon. Hours had gone by. The wind was blowing across the bay, not into it. We could see sailboats heeled up in white cap water while we sat in calm hot weather. Darren called up the wind talker at
Marina up the coast. The north end of the dunes were getting the wind it was straight in there. Now, chasing the wind is often boondoggle, however, it was the last day for Dean and Darren so might as will go give it a look and see if it was really good. We got packed to leave and I spotted a glider flying at the north end. Now packing was thrown into high gear.

The dunes at the north end are more broken up. There are low gaps to cross. On the up side there are high points where you can regain your altitude after making the crossings. And it was sunny again. If we weren’t getting consistent weather, the weather we were getting was beautiful. Soon enough the whole gang was out, jumping from dune to dune, each glider lit through by the sun of the afternoon. After a hour and a half, staying high got more difficult. The day was loosing energy. After a bit one glider sank out to the beach then another. I knew it would only be a matter of time till I joined them. I radioed Darren who was further down the dunes to start heading back or look at a long hike. I did the same slowly loosing altitude till I landed right below the launch on the beach.

The last day of the clinic was a bust. In the end if the dunes didn’t give us the consistency that we were used to, it did give us beautiful weather. But more to the point it served the purpose we came for. And that is, the opportunity for new pilots to get extended flights smooth conditions, to get a chance to dial into their gliders, all that in a beautiful setting

fire in Salt Lake

2008-08-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Miles into the desert from the Mote Exit in Nevada.

More dirt bag camping! Follow some dirt off an exit in the middle of nowhere and keep driving till the road gets smaller and rougher. Go till you think for the fourth time, “Just pull over and set up the freaking tent!”. And I do, checking the ground for level, cactus, cow shit, (well dried, no problem.) I spaz around a little too much trying to get the tent up before all the light bleeds out of the horizon. My water bag has been sitting on the dashboard all the way across the salt flats and is piping hot. I place it on the top of the car, pull out the driver’s side floor mat and put it under my feet and have luxurious hot shower. I get out the guitar and serenade the stars. Finally the few bug that are out here find me and I retreat to the tent.

This morning I woke up and started driving. HIghway six wiggles it’s way down a canyon before depositing me on interstate fifteen. At the opening of the canyon I was surprised to see eight monstrous wind turbines, their long white blades shone brilliant in the now revealed morning sun. For us paraglider pilots their position made immediate sense. They would capture both the evening’s draining winds and the days building winds. Smart! Nice to see something smart. I am perturbed by the idea of an energy crisis. There’s a oil crisis for sure but energy, being neither created or destroyed just changing form, is in the same relative state it always has been. It’s more the pure sloth of not taking advantage of what’s available and the problem that a few people are getting crazy rich by keeping us trapped in the oil age, that has put us in the position that we are in now.

All right enough of that. (It’s buying this expensive gas that’s keeping me ranting.)

As I got onto I-15 and headed towards Salt Lake City I could see the smoke from a large fire beyond the Point of The Mountain.

The Point, as it is known is a famous paragliding site. It is a unique geological phenomena because it is a ridge of mountains that cross a valley. Usually what ever routed out the valley in the first place would remove any perpendicular features to that valley. What this does for the paragliding is that the cold air that flows down the valley every morning flows over the point, making good flying. In the evening the heated air flows up the other side of the point. On a good day you can fly one side in the morning, take a long lunch and fly the other side in the afternoon.

As I get closer to Salt Lake City I see billboards for the Mormon movies. The Mormons make movies about the book of Mormon and show them at the theaters. My favorite was “Polygamy, our Heritage.” I kid you not. This always gets me thinking. I am reminded that Salt Lake City was originally a separate city state that then joined the United States. Salt Lake has a unique history and remains a unique place for it. I keep thinking one of these days I’m going to watch one of these movies just to see what they are all about.

The hiway took me around the point and I could now see the fire blazing up Lone Peak. The smoke had a orange tint to it and now reach up beyond cloud base where the smoke became bright white as the moisture within it started forming a huge cloud. I stopped by the Paragliding shop, Cloud Nine. Everyone was out back taking pictures of the fire. I heard the owner Steve, talking on the phone with someone, “No, you can’t fly today...” (Paraglider pilots can have such one track minds!) I saw the big multi engine slurry bomber plane drop a load of red goo over the house at the bottom of the mountain. With the slurry bombers out the airspace would be closed to all paragliding. I got back into the car and drove and drove and... drove. The salt flats went by the mountain came and went. A river was rarity. The heat got up to speed and started baking the land. Dust devils quivered in long, towering columns. Finally the sun slunk off behind some mountain to look for the back side of the horizon, the heat backed off and I found the sign “Mote exit number something, no services.” or dirt back camping here.

The oil age and road tripping

2008-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings from one of my favorite dirt bag camping sites. I’ve just crested Soldier pass on Highway six. I pulled off a few miles down the west side on a dirt road of questionable condition. Straddling the massive ruts made by the SUV’s, I drove down to the creek and set up my tent. I always drive to the Monterey clinics. I love the road trip and the dirt bag camping on some disregarded piece of property. But each year there is a shadow growing ever darker on my trips. It’s the sun setting on the internal combustion engine.

My last road trip was the epic Central America trip with American Explorer. At over twelve thousand miles, Monterey’s mere thirteen hundred seems a quick trip to the store for milk. Yet the trip to Central America had two things going for it that this one does not. I’m driving my own car, not the sponsor’s and the credit card that I insert into the gas pump is mine. So, from that looming shadow I was talking about comes this voice, “How much longer can you pull this off?”. I drove pass a station in Glenwood Springs, and there it was, four dollar plus gas. Now I know I’m going into the heart of reckless gas profiteering, California. I saw the grim reaper waving at my car, standing beneath that sign.

On my last Paramotor trip to Utah in November, I remember talking with Bill Lhotta about how when the gas is gone we won’t miss mixing the two stroke oil, or the smell, or the noise. And it made me think that we are all trapped in the oil age. Like a bunch of cavemen dragging our stone clubs around, we are all pushed up the end of a technological canyon that is narrowing. Cars were once powered by many different engines but like a bad businessman that relies on one client to keep his business afloat, there is only one now and that way is a dead end. Just the fact that you need an on board computer to run the thing should be a clue. I know when the cars we have today are gone, I won’t be missing the noise or the stink or that only thirty percent of the energy actually turns the wheels as the rest is wasted or all those endless pieces that need fixing. But if the road trips go away...
But there’s one more thing I’ll miss. It’s a by product of those wasteful engines and that’s the heat, cause there’s nothing like going for a drive on a cold winter’s day, slapping that heat control all the way right, and baking myself.

Bill

Home Again, Home Again

2008-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm writing you in a world class stupor. I got very little sleep in the final drive home from Copper canyon,Mexico. Fell asleep yesterday at four pm, woke up this morning at seven am. Not sure which way is up now.

I've got one last entry for the trip in my lap top but right now, it's time to get the paragliding school going.

So for all of you that have been waiting to go flying. We are going Saturday to the leyden site,meeting at 8am. Call me after seven tonight if you want to go. 303 642-0849.

Paraglidng info about schedules and when we are going flying will be on the email list from here on out. If you are not signed up for this it's on the opening page of my web site. Click on the button and sign up.

The blog will continue with stories and ranting.

See ya!

Bill

drivingdrivingdriving

2008-05-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

one thirty, just peeled my socks off like they were duct taped to my feet. Spent all day yesterday in the water and my one pair of shoes is a science project. Drove all the way from Panama in the last few days. Big drives, little sleep. Got to the point were the only sleep we were getting was a couple of hour lay down in the back of the Earthroamer.

We've gotten pulled over at every road block, get searched two to three times a day. Late one night we got stopped. While one guy got his grubby hands in all my stuff another jerk stood in the my face, firing off Spanish at me while making sucking noises like he was smoking a joint, over and over again. I've never wanted to punch somebody more.

Mexico was getting some bad PR in my little brain till we finally hit Monterey. Monterey is a great mountain city and the places we saw were world class in grandar and beauty.

That's my eight minutes of personal time for this day. Time for my four and half hours of sleep.

see ya.

Panama Canal, Batman style.

2008-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

May Nineteenth,

Made it into Mexico later last night. We were trying to make it to a boarder that closed at eleven. With a lot of mad driving, we got there at eleven-o-five. Then we went to the other boarder that doesn’t close... (Ya, why didn’t we go there in the first place?)

The brakes on the Land Cruiser had been making some noise. Now, there were crying out in agony at every slow down. I’m sitting at the hotel while local mechanic works on the brakes in the parking lots.

A brake job is so simple here. Dude goes to parts store, picks up parts, goes to the car’s location, installs parts. What’s missing is, a garage, a lift, matching uniforms and corporate branding.

Back in Panama City. We’ve had one last day to finish coverage of the canal. But first we had to shoot some tape for the airline that had flown us back and forth from the island. ( oh, and that owned the island we were on.) Don and I where at the end of the runway filming the planes taking off and landing. Some of the pilots figured this out, seeing us on the runway. So they decided to give us a show and fly real low overhead. I had to over ride the reflex to run as those big planes came roaring right at me. “It can’t hit me. Can it?”

Next Don was going to over fly the Panama canal in a small plane, the little 182. They pulled off the door and the seat on the right side so he could film without having to shoot through the glass windows. He was in my paraglider harness. I had attached the reserve bridle to the carabiners and then routed it behind him so that we could secure Him to the plane somewhere. Now I know that the bridal on my harness has a working load of eight “G’s” but the airline freaked out. They ended up trussing him up with a sorts of stuff. He was probably good for thousands of kn’s before they let him fly. Off went Don with his feet out the plane for an hour long flight over the canal.

When Don got back, we all drove back to Ganboa to get back on a boat to get more coverage of the Panama Canal. On our last trip on to the canal we were racing to met the Earthrace. Now we wanted to take some time to film what we had seen then.

At the dock there was some discussion about the level of fuel in the boat. Person “a” was saying we needed more fuel while person “b” was saying the gas gauge was screwed up. As this conversation went on in spanish I was only guessing what was going on. I would find out soon enough who was right. As we took off from the dock person “b” pointed to the gas gauge that would read full, empty, half full and so on. He gave me the thumbs up and a wink.

Most of the land around the canal had been kept as natural jungle. It was explained that, as it is, the canal must be constantly dredged because the silt from run off tries to fill the canal back in. If the area around the canal was developed then this problem would be even worse. This makes the land around the canal relatively pristine. There are monkeys in the trees, crocodiles on the blanks, jaguars have been sighted and the jungle is thick as it climbs up into the hills.

We saw the big shovel on a barge dredging the canal and went over for a closer look. I had seen it on our last trip on the canal when we were in a hurry. Now we motored over for a closer look.
Don started filming as the engine was shut off. The huge shovel was shiny bright from constant abrasion. It was a gigantic metal hand scooping out house sized piles of dirt and water. The shovel would plunge in with the illusion of slow motion that an object of incomprehensible size can give. Then returning to the surface with it’s load of mud and a waterfall of brown water pouring off it, it would dump the load onto a barge. With each scoop the barge would shutter taking on the load.

The current was slowly taking us closer to the shovel. And, although we wanted a nice close look, we didn’t want to get scooped up with the mud and dropped on the barge. Our guy went to start the engine to move us away. CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! went the engine. (We continue to drift towards the shovel.) CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! went the engine again. I heard some muttered Spanish, that, although I didn’t understand it, I think would be spelled, even in Spanish as, “%&^$#@#%! CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! Went the engine one more time. (That drifting? It’s still going on.) There is some loud Spanish going on now. One of the guys goes to the small electric trolling motor, no luck there, it doesn’t work either.

Now Don, who is looking through the lens and has his headphones on to hear the audio feed, does seem to be aware of; how close we are, the guy waving his hands over his head at the shovel operator or me yelling, “Do we have any paddles!”. I can clearly see the scratches in the back of the shovel as it come back down. The wave sent up from the shovel impacting the water rocks the boat. One of the Spanish speaking guys point at a hatch that I open to find two paddles tangled up with a bunch of other stuff. I wrestle one loose which Keith grabs and starts powerfully churning the water with it. I grab the other one and get behind him. We are moving now, slowly but , moving.

It appears that the shovel operator either doesn’t see us, (which seems impossible as we were right there.) or does give a crap what a pile of idiots in a boat do to themselves. We are real close. On the next scoop the shovel is no more than fifteen feet away. The next one is going to scoop us. Here’s the problem, with both of us paddling on the same side we only get the boat sideways from where we want to go. That is, straight up current. There is no way we can out paddle the canal’s current. I go to get on the other side of the boat as Don comes screaming by, grabs the paddle out of my hand and starts paddling on the far side. I have almost enough time to think, “Hey!” before I spot a broom laying in the bottom of the boat. Taking the broom I run to the bow of the boat and start paddling across it. I’m not making the boat go forward but I can point the boat across the current so that the efforts of Don and Keith’s paddling will take us across the bow of the barge where, we will be on it’s far side, away from the shovel. Then the current can take us away from the shovel.

I’m wondering if a broom will make an effective paddle as I plunge it into the water. I’m also thinking in that quite, observational side of the little brain, “This is kind of like a James Bond/Indiana Jones/Batman movie, cool! The shovel comes down now even closer. “Crap!” I’m jumping if this doesn’t work. But the broom is doing teh job, the boat is slowly turning and the frantic paddling behind me is moving the boat. I thought we might hit the barge’s bow and then drift onto the wrong side toward the relentless shovel but we just clear it and are safe.

We scrape along the side of the barge, catching our breath. The flesh of my hands feels all compressed from being caught between my bones and the paddle. There’s a little laughter that has a twinge of the hysterical in it. We start babbling about what happened, what we did and thought. And then the cops come.

It seems we can’t get on the canal without a visit from the cops. It appears that there is a new dredging project going on in the canal and the powers that be, want to control the spin. So dudes with cameras get asked questions. Add to that that we almost got snuffed by the dredging shovel... well cops need to check this kind of stuff out. “Yes, officer we are here with our sixty-five thousand dollar camera to make home movies of monkeys. Yeah, monkeys that’s it, you know the ones over there. Look! point point nod smile.” “Yup, the engine failed, bad luck that!” Believe it or not that story worked and we didn’t get our camera confiscated.

Remember that argument about whether the boat was low on gas or that the gauge was bad? Well, the guy who said the gauge was off said that the engine failed due to an electrical problem. The
funny thing was that, when another boat was sent out with a gas can and that gas was put in the engine the electrical problem cleared right up. Funny, that. Our day, even after all that excitement, wasn’t over. We got in a car and head back towards Panama to the locks at Miraflores.

The sun was setting as we filmed from the observation deck over the locks. The sky had a patch work of clouds outline in gold, the hills surrounding the locks fading ever more purple in the distance. On the intercom we got tourist information, people of all languages surrounded us.

