Bas Cam!

“Feelip, Feelip! Bas cam!”

A never-fail recipe for wholesale disorientation is to be awoken in the middle of the night by someone shouting incomprehensibly at you.

“Feelip, Feelip! Kwik! Da bas cam!!”

Arms, legs, blankets, backpacks, flashlights, bamboo mats, everything was in chaotic motion as Lorraine and I jumped up, thrashing about, trying to make some sense of the shouting.

It was Tapu.

Tapu was outside our hut and was hollering at us. I checked my watch. It was 2:30 in the morning. Neurons began to align. Tapu was trying to tell us that “the bus come”. The already objectionably early 5:00 a.m. bus to Apia was absurdly ahead of schedule.

We were on the remote and thinly populated south coast of Upolu, Western Samoa’s main island. Apia, the capital, was on the far side of the island. We had been staying with Tapu and his family for the last week and it was time to go to the airport. It was time to leave what had been a surreal cliché of South Seas living. Tall palms, empty beaches, sparkling water, thatched huts, happy people, seclusion, disconnection, peace... well, mostly peace.

Tapu had become frantic. “FEELIP!!! Da bas go! Da bas go!!!”

Sure enough, as we fell out of our hut, unzipped packs half slung over our shoulders, the thrashed yellow school bus began to inch forward.

“I need the bathroom!” Lorraine shouted, while running.

“No time!” I shouted back. This would prove to be a mistake.

We didn't want to leave. Of course we didn't want to leave. In part this was for the usual reasons people don't want to leave a beautiful place, but in part it was for other reasons. We were trying to come to terms with the fact that this could be the final leg of our eight month around the world vagabondage. The previous summer we had quit our jobs back in Winnipeg, put our possessions into precariously stacked boxes in Lorraine's parents basement, said goodbye to family and friends in an open-ended sort of way and then left without any actual plan for the eventual abstract “after”. Tanya and Byron, the tall guitar playing American couple who were also staying with Tapu were headed to Micronesia next and we wondered, could we stretch our funds just a little further?

We leapt onto the bus just as some advanced gear was engaged and it lurched forward from its slow roll into shuddering, swaying, flatulent propulsion. The driver flashed us a gappy grin and twisted the volume knob on the cassette deck bolted onto the ceiling. Bob Marley began to overpower the engine. We slid onto a small varnished wooden bench and stared in frank astonishment as Christmas lights festooned all around the inside of the front windshield, as well as an oversized Jesus nightlight on the dashboard, began to pulsate in perfect syncopation with “Buffalo Soldier”.

Not a single light was on anywhere outside and it was moonless and overcast, so the black surrounding our festively lit bus was otherworldly and dimensionless, creating the strong illusion of voyaging through outer space until suddenly the bus would slow and faces would materialize out of that void. These faces invariably belonged to colossal women in floral muumuus. Fat is beautiful to the Samoans, so if the vastness of the new passengers was anything to go by, the south coast was awash in hot women. The villages themselves were un-seeable in the black, but women kept appearing and kept climbing onto the bus, all of them full of remarkable good cheer given the hour. Through some trick of spatial geometry they managed to squeeze two abreast onto each little bench until all the benches were full.

The villages on the south shore had no shops, so the trip to Apia was primarily a shopping trip for most of them. Perhaps to pick up a few luxuries. Perhaps to stock up on Spam. Spam and corned beef had been introduced by the missionaries and were considered delicacies. In fact, as honoured guests we were served generously sized Spam chunks floating in ramen noodle soup (another store bought indulgence), while the family ate papayas and fresh greens and banana leaf steamed fish. Every garden was a rainbow riot of vegetables and chickens and fruit and cocoa trees that Sina, Tapu's wife, harvested, roasted, ground and made into hot cocoa for us every day. The sea was so thick with fish that they didn't bother with boats. A small group of men just waded out with sticks and beat the water, herding the fish into a net.

With some difficulty we persuaded them that we would prefer the local food too. Dinners became long delicious affairs in Tapu's open sided hut as we sat on the floor and ate the freshest most natural food imaginable while Byron strummed and Tanya sang softly. Eventually Tapu's family would start rolling over wherever they were sitting and fall asleep right there, starting with the grandmother and ending with Tapu himself. And then finally only the four foreigners were left awake, so we would quietly get up and wander back to our own huts in the starshine of a soft South Pacific night.

Eventually the bus entered another cluster of villages as again the faces appeared and again the aisle was filled with muumuus, smiles and a great deal of flesh. This was going to be interesting, I thought, as every bench was already occupied to an extent never dreamt of by the Blue Bird school bus manufacturers.

And it was interesting.

