The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So, let’s talk about our truck. She is a 2013 Tacoma with about 100K miles. She appears brand new without scratch nor blemish. She is the rock bottom of the Tacoma range with a 2.7 liter 4 cylinder motor that only churns out 180 bhp, incidentally this is more than the V8 Range Rover with which I used to spend my time. She has 5 speed manual transmission and hi and low 4 wheel drive. She has no extras, meaning you wind down windows by hand. There is no GPS, no backing up screen, no TV, no massage parlor, nor spa. All of this I love, I mean she is a truck, not a lowdown, yankee, tenderfoot limousine. What really made it impossible for me not to buy her is her bench seat. Bench seats are the best. You wind down the window, push your elbow out into the wind and roll on down the highway, as your best girl snuggles up against you singing Joni Mitchell songs.

Inside the truck. You cannot really see the bench seat because it is covered in stuff, which is what it is for.

By the Snake River in Oregon

She drives like a truck. The gear stick is long and thick, the clutch is heavy, she exudes tractor like solidity. 1st gear is very low indeed, which is perfect for towing and difficult off road terrain. 2nd  is  also a working gear, low and grunting. However 3rd, 4th and 5th are traveling gears, 5th in particular is an overdrive for those high plain dead straight highways with a storm rolling in from behind.

She does not accelerate but rather just gets faster. Forget flooring the pedal and roaring past big trailer trucks carrying feed from Wyoming. You can buy trucks that do that, trucks with 300 bhp motors but these do not interest me. Trucks should not go fast. They are strong, honest, reliable and love a load of goats in the flatbed. That said our truck will go 75 mph all day at 2,300rpm. James and I have just done 2.400 miles in 5 days without ever taking the motor above 3,000 rpm.

Truck in Gran Teton National Park

So why do Americans love pick up trucks? As we drove around the wide open lands of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada we took truck data. We counted the number of trucks that came the other way down the long and lonesome highway towards us compared to the number of like saloon cars. It came out that 55% of vehicles were trucks. Clearly a lot of these folks do not use their trucks for farming, ranching, hunting and that kind of stuff. However there is clearly a strong identification with the land. An identification with a way of life that has been recent in their family and above all it is a statement of outdoorishness. The problem is that trucks, especially ours, are brutish yet people like comfort. This has led to double cab trucks that are luxury saloons with a flatbed.

Double cab truck but this one is a true work truck. Winnamuca Nevada.

Why are there very few trucks in Europe? I suppose it has something to do with history. People on the land were serfs and peasants you know, that sort of thing, on small plots with thousand of years of same, same, engendering a different relationship with the land than your average cowpoke on wide open range.

However the killer app is the big motor. A truck needs a big motor, a grumble, rumble V8 if possible. Mine has a tiny 2.7 liter motor and I can only drive her because I am old and have come to terms with my masculinity. Nevertheless, this size of motor is very large in Europe. A truck with a 1.2 liter high revving motor does not work.

Most of the the trip is devoted to birdwatching and here is another truck virtue. You are seated high and our Tacoma has a very large window that allows the photographer to lean out and capture.

Antelope on the western plains.

Our truck also has a camper shell, which I am ambivalent about. It takes away from truckishness as you cannot see the flat bed but it is very practical. This trip saw a lot of rain, hail and snow and without the shell all our stuff would have been drenched. It also allows snuggy camping.

Supplies

View from flatbed into driving hail

Anyway I love my truck. Soon I will retire and take her to Alaska!

Well deserved pamper back in San Francisco

So, James and I set off in the truck to watch birds. We go through California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada. On the first day we end up in a small town, Alturas, close to the Oregon border. We check into the Hacienda Motel. Both James and I have a strong sense of deja vu, mainly because the owner plus wife are perfectly weird.

Check the Sand Hill Crane motif.

We realize that we have stayed in this  motel before.

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/hey-swede-burn-me-a-thick-one/

How strange is that, ending up in exactly the same motel in  the same tiny town with no planning nor malice aforethought ?

