3 Houses By The Beach, San Francisco

March 24, 2009 at 4:33 pm

Caribbean colors near my favorite SF beachside espreswso/wi-fi cafe. Am I glad to be home!

In retrospect, my trip was pretty tough at times. I’m off-balance when I travel anyway, and traveling like I did, too much backpack weight, stress in the cities…there were occasions when I would get depressed being alone and…hey, am I whining?

The trip was actually a rich experience:and it’s thrilling to be back; the tough times sharpen perspective at home.

I’m printing out contacts (thumbnails) of all 2500 photos, I swear I have enough for a book: people, places, ocean, jungle, waves, animals, fish, cities, Chilon ajnd Guitar Shorty, Costa Rican Celtic rock and roll, but it will probably end up as a chapter on a book I’ll do some year called Trips.

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I Smell A Rat!

March 22, 2009 at 6:42 pm

I hadn’t been home 24 hours from a 6-week trip before I was made aware of a country homeowner’s nightmare: the smell of a dead, rotting animal in the house. It happened about 6 months ago and turned out to be a disintegrating possum under the floor. I won’t tell you how much fun it was to remove this object. So this time I again donned my crawl-under-house coveralls, scarf and headlight and went under the house looking. I should add that I so wish I’d followed the Uniform Building Code requirement of 18″ crawl apace because I have to wiggle like a worm on my belly to attend to wiring, plumbing or dead animals under the floor. So here I am working my way to the area of the smell and wham! I’ve hit the 1/2″ copper pipe “t” to the kitchen sink and knocked it off and water is gushing out. Shit! I wiggle my way out, turn off the main water line, go back underneath, only to see it’s still dripping. Back out, turn off another valve, get my copper plumbing tools, propane torch, white bread to block water while soldering, big flashlight, wiggle in…there’s more, but just say I was ecstatic that the joint worked.

Now for the main problem: I couldn’t find anything under there, so went to the living room where the smell (getting worse) was strongest, and pried off wood trim so I could start removing the ceiling boards. When I got the first board off, here was a big rotting rat. Yahoo! Way better than if it had been in the middle of the ceiling — lord have mercy! I was thrilled, no kidding, Scrubbed off boards, swept up rat shit, vacuumed dust, burned incense, Hallelujah!

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Three-dot Stuff At End of Trip

March 21, 2009 at 12:34 am

I’m at the San José airport, just about ready to get a flight to Houston, then back to Calif.…yesterday went out to the Univ. of Costa Rica to see the Insect Museum (Museo de Insectos), which is hard to find (in basement of music bldg.) and wonderful. There are some 14,000 species of butterflies in Costa Rica. Was hungry so went into student cafeteria and had a pretty good meal for $2.50, surrounded by maybe 200 college kids, talk about noise…I’ve shot about 2500 photos in 6 weeks…One big problem with my super duper little Cannon Powershot G10 is shutter lag; it means I never know what I’m going to get when shooting people or action…one sure pays a penalty in weight by lugging around a laptop and accoutrements, but it’s the only way I can prepare photos to post on the blog…I wore out a copy of HOME WORK dragging it around and showing to people; reaction was great, especially the carpenters I showed it to, they invariably went through every page, even when they didn’t understand English…sitting at a bar one night in Bocas, I met Steve, a 31-yr-old pilot from Seattle, who had just been laid off by Continental (he flew 737s), said he was getting into fishing, as the airlines jobs were not coming back…I asked all the cabbies about number of tourists and all said there are way less, maybe 50% less Americans than last year…I went underwater sightseeing with mask and snorkel in Bocas del Toro, the reef had coral that was purple, yellow, green, blue, all pulsing with life…much as I love warm water and the relaxation of balmy weather, I’m happy to getting back to my home base’s cooler climate. Nothing like San Francisco fog to get brain cells energized.

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Back In The Big City, Oh Boy!

March 17, 2009 at 1:55 am

I’m a bi-polar traveler. After 5 or so days in a big city I need to flee to cleaner air and less pavement. Then when I get out away from it all, a week or at most two, I want to connect with both more people and yep, the internet. After 6 days in Bocas de Toro and environs (I’ll try to give you an updated take on this very beautiful and wonderful, but, but…) I got a Natureair flight from Bocas back to San Jose, from where I fly home. I was pretty lethargic from the tropical heat in Panama, but getting to this 3000′ elevation, mountain-surrounded city gave me a jolt. Wake up, dude! Checked into the unique little jungle-in-the-city hotel, Los Cinco Hermigas Rojas (The Five Red Ants) and ventured out for dinner, after which I stumbled into some kind of cultural festival in a downtown park. Right away it felt good.

