Facebook update

Well, it's officially been a week since I quit Facebook. More than that, in fact: since I live in the future, it's Saturday here, and I quit late last Friday.

The first couple of days went well. I was out and about, getting fresh air, exercising, watching sunsets, scribbling, and generally being productive.

Now, however, I've noticed that things are starting to slow down. Instead of clicking on the Facebook link all the time (which I've since removed from my list of bookmarks), the junkie in me has fallen back on other tactics. I'm beginning to fill the void which Facebook left with other sites: YouTube, TV Tropes, and other vacuous time-wasters. I blew one-and-a-half days of my four-day weekend, Thursday and Friday, doing nothing but staring at screens. As usual. (The remainder of Friday was spent bottling our second batch of home-brewed beer. Then we went to Taco Bell. Sweet!)

This indicates to me that Facebook—as well as the other stuff I do online, even Wikipedia—was never about keeping in contact with my friends. It was about my brain satisfying a craving for input. I'm no autodidact. All the hours I spent on Wikipedia educating myself about the Taiping Rebellion, Mondragón rifles or the Registan were just the fulfillment of an unworthy part of my brain, the information addict. Now that Facebook is gone and I can't satisfy myself with the doings and thrashings of my friends and acquaintances, my mind has begun to toke on my other Internet drugs of choice.

Apparently, I need to meditate more. More walks, more workouts, more bike rides, more contemplative smokes down by the Han River (if my friggin' Coleman matches would ever arrive from Gmarket). Studies have shown that meditation can be as beneficial to your health as sleeping, and even more so. It helps clear your mind of white noise and file everything away, categorizing and sorting, a sort of mental disc defragmentation, if you will. 

Oh, and there's also the O-Train this weekend.

What's the O-Train, you ask?

This.

It's a train line that runs in a big circle through three provinces in northeastern Korea. Just got started in April. There's actually two trains. The O-Train (above) does the complete circle (about four hours); the "O" represents the round shape of the route. The V-Train (below) is a little diesel engine that only runs through a particular slice of the route, but that slice is one of the prettiest, rockiest, most mountain- and stream-filled valleys in Gangwon Province. The V-Train (the "V" stands for "valley") moves slowly but scenically, and on board you'll find nostalgia like hot stoves, wood detailing, and baked sweet potatoes. It's all about atmosphere, you see? If you want the feel of a quaint old narrow-gauge steam railway (without a quaint old narrow-gauge steam locomotive) then you take the V-Train. If you want to sit in comfort and take in all the scenery that Gangwon, North Gyeongsang and North Chungcheong Provinces have to offer, then you take the O-Train.

You know how much I love trains. I've been agog to ride on one of these babies ever since I first heard about 'em. A good long train ride through gorges and over rivers, past trees clad in autumn colors, would do wonders for stress, mental clutter, and ennui.

Now, someday I'd like to ride both, but for the nonce, Miss H and I will content ourselves with the O-Train. (I can always come back and ride that zebra-striped beast later.) Tomorrow (Sunday) morning, my lady and I shall waltz into Seoul Station, grab a mugunghwa train for Jecheon, Gangwon-do, and then hitch a ride on the Big O. That ought to put paid to my inner Internet addict.

peninsular news

What I'm about to tell you is two weeks old already, because the newspapers I'm using were a week old when I picked them up, and it's been a week since I picked them up. So there. Yeah.

But anyway, the news was so interesting and so genuinely Korean that I had to share it with you. Y'might get a better idea of what goes on over here on this peninsula after reading these stories:

From an issue of the Joong-Ang Ilbo, dated May 3rd:

The rebuilding of Sungnyemun (also known as Namdaemun, literally "South Great Gate") has just been completed. This is what it looks like now:

                                                                                                        from Wikipedia Commons

Why was it rebuilt? Well, because in 2008, this happened:

                                                                                           also from Wikipedia Commons

Some ass-hat set fire to the darn thing and burnt it to a crisp.

That we may be clear, Sungnyemun is National Treasure No. 1 in South Korea. There used to be a huge retaining wall 20 feet high which encircled the citadel of Seoul, back in the Joseon Era (1392-1897). The gates were all built between 1396 and 1398, and they marked the cardinal directions. The northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest gates were the "Four Small Gates," and the north, south, east and west gates were the "Four Great Gates." Only six of 'em still exist today; I've been to four of them.

