[sic]

Seems like only yesterday my Susan and I were wandering in wonderment the walks and waterways of Venice.

I’ve only been to the 5,475-foot-high Dante’s View in Death Valley once (in 2002) but it is a spectacular place in a park full of spectacles that leaves an indelible impression. One not quite as indelible as the national park’s 11,049-foot Telescope Peak that I summited in 2006, but enough so that when I saw this advertisement in the April issue of a magazine, I had no doubt as to the vista in the final photograph (most likely a composite of a stock image taken at Dante’s View and a studio shot of the woman):

The ad’s headline “Let Your Worries Go,” could be the slogan for Death Valley what with its unmatched, beauty, solitude and serenity. Got to find a way to get back there this year.

Brief backstory: I have an Alphasmart 3000, a somewhat goofy PlaySkool-looking AA battery-operated, bare bones portable word-processor that I bought prior to our Africa honeymoon trip in 2005 because I wanted something rugged and durable and cheap ($200) that, given our locations in the Rwandan countyside, the Serengeti (pictured at right tapping away on it into the dark of the night within our tented camp) and other various outposts with uncertain access to electric power, wasn’t in need of recharging. The device performed flawlessly throughout the more than two weeks abroad. I wrote this journal of that trip on it.

I barely used the thing since. In fact, the only time was in the summer of the following year when I brought it with us on our 4,500-mile roadtrip through California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona. I’d also brought our old Apple laptop with us as well and so I hadn’t much use for the Alphasmart.

Which brings us to today when I turned it on for the first time in practically two years and found the 1,421 forgotten words I’d written still stored in its memory, recounting a bit about our travels across the famed Beartooth Highway on to and through Yellowstone.

About 356 words from the end there’s a break where I’ve apparently stopped writing about Yellowstone and several days later picked the thing up to type a few emotional words after we discovered the four abandoned pups on the side of the highway in Monument Valley — and that ends abruptly, too.

For wont of a real blog post today, after the jump it’s all copied and pasted (with a couple links to pics) in full unedited glory.

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At 30,000 feet westward somewhere over Knoxville, Tenn., from seat 18F the view was pretty spectacular out of my U.S. Airways Airbus A321 starboard portal, but its serenity belies what had been a pretty spectacularly turbulent ride all the way here from out of Charlotte — and we weren’t through it yet by this point. We had just cleared a thick shelf of storm clouds to reveal this lower bank, but instead of things mellowing out, the ship got hit by strong easterly winds that bounced and buffeted and pitched and yawed and dipped it with sinister and somewhat unnerving regularity for what was to be another 15 long minutes or so.

It was enough to bring the pilot onto the intercom from the flight deck to keep the flight attendants seated and to acknowledge that it was probably an uncomfortable place back there in the cabin, as well as to assure us that the plane was designed to safely withstand much greater stresses than we were unpleasantly experiencing and unfortunately would continue to for a while longer. I appreciated the calm and confidence of that update, let me tell you.

So I forced myself to divert from my base fear by whipping out the camera to try for some shots over the wing of the north by northwest airspace that captured all of the beauty and none of the anxiety.

Oh well. I got to the airport immediately after the close of the convention today in hopes of getting on an earlier flight (and also just in case it was total delay madness in the wake of last night’s storms). I was happy to find it relatively calm, but sadly the earlier flight — which had available seats as of this morning — was totally booked.

So I’ve got a stretch o’ time to spend in Concourse D of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport until my 6:15 p.m. (EDT) flight and so I’m now on my second pint of Carolina Beer Company’s Carolina Blonde microbrew and enjoying the airport’s free wifi, while watching UCLA vs. Memphis in the NCAA final four. Free wifi at an airport… imagine that. Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you LAX, you cheap bastard.

So with such such unfettered access, allow me to regale you with a highlight of the trip, which was a visit with about 1,500 other show attendees Thursday night to to the U.S. National Whitewater Center on the banks of the Catawaba River in Charlotte — site of the Olympic trials in kayaking next week.

We were given the opportunity to sign a waiver absolving the center of any liability in the event of our injury or death and then after a tutorial wetsuit up and raft manmade versions of Class II, III and IV rapids, and so despite the rain, the darkness and the 45-degree air temperatures (not to mention the 50-degree) water, I said Oh hell yeah.

