Chapter V: Stateside Again and Looking Ahead
Continuing the travel memoir book I'm working on, with this chapter we're caught up with everything I have currently written. Having just finished the back-to-back Second Nigeria project and Ethiopia:
May 12th, 2012, Istanbul Ataturk Airport - “You’ll have to collect and re-check your luggage in Istanbul” they had told me on check in in Addis Ababa. I clearly remember this, as I watch the baggage conveyor go around and around with ever fewer bags on it, none of them mine. Finally I ask a member of the airport baggage staff.
“No it would have automatically been transferred”
Just to make sure I walk to the far end of the airport to find some Delta staff to ask.
“No there’s no transfer agreement between Delta and Turkish, your luggage definitely didn’t automatically transfer”
And so, rather than get out of the airport or at least relax during my six hour layover in Istanbul, I spend the entire time getting the runaround around the airport trying to find my luggage, ultimately without success. It will eventually be delivered to me back home in California looking like they used the baggage tractor to back up over it repeatedly, pulverizing everything solid, including three honey jars that had been carefully wrapped and cushioned, spreading their contents over everything not already destroyed.
Many hours later, but still May 12th, New York - After 36 days abroad, and travel through many airports, which usually have put some effort into ensuring you arrive to a spacious, welcoming arrivals area, -a sort of foyer to the country with public art - I find myself emerging into a grimy underground-garage feeling area. Thick unadorned concrete columns support a roadway claustrophobically just above our heads, heavy traffic on the pick-up roadway fills the semi-enclosed space with exhaust fumes and the sound of engines, and the parking garage just across from it completes the enclosed feeling. And I may be back in the states now, but my checked luggage sure enough is nowhere to be seen.
These are the days before smart phones (I’d get my first one as a birthday present from my parents in a month), so I ask someone for directions … and the answer comes back in a heavy New York or New Jersey accent more incomprehensible than anything I’ve heard in over a month of travel … but I suspect it was rude.
I descend into the grimdark depths of the New York subway system, and ride the snorting, shuddering subway carriage to the grand and airy Grand Central Station, and from there it’s two hours by Amtrak through New York suburbs I barely see because I’ve been traveling uncountable hours by now, to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
I enter the Bridgeport marina and make out a pair of tall masts looming above all the smaller closer boats. As I walk down the dock, the rubber dingy sets off from the schooner Pegasus riding at anchor.
“Mr Fricke I presume?” Tarragon says with a smile as I carefully step from the dock into the dingy with my backpack.
May 13th, 2012 - The crew of the Pegasus is busy up-rigging the boat. Over winter the sails and many of the lines had been downrigged to protect them from the elements, but now it’s time to get her ready for the sailing season. I try to be helpful but they ‘re very understanding that I’m still very jetlagged and don’t know the boat at all. Tarragon has been given the task of rigging the head-sails on the front of the vessel, and I’m happy to be her assistant.
The schooner Pegasus normally only sails with an all female crew, conducting leadership programs for girls, but they're willing to put up with me during uprig and the subsequent shakedown cruise.
It was just not even two years ago, 19 months, that walking down the dock in Olympia, Washington, to welcome passengers to the brigantine Eos, I had first met a bank teller named Tarragon, walking unsteadily on the gently moving dock. Now here she is with a list of sundry pieces of equipment she needs written on her hand and down her arm in sharpie as she competently sets about her complex task, grease stains on her work pants as she concentrates on tying an important knot.
May 14th, 2012 - “Happy birthday!!” Tarragon smiles at me across the table in the mostly empty restaurant. We were lucky to find one that was still open this late -after 9pm- the earliest we were able to get off the boat, what with the long days being spent trying to get her ship-shape.
The waitress brings us a rich slice of chocolate cake.
“I got you a present!” says Tarragon excitedly
“When did you find time to get me a present?” I ask surprised
She slides a pack of socks and a tube of toothpaste onto the table. I laugh with genuine happiness - with my luggage having been lost I truly appreciate these mundane gifts.
