Meanwhile, back at the boatyard...

I am out in Solomons, Maryland again, checking on the refit progress with Whispering Jesse, my 1980 Valiant 40. When I was here last October, the boat's hull had just been painted and the deck teak was being sanded. Since then, the teak has received some coats of Cetol and the cabin top has been painted and had anti-skid applied. The chocks that once held a hard dinghy in place on the foredeck have been removed and the teak handrails nicely reshaped where the chocks were joined to them. Aside from some additional deck and bottom painting, refinished hatches, and new stainless steel portlights, the exterior of the boat is almost starting to look finished.

The inside is a different story entirely. This morning, I borrowed a multi-meter from my friend John Simonton, who is back at Spring Cove Marina after a trip south to Hampton last fall, to see if I could figure out why the stove will not light. I had not been down in the cabin much the last two days because it is like an oven in there, but I figured if I got an early start, before the temperature climbed into the high eighties, it might be more tolerable. Well, aside from the general chaos of boat parts spread all over the interior, the first thing I noticed was a light dusting of mildew on almost every wooden surface. The dorades, which normally vent the boat, have been taped over for several months, as have all the hatches and ports, so the rainwater that came through the mast hole, where the duct tape had disintegrated, and pooled in the bilge has caused a nice growth. I ran my finger along it and it came right off, but it will be a big job with an anti-mildew cleaner and Murphy's Oil Soap to get the wood looking good again.

I moved some stuff out of the galley to get access to the propane switch and unscrewed its panel from the wall. I used John's multi-meter to verify that the fuse was good, but when I switched on the batteries and flipped the propane switch, the light next to it did not go on, so I suspect there is a deeper problem. Don the boatyard manager and I talked yesterday about what it is going to take to finish up the project, and electrical problems are definitely on the list. There really wasn't much else I wanted to do in the cabin knowing that within the next few weeks, the chaos down there will get much worse as Don and his team replace the Perkins diesel engine with a new remanufactured one. They are also going to replace the outdated radar pole with a new Scanstrut one that will attach to and run parallel to the backstay. Other projects, like replacing the manual windlass with an electric one, replacing the Webasto heater with a reverse cycle air conditioner, and installing a new chartplotter, are going to need to wait for additional time and money.

On Friday evening, when I first arrived, I picked up my friend Kevin and his girlfriend Beth at the Holiday Inn and went to have a look at the boat. Kevin helped me sail it down from Baltimore last May, and he was impressed by how much better the boat looked now with its repaired blisters and fresh paint. We also took a look at the rerigged mast, with its new Harken furling gear and integrated Forespar whisker pole. Then it was off to The Dry Dock for dinner, where we discussed Kevin and Beth's travails with trying to purchase a used Dana 24 sailboat. They had sailed with the owner of one for sale earlier in the day and were not impressed enough to pursue a deal. As a gift, they gave me a copy of John Neal's Offshore Cruising Companion. Kevin made a Bay of Biscay passage with the Neals a few years ago and knew I would appreciate all the good information packed into John's book. Thank you, Kevin and Beth!

I fly home tomorrow, but I will be back in late July with Nan, who will be getting her first look at the boat. Hopefully, the new engine and portlights and the refinished hatches will be in place by then and the chaos in the cabin under better control. After that, I am planning to return in September with a crew to sail the boat down to Savannah. There will be more about those plans later. In the meantime, there is still so much to get accomplished.