Thousands of mostly young Costariccenses, lots of children, fire-jugglers, gymnasts, and best of all a band I was sure was Irish — fiddler, bagpipes, guitar, drummer and a guy who clogged as additional percussion. They were sensational. Here and there young people were dancing like Irish jigs. They turned out to be a Costa Rica band, Perigrino Gris, The Celtic Band from Costa Rica.

Not known outside the country. I’m not kidding, these guys would knock them out in New York, or London, or San Francisco. People were all jumping and dancing and yelling. I tried to get one of their CDs at 3 stores today, but they were sold out.

THEN, as I walked back to the hotel and passed the Escuela Metallica, the 100-year old beautiful prefabricated steel building (shown here in the daytime), there was a stage in front, and a small orchestra. An organ started playing Bach, and a spectacular MacIntosh-generated light show started bathing the building in light. I’ve never seen anything like it. The crowd would gasp or go ooooh! Children were transfixed. It went on, with different music for maybe 45 minutes. When it was over, there was about 20 minutes of world-class fireworks. I shot maybe 30 pics.

On my way home I wandered into a patio where a group of avante-garde dancers were whirling and twirling and moving graceful and artistic (and flexible) ways. It makes me think there may be some kind of cultural revolution going on in Costa Rica, a blending of world cultures. Pura vida!

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Mark Morford: the Best Columnist Around

March 15, 2009 at 5:58 pm

The best columns I’m reading these days are those of Mark Morford. He writes perceptively about anything that catches his eye. He is brilliantly articulate and wickedly funny. Trust me; if you have sensibilities at all like mine, check him out. The San Francisco Chronicle has dropped his weekly column, so you can only see it on SFGate.com. (Click here.)

A recent excerpt:

By Obama’s own insistence that he be held accountable for it all, no one knows for sure if all of these spectacular, historic moves — the bailouts, the massive recovery program, the jobs, housing, overhauls in health care and education and etcetera — if any of it, will actually work.

It is, by every estimation, the biggest political and fiscal gamble in a generation, maybe five. It is dicey and dangerous and wildly progressive in scope and ambition, and you know this is true because many bitter, unloved Republicans are seething and whining and tearing into every Obama idea they can find, simply because said plans don’t do enough to fellate the wealthy and worship oil companies and ignore children.

Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama’s agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It’s actually more akin to FDR’s New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be “the greatest political drama in our lifetime.

This, then, is our grand takeaway. If Obama can pull it off, if he can follow through with even half of these massive, historic overhauls, it will result in one of the most profound transformations and redefinitions of American ideals in history. And I gotta say, it’s damn nice to write that sentence and not be referring to warmongering and torture and God-sanctioned homophobia. What a thing.”

See interview of Morford by Steve Outing on Pointer Online.

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L.L. Bean Backpack, PacSafe Fanny Pack, Sanuk Flip-flops

March 14, 2009 at 11:28 pm

While I’m still on the road, I want to recommend three totally-tested-out pieces of travel gear.

1. L.L. Bean Deluxe Book Pack. I have probably gone through 7-8 of these (same model) over a 20 year period. I carry a lot of stuff on my back, usually including books, and this one has pockets, and compartments, places for pens. I’ve even put a tent and light sleeping bag in it. It seems to hold limitless stuff.( Ignore the red color of the one shown on Bean’s website, I like the black.)

Click here

2. The StashSafe 100 Hip Pack. The best fanny pack I’ve had (been wearing fanny packs for many years). This one is especially geared to prevent theft, like someone cutting the strap with a knife and running off with it (the strap has stainless wire embedded), or a thief unbuckling the strap (the catch is hidden). You can also lock the zippers shut, It’s also got lots of compartments and pockets inside for wallet, camera(s), pens, penlight, pocket knife, etc. Click here

3. Sanuk “Summit” Flip-flops. I bought these the night I left and have worn them every day for over 5 weeks. (I gave away a pair of running shoes as I just didn’t need them (or the weight). I’m amazed at how comfortable these things are. I went for a 6 mile hike in the jungle, hiked up a canyon to a waterfall, have worn them in San Jose, Costa Rica and Panama City. https://www.sanuk.com/ (Click on “Men’s Sandals,” then “Summit.” Sanuk also makes the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had. Look for them in surf shops or outdoor stores like REI.

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