So here I am, I think to myself, my thirtieth birthday. I’ve just returned from three projects in Africa and am volunteering on a sailing ship - is this where I thought I’d be on my thirtieth birthday? Certainly it’s a lot better than things looked a year ago. I don’t exactly have a career that’s making me rich but, I decide, it’s not a terrible situation, at least it’s interesting. I don’t know what to expect for the decade ahead but I hope it is both interesting and forms some semblance of a career.
May 15th - 22nd - By and by uprigging is complete, we raise the anchor, hoist the sails and set off down the Connecticut coast towards New York City. It’s only about forty nautical miles to the Big Apple, but sailing ships are slow (the world was explored at the speed of smell) and we’re not in a hurry, so it takes us three days to get there. A schooner such as the Pegasus has two broad fore-and-aft sails, which it can swing out on booms to catch the wind, as well as staysails out over the bowsprit and triangular gaff topsails up above the main sails, but not the “square” sails that make a traditional “square rigger” such as my beloved Eos so distinct. Schooners can easily be handled by just a few crew members and are ideal for running in and out of coastal islands and shoals, as we are currently doing. Many of the little islands off the Connecticut coast have historic lighthouses and glimpses of elegant old buildings among the trees.
We anchor the first night off an island the crew enigmatically refer to as “Tick Island” - we don’t go ashore. Anchor watch is much more peaceful than a watch at sea - one stands watch alone for an hour, alone at night with the stars above and lights of shore shimmering across the gently lapping waves. The metal fairleads on the forestays absent-mindedly tinkle like silver bells. Every fifteen minutes one takes bearing on three points the captain has designated, looking across the binnacle compass at the light and recording the bearing in the log: 130 degrees south-east by east to the beacon that shines nostalgically in the victorian steeple of the historic lighthouse on the nearby island; 240 degrees southwest-by-west to the light that slowly flashes an alternating red and white at the current lighthouse that sticks out of the water like a spark plug about a mile away; 003 degrees north to a light on the mansion on the privately owned “Tavern Island” If the bearing differs by more than an amount the captain has specified, the captain must be woken as that would mean we are drifting. We are not drifting. Once in each crewmember’s hour they descend into the warmth of belowdecks, and as quietly as they can so as not to wake the offwatch crew they proceed to three designated locations where they can lift the deck platings and see how high the water in the bilge is, and record this in the log. The rest of the time, one quietly strolls the deck, alone with their thoughts in the night, until it’s time to wake the next person up.
The second night we once again anchor off an island with a historic stone lighthouse, surrounded by other islands with private mansions on them. This lighthouse island is rumored to have buried treasuer from the pirate Captain Kidd
The third night we anchor off Throg’s Neck, the entrance to the East River through New York. Just across the water from us we can see the lawns of King’s Point, where one of my former crewmates attends the Merchant Marine Academy. The next day we sail down the East River, past the infamous prison island of Riker’s Island, and moored to the mainland adjacent there’s a massive cubist hulk of a barge. [obv the book wouldn't have hyperlinks but look at that thing!]
“What’s that?” I ask a crewmate,
“Oh that’s a prison barge.”
It turns out it’s the world’s largest prison barge, the Vernon C Bains. As a history nerd I’d read about the prison hulks used in the 18th century, to find one in current use is disturbingly dystopian.
We continue our sanding, painting and rust-busting as the endless rows of skyscrapers of Manhattan slide by to our west. After passing under the Brooklyn Bridge, we all look out with great interest as we approach the historic South Street Seaport, eager to see the large clipper ships Peking and Wavertree, along with their smaller consorts. Us tallship sailors always have a great fondness for other historic sailing vessels. The Peking and Wavertree were among the last generation of actual working sailing ships, the latter only retiring from working the tradewinds in 1947.