Sungnyemun (which literally translates to "Exalted Ceremonies Gate") is the best-preserved and most iconic. It shows up most frequently in travelogues and brochures about SoKo. It was nothing short of a tragedy when it was destroyed, and it was a long, torturous labor of love to set it to rights again. But now it's back, and reopened, and everyone can behold it in all its glory. The city government took pains to reconstruct the gate using materials and methods which were correct for the period, and they went slow and steady instead of rushing things (which has bitten them in the butt with previous restoration projects, I hear). I advise everybody to stop by the gate on their way through Seoul. It's worth your while.

Okay, onto the second news story:

The Korean SATs have been canceled.

No joke. It turns out that the office of the Korean Supreme Prosecutor (ain't that a badass title?) raided six college prep schools (hagwons) in Gangnam in February on suspicion that they were selling SAT questions which they sourced from Southeast Asia. In response to this information, the College Board canceled the test on the peninsula. Period.

This is unprecedented. The test has never been out-and-out canceled here before. A lot of Korean college students are going to be heavily disadvantaged by this. Just like in the U.S., SAT scores are an integral part of the university application process. Without 'em, students have little to no chance of getting into any sort of credible institution. It remains to be seen what the overreaching effects of this development will be.

And in the national news section of the Joong-Ang Ilbo, there was this little gem of a headline:

Filial attitudes get less respectful, says survey.

Here's the nut graph, just so you can get an idea of the article's message:

"As Korea's Confucian values continue to give way to modern or Western ways, a decreasing number of young people think they should be solely responsible for elderly parents."

Interesting, huh? I don't want to sound puffed-up, but this is something that I've been noticing myself in my discussions with students and young Korean people. The steady seep of Western films, music and philosophy into Korean culture has wrought its subtle magic, for good or ill. According to this study (conducted jointly by Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which is apparently a thing), only 35.6 percent of Koreans between the ages of 15-24 said they intend to fully support their parents when they get old.

Just to give you some perspective, that figure was 67.1 percent in 2002. 

Increasingly, it seems, young Koreans are expecting the government to take care of the elderly, leaving them free to pursue their own hopes and dreams free of the financial burden of dependent parents. This is quite a turnaround. They don't have a Parents' Day in this country for nothing, you know. Time was that Koreans would sacrifice everything for their parents and grandparents. Nothing was more important than caring for and obeying one's forbears. (Every single story I read in Professor Jeong's Folk Tales from Korea reflected this to a degree.) The unconditional care and support the elderly would receive from their children when they became too old to work was...a given. It was universal. It was the Confucian retirement plan. It was a reflection of Kongzi's emphasis on filial piety and respect for the elderly. These two ideas were ubiquitously practiced in the East for centuries, so much so that they were identified in the West as an integral part of the Oriental mindset.

But all that's changing now. The influx of Western ideas, particularly those which emphasize individualism, are well on their way to supplanting the old Confucian ways in Korea. (Potentially elsewhere, too: I'm curious to know if this same thing is happening in far-more-liberal Japan or far-more-conservative China.)

I know it'd be trite to say that Korea is a "nation of contrasts"; but hey, I'm a hack writer, so I can say it if I want to. That's precisely what this country is. They lovingly restore a 700-year-old gate, and yet their young 'uns don't want to take care of the old fogies anymore. They practically kill themselves working and studying, but some of them seem perfectly willing to cheat to get ahead. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm on the ground to formulate these opinions firsthand instead of trying to construct a picture from newspaper clippings and TV talk shows.

Postie out.

flexing the "write" muscles

Though I crammed a lot of books into my suitcase before I left for Korea in February 2012, I've gradually come to realize that I didn't bring nearly enough. I don't know what possessed me to leave my unread copy of The Idiot; but I did, and I'm intellectually poorer for it.

There were some nonfiction works I shouldn't have left behind, either. One of them was The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises by Brian Kiteley. Kiteley, a novelist and writing teacher, makes a big promise with that "uncommon" part in the title. But, as one Amazon reviewer states, "he lives up to it." What little I remember from skimming through it last February was promising. They were, indeed, uncommon and thought-provoking activities. I wish I had that book with me now. My prose could use some more pizzazz.

That said, I'm being more productive. I recently finished that big overhaul of the novel that I embarked upon so many months ago, and I am currently about 5,000 words into my current WIP (which is Novel #2 in the same series). Miss H is my beta reader for Novel #1. I'm nervous but excited. It's finally ready for her eyes. I don't feel ashamed anymore.

