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ascending, part 1

Summit!!
So, first off – it’s a bit shocking to see visitors to my other sites commenting on my blog. However, welcome to you all, new readers, happen-upon’ers, etc. Although I may feign some kind of “self-policing” by appearing to desire the blog’s audience stay limited, in reality I of course want it to grow. So come on in y’all and sit down whilst I spin ye a yarn.

I debated even attempting to write this tonight, being that I wanted to write a killer piece detailing this weekend’s events. I mean, I’m tired, I’m busted, and I don’t know how much tolerance for detail I have right now. I might start off all figurative and literary, and end up all matter-of-fact and dry. Who knows, but I’m going to give it a shot. So sit down, here goes the story of Mt. Whitney, 2004.

The crew (Melissa, Ben, Anthony, Sharaun, and myself) had taken Monday and Friday off work, giving us a long four-day weekend. The event had been planned for months. I mean, it had to have been, really. So many people want to climb Mt. Whitney that they only assign overnight or multi-day passes via a lottery system. You call or go to the website months in advance and specify a range of times you want to hike, and then they pull the names out of a hat and match them with available dates – and that’s when you’re going.

Our trip was intended to be do-able by all. And by “all,” I mean me. See, I’m the weak link in the chain with this crew. With the exception of me, everyone else is in great shape. Instead of some gung-ho commando journey, we took a very practical approach to the hike – breaking it into three days. From Whitney Portal (8,360ft), where you park your car, to summit (14,496ft) is about 11mi. Our trip was designed to get us the most high-altitude acclimation time possible before trying to summit. Friday night we’d camp at Portal (8,360ft), Saturday we’d hike to Trail Camp (12,000ft) and spend the night, allowing our bodies some time to get used to the thinner air. Sunday we’d summit and camp again at Trail Camp, and Monday we’d hike the 6mi back to Portal and drive home. Doing it this way would hopefully help us a) not die of fatigue, and b) not fall victim to AMS.

Maybe I should back up a bit first. Anthony and Ben, with friends, had attempted Whitney before – but their initial attempt was a one-day (fifteen hour) marathon hike. The day-hike passes are much easier to come by since those folks are supposed to be off the mountain by midnight the day of their pass. Ben had made it last time, Anthony stopped a little more than two miles from the summit – succumbing, like one in every four that tries Whitney, to AMS. AMS – Acute Mountain Sickness, is nasty – and manifests itself in many ways, all of which we’ll get to later. But just to baseline here, it effects “most” people in some form or another once you get somewhere above 10,000ft.

So back to the planning – Anthony got the lottery results sometime back in May. We had scored a weekend multi-day in late August. I made big plans to get in shape and whatnot before the hike, yeah – OK. So the getting in shape thing never panned out really, whatever. We had talked about doing Half Dome again, just to wear-in our bodies for the hiking “season,” but something always came up and August rolled around before we knew it. To my credit, I did wake up at 6am one morning in Taiwan and hit the hotel gym for 30min on the bike. I mean, that’s worth something, right?

Thursday night: I’m out of work at 5pm, everything’s taken care of for my absence – I’ve got it all covered. Ben and I get together and decided now is as good a time as any to plan the meals for the weekend (being as it’s the night before we leave and all). Wednesday night Sharaun and I had made trip to REI to get her some trekking poles, in hopes she could shift some of the burden onto them and save her problem knees some stress. Having all our gear ready, food was the only open item. Benz and I hit Raley’s and invented the menu as we walked the aisles.

Two dinners and two breakfasts, not to mention lunches. When it came down to it, the menu fleshed out as follows: Saturday night would be chicken and rice, Sunday night was macaroni and cheese with ham. We knew from the getgo we wanted mac-‘n’-cheese, y’know, the kind with that gooey cheese splooge that squeezes out of the shiny foil package? I think they market it as “deluxe,” but what it really is is cheesy to the max. While perusing the “potted meats” aisle for possible carnivore-friendly additions to our pasta/rice starch staples – we found what we considered to be a sign from God. Small, vacuum-sealed, foil packets of meat.

We snagged a couple chicken and a couple ham – which would comprise the dead-animal food group of our evening meals on the trail. We picked up some yummy white rice and a container of those condensed-chicken bullion cubes you used to see in your mom’s cupboard and had no idea what they were for. We figured we could mix the rice, bullion, and chicken. Likewise, the mac-‘n’-cheese and ham combo sounded equally rad. For breakfast we got some instant coffee, instant oatmeal, and cinnamon-raison bagels. They key theme centering on things that need nothing other than boiling water to prepare. Lunches would be on-trail and simple, buffet-style, if you will. One of a myriad of Cliff Bar flavors, perhaps a chew or two of beef jerky, or maybe some trail-mix. Ben and I headed home, un-packaged all the items and re-packaged them in pack-friendly ziplock bags, and left them to be distributed among the crew come morning.

