The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

As most of the rest of the world reels from the impact of Coronavirus, we on Okinawa remain untouched. The local government has not suggested any restrictions. Life goes on as normal. Schools reopen next week after the spring break. That said, the university, OIST https://www.oist.jp/ with many international visitors and employees has taken the situation very seriously and has, in my opinion, introduced very sensible changes.

I hope all of you and all of yours are well.

Well, I hope this post does not annoy. It is a beautiful day. We go sailing.

It is Sunday morning when Arisa san, Kaori san, Simon san and I foregather to take the boat out for a sail. A glorious day, bright sun and about 25 degrees. The dark side is 15- 20 knots of wind.

So, none of my companions have any sailing experience and I, as you know, am incompetent. We get out from the harbor to meet seriously disturbed sea. The wind is manageable but the sea is intimidating.

I am amazed by the lack of dread demonstrated by the crew. We are plunging around in broken seas with only the jib up but they are unconcerned, indeed invigorated!

The idea of raising the mainsail with inexperienced crew and having to put in probably 2 reefs as we crash around, seems unwise. This manouevre is complex and trying to do it with people who don’t know the names of the ropes, as we hammer against big swells is foolhardy. I order a turnaround. I am the Captain. The crew is disappointed. I thought they would be terrified. and so overjoyed to get back to land. Ignorance is bliss and that sort of thing.

We go out about a mile just on the jib and then turn around. We come back in very nicely on jib alone. So much fresh air! I am only wearing a T shirt, well, I mean I also have my trousers on.

Once safely moored, we have a delicious picnic prepared by Kaori san and Arisa san. Such fun in a time of plague. Here is a video:

Again sincere best wishes to all of you who are going through difficult times. I hope this post makes you happy.

So, to all my faithful readers, a small but distinguished group, I send all my best wishes. Okinawa is untouched by the Myley Cyrus and it is difficult for me to conceive the awfulness that many of you are going through. Hang tough.

So, here is a happy story to make you all feel better. I try to raise the center plate of the boat but all that comes up is lots of cable. Ouch! This means that the center plate has conspired to free itself from the cable and wants to hang loose. This has to be fixed and in conjunction with the need to generally scrub her bottom I decide to haul her out and give her a good makeover.

So, the bottom of the boat is covered in weed and shellfish of various denominations.

So, first I scrape and then I spray and then I paint on new anti fouling. I work in glorious sunshine with the encouragement of all the boatyard boys with whom I have become close over the the duration of the Norfolk Gypsy project.

Hmmm not so good. The hole in the center plate, through which the center plate cable was threaded, has decayed into uselessness.

I scrape off all the weed and barnacles and limpet-like things. I then hose her down with high pressure spray gun, Yay! Ginowan Marina.

Then I paint her bottom with a chemical brew of awfulness that will keep the creepy crawlies off for another year, one hopes.

I then apply compound to the hull. This is the most rewarding work. What was dull suddenly becomes glistening.

I then paint teak oil on all trim and bolt on two new anodes.

This is all very well but the main problem is the center plate. Kiyuna san slices off the end of the decayed plate and welds on a shackle.

After three days of glorious work amongst friends in a Japanese boatyard, we drop her back in the water with a black bottom. Yay Norfolk Gypsy!

Look at amateur video.

I hope this makes you happy. Stay well.

Back to Okinawa on empty planes, arriving at empty airports.

Okinawa seems very calm and I am certainly safe as Kiyuna san has given me a special magic stone to suck.

The boat is just fine as the wonderful cover has kept her dry as a bone.

The day after I arrive, there is an Irish evening in the excellent Bacon Bar https://www.facebook.com/baconbarjapan/

There are maybe a 100 people. Cancellation is not mentioned. There have been 3 cases of the Miley Cyrus in Okinawa, 2 of which have fully recovered.

I really do not get this Miley Cyrus thing. I realize that there must be a huge risk of mortality somewhere, as Europe and the States have essentially closed down and my pension fund has disappeared, but I have been unable to grasp how awful this risk is.

Okinawa is clearly the wrong place from which to judge this issue. The people are, as usual, super happy and helpful. The supermarkets burst with all kinds of wonderful things to eat. There is more toilet paper than I would know what to do with, mind you we all have botty sprays built into our toilets. Zero sense of crisis. However I do not read or watch Japanese media because I can not understand it. Maybe they are super frantic but somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, this afternoon I show up at the local clinic to see if I can get a full check up as I have not had one for a couple of years. They say sure and within a couple of hours I have weight, height, blood pressure, measured, chat with doctor,chest Xray, electrocardiogram, ultra sound for heart, kidneys, gall bladder, liver, or what the doctor charmingly calls innards. I also have some kind of test to check the state of my arteries and a kind of super blood pressure check. I supply blood and urine samples. I see the doctor again who explains that everything is OK but the results from the blood and urine tests will take a few days and the damage caused by alcohol abuse will show up then. However I have been in Okinawa for exactly a week and I have already gained 2 kilos. This place makes me fat.

They charge me 3,500 yen.

No one mentions Corona virus.

I do not understand.

My stay in San Francisco has come to an end. Boo hoo. I have had a wonderful time. I love the city. I love it being close to a cold ocean. I love the fog. I love wearing wool.

Lucky me.

Up to the lost coast and huge redwood forests of Northern California.

I spend a week snuffling around in the undergrowth and going on very long hikes in the redwoods. I feel very bear like. Mainly because I want to eat lots of meat and do not wash.

