Not Last

A couple months ago, my lovely cousin Marie invited me to to join her and her father (my jovial Uncle Bob) on a bike ride in Madison.  The event is called "Bike the Barns" and is a fundraiser for CSA's or Community Supported Agriculture in the Madison area.  The ride was 63 miles (with an optional 14 mile extra loop) and wound through rolling farmland south of Madison.

Here is Marie packing up the car.  I took this picture at 7am, approximately three hours after going to bed the night before.  It was going to prove to be a very long day . . . 

The following pics were snapped early in the race, when we were still able to force our facial muscles to curve in an upward direction . . .

Along the 63 mile route, there were designed stops at three different farms.  Here the riders took breaks, talked to the farmer, filled up on water, read inspirational messages in the toilets, sampled the local food (homemade and locally grown bruschetta, granola, ice cream, cookies, etc . . .).  At one farm, we picked fresh raspberries!

 

We may not have had the fanciest bikes, we not have been the fastest riders, but we made damn sure that we were not only the best looking bikers, but also the most stylish.

At one point during the ride, we commented on the strong tailwind we had that day.  Later we realized that the "woosh" sounds coming from behind us was not a tailwind, but rather the force of every single biker passing us at breakneck speeds.  An hour into the race, however, we did manage to pass our first rider . . . they were broken down on the side of the road (and later passed us once again).

The ride went smoothly for about the first 55 miles or so.  After that point, Marie's butt began to ache, Bob's knees began to creek, and my hangover kicked in to high gear.  Its a good thing that most everyone had already passed us at this point, as our whining reached screeching magnitudes.  We dragged the last ten miles and reached the finish line around 4:30 pm.  Behind us, way off in the distance, we noticed a stray biker that still had not finished the race.  We turned to each other, exchanged high fives, and exclaimed, "Not Last".  That pretty much sums up our day, "Not Last".

Despite a strong desire for some 'nappers' after the race, we all showered and got ready for dinner at Rick and Mary k's house in Cottage Grove.

We arrived around 7pm: the kids were leading the busy lives of teenagers, Mary K was cooking tirelessly, and my aunt Barb was deep into her first bottle of wine.  

Dinner was absolutely fabulous (big ups to our wonderful hosts): fancy salad, tender beef, quinoa, fresh tomoatoes with mozzarela, and LOTS of garlic sauce.  Dinner conversation was cordial, and centered mostly around buying pagan babies.  After Barb licked clean every bottle of wine in the house, she moved on to the chocolate hazelnut liquers.  At this point, Barb started asking questions about the logistics of sex at the south pole and wondered aloud about my status as a heterosexual.

Several painful mintues later, Marie and I managed to escape to the car.  We may have finished nearly last in the bike ride today, but we were first up from the dinner table.

Ice Castle

Well, I was PQ'd (physically qualified) yesterday, which means that the Raytheon Corporation has decided that I am unlikely to incur any medical costs for them while I am one the ice. SO, looks like I am going for the trifecta - three straight summer seasons on the ice. Excited for me? I am!
My first two seasons were spent in McMurdo station, washing dishes in '06 and working cargo in '07. This year, I will be working cargo again, but at a different location, the South Pole station. The South Pole Station is built on top of a 2 mile thick ice sheet. The elevation is over 10.000 feet, humidity is nearly 0%. Conditions will be more severe (temps in the - 50's F) and the location more isolated. There will be less people and, hopefully better food. More fun facts to come later . . .
I leave at the end of Septemeber.
Let the adventure begin!

Alex and Lucas, I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!

2 days at home, being proked and prodded, in order to PQ (physically qualify) for a precedented thrid season on the ice. Then I was off again, for a short trip to Chicago via the train, to visit aunty and unky John and Sue.
We had a wonderful evening: watching his holiness Barack Obama, sampling exquisite pizza, wine, and authentic Italian pastry, and discussing the jarring loss of his ex-holiness, Brett Favre.
After nine months detatched from the political news gravy train, I was sucked immediately back in, willingly and happily, to the FOX and MSNBC presidential circus. Barack was eloquent and strong: we are still in Love. I Heart you forever, Obama.
A million billion thanx for an absolutely lovely evening, John and Sue. All the things I missed most dearly, you treated me to in the finest fashion. I will remember this evening with great fondness for some time now - my sincere graditude to you . . .

