an evening in George Town, Penang

Travel Truth #7: Holidays and festivals can throw some delightful zest into your trip. Or a monkey wrench.

Things began to go seriously wrong the moment I stepped off the International Express train in Butterworth, Malaysia, fresh off the overnight ride from Bangkok. While the other passengers took the long walk up a series of elevated ramps to the ferry jetty, I turned right, crossed the tracks, and went to the station office to check on train tickets to Singapore. 

There weren't any. As in, none. Zero. Zip. Nada. 

I didn't realize that Ramadan leaped around so much. I thought it was pretty much a winter holiday, and that's that. I didn't comprehend that the vagaries of the Islamic calendar could place Ramadan, say, in the midst of summer, but so it had. It seems that I had arrived in Malaysia right at the beginning of Hari Raya Puasa, the "Day of Celebrating the End of Fasting." Today and tomorrow (July 28-29), every Mohammedan in Malaysia (and Singapore and Brunei and the Philippines) would be home with their family, stuffing themselves silly and giving thanks to Allah. All the train tickets back to Singapore were booked up through the end of the week. 

Shoot. 

Resolving to worry about all this later, I hefted by backpack, sauntered out into the broiling sunshine, and traipsed my way along the elevated walkways to the ferry jetty. 

The line was about 50 miles long. Twin rows of Malays (mostly young men, I noticed) stood upon the cracked concrete of the shady walkway, arms folded, talking amongst themselves as they waited their turn for a ride to Penang, a medium-sized island just a kilometer or two off the coast, its humped green back just visible in the hazy distance. There were a couple of portly, black-uniformed policeman patrolling the crowd, casting disapproving eyes at the loud and boisterous, their keen eyes seeking out any women and hustling them to the front of the line. One of these policemen spotted me. His eyes swept over me, taking in my misshapen hat, sweat-soaked clothes, lumpy backpack, and ridiculous flip-flop tan, and then darted away like a startled fish.

A second policeman with dark sunglasses came along a few minutes later and motioned me out of line and to the front. Gratefully, I humped my backpack another 200 yards, past a line that would surely have meant two or three hours of waiting, paid my fare, rode across the strait, and spent about a 30 fruitless minutes searching for my hotel (and nearly melting in the process) before a kindly cabbie picked me up and took me there.  

I checked into the Red Inn Court, which wasn't as new or modern or large as Boxpackers in Bangkok but nonetheless clean and serviceable. Thereupon I took three hours to cool off, both literally and figuratively. I also had to wait until after 6:00, when the noodle joints opened up. Then I sauntered into the gentler but still sultry evening, found an open-air greasy spoon crowded with locals (always a good sign) and ordered a plate of delicious, savory char koay teow, noodles stir-fried in rich dark sauce. This particular variety had chicken and shrimp. I sat across the table from a Brazilian fellow named Gabriel who lived and worked in Singapore, and found it horribly boring. We talked, mostly of the shittiness of Asian beer and the emergence of craft brew. 

I sloped a few feet west down Lebuh Chulia to the Hong Kong Bar, a cramped closet of a place with an eclectic mix of rustic decorations, Chinese paper lanterns and WWII British Army jungle hats being the most prominent. Best bar in Asia, bar none. I sat at one of the tables out in front, right next to a pillar, and had seven Tiger beers (for a total of 77 ringgit, or about $23.50). The sun set beyond Penang Hill, lighting the low, glowering clouds a lambent yellow ochre overhead and a fulgent papaya nearer the horizon. Drag queens, ladyboys, tourists, and benighted foreigners strode past and kit cars and scooters zoomed by at ridiculous speeds. I chatted with the Chinese-Malaysian proprietress, an English man and his articulate Chinese wife at the next table, and a youngish Russian woman named Eugenya. She was a scuba diving instructor and was living in Thailand, but was down in Malaysia doing a visa run. She and I were united by literature—both of us were quite well-read, and we discussed our favorite works, Russian and otherwise. One of the most controversial topics we discussed was the plus side and perks of racism—yes, we thought of several good ones. We shared a few off-color jokes between us, including ones at Russians' and Americans' expense. 

All in all, it was a magical evening. As I sat there with a bellyful of horrid Malay beer and the fires of a glorious sunset still dying a slow death in the western sky, the Chinese-Malaysian proprietress laughing at my jokes and slapping me on the shoulder, I could see myself happily moving to George Town and sitting in the Hong Kong Bar and doing some of my best writing. And living. 

upcoming jaunts in 2014

Good morning, hangers-on! And ain't it a fine April day? The sun is shining, the kkachi (magpies) are screeching love songs, the yellow dust is nearly gone, one of my students told me I've lost weight and I'm almost over the 24-hour bug I caught. Time to plan some trips.



So I went through the Korean calendar and I found out that 2014 is the year of three-day weekends. Here's a list I compiled of holidays (and the potential trips which might accompany them). I might not be traveling overseas for every little break I've got here, but it's intoxicating to contemplate the possibilities. So here you go:

1. May 3-7 (Children’s Day, Buddha’s Birthday): nothing planned, as it's probably too late; though I might see if there's a last-minute deal for Taiwan or something, just for me. I have five days, but Miss H and Miss J have four. Ha-ha. [blows raspberry]

2. June 6-8 (Memorial Day): Miss H and I were thinking about Jeju Island. We need to jump on the web tonight and book tickets NOW, though.

3. July 12-August 10 (my summer vacation): my big trip. I've shelved Mongolia for the moment, as it seems all the good stuff there is really far apart and requires guides and prepaid tours to access. I'll have to save that for later. But I'm still going to do Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and whatever country Miss H and I decide to visit for...

4. August 2-10 (Miss H's summer vacation): she and I still need to work this out. And fast. Hong Kong might be too small to sustain a week-long trip, so we're thinking Japan—Kyushu and southern Honshu. We could see Miyajima (its sacred torii gate which seems to float upon the water at high tide); Kyoto; Nara (Japan's ancient capital); Hiroshima; Nagasaki; Kagoshima (known as "the Naples of Japan" for its smoking volcano, tropical climate and hot-tempered locals) and other stuff. Yeah, I like that idea. Maybe we could even visit a hot spring and Miss H could sample her first capsule hotel. It'll be my third trip to Japan, but there's still so much I haven't seen.

5. August 15-17 (Liberation Day): another three-day weekend. Might have to be used for a rest period, understandably. But if Miss J's summer vacation lines up with it...that's a different story. Hong Kong anyone?

6. September 6-9 (Chuseok): four days. Always tricky to travel over Chuseok, as that's precisely what the other umpteen million Koreans (and a lot of Chinese folks as well) are doing. But we'll figure it out. Someplace tropical, we're thinking.

