Big news! Living somewhere cold, cold enough to snow, has always been a dream of mine, and for the second time this year, I'm making big dreams come true. Today I'm resigning from Metavante in Norman, Oklahoma and accepting a new job in Colorado. My new position will once again be as a Senior .NET Software Analyst, with a company called Resort Technology Partners (RTP), who are a spinoff from a Ski Resort that provides integrated solutions for resort parks, particularly ski resorts and golf resorts. What's more, the location is based in Avon / Vail, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado an hour west of Denver. I'll be chucking everything I own in the Jeep, probably strapping my bed mattress to the roof, and driving back up to Colorado to start my new job in the new year.
The timing is uncanny, after delays and contract extensions, Metavante finally moved to bring me onto permanent staff, which would require transfer of my visa sponsorship to them, and I've had their offer letter in my inbox for 3 days. Over those 3 days I've had 3 interviews with RTP & they want to get me up there ASAP. So I'm glad I don't need to give Metavante HR the run-around & stop stalling, and avoid any complications with the visa. What's more is my 2 week notice period times perfectly with my plans to visit my friends in Oregon for the week from xmas to new years. So i'll be able to resign, have a big party and convince all of my friends in Oklahoma to make a snow trip and come up to see me, then go to Oregon and be back in time to start.
The living costs of the mountain region is high, i will be in for a shock, but i'll still be able to take care of the mortgage situation back home. The perks of the job include a season pass to 5 mountains, paid overtime, and I might be able to work out a discount to my equipment purchase. By equipment, I mean a shiny new snowboard, boots parka and not least; WARM CLOTHES! Temps in Vail I've only just begun to keep tabs on, but I saw a forecast for a low of -1F a few days ago. That's -18C for my Australian friends. But don't feel too bad for me, while you're basking in the 29C Gold Coast weather at the beach by the sea, I'll be carving through fresh powder on a morning ski session with my mates before we go to work!
I doubted my chances of getting to Colorado this year as the festive season sees a slowing of pace with jobs, but I got this lead from a recruiter, Sapphire Technologies, and I pinned all my hopes on it for getting up to Colorado in time for the prime ski season, before the end of the year. I'd always thought I'd end up in Denver living in the city, and would have to drive the hour west to the slopes to go snowboarding. I'm just incredibly fortunate. :D
Lots will be happening in the coming weeks so I'll keep you all posted.
08 December 2007
28 November 2007
Silverchair & Snow
Just a quick one to say, woohoo I've finally seen falling snow! Saturday the 24th, Nate woke me up with a call to say it's snowing outside, because all of my mates here know how much I've been hanging out for it to snow. I jumped up, threw warm clothes on grabbed the camera and went out the front. Todd sprung me trying to catch a snowflake when he opened the front door, he was looking for me to tell me it was snowing :)
So I shot a quick video and took a photo, and after about 8 mins I'd had enough and went inside for a winter breakfast of maple porridge & iced coffee. It stopped snowing after about 20 mins. The night before I was driving and it begun sleeting, which was also odd as the little balls of ice the size of ball bearings sprinkled over the car and just rolled off, leaving the car dry. I hadn't seen sleet like that before either, and driving along sounded like driving through rain, but the car & windscreen remained dry. I've been learning a lot already about winter driving conditions, such as bridges and overpasses being the most dangerous, as they have no ground warmth to prevent icing. My friend Nicole told me how a girl in her class at school was killed when she hit ice on an overpass and crashed over the wall to the ground below. Nate told me in one of the ice storms a year or so ago, all he did was open his car door, and his truck slid down the driveway and into the street. Andy said he left work here one day, and accelerating carefully out of the car park, spun almost full circle across the street, stopping when he hit the curb. Kevin's told me about driving into sleet or snow, with the white particles coming straight at you, sometimes gives you tunnel vision when you stare through your headlights, and it can make you fall asleep easily.
In other news, last night I saw Silverchair live at the Diamond Ballroom in south OKC! Aussie rock, here in Oklahoma, who'd believe it!? Daniel Johns did joke about the fact that he couldn't remember when he was here last in Oklahoma. I was waiting for him to ask 'are there any other Aussies here tonight?' but he didn't. But they rocked the house like the class act that they are, I had my doubts about the venue, it's in the middle of nowhere (search Diamond Ballroom Oklahoma on Google Maps), but the crowd filled half the place shoulder to shoulder, I'd guess close to a thousand, the atmosphere was great. The low roof was the difference, I'm used to concerts being in the Brisbane Entertainment Center, which is huge. Kevin had told me about the concert a couple weeks ago, and we both agreed to go, but lost track of time and by chance last night I told Todd about it, he looked it up, and found that it was on the same night! He wasn't feeling like a concert on a monday night, so I called my army friend Mackenzie who's always up for spontaneous stuff like that. I worried about her though, from her accident in Iraq that nearly killed her, her ears can't take much punishment, so we sat 2/3 of the way back on some chairs, and she blocked her ears for the screechy guitar solos :) When I heard a good song I went forward to the crowd, it wasn't hard to move around. I was interested to hear some of the chair songs live, coz their last couple of albums have had some interesting tracks, take Tune In The Brine for example. I like it, but there's something about it, the singing, the lyrics & the orchestra on the album, it's like metrosexual rock if that makes sense. But live with just the band, it sounded awesome! Emotion Sickness and Open Fire were also incredible variations, and I guessed right from the start that the encore song would be Freak, which was easily the most popular. Mack said her ear popped during the show, and afterwards had a kind of static noise, I'm glad her ear wasn't bleeding as I remember she's told me that's happened before. I feel kind of bad even though she said she had a good time, she's an absolute trooper. I used to think that she was crazy, even full blown eccentric, but that was coz she was bouncing off the walls from too much coffee & red bull when I met her, an addiction the Army is responsible for. She's actually pretty cool.
And so winter is definitely here, Fall lasts only a couple weeks, a blink of an eye and most of the leaves are gone, and now the temperatures are consistently close to freezing here at night, low teens or single digits in the day (celcius). And I'm the only one excited about it! Am I crazy?
So I shot a quick video and took a photo, and after about 8 mins I'd had enough and went inside for a winter breakfast of maple porridge & iced coffee. It stopped snowing after about 20 mins. The night before I was driving and it begun sleeting, which was also odd as the little balls of ice the size of ball bearings sprinkled over the car and just rolled off, leaving the car dry. I hadn't seen sleet like that before either, and driving along sounded like driving through rain, but the car & windscreen remained dry. I've been learning a lot already about winter driving conditions, such as bridges and overpasses being the most dangerous, as they have no ground warmth to prevent icing. My friend Nicole told me how a girl in her class at school was killed when she hit ice on an overpass and crashed over the wall to the ground below. Nate told me in one of the ice storms a year or so ago, all he did was open his car door, and his truck slid down the driveway and into the street. Andy said he left work here one day, and accelerating carefully out of the car park, spun almost full circle across the street, stopping when he hit the curb. Kevin's told me about driving into sleet or snow, with the white particles coming straight at you, sometimes gives you tunnel vision when you stare through your headlights, and it can make you fall asleep easily.
In other news, last night I saw Silverchair live at the Diamond Ballroom in south OKC! Aussie rock, here in Oklahoma, who'd believe it!? Daniel Johns did joke about the fact that he couldn't remember when he was here last in Oklahoma. I was waiting for him to ask 'are there any other Aussies here tonight?' but he didn't. But they rocked the house like the class act that they are, I had my doubts about the venue, it's in the middle of nowhere (search Diamond Ballroom Oklahoma on Google Maps), but the crowd filled half the place shoulder to shoulder, I'd guess close to a thousand, the atmosphere was great. The low roof was the difference, I'm used to concerts being in the Brisbane Entertainment Center, which is huge. Kevin had told me about the concert a couple weeks ago, and we both agreed to go, but lost track of time and by chance last night I told Todd about it, he looked it up, and found that it was on the same night! He wasn't feeling like a concert on a monday night, so I called my army friend Mackenzie who's always up for spontaneous stuff like that. I worried about her though, from her accident in Iraq that nearly killed her, her ears can't take much punishment, so we sat 2/3 of the way back on some chairs, and she blocked her ears for the screechy guitar solos :) When I heard a good song I went forward to the crowd, it wasn't hard to move around. I was interested to hear some of the chair songs live, coz their last couple of albums have had some interesting tracks, take Tune In The Brine for example. I like it, but there's something about it, the singing, the lyrics & the orchestra on the album, it's like metrosexual rock if that makes sense. But live with just the band, it sounded awesome! Emotion Sickness and Open Fire were also incredible variations, and I guessed right from the start that the encore song would be Freak, which was easily the most popular. Mack said her ear popped during the show, and afterwards had a kind of static noise, I'm glad her ear wasn't bleeding as I remember she's told me that's happened before. I feel kind of bad even though she said she had a good time, she's an absolute trooper. I used to think that she was crazy, even full blown eccentric, but that was coz she was bouncing off the walls from too much coffee & red bull when I met her, an addiction the Army is responsible for. She's actually pretty cool.
And so winter is definitely here, Fall lasts only a couple weeks, a blink of an eye and most of the leaves are gone, and now the temperatures are consistently close to freezing here at night, low teens or single digits in the day (celcius). And I'm the only one excited about it! Am I crazy?
15 October 2007
OU College Sports
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| OU College Sports (October 2007) |
I thought I'd take a bit of time & try to put into words, some kind of description, give some sense of understanding of the CRAZINESS of college sports in America. With such a huge number of long-standing college institutions around the country, divided into conferences and divisions, some events even eclipse the pro league and every other show on TV. Living in the college town of Norman where the presence of the University of Oklahoma (OU) is everywhere, you can't help but get into the hype.
So now I'm an official OU fan with a t-shirt and everything, I've been to a few college games. One weekend Todd & I were out on Campus Corner at the 747 club/bar and met two girls from the OU volleyball team who live a couple streets away from us. So we were invited to their game against Nebraska that weekend & put us on 'the list' to get us in free. I'd never seen a proper volleyball game before, and I was blown away. Walking through the doors and around the polished wooden court, squinting against the bright lights, I guessed 5 or 6 hundred people were in the four spectator stands. The #1 ranked Nebraska team were out practicing, music was pumping, cheerleaders were walking about with their pom-poms, students, parents and kids had come to watch the game.
After warm up the visiting team lined up across the court, facing off as the OU girls came running out underneath the archway shaped like the carriage of the Schooner. For those reading who aren't familiar with local history, back in the late 1800's the US government sponsored several land rushes on the Great Plains, and settlers would claim a piece of land by simply parking on a spot they liked and saying it was theirs. Oklahoma's reputation as the 'Sooner State' was due to those settlers who cheated on the land runs and claimed land before the starting deadline of the land rushes. Those people arrived 'sooner' and the term has stuck until present day, weird hey? So the sporting teams of OU run out underneath the white canopy of the carriages used by the settlers in the land rushes to the shouts of the crowd that call "Boomer!" "Sooner!" over and over.
