Big Love

Big  Love

The Okavango Delta, located in Botswana, is the largest inland delta in the world.  It’s formed by the Okavango River which flows into the middle of Botswana and is consumed primarily by plants and evaporation.  We had the pleasure of visiting this UNESCO site a few years ago while on a two week safari.  There’s an abundance of wildlife here.  You couldn’t walk behind a tree to “mark your territory” without a guide, gun in hand, first checking to see if it was safe.  We learned, while exploring its waterways, there’s plenty of stuff that’ll kill you….which we encountered first hand.

Our entourage of ten was given the option to explore the delta with some local tribal members via mokoro canoes –  long narrow, wooden dug out vessels that had a clearance of about 6”.  Three per mokoro with a guide in the stern using a 12’ pole to propel the craft through the water.  Elaine and Kathy jumped into the lead mokoro with Elaine in the front.  Erin, also in front, and I were in mokoro #2 with our guide, Dikka.  I picked Dikka because he, by far, looked the oldest of the crew so I assumed he was most experienced and knowledgeable about bush survival.  In we go with a sack lunch and around 10 cans of soda for extra fuel. Granted, we could have drank from the delta as the water was so clean, but we opted for playing it safe.   

To get to the mokoro launch site we had to take flat bottom aluminum boats a good hour + from our outpost.  After boarding our mokoros it was then close to two hours of poling to get to our destination, a large island that promised up-close-and-personal views of big game.  Great.  Navigating through the delta was pretty uneventful, as we were winding through three foot wide “paths” carved in the 20’ tall papyrus.  You don’t see much but crystal clear water, blue sky, and papyrus.

After about an hour of us weaving through the reeds we hear snorting. I don’t want to hear snorting of any kind unless I’m sitting comfortably on my couch in my living room, especially not while riding on a repurposed log hours away from civilization.  Kathy, Elaine, and their guide exit the reeds into a small lake size opening.  Granted, I wasn’t in the front row like Elaine but I got a pretty good view of what happened next.  Swimming underwater towards them is a massive hippo (are they anything other than massive?).  He/she is making a beeline for their mokoro with no intention to slow down.  Their guide immediately swings the mokoro around and rams it into the papyrus.  Did I mention papyrus is something you can’t climb or jump on to escape? He then proceeds to take his 12’ pole and slap it on the water, trying to frightening Godzilla.  Bubbles are rising up to the surface, Elaine has rolled up into a ball, and, besides the pole, the only other method of defense was our 2 pound Nikon camera.  A hippo tooth weighs 2 pounds! Oh, and did I mention that hippos get the gold medal for African animals for killing humans?

Dikka elects to venture out and help.  WTF?  Ah, no. Sorry, the only weapons we have are cans of Sprite and Coke, and perhaps the urine that’s now accumulating in the bottom of our mokoro.  Why send the entire Pazaski clan to an early earthly exit?  I begin grabbing the papyrus while he’s trying to make his way to the front lines, and turned around, looking at him, again thinking “are you f’ing nuts?” He kinda did look a little out there with his gapped tooth grin.

I’m saying to myself, “Dikka, I will betroth one of my daughters to you if you get us out of here alive”.  At least the one remaining in our boat.  My heart has moved to my head; that’s what it sounded like.  Seconds feel like an eternity. Finally, the pole slapping works and the hippo decides to do a perfect Michael Phelps flip turn and head in the opposite direction. 

So, what the heck? I thought this was supposed to be a leisurely ride with little, if any, excitement.  The guides gather, looking perplexed, and question their next move. Consensus rules and off we continue to the island.  Once we get there, they tell their pale skinned companions they’ve never encountered hippos in that area.  Huh, guess you forgot to tell the hippos that.  Hippo toll booth out?  They also said the reason why they were mad and heading for us is we may have interrupted them mating.  Well there ya go!  A valid excuse if I’ve heard any. Gordy has Bethany in the mood, Barry White playing, no crocs in the vicinity, the sun’s high, water temp perfect.  Afternoon delight and lo and behold here comes 20+ humans to spoil it all.  Big Love, gone bad.

The return trip was uneventful, fortunately.  I hugged Dikka, perhaps a bit too long, when we departed.  He had my life, and Erin’s, in his hands. I’ve never loved a person more.  Sorry, got a little emotional there.  Next stop, Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. 

4th Grade Wasteland

I had the pleasure of reconnecting with a woman who I’ve known since kindergarten.  We ventured through elementary, middle, and high school together and I hadn’t seen her in 35+ years.  We both looked great, actually we looked fantastic, in my humble opinion.  The one problem was our meeting brought up a fair amount of adolescence angst for me. You see, Susan and Lynn aside, Connie was my first REAL love.  Barbara Eden and Chris Evert (think 70’s) didn’t hold a candle to Connie!

We had a great conversation reminiscing about Mrs. Almadova, our 4^th grade teacher, who was from Hawaii, Mr. Hazard, our custodian who would allow the teachers to smoke in the boiler room.  Talk about freaking me out – teachers smoked!  We lamented not being about to participate in a square dance routine for our parents due to sickness.  She brought up my love of drawing monsters, something my daughter is quite skilled at as well.   Thankfully, she didn’t recall the day I came to 1^st grade with hole in my pants, right below the zipper.  I walked around all day carrying a tube of tinker toys in front of my nether region covering up said hole (true story).