7. October 3-5 (National Foundation Day): another three-day weekend.

8. February 18-22 (Seolnar): a full five days! We gotta do something! 

After February 2015, of course, Miss H and I will head back to the U.S.A. (most likely Las Vegas or Tuscon), settle down, and embark upon our careers and family lives. I won't hang up my travelin' boots, though. I hope to pull in enough money from my writing to take time off and globe-trot some more. Miss H and I still haven't seen Europe, and I've got some trekking in South America and some safariing in Africa to do yet. I still need to ride trains through Canada and Australia and Russia and India, too.

But this'll do for right now.

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 27: start a book

Silly me. When I first read the title of today's challenge, I thought it meant "start writing a book." For two weeks I was all in a sweat to finish Novel #2 so I could start on Novel #4. (Novel #3 is half-written, but there ain't no way it would have been finished it in time.) I guess that means I'm a writer after all. It came as a shock when I actually clicked over to the AoM article and saw the truth: I just have to start reading a book.

All too easy!

I'm actually in the middle of three books right now. The first is Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Published in 2006, the book recounts the author's retracing of his epic train journey through Asia 33 years prior. I'm frantically trying to get done with the chapters about Vietnam so I can read about Theroux's train trip through Japan while I'm taking a train trip through Japan. This is Theroux's modus operandi, in fact. He buys books about the country he's in and reads them on the train. Sounds like a blast.

I'm still working my way through The Great Shark Hunt: Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1. These are some of Hunter S. Thompson's most notorious and infamous stories, concerning the world-shaking events he covered in the sixties and seventies, articles he published in Rolling Stone and elsewhere: the killing of Rubén Salazar, Super Bowl VIII, the decadence of the Kentucky Derby, and others. Some of these events laid the groundwork for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (The book was inspired by two trips Thompson made to Las Vegas with Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta so they could talk privately about the Salazar case.) It's fascinating reading. The sixties and seventies are vivid and colorful — particularly through Thompson's chemical-laden vision — and the historical events which took place are still relevant today.

...but not that relevant. I'm honestly finding it difficult to get into the stories on a personal level. You had to be there, I imagine. "There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday," Robert Nathan said, and he was right. All this stuff went down over forty years ago now. Old news. I'll finish whatever story I'm reading and then lay the book aside.

Finally, I am slogging my way through Anna Karenina. I think I'm a few pages away from Part Three, but dang. This is a hefty book. And again, it's difficult to get into. One of my globe-trotting college buddies, whom I'll call Levi, has read Tolstoy extensively. He did War and Peace first. He called it a "590,000-word page-turner." The way he described it made it sound as though it was impossible to put down. He finished it in a ludicrously short time. Then he turned his attention to Anna Karenina. He, like me, could barely get through it. Compared to War and Peace, Levi said, Anna Karenina was little better than a soap opera.

I agree with that assessment. So far we've had Karenin and his philandering wife arguing about appearances, and the adulterous Vronsky losing a horse-race. Oh, and Kitty being neurotic. Nothing even halfway dramatic has happened, unless you count [SPOILER ALERT] Vronsky impregnating Anna and Levin having a fight with his brother Constantin. (That's another thing: I'm still trying to figure out where the hell Levin fits into this story.)

I don't even have the satisfaction of suspense anymore, either, thanks to Miss H. Wrongly assuming that I already knew how the story ended, my lovely fiancée accidentally let slip that Anna [SPOILER ALERT] throws herself under a speeding train and dies at the end. Thanks a heap, lady. Way to ruin the ending. I'll finish the story regardless, before the spring semester is half over.  

But in the meantime, my reading list is backing up. To ameliorate that problem, and fulfill the requirements of today's challenge, I am starting a new book. Coincidentally, it's the first book that I've ever read on an e-reader. Miss H bought a Nook last year in anticipation of traveling, but found it wasn't as functional as she'd hoped, so she bequeathed it to me. I haven't touched it in six months. I can't stand e-readers. I'd much rather have a nice book in my hands and a funky bookmark to stick in it. I'm the ostentatious type who likes to show people all the fancy books on my shelf, or advertise to the world what I'm reading when I'm on sitting on a park bench or a subway train. Reading e-books is just staring at a screen, and goodness knows I do enough of that already. (The results of yesterday's Marine Corps fitness test are proof of that.)

The book I chose is The Terror by Dan Simmons. It's been a while since I read anything without an ulterior motive: research, or getting caught up with the classics, or taking someone else's suggestion. I almost never pick something out and read it because the concept tickled my fancy in some vague, inchoate, intangible way. But when I do, it's always a blast. That's why I chose this book. I'm not going to describe it to you; you can read all about it here. This post's too long as it is. And by now you know me well enough to figure out why I picked something like this.

The novel will be my constant companion on the journey through Japan. One real book and one electronic book should keep me entertained on the Shinkansen ride from Hokkaido to Fukuoka, and assuage my conscience besides.

Tomorrow: read up on Day 28.

how a Californian (like me) sees the world

WARNING: What follows is exceedingly general and perhaps a bit non-PC. I don't care, and neither should you. Au contraire, you should laud me for admitting my ignorance rather than disguising it. Consider this a list of what I don't know about the world (and hope to learn someday).

DISCLAIMER: You'll notice that I said a Californian like me. You can no more judge all Californians to be the same than you can judge all Dubliners or all Tokyoites to be the same. We're a mixed lot. But even among them, I am an outlier. I was born in Northern California, for one thing. I've lived in the capital, the Midwest, the American South, and the Great Plains, so I know a bit more about the rest of America than the average Californian does. My political views don't exactly match up with a lot of other Californians', either. I'm a white middle-class twenty-something, and proud of it.

Ready? Then let's begin:

THE REST OF AMERICA:

