Awoosh Spl00ge•Blog

Procrastination

2009-11-29T10:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

Sometimes life gets in the way of best intentions. Almost a year and a half have passed since I last blogged (whassup with that? you may ask - or maybe you haven't even noticed - is anyone reading this thing anyway? ;^) I do tweet on Facebook, and have kept up with documenting adventures on Awoosh, so I guess I have not been totally delinquent...

It's been a busy, purposeful, sad, and occasionally crazy year and a half.

A massive garden reno was started, and finally finished. I had intentions to blog that journey, but never got there. I did document with photographs, and maybe one day I will get around to telling the story. Enough to say for now that many dollars were spent, many hours of work were put in, bobcats and excavators littered the landscape for a very long time, thousands of pounds of rocks were pillaged and purchased and then installed, stairs and patios and walkways took shape, ponds were built and filled, and trees, shrubs and perennials were planted. We survived the worst Vancouver winter in memory - first monsoon rains that turned the clay fill into baby shit muck that mired the machines, and then feet of snow that prevented any work for over a month!

I designed this new garden, and planted every living thing myself. Mr G got his hands good and dirty as well, and was invaluable in the finishing work. We found some good framers to build a studio in the garden, which we finished ourselves, and we had a good landscaper and his helper who did the big work - moving large rocks, excavating for the ponds, building fence, pergola, stone patios and stairs. I am not sure he is yet recovered ;^)

In the end, despite a painful (fiscally and physically), muddy process, we are thrilled with the outcome.

Diving was a bit curtailed over the year or so it took to finish the garden, but we did manage to get to Indonesia twice - once on an incredible liveaboard trip with a large group of diving friends in March 2008 - we loved Indo so much that we took our kids with us and returned over Christmas 2008. Both of these trips were well-documented - links to multimedia slideshows, trip reports and galleries are here. I can't say enough good things about Indonesia - although a long way to travel, it is a different world there - many parts yet unspoiled (unfortunately I can't say that about southern Bali) and incredible diving.

I also snuck off to Grand Cayman for a week of diving with my friend Cindy last March. She and her husband escape their gruesome Michegan winters by staying down there for several months every year. Cayman is beautiful, but spendy. We were a bit unfortunate that big winds prevented us from partaking from some of the best diving there, but still managed to have a great time - two diveaholic chicks with big rigs perusing the reef for critters. I did document that trip as well, with a multimedia slideshow and an image gallery.

We lost Marco and Murf this year. Marco was Dave's dad - a wonderful, loving guy who battled prostate cancer for 15 years before it finally got him at age 85. Dave has lost both his parents to cancer (his mom died at age 54) - it is such a sad, difficult way to die. Personally, I want my black capsule. (I will blog about the black capsule concept one of these days). We celebrated his life at a memorable memorial gathering, where his children told chapters of his story, one of our daughters played guitar and sang a poignant song, many friends and family made impromptu, wonderful tributes, and a multimedia show of his life that I put together was shown.

Murf was our golden retriever. We adopted him at age 18 months, after he had been bounced through several homes. He was a bit of a headcase, but we loved him muchly, and losing him, and making the decision to put him down when it was clear he was suffering, broke my heart.

And then along came Harry. Harry is a golden retriever pup. After we lost Murf, my constant companion, our house felt very empty. Fairly soon after we put him down, I started to put feelers out for a pup - most of my sources told me it could be 6 months to a year before we would be able to secure one. Karma strikes again - a breeder I contacted put me on to the Golden Retriever Club of BC website. There, I contacted a breeder who was advertising excess male pups from a massive litter of twelve. I went out to meet Harry, fell in love, and the rest is history. He is now 7 months old, and is a loveable rogue who fills a big void in my heart.

So, those are the salient markers of a year and a half of a life.

I do intend to blog - if for no other reason that it stands as a sort of life diary. It does feel a little strange putting it out there, but this is how we do it in the 21st century, methinks. If you enjoy reading this thing, please let me know that my efforts are not in vain.

Dancing Queens

2008-06-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

Well, as anyone who knew me as a child would tell you, I was certainly no dancing queen. Instead, as a bit of a tomboy, I was into building forts, careening around on my (groovy purple) Mustang bike (with white banana seat ;^), playing field and floor hockey, and fishing with my dad. Dancing lessons were not offered by my parsimonious parents, nor desired by me. I never really gave dance so much as a thought.

Then I hit high school. School dances (especially in Grades 10/11/12 at all-girls' schools), were a social highlight - a chance to mingle with boys (who were strange animals to a girl who had grown up with only sisters), and I discovered through letting go that dances were a chance to lose myself to the music for a spell. When I hear Stairway to Heaven I can easily be transported back to bittersweet "last dances" of the evening, where there was much covert groping and furtive kisses exchanged (under the vigilant eyes of disapproving nuns ;^).

I will admit that, once I had children, I developed a bit of a bias towards dance, and Ballet in particular. This bias was not completely unfounded - in the late 1980's and early 1990's, I was a fitness instructor at the local YMCA (I had to tap into my dormant dancing genes for that gig ;^). The Y shared the premises with a local dance school, which had pupils ranging from preschoolers to pre-professional aspirants. The little kids, in their pink tutus, were cute, but the older, late teens/early twenty-somethings that were trying to make it to the next, professional level? Not so much. These gaunt, green-skinned girls would congregate outside the gym door and chain smoke between their sessions at the bar. They were uniformly emaciated, pale-pallored, unhealthy looking creatures, and they scared me. My thinking was that if this was the face of what years of dance amounted to, I did not want my young daughters anywhere near it.

So instead they played soccer and competed in Track & Field and Cross-Country running, and indulged in hours and hours of footloose play.

It wasn't until the two older girls were in their early teens that I became friends with a mom who had her daughters enrolled at a dance school in our community (not the same one at the Y). She is one of those birkenstock-wearing, granola-munching, down-to-earth type of women, and the fact that she had her kids in such a pursuit intrigued me. I told her of my concerns that dance may lead to body issues and eating disorders, and told her about my experience at the Y. She assured me that the school where her daughters were dancing had kids of all shapes and sizes, and that body type was not an issue at all there.

So, with those reassurances from her, we dove in. All 3 P’s expressed an interest to try it out, and so we started them in Jazz and Ballet (Ballet is mandatory at this school for all Jazz dancers, as much of the technique in Jazz stems from Ballet). That first dance year sped by, and before we knew it, we were finding our seats in a crowded theatre for the end of the year recital. And we were blown away – not so much by the skill of our own daughters, who were still on a heavy learning curve as newbies to the experience – but by the skill of the kids who has been at it a while, and by the wonderful choreography and the varieties of dance showcased.

And even more than that, we were wowed by the incredible, joyous energy exuded by the dozens and dozens of kids who took the stage that night.

There were girls (and a few boys), of all shapes and sizes, strutting and leaping and sashaying and prancing across the big stage. And nary a one that looked anorexic. It was just an excited, happy group of kids showing their stuff.

Since then, the P’s have continued to break their Mama’s mold and be dancing queens. Unfortunately, P1 started too late to have a chance to reach her zenith before graduating from high school and going off to college, although she pursued Ballet studies and competed in Jazz during the few years she was able to attend the dance school. P2 was culled out of her teen beginners group and accelerated into high levels of dance. As a teen beginner she had a lot of ground to make up, but by Grade 12 she had successfully completed the highest level of Ballet offered at the school (R.A.D. - Advanced Two), was named “Dancer of the Year” at the year-end recital. She had been invited to attend the Kirov Ballet Summer School (now Universal), but unfortunately became very ill with Mono, and was unable to attend. After graduation, she auditioned for and was accepted into a provincial Ballet company as an aspirant (professional in training), but she did not groove on it, and so left the program after the first term. She now teaches dance to little ones, and it would be hard to imagine her life without some sort of dance component.

As for P3? She is the reason why I penned this blog entry. This past weekend we were once again warming the seats in the local theatre for several evenings running, watching her dance. As always, it was a delightful show of great talent and great energy - a chance for the kids to share their passion with their families and friends.

I don’t know whether P3 will pursue dance after she graduates in a couple of years - she has talent and potential, but professional dance, at least in Ballet, is a hard life, and not one that I would choose for her, if it was my choice to make. But alas, she must make her own choices about her adult life.

