The Oregon Trail

Just a quick post from the wild west-- Jeff, Jesse, and I left Arlington on Monday night to come to Oregon, ... by car. This might sound only partially crazy to most of you-- it is a well-known fact that I love driving, traveling, and road trips in general, so 4200 mile excursion to come see the family overland might not strike anyone who knows me as all that crazy. Well, you're right-- this time the craziness was not supplied by me, but instead by Jeff (who flew in Monday from Mexico, about 7 hrs before we left town, after doing field work for the last 7 weeks) and Jesse (who returned Sunday from a week-long road trip to OK, CO, and NM with his band The Future Unlived-- featured long ago on this blog as, I believe, the first band I saw in Texas). They are clearly nuts, but I am so happy that they are.
We drove straight through OK, CO, and WY, stopped in Utah (the land of Jesse's people) to refuel (on food, and sleep, and interactions with other humans) and then set out in the dark for Idaho and onto Oregon (now the land of my people). The drive west was an incredible geological gradient-- much more noticeable because of the speed with which we crossed through-- sandy white, dry flatlands in Texas and Oklahoma to gold and rose-colored mountains in Utah, to tree-covered slopes along the Columbia River Gorge. More on this when I can post some of Jeff's pictures (it's his first time west of Texas in the US) when we get home....
We arrived in Portland, where they are attending the annual meeting of ichthyologists and herpetologists, and then I headed south towards Eugene where my mom and sister live (more on that soon too). We'll be on the west coast until Tuesday morning, before turning around to head back east and see the spectacular filmstrip of the american west's technicolor, in reverse.

The Front Range

Fear not-- no more epic, ancient, travel posts for a while. I know there is nothing folks hate more than a "Hey, this one time, when I was in Africa (or band camp, or whatever other place you would like to insert here...)" stories, so thanks for indulging me that one time. Back to the present day: last week I went to Ft. Collins to visit my dear friends John and April and greet their new baby, Zora. John and April were my officemates when I was a grad student in Zoology at the University of Florida, back during what we refer to as the golden age of that department (if you are a devoted reader, you might remember them from an earlier post on my love of Bob Dylan.) During my time at UF, there was a perfect storm of fantastic, fun, smart, creative, enthusiastic, talented grad students surrounding me there-- we were all clustered into grad student offices instead of being housed in our individual labs as is often the case, so we spent all week at work together and then got together on Friday nights for Zoocial (rhymes with social) to drink beer out in the courtyard and figure out how to spend all weekend together as well. It was bliss, and I miss those folks so much after being spoiled like that for so long. John and April just started post-docs at CSU in Ft. Collins but, more importantly than that, they just got back from Ethiopia with their beautiful and hilarious daughter, who is also a blogger by the way-- you can see her and her insurmountable cuteness at Zora Borealis. I was joined in Ft. Collins by another dear friend from the golden age, Nat Seavy. Nat, well-known for is adventures in piracy and surfing (not the internet, but on the high seas), had also fallen under Zora's spell by the end of the weekend. Here is a picture from our hike (Zora hung with the baby bjorn for about 6 hours!) in Poudre (pronounce Pooter) Canyon, some of the weekend's doting, and-- my favorite-- Zora's serious face.

In addition to seeing these guys, I unexpectedly got to reunite with my old friend and roommate from Gainesville, from 2 years prior to grad school actually, Jenny Rubenstein. Jenny introduced me to Florida, live music at the Covered Dish, and really was an incredibly great friend as I settled in to my first "real" apartment and "real" job after college. She has spent the last 12 years gallivanting literally all over the world, and just moved to Ft. Collins recently because her husband, Andrew, is a grad student there. Amazingly, she and April met at a party in December and figured out they had both lived in Florida, and then that they both knew me--not exactly bumping into an old friend, but exactly as great.

Happy Bastille Day! (Or, The Saga Continues....)