Friday morning started off great, being that I wasn’t getting ready to go to work. Everyone met at the local greasy spoon for a pre-weekend breakfast. Omelets, grits, coffee, and gravy-drenched biscuits filled the table. Spirits were high, and we were all more than ready to hit the road. Full bellies and a carload of packs later, we finally hit the road around 10am. Stopping to gas up the Explorer before heading up 50 towards Tahoe, Ben lamented again about his mistrust of our chosen vehicle. It was also about this time that Anthony decided to call and get the full details on how we’d get our passes. We’ll take both of these items as separate paragraphs, respectively.

See, I gotta admit – I’ve let the Ford slip a bit. Being that she’s been, for the most part, a backyard workhorse these past months, I’ve neglected her washing and maintenance. She’s got cracked exhaust manifolds which give her a nice “ticking” sound on acceleration, and something’s wrong with the CV joints or brakes or something to where she makes an ugly and protesting “grinding” sound when making slow stops. Other than these two mechanical defects, and her “wash-me” exterior – she’s running like a thoroughbred. Back to the story.

We’re gassing up prior to the ~6hr trip to Whitney. Anthony has the confirmation for our passes, and we’re wondering if we have to pick them up today or if we can wait until tomorrow morning (being that we won’t actually be on the trail until that day). He calls the ranger station on his cellphone. I hear, “You mean they’re cancelled? Uh-huh. 10am, I see. OK, so for the whole weekend? All the passes are gone? OK, I misunderstood.” My heart drops, and no one in the car says a word as he hangs up. No one wanted to ask, are they gone? Are we screwed?

We continue to climb into the mountains, trees lining the road. Eventually Anthony comes clean: “We were supposed to pick them up by 10am today. They’ve cancelled them all. It’s my fault. It even says so right here on the confirmation.” Man, talk about crap. We weren’t 10min from home and already it was looking bad. I hadn’t told anyone yet – but I wasn’t turning back. I was gonna go to Whitney no matter what. If we somehow managed to get passes, so be it – if not, so what. Some of the crew quickly came up with the alternate plan of driving to Half Dome and doing that again, if the passes fell through. One thing was clear – no one wanted to turn around just yet.

I drive uphill in silence as Anthony’s mind must have been racing. I pause the music as I hear him get on the phone again, he gets a different person on the other end this time. Turning on his best “help me” pleading voice, he explains the situation to the new listener. We didn’t know, got a late start our of Sacramento, won’t be there until 6pm or so tonight, etc. The new girl takes the info and asks him to call back in 10min. Un-pause music and wait, pause again as the phone moves back to his ear. She got sidetracked, call back in a few more minutes. Music on again, pause again 15min later as the he makes the call yet again.

“Yeah, I messed up. I didn’t know we had to be there by 10am. What? July?! Oh, I really did get all mixed up? this is bad. I’m sorry, I really mixed this up. Really? OK. I don’t know what happened, I applied for the August lottery? I’m sorry. OK. Thanks.”

Silence in the car again. Finally Sharaun blurts out, “They were for July?!” Yes indeed, we were nearly an hour into a trip that was booked for the last week of July – only problem was, we were headed down in the last week of August. Not only had Anthony missed the 10am deadline caveat to the passes, he had the whole trip planned a month later than the passes were issued for. To his credit, he did only specify August on the lottery form, and the dates we got lined up with a weekend in August and would’ve been mid-week had we done them in the correct month. When he got the confirmation, he naturally assumed they were for August.

Long story short, Anthony poured on enough charm (over the phone, no less) to score us five last-minute multi-day passes to the Whitney trail. Something that most folks wait months for, and we got it on the drive down from Northern California. Making excellent time, we arrived at the ranger station at 5pm. Walking through the door, Anthony name-dropped his charmed contact’s name to the rangers behind the counter – saying she had reserved him some passes for the weekend. The girls manning the counter pulled out a manila envelope and questioningly eyed the contents as we waited expectantly. Not to worry though, he had managed to pour on enough sweetness for five weekend passes. The other rangers were flabbergasted, apparently Anthony had done no small feat of magic to get this particular ranger to oblige him with last-minute passes. They were proud of whatever it was he did that managed to score us the trip.

As the pass-getting wrapped up, we got the obligatory “clean your car or bears will eat it,” talk – and something new: The solar toilets at Trail Camp were not working, and we’d be expected to pack out all human waste we created on our journey. Hmm? I mean, I’ve known forever that hauling your own poop is just a part of distance-hiking, but I’d never experienced it. I’d seen “crap bags” and “crap cans” for sale at hiking and mountaineering shops, so I was familiar with the whole process – but never really thought I’d have to do it. Luckily only Anthony were listening as they explained that small detail, and it was left to us to choose an opportune time to inform the rest of the crew (mainly, the female members).

Passes in hand, we were set. We drove up to Portal and set up camp, then headed back down into Lone Pine for one last dinner of pizza and soda. Pulling up to the local pizza joint, we parked and decided this would be a good time to clean out the Ford of all bear-yummies – while we still had daylight. The crew set to lifting floormats and scouring gloveboxes and side-pockets for gum wrappers or stray french-fries. I decided to move the driver’s seat to it’s forward-most position to better clean underneath it.