I thoroughly enjoyed my short time in Chicago - my prejudices about 'the city' and gave way to a place of culture, awe, and beauty. Chicago certainly rquires more exploration . . .





After too short a time in the city, I bummed a ride to Burkettsville, Ohio for the wedding of my two Ice lovers, Alex and Lucas. Rarely do you find people so sweet, and so ideal for one another. The wedding was kick-ass: a heartfelt ceremony, though that whole communion thing did drag on a bit . . .











The resception was held in a park across the street from the Church. The food was primarily purchased from the Amish auction - all orgain, all good. As if that wasn't enough, there was an open bar and a grass dance floor. I was in heaven. Big Ups to Alex and Lucas for planning a PERFECT wedding. The laid back atmosphere allowed everyone to have good time, let loose. Especially this girl, pictured below, who hoola-hooped for five hours straight.



The first dance . . .



You may watch 'Dancing with the Stars,' but I guarantee you that you ain't seen nothing yet. Lucas is my mad dancing hero - save a dance for me in McMurdo, Lucas . . .



If I ever get married, I will make only one request of my bride: Please, please, for the Love of God, do not play "the Electric Slide" at the wedding. It hurts the eyes.



In Ohio, corn is big, and ice cream is bigger . . .

Welcome Home, Nation

Chicken bus's passing at breakneck speeds on mountain passes; 7 hour wait in the Guatemala City Airport; greedy taxi drivers; 2am drive through Beloit, WI; and my nemesis - the Badger Bus - That about sums up my trip back to the states.
But, bigger picture - I am home and healthy; Sade (the artist formaerly known as Chocobanano) is home and healthy; Taryn and I had a wonderful ten weeks together. All is well.

I am glad to be home . . .

Stats

1 month in good 'ol WI, hanging with the fam
157 lbs . . . yikes, time for some good 'ol mommy food
104/62 BP
1 more season on the ice, just one more, really, I am not addicted, I promise, kinda, sorta
10-6 predicted record for the Green Bay Packers, led by the always stylish Aaron Rodgers
5 gallons of a Texas style Brown Ale: the first task on my to do list
26 years old! Oh my God, boy, time to get serious . . . wait, about what?
14 months - age of my princess, goddess, diva, lover Elladia

Goodbye, Guate

My last week in Guatemala I returned to San Juan, volunteering for the fire department and living with the family that Taryn lived with, the family Cholotio Hernandez.

The father, Lallo, works two small plots of land. One he is selling, as his daughter became ill with appendicitis last year, and needless to say, health care in Guatemala is not exactly socialized. Lallo also works part time in a carpenteria. His main duties, however, are with the church. He volunteers as the accountant, which is nearly a full-time job. Can you imagine, being the primary breadwinner for your impoverished family of five children, and still finding the time to volunteer full time for the church? Lallo's story is not uncommon in San Juan - the firefighters are volunteers as well, five days a week, 10 hours a day. Maybe if there were work to be had in San Juan, people would be less generous of their time . . .

Lallo's wife, Maria, stays at home, preparing three meals a day, and rolling enough tortillas to feed an elephant. Two daughters are secretaries and another works as a manager for a weaving group. The youngest, the only boy of five children, Gaspar, is fifteen and still in school.

My last week I spent my days volunteering with the firefighters, helping to construct their new firehouse. It was mindless contruction work in blistering heat, but I enjoyed it. I lived and ate my meals with familia Cholotio Hernandez that week. I grew to understand how Taryn fell in love with her family - I looked forward to 'coming home; to my family everyday, talking about my day, telling jokes. I felt at home with them. Even still, I am ready for home. I am so glad to have spent my last week here in San Juan, I am also glad to be going back to the states. Homesickness has crept in. A graditude for my family has crept in as well, and a desire spend some time with them, to thank them.