We round the south end of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty holding her torch aloft to our left across the shimmering water, tourist ferries zipping back and forth busily. We continue around up the west side of Manhattan and into the Hudson River, having almost circled the steel-and-glass heart of the metropolis.
After anchoring overnight near the shore in a broad part of the river we continue up the gently curving river the next day. The sun is bright and warm, and I’m working up near the top of the mast, as on either side the forested banks slide by. Life is good. Having grown up in the urban sprawl of the greater Los Angeles area, I had always assumed the West Coast had entirely filled up with people before California began to - so it’s a marvel to me to see what appears to just be endless forest on either side of the river.
Around another bend in the river and … it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings on the bank up ahead - A massive citadel of gray stone walls and towers standing straight and proud, stoic and impassive. No one had told me Westpoint Military Academy looks so picturesque.
As it happens, Westpoint is our destination, and we tie up to a small dock below the stone edifices. It’s not a public dock, but our boat has special permission.
Walking barefoot on the grass field beside the river that evening Tarragon and I marvel at another unfamiliar sight for us - little glowing lights lazily loop around in the gloaming twilight - fireflies! After some fun but unsuccessful attempts at catching them we grow a bit serious, because tomorrow I am leaving. She purses her lips when she’s particularly thoughtful about something.
“So you’re thinking of going to Australia next?” she asks
“Well not for a few months, not till the end of summer” I say “the beekeeping seasons are reversed there so when the season is ending here it will be beginning there”
“And… when will I see you again?”
“You can come to Australia too?” I ask optimistically
“And do what?” … “you’re always leaving” she sighs.
We walk in silence for a moment, holding hands, barefoot on the soft grass, surrounded by the surreal scintillations of fireflies in the gathering darkness.
“I love you but… I think we should consider ourselves broken up after you leave here - because I have absolutely no idea when I’ll ever see you again,”
I don’t argue, we’ve been drifting toward this point for awhile.
The next day she takes me across the river in the smallboat, I’ll catch a train in the town of Garrison across the river. As she casts off from the dock in Garrison, after we’ve said goodbye, she has one last thing to say: “now don’t you get killed in Australia.”
[If you're wondering thats not how the break up happened but over the phone a month or two later isn't as good a scene as among the fireflies, literary license here. Terragon might make one more reappearance in 2017 when I join her for a few days on the ship she is by then first mate of]
[baggage arrives run over would arrive here chronologically but doesn’t really fit]
June 2nd, Southern California - It’s a warm summer evening, and I’m tired from another ten hour day of beekeeping, but you can’t let that stop you from doing other things or you’ll never do anything, because every day is a ten hour day of beekeeping - unless it’s a 12 hour day.
So sitting at my desk, under the slowly spinning ceiling fan and a pleasant breeze coming in the window, I open my laptop. It was articles in the American Bee Journal that inspired me to go to Africa, maybe I’ll have my hand at writing an article and see if they’ll accept it. My fingers hover over the keyboard, I need a good moment to begin on, something both exciting and representative of the whole experience…
“Rows of yam mounds and mud-walled little houses fly past us as we speed along the narrow dirt trail...” tap tap tap 3690 words later an article about Ethiopia and Nigeria, with plentiful serious looking citations to the thesis studies of both my Ethiopian interpreters. Reread it again, send it to my mother so she can tell me all the commas I’ve missed, and go to bed.
June 3rd - Sit down under the fan once again and open the computer, read the news. Headline: “Nigerian airliner crashes into ‘Mountain of Fire’ Church, 183 dead.” A Dana Air flight from Abuja to Lagos had crashed, killing all aboard and many on the ground as well. I double checked my ticket stub, yes I had flown that same airline, that same route, just a month earlier. Dana Air only operates four aircraft, there’s a one in four chance it was the aircraft I was on, there’s a one in four chance each and any of the flight crew I saw that day were in it. I feel a bit shaken, this is as close to a plane crash as I have any desire to get.
