It’s always best to stay out of foreign prisons.

It’s no secret that I want to go to Cuba.

 

But, for some, being there ain’t a choice, and neither is their cuisine.

 

Once again, GITMO is in the news, and the news is bad.

 

I happened to think about this as I was paddling ” up the river”— literally— to Folsom Prison, this weekend.

 

      

 

Hell, in California it’s against the law to feed a goose like these people are being “fed” in Cuba.

 

Thank goodness, this gang escaped before they suffered any uncomfortable situations.

 

    

 

Think of today’s post as a political cartoon; the delivery might be funny, but the message, not so much.

 

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Climate-Strange® It’s a brave new world of travel. Pack accordingly.

I can see the wind.  You are not supposed to be able to see the wind.

 

We live in the spacious agricultural belly of California’s mid-section. From my cluttered, second-story farmhouse World Blog Headquarters window, I look out onto acres upon hectares of fruit trees, planted crops, and the meandering valley creek, which occasionally flows behind our place.

 

Unfortunately, the view today is nothing like the pastoral backdrop that we are accustomed to.

 

The insistent north winds are blowing with an unrelenting vengeance, thick with the fine-grained topsoil of recently tilled fields. You can see the wind in the brown haze that obscures what little snow is left topping the spine of the magnificent Sierra Nevada mountain range, to the east.

 

And you can taste the acerbic grit that feels of dirt in your mouth.

 

The wind today is like yesterday, which was like the day before, which was a repeat of the day before that. We have lost count. Insanity is said to come of stretches like this. The old timers claim they cannot remember a spell of wind like this in their many years.

 

This is where you skeptics are probably screaming at your screens, that this has nothing to do with climate change, and is probably just a case of C.R.S.

 

All I know is that we are living in strange times. A few weeks ago, we had unseasonably hot early spring days, in the 80’s. That was followed by a cold spell that sent me packing to the hills for one last day of skiing, where the temperature fell to the,

“Oh my god…I can’t feel my face.”

 

    

 

Then, a couple of weeks later, it was back into the high 80’s, even bumping the low 90’s.

 

The warm weather got my blog brother and I up into the foothills for a flower finding mission in the Bear Valley area. Even the wildflowers could not figure out the seasons, and apparently just decided to skip their typical cavalcade of color, which we witnessed the last time we visited.

 

    

 

The new normal is abnormal®

 

(Full Disclosure: the phrases in this blog post aren’t really registered trademarks. I just like using the ® symbol.)

 

Back on the homestead, this unrelenting wind is taking its toll. I am starting to see strange sights.

 

I swear I just saw a jackrabbit flying by in the adjacent field, with its enormous ears billowed out like spinnakers on a sailboat, using its almost comically long rear feet as rudders as they trailed across the ground.

 

Did I mention the rabbit was pink?

 

    

 

 

See, I told you the climate was making me strange.

 

O.K., making me even stranger. Climate-Stranger® as a matter of fact.

Here is where iTravel by iPad. The question is whether iSuck.

Finally, I’m getting lighter.

 

Oh wait, you think I mean me, personally? Heavens no. 

 

Hell, whenever I travel I manage to find every bakery, pizza joint, and pub along the route. Lighter is the last thing I’m getting on these trips.

 

No, I mean I am now traveling with less electronic crap. It used to be I hauled my ancient–by today’s standards–IBM Thinkpad laptop on my travels, which weighed in at about the same as a case of beer. And, just like a case of beer, that old laptop had its use, but it was such a pain to schlep around.

 

Next came the netbook, which got the bulk down to closer to that of a six-pack. The problem was, by the time I packed the external mouse, the charging cord with the transformer, and other accessories, I lost a good portion of the weight I thought I had saved.

 

In my attempt to go small, iOpted for an iPad. This seemed a logical choice, given that my current smartphone is a Blackberry (you can stop laughing any time now) with a screen the size of a postage stamp.