So where were we? Oh yes, finishing up a refreshing swim in Lake Turkana, and starting to think about how in tarnation (is that a word? I swear it is, but embedded electronic dictionaries seem to disagree) we were going to make it back from Loyangalani to Nairobi (see map). As I mentioned, this is not a far distance—but there are very few roads, and fewer cars that can traverse them. Many people when describing this region of Kenya refer to it as “inaccessible by car” and suggest anyone trying to get there go by plane. Funny enough, we made our way into town and befriended a pilot named Andy at the one operational hotel in the city—the luxurious and almost completely empty Oasis Lodge. It was a travesty really—here we were in the middle of the driest, most barren area I have ever seen, and there was a hotel with literally ONE guest that was built upon two freshwater springs that fed the spectacular tiered swimming pools. Said guest, Andy the Canadian pilot, was very friendly and bought us icy cold cokes in the bar and offered us a trip back to Nairobi via airplane, if we could wait until the following Wednesday when he would be done with his aerial surveys of northern Kenya. We said thanks, but we really needed to get back by Saturday. He wished us the best of luck, but mentioned the last backpackers he had seen that far north waited 3 weeks for a ride back to Nairobi. It was at this point that we realized our situation was actually somewhat dire. Our discussion with the Samburu warrior in South Horr about the possibility of walking back to Nairobi seemed less ridiculous when we were only 150 miles away (still pretty ridiculous—but not to the Samburu), but with over 300 miles separating us and Nairobi, walking was no longer a good option. We decided to go to the post office because the delivery of mail is-- the world over-- one of the few things that guarantees at least sporadic travel to and from remote areas. As if we hadn’t gotten lucky enough with Joe, when we got to the postal drop off area, we were told that, yes, this sedan with the back half sawed off to form a makeshift miniature pick-up truck was the “posta” vehicle, and yes, it was leaving Loyangalani (very soon in fact, we better be ready if we want to go), but, no, it was not going to Nairobi. In fact, it was going north to drop off mail in a town called North Horr, and then on from there. After our experience in the southerly sister city, you can imagine our hesitation. On the other hand, this was quite possibly the only vehicle leaving town (other than Andy’s airplane) for the next 3 weeks. We decided we had to go, so we hurried up and got ready, and waited for about 3 hours until we actually left. “We” included the three of us, and approximately 6 other passengers in the cut-out back of the car, and then three people in the front seat, most notable the driver, christened Dr. Teeth by me because of my intense tooth fetish (his were TERRIBLE— blackish, green stubs—can you imagine me trying to negotiate with this man? if you know me, you can't) and the mechanic, who was obviously indispensable given the terrain, the vehicle, and the load. Unfortunately, Dr. Teeth was a heavy smoker (about 1 cigarette every 20 minutes). Even more unfortunate was the fact that he couldn’t drive and smoke at the same time, so every 20 minutes we had to stop. Imagine it, if you will—we are in a jacked up, postal sedan carrying cargo and at least 12 people, we are traveling NORTH across the desert in hopes of getting to Nairobi (which is south) in the next two days, and we are stopping every 20 minutes so a guy with the worst teeth I have ever known can satiate a nic fit.

The plan was to head north, arc back down to the town of Marsabit and from there head back to Isiolo. We had figured out that we were at T minus 36 hours to make this trip when we arrived in North Horr mid-afternoon, and figuring a mail stop in this town (see picture) couldn't possibly take long, we were still hopeful that this route, however convoluted, would get us to our destination in time. To our dismay, when we pulled up, all the other passengers started collecting their belongings to disembark, … as if we were staying there for the night. Dr. Teeth had decided to stop here and to resume our trip to Marsabit in the morning. We had explained our situation to him, perhaps even exaggerated what we thought the consequences of our tardiness would be (as it turns out, we underestimated those consequences quite significantly), but Dr. Teeth was adamant. I gave up arguing with him about it only after all the passengers had disappeared somehow into thatched huts, my daily gazing-at-Dr. Teeth-allowance had been used up, and he promised that we would get on the road by 9 am the next day. Morgan, Sean, and I found a thatch roof hut of our own that sold delicious food and (again, miraculously) ice cold Coca-Cola, so we sat outside in the beautiful desert night at a table with sand between our toes. North Horr was way better than South Horr and we managed to thoroughly enjoy the happy accident of ending up in this region far beyond the area we had even hoped to be able to see. Kenyans there look more like their Somali neighbors to the north, and we were treated very kindly by everyone we met. That night, we slept in the churchyard (I found this picture of that very church on the web, like all the others I have shamelessly borrowed to illustrate this post—I have gotten too lazy to give photo credit, but they are obviously easy to find if you are interested in knowing who took them by using the same descriptors I use, e.g. "church north horr"). The next morning we were up bright and early waiting by the car. 9:00 came and went. 10:00 came and went. At about 11, Dr. Teeth emerged from wherever he had slept. A few others followed slowly thereafter. I was impatient, even though at this point I should have known it was futile. We all piled in and drove around the town in circles collecting the remaining passengers from wherever they had spent the night and, again, miraculously didn’t leave anyone behind. We had bonded at this point—singing Snoop Doggy Dog and Kenny Rogers songs to pass the time. We left North Horr blazing through the desert, stopping every 20 minutes for a cigarette break, and soaking in the beauty of this far away place-- most of our communication consisting of raising our eyebrows, sign language, and laughter.

To make a very long story slightly less long, we arrived in Marsabit hopelessly late, eventually caught a lorry to get back to Isiolo, and from there easily got a bus that returned us to Nairobi about 8 hours after our comrades and professors had departed for Maasailand. We showered, detangled, de-sanded, got some rotisserie chicken, and slept like babies, only to wake up the next morning and plan our trip into the remote valleys of southern Kenya where we would hopefully find our group. Two days of travel by bus, car, and foot later, we were indeed reunited with the other students and professors—most (but not all) of them happy to see us alive and eager to hear stories of our adventures in the north. We were punished academically for our decision to go up the east side and consequent tardiness, but rewarded with a beyond-the-thunder-dome adventure that far outshined the formal learning that occurred during that semester abroad. The story continues, in a sense, 10 years later in 2006 when those same leaders interviewed me for a job leading Earlham’s East Africa Semester Abroad program in Tanzania. (Again, miraculously) I got the job.

The 2006 EC Tanzania Program group in front of a giant baobab tree led by none other than the responsible, reliable, non-thrill-seeking yours truly.