It’s hard to capture the scale of things here, but imagine a huge ship stacked with layer upon layer of leggos and then realize that each leggo is actually a container the size of a semi truck. Watch the ship enter the locks, see the doors open and close, see this behemoth of a boat sink down between the concert walls of it’s pen before being released into the Pacific

This ships toll was close to a quarter of a million dollars. The smallest toll ever paid was a man who swam it, 36¢.

Almost done with this day now. My last task is to climb into the Earthroamer and drive to the town of David, eight hours away. Keith and Don are in the other car. I listen to a book on tape, the road spools along under my tires in the night.

Last Day, San Jose

2008-05-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Today we leave behind San Jose, the private island that has been our home for the last few days.

Got a word for all of you about all those plastic bottles we use. They’re out floating in the ocean, That’s where they go. San Jose, being private has a tiny population, not large enough to cause what we saw. When I was out on the boat yesterday afternoon, I found the ocean littered with trash. There we were miles from the island that is miles from Panama and we would go through large swaths of floating garbage. Bottles, bags, flip flops, foam containers.

I had heard about there being vast expanses of trash in collecting points between the major currents of the ocean. But, hearing about, is not seeing. So I’m thinking about putting an end to the plastic throw away bottles in my life. One Gatorade bottle can last for many uses, when being refilled with powder and mixed at home. Give it some thought.

Well, leaving a private island out in the Pacific. Sounds like a wistful lament, but I’m ready to start, at least, pointing home, if not going there. I see all trips as a big bungy jumps. First is the glorious liberation of committing to the unknown, then the meat of the adventure falling through events. But then you start feeling the pull of home, like that bungy starting to go taunt. And slowly the desire to go home increases, till on those last few days it’s like being sucked into a black hole. I’m just starting to feel the bungy cord, just starting to slow me down.

Earth Race

2008-05-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

Earthrace

Well today I spent running around San Jose Island. The Earth Roamer arrived so we drove it around shooting on the roads and beaches.

But let’s back up to yesterday.

Woke up early again. ( I guess I should just start remarking when I actually wake up late as it is the more noteworthy event.) Drove the twenty minute drive across the island to the airstrip. Getting on the little 182 four seater, flew, with the gang, back to Panama City.

I've been flying back and forth to the island the last three days in a row. It’s my commute! So I drifted over the islands of the Pearl Islands. Sleep was trying to shut my eyes as the ocean passed below me. Little wisps of cloud parted over the wings. I saw miniature towns on small island and nothing but the jungle on others. I was trying to see if I could spot some whales but found my eyes were shut and I had been sleeping.

The plan... you know how this goes, there’s a plan and then things change. After all our mission is to shoot great TV not to adhere to schedules. Back to the plan, that was to over fly the Panama canal. The weather was a gray overcast mess so we had to bag that. Next on the to do list was filming the Earthrace.

The Earthrace is a bio- diesel boat that is trying to set the around the world record while drawing attention to bio-diesel. Today it would enter the Caribbean side of the Panama canal. We were to get on the support boat in the canal and meet it.

Now about the canal. If you start on the Caribbean side, the canal cuts inland to a lake after going through a number of locks. Then you must cross a channel cut in the lake before reaching the locks on the other side that drop you down to Pacific ocean. We would get on the support boat at the Pacific side of the lake, motor along to the Caribbean locks and wait there for the Earthrace.
There was a big meeting at the Dunkin Donuts of Panama City with the Earthracer people. They needed to know who we were and what we were doing.

Two of the guys had been on the boat, Tino and Adrian. They seemed happy just to be on dry land having donuts and pizza. (Duncan Donuts sells pizza here!) They were taking a short break while the boat went through the locks before returning to get on board for the next leg.

Everything was cool. We then had to move from the Dunkin Donuts to the Subway. (That’s sandwiches by the way, not a form of mass transit.) There, Andrew would come by with the support boat on a trailer.

Now, the support crew was a different animal than our American Explorer Crew. First off they had women! And, we’ve never packed beer and rum and what not before heading off anywhere. When the support boat arrive it was provisioned, then we followed it up to Gamboa to put in.

Gamboa is on the most Pacific side of the lake, (who’s name I can’t remember, if I ever knew it.) that is the middle part of the Panama canal. The support boat was maybe thirty feet and had two two hundred and twenty-five horse power engines. There were shouts of “Ipod, Ipod, who’s got an Ipod.” so the music was blasting as Andrew lit up the engines, we all found something to grab and the boat flew off.

The canal here is a lake, yet a series of green and red buoys mark the middle channel where the big boats must go. And these are BIG boats. Call them ships. Ships the size of shopping malls. They were sitting around here and there, waiting for the traffic change from Pacific ward to Caribbean ward.

We passed two massive cranes used to maintenance the lock doors. There were barges dredging with shovels that could eat houses. AND there where thatch roof huts with dug out canoes pulled up on the shore before them. We made a short stop to throw bananas to the monkeys hanging around in the trees but they must have been full. It’s a sad day when you can give away bananas to monkeys!

We whipped by all this with hair flailing, Don running tape the whole time, trying to capture the blurs going by, until the police pulled us over. Well, there was this problem about someone getting off the Earthrace between locks thereby disrupting the fabric of the universe of the officials that run the locks.

Andrew our captain, is a pilot for the canal. That is, he boards the ships before they enter the canal and guides them through. So He knows everyone and starts showing his credentials. Some of the officials are smiling and saying “Hi” and then there are the scowling armed dudes. Now, the boat is stopped we’re filming like mad. There are whispered conversations as other people get heavy the the heavies. Eventually everything is resolved and we get to the Caribbean locks.

There are huge ships everywhere waiting to enter the locks. A lot of waiting is going on including us. There’s the problem, we need to catch a plane back to the island tonight. Because we filmed the EarthRace today we didn’t film the island. We have to film the island tomorrow so we must be on the plane at four thirty. I do the math, forty minute back across the lake, a half a hour to the airport, it’s three now... Twenty minute later the EarthRace comes out of the locks.

Ok, google “Earthrace” this is James Bond’s boat! It’s long and sleek and has two outriggers on both side attached by flying buttresses. It’s made to go through waves, completely submerging rather than going over the top. It’s a spaceship on the water.

We cruise up to it. There are shouts back and forth, “Go to channel four” “You got beer?, you’ve got beer!” “Send over the girls” “Nice beard!”. As the officials are already giving us the hairy eye ball over the illegal de-boarding, nothing passes between the boats. Instead it’s time to blast off to the far locks. And off we go. We are racing along with this crazy looking boat. Our skipper knows his job, we get front shots, rear shots, left side, right side. Everything is going great till we cross wakes and everyone is thrown sideways. I’ve been trying to steady Don and warn him about the rough spots. I’ve got time to yell “hang on” and we do. But even with both hands I still can’t keep from bouncing my face off the pole I’m hanging on to.

Finally back at Gamboa the boats stop to chat a bit. They go on to the locks and we go to the boat ramp. There is some disappointment. Keith and Don were to go on the Earthrace and interview to crew, get their story. (They were shot at in the Caribbean and have the bullet holes to prove it.)

It’s now five. Are we getting on the plane at four thirty? No! We race off in the car to get a plane to another island and talk a guy into taking us in a small open boat, at night, thirty miles out into the ocean back to San Jose.

It’s night, the air is warm. There is a hazy half moon overhead. Lightning flashes on the horizon. The bio-luminous plankton make our wake a wide swath of light filled with sparks. Behind us is Panama, somewhere ahead, in the dark, is our island, but right here is a world removed. Keith pulls out his phone, “I’ve got coverage!” And calls home from way out in the Pacific

Pearl Islands

2008-05-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

I just had the most singular experience. We flew out of Panama City after hours of sorting things out. The plane was a twenty seater Twin Otter. I got a look at how large Panama city was before heading out over the ocean.

The waves passed under me for maybe a half an hour before I saw the straight cut of the a runway a cross the island a head. San Jose is it’s name, one of the Pearl Islands off the Pacific coast of Panama.

As we taxied to the end of the runway a pickup truck paced us along one side. The plane came to a halt at the end of the grass runway. There was a small bamboo building of sorts and a man to greet us. The man shook my hand and said something but Don was already rolling tape and I was trying to get out of the shot. As it turns out the was the owner of the island and the Airline we just flew on.

We loaded the gear onto the truck and started driving. The island has a series of really nice dirt roads. Our driver spoke no english so we looked out the windows as he drove on. There were deer and wild pigs about. I saw a big butt rat rabbit thing eating something off the road. It ran away as we came by, it’s big butt bouncing up and down. A comical thing, but when it got to the edge of the forest it jumped many times it’s length like it was shot out of a cannon revealing a hidden power beneath it’s awkward appearance.

This island had gone over a hundred years untouched and unoccupied. It has been privately owned and is largely undeveloped. Once pirates stayed here, now it has a resort. What has remained the same is the beauty of the place with it’s sand beaches, coconut tree and dark rock cliffs. (More jungle so insert one of my previous descriptions here.) The island was way bigger than I thought as it took quite a while to get to the resort. The resort is so far beyond the means of a paraglider instructor as to be unthinkable. But... I’m here!

My room is a bamboo cabin over looking a paradise of a beach. At the main lodge the view is of slack jaw quality. It’s maybe a hundred feet up on a ocean cliff. There are tiny rock islands with tufts of trees, like heads of hair. On the railings toucans eye the cherry in my drink. I try to make friends with one that lunges for my drink. It, instead, gets a firm bite of finger. This my third altercation with things biting me. One toucan, one crab and that dam tripod I’ve been carrying around everywhere.

The sun set, we have dinner on the porch. The tree over us is full of macaws making a racket, hanging upside down and biting each other. After dinner the planning begins, what to shoot, how long will it take. I make some, hopefully useful comments, but find I falling asleep in my chair. But I cant’ quite hang it up yet and that beach is calling to me.

So I take a nigh time walk. The waves are crashing. The stars are brilliant in a clear sky. In a few minutes I’m far enough away from the resorts lights that my night vision comes on. Occasionally I scare something in the jungle which at least scares me as much as it.

At the end of the beach I find a absolutely clear river. I walk along it for one bend so that I’m now completely blocked from the resort lights and sat down, shutting off the head lamp.

Darkness and quiet. I let my thought drift for a bit, eyes closed. These moments are so rare on this trip, it’s like a powerful drug coming on. I pull off my shoes and wade into the river. As I step into the water a cloud of roiling grains of light swirl around my feet. I take another step and then another. With each one the swirls of light come tiny yet sharp. Then I’m crawling through the water watching the lights around my knees, my hands.

I remember first hearing about bio-luminus plankton when reading “Kontiki” as a kid. There was a passage about the balsa wood raft out in the middle of the pacific, under the stars, leaving a glowing trail of light behind it. Since then I had always wanted to see it for myself. Now I have, first just months ago in Mexico and then at Gondoca the night of the turtle patrol, but nothing like this. This was pure magic, the late night, the warm wind, water and the woozy tint of sleep depravation made it all intoxicating.

I pulled myself away after a while headed off to my room to sleep.

Rafting

2008-05-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

Rafting.

Ok, backing up a bit to cover the rafting trip in Costa Rica

I’m waking up with my old pal, Five a.m. again. It’s a drive to a river for some rafting today. It’s raining so the big question is, “Can we film?”.

It takes three hours to drive the fifty miles. As I’m now writing from Panama, I can crown Costa Rica as the worst roads of Central America! Yeah! The country seems to be one of the most, well to do, but none of that money turns into asphalt. No matter, you just pull over every once and a while to put the fillings back in your teeth.

Warren has brought a friend, Daniel, along. Her part, along with Warren, is to have other people in the raft so it will look more like a trip. The bonus is she is female and the show needs some feminine balance. Otherwise it would just be Keith and the rafting guide. Don and I are in an oar raft with the camera, tape and gear.

We get off the dirt road to get on a dirt road before arriving at THE dirt road. At a gate across the road the horn gets honked and a very old women slowly comes out to let us through. Keith, being a gentleman, opens the gate for her and we drive through.

Finally we drive down a steep road, (dirt) into the river valley. It’s beautiful place. Water worn gray rock contain the river. The trees overhead drop down long vines. As with everywhere around here the jungle is a collection of every shade of green and every shape of leaf. The valley makes a sharp bend, a slight hint of white water beyond.

Don has the little camera in the lead boat. It’s me and the guide in the oar raft. The first rapid sends us stepping down over some rocks, then bounces us off a rock wall. It’s low water. There are many rocks and shallow spots. Whether the river is tamer is debatable. There are spots that are rapids now that would be washed over in high water, there are rapids in high water that are now rocky shoals.

At first I am thinking I’d like to be in my kayak. The water is class two and three which would match my lack of skill perfectly. I’ll change my mind later.

Now Don joins me in the raft to get out the other camera. The class two and three water has gotten everyone thinking that we can film on the river with the big monster camera. There is a cooler strapped to the frame of the raft in the middle. That’s where the big camera goes in the rough water. My job is to sit behind the cooler grab the straps of Don’s life jacket from behind and keep him stable by holding him against the cooler. That way Don can concentrate on shooting as both his hands are needed to run the camera.

All is going well. We’re rolling tape, shooting rapids, getting out to film the other raft going through. Everything is taking longer than planned. The guides are starting to twitch. There is a chance we wouldn’t get to the take out before dark. The guides don’t want to run the rapids at night. They are using language like, “concerned” and “for your safety”. Pretty soon they aren’t letting us out of the boat to shoot or even repack gear.

Now the rapids are getting bigger. It takes more strength to keep Don in the boat. My finger are numb from hanging on. At times it takes everything I’ve got. In one rapid we go over a drop sideways. I feel one side of the raft go down the other up and then we slam down on the side. I feel Don pitch violently like he’s going over. I pull him back to the center of the raft with a quick jerk.

I ask the guide whether it’s going to get worst. He say “yes”, there’s a class four rapid coming up. At this point everything in the raft is wet. There is nothing dry left to wipe the lens clean so Don has been holding the forty five pound camera over his head as we go through the bad stuff.

So where is the class four rapid? “Just there.” points the guide. Oh crap! I’m thinking what are doing taking the big expensive camera through rapids of this level? The very first thing that happens is we hit a rock and are spun around backwards. I look over my shoulder, there’s a six foot drop that is divided by a huge rock. We smack right into the rock. I stand up to shove Don forward as the sudden stop sends him backward and then over the drop we go. There is a big splash, we spin around one more time and, amazingly, everyone is still in the boat.

There’s flat water in a deep canyon a decrepit bridge handing over head. It’s very quite. Our rafters get out to swim. The big camera has had it, the lens fogs up and it’s put away

Panama

2008-05-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Panama

I’m sitting behind the counter of Air Panama by the women's bathroom. Keith and Don are off arranging arrangements. I’m watching the gear.

