#and miles ahead of the train wrecks of seasons 2 and 3

[simptasia]

i like heroes season 4 because i got to launch the words "oh this is from when sylar had amnesia and was living in a carnival" at my friend without her having any way of being prepared for that

[sailing-elitsha]

Hallelujah

Thinking about a header for this report I am struggling, it’s from boring because of no wind from all directions in the doldrums, over: exited to come closer to the Amazon river, over: we saw Neptune, over: not being sure if we can do this up to total exhaustion. We have been so tired that we could not even show excitement and joy anymore by our safe arrival in Paramaribo, after a very difficult 11 days stretch.  Let me first write everything down and see which heading we will choose.

Very quiet Dick said, “I saw you praying with your hands folded.” “Yes, I did that.” Whoever up in heaven, the universe or wherever feels I could have meant him or her: Thank you. Dick agreed.

Towards the end of this stretch, we could not think straight anymore, did not sleep because of the funny moves, Elitsha made, encouraged by Jip and Janneke, and the waves. Sometimes we really heeled onto our side after sliding down steep waves or swell. Realistically and objectively, there was no real danger, but at times it felt differently. Elitsha did a great job.  And let’s be honest, while in a force 8, in gusts 45 knots on our wind vane at sea with a currant of 3,5 knots, 12 knots showing on our log, knowing shore was close even though you do not see a thing and to sail in a river mouth with low tide, you make one wrong move……… everything can happen. But we did not make a wrong move. Dick knows what he is doing, and I am not too bad a sailor too.  Most importantly: when I was losing it and panicked there was Dick for me and when Dick was tired and miserable, I was there for him: Interesting self-studies of a relationship therapist, I am telling you. Do not do this if you don’t have a good relationship. But if you have good relationship, this is so special and amazing to go through together.

And… perhaps or most probably, this is normal and not a big thing for cruisers on an ocean crossing, but for us as beginning cruisers, it was a big thing. The challenge was, that for the last 4 days we hardly found a longer stretch of sleep than 1 or 2 hours and that breaks you at the end. That was, I think, the reason why we were desperate to arrive and stay somewhere for a while.  

But let’s start at the beginning:

We started relaxed after leaving Fernado de Norunha. Although, sailing without wind is never relaxing. You are looking for wind all the times, changing your sails and finally if you can’t stand the slapping of the beams and sails anymore you start the motor and you get annoyed by the noise of he motor and the fact that you are a sailing boat and not sailing……all of those things. Fortaleza just didn’t want to come closer, and Suriname seemed unreachable far for us. The promise was that we at least will find the strong current which would push us along from Fortaleza to the Amazon delta and Suriname.

On the 8th of Mai at 2.23pm Brasilia time we saw Neptune and served him an Oude Jenever. He seemed to like it. We originally wanted to go and swim with Neptune but just at that time Neptune on his turn treated us with some wind and we made 7 knots: 3 of them from the current. But in the doldrums, you are happy with everything what moves you along. Anyway, he (Neptune) had to do it with the Jenever, and we kept on sailing.