Someone always sings the US national anthem (I need to learn the lyrics coz the anthem is awesome at these live events), the girls get introduced one by one by the commentator to roaring applause and then it's game on. From the first serve I was shocked, these girls are hard core, hammering the ball down, diving and rolling on the ground and leaping into the air, it was way beyond my expectations. There's so many tactics, rules and game dynamics, the sport of volleyball has a depth I never knew about. Some girls had strapped fingers, some took a running jump at their serves, most of them are 6ft tall or taller, it's the real deal. Unfortunately OU lost to Nebraska in 3 straight games (they play best of 5, first to 35 points each game), but to be fair, Nebraska is ranked #1 while Oklahoma is ranked in the 20's.
Recently also I met an Aussie girl from Melbourne, Stephanie, & she's into gymnastics in her senior year at OU. It was over 6 months since I'd spoken to an Australian in the flesh, and talking to her is like a breath of fresh air. Todd & I also went & watched a practice session of theirs and again, I was completely blown away. Watching the vault, uneven bars and beam on TV is one thing, but watching it live you see the strength & concentration, their technique and their mistakes. I only ever thought of gymnasts as elite athletes and it's cool to meet some who are just normal girls who can do crazy things.
But the epitome of college sports is the football. That's what draws the crowds, on game day the population of Norman doubles and it's an all-day party. Before the game people set up parties in the backs of their trucks & tents, called 'tailgating.' The roads are blocked off and everyone's walking around drinking (one of the few days when public drinking is allowed), BBQs are going non-stop and many people have TVs & loudspeakers set up for people to gather around. Some people invest serious $ in their tailgating rigs, they could enter them in shows. And everywhere, everyone and everything is crimson & cream. There's a plethora of merchandise, OU flags flying from passing cars, OU dog vests, everyone has OU t-shirts like 'I bleed crimson & cream', 'Texas sucks'...
...which leads me to the annual Red River Rivalry match between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the University of Texas Longhorns. It's one of the biggest college football games in the nation (see Wikipedia's article on the event). With patriotism and pride reminding me of QLD vs NSW State Of Origin Rugby League, the stakes are huge; both teams are highly ranked, win or loss has huge significance to the team and to the conference, and there's only one match. The Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas is exactly halfway between the Longhorns campus in Austin and the OU campus in Norman, and both states converge on Dallas for the weekend of the state fair and the big game.
My mates and I made plans to head to Dallas and watch the game in a bar. When I drove down the friday afternoon before my mini-holiday to New Mexico, I was part of a fleet of cars headed south on I-35 showing their colours. Red trucks, crimson OU flags & wind socks, bumper stickers with the longhorns turned upside down (the classic insult) and other Texas libel, like "Tuck Fexas!". Likewise, Texas supporters were driving around with Longhorns merchandise, orange window paint with "OU Sucks" and stuff. The night before the game is the big night out, & our crew of about 10 friends, all of us in OU colours, hit the town in Greensville. The streets were a sea of red & orange, as mobs of fans cheered & greeted friendly fans like old friends while shouting insults and trash talk to the enemy whenever they passed. We went to the Zephyrs bar, paid a ridiculous $20 cover charge, and got a black marker 'Z' scribbled on our wrists by the door girl. Somehow our half-spastic group managed to stay together for the whole night, we all caught a limo (a first for me) back to the hotel. While I struggled to keep my eyes open for my first limo ride, Cristen, Nate & Todd were fast asleep, Ray collected money off those who were still awake, and for some reason Cassie was taking all the clean limo glasses out of the racks and sitting them on the table while we were driving along. Back at the hotel Todd defeated Monty and I in a high-stakes paper-scissors-rock battle for the single bed, and we ended up in the double. Meanwhile in the other room Nate had a grand plan to sleep between Cristen and Cassie on the huge king double. When I woke the next morning, I was VERY disturbed to find weird marks around my right nipple that looked like bruising! Well I copped plenty over breakfast from my mates, Monty did too, and Nate told us his grand plan went astray when the girls jumped into bed first, Cassie stuffing half the blankets between her legs (something to do with back posture), leaving him on the edge of the bed shivering under a sheet. He woke up curled in the fetal position, arms crossed over his chest, where he found a black letter 'Z' imprinted from his cover charge mark. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he sat up he looked over and saw Adam was also in the bed asleep with an arm over Cassie (you need to see Adam to know just how funny that is. #3 clippers haircut, nice manly beer belly, basically a total bogan). Nate's quote of the day - "He definitely wasn't part of the plan". But after brekky I grabbed a shower and then noticed that my marks were gone! I thought how retarded I was to a) not have realised myself that it was my own Z-marked wrist to blame, and b) still not have realised when Nate told his story! Haha I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders that morning.
Game day of the OU vs Texas match is a phenomenon, the crowd spectacle is one of the greatest in the world. The Cotton Bowl is split right down the middle with OU fans covering one half of the stadium red, and Texas fans turning the other half orange, filled to capacity at over 68 000. This is despite ticket prices range from a couple hundred to over a thousand dollars. Nate's been to the match, he says the noise is incredible, never a dull moment in the crowd, moving from one chant to another, I found a good online video of a guy filming from within the Texas crowd as they shout "Texas! / Fight!" while a lone OU supporter shouts "Texas! / Sucks!".
Have a look here (the audio is sometimes delayed though).
Other videos :
Texas band playing
Oklahoma highlights, touchdowns and quarterback sacks from the 2007 game
Funny Texas crowd reactions by an OU fan
We headed to Humperdinks, an OU stronghold with about 95% of people supporting the Sooners, and we watched it on a big plasma TV, OU was in great form and it was close all the way. The atmosphere was awesome in the bar, I wished I could drink but I had to drive back to Norman after the match, still it was easily worth the drive down for my first visit to Dallas.
But a week later, Nate said he had a spare ticket to an OU home game, against Missouri in the mid afternoon, and there was no way I was gonna miss it. So I went to my first college football match, the stadium was packed to capacity with 80 050 in attendance. And then the crowd started up the Boomer/Sooner chant, the noise was unbelievable especially hearing the opposite half of the stadium shouting Boomer, I shot a video of it which is linked below (sorry for the poor picture).
Boomer/Sooner Chant:
Ooooo U call:
I also broke ranks from putting my hand on my heart during the anthem to take a photo, gotta give it to the yanks for their patriotism, the crowd shouting over the singer at the end of the anthem to change the lyrics to "o'er the land of the free, and the home of the SOONERS!" As the players lined up for every kickoff, every OU supporter in the crowd would stand and point a finger into the air and take up a call of 'OOOOOO' raising to a crescendo as the team runs forward and shouting 'U!' when the kick is made, and the Ruff/Neks fire shotguns for added emphasis. It's seriously nuts and awesome fun, people of all ages are in the crowd, a kid in front of me would pull his hat off and throw his arms in the air on every dodgy call made by the ref against us. When OU scores their first touchdown, fireworks are shot from the stadium, the college band launches into song and the A-squad cheerleaders line up along the in-zone and each do a full back somersault one by one for every point OU has on the board, both guys and girls!
So overall, my opinion of American Football / GridIron has lifted considerably, I used to think they were wusses for wearing so much protection it's a wonder they can walk, and couldn't understand the strategy of everyone charging down everyone at once. As with almost every US sport, the timeouts & other rules that drag the game on drive me crazy. But, the hits are harder because the players are always interchanging & fresh, and the sport can produce some pretty awesome moments when the QB throws a 50 yard pass to the outstretched hands of a receiver in full sprint. I'm certainly a converted OU fan even though I never studied here, and my old Bond University looks tiny and dull in comparison.
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| OU College Sports (October 2007) |
12 October 2007
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, New Mexico
Hi everyone!
I've been up to a bunch of stuff this weekend past, where I managed to request 3 days of unpaid leave from work to go an event I'd had my eye on for a while, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. And while I was at it, might as well explore the area, so after lots of figuring & changes of plan, over 5 days 6 nights from Friday to Wednesday, I managed to go to Dallas Texas, south western Colorado, eastern Arizona and New Mexico. 2500 miles later, I'm totally over driving, but I've seen the best college football match, been to two new states, and the world's largest hot air balloon festival.
Originally I'd planned to spend 5 days out and about in NM, but at the last minute I realised the OU vs Texas match was on Saturday the same weekend, and I couldn't miss it. I plan to write about it in another little story on college sports which is to follow this, so I'll leave those details for later.
But after the footy match I drove back and arrived in Norman at 10pm at night, packed the car and went to sleep, ready to wake up nice and early at 3:20am to have a quick breakfast and head up to Kevin's place in the city. The reason for such an early start was that we had a he-uge day of driving ahead, planning to get all the way through 4 states to Durango in far southwest Colorado (close to 950 miles), as well as making Shiprock in northwest New Mexico by sunset. I rocked up at Kevin's hoping he'd drive first leg as I was in need of sleep, to find he'd only slept 30 minutes before I called him! He'd been up all night struggling to load the maps we would need into his GPS. So we loaded up, and set off westward in the dark. I was fighting to stay awake, to cover good distance & give Kevin time to sleep, but finally after over an hour in the dark, I decided that it was too risky for either of us to continue, so we pulled in at a rest stop and both slept for half an hour. When we woke up, the sun had just risen, and Kevin took over. Twice more we would alternate, and then I would do the majority of the driving the rest of the trip.
By mid morning we reached the Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo, Texas, something I passed without knowing on my first drive back with my Jeep from Colorado Springs in March. It's one of those offbeat, eccentric roadside attractions that are part of the appeal of a holiday driving around the American West. 10 wrecks of Cadillacs representing the 'golden age' of American Automobiles from 1949 - 1963 stand half buried nose first in a line pointing west. This is in the middle of a dusty wheat field off the side of I-40, where spinning in a circle shows me the now-familiar flat horizon of the Great Plains. Tourists casually come and go a few people at a time throughout the day 24-7, to marvel at the wrecks which are unremarkable yet remarkable. The glass & electrics are long gone, rear tyres half disintegrated or missing, the only thing of wonder is how many layers of paint there really is on the visitor graffiti that covers every inch. You wouldn't think 10 cars in a field would be that interesting but somehow it was pretty cool.
After god knows how many fuel stops we drove all day to finally reach our objective by sundown, Shiprock New Mexico. A sheer rock so massive above the surrounding flat plains that it's visible for miles, the whole time we were driving toward it, Kevin or I would joke "wow, would you look at that?", "Hey Kev look, there's Shiprock" ...around another bend... "there it is again." After driving toward it forever, we came across a town, and a massive dust cloud. The dust cloud turned out to be traffic leaving the country fair that was going on in the town of Shiprock. Concerned with the time left before sunset and getting lost on the unsigned roads of NM we finally picked a safe looking dusty track off the side of the highway that followed the crazy volcanic ridge towards Shiprock. After photos at a gap in the curiously shaped ridge and some testing out of the Jeep's new offroading capabilities, we crossed around the base of Shiprock just after sunset. The size of the thing is incredible and deceiving. Also from our vantage point on the ridge, we could see no other car headlights for miles. It's remoteness was completely unexpected for something so spectacular, I can't understand why there isn't a road and a carpark to the base, unless it's by decision of the Navajo who own the land.
So after some cautious driving on steep grades and a bit of a moment nearly getting stuck in a ditch, we made it back to the highway and cruised up into Colorado.
