God Bless Texas

We needed a memory card reader to access our data-logger, so my boss bought one. What this means to you is I can now upload my pictures (yay!)
When we bought the card-reader, my boss tried to stop the checkout gal from giving us a bag. He told her "we don't need one, we're trying to conserve plastic for future generations", in his raspy, matter of fact, cool as a cucumber tone. The checkout gal only cocked her head to the side the way a confused chicken does and her jaw fell open a few inches as she slowly continued to insert the 3-inch device into a plastic bag.

There are hundreds of miles of of oil pumps systematically sucking the stinky grease from the ground in all direction, so the entire community is fully assimilated into the maddness. The town of Odessa is nothing more than a collection of burrito shops and machine shops for fixing oil equipment. The local band "the roughnecks" is playing down at Dos Amigos tonight, and "the pump jacks" are at Rosa's.

There are no sidewalks or crosswalks and everybody drives gigantic trucks. Everywhere. Yesterday we needed some parts made at a machine shop. The first one we tried couldn't do what we needed, so the machinist told us to "git yerself on over to tripple J, Of course Marco's Steel could do it too but they're higher than all get-out." So we drove clear across the flat expanse of dollar stores, nail salons and used furnature stores to Tripple J and met the receptionist. She told us that we needed to take our part into the yard and talk to another one of the workers. She went on to provide us with very elaborate direcions to reach this man, something like "What you'll do is drive around the building and through the gate. It will be the first white trailer on your right side." so we got into our truck, fired it up and drove where she told us to go. Here we discovered that the distance from her front door to the front door of this white trailer was no more than fifteen feet! This same thing happened two more times afterward.It seems that nobody down here has any thoughts whatsoever about conservation. So far every visit to a restaurant has required me to toss out a pound of styrofoam,5 feet of aluminum foil, and a few bags. There doesn't seem to be any way around it, recycling isn't even in the vocabulary here.


Here's a picture of the trucks and oil refinery I see out my motel window.

I've never been this old before

It’s been a very busy last few days. In fact, this is the first time I’ve taken a breath in six days. Here’s why…
Exactly one year ago, I started off an amazing adventure by celebrating my birthday in Washington at the Sasquatch music festival. This year it seems I’ve done the same thing. I trekked westward to the Gorge Amphitheater with a gang of good friends to hear twelve hours of music by the Cold War Kids, Death Cab for Cutie, the Presidents of the United States of America, Tegan and Sarah, and THE CURE!! As expected, the Cure put on an amazing show that outlasted most of the audience. In fact I’m not sure how deep they rocked into the night because by 1:am I was too danced out to go on. They were a wonderful way to celebrate my 30th birthday.
Immediately following the concert, I embarked on a marathon road trip to Texas. People who know how I feel about Texas will think I’m joking, but indeed I’m here. I visited Nick and Chris in Denver along the way, but the reunion was brief because I arrived at midnight and left before they woke up the next day for another 14 hours of driving.
My reason for being in Texas is related to work. That means the road trip is free, the gas and hotels are paid for.
I work for a wind prospecting company that sets up meteorological towers and instruments for collecting data about wind speed and direction. Our company isn’t erecting this particular tower, we’re just outfitting it with lights, sensors, and data collecting equipment. This is really the best case scenario; I get to be the technical guy while I watch a bunch of laborers do the hard work. And what’s better is that I asked the installers if they’d train me to climb and they said it would be no problem. I’ll be ONE HUNDRED METERS above the flat expanse of Texas mesquite trees clinging to a two foot wide swaying tower like an ant on a wheat stalk. I’m pretty excited about this (exclamation point)

It’s good that I have something exciting to look forward to because I will be here awhile. The installation crew is about a week behind schedule, in other words it will be a week before they have a use for me. In Texas, the wind spits grains of dirt into your mouth every time you gasp from the smell of pig shit and the sun pounds down on your skin until it stings. Being outside is painful, and even if you choose to bear it there’s nothing to do outside anyway. All the plants have thorns, and all the buildings are run down to ghetto-like conditions, and the people who live here are too.