Once more I need to digress and talk about the Ford. Not only does she tick and grind, she has a couple notable pieces of interior “charm.” The vinyl top to the center console is cracked and showing its stuffing, and the driver’s side chair mechanism is all busted up. The seat-recline lever is completely broken off, locking the seat-back in the perma-gangsta-lean position I prefer to rock it. The rest of the seat controls, both driver and passenger, are completely mechanized. Moving the seat forward and back, up and down, canting front or rear, etc., is all done via a wired-panel of switches on the side of the seat. On my Ford, this control panel of switches is all jacked-up. When the seat-recline lever broke, the whole panel became detached and is now hanging by wires which disappear back into the seat somewhere.

So where was I? Oh yeah, I move the seat all the way forward to clean under it. Fine, clean. I go to hit the switch and move the seat back to a drive-able position. Nothing. The seat’s going nowhere. I ask Ben, who’s cleaning the passenger seat area, if he can move his seat – nothing. I check the power windows and locks, nothing. Something’s wrong. We quickly troubleshoot the problem to a blown fuse. Meanwhile we’re still in the parking lot of the pizza joint. Despite the fact that the car is completely bear-immaculate, the driver’s seat is stuck in such a position that the vehicle is now completely undriveable and utterly useless. Not even Sharaun can wedge her legs between the seat and dash and still be able to work the pedals. What’s worse, the whole thing is motorized – there’s absolutely no way to move the seat back manually.

The fuse box in the cab is no help, it’s tiny fuses are all in good shape – although I have to bust out the owner’s manual to see what fuse covers which items. The big fuse box under the hood looks more promising, filled with 20A and 30A fuses, the owner’s manual says that one of them controls “power seats, windows, doors, etc.” A quick check of the fuse-box against the illustration in the manual immediately shows that my fuse box is laid out nothing like the one in the manual, so trying to match up the fuse positions to their respective circuits will be useless. Anthony goes for a visual inspection of all the fuses until he finally pulls what is a very spent 30A fuse.

A quick walk across the street to the local market learns us that the Napa closed at 6pm and won’t be open again until tomorrow morning at 9am. Well, that’s fine – we don’t have to hit the trail until 10ish tomorrow and we’re already planning on coming down for a good breakfast in town before hitting the trail – we can pick up a spare fuse then. But, how do we move the seat now so we can go anywhere? So, three engineers, one blown fuse, and one un-drivable SUV. Anthony comes up with an idea in short order, let’s just close the circuit – fuse be damned. I mean, all we need to do is get power to the seat motor for the 10 seconds it will take to move it back to a drivable position, right? So, we go in to order our pizza – and ask for a paperclip, our temporary fuse. Let’s see 30A try and blow a damn paperclip.

Sensing the humor in our current situation, and the possible mad-cap antics that could result from the paperclip plan – I decide we should document the whole process on film. Our little digital camera can take 3min movies with sound, so I insisted we wait to try the plan until I was rolling and had properly set the scene. Here we are, daylight fading, seat stuck so forward that no one can drive it, all our hopes resting on a bent-up paperclip acting as a makeshift fuse. I think I’ll let the video tell the rest of the story (dialuppers beware, large file).

Basically, Anthony completed the circuit with the paperclip (and his hand), and quickly realized that that 30A fuse was working just like it was designed to. There was obviously a short to ground somewhere (in a car, I think something like 115V to ground, right?) – and that fuse had melted away under the unwanted current. He got the entire short right through that clip into his fingers. A paperclip one minute and a red hot wire the next, he recoiled in pain proclaiming, “Something’s shorted!” Luckily we caught the whole thing on video. Even more luckily, once Anthony’s burned hand confirmed the short – we jiggled the driver’s seat control panel and tried the paperclip again, this time having jiggled loose the short. We were able to move the seat and get a replacement fuse the next morning.

OK, I’m only on the first day of the story and it’s nearly midnight on real-life Monday night. I have to go to bed. Stay tuned for “Part II” as tomorrow’s entry. You’ll get to hear all about exciting things like recreational Imodium usage, poisonous spider bites (a real picture of me, not for the squeamish), pooping in bags, and black and blue toenails. As for what you’ve read already, I wrote fast, and I hiked six miles and drove six hours today – so expect poor grammar and syntax errors… I’ll fix ’em later.

To close, I was deeply saddened to see the first true “blog” I ever read close up shop the other day. I found it one day while I was working an “internship” at Raytheon – coding targeting systems for tanks in ADA (read: downloading gigs on gigs of Dead from Sugarmegs). R.I.P. DAaR.

Dave out.

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in front of God and everyone

I remember those panties like yesterday.
Today I woke up at 5am and, despite laying quietly in bed for another 15min, couldn’t make myself fall back to sleep. Since getting back from Taiwan I’ve once again been lucky and experienced no “jetlag,” but I can’t help but think my early-morning pep is somehow related to the 15hr time-change I went through this weekend. I already decided that if it happens again tomorrow I’m going to make the best of it and go spray the yard for crabgrass before work. Intro paragraph over.