I do not have pics of familia Cholotio Hernandez yet - but I will upload some soon. Below are pics of our neighbors in San Juan. I was joined at the hip with these kids for five weeks.

As I look back at some of my blog entries over the past month, I realize that I have often written with acidity. In the moment, few of my experiences in Guatemala were tinged with such negativity. Yet in retrospect, that is the way I feel. I have no regret in returning home, and little desire to return to Central America, despite the connections I made. The country is beautiful, the people are colorful and kind, everything was new and exciting and challenging, the land is a paradise. But it is a third world country, and the poverty is glaring and unnerving. Of all the countries that I have visited, this is the first that I can definitively say that I would not want to live in. I felt guilty, I felt unsafe, I felt like a spectacle, I felt unsure. Mostly, I felt guilty. I think that is why I quit after ten weeks, why I was eager to return home.

The task, thus, as I bid adieu to Guatemala, is to find a way to convert the energy of that guilt into something positive. Will you, my friends and lovers, hold my lazy ass to that task?

San Marcos La Laguna

After a week in Xela, we returned to Lago de Atitlan, just 8 km downshore from San Juan in the small, new age, hippy town of San Marcos La Laguna. San Marcos is a mix bag of old hippies who have settled here, new age spiritualists, healers, yoga teachers, massage therapists, hypnotists, and artists. If you want to learn massage or reiki or stain glass or yoga, this is a great, inexpensive place to do so. There is a gringo section of town, and a moreno section of town. The only reason the two sections interact is commerce. The segregation is glaring, and the hostility palpable. I do not know how it got to be this way, but it is unnerving and puzzling. You would think that a community dedicated to the healing arts would have found a more ameable way to coexist with the locals, but they have not. That said, it is a beautiful, expressive, open, and uplifting community - I was fortunate to be a part of it for a brief time . . .

We spent a month here at "Las Pyramides," attending a yoga and meditation retreat. Our days started with Hatha yoga at 7am. At 10am, we attended a class on subjects varying from metaphysics, to lucid dreaming, to the 7 shakras and 7 corresponding dimensions, to the tree of life, to the emerald table, to astrology, to the kybalion, etc. We sat for meditation at 5pm each day. This schedule remained consistent throughout the entire month. The afternoons were ours, to cook or swim or take a massage or music class. The couse followed the lunar calender, so we started on the new moon and the course culminated on the full moon. The last week, we entered silence and fasted. I modified my fast after the first three days to include raw fruit and veggies, due to weakness and lightheadedness.

This picture was taken before the full moon ceremony, on the last night of the retreat. As you can see, we were required to wear all white for the final ritual.

This is what I took away from the course.

1) Knowledge, as a concept, evolved from something that is 'black and white' to something that is 'fluid and utilitarian'.
San Marcos is more than a little bit woo-woo, and so was this retreat: astral traveling, the tarot, the shakras, astrology are all part of this course, and are all things that I met with skepticism. But I nevertheless listened to the practitioners of these mystic practices, and worked to remain open. I learned that these practices are not as 'woo woo' as I thought, and I learned that skepticism is not always a useful disposition.
We spend 20 years in schools, and the constant, enduring lesson from our instructors is this: memorize and believe and have faith in what I am telling you, and disbelieve everything else - there is no value to what you cannot quantitatively measure. This is the faith we place in science. Science has been perverted into a new religion. Many of these 'mystic practices,' on the other hand, require no such blind faith. Rather, they require strong intention, effort, introspection, deep thought, self-awareness, self-knowledge. The 'answers' of the mystic have value only if they are discovered empirically on your owm, through direct personal experience. These answers may not be quantifiable or verfiable, but they are most certainly as useful as the pythagorean theory, for instance. In fact, the evolution of our ability to interpret these mystical experiences may coincide directly with our ability to interpret the pythagorean theorem. Well, I threw one way out there - anyone hungry, anyone biting?
Faith in science has brought us the cure for polio and the washing machine; it has also brought us weapons grade anthrax and the cluster bomb. Faith in religion has brought us the golden rule; it has also brought suicide bombings.