• OREGON: Best known for portraying that forested planet in The Return of the Jedi. And being mispronounced by Midwesterners and foreigners alike.
• WASHINGTON STATE: Coffee. Rain. Pine trees. Killer whales. Reggie Watts. Legal marijuana. Sententious living.
• IDAHO: Potatoes.
• MONTANA: Looks really good on a postcard.
• NEVADA: Vegas, baby. And machine guns. The rest of it's desert. And Reno.
• UTAH: Mormons! Who doesn't like Mormons? And saltwater?
• ARIZONA: Simply marvelous gun laws. Cacti which are the envy of the civilized world. Gila monsters. Fatuous Nicolas Cage movies. Mountains that look like Indians.
• NEW MEXICO: Are the rocks supposed to be red like that?
• COLORADO: Best place to raise abducted children.
• WYOMING: Fewer people than a single suburb of Los Angeles. Seriously, the antelopes outnumber the humans. Scary thought.
• NORTH DAKOTA: I felt like a celebrity there.
• SOUTH DAKOTA: Big stone heads. The Black Hills (yeah, baby). Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
• NEBRASKA: What the guy who thought of the phrase "middle of nowhere" was thinking of.
• KANSAS: You're not there anymore, Toto.
• OKLAHOMA: Bombs. Musicals. The Dust Bowl. Tornadoes.
• TEXAS: If it weren't for them, Mexico would have invaded long ago.
• MINNESOTA: So, like, let's go to the lake, eh?
• IOWA: The Minnesotans are right. The best thing coming out of Iowa is I-29.
• MISSOURI: My dad went to college there. Considers himself more Missourian than Ohioan. They've got an arch. That's the limit of my knowledge.
• ARKANSAS: Most direct route between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
• LOUISIANA: Bayous, swamps, Cajun food, levies, Mardi Gras, and hurricanes. Especially hurricanes.
• WISCONSIN: Cheese.
• ILLINOIS: Abraham Lincoln.
• INDIANA: No friggin' idea. Maybe basketball?
• KENTUCKY: Is the grass really blue, or is that just a figure of speech?
• TENNESSEE: Too many mullets for my taste.
• MISSISSIPPI: Hard to spell.
• ALABAMA: Probably has the most likeable/least unpleasant Southern accent, depending on where you stand on Southern accents.
• GEORGIA: Good peaches.
• FLORIDA: Can't think of it without thinking of the auto-tuning rapper. Thanks a bunch. Before Flo Rida was a thing, I associated Florida with Scarface, my grandmother's house with the orange trees in the backyard, the one billion percent humidity, and the white-sand beaches.
• MICHIGAN: They make cars there, don't they? And awesome music?
• OHIO: Hot in summer, rainy in spring, miserable in winter, the most beautiful place on the planet in autumn.
• WEST VIRGINIA: Coal. The Civil War. Trout fishing. Caves. Chuck Yeager.
• VIRGINIA: This may sound weird, but I can't help but think of Virginia in terms of the famous people who were born there: Ella Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Sam Houston, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (yes, that Lewis & Clark), Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Tom Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, like, twenty U.S. presidents. 
• NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA: What's the difference? 
• WASHINGTON, D.C.: Crazy homeless people in the streets, crazy people in the government.
• MARYLAND: You need to put on some weight, you're too skinny.
• DELAWARE: Sounds like a seldom-used word you'd find in a dictionary.
• NEW JERSEY: Just as all myths have some basis in fact, the moniker "Armpit of America" must on some level be well-deserved. 
• CONNECTICUT: Pretty. And filthy rich.
• PENNSYLVANIA: The birthplace of liberty and independence. Looks nice in autumn, too.
• NEW YORK: California's biggest competitor in terms of culture and coolness. They've got some pretty country, too; and heck, they even have their own version of the San Andreas Fault. We'll get you yet, you buggers.
• RHODE ISLAND: Too small for my Californian mind to encapsulate.
• MASSACHUSETTS: Baseball. Football. Clam chowder. Cod. Moby-Dick. Cheers (the TV show).
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: The last stop before Maine.
• VERMONT: The second-to-last stop before Maine.
• MAINE: The last stop before New Brunswick. Also, Stephen King is from there; I do know that much. A lot of his books are set around those parts.
• ALASKA: I know as much as everyone else does. Grizzly bears, gold, the Inuit, glaciers, the tallest mountain in North America, savage cold, bush pilots, hunting, cruises, trains, oil, fishing, formerly Russian, real men and real women. Oh, and I'd give my right arm and two or three toes to live there.
• HAWAII: Palm trees. White-sand beaches. Turquoise water. Tropical fish. Sunshine. Ukeleles, luaus and leis. Volcanoes. Surfing. Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona. Paradise on Earth. California's biggest competitor in terms of fun in the sun and water sports. Not bad if we can take on New York and Hawaii and still compete, eh?

THE REST OF THE WORLD:

• MEXICO: Lovely beaches, great food, incredible culture, marvelous natural beauty, and good booze...but a corrupt government and a few too many all-powerful drug cartels. Oh wait, that's California.
• CANADA: A dichotomy. On the one hand: nigh-socialism, a Governor General, and a certain amount of cultural snobbery (though that might just be the folks from Toronto). On the other hand: maple syrup, the Yukon, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, ice hockey, Shania Twain, William Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Stana Katic, Nathan Fillion (whom I hear is from Edmonton), Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Sutherland, Alexander Graham Bell, Elijah McCoy (the real McCoy), James Howlett (better known as Wolverine), Anne Shirley (a.k.a. Anne of Green Gables), Chris Hadfield (the astronaut), Rush, Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, dinosaurs, Black Velvet whisky, the Devil's Brigade, lentils, Swedish Fish, and some of the friendliest, politest people on the face of the Earth.
• BRAZIL: Great barbecue, oddly-named mountains, and the best jungles and parties (and jungle parties) anywhere.
• BOLIVIA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got zonked down there, didn't they?
• URUGUAY: It's all about the tango.
• KENYA: I know Tanzania, Mozambique, and some of the other countries have amazing biodiversity, natural beauty and safaris, but whenever I think "East Africa," my mind just leaps to Kenya. Craters, rhinoceroses, the Serengeti, poaching problems, and now some election brouhaha. And a spectacular John Wayne movie.
• SOUTH AFRICA: Let's move past the bit with the apartheid and get into Sharlto Copley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Basil Rathbone, Manfred Mann, Candice Swanepoel, and that sweet movie Zulu with Michael Caine. Just please don't mention Dave Mathews. We don't mention Dave Mathews on this blog.  
• LESOTHO: See RHODE ISLAND above.
• EGYPT: Revolutions. Pyramids. Rivers. Desert. Camels. Political turmoil. And they have their own version of The Daily Show.
• MOROCCO: I only know where it is 'cause I watch Bogart films. 
• CROATIA: It gave the world Serious Sam, so it can't be all bad, can it?
• RUSSIA: I was born five years before the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd venture to guess that my generation's the first one that doesn't think "Commie bastards" whenever we hear the word "Russia." That doesn't mean I trust Putin or the KGB, but I sure would like to visit the country, ride their trains, drink their vodka, walk over their bridges, and so forth. Oh, and see St. Petersburg in the wintertime.
• FRANCE: The other place an aspiring artist or writer might go besides California.
• ICELAND: All of the wintry fun of Canada or Alaska with none of the urban sprawl.  
• ENGLAND: Sorry, did I say Canada was guilty of cultural snobbery?! Though that could just be Londoners. Seriously, some of my best friends are from England. I wouldn't mind retiring to Newcastle someday, having fish and chips down by the quayside, a pint in the Turk's Head, then a walk 'round the priory and a pipe-smoke on the point. Geordies rock.
• SCOTLAND: It gave us Scotch whisky, haggis, Robert Burns, Ian Anderson, and some of the world's finest and hardiest soldiers. I think a good many wars would have been lost without a few good Scotsmen.
• IRELAND: The setting of another rather good John Wayne movie. If you don't think about the Troubles, you can get lost in the whiskey, the beer, the corned beef and cabbage, the stew, the River Liffey, James Joyce and the wild Irish countryside. Gotta love Chloë Agnew and Liam Neeson, too.
• GERMANY: Efficiency. And cake. And philosophy. And awe-inspiring classical music.
• SPAIN: Sunshine. And beautiful horses. Architecture to die for. Paella. Soccer. Bulls, and a lot of sports that shouldn't be combined with bulls. And tomato-chucking. 
• SWITZERLAND: Americans voted it the best place to go if you're trying to escape from a German prison camp. I've heard they make pretty good watches and toys, too. 
• INDIA: Outsourcing. Overpopulation. Sacred cows. Fascinating religions. Fantastic architecture. Pollution. Garbage in the streets. People pooping in public. The Ganges River, which I wouldn't dunk my worst enemy in.
• VIETNAM: The site of a rather nasty and unconventional war. Now home to gorgeous waterfalls, delectable cuisine, a generation of suspiciously blond-haired Vietnamese, and tons of unexploded ordnance.
• CHINA: Big. Really big. Filled with people. Controlled by a Communist government. Mao's noggin is everywhere. Still, even though fat guys go topless in public and toddlers poop in the streets, the trains run on time and the countryside is undeniably gorgeous.
• JAPAN: My knowledge beforehand was mostly limited to World War II, anime and manga. Now I see the country through the Korean lens, and that colors my perception a bit. It's definitely one of Asia's bright stars, a broad, clean, polite and user-friendly country. But its foreign-relations record is a black mark in its ledger.
• SOUTH KOREA: Before I came to live here, I knew the name of the capital and that the country got snow in winter. That's it. Now I know that, despite the bali bali culture that grinds students and salarymen into the ground, Korea has elevated itself from a smoking crater to one of the most prosperous, bright, advanced and innovative nations on the planet. The people, though bound by millennia of tradition and rigid societal and behavioral mores, are some of the most friendly and unconditionally kind folks I've ever encountered.
• NORTH KOREA: If you're ever in need of a good laugh, just look up some of their propaganda.
• AUSTRALIA: Deserts, mountains, jungles, forests, beaches, great music, good actors, some fantastic sports (and sports players), architectural wonders, storied history, a charming accent and some of the weirdest animals to be found.
• NEW ZEALAND: Like some weird mix of England, Iceland, and Hawaii. But it did give us Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, Karl Urban and Bruce Spence, and some lovely glaciers.
• ANTARCTICA:  Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Mountains. Volcanoes. Rocks. More snow. More ice. Frigid seas. Storms. Penguins. Blubber. Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and every other adventure or horror writer who ever needed a remote, bleak, barren, ice-blasted place to set a secret base or an eldritch abomination.