The conversation took a turn for me when we started going through the list of classmates from Alderwood Elementary.  We hit on the few that, unfortunately, aren’t with us today, what this person is doing, etc.  The discussion then segued into our first crushes.  She mentions Guy, Mike, David, Mr. Hazard, her bus driver, the kid who wet his pants in 3^rd grade, the mannequin in the back of our Mr. Cole’s class, our mascot, a husky…….. on and on.  I’m anxiously waiting for my name to pop up. I’m sure you could imagine the look on my face – weak smile, wide eyed, raised eyebrows, hands gesturing.

The conversation of her caste of adolescence loves had me remarking with, “Yeah,” “Sure,” ending with “Anyone else?”

“Nope, that’s about it,” she replied.

You sure?”, I said.

Connie said, “Yep. Oh wait, there was Bret but he had a weird lunchbox so my crush didn’t last but a month in 2^nd grade”.

My head’s spinning as I’m thinking, “WHAT ABOUT ME?”  “For God’s sake, you named our entire class.  I could draw monsters, had access to minibikes, waterfront property, chickens, pigs, good weed (no, I didn’t have weed, but might have helped).   Was it that I played the organ?” Seriously, I did.

OK, I get it now. Forty-five years later she pretty much seals the coffin on any potential that we could have been an item.  There was never an opportunity for us to hold hands sitting in those tiny chairs with accompanying tiny tables, walking hand in hand down the tiny halls, using tiny urinals (OK, not the urinals).  I harken back to the comment the Rankin/Bass stop motion character, Yukon Cornelius, from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer said when he’d lick his ax after pitching it in the snow looking for gold: “Nothin’”.  So it goes, after all these years: nothin’.  I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

Oh well, there was Susan and Lynn right? Susan? Lynn? Hello? Hello?

Fight Club

I’ve never been in a fight. Sure, I’ve had verbal fights but not one involving fisticuffs (how often do you get to use that word?) where my intent is to inflict physical harm on someone.  I told this recently to some guys at work and they were shocked. I guess, in their opinion, fighting makes you more of a man.  I always thought my best line of defense was 50 yards and, if you spot me this distance, bad guys aren’t going to catch me!  Or in the words of Michael Jackson, “I’m a lover not a fighter”.

The closest I ever got into a fight was in one of the most beautiful locations in Europe, Bled, Slovenia.  A small touristy hamlet, located on an alpine lake with an island in the middle, complete with a 17^th century church on the island.  It doesn’t get any more picturesque than this. 

I spent the night there a few years ago while on a business trip and no, it wasn’t a boondoggle.  I had a late afternoon check in followed by a run around the lake. **Side note** The crazy thing when you look at the lake is your assumption is it has to be a good 12+ kilometers around it.  Surprisingly, it’s only about 6k, or, about the size of Green Lake (excluding the hundreds of people and dogs).  After my run, I walked to dinner and then stopped off for a cold beer, aka, pivo, at one of the local pubs.  I sidled up to the bar, ordered my beer, and took in the establishment.  This is when things got interesting….

In walks two men, one big guy, sober, early 30’s, I’m guessing. His friend, mid 20’s, was drunk off his arse, think Foster Brooks drunk, and wasn’t about to slow down his consumption.  Slovenia’s Foster Brooks proceeds to the bar where I’m sitting and tries to strike up a conversation with me. Fact – I can’t speak Slovenia so I was crossing my fingers he couldn’t speak English.  No luck, the guy’s pretty good at my mother tongue and asks me where I’m from.  I tell him Baffin Island (no I didn’t but hindsight’s 20/20).  When he hears I’m American, the party begins.  “I love America, let’s dance”, he spits out.  He proceeds to grab my hands and pull me off the bar stool.  I’m looking at his friend with my best worried, what the F look, hoping he’ll intervene.  Again, no luck. I tell him let’s relax, go back to the bar and talk about fly fishing, how do you pronounce Slovenia’s capital city, Ljubljana, baseball,  but he keeps me out on the floor.  Please note, it’s not a dancing establishment.  We are the only ones doing the Macarena. When I break his grasp he then lunges forward and applies a full nelson on my family jewels, Peter, Paul, AND Mary! I either turn left and cough or fend for my life. I don’t know if he intended on “going south of the border” but this is where his hand ended.   Here’s when bad ass Pazaski goes Rambo and pushes him away followed by my fists at full attention.  What the hell next?  I yell, “That’s not cool”, which was kind of a stupid thing to say, and look at his friend again telling him to get his buddy away.  I’m now envisioning Foster staggering at me and I’m going to have to nail him.  Hell, I sucked at “Rock ‘um, Sock ‘um Robots”!  What if I really connect and knock him out when I unleash my 155 lbs. of twisted steel? I’m then arrested, thrown in a Slovenian gulag having to explain to the local burgermiester (or whatever they are called in Slovenia) that I was only trying to defend my manly man parts. 

Fortunately his buddy does come to my rescue and grabs Foster, pulling him to a table to sit down.  I quickly paid my bar bill and exited the establishment.  End of story. My dance card was full.