Dhow

Steve’s wedding was great!  He, Loyce and the bride's maids walipendeza sana (looked very attractive)!  I couldn’t see for most of it, since their camera man had employed use of the midday sun to illuminate the wedding party, blinding us and giving our snazzy suits the greenhouse effect.  It was a really nice wedding, though.  The ceremony was in St. Joseph’s Cathedral by the ferry port to Zanzibar in Dar es Salaam.  They had a fantastic choir and the mass was a mixture of Swahili and English.  I was very excited to see that Loyce’s family had hired a pickup truck brass and drum band to escort us through town.  The wedding itself was mostly Tanzanian-style, but with very good style.  There were three bottles of champagne shaken and corked, every single guest of the wedding gave cheers to the wedding party, ngoma (drums) was danced, kichekesho (jokers) was played, and the food was excellent!  All I really had to do was pendeza (make the wedding look nice) and attack the beer table once formalities were over.  Oh, and I had to wipe Steve’s brow constantly, although it was not sweaty.  If you ever saw a Tanzanian wedding, you’d understand.

After the wedding, Loyce, Steve, Papa Steve and I headed off to Zanzibar.  The highlight of this trip was a full day of dhow sailing from Stone town to Bale Island and Changuu (prisoner) island.  Steve, his dad and I were all very curious how a dhow was actually sailed, and we found out!  It basically had a mast, and a triangular sail with a spar going from the bow and up past the mast.  This was connected to the mast by a rope gooseneck, and the tack had a sheet which was tied to a plank going across the stern just fore of the skipper.  The halyard ran through a hole bored into the top of the mast and was fastened to the stern, doubling as a backstay.  A single side-stay was switched back and forth according to which tack we were on.  The rudder and tiller looked like they’d break in half at any minute.  The boat was quite fast reaching or downwind, but upwind was challenging as it could only point about 45 degrees off the wind.  Tacking is impossible, and gibing is accomplished by releasing the sheet and side stay, pulling the fore end of the sail spar back to lift it over to the other side of the mast, passing the sheet around and retying the sheet and side-stay.  In really heavy wind, it was too difficult to force the spar over the mast, so the sail was allowed to fly freely before the bow, keeping hold of an end of the sheet, and brought back along the opposite side.  I was amazed that even in 15 to 20 knots of wind and with no keel, the boat was quite stable, probably due to it’s weight and length in proportion to the sail area.

Anyway, we sailed out to two islands, went snorkeling at a coral reef beside Bale island, and saw the old slave barracks, quarantine hospital and giant tortoises on Changuu island.  Changuu also had the best beach I’ve seen on Zanzibar yet, with perfect sand and very few people.  All together it was a fantastically adventuresome and relaxing day.  I had wanted to sail aboard a dhow since I first saw one about three years ago.  Also, I should mention it was not a tourist dhow, but normally a fishing boat which we hired for the day.  The two-man crew did not even know much English, certainly not enough to lead any tours, so it was a genuine fishing dhow.

Now I am back in Dar es Salaam again, and I will stay here a day or two, then go to either Njombe, Lushoto or Kilwa Masoko.  I haven’t decided which yet.  I just heard there was an earthquake in Tanzania.  If you’re worried, don’t be!  I was in Zanzibar and had no idea.

Tanzania

I've been in Tanzania for something like a week now.  It's been interesting, and fun.  Some things which I had gotten used to during Peace Corps really aggrevate me again, but for the most part I've been excited to enjoy a lot of things I had missed, especially food.  All the fresh tropical fruit, passion fruit juice, stoney tangawizi soda, castle milk stout, chipsi mayai, hot peppers, pilau, chai, Dar es Salaam's famous tandoori street chicken and Zanzibari seafood... so good!

Also I'm surprised how many people are around, and how some things never change.  For example, the Protein Bar and it's crappy deck furniture on the sidewalks still attracts all the Peace Corps volunteers in Dar in the evenings, with Rastafarians trying to sell crap to tourists and waitresses with more attitude than my failing form 2 students had.  Some things seem to have improved, like the sound systems on the mosques and the regulation of street vendors in the city.  Other things seem worse, like the trash all over the place, traffic jams and overcrowding of daladalas.  Overall, though, it's great to be back and see some volunteers I knew, as well as some Tanzanians I knew, especially some of the guys I lived with in Ihungo.