Kevin called ahead to the Steamworks Brewery to ensure they were open, we rolled into town at about 9:30pm and had a great dinner and I ordered the sampler of 6 of their famous & award winning beers. By 10:30pm I was ready for sleep and was stunned to see people riding around on bicycles in the cold! The Quality Inn in Durango was awesome, brand new, in another league compared to the (lack of) Quality Inn that I spent 10 days in Norman. In the morning after realising I'd forgotten deodorant & Kevin had left behind his toothbrush & razor, I went down to reception to ask if they had this stuff. Kevin said it might be free, sure enough, the girl cheerfully said "sure!" and came back out with miniature deodorant, razor and shaving foam, toothbrush and toothpaste! I was expecting to pay like 10 bucks but it was free! I was blown away. Guess i'm used to hotels where you pay $2.50 for the 175mL bottles of water on the front table next to the welcome letter. Walked out the front lobby doors to the car for a late start but wait...is this typical Durango? A girl dressed in a tutu in the crisp morning air was standing next to her bicycle loaded with baggage, stopped on the side of the highway talking on the celly! Resisting temptation to ask Why the tutu (she was attractive), we headed west for Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa Verde, Spanish for Green Table, is an enormous flat-topped mountain range unlike anything I've ever seen, filled with canyons and home to the most notable & well preserved cliff dwellings of Ancestral Pueblo Native Americans in the US. A spectacular drive that rivaled the Pikes Peak Highway wound its way to the Visitor Center, where a cool exhibition showcased the craftsmanship of the Pueblo people. Purchasing a ticket to the Cliff Palace tour, the most famous of the cliff dwellings, we headed off to catch the next hourly tour. I'd seen photographs of it while researching the trip, but walking over to the lookout to behold the Cliff Palace was stunning. Nestled in under an enormous natural rock overhang, like a wide open mouth to a cave, the ancient city looked out over a steep canyon. During the tour we learned that back in the day there was only one way in or out, where the Puebloans climbed a crevasse up one side to the Mesa top, carving hand and foot holds in the rock. From 600 A.D. to 1300 A.D., the Pueblo Native Americans lived for 700 years and flourished in Mesa Verde. For the first 600 years they lived on the flat tops of Mesa Verde, migrating to and from the area with changes of the season. It wasn't until their final century of occupation that they built the cliff dwellings that revolutionized their social structure. Hunter-gatherers became farmers, storing their food & water, remaining throughout the winter protected by the cave and walls they built of sandstone brick & mud mortar. Less time was needed for hunting leaving more time to specialise in weaving, leatherwork, pottery etc. and the economy of the Mesa Verde community became strong and complex. At the peak of their civilization, 60 to 100 people lived at the Cliff Palace at any given time, with 129 rooms and 8 kivas (ceremonial rooms), one of the largest villages of the 600+ identified cliff dwellings in the area. And then suddenly, in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away.
Archaeologists worked out this was most likely caused by an 80 year drought, combined with the deforestation and depletion of local resources, and rumours of flourishing neighbour communities. But as the tour guide made a valid point, this ancient civilization joins a list of several others that all perished at their peaks, which has a bearing on our civilization today, where if we don't manage our consumption of resources & manipulation of the natural environment, we may face a similar fate.
After Mesa Verde we drove to Cortez where we stopped to cook a late (3:30pm) lunch in the town park. While Kevin broke out his awesome little primus stove that can burn just about anything for fuel, I noticed several utes with huge tanks on their trays occasionally driving up under a strange hanging pipe & filling up with what looked like water. I walked over to check it out, and met this older fellow, Jim Powell, who rocked up with another huge empty tank. I had a chat to him and he told me a story about when he & his wife met an Australian couple while traveling back in the day who lent them (total strangers) money after they'd lost their travelers checks. He thought that we Australians are the kindest people in all the world! With half a dozen teeth missing in his warm genuine smile he explained to me how he lives on a property where there is no water, and he has to haul water every day or so. Three quarters buys you 300 gallons of water from the town water station in the park. After his tank overflowed everywhere and I spotted his tank's tap wasn't turned off properly, our chat was stopped short by another dude who arrived for water so I shook his hand and waved him off, thinking for the zillionth time how fortunate and proud I am to be Australian in this country that regards us so highly.
Driving on that afternoon was right up there among the most awesome drives I've ever done. Skirting the northwestern side of Mesa Verde's cliffs and Ute Mountain, lit up orange by the late afternoon sun, we got to Four Corners half an hour before close time. Four corners is the point where the borders of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet, the only four border junction in the United States. After getting the touristy photos of one hand and one foot in each state, I bought a t-shirt and a fridge magnet, drove in a circle around the monument and headed off into Arizona. And what an introduction to Arizona it was, the sun setting below high altitude clouds that made half the sky turn yellow, orange, red, pink, blue and indigo, as I drove along the straight western roads directly into the sunset. We passed the Chuska Mountains to our left and could see countless other Ute-Mountain lookalike rock formations & mesas. When night came as we passed several Navajo villages and towns on our way to Chinle, I was surprised to see single bright yellow lights dotted all over the place. Here, each house or group of houses have a single flood light, standing twice as high as the roofs, as if to mark their position so the owners can find it in the dark! Some clustered together, others way out by themselves. Kevin was startled when he spotted a black horse just off the shoulder of the road, the first of several animals we passed where there were no fences or anything I could see that would stop animals from crossing where I was doing 80mph. And I thought the New Mexicans were crazy for not having signposts for half of their roads!
I helped Kevin set up his tent at the free campgrounds near the entrance to Canyon De Chelly (pronounced canyon-de-shay) and he fixed dinner while I emptied stuff out of the Jeep to sleep in the back. Kevin was worried about a couple of huge RVs near us, I asked why, he said last time he camped around RVs the owners had their generators going all night. Sure enough, 5 mins later an old couple returned to the RV opposite us and click whirrr there goes the generator. Within 20 mins the place started to reek of fumes too, I was glad to be sleeping in the car. I thought it was rude & offensive of RV owners to do that around people with tents, and thought of how much better my parent's caravan setup is with solar power and batteries. I was barely able to keep warm overnight & woke with a start as Kevin opened the rear glass at dawn to photograph me sleeping in the Jeep! It was only 3C on Kev's watch thermometer so after a hot breakfast of oatmeal & water we packed quickly and rolled out to the visitor center on the South Rim Drive.
Canyon De Chelly compared to Mesa Verde is less for interesting history and more about spectacular scenery. Sheer smooth cliffs of red & brown sandstone, most overhanging past vertical, dropped all the way to the flat canyon floor. In many cases there was no rubble or rockslides at the base, the cliff rose straight above the flat ground at a 90 degree angle. There were Navajo cliff dwellings too, and the canyon floor is still farmed by them today, access is restricted unless you have a Navajo guide with you. Since it was perfectly calm, I decided to get Kevin to try a couple of shots of me standing (well, kneeling) at the very edge of these sheer cliffs. I was fine looking sideways at Kevin, but had to focus and keep perfect balance, even control my breathing, because if I looked 1 inch past my right foot I was staring over the edge of the cliff to the canyon floor 500 odd feet below, straight down! Argh gives me vertigo thinking back at it!
We met two Navajo kids, Newton & Dion Martinez, and chatted to them for a while. They get dropped off on some of their spare days from school by their mother, and sell Navajo Art they paint onto flat sandstone rocks taken from the Canyon floor. Newton showed us his $25 rock of paintings and told us an 8min long story with the pictures! His accent was so cool but I didn't want to buy a rock as it's just something that's gonna get broken in my travels, but I got my wallet and Kevin & I each gave them $5 for being little champions. As we progressed through several lookouts, the canyon progressively got deeper and more impressive with 600ft, then 700ft sheer cliffs. Finally we came to Spider Rock, the pinnacle of Canyon De Chelly, a thin vertical tower of red sandstone rising 800ft above the middle of the canyon floor. Again we got up to more mischief climbing onto boulders on the edge of the cliff for more mad photos, while a group of 3 older German tourists I'd met earlier watched us, shaking their heads & calling out 'nein nein!'
From Canyon De Chelly we went off the beaten track to the backroads of AZ making our way down to Window Rock in the town of..Window Rock. My initial worries about this route proved unnecessary as the dirt road was maintained, the GPS knew where it was going & we only passed 2 trucks over the whole 2 hours. Kevin had even made a trip to Tulsa prior to leaving to get 'protection' and we were rolling with a Glock .40 in the back just in case. Window Rock was cool, a large circular natural arch, and the site of an impressive WWII monument to the Navajo Code Talkers. Below I've copied the transcript below the sculpture of the Navajo Code Talker that tells their story:
During World War II at a time when the Japanese possessed the ability to break almost any American military code, over 400 Navajos, with 29 being the original Navajo Code Talkers, stepped forward and developed the most significant and successful military code of the time using their native language. So successful was this innovative code that military commanders credited it with saving the lives of countless American soldiers and with the successful engagements of the U.S. in the battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and paved the way to victory for Allied Forces in the Pacific Theater. "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima", these were the words of Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal Officer.
Far from their homes, these brave young men served our nation with honor. Sadly, the tale of their exploits remained a closely guarded secret for decades in the even that the Navajo Code Talkers unique talents would be needed again. Many Code Talkers have passed on never knowing of the honours a grateful nation are now bestowed upon their remaining brothers. It was not until 1968 when the Navajo Code was declassified.
Next, we drove south east through building afternoon thunderstorms and eventually emerged onto the vast flat plains of San Augustin, formerly a lake, where the National Radio Astronomy Observary (NRAO) and the Very Large Array (VLA) is centered. Highway 60 runs dead straight for some 20 miles across the middle of the Y-shaped Array, and soon the huge dish antennas were visible stretching right out into the distance. Upon our arrival we learnt a bunch of stuff, the array was currently in it's largest A-configuration, which meant that each of the 27 antennas were spread along the Y-arms a distance of 13 miles (21 km). This is the most sensitive setup; the signals received are processed and combined with the equivalent sensitivity of a single 36 km antenna. Each of the 230 ton 25m diameter dish assemblies are almost constantly in use, the Array is manned and making observations 24-7, we saw them change angles a couple of times while we were underneath one. Changing array configurations takes a week or so to complete (the array generally remains in a particular configuration for several months), each moves along rail tracks between docking pads with the assistance of strange red vehicles. The vehicles supply power to the antenna on the move, as internally the receivers are cooled to 15 Kelvin (-427 F) to reduce internal noise & vibration that distorts the weak signals from space.
On the walking tour, we came across the Whisper Gallery, which is just two dishes spaced about 30ft apart facing each other. Kevin walked to one and I walked to the other and as soon as you walk in front of one dish, you can hear what's going on at the other! It was so cool, if I put my head at the focus point of the dish, I could hear Kevin whisper in my right ear, when he was 30ft to my left facing the other way!
Walking around the tour I deliberately went past the 'restricted area' sign because I wanted to photograph the afternoon sun behind one of the dishes, which soon resulted in a security guard driving over to kindly tell me where the visitor area was.
