132 posts tagged “travel”
i'm back on dry land! there will be news from cape town shortly, but in the meantime i can also start uploading photos. i'll add them to and between the sealogs over the next few days and add the links below for easy access. here are the first ones:
sealog 1
water & air
sealog 2 (sea owl!)
flying fish
sealog 3 (mid-air predatory action!)
new as of 7 december:
i spent many blissful summers at a set of camps in northern minnesota
that teach foreign languages to kids through immersion. the kids come
for one, two or four weeks, and do all the usual fun summer camp stuff
(swim, play outside, get poison ivy, push food they don't like around
their plates three times a day), but while they're there, they only
hear the target language spoken by the staff. they are free to speak
english among themselves of course, but at the table, and when
interacting directly with staff, they are encouraged to use words and
phrases in the foreign language, and it works amazingly well. i
learned norwegian this way, two weeks at a time, for six years. later,
when i learned (much more) german, i went back and taught for five
years, and that too was incredibly good for my language skills -
speaking only german for six weeks a summer was like a mini
living-abroad experience, and i loved it.
but it's been a long time - 21 years, actually - since i had the 'new
villager' experience and tried to learn a language from absolute zero,
just by being immersed in it. yet here i find myself, listening hard
to the ship's announcements (all in russian), to see whether i can
catch anything at all. by studying a detailed wall chart of the ship
with labels in both languages, i refreshed my memory on the cyrillic
alphabet, by sounding out words that were similar and extrapolating the
letter sounds i didn't know ('tweendeck' is твеендек, 'tveendek;' 'elevator' is
лифт, 'lift' (i mean, er... what elevator? this isn't a luxury outfit, you
know), 'meteorological laboratory' is, well, 'meteorologiski
laboratoria' or something like that). apart from the really alien
characters, like the letters for 'zh' (ж), 'ts' (ц), and 'ui' (ы), i managed to get most
of them on my own. for the rest i entreated help from a friendly
kitchen guy, who has also been trading us some informal russian lessons
for some english and spanish ones. embarassingly, while we learn to
say 'good morning' and 'thank you,' he (an avid reader of english
detective and crime fiction) is perfecting phrases like 'i won't answer
your questions until i consult my lawyer.' (we do wonder what his life
on land involves.) he also used the word 'insalubrious' in casual
conversation the other day. but lessons in humility are always good
for the soul, so i can grit my teeth and soldier on with 'a little, and
very badly' (my hypothetical answer to the question 'do you speak
russian?', probably doubly useless in that (1) no in their right mind
will ever, EVER think i can speak enough russian to even comprehend
that question, and (2) a much safer answer would just be 'no'). and as
my understanding of the letters and sounds improves, he has less and
less occasion to laugh at my attempts to render the phrases i learn
into intelligible written form, although i think my handwriting will be
like a russian five-year-old's for a good long while yet.
with my newfound skills, i can have such meaningful exchanges as 'hello
/ goodbye' (at any time of day, i hasten to add), 'thanks / you're
welcome,' 'how are you? / well, thanks, and you?' (this last actually
occurred unprompted yesterday with one of the mates in the bridge -
apart from the ridiculous look of concentration and 10-second delay
between question and answer while i dredged the words out of my brain,
i was very proud. we won't talk about the fact that my russian
experiences must always be cheerful because i can only say that i'm
doing well), and i can ask how to say something in russian, probably
the phrase i use the most often but with the least effect, since i have
to hear the word/phrase at least five times before i can remember it.
yesterday's other big accomplishment was reading the names of the
countries whose flags are stored in wooden cubbies in the bridge, for
when the ship is in foreign ports - 'iapano,' 'nova zelandya,' 'avstralia,' 'urugvaya,' 'egyepto.' look out, next i might actually be
able to read the menu in the dining hall! ... although then i would
have to decide whether the joyful anticipation of, say, pizza, would
cancel out the dread of knowing in advance that we were having
liverwurst for breakfast (like this morning).