I've been really busy since arriving in Tanzania.  First Steve and I arranged to have suits made and went to Zanzibar for the Zanff film festival.  We saw some films, some excellent music, and a few galleries of local artists in Stone Town.  Steve went back to Dar, and I rented a bike to ride across the island, stop in Jozani forest to see the Red Colobus monkeys, stay the night at a beach and ride back the next day.  The ride was great, beaches were fantastic, and I even wound up meeting a buch of Tanzanian archeology students and their professor working on a 20,000 year old cave site.

In Dar, I've been meeting friends, old and new, searching for wedding accessories, and trying to find out what's going on at the University of Dar.  By some luck and persistence, I found a professor there who has just started teaching GIS, does contractual work with the government to solve problems such as finding water sources for Dar es Salaam, and studied at Clark.

The frustrating thing at the university was trying to find a list of faculty and their research interests or publications.  Impossible!  If there is such a document, it is highly classified, but at this juncture I doubt it's very existence.  Some things that are so simple in the USA leave you wandering from office to office for hours, finally coming back to the place where you started and nothing to show for it.  Whatever.  Should I try again in Nairobi and Kampala?  It takes a lot of patience and for some reason you're always seen as very suspicious; or Tanzanians are overly secretive.  Either way, it seems you definitely have to be on the inside of the situation to accomplish anything, or have a letter with a stamp on it.  A stamp really is necessary.  I should work on that.

So much...

Wow, a lot has happened since that last post!  There have been no more causes for heart attacks or bleeding since then, so that's a good thing!  As good as I said the cycling was in Barcelona, it was trumped by Mallorca.  I rented a HEAVY cross bike there for three days.  First of all, my hostel was half a block off the beach in s'Arenal, about 9km southeast of Palma de Mallorca (the city and port), almost all beach apart from some rocky shore and marinas.  On the first day, I rode southeast, up inland among some hot roads flanked by walls and orchards and really loud buzzing insects like locusts or cicadas or something.  After what seemed like hours I came up over the crest of a hill to find a strong cool wind and breathtaking panoramic view of seaside cliffs.  My guess by the map is that the drop to the ocean was 600 feet or more. 

From there, I continued southeast around a point, went by some small marina and/or beach towns and had lunch at a local drinking hole.  Inland, many of the houses had Don Quixote-esque windmills, small stone environs, light golden hayfields and haystacks, pink brick walls and bright green shutters.  I left the coast for Llucmajor and then headed back inland to climb to Randa and the mountain directly to the east.  This was at least the size of Tibidabo, if not a little more.  All the landscape was semi-arid savannah and scrubland, and there was a cool sanctuari at the top (church/monestary sort of business).  The view of the island and sea was, clearly, incredible.  To the North, however, I could see another mountain range at least twice the size of the mountain I had just climbed.  I knew I would have to go there tomorrow.  But for that day, it was already 5 pm, and I was supposed to meet some other travellers for dinner by 7 and was quite far from the hostal, so I raced back down the mountain, through the scorching hot inland roads and back to the beach.  The difference between coastal roads or windward mountain roads and leeward inland roads was so extreme... the coast held the cool sea breezes while inland the roads flanked by walls formed punishing hot wind tunnels.

Anyway, I've got little time left.  The mountains were excellent, the beaches were excellent, Valencia and the America's Cup and Picasso Museum were all pretty cool, and on my second time through Barcelona I did make a point of seeing some of Gaudi's work, in particular the Sangra de la Familia.  I think I've spelled that right.  Rome has been a whirlwind tour of plazas, the Panthenon, the Vatican and the anchient city, including Colleseum.  Tonight I'm off for Africa!

A small heart attack and explosion of blood

Do you remember how I was excited to have my ankle healing up?  That same afternoon, I looked down at my foot only to see that bright red blood had soaked clear through my bandage, pants and sandals.  We're talking a LOT of blood, here.  It may have even happened while I was writing that blog entry.  Needless to say, I was a bit disturbed by the excessive bleeding which had occured, but it hasn't happened again since.  I think it might be something like when my splinter wound from Tanzania exploded with a blood clot 10 months after it had healed.  Either way, my ankle is great now.  I've been wearing running shoes again and cycling like mad.  There's still a bit of a hole, but it's gradually disappearing.

As for the small heart attack, I was all packed and ready to go this morning when I realized I had not packed my Mexican travel wallet, including much cash, travellers cheques, rail pass, ferry tickets and passport.  Whew, I freaked out.  I was running all over the place searching and asking people.  Can you believe what happened?  I can, but I'm so stupid... there are two computers free for internet at the hostel (I'm on one of them now) and I had put my itinerary and wallet on the shelf beside it as I was trying to book a ferry from Barcelona to Rome.  Then I got tired of the mouse pad (not good for optical mouse) and placed it on top of the wallet, where it stayed for the next 12 hours.  Whew!  So very, very lucky.