We woke at a reasonable seven o'clock at the Gamboa resort, had breakfast and headed out to put the Earth Roamer on a barge to the Pearl islands.

At first the road took us along the canal, which at that point was more or less a river. The banks were a few hundred feet high and covered in jungle. Soon we were in Panama City, diving through narrow streets packed with people. There was a car leading us or we would have been lost in the first turn. The streets were lined with food carts and the traffic was an act of faith.

It had been pouring rain but a patchy sky was drying out and the sun would make brief appearances. Our circuitous route brought us to the sea. A thicket of skyscrapers stood against a gray sky. Of this huddled mass of buildings, every third one was under construction. this town must be booming. I hadn’t seen anything like it since Shanghai.

At the “docks” the barge was sitting, hard, on a concert ramp. The ramp angled down to a rolling plain of mud. From the smell, there must have been something other than dirt making up that gray brown mass. There was no water in sight.

The gear was divided into need right now and need later. The “now” came with us, the “later” went in the Roamer. The theory was that the tide would come in and cover the crap mud plain, raise the barge off of it’s parking spot and float the Roamer off to San Jose, one of the Pearl islands. We would fly there and meet it when it arrives a day later.

Oh, and never ever, ever think of swimming off the coast of Panama City. I’ve seen what’s down there.

Although a necessary task, watching the gear, I’m getting bored sitting on the airport. There is the traffic to the bathroom, the workers punching in but beyond that it’s dull back here. Guess I’ll read my book.

Turtle Day

2008-05-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

Turtle Day

It’s two a.m., The three of us are lined up, sitting on a log in sector B of the beach at Gondoca station. We are hear to film leather back turtles laying their eggs.

It’s been a very long time since we woke up at 5 a.m. on what, as of midnight, has become yesterday. It’s a moonless night with a sky full of stars. The near one hundred percent humidity stifles what light there is. The darkness reluctantly softens to blotchy gray in places. I had stumbled out with the research patrol. Making the first pass, I never knew where my feet would land, wondering how in hell anyone would know if there weren’t thirty turtles all around us in the gloom. I had the boom microphone and so was attached to Don by a few feet of cable. I would stumble one way, He the other, the cable would go tight. I’d lurch back towards Don, who I couldn’t see, to keep from ripping the cable out of the back of the camera.

The patrols go all night long. This patrol is midnight to four. The patrols look for turtles coming a shore. The researchers stand aside as the turtles digs it’s nest, lays it’s eggs and then buries them. They then rush in to check for tags and if untagged tag it. The turtle is then measured. The place and the date of the laying is recorded and the turtle returns to the sea.

After each pass of along the beach, the patrol sits for twenty minutes so the turtles, (who must be able to see something in the gloom,) feel comfortable to come a shore.

I think it was the length of the day combined with gloom that had us all feeling a little pessimistic. There was talk about just going back to bed and seeing if we could round out the story with some “B” roll. (“B” roll being footage from another source, that is used to illustrate what, say, an interviewed person is talking about.) Physically this sounds like a great plan, mentally... Seeing a leather back turtle climb up the beach to lay it’s eggs, How could one miss that?

Then a red light starts blinking from sector A, a turtle has been spotted. Everything changes in an instant. Lethargy flees before excitement as we plod off at top speed across the sand in the dark. Megan, one of the researchers greets us. She explains in her Australian accent, that we must wait as the turtle is still lying her eggs. Within a patch of darkness only a few feet away is the turtle.

Soon we are told it’s time to move in. Camera’s rolling! Now soft red headlamps are turned on, there she is. I’m three feet away. I was told later it wasn’t a big turtle, could have fooled me! Megan can just reach from tail to shoulder as she lays the tape across the turtles back. This turtle is tagged. At this point the turtle starts waving it’s powerful front flippers. This is the sign top back off. We all move away. Data is written down in whispered conversations. The turtle calms down. We move back in. A little more filming is done. And then she starts laboriously crawling back towards the sea.

The creature is large and powerful but the turtle looks completely out of it’s element. The big flippers come down and plow the sand, pushing her forward. I think about what must drive her to leave the sea behind, what thoughts might a turtle have in the surf, head out of the water, surveying the beach for a place to lay her eggs? And now that the job is done those final moments of exposure as she pushes her bulk over the sand.

And then it’s over. The turtle is in the water, that massive body once again weightless, transformed from lumbering beast to master of the sea.

Master of stumbling, I head back with the group. Elated by the experience I’m more aware of my surroundings now. There is a faint bio-luminous glow coming from the beach with each step I make. I see it also in the water. There is now an outline of the trees against the water. We rejoin the patrol at sector B, who lead us back to our rooms at the station. I’ve got a chance to get a whole four hours of sleep before we get up to interview the other researchers.

Here’s the deal, these turtles are in big need of assistance. There has been an eighty percent decline in their population in the last ten years. Due to the efforts made here at Gondoca there are seeing a slight increase in number at this beach.

Now, on to the babies turtles. Mom is out of here, they are on their own. Of those eggs some twenty percent aren’t fertile. Of the others forty percent may hatch. Then there is a four day climb to the surface, a dash across the beach and finally surviving till one can breed and lay eggs. One in a thousand make it. JEEZ!

Oh why did we get up at five a.m. to film turtles twenty one hours later? To get in a helicopter to film volcanos outside of San Jose of course! I didn’t get to fly in the helicopter this time. My job was to drive the Earth Roamer around the mountain roads while Don, in the helicopter, filmed me. This was actually real cool. Totally James Bond, I’m getting cased by a helicopter! It would come in low and pace me. I would drive through some trees and it would pull away. I’d be thinking, “Where is it, where is it.” And then it would come along the other side.

Anyway I’m in Panama. Just drove over the Panama canal. Although the trip is far from over this is a milestone. This is the farthest we’ll go south. After filming here we head north again and some, as of yet, unthinkable time in the future, head home.

San Jose

2008-05-03T23:24:00.001-07:00

San Jose,

Well the big camera just broke down. This brings everything to a screaming halt. The gods of dumb luck have smiled on us as the only Sony service center in Central America is in San Jose, a two hour drive from the point of failure. So I’m in a hotel in Down town San Jose regrouping with the gang as the camera gets fixed. We used the time to get a title problem sorted out with the Land Cruiser.

This will be a short catch up as I need to wake up five hours from now. The camera did get fixed. We went to Monteverde, staying at the research center at the Cloud Forest Reserve. Saw the Bat jungle. Returned to San Jose yesterday to go rafting today. Tomorrow is a helicopter flight around some volcanos for some ariel footage. After that we’re watching some turtles babies on the Eastern coast.

Snoozing now!

Canyoneering

2008-04-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is tourism central. Fortuna is designed to get people touristed. There are signs everywhere for every type of tourist level adventure.

We are filming canyoneering today. That’s a merger of the word canyon and mountaineering, which means exploring a canyon with mountaineering gear. One repels down water falls, climbs through narrow canyon walls, gets real wet, and generally gets to poke around in a unique and beautiful setting. The gripping thing is how the hell do we get the sixty five thousand dollar camera down through water falls, streams and over slippery rocks. Remember, this is a rain forest and we’ve already toasted one camera getting it wet. We were shown a video the day before, it’s real wet in that canyon. When the big Sony Seven Hundred A, dies, the gig is up.

First we meet the tour operators. They’ve got a great place. When we explain that we need to film the car on the way to the canyon. They ask if we want the car washed. “Yes” is the answer to that question. Five guys are all over our car, soon it is sparkling. I ride up in the tour operator’s truck with Don. Keith is driving the Earth Roamer, getting filmed.

The tour company is owned by a Husband and Wife team. The gal turns out to be my former Alderwomen from when I lived in downtown Madison. We chatted about the Paul Soglan years, Madison’s once hippy Mayor turned grumpy old man.

We drive up, yet another contestant for the worlds bumpiest road. Occasionally, opening gates, and herding cows off the road we gain altitude. At the top we pull out the trusty cooler, which worked so well in the caves, for the camera, get geared up for repelling and head off.

Entering dense forest we haul the gear in. There are five guides with us to help and I don’t have to carry the tripod, so it’s more or less a day off. This is a different than the jungle in Belize, this is dripping rain forest. There are the palms and banana trees, hanging vines everywhere and, what is to a Wisconsin boy, huge house plants that have escaped their pots, everywhere.

I know how to repel, I rock climb but I listened the briefing to be a good sport while checking the anchors to see if they’re set up properly. After a short hike came the first repel that would drop us into the canyon. Now comes the first logistics discussion. There is a second repel point, near by, that is a free repel. That is the rope drops straight down. The main repel goes down a near cliff but the rope lays against the wall so the person going down will walk their feet down the wall as they go. Don will shot keith going down from the top and then the camera will go back in the cooler and be lowered down the free repel. That way the camera will not be banged against the rock wall, even if it’s in the cooler.

I get to go first. The repell is about a hundred and fifty feet. The guides are attaching safety lines to everyone with a braking devise. That way they can control my descent even if I screw up.

For those who haven’t repelled before the first thing you do is stick your ass out over the edge. the further your ass sticks out the better. This is not a comfortable thing to do. And though I’ve done lots of repels, that first moment, before I get my feet on the wall and start descending is always disconcerting.

I dangle off the platform. The first little bit I’m hanging free of the wall. The rope twists me around in the circle so I get a full view of the canyon walls, the waterfall and the deep “V” the canyon makes in the thick foliage. My feet soon touch down on the wall and bounce down to the pool below. I speed up the repel to see how tight of a leash the guide overhead is keeping on me with the safety line. I find out He’s letting do my thing so I speed up some more. Too much He puts the brake on me. Oh well.

Next comes Keith. Don is filming with the big camera. I’ve got the little camera and am filming from below. I’ve got to scramble up the side of the canyon a bit to stay out of the shot yet still film.

After we are all down, the guides come descend. Showing off they come down head first. Last is the big camera being lowered on the rope.

Next we climb further down into the canyon, going through and along the river. Keith is getting soaking wet for the camera while Don and I are doing everything we can to keep that camera and the other gear dry. At times I’ve got my heavy pack on with one foot on each side of the canyon, my hands pressing outward on the walls and the river running underneath and between my legs.

The last repel is a free repel that goes through the waterfall. It’s over two hundred feet. Keith will repel this one, get to the bottom, run the long way around on the trail so that He can be filmed again. This way Don can get a shot from above and well as below. Keith goes down right through the waterfall whooping it up. I’m next. I try to stay out of the water, keeping the gear dry. (That sort of works.) I stop for a moment to just look around. I’m on a rope, a waterfall, that I can touch with and outstretched hand, next to me and lush jungle all about. I look straight down at the pool below me. I let myself zip around for a while till my guide overhead puts the brakes on me.

Keith does his second repel and then heads down stream to do some interviews with the guides and the tour’s owners. I stay behind to collect the gear. The cooler will be sent down clipped to a guide rope that is tied out at an angle to keep the gear out of the water. A second rope does the actual lowering. I can’t help but think what the camera rental place would think of it all as I watch the small dot of the cooler with the camera in it become larger and larger as it descends.

At the end of the day, driving back it’s clear. Finally we can see the volcano is all it’s glory. We set up the Earth Roamer and Don getting great end of the day shots of the volcano with a sky full of orange modeled clouds.

Driving in Costa Rica

2008-04-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

Backing up a little now that I've got internet again.

Completed the trek through Nicaragua yesterday. There must be nice places in Nicaragua but I didn’t see any of it. Everywhere were huge posters of politicians. They were scruffy looking dudes with their fist raised in the air. I remember this type from the sixties. If the most compelling image a politician can come up with is of themselves is a raised fist, then they’re trying to aggravate the populaces petty angers and frustration. I trust these guys about as much as people who win elections by aggravating the populaces fear.

Had a classic border experience. The Costa Ricans wanted original titles for the vehicles, we brought copies. Five hours later, two hundred dollars of bribes got across. It was funny, being a tighter run country, the rules were stricter, but not so strict as to be bribe proof. I was looking forward to a better run country to hang in and yet we need the loseness, the sloppiness to get us across the border.

Here the border magic was strong. Some how an imaginary line, no more physical than a thought in the head, cleaned up all the trash. The people went from being destitute to merely not having a lot of money. The land became more fertile, the animals had more meat on their bones. I could even convince myself that the people were happier, but I’m starting to push my luck with observations made from the window of a car.

There was a big red sun setting in the haze as the Costa Rica leg of the journey started. I was navigator. The main challenge here was not getting taken by the creative aspects of the map. The map, one red line going across a wide open country. Reality, a bunch of roads going everywhere and a bunch of towns. The question of dread was, “Which way now?”, when the map showed one, single, straight line. It got dark. I would pop out of the car to show my map to a guy in a bar, a guy on a horse, a guy walking along the street. “Me go here!” point, nod, point at myself, point down the road, point, nod smile. Get back in the car. “So, are we going the right way?” “ Uh, Sure.”

Even though we went through a town miles from the road we were on, we got to town and found the Hotel.

Costa Rica

2008-04-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in cafe waiting for donuts. It's a germany bakery and they are torturing us with an opening time that is always ten minutes from the present time. The second part of the torture the smell.

We've been in La Fortuna. This is Costa Rica's adventure tourism capitol. Everywhere you look there is another tour operator. Our first day was ATV and Horse riding. OK, if you are into that kind of thing. That night we went looking for the lava flows off the Arenal volcano but it was too cloudy. Looks like we are out here, the donuts are here.

Bill

Driving through Nicaragua.

2008-04-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

Nicaragua is a country we are pretty much blasting through.
No knock on the place but you can’t do everything. The approached to the border of Nicaragua was well marked by a line of parked trucks on both sides that stretched for miles. These beached whales of commerce were a grim reminder of how bad crossing the borders down here can be. This time we had a posse of tourism employees to get the experience down to only two boring hours.

Once on the way the first Nicaragua experience was a forty minute wait at a bridge blocked by protesters. One of the locals told us what is was about. The local farmers had taken out loans and now were expected to pay them back. They didn’t like this idea and were now protesting. I have a feeling that the protesters would spin the story differently.

Nicaragua is in it’s dry season. Everything is dead and brown. I’ve got the sniffles and am beat. Everyone’s a little grumpy. That the country is haggard, littered with trash, adds to the gloom. We no longer have a guide. The weight of getting lost is nothing to the fact that the Earth Roamer keeps getting pulled over at the police check points. We then have a moment of panic as we don’t understand the Spanish of the heavily armed young men before they wave us on.

Tonight we are on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. I’m getting feed wonderful spaghetti and starting to revive. It’s a beautiful night with a breeze coming off the unseen lake in the distance.

