London Naadam, Launch of the 2nd Charity Rally to Mongolia

The Launch today was a complete success, and I got to meet several of the ralliers going off to Mongolia today. Right now, I'm completely tired at the moment after spending the day setting up for the London Naadam, seeing the rally vehicles off, and then spending the evening drinking pints to celebrate a successful launch. After that, a few the Charity Rallies Trustees and I went to a boxing match featuring a Mongolian boxer. To finish the evening off, we had a couple more pints near Charing Cross and then we called it a night.

Jetlagged and tired I'm finally going to sleep. It's 3am here. More tomorrow...

A New Personal Record, Back in the UK, I Meet Team Grand Canyon 2

I'm now back in the UK! The last 24 hours have been extremely busy for me as I've gone from being on the bay in California to blogging from a hotel room in London.

The first 2 hours of the last 24 were spent moving the Hoa Hele to a friend's house near the marina where we normally practice. Instead of going straight to storing the canoe, I decided this morning that I would get some paddling time in before I went off to London. I got on to the water this morning and it was perfect out there, the kind of conditions that make you want to stay out all day. As I was watching the planes come in for their landings at Oakland Airport, I decided then and there that I would set the bar for myself in the "Most Transportation Vehicles in 24 Hours" category.

Seeing as I started the 24 hour clock by taking the Hoa Hele out, I'll count travel by outrigger canoe as number one.

As I was putting her away, John, whose backyard was to serve as dry dock for the Hoa Hele while I was gone, offered to drive me to the airport. A generous offer, as I was running late by taking a run out into the bay.

I got to my plane a little over an hour after he dropped me off and I was off and flying to LAX on a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 to catch my connecting flight to Heathrow Airport. I watched as the California coast scrolled past my window to Los Angeles. John's Subaru is transportation vehicle number two, the MD-80 number three.

Once in Los Angeles, and facing a 4 hour layover until I could get onto my flight to the UK, I met my sister who picked me up in her Toyota FJ, vehicle number four. I had a nice California burger before heading back to LAX to catch a Boeing 777 to London Heathrow.

Once on the 777, vehicle number five, I met up with an American team participating in the Charity Rally this year, Team Grand Canyon 2. Jeff and Art bought a Landrover Discovery to make their way through to Ulaanbaatar. On the way they'll hit all the 'stans and Iran and will be tackling the Pamir Highway, the famed road to Dushanbe. We had a good time talking and when we disembarked, they were nice enough to sneak me through the "invite only" passport line where it took mere minutes to get processed and into the UK proper. From there it was off to the London Underground.
Since I had some experience dealing with the tube, I helped Jeff and Art out by getting them maps and showing how to read the London Tube map. To the unitiated, the London Tube system map can be a source of anxiety, until you realize just how brilliant it is.


Once on their way, Jeff and Art made their long trip to retrieve their vehicle. I'll have more about them when I meet up with them tomorrow and get the rundown on their vehicle. I took the Picadilly line further to Holborn. The Tube train is vehicle number six. Once I got off, I had to take the number 55 double decker bus to my hotel in Bakers Arms, making it vehicle number seven. It took about twenty minutes and puts me in North London, a few miles within Islington where the Rally starts. I got checked into my hotel, and found the accommodations kind of scary. It's adequate enough, however there's a raging case of mold growing in the shower stall. I made the joke online that its probably more afraid of me than I am of it.

It's afraid...it's afraid!

Aside from the scary mold, I'm glad to be back in the UK, and I look forward to meeting the rest of the teams this evening and tomorrow at the Naadam Festival in Highbury Fields. After 7 different kinds of transport and running all over the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and London, I'm ready for some sleep. Hopefully I won't be too terribly jetlagged and I'll be coherent within a couple of days.

Off to London Tomorrow

I'm off to London tomorrow afternoon to participate in and help launch the Mongolian Charity Rally from Highbury fields, something I didn't get to do last year. I'll get to meet some of the brave souls making their way across two continents to bring useful vehicles to Mongolia. Last year, Charlie Hogg and his co-driver Matthew Burgum drove a fully loaded ambulance to Mongolia, where it is now fulfilling its duties as an emergency vehicle at International Children’s Centre Nairamdal.

Turning the Ambulance over to the charity.
Photo courtesy Charity Rallies.

International Children’s Centre Nairamdal.
Photo courtesy НАЙРАМДАЛ.