Now where am I going?  I'm taking a ferry to Mallorca this afternoon and staying in a hostel on the beach in s'Arenal, just southeast of Palma de Mallorca.  My plan is to read on the beach and go cycling every day.  I'll stay there four nights, then take a ferry down to Valencia.  I'm not sure if the America's Cup will still be going on, but hopefully I can at least see some of the boats, as well as the sights in the city, and rent a bicycle as well.  Thereafter, I might have a chance to go to Madrid for a couple of days and then to Barcelona, or I might just come back to Barcelona, and then to Rome from there.

The cycling in Barcelona is increible!  (sounds better with the Spanish word)  I got a city bike two days ago and used it to climb up a hill to see a castle, olympic stadium, gardens, and otherwise.  Of course I spun around the gothic area and the beach as well.  Then yesterday I rented a mountain bike, which just happened to be BRAND NEW (little rubber hairs still on the tires and everything!) and I took it for a crazy ride up Tibidabo Mountain, all over an excellent network of trails and dirt roads through the park on the opposite side of the mountain, and finally got completely lost way off the other side of the mountain.  I knew I was in trouble when I couldn't even see Tibidabo anymore.  Well, I finally asked for directions to find out how far I was away, and left with only 1:40 to return the bike, was forced to sprint over the mountain and across nearly the entire city of Barcelona.  I was three minutes late, but the guy didn't mind.  Just to see, I timed the climb going over the mountain at 26 minutes and 7.5 kilometers straight up.  The most relief I got was a couple of false flats around the mountain curves.  I haven't seen so many switchbacks since climbing Kilimanjaro.  The view of the Mediterranean and Barcelona and the fresh breeze coming off the sea, and the wild descent down to the city made it all more than worth the effort.  Barcelona is actually the best place I've ever been for cycling.  There's paved roads through mountains, there are roads prefect for cross-bikes, there is single-track, and through all of it you're rewarded with finding gothic churches in now uninhabited valleys, Catalan lunches in mountainside villages, and fantasic views of Barcelona and the sea.  Not only that, but most of the main roads have bike lanes or bus/taxi lanes that are pretty good for bikes and drivers are more considerate of cyclists here than any place I've ridden before.  As I said, the cycling in Barcelona is incredible!  I think I'll leave myself an extra day here on the return trip so I can attack that mountain again.

Word on the street is that the cycling on Mallorca is even better, and I've already check to make sure there are several outlets renting everything from city bikes to mountain bikes and racing bikes.  I can't wait!

Another Day in Tuscany

As always, traveling has been eventful!  The short version of the last month goes like this:

Race the Syracuse Race Weekend and get taken out on the last turn of the criterium at around 30 miles per hour, resulting in road rash from my foot to my butt and elbow too.  I spent almost the whole week after that on the couch before I started gimping around more.  Luckily by the time I headed to New York City to stay with Jules and attend the ATHGO International World Forum on Global Climate Change at the United Nation, the deep cut (to the bone) on my ankle was nicely scabbed over and healing.  Unfortunately, after all the walking I did in New York, it started swelling up again.  I thought it might just be that it had started bleeding internally again, but as it turned out over the next 24 hours, I had gotten an infection. 

Another unfortunate turn, I sort of had a head cold the last two days of the conference and forgot to bring my Eurorail pass with me to the conference on Friday.  As it was, I planned on leaving directly from the conference to catch a shuttle to Newark for my flight to Rome.  About 3:30 pm I realized the pass was still in the Bronx, so I had to duck out of the conference early.  From 42nd street, I took 2 trains down to 14th to get the keys from Jules.  Then another 2 trains took me up to 238th to get the pass, then another 2 trains took me all the way back down to 42nd street to catch the shuttle.  Despite being a geographer, every time I exit a New York subway I immediately walk in the wrong direction, making all this take longer and hurt more than it had to.  3 hours after leaving the U.N. and rushing nonstop, I finally boarded the shuttle to Newark.  Then the flight was delayed 3 hours anyway.  So it goes.

So I got into Rome late afternoon instead of at noon, requiring me to pay extra for the faster Eurostar train (it really is fast!) to Florence.  It was already 9:00 pm when I got there, and as I could not find any bus route maps or information and walking was starting to get really painful, I bit the bullet and took a taxi to the campground in Fiesole for 35 euros.  Finally, I put my stuff in the cabin and had dinner at the swimming pool with a great view of nighttime Florence in the valley below.