Refugio De Vida Silvetre

2008-04-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

I had little expectations for today's agenda. It was to take train ride to a boat to see a wild life refuge. It sounded pretty touristy to me. That things weren’t going to be what I expected started when we turned off on a small dirt road and bounced down to a tiny collection of houses.

The train was two platforms and a roof over some wheels. It was the color you get when you paint something bright yellow and then have a a thousand people over a few years touch every inch of it. It had a small diesel engine, a Texas licensee plate and tracks that were a few feet apart. I got in the with Keith and Don. Don figured where he would shoot from, I picked a bench so that I would be out of the frame. Then we were off.

The diesel had that classic, marbles in a blender, diesel sound. It rattled along at a jogging speed. This was not touristy at all. I liked the little train and the slow speed was perfect to enjoy the scenery rolling passed. First we had to clear the palm frond roofed houses of the town. We had plenty of time to get the cows, horses and dogs off the tracks. I’d hang off the side to take pictures. I didn’t worry too much about falling off cause I could just get up and run after the train. I expected to enter the refuge but we were going passed fields and over streams. Cows munched grass, herons stood poised looking for a heron’s meal. It was a rare clear day and I could plainly see the ten thousand foot mountains way back behind our hotel.

Miles later the train shuddered to a stop. The visitor’s center was ahead as a was a river, the Rio Salado. There were guards there with machine guns in case someone needs shooting. Was this the refuge? The next step was to get in a boat and go up the river. I was a a little bummed that there wasn’t enough room for me in it. But, the point of this whole trip is to shoot TV. If there is room for two it will be the Host and the camera man. I get to hang out.
There were a couple of canoes along the river. No one had any problems with me taking one out. So, I headed up river to go poking around. There were dug out canoes along the banks behind bamboo huts. I found a small side passage and went exploring. It was quite tight and shallow. I paddled up for a bit before I had to turn back to met the other guys. There were trees that looked less like they were rooted to the ground than they were standing on their roots. There were roots that branched into smaller roots and then to smaller roots so that the trunks were five to six feet off the ground. One could easily imagine that they had be walking about and only had stopped when they heard me coming. As I head back to the main river I startled something along the banks that went crunching through to branches. Then it happen again. Ah, the imagination!

In the main river, the fisherman were returning from the sea. They were in dug out canoes with sails made of garbage bags. They made quite a sight as the flotilla came in. Keith and Don were back raving about the jungle they had been in. Monkeys, crocodiles, birds. I hadn’t seen anything. But they were going back in and I got to come as Keith would canoe along side the boat to be filmed. While we're getting our act together, there came news that a captured crocodile was being brought in to be released in the refuge. We had to film that. The crocodile was hanging around town eating garbage and getting into the sewers. So, it was captured and brought here.

The train arrived. It had woman with their kids and groceries, a few old men and a crocodile tied up with string under the front seat. Keith volunteered to carry it to the boat. So there goes Keith holding the croc as Superman might carry a passed out Lois Lane.
Later when Keith found out it had been in the sewers he was less keen on the idea, but right then it was making great TV. The croc got a ride out into the refuge where it was released. The report was that it seemed a little confused. Probably wasn’t used to riding trains.

After the release of the croc, the boat was free to take us back into the refuge. We went the other way than I had gone. Here the jungle was deeper and denser. The boat pilot pointed out a White faced monkey in a palm tree and then some Howler monkeys. There were huge blue butterflies and wading birds with brilliant yellow heads. Keith got into the canoe and headed further in as Don rolled some tape. He returned and passed us heading back when the pilot pointed out a crocodile in the water. It was up front of Keith, just eyes and nostrils cruising from one bank to the other. This was good TV what ever happen, but the croc just slipped under the water and disappeared.

Back at the visitors center we got on the train and rattled back to the cars. We had one more stop, a bridge over a river with cable car. When we got there we found that the cable car was a small wire box on a cable that was pulled along with rope. There was bar that grabbed the cable so that the occupants could pull themselves along. With much yelling we managed to get Don into the middle of the river. I was with him to help balance the box as he leaned out to film. At the far end I had to move the bar to the other side of the box or we might get clopped by it. But the box was pulled the other way before warning us. Don was not clobbered by the bar though, the bar hit the camera that hit his head. We stopped as the bar could not push Don’s head and the camera through the far side of the box. I was yelling “Stop and Watch out! “ and tried to move the bar out of the way but a lot of metal was arguing with me. Luckily Don’s brains weren’t bashed out, I mean, he seems normal to me at least.

Tomorrow we lose one of our guides from the tourism office. The tourism car has a sticker on the windshield that says it can’t be driven on Wednesdays and tomorrow is Wednesday. So we say goodbye to Henry and Aberto gets in our cars and we head towards Nicaragua.

MAINLAND HONDURAS

2008-04-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

I’m at a Jungle lodge, Picco Bonito, twenty minutes out of La Ceiba Honduras. We had this morning to wrap up our bit about the Whale Sharks. Most of it was interviews. There a couple of guys down from the Mexico Whale Shark research station, the local gal that tags the sharks and Steve the owner of our hotel who, with his wife Jasmine, does the up keep for the whale shark data base for Utila island.

I got to ride around in boats and got another good snorkel session in. We were out in the boat out in front of the hotel. The boat had to go a mile up the coast to the lagoon and then back down to dock behind the hotel in calm water. I had mask and fins with me and did the short cut swim back to my room.

Utila island is a great place for snorkeling. There were passages with sandy bottoms between the coral. I watched the fishes as I swam for my room. The surf was breaking over coral so I had to stay within the passages. There were a few dead ends where I would have to back track before finding a way to shore. It was over way too soon.

All the houses and hotels are on stills. I saw a lot of this in Belize also. On Utila it made sense, this is hurricane country. In Belize, the houses way up on the hills were also on stills. No hurricane on the west part of the country. As it turns out this is just to keep the houses cool.

We had big meals made for us in a common dinner room with the other guests. Evenings where talking or catching up on the FREE internet.

There were humming bird feeders on the porch. All day long the humming birds would swarm around them. In the evening the humming birds punch out for the day and the night shift would take over. That would be the fruit bats. I stood around getting pictures of them both.

Took the boat back in the afternoon. Picked up the Earth Roamer that had some maintenance done it. Our new guide Alberto was there to take us here to the lodge. Got to see this place in the light. It took over an hour to reorganize the gear. Time to crash now.

Whale Sharks

2008-04-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Still on Utila island. We're here to film Whale Sharks. They aren't cooperating. Must have not gotten the memo, "Filming with Breakwater Entertainment, Monday". Whale Sharks are the largest fish in the sea, as much as sixty feet long. They're a deep blue with white dots and stripes. They were thought rare, even Cousteau saw only two in his entire career. It turns out to be more of a case of looking in the wrong place. Utila is the right place.
There is a cool grassroots protection movement of the Whale Sharks here. They are taged and tracked here and in Mexico. To indentify them a picture is taken of the side behind the gills. Here there is a distinctive pattern of dots. A computer program that NASA design to recognize patterns of stars, draws triangles between the dots that can then be rotated to be compared with other pictures. Anyone can submit a photo. If you've taken a picture of Whale Shark and submit and it's a new Whale Shark you will get updates about your Shark when it is spotted again. If not you get a history where it's been spotted before.

We had a good boat ride looking for them. Oh well.

Utila Island

2008-04-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Keith and Don made it over the border this morning. They spent the night between the two borders with a bunch of idling semi trucks and a guard in the front seat. The Earth Roamer has a Nav. system that will play DVDs. So the guard sat there watching Will Farrel movies with the Spanish subtitles turned and his pistol in his lap. People came around the car all night to check in out. In this relaxing atmosphere, Don and Keith got no sleep.

We went to the Maya ruins of |Copan. It's said if Tikal is teh New York of teh MAya than Copan is it's Paris. The cravings are much more detailed. There the trees were left growing on the ruins. The thought is if the trees were removed it would damage the temples too much. So you get the temples with hoger trees growing out of them, their roots twisted in amoungs the stones.

The next day, Keith and Don headed off for Utila island. I stayed behind to get the cars serviced and then joined them in the afternoon. Utila is a small island of the coast of Honduras. The people here are betting against global warming as the island has a total attitude of three feet. The plan is to film |Whale shark, teh biggest fish in the sea.

Drive to Honduras

2008-04-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

Waiting at the boarder. Even with the help of the tourism board we are sitting at the boarder. We have a new guide. Keith and Don are pouring over a map with him.

I was taunted but a my airport card, which asked me if I wanted to get on line. It was lying.

If we ever get through the boarder we’ll go to Copan another Maya ruin.

We just met a couple on bikers. They are riding from Alaska to the tip of South America. Keith asked them how much longer they had. They said a year or two. That’s time on a different scale.

It’s now been over five hours of waiting. We are bored. real bored. Like parawaiting bored. We spent the last ten minutes cheering a on an ant that a big load to carry back to the ant hill.

One of the two vehicles has cleared. The important one, the Earth Roamer, with all the gear, is stuck in limbo between Guatemala and Honduras. At five thirty the troll and the border leaves if the car isn’t over by then it won’t move till morning, maybe. I have crossed the border and am now sitting at the hotel with a pile of gear. Neither car is here, just me and some of the gear. Sure hope someone comes back.

Later

Well who knows when I’ll get internet again. As I write, Keith and Don are still stuck in the Earth Roamer between the borders, camping for the night.

Return to Actun Tunichil Maknal

2008-04-17T22:20:00.000-07:00

As is often the case, we need to return to a location to get some additional footage. My shoes, nice and dry after an evening with the hair dryer blowing them, go back into the river as we hike back to the cave entrance.

This time I feel more relaxed to take in the scene. The water in the shallow river is absolutely clear, so it takes on the orange brown of the rocks, the green of the jungle, the blue of the sky. It’s a cloudy day today, so everything is subdued and maybe more fitting for a place so lush.

There is another stop for poisonous snake removal, yet the trip the second time seems much shorter. We aren’t going in the cave today. At the entrance will be shot for the all important, show opener. This is the very opening of the show where there is a just a few seconds to grab the viewers attention. You need to keep them from changing the station. So, how to spin, swimming into a dark cave, wading through chest deep water, entering chambers of huge stalagmite and stalactites to find pots and the crystalized skeletons of humans sacrificed thirteen hundred years ago... sound interesting? Pretty much tell it straight, right?

Keith and Don stand in the Waist deep water before the entrance of the cave, going over and over the “Opener”. I don’t mind hanging out. It’s a beautiful place and lord knows I know how many takes it takes to get something right, when I’m recording music. So I go for a swim, skip some stones, when not getting Don tapes or batteries.

After the hike out, it’s back to the hotel to pack up all the gear.
Then it’s off to Honduras.

Actun Tunichil Muknal

2008-04-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we drove to Belize city. The production lights, (remember those?) that we needed were confirmed to be there. An hour and a half of driving gets one across the country to the east coast. Weaving around the streets of the beat up capitol city we arrived at DHL got our package and weaved back out.

We made a spot at the Belize zoo to shoot the Earth Roamer driving into and out of the park before completing the drive.

We had made arrangements to meet both Dr. Awe and our guides/ porters at our hotel. For once we, (I) would not be crushed by gear. I volunteered to ride in the back of the Earth Roamer. Not my best decision. After getting savaged by the dirt road I fell out of the back to start the hike.

We shook hands with Dr Awe. He is the archeologist that did the initial scientific survey of the cave. It was a six year long study where he lived, with his crew, at the site, in the jungle.

We had bought a gigantic cooler to put the camera in. We had gone to another guiding service to get some help. They had been very negative about bringing the cooler, it wouldn’t fit, it would be too heavy. we didn’t use them.

Our new guides found a long pole and tied the cooler to it like a cannibal sacrifice going to the fire pit. Two of them put either end of the pole on their shoulders and off we went. There was a forty five minute hike through the jungle to get to the cave. The path went along a river and delighted in veering across it. The first crossing came just a few minutes into the hike, that was the last of dry shoes.

Our guides had gone way ahead. Dr. Awe and Keith where discussing the shoot, Don was hiking a shooting the river crossings, I was bringing up the rear. we found our guides stopped a ways up. They had stopped to warn us of the poisonous snake sitting in the middle of the trail. One bite and you’ve got three hours to get a shot or you’re toast. It was a small thing well camouflaged. With the help of a stick our main guide Edward convinced it to move on.

At the end of the trail we came to the remains of Dr. Awe’s camp. Beyond that was the entrance to the cave. we first shot the an interview with Dr. Awe. It would be hard enough shooting in the cave. let alone getting good audio. The light was perfect, beams of light strained through the canopy where playing across the turquoise blue waters of the stream, the pool of water and moss covered rocks. But my eye was drawn to the yawning mouth of the cave, I was going in there.

In the interview, Dr. Awe explained that the Maya had always used caves. Their gods were believed to dwell there with their ancestors. They used the caves to get closer. Inside exactly how the Maya had left them thirteen thousand years ago were, pots, knives and the remains of the people they had sacrificed there.

The entrance revealed a pool that we would need to swim across with our sixty five thousand dollar camera... But, with our much scoffed at cooler the the camera was simply floated across. Then by staying close to the edges we brought across everything else in on our heads or shoulders. we weren’t done yet. There was another three thousand feet of going in and out of chest deep water and scrambling over rocks, squeezing through passages.

I hadn’t been caving in a few years and was enjoying the experience. And this was a good cave. Great speliothems of all sorts, came out of the darkness as I swung my headlamp around. I saw waving flags of frozen stone, reaching stalagmites, dangling stalactites. Caverns came and went, the river deepened and receded. I was warned about being cold, but my winter blood came through for me. The water was quite pleasant.

Finally, we got at the of the back of the cave. We would do the cave backward. Dr Awe had limited time ot spend with us, so we would cover the most important things first, with him. I clambered up a rock wall, following the group, leaving the river behind. At the top the cooler was left behind as were our shoes that were not allowed further into the cave. I was in my socks for the rest of the time.

Watching not to stub my toes, I hurried on. we were rushing now to get the in cave interview of Dr. Awe done before a second guided group got into the cave. We were in a huge cavern with flow stone everywhere. The floor was absolutely littered with thirteen hundred year old pots. You had to pay attention to not veer off the path and step on them. Some where shards , some were near whole but none were complete. All were, “killed” as part of their use in the ceremony. We reached a ladder at the end of the cavern.

Up the ladder, went the gear and ourselves. At the top was a complete human skeleton of girl lying on her back. The skeleton was it a small alcove very far back in the cave. At times in the year, water covers it. Over the years, crystalize stone has been laid over it, till now, in sparkles.

The camera got me beyond the barrier where everyone else stop. Dr. Awe then told us about the sacrifices. I was sitting holding a light in just the right place so that Keith asked Dr. Awe to speak to me. I would look right on camera then. So I was like I was getting private lecture by the Dr.