If nothing else, this whole dance saga is a reminder to myself that one's mis-perceptions can close one to possibilities. If I had not allowed myself to revisit the possibility of dance for the P's, due to my own biases and fears that they would develop body image issues, there would have been so much they would have missed.

Dance clearly isn't just for waifish pixie women - it is a sport that involves athleticism, musicality, teamwork and creativity. It is no big surprise that reality shows like "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Dancing With The Stars" are so popular. Dance is fun to perform and, at least for me, great fun to watch.

Hello? Tokyo?

2008-05-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

Man, when it rains, it pours blog entries ;^)

After writing about "Flights From Hell" yesterday, I realized that below, in another entry, Thailand & Beyond, I made reference to the Tokyo flight from hell that we endured in December 2007, on our way to Thailand.

So, as promised, here is the story, exerpted from my Thailand Trip Report:

We were very fortunate to be flying in Biz Class (on frequent flyer points), so let me say up front that what was surely a Flight From Hell for the 200+ people sitting in Sardine, er, Economy Class on our flight from Vancouver to Tokyo, was truly only very inconvenient for us.

The stress we felt was not so much physical from being prezzled in the back of the bus – it was more about our two older daughters, who had been backpacking around Thailand and Cambodia and who would be waiting for us in Phuket as we had pre-arranged. We had no way to contact them about our delay except by e.mail, which we weren’t sure they were checking regularly as they were vagabonding around quite a bit. That was a worry, and as things evolved, there was a very real threat that we would not show up in time to make the departure of The Junk live-aboard that we had booked for a week of diving in the Andaman Sea. That for sure put us on edge. The fact that we had prepaid for two rooms (non-refundable) for one night in a very splurgey kind of resort for our reunion with our daughters in Phuket, and that it wasn’t looking like we would arrive in time to enjoy it, was just an added injury.

Our Air Canada non-stop flight from Vancouver to Tokyo did not start off well. We arrived at the airport to find out that the flight had incurred a one hour departure delay – something about the cockpit crew deadheading in from somewhere else, and their flight was delayed, so therefore ours was too. Approximately an hour after scheduled departure time they started boarding. We were already beginning to feel anxious, as we had a pretty tight connection in Tokyo for Bangkok, and we were watching that transfer time inexorably whittle away. Still, even with an hour and a half delay, and the longer than usual planned flight time, it looked like we could still make it in a pinch.

On a side note: as a kind of personal travel survival strategy, we try to make sure that we have a minimum 3 hour connection time for any international flights – and at least 4 hours if transiting through busy American airports like Miami, Houston or LAX.

Also, just so you know, connecting airlines are entitled to sell your seats if you do not show up on time, even if you have been issued a boarding pass at some point. What time that is seems to be under dispute.

And a bit of a traveler’s rant: TSA or FAA or Homeland Security or whatever powers-that-be have not yet cottoned on to the idea that international passengers who are merely making a flight connection through the USA, and not spending any time there at all, except in the airport waiting for their connecting flight, really shouldn’t need to clear Customs & Immigration if they are in transit. Several countries I have visited have separate, secure systems for in-transit passengers, including New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Germany. Passengers are kept behind Customs & Immigration, and therefore bags can be checked though, no Customs & Immigration screening is required, and at the most, passengers may be required to go through an additional security screening to get to their connecting flight. The time saving and lack of redundant security and in-and-out screening is most welcome to travelers.

Anyhoo, back to the saga. So there we were, now on the plane, wishing they would hurry up and get the crate in the air. Instead, the Captain came on the PA with a jaunty “Well folks, I’ve got some bad news and some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that we have a mechanical issue that needs to be resolved before we can go. The good news is, the ground crew advises that it is a fairly minor issue and should be resolved quite quickly, hopefully within an hour or so. The bad news is, if we don’t take off in 45 minutes or less, myself (the Captain) and the other flight deck crew will be exceeding our allowable duty day, and a new front end crew will need to be called out. Due to peak season crew scheduling, that could take several hours.”

Groans all around. Fingers and toes duly crossed. Watches watched. As we waited, we used Mr G’s Blackberry to call our travel agent to ask her what to do about the Toyko-Bangkok flight that we were now guaranteed to miss. She was able to quickly contact Air Canada who arranged that we would be carried on a JAL flight that left later that day, still arriving Bangkok in plenty of time for an ugly 7 hour layover before our early morning flight to Phuket. So, not all that big an issue at that point, but there was some stress knowing that a big possible delay was looming out there if they didn’t get the thing fixed soon.

Frequent Flyer Flying: We felt very fortunate that we had booked our ff tickets through a travel agent (we always do) – she charges a reasonable fee for this service and we believe it is totally worth it as she is able to access a database that lets her see what seats are available over several routes and over several days, versus the luck of the draw (after being kept in a holding pattern, often for hours, waiting for a real live body to speak to at Air Canada’s clearly over-inundated and under-staffed Aeroplan call center). Been there, done that trying to book ff seats, and despite being a frequent do-it-myselfer on booking travel, I would rather pay someone else to do this onerous and frustrating task. Having an agent book the tickets and so taking care of issues as they arose, and having all the flights showing on one ticket ended up being critical to the outcome of this debacle.

With literally minutes to spare before he would have to get off the plane, the Captain came back on and said all was repaired and we were on our way. Sweet! High fives all around!

Fast forward through a meal service, a couple of celebratory vodka tonics, and a movie segueing into lights out. All tucked in, I had visions of a happy reunion with our older daughters dancing in my head as I drifted off to sleep. I woke up, parched, about 6 hours into the flight, and cracked the window shade. I had figured that as we left Vancouver early afternoon, and were heading west, that we should be flying in daylight all the way. Not so much. A peek outside revealed an inky, starry night. Hmmm. I got up to go to the loo and get some more water, and asked one of the flight attendants in the galley what was up. She advised that we had turned around and were about one and half hours west of Anchorage, where we would be landing due to a medical emergency on board.

You know, a person can get a bit of a complex about being a jinx. For a while there, I kept finding myself on sinking dive boats, and until one sunk when I was not on the boat, I worried that I might be the bad karma carrier ;^)

Last year, I was fortunate enough to find myself on about 6 trips that involved flights. Less fortunately, four of those trips had flights involving medical emergencies.

Side Story: One of the in-flight emergencies (en route to LAX to connect to a flight to Fiji) was very serious indeed – a youngish guy, looked to be in his early 50’s – had a full on cardiac arrest over Oregon. He was incredibly fortunate that there were no less than 4 medical personnel on board, including a couple of doctors. They hauled out the AED (they did not have this technology available on aircraft when I was a flight attendant in the early 80’s) and broke out the O2 and kept him alive whilst the flight crew made a red hot emergency landing in Reno. The good news is that the guy apparently made it. Let me tell you though, it appears to be quite easy to get clearance to land for a medical emergency, but getting clearance to take off again? Not so much. We were lucky that we had a planned 5 hour layover in LAX, so we still made our flight to Nadi despite the lengthy delay in Reno while a new flight plan was submitted and finally approved.

Back on the Tokyo flight. Curious, I asked a friendly flight attendant what the medical issue was. I felt justified enquiring, as I knew the landing in Anchorage was going to have a serious impact on our travel plans. She confided that they had paged for medical personnel on board - incredibly, with 225+ folks on the Aerobus, not one was an MD, nurse or paramedic – or at least not one who was willing to come forward. I missed the page altogether, due to vodka-induced, earplug-enhanced sleep (I know, fellow traveler, that at this point you are lightly strumming a sad song for me on your violin ;^), but only having Industrial First Aid and CPR, both certifications now lapsed (my bad), I would not have been qualified to help anyway. It seems that a youngish male passenger was complaining of pain in his abdomen. With no one on board to ascertain that he was not bleeding internally, that his BP and heart rate were normal, and that he was not suffering appendicitis or similar affliction, the flight crew apparently had no choice but to turn the flight when the passenger indicated that he could not go on. Man, I couldn’t help thinking that if we had left on time, we would have been closer to Tokyo than Alaska, and so would have gone there instead...

It gets curiouser – they moved the passenger in question, and what looked to be his parents, up to some empty seats in Biz Class for the duration of the side trip to Anchorage. The seats in the new personal pod configuration on Air Canada are herringbone to the aisle, as opposed to facing fully forward, so it wasn’t necessary to be a rubber-necking looky-lou to covertly check him out. He was a young Asian guy, late teens or early 20’s, sitting up straight, and he looked okay to me – more sullen than anything. The parents virtually ignored him.