The Apple War

     A.J. Foyt had just won the Indianapolis 500, school had just let out for the summer, and my family was moving to a new home more than two hundred miles away from our old one. It was 1967 and the country was in turmoil. Bombs were falling in Viet Nam. Race riots were raging in major cities. And young people were pushing traditional boundaries. The sense that everything was changing all at once was palpable. Even I, a nine-year-old boy, could feel it.
     At that age, I was obsessed with building forts and forming clubs. My seven-year-old sister Jane and I thoroughly explored every inch of our new house, inside and out, looking for a place to locate a fort. What we finally settled on was the giant tree that grew behind our garage. Its trunk, almost five feet in diameter at its base, grew at an angle that allowed it to be climbed without nailing in planks for rungs. At the level of the garage roof's peak, the trunk split into three huge branches. The left branch extended horizontally for many feet before there were any smaller branches. It was only possible to reach those branches by either scooting along on the seat of one's pants or by walking across like a tightrope walker. A fall from that height would have meant a broken leg or worse. Because of the danger, we didn't venture out on that branch very often. The middle branch was the main trunk's extension but without the climbable angle. Its verticality and lack of branches made it too difficult and dangerous to climb.
     The right branch was where we established our fort. Like the left one, it extended horizontally a long ways, but it had numerous branches that served as handholds, making it a safer climb. Far out over our backyard neighbor's yard, more than thirty feet off the ground, the branch forked in such a way as to make a perfect bench, complete with foot and back rests. There was no need to build any kind of tree house; the tree was perfect as it was. I simply used my Cub Scout pocketknife to trim some of the smaller branches to make the bench more comfortable, and we had our fort.
     Next came the club. We were crazy about zoo animals, especially the big cats, so we called ourselves the Tiger Club. I wrote the word “Tigers” on an old piece of white bed sheet in big striped letters using Magic Markers and tied it to a bamboo pole that a new house rug had come rolled around. I stuck our new flag in the open end of a corner railing post on our second-floor back balcony, where it could be seen from the street and announce our presence. The bamboo pole served double duty as a makeshift spear when I rubber-banded a sharpened tongue depressor to one end, though it was never taken seriously.
     A two-person club is not much fun, so Jane and I went off in search of new members. We found Eileen, who was Jane's age, just a few houses away. Eileen knew the people who had lived in our house before us, and she was very familiar with the giant tree behind our garage. The three of us climbed up to the tree fort's bench and spent some time picking off leaves and watching them slowly circle to the ground. Eileen knew the neighborhood well and pointed out everything that could be seen from high up in the tree: the neighbors' houses, the public library, the sandlot baseball diamond, and in the far distance, an old apple orchard.
     Eileen said we should go take a look at the apple orchard, so we climbed down from the tree, climbed over the chain-link fence that separated our yard from the library parking lot, and set out for it. What we found was not so much a thriving apple orchard as an old sloping lot with a few ancient, untended apple trees growing in it. There were apples growing on the trees and the ground was covered with them, but they were wormy and not good to eat. Eileen picked up a rotten one and threw it hard against a tree trunk. It splattered in a satisfyingly messy way. We walked over to a dug-up area near the bottom of the lot. It looked like someone had been digging foxholes in the sandy soil, maybe to use for playing army, but there was no one around.
     Within a few days, Eileen had shown us around the entire neighborhood. She introduced us to most of the other kids and warned us about a few of them, including her eight-year-old brother John, who was in a club of his own called the Hanscotter Detective Agency. The name was an amalgam of the three principal members' last names. They were fans of the FBI television show and everything related to law enforcement. Eric, their eleven-year-old leader, even had a signed letter from J. Edgar Hoover appointing him an honorary G-man. Together with his friend Joe, also eleven years old, Eric was the law of the land as far as the kids in the neighborhood were concerned. The Hanscotters had converted Eileen's brother John's wagon into a tank by building a wooden turret that sat on top of it, like in the John Wayne movie War Wagon, and they used it to patrol the neighborhood with their squirt guns.
     The Hanscotters did not appreciate the Tigers' sudden appearance and immediately considered us the enemy. We didn't realize how serious they were until they captured Eileen and me one afternoon, plucking us off our bikes and carrying us into Eric's backyard. They chained us to a tree using bicycle locks and left us there to suffer, but it didn't take long for us to escape. I took Eric's brother Chris's squirt rifle in revenge and hid it under my bed, but my mother found out and made me give it back.
     The Tigers thought this would be the end of our conflict, now that adults had gotten involved, but we were wrong. The next day, as we rode our bikes down the street past the Hanscotters and their war wagon, they reached into it, pulled out apples from the orchard and opened fire, throwing as hard as they could to try and knock us off our bikes. Apples flew everywhere, splattering in the street and exploding through our bent spokes. Nobody was badly hurt, but we were shaken and angry. We managed to get home and regrouped at the tree fort. If they were going to throw apples, then we would too, we declared. We trooped off to the orchard with paper bags to arm ourselves.
     The Hanscotters had gathered up all but the most rotten apples from the ground, leaving just the ones still in the trees for us to gather. Eileen climbed up a tree to shake down some apples to Jane and me. We had gathered up only a few when the Hanscotters returned to rearm. They accused us of stealing their apples and said they were going to make us pay. Joe, the biggest and meanest of them, picked up a fresh apple and threw it hard at Eileen, knocking her out of the tree. She fell more than eight feet but landed on a mat of rotten apples and soft ground, uninjured except for a red welt on her chest. The shock of seeing her fall stopped everything for a few seconds, but then the Hanscotters recovered and launched a barrage of fresh apples at the three of us. Leaving our bags of apples behind, we ran for safety as they laughed and called us names.
     The apple war continued through the summer, with minor skirmishes occurring every few days. The Tigers did eventually arm themselves, and the battles became less one-sided but more fierce. Instead of one side or the other running away, both sides stood their ground and threw apples as hard as they could at each other, until there were no more apples left to throw. Bruises and welts were common. Black eyes were not unknown.
     One hot August day, I was helping my mother with some weeding in the front garden. Joe walked past and said something disrespectful. Without thinking, I picked up an apple and threw it at him, striking a glancing blow off his shoulder. He looked back with murder in his eyes and ran to get the apple I had thrown. He turned and threw it at me with all his might, but he missed me. In the midst of the commotion, my mother had stood up from her weeding and turned just in time to get hit square in the stomach by the apple. It knocked the wind out of her. She doubled over, gasping for breath. I started crying. Joe started crying. He yelled, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" And he turned and ran for home.
     No more apples were thrown that summer, but the differences between the Tiger Club and the Hanscotter Detective Agency were never resolved. The feud continued, but in a non-violent fashion, until my family moved to a new neighborhood two years later. In that time, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, Richard M. Nixon was elected president, and man walked on the moon. The apple orchard was paved over to expand the library parking lot, and the giant tree behind our old garage was cut down after a kid fell out of it and broke his leg.

