August...middle weekend...camping trip to Mann or Torruji

So 6 of us plan this camping trip, or try to.  There was a lot of talk, inner island relationship talk in the beginning.  It escalated a bit maybe, but not really.  It got complicated another way before the week was over, but completely worked itself out by the time Saturday came around.  Being vague in this blog is sometimes a great idea.....

So it all worked out.  We took 3 boats and 6 people Sunday morning at just after sunup, and headed up the lagoon to an island on the west reef.  I had planned on taking the Hobie Getaway, but the doldrums have arrived here in the Marshalls and the 2.5 horsepower back up motor would be a little time consuming to get to an island 17 miles away.

I'm not quite in the spirit of this at the moment, probably just drained from such great weekend...

Here's a pic...that explains it all....10 o'clock at night, everyone (else) is in their tents sleeping like they should be.  Jobe and I are out tossing a light up Frisbee in a fish trap...

Thank you Steve for setting up your gopro to catch us having fun....in the dark (yes it was pitch black)

August 13ish....

So, we did our usual Friday night Frisbee deal.  They have been really good lately, as opposed to the Monday games which are at 5pm (2hours from sunset) and way too hot.  At 6:30 its still too hot, but the sun is mostly gone by 7, and we turn the lights on by 7:30, and its a little nicer after dark.  The Indonesian battleship (?...it had guns) was at port.  Several of the "Wolf Pack" showed up saying they had invited the crew to come play Frisbee and at 7 there would be 15 guys from the ship there to play.  Ted told me he gave one of them our Ben Potter/Ted Shultz designed Kwaj Frisbee's and he thought it was a dinner plate.  It doesn't matter, we are Frisbee missionaries.  So, in the middle of the Friday night game, 14 Indonesian soccer players showed up to play ultimate Frisbee, well some of them were sold on the idea anyhow.  We had 8 on 8 before they got there, then we dumped half of our teams and took on 8 guys who really know how to laugh at themselves and realized we didn't care if they made mistakes.  Smiling, laughing people are just so much better to be around....I commend our guys for making sure every pass went to an Indonesian sailor.  NO one who plays ultimate the first time is any good at all.  They proved to be no exception, although for barely having seen a Frisbee they didn't do so bad.  Mostly it was just fun because they had the balls to try a completely new game and fail....and laugh at themselves.  A quality to emulate (mental note).

I'll add the random pictures tomorrow

July 29th...2016

Accidental hugging is  kind of a strange way to put it, but that's what happened to me last weekend.  Jenny is married to Fred I think.  She was one of the first people I talked to about kiteboarding out here.  She wasn't too positive with me about it because I had told her about my old kites.  The original kites were a bit dangerous and she was protecting her "turf".  "Turf" protection on Kwaj means protecting the sport you love, because if someone gets hurt doing said sport, the entire sport gets penalized....ie shut down.  I've been kiteboarding with Jenny a bunch of times last windy season.  She came in a different boat with different friends than me but we still shared the same area, but not often enough the same immediate area.  Long term people out here, strangely, keep a bit of a distance from other long term people out here for whatever rude thing one side or the other did back in the day, or kept doing.  So we'll go out to a well known sand bar and anchor just far enough away from the others that we can clearly see them, but just barely not hear them.  Weird.  I don't know their history.  Of course the ones I'm with are super nice, but the ones just out of range when I've talked to them are very nice too at least to me.  I don't know the history here though. 

The accidental hug, was one of those things where Jenny tapped my on the back, and I turned around for some reason with my arms open, which of course, left nothing else to do but hug her.  She had to have thought it was strange, I did.

7-27-16

Here's a link to a great article about the diving out here by Brandi.  http://www.uw360.asia/most-exciting-place-never-heard-of/

July 19, 2016

The possibilities are endless.  I will never be grateful enough about the life that has been handed to me.  I'm sore from surfing. 