I’ll admit I started thinking – WTF? If the guy is not in serious distress, why are they turning the plane, with huge inconvenience to several hundred people, not to mention mind-boggling cost and scheduling nightmares for the airline, all for someone who looks, at the worst, like he might have a bit of intestinal upset?

Don’t get me wrong – I am not without compassion (truthfully I think I do okay in that department), but this did not look right. But what are you going to do? What is the crew going to do? With no medical opinion as to the passenger’s fitness to fly, huge liabilities lurk out there – what if he does have internal bleeding or a hot appendix or something equally as sinister? If things go bad, heads are gonna roll at Air Canada.

So we landed, heavy, in Anchorage. It was an icy cold night and the runway was slick. It didn’t help that we were still carrying several thousand pounds of fuel in addition to a fully loaded plane. It took forever for the jet to stop.

As soon as they pulled the plane over, paramedics were ushered on board. They did a quick BP and pulse check on the patient, poked him in the abdomen a couple of times (his response was minimal) and then shrugged their shoulders at each other. They asked him if he could walk off the plane, and he said yes.

So he stood up and walked off the flight, followed by his little family entourage.

Hello? Tokyo?

The Captain came back on the PA, not quite so jaunty any more. From what he told us, there were a couple of options – none of them very attractive. He advised that we could not continue on to Tokyo, as Narita airport is closed in the wee hours, when we would end up arriving. He reminded us that the flight deck crew couldn’t go anyways, because that would be overtime, and that is not allowed in the airline industry. Nobody wants a somnolent pilot.

One possible option was to unload the passengers and crew and put us all up at hotels in Anchorage – allowing the crew to have their minimum required 9 hour rest before we proceeded. I was thinking that this was the best scenario, with the least possible delay. That, or fly in a replacement crew from Vancouver (about 4 hours away).

My wishful thinking was sadly overruled by the powers-that-be, who, after a couple of hours of deliberations and logistics studies and crew scheduling and aircraft scheduling and flight plan submissions, decided the best thing was to return the aircraft and passengers to Vancouver, overnight us at the airport in Vancouver, and then reschedule the flight for the following morning.

I can’t begin to describe the sense of disbelief we felt. Twelve hours on a plane, and we were going to be back where we started.

I have to say Air Canada, whom I have dissed in the past for some head-shaking policies, procedures and attitude (not to mention frequently losing my dive bag), receives my full kudos for how they handled this whole situation. In fact, I’d give them a gold star.

We arrived in Vancouver in the wee hours, where we were given info about the flight arrangements for the following day (including assurances that a flight from Toyko to Bangkok had been rescheduled for us), and a voucher for the airport hotel, and off we went. By the time we had collected our bags and schlepped them to the hotel, checked in, and were in the sack it was 2.30 am with a planned wake up at 6.30 to check in by 7 am for a 9 am departure. I did not sleep well fussing about the Ps waiting for us on the other end, and figuring about how the heck we were going to get from Bangkok to Phuket in time for The Junk’s departure.

I am pleased to report that on the day after Groundhog Day the stars lined up for the G family – flights flew on time, and we slept most of the way to Toyko. When we got there, we picked up an e.mail from Lily, our agent, with the subject line CONFIRMED! THAI AIRWAYS FLT ### 7 AM TOMORROW. Well that was a woohoo – although we’d miss the night at the resort with P1 and P2 (and have to kill 9 hours in Bangkok Airport), we’d still be there in time for a shower and a quick nap and then a scheduled late afternoon pickup by the Junk driver. The Japan Airlines lounge in Narita (at least the one we were in – there are several) had some cool massage loungers and continuous sushi. So we happily noshed nigiri nuggets and rode the massage chairs during our short wait for the connecting flight. We were moved onto an earlier JAL flight out of Tokyo that got us to Bangkok in time to hoof it with our bags through the long, ultra-mod tubular hallways and glass atriums of Suvarnabhumi Airport to stand by for the last Thai Airways flight of the day to Phuket (which we were told was oversold). We got the last three seats - literally, the 3 center seats in the back of the bus. They don't recline, but who gives a hoot? We were almost there and it's a sub one hour flight.

And so, there we were, in Phuket, at midnight, drinking beers with our much-relieved daughters in a bar at Nai Yang beach, just outside the gates of the chi chi resort that, in the end, we got to enjoy – only checking in 14 hours later than planned.

Kind of miraculous when I look back on the whole thing.

Schadenfreude

2008-05-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

(Excerpted from Merriam Webster On Line Dictionary)
Main Entry: scha·den·freu·de
Pronunciation: \ˈshä-dən-ˌfrȯi-də\
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: German, from Schaden damage + Freude joy
Date: 1895
Enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others

So, does this describe you? ;^)

Gregg Rottler, founder of Flights From Hell, has figured out that there is a demand for "Flight From Hell" stories. His popular website, featured in The New York Times, MSNBC and various other media outlets, features submissions from travelers with a beef.

Recently, Gregg contacted me to enquire whether he could feature Carry On Blues, a blog entry and poem I wrote after returning from a trip to Fiji, where I was hassled by authorities regarding my (slightly overweight) carry on bag containing sensitive photo equipment. I happily complied.

In addition to airline consumer news, FlightsFromHell.com features no less than 15 flight gripe categories, including "Portly" (issues regarding obese passengers - a sore spot with me after a recent flight on Luftansa;^), "Babies & Kids" (maybe I should share my story about the toddler-from-hell who screamed, like a tortured piglet, non-stop, for two segments from Ambon to Jakarta in Indonesia), "Odors" (big nasty yuckers and ditto on my Luftansa seatmate!), "Weird People" (I know I've seen more than a few).

And so, there is no doubt something for everyone ;^)

C'mon, tap into your schadenfreude and have a look...

Motherbucker!

2008-05-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, how long has it been since I rambled on here? Life seems to whir by, taken up with day to day minutae (not to mention a significant garden renovation that has kept me hopping of late). I view this blog as an opportunity to document my life and experiences, but clearly, a little more discipline is in order or there are gonna big, gaping holes in the story ;^)

Since my last entry, an incredible, long-planned-for adventure to Indonesia was undertaken in late March/early April with a great group of buddies. A slideshow I put together, featuring the highlights of the trip, is here - Indonesia: Monkeys in Paradise. Hopefully, a group effort trip report will materialize sooner or later and I'll link it - the many photographers on the trip returned with bountiful and beautiful imagery.

The Thailand trip, of late 2007 that I blogged here, finally got documented in the form of a photoessay. That hefty epistle can be found here: Thailand Trip Report. You'll need a big cup of java to keep you going through the epic odyssey, which included land stays on Phuket, a liveaboard to the Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock, a two day dive adventure to the Phi Phi Islands, and a couple of days in Bangkok.

And finally, while I am proving to myself that I have not been entirely idle these last few months, a short jaunt up to Quadra Island, British Columbia, netted this slideshow: Quadra Island Slideshow.

As for Motherbucker? That is the name my little sis gave the horse she rode last week up at the Flying U Ranch, in central British Columbia.

Our family has a long history of heading up to the U to play cowboy/girl for a few days. The scenery, the freedom of being assigned a horse, handed a hand-drawn map, and an open gate out into 20,000 acres of drop dead gorgeous country sounds an on-going siren call that we just can't ignore.

Sadly, the current owners of the U have had it up for sale for some time, and it seems unlikely that future owners of the land will run a guest ranch - the liabilities, the limited season (the Cariboo region, in Central British Columbia, is as cold as a witch's tit from November to April, so the ranch is only open May to beginning of October), and the cost of upkeep of the charming 100 year old log cabins and extensive herd of horses will likely mean that developers will nab the property and build gaudy vacation homes and/or an RV Park on the site. That will be a crying shame.

This time out I rode Sandy, whom I would nickname "Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly". At the turn of the ride (often 3 hours out), this somewhat reluctant-to-go horse would become a headstrong bitch. Lengthy battles ensued between her and me - she wanted to flatten her ears and scream back to the barn. I wanted her to stay under control (not to mention stay in the saddle ;^) so we could enjoy the return ride with as much enjoyment as the ride out. I am happy to report that I won (barely) and that none of our group had any serious mishaps. The last time up at the U, Mr G took a tumble when his horse spooked at full canter, causing him to fall and break a rib. Injuries are not uncommon in horse riding - the animals are not always predictable, and the terrain can be difficult at times.