(You kids can Google what a postage stamp is.)

 

 

 

So, here I sit, engaging in full-out thumb-to-screen combat with my iPad’s make-shit-up auto correct, creating my first blog post using the BlogPad Pro app for IOS, which I recently purchased.

 

Seriously, I don’t know if it is my iPad, or this new app, which turns an errant keystroke–or, more accurately, off target screen touch– into a string of nonsensical words. Arrggg!

(According to the app’s FAQ’s,  it seems to be both.)

 

While I typically create my unbelievable blog posts (unbelievable how much time I spend trying to be funny) using Microsoft Live Writer, and then post to WordPress, I have found using the WordPress app for the iPad to be about as satisfying as a soggy hamburger bun. 

 

O.K., now I want to add a couple of random pictures and see how this posts. For my fellow bloggers, I will report my ratings on this new app down the road.

 

 

For the rest of you, normal programming will return to your screen shortly.

 

 

Late Breaking News!!! 

My initial impression is that BlogPad Pro doesn’t suck. 

(It certainly is easier to post, and subsequently edit, than using the WordPress app for Apple.)

 

 

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Extreme outdoor adventure never looked so good (or felt so comfortable).

Here we are, sitting in near darkness, seduced by the spectacular scenery of this wilderness setting.

 

We are neither cold nor uncomfortable, or bothered by the hard ground.

 

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we are sitting in plush seats of a temperature-controlled movie theater.

 

Nevertheless, I recently asked myself,

“Self…why do we wander out into the wilderness? What does it do for, or to, us?”

  

       

 

I have been getting into the great outdoors for as long as I have been breathing. While I came onto this planet in the suburban setting of the San Francisco east bay area, I was lucky to be born to parents who had a love for the fresh, pine-scented forests of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, where I spent many a youthful summer.

We used to take annual family car camping trips up to places like Lake Tahoe, and stays at Camp Mather, just outside of Yosemite.

 

In my formative years, I donned the merit badge-festooned uniform of the Boy Scouts of America—long before scandals of homophobia and the concept of low-impact camping techniques were de rigueur.

(One of our first tasks when making camp was to surround our canvas tents with drainage ditches cut deep into the fragile soil.)

 

      

 

While in college in the early 70’s, I joined the Chabot College hiking club, where we would venture up to the central Sierras. My love of wilderness grew during those treks, which may have had something to do with the recreational herbaceous materials we would pass around in the back of the van during the drive.

 

Or, maybe it was that I discovered women would backpack topless and were—occasionally—not averse to sharing a sleeping bag, after the ritual herb sharing around the campfire.

Hey, remember that was the post Haight-Asbury, Summer of Love era.

 

But, what really broadened my horizons was my 30- year affair with the iconic outdoor travel writer, Tim Cahill. Whether from Outside Magazine articles, or his series of travel tales with tantalizing titles, his evocative prose, infused with self-effacing humor, created an impetus for global adventure discovery.

 

I also discovered that the outdoors meant different things to different people.

 

Over the intervening years, a lot of people decided that the wilderness was not just a place to get drunk, get naked and sit around in a drum circle all night.

(That is what Burning Man is for.)

 

The fact was, adventure travel seemed to lean more and more towards the adventure aspect of the outdoors activities.

 

      

 

Enter the world of extreme adventure. Doing it harder, faster, longer—and scarier—became the attraction, in and of itself, for some.

 

       

 

Is there some form of “runner’s high” which revs up the desire for extreme adventure? Can this just be the outcome of self-induced morphine-like neurotransmitters, namely endorphins, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and even something called endocannabinoids, which the human body naturally produces?

(Thanks, U.C. Berkeley Wellness Letter for all those intelligent sounding words.)

 

Whatever the catalyst, for some, it ain’t a good time unless they bleed and it hurts. And, it gets filmed.

