PohnPei, Micronesia....

Its a stopping point on the way east from Kwajalein, on the United Airlines flight they call the "Island hopper".  United flights 154 or 155 depending on the day and direction of the flight, are on a 737, a plane with an aisle in the middle and 3 seats on each side.  On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays it leaves Honolulu and makes stops on Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrei, PohnPei, Chuuk, and finally staying on Guam.  Going in either direction you can usually "deplane" and go to each islands airport for 30 to 40 minutes or so and have a beer, or some fish jerky on all the islands except Kwajalein.  Sometimes they make half the plane leave for a security sweep.

The first time flying east from Kwaj, and going into Pohnpei, the island gave the impression of maybe ten miles in diameter with a barrier reef.  This time, as the plane flew by some island with a little tiny runway, I used the runway to estimate the size of the island.  Of course this couldn't be Pohnpei, and THAT couldn't be a runway big enough for a plane this size to land on.  It looked to me like some private island that someone built a runway on the reef.  The plane slowly turned and headed back to that little strip. So it was Pohnpei. Somewhere along the way it was said that Kosrae has the shortest runway possible for a 737, and that the plane often has to "take off" again after touching down too far down the runway to make a safe stop possible.  The runway on Pohnpei is not much longer.

Using the runway as a gauge, the island has to be around a hundred miles long. It will be interesting to see how close that guess is, as the island looked about a hundred times the runway in length.  Compared to Kwajalein, its a HUGE island, both tall (2800 feet) and in terms of square miles.

Its a newly found world class surfing destination with no real backbone of logistics to support it.  This time of year, also, isn't good for big waves either.  That all worked on my behalf as I am in no way capable of any "world class" waves, although my level of stupidity would not have stopped me from (read: drowning or getting crushed on a reef) trying.

Its not an easy place to figure out.  My lack of world travelling probably hasn't helped.  Most speak varying degrees of English.  Most people don't walk or ride bikes, cars seem to be the way to go.  Its hard to walk around in Kolonia, you get asked for a ride from a "taxi", or maybe just foreigners do.  Kolonia, not the capital, but the town, is the only "town" on the island.  Most would assume its the "capital" of Pohnpei, but as a cab driver showed me, the "capital" is a set of newly built modern buildings with housing nearby, about 5 miles from the "town" (/Kolonia).  The "Capital" reminded me of the whole chick with the bow and arrow movie....asparagus....oh...MockingJay.  Anyhow, it was very close to the "College of Micronesia".  Maybe a mile away.  Strange set up.

A little closer now, it still doesn't look like a quarter of the state of Ohio....but I think it is.

The yellow line is a road around the island.  The barrier reef is the outermost deal there and you can see the interior lagoons.  

Now you can barely see the runway at the top of this picture.  The runway has to be a mile long, so maybe the island is only 50 miles in diameter.  

Grateful......8-19-17

I rarely post anything on facebook.  I do look at it, way too much and I need to stop.  Its full of bad news, or maybe that's just what I look for.  Passing by the posts from people who have crossed my path enough in life to become a "facebook friend".  Of course many have been in my life since childhood or birth, relatives, cousins, aunts, etc....I look for the bad news from the states and the new "President".

Tonight I posted simply "Never thought I'd be living this life (just being happy and grateful)".  Waking up this morning at 5 am on the last day of my employment and deployment with San Juan Construction on Kwajalein, the cleaning began.  It's been a very very long time since moving from a place that wasn't mine.  Fortunately, along the way, there have been a few rare people who have demonstrated class as tenants, and as just friends borrowing things.  Jacob Dehues, a former tenant of mine, left the lease early, and left the place spotless.  That was probably twenty years ago, but it left a mark in my head.  Then there is Marty Brown, best guy in the world, who borrowed stuff from me occasionally, but always returned it in better shape than when he received it.

It wasn't only those two who motivated the cleaning this morning, they were just the largest influence.  Loni, James, or now Myra were left to the task of cleaning the man camp units after guys (mostly) left.  Knowing James and Loni was another small part of the motivational cleaning.  I wanted to make sure they didn't have to do anything, but let someone move in to my space.