Here’s how it went; The Mayan rulers had set themselves up conduits to the gods. This means when things are going well, you could get people to do anything. “The gods tell me that you need to do so and so...” But when things are going badly, the people start thinking, “Dude you are screwing up, cause the gods are pissed.” and the rulers are in trouble. What happened is that the area was suffering from a drought, the Maya had over reached what the land could provide and the system that the mayas had lived by started to come apart. This is where the sacrifices came in.

Desperate times calling for desperate measures brought sacrifice to this cave. What better way to stop a drought than kill a few children and put their blood in pots in the back of a cave? We spent the rest of the time till the camera Lights fail, shooting, pots with monkeys on them, children's skeletons left in some obscure hole, amazing flow stone formations.

As the last camera light faded out, we wrapped it up. We went back down through tight spots, into the river. Then after handing out last piece of gear, I belly flopped into the last pool and swam into the light.

Jungle Day Two

2008-04-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Earth Roamer has it’s day. We driven that car for over four thousand miles. But it’s all been roads. Bad roads maybe but roads. Today it was going way into the jungle. So it was another stupid early start. The Earth Roamer was designed for two people. Now we have Me, Keith, Don and Graham in it. I got lucky and got to drive.

At the spot we parked yesterday the Earth Roamer kept going. The cameras came out, it was time to give back to the sponsor. We set up shots of the Roamer going through the jungle, foliage brushing both sides. Our Bush Master friends arrived in the Land Rover. We then headed further in.

The Land rover got stuck three times. We used the winch on the Roamer to get it out. Finally we got to the point you would have to cut down trees, so we stopped. We shot more scenes we would need to set up the show, meeting people, getting advice, stand ups and so on.

We repeat yesterdays hike. Everyone gets across the river dry this time. Today, Celistro makes a fish trap. We shoot more set ups. Then Celistro sits down to tell his story.

I get to run the second camera for this. I begin to further appreciate the job Don does. Holding the camera, watching the frame, dealing with the movement of the subjects, having your arms go numb as you try to keep everything steady.

The last thing we do today is to go tracking. Wild pig is what we are tracking. Now I saw some wild pigs at the Belize Zoo and being where they are seems like a bad idea. They smell and are aggressive. I was thinking, “If these pigs are not we where we are isn’t this a good thing?”

We are no longer even on animal trails but bush whacking through raw jungle. I’m liking this, though it’s the last thing of the day and I’m wrecked tired. Sure enough we get to a pig mud hole. It’s full of mud and pig tracks.

Time to get the cars out of the jungle. The Land Rover is having troubles getting up the road. It’s in the way of the Earth Roamer. We all to get on the back of the Rover to give it weight and traction. I’m going to get on when I notice I’m getting bitten. I look down to see a few hundred ants on my shoes. Pulling up my pant leg there are a few hundred more. The guys are yelling at my to get on the truck, I’m brushing and smashing ants off me and dancing around. Every time I put a foot back on the ground there are a few hundred more ants on me. Finally I get them smashed. The land Rover is free and heads off with the Bush Master and his grandson.

There’s another nice bumpy ride in the truck I’m in the back this time, which was ok till, we see the Land Rover broken down by the side for the road. I joke with Graham about the Earth Roamer saving the Land Rover. He doesn’t find this humorous, though. The Earth Roamer is made for two people, we have four in it. Now there are six, us and the Bush dudes. When we finally get back to the hotel, we spring out of there back of the Earth Roamer like a jack in the box, panting for air.

The Jungle

2008-04-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

Damn if I’m not awake again at five A.M. Today’s mission is the jungle. Back from Ambergris caye and on the main land of Belize. We will met Celisto, the Bush Master, to learn jungle survival skills.

Graham, the tour operator, meets us at the hotel. he drives up in an ancient yellow land rover. Graham is a Brit by way of South Africa.

It’s a short drive to a dirt road that I will be on for the next hour and a half. We pass a few buses and military Land Rovers. The British forces practice jungle warfare skills here. We pass their encampment and head further out into the boonies. We’ve climbed up to about twelve hundred feet. Here the forest is far from jungle but pine. A decrepit pine forest. The pine beetle has hit this area hard. I get a good look at where Colorado is heading as the beetle infestation is pretty serious there also. Finally we leave the dirt road for a road no more than a beaten track. Now the jungle takes over.

Keith parks the car here as his Land Cruiser is going no further. Tomorrow, after scoping it out, the Earth Roamer will get to really strut it’s stuff. It will be driven way into the jungle. Now, we wait. The Bush Master and his grandson, walk out of the jungle to met us a half an hour later.

I get on my way heavy pack and hurry off after them. At first, our path is an over grown track of some sort. Maybe an old road from the logging days. The jungle then thickens and then thickens more. We hike for forty five minutes. Celistro nicks the trees with his machete, making a trail so that we can find our way back to the cars.

It’s hot. I’m in long sleeves, long pants, big sun hat, smeared with bug dope, stupid from the early morning call with the heavy pack stuffing me into the ground and excited to be going deep into the jungle.

The shadows zebra stripe everything. I’m taking pictures but they’re too often bright streaks and blackness. There are hanging vines coming down from the canopy, creeping vines that grab your feet. Huge broad leaf plants tower over me. The sky is no more than shards of blue seen amongst the leafs over head. The sounds are of birds and bugs that are unfamiliar to me. Some gigantic fly makes a noise like playing a wood saw with a bow.

We come to a river after a few miles. It’s a green river tumbling through rocks. the river is wide enough to break to foliage and let the sun in. We form a bucket brigade to pass the big camera from rock to rock. I got a all my gear in a my paraglider pack and easily hop over. Going from dry rock to dry rock.

Graham, hits a shit slick patch of moss and goes in the drink. As we are all burden when our gear and scattered across the river our our individual rocks, where’s nothing to do but watch and see if he’ll get out before going down one of the numerous falls. But Graham is out and telling us it’s all part of the fun when we ask if he’s ok.

After a short climb, we come a lean-to made of sticks and huge palm fronds. This is where Celistro and His grandson spent the night. This where we will set up our camp. The idea is for Keith to be shown everything he’d need to know to survive in the jungle, say, after a plane crash.

Step one, make sure the plane you are going to crash in has a stash of machetes in it. Celistro is a master of the machete. With it, and a short search around for materials, He would build all sorts of things. We got to joking around after a while ask him to build us a jungle microwave or find the pizza tree.

Celistro is a Maya. He is quite small. Next to Keith he is child size, his head barely to chest level. He is thin and strong and all leg. He has worked in the jungle all his life as a Chicalaro. That is, one who harvests the sap of the trees for chewing gum. He demonstrates his skill with machete by showing us how the trees were, “bled”. As with everything he did, He used a minimum of effort to make a series of herring bone slashes along the trunk of the tree in which the sap would run from one slash to another till reaching a bag at it’s base.

Next, He showed Keith how to build a shelter. Shelter is the first step, they told us to survival. The shelter was a simple lean to. The roof was the long palm fronds.

Next they built a jungle bed. At first this seemed a little silly. What do you need a bed for? But Celistro pointed out that being off the ground is very important. It keeps you away from the ants, snakes and the wild pigs will have to, at least, stand on their back legs to bite you.

The bed was made of four “Y” shaped branches. The bottoms were driven into the ground in a rectangle. Then two cross branches were set into the “Y’s”. A series of stalks from the palm fronds were placed ninety degrees to branches in the “Y’s” to make the platform of the bed. More palm fronds were split long wise and then placed on the bed to make the mattress. The whole thing was unexpectedly comfortable. Finally a pillow was made of a different kind of palm leaf.

Once you have protection from the elements, you look for food. The palm that Keith used to thatch his shelter and to make the bed held, deep within it, a heart of moist, white, cabbage like food. (I wonder what it would be like in a stir fry?) It took a lot of work to cut it out. Celistro and Keith took turns swinging the machete. Celistro’s skill more than made up for what Keith had in size and power. We all took a break to munch this crunchy veggie meal.

For the non vegetarians, our Bush Master set couple of traps. One was a spring driven bird lynching machine. The other was a classic box trap.

Next was a few plants of medicinal value. One, the “Give and Take” plant was covered with spines to poke you, but had in it’s a bark to help heal the poke wounds. The other was to counter a poison found in one of it’s neighbor trees.

The sound of thunder canceled the rest of the day. Part of me thought of what if would be like to over night it in the shelter in the jungle. It was a safe thought as I knew the camera gear had to get to the protection of the cars. We headed back over the river and through the jungle.

The Blue Hole

2008-04-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

Going out of order now. I didn't have my computer on Ambergris Caye. It's been hell catching up. As I have internet tonight I'm posting like mad. Here's a bit about the Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole was first explored by none other than Jacques Cousteau. It's an old collapsed cave that is now under water. The cave is a vertical hole in the ocean. Two days ealier we flew over it in a helicopter to get arial footage. It's a perfect blue circle in a green sea.

What I'm blowing off to catch up is, the ship wreck dive, The white faced, red footed booby bird colony, the hol chan marine reserve. Seeing a manatti (F*** spelling!)

It’s another five a.m. start. Time to stumble out with the gear to meet the boat at the dock. We are going to the blue hole. Two days ago we had flown over it in the helicopter. Now we would go to it, Keith will drive into it.

The boat heads out. As we pass through the reef, the water is violent. I’m slammed around, my arms pulled out at the sockets as I try to hold on. Up one wave the boat would go, then to go falling into a hole between the waves. The water becomes merely rough after getting through the reef.

Two hours later we’re at the blue hole. It’s in the atoll so the water is calm. Surrounded by a circular reef the water is quite calm here. Keith want’s shot the breifing of the drive by the dive master, but as soon as tape is rolling, a big boat with anoyingly loud engine starts motoring away. On the water the sound carries forever, so that’s the end of that idea. As Keith hits the water, I have fifteen minutes to go snorkling before my duties resume. The underwater camera man takes over now. I get my fins and mask on and pitch myself over the side.

The blue hole has a sandy funnel going down till it becomes a straight sided cylinder. I swim around looking at fish for awhile but that deep blue circle below me is beckoning. I can’t drive down to a hundred and thirty feet to follow Keith holding my breath. I long to see the stalactites on the over hang far below. i thought I had heard the drive master say that the rim of the Blue Hole was thirty feet down. I figured I could make that. I took huge breath and started kicking down. Half way I felt out of breath. I kept going. I was repressurizing my ears over and over again. My mask is smashing my face, I let a little air out of nose and the pressure releases. My lungs are screaming for air but I’m still not quite there. Finally, I’ve an instant at the lip to stare into the abyss. It’s a deep dark blue down there. Then I’m heading up and up. Seems a long way. My lungs don’t know that I’m surrounded by water. They want air and they’re pissed. They try to over power my command not to breath. It’s getting brighter, there’s the surface, air.

My watch says ity’stime to get out to be ready to shoot Keith getting out. He’s pumped, it was very cool down there. We then reshoot the briefing as the loud boat is gone. This time I hear the drive Master say the rim of the Blue Hole is fifty five feet down. Where did I get thirty?

San Pedro, Ambergris Caye

2008-04-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

It’s funny how low and slow in feels, to be in a plane, flying at a hundred and twenty knots at nine hundred feet. Funny for me, as I’ve flown my paramotor, which goes twenty miles per hour, a few feet from the ground.

I’m on a little ten seater flying over an ocean which is a collection of the most amazing blues. Small islands barely taller than the waves, add a stretch of green to the palate of the sea. I can see straight down to the sandy bottom which is often just feet under the surface. As Ambergris gets closer and the plane flies yet lower, I can see rays swimming, rippled by the waves they glide underneath.

I like the little plane. I like that it moves with the air. I like that there is a pilot flying the craft and the sky, not operating a computer that flies the plane.

The plane coasts to a stop. I look out the window and there is our mountain of crap waiting for us by the side of the runway. How the hell did our luggage beat us here? We got to the airport late, handed the dudes are stuff, sat around for maybe fifteen minutes and got on the plane. But, there was our gear calmly waiting.

After passing through the rigorous home land security, (A big dude that unclips the rope, that is if you don’t walk out through the big hole in the fence. (Man it’s nice to be in a place that isn’t paranoid in the most stupid, “close the gate now that the goats are out.” way.), we load up into a golf cart to go to the hotel.

There are cars on Ambergris caye, but for every car there are ten golf carts. They appear to be the preferred means of transportation. Hey, it’s a tiny place with narrow streets. A lot of the carts are electric, quite and don’t stink. It’s where the world is going. Ambergris Caye is already there.

I’m hitting my third week of the trip but I’ve yet to get used to the heat. Eighty five, ninety degrees, eighty five percent humidity. Don and I have been rooming together. At the hotel, I can’t get to the AC fast enough before Don has it set at sixty five. The locals don’t even sweat. We’re drenched.

I got a third floor balcony, from there, the beach is right below. Got palms trees, a trade wind breeze. The reef is a little less than a mile out, at that point the water goes from turquoise to deep blue. The water is shallow, I think I could walk to the reef.

Don and I have a lot less to do the next few days than usual. Keith is lining up the diving part of the trip. We weren’t suppose to be here till next week, so everything is getting rearranged. Keith has to get boats, dive gear/ masters, locations sorted. And then work out the fine details with the tourist board. Don and I shoot some tape, walk around town, get some ice cream.

I’m out of the loop on the “getting the lights shipped” process, that appears to take two hours at the internet cafe per day to sort out. I, for once, have some spare time. I left my computer, guitar, movies back in San Igncaio, so laying on a deck chair at the end of the pier was a good back up.

San Ignacio, Belize,

2008-04-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

San Ignacio, Belize,

Internet connections have been way more hard to come by than I thought. If you haven’t checked in a while, I just up loaded nine posts. I’ll have a link to Don’s web site soon that will have tons of pictures

The pace has slowed way down. This is regroup time, walking around town , laundry...

Soon we will go see skeletons in caves. Right now we are looking for lights to light the inside of the cave. The cave, Actun Tunichil Muknal, is an ancient Mayan site. The word is that people were sacrificed in there. The remains of fourteen people are there, six under the age of three all showing cranial trauma.

We were told a local production company had the lights we needed. Relieved not to have to drag around lights for eight weeks, (which we would need only on one day), no lights were taken. BUT, upon our arrival we were told by said production company that they had no lights. This has thrown a huge wench into our plans. Don is trying to get lights from anywhere.

Now we are just spinning our wheels. We were to meet Dr. Jaime Awe of the Western Belize Regional Cave Project on Friday the fourth, to tour the cave. Without the lights this is pointless.

