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Tuesday, Nov 20, 2001
On the road to NOLA
November 20, 2001
I'm packing up the computer and Yoyo the geriatric cat to drive to New Orleans. I'd like to fry up a turkey while I'm there.
In addition to the usual assortment of music, I'm bringing "On the Road", "Huckleberry Finn", and "Mastering Spanish" on audio CD.
I've never taken Yoyo on a long road trip, so this shall be an interesting experiment. I suspect she will sleep once I hit the interstate. I've rigged up a little Biosphere III for her in the back of the sedan. I folded down half of the rear seat back to give her access to the trunk, as a private little cat cave.
I've heard of cats breaking away at rest stops, never to be seen again. But I'm not worried. At 19 years of age, Yoyo is an ancient old lady, and she never exceeds a walking pace.
.
Ambassador of Goodwill
November 17, 2001
I recently went backpacking in the Ventana Wilderness with a buddy. He's also on "sabbatical", so we were able to do a mid-week trip. Perhaps the most popular destination in this wilderness is Sykes Camp, or rather the hotsprings downstream from Sykes.
The last time I made this trek, sometime around 1990, the parking lot was a little patch of gravel at the trailhead. Now there's an asphalt lot with more that 80 spaces. Sykes must be absolutely overrun on the weekends in the summer. But mid-week in mid-autumn, there were only two other cars in the lot.
As Ren and I loaded up for the 10 mile hike into Sykes, another car arrived. A petite woman strapped on a very large pack, and was making preparations to start her hike. She had some questions about how to pay for parking, so, being a local, I decided I should be an ambassador of goodwill and help her out.
I helped her with the parking issues, and gave her some advice on water, campsites, lightening up her pack. I noticed she had an Australian accent, and was quite cute. She also seemed a bit young, perhaps college-aged.
I remembered the hike into Sykes as being relatively easy. "After the initial steep climb, it gets easier." About five miles in, as Ren and I took a break for lunch, I said "Okay, the hard part lasted longer than I thought, but now we're past that. It gets easier from here." A few hard miles later, as the shadows grew long, I decided my memory wasn't entirely accurate. This was a roller coaster of a hike.
In the eighties, I had done serious backpacking trips about twice a month for two years. At the end of those two years, a hike to Sykes was a walk in the park. My very first trip had also been to Sykes, and I started to remember how bloody hard that hike had been.
After a late lunch, we knew it was three miles to Barlow Flat, and two more miles to Sykes. After hiking three hours, we still hadn't seen Barlow, and it was getting dark. That stretch of trail felt like the longest three miles that Ren or I had ever hiked. The canyons are narrow and deep, so after 5 pm, twilight turned to dark rather quickly.
We finally came to a river crossing, but it still wasn't Barlow. I was dead on my feet at this point, and managed to slip while crossing the river. I stepped into water deeper than the top of my boots, and filled both boots to the top with cold water. I was starting to think that this would be a nice spot to pitch the tent for the night. But I didn't want to be the first to cry uncle.
As we searched for the continuation of the trail, we came upon a sign. "Hey, wait a minute. We are at Sykes." We were indeed a couple of happy campers.
Ren is an early riser, and I'm usually up by the crack of noon. So by the time I rose the next morning, Ren had left to explore the canyon a bit. As I surveyed the campsite from the comfort of my warm sleeping bag, I noticed Sara, my Australian friend, sitting nearby, and looking a bit cold.
She had had a water encounter similar to mine. Her boots were soggy, and her jeans were wet up to her knees. Wet cotton is not exactly the best insulator, and the sun simply couldn't find it's way to the bottom of the canyon.
We chatted a bit more, and I fired up the stove to make some tea. I knew Sara was stove-less, and perhaps would be drawn closer by the presence of hot water. And being an ambassador of goodwill, I wanted to make sure that she had a good experience in California's wild lands. She was trying not to be too obvious, but betrayed a bit of eagerness when I offered her some hot water. She sat hunched over her hot cup of ramen noodles as if she was hoarding the last source of heat in the universe.
Is this why ancient hominids learned how to make fire? "Dude, chicks love this fire stuff. You gotta show me how to make it!"
By this time, Ren had returned with the report that he couldn't find the springs. The hot noodles perked up Sara, and she was ready to try to find the springs. She returned a few minutes later saying she couldn't find them either. At this point, I was fully awake, dressed and fed. So, I put my ambassador hat back on, and offered to show her the location of the springs.
As Ren watched Sara and I disappear down the river, he was wondering if he was going to see me again that day. Later he told me "Well, I had the food, water and tent. The only problem was the car keys."
As we walked down the river, we had a chance to talk more. "When I was in college, I never took off any time to travel, but I'm taking off some time now."
"Yeah, my friends are off in college now, but after high school I decided to take a break."
High school!! Ohmygod. Here I am chatting up -- um, I mean, uh -- chatting with a high school girl. Okay, she had been traveling around the world on her own for over a year. And her friends were probably college sophomores by now. But any way you do the math, she was most likely under drinking age. I have nothing against pursuing women younger than me, but under 21 is beyond even my liberal standards. Good thing I was just being an ambassador.
So, I took Sara down to the hotsprings, and spent a little time checking out the numerous improvements to the soaking pools, and then left her there to have a soak on her own.
The next morning, I woke up and there was no Sara to be seen. But I did have a little ditty running through my head (to a J. Giels tune). "Doo doo da-do-do-do, angel from the Outba-ack ..."