Friendly smiles were exchanged between sitters and would-be sitters and then the would-be sitters delicately clambered onto the sitters’ laps until there were four enormous women per bench. You may want to read that over again. Four. Per. Bench. Two above. Two below.

Finally Lorraine and I had the only remaining double occupancy bench. And then I was smiled at. I stared at the smiler. She smiled some more and began to swing her prodigious hind quarters around towards me. Zapped into action, I grabbed Lorraine, plunked her on my lap and slid to the window. Two women gracefully inserted themselves beside us. One above. One below.

Marley played on. Jesus pulsated. The bus lurched and farted deeper into the Samoan night.

You will recall that Lorraine needed the bathroom earlier. She still did. Even more so. Her brow was glossy with sweat and her mouth was set like a vice. With every lurch and bump she winced softly. This went on for almost two hours. How she didn’t succumb to a rupture, I honestly do not know. I suppose some of us just have inner sphincter strengths that we are unaware of until they are truly tested.

We finally sputtered into Apia’s main market at 5:30. I had assumed that the early start had been to allow everyone to get to the market for opening. But it didn’t open until 7:00. It was empty, save a handful of skeletal dogs scavenging through yesterday’s market’s remains.

It is so strange when I think back on this now, but when I calculate the time change, at that very moment back home my father was undergoing emergency brain surgery for a tumour that had suddenly declared itself with a storm of seizures. We had been a week without any communication with the outside world. There had been no way for anyone to reach us, although they were beside themselves with efforts to try. There in Apia, in the cool pre-dawn, looking out at the deserted market and trying to see the funny side of the bus situation, I had no idea that my life was being profoundly rearranged on the far side of the Pacific.

It was time to go home. The lack of a plan for after was no longer a problem, but a blessing.

We disembarked just as the eastern sky began to colour rose and saffron. Everyone else stayed on the bus and, including the driver, went immediately to sleep, their snores mixing with Bob Marley and the sounds of a small tropical city just coming to life.

What's with the tie dude? Long story why I actually packed a tie, but I'm wearing it in this photo because it is Sunday and Samoans are very observant. Everyone goes to church on Sunday. Everyone.  Even heathens like me. The whole congregation sang like a massed choir with such clarity, beauty, passion and harmony, I can hear it in my mind still today.

The High Road, Definitely The High Road

   

 You know that old Scottish song that goes, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road..."?
You want to take the high road. Not only for the views and the favourable general metaphor, but because in the song the low road specifically signifies a spirit road which you can only take when you are dead. You don't want that. Most people don't get past that first line, but if you know a little more of it you'll know that it goes on to sing about the "bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond".

    "They are bonny!" John said when he had caught his breath.
    I nodded in agreement, too winded for the moment to reply.
    The loch gleamed far below where we stood on Conic Hill. This was definitely the high road, although we felt half dead.
    "Aye, the bonny banks of Loch Lomond," I finally said when the panting had subsided.
    "No Philipp, LOW-mund, Loch LOW-mund, not le-MOND," John reminded me, again.
    "Ok, right, le-MOND. No damn it, LOW-mund, LOW-mund, LOW-mund."
    I don't why the oddly French sounding version stuck so tenaciously in my head, but it did. Over the next six days on the West Highland Way I would mispronounce that name no fewer than 271 times. That is an estimate.

    Looking down on Loch Lomond, bright quicksilver against the darkening hills all around, it was astonishing, surreal in fact, to consider that just earlier that same day we had stepped off a flight from Canada. It took us no more than an hour to deplane, clear customs, grab a taxi to the trail-head in the Glasgow suburb of Milngavie (perversely pronounced "mul-guy"), and begin the hike. I tell you, there is no better remedy for jetlag than to walk 32 kilometers. It's like pressing the ctrl-alt-del on your body and brain. There was no jetlag in the sense of feeling out of synch with the local time, but a 32 km hike over the hills after 3 hours of sleep in a cramped aluminum tube certainly made us tired. But at least we were tired at a time of day that made sense in Scotland as we had walked until dusk. This brought us to the Oak Tree Inn in Balmaha, on the shore of Lomond, where we were able to shed our now accursed boots and reeking socks and then stagger (yes, this is the right word) into their restaurant with the refrain 'beerfoodbeerfoodbeerfood' having comprehensively displaced 'you take the high road...'