After a bunch of wrangling, Don arranges lights to be sent all the way from Denver, Dr. Awe agrees to meet us on Monday the fourteenth. The next mad scramble is by Keith. He needs to get us filming something in the meanwhile, or it’s a horrible waste to our limited time.

Two days later we’re on a plane flying to San Pedro on Ambergris caye.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

2008-04-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

One of my jobs is to keep a photographic recorded of the trip.
Don has posted these pictures on his web space.

Here they are,
http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay9

http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay10

http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay11

http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay12

http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay13

http://picasaweb.google.com/donjsouza/BillsDay14

Belize

2008-04-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

After a complete eight hours of sleep. It was back to Isle de Flores to interview Mr.Ortiz. We learned that Temples at Tikal were in the shape of the star constellation Pleaties. It was Mr. Ortiz’s discovery of the Sixth Temple that revealed that this was the case.

It was time to leave Guatemala after eleven days. The trip was now two weeks old. Our next stop was Belize. We said goodbye to Walter our guide, and thought, “Oh crap we’re own our own again!” That hadn’t worked out to well through Mexico. Walter had arranged a police escort to the border. The police followed us for a measly twenty miles before leaving us an hour before before the border. (Right before the road turned to dirt.) We gave them their twenty dollar “tip”.

At the border we officially left Guatemala, parked the cars walked to Belize side where we ran into all sorts of problems. The Belize tourism office said everything would be set for us. So, Keith, when asked what we were doing, told the truth; We were shooting a TV show with the tourism board. Now they wanted a visa we didn’t have. Now what? We had left Guatemala, but weren’t being let into Belize. I had visions of living out my life in a gravel parking lot between the two borders.

On a whim, as Keith and the border guard were going back a forward, I said “But we aren’t filming now. We are scouting on this trip and won’t be filming till we return from Panama on our way back.” Keith, pauses for a moment at this blatant lie, before picking up the thread. I don’t think they believed us, but thrown a solution to what would otherwise be a big pain in the ass, they played along.

Now, I’m in a Belize hotel writing this. The Denver news channel is on the TV. Not sure why.

Tikal

2008-04-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Another woozy start of the day. At four thirty A.M. someone was pounding on the door. The plan was to climb to the top of temple four of the Mayan ruins at Tikal Guatemala and shoot the sunrise. If you are wondering what the view was like, it’s the view you got in the first Star Wars movie of princess “What’s her name’s” home planet. Stumbling around in the dark, I got together my pack of “production” gear. That’s, one twenty pound tripod, one to three ten pound batteries for the big camera, some cable, video tape, double “A’s”, nine volts and a mic boom.

We had a special permit to drive inside the park where the ruins are. So, bouncing around in the back of the Earth Roamer, we headed for the temple. We climb up the wooden stairs in the dark. At the top of the temple the pale predawn light showed the jungle endlessly stretching to the horizon with three other of the temples poking out from the forest canopy.

The birds had just begun to sing. Or squawk, or make any number of unfamiliar types of racket. Some birds were periodically taking off and you could hear the powerful pounding of their wings on the air. But then the howler monkeys started. As it was a gray morning full of fog with a low cloud base, we never saw the sun rise, but the sounds carried so clearly. And, as Spielberg had used the call of the howler monkey as the sound the bad boy dinosaurs had made in the Jurassic Park movies, those sounds were ominous and a little disconcerting.

The next spot was the Mayan observatory. It was closed after a guy tripped going down the steep stone stairs and managed to kill himself and three other people. We got to climb it because we were special film guys. I, having along history of stair ascending, made it both up and down and was rewarded with an incredible view of the ruins from the top.

Only twenty percent of the ruins have been uncovered. Tikal was once a major city with somewhere around hundred thousand people in it. I got way turned around as we toured around the ruins as even twenty percent is quite large.

In the main plaza the modern day Mayans were holding a ceremony to bless crops, protect from accidents and that kind of thing. This was pure luck on our part as this happens only once a year. The Mayans like the Incas are both a once conquered peoples that have survived and are now growing. The main plaza was considered the center of the universe and so holds a certain special significance.

At the ceremony each person held four candles and red, black, yellow and white one. Each candle represented one of the four colors of corn, which is turn represented each of the four cardinal directions. First, wax covered tamales were burned, then the group would face one of the directions, say a prayer and then throw that colored candle into the fire. SO, first red, then black and yellow and lastly white. But one more candle came out, which was green. Green represented the work to be done. At this point everyone got on their knees to pray before throwing the last candle in.

As far as filming went, freaking out was going on. We needed an expert to tell us what was going on. We had one but he spoke Spanish. Spanish is good language for someone from Guatemala but our show needed English for our gringo audience. We went on filming with Keith filling in as well as he could.

I was following Keith and Don around from one incredible ruin to another. We would speculate about what each place was, which was a pretty cool game. Wander around the jungle, looking at temples in all degrees of restoration. From brand new rock and mortar, sharp edged, to rounded and worn, moss covered, to completely buried, hidden under huge trees and their twisted roots.

It was the buried temples that got me thinking. What was it like to come here, innocent and think, “What formed these strange hills?”. What was it like to be the first ones to dig here and find this city in the jungle. Soon enough I would met the man that had had that experience.

Don shot everything, so by noon all four of the camera batteries were dead. This forced a lunch break. Over launch, Walter was told He had to come through and find us an expert, who spoken English and that, that needed to happen right about now or sooner. I could tell Walter was feeling the pressure of our relentless schedule. Our permit allowed us to film one day. It was today or never. Surprisingly enough, Walter returned to our table in a few moments. The jungle lodge that we were staying at was owned by two brothers. One of them was here and not only knew the ruins inside out but was trained as an archeologist. And, their Father was one of the early explorers of the area and had discovered temple six an very important find that completed the design of the cities center.

Enter Carlos Ortiz, our new guide. We drove back into the ruins and started shooting. Carlos was a golden mine of information. Don turned on the camera and let it flow. It this point the ninety degree heat, the thirty pounds of gear, the four thirty A.M. start were getting to me. I was wasted tired. I found every tree stump, rock, bench I could sit on. I was trying to stay awake enough to hand Don tapes, batteries, hold the white card before the lens, set up the tripod. Otherwise, I would sit there and space out at this amazing place I was in.

At the end of the day we hiked back up the observatory. We were waiting to shoot the sunset. For some reason our “special” status has expired. Walter and Carlos was shouting for us to come down. We were going to blow them off but, A park ranger with a shot gun had arrived, so down we went a disappointing five minutes before sunset.

We set up the Earth Roamer at the bottom of the observatory and shot some very misleading footage that one could camp in the ruins. Looks cool though.

Yea! It’s dark, the day is over! No, not quite yet. Carlos invites us into town to have dinner and meet his father, Antonio Ortiz who was there when the ruins were discovered. So we drive to Isle de Flores a town that has been constantly inhabited since Mayan times. The town is a small island in the middle of a lake. I remember talking with Keith, earlier that day, about what it must have been like to discover the ruins, to be there has they were uncovered. Mr. Antonio was that man. I felt a little intrusive entering his house, but we were all made immediately welcome. Mr. Ortiz, now in his eighties talked the early discoveries of the ruins. It was too late to visit long and we were starving hungry. We said goodbye but not before Mr. Ortiz invited us to visit the next day and agreed to be interviewed on camera.

The drive back to the jungle lodge was pretty vague. I was in the back of the car falling in and out of sleep.

On the Road Again

2008-04-03T09:26:00.001-07:00

Travel day

From Guatemala City we drove to the ruins of the Mayan city of Tikal. Drive drive drive. Every once and a while Don would stop to film something.

The longest stop was at the banana plantation. As the bananas were in all different stages of development, it was cool to see how they rolled out a pod like thingy. (That’s technical talk.)

Walter was complaining that we wouldn’t get to Tikal till midnight. That wasn’t the case, we were just hours late. I bedded down in the Jungle lodge in the park at Tikal. It was my first night under a bug net. I was in a hurry to get my six hours of sleep started. It would be a predawn start to shoot the sunrise from the top of Temple four.

Back to Pacaya

2008-04-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Back to the volcano

We returned to the Pacaya volcano with an expert from Guatemala’s Instituto Nacional de Sismologia Vulcanologia Meteorgia e Hidrologia. They are in charge of studying the volcanos, (among other things) including issuing warnings to evacuate areas. Guatemala has thirty two volcanos, four of which are currently active.

It was back on those poor mangy horses. I had asked what happened to the horses when they no longer could make it up the mountain. I was hoping for an answer like, “ We reward our noble companion for it’s long service by putting him out to pasture to enjoy it’s final years.” The answer I got was, “We make him into sausage!”. On the steep parts of the path I would pat my horse on the neck and say, “Come on buddy, it’s this or you’re sausage.”

With a guide, who was a scientist, we went a lot further into the lava field. He was obviously having a fun day out of the office. He was pointing things out and beckoning us to follow. Which we did, as long as he wasn’t incinerated, it had to be safe right?

It was hot. There I was with lava glooping about, oozing here and there. Even among the more sedate areas, I’d look across the mountain and see the red hot glow of the lava like the eyes of a beast lurking under the rock. The idea that rock is a frozen liquid isn’t commonly thought, but here, it was the best description. The black rock seemed to be caught in the act of frolicking about, rock frozen in motion.

Our guide pointed out layers and formations and precipitated rock. We burned a few more sticks and jumped across some ridiculously hot cracks.

Sweating hot we retreated to cool of the trees off of the lava field. The horses were waiting for us.

Fishing

2008-04-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Deep fishing is big business in Guatemala. It would be great for the show. I’ve always been one to leave fish alone, but I was looking forward to being out on the ocean. It was a nasty predawn departure. The sun came up a few miles later along the road.

Sailfish is what we were after. There are tons of them along the shores of Guatemala and the world record catch was caught here. It is illegal to kill a sailfish, so it’s catch and lease. We met the world record crew at the dock, loaded the gear and headed out in the ocean. The captain was looking for blue water, which lies an hour and half from the shore.

Much later the line were baited and the fishing began. The first fish caught was Dolphin fish or your mahi mahi. These dudes didn’t fair too well as they were for eating. This made for one seriously fresh sushi.

As this was going on we were over taken by hundreds of dolphins. On both sides of the boat they were porpoising, jumping, twisting in the air. Absolutely unbelievable! For five minute we were surrounded, these dark, smooth, powerful bodies frolicking around us. In the process filming the smaller of the two cameras got slashed and blinked out. That’s six thousand dollars down the tubes!

It was time to fish for sailfish. Don was doing the hero’s job, filming with the forty pound camera on his shoulder. The boat would go around in circles, driving back through it’s own wake making it rock violently and unpredictably. I am pretty sea sick proof, but my ten minutes below decks seeing to the damaged camera had given me the queeze. Don was looking pale and Walter was bent over the side “feeding the fishes”.

Keith on the other hand was reeling in an eighty pound sailfish. The massive thing was pulled aboard and sat on Keith’s lap for pictures. Kind of like a fish Santa Claus. (I’m guessing that the fishes wishes was, “Put me back in the water!”.) The fish got it’s wish as we got our fish and all was filmed.

It was an hour and a half back to the dock. The boat, now in a straight line, had a pleasant rock to it. Even the worst of us started to revive. On the way I started to notice the big sea turtles on the surface. I saw ten or twenty.

The plan was to return to the volcano Pacaya. An expert was to meet us there. We were late, which with our schedule was normal. When we arrived the volcano was in cloud. A little pointless to shoot. So it was, turn right around and come back tomorrow after another long, long day.

Flying

2008-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Let’s see what day is it? The twenty-sixth I think. We were leaving our eagle’s nest hotel today. Two things had to happen, one is to film the hotel we were in. That’s our pay back for getting the rooms. The second thing was to get all our gear to Panajachel, where the cars were waiting for us. There was no way the gear was going down 420 steps to the lake. So, my job was to accompany the hotel’s car, with all our junk, down a skinny twisted road, (Did I mention, real steep?) to the next boat stop. For some reason I was to go an hour before the boat came. So I sat at the dock for a while. A great chance to sit on my ass for a moment. The one thing I notice while sitting on my ass was that it wasn’t blowing hard today. Maybe today was the day to fly.

The boat arrived, the gear was loaded. By the time we got to Panajachel the weather was looking good. I called my local contact, Roger, who confirmed opinion on the weather. We planned to meet in a couple of hours to go to launch. Keith wanted to get some coverage of the zip line place. (Coverage being, shooting odds and ends that can be used to fill in between scenes.) On the way there Walter spotted Roger out in the field doing ground handling practice with a student. So I got out to introduce myself. Roger has been teaching in the area for eight years. I got the skinny on the site.

Keith and Don soon returned and we headed up to launch. With a twelve thousand foot volcano a, seemingly touchable distance across the lake and the steep, “end of the world” edge, the launch seemed much higher than it’s fifteen hundred feet. I got my paraglider out and started setting up while Don got the big camera out.

What a difference from being support to being the in the spot light. Not better, but different. Paragliding is my element. When we are filming, I’m paying a lot of attention. What should I be doing? How can I be helpful? Just staying out of the shot can be hard as Don moves around a lot with the camera. But now, I’m the dude.

I get ready. I pull the glider up a few times for Don to film. With the sharp edge the launch, the wind is a little rotor-y. I drop the glider on Don’s head once. Then I ask if he’s got what he needs and if he’s ready to film my launch. Thumbs up! I bring the glider, turn and give it my best superman launch. And it does seem like the edge of the earth. The edge falls away so steeply, there is a town climbing up the side of the mountain far below, the lake is BLUE. And I am going up! Don, the camera and launch are falling away below me. Usually this is the best thing but for filming, looking straight up at a tiny glider surrounded by blue is kind of dull. And I’ve got world class scenery around me. I head away from the mountain to lose the lift. No luck there’s lift everywhere. I pull big ears to get back down around launch level. I make a bunch of passes. BUT I’ve got to cut this flight short. I’ve got to head to the LZ to get back up to take Don tandem. We needed in flight footage to tell the story. So I’m off over the lake, a thousand feet below to head to the river mouth where I am to land.

Back up at launch it is obvious that Don is not real comfortable about going flying. We couldn't be farther apart in emotional state. I’ve been out there already and I’m excited to get back in the air, it’s perfect. Don doing the, “is this the last moment of my life”. thing. I get him suited up, go through the briefing. For all the apprehension, Don was the perfect passenger. Alas, for me, it had lighten up. There was very little lift. We made a few passes in from of the launch and then left for the landing zone. I got in a perfect flare so the landing was gentle.

So day three paid off for flying. I could have flown for hours, but filming put restriction on what I could do. Panajachel is a place worth further exploring. I must come back here to fly some more.