sweet vindication!

vindicate [vin-di-keyt]

verb (used with object), vin·di·cat·ed, vin·di·cat·ing.

1. to clear, as from an accusation, imputation, suspicion, or the like: to vindicate someone's honor.
2. to afford justification for; justify: Subsequent events vindicated his policy.
3. to uphold or justify by argument or evidence: to vindicate a claim.
4. to assert, maintain, or defend (a right, cause, etc.) against opposition.

Vindicate. I've always liked that word. The moment I first saw it (in a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon; Bill Watterson does wonders for the vocabulary), I added it to my lexicon. Over the years I've tried to use it as much as possible. Vindicate. It's got a nice ring to it. It sounds exactly like what it means. There's nothing more satisfying than shouting the two words in the title of this blog post whenever the justness of your cause and the righteousness of your position has been confirmed. Sweet vindication!

And believe me, I've been vindicated.

For years I labored in hopeless drudgery, praying that one day I'd get to where I wanted to be. Maybe I'd have to put up with some unpleasantness on the way. I'd feel like I was in limbo sometimes. But one day, I told myself, things would be different. And now they are.

Nearly eighteen months ago, in February of 2012, I left the California desert and boarded a plane for South Korea (for the second time). The circumstances of my going were dire indeed. I had lived in my parents' house for the last two-and-a-half years, and no matter the state of the economy or the kindness and warmth with which my folks took me in, I was at my wits' end. My ego was crushed. My soul was in shambles. I felt rather emasculated. I hadn't been able to find a decent job, and even though I'd gotten my private pilot's license and put myself through bartender's school, I was still without prospects. It was the same situation as mid-2008, when I'd first gone to Korea. I'd been living for six fruitless, jobless months in my parents' basement in Wyoming. It was a nightmare.

And here I am, now, in July of 2013, ready to depart once more for Korea. This is the final week. My parents have been their usual lovely selves, and have seen to my every need (material and emotional). On the 29th I shall board a jet plane at...um...either LAX or Ontario (that's Ontario, California, just so you know) and fly to Tokyo, there to spend eight days touring the central and southern regions of the country by bullet train, and then a high-speed ferry to Busan. (I'll talk more about this trip later.)

Things are different now, don't you see? I'm not leaving out of desperation. I'm not sick at heart. Hopelessness and despair and jealousy no longer hold me in thrall. I've forgotten what despair feels like, in fact. It's just as well I didn't put too many maudlin posts up on this here blog, 'cause they'd ring hollow and puerile to me (and you) now.

On the contrary, my return is triumphant. Everything seems to be looking up. I'm not going back just to work, I'm going to have fun. I have an awesome job waiting for me, plus my special girl and our troublemakin' cat. Thanks to my stateside sojourn, I have a new Lensatic compass, an attaché case, a wine-bottle opener, new clothes, and adjusted vertebrae. (I dug into my closet and found my duster coat, my binoculars, and my army-surplus goggles, too.) Plus, I have another month of vacation left. After this jaunt through Japan, I'm spending the rest of my time kicking around Seoul and the northern provinces, checking out all the stuff I haven't had time to see yet. I'm also packaging my second novel (the one about the General Sherman incident) for publication before the end of the year, and finally sitting down and learning Korean. Things are going to be great. Heck, they already are.

And in the coming 18 months, I have all sorts of trips planned. That's right: I'm finally getting to travel like I've always wanted...and like I've always promised you, dear readers. For the Chuseok holiday this year (in September, I believe), Miss H and our friend J from Bucheon will venture into China; in January 2014 there's a road-trip across Australia, plus a beach holiday with Miss H in Malaysia; in the summer of 2014 there will be some kind of jaunt along the Pan-American Highway, possibly on a motorcycle; and in the winter of 2015, for my final hurrah and last departure from South Korea, there will be a grand trip from Beijing to Moscow aboard the Trans-Mongolian/Trans-Siberian Railways.

You'll get to hear about all this on the blog. Of course.

After that will come my glorious return to the U.S. of A, wherein will resume my flying career (also blogged about) and a rewarding foray into radio journalism and punditry. And the novels (the big ones, the sci-fi series I'm always rattling about) will get published somewhere in there, too.

See the difference? I have prospects now. I'm not just going to Korea to keep my head above water and pay off my loans. (Those are almost all gone, by the way.) All my waiting and hard work, years of it, are finally paying off. I can now settle back and enjoy myself some. At last there's the promise of a wondrous future and fulfilling life ahead. It was always there—it never really went away—but it was mighty invisible for a time.