Louis's new sailboat

While we were in Isla Mujeres, Teresa and Louis, the wonderful couple who own and manage the Color de Verano apartments where we always stay, mentioned that Louis had just bought a fixer-upper sailboat. It had been moldering for more than five years at Oscar's Marina, just a few doors down from where they live on Laguna Macax. According to Oscar, the owners had sailed the boat, a 1979 CS 27, from Ontario, Canada, where it was originally built, through the St. Lawrence Seaway, down the eastern seaboard, and across the Gulf of Mexico to Isla Mujeres--quite the adventure in a 27-foot boat! They left the boat behind when they returned to Canada and eventually stopped paying the dockage fees. Oscar claimed ownership and sold the boat to Louis at a very good price.

The boat was not exactly sail-ready, but Louis needed only to motor about a hundred yards farther into the lagoon to tie it up at his own pier and begin what will be an elaborate refitting project. But Louis, an expatriate from France, is an artist and a master craftsman, with the skills to turn the little sailboat into a work of art. He designed and built both of the art deco Color de Verano buildings, the one next to Jax Bar and Grill downtown and the one where he and Teresa, who is originally from Mexico City, live on Laguna Macax, including all of the beautiful wooden furniture that each contains. At one time, he owned a furniture factory in Cancun, but he is mostly retired now, with plenty of time to put into the refit.

Nan and I agreed to meet Louis at his home one morning during our recent stay to see the boat and discuss his plans for it. When he led us out back to his pier, we were surprised to see the boat in better shape than he had described. The worst thing about it was the three or four inches of marine growth on the hull. Louis said he planned to haul the boat out and address the hull situation later, but first he wanted to do all the work he could right at his own pier. We stepped aboard and started taking note of all the repair issues. The boat looked like it had been subjected to some heavy dock thrashing, as there was some fiberglass damage along the rails, a few of the life line stanchions were bent or missing, and the stern arch, which had once been the mount for the boat's solar panels, was mostly destroyed. None of this dampened Louis's enthusiasm. He fired up the diesel engine for us, and it hummed like it had been well maintained, not neglected for years. Then he led us down into the compact cabin to show us all the nifty design features built into the interior. He explained how he was going to spruce things up to make them as comfortable as possible so that Teresa would be willing to do overnight sailing trips to Cancun and other destinations with him. He was excited by the possibilities that the little CS 27 opened up for them, but he confided that his long-term dream is to get the boat into tip-top shape, sail it locally for a year or two, and then upgrade to a larger boat with a greater range.