    Now let's play a word association game. I say Scotland, and then you say...? Bagpipes, kilts, haggis, rain. Am I right? Probably even in that order. Well, the reality is that in over a week in Scotland we saw nobody playing the bagpipes and the only kilts were worn by two Belgians on the top of Ben Nevis (another story). And rain? Yes, statistically the chance of rain on any given day when we were there is 75%. And that's for Scotland as a whole. We were in the west where it is "even wetter". But we had no rain. Not only did we have no rain, but we both got sunburns. But haggis, there you are spot on. I don't know whether it is making a comeback or whether it never went away, but haggis is everywhere and in a delightful array of forms and presentations. We vowed to have haggis every day. That night we tucked into a haggis and blood pudding pizza, which we immediately dubbed the "Blood & Guts". It was delicious, absolutely delicious. I am being completely serious.

    We slept like dead men. Like on the low road. The next morning the very un-Scottish sun filled our rooms and roused us for the next leg of the hike, this time 33 km along the entire length of the loch. If this strikes you as unwise, then you can give yourself a point. This is not the recommended way to hike the West Highland Way, but alas, we had left the bookings too late and the more favourably spaced accommodations were booked out. This is a surprisingly remote area, so hotels and B&Bs are very thin on the ground.

    But no matter, we had survived the first day, including bizarre encounters with, first, a fake gypsy and his alleged wolf, and then, a real, apparently famous, dwarf. I'll leave those to your imagination as further description would distract from the narrative. Both of us were understandably a touch footsore, but felt fit enough that the 33 km did not seem excessive. At least not at first. At first there were carpets of bluebells on either side of a lovely meandering path that skirted the lake shore and then wound up through woods sprouting bright fresh green. It was sunny! The lake sparkled! The path was gentle! There were bluebells! This was at first. (foreshadowing)

    By early afternoon the path had become decidedly more rugged and John was beginning to lag a little. At first I hoped that it was just the tiredness and the terrain. But we usually match pace very well, so I was concerned. Sure enough, John told me that his knee was starting to bother him. He had injured it a few years before on Mount Elbrus in Russia (an excellent tale in its own right). Something about the distance we were covering and the torquing twisting nature of the increasingly rock and root strewn path had grievously reactivated the injury. He rapidly went from lagging a little, to having to stop frequently, to hardly being able to walk at all.

   There were still about 12 km to go of what was reportedly the most difficult stretch of the entire 155 km West Highland Way. And we were losing time. There was no way we would make it to our hotel, the Drover's Inn in Inverarnan, by nightfall. Absolutely no way. Fuck.

    So, call a cab then you twat! Fine idea, but the problem is that the road is on the other side of the loch. The loch is 40 km long and we were close to midway along the roadless northern half of the east bank.  However, just ahead of us was the remote Inversnaid Hotel. We had actually wanted to stay there, but it was booked out months before. It did have a service road connection and one could theoretically call a cab there that would take us up into the hills away from the loch and then on a great long looping detour way the hell around the southern end of Lomond and then all the way back up the other side to get us to the Drover's, which was to the north. Even if available this would cost literally hundreds of dollars. Fuck.

    Well, no sense in worrying about you can't change. The Inversnaid had a pub. This was the immediate goal. One small step at a time. So we limped in, leaned up against the bar and ordered two pints. The barman was pulling the first pint when I asked, "I don't think we're going to make it any further today. By any chance, is there a ferry or boat that crosses the loch?"
    "Yes, there is." He glanced up at the clock above him. It read 4:27. "The last one leaves at 4:30."
    I looked at John, eyes wide. John looked at me, eyes wide.
    The barman looked at both of us, "You'll not be wanting that second pint then I take it?"
    "No! Thank you!" I put some cash on the bar, grabbed my glass, poured half into the waiting empty glass, handed it to John and out we went, John hobbling as fast as he possibly could.

    And there it was, a ferry was casting off from the dock in front of the hotel. We waved and shouted. The ferry was slowly moving away.

    For a long sickening moment it looked like we had missed it by seconds.

    But then the captain noticed us. He called to his deck hand to be ready with the rope and maneuvered the boat back into place. Having heroically chugged our half pints on the run, we put the glasses down, boarded and collapsed, laughing, onto a bench on the deck.

    Across the loch we would meet an amusing Dutchman who had done the same thing and we would share a cab with him for the much shorter distance on the main road to the Drover's. And there we would admire the eclectic taxidermy and the ancient carpet and there we would enjoy many many pints and drams and live music and, yes, haggis. But for now, as the ferry began to pick up speed, leaving the east bank behind, we were just content in the knowledge that while you should always take the high road, if for some reason that is not possible you could actually take a boat instead, and that would be very good too.

A Donkey, A Sack Of Gummi Bears And Mt Everest

Herein lies a convoluted tale of, yes, donkeys, and of gummi bears, and of Mt Everest, but it is not what you are picturing, because it is also of staircases in my house and of a peculiar little obsessive idea.