Whooosh!! (Sound of the blog being sucked through a hole in time, back into the year 1990.)

As a new relatively new teenager, I can remember walking from my house to my then-girlfriend’s house, she lived about a half-mile away (if you cut through some backyards, crossed a ditch, and walked through the woods). I used to love that walk because I knew we were going to make out when I got there. If her parents were home, we’d “go for a walk” and end up off in the woods somewhere rolling in pine needles. If her parents weren’t home we’d just watch TV on the couch when we came up to breath. It was exhilarating, nothing in my life yet could compare to it. I fondly recall swigging a couple gulps of mouthwash prior to leaving my house, maybe a squeeze of toothpaste too for good measure, and trying to swish it around in my mouth for the whole walk to her house. The thought being I’d be minty-fresh upon getting there. To this day I can recall walking under the smothering Florida heat while my cheeks burned, begging me to spit out the Scope.

We had different places to go, but our main objective was to get as far away from civilization as possible. I mean, if any items of clothing were going to get removed, we wanted to be as far out of sight as possible. We’d follow firebreaks or worn trails into the woods for ten minutes or so and then track off into the brush, blazing our own trail to a nice secluded spot. We’d hit the dirty dusty prickly ground as if it were a featherbed, lips instantly locked and hands instinctively roaming. Something about being outside made it all the more exciting, two semi-clothed, hormone-filled kids wrestling in the underbrush. Usually we’d head for nice “hidden” areas, a small copse of trees or grass-rimmed depression we could slip out of sight into. A couple times though, I can remember deliberately walking extremely far out into an open field of knee-high grass and going through our whole routine standing up in front of God and everyone. I mean, where we were there was no one around for miles – but to stand in an open field with the sun beaming down on you as pull her shirt through arms stretched high above her head is, at fourteen, otherworldly.

Whooosh!!

Two big weekends coming up. This weekend we’re headed south to Mt. Whitney, where we’ll attempt to summit the tallest peak in the “lower 48” states. I’m actually pumped because we’re taking both Friday and Monday off work, and camping on a Friday and Monday instead of working on a Friday and Monday just sounds so much better. We’ll spend Friday night camping at about 8000ft in a bid to acclimate our bodies to the higher elevations before moving up to the ~14000ft mark to summit. Should be a great time, and I think with the extra days I may be able to set a pace that will see me to the top and back – providing I don’t get sick. The following weekend I’m off to Houston for a customer visit, and instead of flying home will be meeting Sharaun and Ben in Portland (they’ll have road-tripped their way up earlier in the day). Then we’re headed for a weekend of hiking, camping, and possibly fishing at Smith Rock. I’ve never been to Whitney or Smith Rock, so I’m really excited to see, camp, and hike both.

Then that’s that then. Dave out.

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wayne presents

Moses brought them down from a mountain.
Sometimes water sounds and tastes infinitely better to me than soda, like right now – I’m drinking water and it “tastes” great. Intro paragraph over.

Tonight I mowed my sickly lawn with tender-loving care. I edged her, used the blower to clean her of stray cut grass, fertilizered her, weed-controlled her, and all around pampered her. But that’s not what’s important about this story – the important part is the soundtrack I chose for the task. A few days ago I downloaded an album by a group called The Horns of Happiness, simply because I liked their name (alliteration does a whole heck of a lot for me for some reason). Occasionally I’ll do this, grab an album on name alone, and usually it’s a bust. Like they say, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover (as illustrated beautifully by the turds contained within the kickass album covers of Molly Hatchet). Anyway, the album was perfect for our oddly Fall-like weather this week. Some strange hodge-podge of disjointed tunes, sometimes reminding me of anything from the Microphones to Neutral Milk Hotel to Sufjan. Anyway, it’s quickly climbing the charts in my head, gunning for number one with some animal drive? yeah. The music was good, and the lawn’s already showing signs of improvement. Whew! What a relief.

Speaking of our unseasonably Fallish weather of late, bending my mind more and more to thoughts of Halloween. If I haven’t said it before, I freakin’ love Halloween. Ever since I was a kid and my brother and I used a pair of my dad’s old slacks and one of his old flannels to make a mask-covered basketball-headed dummy which we then ritualistically covered in 99? fake blood from Kmart and hung from the basketball goal above the garage. I will repeat, Halloween is awesome. This year will be our second annual Halloween party, and I swear I’m fated to finish the backyard the day before or something. I just want it done y’all, I just want it done.

Man, sometimes I get super sick of people sending e-mails around without checking them out online first for accuracy. I have a family member who is very religious, and therefore very republican and very pro-Bush. Being so republican means that this person is also vehemently anti-democrat and anti-Kerry. What bugs me is how these anti-Kerry pro-Bush mails seem to circulate like wildfire among these “churchy” e-mail “clubs.” Like a right-wing party line, these retired-couples-cum-internet-surfers dutifully forward any piece of tearjerking, awe-inspiring, mushy God-crap that lands in their inbox along down the line to the next person who needs a “virtual hug” from the Lord. Now, I know I’m on the edge of offending people here – and I don’t mean to. You’re more than welcome to need a virtual hug from the Lord, heck maybe even I do, but that’s not my point.