...but I am ashamed of how lax I've been with my travel writing career.  I haven't sold anything in over a year. But hope is on the horizon, even as trees leaf out and flowers bloom in Olympic Park. When the weather warms up, the sun climbs high and Spring rears her lovely head, Seoul starts effervescing with parties and events. Case in point, I'm heading to the Spring Beer Fest in Itaewon on May 4, and I'm super jazzed. Mass-market Korean beer has driven me to distraction. I'm beyond ready to sample the best suds this country's microbreweries and home-brewers can dish up. I'll have my old Geordie friend Adam (from Geoje Island) beside me, so he and I will paint the town on Saturday afternoon. YEAH!

...the practical upshot of this is that I'll get a humdinger of a travel article out of it. I just need to find a beery magazine to publish it in after the dust settles. Trust me, I'm researching markets as you read this.

And now I'll leave you with a little something. I wrote it early last year, before I left for Korea. I was involved in a writing workshop with a poet, musician and writing teacher (the mother of one of my old high school buddies). This is one of the things which it produced. It was a writing exercise in which we...um...in which we...

You know what? I've completely forgotten what the point was. Perhaps it was to choose a characteristic and then create a character based on that characteristic. Perhaps it was to choose an important piece of information about a character, but keep it concealed from the audience until the very end. Whatever the assignment's original intent, I've reproduced my response for you below. Enjoy.

CHARACTER STUDY #1

     The sun beat down upon the hard, dusty earth.  The air was dry enough to suck the juice out of any living thing, and was hotter than hell to boot.  Not a breeze disturbed the arid landscape, with its piles of white-hot rocks, the waterless streambeds, the stiff and desiccated plants.  The only sound was the lonesome cry of a solitary hawk winging its way through the boiling updrafts.  Silence and desolation reigned over the land.

     In the midst of this parched wasteland was a pathetic cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings as bleached and bone-dry as the country which surrounded it.  Ten or eleven structures straddled a wide main avenue, which came from nowhere and led to more of the same.  “Monson’s General Store” one shop front was labeled.  “Chinese Laundry” hailed another.  “The Golden Horn Saloon” was a third, and it was here that most of the town’s meager activity was centered.  Skinny, rawboned folk, their faces beaten into a mass of crusty wrinkles and wind-burned lines, moved in and out of the creaking batwings at the saloon’s entrance.  Potbellied men with greasy hair, beady eyes and clothes bleached to a grimy no-color escorted women as slender and wispy as straw.

    The bartender stood behind the worn and long-suffering bar, endlessly wiping whiskey bottles free of the choking dust.  Beads of sweat stood out on his furrowed brow.  The air of desperation was thick enough to cut with a knife.  He heard a particularly loud creak from the batwings and looked up from his work. 

     Standing at the door was a man so thickset and long of limb that he looked like an ape on its hind legs.  The entire saloon fell quiet at the amazing sight.  The stranger loped across the room with an easy, lolloping gait, like a man accustomed to venturing into strange and hostile places.   He swung up to the bar and planted himself on a stool.  The bartender stared.  The stranger met his eyes and opened his mouth, speaking in the hard, gravelly tone of a hard-bitten trailblazer.

     “Gimme a whiskey.”

     The bartender put his eyes back in.  He reached around, retrieved a half-full bottle of red-eye from below the mirror, set a shot glass on the bar and poured a gulp.  The stranger took it, knocked it back, and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.

     “Mister?” the bartender began, hesitantly, straining his courage to its limit.

     “Yeah?”

     “Why you wearing a clown suit?”

things I've done in Seoul

First, I'd like to tell you that the new semester has begun at school. My schedule's a bit heavier—especially Thursdays—but nothing I can't deal with.

Second, Heather and I have been having a lot of fun. Last weekend we went to the 63 Building in Seoul (on Yeouido Island), took in the view from 60 floors up, saw a show at the IMAX Theater, and totally skipped going to Sea World Aquarium (not the same SeaWorld as in the States) because the line was literally around the building.

I also sallied forth to the War Museum in Yongsan, and take in some of the finer points of Korea's military history, going back thousands of years. Korea ranks right up there with Israel on the List of Small Countries Who've Spent Their Entire Existence Surrounded By Much More Powerful And Unfriendly Nations Who Want To Brutally Conquer Them Or Wipe Them Off the Map But Haven't Been Able to Because This Particular Small Country Is Rather Defensible And Also Really Good at Busting People In The Nutsack With Superior Weapons And Tactics When They Come Invading Thank You Very Much And Have Therefore Managed To Survive For Thousands Of Years When The Odds All Said Their Chances Were Close To Nil.

(I really need to stop reading Badass of the Week so much.)