The way one approaches science can be more 'woo-woo' than the way one approaches the Kabbalah, for instance. An unwise, unbalanced, and blind faith in science brought us the atom bomb. There is nothing in this world more 'woo-woo' than the atom bomb. It is hard to believe that an unwise, unbalanced, and blind faith in the Kabbalah could bring us anything as awful as the atom bomb. So who is more woo-woo: Robert Oppenheimer or John Lennon?

So next time you look at a hippy and discount and dismiss him for being 'woo-woo', ask yourself a few questions:
"How has a blind faith in my 'rational' mind served me/ the world?"
"Are there belief structures that operate outside the realm of science that may serve me?"
"Why is it so important for me to discount mystical experience?"
Well, sorry for preaching there - I kind of got lost in that one. All I set out to say was this: many mystical practices have strong utilitarian value. Bam. Done.

2) I was reaffirmed in the value of self-awareness, of meditation and breathing practices. Every day since the retreat, I have noticed a structure or underpinning of my suffering that I would otherwise have been inaware of: whether it is a deep, hidden fear, or a mental delusion, or a negative physical habit. I was reaffirmed in the mantra of 'know thyself'.

3) The knowledge that I need more vitality in my life; the knowledge that I have the potential to create more vitality in my life.

4) Graditude, intense graditude, for my family.

5) The distinct and verifiable ability of humans to evolve . . . and the hope that that truth breeds.

6) Spirituality - its right fucking there.

7) The encompassing power of doubt

8) My monster is my guide

9) There is a distinct, verifiable, cross-cultural mental state or worldspace that is created by performing such rituals as yoga, meditation, and cleansing practicies in a quiet, relaxed environment. This worldspace is light, positive, hopeful, strong. It is a worry free state that has the taste of rising. A constant smile molds the face. A sense of joy, and a sense of awe at being in the world arises from within. Its a spiral upwards. There is no better state of being, for the self, for the world.

Below are the moonset/ sunrise after the final day of the course.

El Autobus de Pollo

The primary, and most often only, means of transportation in Guatemala is via what gringo's call a "chicken bus". The exact etymology of this slang is unknown to this traveller, but I can tell you that the term is most definitely apt.

According to lonely planet, after school bus's are decommisioned in the states, they are driven down to Mexico, where they are 'tricked out' - custom paint job, removal of safety devices. After that, the chicken bus makes its way to Guatemala, where it becomes the beating heart of the transportation industry




The paint jobs are often intricate and are almost always centered around "el senor," por que solo Jesus puedo cambiar tu vida! If you are lucky, seating is three to a seat, as in the picture below. If you are unlucky, a 225 pound lady is sitting in your lap, elbowing you in the neck, breastfeeding 6 inches from your face, and actively fighting you for your seat while the bus creaks, moans, and jolts through the mountain pass. My back is not the same after a five hour ride from Xela to Guatemala city.

A streetdog named nunchuck, part deux . . .

Chocobanano travels to the big city!
Yep, our little puppers is now better traveled than most Guatemalans! The irony is depresing.
Every day, little 'cafe con leche' is getting more healty, more lively, less scruffy, and more plump. Taryn has worked tirelessly to nurse 'Luna' back to health.
Bringing 'sofia' back to the States is not as hard as you might think - vaccinations, a clean bill of health from a US embassy approved vet, a small fee to the US embassy, and 'Xela' is a US citizen! Of course, nothing in Guatemala is as easy as it sounds, but even still, the process has been surprisingly smooth and straightforward!



Thw first thing Taryn and I did in Xela was take 'Chaco' to the vet. The dx, to Taryn's sincere and heartfelt relief, included all curable ailemts - respitory infection, skin fungus, and intestinal worms. We had previously suspected she had worms, since very time she ate, her stomach bloated to the size of a melon, impeding her ability to walk.



Nurse Taryn, happily caring for her sick little puppy.