It’s the political mails that really get me – mostly because these donation-plate-stuffing senior citizens just blindly believe whatever trash washes up on their AOL accounts’ shores and proceed to propagate said nonsense to those of us who actually bother to “fact check” the cyber-missives. Without so much as a thought on the accuracy of whatever the internet rumour-mill churned out last, they jot their insightful comments on top of the long line of those before them and proceed to add another column of carats to the left margin of an already unreadable body of mis-tabbed and oddly-spaced text. “I think this is disgusting, shame on us if we elect these men,” reads a comment in the 15th attachment I had to open on the way to the original e-mail which is still another 10 nested “envelopes” down.

And hey, I’m not even that guy who says anything negative about the dems or Kerry is necessarily wrong. Maybe, somewhere out there, there’s a mail about Kerry/Edwards that’s fact-based and worth distributing. But most of this stuff is ridiculous. Where does it say in the Bible that you’re duty-bound to God to forward this rubbish? Thou shalt be staunch republican, may thou never neglect thy duty to forward any e-mail which let’s thy distribution list know thy as such. I mean, you think Edwards flips people off as he runs? Think Kerry’s wife really runs overseas sweatshops? Or maybe that he’s voted to kill every defense weapons bill since ’88? They’re all crap folks, all crap.

To be fair, there’s no shortage of the same going around about Bush – and the tree-huggers can be just as bad about forwarding mails painting him as the grandest fool of an evil-dictator ever to grace the earth? so I suppose it goes both ways.

And to all my relatives, if you’re reading this, I love you dearly.

Time to go check e-mail and get ready for bed. Oh yeah, here’s a picture I drew last week in Taiwan while a co-worker was doing his portion of our presentation. It was the 8th or 9th time we’d given the same presentation to customers, and I guess I was just getting bored. Enjoy.

G’nite all, Dave out.

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you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered

Man, that's longer than Tracy.
Ugh man, I’ve got that ten-hour plane-flight funk going on. You know, that thin sheen of been-up-too-long sweat and grease all over my body. Coupled with the stretched, frazzled feeling you get from bring travel-worn – I’m ready to sleep in my own bed. I got bumped from business class on the long leg of the flight, so I’m in the next best place – the exit aisle with no seats in front of me, on the aisle seat. I actually think this would be fine were the arm rests just a tad freakin’ wider so as to accompany my ate-too-much Taiwanese food hips. I mean, my wallet is pressed so tight against the armrest that it’s holding the seat-recline button in perma-depress – which is really pissing me off. The only problem with sleeping in this seat is that I tend to naturally lean out into the aisle to keep from laying my head on the shoulder of the attractive young Japanese woman sitting painfully close to my hip pocket in the seat next to me. I think they are stewardesses, I hope they don’t mind the snoring.

Got home to find the lawn in a shambles. See, we had some decorative concrete curbing (mow-strip) installed one Friday while I was gone, and apparently the install crew got the sprinkler treatment during their job (at least this is what I imagined happened). To fix this problem, they decided to simply turn off the main water (they had no choice really, not being able to access the controls in the garage or anything). Anyway, Sharaun didn’t notice the sprinklers weren’t coming on until the lawn told her by turning a nice I’m-dead brown. Not her fault, how’s she supposed to know. She ended up calling me at a customer in Taiwan, where I proceeded to work through an extremely frustrating 20min debug process in which we attempted to figure out why the sprinklers weren’t working. Eventually, and without even getting divorced, we figured it out and got them up and running again.

But you know me, I take a lot of pride in the yard. I mean, I’ve worked dang hard to keep it looking OK. And now with the appearance of the dreaded crabgrass the week before I left, the large spotty-brown thing I once took so much pride in is just a neighborhood eyesore. I know it sounds trivial, but you don’t know how much it frustrated me to be greeted by that sad sight upon pulling up to my beloved house after a two-week stint overseas. Anyway, I hit it double-hard today with a nice dose of crabgrass killer and some kinda turf-builder, and it’s been getting enough water – so perhaps the majority will grow back. I mean, I guess when it comes down to it, who cares right? But man, that seriously bummed me out.

This weekend was sufficiently laid-back: hung with friends, cleaned the house, worked a tad in the yard. The thing is, I’m really gonna be slammed this week at work. I have several commitments which I placed “on hold” when I was traveling, and they will be coming back to judge me this week. I’ve got to make good on some promises, and one involves getting a big project done by tomorrow evening. It’ll be tough, but I think I can swing it – even if I have to work late. What’s worse is, I have to take Friday and Monday off because we’re climbing Mt. Whitney this weekend. Don’t even get me started on how woefully unprepared I am for that. I should’ve been running every day for months, instead I’ve been stuffing myself with Chinese food and Bloody Marys – just hoping my weary legs can carry my clinically obese ass up that mountain. We’ll find out I suppose.