But in all seriousness, Korea has spent much of its existence in the company of larger and militarily powerful countries like Japan, Mongolia and China, and has been invaded countless times throughout its history. Through a combination of skill, fortitude, resolve, badass military commanders, and the occasional advantageous alliance with China, Korea has managed to preserve itself all this time.

 

Oh, and did I mention their weaponry?

That's right. This is a mortar which fires giant iron-tipped arrows.

The sword of a commanding general, given by the king, inscribed with constellations, sacred texts and symbols. Effin' badass.

The turtle ship, a tank-like vessel covered with spiked armored plates. Oh yeah, and the dragon's head up front? It spews poison gas.

The Goguryeo Kingdom favored the use of tridents in combat. And that spear in the back appears to be covered with razor-sharp leaves.

The crowning glory of medieval Korean battlefield might: the hwacha. Those are 30-40 rocket-propelled arrows attached to this thing. It mercilessly chewed up enemy formations. This thing was badass enough to be featured on an episode of R. Lee Ermey's TV show Lock 'n' Load.

There! All done. I just needed to bring you up-to-date on my more exciting doings...

Oh yeah: I finally got another travel article published. The last one was...jeez, I don't even want to think about that. This latest one's in GoNomad.com. It concerns the balloon launches. The editor-in-chief gave me some very lovely, if unspecific, feedback. Maybe I should write articles like this more often, hmm?

In the next post I'll tell you how the novel's going. First I need to go work on it, though. Postie out.  

gonzo journalists have more fun

I'd hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
                                                                                           — Hunter S. Thompson

I never told you why I became a journalist, did I?

I started out in zoology. I don't know why. I never really had a clear idea of what zoologists do. I'd heard they were involved with animals, and I wanted to be involved with animals. I loved animals as a kid. You can thank Walt Disney for that. Bambi was probably where it began. I can still remember, to this day, where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Bambi's mother had been shot.

So I said, "I'll be a zoologist, and work with animals." I signed up for the zoology program at North Dakota State University in the fall of 2004. I looked around. There were six incoming freshmen in the zoology program at North Dakota State University in the fall of 2004. The department was in the basement of the biological science building. The head doctor had a black-and-white photograph taped to his office door, depicting a bunch of people with their heads stuck down holes in the middle of a grassy plain. The caption read "PRAIRIE DOG WATCHING."

Those were my first clues. I should've realized that I didn't have the slightest idea what I was in for.

Two semesters into the program, I was floundering. I'd scraped through math, wiggled under statistics, survived biology lab and was blowing holes in my English classes. But chemistry was kicking my arse—a C the first semester, and what was shaping up to be a D+ the next.

I was having my doubts about zoology. The magic had been steadily going out of it. I was coming to realize how limited my options were: I could either teach, or become a veterinarian. One would require several extra years of school, and the other would require a cast-iron constitution. And, probably, my firstborn child. Neither of these avenues was appealing.

The final straw came during my preliminary scan of the course catalog in the spring of 2008. I saw that I would be moving up from basic chemistry into organic chemistry in the ensuing fall. I had heard nothing but evil stories about O-chem from everyone I had spoken to. Unwilling to rely on hearsay alone, however, I peeked at a textbook in the university library. The figures made me nauseous and the diagrams made me dizzy. I knew then and there that advanced science wasn't in the cards. I was right-brained. I didn't stand a bacterium's chance in a paramecium dish of coming out alive.

So I said, "F@#& it, I'll be a journalist."

I switched my major to mass communication, figuring I could go anywhere with it: magazines, radio, television, whatever. As luck would have  it, two semesters later (at the beginning of my junior year) North Dakota State opened five new majors in the communication curriculum. One of these was Journalism, Broadcasting and Mass Communication Technology, and I jumped at it. Eighteen months later (and a grand total of 3.5 years in college) I graduated with a Bachelor of Science.

My reasoning was simple. If I wasn't willing to study animals, I could at least write about them—and any other subject that took my fancy. Geology, botany, meteorology, astronomy, politics, geography, travel...

Hey! I could be a travel journalist!

So I did it. I got my degree. And I traveled. And I wrote. And I'm still doing both to this day. I've published three articles so far—one in a free e-zine and two to paying publications. That's right, I've actually made money on what I write. This is such a racket! 

I have many more junkets (and subsequent scribbling) planned. I'm making plans to be off to Korea again sometime next month. After that I think I'll take the long way home: the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia. Miss H and I will kick about in Europe for a few weeks and then return. And that's not the end: I still intend to work in Japan and live in Australia, not to mention fly (for money) in Africa. All of that is prime writing fodder. And it will be written up, don't you believe it.