Louis, we wish you the best of luck with your refitting project! We can't wait to see the results the next time we visit your island paradise!

"Isla Animals" Dog Rescue Shelter

Last week, before I arrived here in Isla Mujeres, Nan went over to the Playa Norte headquarters of Isla Animals, the local dog rescue shelter, to donate some leashes, collars and ointments she had brought down with her and to walk a few of the dogs. While there, she met the founder, Alison Sawyer Current, who coincidentally is also from Colorado and divides her time between the two places. She also met maintenance worker Marcelino and, of course, all the dogs. Each dog has its own sad story, like Rusty, a young mutt with a white heart-shaped patch on the top of his head. He was found in the Cancun dump, suffering from eye infections and weighing only five pounds. Now he is at a normal weight, healing, and playing non-stop with his dog buddies.

Nan had such a good time walking Bruno, George and Karen that she suggested we go walk them together. On Tuesday morning, volunteer Irene set us up to walk just Bruno and George, who had been neutered since his first walk with Nan. Both dogs are pit bulls with histories of fighting and abuse, but aside from their scars, you would never know it. Both are friendly, affectionate and good on a leash. Like all dogs, they respond to love with love of their own. We did a big beach loop with them and they had a great time, cavorting in the surf and chasing after sandpipers. When we dropped them off, George followed us to the gate like he wanted to go home with us and looked sad that we weren't taking him.

We went back again on Thursday morning. Irene told us that George had been taken to a shelter in Cancun to be adopted. It saddened us that we wouldn't see him again, but we were happy that he was going to a good home. Irene set us up with Bruno, her personal favorite, and with Sol, Alison's small, curly-haired, black and white dog. We did another big beach loop, with Bruno off the leash most of the time and Solly sniffing and marking the entire way. We were supposed to meet our friend Juan Torres at the shelter to help him pick out a puppy that morning, but he was tied up with business. He wants to give one to his son Joab for a birthday gift next month. There are three different litters of puppies, more than twenty in total, to choose from right now.

Unfortunately, there are more puppies born on Isla Mujeres than there are homes for them all. Isla Animals does what it can to make sure the puppies in their care get a healthy start at life, and each is neutered or spayed before adoption, but far too many dogs end up on the streets, where they are rounded up and electrocuted by the local government. To help prevent this inhumane treatment, Isla Animals conducts regular spay/neuter and pet care clinics all over this area of the Yucatan Peninsula. To learn more, or to make a donation, please visit the Isla Animals website. Thank you.

Happy Easter from Isla Mujeres!

Locally, it would be "¡Felices Pascuas!" As in the United States, Easter is not a huge holiday here in Mexico, but the people celebrate "Semana Santa," saints' week, all week long, culminating in a day-long fiesta on Easter Sunday. Nan and I were at the beach earlier in the day, but when an emcee and his "Corona girls" took to the stage that had been constructed for the celebration, and the patter and music became annoyingly loud, we retreated through the gathering crowd to our rented apartment at Color de Verano, just a half-block away. But even from that distance, the bass still rattled the windows, so we took a drive in our rented golf cart.

As we toodled down the main drag, around where the island narrows at the single-runway airport, we passed a sign for the Soggy Peso bar and restaurant. We had commented on the name during trips past, how similar it was to the Soggy Dollar's on Jost Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands. This time, we made a U-turn and stopped to check it out. What we found was a fairly typical beach bar, complete with palapa roof and souvenirs of past visits, in this case autographed baseball caps, but lacking an actual beach, being located near the mangrove-encrusted entrance to the island's lagoon, Laguna Macax. We sat at the corner nearest the water and ordered drinks. The owner, an American, came over and said hello. I thought, he's probably semi-retired and imagined it would be fun to create the Mexican version of a famous Caribbean bar. Believe it or not, the man sitting next to Nan in the photo above is actually wearing a Soggy Dollar tee shirt. So we are not alone in our thinking.