Anyway we go out to eat and happen upon one of the best restaurants in the world. Yes, we are talking about ‘The Brass Rail’ here.

The exterior is, um,  unprepossessing

Inside it is a western family restaurant run by Basque descendants. Lots of Basques came to California to herd sheep.  There is only one thing on the menu, which is a meal. The meal is homemade soup in big tureen with lots of homebaked bread, salad, a great dish of chick peas and pork and you do get to choose what kind of steak you want before you wade into ice cream and coffee.  You also get a carafe of red wine. It is wonderful, just simple food really well cooked and served up by nice folks.

Soup!

Vegetables!

Steak!

$26 all in.

So today, the last day of my vacation, I go down to SLAC to lunch with Melinda.

Melinda always has the best shoes.

It is a wonderful visit. We bump into all kinds of nostalgia.

Roger sensei joins us for lunch.

Melinda is a woman who has every attribute, a constant drive to have a good time being one of the most admirable.  She is the best company. Roger Blandford is one of the world’s most amusing men. We have such fun.

Patrick joins the fun

One of these people is the Director of SLAC.

Yesterday I had lunch with Bebo.

Bebo eats lunch.

Apple store Palo Alto

I love California!

There will be more posts about the rest of the trip but I thought I would do some start at the end literary cleverness.

So I wake up on Wednesday morning and walk down to the sea. I swim out to the Scaffie through  beautifully warm, still water. I rig a third anchor on the boat and then swim slowly back as the sun rises. I get ready and then go down to Naha airport to take a plane to Kansai. I wait 3 hours in Kansai in a totally empty lounge before getting on a flight to San Francisco.

Alone in Osaka

I then have one of the worst flights ever. I am in the very back row of the airplane in low, low cattle. There is then 9 hours of turbulence, which always seems worse at the back of the plane. I hate turbulence and am very miserable. However we finally reach SF and James picks me up in the mighty truck.

It is 10:30 on Wednesday morning.

We go for a long walk along the beach to Fort Funston to look at beach art. It is a tough walk as we have to go up and down cliffs and hills and stuff. I am blowing like a walrus.

Early afternoon by the Pacific, but not the Pacific I am used to.

We go shopping for camping stuff, an occupation which reaches it zenith in the US. Outdoor shops here are bliss. We then meet up with Ben and Courtney and play with Ben’s new motorbike.

Great bike!

We then go for a delicious Iraqi dinner, lots of lamb and mint and yoghourt and humus and stuff.

We are home by 10:00 and it is still Wednesday. Long day.

So, today I hand in my application dossier for permanent resident status in Japan. The process is ridiculously easy.  All the documents needed are less than 15. All are easily come by. My U.S. Green Card application took 6 months of work with an attorney resulting in a file 4 inches thick.

A couple of days ago, I went to the Onna village office to get some documents related to paying local taxation. Such visits are always a joy.

So clean

Lots of grinning ladies help me.

A man whom I revere, Yamada Shinman sensei, agrees to sponsor me.

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/jamonjamon/

With beautiful daughter Miwako

Anyway, I get all my papers together and head on down to the Immigration Office in Kadena.

This is my entire dossier.

My Green Card dossier, which miraculously is hanging around in Okinawa. Compare and contrast.

If I succeed in this application, I will be able to live in Japan for the rest of my life. An outcome dearly to be wished.

I cannot really think of many reasons as to why they would accept my application as it confers the world’s best health care for life and free walking sticks. I suppose we just wait and see.

It will take a couple of months to process

Wish me luck.

After unwellness and a week of Board of Governors I finally get back out to sea on Saturday. I go for a long, long reach straight out in front of the house into the shipping lanes. Big boats thunder by. It is exciting.

High traveller at start of trip.

There is enough wind to drive the Scaffie at a very satisfying speed. Her viking lines allow her to swoop over the swells without a care.

The weather is not great. In fact it rains quite a lot but I am feeling vikingy

Interesting how many terms have Norse origin

My segl and new siglura

Anyway it is getting dark as I elegantly pick up the mooring. The boat is bucking about a bit as I lower sail. I slip somehow and go crashing into the bottom of the boat, bashing my head on the thwart on the way down.  This opens up a very nice gash on my scalp and the blood pours down my face.