Just before the Amazon river at the end of day 6 of 11 it started blowing. Yeah!!!!!!!! 180 miles a day and no motor anymore. That’s great. Forecast: 12-15 knots with gusts of 20 knot. Lovely!!!!! From late afternoon of day 7 the constant wind was 32 and the gusts up to 40, RAIN and it started with a close-by lightening flash and a thunder clap. And that carried on till close to Paramaribo. The funniest: Nothing of all was forecasted on the Iridium weather report: as I said: ENE wind 12 – 15 knots, gusts of 20 knots and some possible thundershowers, but in our case they were not gusts any more, but constant hard wind 30 knots plus for 3-4 days in a row. The Amazon, even we passed him on a big respectable distance, and later the Suriname river brought trees down to the sea. You had to have your eyes everywhere. A whale, a humpback, close to the Amazon, just next to Elitsha, I saw him thinking: you are here and not in Africa? (we see whales in Hout Bay on a regular base), that close he was. For weeks we didn’t see more than a handful ships. They were huge, okay, but we saw them on AIS far before we could see them in real. Now there were lots of fisher boats around who didn’t feel like using AIS (they don’t want to be seen by their colleagues), tankers from Venezuela who switch on AIS only last minute, and this all at night, without moon and stars assisting…...and then………..always this “gale wind”, waves and massive swell.  Another thing made us nervous: the “shallow” water.  After having sailed for month now in blue water, REALLY blue water of 4 000, 5 000 meters deep, we suddenly sailed up the plateau of the South American Continent: only 200 meters of depth. You should think: That’s deep enough, Sylke. Yes, but it’s just what you are used to, right?! And we were used to 4000 to 5000 meters. The water was green, closer to Suriname, when we had no more than 20 meters it was yellowish. The Amazonas brought trees with big branches and fields of green-brownish weed, leaves…. and always the strong wind, the rain and thundershowers and you can’t step out of this train or leave the movie……you have to hang in there. This paired with not sleeping and being exhausted and Navionics giving us problems at this very moment, we saw the lights of French Guyana as the lights of Suriname (same character) and panicked that we would have passed Paramaribo already. After having struck sails and heading Elitsha into the wind, to check out if we are right or wrong, we finally followed our way towards Suriname with only the Genua, which was still fast enough. Holger, one of our shore captains confirmed, that we have the entrance of the Suriname river 20 mile ahead and not behind us. Ufff, what a relief. We still didn’t see land………. only 60, 50, 40, 30 foot of water under Elitsha, no entrance buoy in sight…….  Via radio we got in touch with  MAS ( Suriname Harbour authorities). Anneke, our other shore captain, had arrange contact and allowance with them already. In times of Corona regulations this is essential. You can’t just go to a harbour. Everything has to be pre-arranged. When we called MAS, to ask if we were somewhere close to the entrance buoy of the river mouth, a deep voice in Dutch with a heavy Surinam’s accent answered: “ik zie jullie on AIS.” YES!!!!!!!!!!! Eventually, we saw not the entrance buoy, but the first green buoy and shared this” achievement” with him. His dry and short reaction: “Mevrouw, u bent op de goede weg!!!!!” (“Lady, you are on the right way”). Not more and not less, but it was like music to our ears. It was low tide and our echo sounder told us, 20, 10 and then 9,60 foot. Elitsha needs at least 5,50 foot of water to float. We motor sailed (to be more controllable). Still 30 knots of wind, rain, and buoys not visible all the time. On the river we almost got stuck twice in the mud: 6 foot on the depth sounder. We were blessed to have sailed for years on the Dutch Waddenzee. This was very similar. The only difference: ELITSHA is not a flatbottom with leeboards.  It looked exactly like you sail from the Stortemelk into the Schuitegat towards Terschelling with low tide and it felt exactly like that.

I could tell you more about my fear of sailing over the many wrecks alongside of the coast, our chart showed us and Dick’s fear of hitting ground in the bottom of the waves (that’s why he looked for more shallow water without swell and waves), about comforting and encouraging each other that we will make it, that the fishermen would look out, that 30 - 40 knots of wind is actually not that bad and we are not in real danger but that we just needed some sleep and rest, after 2 antibiotic courses and, and………  And then we just arrived……just like that!!!! We picked a mooring buoy, made the dingy ready to go and went ashore. I did not eat for 4 days, actually ate the other way round (if you know what I mean). In the bar of the Marina, where everybody welcomed us, we ate and drank because we felt, we must celebrate. But the feeling was not there like in St Helena and Fernando. We went back to our brave ELITSHA and slept like we got paid for it. The next day we celebrated full time. We ate the whole day, talked to everybody who came across. We did 5 washes in the Marinas washing machine, had I don’t know how many showers and Elitsha got a very good clean up: you don’t want to know how it looked like inside her: flour everywhere, everything everywhere and because of the salt water everything was sticky, wet and just ick.

Now we have a fruit bowl and candles on the table, new sheets on our beds, nothing moves, and we can just move without getting thrown into one of the corners of the ship, fall of the toilet and stuff like that. Okay its rainy season and if it rains, it REALY RAINS, buckets of water coming down, but that is not such a problem: cleans the boat and fills the water tank. A bar with nice music and good food where you meet nice and friendly people, a shower, free internet: that is what we were craving for.  We are on the Suriname river in Domburg, close to Paramaribo. We hear the howler monkeys on the other side of the river, where it’s already  pure jungle. I am telling you, it’s REAL heaven.

I remember from the old days of sailing in Holland: the feeling of arriving after a tough stretch in bad weather and under poor conditions is unbeatable. Leaving under difficult condition makes you nervous, hanging in it, you just do what you must do, and arriving is heaven.

Wednesday we will go for the stamp in our passports and on Friday we will sail with ELITSHA  70 miles down the river to meet caiman, anaconda, howler monkey and jaguar in the real jungle. No Sonny and Crocked anymore, Dick as Tanzan and I will be Jane.

………to be continued.

[jwood719]

Points West and Devils Tower - The Sand Hills of Nebraska.

Some time in June of 2017 I thought “I haven’t seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind in, like, years.”  Watching again was mixture of nostalgia trip, child-like fascination, and inspiration.  Much of the first half of the film is set in and around Muncie, Indiana, only a couple of hours from Lafayette and easy enough to visit; Devils Tower is rather farther away (to put it mildly), but I decided it was worth a journey.  In July, I made those trips.

