And right at the end, his hopes are dashed

So I am riding my bike to school this morning and I am on pace to shatter my personal record by about three minutes and I am feeling pretty confident in myself. I am primed for this moment. I am in stride. My legs are pumping furiously; I’m channeling my best Lance Armstrong (sans steroids controversy) and the wind is whipping past my ears. In my head I am wondering about how I should throw my arms over my head in celebration. Is tilting the head-back and crying in exhaustion and pure joy overkill? My smile is huge and I wave to every other biker I pass. Random quotes that have nothing in particular to do with the ride keep popping into my head.

“We’ll just live off the fat of the land.”

“Keep your head down and your nose clean, boy, and you’ll do alright.”

“I’ll never go hungry again!”

Finally I sweep effortlessly into the turning lane in front of the university and as I am balancing on my two wheels (look at me, I can balance stationary on two wheels) and waiting for a break in the traffic to turn into the university I begin to lean a little too far to the left. Frantically I pull my feet from the pedal straps but they are in there too tight. I convulse and tip past the point of return. I clatter onto the pavement and cars honk as they pass me by in the equivalent of school kids pointing and sniggering at the poor kid who just tipped his tray too far up and spilled sloppy joe on his white sneakers.

I missed my record time by a couple measly seconds.

Schools, Schools, Schools

I don’t know what the purpose of schools is. Does anyone really know? Do we have schools in order to create citizens that can function in our society? In that case should schools focus only on producing polite and kind students? Throw spelling and math out the window and make sure that each and every student knows how to navigate the world without ticking everyone else off? Please and Thank You Primary School?

Another way to look at it is that schools are basically an economic training ground producing potential workers. In that case should we have Engineering Elementary? Janitorial Middle School?

Does it matter how a person is intelligent? Is what we test for in schools actually skills that we value? Is your favorite person the best speller ever produced from his alma mater? Do you even know anything about his spelling skills? If those are things that do not matter to you at the end of the day, why is such a big stress on them?

Here in class we are beginning things off in the broadest possible way. We are starting with big-picture philosophy. These are classes that I love. I hope that I can keep toying with these ideas throughout the next 10 months and the rest of my life.

First Day of School... Again

OK, I don’t want to sound like I am whining. That is my number one fear in all of this, but damn it all, sometimes a guy has to vent.

I love my morning commute to school. I get on my bike and ride down Kearney until I cut over to the Broadway Bridge (can’t remember the street I cross over on, but I know it by my nose because there is the sweet, sweet smell of freshly baked pastries coming from somewhere pretentious nearby) and then I take Interstate up to Willamette and before I know it I am at the University of Portland.

I have been timing myself each morning. This morning it was 34 minutes and 23 seconds. I will be timing myself each morning to look for improvement.

So, I don’t want to whine about my commute – because it’s lovely – it’s just that it is so dang early… I get up before I feel like I am human. As I have to be in class by 7:30 it means I need to leave my house by 6:55 which pushes back my wake-up time to 6 am. It is so early I can’t open my eyes all of the way. I feel like someone opened up every joint in my body and sprinkled in some sand. I creak more than my ancient floor-boards, and if you are Tom or Youlee and you live below me, then you know those things creak like a kid complaining. My alarm is set to this station that oozes feel-good grooves like honey, but even Aretha sounds terribly negative at that hour.

Why can’t everything just be island-style? We’d all wake up around 8ish and then kind of hang out in school until 2ish and then we’d all spend about three hours sitting around waiting for someone to decide to barbeque chicken. After we ate we’d sit around and nap or look through a 4-month old People.


I recently developed some rolls of film that had been lost in the corners of my luggage and looking through those pictures last night really hammered home how much I will miss that place (included in this blog are some of the choice photos).

When I first got to the RMI, I was in a bit of a panic. Suddenly things did not make any sense. I thought to myself, why did I commit a year of my life and a ridiculous amount of sitting in an airplane (although the movies were decent) to have a life that doesn’t make sense?

I am in the exact opposite situation now. I was just getting good at my life back in Majuro, and now, here I am, waking up too early, aching and feeling grumpy.

I don’t have a wrap-up to this. I don’t know if this is all going to ultimately be a good thing for me. I am not even 100 percent sure that going back to school to get my MAT is the right choice. All I know is that I have had flashes of giddy excitement thinking of a possible future in education and flashes of intense regret for dropping an obscene amount of money on an education I don’t know if I will ever use…

In an unrelated note, my transition back to normal, American food has not been easy (my girlfriend can attest) and I apologize for any unnatural or inconceivably foul odor emanating from me while I take notes in class.

This too will pass, and soon my stomach will be an old pro at fresh food. It will be something it is good at. It will be something it will miss when I leave again to eat something it doesn’t know.

And when I leave and eat food that makes me sick, I will whine some more.

Happy Father's Day

When I was small every step he took could span the globe. It was so hard to keep up with those superhero strides. His arms could reach clear across tables and from one end of the couch to the other. He rarely used a ladder. His face was scratchy when he didn’t shave for two days. It was a hilarious panic when he came in for a goodnight tuck-in and you knew he would rub his face on your forehead or cheek and you would laugh until you were done making noise and could only wheeze. His lap was huge, with seating for four at least. Somehow everyone got on. He had glasses that made his eyes seem bigger and he told people that his salt and pepper hair was getting more on the salt side of things. It was the funniest joke I’d heard until I was 10. He listened to John Denver songs and replayed small sections to point out Mr. Denver’s speech impediments. Somehow he knew. Once he told everyone in the car that he’d give a dollar for every hawk they spotted. Twenty-some bucks later, he called the deal off. He wasn’t mad, only broke.