This was our last day in Lake Atitlan. The drive out showed me the views that were hidden in the fog on the way in, days before. We drove around the lake, passing two of the volcanos that were the back drop of the area. The cloudscape was amazing and as it built, it drove over the backs of the volcanos. Long tendrils of cloud twisted and curled over the town of Santiago below. In the dark we arrived, back at sea level, to the next hotel. Tomorrow, fishing.

ZIP

2008-04-03T09:14:00.001-07:00

On the ferry boat ride to Panajachel it was, once again very obvious that I wasn’t going flying. I was starting to get that sinking feeling that I would carry those gliders all over central America without flying. The whole time I’ve been on this trip, from Colorado to Guatemala, it’s been blowing hard. Now I had only three days to fly here. I would tell anyone going anywhere for three day not to expected to fly more than one day. Well, it’s day two, so one more to go.

Walter had a plan “B” ready to go. We would go to a zip line canopy tour. For those not in the know, a zip line canopy tour is a cable strung through the jungle canopy on which one, in climbing harness zips along a cable hanging from a pulley.

I was excepting to have fun and I did. It was cool to zip along the line through the trees. As far as “touring the canopy”, forget it. You zip by and don’t see much. Plus, you do have to slow yourself down at the other end. Which tends to take your focus away from sight seeing.

In my harness, with a helmet, (which curiously enough was design to protect one from falling rocks), I stepped off the starting point and started zipping through the trees. The forest zoomed passed around me. Seconds later the guy at the other end starts waving a flag at me which is the signal to slow down. The braking is done by your right hand. You have a glove with a thick piece of leather glued across the palm and fingers. With this glove you grab the cable and squeeze. Being a jackass, On one of the eight cables I had my gloves off. I quickly got them on as the other side was coming soon and I wasn’t going to try to grab it with my bare hand.

To back up a bit, in a lot of ways the hike up to the start on the series of zip line cables was the more rewarding. The first stop on the way up was the spider monkeys. These are not wild monkeys, but rescued monkeys living in the jungle. Some locals had bought them as pets but when they became mature them found out they were more than they could handle. One had bit a person and was thrown in jail. Alberto, who built and runs the zip lines, bailed the monkey out of jail and now it lives in trees on the grounds. I threw them some bananas and watched them swinging around.

Alberto walked with us up to the top. On the way he pointed out a few things. There was a flower from a plant that blooms for a day once every two years. There was a tree that,, when in the sun turns red and the bark peels. It’s called the tourist tree. The path wound around, crossing streams with cable bridges.

At the end of the day it was time to film the Earth Roamer. We needed some more shots of camping. The area was beautiful so we took multiple shots of the Earth Roamer driving in, setting up. Keith would get in and write in his journal. We need one ending shot for each show so this way we got some extra shots so if we can’t find a good spot in each place we go, we were covered. As the shots had to come from different angles with different background, we had to keep moving things around. I moved one of the cars. When I got back, Keith had a paragliding helmet on, Don shooting. I was wondering what the hell is going on, when they both crack up laughing.

Lake Atitlan

2008-04-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to stand on my balcony, three hundred feet up a cliff over lake Atitlan. Three volcanos reaching to twelve thousand feet stand before me on the opposite shore. The night before I drove over an eight thousand foot pass in the mountains. The fog raced the sunset to see what would limit our visibility first. In the dark we descended to the lake at five thousand feet. There was a late night rummaging of gear in a parking lot. We would leave the cars here to find a boat to carry us along the lake to our hotel.

We were too late for the scheduled boat so Walter tracked down a private ride for us. I love arriving at night to a new place and the feeling of anticipation it brings. “What will this place be like in the morning light?” The moon, blocked by clouds, wasn’t giving much away except a hint of outlines of vast mountains. It was a warm night and the dark ride over fresh water was a dreamy kind of pleasant.

We arrived at a dock, stumbled off the boat to schlep our massive pile of crap up the stairs. The stairs wound around climbing steeply. I had my head lamp on, wondering, “Where are we going?”
At the top I found a beautiful hotel. Crashing out was imperative.

In the morning the place was revealed. The lake, a deep turquoise blue, the volcanos, small towns reaching up the slopes. I didn’t think we were too far up till I saw the tiny boats of the local fishermen below. I had breakfast with the gang on the deck in bright sun light. Pancakes and eggs. The view is in a club with few members.

The days plan WAS paragliding. But on the boat ride to town we started to encounter white caps on the lake. The spray sent Don into a tight embrace of the expensive camera. I told Keith we could forget flying as the wind was way too strong and exactly the wrong direction.
In a way this was good. The weather was decisively bad. We wouldn’t waste any time on parawaiting. We went back to our parked cars, rummaged through the gear, packed up for plan “B”, tour, by boat, the towns around the lake.

Keith wanted to interview Walter about the lake and it’s communities, but we needed to find a spot where the wind wouldn’t blow away the audio. We sheltered in a little bay that was slightly less windy. I got on the roof of the boat to hold the microphone over Keith and Walter’s heads.

Walter talked about the lake, that it was a crater from a massive volcano that erupted eighty five thousand years ago. The explosion was so powerful that all life in Guatemala was extinguished. The ash landed as far away as Asia.

As Walter started on about the local cultures, I, upon the roof noticed, a dark line on the lake followed by large closely packed white caps. The shit was heading for the fan. Moments later I was rocked about on the slick fiberglass roof, looking for the nonexistent hand holds. We had gotten what we wanted so it was time to get the gear under cover and head on.

The first town we went to Santiago, the Mayan people all dress in their traditional clothes. Each place ha s it’s own designs a patterns. The clothes themselves are hand woven on looms. The colors are bright, the designs intricate. I soon noticed that all the women would scatter at the sight of the camera. Don , the with monster camera on his shoulder, was playing the part of Moses, parting the sea of women. Walter explained that the local women had seen picture of themselves in galleries in town for, what is to them, very high prices. As they didn’t get a dime of it, them decided to dodge the cameras from there on out. This torture for the photographer. The bright colors of their cloths, the babies nestled in one arm, the wrapped parcel of goods balanced on their heads, make great pictures.

Walter knows the locals as a tourist guide and has friends that agree to have their pictures taken. At one stall a long the road a women insisted on dressing Keith in Local garb. SO on went a pink and white striped shirt, a brown, mini skirt (Which I’m sure has a more elegant Mayan name.) and a head scarf. Keith, at six five, two hundred and thirty pounds, blue eyed looked.... Well, no one would mistake him for a Mayan. When he was all dressed up, the women said something to Keith that got Walter laughing. When pressed for details He translated for us. “She says you have a face like a baby.” We wanted to shoot the loom and someone making the cloth the shirt were made of, but the place was too dark for the camera.

I broke down and finally spent some money. I got blue and black striped shirt with a few yellow stripes here and there. I was then elevated to coolest dressed person on the team. Eight bucks by the way.

Back on the boat we were off to the next town. (San Antonio, but not Texas!) The lake was still windy and we got splashed and sprayed as the boat bucked around. The monster camera got tucked away as the little camera was pulled out.

It’s hard to think of the little camera as a mere back up. In any other situation it would be the deluxe super camera. It was only in the light of the monster camera that it was over shadowed.

As we came close to shore I could see the women in the lake washing their cloths. Out on the lake the men were cutting reeds and fishing. The boat are carved from one huge tree trunk. Boards are set, to on the sides making the boat deeper.

We headed into town in two tuc tucs, a motorize three wheeled taxi with a rag top, no doors. In town there were basket ball courts. Keith got in a pick up game with the Mayan kids. A little tree on three game. None of the kids were even up to Keith’s shoulders. We then did the church/market thing before getting back in the boat to head back to the hotel.

Back to Antigua

2008-04-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

FIlm Day Three,

Safety

Locking cars, police escorts, soldiers? How safe is this place? I’m a little freaked about a place with so many machine guns. Every since we crossed into Mexico the level of machine gun sightings went from, well, none, to every day. At the gas station last night there was a uniformed guard with a shot gun. (also dancing girls, but that was some promotion thing, I think. Maybe there are dancing girls at that station every day.) At the borders , of course there more machine guns and the police have them too. The soldiers I talked with at the Guatemala border were friendly enough. How safe once again? That’s hard to figure. We’ve driven around with a car that wasn’t lock and had no problems. Then again we met a van load of kayakers that got ripped off. At times the worry of getting our stuff getting stolen has gotten out of hand. After all most people in the world, work, raise their families and so on. I’ve been to enough places where you get the, “We’re great, but watch out for the people over there.” And then where you get to “over there” they say “ We’re great but...

On the other hand to a thief, the amount of wealth we are traveling with wold make a retirement level score for a thief. In the end, being smart and not projecting a paranoid, thief attracting, image is all we can do anyway.

Antigua Take Two

To tell the story of our trip we often can’t keep to the real time line. When you actually see the show, the order of the scenes won’t always be the actual order in which they happen. Our late arrival to Antigua on Good Friday meant we missed shooting things we needed to tell the story. Today we went back to Antigua to show what we had missed.

As we got into town, we pulled over to shoot the volcano from a distance. Just as Don started rolling tape there was an eruption. It’s started with a tiny plume of smoke, a tuft on a huge mountain. But it continued to grow. Blown over by high winds, it soon spread roiling across the sky. The dumb luck!

Back in town a few processions were scheduled for Easter Sunday. Keith helped make one of the carpets. This one was made with a background of colored saw dust that was shook through a screen onto the cobble stones of the street. Broad bands of bright colors were laid down then onions were placed upon the border. With in the design were potted plants, squash and red peppers. Now, we had more of the story. I was pulled away to drive the cars away as the police were threatening to tow them. When I got back Keith and Don there filming the procession emerging from the Church. Rows of people in wheel chair lined either side of the churches plaza as it passed. I caught up with them to point out that this procession would walk right through the carpet that Keith had just helped build. We rushed across a short cut to film the carpets final purpose, it’s destruction. As the procession passed the crowd moved in to pick up the vegetables. Now we had the complete story. We could add the new footage to what we got friday night. Now we would relent to our guide Walter’s request to get our butts in the cars and get over to the coffee plantation.

The coffee plantation was what was on our schedule for the day. We could the tour, once again out of order. First the washing process, then the drying court yards, then the plants and picking them. Then it was into the plantation to see the coffee plants. This is shade coffee. There are two sets of trees, the shade trees, which are heavily pruned to keep them wide and then the coffee below. Afterwards we had some coffee. I must say as a coffee hater, this was good coffee.

So Far

2008-03-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

Driving through Mexico

All we are trying to do is get to Guatemala by Friday. What’s against us is our original delay, plus, Visa hassles, creative rather than accurate maps, sleet, hail, rain, high winds, being clueless at times... And most of all, just simply not enough time.

All trips have their travel hassles and in general, they are not the heart of the matter but one it’s by products. Alas, all we are doing is driving, everyday, all night, so travel hassles are most of the trip. So you can insert your own memories of your last endless driving experience here and it will be more or less what we have been doing. The things that were new to me were how more than one road is called the same thing. For example, you’ll get to a fork in the road and you’ll see, that BOTH ways are called 180. 180 left to one town, 180 right to another town. Which way do we go? The roads are small, traffic rules are guide lines and speed limits... And then there are speed bumps, every where. Because jerks like us drive and crazy speeds, ignoring the speed limits, they put up speed bump after speed bump. What will wake you up in a hurry is hitting one of those babies when you’re speeding!

To give our blast through Mexico a fair shake, there was some great scenery. But the endless driving, the lack of sleep and junk food eating made this part more of a trail than a life forfilling experience.

Got There

Finally we reached the Guatemala boarder. Boys on motorcycles drive up besides you, tap on the window and yell, “Guatemala, Guatemala?”. If you respond, they then lead you through the town of HIilago to the check point. I sat around chatting with the soldiers at the border while the paperwork got processed. I spoke english, they spoke Spanish, but I figured out they were paratroopers and they really liked the Earth Roamer. The paper work took forever because the good old DMV back in Colorado put the wrong license plate number on the title. If it hadn’t been for our guide from the Guatemalan board of tourism we would not have made it into the country. The big question is whether we can get the Earth Roamer OUT of Guatemala. Without a corrected title, the car will be presumed stolen and It will have to stay here. Our guide, Walter, says he is willing to take it.

We headed down the road only to get stopped by the police in just a few blocks. The Earth Roamer gets pulled over a lot. The problem is that it is army green and looks very aggressive. Everywhere we go heads turn. I think the police and the soldiers just want to check it out.

As it turns out Walter had requested a Police escort into the town of Antigua. So off we went with the police behind us. As we went from one county to another, a new police car would drop in behind us as the old one peeled off. Strange to have the Guatemalan police, with their lights on and not be going, “shit, shit , shit.

In Antigua we parked at the police station, loaded up a crap load of gear and went off to film the Good Friday Processions.

Bear with me, as I am not a Christian, but here’s what went on. The procession, has hundreds of people in black robs, swinging incense burners, hand carried statues of life of Christ and then, comes the actual procession.

How to describe it? It’s a thirty feet long and ten wide, box. And I say box, in desperate need for a better word. Four rows of, maybe, thirty people carry it on their shoulders. It’s built of wood with very ornate cravings. On top in a glass case is Christ. In the gloom of dusk and the haze of the incense, it comes slowly swaying back and forth down the street. Laid on in the streets are the “carpets”. The carpets are made of colored plants and leafs making pictures and designs. The procession walks right over them and so they are destroyed. Drummers march behind it making a slow, deep, booming note.

The camera is a powerful thing. Well maybe, an influential thing. The camera got me and Don right into the middle of the street, right before the precession. MInd you the streets were packed, mobbed. People made way for us. (Then again we still had the police escort, on foot now.) My job was carrying the tripod, making sure Don didn’t fall off a curb or run into anyone when filming and, in general, being useful.

The light soon faded, and although the event was still in full swing, the filming was over. We headed back to the police station. I tried not to club anyone with the big tripod I was carrying over my shoulder. There was a full moon rising over the Volcano, Agua, which dominates the skyline. I was lusting after the idea of flying off of it.
Back at the police station, gear was repacked. The car was unlocked and I was getting a bit of grief as the last person out of the car. The police had just brought in a thief. From the anguish in his cries, I was guessing that his life was about to really really, start sucking.

We left with our police escort to Walter's sisters house to spend the night. It was a hot evening, in the eighties. There we found out the power lock cable was not attached to the rear door lock of the Earth Roamer. I was exonerated on the not locking the door charger. As it turns out it hasn’t been locked all trip. A big deal? Well, there’s is $13000’s of video tape and a $65000 camera.

Pacya

On the second day of filming we went to volcano Pacya. Seeing a real live volcano has been high on my list of thing to do, so I was excited for the day.
Start with a drive on the hiway, wind up the road on the volcano that goes from good to bad to real bad. We continued with the maniac passing of slow moving pick up trucks with a lot of people, that we have become so good at. We took horses from the parking lot. I felt a little wimpy about this. I should carry my own gear not have some beast carry me and it. The gear to shoot the show it too much to get up and down in any reasonable amount of time, so it was horses.

