I am craving for adventures; I am craving for new experiences. I am missing that “controlled” adrenaline boosts that make you feel so… present, existing?
The bus in front of me this morning told me not to worry, be happy. I won’t worry, I am feeling positive.
When in Oregon, destiny put me in front of a book called “Hell or high water”, about a whitewaterkayaking expedition on the Tsangpo river in Tibet. It captivated me. Inspired me. I honestly still believe the paddlers are crazy, risking their lives for…what?
But maybe I know what is “what” is. Or more correctly, maybe I know of that “what” feels. I can relate to them.
I never did anything that extreme, or at least not intentionally (I could claim a record flying double on the Dolomites… I was so tense that I could feel –or imagine- even my ears moving to change the body weight distributed on the wing).
But I can still remember my first take off on the Andes in Venezuela. I was 21. Twenty-one ( with 3 years of hard core flying experience). What do I do if I get a daughter like me????
What happened to that little girl traveling with her glider by herself, exploring new places or testing new launching places? If life wouldn’t have hit me so hard, would I have become at age 30 like one of those extreme paddlers in the book? How did I become a woman with a stable job and 3 cats? Is it too late to go back?
(my backpack -my glider- and I, hitchhiking to the top of the mountain. I did all the trip sitting on the roof of the van....)
(Turns out that launching at sunset is not a good idea. Especially if you do not know the landing place that well, and if you end up flying on top of a car driving down the mountain screaming to please stop and wait for me. Then I asked them to drive me to a pub in the first town on the way...)I just watched a documentary ("Encounters at the end of the world") about people in Antarctica. I always dreamed to go there. I was so close to go, got my position on an scientific boat, then my dad and my brother announced their visit in the States. It was soon after my mom passed away, and this would be our first (and last) traveling trip together since. I could not say no to them. And Now I am so glad I did not.
Antarctica is apparently filled with dreamers like I used to be. There are bus drivers and blue-blooded plumbers. In summer, that said. In winter, once the plane stop flying, there is only a handful of scientists and members of the 300 degree club. Still, the Lonely Planet make a travel guide of Antarctica. I wonder if it is bigger than the guide they made for the Samoas. The base of McBurdo remind me of this island. People dreaming of the far south there, people dreaming of a tropical island here. In one of the scene of the documentary, the author was interviewing a geologist. I was surprise to see, behind the scientist on his right, an old creamy phone. I would imagine all new technology down there, rather than old 80’s surplus staff. Then I looked closely at the phone… god, it looked familiar… way too familiar… I looked at my right… ladies and gentlemen, I just discovered that Antarctica and American Samoa buy their phones from the same source (when you get the line, the local phone company informs you that you need to buy a special instrument or your line won’t work… it turns out they are talking about this phone…)!!! Check this out (can you see the phone in the documentary?)
It must be a sign...Post Scriptum!!!!!
I just came up with a new telephone hypothesis!
A while ago, a woman here was waiting and waiting and waiting for the beds she shipped for her kids to arrive. Finally she went to the post office trying the track the parcel... after looking and looking for it, the post office tracked it down: by mistake, the beds ended up in Antarctica!
So, my new hypothesis is that the phones were indeed meant to be shipped here in American Samoa but, by mistake they were sent to Antarctica (probably together with my friend's beds). The scientists though it was cool to have something meant to be in the warm tropical south Pacific, and never returned them...
This last hypothesis seems more probably to me, as i can not possible think of somebody actually buying such a phone of his own will. Especially if you are going to Antarctica. You would probably look for some sort of North Face or Columbia style phone... If you own one, you probably either were tricked into it, or you received it for free and decided, why not, to keep it.
1 comment:
That's awesome!
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