 

Back a few years, the goal for a few was to be labeled Jackass and get their videos viewed in a hit movie and television series. (I am not sure, but I think now days, you might find some of those that survived those exploits on Tosh.0)

 

Those wishing to forgo the gaping wounds and severe pain can still venture out—at least virtually—into slightly less testosterone-stimulated situations by viewing various adventure films.

 

       

 

This would include offerings from Warren Miller, Radical Reels, and locally inspired versions, like the Lake Tahoe Adventure Film Festival, or what I just saw at the Davis High School theater, a showing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour.

 

I could not help but notice that the majority of the attendees seem to be a league of  like-minded, tattooed tribe of wannabe adventurists, displaying a true sense of uniform individuality by their apparent requisite costume, bearing labels of Columbia, Patagonia, North Face, and REI.

 

       

 

But, my guess is that most of that audience does get out, notwithstanding the tagline of one of those adventure film posters that boasted—albeit absurdly—watching others out there in a movie is ”the next best thing to doing it.”

 

Nah, we know that is not even close to being true. Really, how likely are you to see even one topless woman in an adventure film audience?

 

I certainly did not see any at the Banff Mountain movies last week.

 

Although, I did smell some smoke of a particularly distinctive odor in the parking lot during the intermission.

 

       

What they don’t tell you about travel planning. It wears the hell out of me and it just might not be worth the effort.

Travel planning is not for sissies.

 

And at this point, I am not sure I’m up to the task anyway.

 

It is not just the unfathomable hours spent clicking countless computer sites, pouring over piles of guidebooks, and making copious notes that typical travel planning entails, but sometimes all that work is for naught.

 

There once was a guy named “Ike” who got this.

 

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, who was the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, planned and led military forces into North Africa, and then France and Germany, and happened to have been the 34th President of the United States, knew something about planning.

 

It was Ike who expressed the conundrum of planning when he said something to the effect of,

“Planning is essential; plans are worthless.”

 

And, kind of like the WW II secret code encryption machine, the enigma is whether all that travel planning is really worth the effort.

 

Maybe that device’s mathematical basis can provide us the secret key to successful travel planning.

 

Ah…then again, maybe not.

 

But, not knowing something has never stopped me before from talking about it at length;

so how much planning is appropriate?

 

      

 

Marsha, over at Wanderlust for One, posits in her post Praise of Travel Planning, that for some travelers, less is more when it comes to voraciously compiling pre-trip information, and planning the trip down to the most finite component.

Is spending a lot less time and energy—and sometimes mental anguish—the best plan for trip planning?

 

The answer is…it depends.

 

It depends if you are a member of the Church of Feel Good Serendipity, or an officer in the National Anal Retentive Society.

 

Marsha—can I call you Marsha?—certainly leans towards the more is better. Much more.

“All the experimentation has done is to teach me–the hard way, you might say–that unplanned travel is not for me.”

“A natural scaredy-cat, I need lists and schedules [and have a] compulsive need to have itineraries and check-off lists and follow schedules.”

 

Hey, I’m not being judgmental here (O.K., maybe I am), but if Marsha is a self-professed scaredy-cat, hell, I’m the king of the jungle.

 

I won’t go as far as to say, I know the location of each toilet within a quick trot on the trip, but let’s just say, I have an app for that on speed dial on my smart phone.

 

Now Tracy, in her website The Suitcase Scholar, is one that wants “wiggle room” when planning for her next trip. Apparently, she set up a schedule on a previous trip which was unattainable, and she went as far as saying that the trip had been “doomed from the start,” as indicated by the 36-page itinerary she had prepared.

 

(I must say, I am not sure what is wrong with a 36-page trip plan. I might need that much space just to map out local pubs along the route.)

 

Agreeing with Tracy is a bespectacled balding bearded guy named James, who wrote on that topic at About.com.

“Most new travelers do what I did- they plan out everyday. Their entire route is planned, sometimes even down to a specific day. This holds true especially among young or gap year travelers. They try to race and see it all. 2 days here, 2 days there. This is a bad way to travel. When you travel, less is more.”