i don't think i'll be turning spy any time soon, or passing myself off
as a local if i ever make it to russia, but i've always loved foreign
languages, and i have to say i'm having fun with this one. the
pleasantly camp-like atmosphere probably helps, although the drawback
of being on a shipful of adults is that they dare to serve things like
aspic and tongue. luckily, i can now say, 'no, thank you' ... assuming
our friendly russian teacher hasn't taught us to unknowingly say 'my
buttocks are on fire' instead.
on monday night we reached our first 'superstation,' a central point
around which we would deploy several kinds of sampling gear. ten
superstations are planned for the voyage, with 5-10 separate samples to
be taken at each - a variety of benthic, mid-water and surface
biological samples, plus hydrological, acoustic and geological data.
the first net (midwater, the most likely to catch squid) was shot at
about 1am and recovered around 3.30. those who would work with the
specimens collected in this sample (the fish team and ceph-heads) had
rested in advance, napping during the previous day and in the earlier
part of the evening, since the catch would need to be sorted and
photographed while fresh. the fish people would first sort out their
animals, then pass the rest of the sample on to the other squid guy and
me for second sorting; we would pull out any cephalopods, and
photograph, ID, and fix them in formalin, and fix the rest of the
sample as well.
when the first net was retrieved, bad luck had struck again (an earlier
test run of the benthic gear had suffered two malfunctions) - the
cable designed to hold the net open while sampling had come loose at
one end, so the net had essentially been towed with the mouth either
slack or mostly closed. the entire sample was about two handsful. but
there were some interesting things - hatchetfish, some very toothy
deep-sea fish with interesting lights and barbels, several different
kinds of shrimp, and two small squid.
while the net was being repaired, a plankton net was towed from the
ship's bow, but no cephs came in. the second deployment of the larger
net, however, which finished around 6am, was much more satisfactory,
containing about 45 small squid and octopus, from five different
families. these included some baby argonauts, a small species of squid
called Pterygioteuthis gemmata with absolutely beautiful opalescent
photophores (light organs), and a ridiculous-looking cranchiid squid
called Cranchia scabra, whose mantle is a transparent, perfect sphere,
and covered with pointy tubercles that make it look like an inside-out
golf ball.
inkspotters, there is a chance that the entire month of november will be update-free. i am off on a five-week research trip as of tomorrow, to the south atlantic ocean. i hear that there will be email access (kind of counting on that actually), so i hope to get a few posts up here via the pebbles. but if that doesn't work out, i'll tell all when i return in early december. until next time, whenever it may be!
when i made that simple statement at the end of the previous post, 'and then, at last, i was home,' it wasn't quite accurate. because, while many aspects of this trip were wonderful and i loved seeing spain and scotland and all the good people we caught up with, let us not forget that it was also the Trip of Woe (see exhibits a, b, and c). which is why it really shouldn't surprise me that, just to round it all out, i've had to compose the following letter to the long-term parking company at the airport. (you may be surprised to learn that i can use capital letters when necessary.)
- - -
Dear Company [name to be updated perhaps, depending how they deal with this],
Recently we parked our car with you for thirteen days while travelling in Europe. We have used your service many times in the past and always been pleased with it. However, on this occasion there was a serious problem.
When I landed on Monday morning (October 5), my flight had been delayed and I was unable to call and let you know due to a dead cell phone battery and misinformation from the people in the airport (who didn’t realize there was an 0800 number, which I also did not have – my own fault). When I arrived at your parking office, there was some confusion, and at first I was told the keys to my car had been misplaced, and then that my car itself was not parked where expected. In all, it took about 25 minutes for my car to be retrieved from the time I arrived, which in itself is not a source of major complaint given the delayed flight, although it was inconvenient as the weather was rainy and extremely cold, and I had been travelling for 36 hours.
However, when your driver brought the car around, he turned sharply into the lot by your office, dropping the left front tire into a deep puddle at the edge of the sealed road. There was an audible and rather terrible scraping sound as the undercarriage hit the edge of the asphalt. I did remark on this to the driver at the time, but he made a noncommittal noise and I did not press the issue, at that moment only wanting to get home.