For that reason, I call myself a gonzo journalist. Gonzo journalists do what they write about. I may not be in the same league as Hunter S. Thompson, but I'm giving it a go. I may not have the same attachment to drugs and alcohol and mayhem that he did, but I've found myself a niche and I'm exploiting it. I wrote an article about living in South Korea. And I lived in South Korea in order to write it. Gonzo. See?

I didn't want to live in some stuffy classroom and stare at slack-jawed students all day. Nor did I want to exist in the fluorescent world of labs and exam rooms and anal-retentive pet parents, either. So I thought I'd pick a career that (a) I could do, and (b) was fun. And I think I've done that, even if the field is as competitive as they come. And for kicks, I can write novels and short stories and crap like that on the side, and get all of my narcissistic jollies out in one fell swoop.

There are worse career plans, right?

Miss H and I took a trip to Las Vegas in July. I wasn't thinking about writing an article about it, because scads of articles have been written about experiencing Vegas from every conceivable angle, and that stuff's old hat. But if I had gone there intending to write about it—even just a journal entry—I'd have struck solid gold. Miss H and I were unexpectedly upgraded from the basic Pyramid Room in the Luxor Hotel to the TOWER LUXURY SUITE. Four rooms. Wet bar. Living room. Spacious bathroom. Bathtub with jets. Floor-to-ceiling windows. One-thousand and eighty square feet. For a whole glorious weekend.

And I learned how to play craps and roulette, and got some inside tips on the science of blackjack.

I really do have too much fun. Someone ought to intervene.

where've all the Irish gone?

TIME: late afternoon, June 15, 2010

PLACE: Dublin, Ireland (O'Connell Street and the River Liffey)

MAJOR PLAYERS: my Canuck friend Jeff and I

OCCASION: our side-trip from northeast England into Ireland

PROBLEM: where the hell are all the feckin' Irish?

I forgot to mention a few things in that last post. First of all, right after we got to our hostel, I leaped out the door and ran down the road to an Internet café, where I stumped up a ridiculously large amount of euros to use a computer for two hours. I sent off my latest article to The Expeditioner, and then I went back, rendezvoused with Jeff, and met Harry, our Australian roomie.

We all clear now? My apologies. This is what happens when I blog without having my notes in front of me. I tend to complain a lot and not say anything edgy or worthwhile. All the poetry of the moment has been scribbled in the notebook.

Jeff hadn't been idle while I was out writing an article. He had explored the western regions of College Street, and ventured a little way east, into Temple Bar, the gleaming party district of southern Dublin. It's touted as the "cultural quarter," preserving the medieval street layout and cobbled streets. But it's also the drunken touristy bit as well. No matter. It was scenic, had a sort of charm about it rarely found in an urban area, and was awash with pretty girls, as I'd mentioned previously. And don't forget the red-haired street performers and amphibious trucks filled with screaming children in Viking hats.

And there was another thing I'd noticed about Dublin while I was out walking around by myself, and even more so when I hooked up with Jeff again and went exploring up O'Connell Street, north of the Liffey.

There were hardly any Irish people anywhere.

There very well may have been, but if they were, they were few, and quite silent. I saw almost nothing but foreigners. I certainly heard nothing else. As we walked up the broad avenue towards the enormous spire in the distance, Jeff and I were barraged with American accents, English accents, Australian accents...but hardly a whiff of Irish in the whole bunch.

We couldn't accept it. This was Dublin, for Pete's sake. The same city Joyce wrote about in a book called, unsurprisingly, Dubliners. It's the capital of the country. The largest city in Ireland. It should have been a friggin' nexus of Irish folk. (I wanted to see some Irish lasses, dammit.)

 

So I decided to try an experiment. Neither Jeff nor I understood what the hell the Spire of Dublin was supposed to be. It was just this shiny steel rod, standing up straight in the middle of O'Connell Street, north of the Liffey. Looked impressive, sure, but it was hardly the most imaginative monument we'd ever seen. (And before you say anything disparaging about the Washington Monument, at least that is an obelisk, and a damned tall one, too, countering anything the Egyptians ever put up.)


So we decided to ask somebody about it. A local, preferably. This would be a great way to assay the extent of the un-Irishness of Dublin. If the random person we picked turned out to be Irish, my faith would be restored. If not, I'd give up all pretense and guess that there were probably fewer Irish people in Dublin than there were foreigners...however good or bad that may be.

I picked the prettiest and most bored-looking girl I could find in a 50-foot radius from the base of the spire.