I promised you guys the scans of the Taipei Hooters menu that I boosted one night whilst at dinner. It’s funny for a couple reasons, both of which I think are obvious. Firstly, these girls have no hooters. I mean, c’mon y’alls, we all know the “hooters” in Hooters isn’t really talking about owls like the logo may lead you to believe. They mean boobs! No, I’m for real, that restaurant Hooters is all about boobs. Anyway, we took to calling the place “Hoot” because the “ers” was actually pulled around the back of the shirt being that there was nothing in front for it to stretch across. Secondly, at Hooters in Taiwan you can order all sorts of seafood. Shock! Seafood at an eatery in Taiwan?! These people live and breath fish man. Pat even complained one morning because his bacon at breakfast tasted of fish – and that’s what I mean, everything there is seafood. Oh, it may not be seafood overtly – like fish or prawns or whatever. But you can almost bet that it was made or cooked with seafood or some seafood “essence.” I’m being unrealistic for the sake of comedy of course, but really? they love some seafood. And yes, I know it’s an island. Anyway, without further ado – the Taipei Hoot menu:


Janet was our waitress, and mighty attractive if I may say. You could land a plane on her chest, but she was cute nonetheless. Note that you can order “Chips and Salsar” or the “Fried Fishman Platter.” You can keep the fishman thanks, I’m not feeling terribly cannibalistic today – but salsar, now that sounds new and exciting.
Here’s the flipside, where you can feast on such delicacies as “Curly Squid” and “Pork Knuckle.” Man, when did Hoot go all gourmet? To be fair though, the “Fried Mushroom” only costs lantern-house-menorah-sailboat, pretty good if you ask me.

I think it would be cool to sell a shirt that had nothing on the front but the words “Where I stand.” Then on the back there would be a short list of items and two columns, “Yes” and “No,” with a box for each column after each line-item in the list. Before I get to the list, lemme say that the purpose of this shirt is controversy. You take the few most-debated political and social issues today and list them out – then sell all the yes/no permutations. I imagine a list something like the following:

  Yes No
There is a God.  
Capital punishment is just.  
Keep abortion legal.  
Affirmative Action is rad.  
Gay people will burn.  
Three AK47s? No problem.  
Welfare works!  

Anyway, you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered, so I think that list would be enough to enrage enough people. Then you wear it around see, and people know right away where you’re at. Maybe I should make these shirts. I mean, there’d need to be 128 of them to get every possible combo – then you could keep stats like which permutation (combination?, I forget my statistics) was most popular and stuff. It could be a whole website, people could even vote on the next issue to be added to the short-list. Hmm? Oh yeah, and for any of you entrepreneurial bastards out there – I’m pretty sure that’s my intellectual property now that I wrote it down, so don’t even think about it.

And I’m out, g’night.

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do i have to do this again?

Shea-shea!!
Tokyo. Again. And again I’m just passing through, still haven’t been able to see Japan. This past week, I was originally booked for Japan, but plans changed and I stayed in Taiwan instead. Anyway, that’s all old news now, history. I’m on my way home, finally, after what seemed like a month-long two weeks. Really, I got to the point where I welcomed the hotel bed as my own each evening. A spotty week for writing, or maybe I should say posting – because I actually wrote quite a bit. A couple paragraphs from Tuesday, some crazy outlines for an intended Wednesday entry, and last night’s famous unfinished Thursday-night-in-the-bar entry. Anyway, I’m gonna make the verb-tense workable and go ahead and publish most of it riiiight about? now.

[Written Tuesday afternoon in some hotel conference room, after giving my initial presentation to about 150 Chinese dudes.]

Damn. Nothing can humble me like giving what I feel to be a bad presentation. I mean, I just got off the stage and I think I stunk it up royal. I blanked on a couple of really easy questions and just didn’t have confidence in my knowledge of the material. Man I wanted to run out of that room. What’s worse: I’ve got a totally different one to give in another hour, one I’m equally undereducated on. Ugh, right now my only solace is thinking that I can head back to the hotel in shame and take a nap if I want. I’m sure from the audience it didn’t look that bad, but knowing that I was just reading from the material with no knowledge to back me up sure made me feel crappy. What a terrible feeling, and embarrassing too. I’m ready to leave Taiwan again.

It’s funny how a bad experience like that can make me want to crawl into a cave and hibernate (read: lock myself in the hotel room with the “do not disturb” light on and lounge around in my boxers). It’s my laziness kicking in I guess. To make matters worse, I had an 11pm conference call last night and didn’t get to bed until 1am, only to wake up in four hours for another call at 5am, then it was straight from that call to here. Now I’m dangerously tired and trying to stay awake for my next class. Funny thing is, whenever I do come off a less-than-stellar speaking engagement, I always question why I like doing it at all. I mean, not putting myself up there means never having to be embarrassed. Talk about a quitter attitude huh? But, I know I’ll do it again, because I like to – and I like it most when things go well and I come off feeling like a champ. I suppose every one has a “stinker” once in a while, presentation or not. (Note from the future: The next presentation and the Q&A sessions that followed in the days after went superb, more than making up for the self-loathing my initial bomb instilled in me.)