Water under the bridge. I no longer feel like I'm pedaling toward my goals on a rusty unicycle with a bent rim and a flat tire. Now I've got me one of these:

And, though the road be hard and long, Miss H and I shall persevere.

Let the games begin.

a day at the races

I love it when I get to drop Marx Brothers references in my blog post titles, but this one is especially apt. I just came off the perfect weekend in Seoul, and it wasn't even a holiday. Yet.

Here's what happened on Saturday, . First, Miss H and I went on our first double-date. It was one of my best buds from Sejong University, whom I'll call Sam, and his girlfriend JB. We went to Seoul Racecourse Park and bet on the ponies:

I even included a video for you schmucks, 'cause I think that highly of you: this is the final stretch of the 7th heat:

I was slightly disappointed. This was my first horse race, but even though I'd known in advance that they only ever made one lap of the track, it still went by too quickly and ended too abruptly. On the other hand, the palpable excitement we felt when the racers rounded the final curve and went flat-out on the home stretch, with the Koreans yelling and stomping all around us, and their cheers and shouts gradually building to an inhuman roar, was something to experience.

Then we went to our favorite Uzbek restaurant in Seoul (yes, we have one): the Fortune Café. Left to right: lagman (lamb and noodle soup); shiz-biz (bits of mutton and onion over French fries); and manti (enormous meaty dumplings, boiled or steamed); and there were at least five varieties of Baltika beer to go with it. (No. 7 is my usual favorite.) A steady stream of Russian pop music videos on the TV set guaranteed that we were never at a loss for something to listen to when conversation waned.

 
The Fortune Café is in Dongdaemun, which is sort of the Russian district of Seoul. So we also stopped by one of the many tiny Russian markets in the vicinity. We walk into the first one and see this:

Holy cow, ain't nobody got a selection of vodka like that around here. I nabbed some Parliament-brand vodka and a bottle of Napoleon brandy (French stuff; I've heard it's excellent). Score!

Then we walked back outside into the dying evening light. And lo and behold, what did we see but a grand parade! It was the Lotus Day Parade, an early celebration of Buddha's Birthday, which would be coming the next weekend. Take a look! It was an amazing spectacle.

 

Each group of people represented a different Buddhist temple in the vicinity of Seoul, and each had different flags and lanterns of all shapes and hues. And it wasn't just Koreans, either: the Chinese and Tibetan diaspora were out in force as well, with the flags of their nations and their own brand of Buddhism on display.

After the temple-goers passed in review, we moseyed down the road in the direction of the Dongdaemun gate, viewing the floats and moving sculptures people had fabricated for the occasion. The elephant dipped its head...

...and the lotus flower opened and shut, giving birth to Siddhartha over and over again.

When we'd finished viewing the parade, we slid down an alley to a tent city filled with cheap merchandise and street food.

This is a mixture of noodles, onions, cabbage, spicy red sauce, and sundae (noodles wrapped in the lining of pig intestines, a Korean favorite). It was surprisingly good. We got ripped off, though; these two plates and the four cans of warm beer cost us 40,000 won, or roughly $36.

And then it was time for the evening's crowning glory: a gem of a place I had no idea existed anywhere in Seoul. It's called an LP bar:

This one was called the Sam Cooke, after the American soul singer. It's near Hyehwa Station, north of Dongdaemun, near Seoul University. These LP bars are the bee's knees. Sam Cooke was no exception. It was quite dark (as you can see from the photos) and the decor was eclectic: photos of the Beatles on the walls, cubist paintings behind the booths, an image of Che Guevara by the door. We walked in, sat down, and looked around. The shelves behind the bar were filled with vinyl records. There were two turntables on the counter just going like the clappers, and sound—a sound I'd not heard played in public for 15 months—was blasting out of the speakers.

Classic rock.

No joke! These LP bars sprang up back in the 1960s when Park Chung-hee outlawed listening to Western music. Enterprising bar owners sneaked onto American army bases and bought LPs off the G.I.s, secreting them in their establishments and playing them after dark for willing patrons. Now these LP bars are old and scuffed, just like the records they play, but they survive as novelties, places where oldsters can go to feel nostalgic and young 'uns can go to feel hip. And that's surely what we felt as we scribbled arcane requests on slips of paper, giving them to the barman up front. Our eyes widened and our souls soared as we heard the familiar tunes piping out of the speakers a few minutes later. It was downright psychadelic to sit there sipping beer in a dark wooden bar while the Doors' "The End" oozed serenely out of the speaker grilles. 

And that was just Saturday. On Sunday, our old friend Joanna, Miss H and I went to Myeong-dong to go shooting (in and out, no pictures), had some delectable Italian food and then went down to Gwacheon to hit up Seoul Zoo. Another full, lovely day in the third-largest city in the world!

I'll just leave you with this bear to keep you company until my next adventure-filled post.

Stay tuned...

channeling Dostoevsky

One of my favorite books—and the only one I didn't sell back to the Royal Rip-Off Club (the university bookstore, in other words)—is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I couldn't really tell you why I kept it, except that I like it. The protagonist of NFU is not a likeable fellow. He's a neurotic mess. Mind you, his environment has something to do with it. His job was boring and didn't pay well. His (few) friends are all better-off than he is. His butler is passive-aggressive. And to top it off, he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, which (Dostoevsky puts this quite delicately) is a frigid cesspool. Understandably, this unnamed protagonist is lonely, distraught, and used to be downright ornery (before the ennui overwhelmed him and turned him into an apathetic pile of dithering paranoia). His self-esteem is in tatters, and his perceived inferiority to others drives him to fits, so he takes this bitterness out on people. He acts solely out of spite. Everything he does is done out of spite. He even spites himself when there's no one else around. He finds pleasure in toothaches and liver pain. He was as nasty as possible to the petitioners who appeared before his desk. In his own words:

When petitioners came to my desk seeking information, I gnashed my teeth at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid folk: naturally—petitioners. But there were also some fops, and among these I particularly detested a certain officer. He absolutely refused to submit and clattered revoltingly with his sword. I battled him over that sword for a year and a half. And finally I got the best of him. He stopped clattering.

This novel entertains me. On the surface it's the depraved maundering of a nihilistic sociopath, who once would've liked nothing better than to set his hooks into you and drag you down with him. (Now, his soft insides hidden beneath a layer of calcified spite, he sits on the sidelines of social interaction and cackles like a demon at the artifice of it all.) Underneath it's one of the first existentialist novels, and a complete rejection of utopian socialism. It pulls no punches in presenting humans as irrational, uncooperative, uncontrollable beings.

Much as I enjoy the idea of a happy little world filled with soap bubbles and hearts and fluffy clouds, where everybody gets along and all are considered equals and nobody kills anyone else and whatnot, the idea is laughable. This is a central theme in my own novel, in fact.

Moreover...

It is ample justification for what I am about to tell you.