"Excuse me," I said, pointing up at it, and putting just a hint of Texas into my inflection, "my friend and I are both new around here. What the heck is that?"
"I don't know," she said, in an American accent.
"You don't know either?" I asked. "What's it called?"
"The Millennium Spire," she said. She wasn't offended by our questions. She had an amused sort of smile on her face, in fact. She was a curly blond wearing a flowery skirt, flip-flops, and Paris Hilton sunglasses. She wouldn't have looked out of place in Orange County.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Minnesota," she replied. "My family's here on vacation, I'm just waiting for them now."


Well, that was that. I guess there's some kind of reverse diaspora going on in Dublin. All the Irish left and all the foreigners moved in and took up the slack.

I had more pressing matters to attend to than demographics. Jeff indulgently followed me as we ducked down Henry Street and into a supermarket where I grabbed some postcards for the folks back home. Then we went back across the river and into Carroll's Irish Gifts. I was a man on a mission. One of my dear friends, the lovely Miss B (whom I was rather close to in college), had given me a special request. She had stated categorically that I was to buy her a souvenir whilst abroad in the British Isles, on pain of death.


Never one to incur Miss B's wrath, and wanting to surprise her with something beautiful and lovely and marvelous and reminiscent of our time together, I stepped into the shop and cast a discerning eye over the goods. After much deliberation, I selected a necklace, a teardrop-shaped bit of amethyst with spiral silver trim. (Purple is Miss B's favorite color.)

Then it was time for more selfish ends. I dithered a while over a T-shirt for myself. The selection ranged from the basic—IRISH REPUBLIC, EST. 1916—to the jocular—IRISH I WERE DRUNK—to the ribald—I SURVIVED A NIGHT IN DUBLIN, with images of a glass of beer, a couple humping in bed, and an aspirin pill.

I decided to sleep on the decision.

Jeff and I returned to the hostel (stopping off by the Ha'penny bridge on the way, which struck a chord with Jeff, because his ancestral name is something quite close to Ha'penny; so we had to get pictures) and had a lovely nap. We partook of some delicious pasta salad in the kitchen on the second floor, courtesy of the staff, and then went out to explore Temple Bar.

We passed the Christ Church Cathedral and the Four Courts...

...and located the Brazen Head, supposedly the "oldest pub in Ireland", established 1198. Here we sipped Guinness (and I learned how to pour it; the stuff's so foamy that you have to fill the glass three-quarters of the way and then let it sit for a bit before finishing) and watched Brazil beat hell out of North Korea.

And we laid plans for the morrow. We figured we'd take the walking tour just to familiarize ourselves with Dublin's layout and historical significance. Couldn't hurt, and it was free, too. We were on a budget, after all. We'd definitely want to hit either the Guinness brewery or the old Jameson distillery. Those were two Dublin tours we couldn't miss, and they both offered the chance of a free taste.

And suddenly Jeff and I realized the inherent stupidity of coming to Ireland to detoxify.

We slowly worked our way back east to the hostel, stopping in at any likely pub that caught our eyes. First there was Thomas Read for some Paulaner Hefeweizen (apparently it's a faux pas to order Kilkenny in Dublin; the barman stiffly informed me that he was fresh out); and then Doyle's, right next door to our resting-place. We had another pint of Guinness. We had become addicted to it. Guinness, surprisingly, actually tastes good in Ireland. Everywhere else it's been bitter, flat, and thoroughly unimpressive stuff. But in Ireland it was rich, foamy, dark, aromatic, full-bodied and smooth, far and away the best stout we'd ever had. We were astounded, flabbergasted, gobsmacked. We couldn't get enough of the stuff. One drink was like the most delicious meal and the most satisfying draft all wrapped up in one.

While we were sitting there in Doyle's (which was the most pub-like of all the pubs we'd visited...almost pitch-black, loaded to the brim with dark wood, and filled with all manner of working-class folks, their faces half-hidden in shadow) a sharply-dressed gentleman with a name tag that read "Martyn" walked up to our table and asked us if we wanted to read his poetry. I had a few beers in me (and, subsequently, a pervading sense of general equanimity), so I said I would. With names like "The Black Rose" his poems were charged with feeling and besotted with visual and sensual imagery, manifested in florid verse. I was a bit buzzed to tell Martyn that, though. Nonetheless, I read a few of his poems, nodded appreciatively, handed his book back, and told him thanks, but I was saving all my money for beer.

