Travel

Well, I survived my first open ocean passage! We are now in the Canaries on an island named Graciosa. It is very rural, with no paved roads. All the cars here are Land Rovers and models of Toyotas meant for use in Africa! It’s pretty neat to be in a place so different in architecture from Europe. The culture here is still very European, which I guess is good, because it makes the culture shock less. As we head south toward Cape Verde, things will get increasingly less European. ...

You can see Wonderland’s position by visiting this link. We will update it every day or so. The technology we use to do it is nifty. I’m learning lots of cool stuff about packet radio. I’ll write up some info on it when we get to the Canaries. Back to boat chores. It really looks like we’ll make it out to sea today!

This might be my last entry from Ayamonte, Spain. We are working furiously to get all the last minute chores done to be ready to set sail for the Canary Islands this afternoon. The trip should take 5-7 days. I’ll be off the net until we arrive there, but I’ll send out an update as soon as I can. I had a great birthday dinner with Evi and the girls last night (thanks Evi!). We ate tapas until we almost burst. The baked tuna was really amazing, so we had two! ...

When I last wrote, I was on my way to Newark airport. The trip to there, then on to Lisbon was uneventful. Lisbon airport was small and efficient, so getting through the airport, then into the town center was also uneventful. Portuguese sounds nothing at all like “Spanish with a French accent” as someone suggested to me. In fact, I never understood a single bit of Portuguese spoken to me the whole time I was there, it seems. It’s easy enough to read, as it is a Romance language, and at this point my brain pretty much translates written Romance languages on the fly into English (that survival skill comes from all my time not speaking French in French speaking places). So I wasn’t exactly incommunicado, but close. The people are nice, and enough speak English to get by, but it’s not exactly smooth sailing. ...

My first big trip after leaving Tellme has commenced! I am writing this from Jim Fanning’s apartment in the Upper West Side of New York City. I got in yesterday at 3:30pm, and took the subway in. I had time to kill before visiting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for a prospective volunteer open house. I went through Grand Central Station on the way to the main branch of the public library. I gawked at both of those for a while, then walked along 42nd Avenue toward Times Square. I hit an internet cafe there, got dinner, and took the cab to MSF. Perfect timing! ...

A friend is on her way to Budapest, and I wrote some of this to her. I’m copying it down here so that I don’t lose it. I was in Budapest in the fall of 2000 on my way to Oradea, Romania. There, I helped build a huge house to be used for a family-style orphanage. It had 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 1.5 kitchens, 2 living rooms, and a dining room. We had to finish it from a finished foundation and framed walls to “pillows and sheets on the beds” in about 8 days. ...

I just got home from a long visit with kc in San Diego. I took Highway 101 down and most of the way back. It is so much nicer than I-5. Today, on the way back, I strayed from 101 and took some back roads. I ended up coming up state route 25 from south of Pinnacles National Monument. There are some absolutely stunning vistas down there. Was nice to trade some time for some driving on twisty roads with no traffic and no sprawling wasteland on the side of the road. ...

I was up at Westerly this weekend, and wanted to go for an overnight camping trip while I was there. I decided to hike 4 miles up Noble Canyon to Noble Lake, then sleep under the stars and reverse the whole process Monday morning. I like summer camping trips like that, where you can keep the pack light by ditching the tent. On the drive there, I noted a fair amount of thunderstorm activity. When I got to the trailhead, there was moderate to light thunderstorm activity. The clouds were all up above the top of the canyon, and I’d be hiking in the floor, with plenty of room between me and the storm. I decided to get hiking, and make one final go/no-go decision at 2 miles in. Either it would be a 4 mile day hike, or an overnight as planned. ...

I’m back from a really cool 2 week vacation sailing in Croatia. I’ll be filling in weblog postings for the days of vacation in a bit. For now, let me just say it was wonderful, and I’d recommend Croatia to anyone!