I once had a coworker whom I couldn't stand.

The man was an utter and complete idiot. He wasn't safe to work with, lacked any understanding of his trade, and worse yet, he would equivocate, exaggerate, downplay and flatter to avoid being called on it. He'd say anything to wiggle out of being blamed for mishaps he caused. (And he caused quite a few.) He undermined our supervisor's authority by calling the higher-ups behind his back. He treated near-misses nonchalantly, as if they didn't really matter. He routinely forgot (or conveniently misplaced) the most fundamental things. (I could list more of his transgressions, but I wish to avoid casting aspersion on the company.) Suffice it to say that this fellow was a piss-poor worker, forgetful, sneaky, inept, incompetent, and conniving—and his arrogant attitude compounded the problem tenfold.

So I saw nothing wrong with giving him hell on a daily basis.

I called him out on his errors. I raked him over the coals when he screwed the pooch. I sententiously bossed him around in the cockpit (remember who you're dealing with). I contravened his wishes (though never in an unsafe manner). I second-guessed his intentions. I challenged, I questioned, I snarked without mercy. In short, I submarined him any way I could. If he borked, he got an earful...and so did the supervisor, chapter and verse.

Got a problem with that? Sue me.

I was on a holy mission. The Royal F@#&-Up and I had to work together. His foul-ups weren't severe enough to get him fired. And I wasn't in a position where I could logically or conscientiously refuse to work with him. I had gone before the higher-ups and complained, and there had been problem-solving sessions and group discussions, but in the end, the Jerk was exonerated, and I had to suck it up and roll with it. But I didn't have to acquiesce to his stupidity, I decided. As the duly-appointed safety observer, it was my job to point out any issue I felt needed to be addressed. And did that. I was civil about it, too, mostly. But I didn't have to like the guy. I figured it was better for him to watch his ass when I near. I wouldn't tolerate failures or slip-ups. After all, if he balled up the airplane, I'd get splattered all over the countryside along with him.

I looked at this the same way the Underground Man in NFU does. There was a battle of principle taking place. The Royal F@#&-Up refused to submit and began rattling his saber. So, I vowed, I'd gnash my teeth at him until he quit.

I finally got him to quit. Or to crack, at least.

It started innocently. It may not even have been a hill worth dying on. We had a slight disagreement about procedures. Tomato, tomahto. He did something, I questioned him about it, he defended himself. I filed the matter away to be discussed later.

And when I brought it up...

He exploded. He used a rather naughty word. He threatened to quit, which made me quite happy, if only he could've known. He said he didn't need this kind of aggravation. He was the superior here, he insisted. He would do things the way he saw fit, the safest way he knew how. I could barely choked back the laughter. I leaned against the nearest wall and soaked it all up. I'd beaten him. I'd shaken his cool. I'd rattled his cage. I'd cracked the ridiculous veneer of professional calm which he'd exuded up 'til now. Victory was mine.

By and by he calmed down. He said that he didn't have a problem with my calling things to his attention, per se (odd, seeing as how that was what had set him off in the first place), but my delivery could use some work. I was nitpicking and hypercritical, he said. (Excellent, I thought, he picked up on it.) My tone came across as condescending, he said. (Oh good, he'd noticed.) I shouldn't stop bringing these issues to his attention, he said, but my bedside manner could be more polite. Delighted, I agreed. I'd continue my duties as safety observer, but I'd work on my delivery, no sweat. I was chuckling inside all the while. Sure, I'll be nicer. Now that I've knocked all the supports out from under you, and revealed you to be the pompous, egotistical, scheming nincompoop you always were. And now you know I've revealed it, too. And indeed, his manner was conciliatory. He seemed to regret his loss of temper and took pains to ensure that we had resolved the conflict—and by proxy, that I wouldn't report anything to the supervisors. I didn't report a thing. There was no need. I'd gotten what I was after: sweet satisfaction. I felt almost no guilt about it, either.

Undermining people's egos isn't something I've made a habit of since, largely because I've never again been forced to work so closely with someone I despised.

But now that I've done it, I can see the benefits (and potential harms) of it. And I understand Notes from Underground a lot better, too.

Because, to a substantial degree, I didn't need to do what I did to the Jerk. I'm not a malicious man, and neither was Dostoevsky's protagonist. We are not, by nature, spiteful or hateful or nasty or mean. We were just amusing ourselves.

Because it can be mighty amusing.

recommended reading

• THE BOOK: The Reivers, written by William Faulkner and published in 1962.
• THE PLACE: Jefferson, Mississippi.
• THE TIME: 1905, when Civil War veterans were still alive, when automobiles were still a novelty (and were still hand-cranked), when it still took several days to travel anywhere and back.
• THE CHARACTERS: Boon Hogganbeck, the big, brawny, juvenile carriage-driver, one-eighth Indian, a boozer, a womanizer, and a terrible shot. Ned, the giggling, fractious, black retainer with a rebellious mind and a keen eye. Lucius Priest, the eleven-year-old son of a freight company director (Boon and Ned's boss), hovering somewhere between heaven and hell.
• THE TRICK: How to get these three guys and one stolen car from Jefferson, Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, raise as much hell as possible, and get back before the boss returns from the funeral in Louisiana.

This is William Faulkner's last novel, and my first taste of the man's writing, which, by all accounts, was uniformly superb. Everybody calls this guy one of the world's greatest writers, a giant in the world of scripture. I never understood why. I thought I'd already read some pretty good stuff. My first impression when I opened up The Reivers (pronounced like "reavers," meaning people who steal by force or stealth) was one of disbelief. He seemed to be committing, unapologetically, all of the venial mechanical sins which I've been attempting to forcibly train myself out of since I first began writing: extremely long sentences, excessive use of parentheticals, a lot of needless words and phrases. I was flabbergasted.

I said to myself, "How can this guy be considered one of the best there ever was? This is nothing but a single, rambling, pretentious, pointless description. I could write a better novel than this in a storm at sea with both hands tied behind my back."

Well, to be truthful, that last sentence has been embellished. What I actually thought was "This guy's about as good a writer as I am. I could write a novel about this good, and probably am."

As far as first impressions of Faulkner go, mine were anything but auspicious. But I kept reading. I stuck to it. I was determined to see it out. Because, as critical as I was of Faulkner's style, I was rather enjoying the story. I liked this corner of the world he'd set up for my mind to play in. The characters (see above) were absolutely scintillating as well as believable; and in general, the style of the thing was agreeable to me, an immediately recognizable rogue's tale in an unfamiliar guise. I appreciated not only the way that Faulkner was telling this story, but the way he approached it. I don't mean to put on airs, but Faulkner seemed, with this book at least, to be coming at it from the same angle I might've come from: dip the audience immediately into a colorful place, filled with light and life and memorable people, and extract from them a laugh or a gasp or a head-scratch or two. Faulkner and I, perhaps, liked to read (and write) the same kinds of stories, and we went about it the same way.