We finished our drinks and headed back down the road, destined for Chuuk Kay, our new favorite place on the island. Our friend Ariel, who runs fishing and snorkeling trips with his panga, had said he would be there with his clients in the afternoon for lunch, but we missed him. Instead, we found our Isla friends, Garnette and Roger, and our favorite Isla band, La Banda sin Nombre, The Band without a Name, there instead. We sat with Marla, band leader Xavier's American wife, and drank margaritas while listening to amazingly good classic rock and traditional Mexican songs. Marla joined the band to sing a few classics, including "Angel from Montgomery," one of our favorites.

Before the sun set, we drove out to Sac Bajo, at the far end of Isla Mujeres's natural harbor. On the ferry over from Cancun on Saturday, I had looked for the hurricane-devastated white house that is located there. I considered it my personal symbol of the island and fantasized about owning it one day, but I failed to see it. What we found there instead was a pile of rubble and an active construction site. The house has been torn down, and it appears that the owners are going to build a new house where it once stood. It made me sad to see it gone, but if you return to the same place often enough, and this is our ninth trip to Isla Mujeres in thirteen years, you are bound to see changes you wish you hadn't.

Suicide by Proxy

The budget quagmire in Washington has me thinking too much about politics. I wish I could disconnect from the Internet, turn off the TV and radio, and set down the magazines and newspapers, but I can't. I care too much, and so should you. Our future depends on what is happening right now.

We have elderly friends who eat up every scrap of misinformation that comes out of the Fox News propaganda mill. They forward us the phony Obama birth certificates, the disparaging caricatures, and the other hate email that is accepted as truth by people like them. These friends are almost wholly dependent on Social Security and Medicare, and yet they vote Republican in every election. If House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and his Republican cohorts had their way, these programs would be gutted or eliminated entirely.

It makes no sense to vote for representatives who not only don't care about you but who are actively working against you. You might as well hand them a gun and say, "Shoot me!" The entire financial agenda of the Republicans is focused on enriching themselves and their cronies at the expense of the poor and middle class, who are enabling it through their fear and ignorance.

Cuts in spending for Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio, and the National Endowment for the Arts do nothing but promote the Republican social agenda. Programs that promote social justice and the common good must be saved if we are to preserve our way of life and avoid the ever-widening gulf that will eventually replace our democracy with an oligarchy: Of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

We saw in Madison that people will only be pushed so far before they fight back. If Republicans continue to ram through their unjust legislation, in the name of necessary budget cuts, then we should expect to see angry people rioting throughout the country.

It's not too late to support the people who support the programs that benefit you, me and everybody else. Let's work to ensure a future worth looking forward to.

The end of a dream

My friend Paul Caouette emailed me this surprising message a few days ago:

John,

How are you doing?

Progress on the boat?

We are in Curacao. Have been for a month now. Sailed from Trinidad through the islands off the coast of Venezuela. (Way off to avoid any close encounters with pirates). Had a mate aboard with us to help with the passages. He was a great sailor and a welcomed addition. I honestly don't know how couples do the long passages without succumbing to complete exhaustion.

We are taking care of this's and that's while at anchor her in Spanish Waters. Stripped the exterior varnish and will recoat with Cetol. Also redoing the deck. Lots of small blisters that are actually older blisters that weren't repaired correctly (body filling rather than epoxy). Lots and lots of them.

But the real news is that Honey and I have decided in yet another change of lifestyles. This decision precipitated, in part, by my recurring sciatica. Long passages without exercise take their toll. Numbness and weakness in my left leg does not make me a happy, or safe sailor.

In conversations with Stan Dabney about how best to list her.

I sure would like to know how much you paid for your boat and some measure of the money you've spent so far. I want to fairly represent what one can expect when purchasing an older Valiant.

Best to you and Nan.