Driving back through Socorro up to Albuquerque Kevin & I tested each other on the states & capital cities of our countries, when I asked Kevin about Tasmania, he thought that it was off the northeast coast somewhere! That was funny but to his credit he knew more than most locals about where stuff was. At the Hyatt in Albuquerque after days on the road we were looking forward to some 4 star luxury, but we arrived a half hour after the pool area & spa closed! After hunting around for indoor spas and spending 2mins in a crappy sauna, I said "we'll never know if we never ask." So, decked out in boardshorts, towel over shoulder, we walked through the ritzy hallways past dudes in suits and ladies in dresses to the reception, and after being initially denied by the girl behind the counter, I turned on my best Aussie "accent" and reasoned that we'd been on the road for hours and were only staying the night, here for the balloon festival, and she gave in and went to ask security if it was OK. Security said they would come down & let us know (ie. check us out first), so we hung out in the lobby for several minutes drawing looks from hotel guests & staff. Eventually a funny pairing of a short & an enormous security guard who resembled Schwarzenegger came over and escorted us to the spa, woohoo!
Quick sleep, 5am and we were back up & at it! Taking our small amount of gear back and checking out, we made for the Balloon Fiesta Park, early to get sorted out and not miss the dawn patrol. Kevin bought some brekky and I got an awesome hot chocolate. I think we were a little delirious from all these early starts, because for some reason, everything seemed funny. Ridiculously funny. A kid's slippery slide in the form of an inflatable sinking Titanic was there, and as the crowds increased I went about asking people trying to track down any Australian teams. I saw the flags of the participating nations and spotted my flag! We tracked down information and found the list of pilots and their launch sites, but unfortunately there were no Aussies; the flag I saw belonged to a single NZ team, the missing Commonwealth Star hidden in the folds of the limp flag in the calm air. I was really annoyed actually, all these crews from all these countries, and NOBODY from Australia.
Kevin & I made our way onto the field as crews began driving to their launch sites on one edge of the field. Eventually after a loudspeaker announcement, generators whirred to life, portable lights came on and large fans began blowing air into the balloons. I'd never seen a hot air balloon launch before, it's pretty amazing. When the balloons were half inflated lying on their side on the ground & crews with torches had checked there were no tears or knots, the pilot lit the burners and fired roaring bursts of yellow and blue jets of flame into the balloons. The balloons would suddenly glow their bright colours, then drop back into darkness. Members of the crew would hold the flaps of the balloon up as the half-foot thick jet of flame shot into the balloon barely a meter from their arms. One by one, the balloons began to lift and tilt upright, crews moved quickly and efficiently to anchor the basket, the pilot jumping inside rocking back as it swung upright, intently focused on the rate of lift the burner was causing so as to not overdo it and need to rely on the final anchor - a rope or chain to the support vehicle.
Soon a dozen balloons were vertical on the ground, and it was time for the famous dawn patrol balloon glow. Announcers counted down and all together the balloons fired, lighting up the sky with their shapes & colours, as the slightest hint of light appeared in the east. They also fired in bursts, each balloon flickering on and off like a series of enormous Christmas lights. Then, with one extended burst, the first balloon shot up into the sky really quickly, the rest following one at a time. Each pilot had special objectives, test out an elevation and report wind conditions back to the ground. The dawn patrol eventually became hard to see, visible mainly by the lead lights that hung from their baskets, until more hot air was needed and a burst of flame would light one up in stunning, silent brilliance. That is, silent until Kevin judged that we were far enough away from any bystanders, and audibly passed wind. Unbeknownst to him, a professional photographer was only meters behind him, he looked up from his tripod mounted camera and said over his shoulder "hey, did you kill something?"
Later, when the crowds took to the fields walking around dozens and dozens of crews setting up, inflating balloons and taking off in wave after wave, the magnitude of this event as the world's largest balloon festival and the U.S.'s most photographed even became clear. Balloons of awesome design mixed in with the sheer numbers of standard balloons began filling the pre-dawn sky, each flying their country flag from the basket. The day was Wednesday which I'd chosen to see the fiesta because it was the Flight Of The Nations mass ascension, where the international participants are given the honour of launching first before the U.S. crews. I spotted the Darth Vader balloon, after hearing a crew chatting earlier about him being the largest balloon registered for the event. Storm troopers marched through the crowds and someone said "Where did you get those costumes?" to which one replied "The Emperor." And later on I saw Boba Fet walk past. He had an awesome costume, really accurate, except it was obvious that he was in fact a skinny she underneath. Kevin said "hey look, it's a Boba Fet-ette" and I said "yeah, she has a Boba Fet-ish".
Footage I took on YouTube:
The mass ascension went into full swing after dawn, and it was amazing. Balloons being launched were squeezed side to side, while balloons down low were traveling in opposite direction to balloons up high, and behind every balloon in the foreground were dozens of balloons trailing off into the distance. The balloon fiesta park in Albuquerque is the site of the world's largest balloon festival for a good reason. Geographically, the mountain ranges and plains around the area create a consistent 'box effect', where air between low and middle elevations travel in opposite directions, allowing balloon pilots to navigate with high accuracy, often allowing them to land in the same area from where they took off. All the same, balloons ended up all over the place, and at the height of the launch, balloons were visible 180 degrees in both directions and were making landings all over town. When its clear a balloon isn't gonna make it back to the launch field, the chase crew packs up the gear, jumps in their ute or truck and heads off around the city tracking & eventually intercepting the balloon to assist with the landing. Three days previous, high winds caused a number of crashes, injuries and even a death, where a balloon got caught on power lines and a gust of wind tipped the basket, causing a lady to fall out 70 odd feet to the ground. Kevin and I were having breakfast in Durango at Quality Inn when we saw that on the news.
After the several hundred balloons had taken off there were a couple of other things to see before we left. I chatted to Deirdre, a mounted policewoman who drew a bit of a crowd. Fully armed and on horseback, she explained how they are part of the tactical division, used for crowd control & aligned with other tactical units like S.W.A.T. and the Airborne. Another bunch of police were gathered together in front of the Children's Network Balloon, a dozen cars and bikes, more than one person joked along the lines of 'that guy sure did something wrong'. They were arranged for a photo shoot as the Albuquerque police do charity work with the Children's Network, and I managed to get a bit of a look at the Sheriff motorbikes and the new 2007 model Police Mustangs.
And then all that was left was another tedious drive all the way back to Oklahoma and the end of an action-packed fast-paced holiday! I've written a fair bit so, until next time...ciao.
I've been up to a bunch of stuff this weekend past, where I managed to request 3 days of unpaid leave from work to go an event I'd had my eye on for a while, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. And while I was at it, might as well explore the area, so after lots of figuring & changes of plan, over 5 days 6 nights from Friday to Wednesday, I managed to go to Dallas Texas, south western Colorado, eastern Arizona and New Mexico. 2500 miles later, I'm totally over driving, but I've seen the best college football match, been to two new states, and the world's largest hot air balloon festival.
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But after the footy match I drove back and arrived in Norman at 10pm at night, packed the car and went to sleep, ready to wake up nice and early at 3:20am to have a quick breakfast and head up to Kevin's place in the city. The reason for such an early start was that we had a he-uge day of driving ahead, planning to get all the way through 4 states to Durango in far southwest Colorado (close to 950 miles), as well as making Shiprock in northwest New Mexico by sunset. I rocked up at Kevin's hoping he'd drive first leg as I was in need of sleep, to find he'd only slept 30 minutes before I called him! He'd been up all night struggling to load the maps we would need into his GPS. So we loaded up, and set off westward in the dark. I was fighting to stay awake, to cover good distance & give Kevin time to sleep, but finally after over an hour in the dark, I decided that it was too risky for either of us to continue, so we pulled in at a rest stop and both slept for half an hour. When we woke up, the sun had just risen, and Kevin took over. Twice more we would alternate, and then I would do the majority of the driving the rest of the trip.
By mid morning we reached the Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo, Texas, something I passed without knowing on my first drive back with my Jeep from Colorado Springs in March. It's one of those offbeat, eccentric roadside attractions that are part of the appeal of a holiday driving around the American West. 10 wrecks of Cadillacs representing the 'golden age' of American Automobiles from 1949 - 1963 stand half buried nose first in a line pointing west. This is in the middle of a dusty wheat field off the side of I-40, where spinning in a circle shows me the now-familiar flat horizon of the Great Plains. Tourists casually come and go a few people at a time throughout the day 24-7, to marvel at the wrecks which are unremarkable yet remarkable. The glass & electrics are long gone, rear tyres half disintegrated or missing, the only thing of wonder is how many layers of paint there really is on the visitor graffiti that covers every inch. You wouldn't think 10 cars in a field would be that interesting but somehow it was pretty cool.
After god knows how many fuel stops we drove all day to finally reach our objective by sundown, Shiprock New Mexico. A sheer rock so massive above the surrounding flat plains that it's visible for miles, the whole time we were driving toward it, Kevin or I would joke "wow, would you look at that?", "Hey Kev look, there's Shiprock" ...around another bend... "there it is again." After driving toward it forever, we came across a town, and a massive dust cloud. The dust cloud turned out to be traffic leaving the country fair that was going on in the town of Shiprock. Concerned with the time left before sunset and getting lost on the unsigned roads of NM we finally picked a safe looking dusty track off the side of the highway that followed the crazy volcanic ridge towards Shiprock. After photos at a gap in the curiously shaped ridge and some testing out of the Jeep's new offroading capabilities, we crossed around the base of Shiprock just after sunset. The size of the thing is incredible and deceiving. Also from our vantage point on the ridge, we could see no other car headlights for miles. It's remoteness was completely unexpected for something so spectacular, I can't understand why there isn't a road and a carpark to the base, unless it's by decision of the Navajo who own the land.
So after some cautious driving on steep grades and a bit of a moment nearly getting stuck in a ditch, we made it back to the highway and cruised up into Colorado.
Kevin called ahead to the Steamworks Brewery to ensure they were open, we rolled into town at about 9:30pm and had a great dinner and I ordered the sampler of 6 of their famous & award winning beers. By 10:30pm I was ready for sleep and was stunned to see people riding around on bicycles in the cold! The Quality Inn in Durango was awesome, brand new, in another league compared to the (lack of) Quality Inn that I spent 10 days in Norman. In the morning after realising I'd forgotten deodorant & Kevin had left behind his toothbrush & razor, I went down to reception to ask if they had this stuff. Kevin said it might be free, sure enough, the girl cheerfully said "sure!" and came back out with miniature deodorant, razor and shaving foam, toothbrush and toothpaste! I was expecting to pay like 10 bucks but it was free! I was blown away. Guess i'm used to hotels where you pay $2.50 for the 175mL bottles of water on the front table next to the welcome letter. Walked out the front lobby doors to the car for a late start but wait...is this typical Durango? A girl dressed in a tutu in the crisp morning air was standing next to her bicycle loaded with baggage, stopped on the side of the highway talking on the celly! Resisting temptation to ask Why the tutu (she was attractive), we headed west for Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa Verde, Spanish for Green Table, is an enormous flat-topped mountain range unlike anything I've ever seen, filled with canyons and home to the most notable & well preserved cliff dwellings of Ancestral Pueblo Native Americans in the US. A spectacular drive that rivaled the Pikes Peak Highway wound its way to the Visitor Center, where a cool exhibition showcased the craftsmanship of the Pueblo people. Purchasing a ticket to the Cliff Palace tour, the most famous of the cliff dwellings, we headed off to catch the next hourly tour. I'd seen photographs of it while researching the trip, but walking over to the lookout to behold the Cliff Palace was stunning. Nestled in under an enormous natural rock overhang, like a wide open mouth to a cave, the ancient city looked out over a steep canyon. During the tour we learned that back in the day there was only one way in or out, where the Puebloans climbed a crevasse up one side to the Mesa top, carving hand and foot holds in the rock. From 600 A.D. to 1300 A.D., the Pueblo Native Americans lived for 700 years and flourished in Mesa Verde. For the first 600 years they lived on the flat tops of Mesa Verde, migrating to and from the area with changes of the season. It wasn't until their final century of occupation that they built the cliff dwellings that revolutionized their social structure. Hunter-gatherers became farmers, storing their food & water, remaining throughout the winter protected by the cave and walls they built of sandstone brick & mud mortar. Less time was needed for hunting leaving more time to specialise in weaving, leatherwork, pottery etc. and the economy of the Mesa Verde community became strong and complex. At the peak of their civilization, 60 to 100 people lived at the Cliff Palace at any given time, with 129 rooms and 8 kivas (ceremonial rooms), one of the largest villages of the 600+ identified cliff dwellings in the area. And then suddenly, in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away.
