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

Captain Liz....Master Captain.

6-3-17?

Liz has been out here for awhile.  She took a break for a year and has now returned to take care of the islands hair.  I  always had some idea she was originally Australian, because she has dreadlocks, tattoos, and a look that for some reason gave me that impression.  There is no accent though, probably because she's from Iowa.  She's somewhere between 30 and 40, quiet enough to make you realize she's smart and capable = able to handle herself in situations that many others wouldn't.  The first year here she punched some idiot in the face. (please refer back to earlier journal entries) He completely deserved it, and was kicked off the island shortly after.  Maybe that "capable" adjective came partly from that.

We went sailing Sunday.  I had asked her a week before and the weather looked like it could be good.  The forecasts here, especially for the wind, are worthless more than two days out.  Saturday afternoon showed 21mph winds from the north east.  Saturday evening showed 16mph from the same direction.  The second forecast was much more conducive to sailing, especially sailing to the west reef islands.

We left around ten am.  The "float plan" that I turned in Saturday evening changed Sunday morning.  The east reef looked less appealing due to the wind direction, so we headed to the west reef as I had originally planned in my head.  The problem with the west reef island is that the winds blow directly at them, well at an angle.  The catamarans love sailing with the wind at their side nearly perpendicular.  They travel the quickest when the wind is "beam reach", the sailing term for the wind hitting the boat perpendicular to the length of the boat.

Sailing up the east reef means sailing up the leeward side of the causeway, all nice and protected by the wind.  It's best with direct east winds regardless of wind speed.  I say "regardless of wind speed" because the wind out here is normally not very strong at its strongest.  30 mph is heavy winds here with a few exceptions.  If the winds are too much northeast it leaves you making a bunch of stretchy "Z" patterns trying to go up the causeway.

So instead of stitching up the east reef in what would have been mostly calmer waters, we headed in a straight line to the third island up on the west reef.  It gets choppy over there on those islands in the lagoon side because there is 4 to 10 miles of open water that the wind has the chance to mess up.  The island I had been to before and thought I was returning to again was the 4th island up the west reef.  It had some coral heads but a big sandy beach.  The island we got to didn't have a sandy beach on the lagoon side.  It had big ugly coral heads and softball size rocks as a beach.

We got there, in 3 foot chop, maybe four.  Liz was driving the whole time, and it was a great trip.  She continued to do a great job driving when we approached the island and she headed the boat up wind to stop it about 100 ft off shore in terrible waves.  I chucked the anchor anyhow.  The anchor caught and that part was good, but we were getting rocked in the boat.  There was no grabbing our stuff (her awesome sandwiches) and swimming to shore.  It was just way too rough with the boat jumping up and down there was no way I could relax on shore knowing something would break on that boat before sending it into the rocks and coral head directly behind it.  It was a mutual decision to pull anchor and leave to a calmer spot.  The problem is the anchor didn't want to come free.  It was only twelve feet of water so that part wasn't a big deal.  The anchor was holding still after several attempts of me pulling the boat forward enough to be on top of it to be in the best place to dislodge it.  The little boat was bouncing so hard in the bow I was being so careful not to get my fingers tied into the rope too much because the whole pain thing.  After realizing the anchor wasn't going to come lose from me just yanking, I sat back a little to gather my thoughts and Liz says we should use the motor to try and get in front of the anchor and pull it from that spot.  At that point starting the motor was a great idea, that I was about to come up with before she stole it.  We tried a half a dozen times to run over the anchor and pull it out from that angle, but it was fruitless.  I kept having thoughts that ..wow she's doing a great job of steering and working the motor from back there.  She just knew what to do, or it seemed so from my vantage point, which was not looking back at her.  I'd have to say she never really got the boat, or at least the bow, very far in front of the anchor, but it wasn't her fault for trying.  The waves were so big the motor was out of the water half the time so it couldn't push forward.