PS

We have no idea when we'll be back in Colorado..Perhaps by mid June.....hope for an opportunity to visit then.
--
Paul Caouette
sv Wild Iris (V40-133)

Paul has been having problems with his back for at least the last few years. Back in the spring of 2009, his back issues prevented him from sailing across the Atlantic to Europe. Instead, he and Honey have been sailing through the Caribbean, slowly circumnavigating the sea in a clockwise direction. Now it appears that even that dream is coming to an end.

I feel badly for Paul. He has sailed most of his life, and he has put everything he has into his boat. It is a sad reality that the complications of advancing age have interfered with his plans, but Paul just turned 63 in February so health issues should not be unexpected.

I will turn 53 in June, which means that I am not exactly a young man either. Paul's situation makes me think that I should be trying to fulfill my sailing dreams sooner rather than later. I would hate to wait too long and then live with the regret I am sure Paul is feeling.

Rock climbing in Unaweep Canyon

John and Scout at the base of Lower Sun
Tower, with Wilson and "Crack of Don"
in the background 

Back in January, when I was hiking Serpents Trail with my friend John Sasso, we talked about doing some rock climbing together. John is an avid climber and gets out every chance he has. Me, I haven't rock climbed in 25 years, not since moving to Colorado from Wisconsin almost twenty-five years ago. Friends and I used to go up to Devil's Lake State Park, a little ways south of Baraboo, and top-rope the nice quartzite faces in the Bedroom Amphitheater west of Rainy Wednesday Tower. At that time, I could make it up climbs with a difficulty rating up to 5.8. Since then, the only rock-type climbing I have done has been in some tight situations while climbing all 54 of Colorado's 14ers, where I was thankful for the earlier experience with using dicey hand and foot holds.


John rappeling down after climbing "Crack of
Don." Note the rope going up "Sunup."

So last week, when John proposed that we go rock climbing this weekend, with the idea of getting in some fairly difficult training climbs before tackling the moderately difficult Independence Monument, a climb we had discussed during our Serpents Trail hike, I wondered if I was up to it after all these years. John emailed me Mountain Project links to descriptions and photos of the climbs he wanted us to do, and they didn't look too bad. Both are in the Lower Sun Tower area of Unaweep Canyon, about 20 miles south of Grand Junction. "Crack of Don" is a 5.6 climb that follows a meandering crack, as the name implies, up 80 feet of good granite. "Sunup" is a 5.8 climb that runs parallel to Crack of Don but without the advantage, from my viewpoint, of the big crack.

Me grimacing just below the first bolt
on "Sunup"

Except for today's temperatures in the 30s and some rain and snow, the weather here in Grand Junction has been beautiful the last few days, with temperatures in the high 70s yesterday, the day John had picked for our climbs. Scout and I picked him up at noon and the three of us headed down to Unaweep Canyon. We parked along the shoulder of Highway 141, just before the driveway of Bob and Lise Eakle, the owners and caretakers of the property which contains the Sun Towers. We hiked up their nicely maintained trail past their nice log cabin and climbed up the switchbacks to the base of Lower Sun Tower. Two other climbers, Wilson and Conrad, were already there and climbing the Sunup route, which worked well for us because I was hoping to start on the easier route. We geared up with climbing shoes, seat harnesses and helmets, and then John gave me a quick refresher in knots, belaying techniques and climbing protocols. He described how he was going to lead-climb the route up Crack of Don, placing protective cams every dozen or so feet, while I belayed him, and how I would then follow, removing the protection as I climbed, while he belayed me from the top.

John rappeling down "Sunup," with Unaweep
Canyon and Highway 141 in the distance

Away John went up the crack, climbing steadily, placing protection, and making it all look easy. When he reached the top, was off belay, had pulled up the slack rope, and put me on belay, I started to climb. The first few moves were pretty straightforward and felt right, like it was all coming back to me. Soon I was 30 feet off the ground. I looked down to see Scout staring up at me and that made me smile. But then the holds that were available to my right hand petered out and I struggled to keep myself from hinging off until I found better holds to the left of the crack. The verticality eased after that and soon I was standing on top with John. Scout had lost sight of me and was barking far below. John rigged a rappel setup and sent me down first. I kept my eyes on the wall in front of me as I jerkily descended, not wanting to see how high off the ground I still was.