I'm looking forward to meeting more ralliers and see the cars that will be tackling the 10,000 mile journey east to Mongolia. Additionally, since they will be launching from the London Naadam Festival, I'll get to meet and talk to Mongolians and sample their food, archery competitions, wrestling, and I may even try Airag, fermented mare's milk - if there's some around.

2008 Naadam Celebration at Highbury Fields.
Photo courtesy Liz Bartlett.

24 hours to go before I step out my door towards London.

Fourth of July

Kaimanu spent the 4th this year raising money for the club by selling shave ice at the City of San Pablo Fourth of July Family Day. Much fun was had shaving ice into tiny flakes, flavoring it with syrup, and providing some relief from the heat for the patrons. Seizing the opportunity to do some PR and push my trip and maybe get some donations and perhaps some sponsors interested, I had Rocinante and Hoa Hele there on display. I spent a lot of the day explaining where I was going with trip and why I was doing it. It's kind of hard to miss the Hoa Hele and it attracted quite a few people over to our booth. After the day was done and night fell, we celebrated the birth of our country by blowing things up and making a lot of noise. It was perfect weather for the fireworks show and it provided a nice backdrop for the Hoa Hele and Rocinante.A few days from now I leave for London to celebrate another national holiday when the Mongolian Charity Rally launches from the Naadam Celebration in Highbury fields. I'll try to blog daily while I'm over in the UK and I'll be asking lots of questions of the ralliers participating this year in preparation for my own big drive.

Paddling Weather Finally Here

It was actually Summer out on the Bay today so I got up early and took the Hoa Hele out for a spin using the camera on Indestructo-phone to take some photos and a short video clip.

Hoku is too damned smart for her own good

I came home from work yesterday to find that Hoku, my dog, had opened the refrigerator and eaten half a loaf of bread, a pound of baloney, a jar of peanut butter, all of the pepperoni, and an apple. To add insult to injury, she had left the door open, letting all my beer get warm and tepid. I was hoping to have a cold one after a long week, but alas, I was thwarted by my canine companion.

Hoping to thwart her, I made a trip this morning to Pagano's Hardware Store here on the island and bought a child safety interlock to keep Hoku out of my food and keep my precious beers cold. Seeming to know what I was about to do, she came to the kitchen and started barking at me. I had my camera handy and snapped her photo as I taunted her with the device.
Showing no sympathy for her, I installed the child-lock. Afterwards, she looked like she understood this to be the end of her gluttonous afternoon binges and looked on with despondent resignation, knowing she'd have to grow thumbs and walk upright if she wanted to get more free baloney.Haha! Human 1, Canine 0.

What 400 pound gal do we love?

Why, Kaimanu VI of course. This was taken as we were getting her weighed in. To level the playing field, all the canoes racing today have to weigh at least 400 pounds. At the scales, she was a tad under weighing in at 396, so we put a little more lead plating in her.

She still looks great even though she's put on more weight, I guess it's the high gunnels that keep her looking trim.

I always liked my canoes with a bit more body to them. Keeps them stable. Even the Hoa Hele is 10 pounds overweight, and lucky thing too: it's the weight that makes her so stable and resistant to dents and cracks. How else would a carbon fiber canoe last 30 years?

It's 5:24 AM. It's Race Day! I'm awake...

Well, sort of awake.

I posted this photo early this morning as I passed through Berkeley on my way to Lake Natoma which is 2 hours away from Alameda. The blurriness of the photo emulates the blurriness I'm experiencing from being up this early. On the plus side, I get to drive The Rocinante and Hoa Hele to the lake for some outrigger racing and it's a great place to build PR.

Did I mention I'm sort of awake?

Ooops...Almost Forgot

In all of the scurrying about trying to get my work done, I nearly forgot that I had to buy my tickets to London for the Charity Rallies Launch. I've been neck deep in an autoclave validation test, so as soon as I was able to get away, I booked my tickets online. I took a screenshot to document the craziness in choosing a flight online. In the end, I decided on a flight that routes me through Los Angeles with a 4-hour layover. This is actually a plus, because my little sister works at LAX and I get to have dinner with her before continuing on to London.