After some delay due to being unsettled, re-read my article. Fix all the commas my mother pointed out as missing, make some other tweaks, email it to the editor.
June 4th - “Hello Kris,
Thank you for sending your interesting article on your volunteer beekeeping work in Africa. You are certainly to be commended for your wonderful work in helping beekeepers in Africa! I think many of our readers would find this article and your photos of interest. We have published similar articles from volunteer beekeepers in the past and we always like to highlight these efforts in the hope that it will inspire others to do similar volunteer work.
Please select some photos from the many you have for use with your article. That would help me out a lot. On our present schedule, I hope to print your article in one of our late summer or early fall issues that we are working on now.
Best regards,
Joe”
I hadn’t actually been terribly optimistic it would be accepted, the ABJ is such as prestigious publication!
By and by the summer slips by. I apply for and receive a working holiday visa for Australia, which will allow me to live and work there for a year. I book a ticket for September and put feelers out for jobs, though the visa specifically requires one not to have a job lined up beforehand. My article is coming out in September though, which should make it easy to get a job in the industry that month.
[potential scene where I go camping alone in the redwoods for a week before I leave for Australia but I don't think it makes the cut]
So that's as far as it currently is written. So far there are 41,409 words, which I think corresponds to about 90 pages. This causes me a bit of existential panic because at this rate I think the entire planned scope might end up far too long! O:
Currently written chapters are:
Ch 1 California feeling stuck (4,054 words)
Ch 2 Nigeria I (15,510)
Intermission California (2,203)
Ch 3 Nigeria II (2,684)
Ch 4 Ethiopia I (14,378)
Ch 5 Stateside (2,580)
Assuming first visits to places will be like Nigeria I or Ethiopia I (which fall very close together in length, around 15,000), and the minor chapters seem to be grouped around 2500 words each, the future chapters planned would be:
2012
Australia I (2,500)
2013
Nigeria III (2,500)
Egypt (15,000) (with some flashbacks to Egypt 2008)
Stateside Intermission III (2,500)
Turkey (15,000)
2014
East Africa I (Tanzania & Zanzibar) (15,000)
Ethiopia II (2,500)
Stateside Intermission IV (2,500) (obv every time I'm back home doesn't need a chapter but for example here I was trying to plan and fundraise for the project to the Hadza)
2015
Guinea I (15,000)
Not dying of Ebola (2,500) a melange of post-Guinea adventures in France, Sweden, and sailing off the California coast again (until kicked off the boat for suspected of having ebola)
East Africa II (Hadzabe hunter gatherers and Uganda) (15,000)
Australia II (2,500)
2016
Guinea II (2,500)
Kyrgyzstan I (15,000)
2017
Guinea III (2,500)
Kyrgyzstan II (2,500)
Nicaragua (15,000)
2018
Dominican Republic with Cristina (2,500) (obv not a "minor chapter" but you can only write so much about three days)
2019
Dominican Republic with Cristina II (2,500)
2020
Covid / Australia (2,500)
Which... okay I'm thinking out loud here in that I hadn't totaled these up earlier but that adds up to 137,500 words, plus the existing 41,409 wordsw makes 176,409, which is about 350 pages which is actually right on target for a typical book length. And obviously all these chapter lengths are just approximations and who knows how it will pan out but with this roadmap I feel a bit better.
I might try to roll Kyrgyzstan I & II together and Guinea II & III. Some of the other ones can't be combined like that because my own growth through time is an important narrative arc and I was a different person in Nigeria I and Nigeria III.
The current plan for the end is to kind of meta (I love being meta!) have me start writing a book during the covid year. But then so as to not end on such a depressing note as Covid Year probably the very end will be me flying to Africa for the recent trip or just arriving there -- though that trip is not in the scope here. May recent 40th birthday would be a convenient bookend to the earlier 30th birthday detailed above, especially since it was within a day or two of that that after the long covid gap I got three project proposals in my email in one day.