Now I am even taller as he is and I know that my steps are small in the grand scheme of things and it takes millions to span the globe. My arms are long and I can reach things, but this only means that people are always asking me to get things off high shelves for them. I can grow a beard, a scraggly one at least, I can make it scratchy, but so can everyone else I know. I don’t mind when my cousins sit on my lap, as long as they stay still and don’t jab their boney elbows into my stomach. I don’t wear glasses and my hair is too blonde to make any seasoning jokes. I make my friends listen closely to lyrics that don’t make grammatical sense. They usually don’t listen. I once told my friend James that if he gave me a dollar I’d order a pink credit card. I’m a dollar richer, but with a credit card for a Care Bear in my wallet. For some reason I am hesitant to use it.

The biggest thing my Dad ever did for me was make small things huge and ordinary things amazing.

Driving Home from Eugene

So I am driving home from Eugene and I stop in a gas station to use the bathroom. In the bathroom there are two stalls. I take stall one, and in stall two there is a very large and dirty man (judging from his tattered work boots). Well, I am sitting there and he's sitting there and we are doing our respective business and all is right with the world.

Suddenly someone comes into the bathroom and slams on each of the stall doors in turn. When he slams into mine I say nothing and continue to concentrate on the matter at hand. My friend to the right however, chooses a different strategy.

"What the hell are you doing?" he shouts out.

"Checking to see if there was someone in there," answers the stranger outside the stalls. "What's it to you."

"Well, haven't you heard of knocking, you prick," my porcelain neighbor says. An important word to note here is "prick," because he was the first to resort to vulgarities.

"Hey, listen you f**king a**hole, if you got a problem then I'll be waiting for you outside," the other guys says. By now the whole situation is intense, and I think that everyone is tensed up, which is a problem because being tensed up doesn't usually jive with the sort of things that go down in a bathroom stall if you catch what I am saying, and I think that you do.

Well, the newcomer goes storming off and me and the guy next to me are thankfully in silence again. I got "back to work" so to speak, hoping that all the drama is behind me when I hear a whisper from the stall over.

"Can you believe that a**hole?" the guy asks.

I didn't answer. How could I? I can't imagine a more uncomfortable place to have a conversation then perched bare-butted over a swirling body of water in a gas station bathroom with loogies spotting the floor and used Bandaides taped to the stall walls.

Well I cleaned up, pulled myself together and got out of the stall to wash up my hands. The thought crossed my mind that the two men had not even seen each other's faces. When I left the bathroom I could be clocked in the side of the head.

I left from the side door just in case.

On Some Level

On some level it feels like I never left home. Here I am with friends and family and we are still talking about what is going to happen to the Blazers next season, high gas prices and what everyone else is doing. People are laughing at the same types of jokes, are still excited to do the same sort of things and are still addicted to coffee.

In some ways however, it is utterly different. Suddenly my friends are all entering adulthood full-on. Talking about salary rates and 401K's. Hanging out with new friends and telling stories that I am so lost in that I need a map to make sense of anything. Is there any way to get back to normal? Does that even matter?

Do I have to grow up too?

How far to the nearest beach people?

Hello USA, How Have You Been?

Well, here I am, back in the U.S. of A. and I must say that it feels pretty dang good. Got off the plane at 2:30 am and waited for 8 hours for the Continental desk to open up so I could check my bags. Once that happened though, things have been going smoothly. They even checked my bags all of the way through to Portland even though the LAX to PDX leg is on a different airline.

Sweet.

Things I love so far: Starbucks, high-speed wireless internet, not being stared at, understanding everyone, clean bathrooms with soap and hot water, fresh fruit and air conditioning.

Things I am weary of: Well after spending a year in a country where all women were more or less boxy in shape due to the huge conservative dresses draped over them like a burlap sack, seeing ladies strut by in tight jeans and low cut shirts makes me blush. I want to shout, "HAVE SOME MODESTY! DO YOUR PARENTS KNOW YOU DRESS LIKE THIS?"

Things I hate so far: Everything in the airport is about $30 more than it actually should be. Want a water? Well, just sell me the rights to your kidney and then we can start talking.

Well, I waited with two friends from the RMI and we slept a little, talked a little and I called people on my cell phone...

Boomer found rest flung over the top of his suitcase while Ashley meditated to a higher plane.

Next step Portland.

Can't wait.

The Walk of Hell

Well, I don't know whose stupid idea it was, all I know is that it seemed a good one at the time... Famous last words to be sure. My assistant field director and I decided to walk the entire length of the island in one go. That is 30 miles folks and no rest for the weary. We left the Rita end of the island at 7:57 pm and took off at a four mile an hour clip. as you can see from the photo, we were pretty stoked at the start...



Well around mile 10 things started hurting. My joints felt like they were grinding away my bones and Jeremy and I began to wonder if we had made a mistake. Delirium set in. I imagined that giant winged dinosaurs were swooping in around me... My feet and legs hurt. Mean dogs came out at every passing house to nip at my heels and my bag, which was less than 10 pounds at the start, suddenly felt like it was in upwards of 100 pounds. The nice walk, turned quickly into a trudge... I only kept pressing on because Jeremy insisted. He reasoned that if we stopped now, the defeat would be more painful then our legs. We hobbled on in tottering steps like we were on stilts...



We finally made it after sleeping for two hours on the abandoned cement basketball court of Ajeltake Elementary school. We slept on the beach and ignored the flies that swarmed. After an hour nap we hitched back home in the back of a truck whose driver was so impressed with our feat that he bought us gatorades and snacks on the way home.



30 miles in one night, 14 hours of walking, one bottle of water and a bag of sunflower seeds. Top that.