I booked my tickets while I was in a cleanroom during a lull in activity when everyone else was at lunch, being too lazy to strip out of two layers of cleanroom garb just to get to the computer in my office. There are plenty of terminals down here and WiFi, so I figured why not? I began to regret my own laziness as trying to type with heavy latex gloves on my hands introduced me to a new level of frustration. Not only was I booking my flights in a frenzy trying to find the best price, get seat assignments that didn't put me in the center aisle of a Boeing 777, and making sure that I didn't get an overnight layover in Houston, I was also fighting the urge to rip off my gloves in the middle of a cleanroom environment. Even more frustrating was trying to type in "LHR" for my destination and instead typing "LGT" which I learned is an airport in Las Gaviotas. In Colombia. I didn't even realize my mistake until I saw a message telling me "We're sorry, we can't find a match for this location. Please click the airport link for a list of cities/airports." Funny, I thought, why can't they find any flights to Heathrow Airport?

Even more frustrating was that I had entered as my departing airport "SFP" which is an airport in Surfer's Paradise in Australia. Not that I would much mind being from Surfer's Paradise in Australia, but unfortunately I don't live there and even more unfortunate, I didn't have the pleasure of being there long enough to have to leave to go to Colombia. Clearly, typing with heavy latex gloves is not recommended, especially when you're under a time crunch. Just so you know, there are no non-stop flights from Surfer's Paradise in Australia to Las Gaviotas, Colombia. Just thought I'd save you travelers some precious time and frustration.

After wasting an entire lunch hour typing like I had flippers instead of fingers, I finally got the itinerary I wanted.

Note to self, never book flights from the inside of a cleanroom - ever.

Enough about Canoes and Cars, What do I eat tonight?

My diet as of late has been heavily skewed towards training and is high in protein and low in fat. There's lots in my fridge that has been relocated to the back of the cooler, like pepperoni and cheese. And delicious delicious beer. But my upcoming trip to the UK might put a dent in all of that self-discipline. Truthfully, as bad a rap as English food has gotten, most of the food is delicious and I can't wait to get my hands on another Cornish pasty like the one I got at Waterloo Station.These things look like an apple turnover but are filled with beef, sliced potato, turnip, and onions and then baked. The resulting product weighs nearly a half pound and is very filling. The history behind this meal is rather interesting and can be found here along with some representative photos. I ate mine before realizing that I should photograph it, so I have another reason to buy one the moment I get to England. The most interesting part of this Wikipedia entry is that they say a good pasty should be "strong enough to endure being dropped down a mine shaft." After eating one, I felt like I had swallowed something that came from a mineshaft. But it was delicious and fueled me for a whole day of walking around London and the British Museum.

Another thing I look forward to eating is Sunday Roast. I won't even try to describe it so here's a picture.England might not have the high-end cuisines the likes of Paris or San Francisco, but the Brits sure know comfort food. But it's at least three weeks away before I get to sample that fare again. Right now, about the closest thing I have in my fridge to British comfort food are two kinds of Branston pickle, one bottle of spreadable small chunk and one of regular chunk. I could make a cheese sandwich with it, but that hardly satisfies my craving for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or a turnover that could be used as a boat anchor. A warm, delicious, and filling boat anchor. Mmmm...boat anchor.

I guess I'm stuck with raw vegetables and a Primo beer. Again. And that's hardly a comfort at all.

Well, the Primo is somewhat comforting.

Hoa Hele goes to her first Race - but doesn't race.

Saturday marked the first Northern California Sprint Regatta in Sacramento at Lake Natoma and most of the NorCal canoe clubs showed up to sprint 500, 1000, and 2000 meters for medals and points for their respective clubs. I drove Rocinante and the Hoa Hele up into the central valley for a day of racing and fun. Since the races are on a relatively flat lake, it seemed a good place take the Hoa Hele to paddle around and get people re-acquainted with a classic 30-year-old racing canoe. (I hate using the word "vintage" when talking about anything other than wine. For example, when someone talks about vintage clothing, I can't help but think of a wine sommelier's uniform so I use "classic" which is better suited to objects and things.)Several people took the opportunity to take her out 0n the lake and everyone who paddled her remarked at how smooth and stable the Hoa Hele was. Some people had a hard time believing that it was a Kaiwi Challenger and wondered where I got a brand new one. I was thankful for all the compliments and felt glad that we were able to restore such a classic back to operational condition.
I was slated for a 500 meter open men's race so I took a few laps around the race course on the Hoa Hele to warm up. We'll be racing in Sacramento once again and I can't wait to go since I may race her.

