Four Days in Germany

    I spent all day flying to Germany on the 6th of November, 2010. I left Denver at 10:00 am and didn't get to Germany until 7:00 am on the 7th. Losing that eight hours as you travel east across the ocean is the root of what we call Jet Lag. I had many strategies for trying to deal with this: sleep on the plane so as to wake up in the morning. That didn't work as I couldn't get a wink. Then I thought, I'll just stay up all day when I get there and go to bed early. Nope, didn't work either. I was too tired from traveling all day. I ended up sleeping all day the 7th, got up for dinner, then slept all night. Problem solved. Truth is there are any number strategies for tackling the Jet Lag issue, please feel free to comment with your experiences and share your Jet Lag strategy.
     I was picked up at the airport by a very pleasant German named Helmuet (pronounced helmet) and treated to my first experience on the Autobahn. As we pulled out of the Frankfurt Airport on the Autobahn this nice older man put the pedal to metal and we did 220kph (about 120 mph) all the way to our destination of Roedormark. It only took about twenty minutes and it was very exciting. It is Illegal to pass on the right in Germany, here in the states it is just annoying. So on the Autobahn if you are on the far left lane hauling ass and the person in front of you doesn't get over, you have to slow down until they do. I saw many cars that were modified to be, as my friend Boris put it, Autobahn bad asses. Gunthur took me out to dinner in his new BMW and made 260kph at one point (155 mph or so). It was very cool. They all ask you if you are scared because they know Americans have speed limits, and they all have funny stories about having to drive at a snail's pace in the States and getting pulled over for speeding. I was lodged at the Sterkel Hotel which was a quaint little spot with a fantastic resturant. The room was small but clean and comfortable.

http://www.starstay.com/en/hotel-41863/sterkel.html

     Speaking of dinner, as I was there for a job interview, I was being wined and dined. First of all, if one has the opportunity to be wined and dined, I highly recommend it. At first they took me to a high end restaurant called "The Savannah" that turned out to be an American style restaurant with 10 euro cheeseburgers and Texas style steaks. The Savannah had a huge rebel flag painted on the door which I found odd and a little funny. I guess taking me to this restaurant was an attempt to make me feel at home. I tried to explain that I really wanted German food and that I could get cheeseburgers in the states. All was not lost as there was an extensive selection of Schnitzel on the menu. Schnitzel is basically a pork chop or veil pounded flat, breaded then fried and it is very tasty. The rest of my stay was spent eating at traditional German style restaurants including a trip to Seligenstadt for rouladen at a restaurant that was as old as our country in a town square that was older. It was fantastic, served with potatoes and red cabbage. I was in heaven.

The square at Seligenstadt

     Oh yeah, I almost forgot - I had a beer or two while I was there. My favorite by far was the  Schöfferhofer Dunkles Hefeweizen or dark wheat beer. It had a flavor I will not soon forget. This beer gave some of the Colorado Beers a run for their money.

OH YEAH

By the way, I got the job and I will be moving to Virginia Beach in the beginning of January, so watch for the blog update.





The Forest Elephants of Uganda

I am about to drive across the country. I'm heading back to Colorado from Georgia where I will begin my search for the perfect RV. I want to say thank you to those of you have started reading my blog and that I have not lost my mind, though that seems to be the general consensus. A lot of people thought I was crazy when I went to Africa for a year and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I wanted to write a flashback article about the first time I saw elephants in the wild.  I was in Uganda so I am going to skip the preamble of why I was there and just start the morning of one of the greatest days of my life.
 We pulled up in the jeep to the head of the trail I used every morning to enter the forest in search of chimpanzees, but that morning there was something very different, there were huge elephant tracks all over the place.

Journal Entry - 9 Nov 2001
" I saw Elephants in the forest this morning. There were 17 in all. Edson ( My Uganda Wildlife Authority Representative). and I were walking down the Jogo Jogo trail and I heard them moving about on the right about ten meters away. I slowly continued down the path then heard the others off to my left."

I was warned the the last thing you want to do is split a heard of Elephants. It certainly wasn't intentional but they were so quiet and the early morning forest was so dark, I just had know idea how many of them there actually were and I didn't realize they were all around me until it was too late. You wouldn't think of elephants as being either hard to see or particularly quiet, but they can be. It was the sounds of them eating that gave them away.

"We continued down the trail slowly and soundlessly until we were past them. Then I stopped to observe them for a few minutes. They were marvelous. Beautiful and serene with a majestic quality. I was an Intruder on their morning repast. Fortunately they never saw me or at least made no notice of me."