I’m not usually one to complain about motels, but the one I stayed in last night was a crack house. The bathroom had one bar of soap, which was already half used. My room smelled the way a bar does after closing time. And in the lobby, above the television that was displaying scratchy images of face-painted ultimate fighting matches (in Spanish) was a sign that read “No Refunds After 10 Minutes”. Which confirmed my belief that this is the motel for hookers and affairs. The hotel I’m in tonight doesn’t have shampoo but that’s just fine in comparison.

It is here I wait…

this will be a non-illustrated Blog because I left my camera cable at home. If I had it with me, you'd see a picture of a horny-toad, a roadrunner, and oil pump-jacks.

Hurricane Dean

Continental Airlines has put a hold on my flight. If it is canceled then it will be re-scheduled for Friday, same timeline. This will put me home at 10:40 pm on NW flight 1273.

There are no more vacancies at the hotels in San Ignacio, so I'm staying in the home of one of the local girls. Her mom runs one of the hotels. The weather is still calm, but the sky is darkening. It's expected to hit the fan at about 5:am.

The phones are jammed, so I can't get through to the airlines. Once I do, I'll try to change my departure city to Flores, Guatemala so I don't have to wait until Friday. The website says I must keep the same origin and destination cities, but I'll try to sweet talk them.

I made two trips to town to get phone cards but whenever I did manage to get through, my minutes were immediately consumed while I listening to recorded messages and flaky music. I decided the best way to get through was to get a surrogate caller from within the USA. In these days of internet technology I was able to contact my mother and have her make a dozen calls to three different agencies while I supervised from a few thousand miles away with MSN messenger. I think I have a flight reservation tomorrow, but the airport might close again if the weather kicks up. It probably won't, so I'll expect to be home sometime late Wednesday evening.

I haven't heard about the impact on Belize City, but where I was things were pretty calm. There were no flying rooftops, trees, dogs or even dead chickens. Just a little breeze at night and some sprinkles until morning. Now its overcast now but not stormy at all.

I expect this to be my final fit, thanks for joining me on my travels. I've had a blast!

Getting out

" realized immediately that my lack of inspiration was due to the oppressive heat and the crowds of arrogant tourists at Caye Caulker. Once I escaped to the cool highlands to do some camping, I was happy again. I spent the last few days based out of the tiny little town of Augestine. I'm not sure if Aguistine is classified as a ghost town, but in the last four days I didn't see a single person in town other than a few at the forest service office. I would sometimes hear trucks or music, but never actually spotted a person. Also, all the houses looked like they were probably abandoned, but the camp ground was incredible! It was an area of mowed grass and trees about the size of Lindley Park (in Bozeman). There were two concrete buildings with bunk beds, and two enormous thatched roof buildings, and running water too. I had the whole place totally to myself. The reason I chose to camp here was because it's close to three pretty cool things that I wanted to check out. >The first was a place in the river called the Rio On pools. Here the river cascades through granite rocks forming little pools for swimming. There are places where the river has carved smooth chutes through the rock that I could slip down like a waterslide. It was a great way to rejuvenate after the intense heat of the coast. Also, it's pretty high altitude so I was greeted with pine trees! It's been a while since I enjoyed their company.47" From the size of the opening I expected the cave to be about the size of a van, or maybe a bus if I was lucky. I squeezed through and was shocked to find a cavern the size of a warehouse! And this was the real deal, a limestone cave with stalactites, bats, giant cave-scorpion-critters and 1500 year old shards of Mayan pottery. After exploring the whole thing I was prepared to say goodbye when I noticed a little hole behind some columns. , another warehouse sized cavity was on the other side!
Back on the main road were two more small caves, but I wasn't too impressed because I was still high from my adventures in the last one. At the end of the road was the main attraction, the Rio Frio cave, which was more of a tunnel than a cave. The river flowed into an enormous hole in the side of a hill and out the other side. >From one enterance I could see out the other, so I never needed my light but there were some impressive formations inside. There was also a really deep part of the river about halfway through that I swam in.>Yesterday I went to the Mayan ruins of Carcol, and this place was incredible. There were only a few people there (just one other tour group) so I felt like I had the place to myself. One of the stone pyramids is still the tallest building in Belize. From the top of it I could see over the jungle treetops for miles. There were also ball courts, and intricate carvings on all the structures. Some of the pyramids had tombs and chambers that were partially broken open (no contents inside, of course).
In the past there has been some crime here, so the government of Belize has placed some tourism police and military guards at the site. I would occasionally spot some guy in the jungle with a machine gun and camouflage pants following me. Since I was one of the only people at Carcol, it was like having my own personal secret service agents.