London is just a few weeks away and I can't wait to go back. I'll be blogging from several places in England and will have plenty of photos of the Mongolian Charity Rally Launch on July 11th. Fiona leaves for Australia July 4th from The Goodwood Festival of Speed and you can catch her updates from her blog link at the left.

33 More Days Until I Leave for London, 36 Days Until Launch

There's little over a month left before I leave for London and I'm getting antsy already. I had quite an interesting time the last visit and I look forward to participating in the launch activities for the Mongolian Charity Rally on July 11th. I'm very much looking forward to meeting the rally participants going off to Mongolia this year. I'll be green with envy as I talk to the ralliers, but at the same time they provide a kind of vicarious motivation that will help me get through some of the roadblocks I have to face in the next year.

I've been helping Charity Rallies from my end here in California by trying to blag sponsorship from ferry companies that can take the ralliers across the English Channel to France. We have weekly phone conferences, that luckily for me, coincide with my lunchbreaks and they were nice enough to provide me a toll-free number so I wouldn't get busted at work for making 45-minute calls to England. My curious and somewhat obnoxious cubicle cellmate snapped this photo of me during lunch while I was chatting with the folks in the UK, after he started wondering why he was hearing British accents coming over my speakerphone. I flipped him off, started using my handset, and that's when he snapped the picture, threatening to show the boss a photo of me making an international call. Of course he was joking knowing full well that there was no way to prove from the photo that I was talking to people in England on the company dime.
One of the other things I look forward to doing when I get to the UK is grocery shopping. That's right, I plan to buy groceries while I'm there. Call me weird but one of the things I got hooked on is Branston Pickle, a kind of sweet pickle relish that I love spreading on sandwiches. For the longest time I couldn't find the stuff here in the US without going to a website to order the stuff, but since they opened the new Berkeley Bowl literally down the street from my work campus, I've been able to find it stocked along with other British foods like Aero Bars and, ahem, Spotted Dick. Look that one up, I don't feel like describing it in detail. They didn't have any haggis in a can, but that's OK. I'll still go shopping for groceries while I'm there in the UK, and I'll save a lot of weight for other things now that I can get Branston Pickle down the street.

Rocinante!

After having the Geo for more than 2 years and struggling with the task of christening her, I finally decided on a name rather spontaneously at the end of last Saturday's blog posting. I don't know why I didn't think of it before as I've made jokes to friends about how having the Hoa Hele on top of the Geo makes it look like I'm ready to joust windmills like Don Quixote. Maybe it was because I never had any real connection with Cervantes or his most famous novel, but after I ended Saturday's post, I remembered the name of Quixote's horse and that's when it struck me as the perfect name for the Geo.

I still don't have any real connection to Cervantes or a particular fondness for horses or even El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Well, I take that back. One of my first experiences with community theatre was a job as an usher for a production of Man of La Mancha. That was a lot of fun and I got to watch every show. Funny, I hadn't remembered that until this moment, but I digress. Actually my real heartfelt connection to Quixote's horse Rocinante is through my roots in Salinas and John Steinbeck.

For all the readers out there who have a love and familiarity of Steinbeck, you'll immediately know the significance of the name Rocinante. For the rest of my readers whose familiarity with Steinbeck is limited to having to read Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men for their 20th Century Literature class, Rocinante is the name that Steinbeck christened his GMC truck and camper shell for his travels around the United States. He took his trusty standard poodle canine companion, Charley, and together they rediscovered the US in 1960. His subsequent travelogue, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, is an engrossing time capsule of what America was like nearly 50 years ago. Of Rocinante, Steinbeck wrote that the GMC was “a beautiful thing, powerful and lithe.” Steinbeck also said Rocinante wasn't “mean” or “ugly-natured” like some cars he'd owned. Indeed, because of her “purring motor and perfect performance,” “because of her ready goodness,” he treated “her like the honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife,” and except for meticulous routine maintenance, he ignored her. Well, I don't know if I'll be ignoring my Rocinante, but every description Steinbeck used for his GMC can be said of the Geo.

Steinbeck also had the best quote regarding adventure:

"In time of peace in the modern world, if one is thoughtful and careful, it is rather more difficult to be killed or maimed in the outland places of the globe than it is in the streets of our great cities, but the atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure. However, your adventurer feels no gratification in crossing Market Street in San Francisco against the traffic. Instead he will go to a good deal of trouble and expense to get himself killed in the South Seas. In reputedly rough water, he will go in a canoe; he will invade deserts without adequate food and he will expose his tolerant and uninoculated blood to strange viruses. This is adventure.