My sister, who was a neophyte to the whole experience, was assigned a horse named Phoenix whom she quickly christened "Motherbucker" due to his tendency to donkey kick any horse that came within six feet of his rear end. As a new rider, she did great dealing with the ornery bastard, and she seriously grooved on the fabulous scenery.

A few pix to illustrate the experience:

Thailand and Beyond

2008-01-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

This is a long entry. This was originally posted as a teaser trip report on scubadiving.com, but then I figured I’d add a bit more detail and blog it, in case I don’t get around to doing a full on trip report. I also took lots of pix, so hopefully a gallery and slideshow will be up on Awoosh soon.

PS - Thailand photoessay can now be found here, and a trip Gallery can be found here.

The trip – a family journey in Thailand. This was my first trip to Asia. What a great introduction...

P1 and P2 had gone ahead and had already been trekking around Thailand and Cambodia for a couple of weeks before our arrival. They really saw it – still unspoiled islands, and magnificent ruins at Angor Wat (including a friendly monkey). Such adventures as bus breakdowns in backwoods Cambodia. It is the kind of traveling I did and longed to do more of when I was in my footloose and fancy-free twenties. These days, although my adventuresome spirit lives on, I am not so much on sleeping in a communal dorm where one must shower with a bucket of cold water and squat over a hole in the ground to do one’s business and then rinse one’s butt with a garden hose. Been there, done that, and then made enough money to afford a hot shower and a private toilet ;^)

Our goal was to try to do some of the best diving Thailand purportedly offered, and when not diving chill out in quiet places, away from the maddening crowds whenever possible. Choice of locations for land portions was dictated by nearness to dive ops. That took some research on my part. There was some major planning for this trip, with so many moving parts.

I could not find a good land-based dive lodge in the Andaman Sea side of Thailand – unlike Indonesia where there appears to be many to choose from. A hard lesson I learned about Christmas in Thailand is to plan early. We got the last 5 spots on The Junk booking it in July. I did alot of scrambling for seats from Bangkok to Phuket (not part of the ff tickets we booked a year before the trip) and finding hotels for the short stays. Bangkok was the only portion of the trip where there were many options to choose from.

The way the flights worked out, we had 3 days to kill on the end in Bangkok – so although we’d rather be diving, we made the best of it. The older P’s had transited thru there a few times on their journey, so they took us touring and eating and they got to enjoy it on the other end of the scale from the insecty guesthouses off Khao San Road.

Routing for Mr G, myself and P3 (Biz Class - on ff points, baby! – one nice payback for all the biz travel that Mr G endures): Vancouver-Tokyo-Bangkok-Phuket. I'm calling this the Groundhog Day Flight(s) From Hell. Suffice to say we flew for 12 hours and ended up back in Vancouver. Overnighted (if you can call a four hour stay in a hotel an overnight) at a hotel airport by the airline, and then woke up to do it all over again the next day. Longer version of story to follow in future.

I have to say that despite the fubars, Air Canada and their partner airlines were excellent throughout the situation, and it is the best of the worst when you are sitting in a very comfy biz class seat. Additional mitigation because we had the cool new units that convert to a bed on this aircraft – well not really a bed, but you kind of have your own little pod and you can get flat. If I can lie flat with earplugs and eyes covered, I can sleep like a baby on a plane.

The Groundhog Day flights were unfortunate (and I am not entirely sure they were necessary, at the end of the day), but really the biggest stress for us was worrying about our kids who were already there, waiting for us to show up, and that we would miss the departure of the Junk and have to hire a longtail to chase it up the coast. That was entirely possible since apparently Thai Airways flights were completely sold out for days on end. Did I mention book early?

We spent one night at the Indigo Pearl Resort at Nai Yang Beach in Phuket, to recover from Groundhog Day Flights from Hell. It's a really beautiful (read: architecturally and vegetatively cool) resort near the airport at Phuket, and also near a pretty nice beach. It was a bit of a one-night-splurge kind of place for a family reunion with P1 and P2; they hadn’t a had a hot shower since they’d been traveling, so they were happy campers ;^)

Sux nights on the Junk liveaboard dive boat out of Phuket that took in the Similan Islands, Koh Bon (yes we saw mantas), Richelieu Rock (which rocked, although we did not see whalesharks) and Surin Islands. The diving exceeded my expectations, although we accepted that given we were doing a peak season week, the sites would be busy, and they were – loads of divers of all capabilities – dogpaddlers and finning reef whackers and myopic coral handlers as well as our eager and capable dive masters and lots of neat folks from all over on our dive boats (we were the only North Americans on both the liveaboards we did).

The reefs were colourful, and healthy (except for the old dynamite-fished patches at some locations - dynamite fishing is wisely no longer permitted in these areas of Thailand, but fishing still occurs). The place was very very fishy, with lots of firsts for me - including mantis shrimp, harlequin ghost pipefish, leopard sharks, some new varieties of anemone fish. I had fun with the camera, although I must confess that I really miss the ability to shoot both macro and wide angle, not to mention video, on the same dive, as one can with a digicam-style camera.

Oh, and did I mention the x-rated mating cuttlefish show on Christmas Day? ;^) - images in the Thailand gallery, linked above.

We loved the boat - the perfect first liveaboard for our kids - not fancy, but great food, great crew, great itinerary, great diving, great weather, funky boat - and really budget-minded. By booking at least 3 months out we saved 15% on the total cost, which I think was a great deal to begin with.

Three nights at Centara Villas on Phuket to dry out, de-saturate Nitrogen load (The Junk unfortunately does not deal Nitrox). Lovely, jungly resort with accommodation in little houses on a hill-side on the point just north of Karon Beach and with a kickass bar/restaurant at the top of the hill for surveying sunsets over a chilly Heineken. A very nice breakfast is included in the room rate, if you book thru the right source. Suhweet. I saved alot on the rooms by shopping internet sellers. Unfortunately, if you book directly with the resort (which would be my first choice, to ensure complete communication) you can expect to pay as much as 35% more than if you book through something like travelocity or asiarooms or hoteltravel.com

As for Karon Beach - big, white sand, with busy beach requisite parasailing, excursion sales, waterskiing/wakeboarding rentals and a legion of chair vendors. You rent the beach chaises – I think they're a couple of bucks a day - and as an added bonus, you will be incessantly bombarded by beach vendors hawking beverages and beachwear and lotsa other shtuff. Imagine masses of beach chairs for as far as they eye can see, overflowing with sunburnt European tourists who have come to play on their travel package holiday to the beach in Thailand, which for Europeans is about as easy and budget-minded as the package deals to Mexico and the Caribbean are for North Americans.

Karon town itself also was pretty soul-less and touristy. I wish I had seen the place 20 years ago. That goes for all of Phuket. And, not a bookstore in Karon. Seriously. The closest bookstore is Kata Beach. Now there is a biz opportunity…

We still managed to find some neat little spots to eat - if you don't need white tablecloth service, you can eat awesome Thai food very very cheap - either in little beach eateries or in town - all you can eat dinner and beverages for the five of us was always less than $30. That's $30 total. For everyone. We’d order up prawn and/or veggie curries, pad thais, some delicious soup and/or some other noodle concoction. No mammals or birds – some of the P’s are pescatarians, dontchaknow? They will eat what they consider to be sustainable seafood, harvested in an environmentally conscientious manner, which I can’t disagree with and I am happy to eat like that when in their company. Throw in some fried or steamed rice, a couple of tropical fruit platters, a couple of bottles of water, some fresh fruit "shakes" (really just pureed fruit and ice) and some of those big Heinken beers (we were not drinking Thai beer as P’s got reports of it containing formaldehyde), and you are golden.

Wonderful Thai massage for less $10 an hour, including tip. Prices much higher at spendy hotel spas. Bottled water for as low as 20 cents. Happy, happy...