Irritated by style but fascinated by story, I forged ahead. I got halfway through Chapter 3 when it finally hit me. William Faulkner was a transcendent genius. He is, indeed, an inimitable, masterful writer. He makes it look not only easy, but natural. As I read, I gradually got the feeling that Faulkner was telling this story with almost careless facility, that the whole of it had just popped into his head one day and he'd merely sat down at his typewriter and banged it out. An absurd notion, of course. That's not how the writing process works. It's agony, raw and unattenuated torture. The flow of words stops and starts like a broken water main; any leftover initiative, inspiration and determination are squeezed out of the writer's soul by the gristmill of revision. But Faulkner, apparently, was a good enough writer (and editor) to make it seem as if he just slapped the whole thing down on a Saturday afternoon. But beyond this (and what struck me the hardest) is that Faulkner had powers of perception beyond the scope of my and most other writers' wildest aspirations. He saw and heard and felt, and translated his experiences onto the page completely intact. Whereas I have a tin ear for dialogue, no penchant for vivid character, and only the most rudimentary grasp of description and setting, Faulkner sweeps the board in all. In three short chapters we have scene, character, conflict, advancement, emotion, invocation, investment, power, and (as a result) the last and highest peak of the pyramid: story. And I am enjoying that story immensely. I am amazed, at every turn of the page, by the depth with which Faulkner explores his characters' motivations, their fears, their doubts, their emotions, their wants; his impudent use of run-on sentences and parentheses; the sheer amount of thought, observation, and characterization that went into this book; and the staggering range of Faulkner's (and his protagonist's) perceptions. This book is humanity on parade, an intimate exploration of people, morals, virtues—and their attractive antitheses. It is also just a rompingly fun story about three guys swiping a car and going to a cathouse in Memphis. Read it and you'll see what I mean.

• THE (SECOND) BOOK: Blind Man's Bluff: The untold story of American submarine espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, published 1998.
• THE PLACE: the world's oceans.
• THE TIME: the Cold War, 1947-1991, when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. jockeyed for political and military supremacy in an undeclared war of intimidation, subterfuge, and arms races.
• THE CHARACTERS: American spy submarines and their crews.
• THE TRICK: How to build submarines capable of remaining hidden from the sophisticated senses of the Soviets; fill 'em with spies and able-bodied seamen; and get 'em close enough to Russia to scope out the Commies without being spotted, killed, or used to provoke a nuclear war.

For my next new conquest, I decided to delve once again into nonfiction, pursuant to a rather curious obsession that's been asserting itself over my mind recently: nuclear submarines. Lately I have become obsessed with nuclear submarines. Subs in general, really. The reason baffles me. Maybe it was because I was mentally going over possible novel plots (or, in comic book lingo, story arcs) the other day and, seeing as how my novel series is an allegorical history of the world, the Cold War crossed my mind. And with the Cold War came thoughts of spies, atomic secrets, spy planes, and...submarines.

Then I caught a documentary on the Military Channel about famous American subs. It wasn't particularly good—it didn't go over much of anything in detail—but it got the wheels turning, if you know what I mean. Soon I was on the Internet, looking up some of the Gato-class submarines which served in the Pacific during World War II, and the nuke subs that came after. These last all came with captivating names like Scorpion, Thresher, and Seawolf.
Come on, now. How could any self-respecting young man not be fascinated by the mere concept of submarine warfare, particularly in the cloak-and-dagger context of the Cold War? A cigar-shaped submersible, run on the principles of atomic fission, a cylinder of fragile black steel holding off the unforgiving ocean, crammed full of top-secret specialists and their high-tech listening devices, shepherded through the troubled water by a courageous crew and a devil-may-care captain, trained to ignore Soviet boundaries and push deep into enemy turf, as far as they dare, in constant peril of their lives?

And so I opened Blind Man's Bluff. It was one of the first books to address the then-still-mostly-classified and highly touchy subject of the "Silent Service." But that didn't stop Sontag and Drew. They interviewed as many sailors and commanders as they could (their interviewees often received stern reminders from Navy brass about their secrecy contracts). They combed through old newspaper reports and records, American and Soviet archives. And then they wrote a book. But this book isn't a drab, humdrum collection of accounts and data, nor of the governmental grandstanding and policy-making, the hallmark of the era. No. This is a story about submarines, and the people who crewed and commanded them. Blind Man's Bluff reads like an adventure serial, with stories of close shaves and disasters and incidents told in real-time, third-person narration. When my dad first gave it to me a few years ago (jeez, when I was like, nine, and way too young for that sort of thing) I thought it was a Tom Clancy novel.

I'm hooked. In the first chapter, "A Deadly Beginning," we learn of the diesel submarine Cochino, one of the very first spy subs, which in 1949 conducted surveillance operations near the port of Murmansk, on Russia's northwest coast. This was before anybody even believed that submarines could be used for spying instead of sinking enemy ships. Enter Harris "Red" Austin, a radioman descended of a long line of redhead Scottish warriors, who transferred from surface ships to submarines to being a "spook," all in search of adventure. Together with Commander Rafael C. Benitez, Austin conducted a series of daring sweeps of Soviet radio waves and communications, trying to divine whether the Russians were readying a nuclear onslaught. Just like the breaking of the sound barrier which had occurred barely two years before, submarine spy operations were a ticklish business. Submarines in World War II weren't submarines in the strictest sense; they were merely submersible boats, designed to run primarily on the surface and dive briefly into combat. GUPPY-class diesel submarines like the Cochino were the same kind of deal, but they were retrofitted for spy duty with some rather daring modifications: namely, adding a snorkel and an exhaust vent to allow the sub to stay submerged longer, and drilling holes through the pressure hull, the crew's only shield against the millions of gallons of seawater outside the sub, to accommodate the antennas of Austin's spy gear.

The mission went well until an explosion in the Cochino's battery compartment knocked out power and sent massive doses of toxic gas spewing through the sub. Cochino's sister sub, Tusk, was nearby, but a massive storm complicated matters. Things rapidly went from bad to worse. Men wounded by the explosion were cut off in the aft part of the sub by the fire in the battery compartment. The seas were so heavy that Tusk drifted out of sight. Further explosions destroyed what little chance Cochino had of recovering and limping away under her own power. And the toxic gases kept building up. As they waited for Tusk to pull side-on to evacuate them, the crew of the Cochino were faced with an agonizing choice: stay below and be poisoned, or go out onto the slippery, heaving deck in subzero temperatures. It wasn't long before half the men were groggy or unconscious, and half were hypothermic. The executive officer, Wright, was horribly scalded attempting to force open the door to the battery compartment. Six men were swept off the Tusk into the sea as it pulled alongside Cochino, and were drowned. In the end, Tusk managed to effect a rescue. A long plank was run between the two submarines. The seas tossed and rolled. The men had to wait for the precious few seconds when the plank was level to scurry across, else they would fall and be crushed between their submarines' hulls as they ground together. Everyone made it. Wright—in terrible agony, the entire front of his body burned—somehow managed to stand up, climb a ladder, cross the heaving deck, and get over the plank. Six sailors from the Tusk and a civilian engineer from Cochino were lost, and Cochino itself sank.