Scout and me with one of Lise Eakle's totem
poles. Note "The Twin Owls" rock formation.

When John had rappeled down, we switched routes with Wilson and Conrad. Sunup presented a whole new set of challenges. There are so few cracks for placing protection that anchor bolts have been drilled into the stone. The first one is almost 12 feet off the ground. John had me spot him until he had secured protection to it and I could begin to belay him as he climbed the rest of the route, again making it look easy. When he reached the top, he rigged up a single-rope rappel and rappeled down while picking up the protection he had attached to the bolts on the way up. This left the rope doubled to set up a top-rope belay so that John could belay me from the ground while coaching me up the difficult climb.

On my first try, I made it only a few feet off the ground before falling. John eased me back to the ground and had me take another look at the first few moves. The key was to move quickly up to a place where I could get my right foot onto a thumb-sized horn. That would give me a resting point from which to figure out the next set of moves, with the help of John's experienced advice. In this way, I moved slowly up the 80-foot face, relearning along the way that I needed to keep my center of gravity as close to the face as possible, and put all my weight on my feet while using my hand holds only for balance. When I reached the top, John cheered and Scout barked. I leaned back against the rope and John lowered me slowly down to the ground. I was whipped, partly from the exertion and partly from the innate fear of falling. But I had made it to the top, and John told me that others he has belayed on Sunup have not made it.

We packed up our gear and hiked back out, pausing to take some photos with one of Lise Eakle's hand-carved totem poles. On the way home, we discussed plans for our next climb, a 3-pitch 5.6 rated climb up "Betty and Ray's Adventure" on the Upper Sun Tower. John wants to see how I do on a multi-pitch climb before we attempt Independence Monument, which is a 5-pitch climb with a 5.8+ overhang at the very top. I'll let you know how it all goes.

Santa Catalina Island

I am out in the Los Angeles area for two weeks of training for my new job. This has given me a free weekend to fill, so on Saturday morning I drove down to Dana Point and took the ferry over to Santa Catalina Island for the day. The island is a popular destination for sailors in this area, and I have been reading about it in Latitudes & Attitudes magazine for many years. It didn't disappoint.

The Catalina Express took about an hour and a half to cover the twenty-two miles to the island through sizable swells heaped up by a Pacific storm front that has been blowing in over the last few days. We docked in Avalon, the principal town on the island, and I immediately bought a ticket for the inland bus tour, figuring I would have plenty of time afterward to wander around Avalon. The tour bus took us briefly through town and then up the big hill that is visible above the ferry in the first photo. That's writer Zane Grey's home at the top of the cluster of houses extending up the hill, the clarion tower commissioned by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr.'s wife Ada further up the road, and of course the famous Casino at the far end of the harbor. (Click the photos for full-size views.)

The bus took us up the winding road, lined with eucalyptus trees, to a natural overlook, where we stopped to take photos. Further on, we spotted a lone buffalo. According to the tour guide, he is one of the descendants of fourteen buffalo brought to the island in 1924 for the filming of "The Vanishing American", based on Zane Grey's novel. We also spotted a pair of the island's native foxes, which were almost wiped out by a distemper epidemic in the mid-1990s. The turnaround point for the tour was the island's airport, a 3000-foot strip of asphalt and a control tower built by Mr. Wrigley to allow him to fly his DC-6 over from the mainland. There were commercial flights after World War II but only private pilots use the strip now.

On our way back to Avalon, we were accompanied by two ravens flying next to the bus. The tour guide explained that another tour guide had found three raven chicks on his front porch one morning almost ten years ago. He named them Edgar, Allan and Poe, and raised them to adulthood. He released them at the airport, and they continue to live along the road that leads there. The airport sells really good chocolate chip cookies, and the tour guides have made it a habit to stop and share one with the ravens during each tour, which explains why two of them were flying next to us. Our guide was prepared, and he stopped the bus to toss a cookie to the expectant birds.