Archaeologists worked out this was most likely caused by an 80 year drought, combined with the deforestation and depletion of local resources, and rumours of flourishing neighbour communities. But as the tour guide made a valid point, this ancient civilization joins a list of several others that all perished at their peaks, which has a bearing on our civilization today, where if we don't manage our consumption of resources & manipulation of the natural environment, we may face a similar fate.
After Mesa Verde we drove to Cortez where we stopped to cook a late (3:30pm) lunch in the town park. While Kevin broke out his awesome little primus stove that can burn just about anything for fuel, I noticed several utes with huge tanks on their trays occasionally driving up under a strange hanging pipe & filling up with what looked like water. I walked over to check it out, and met this older fellow, Jim Powell, who rocked up with another huge empty tank. I had a chat to him and he told me a story about when he & his wife met an Australian couple while traveling back in the day who lent them (total strangers) money after they'd lost their travelers checks. He thought that we Australians are the kindest people in all the world! With half a dozen teeth missing in his warm genuine smile he explained to me how he lives on a property where there is no water, and he has to haul water every day or so. Three quarters buys you 300 gallons of water from the town water station in the park. After his tank overflowed everywhere and I spotted his tank's tap wasn't turned off properly, our chat was stopped short by another dude who arrived for water so I shook his hand and waved him off, thinking for the zillionth time how fortunate and proud I am to be Australian in this country that regards us so highly.
Driving on that afternoon was right up there among the most awesome drives I've ever done. Skirting the northwestern side of Mesa Verde's cliffs and Ute Mountain, lit up orange by the late afternoon sun, we got to Four Corners half an hour before close time. Four corners is the point where the borders of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet, the only four border junction in the United States. After getting the touristy photos of one hand and one foot in each state, I bought a t-shirt and a fridge magnet, drove in a circle around the monument and headed off into Arizona. And what an introduction to Arizona it was, the sun setting below high altitude clouds that made half the sky turn yellow, orange, red, pink, blue and indigo, as I drove along the straight western roads directly into the sunset. We passed the Chuska Mountains to our left and could see countless other Ute-Mountain lookalike rock formations & mesas. When night came as we passed several Navajo villages and towns on our way to Chinle, I was surprised to see single bright yellow lights dotted all over the place. Here, each house or group of houses have a single flood light, standing twice as high as the roofs, as if to mark their position so the owners can find it in the dark! Some clustered together, others way out by themselves. Kevin was startled when he spotted a black horse just off the shoulder of the road, the first of several animals we passed where there were no fences or anything I could see that would stop animals from crossing where I was doing 80mph. And I thought the New Mexicans were crazy for not having signposts for half of their roads!
I helped Kevin set up his tent at the free campgrounds near the entrance to Canyon De Chelly (pronounced canyon-de-shay) and he fixed dinner while I emptied stuff out of the Jeep to sleep in the back. Kevin was worried about a couple of huge RVs near us, I asked why, he said last time he camped around RVs the owners had their generators going all night. Sure enough, 5 mins later an old couple returned to the RV opposite us and click whirrr there goes the generator. Within 20 mins the place started to reek of fumes too, I was glad to be sleeping in the car. I thought it was rude & offensive of RV owners to do that around people with tents, and thought of how much better my parent's caravan setup is with solar power and batteries. I was barely able to keep warm overnight & woke with a start as Kevin opened the rear glass at dawn to photograph me sleeping in the Jeep! It was only 3C on Kev's watch thermometer so after a hot breakfast of oatmeal & water we packed quickly and rolled out to the visitor center on the South Rim Drive.
Canyon De Chelly compared to Mesa Verde is less for interesting history and more about spectacular scenery. Sheer smooth cliffs of red & brown sandstone, most overhanging past vertical, dropped all the way to the flat canyon floor. In many cases there was no rubble or rockslides at the base, the cliff rose straight above the flat ground at a 90 degree angle. There were Navajo cliff dwellings too, and the canyon floor is still farmed by them today, access is restricted unless you have a Navajo guide with you. Since it was perfectly calm, I decided to get Kevin to try a couple of shots of me standing (well, kneeling) at the very edge of these sheer cliffs. I was fine looking sideways at Kevin, but had to focus and keep perfect balance, even control my breathing, because if I looked 1 inch past my right foot I was staring over the edge of the cliff to the canyon floor 500 odd feet below, straight down! Argh gives me vertigo thinking back at it!
We met two Navajo kids, Newton & Dion Martinez, and chatted to them for a while. They get dropped off on some of their spare days from school by their mother, and sell Navajo Art they paint onto flat sandstone rocks taken from the Canyon floor. Newton showed us his $25 rock of paintings and told us an 8min long story with the pictures! His accent was so cool but I didn't want to buy a rock as it's just something that's gonna get broken in my travels, but I got my wallet and Kevin & I each gave them $5 for being little champions. As we progressed through several lookouts, the canyon progressively got deeper and more impressive with 600ft, then 700ft sheer cliffs. Finally we came to Spider Rock, the pinnacle of Canyon De Chelly, a thin vertical tower of red sandstone rising 800ft above the middle of the canyon floor. Again we got up to more mischief climbing onto boulders on the edge of the cliff for more mad photos, while a group of 3 older German tourists I'd met earlier watched us, shaking their heads & calling out 'nein nein!'
From Canyon De Chelly we went off the beaten track to the backroads of AZ making our way down to Window Rock in the town of..Window Rock. My initial worries about this route proved unnecessary as the dirt road was maintained, the GPS knew where it was going & we only passed 2 trucks over the whole 2 hours. Kevin had even made a trip to Tulsa prior to leaving to get 'protection' and we were rolling with a Glock .40 in the back just in case. Window Rock was cool, a large circular natural arch, and the site of an impressive WWII monument to the Navajo Code Talkers. Below I've copied the transcript below the sculpture of the Navajo Code Talker that tells their story:
During World War II at a time when the Japanese possessed the ability to break almost any American military code, over 400 Navajos, with 29 being the original Navajo Code Talkers, stepped forward and developed the most significant and successful military code of the time using their native language. So successful was this innovative code that military commanders credited it with saving the lives of countless American soldiers and with the successful engagements of the U.S. in the battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and paved the way to victory for Allied Forces in the Pacific Theater. "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima", these were the words of Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal Officer.
Far from their homes, these brave young men served our nation with honor. Sadly, the tale of their exploits remained a closely guarded secret for decades in the even that the Navajo Code Talkers unique talents would be needed again. Many Code Talkers have passed on never knowing of the honours a grateful nation are now bestowed upon their remaining brothers. It was not until 1968 when the Navajo Code was declassified.
Next, we drove south east through building afternoon thunderstorms and eventually emerged onto the vast flat plains of San Augustin, formerly a lake, where the National Radio Astronomy Observary (NRAO) and the Very Large Array (VLA) is centered. Highway 60 runs dead straight for some 20 miles across the middle of the Y-shaped Array, and soon the huge dish antennas were visible stretching right out into the distance. Upon our arrival we learnt a bunch of stuff, the array was currently in it's largest A-configuration, which meant that each of the 27 antennas were spread along the Y-arms a distance of 13 miles (21 km). This is the most sensitive setup; the signals received are processed and combined with the equivalent sensitivity of a single 36 km antenna. Each of the 230 ton 25m diameter dish assemblies are almost constantly in use, the Array is manned and making observations 24-7, we saw them change angles a couple of times while we were underneath one. Changing array configurations takes a week or so to complete (the array generally remains in a particular configuration for several months), each moves along rail tracks between docking pads with the assistance of strange red vehicles. The vehicles supply power to the antenna on the move, as internally the receivers are cooled to 15 Kelvin (-427 F) to reduce internal noise & vibration that distorts the weak signals from space.
On the walking tour, we came across the Whisper Gallery, which is just two dishes spaced about 30ft apart facing each other. Kevin walked to one and I walked to the other and as soon as you walk in front of one dish, you can hear what's going on at the other! It was so cool, if I put my head at the focus point of the dish, I could hear Kevin whisper in my right ear, when he was 30ft to my left facing the other way!
Walking around the tour I deliberately went past the 'restricted area' sign because I wanted to photograph the afternoon sun behind one of the dishes, which soon resulted in a security guard driving over to kindly tell me where the visitor area was.
Driving back through Socorro up to Albuquerque Kevin & I tested each other on the states & capital cities of our countries, when I asked Kevin about Tasmania, he thought that it was off the northeast coast somewhere! That was funny but to his credit he knew more than most locals about where stuff was. At the Hyatt in Albuquerque after days on the road we were looking forward to some 4 star luxury, but we arrived a half hour after the pool area & spa closed! After hunting around for indoor spas and spending 2mins in a crappy sauna, I said "we'll never know if we never ask." So, decked out in boardshorts, towel over shoulder, we walked through the ritzy hallways past dudes in suits and ladies in dresses to the reception, and after being initially denied by the girl behind the counter, I turned on my best Aussie "accent" and reasoned that we'd been on the road for hours and were only staying the night, here for the balloon festival, and she gave in and went to ask security if it was OK. Security said they would come down & let us know (ie. check us out first), so we hung out in the lobby for several minutes drawing looks from hotel guests & staff. Eventually a funny pairing of a short & an enormous security guard who resembled Schwarzenegger came over and escorted us to the spa, woohoo!
Quick sleep, 5am and we were back up & at it! Taking our small amount of gear back and checking out, we made for the Balloon Fiesta Park, early to get sorted out and not miss the dawn patrol. Kevin bought some brekky and I got an awesome hot chocolate. I think we were a little delirious from all these early starts, because for some reason, everything seemed funny. Ridiculously funny. A kid's slippery slide in the form of an inflatable sinking Titanic was there, and as the crowds increased I went about asking people trying to track down any Australian teams. I saw the flags of the participating nations and spotted my flag! We tracked down information and found the list of pilots and their launch sites, but unfortunately there were no Aussies; the flag I saw belonged to a single NZ team, the missing Commonwealth Star hidden in the folds of the limp flag in the calm air. I was really annoyed actually, all these crews from all these countries, and NOBODY from Australia.