I feel wonderful. I am a real viking! My genes tremble as I wade ashore after long sea voyage, covered in blood, getting ready for a bit of rape and pillage. Well, pillage.

Odin owns you all!

Wandering through a pharmacy looking for goose grease to rub on the boils, I have a very strong madeleine moment.

My mother had a beautiful dressing table. It had a large mirror and a glass surface on which were her silver backed brushes and hand mirror, her jewelry box, and always a beautiful round tin of Nivea cream.

I had not seen one of these tins for decades. I had seen various Nivea products, indeed I bought a big plastic bottle of what I took to be Nivea cream but after rubbing it into my skin for a couple of weeks I was told it was shower lotion.

Anyway there in the pharmacy in Yomitan, Okinawa were tins of the original Nivea cream.

Ageless graphic design.

It made me think of my Mummy.

A Swiss photographer whom I had apparently employed 25 years ago turns up in Okinawa. He takes the usual selfie with his Iphone.

This is what he sends to me. I understand why he is a successful photographer.

This is fun.

It is the start of the plumeria season.

Pink ones

Yellow ones

I will go and dab Nivea cream on the end of my nose.

I was always very bad at those ‘spot the difference’ games. You know, two pictures that look the same but have lots of subtle difference, like the cow in one picture is black and in the other it is white. I could rarely spot these things and the games made me even more surly and bad tempered.

looks the same to me.

I was thus particularly pleased to notice that the dead tree in front of my house had been lumberjacked.

Notice dead tree

Old buddies of mine came on Wednesday to cut it down.

I have spent a lot of time with  these guys exchanging chain saw stories.

Don’t you love chains, hawsers and winches.

New garden

Boat safe and well.

Rescued orchids

Well, today I am 65 years old. This is usually considered an important milestone as I now gets cheap travel, reductions on coco and carpet slippers.

Indeed the great Shinto gods, who understand, did not want this day to pass unnoticed. First they strike me down with Bronchitis and I have spent the last 2 days choking up chicken on my rancid sleeping mat. Then they sent the heaviest rain of the year.

The orange is caused by earth washed into the sea killing coral and seaweed. The boat is hiding behind the tree.

This is now 135 millimeters of rain.

They then send me the great test. The sea is very rough. The rain has filled the boat with water thus making her very heavy and more likely to drag her anchors. If she does she will end up on the shore, her rudder will disappear and I will be back to square one. I feel terrible and posses a plentiful fever. The wind is very high and it is lashing down with rain.  But there is nothing for it really. I put on a Vermont hunting jacket and a sou’wester, neither of which I have previously worn in Okinawa, and wade out in the howling storm.

I bale the boat. She is already full to the seats. I check the mooring, which appears to be holding well. I then wade back and return to my foetid sleeping mat to swallow more antibiotics.

Thanks for the Sou’wester, Ian. I knew it would come in handy one day.

Not much of  a  65th birthday party really but I do have a great sense of wellbeing from having done the right thing.

We are booked to play the Naha Haari Boat Festival, http://www.naha-navi.or.jp.e.ni.hp.transer.com/magazine/2227/  as part of our 2017 tour.

It is incredibly hot.

Sound check. Notice the no shade orientation of the stage.

Our warm up dancers. The young lady kneeling center stage is particularly arresting as she has 3 feet.

We play and the crowd goes wild. Young women sit on their boyfriends’ shoulders waving cigarette lighters.

Violence breaks out in the crowd. Jagger Altamont style we cry, “Cool it!”

It is no good. The Angels that we hired for security are going beserk.

We play on, but we know that this is a turning point in the history of Irish traditional music. The flower power era is over.

After the show we party like crazy, happy to have got off that stage alive.

Anyway, on the way home I marvel at the flowers growing wild by the roadside.

Oh Amarillo, what you want my baby for?

Later we have an excellent dinner to mark the beautiful Laura’s departure.

Someone makes a rude smell. Spot the culprit.

Good times.