Day Five: On Foot and Online

By my standards, it was a rough night. The boat pitched and rolled and I was awoken by the beginnings of a light rain through the hatch. I scrambled up and closed my hatch, and the side hatches in the head and the spare cabin before crawling back into my bunk. Amazingly, I haven't been seasick at all, but I can understand the reaction. If I ever got caught in a true storm, I'm sure that I would understand it even better.

When dawn came, I decided that I wasn't particularly up for another scuba run. My left hand was decidedly pink, and my nose and forehead had a dangerous hue as well. A day on the boat, writing, seemed the ticket. So after breakfast, Bill and Linda headed out and I sat down and tackled another chapter of the novel. Things are happening much faster now, it seems, although it would be more accurate to say that I need to shift locations between characters more quickly to maintain the thread of events. Thus, my 10 page chapters are turning into 4 and 5 page ones.

Halfway through the chapter the rain began again, sending me below to close all the hatches. Again, it was only a light rain and not a proper squall, and the topside was sufficiently covered to allow me to continue to work while I watched the water grow choppy and the wind blow the countless palm trees on the shore.

Once it had passed, I opened everything up and wiped down everything that had gotten wet before finishing the chapter. I had just completed the final words when Bill and Linda returned. They had seen dolphins, but only from a great distance, and also a small shark. I would have been truly sad if I had missed a dolphin encounter, but there are still six more days for that.

We took the dinghy into shore for a produce and internet run. There were rumors of a place that would let you use your own machine and I hoped to upload this week's Radiostar episode and check email. The sole taxi was not running that day, however. Another yachtsman had rented a small vehicle for the day, but it would only carry two. We agreed that I would take the usual transportation route and he would take Linda where she needed to go. I would meet her at the internet cafe.

I began walking down the road. To my right was the small general store and dock we had visited earlier. To my left was the rest of the atoll. As I walked, the sky remained thick with clouds, but was beginning to lighten. I pulled out the spare can of spray-on sunscreen and was dismayed to find that it didn't work. I could trust rain clouds to protect me from sunburn, but not cloudy haze.

To my right I could see the lagoon, stretching as far as the eye could see. To my left, I could see the ocean. The atoll is very long, but extremely narrow. It is next to impossible to not have an "ocean" view here.

As I walked, I stuck out my thumb for vehicles passing my way. Yep, the usual way to get around is to hitchhike, according to the hotel. A few cars passed by, but then a old local stopped and picked me up. He spoke no english and didn't understand that I wanted to go to town, or to the cafe, or internet. Eventually, we kind of agreed on village, but in truth it was a matter of him waiting for me to tell him to stop. So we drove in silence, past the airport until I saw the sign for internet/restaurant. I tried to give him some money in thanks for the ride, and he looked at me as if I was a very strange person and waved me off.

The rumor had been that this was a place where you could bring your own computer and get online. That place was across the street, apparently, and had closed up shop for three weeks. The place we did have available had a windows box that we could use for rather exorbitant fees. Once Linda was through with it, I located the url for my personal webmail and began my online adventure.

The connection speed was, at best, 14.4. My webmail seems to be java based, so simply getting a list of emails took me almost fifteen minutes. Each email I read took an eternity, and replying to it even longer. This arduous process was not aided by the French keyboard, which has a considerably different layout. How different? Well, you need to use the shift key to type numbers. After 45 minutes, I was able to respond to four emails and it cost me around $9.

I will be posting these journals when I arrive home.

As frustrating as this experience was, I was glad to send a very few words home to Radiostar, Mayuko, and my Mom.

The yachtie who got Linda there took her back and them came and picked me up as well. It was back to the boat for a little relaxing.

There was a pizza gathering not far down the road from the internet restaurant that evening. Three boats were represented, although the Creola was the first to arrive. We were about a half hour before the place opened, so we checked out the large grocery store across the street. Linda bought some lettuce, which turned out to be from Salinas, CA. It was a very small place, but compared to what else I had seen on the atoll, it felt like shopping at Costco. A large freighter had docked earlier, so the folks that run the store were madly stocking the shelves.

The pizza was quite good, on a kind of thin cornmeal crust. Individual pizzas were more than I could handle, but we had a couple of teenage boys at the table who were more than happy to take up my extras. Table talk was a little less technical than it had been earlier in the week and I heard some interesting tales from the folks on the Phoenix, who are both "Coasties" (Coast Guard) and talked with another gentleman about life in South Carolina and about Nashville. There was a bit of polite curiosity about my relationship to the McKeevers, no doubt wondering how this scruffy nerfherder got to come down to paradise for the week. I seem to have passed the test, however, as queries were made about Radiostar and I promised to give the Phoenix a few shows to listen to as they make the next leg of their journey.

Yep, I'm half way around the world and shilling my podcast. I'm a good producer.