We did a 2 day trip on the Greta to Phi Phi Island. Diving again way exceeded my expectations, although the op itself could use a few improvements. Anenome Rock, Shark Point and several sites around Phi Phi Don (the uninhabited of the two islands) were absolutely awesome. Loved it all. We spent New Year's Eve on a Phi Phi beach and it was magical. Paper lantern constellations in the sky, Thai reggae in a funky bar on the beach, agile young Thai boyz playing with fire by twirling flaming sticks and balls to their favourite tunes, drinking beers and dancing in the sand with our kids.

1 night in Phuket town (filler accomodation after diving before flight out to Bangkok). Getting hotel rooms for one night during peak season proved to be quite difficult. More on that in promised trip report to come.

3 nights in Bangkok at Dusit Thani hotel. Lovely hotel. Bangkok was better than I expected - not too hot, sticky or dirty. We stayed away from the sketchy/sex tourism areas but enjoyed bargain shopping at Khao San road. Highlights of our self-guided walking tour were Chinatown, and the beautiful flower and fresh produce markets that went on for blocks, and blocks, and blocks. For less than $1 per person you can ride the skytrain to one of the southernmost stops on the city river ferry system and then ride the ferry for about an hour north, seeing Bangkok and its many, many temples from the water. From a northern stop, we got off and hired a longtail speedy canoe (one of the small ones with bigass engines that you don't see in Bangkok city proper as the water is too rough). We literally flew upriver on the thing to the "pottery island" (Ko Kret) where there are no cars. It was pretty surreal to be that close to a massive, bustling metropolis and find quiet.

The only shadows on what was a great trip were the Groundhog day flights getting there, and the worrisome news that my mom had suffered a heart attack on New Year's Day.

We were on our way to Bangkok for the last couple of days of our stay when we got the news, and it did cause us much concern (although I do try very hard in my life not to worry, as it is such a useless, soul-sapping activity). With full flights due to peak holiday stuff, we could not get home any sooner without huge complications, and I knew my wonderful sisters were there to support my parents through what was really a terrifying ordeal for them both. So we tried to enjoy our last few days of our trip with our kids before they go their separate ways again, all the while in (disparate time zone) constant contact with family via Dave’s Blackberry.

Blackberry is now my friend (used to call em Crackberries and really despised the intrusiveness of the things...) This groovy technology allowed us to stay in close communication with the family.

My Mom is home again, and is doing much better after angioplasty and stent.

Our much-envied (internationally, and particularily lauded by Michael Moore) national health care system leaves much to be desired. My mother apparently received state-of-the-art treatment (angioplasty and stent) by practioners who are appear to be lacking a compassion gene, and in a less than timely delivery. The government is blamed by all for underfunding, but really the system is broken for many different reasons, many of which surely could be remedied.

Morale of medical staff appears to be at an all time low, and the Golden Days of Medicine, at least here in the socialized model, appear to have seen their day.

The surgeon who performed angioplasty on my mother did not even introduce herself to my mother (who was fully conscious – no meds for pain nor for anxiety) before she started up her business of sticking utensils into my mother's arteries – talking over my mother like she was not present. My mother is 78 and still does the Globe & Mail cryptic crosswords every morning.

Mom was transported to a major cardiac surgical center after spending 6 hours, essentially unmonitored in the Emergency ward of our local hospital. In the ER she was parked off in a corner, and after initial monitoring on arrival, she was no longer being medically monitored by machines or medical staff for BP, pulse or ECG or any such thing, even though there was confirmation that she had had an MI. She was placed away from the Nurse’s Station, with no signaling device and no way to visually cue them should she need help. She had a second cardiac event while in the ER, and it was fortunate that my dad returned from a quick break to find her in distress.

At the cardiac surgical hospital she was kept waiting on the surgical slate 6 hours past her scheduled procedure time, due to getting bumped for more ‘urgent cases’. Hard for her to understand, since she had had two major cardiac events in the past 24hours. My mother, I surmise because she was in some pre-op area, was not allowed to be seen by her (retired MD) husband for all that added waiting time. No one asked if my mom was comfortable. No one had any kind of conversation with her at all. No one assured her that she would be fine. The only direct communication in all those hours was from a whippersnapper resident who, whilst performing a perfunctory pre-op assessment, told her something to the tune of “you know you could die during this procedure, right?”

As for my father? It was only when he caught the attention of one of the scurrying nursing staff that he could find out anything that was happening with his wife. No one perceived his distress (and I have no doubt he appeared very distressed, especially as time ticked by).

Were they marginalized to some degree because my parents are elderly? There is no doubt in my mind that this was a contributing factor. But it is a sobering reality to think that if a retired doctor and his wife, who has had a major heart attack, get treated like that, what happens to folks who don't have enough medical knowledge or language skills to advocate for themselves?

It seems to me from other personal and secondhand experiences that many people working in the hospitals in this province are so frustrated that they are taking it out on the people that they serve. That, or they are woefully undereducated in and/or unaware of basic patient psychology. There also appears to be little to no accountability for poor patient care.

I worked for several summers as a Nurse’s Aide in an Extended Care unit of a hospital, and even at 18 I understood that people who are in any kind of distress just want to feel heard and reassured, not marginalized and ignored.

I feel some letters coming on… ;^)

We have a self-avowed, card-carrying Socialist doctor friend who went to work in a hospital - a public health institution, even though he would make a much cushier living doing private clinic work. He chose this work because he ardently believes in the concept of socialized medicine - that is good quality medical care, funded by the government, through taxation, accessible to all, no matter what their means. He believes it should be available in Canada. The taxpayers are paying through the nose for it.

This true believer in the socialized medicine model confessed to me, when I purged the frustrations about the treatment of my mom to him in a post-holiday catch up chat, that if something medically serious was going on with his family, he’s pay to go private, he has so little faith in our current medical system.

Let me tell you, that is a very, very sad statement.

Carry On Blues

2007-12-07T14:54:00.001-08:00

A poem for posterity.

I penned the ditty below on return from Fiji in July, where I had a very unpleasant experience trying to carry on my (fragile) camera equipment onto a Fiji Air Pacific 747 flight in Nadi Airport. No problems coming out of LAX on the same aircraft/carrier/route - but coming out of Fiji? Busted on the weight of my carry on rolling bag by some young, inconsistent whippersnapper who had the powertrip position of arbitrarily culling folks like myself out of the security line to have their carry on bags weighed.

Air Pacific has a crazy policy of *one* carry on piece of baggage for international flights, maximum 5 kg (that's 11 lb for you non-Metric folk). Crikey - the bag weighs at least 5 lb empty!

Here's my message to Air Pacific - if you are going to (arbitrarily) enforce your ridiculously low carry on baggage allowance, do it at the check in counter, and do it for all passengers. Don't wait until folks are clearing security to go to their gate to nail them and tell them that their bag is overweight and must be checked, and then direct them back to the check in counter where another 747 load of passengers is lined up to kingdom come waiting to check in, which for all intents and purposes means that a cabin bag that is 10 lb overweight, and that you insist must be checked, is going to make a passenger miss their flight. Jeesh.

Now, in theory, I don't object to reasonable bag weight restrictions imposed for safety reasons (ie maximum weight capacity of overhead bins, or total weight allowances on small aircraft, or in an effort to lessen work-related injuries of baggage handlers), but on a 747 is my extra 10 lbs or so of camera gear, in a carry on bag, going to make a whit of difference? I think not.

Most US carriers do not stipulate a maximum carry on baggage weight allowance (acceptable dimensions are somewhat universal for all airlines ie if it don't fit in the bin or under the seat in front of you, it goes in the hold). The airlines that do stipulate weight restrictions - Air Canada for instance, offer 2 bags for a maximum 44 lb carry on limit - but I have yet to have my carry on bag weighed by Air Canada, and I suffer, er, fly Air Canada quite alot.

I have long opined that there is discrimination happening in the airline industry - where else in the business of moving things is the weight and bulk of the cargo calculated on a flat rate, one size fits all? Why does a 120 lb individual pay the same freight as an individual who weighs 300 lb?

In Judy's Ideal World (and what a rarified place that would be ;^) it would seem fairer to weigh an individual and their luggage, for a total reasonable weight allotment per passenger. Carrying more than the total allotment on your bones and/or in your bags? - well then, to be fair, surcharges should apply in both cases, no?

Of course, this will never fly - the large people of the world will boohoo about discrimination and human rights and that it is just not fair.

Fair?