Another editors note: Wanna see my “free writing” notes for that last paragraph? Oh, what? You do? OK, here it is: funy, performp poorly and start questioning how much i like it. lazy, from youth, etc. Wow, exciting huh? I mean, it’s these sneak-peeks into the behind-the-scenes workings of the blog that just set me apart from other writers. At least, to me I mean.

[Written late Thursday night from a corner table in Henry’s Bar at the Sherwood Taipei, three or four bloody marys into a night getting tight on spiked ‘mater juice.]

Sitting here in a dark corner, cigar smoke and Mandarin fill the air. I’m looking out across the dim room to the bar – where the bartender is making me a new bloody mary to replace the one I just finished. Her name is Tracy, but in Chinese it’s something longer and is drawn with a lot of little sticks and boxes that look like lanterns and houses and tic-tac-toe games. I know because she wrote it down for me on one of the paper coasters she brings the drinks on. She’s trying to teach me more Chinese before I leave, but the bar is busy and she can only come talk ever once in a while. So far I can recognize about twenty characters, and understand a few words in every sentence. Next time I come, she says, she promises to speak better English if I promise to speak better Chinese. Deal.

Anthony and Pat were here, but went out to the night market to see the people drink snake’s blood. In all my time in Taipei, I’ve never had the urge to go to snake alley. It sounds interesting as all get-out, but the locals look down on the place as dirty and giving them a bad name. Last night I went to karaoke with two girls that work at this bar. Tracy actually changed her night off to go, all the bar staff knows it and they give me funny looks and talk about me in Chinese (I can recognize my name, “Da-Way,” in Mandarin). A buddy of mine from the states who speaks Mandarin and is also friendly with the bar staff hooked up the outage, and they came and grabbed me from my second-favorite bar down the street and whisked me away to karaoke. Everyone knows I have a crush on Tracy so it was all a big joke. We ended up having a blast. The Taiwan beer and milk-tea flowed freely and my head didn’t hit the pillow until 3am.

So tonight I’m practicing my words again on the drink coasters: fire, human, door, time, ask, month, temple, big, sun, house, one, two, three, four, understanding, ten, and love. Later I’ll end up hanging at the bar until they close at 1pm, drinking more bloody marys and finally winding things down with some milk-tea-made-with-love. Time to hit the hay, and what do you know it’s 4am again somehow. Taipei was fun this time, a bad presentation, a good presentation, two nights of karaoke, and a handful of nights where one more hour out would’ve meant seeing a sunrise.

I’m done, I’m outta here. Until next week when writing once again begins on US soil, Dave out.

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damn you soda popinski

Duck and move! Duck and move!.
Monday in Taiwan and it was time for a “shift-change.” Most of the crew from last week took off and a new crew came in this weekend. Anthony’s here, and we already did some tromping around the city, some good eatin’, and some cocktailin’ at the hotel bar.

Honestly, and not to brag or anything but, I’ve been living like a king this past week. Nay, not of my own doing – these country just treats you like one. They open doors, pour drinks, wish you good evenering and good afternoorn, it’s totally awesome. The other night I was lounging on a plush couch with my legs spread wide in a I’m-all-man pose, drinking champagne while house beats rumbled from the ceiling and waitresses called me “boss.” I handed out business cards at 3am to other “industry” types in some crazy dance club. In some ways I love it here, but I am pretty ready to go home.

The other day I went to the local computer market (a two story “mall” that’s bursting at the seams with computer and electronics equipment), and bought a better controller for the anticipated Zelda64 marathon that will be my flight home. It’s smaller, more accurate, and the force-feedback works. It should make Zelda’n much more better, and more force-feedbacky. I haven’t had much time to play it lately though, as we’ve been busy running around the city visiting this customer and that customer. We did, however, get together in the hotel bar the other night, all with our laptops, and have a marathon NES session. We played Tyson’s Punch Out! for like four hours, just sitting in a corner drinking beer and trying to beat Soda Popinksi. It was awesome, once the crew saw me playing some old NES they all wanted them. Nerds to the bone man, how embarrassing.

Anyway, today is kind of a “free day” where we had some time to come into the office and work instead of being carted around the city by some maniacal van driver. Pat got in early this morning so I’m actually writing now as I watch him present his material to some customers. For me, tomorrow is the big presentation day – thinking about 200 people per class and I’m doing two pretty much back to back. I’ve been working on my material and trying to bone up for questions. Hoping it all goes well. Then we do the crazy two-customer-a-day days on Wednesday and Thursday, and get Friday off before we fly out Saturday morning. I can already tell it’s gonna go faaaast.