Don't miss the next chapter of our stalwart heroes' fearless journey through Dublin, dancing with the Australians, coming soon to a blog near you!

the Postman resurfaceth

I'm back. I got into Las Vegas about 2:00 in the afternoon (it was 107 degrees Fahrenheit; thank goodness my folks brought the air-conditioned Chrysler to pick me up). I've been back about 24 hours now and already I'm jonesing for a cheese-and-Branson-pickle sandwich. No, I don't expect you to know what that means. Yes, I will explain it to you fully later. Right now I've got a million other things to attend to. I've got to finish writing all of my magazine articles and submitting them, for one thing (go to TheExpeditioner.com and check 'em out). I've got to get everything out of my room before Monday, too, so the contractor can tear up the carpet and replace it. That's going to be hell, I can already tell. There are some dead branches piled up out on the basketball court that need to be cut up, and at some point I'm going to have to resume my exercise regimen and mail off all the gifts I bought for people over in the British Isles.

And oh yeah, I'm going to have to get caught up with all you slobs' blogs, too. Anyway, give me a couple days. Then I shall begin to relate to you the marvelous, amazing, life-changing, mind-bending, delicious, adventurous, jubilant, feverish time I had across the pond. Stay tuned.

the thin blue haze

No two days on the job are exactly the same.

Tuesday and Wednesday we didn't fly at all. We were weather-canceled. The spring winds which blow so fiercely in the Mojave at this time of year kicked up in force. The powers-that-be don't like the UAV to fly in high winds; it makes landing kind of tricky. Any less chance that the $3,000,000 piece of equipment will get bent is taken up. I stayed home, but Spud, my second boss, still flew. That governor on the Mooney "Sierra Hotel" was still acting up. Pete, Spud and a few others worked on it for two days and got it fixed at last.

On Thursday, the winds were calm. Spud and I met at the hangar at 7:00, had some of Anna's excellent coffee, rolled Sierra Hotel out of the hangar, cranked up and took off. Spud is solid. He's tall and extremely lanky, with a Roman nose, big honest eyes, and a ready grin. He'll never hesitate to tell you a story or explain an obscure aerodynamic principle. He lets me fly quite a bit, too, whenever there's a quiet moment in the air.

There was a bit of an incident on Thursday, though. It felt oddly breezy in the cockpit as we climbed out of Apple Valley and headed west to Victorville. Neither of us could figure out why. Then I looked up. I saw blue sky peering at me through a crack over my head. The door was open. I hadn't closed it properly. I'd fastened the bottom latch, but the top latch, directly above my head, was loose. And now the 100 mile-an-hour slipstream was blowing the door ajar. Neither of us panicked, nor even lost our cool, but I tell you what—unexpectedly seeing blue sky from inside the airplane is somewhat disconcerting. Fortunately, the UAV wasn't ready to take off yet, and we had a few minutes to spare.

We tried various things. Spud slowed us down to an absurdly low speed to reduce the tearing force of the slipstream. No good. Even with that, I still couldn't pull the door to. Spud called up the tower and asked if we could do a touch-and-go. We were cleared, and while on the deck, Spud reached over and helped me latch the door. We had to throw in a fancy handle-jiggle to get the job done. We took off again, just as the UAV called up and said they were ready to go.

Lesson learned: next time, look up and make sure the door's latched. I didn't feel too bad about it. Spud was gracious and passed it off. I hadn't delayed the United States government in the testing of its new über-advanced reconnaisance and weapons platform, either. Whew...

And then, there was a bit of technical difficulty. We escorted the UAV out to the test site, but the controllers at Victorville couldn't seem to hand the darn thing off. Control couldn't be transferred to the training base. After 30 fruitless minutes, they gave up. Spud and I escorted the UAV back to Victorville. We tried again at noon. This time, everything went off as planned.

Later that day, while Spud and I were sitting in the airport café, Boss #3 showed up. Dawg had come to take care of some other business, and thought he'd observe the afternoon mission. That meant I was let go at about 3:30 p.m. So I went back home and got some stuff done. All in all, it was an odd sort of day. Friday was more...well, normal. (As normal as things get around here, anyway.) In the morning, Spud let me orbit in Victorville airspace while we waited for the UAV to taxi. "Orbiting" is just what it sounds like: flying in a circle (or an oval, racetrack-like). Jetliners do this when they're in a holding pattern. We try to time it so we come out of the final turn right behind the UAV as it takes off. Sometimes we make it; otherwise, Spud has to haul an extremely tight turn. That's one major thing Mooneys have over less complex planes like Cessna 172s: the zippiness. You can pretty much roll a Mooney's wings straight up-and-down, and fly that way. You could never do that in a Cessna; you'd completely lose the vertical component of lift. Mooneys have the power to pull that kind of maneuver, though.