The dutch oven is the best cooking device. I only use open wood fires yet produce wonderful meals. Well, all my new bear friends said they were.

The countryside is magnificent, the wildlife abundant.

I stay mainly in National Parks, which are fantastic places, so wild, so huge, so full of bears. Congratulations California on your National Parks!

In Fort Bragg I amazingly run into one of Irelan’s top traditional bands, http://teada.com

They are amazingly good at playing their instruments but they lapsed into Irish music hall banter. “Sure love is blind. Yes ,but marriage is an eye opener right enough.” This was cringemaking to me but my fellow audience members lapped it up.

I like being a bear.

James and I head out to the Mission; such a fascinating part of the city. It is a glorious day and we have various small errands but we get completely sidetracked by the Mexican stores.

The Mission is so full of life and vivacity. Lots of quirky specialist shops and of course amazing street art.

Thanks James for showing me around. He really knows the Mission. We now have more octopus, goat, belly pork, oysters, limes than we need. Will have to eat hard!

I do not get very debauched these days, in fact hardly debauched at all. This is currently about as good as it gets.

On Saturday, Nancy and Bebo kindly invite me to their annual Mardi Gras Party that they have been holding since 1893. Their house is on Clayton so only a few blocks aways, up Masonic, along Haight, up Clayton; https://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/haight-the-web/.

The party is great with elderly hippies playing jug band and Grateful Dead music. We eat the wonderful Jambalaya, Seafood Gumbo and collard greens, that Nancy has prepared. More importantly we drink Oyster Shooters. You put a raw oyster into a shot glass, fill it with cold vodka, some lime juice and tabasco. You then neck it. They hit the spot and are so good for you.

Lots of interesting people, mostly in their 70’s, with great stories to tell.

I stagger home at 12:30 along Haight St at its wildest. Live rock and jazz are blaring out of bars, the sidewalks are packed, homeless party with their dogs, playing bongos and banjos, SFPD cruisers lazily swim around like sharks, people who have drunk even more than me sit up against walls, the air is blue with dope smoke. Yay debauchery!

I have a few hours sleep before setting out for more debauchery. At 06:30 on Sunday I am not in church, I am in the immortal Kezar Pub, https://kezar.pub

The place fills with hilarious Irish, who fall into 2 categories, construction and techie. Both groups are so funny, so inventive in their comedy. The humor is catalysed by lots of Guinness and huge fry-up breakfasts.

It is the best party, enjoyment amplified by drinking at 08:00. So debauched. Ireland lose the game convincingly.

I burst out of the pub at 09:00 ish into wincingly brilliant sunshine and find myself back on Haight, but a very different version thereof.

Almost nobody has surfaced from the previous night’s partying, except a few casualties asleep in shop doorways.

I stumble into Gus’s Market https://gussmarket.com as it opens and the first thing they sell that day is an octopus, er to me.

Somehow buying an octopus early in the morning also seems debauched.

If Orwellian interrogators had to find my ultimate phobia in Room 101, it would be filling in tax returns. I would betray my family and friends to avoid filling in tax forms.

This is why I love Elena so much. This is the 3rd year she has helped me with my U.S. returns. She is very Russian and laments the fall of the Soviet empire. She understands my phobia and is gentle with me.

We spend a wonderful hour together resulting in completed tax for 2019.

I now have to do my Japanese taxes when I get back to Okinawa in March. This was very straightforward last year, so fingers crossed that nothing has changed.

I have been very lazy since the return from Mexico. I have luxuriated in the beautiful Spring weather and the resplendent flowering trees in the streets adjacent to the house.

I also had lunch at SLAC with the unparalleled Melinda but forgot to take photos. Met lots of friends who seemed strangely old.

So, the last lap is up the Pacific coast of California. I start in Ventura and basically follow Highway 1 all the way back to San Francisco. The weather is perfect.

The trip up Highway 1 is one of the greatest drives.

Such a great drive. Between Carmel and Santa Cruz, the road is bordered by huge Mimosa trees covered in yellow blossom, so beautiful. The sun goes down very dramatically just after Santa Cruz.

I had lost my driving glasses somewhere down the road and the Tacoma’s lights are not the best. The twisty turny road back into San Francisco was pretty terrifying but around 8:00 I park right outside my house in the city!

So what a colossal trip, 5,000 miles through 2 amazing countries. Thank you USA, thank you Mexico, thank you all the wonderful people I met. Coming to think of it, I did not meet a single unsmiling, unhelpful person during the whole 7 weeks. Such a different world from that you read about in the media.

So, this post will be even less coherent than the previous few. It is devoid of literary style or plot but only records events that I do not wish to forget when I am an old man. There has been a lag in posts due to much wilderness but now I am back in the USSR with fast internet.

I head North from Guerreo Negro after a morning of exquisite birding.

I camp in Catavina. The best camping er place in the world. Huge boulders are piled up at random and every kind of cactus thrives.

I drive North. I stop for lunch.

I drive up from sea level to nearly 3,000 meters to visit the National Astronomical Observatory. This was once proposed as the site of the LSST when I was at SLAC. It went to Chile.

I camp in snow! Coyotes stroll around. This is the second best camping er place in the world.

I make it to the Observatory after miles of super steep roads with vertiginous drops.

North to Tecate. It is pouring with rain. First rain for 6 weeks. Suddenly I am back in the USSR.

Thank you Mexico for an outstanding stay.