It was a disaster. But the surveillance had worked. Though he hadn't discovered any Soviet plots to blow up the United States, Austin had managed to tap the Russian lines of communication, convincing skeptical naval commanders that submarines were a viable platform for subterfuge and special reconnaissance operations. And that was just the beginning.

Can you see why I'm hooked? Mind you, not every story in Blind Man's Bluff is like this. The second chapter, "Whiskey A-Go-Go," details the adventures of another snorkel-equipped diesel sub, the U.S.S. Gudgeon, the first submarine caught red-handed in Soviet waters. Already low on air and battery power, the Gudgeon accidentally let its antennas and sail break the surface, and was spotted by Russian observers. The sub was consequently hounded for 48 hours by Russian ships, dodging one way, ducking the other, trying to evade the clouds of small-sized depth charges raining down from above, desperately seeking a temperature layer (a mass of cold water) to hide in, oxygen levels sinking and carbon monoxide and dioxide building up. Eventually, Commander Bessac was forced to quit on the business. In danger of losing his men to suffocation, horrifically low on power and unable to send out a call for help, the Gudgeon surfaced. A Russian ship took a sideswipe at the American sub, forcing it to dive again, only a gulp of fresh air in the snorkel. The Americans held out for another few hours, then surfaced again. The Russian ships dropped back. The Gudgeon spat out the bad air and sucked in some fresh. The diesel engines fired up, recharging the batteries. And a much-delayed call for assistance was sent out. The Russians didn't press the attack. They sent the Gudgeon a message, asking for identification. "USN, returning to Japan," the sub replied. "Thanks for the anti-submarine warfare practice," the Russians quipped, and disappeared.

Did I mention that I'm hooked on this book?

In ensuing chapters, I'm going to read about John P. Craven and some of the nutty ideas he came up with to advance undersea warfare; the death of the U.S.S. Scorpion, which something I've been burning to find out more about ever since this obsession with submarines set in; and a few tips and tricks about fighting underneath the Arctic ice cap, which plays merry hob with sonar. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.

how to land a Mooney

One of the advantages of flying twice a day, four days a week is...well, you fly a lot. And when you fly a lot, you learn a lot—especially if your flight instructor spent 20 years in the Navy doing crazy things like landing on aircraft carriers and riding around with suicidal low-flying Germans and thumping Russian bombers.

Don't even act like you don't know what "thumping" is. Trade secret. Nonstandard navy fighter procedure during the Cold War. The trick is to come up beneath a Russian airplane—bomber, preferably—pile on some thrust, and rocket straight up, right in front of him. This has the twofold benefit of (a) scaring the living daylights out of the Commie bastard and (b) forcing him to fly through your shock wave. (Hence the "thump" part.) It's a ticklish business. You've got to leave enough space between yourself (going relatively slow, climbing straight up) and the oncoming Russian bomber (still flying at 450 knots)...or else, WHAM. You can't leave too much space, either, or the "thump" will be more of a "kerpuff."

Spud wasn't the first instructor I landed a Mooney with (that was actually Mr. Mooney); but it was with Spud that I truly refined my technique. All last week he taught me the finer points of landing, and I think I've finally got it down. Let's get the mechanics out of the way. You'll want to be at 100 miles per hour on the downwind leg of the pattern, and on base—

Aw, crap. I haven't explained landing patterns yet, have I? Here:

As I've mentioned before, you'll want to land into the wind. Therefore, when you're flying past the runway (before you make that 180 degree turn to land), you're going downwind, and are therefore on the appropriately-named downwind leg of the pattern. After the downwind, you turn base: 90 degrees to the left (or right, depending). Then you turn final, and land. From the time you're on downwind, abeam of the numbers on the end of the runway, you should be descending steadily.

Got that? Good. Now where was I?

Oh yes. So, in a Mooney, you want to be going 100 miles per hour on downwind; 90 on base; and 80 on final. You'll touch down at about 65. Gear speed (the point at which it's safe to lower the landing gear) is 120 miles or less. Flap speed (the point at which it's safe to lower the—well, you know) is 100 miles or less. Pattern altitude at Apple Valley Airport is 4,000 feet (because the airport itself is at 3,000 feet; pattern altitude is 1,000 feet AGL in this case). It's left traffic for Runway 18 (which means all the turns you make in the pattern will be left turns).

You might want to write some of this down. It'll come in handy later.

You can lower the gear whenever the heck you want. Mooney pilots know a neat little trick that greatly aids them during landings: the Mooney's landing gear can be used as an air brake. Having those big clunky wheels sticking out into the slipstream slows you down something righteous. This is how it's supposed to go: enter the pattern on the downwind leg at 4,000 feet, preferably at 100 miles per hour; lower the gear to help slow yourself down and lose altitude; once you pass the numbers, pump in some flaps (which slow you down more, and also help you stay aloft at slow speeds).

When you reach 3,800 feet MSL, turn your base leg. Keep the speed at 90. Look around carefully to make sure there aren't any fiery airplanes streaking in from the north to land on the runway you're trying to land on. Then turn final. Pump in full flaps. Keep speed at 80. Pull the throttle all the way out. This is so the plane will actually come down to the ground instead of floating forever 100 feet off the deck. If you've judged the distance and altitude right, the plane will just drift on down to the runway (with you keeping an assiduous eye on the airspeed indicator, keeping the plane at 80). When you get to the ground, flare. (That means raise the nose so (a) the plane slows down; (b) the plane touches down on the runway; and (c) the plane touches down on its two main wheels and not the poor little nose wheel.)

I had a dickens of a time getting all this down. For one thing, the airplane I took most of my flight lessons in didn't have retractable landing gear. The gear was always down; I didn't need to worry about it when I was coming in to land. In my complex Mooney, I've got about three more gauges to watch and a few more steps to take. Not to mention that I have to really yank on that Johnson bar to get the gear down. This Johnson, apparently, is even more stiff than the one in Mr. Mooney's plane...

Gradually I nailed it, though. One of my landings with Spud was so good that he said he wanted to patent it. I just sort of floated down, hardly had to flare at all, and touched down so smoothly that you couldn't tell we were on the ground. That's right. Me. The Postman. I landed a Mooney smoothly. Don't you forget it.

Today, during my landing with Mr. Mooney, I did everything right except pulling out all the power. The flaps were down, the gear was down, the speed was perfect...we were just floating forever 50 feet in the air. It was another gentle landing, though, let me tell you. Grandma could've been sitting in the backseat buttering toast, and never would've spilled a crumb.

Now, if I could only figure out how to trim the dang thing properly, I'd be on Cloud 9. Literally.