The mission went perfectly. We escorted 'er out; came back to Apple Valley; got some errands done, like returning Spud's rental car (a Prius...ha!); and then drove back to the airport and did some paperwork. I polished up a long article about mountain-climbing in Korea, and sent it off for publication. I also worked on my entry for the "Drunk At First Sight" Blogfest. (It's not too late to sign up for that, folks! Join the fun! Write up some romantic, comedic fiction involving St. Patty's Day, alcohol, or Ireland! Come the 17th, stroll around to everyone else's blogs and enjoy the read! Sign on today!)

Then Spud and I flew the afternoon mission. He let me fly out and fly back in. The thing that sticks in my mind about those two flights is just how beautiful the flying was. The weather was divine, and clear as a bell. You could see for miles. There wasn't a breath of wind, which almost made up for two days of tree-bending gales. We just sort of cruised along, behind and below the UAV, close enough to read some of the serial numbers on the tail, a vast sea of blue sky above us, a continent of sand and dust below. The snowy San Bernardinos glimmered in the distance through the thin blue haze. Rogers Dry Lake shimmered with a mirage the size of a battlefield. The Sierra Nevadas reared their hoary heads on the horizon. Our perspective was unlimited. We were masters of the world, and all that lay in it. Flying is joy, and as Melba Colgrove said, joy is the feeling of grinning inside.

The neat thing about working with an instructor who also happens to be a retired Navy fighter pilot is: you get to hear the most incredible stories. And all sorts of exciting military jargon is thrown in with your lessons, too. We sat up there on Friday afternoon, six thousand feet over the ground, the panorama of the desert spread out beneath us under the fiery western sun, the ground controllers updating us regularly on the position of the incoming UAV. A bubble of excitement bounced irrepressibly around my chest. There's a strange sort of deliciousness to waiting. Waiting for somebody's vehicle—even just the vehicle itself—is one of the sweetest kinds of anticipation. It doesn't matter what manner of conveyance it is: a train, a plane, a car coming around the bend. Whenever I'm waiting at the station for a bus or a train, excitement simmers in the pit of my stomach. Every time I see a film where people stand around and wait for something (or somebody), I am bodily thrilled. The opening sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time...and I don't even like the movie all that much.

Things were no different as we slowly orbited the rendezvous point that Friday afternoon. Oh boy...where's he going to appear, and who's going to spot him first? And, as we waited, Spud taught me how to intercept. That's right, an old fighter pilot taught me how to intercept another airplane. Picture me, my hands on the thin yoke of the temperamental Mooney, Spud sitting in the left seat, his flattened hands held up in front of him, pantomiming two aircraft in flight, as he discourses excitedly about how to spot the enemy first and get on his tail. Tell me that's not awesome. Just try.

After I made a pretty decent mess of putting the Mooney into the traffic pattern for runway 26 back at Apple Valley (the wind was blowing out of the west, strangely), we landed, refueled, tucked the plane into its hangar, and prepared to depart for Ontario Airport, about 60 miles away. I had a moment's scare when I realized that my computer bag was not in my Jeep. And what's worse, it had my computer in it. Somewhat frantically, I drove down to the airport lobby, with Spud sitting in the passenger seat and calmly reassuring me.
"You ever read Nancy Drew stories?" he asked, as my heart jumped and pounded in my chest, cold sweat on my forehead, hands tight on the wheel. I was thinking about the USB drive with all my private data on it...in the hands of a stranger.
"Uh...no...what?" I stammered.
"Nancy's father gave her some good advice once," Spud said. His voice was strangely soothing. I felt like I was in a two-seat fighter jet, roaring over the ground at hundreds of miles an hour: a hapless trainee, sweating about what button to push next. Spud, my instructor, was at ease in the backseat, speaking to me in that same tone...an aural salve.
"Don't borrow trouble," Spud intoned, quoting Nancy's father. "You've got plenty enough of your own."
After I took a turn about 30 miles faster than I should've, he added "If it's there, it's there. If it's not, it's not. Nothing's going to change in five minutes."
That ready grin never left his face. Feeling marginally better, I dashed into the airport building and found my bag. It was sitting right where I'd left it, on a chair in the lobby. Nobody had even touched it. Everything was still there. Computer, USB drive, lock, stock, and barrel. Man, I love small airports in small towns. I ran Spud down to Ontario Airport, battled my way back through rush-hour traffic on I-15, and got back to the house about 7:30. I could now look forward to Dad's spaghetti, Mom's garlic bread, some Billy Squier, and InuYasha. I'd just put a twelve-and-a-half-hour workday under my belt. It felt good.