There were trains for getting around before there were planes. You have to walk before you can fly.
The first trains were big, lumbering, uncomfortable, dark, and were powered by men shoveling coal into fireboxes to heat water and using the created steam to turn gears and wheels. Train tracks were wide and it took the help of thousands of Chinese immigrants to lay down track from one side of our American continent to the other.
Modern trains are sleeker, well lit, aerodynamic, fast.
Waiting for the Number 8 bullet train in the Narita Airport,we commuters stand religiously at our proper pick up spot.
When my train stops and its door opens, I step inside and take my seat and hope I haven’t gotten on the wrong slow boat to China. As we make more stops,new passengers, that have no seat, grab rings hanging from the ceiling with one hand, hold on to their purse or suitcase firmly with the other.
The ride from the Narita airport to the Haneda Airport is two hours through pastoral Japan countryside, and through medium size cities.
My commute gets me to the Haneda Airport and I grab my carry on bag. I had four hours to get from one airport to the other, get my boarding passes, get to my right gate, and board the right plane. Two and a half of those four hours have already been burned up in transit.
Japan has captured my attention.
Coming back to Japan is one of the things I want to do. I want to take Godzilla to a Sumo wrestling tournament.
I think he would enjoy seeing two big men wearing diapers, trying to throw one another out of a ring not much bigger than they are.
The nautical miles click by and Marinduque disappears.
The Philippines move into memories, that funky place where facts get forgotten, emotions get heightened, truth gets obscured, and we turn experiences into what we want them to be instead of what they really were.
Montenegro lines will get us safely across this pond and when we dock it is still a four hour bus ride to Manilla, a throbbing, bustling metropolis that even locals want to avoid.
Tomorrow, early, I take a plane to Japan, then Minneapolis,then finally to Denver. Time zones will be barreled through like a NFL lineman going after a quarterback,
There is a saying that ” Wherever you go, There you are. ”
There is another equally powerful old saying that, ” Travel changes you. ”
The water is still and opaque.There are islands we pass that wave at us and seabirds glide above us, their extended wings riding the drafts. A sailor takes a last puff on his cigarette and flips it overboard with his forefinger. In the sitting area a kung fu movie is kicking and those that can sleep, do.
Travelling by boat is not fast but I have learned not to be in a hurry.
The most common vehicles on Marinduque are bikes, tricycles with a cab, tribikes with a cab, motorcycles, and jeepneys.
Jeepneys are the most colorful and most used on narrow winding mountain roads that take a traveler three or four hours to go around an island that is called small by locals.
Jeepneys are versions of World War 11 jeeps enlarged and modified to carry multiple passengers. They are intensely decorated with signs, slogans, horns, bumper stickers. On dash boards are replicas of Jesus with hands praying. There are beads and charms with rooster feathers swinging from rear view mirrors and, on the outside of one, the words, ” GOD WILLS, ” is hard to miss.
For tall Americans or Europeans, you have to bend low when you enter a jeepney and there are railings on the ceiling you hold if you need stability. Windows are small and there is no place to pause and take a photo as the transport moves down the road as quick as the driver can be safe.
Getting down the road is a game of chicken where transports usually stop a few millimeters from collision.
You can rent a car if you need one, but Jeepney’s are an adventure worth having.
Getting around is one of a trip’s great pleasures and getting around in style is the best way to fly.
Outside Hanger One at the Pima Aircraft Museum, in a dirt field, helicopters, prehistoric looking birds with rotating wings, are on display.
This Sikorski Utility helicopter was used at U.S. Coast Guard search and rescue stations in the seventies.
On night duty in U.S. Coast Guard Air Station radio rooms, part of my watch was relaying messages from aircraft to the Officer of the Day, answering calls from fishing widows wondering why their hubby wasn’t back in his easy chair with a beer in one hand and the channel changer in the other looking for football games.
Weather is always a consideration, and, in the gulf, squalls come up unexpectedly.. Hurricanes shut down oil rigs and personnel are routinely evacuated. Around water, you can always become a grisly statistic.
In those Vietnam years, us six foot sailors wore dress blues for ceremonies – dungarees, denim shirts, and white Dixie Cup hats for daily work.There were angry protests on the nightly news, signs in the streets, and burned American flags.
Now, decades after the tragic war, Vietnam is a thriving country instead of a place Americans had to lose a war in order to win it.
Some obligations can’t be run from, no matter how odious.
Countries, just like people, are not always smart about what they choose to do, or not to do.
Most people love trains.
Just to the southeast of the main office at Rincon West RV Resort,in Tucson, runs the Rincon Railroad.
Sitting on a little hill, train conductors sit in lawn chairs with wireless controllers and run their trains through their make believe town. A train schedule is posted at the station, and, on this day, an engineer is trying to figure out why his train loses power in the turns. His wife is adding little plastic people to displays of Old West scenes in the miniature town, scenes that are now mostly found in kid’s books.