Don't even get me started about a recent Luftansa flight to Germany where my seatmate in a 2-4-2 configuration (I was in A, she was in B), was a person of very large proportions, whom, while I was trying to catch some shut eye, lifted the armrest and proceeded to ooze/snooze into my seat, to the point where she not only took up her seat, but half of mine as well, all the while subjecting me to continuous full body side pressure - from shoulder to ankle.

There was no escape - I was huddled into the window well for 9 hours, but could not get away from being touched against my will, and the more I tried to move over to avoid physical contact, the more space she claimed. The flight was packed; there were no empty seats that I could see, and so no way out. Seriously. It was truly uncomfortable and an unwanted invasion of my personal space.

Afterwards, some of the folks with whom I shared the story of my flight from hell (and I haven't even shared with you that she consumed 3 Warsteiners with dinner and proceeded to flatulate for the duration, nor that everytime she nodded off, her left arm, which she stowed across her chest since there was nowhere else to put it, was released from her grip and smacked me ;^) suggested that I should have snagged a flight attendant and asked him/her to deal with the situation. Truly, I had empathy (at least in the early hours of the flight) for this German lady, as it must be very uncomfortable to fly squeezed into lilliputian airline seats in the back of the bus when one is of large dimensions, and I certainly did not want to embarrass her by complaining, so I did nothing but suck it up like the polite Canadian I try to be.

But, I ask you, is it fair that folks must share their seats, for which they have paid large dollars, not to mention completely relinquish the use of the armrest, and several inches of their space adjacent to it, because another passenger exceeds the space they purchased?

Not so much.

....................................................

Anyhoo, here is my parody/cathartic exercise:

Carry On Blues

[To the tune of Summertime Blues, with a little poetic license]:

Well, I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler
Been working all year just to pay big dollars
For a crappy seat with leg room for a dwarf
And food & beverage service that makes you wanna barf

And every time I take a flight, I get nuthin' but grief
Treated like a terrorist, or some at least some kinda thief
My bags they get picked over, and all liquids are taboo
The bastards even took my 3 oz tester of shampoo

Sometimes I wonder how a girl's gotta pack
To keep the airport monkeys from climbing on her back

Well my dive buddies told me, "you gotta carry on your gear”
Cuz TSA will break it, if they think that it looks queer
The scanners and the handlers they ain't got no respect
So cameras and regs n stuff fer sure are gonna get wrecked

Well you can't carry it on cuz they say it weighs too much
And you can't check it in cuz of baggage chimps and such
And if you chance to check it, don't count on its arrival
So many bags are lost in space: it's a fustercluck revival

Sometimes I wonder what a girl's gotta do
To get herself to a dive trip, with her gear bags too

When I tell my travel agent about these sorry woes
"I'd like to help you girl but that's just the way it goes”
So I'm gonna stuff two bags, gonna sneak 'em past the scale
I'm gonna carry on my stuff, the chimps can go to hell

Since 9/11 the airline industry’s a joke
Only nobody's laughing, they're just hassling us good folks
Pat downs and shoes off and secondary screening
Have left this forty something housewife positively steaming

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
But there ain't no cure for these traveling blues

So bring on databases, and retinal scans
I've got nothing to hide, and neither does my man
We just wanna travel in peace, without all this crap
And get some basic respect from grumpy airport staff

Give us a decent bag allowance, most times it’s much too low
And let us carry on our camera stuff, it's delicate you know
The guy sitting next to me weighs a quarter ton & overflows his seat
He's packing 5 carry ons or more, measured out in meat

Sometimes I wonder what I am going to do
Cuz there ain't no cure for these carry on blues

It's all about dollars - finding a way to pad the fare
They forget it's a competitive business, to get us from here to there
My dollars are going to airlines that go easy on the weight
And have a decent record for not arriving late

Muy Tarde

2007-12-06T16:45:00.000-08:00

I signed off my last transmission Mas Tarde, which in Spanish means Later. And it is later, very later. And no three bags a day to blame for it either ;^)

Cozumel was great - not too much current (but enough to do some reef and wall flying) so I was able to take some pix (trip gallery is here). Although I have been lucky enough to visit and dive at Cozumel several times over the past years, I never felt that I had found my mojo with the camera. I chalk it up to a combination of current and the mandatory Divemaster-led dives (and they do seem to get irritated when you don't keep up, but they almost invariably scoot along too quickly for someone armed with a camera).

Coz has Divemasters in the water with all divers for good reason - between strong currents, a multitude of divers, and an armada of boats on the water, surfacing alone, without a large surface marker buoy that you can launch from your safety stop, means that both the unappealing options of getting lost or getting run over by a boat are quite likely.

This time, there was the inevitable current (and I got a real workout at Punta Tunich and Cedral trying to shoot macro ;^), but I am not overly intimidated by moving water, as to do any of the good diving here in BC, you must dive in current, and doing it in cold water, in a drysuit, and/or in low viz is much more disconcerting than being swept along in the embyronic blue.

And there were the predictably fast pace-setting DM's, the majority of whom seem to refuse to just drift, and instead appear to feel the need to tour, but we did find a couple of slackish sites where I could putter a bit and not get left too far behind. And some of DMs did minimize the tank-banging and herding, and did point out some really cool stuff, so it was pretty much as good as it gets in Cozumel, other than the sploogey viz after the rains. And good in Cozumel, even post-Wilma, is very good by Caribbean standards.

We bagged a couple of really, er, profound dives ;^), including Devil's Throat (on a triple penetration, so I'm pretty sure we did the Devil's Ass too ;^), Columbia D-e-e-p and Santa Rosa Wall.

We also dove Punta Tunich, where the top of the reef is pretty flat (about 40-50 ft), with a sloping wall to the west. There always seems to be quite heavy current on this site, and there are few outcroppings behind which to hide in the lee, but many highlights on this trip including: a teensy octopus, and a bigass green moray. The man-I-wish-this-camera-shot-video moment was spying the above-mentioned bigass green moray and a bigass grouper doing a tandem hunt (into the current, damn them ;^) They are the big bosses of that bit of reef. Video wouldn't have hurt either for the rapid-fire colour-changing of the little octopus who was trying very hard to be the algae. It wasn't an easy dive, photographically speaking, due to current, and I was sad for lack of video, but it was a great dive.

Another favorite was Cedral - another rocking, flattish-terrained, made-for-Nitrox reef with a wonderful, many-tunneled swimthrough. Check out the size of this monster porcupinefish hiding in one of the cut outs - he had to be 3 feet long. There were also some herds of porkfish and grunts and a pipefish, so no one was complaining.

Chankunaab Balones also delivered - I love this site, although it too is best dived (diven? doven?) on Nitrox, as it is flat, gently sloping for 50 - 60 ft. 36% and you are golden. There be numerous jawfish at this site, and Christi found 3 scorpionfish in one dive. I got skunked on the scorpionfish (and did not have the patience, nor the lens, for the jawfish), but there were lots of highlights, like this rock lobster, and this slender filefish, and wandering amongst the coral boulders (not so much bommies, which I think of as bigger structures) was pretty darn wonderful. Added bonus: did not get buzzed by the Atlantis submarine, like our family did, in low visibility, last Christmas. Awoosh.

And I would love to tell you all about those, er, profound dives, except everything that happens on the boat, and under the boat, stays on the boat, dontchaknow? ;^)

So we saw some pretty cool critters, great and small, did some kickass dives, and the turtles just kept on coming. I put together a trip slideshow - both EXE version (for PC's) and Flash version (for Macs), which I hope helps to communicate the identities and personalities (or is that fishonalities? ;^) of some of the stuff that we see.

It was really great getting together with some old buddies, and making some new ones, and best of all, no Salmonella poisoning. Seriously.