Kevin & I made our way onto the field as crews began driving to their launch sites on one edge of the field. Eventually after a loudspeaker announcement, generators whirred to life, portable lights came on and large fans began blowing air into the balloons. I'd never seen a hot air balloon launch before, it's pretty amazing. When the balloons were half inflated lying on their side on the ground & crews with torches had checked there were no tears or knots, the pilot lit the burners and fired roaring bursts of yellow and blue jets of flame into the balloons. The balloons would suddenly glow their bright colours, then drop back into darkness. Members of the crew would hold the flaps of the balloon up as the half-foot thick jet of flame shot into the balloon barely a meter from their arms. One by one, the balloons began to lift and tilt upright, crews moved quickly and efficiently to anchor the basket, the pilot jumping inside rocking back as it swung upright, intently focused on the rate of lift the burner was causing so as to not overdo it and need to rely on the final anchor - a rope or chain to the support vehicle.
Soon a dozen balloons were vertical on the ground, and it was time for the famous dawn patrol balloon glow. Announcers counted down and all together the balloons fired, lighting up the sky with their shapes & colours, as the slightest hint of light appeared in the east. They also fired in bursts, each balloon flickering on and off like a series of enormous Christmas lights. Then, with one extended burst, the first balloon shot up into the sky really quickly, the rest following one at a time. Each pilot had special objectives, test out an elevation and report wind conditions back to the ground. The dawn patrol eventually became hard to see, visible mainly by the lead lights that hung from their baskets, until more hot air was needed and a burst of flame would light one up in stunning, silent brilliance. That is, silent until Kevin judged that we were far enough away from any bystanders, and audibly passed wind. Unbeknownst to him, a professional photographer was only meters behind him, he looked up from his tripod mounted camera and said over his shoulder "hey, did you kill something?"
Later, when the crowds took to the fields walking around dozens and dozens of crews setting up, inflating balloons and taking off in wave after wave, the magnitude of this event as the world's largest balloon festival and the U.S.'s most photographed even became clear. Balloons of awesome design mixed in with the sheer numbers of standard balloons began filling the pre-dawn sky, each flying their country flag from the basket. The day was Wednesday which I'd chosen to see the fiesta because it was the Flight Of The Nations mass ascension, where the international participants are given the honour of launching first before the U.S. crews. I spotted the Darth Vader balloon, after hearing a crew chatting earlier about him being the largest balloon registered for the event. Storm troopers marched through the crowds and someone said "Where did you get those costumes?" to which one replied "The Emperor." And later on I saw Boba Fet walk past. He had an awesome costume, really accurate, except it was obvious that he was in fact a skinny she underneath. Kevin said "hey look, it's a Boba Fet-ette" and I said "yeah, she has a Boba Fet-ish".
Footage I took on YouTube:
The mass ascension went into full swing after dawn, and it was amazing. Balloons being launched were squeezed side to side, while balloons down low were traveling in opposite direction to balloons up high, and behind every balloon in the foreground were dozens of balloons trailing off into the distance. The balloon fiesta park in Albuquerque is the site of the world's largest balloon festival for a good reason. Geographically, the mountain ranges and plains around the area create a consistent 'box effect', where air between low and middle elevations travel in opposite directions, allowing balloon pilots to navigate with high accuracy, often allowing them to land in the same area from where they took off. All the same, balloons ended up all over the place, and at the height of the launch, balloons were visible 180 degrees in both directions and were making landings all over town. When its clear a balloon isn't gonna make it back to the launch field, the chase crew packs up the gear, jumps in their ute or truck and heads off around the city tracking & eventually intercepting the balloon to assist with the landing. Three days previous, high winds caused a number of crashes, injuries and even a death, where a balloon got caught on power lines and a gust of wind tipped the basket, causing a lady to fall out 70 odd feet to the ground. Kevin and I were having breakfast in Durango at Quality Inn when we saw that on the news.
After the several hundred balloons had taken off there were a couple of other things to see before we left. I chatted to Deirdre, a mounted policewoman who drew a bit of a crowd. Fully armed and on horseback, she explained how they are part of the tactical division, used for crowd control & aligned with other tactical units like S.W.A.T. and the Airborne. Another bunch of police were gathered together in front of the Children's Network Balloon, a dozen cars and bikes, more than one person joked along the lines of 'that guy sure did something wrong'. They were arranged for a photo shoot as the Albuquerque police do charity work with the Children's Network, and I managed to get a bit of a look at the Sheriff motorbikes and the new 2007 model Police Mustangs.
And then all that was left was another tedious drive all the way back to Oklahoma and the end of an action-packed fast-paced holiday! I've written a fair bit so, until next time...ciao.
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| Albuquerqu |
21 September 2007
Mountainbiking, Lake Thunderbird
Thought I might share my crazy story with folk back home about a little mountainbiking adventure with Todd yesterday afternoon, Wednesday 19 September at the Clear Bay trails, Lake Thunderbird (15 mins down the road from where I live in Norman).
Unfortunately I forgot the camera, been doing that a lot lately, maybe I'm getting complacent and it doesn't feel like I'm traveling anymore, now it's been 6 months.
After work Todd & I threw the bikes in the back of my Jeep (I have a borrowed bike from a lovely lady at work whose husband isn't using it currently) and we drove down Highway 9 to the South Dam trail head which leads straight to the expert trail.
Bodgy site about Clear Bay
Clear Bay Trail Map
We were attempting the expert trail because the intermediate trail and the Stanley Draper lake course didn't do much to raise pulses. The afternoon weather was warm and calm, the lake was amazing Todd and I agreed that we were doing the wrong activity and we should be on the boat, storms were building in the distance. Well after 10 minutes on the trail I was sweating and already had ridden through dozens of spider webs. Soon I was surprised to find some pretty crazy stuff, a totally different level from everything else I've seen here, and throughout the afternoon we encountered several rock drops, very deep and steep gullies, some of them with mud at the bottom and severe erosion from the spring and summer rains. We are both very new to the sport, and where Todd used to balk at a drop and think it was suicide, it wasn't long on this course before he started going first and making it through despite hesitation wobbles, feet slipping off pedals, brakes screeching, shouting 'holy moly!' etc. Very amusing stuff, for some strange reason, seeing my room mate in distress is incredibly funny to me. Probably because most things we do here, like Frisbee Golf, Wakeboarding, even Xbox gaming with the boys, he's infuriatingly good at all of it!
We encountered the 'Totter', a great big 2ft by 12ft long see-saw that you can ride over. The idea is to ride up the ramp, slow down to an almost complete stop and creep over the center so the see saw dips down, and ride off the end. Sound easy? I attempted it 3 times and each time I stacked off the top of it, losing my balance at the point where the plank tips over, falling to the left and having to jump off the bike or over the handlebars from about 7ft in the air. Big moments each time, lucky I landed on my feet as an awkward fall from that height could mean broken bones. Todd's first attempt was funniest, he went too far past the center, and the see saw pivoted real quick and crashed to the ground, suddenly propelling Todd forward on the steep decline. As he had his weight leaning back on the bike, he rolled down and off the see saw with his front wheel going up into the air and he fell off landing flat on his back on the ground!
So the Totter defeated us both, and we had to move on. We saw two Deer running around, first time I have seen wild Deer. Then, we got lost. The signage definitely needs improving, at least 4 times we thought we knew where we were, only to pedal down a chosen track to find out it's not the one we thought. We were running out of light and were still lost when the sun was about to set, we were somewhere in the middle of the 5 mile course, hadn't seen a single person, and Todd thought we had about 20 mins of light left. We had bearings of direction, from the sun, the lake and the sound of traffic on Highway 9, but under the trees with the light running out, several times neither of us had any clue as to where we were. Finally at about sunset we located ourselves and decided to get off the unknown and hard-going advanced track and go back along the intermediate one we had done before to the other trail head, which is over a mile away from the trail head where we parked. Anxiety was mounting, not panic though, I have never panicked as that doesn't serve any useful purpose, and Todd's the same. After a half hour of serious pedaling and never-ending winding tracks through the darkening bush, under an approaching storm with thunder and light rain, my thoughts were far away from how cool the lightning bugs looked blurring past in orange streaks. Todd said he might have swallowed one. Soon it was virtually dark, I was leading and couldn't go fast even in a straight line, for fear of riding off the track I was straining to see. I had my mobile phone though, which as I have proved before, can be used as a source of light, if it came to it, we could walk our bikes single file off the track by that light, provided we didn't miss the intersecting trail.
Finally we made it to the exit trail that leads back to the car park, and that feeling of relief, that's when all anxiety turns to joy and triumph and suddenly you're having the best fun in ages. I think we had less than 5 minutes of twilight left before we would have had to stop and resort to walking, under the trees it was nearly pitch dark. As it was when we got off the exit trail to the road, it was 100% night and we rode back down highway 9 in the dark getting blinded by oncoming car headlights. So we hustled as we were supposed to meet some of Todd's friends in town for dinner and we were way late, and Todd washed the muddy bikes off the boat ramp in the lake while I went and got the car, getting dozens of sharp burs on my shoes and socks as though the lake was having one last go at me. All told I'd flicked 5 spiders off me, rode through over a hundred spider webs, Todd caught 2 ticks I caught one (just crawling around not digging in), and I had curious itchy swelling under my left eye and neck. But it was the best adventure I'd had since coming to the US, and I'd do it all again tomorrow!
Unfortunately I forgot the camera, been doing that a lot lately, maybe I'm getting complacent and it doesn't feel like I'm traveling anymore, now it's been 6 months.
After work Todd & I threw the bikes in the back of my Jeep (I have a borrowed bike from a lovely lady at work whose husband isn't using it currently) and we drove down Highway 9 to the South Dam trail head which leads straight to the expert trail.
Bodgy site about Clear Bay
Clear Bay Trail Map
We were attempting the expert trail because the intermediate trail and the Stanley Draper lake course didn't do much to raise pulses. The afternoon weather was warm and calm, the lake was amazing Todd and I agreed that we were doing the wrong activity and we should be on the boat, storms were building in the distance. Well after 10 minutes on the trail I was sweating and already had ridden through dozens of spider webs. Soon I was surprised to find some pretty crazy stuff, a totally different level from everything else I've seen here, and throughout the afternoon we encountered several rock drops, very deep and steep gullies, some of them with mud at the bottom and severe erosion from the spring and summer rains. We are both very new to the sport, and where Todd used to balk at a drop and think it was suicide, it wasn't long on this course before he started going first and making it through despite hesitation wobbles, feet slipping off pedals, brakes screeching, shouting 'holy moly!' etc. Very amusing stuff, for some strange reason, seeing my room mate in distress is incredibly funny to me. Probably because most things we do here, like Frisbee Golf, Wakeboarding, even Xbox gaming with the boys, he's infuriatingly good at all of it!
We encountered the 'Totter', a great big 2ft by 12ft long see-saw that you can ride over. The idea is to ride up the ramp, slow down to an almost complete stop and creep over the center so the see saw dips down, and ride off the end. Sound easy? I attempted it 3 times and each time I stacked off the top of it, losing my balance at the point where the plank tips over, falling to the left and having to jump off the bike or over the handlebars from about 7ft in the air. Big moments each time, lucky I landed on my feet as an awkward fall from that height could mean broken bones. Todd's first attempt was funniest, he went too far past the center, and the see saw pivoted real quick and crashed to the ground, suddenly propelling Todd forward on the steep decline. As he had his weight leaning back on the bike, he rolled down and off the see saw with his front wheel going up into the air and he fell off landing flat on his back on the ground!