 

       

 

Yen Lee, over at HuffPro, takes a somewhat sexist approach to the question of travel planning, claiming he is beat by women. (I, on the other hand, get beat by just one woman, and I usually have it coming.)

“Men are more likely to wait until the last minute to book holiday travel. Perhaps in an effort to best William Shatner’s negotiating skills or outwit that wily roaming gnome, they also tend to waste their time and effort on hunting down the best airfare.”

 

Lee, Yen, makes the case that we don’t remember a trip by the success of the planning that went into it.

As a consummate planner, I might take exception to that concept.

 

That his metric of success includes meeting some guy along a mountain path who shares his home-brew beer, well to this point, Lee and I have a similar yen.

 

But, based on his research, and the accompanying blog comments, apparently there is something to the sex aspect. Apparently, us guys have just been in the wrong position. When it comes to travel planning.

 

Boyfriends and husbands – you have been forewarned.

 

Thinking about sex (yes, that is in fact what most men do 23½ hours a day), as we look for resources for travel planning, SexySocialMedia.com  mentions five social networking sites, such as Foursquare and Gogobot, that are said to “make trip planning fun.” 

 

As I prefer independent travel to quiet spots, off the tourist beaten paths, I would like to find the unsocial networking sites. And, I am not sure the wife-person wants me spending too much time on websites offering fun sexy social networking.

 

There is no doubt that the web has a huge audience when it comes to travel planning, and where there is money to be made, there are people who are paying close attention to our web-based planning activities.

 

Brandon, at his blog Buuteeq, posted a Google interactive infographic tool that provides a visual picture of the five steps of trip planning. While the colorful graphic is interesting to click on, “Oh look, colorful spinning object!” this “tool” seems to provide more business related statistics—albeit interesting—than helpful travel planning information, especially given the promising title of “How to Plan a Trip.”

 

Another website, which is dealing with how web content shapes our travel choices, also provided a colorful infographic that seems to me to be more orientated towards web marketeers, rather than trip planning surfing.

 

While there are a few of us who still prefer paper maps and written guidebooks to peruse, the vast sea of Googleable resources available make waves that we all are affected by. Especially, when the waves are occasionally rogue, thus less than reliable for those of us wishing to surf our way smoothly across the interwebs towards our next trip.

 

But, can you depend on what you read?

 

In his book, “smile when you’re lying, confessions of a rogue travel writer,” Chuck Thompson broaches the subject of how travel writers are sometimes less than totally truthful.

 

Numerous exposés have been written about less than honest travel evaluations, laying out the half-truths and outright lies you might find within online travel information and reviews.

 

Trip Advisor gets gazillion of views, by folks wishing to check out vacation providers, hotels, restaurants, and more, but they have been accused of bias and censoring on some occasions. 

 

Then there were the stories of people who do their travel planning on Apple computers being shown higher prices, ostensibly since Apple product owners are of higher affluence.

 

    

 

I got to writing on this subject as I spent way too many hours—days? (I lost track)—as we prepared to book our first European river cruise for next year. I bounced around from website to website, trying to make sure we had every last detail and every last eventuality planned for. (Recall that I am a charter member of the National Anal Retentive Society.)

 

I was more than a little alarmed when I read that cruise ship message boards were being accused of selectively deleting unflattering reviews.

 

So, I guess it like I have said on more than one occasion, read everything with a jaundiced eye (unless you have been vaccinated against that malady), throw out the best and worst reviews and average the rest.

 

For those of us who spend way too much time travel planning, depending on less than accurate information is clearly counterproductive.

 

Obviously, what—or whom—to listen to is the challenge. An article from BootsnAll on getting bad advice, many times from best intentioned friends and family—often those who never travel themselves—suggests how to make your own good choices.

 

And, for those of you who pay little attention to all this noise and prefer to simply grab a few items of clothing, your smart phone, and a box of anti-diarrheal medication, and then hop on the plane, well, I admire your serendipitousness. 