Omaha: multiple lanes and lots of “zoned commercial.”

The second day on the road to Devils Tower came cool - and overcast.  Le sigh.  I wasn’t going to complain about the temperature.  When I arrived in Omaha the evening before, the heat index was 105 degrees, so waking to around 70 was really nice.  The thought of shooting under cloudy skies, though - argh!  Oh, well, nothing to do but do it.  I had miles to go (more miles than I thought as it happened) before I stopped.  Rapid City was hours away.

All the national chains?  Pretty close.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the contrast between Omaha and the Sand Hills would be pretty profound, and I was right.  I shot these first few photos as I followed state highways out of the city and into the rural lands.  Instead of driving down I-80 to Grand Island and picking up Nebraska 2 - The Sand Hills Scenic Byway - I struck out west on Nebraska 92, which ran right by my motor hotel.

The municipality did cease pretty quickly though.  There were a few out-lying newer subdivisions but the suburban, or more-like “ex-urban” area was a fairly narrow band, at least to the west (below).

Yep, they’re building out.

NE 92 intersects with NE 2 at Ansley, shy of half-way across the state.  I’d had enough of Interstates the day before, so I liked the idea of the local roads. After making a hundred miles or so and with no trailing traffic to be concerned about, I turned right off of NE 92 and drove north about a half-mile.  I found that I was already in the sandy hills, even though I don’t know if it was the Sand Hills.

(Above and below)  Well, that is, after all, sand under the grasses.  With a bull, too (the cows were under a tree elsewhere).  In the vicinity of Archer, I think.  Yes, the bull let out a few bellows.  Just like you’d expect.

Prior to this, the lands, while hilly, still resembled much of the agricultural lands I’m pretty familiar with: old farm houses, mobile irrigation, row upon row of green growing commodity.  Now, I saw, that the farms were, a few acres at a time, giving way to the ranches, with more and more cattle as the plowed lands decreased in frequency.

These scenes (above) were between Farwell and Ashton.  Past Ashton the landscape would be different: the farming would be relegated to wash plains near creeks and rivers, while the highlands were nearly all cattle lands.

West of Loup City about 9 miles was this “classic scene” of The West (above).  I actually did a “double take.”   Seriously - these views actually exist?  With cows across the road, of course (below): 

From Loup City onward, after joining the Scenic Byway, the farmed lands were not only in the wash plains, they were also mostly immediately about a town (below):

(Above) Contemporary America: just on the west outskirts of Ansley.

(Above) West of Anselmo, some more than two hundred miles west of Omaha, and this is really The Sand Hills.  From here on, there would be very notably less farmed land - indeed, miles passed with nothing but grassy hills beyond grassy hills.  

(Above) In the vicinity of the Nebraska National Forest, the Middle Loup River provides a flatter “bottom” through which road and rail passes.  On those rails I would count 6 of the mile-plus long coal trains: two engines to the fore, one to the rear (as below).

As would be the case out on these highways and byways, I had to keep telling myself to “keep going.”  Rapid City wasn’t going anywhere, but if I kept stopping to shoot photos, I wouldn’t get any nearer, either.  Ah, but that would become something to smile about soon.  Y’know, when you can laugh or cry, so you may as well laugh?  Yeah, like that.

(Above) Across the Middle Loup: a major “blow out.”

About 7 miles west of Thedford,  NE 2 left the Middle Loup River bottom, and covered several miles just in the hills.  Between Thedford and Seneca, I paused a couple of times near the entries to cattle ranches to take in the view (above and below).

Then: Laugh or Cry it’s Orange Cone Season! (above). Maybe 6 miles west of Mullen, I fetched up against the first work zone.  “FLAGGER AHEAD” was a guy with a STOP/SLOW sign and a cooler.  I was the first one to arrive this cycle - and cycle it is: after about 10 minutes of sitting, with 7 or 8 more vehicles behind, a "pilot car” showed up at the head of a stack of east-bound traffic.

The work zone was a 2- or 3-mile-long section of restricted highway; the pilot car kept the speed down to about 45 MPH until, toward the middle of the zone, we actually passed where the road work was being done.  The pilot car slowed, changed lanes, and everyone followed until we passed the flagman at the other end.

Then we all sped back up to the speed limit (65 MPH! Whee!) but after another 3 miles, there was another work zone, with another flagman, and another pilot car.  Which, after passing through those 3 or so miles (may have been less, I really don’t know) we sped back up --

-- for about 2 miles when were brought to a stop by a flagman in the turn-out clothes of a fireman.  What now?  Another half-mile on down, there was a cluster of vehicles with flashing lights going, and a fire service pickup was making a detour on local roads, with the firemen conferring between themselves at intervals.  