I hadn’t been on a horse in decades, but all I had to do was not fall off. The trail was very eroded much like I’ve seen in Yelapa Mexico. That means in the steep parts you were riding through a deep slot. We where warned to bring warm cloths. However, those of us that started this trip in a snow storm, didn’t fine the sixty degree temperatures, “cold”.

We came to a shoulder of the volcano where we got off the horses. Before us was a huge sloping laval field, the cone of the volcano rose thousands of feet yet higher. At first I saw a slanting slope of dark gray rock, cool but not amazing. Then I started to see the hot glowing red of the lava here and there. Parts would damp up and cool then bust loose and expose oozing, brilliant lava dripping in great globs.

Here’s the part I didn’t expect, the sound. The lava is constantly moving, tumbling the light lava rock. The sound of the rock falling and clonking, stirring and scrapping along ebbs and flows.

Keith, Don and I hiked down on to the lava flow in’s self. Hey! molten rock is really hot! Duh, right? But when you are there it’s amazing. You try to get close, wondering if you shoes are melting off, but the heat, (and what’s left of your common sense that hasn’t been suppressed by your excitement.) keeps you back. Don started rolling tape as Keith did his thing. The camera worked it’s magic again. People would hush as we rolled tape, move aside to make space for us. (As it was one day after the processions, everywhere was very crowded. ) We couldn’t get the sound of the lava with all the people so I went out on the flow and rolled rocks around for the microphone instead.

Anyway the pace is brutal and I need to sleep.

Think we are off to the coffee plantation tomorrow.

Bill

Texas

2008-03-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

A thousand miles of driving, two hours of sleep.
The Earthroamer is a big truck, tall. We spend hours in high winds and pouring rains being pushed around. At time splashing into big puddles on the road.

More later, it's my shot at the shower.

Bill

Picture test

2008-03-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

Well,

I got this a used lap top to keep the blog going. My next mission is to try and get a picture on the blog. So, if you’re reading this and there’s picture, it worked!

Here’s my gear waiting to go. (Ya, boring, I know. I just wanted to see if this would work.)
Bill

Delay

2008-03-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

We’ve been delayed two days now. There was a problem with the vehicles title. This works out well for me. I thought I’d have to leave Saturday so I spent all day today getting ready. So, I’m pretty much ready to go and still have two days.

If I’d known I had two more days I would have blown off everything till looming crisis propelled me foreword. I’ve started so many trips sick, by using this strategy. Run up the stress level by procrastination.

The big down side is that we’ll have to drive in shifts twenty four hours a day to make the Easter celebration in Guatemala. A driver a navigator and a snoozer in the back on our piles of crap.

I got a used lap top to keep the blog going on the trip. The Earthroamer has satellite internet in it. We have budget of a thousand hours, ( or maybe it’s a thousand dollars.) after that we are charged six dollars a minute!

TV

2008-03-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

At some point this afternoon, quite suddenly, it sunk in that I am actually going to jump into a truck and drive to Central America to shoot a TV program for the next eight weeks. It was an exquisite feeling of exhilaration spiced with panic. Up to that moment it wasn’t real . But as I sat in the Mexican Consulate with the shows host Keith Neubert, trying to figure out if; A, We didn’t know what we were talking about, B, They didn’t know what they were talking about, C. They didn’t know what we were talking about, D. We did know what they were talking about or all of the above, it struck me, “I’m going on this trip.”.

The show, “American Xplorer” is Keith’s new show. I had done a paragliding episode with him a few years ago when it was “Colorado Explorer”. (See, http://www.youtube.com/flywaybill) Since then He has joined the HD Satellite Network and gone national. It’s an Adventure based show. The part I’m doing is “EarthRoamer Chronicles”.

The Earthroamer is... well here’s the link. They say it better than I can. (Oh, it’s the XV.JP by the way.)
http://www.earthroamer.com/tab_xpedition_vehicles/vehicles.html

Keith, camera Man, Don and myself are getting in this very cool vehicle and then traveling around Central America. We’ll shoot 13 episodes. The show works like this Keith gets various sponsors involved with the show and they become it’s subject matter. For instance, instead of an Earthroamer commercial, the show features us driving around in one. You get to see for yourself how cool it would be to have one. Besides Earthroamer there will be Resorts, attractions, even the Mexican Tourism board sponsoring us.

Here’s the schedule,

Leave CO: March14pm

Arrive: Brownsville TX March 15 pm. Hotel / sleep. Be first in line @ Mexican border (with letters from Mexico Tourism/Consulate Gen) March 16th am. Film our border crossing.

Travel through Mexico to Guatemalan Border (I-80 Toll road) 3 days drive

Arrive: Guatemalan Border March 19.
Cross Border into Guatemala

Arrive Hotel Lake Atitlan and prep Antigua (rest day): Lake Atitlan: March 19/20.

Shoot / Coverage Antigua’s Processions Ceremony. March 21-22

Lake Atitlan: March 23-25

Volcano Trek March 26

Drive to Tikal: Coffee Plantation – March 27/28
Stop in Guatemala City: Film Permit for Tikal / Review B-Roll Aerial

Tikal: March 29/30

Drive to Belize: March 30 pm. Arrive Hotel in (San.Ingnacio)
Medicinal Plants, Rafting, Show close x 7, Wildlife / B-roll of area: March 31
Dr. Awe archaeology research / caves: April 2,3,4

Belize Zoo (discuss Belize wildlife conservation programs) and B-Roll wildlife: April 5

Leave Vehicle someplace safe (Tamara’s contact) while we’re in AC.

Fly to Ambergris Cay pm on Tropic Air (need to book this DINO): April 5

Cover Ambergris Cay/ Aerial footage of Blue Hole and Coast/ Set up Dives/ meet with Marty (check his b-roll library): April 6-7

Blue Hole Dive: April 8
Ship Wreck Dive: April 9

Fly back to Belize early am, pick up ER and Drive to Honduras La Ceiba: April10
Ferry to Utila Island pm (Leave vehicle safe on Honduras): April 10 pm

Whale Shark Research Program (interviews and dives): April 11-13 (Marty continue to film whale shark b-roll through April 16)

Ferry back to Honduras and drive to Nicaragua’s Ometepe Island (get Marty back to Ambergris Cay): April 14

Ometepe Island and explore Lake / Granada or Leon Nicaragua: April15/16.

Drive to Costa Rica: April 16.

Costa Rica: April 17- 24 (8 days)

Hot Air Balloon in Costa Rica (early am) then Drive to Panama: April 24

Panama: April 25 – May 2 (8 days)

Drive back through CA to Mexico via TA Highway: May 3/4

Mexico: May 5-14. (10 days)

Home: May 16.

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Expert advice and beginners, do they mix?

2008-03-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

I was flying in Yelapa Mexico in the end of February. A typical day would start with a morning flight off the high site and a afternoon flight from a smaller site. The morning flight would be pretty calm with light thermals. The afternoon flight was after the sea breeze came on and be ridge soaring with embedded thermals. At some point in between, the transition from the morning calm to the afternoon wind would happen. At times this transition would be quite abrupt and gusty before settling down into the afternoon session.

I was guiding pilots on this trip and therefore,in the mornings, was always the last one in our group to launch. As I flew around I noticed that the sea breeze was starting build in. Soon, there were white caps on the ocean and the palm trees were waving around. “Great” I thought. At some point I would have to fly through the shear between the calm upper air and the strong surface winds to reach the LZ on the beach. So, the question was, How turbulent will the shear be and at what altitude will I meet it? If it’s not very turbulent, no big deal. If I hit it when still high in the air, I’ll have lots of time to sort it out if it is a bad shear. If the shear is bad and low, I could take a big whack close to the ground, which is the worst case scenario.

I decided to meet the shear over the ocean, well clear of the surf. The shore was lined with boats and I figured if I wrecked into the ocean, one of my buddies would get up from their lemonade and get someone to fetch me from the drink. I , also, decided not to pull big ears but to go through the shear with my glider “Open”. As an eighteen year pilot, I was assuming that my surge control would be up to the task. I was also flying DHV 1-2.

As it turns out, my assumptions were correct. I took a hell of a beating, but I kept the glider overhead and open. Mind you, I was pretty gripped because, even as I handled each situation, the question was, “Yea, but what’s coming next?”. At six hundred feet I dropped out of the shear into the strong but smooth seas breeze. At that point I did pull big ears as I had had it and wanted to be on the ground. I released them to set a figure eight approach. As it was still strong I slightly extended the down wind sides of the figure eight so I could slowly back into the LZ from up wind. On the ground I turned, pulled in my “d”s and it was over.

The next pilot in didn’t fair as well. They hit the shear at about four hundred feet. The glider pitched forward and collapsed. The center went away and both wing tips came forward and touched. As this glider was a DHV 1, it sorted it’s self out right away. The pilot landed, got drug and was none the worse for wear except getting the crap scared out of them.

I spend a little time talking with the pilot afterward as it is important for a new pilot to be able to place these events in some context so they don’t become spooked. The big question is always, “what should I have done?”.

The advice I gave was NOT what I did.
The standard expert reply would be, keep or glider open, don’t pull big ears as that will eliminate the use of the brakes AND well timed surge control is more effective than the non responsive big ears. The big BUT here is that that advice assumes the pilot has good surge control. If, as in this case, the pilot does not have that skill set, then the expert advice does not apply to the beginner pilot. The advice I gave was first, learn, from this experience, how to recognize the situation and pull big ears before you enter the shear. In big ears she would have then descended through the shear quickly with a small, highly pressurized glider.

The last bit of advice was to practice surge control in mild, non critical, situations. Make it your goal to always have your glider directly overhead. If there is anything dangerous about the new entry level gliders, it is that they are too safe. Uh....? In the bad old days we had surgy gliders and if you didn’t get your surge control sorted out you either got lucky or crashed. Things are way better now, but I see a lot of pilots who don’t develop their surge control because experience has shown them that they can get away with it. Well, you can get away with it till you don’t. If you don’t practice your surge control when it’s not completely necessary it won’t be there when it is.

Lastly, advice giving is instruction. Instruction is a skill set of it’s own. If you don’t practice instructing you won’t be good at. Even if you flying skill set is at expert level.

Bill

THE LIST

2008-01-19T12:28:00.000-08:00

Paragliding
glider
Harness
Reserve
Helmet
Hook Knife
Vario
GPS
Flight Suit
gloves
Wind Sock
Spot

Radio
FM
FRS
Spare
Charger
Harness
batteries
Speaker Mic
Head set

Camera
Charger
batteries
memory
usb cable
tripod

Video
camera
memory
charger
batteries
USB cable
Tripod

Diversions (parawaiting)
Roller Blades
mask and fins
rock shoes
kite
I-pod
Noise canceling headphones!
Book
Journal
Sketch pad
pens
pencils
water colors
juggling balls
fishing gear
kayak
Mountain bike
blokart
skis

Music
guitar
drums
anything else you play
tuner
mini studio
mics
cables
head phones

Camping
tent
poles
stakes
ground cloth
sleeping bag
sleeping pad
pillow
stove
fuel
pots and pans
silver ware
knife
chair
head lamp
shower bag

Clothes
Shirts
Pants
socks
undies
fleece,jacket, pants
rain wind layer
warm hat
Sun hat
Boots
Sandals,Keens, Crocs
gloves

Toiletries
Tooth brush
tooth paste
deodorant
comb
hair goo
shampoo
soap
finger nail clippers
mirror
razor
spare blades
ear plugs
prescriptions
vitamins

Seeing
Glasses
contacts
spares
solution
Sun glasses
prescription

Repairs
Line
repair tape
rubber bands
Spare deployment bag
handle
needle and thread

Flying with your glider

2008-01-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

Flying with your glider, (not flying your glider)

One of the greatest things about a paraglider is that it is so easy to travel with. Hiking, driving, flying, all are low hassle factor. When traveling by plane a few precautions with help keep your flying vacation airborne.

Packing up;

First off find out how much weight you can take in your bag. Most paragliders should fall well within the limits. If necessary move some items into another bag. But unless you have a lead harness this shouldn’t be a problem.

Pack Small,

Getting busted for oversized luggage is a lot more likely than over weight.
So, Find a nice clean place to pack your glider up and do an extra good job. Although you’ll never get it down to the factory pack size, you can get it way smaller than your average field pack job. Next, if you have a foam style back protector, pull it out, roll it up and use that horrible glider destroying compression strap (that you never use on your glider) and strap it down. This alone will make your bag way smaller.

Pack Smart,

Your helmet is design to take a blow with your head in it. It is not design to take a blow, empty, driven by the weight of your pack, into asphalt when it falls off of a conveyer belt. Pack your helmet full of clothes, like your flight suite and gloves. (Your instruments, wrapped up in those cloths works well.) Place you helmet on your seat board between your glider and the harness, NOT on top of the bag!

Secure all pack straps, buckle all buckles, these things can get caught and rip your bag apart. Make sure your name is on your bag. Don’t make it overly obvious that it’s a paraglider. (Like a beautiful bag tag with a picture of your glider on it.) Paragliders can be targeted for theft. Or, just stick the whole thing in a duffle bag.

Your reserve and home land security
.
Try to keep your reserve from being opened. If it comes up, explain what it is and that your life depends on the reserve working properly. Also, that it is huge and hard to get back in it’s pack. Suggest that it X-rayed. As a precaution, place a luggage tag with a note on your reserve handle that says, “This is a reserve parachute. My life may depend on it working properly. If you inspect it please remove this tag so that I will know it has been disturbed.”
NEVER try to carry on a reserve! (You’ll spend time in a dark room facing a spot light, answering questions.) If worse comes to worse, I can repack your reserve.

Take care of those that must schlep your gear around.

Most baggage handlers will not look upon your heavy pack with relish and delight. My best plan is to be at the airport early, find a skycap, thank them for taking care of my pack while handing them a five note. Never had a problem when using this method.

Other Plane related stuff.

Don’t forget your Passport! I did this one and some how just got away with it. That included breaking the speed limit and getting charged $100 to switch flights. Real stupid! Take my word for it.

Noise canceling head phones. When I went to Lima in 07 I had just gotten a pair and what a difference it made! While being subjected to the clown circus we call airline travel, I could escape to a quiet world of music or a book on bytes, (book on tape just doesn’t cut it anymore.).

If you are larger than the "Most airline profitable size", MAPS, which is taller than 5 feet and weight more than 92 pounds, you will not be comfortable on the plane. Try to get up and move around. Or at least, squirm around a bit. If you come off the plane stiff as a board, limber up a bit before picking up your pack.

Now you’re ready for the fun part.

Bill