I'll admit it took some time for my system to return to normal after the food poisoning fiasco in Berlin a few weeks before - I was a bit worried in Mexico (especially eating in some of the back street eateries with the ever-intrepid EDG) that my post-Salmonella sulking GI tract might be unhappy. Never a good thing on a dive trip. In fact (and this way be way too personal, but what they hey, if it helps someone else, that's a happy thing), quite the opposite - it was like after all that overtime outflow there was a work stoppage. Nothing that lots of water, prunes and some patience can't cure ;^)

The EDG

2007-11-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

Me again. In this whirlwind life I appear to be leading these days, here I am in beautiful Cozumel, a place I have visited often enough that coming across on the ferry from Playa del Carmen feels a bit like coming home. My last visit was last Christmas when our family enjoyed a really wonderful two week stay. This time, I am here as part of the EDG - Doc Vikingo´s illustrious and somewhat legendary group of mondo divers. Doc´s trips are always a fine adventure (previous trips I´ve been on include Bonaire, Curacao and Australia), and finding myself being included as ¨one of the guyz¨ is both a pleasure and (as a true confession) feels like a bit of an honour. The group is, without exception, composed of very experienced divers who approach their diving with fanaticism, er, competency ;¬) that is second to none, Seriously, I can´t say enough about how pleasurable it is to find yourself on a boat with a group of folks who are such fine, proficient and conscientious divers, not to mention good guys.

My buddy Sapien and I arrived on Saturday and set up camp at a modest hotel in the heart of San Miguel. It isn´t fancy, but it is clean, convenient and cheap - all of which make it an ideal lodging for divers. For folks who say that Coz is too expensive, they need to get out of the all-inclusives and fancy hotels and seek out the small hotels like this one, where a very nice room with balcony, kitchenette, and two large beds goes for around $50 bucks a night (breakfast included!). We aren´t partaking of the breakfast as we must be on the dive boat in time for a 7.30 am departure (early divers get the best sites to themselves), but still consider it to be an excellent deal.

As far as eating in Coz, there are a plethora of very nice ´American-style restaurants´ near the waterfront with prices pretty consistent with what one would pay in a large city in the US. So, not such a deal, but good for a special evening out and there are many to choose from. To be avoided at all costs are establishments like Carlos ´n Charlie´s - rife with drunk CSP (cruise ship passengers) whose idea of seeing Cozumel is drinking yard-long beers and fishbowl-sized margueritas in a big gulp. Nasty and noisy...

Doc and his buddy Macho Man (Steve M), who are both east coasters, visit Coz several times a year and have made it a mission to seek out authentic Mexican eateries that can only be found by heading east into the back streets of San Miguel - far from the t-shirt and silver shops and cruise ship promenade. The food is good, and cheap. A real Mexican taco is not the hard crunchy El Paso variety you get in the US or Canada - it is a small, soft tortilla, mounded with whatever filling you request. Guacamole is a special order, and salsa is verde or roja (green or red) and will rip your throat out if you over-indulge. It´s all good.

Diving Cozumel is fabulous - steep and deep terrain, swim-thrus, caverns, and reefs that are nicely recovering after the decimation of hurricane Wilma in 2005. There seem to be a larger population of fish than I observed last Christmas, and there is a healthy new growth of corals and sponges. Still not seeing much in the way of new sea fans, but undoubtedly they will come. What we are seeing alot of are tortugas (sea turtles) - love those guys. Also sighted in the 6 dives we´ve done so far - several nurse sharks, eagle rays, Caribbean electric ray, a couple of bigass (and I mean big) green morays, some monster grouper and parrotfish and some nice-sized schools of grunts. All the reef fish are present and accounted for, including an itsy bitsy juvenile spotted drum and the splendid toadfish. Angelfish abound. We had some spectacular viz on our first day of diving, but heavy rains yesterday really splooged it up. Still beautiful though, even in the subdued light of overcast skies. And when the sun deems to break through, it´s all pretty freakin´ wonderful.

I have been taking quite a few pictures and will likely put together a slideshow and gallery on Awoosh on my return. Hey, if I find the energy, I might even put together a bit of a trip report with details about some of these backstreet restaurants Macho and Doc are dragging us to ;¬)

Mas tarde.

Berlin

2007-11-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

Damn - best intentions aside, not getting to blog as regularly as I hoped.

My excuses are many - the last couple of weeks has been a whirl of getting ready to travel, travel, unpacking from travel, repacking for new travel, repeat. I know, I know, there be no sympathy for my plight, but it is my attempt at justification for my blog-silence.

I accompanied my better half to Berlin last week, a city he visits pretty much bi-monthly for business reasons. Every now and then I get invited along to warm his bed and entertain him during long airport waits that are inevitable at major intersections like Frankfurt. It is always a joyous thing going on these biz trips - I just need to get myself there (on frequent flyer points whenever possible) - the hotel is luxe, and expensed to the company, as are any 'business' dinners that transpire with Mr G's German colleagues, so my spending is limited to museum entrances, coffee, gnoshing on the fly, and whatever bit of shopping I might do.

I love Berlin. It is a city full of historical significance - both notable 20th century happenings, and prior, when Berlin was considered for some time as the cultural center of Europe.

Berlin is a wonderful city for walking, although I will admit that in my several journeys there, I have almost exclusively focussed on (what was formerly) East Berlin. The historical center (Unter der Linden, Museum Island, Marketsquare, Alexanderplatz, Willemstadt, Brandenberg Gate, Tiergarten, Reichstag, Jewish Museum, etc. are all within a nice afternoon meander. Lots of great shopping on Friedrichstrasse too (not that I am much of a shopper) - all the major hitters, some quite upscale, plus the (beautiful for a mall) Galleries Lafayette - which has the rockingest food (gourmet) court. The Germans know how to do it right. It's expensive though - so I rarely buy much in Berlin (most of the stuff is ubiquitous anyway - available in any major city).

Also of major note in Berlin is coffee. Starbucks has landed, and the line up of tourists out the door speaks for its popularity. But, no self-respecting German will drink Starbucks' marginal coffee offerings when they can go to Einstein's - a great chain of German coffee houses. There, for a paltry 4 Euros (a smokin' Canadian 7 bucks or so) you can order up a Cafe Latte Grosse - served in a tall thick glass with a gorgeous layer of crema on top, and sit in the window, watching the teutonic world go by. The only negative to the experience (other than the righteous gouging of the wallet) is that smoking is still very much de rigeur in Germany - allowed in all public buildings, including coffee houses, bars and restaurants. As of January 1, 2008, the liberal smoking policy will be kiboshed, and smoking will be restricted. It's about time - there can never be enough ventilation in any of the above-listed establishments to evacuate the ubiquitous blue fog of such a huge population of smokers. Not to mention, smoke or not, you are gonna smell like an ashtray when you leave.

I had great intentions of continuing on with museum and gallery visits on this trip, but like all best-laid plans, I got sidetracked. Only, it was not a pretty diversion - I got nailed by some really violent food poisoning (prime suspect is some duck I consumed at a very high end restaurant during a business dinner). I was down for a day (well, actually up and down, as the duck, after attempting to settle overnight, made for every possible exit during a gruesome 12 hours the next day. Blech. I was so sick, I worried that if the vomiting/diahrrea (is that too much info? ;^) didn't let up, I would need an IV for fluids, I was that dehydrated. It did eventually let up, leaving me feeling like something the dog dragged in for a couple more days, so other than some brief walks near the hotel, I laid pretty low.

I managed to recover enough for our planned side trip to Paris for the weekend. And that is a story for another day. Got a flight to catch, dontchaknow? ;^)

Three Bags a Day

2007-10-29T16:05:00.001-07:00

I've been struggling a bit about what to include in this blog. The reality is, I live a pretty little life, and I can only pontificate so much about pop culture and current events. Mostly, my life revolves around family and home environment, with a few voyageuristic forays into the wider world of travel and diving.

So, close to home: Fall, this year, has been bereft of much travel, and unseasonably wet. We were on the receiving end of the last hurrah of some eastern pacific tropical storm that dumped boatloads of water on us for days on end. The heavy dark clouds that stall when they bump up against the mountains create an oppressive atmosphere of perma-dusk. It ain't easy being green - all the lushness of our temperate rain forest comes from these regular deluges of rain. Living literally on the edge of the forest, we get some smoly hokes rainstorms here.

Heavy rain for a gardener like me makes a Fall cleanup a mucky, procrastinated chore. My habit has historically been to try to stay on top of the garden from (glorious) early spring to late summer. When it starts to fade, in the past, I have lost interest, and let it revert to decadent jungle until I cut it all back and rake it out in late Winter, and then lay on my secret recipe mushroom manure/peat moss mix to give it a jump start in early Spring.

