Gearheads, Virgin Trannies and an Arctic Circle Shout

(pjdillon@attglobal.net)
Got my feeble brain around the nuances of linking digi-pix on my can-do laptop with the new printer – big applause for the hp5550, an effin piece of printing excellence – and having a groovy time cranking out images to give my buddy Sasa when we hook up this evening.

The photos came from an October trip to Sumba, a largely forgotten, desiccated island south of Flores (90 minutes southeast of Bali in a shiny new Pelita Airlines Dash-9) and the only blemish on the clean jaw-line of Indonesian islands – 18,018 now that the government has officially “discovered” more than 1,000 new ones – as it sweeps southeast from Sumatra.

For those gear-heads who give a damn about such things, the photos were taken on my co-habitating ugly second cousins, related in the same sense that a Lada and a Ferrari share ‘car-ness’: one the one hand, a battered three-year-old Sony DSC-S50 Cybershot shooting a max of 2.1 mega-pixels which is all the camera most hackers like I need; and on the other, my Formula-1 ride, a three-chip Sony pd-150 digital video cam, shooting vid that makes me look like an overexposed Warren Miller, and with a flip of a button banging off sneaky low rez pix (can you say “Three frames per sec?”).

I’m trying my hand at documentary film-making – among other things – part of the GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS reworking of work and play skills to take me over the rapidly approaching mid-life hump. A dozen years of journalism must be good for something, right? Redefining. Recalibrating. Rediscovering…. etc etc. I need a Hill & Knowlton to come in and spin my life for outside consumption ‘cause when I write it it seems kinda desperate and sad, no rooted concept of home, persistent wanderlust and no obvious pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow.

“Jumping Jehovahs’ Witnesses, Batman, what’re we gonna do for a pension?”
“Easy, Boy Wonder. Worst comes to worst you’ll fetch a handsome price from those khol-eyed Taliban pederasts in Northwest Frontier Province.”

The shots I ran off include one of Sasa draped floor-length thick cotton warp that does multiple duty as a sarong, sweater and sleeping bag, looking for all the world like the Virgin Mary as played by a bearded Spock-eared Balkan transvestite. Unfortunately, this low-rent Blog site does not permit photo posts otherwise…. The second is a moody dawn pic of two fog-shrouded youngsters curled up on top of a 35 ton black of limestone that’s been cut from a hillside, bound with thick vines and loaded on the ‘back’ of a sled made from two large logs, one topped with a carved horse’s head. All this in anticipation of the arrival later in the day of up to 1,000 local men who’ll grab hold of the vine tethers and haul the stone for more than a kilometer across the undulating, dried paddy fields to a future gravesite of a Dameka village traditionalist. The third and final, is my friend sitting up a tree with his long lense trying to get an aerial view of the stone-pullers. Being Indonesian however, the “Albino in the Tree” is wayyyy more interesting than work so he’s is surrounded by several hundred curious, laughing men who have been looking for an excuse not to work for quite some time.

Despite the ensuing Death Match struggles we both waged against varying types of malaria and other associated parasites, imbalances and nasties, it was an excellent, epic trip, one we’ll be using to bore folks to tears for many years to come. It is a beautiful moment.

(As a quick aside, I’m reminded writing here of that scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, after the fat guy explodes in the restaurant. The waiter speaks directly to the camera, inviting it to follow while he shows them ‘ve meaning of ze life.’ On and on we go, trapsing through city traffic, boarding buses – he’s got a white napkin over his forearm – until we are walking with him across a meadow and up a small hill. Below us is a timeless pastoral scene, a picturesque farmer’s cottage shrouded in mist, smoke is puffing merrily from the chimney and it looks warn and inviting. The waiter – was it Michael Palin? – turns to the camera and says, earnestly: ‘Vis iz ze place where I vas born…’ Obviously he is greeted by an incredulous movie audience and realizes immediately that they are mocking him. He gets defensive and attempts to draw us in: ‘Wellll, I know it iz not much but….” And finally sensing he’s the butt of all jokes: “Well zen, well, Fuck You!..” and sets off down the hill with his napkin still affixed to his arm, muttering and swearing to himself in French.)

I wanted to take a moment to send a very special shout out to the Monkeyman, Wolfy, Andy and Dave who leave from Vancouver today, March 1, on the first leg of a six week trip that will see them as early as next week begin the extraordinarily dangerous bicycle trip across more than one thousand kilometers of central Alaska in the dead of winter, the first serious attempt to re-run a trip done by a turn-of-the-century goldrusher, following the Yukon river, then overland to the Bering sea. You can follow all the action and weekly posts on Kev’s expedition website, www.bikesonice.com or by tapping into the websites of the Vancouver Sun (http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/) or Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In what can only be described as a Grinchtour-sanctioned reality check, the biggest challenge the boys face is the weather: IT IS TOO WARM. The hard-pack they would be riding on is starting to turn to elephant snot and the Yukon is threatening to break up early, something that would scuttle the whole project and, very likely, sweep the team downriver in a most unpleasant manner. So guys, here’s hoping the weather is absolutely friggin frigid for you over the next couple of weeks. Peace out and remember: Moose and Elk have the right of way.