And the infection continues... by the end of the workshop on Monday I was sure it was indeed infected and decided to go to the Pharmacist.  He was very distracted by my purple toenail (marathon legacy) and purple shin (interestingly colored scar from road rash) but in due time realized the real problem was my balooning foot and festering laceration.  Then he brought out his (HOT) daughter to translate for him that I should go up the street to the doctor.

The Medico: this was great.  Reminiscent of Mexican and Tanzanian doctors for sure.  The office consisted of a door at the street with a plaque (plague?) saying something-or-other Medico.  The door led to a straight short hallway lined with chairs and Italian magazines with four doors to the side.  I joined the queue, 4th, and waited for about 45 minutes to see the doctor.  I thought he would know English, being an educated health professional, but I was wrong.  He was also confused by the purple toenail and purple shin, but got to the problem quickly, and through gestures and mutterings we communicated that I did not break the ankle, I did have an infection, and he would call to the pharmacist to get me amoxycillin.  So, back to the pharmacist.

The pharmacist put on rubber gloves, placed a stool covered with a cardboard box in front of me and indicated that I should remove my shoe and put my foot on the stool.  I was thinking that this could not possibly be good, but complied.  He disinfected me, lathered me with iodine (more purple!) and bandaged me up.  To my dismay, the only way to secure the bandage was the same elastic netting crap they gave me in Mexico.  Damn Mexican bandages!  The bandage always slips off with those.  Anyway, I got my drugs, disinfectant, antibiotic cream and pills all for 30 euro with no charge from the doctor.  Then the pharmacist insisted on driving me back to the camp so that I would not have to walk on my foot.  Nice!  Italians really are quite helpful, despite what the stereotypes say.

Moving on, the ankle is almost completely healed up now and I'm catching a train to Milan and Barcelona tomorrow evening.  The plan for Spain is to wander around, speak Spanish, try to put shoes on and rent a bike, maybe go to Mallorca (islands in the Mediterranean) and read some of the U.N. research publications I picked up. 

And the Statue of David is, in one word, magnificent.  It's a close call between the statue and the food and Chianti wine here, though.  :)

Ressurection

Okay, I know I left this blog alone for a while, but give me a break!  I was taking a 19 credit semester while trying to be competitive running and cycling.  I pulled it off, but it didn't leave much time for fun, games or blogging.

So this is a ressurection of the blog and myself.  I just spent an entire week, as in 7 full days, on the couch.  You might wonder why I would do such a thing?  Well, I raced my first criterium in Syracuse last weekend and it ended badly.  Somebody (I won't name names, but you know who you are!) cut across from the outside of the pack to the inside on the last corner as the pack started sprinting toward the finish.  I don't know exactly how fast I was going, but it must have been at least 30mph when my front wheel got swept aside and I dove side-stroke style onto the pavement for a long painful slide.  I split the flesh on my ankle open enough to see the bones and took a lot of skin off from there all the way up to my butt on the right side.  Long story short, I did not complete the race, I did wait for the ambulance to clean and bandage my wounds, and somehow I did get credit for finishing the race and wound up with a 6th for the Syracuse Race Weekend stage race.

The reason for ressurecting the blog just now is to start off the summer's travels.  Tomorrow I'm flying to New York City to stay with Jules and Sarah while attending a forum on global climate change at the U.N.  Just after that, I'll fly to Rome and take trains to Florence for a week-long seminar on the ontological definitions of geographical information systems.  I'd explain what that is if I really knew.  After that, I will take full advantage of just over two weeks of free time and an Italy-Spain rail pass to practice some Spanish and hopefully see some America's Cup action in Valencia.

After that, I will fly out of Rome, not to the U.S.A., but to Dar es Salaam for Steve and Loyce's wedding!  That might take a couple of weeks, during which I'll visit the University and the beach.  Following the wedding, I have to somehow get to Kigali (please, no food poisoning or black mambas this time!).  I'll fly out to Addis Ababa, where I will have 12 hours to find a hostel and eat as much Ethiopian food as possible.  Then, I'm off to Rome, New York, and Albuquerque to see the Peace Corps Bukoba ladies, and finally back to Buffalo for fall semester.

All in all, I have reservations for about 12 flights, a rail pass, and two and a half months of travel.  It promises to be a wild summer.  Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm doing all this with just an EMS Daypack. 