So the Totter defeated us both, and we had to move on. We saw two Deer running around, first time I have seen wild Deer. Then, we got lost. The signage definitely needs improving, at least 4 times we thought we knew where we were, only to pedal down a chosen track to find out it's not the one we thought. We were running out of light and were still lost when the sun was about to set, we were somewhere in the middle of the 5 mile course, hadn't seen a single person, and Todd thought we had about 20 mins of light left. We had bearings of direction, from the sun, the lake and the sound of traffic on Highway 9, but under the trees with the light running out, several times neither of us had any clue as to where we were. Finally at about sunset we located ourselves and decided to get off the unknown and hard-going advanced track and go back along the intermediate one we had done before to the other trail head, which is over a mile away from the trail head where we parked. Anxiety was mounting, not panic though, I have never panicked as that doesn't serve any useful purpose, and Todd's the same. After a half hour of serious pedaling and never-ending winding tracks through the darkening bush, under an approaching storm with thunder and light rain, my thoughts were far away from how cool the lightning bugs looked blurring past in orange streaks. Todd said he might have swallowed one. Soon it was virtually dark, I was leading and couldn't go fast even in a straight line, for fear of riding off the track I was straining to see. I had my mobile phone though, which as I have proved before, can be used as a source of light, if it came to it, we could walk our bikes single file off the track by that light, provided we didn't miss the intersecting trail.
Finally we made it to the exit trail that leads back to the car park, and that feeling of relief, that's when all anxiety turns to joy and triumph and suddenly you're having the best fun in ages. I think we had less than 5 minutes of twilight left before we would have had to stop and resort to walking, under the trees it was nearly pitch dark. As it was when we got off the exit trail to the road, it was 100% night and we rode back down highway 9 in the dark getting blinded by oncoming car headlights. So we hustled as we were supposed to meet some of Todd's friends in town for dinner and we were way late, and Todd washed the muddy bikes off the boat ramp in the lake while I went and got the car, getting dozens of sharp burs on my shoes and socks as though the lake was having one last go at me. All told I'd flicked 5 spiders off me, rode through over a hundred spider webs, Todd caught 2 ticks I caught one (just crawling around not digging in), and I had curious itchy swelling under my left eye and neck. But it was the best adventure I'd had since coming to the US, and I'd do it all again tomorrow!
28 August 2007
Pikes and Longs Peaks, Colorado
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| Pikes & Longs Peaks, Colorado (22-26 August 2007) |
I've been on a few adventures since coming to the US, but my latest effort over the 22nd - 26th August surpasses everything that I've ever done as far as challenge and adventure goes. Myself, Todd and 3 more friends of his from Denver set out to climb a fourteener in the Rocky Mountains. The term 'fourteener' is given to Colorado's highest mountains, those that are over 14 000' in elevation, and the one we attempted was Longs Peak.
It had been on the cards for a few months, since back in April when Todd first discussed climbing a mountain in Colorado sometime during the summer. When the date was finally set, we began training a month out, but our objective was only agreed to by everyone in the second last week. I'd been speaking to Bill at work, one of the bosses who had done Longs Peak by the Cable Route in winter as well as several other fourteeners, and he gave me a book where I found Longs Peak. What attracted me to Longs was the obvious range of attractions along the hike, with lakes, ridges and amphitheatres. I was unaware of its true difficulty though, and its history, someone dies on Longs Peak every year, and Todd's mates in Denver had heard stories, and warned us that it was gonna be tough. Todd also has a bad back at the moment with some turned vertebrae probably from wakeboarding, and is in therapy, so his family was persistently trying to discourage us from doing anything hard. But as I said to Todd, we weren't getting any younger, so Longs Peak we all eventually agreed to.
So, I got to running. It was more of a fun training scheme than strict, when I felt like it I would usually run, i'm guessing 5km from Todd's house, the long way through the neighbourhood, then north over Lindsey St towards a college apartment block which backed onto a green strip with a creek. I usually ran at 9:30pm at night when it had cooled from blazing hot high 90's to simmering, and running through the half-mile green strip to the sound of crickets and random bright orange flashes of lightning bugs was almost as good as running down Miami beach back home to the sound of the surf with the moon rising over the ocean. Except for an added plus, when groups of college girls were out on their balconies above the park, and they thought I couldn't hear them.
The East Longs Peak trail via the Keyhole, easiest of the various options, is a lengthy 16 mile (25.7km) return trip, with 4 845' of vertical gain in the range of 9 410' from the trail head to the 14 225' summit of Colorado's 15th highest peak. Camping options are numerous but crowded at this time of year, with spots at the trail head, a couple of km up the trail in the Goblin Forest, or up near 13 000' in the Boulder Field. Originally I liked the idea of camping along the trail, to take some of the endurance out of the hike, but it would require all of us to have appropriate light camping gear, so the plan was camp at the trail head, and get up early.
So on Wednesday, Todd and I jumped on a Frontier airlines flight from OKC to Denver, and encountered awesome storms on the way, which we had to fly between. We skirted the east side of a huge storm through grey gloom for a while, but then suddenly we came into brilliant sunset twilight, flying in clear air between the base clouds and the anvil top, with the core flashing with lightning out my window, and a near full moon to top it off.
We stayed with Todd's sister and brother in law, Shelly and Tony Wahl, in Golden, a suburb of Denver. They have a lovely daughter Abby who is nearly 4 and baby Luke who isn't 1 yet. Wednesday night I slept in the basement bedroom that has two ground level windows, and in the middle of the night a storm hit us, with one colossal crash of thunder that woke everyone up. I remember waking to the flash and crash of thunder at the same time, Todd said he sat bolt upright in bed braced like he was ready for a fight. The lightning was almost constant and it hailed, making loud clanging noises on the grates that protected my windows. Maybe it's something about Denver being so high that cloud to ground lightning is easier, coz that was not a normal storm, yet Tony and Shelly seemed used to it, and Abby & Luke didn't even wake apparently.
So Thursday, Todd and I set out in Shelly's Camry for Pikes Peak down near Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is the most famous of Colorado's fourteeners, home of the Race To The Clouds, the only fourteener where you can drive to the summit, and the easternmost of all the fourteeners being the first mountain clearly visible as one approaches from the east. Stopping in Manitou Springs to get Subway for lunch, Todd and I drove up through Cascade to Pikes Peak Highway, paid the $10 per person toll and headed up the awesome 13 mile drive to the top. Part way up the weather cleared to almost cloudless sky, typical of the fast changing conditions in the Rockies.
This was my test for altitude, as before then, the highest I had ever been was climbing to the summit of Mt Ngauruhoe, a volcano in New Zealand at 7516' (2291m), which everyone here laughs at; I had no idea what thin air was! I was about to go almost twice as high. The body's fitness level has little bearing on its ability to cope in thin air, and while living at altitude can help, ultimately it is the luck of the draw as to whether your body's physiology can adapt to handle it. Turns out I was fine, while Todd began to feel a little off after a while at the summit. It was spectacular being so high above the clouds, like being in an aeroplane but walking around in the crisp wind and seeing a full field of view instead of looking out a tiny window.
The drive down was even more spectacular than heading up, as the road at several points seemed to be on the edge of the world. At a section of roadworks on an exposed slope, one dude was driving heavy machinery that compressed loose gravel and dirt on the wall of the road, and he had to follow the crooked road edge driving consistently within a foot of the steep slope dropping away hundreds of feet to the side! That night we met up with James & Britney, Todd's childhood mate who is now married and living in south Denver, and we ate at the Cheesecake Factory. When I exclaimed at the monstrous foot high mud cakes for sale at the entrance, Todd saw James' puzzled look and explained that I do that all the time, at things that are just normal to them.
Friday we had a lazy morning, playing with Abby & Luke until James drove up and Tony finished work. Then after lunch we packed our camping gear & day packs and headed north and west into the Rocky Mountains for the Longs Peak camping grounds. That drive was also very scenic, and while we were still out on the plains we could easily see Longs Peak towering above all the other mountains around it. Arriving at the trail head, we could see it was busy, and went to visit the Ranger Station for news on the trail. It didn't look good, the Park Ranger said a heavy storm had come through thurs night and had left the region beyond the Keyhole (south west face) fraught with black ice. Nobody had summited that day, and the chances of the ice melting in time for a summit attempt the next day were slim. Perplexed at possibly being denied the summit, we were further disheartened when the trail head camping spots were all taken. We had to back track a couple miles to the next camping ground, and eventually found a clear spot there.
After setting up camp, our 5th person Michael joined us from finishing work in Denver, and while I grilled Brautwurst sausages on the fire and watched Tony, Todd and James play horseshoes, I thought of how cool it was that I was finally camping in the Rocky Mountains. The Rockies and Yosemite are the two places I wanted to camp most in the world, except I couldn't flip the top off a bottle of beer for happy hour because we were so focused on hydrating to acclimatize and reduce our risk of altitude sickness. After a simple dinner of sausages and bread and water we cleaned up camp ready for a quick getaway at 3:30am the next morning.
I don't think I slept at all during the night, and it wasn't because I used my jumper wrapped around my backpack as a pillow; that was quite comfy. I guess it was just the anticipation and excitement about the next day. By 3am the campground was filled with voices and cars being packed and driven off, and even traffic could be heard on the road outside the grounds! After forever, a light came on in our tent and I saw Todd's face squinting at his phone. I asked 'what's the time?' he said '3:24, 6 minutes. Ah might as well get up'. We were all awake anyway. I had slept in my clothes, packed up my sleeping gear and went for breakfast, where I hunted around for my yoghurts, then remembered I had forgotten to pack a spoon, borrowed a spoon off Michael, then found I had left the yoghurts back in the fridge at Shelly's. Gave the spoon back to Michael and had 2 bananas and some chocolate instead.
We packed the tent and headed back up the road to the trail head, where to our astonishment, cars were parked in a line by the side of the road hundreds of metres from the trail head carpark! We drove up anyway, only to find the place was packed with cars and people getting ready, so we headed back, and to me it really sucked coz we would have to hike half a k uphill before we even started our 16 mile day! As we walked up the road, Tony set a freaking quick pace and Todd joked about being exhausted already. I remembered Todd had never seen the Milky Way, which was clearly visible straight above us, so I pointed it out to him. Micheal signed our group into the book at the trail head showing who is on the mountain and we set off through the pine forest.
You cover good ground when it's dark and the only thing to look at is the spot of light cast by your headlamp, and soon the forest was thinning out into smaller trees as the rays of dawn crept over the mountains to the east. It seemed to me to take forever for dawn to come, but we made the ridge to where the Diamond Face and the Chasm is visible just as dawn broke, perfect timing! After shooting some fantastic panoramas, while some of our group went to the toilet on the precariously perched pit loo on the ridge, we made for the boulder field. For the next several hours, it was an arduous haul into increasingly windy and thin air. Since before dawn from the treeline we were subjected to 30-50mph winds, with gusts that would blow you off balance as you plodded on step after step. I got winded quickly and let almost a litre of water out of my backpack, and handed the stack of 6 bananas off to Todd, as my pack was too heavy for the pace.