 

I’ll be the one next to you on the airplane, buried under piles of printouts and tomes of travel tips, and bugging you for any information you might have on our destination.

 

My suggestion to you is to pretend you are asleep.

 

       

I’m in the desert and I’m hot. The question is, why am I so surprised?

Abnormal is the new normal.

 

No, I’m not talking about me. I only wish that sage saying referred to my own mental disposition.

 

But, what’s up with this bizarre weather nowadays?

 

While the rabid right-wing radio-heads are wont to dismiss Al Gore as a wingnut, there’s something happening here and what it is ain’t exactly clear, but nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. (Yes, there IS a song lyric there.)

 

For anyone even remotely enamored with the classic sport of baseball, the phrase spring training brings thoughts of warm weather, cold beer, and pudgy old farts with well-worn mitts that haven’t cradled a baseball in decades.

 

Many east coasters, wishing to escape the winter doldrums, travel south to the scattered ballparks of the so-called Grapefruit League in Florida, while thousands of other fans find their way to the sunny southwest surroundings of Phoenix, Arizona, for the popular Cactus League.

 

       

 

Last year, the wife-person and I embarked on a two-thousand mile spring training road trip to AZ, which took in a little of Las Vegas (or more accurately, they took us for a little), a visit to a grand big canyon, looked over the edge of one damn big dam, and watched my fantasy girlfriend, Danica, make left turns for 400 miles, going really, really fast.

 

And, oh yeah, we watched some baseball.

 

This year we planned—what I now believe after two successive trips to be—our annual mid-March trek, where we looked forward for some of those famous warm Arizona springtime temperatures. We did get at least a little concerned, when about two weeks before our trip a news story reported that,

“A freaky storm dusted parts of the area with hail and snow, a combination called graupel.”

(Gee, I thought that was an Italian liquor.)

 

HA! I only wish we got some snow while we were there last week. Summer apparently decided to precede spring, and we were scorched by sunshine, and a record 95 degrees. And that was in the shade.

 

Using the meteorologically scientific Comfort Index of Weather Reporting, sitting in the stands under full sun for three hours, this converts to, as I heard a guy walking behind me in the stands say,

“HOLY SHIT, IT’S HOT!”

 

The fact is, it ain’t easy to sit in the stands drinking mugs of frosty cold beer for the full three-hours, or so, of the ball game.

 

For one thing, they announce “last call” already in the seventh inning. Apparently, it is difficult for the ballpark crew to mop up puddles of spilled beer, and sweep up mustard and ketchup encrusted hotdog wrappers and discarded peanut shells, if they have to work around passed out patrons, once the game is over.

 

Thankfully, it does cool down in the evenings, especially in the air-conditioned comfort of the many local eating and drinking establishments.

 

Our favorite place, so far, is Cowboy Ciao, in Scottsdale. As it comes out, we are not the only one who thinks so.

The Visit Phoenix “Official Travel Guide to Greater Phoenix,” quotes local resident, Danica Patrick (yes, that one) as that being her favorite place to eat.

 

I KNEW we thought alike.  And, we have so much in common; she likes to drive fast and I look to look at her.

 

  

 

See you next year Danica; I’ll be looking at you for you.

 

Shameless Promotion Announcement Section

While I cannot claim my abnormal is now normal, I can unequivocally state that my regularity has become very irregular, at least when it comes to my blog posting.  While I would love to blame an excess of time spent doing adventure travel, it is probably that my nap time has increased in both frequency and duration.

 

So, if you have grown weary of clicking back here every few hours (yeah, as if THAT is happening), I might respectfully suggest that you click on the upper right column, where it says, “Subscribe to Sand Dollar Adventures by email.”

 

That way, my latest blog post will find its way to you, and I promise not to send you requests to fund my next trip to visit Danica in Arizona.

 

At least until it cools down there.