(Above) While waiting: take a photograph of the local color.

The fireman with the STOP sign eventually wandered over and told me that there was a truck off the road ahead.  It had apparently slid, lost its back wheels in the ditch, and the whole thing went over.  I don’t know that it was a semi; the fireman remarked that it was “middle sized,” so maybe a long box truck?  But it was carrying cattle, and the recovery crews needed to remove the bodies of the driver and the cows.

Whoof.

After some 15 minutes (maybe more, maybe less, I honestly wasn’t watching the clock) a fire supervisor approached and told me that it would be maybe 2 hours before they got the wreck cleared enough to allow traffic to pass - if I wanted to detour.  Hmm, yeah, thanks, and good luck.  I turned around.

In blue: about 300 miles of west-bound travel, and about 75 miles short of Alliance.  I was going to make a right at Alliance and visit Carhenge, but instead I reversed course to Mullen to pick up NE 97 - in yellow.   

Orange Cones to Major Detour.  It was some nice scenic ways to travel, but I figure it added an hour-plus to my travel time getting to Rapid City.  Not only did I have to back-track to get to 97, 97 tracks back east before entering Valentine where I picked up US 83 for a north run to I-90.  Oy!

(Above) NE 97 north-bound.  No river bottom here: it’s a long, slow, roller-coaster ride up and down through the hills.

Driving through the Sand Hills be like grass grass grass Look a windmill! grass grass grass Oh! a tree! grass grass grass -

The detour did allow me to see some of the Sand Hills that I might have missed otherwise, so “not all bad.”  As I drove north-ward, there were wider swales between hills, and many of those were quite wet (as above and below).  The hills themselves were still the province of cattle, but the ancient wash plains were more given to narrow, farmed land strips.

NE 97 also becomes an access road through the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest for about 5 miles where I stopped for the wild turkeys that were crossing the road (below)

“Can y’tell me where Cornbread is?  Turkey!”  Yes, that line from the movie actually came to my lips as I took the photograph.

(Above): looking east-ish at cattle country hills.  (Below): golf course on the other side of the road.

Where US 83 crosses into South Dakaota, there is also a notable change in the landscape.  The hills are, I’m sure, still built with sand under there somewhere, but they are no longer The Sand Hills.  Here, they are part of the Great Plains, and the sun was revealed at last (below):

Map: Google satellite with route overlay by the author.

Photographs: R. Jake Wood, 2017.

[stag28]

"This iteration of James was always on the attack and mostly only pulled back in the face of double teams to find the open man. During this timeframe, he averaged 29 points, 7.3 rebounds, 7.1 assists, 1.8 steals and shot 48.4 percent from the field. No performance captured his marvellous talent better than his 48-point performance in a swing Game 5 versus the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals: At the time, this was said to be the signature game of his career given that his outstanding play helped catapult a Cavs team that started Eric Snow, Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden and Zydrunas Ilgauskas next to LeBron into the Finals where the San Antonio Spurs swept them. Surprisingly, this version of James that carried a subpar roster to the title round was the worse peak LeBron of them all, even though he did claim two MVP trophies and two All-Star Game MVPs. [..] by the way, a year after [that], he averaged 35.3 points, 9.1 rebounds, 7.3 assists and made 51 percent of his shots during the playoffs. [..] in a feature written by Zach Lowe for Grantland in 2013, the Toronto Raptors shared their defensive simulator program to help the coaching staff figure out how to place defenders in optimal spots to thwart opposing offenses, and one player always beat the simulator. [..] “James’s willingness to think ahead and facilitate for his teammates is what sets him apart from his fellow NBA megastars.” [..] During this run, James won two MVP trophies, two Finals MVP awards, led the Heat to three Finals appearances and helped Miami win two championships. However, just before winning his first title, LeBron had to walk into the lion’s den and survive. With Miami facing a 3-2 series deficit during the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals, the Heat had to travel to Boston and face the Celtics in a game many anticipated James’ squad would lose. The King wouldn’t allow it [..] Sam Vecenie wrote in march 2014 (the season before LeBron re-joined Cleveland) for SB Nation’s Cavs blog Fear the Sword: “The Cavaliers are a dumpster fire mixed with a train wreck. Watching this team has the same mind-numbing effects on one’s senses that the Kardashians do. It makes you want to claw your eyeballs out, stab your ears with an icepick, and then be repeatedly punched directly in the nose by a mixed martial arts fighter.” James would be joining that. Sure, he was teaming up with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love (who joining Cavs via trade for No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins), but neither of them had ever been to the playoffs. Cleveland needed the then 29-year-old LeBron to ball out despite accumulating almost as many miles (39,993 total minutes played) as Magic Johnson (40,783) during his entire career.“