Upon reflection I realize how silly that last assumption was. As the weeks went by I came to know the forest so well that I could tell when animals had passed by an area just by the disturbance in the leaves. To have thought that these elephants somehow missed my presence is absurd.

"As I understand it, Forest Elephants have been given their own species name recently which makes them a new elephant. They are a bit smaller than their grassland cousins but no less spectacular."

This is true. The forest elephant is now called Loxodonta cyclotis and is differentiated from the more familiar grasslands larger elephant Loxodonta africanus. This is a prime example of the issues when determining species level classification. The taxonomic nomenclature system is based observable similarities and differences but what makes a species is that the animal in question can not mate outside its species. Forest elephants and African elephants can mate and reproduce viable offspring. Read more on this topic in my article:http://factoidz.com/conflicting-variables-used-when-determining-species-level-classification/

"I have always thought of elephants in the open but to see them in the dim morning light under the forest canopy was breathtaking. They looked black with tusks that glowed and their footprints were filled with water on the forest floor. We quietly left them to their feast and made a discrete departure. Better to leave peacefully than risk provoking a charge"

 None of my pics turned out so I borrowed this one from:

http://dzangaforestelephants.wildlifedirect.org/category/uncategorized/

Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to walk away and call the day a success. I saw my first chimps that day as well but that is a different story. You can see from the pic that the forest elephant is smaller and darker.

My next post will be about my traveling back to Colorado, I can't wait to see my family again, I have been gone too long.

Update: Check out 28 things I wish I had know before I traveled. very cool blog, I've had to learn many of these the hard way.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/13/28-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-traveling/


Gustave Flaubert:  The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Update: Best signmaking and Shirt Printing in the south...Screen Scene Custom Printing

Travels both Past and Future

I have recently turned 40 and my life is a mess. I have traveled far and wide as a soldier, an Archaeologist, and a Primatologist. I will use this blog to talk about future plans and to relive some of the glories of the past. As of this writing, I intend to make my life fully mobile. That is to say it is my intention to purchase an older 5th wheel recreational vehicle and live in it instead of renting an apartment or a house. This is a move that makes sense to me on many levels, though I must admit I am alone in this. My mother thinks it’s a terrible idea and that I will be unhappy and lonely. She is probably right. It seems that the notion of being fully mobile is not a new or unpopular one. I had heard of people doing this in the past but had never really considered it for myself until recently. A couple of years ago I went to a yard sale where the house was wide open and the kindly couple said," Go on in, everything is for sale." They had a large RV in the driveway and were leaving the sedentary life behind for a life of adventure on the road for their retirement. I had heard this same story over the years but had never actually met someone doing it.

 Ideal 5th Wheel

     If nothing else, the math supports the idea. I can rent a small apartment for $800 a month including the bills. That is a conservative rent estimate. That is $9600 a year with no equity to show for it. Or I can pick up a decent sized used 30' 5th Wheel trailer for about $3000, renovation that I will do myself for approximately $2000 more and an RV site with hook ups is about $350 a month at any given RV Park. So that is $4200 for a year of park space rental. So the first year works out to roughly $9200 and I have something to show for it at the end of the year. The next year I have saved $5400 dollars and so on. Seems like a financially sound idea to me.
     What about the stigma of living in a trailer? Honestly, I don't give a crap. I am recently divorced from a woman I love very much and have no intention of ever going through another marriage again in my life unless she wants me back someday. So impressing the ladies is not really a concern. Besides, it’s not living in a mobile home in a trailer park, its living in an RV at a camp ground. The park I have picked out to start this little venture in has a pretty little lake that is stocked with fish. I will remodel the RV to suit my tastes, hard wood floors and an up to date stylish look that will increase the value of my 5th wheel. The idea being that I can then trade up or sell it for more than I have into it in order to get into a bigger one and so on until I really have something of value. The ultimate goal is to live on a big sailboat with an RV in storage. This seems a lofty goal to some but I figure with the money I’ll be saving by living frugally and not just pissing it away on rent this becomes an attainable goal indeed.
     Fully mobile and on the move, that is what I am shooting for, and I have decided to chronicle that endeavor here in blog format that my readers might share in the experience. Maybe benefit from the mistakes I am sure to make, offer suggestions to make my life easier, and who knows, maybe even meet up with me on the road somewhere. Yes my life is a disaster right now but I have a feeling that this plan may just help me to get it back together a bit.

UPDATE: As for my detractors, of which there seem to be many, understand that (in the spirit of Eddie Izzard) I will not be a weird trailer park guy, more... an executive camper of style. 

Here is an article about one of my first travels as an archaeologist to the wonderful country of Belize:  http://factoidz.com/belize-a-backpackers-paradise-part-1-the-cayes/