So, you know, usually when I go to Taiwan I write all about the crazy junk I eat. Well, I think I must’ve gotten used to what was once “crazy,” because the urge to write about food hasn’t struck me this time. I mean sure, I have eaten some interesting stuff on this trip, standard fare really: octopus, fish eyes, shark fin, coagulated pork blood, etc. We didn’t, however, order the “fried intestinal tract” or “stir fried chicken testicles.” No crap man, they eat everything over here! Oh, and we went to Hooters! Hooters in Taiwan y’allz? yeah, uh-huh. We took to calling it “Hoot” since the “ers” part was actually on the back of the shirt – these women may be hot but they ain’t fillin’ out no Hooters tee. Not only that, but Hooters Taiwan don’t be compromisin’ y’all – sure they have wings, but they also have all manner of cooked undersea-life goodness. I actually stole a menu that had some pictures of the waitresses, including ours, I’ll post it tomorrow if I can remember.

Well, that’s it for me. Huh? Still hard-up for some more quality reading? Check out Ben’s site then, he’s been updating more regularly and even posting little web-narratives punctuated by pictures which are teetering dangerously close to the edge of blogdom. The kayak and Advantage stories are good, so quit being such a pussy and check ’em out already.

OK, I gotta run? Pat just got in today and wants me to show him where the hookers from last week’s story work. Dave out.

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take that Dodongo

Back in the F-L-A!
First off, thanks, readers, for the comments on yesterday’s blog. Made the effort all the more worth it.

Apparently all this rain the past few days is because there’s a typhoon churning off the coast of the island. I thought I left my days of tropical-weather-tracking behind me when I moved out of Florida. It’s OK though, it seems it’ll pass us by doing nothing more than giving a good storm or two. I mean, with the humidity here it might as well be raining everyday anyway. The eye is set to pass just offshore of Northern Taiwan, which is right where we are. Anyway, kinda nice to have a Florida-esque thunderstorm raging vainly against my open hotel window while I sleep – I’ve always dug being inside while the elements thrash outside, somehow gives me feeling of power or whatever. Like, try as is may, it can’t put forth enough effort to overcome the effort that man put into the shelter which houses me. We win: human engineering 1, weather 0. I say that now, when this week alone the earth and sky have so far teamed against me in both an earthquake and now typhoon. Damn, does Taiwan have volcanoes?

My trip to Taiwan so far has been filled with omen. OK, not “filled” with omen, but at least containing some omen. I’m not sure what it all means yet, but if one of you four who read this are armchair numerologists – get back to me with your interpretation. See, when I checked into the hotel – I got room number 1111. Now, I thought that was kinda cool – and immediately came up with some good jokes about how I’m all “number one” or something. Since then, the number one is all over my trip. Every time I take a cab ride, the total is spot on 100NT? each time for four separate rides. When we go to customers to present, we sometimes get temp badges. I didn’t check on the 1st day, but yesterday my badge was number 111. Is that crazy or what? I checked my flights back, and none of them are all ones – so I take that to either mean they will end in a fiery crash into the sea, or something? at least.

I skipped dinner last night, unintentionally, heading up to my room for a “nap” after a Boddington’s with the boys in the hotel bar. I hit the bed around 8pm and didn’t wake up until the typhoon loudly hurled rain into my window around 1am. I missed a phone call and a knock on the door, I think the 4am bedtime the night prior really sapped me. Anyway, I ended up getting about eleven hours of sleep – which I think is the main contributing factor to how energized and well I feel now. I even managed to wake up early enough to give myself some time to play a little Zelda64 before breakfast (I’m so freakin’ addicted, I totally just liberated Dodongo’s cave on Death Mountain and I’m kicking butt – I’m actually looking forward to a possible 10hr of uninterrupted playing time on the flight home). We were slated to head to some club which is infamous for it’s Wednesday night “ladies night,” but I sacked it instead. I’ll be here next Wednesday anyway, so I can scam the Taiwan-tang then if need be.

I gotta say, I look pretty awesome in some dress clothes. I mean, I’m still fat and whatnot – but I clean up OK. This morning I made sure to ask Sharaun if my intended shirt/pants combo was legal: blue shirt and black pants. It seems it would be legal, but dependant on what shade of blue the shirt was. I described it as light to medium blue, at which point she blessed the ensemble (seems dark blue and black won’t work). So anyway, I’m sitting here, looking dapper as all get out, ready to wow these dudes with my public speaking skillz. It’s good to be able to talk to Sharaun each morning and run my planned outfit by her, since apparently I’m totally incapable of knowing what “goes.” It’s OK though, because with her to rebuff me as an “idiot” for even suggesting dark blue and black, I don’t have to worry about it.

I’m getting tired of presenting the same thing over and over again. Tired of the forced laughs and smiles and feigned interest in things. At least next week I’m presenting some different material to a semi-different audience, maybe that’ll be enough to keep me awake. At our first meeting today, our audience sucked – eight presenters to three attendees. Three attnedees? For most of the previous sessions we had a pretty good turnout. Sometimes I wish I could just chill at the hotel or bum around the city instead. Owell.

If you guys wanna call Hammertime, the featured guest of yesterday’s entry, her international number (I think all Taiwanese hookers who are worth their salt have international numbers) is: 886955863197. ‘Night y’allz, Dave out.