I've never moved out of a place (that wasn't mine) and packed for "vacation" in the same 5 hour period.  It was a bit stressful, despite having done what was supposed to be the majority of the work before hand.

POHNPEI.  Its in the FSM.  The two capitalized words there were two places not in my head, my  geographical arena, or my vocabulary until taking the job with San Juan Construction on Kwajalein.  Now, sitting in a hotel, on Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.

How the hell could my life be any better!?  Yea, there is always better, and there is always worse....but the best imagined life in my head didn't take things here, or where I've been for the past few years.

KUDOS to you life  THANK YOU!!

August 15th - bugs on Kwaj....

So the insects here are not much of a bother to us as humans.  Its not like some south American rain forest deal where I seem to have the mistaken impression there are poisonous bugs everywhere.

The flies here are bad, as I've stated before some time back.  Having an outdoor food oriented event before sundown is seemingly the highlight of a flies' life on Kwaj.  Food gets swarmed with the little speedy, non biting flies.  Its a non stop battle to keep them off the food.  Wait a few hours, until the sun goes down and there will not be a fly present.  Everyone who has spent a month out here knows this.

Cockroaches are here, but not as expectedly visible as one might think given the warmth of the air and all.  I had one in the first residence they provided for me on Kwaj, for the Space Fence project.  I can't speak for all the other contractors in that mancamp, but apparently San Juan hires a special bread of whiny folks, or the HR department is THAT good, but they paid us an extra 25$ a day if our little tiny small 4 person unit exceeded 2 people.  We (James and I) did eventually get a third person....however, before that happened we were fairly certain the giant cockroach we named "Fred" would warrant "room mate pay".  He was big, not that we had the kahoonas to catch him to check its genitals to see he was a "he", but he was the largest cockroach either of us had ever seen.  I had no idea they could fly.  I discovered this one day when Fred was on the bed of the room mate I never had.  My kiteboarding gear was on that bed, and I was messing with it when Fred charged me from out of the blue.  To someone outside of this scene comparing a being weighing nearly 200 pounds being at war with a "being" (read brown monster from hell) weighing only 4 pounds, seems ridiculous.  The big guy should just smash the small guy.  Sometimes life isn't so simple, especially when the little brown guy can fly.  I nearly knocked myself out on the cheap furniture provided in the room.  Ok, so that was a little dig...it could have been really expensive furniture that my head hit.  My head hit the corner of the glued sawdust cabinet with a cheap wood colored veneer.  There was no blood.

James killed Fred a few days later while sitting on the toilet and smashing him with a flip flop.  We had to borrow a power washer to clean up the mess.

So ants.....there area few variety of those out here.......

I have to go to sleep, but let me try and spell out the fire ants here.

Friday night is the night we play ultimate (frisbee).  Liz comes out, and immediately gets 5 scores of fire ants on her shoes and legs.  I'll be honest, and say that I kind of dismissed it as a one time deal.  It wasn't.  It happened to her a few more times before I walked or ran across a penchant of them.  It's really hard to believe you can walk across a little colony of ants an end up with a  hundred of them biting your leg.  Ants on cocaine.

Ants on cocaine that bite.

so...its been a while....8-12 or so-2017

I've gotten a little busy with life out here.  Its an incredibly easy place to get busy and forget a few things.  In the Philippines life was a little less complicated by having extra discretional time to live life.  While that sounds all pathetic for them, it wasn't.  They have hard lives, just like we do, surrounded by lack of money.  Many of them aren't television watchers, so they don't get sold on some life they shouldn't be striving to live in the first place like Americans are.  In our view, without much thought or reflection on our American lives, they appear as poor.  Same as the Marshallese.

They just love each other.  Family or second family, or not, they love and share and take care of each other.  TV or not, they get together and share, and laugh.  Mostly they are just together, and enjoy each other.

I've got so much to learn from them.  We all do.

I can now say I've been in many places.  I now feel mostly "well traveled".  Of course that's relative.

The point to that last sentence is that....well.....civilization .......has a long way to go