This year I am trying something different. Inspired by some of the lovely gardens I have been visiting while traveling in other cities, I am cutting back the perennials and pruning the shrubs and getting rid of infestions of chickweed and morning glory before they can settle in for the winter. So far I've bagged twenty-five or so garden recycling brown bags of detritous, and it ain't over yet.

I've discovered that there is something cathartic in cleaning up a garden and putting it to bed for the winter. Even though no one will be out there enjoying it, it will look better from the windows and entries, and a good pruning now will help the shrubs stay as compact as possible for any snow loads it may suffer.

We are planning to renovate a corner of our large garden in the Spring, so this winter I'll work on the design and the plan for those garden changes, and then in Spring I will have the time to move plants, shrubs and trees. I love landscaping - compared to house renovations, much less stressful and so much more bang for the buck.

Three bags a day (when the weather allows me out there) has been my goal for this Fall. The bending, stretching, kneeling, lifting, carting is keeping me strong and out of the weight room.

It's all dirty, but good.

Britney Dearest

2007-10-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's the story that just won't die.

Just what is our fascination with this (alleged) dumb-bunny pop tart?

Maybe it's like watching a train wreck - you know it's gonna be tragic, but you just can't look away.

I have never been a Britney fan - and neither have any of my progeny, who are much closer to the demographic that Britney targets. Fortunately, they have more refined taste in music.

You just can't avoid Ms Spears - she's everywhere, all the time, youtuberous, driving dazedly around in her pinging 'Benz (with her kids unbuckled and her purse dog in her lap).

So there she is, lip-synching vacuous lyrics to really bad songs on music awards shows, looking dopey and confused. There she is again slurping Starbucks at the wheel, or scarfing Taco Time, or clear cutting her over-treated tresses (caught on camera phone), or partying hardy, or flashing her Brazilian-waxed nether bits to opportunistic paparrazzi at every opportunity.

As a Mom, Britney first came into my focus with her saucy schoolgirl MTV video in her mid teens. The previously (self-declared) virginal small town southern girl of Mickey Mouse Club origins was making sexy young thing mainstream, and apparently loving every second of it. I remember at the time there was a bit of an outcry from the Mom Majority who were (justifiably) concerned that their tweenies (who idolized the previously wholesome Ms Spears) would be influenced by her not-so-subliminal sex messaging in lyrics and videos. Throw the-then-borderline-raunchy Christina Aguilera and a few other notables into the mix, and you have a recipe for the mass reproduction of pop tartlettes, coming to a mall near you, dressing themselves up in what look suspiciously like pole dancing outfits, and slinging the much-abused "like" every fifth word. Spears' rebuttal: She was just "finding" herself, and it was up to parents to disabuse their daughters of the notion that Britney was any kind of role model. And Aguilara's? It was her way of dealing with some childhood sexual assault. Um, okay.

Spears went on to stellar $uccess: Beverly Hills, swimmin' pools, movie stars. She ramped up her sizzling hot performances with boa constrictors, flashdance showers, tearaway costumes, fondling young studs employed to be her "back up" dancers, and steamy kisses with Madonna. It was a fantasy life fer sure.

After a very public relationship (and break up) with pop icon Justin Timberlake, she married backup dancer/wannabe rapper Kevin Federline (aka K-Fed), raising eyebrows and (all-too-correct) predictions of near-future marital strife. She (very publicly) popped out two little boys in record time, the marriage collapsed (whilst undergoing enormous scrutiny and speculation in entertainment media) and she spiralled into the craziness that is reported ad nauseum in mainstream press.

So why not just ignore this whole sad story? We can't. It's that train wreck thing.

She is clearly a very troubled young lady (I use the term loosely ;^) Her ever-escalating, very public acting out, her apparent willingness to relinquish the custody of her young sons (and then jump in her Benz and go shopping), the secondhand stories of her erratic parenting skills, and the apparent total lack of reality-based self-awareness paint the picture of someone who is clearly not well. The on-going press free-for-all that obviously pervades her life can only add fuel to the fire. She has pushed away her Momager and everyone else who seems to have true good intentions of wanting to help her. It looks like she is giving up custody of her kids to K-Fed who is blending them with his two kids from a previous girlfriend (he's apparently a fertile, though not very monogamous, young man ;^)

Britney is, by all reports, off the tracks - out partying, careening around LA without a licence, missing court dates for custody issues and driving offenses, ditching court-appointed drug and alcohol monitoring. She's currently only allowed supervised visits with her kids. So there she is, out living the big life at the ripe ol' quarter century mark, on the way to what is shaping up to be a colossal crash n burn.

Why are we fascinated by watching the wheels coming off?

It seems humans have always had deities, and the fall of them has always been the stuff of lore. Maybe celebrity is not such a new religion, but maybe the electronic era has made it truly caffeine for the multitudes.

It's a pretty hard tumble for a little girl with big dreams from Louisiana. I empathize (somewhat) with her family. Britney is a long way from home on the burning shores of Malibu. She is a long way from the apparently wholesome place that she came from. I feel sure her mother never imagined that Britney would end up like this.

Teen stars are fickle young things - so many of them become pretty screwed up - maybe it's too much spotlight, too much money, too little rudder, too soon. It's a tricky balance between success and excess.

Explaining the rise and fall of Britney to a teen is tough. Then again, try to explain Anna Nicole Smith. Jeesh.

But in all this, there are some takeaways - including be careful what you wish for.

I hope Britney finds a good therapist. I think she needs one.

To Blog or Not To Blog?

2007-10-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

That is the question I have been asking myself for a while.

When I first put up Awoosh.com, my intention was to create a site where I could share my writing and photography stuff with family and friends. I also wanted a place where I could host the trip reports and multimedia slideshows that I occasionally created to share with the wider world (via a couple of internet scubadiving sites). I felt strongly that I wanted to retain artistic control of my contributions and how they were viewed.

Since launching Awoosh in 2003, this site has received several millions of hits, from around the world. I don't know where all the viewers come from, or how most of them even heard about it, but I have come to feel somewhat compelled to find a way to share more active information and experience on Awoosh, without the investment of the many hours that are required to produce a formal photo essay, travel article, or multimedia show. I have a very busy day job (not to mention a family, and a wolfman who requires frequent walks in the woods to stay connected to his canine self), and finding the time to produce these chunks of work, much as I enjoy doing it, is just not happening very often.

A while back I asked my good buddies Doc Vikingo, Richard Salkin and Bill Cooper to contribute some of their wonderful work to Awoosh, with a view to creating a significant diver's resource. Being the fine dewds that they are, they obliged, and their stuff continues to entertain and illuminate divers everywhere. Their contributions have added significant depth and density to Awoosh, but these guys, like me, are limited in the time they have to produce creative work.

And so, in an effort to create more dynamic content for Awoosh, I humbly offer up this Spl00ge•Blog.

So, what is a Spl00ge•Blog anyway?

Well, Spl00ge itself is fruit o' the loins stuff - googlewhack the Urban Dictionary to get the narsty, literal definition. By the way, I'm using zeros instead of O's so my site does not get filtered out by netnannies ;^)

To me (and to some of my buddies), spl00ge is a metaphor for the purging of highly personal stuff - a dissemination if you will ;^) - usually in the form of writing on public forums on the internet.

A blog is an abbreviation for web log - a kind of online diary/journal that some folks keep to share their lives and thoughts.

So, what might be found in the future in this Spl00ge•Blog?

Well, my thinking is that, whenever prudent (in keeping with my commitment to maintain an acceptable level of privacy for myself, my family and friends), I'll share some bytes from the life and mind of a Canadian divechick. That might be a short story or a photo or even (Dive Gods Forbid!) a bit of a rant about some Great Injustice ;^) There might be mini-trip reports or a bit about Murf The Golden Boy or a link to a gallery, slideshow or article.

I also plan to link to the material of others - for example, images, galleries or photo essays by my dive buddies and others, health articles, opinion pieces, videos, internet scuba forum posts etc etc.

My intention is to put up new entries in this Spl00ge•Blog at least several times a week.

The stuff that I create and the stuff that I link will hopefully target the following categories: interesting and informative, beautiful, poignant, roflol funny, or bigtime bizarre ;^)

So, here I go, despite my fears that the creation of this blog smacks of self-indulgent navel-gazing ;^)

Thanks for coming along for the ride. Your feedback is always welcome - feel free to drop me a line at judygATawoosh.com or leave a comment here.