Trains helped settle the west and in early morning hours, in South Tucson, you hear real train whistles as big boy trains speed through pulling box cars of coal, shipping containers, and empty cattle cars.
In receding light this evening, this choo choo is not running much longer. The conductor and his wife need to fix dinner, sit around their front porch with neighbors talking about old days, listening to Glenn Miller on an old radio prized by antique hounds.
At the Rincon West Railroad Club you take a stroll back in time,
Playing with trains is something little kids and big kids have in common.
In Granada, streets have horses, wagons, carts and carriages..
Horses and carriages carry tourists on tours of the city and the usual place to match up is in front of the Hotel Alhambra at the Parque Central.
Horses and carts are also working today, hauling sand, lumber, and produce down shaded thoroughfares.
This morning, two Nicaraguan generations, sitting next to one another, turn a corner, the reins waiting to be passed, but not just yet.
There will not be many years before horses will not be allowed on thoroughfares here and one more trace of the nineteenth century will vanish.
This boy won’t have a horse and a cart in his future, but he will remember this early morning ride with his Dad.
There are exotic birds in the pool area, some in cages, some free in the banana trees. Two of the caged birds are varieties of parrot and several others are parakeets. They are brought out by staff in mid morning and climb obstacles in their cages, hang upside down on swings, break sunflower seeds with stout beaks.
There are also two tortuga’s in the undergrowth by the pool. They are more difficult to find because they are not colorful and make no noise.
After looking, and not finding them, I give up the hunt till Security man Juan finds one and calls me to admire it.
The smaller of the two is underneath plant leaves and nestled in shade, in a moist area.
” No agua, ” Juan says, wagging his finger.
He picks up the tortuga and holds it in the air.
It’s hands, feet, neck and head remain inside its shell. It looks like a rock with a hole in the middle.
Tortuga’s make good pets. They eat leafy plants, don’t tear up flower beds, eat insects, are quiet to a fault, and hibernate if it ever gets cold enough in Granada.
Juan carefully places the turtle on pebbles but it doesn’t change it’s attitude of withdrawal.
I return to the pool and don’t hear a peep out of either of them.
All I hear is the rooster next door that wakes me every morning and struts all day, full of himself.
Tortuga’s don’t talk much, but if they do, I listen.
” We aren’t to feed the monkey’s, ” Mario warns, much to the dismay of my fellow tour boat passengers.
” Monkey’s are loco…..If you knew what I know you wouldn’t want to get close to them. ”
Our boat stops at Monkey Island and several of the small mammals come to the water’s edge to greet us.
One lone monkey scampers out on a tree limb, reaches his hand out, and a young tender hearted woman, in another nearby tour boat, gives him a treat.
This group of monkey’s was marooned here years ago and they provide entertainment in exchange for people food that isn’t even good for people.
Our foraging solo spider monkey, once he has his fill of handouts, leans down and drinks from Lake Nicaragua.
He might get hungry but he won’t ever run out of water.
Taking what someone freely offers you doesn’t count as begging.
This monkey and his business are not messing around today.
Lake Nicaragua is in the top five largest lakes in the world and has enough water to keep Central America hydrated for hundreds of years if the tap turns off.
Mario, our tour guide, brings out his map and shows us where the new Panama Canal is going to be built.
Looking at the map, he points.
The new canal will go from the from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea cutting through the southern part of Nicaragua, using this lake and a new man made fresh water lake to feed water to canal locks. China is scheduled to start this new canal soon and the project will change this country forever.
” These islands, ” Mario continues, ” are for sale.” He puts away his map, gestures with his hands, and grabs our attention.
” That one, ” he continues, is owned by one of the wealthiest families in Nicaragua, the Pella family. They own the Tona beer company too…. ”
The good thing about owning an island is that neighbors are separated from you. The bad thing is some of your neighbors are living in galvanized sheet metal houses with boats dry docked in the yard and laundry hanging from makeshift clotheslines..
Men fishing in the river pause and watch us, then cast out their nets and pull them back in with tonight’s dinner.
When the sun goes down fires glow in the woods as day is put to bed and stories roll out of their bunks.
Most who live on this lake never want to see anything crossing it that ruins their fishing.
Early in the morning no one is about except tourists with cameras, construction workers getting a jump on the sun, security guards walking to work talking on their cell phones, vendors loading little carts with bananas, potatoes and pineapples for a day of selling.
On the boulevard in Lake Nicaragua Park, at the end of the Calle Libertidad, a few men operate leaf blowers and primp the grounds for the real barrage of tourists in October, November, and December.
I watch a trash truck overflowing with bags coming closer, remember my morning rides on Saba, on winding dangerous roads, on the way for a day of cistern building a number of years ago.
As these men and boys pass, they hang off their truck, wave, laugh, happy to be riding on a cool morning instead of walking. It is not safe to take deductions too far but these guys don’t seem unhappy.
” Here we are, ” they say, ” take our picture. ”
And so, I do.
They wave at me, as they go by.
Picking up refuse seems to be bad only if you see it that way.
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