I made the decision, quickly, before Captain Liz did, that I had to go dislodge the anchor.  The idea was to snorkel down pull the boat forward enough and put the anchor in a place where it would still hold, but that it could still be pulled from above at the right angle.  I put the snorkel mask on, and had thoughts of just diving in without the fins, but Liz, Captain Liz, suggested using them.  I was going to use them, I just had thoughts of not.

It's weird how all that violence and stress can be happening above the water, then you dive in and its this beautiful calm place.

Liz had asked me before I went in if the anchor line would hold, because she thought we had gotten closer to shore.  Actually closer to the big coral head directly 50 ft behind us.  I told her we have not gotten closer.  The weak link in my anchoring deal was this rope tied to either side of the bows of the catamaran so it would end up in a "V" shape to tie the anchor line to.  They were ...well lets just say it was a really pretty tie job using smaller kite line to tie it on either side.  Then there was this "Danik" hook I bought offline that was hooked to the middle of the "V" line.

So, when I went snorkeling, after looking at the situation from the top of the water for a bit, I decided to dive down and do something.  As I made it do the bottom by the anchor, I looked back and saw the "Danik" hook sinking with the line behind it.  NOT GOOD

I came to the surface to see what was going on and before I got the visual, I heard the little 2.5hp motor revving up.  That was a good sound.  The visual comes in and Liz is driving the boat mostly parallel to the island but out a bit and south away from me.  I waved to the boat as it headed away from me as a little inside joke.  The main sail was not connected and flapped in the wind. The jib was still connected though.  The boat did wheelies.  I was impressed totally.  She was driving the boat away from shore with all kinds of chaos going on.  Sails flapping, waves smashing, the shore nearly a stones throw away, a motor that was in and out of the water too much and I think she had just learned to steer the boat that day.   I was soo worried the motor might quit.

I had to stop being impressed with her and do the stuff I had to do if she came back for me.  I dove down and wrestled the anchor free, then got back to the surface.   I was pulling in the rest of the anchor rode quickly to keep it out of the prop that I hoped would be heading back my way when I surfaced. I was rooting for her!!  It was like, well if the boat gets all smashed up no biggie, it was all my dumb idea.....but Liz was heading back my way however the wind was blowing her into the island.  Her head moved around a lot, but she figured it out, she kept cool except for that little moment when the motor turned, and the wind and the rudders acted against her...wait she kept her cool then too.  She steered the boat again back south and this time she headed much further out.  I swam directly away from shore knowing she'd be coming back.  I had 150ft of 3/8" anchor line and ten feet of chain with a five pound anchor when she got back to me.

I swam at the bow and chucked all the rope and anchor up on the front trampoline.

She did really good.

No pictures though....we were busy!

So its been a while.....5-30-17

I surfed.  Friday night for 1.5 hours.  Saturday night for 2 hours.  Sunday morning starting at 6 am for 2 hours.  Sunday evening, after sailing in the Hobie for 6 hours, 2.5 hours.  Monday morning at 6 am for 2 more hours.

Learning to surf was so far off my radar for so long.  I just never thought of being in a place to learn.  Never thought of being so fortunate.  Not only now am I in this place where I can learn, I'm in good enough shape to learn, and if you've read any of the rest of this journal/blog you would know its the hardest thing I've ever done.

On a side note....when I came back from surfing Saturday evening in the work truck in my shorts around 6:30pm,  I parked the work truck at the man camp.  When I got out to walk to my miniature apartment two Marshallese guys were leaving someone else's apartment and saw me.  They asked me for a ride to the dock/ checkpoint.  It was raining and had been since 3pm.  The safety guy came out and said he couldn't take them because he had been drinking.  Abi and the other guy whose name I can't remember had been drinking too.  Abi kept saying stuff like "Ben ...you are batch plant boss, bring me to batch plant, I want to work for you, I respect you" to which I replied "I'm not the batch plant boss, I'm just putting it together for James" Abi denies me that I am the boss several times and tells me to promise him I will bring him out there.