Our story begins in the hills of Burgundy, France, in the summer of 2010. My wife, Lorraine, my eight year old daughter, Isabel, and my five year old son, Alexander, and I had booked a "donkey trekking" holiday. Donkey trekking, at least in the French context, involves hiring a donkey to carry your bags while you walk through the countryside from farm to farm and village to village, staying in pre-arranged B&Bs that can also accommodate donkeys (outside, in a barn).
I described some of the foibles involved with this in a previous post:
http://terraarcadia.blogspot.ca/2012/03/all-barnyard-animals.html

It was more or less as idyllic as it sounds, like walking into the pages of Peter Mayle's "A Year In Provence". Our donkey, Odyssee, was a pleasant and compliant companion and the landscape was tourist-brochure gorgeous. In part it was made so by the steep hills. If you were paying attention

you'll have noticed that Odyssee carried bags, not people. An occasional exception was made for Alexander, but otherwise we all, children included, hiked up and down these hills for up to 15 km a day during what was one of France's hottest summers on record.

Predictable difficulties ensued.

Five and eight year olds can't really murder you for your foolishness, but they can complain and wail and cry in a way that makes you wish that someone would.

We reached "the hill too far".

You know the one.

The first few hills can be made fun with the right amount of jollying up, but by the time "the hill too far" comes along you and your spouse are yourselves comprehensively exhausted and are no longer capable of the superhuman jollying required. Things were looking pretty grim.

Then I remembered. Then I remembered that my uncle had given the kids a giant sack of gummi bears when we visited him in Frankfurt. Like a kilo or something. I was appalled and whisked it into my pack before the kids cottoned on. I was looking at the topographic map when the idea struck me.

"Isabel! Alexander! See this map? See these lines? Each one represents a ten meter climb. That hill is six lines up from here. I'll give you..." and here I paused dramatically while I fished out the gummi sack. "... one gummi bear for every line you cross going up without complaining."

God bless that drug-like gummi goodness for motivation and the concentrated sugar for energy. The rest of the walk went splendidly. They actually began looking forward to hills.

~

So, fast forward to later that year back in Winnipeg. It was a foul stormy winter day and cabin fever was setting in. In a desperate gambit to avoid having to watch Despicable Me for the 14th time (it's a fine film, but a man has his limits) I remembered France and popped out to Safeway to buy gummi bears. The kids and I then measured our staircase. It turns out that it is 5.4 vertical meters up the two flights from the basement to the upstairs hall. I told them that they could have a gummi bear for every two times they went up and down the stairs. They didn't quibble about the extra 0.8 meters.

As they did this I began idly wondering how many times you'd have to do that to climb Mt Everest... The answer is 646 times. As there are two flights per ascent, that means 1292 total flights of stairs to climb the vertical distance from Everest base-camp at 5360 m to the summit at 8848 m.

And so a peculiar little obsessive idea was born. I began calculating the stair height of various smaller mountains and of various famous tall towers. I began climbing their equivalents and found that for some reason that remains unclear to me I actually enjoyed it. (I doumented the first several ascents here: http://everest-in-my-house.blogspot.com/) "Climbing Everest" in this odd fashion began to seem like a realistic prospect. At least at first it did as I made rapid progress extending my heights from 100 flights to 200 to 300 etc.. But then at about 500 I hit some sort of limit. Fatigue, pain, boredom, the feeling of futility - all of these became large enough factors to make pushing to almost 2 1/2 times that seem not only foolish (more foolish?), but impossible. So I slowly... quietly... dropped it, going from stair climbing twice a week, to once a week, to monthly, to never.

~

Now another six years have gone by. In the intervening time I had occasional thoughts that perhaps I could still do it if I mirrored the actual climbers and did it in five stages spread over five consecutive days: 238 flights to Camp 1, 148 to Camp 2, 296 to Camp 3, 278 to Camp 4 and then 332 to the summit. Even that seemed like a lot and the motivation still eluded me.

Then last week something happened. There was heavy rain on Monday, followed by a deep freeze and scouring winds, making it the iciest I can ever remember. It was impossible, or at least very hazardous and unpleasant, to ski, cycle, skate, run or even walk. The wild wind whipped spindrifts into the clear blue sky off of roofs and the remaining snow piles. I thought, 'this is like the summit of Everest...' And then I considered that I had a stretch of days off and suddenly the motivation returned. Like flipping a switch.

And now it's done. Yesterday at about 12:30 p.m. I "summited". I took the inevitable selfie, told my family (Lorraine smiled, Alexander looked at me blankly and Isabel rolled her eyes), took a shower and had a big lunch.  And began to think about doing it again, but doing some of it breathing through a snorkel to simulate low oxygen...

But that would just be weird.

This is me in 1993 looking at "the real Mt Everest" in the distance.