I have to brag a little bit about the post-semester racing madness.  I've been doing on average two races every weekend, including a 1:30 half-marathon followed with a 2nd place road race (cycling) the next day.  The next weekend I got 7th in a 5K and 5th in a tough road race the next day.  The next weekend I won a road race, and finally last weekend I did the Syracuse Race Weekend, placing 3rd in the road race, 8th in the time trial and scoring a sweet pavement-dive in the criterium.  I'm a little dissapointed that I can't race all the way through this season, considering how good my results have been so far.  Maybe next year.  I had intended to go to the French alps and run the Mount Blanc Marathon this summer, but those plans were shot when I crashed in Syracuse.  Next time, next time...

If you've given up on reading this blog, come back!  I've made some promises to update at least a few times while I'm wandering around and I *intend* to keep them.

Lower Potomac River Marathon

Overall Place:  9
Time:  3:10:54
M20-29 Place: 1

Boston 2008, anyone? 

Freefall
I've jumped off of the cliff featured in this Microsoft Live image over 100 times.

Cold One

I just ran the Lockport Y-10.  It's a 10 mile running race, and it was a chilly one today.  It was 20 degrees out with 20mph wind and gusts up to 30mph.  Despite having a huge blister on my toe (I hate you, NewBalance.  I hate you so very, very much.  This is a call to anyone who reads this blog to never, ever buy NewBalance.  I always have problems with these shoes.)  I ran it in 1:08, placed 15th out of more than 185 runners (140 guys) and got 3rd in my age group.  Now I am going to sleep.

Oh, I just slept for an hour.  I forgot to post this before my nap.  Nice.

I hate New Balance. 

Here's some quotes about today's weather from an A.P. story by Roger Petterson:

"Anybody in their right mind wouldn't want to be out in weather like this."

"We have a lot of kids that walk to school. We didn't think it was worth the risk."

"It was so cold that Toledo, Ohio -- 5 above zero at noon, up from 4 below -- even closed its outdoor ice rink. ‘The irony is not lost on us,' said city spokesman Brian Schwartz.

It was not too cold for some mountain biking!  Okay, maybe a little too cold.  When your freehub freezes, that's pretty much the end of the game right there.

So, I realize I haven't written in quite a while.  I mean, the last post was about the October snowstorm, and now there's a huge arctic blast in the Great Lakes in February.  You might think that it's been a really harsh winter.  Not so!  November and December hardly saw any snow at all.  But enough about the weather.

I'm going to brag a little bit because otherwise I become unrealistic.  I hate when people do that, but I need some perspective in the dead of winter in Buffalo.  Around New Year's, I was thinking about the previous year.  I started to think that I hadn't really accomplished anything of note in 2006.  It had something to do with the failure to explore any foreign countries.  But then I went month by month and realized that no, I designed a couple of websites.  I ran a marathon.  I applied for and got into grad school and took a few road (and train) trips around the eastern USA.  I bought a road bike in June and put just over 2,000 miles on it.  I moved to Buffalo and made it through my first semester of grad school: 17 credits of courses, and all A's.  So maybe I did accomplish a few things; perhaps my goals are a little extreme.

Then what will happen in 2007?  I've been in America for slightly over a year and I have a stable housing and funding situation.  That should mean that it's time to get moving.  Therefore, I'm plotting to go to Europe and Africa for the summer.  Meanwhile, I want to do some racing this spring semester with the U.B. Cycling Team.  But, I also want to qualify for the Boston Marathon, so I'm training for a marathon to race just before the cycling kicks in: over spring break in Maryland.  I shouldn't even write that here, because I recently get the impression that I won't be fast enough (yet).  The qualifying time is a speedy 3 hours and 10 minutes.  That's 43 minutes faster than my Buffalo marathon; not an insignificant amount!

Academically speaking, I'm very frustrated this semester.  My courses are all pretty good ones, all very interesting.  Except for Ethics in Professional Development.  The problem is that I decided it'd be a good idea to take 19 credits, and to take multivariate statistics without having taken the prerequisite univariate statistics (or any other statistics for that matter).  We'll see how that one works out... here we go ‘F' unless I start studying statistics as much as I run.  The other problem academically is that there are a bunch of big projects this semester: long research papers, independent readings, environmental modeling project, etc. etc.  You know, they are the sorts of things that are designed to help you on your way to writing a thesis.

That word "thesis" is sort of like a 35 mile per hour gust of cold arctic air finding the little gap between your socks and your pants and shooting all the way up, causing an arresting shock and reflex shrinking reaction.  What am I going to do?  This is worse than choosing an undergraduate major, and I think we all know how that ended up for me.  I should try to quantify how many hours of sleep I lose over this issue, starting now.

Anyway, enough wallowing in indecisiveness and winter cold.  I promise I will write about parties and Fung Wah next time.