On Kwaj, especially lately, you are not allowed to use work (government property) vehicles for personal use.  So I knew taking them up there would probably earn me a ticket and possibly a driving suspension from San Juan, but it was raining, and I love the Marshallese guys.

Halfway back near dusk the rear view mirror showed headlights.  It had to be the cops.  I was only a half mile from the man camp where I could hide truck amongst the others and duck into my place before they would know who was driving.  A half mile at fifteen miles an hour, the islands top speed limit, is an eternity to get thru.  I sped up to 40mph.  It was risky.  I made it.  I saw the little square cop suv drive past.....

Next time copper....next time!!


Ok, so that was a long side note..

The thought that originally started this thought was Guiness, the great dane I had the pleasure of being best friends with for 11 years.  When she was 4 she would run like a gazelle for an hour, then rest for half a day.  When she was12 she would run like a gazelle for two minutes then rest for several days.  I seem to be her at 12.  The surfing wiped me out.  I spent much of the latter half of Memorial Day weekend chilling like Guiness.

I started wearing the high visibility orange shirts after the 4 or 5 guys got lost Oceanside for 5 hours.

Apparently, I'm not worried about the advertising space of my forehead getting sunburnt.  This picture was taken by Chris Rice...thank you

This is a church on Ebeye.  Bilwa told me it took 3 guys seven years to build it.

so we can get pretty close to things with my Hobie....I do love sailing by Ebeye with it

Patrick and Tom's boat ...the Geneva.

This picture taken by Steve Davis....shows the size of waves I love out here.  Too much bigger and its scary.  I didn't really catch this one right and ended up riding the white water as opposed to turning right.and heading down the face of the wave

Kiteboarding at Bigej......beautiful place...

Bigej....around 40 folks live here.  great people.  

Bilwa has the best laugh

Bilba......and that's not his name.....

Today, he starts telling me about how one of our new safety guys approached one of the guys (not sure if he was "rebelle" (white guy) or Marshallese.  It's probably not important to the story any how.  The important part is that he was a KRS employee.  KRS is the "king" on Kwaj as Bilba put it.  They are the military contractor that runs the island, and has run the island for quite a while.  KRS = Kwajalein Range Services.  They may be based out of Georgia.

So to set this up better, there are 10 or so San Juan guys working downwind of some old Kwaj housing units.  At the industrial boat dock on the industrial side of the island. They are basically mobile homes, made in the fifties or sixties.  They called them at the time "Silver City" because there were a slew of them together located lagoon side on Kwaj, and they are covered in galvanized/silver tin. They are now kind of dispersed on Kwaj, and a few are halfway up the "causeway" .  The "Causeway" is the 5 or so islands north of Ebeye.  Shell, North Shell, Loi, and a few other islands I can't remember make up the "Causeway" that extends ten miles north of Ebeye.

The San Juan guys, working "hard" to get things together for the next barge at the more industrial boat ramp that has some acronym name that I can't recall, are doing their thing when the KRS guys start doing something to the "silver city" trailers.

I wasn't personally there for this, and it may be totally a moment where you "had to be there", but Bilba's laugh, as he finished the story has led me to this post.  So Bilba (still not his real name, and not sure why I feel I need to protect his real name, except that his laugh  was soo loud and so extended it deserves to get him fired...not really...but it was great).  A friend told me "that's all the Marshallese have left is to laugh".  That part is kind of sad, but its true, and they certainly do laugh.

So Bilso explains to me how the safety guy approaches the KRS workers, chest puffed, and declares "hey you guys can't do that while we are here working, those things are full of asbestos and we are downwind working"...."I'm the safety guy for San Juan, you have to stop doing that".  So the guy says "ok, I'll be back".  He comes back a bit later with the bigger KRS guy who says "you're absolutely right, these trailers do have asbestos in them and you are down wind, YOU guys have to move................