When I climbed into the driver’s seat, the oil light was on and the oil warning alarm sounded as I drove out of the lot. (We had been aware of a very gradual oil leak, having found a few drops of oil occasionally, but not regularly, on the floor of the garage at home. My husband had checked the oil a few weeks before leaving and had noted that it was getting low, but not urgently so, and the oil light had not come on before he left.) I took the car straight to the Shell station near the airport to check the oil and top up if need be, and asked their associated mechanic to check that the car was all right before driving home. He refilled the oil (3.5 litres were required) and checked under the car, where he observed, entirely unprompted, that there was a brand-new scrape under the oil pan that had caused a significant crack, from which oil was now dripping at a steady and alarming rate. He explained that the damage had to be very recent (less than a day old), since the scraped aluminium had not oxidised at all and no dirt had accumulated over the scrapes. He was concerned at the rate at which the oil was draining and advised me to drive straight to my home mechanic, possibly not even dropping my luggage off at home, in case I ran out of oil again.
The car was duly brought to our mechanic, who has now (after three days in the shop, including one day when the buses were on strike) fixed the leak to his satisfaction. He confirmed that the rapid oil leak was due to very recent damage to the car’s undercarriage. Both mechanics are willing to be contacted and will stand by this information.
We ask that you cover the cost of repairing the damage done to our car by your driver. This includes the labour charge for the repair ($128) and the cost of the oil required to get the car home (4 litres, $97.02). We will happily provide the receipts if necessary and the contact details of both mechanics if you wish to follow this up with them.
Please
feel free to contact us if you require any further information.
- - -
and, update: no word from parking company, but there is still a slow oil leak, plus - bonus! - i found a fresh puddle of coolant under the car yesterday morning. awesome.
on our final full day together, we traveled from peebles to edinburgh, via carluke (to meet another friend from tonmo and see his amazing house-in-progress, a renovation of an old barn that will include one of the original stone walls as an interior feature wall... WANT). we parted company from the pebbles senior in the morning, and so were left to our own devices in auld reekie. upon arrival we checked into what was by far the flashest hotel of the entire trip, and spent a few moments admiring the four-poster canopy bed before setting off for the golden mile. we wandered up market and cockburn streets and made our way to the castle, then opted for a tour of the vaults to get out of the increasingly spitty weather for a bit. we had a great guide with lots of interesting stories (we went with a fairly historic tour, as the 'grisly tales of horror and torture in the darkness!' options didn't really appeal), including one about paisley close, which we later spotted for ourselves. back on the surface, we strolled down to holyrood house, pausing to drool over a tartan wedding dress (well - one of us was drooling) in a shop window, and taking a few detours down the closes. as evening fell, we walked back to our hotel via the rather sinister-looking scott monument, whose uppermost narrow spiral staircase apparently scarred the pebbles for life last time he was in town. we finished the day off with an absolutely delicious italian meal near our hotel (although i unfortunately wasn't able to subtly photograph our dining neighbors, one of whom ordered a calzone that - without exaggeration - was 18" long and 8" tall).
early on saturday morning we took the train to doncaster (and were treated to a spectacular sunrise along the coast, and the brightest rainbow i've ever seen, which stayed with us from sunrise until we arrived two hours later) for lunch with some relatives. the pebbles stayed on for a few more days (remaining in england an extra week for his nana's 90th - happy birthday, trudi!), while i was due to fly out from heathrow that night and so made my way back to london. my flights (via hong kong) went reasonably smoothly, apart from a plague of crying children (i admit that, as the flights wore on, my inner monologue changed from 'could you please comfort your child so the rest of us can sleep' to 'SHUT YOUR KID UP OR I WILL DO IT WITH THIS AIRPLANE FORK'), and a first officer who fell so ill after everyone was already seated for departure from hong kong that he had to be removed from the plane. but then, at last, 41 hours after leaving edinburgh, i was home.