In some year after 2000 in a month before Christmas when I delivered packages for UPS in a little brown box truck, I had a "driver's helper". He was this completely enthusiastic young guy, that asked me a question, that I knew when he asked me, that I wasn't the first person he asked and wouldn't be the last.  He had this shiny smile when he asked me that is kind of hard to forget.  Being a better writer would help describe the energy this kid had.  Maybe the question he asked could explain him and his smile and energy.  He asked me "what's the meaning of life?".  I don't remember my answer , but I do remember that I would never not remember his questioning life.  Questioning life is being grateful.  I'm grateful to be sore from surfing.  I'm also grateful you might not be weirded out with me posting this little thought tree.

June 21...maybe...

Monday....

Only 4 showed up for ultimate tonight.  A low turnout was expected, but only 4?  Then someone reminded me the Indonesian guys that have the ship in the harbor are playin soccer at the High School soccer field tonight with whatever Kwaj could throw at them.  I was going to go watch, but we were chuckin the Frisbee back and forth so much for so long I kind of gave up on it.  Their match started at 5:30 and we were done shortly after, but I was still heading back to "man camp".  Then I ran across a couple of the Indonesians, one was jogging and the other on a bicycle.  I asked them why they weren't playing soccer and they said they were heading to the game.  Someone wasn't up to speed on the location of the game, and that someone gave these two bad directions, they were heading to the downtown soccer field and not the High School soccer field, so I told them I would show them.  The one guy jogging didn't really say much. He was kind of busy jogging.  The guy on the nice road bike "Trek", with nice road tires and frame spoke great English.  I mentioned to them how they would probably kill the Kwaj team because they have been on that boat so long and are needing to run.  They replied "no we are fasting for the month".  I didn't know it was Ramadan.  They were in their early twenties, I'm fairly certain they were afraid of our overqualified (not) soccer team and offering excuses early on.  Short, lean, young,  tanned skin, more Asian in looks than the Marshallese and slightly lighter skinned.  When we arrived at the high school soccer field I asked them if they wanted some water.  I didn't know their fast included liquids.  So these guys got thru the day since sun up in 88 degree humid heat without water or food and headed off to play soccer.  Great guys....it showed in their sportsmanship.  Muslims.  People (Amerkan) are just plain ignorant(and yes the word ignorant was chosen above stupid, because its lack of knowledge and experience not lack of intelligence that drives the....hmm ignorance. 

After seeing these guys, I wonder if the Marshallese didn't get up and sail both east and west.  You can see the Marshallese in the Indonesians and in the Hawaiin's ....it doesn't look like they made it to California though.

June 17, 2016....

So........never having lived outside of the county I grew up in stepping out of a plane into the hot humid air on Kwajalein was a unique experience.  There were people in Honolulu at the airport that I remembered their faces later after I knew their roles on the island.  Our project manager from San Juan Construction was coming back from "R and R", but he was just a face on the plane that I remembered later.  There were a few like that.  You see them a few weeks later on the island doing whatever, and remember their faces on the plane.  A few you kind of bond with because it's all so new.  There was one guy, tall, a bit older, quiet, but he had a hard hat attached to his back pack on the plane.  I assumed he was here for the same construction project I was.  I had no clue what exactly his role was when I saw him in the huge cafeteria.  He looked too smart to be just another construction worker, he was obviously leader of some steel workers deal I thought.  We stayed in the "Kwaj Lodge" for the first few or three months out here until the man camp deal got finished.  I passed Gary in the stairs a few times and saw him alone in the cafeteria always reading a book by himself while eating.  I could tell he was smart.  He was one of the first ones to show up to Frisbee after I got the people in power to advertise it on the "Roller".  Its one of the local TV stations that puts up local events for the island.  Gary always thru the Frisbee well.  He was the only one who used the "Dad" throw.  He kind of looked like a guy who might throw it old school.  He threw it well that way.  That part wasn't so impressive.  What was impressive about that guy, and I talk about him like he died, but he's only just leaving the island for better things, the impressive thing about Gary was that he had all the traits I aimed for in myself.  Sportsmanship is the main one.  I learned later and dealt with him a bit at work because he was our clients' Project Manager, that he carried himself the same calm unwaveringly solid way he did at Frisbee in spite of the ridiculousness of moments presented.  Thanks for the hug before you left Gary...you are a great guy!