Rocinante and Rocinante: aptly named.

Memorial Day Aboard the USS Hornet

Today is Memorial Day. I decided to spend it on the USS Hornet which is permanently docked here in Alalmeda. A recent Gallup Poll showed that only 28 percent of Americans know the meaning of Memorial Day. For me it's hard to understand why this percentage is low. I may take many things about my life for granted, but I also realize that this life many Americans and I currently enjoy came at a huge cost.

Inside the Hangar Deck, USS Hornet, CVS-12

For me, Memorial Day gives me a chance to reflect upon and remember the ultimate sacrifices made by the men and women in our armed forces. As a direct descendant of a World War 2 Veteran, I realize that if not for the sacrifices made by those during that war, I wouldn't even be here in the United States. The USS Hornet played a significant part in my family's history and ultimately the reason why my grandfather was granted US citizenship and immigrated to the United States.

65 years ago, the USS Hornet's aircraft supported the US invasion of Leyte and the eventual liberation of the Phillipines from Japanese occupation. While the US command was planning their attack to liberate Leyte, my grandfather, Fernando Adi, was a prisoner of war held by the Japanese after being captured after the Fall of Corregidor and the Battle of Bataan. He was a Phillipine Scout, one of many that had been under the command of Major General Edward P. King, Jr. After months of fighting the Japanese, King ordered they surrender, rather than starve to death fighting a futile battle. Despite being promised that his men would receive adequate treatment, the Japanese Imperial Army marched the 70,000 prisoners 65 miles to the prison camps, without food or water, slaughtering those that fell from the heat, thirst, and starvation. Civilians that tried to help the prisoners were also killed. My grandfather was one of the stronger men that made it to the prison camp, where their situation was only marginally better and Japanese Imperial Army atrocities continued. US troops liberated the prisoners of war, but not before more than half of the Phillipine Scouts and Filipino soldiers and two thirds of the American soldiers had died. My grandfather was one of the lucky that survived, and was granted US citizenship for his service with the United States Armed forces.
I wanted to pay my respects to those men who died in that horrible Death March, and to all the troops that have made sacrifices to ensure our freedom. We owe them a tremendous debt, and remembering them, and all our troops and veterans here and abroad, by attending the Memorial Day services aboard the USS Hornet, I hoped to acknowledge their sacrifices and give them and all our veterans the heartfelt and sincere thanks they deserve on this day.Thank you, all of you, you are not forgotten nor are your sacrifices.

The Geo Gets a New Windshield

Or "windscreen" as they'd say in the UK. Here in the US, a windscreen is the foam or fuzzy attachment on the business end of a microphone. Betcha didn't know that until now, did you?

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the two small star cracks on the left side of my windshield decided to branch up and down and meet each other. Not only did they meet, but they apparently had a few too many drinks and dared each other to see who would make it to the opposite side of the car first. Apparently the top star-shaped crack won because it continued across my windshield almost the entire width. The bottom star-shaped crack passed out early and only made it a quarter way. The top crack was perfectly aligned with my sight and I either had to crane my neck up or slouch so that it wouldn't interfere with my vision. Not only were these cracks annoying, they also posed a significant safety hazard. Aside from its obvious benefits - like protection from wind and road debris - my windshield plays a critical part of the Geo's safety. In fact, the windshield is classified as a safety device and is part of the Geo's structural safety system. In an accident, the undamaged windshield enables the passenger airbag to function properly and minimizes roof collapse. That is, if I had a passenger side airbag. I don't even have one on my side. Since my windshield was damaged and getting worse, it was time for a replacement.

After calling around to various places around the Bay Area, I found one vendor that was willing to come out on a Saturday and was reasonably priced. At 230 dollars, I was getting service at my door and didn't have to wait around at a shop to get a new windshield. When he was done with the installation, I was surprised at how much a difference a new windshield made. Everything outside was clear and bright and the annoying myriad of tiny bubbles in the old windshield that made things fuzzy was gone.

Most importantly I can now see with perfect clarity how far the Hoa Hele juts out in front of my car. Perhaps I should name the Geo Rocinante and start looking for windmills. In fact, from this moment forward, I'll refer to the Geo as the Rocinante. As a native of Steinbeck Country, I can't think of a more perfect name than that.