Today I hitch-hiked back to the city of San Ignacio with the forest service. Due to the approaching Hurricane Dean, they wanted to get everybody out of Augistine. So I crammed into a tiny short-bed Nissan truck along with 3 toolboxes, a chainsaw, an M-16 rifle, two watermelons, a 40 food extension ladder, a 5 gallon tank of diesel, 11 people and their backpacks and of course, a dead chicken.

bottom of the ocean

It's true, there is water at the bottom of the ocean, I was there. Today I ventured into a world completely unlike any place I have ever been. Even now, 10 hours after the experience I'm still dazed (no help from the four glasses of rum punch I've slurped). I've been living on an island where the primary industry is lobster fishing, so it's been loads of cheap, fresh lobster every night. During the day the sun is straight overhead. I calculated the time and date when the sun would pass directly overhead at this lattitude, and was sure to have my own private cereromy during the moment of no shadows.Now back to the bottom of the ocean. Today I met up with the Canadian girl from the bus and we went SCUBA diving at a place called the Great Blue Hole. A perfectly circular dark blue hole waits in the middle of the ocean to swallow curious tourists. We stuck tubes into our mouths and fell into the hole with a school of fifteen reef sharks, each about twelve feet long. They would stay just far enough away that I could barely make out their large grey bodies and angular shape. The Blue Hole is an opening to a gigantic cave that existed back in the days then there was no ocean here. It actually sinks down to a depth of over 400 feet, but it takes special gear and training to go beyond 130, so we stopped there, at a pressure of over five times greater than the design specs for a squishy human. Inside this part of the cave there were enormous stallegtites fifty feet long and ten feet in diameter. I drifted around them in a way that I still can't believe, below me was a black void that looked so overwhelmingly inviting. Even though I knew it would be a one way trip, it took all my will power to limit myself to 130 ft.

We did two more dives that afternoon at different locations. On the way to our second dive I saw a bunch of flying fish from the boat. I have seen fish that leap out of the water before, but these guys really flew. They were as large as a full grown trout, and would fly about 100 yards before splashing down again, flapping their little wings(?) as fast as a hummingbird. During that next dive I was checking out a little pencil sized fish near the bottom, and he got freaked out and disappeared in an instant. He had completely dug himself right into the sandy bottom.

The third dive was also unlike anything I have ever experienced. It's another world under the ocean. The amount of brightly colored exotic life is so overwhelming I can't even begin to comprehend where I am, or what is going on around me. I could spend an hour in each area the size of a fruit basket, but traveled over a distance of a few hundred meters. My puny little brain is overfull. At the end of the dive, one of the dive masters took out a water bottle from his pocket. The fish around here are pretty smart because they all knew what this was about. Instantly thousands of fish raced to the bottle. Inside it was some cooked rice, which must be a delicacy for fish. The guide would open the bottle and shake out a little rice and all the fish would explode into a whirlpool of activity. He squirted rice over my dive buddy and in an instant the fish surrounded her so completely that I could no longer see her at all, even though she was only an arms-reach away.

I now have one week remaining before I return home. To be honest I'm out of ideas. I tried moving my plane ticket up a few days so I could get home and be productive before school starts, but after spending a total of 3 hours talking to 7 clueless operators at four different companies I officially gave up. There is no way to change the ticket because nobody really knows who sold it to me. It's one of those deals like a Northwest flight operated by Continental, through American Airlines, sold by Orbitz. Plus it's international so that requires a "specialist" to deal with it. It's an intertaining story but I don't feel like ranting now so I'll hold my tongue.