Back in Avalon, I walked out to the Casino, which is not a place to gamble but rather a very large, circular ballroom. Behind it is a dive park, where people were scuba diving through the kelp right off the shore. I heard one diver comment that she had seen an enormous crab. On the way back around the harbor, I took a photo of the Santa Catalina Island Yacht Club building, which sits on stilts over the water. In the background, the house highest up the hill is the Wrigley's mansion. The final photo shows a statue of "Old Ben," a notoriously friendly seal who lived in the area in the early 1900s. Up on the hill behind the statue is a unique home with its own story, about a wealthy man who built it for his future wife to move into from the mainland, only to find that she had run off with another man. The wealthy man lived in the house as a bachelor until he died many years later. And he died happy, according to our tour guide.

If we should ever find ourselves sailing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, I would make it a point to spend some time on Santa Catalina Island. There is so much more I would like to explore than I had time for in my brief visit.

Tax the Rich!

Last week, a friend emailed me the following article, which appeared in Madison, Wisconsin's newspaper, The Capital Times. I had been thinking of writing about the imminent death of America's middle class, but this article sums it up much better than I ever could:

The crisis is our unwillingness to make rich pay their share

by John Hallinan

U.S. corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash -- trillion, not billion. The same people who shipped millions of jobs overseas, caused the financial crisis, and pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses every year are now sitting on a mountain of cash. Yet both state and local governments feel the need to give them more tax cuts. To what end? So they can create more profits and sit on bigger piles of cash, so they can play monopoly as they buy each other out, or so they can give themselves even bigger bonuses? There is no indication that they are interested in doing anything to spur the economy.
 
In December we heard the Republicans tell us that people making over $250,000 per year couldn’t afford a 4 percent tax increase, and it would be terrible for the economy to increase their taxes. Thirty years ago they were paying 70 percent in taxes. Now they pay half that, but a 4 percent increase is just too much to bear.

Now we are told that state workers making $40,000 to $60,000 per year are stealing the state blind. The same workers who for the last two years have taken over a 3 percent pay cut in the form of furloughs are now told they haven’t sacrificed enough. Now they must forfeit 7 percent or more of their pay, and give up their right to negotiate their future. What is appalling is the state workers were willing to give up the money to help out the state. All they asked was to keep their right to negotiate. Yet the wealthiest in our country aren’t willing to give up anything to help our country out of the financial mess they created.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan told the biggest lie ever perpetuated on the American public. He condemned Jimmy Carter for running a $40 billion deficit, and then told everyone he could cut taxes and balance the budget. Voodoo economics -- that’s what George H.W. Bush called Reagan’s economic plan. He was right, and by the mid ’80s the budget deficit had ballooned to over $200 billion.

Of course it was the rich who walked away with virtually all of the Reagan tax cuts. During the last 25 years the Republicans have doubled down over and over again, giving more and more tax cuts to the rich. While the rich have gotten incredibly wealthy, the poor have gotten poorer. It is a reverse Robin Hood economy where we take from the poor and give to the rich. It has been the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of our country -- the 400 richest have more than the 155 million poorest.

Ballooning government deficits weren’t a problem when Republicans were in the White House, but with a Democratic president, it is suddenly a crisis. The recession we’ve been living through proves the fallacy of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan and the rest who told us that markets are self-correcting and regulation is bad. Banking regulations kept this country out of serious recession for 70 years, but once the regulations were repealed it took only a decade to bring the world’s economy to its knees. Yet Republicans refuse to acknowledge how wrong they were as they continue to try to gut government regulations.

Every time a politician tells you he wants to make the government more business friendly, what he’s really telling you is that he wants to increase taxes on your children and grandchildren. Every environmental law that is weakened will mean a cleanup to be paid for by future generations. Every bad business practice that is endured will be funded by taxpayers having to clean up the mess at some later date.

Now we are told that everyone must sacrifice to bring state and federal government budgets in line. But somehow the sacrifices once again all fall on those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Once again businesses are given tax cuts, money is found to increase spending on roads, but education, health care and help for the poorest in our society are cut.

There isn’t a financial crisis at either the state or the federal government. The crisis is our unwillingness to ask those who have gained the most from our society to pay a fair and equitable share from the wealth this society has allowed them to accumulate. It is the honest, Christian, and patriotic thing to do.

© 2011 The Capital Times

Published on Friday, March 11, 2011 by The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin. John Hallinan is a Stoughton, Wisconsin resident.