Motivación
2 Noviembre, 2001
For most people, learning a new language is a difficult thing. Having a strong motivation, such as wanting to travel, learn about another culture, or eat, can be quite helpful to the process.
The carnivore expedition and travel to remote quarters in Argentina were designed to provide motivation to stretch my limited Spanish. By the end of the trip, I was amazed with my ability to have simple conversations. As long as the topic was limited to things like animal trapping, bus routes or related topics, I did okay.
The three grad students on the Argentine team have limited English, but were eager to practice. The three volunteers have varying degrees of knowledge of Spanish (from poco to poquito), but were also eager to practice. Hiding from the rain in a tent for hour on end gave us plenty of opportunity to have conversations in bad English and bad Spanish. Sometimes it took the six of us to get all the words straight in a particular sentence.
This close order drill in Spanish prepared me to venture to the northwest. In Buenos Aires, you can fumble through with a tiny Spanish vocabulary. You can almost always find someone who speaks a bit of English. But in the interior, English doesn't go very far.
Traveling in the Jujuy (who-hooey) province with my new friend, Mary from the north of Scotland, I suddenly became the bi-lingual expert. We arrived at the hectic omnibus terminal in the town of Jujuy about 9:00 PM with a mission to get on a bus to Libertador General San Martin.
Mary wasn't sure of the name of the bus line serving Libertador. My 3-year old guidebook gave the name of a bus line we couldn't seem to find. The terminal is served by about 7 major bus lines, plus a few minor carriers, and the terminal was abuzz. We went from window to window asking for the bus to San Martin, but the town we wanted is known as Libertador. Mary was trying to ask questions in Spanish so broken I only understood because I knew what she wanted to say. On top of it all, the accent in the northwest is considerably different from the Buenos Aires accent I had just learned.
Eventually, we found the right bus, reserved rooms for the night, and made our way to Libertador. The thought of being stuck in Jujuy and missing a rendezvous at Libertador with two other travelers kicked my Spanish up a notch or two.
While in Argentina, one of the grad students caught my eye. She's warm, expressive and has a lust for life. But her English is quite rough -- about as bad as my Spanish. I didn't get a chance to talk with her much. Somehow my Spanish faltered a bit when I wanted say something to her.
I got a friendly email from her a couple days ago, in English. She obviously put some effort into the letter. To write a reply in Spanish, I carefully selected and bought two reference books, labored over vocabulary, struggled through present indicative, imperfect indicative, preterite, future and participle conjugations. I dodged the subjunctive, muddled my way through a couple reflexive verbs, spent time sorting out a few idioms, and tried to work in some Rio de la Plata regionalisms.
Motivation is a powerful thing.
Di Fi
November 2, 2001
Well, I finally got a response from Feinstein to my "let's keep God out of this" letter. Glad to see she took the time to address my concerns.
From: senator@feinstein.senate.gov
Subject: Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 22:55:29 -0500
October 31, 2001
Thank you so much for contacting me to share your thoughts and concerns. As I am sure you know, letters containing anthrax disrupted Congress by forcing the closure of the House and Senate office buildings. We are also deeply saddened to learn of the deaths and illnesses of Postal workers and other innocent victims infected by anthrax.
Through these trying times, the Capitol has remained open and legislative work is continuing. Also, some of the other office buildings are being reopened. Unfortunately, it appears the Hart Senate Office Building, which is where my office is located, may remain closed for an undetermined length of time. During this period, I am working out of a one-room office with many of my staff in the basement of the U.S. Capitol with only one computer having access to our Senate network.
In the average week, we receive approximately 30,000 letters and e-mails, but the mail is being held up by the Capitol police pending the establishment of a better screening process. And even when the mail service is resumed, because of the closure of my Senate offices, it is simply not possible to respond individually to the letters and e-mail I am continuing to receive.
Because of these unprecedented events, I have asked my constituents who require a specific response, need assistance with a Federal agency or have a specific request for information, to call or write one of my California offices. The lead staff member at each office is listed below along with the address and telephone. I plan to have a conference call every day with my California offices specifically to be updated on the issues raised by these calls and letters and staff will continue to respond to specific casework requests.
And while it is not possible at this time for me to respond precisely to the issues and questions you have raised in your letter, I thought you might be interested in what is happening in Congress and what is apt to happen in the coming weeks.
Currently, we are in the process of completing the remaining appropriations bills that provide the funding for most of what the Federal government does, be it health care, transportation projects, defense, foreign affairs or law enforcement.
As chair of the Technology, Terrorism and Government Information Subcommittee and a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I have been actively involved in legislative efforts to strengthen our country's defenses against terrorism and I hope to see passage of measures to provide protection on our airlines, at our ports of entry and from bioterrorism. I am also hopeful that a new economic stimulus package will be approved, providing a careful balance of tax cuts and financial relief.
Finally, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding at this time of great certainty. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Below is a list of my California offices and contact information:
San Francisco
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Russ Lowe, Office Manager
415-393-0707
Los Angeles
11111 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 915
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Guillermo Gonzalez, Acting State Director
310-914-7300
Fresno
1130 "O" Street, Suite 2446
Fresno, CA 93721
Juliette de Campos, Office Manager
559-485-7430
San Diego
750 "B" Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Mike Richmond, Office Manager
619-231-9712
Let's all pull together and get through this.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
http://feinstein.senate.gov