So that's it. I'll formulate a plan tonight and go forth into my final week of adventure. I'm sure I'll think of some epic way to finish my three month tour.

Keep in touch.

rocket man.

note: thespacebar on thiscomputer sometimesdoesn´twork.thanks for toleratingmyadjoined words.

I don´t have much of a tale to tell this round because I haven´t done much adventuring in the last few days. Thais flys into Belize on the morning of the 3rd, so I havetobe there by then to meet her at theairport. therefore, I´ve justbeenrocketing throughHonduras as quickly as possible(on a 1975 bluebird school bus).
I did see some noteworthy things on my tour thatare worth reporting. In the town of Tegucigalpa there was a line of 60 people in the sidewalk. They were all standing in a perfect orderly line and not talking much. I looked tosee what was at the front of the line, and there was nothing at all! Across the street, 40 more people were lined up the same way, just waiting in line. I had to know what was up, so I sat and watched (and counted the number of people) for a while. Eventually I got my answer. There is a shortage of taxis in Tegucigalpa. Every few minutes a new taxi would show up and pick up a few more people from the front of the line.
I traveled north to teh caribbean coast tothe town of Puerto Something. There is a boat that leaves from here to Belize City. When I arrived I learned the critical detail that the boat only leaves on Tuesdays. So I ventured off the Peurto Somethingelse in Guatamala. Fromhere there are several boats per day,but south of Belize City, I´ll still have to takesome busses.
Crossing the boarders in these countries is always intersting. first of all some guy with a handgun and astack of money 7 inches thick comes to you and offers to exchange your money. At first I didn´t trust these guys, but it turns outh they are ligitimate. It´s impossible to tellwho is an official and whois just some haggler. Then there are always half a dozen places to show your passport, spread out over the next 5 km. some of them want money, most don´t. Some of teh officials that do want money are taking it illegally, but it´s only a few dollars, and not worth arguing in Spanish witha guy withan automatic weapon.
After crossing theborder, there was a van to take peopleinto town. There were 11 seats in the van, room enough for 21 people and a dead chicken. The doors can´t close with so many people inside, so a few were hanging out. Nobody butme seemed to think this was funny. Occasionally the van would stop and an official would call out the three "gringo´s" to do something else with our passports.
There is a lot to see in Guatamala, so I think I´ll convince Thais to come back here during the next two weeks. I think they might put cocane in the water here. I smile all day at nothing, locked in an unexplainable happiness.

here

sorry guys, I´ve typed the same great story three times already but various circumstances keep inturrupting, undoing and erasing my efforts. I´ve alredy spent hours on the same story that is now seven days old. So instead of spending a fourth hour redoing the same thing I´ve already typed I´ll just show a few pictures. make up your own story.




















One story I will tell involves swimming in the nearly hot ocean with my uncle and cousins. We were watching a sting ray jump out of the water about five feet into the air. Later we noticed that as the waves were about to break, we could see sting rays "surfing" inside them. We stood for a while watching the waves come at us and then, just a few inches under the surface of the next breaking wave were two sting rays racing along. One of them was headed right toward my uncle and veered off just inches before it got to him. It was so incredible to watch them playing right in front of us.

intermission

I want to give my travel companions (y'all) a quick update and some sign of activity so nobody calls the police to report me missing.
I have arrived at my Aunt's hotel resort, and she has been so hospitable. I keep telling her to put me to work, but she refuses to. I'm only allowed to have fun and be a guest.
My uncle and other aunt and three cousins are also here together and we're having a wonderful time doing local gringo tourist things. I've been so busy having fun with them that I haven't been able to pull away and write up the tales of camping on the beach or crossing the boarder. But I promice I will so so as soon as I can, and present some nice pictures too.
keep watching this space:Eric.