Winter’s back! Skiing is superb. Life is lovely. But, I’m not crazy about this metal rod between my legs.

Look, quick!  Too late, it’s gone.

 

Such is the existence of any mid-winter quality, perfect powder days this time of year, especially given this season’s great start and elevated expectations, but followed by poor execution with a dearth of precipitation.

 

With only a few days between a dumping of fresh powder and a forecast of temps of almost 80, when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

(Which I did at the Chevron station in Rancho Murieta, on my way up the hill to Kirkwood last week. You kids wait; for every year past 50, I think your bladder shrinks in size by two percent. Given that I’m on the far side of 60, if you ride in the car with me and you get thirsty, don’t grab that bottle of liquid that only looks like apple juice!)

 

 

 

The ski slopes at Kirkwood greeted me with over a foot of new snow, a beautiful bluebird day and no crowds. Occasionally, I do get lucky.

 

After connecting with my ski buddy, Keith, we followed the insider’s protocol by heading over to the backside, and Chair 4, the infamously slow quad chairlift.

 

Given my “glass half-full” attitude on life, as credited to me in an email (which I have yet to erase from my cell phone) from Tim Cahill—not to be a name dropper; o.k. yes, to be a name dropper—I take advantage of those long lift rides to rest my legs and relax my back; the former by use of the safety bar with foot rest, the latter by use of my always handy Rumple Minze-filled flask.

 

We decided to ski across the ridge to the two poma surface lifts that give access to some great terrain, formerly requiring a hike up the hill. Many of you may be totally unfamiliar with what a poma lift even is.

 

Wikipedia defines these as,

“A surface lift is a type of cable transportation system used to transport skiers and snowboarders where riders remain on the ground as they are pulled uphill.”

“Surface lifts have the advantage of being less intimidating, especially for beginners: the speed is slow, they are usually situated on beginner terrain, and remaining on the ground is perceived to be more controlled than off the ground.”

   

The term lift is somewhat of a misnomer, as in the only thing that gets lifted is your arms from your shoulder sockets as you grab the moving cable, which careens by while you are standing there in a stationary position. That Wikipedia states “the speed is slow,” may be true once you are “one with the cable,” but not so much as you stand there, waiting to grab hold.

 

Let me be clear. You do not sit on this so-called ski lift, as you would on a chair lift. The poma will have something to sit against, such as a disk connected to the cable with a steel rod, and you get pulled along with your skis or snowboard sliding along the often rutted, uneven, and bumpy snow surface—hence the name surface lift.

 

As you get pulled up the slope, you cling onto the cable as you lean against that pseudo seat, praying that you won’t become separated en route.

 

Coming off whatever style of butt-rest on the particular poma you are attempting provides you two choices. The first being, you can hold on and be drug along—imagine a water skier not willing to let go of a tow rope, but in this case, the outer layers of your face are being scraped off as you are being drug over the hard frozen ground.

 

Your second choice is to let go completely, and then pull yourself out of the frozen rut and poma path, and get out of the way of the person being pulled up, coming up right behind you.

 

      

 

I am glad that Wikipedia says they are usually on beginner terrain; this is not always the case.

 

I used to ski at a small community college-run ski hill in northeast California, called Coppervale, which operated using only a poma to get up to the top. This surface lift happened to run up on the steepest part of the entire area, often on a hard-packed, icy groove, along towering (at least to us novices) moguls.

 

Becoming separated from the poma meant first trying to pull yourself, with your body on the ground rigidly connected to your skis, out and away from the groove, as you wait for the sharpened steel-edged skis of the next rider coming up the hill.

 

Your next challenge was that you then had to get down the “face” ski run, named as the most likely part of your body that would be bouncing on those hard packed, frozen moguls, until you slide into the small ski shack at the bottom of the hill.

 

   

 

Thankfully, as you can see in the picture, the pomas at Kirkwood are on relatively benign slopes.

 

That is, as long as you are able to keep that metal rod firmly planted between your legs.