It was a soaking wet and bone-chilling blast. The first of two channels we went down had Class II and III rapids and then they took us down the bad boy, which was Class III and IV. At my seat up on the starboard bow I certainly got wet, and it actually got a little scary after our first pass of the Class IV. Our guide had given us the “all down” signal before hitting it (meaning we all had to pile out of our positions on the outer sides into the bottom of the boat). Nevertheless, we lost one attendee from the middle port side and he actually ended up getting carried by the swift current under the boat for what seemed a good 10 seconds. Eventually  and thankfully he popped up and one of the other attendees was able to grab him and pull him to the side where others manhandled him up out of danger. Whew.

Even worse, the boat behind us, whose guide hadn’t given the “all down” signal, lost all four of her attendees into the drink, but all ended up safe and sound.

Being a glutton for punishment, I agreed somewhat freezingly to tackle the Class IV run again and that time it was a piece of cake.The worst part was trying to warm up afterward after drying off and getting out of the neoprene back into my clothes. I’d made the mistake of keeping my skivvies on under the wetsuit and so had to “go commando” the rest of the night with my Calvins in a wetbag provided by the convention sponsor. TMI? Sorry.

Turned out I must’ve been borderline hypothermic given the rancid conditions because I couldn’t stop shivering while getting something to eat. Even afterward on the bus ride home it was like someone had turned an air conditioner on in my inner core. I was freezing the entire ride home.

Certainly under more idyllic conditions - i.e. with sunshine and warmth — it would have been more fun, but even under such less-than-ideal elements, there was nothing keeping me from such a seldom-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

See for yourself: sh-sh-sh-shortly before leaving I managed to get a videoclip (and hold the camera steady despite my shivering) of other attendees heading around a bend to the Class IV section:

All’s good over here in North Carolina. I’ve been as busy as the weather’s been wet, culminating this evening in severe thunderstorms that I’m keeping my fingers crossed will abate by by sometime before my flight’s time tomorrow evening.

Strange that the only times I’ve been to Wal-Mart in my entire life, both have been for neckties. The first time was in Carbon Hill, Alabama, in 1987 for my grandmother’s funeral. I’d forgotten to pack one and so thanks to a desperate visit to the only Wal-Mart in Walker County I was able to pay my respects at her funeral suitably suited.Arriving in Charlotte Wednesday, I unpacked my clothes and behold and low: no ties. Fortunately there was a Wal-Mart 3.6 miles from my hotel so I drove over there and purchased a red one and a dark blue just-in-case one.

On the way back I stopped for my inaugural visit at Chick-Fil-A for lunch and then this morning was able to savor my fist cup of renowned Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. And boy was it gooooood!

Other than that I’m bushed, but wanted to check in before I sack out for one more night before coming back to L.A. 

Off to LAX this early morning for a flight to Charlotte where I’ll be pretty busy at a trade show until I come home Saturday evening. I’ll be avec company laptop so chances are I’ll be able to offer some dispatches from that front.

You don’t need me wasting keystrokes attempting to explain just vast and magnificent Tanzania’s most famous national park is, when this picture will do just fine:

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(click to quadruplify)

Just a random photo upload to break up the text monotony — this one being one of the first photos I took upon arrival with Susan at the Serengeti in Tanzania during our everything-we-could-ask-for African honeymoon odyssey in the summer of 2005. Their attentions were toward a solitary warthog whose scent this previously lounging hunting party of five had just picked up. The warthog was making its way over the bottom of a dry wash a couple hundred yards to the right and moving further away from the lions who made something of an effort to stalk and flank the creature but soon realized it would be too much effort for too little a meal.

I’ve written before of the single bag of local coffee we purchased at the airport in Kigali on our way out of Rwanda back to Kenya when we visited Africa in 2005 and how it turned out to be the best coffee we’ve ever had. After we’d quickly emptied the bag I tried on several occasions to arrange shipment directly from the company since their beans weren’t available in the U.S. Eventually I connected with their marketing manager who kindly informed me via email that a 12-ouncer would run me $7 — not including shipping via DHL, which would be $265.

It was good coffee, but not that good.

Fast forward a few months ago and I get an email from a Doug Sherman in Massachusetts who wrote me because I believe he’d either found my trip pix on Flickr or my journal of our travels in Africa and had some questions about a Rwanda excursion he was thinking about making with his wife during their upcoming trip there.

In the exchange that ensued I encouraged him to take advantage of the opportunity and answered his questions as best I could and at the close of one of my emails I think I practically begged him to bring us back a bag of coffee. He said he’d be happy to.

It arrived yesterday. And while it is a different company (COOPAC) than that which produced the bag we bought we’re nonetheless brewing up our first pot of Café de Maraba in anticipation as we speak. Thank you Doug!