6 hours later we had made the Boulder Field and were staring up at the Keyhole, an obvious notch in the ridge at the top of a steep boulder climb. By this stage both my knees were hurting on the muscle tendons underneath used for lifting my body, and this condition caused me to be the slowest in the group, as pain had overcome exertion to be the main reason for how often I stopped. I'd been afflicted by the same symptoms the last two times I'd climbed any elevation, at Mt. Ngauruhoe and Mt. Warning, and while I expected knee pain it was worse than before, and incredibly frustrating. The Keyhole, as spectacular as it was with a jagged granite overhang, is the focal point of the infamous winds for that side of the mountain. Climbing towards it on the lee side, you would catch the occasional gust or calm moment, but ever-present was the noise of wind through the rocks above, and it wasn't like the high-pitched whir of wind through a partially opened window, but a deeper shearing noise. I caught some footage of that noise on a video of my camera and uploaded it to YouTube, if you persevere, it is clearly audible in the last 10 seconds:
Entering the Keyhole entailed a blast of chill wind that assaulted your balance, pushed you into the rocks, and made it seem difficult to breathe. Perhaps the most foolish decision I made that day was to still have shorts on at this point, and within 30 seconds I was shivering. The second most foolish decision was to perch myself in the middle of the Keyhole, remove a glove, pull out the camera & attempt to shoot a panorama of the spectacular valley before me. I had to focus to stop shivering and hold the camera steady when shooting, and by the time I finished my face and hand felt numb and I was shuddering more than I ever had in my life. Somehow I lost the glove, probably blew out of my numb hand on a gust of wind, Todd came back to assist and said I looked shaky and pale, but they'd heard people had been going on to the summit, and they were going to press on too. He gave me his spare set of windproof pants which I put on, and initially I resolved to go with them, but after 50m my balance felt terrible with my shivering, my ungloved hand was numb which isn't good for climbing rocks, and I knew I would hold them up. So I told him to go on and I'd remain at the Boulder Field. He gave me the other walkie talkie, and then asked to borrow my camera. I knew Tony had a camera and he was still going, so I told Todd I wanted to take more photos from the Boulder Field, and maybe go back and head up the Chasm.
I took some more photos of him setting off towards the Trough Couloir, the spot where climbers are at greatest risk from falling rocks. I then headed back through the Keyhole and ducked into the Keyhole hut, impressively made of rock and mortar, and sat down to chat with a few other hikers including two guys decked out in full mountaineering gear helmets and all, who had just returned from the summit. After 5 mins, I happened to look out the narrow doorway and saw Tony just below scanning the Boulder Field below looking for me! I called him in out of the wind and we ate some food. People from all over the world are on this hike at any given time, and we had US, English and Irish men and women in the hut at various times. Longs Peak dominated the conversation, with people exclaiming how no guide or reading materials came close to describing the difficulty and exposure beyond the Keyhole. There were also discussions of other Fourteeners and Everest, especially about the book I had read called Into Thin Air about the Everest climbing disaster in 1996.
It took me 20mins to stop shivering, then after a while Tony & I headed down to the Boulder Field. After some time more at the base of the North Face cliff we started heading back intending to go up the Chasm, when my walkie talkie started beeping. Todd had made the summit at 12:05pm and was calling me, and once he had worked out which side of the summit to walk to, we held a crystal clear conversation with him, and I took photos of him, James and Michael on the summit. They had no cameras because Tony had turned back without giving them his, so my photos are all the proof they had, other than writing their names into the Longs Peak summit book. Todd later found someone's website detailing some striking photographs of the territory beyond the Keyhole, including places like the Trough, the Narrows, the Chockstone, the Home Stretch and the Summit. These photos are at http://www.pbase.com/rianhouston/longspeak.
I told Todd our plans for the Chasm and we arranged to rendezvous at the trail fork where we stopped for sunrise. After a long way down, and a lot of knee pain as lowering myself over rocks was as bad as lifting, Tony & I reached the trail fork and started up the Chasm. I knew it was going to be good, but as we rounded the bend and descended to the valley along the steep edge of a rocky slope, I was stunned. After being in blasting wind all day since before dawn, above the timberline where only hardy tufts of grass and moss grew amongst the granite boulders, the feel of the soft breeze and warm afternoon sun, the sound of waterfalls, and sight of lush green grass and shrubs was like stepping into another world. The crystal clear waters of 'Roaring Fork Creek' flowed under a natural bridge above the waterfall, and I had an idea to use my camera's waterproof capability to dip it partially in the stream and take a photo up the Chasm towards the Diamond Face. I had to guess where I was shooting, and got Tony to tell me how far to dip it in the water, but the resulting photo was by far the best I had ever taken.
One last struggle up the slopes of the higher waterfall revealed the stunning Chasm Lake, at the base of the enormous sheer cliff of the Diamond Face, and at the end of the amphitheatre. After shooting more experimental panoramas where I did my first two-level sequence to take in the cliffs towering above me, I decided to atone for my failure to summit by going for a swim, and at an elevation of 11 800', Chasm Lake is frozen over in winter months, and I doubt I will ever swim at a higher altitude. The swim was brief :) and I have video footage of it on YouTube here :
We headed back down and made it back 5 mins before Todd and Michael, which was perfect timing. James had legged it down over an hour earlier and fallen asleep at the trail fork, while Todd waited and assisted Michael who had begun to suffer altitude sickness symptoms of nausea after 25 mins on the summit; they had taken 2 hours to get back to the Keyhole. Apparently Michael gets sick every time he goes over 12 000' despite having climbed 4 or 5 fourteeners. So we all started down again, talking and laughing non-stop about the day, how starting off at dawn felt like at least 2 days ago, how crazy the Trough, Narrows, Homestretch and Chasm Lake was, how sore we were, how nobody would climb a fourteener ever again, how good dinner would be, how great a shower would be and how awesome bed will be. As we got back below the timberline into the pine forests, we started making free bets as to how much further we had to go. I was the skeptic, coz I knew the first dark hours of pre-dawn was deceiving for how much distance you actually cover, and when Todd guessed 15 mins and I guessed at least 25 he groaned, not wanting to believe it. 40mins later we were still going down, and took another bet, this time Todd said 10mins and I said 15, and after 15mins Todd was leading and passed a sign, where he yelled in dismay "Half a mile to the Ranger Station!?". Finally, we got down at 6pm and Michael signed us out of the book, completing 14 hours on the mountain, over 16 miles and 5000' of vertical gain, and the craziest climbing experience any of us had ever had.
Tony, with good intention, took the shorter road home, which proved a mistake as it was almost constantly winding and turning and Todd got motion sickness. Todd eventually took over driving and had to fight nausea and tiredness on the way back to Denver, where dinner was waiting upon arrival. To my absolute torture, my clothes and gear was of course in the basement, and the stairs down left me breathless with pain much to Todd's amusement. But I got mine back later when I was stretching out in bed, laughing as I heard Todd's voice come down the stairs explaining to Shelly "Why is the baby crying? I don't know, that's just what babies do, they cry for no reason." Abby wanted to play, and so uncle Todd had to stay up and play, while I fell into glorious sleep.
Photos from the trip have been uploaded to Picasa, feel free to have a look at them by clicking below. Also note that both the YouTube videos and the Picasa Album have been mapped, so feel free to have a look at Longs Peak in Google Maps from the mapping links.
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| Pikes & Longs Peaks, Colorado (22-26 August 2007) |
19 July 2007
Austin, Texas, and floating
On the weekend of the 13th-15th of July, I headed down to Austin, Texas to meet up with Jessi who had recently moved there temporarily while she looks for work in Germany. It was a fun-filled weekend, where I was introduced to a favourite sport among the locals.. Toobing!
I had initial plans to go to the Schlitterbahn Water Park in New Braunfels, which is apparently the biggest and best water park in the US. But the word on the street was that the big kid's Schlitterbahn was floating the Guadelupe river (one of many), which involves lots of young people, sun, skin, alcohol and no queues. The lure of hydro-coasters and surf chutes and waterslides was strong, but finally I was convinced.
Saturday morning was stormy but everyone was keen to go, and from when we arrived at midday, loaded with cans of various beers and pre-mixed drinks and margaritas, the weather was fining up. I quickly got the impression that it was rather popular, by the dozens and dozens of people walking around in swimwear and the big warehouse with hundreds of truck inner tubes stacked to the ceiling. $20 got you a tube, with or without a wooden board lashed to the bottom, a bus trip back from the finish, and a tube with a bottom for a cooler and a mesh bag for rubbish.
The river was huge, it reminded me of the Logan Creek at Big Riggen that I floated down on tubes as a kid, only about 20 times the scale. It is fed by a freshwater aquifer that is 68F (20C) all year round, perfectly refreshing on a hot summer day. After the initial traffic jam on the shores while everyone got into the water and into groups, we were off. It was just minutes before we hit the first set of rapids, which turned out to be the most severe of the whole trip!
If you can imagine a scene of absolute chaos, Jessi flipped and scrambled for her tube, I got dunked but stayed upright, the sound of rushing water, everywhere people were calling out, trying to re-group, swimming around to pick up tubes, hats, thongs. There were unopened cans of beer floating down the river at a rate of one every 10 seconds because some poor person had upended their cooler tube, the contents emptying into the river. We lost the contents of the smaller of our two coolers, thank god because my Jimmys were in the big one, and I'd already dropped mine (which sank!) because I was paddling about retrieving 4 other beers that were floating past!
After we re-grouped and resumed drinking, floating in the cool water in the hot afternoon sun through the lush green countryside, it was right up there with some of my most favourite experiences. My waterproof camera drew a fair bit of attention, I had it strapped to my rip cord which was strapped to my key cord in my pocket. So many funny things happen on the river. Jessi was scared of the fearsome snapping turtles (I saw at least a half dozen of them), while she squealed and scrambled to lift her butt out of the water she tried to convince everyone that they could bite your finger off. Some guys had a blow up doll. Others had waterproof speakers. We had to drink from our unnatural hand, if someone spotted you using the other hand they'd cry 'buffalo!' and you'd have to skull/chug the rest. I asked 'why Buffalo? What's that go to do with drinking, or using the wrong hand?' I was missing the point, you could say anything, Buffalo was a country thing. I was in Texas, after all. Guys were doing flips and jumping off a rope swing, I saw two guys with their heads split open, cuts that definitely needed stitches coz they banged their head on a rock. And then with each set of rapids, protect the cooler! Eric and I were ready to put our bodies on the line to save our remaining drinks, only he got swept down the main rapid while I got swept in another direction, the cooler nearly went on its side but he held it down with one hand, the other holding his hat, legs in the air with a classic 'oh sh$!' look on his face. It was legendary.
By the end, several rapids and 4 hours of drinking later, we were all thoroughly plastered, and the last rapid ends quickly and you have to get to the side before you get swept under a low bridge. A girl had drowned under the bridge the day before, and so event organisers sat on the bridge instructing wayward floaters how to safely go under, and cops were walking about. Other staff lugged around 5ft tall bags full of empty cans. I didn't notice until later the little slashes I'd inflicted on my foot. We piled aboard the old school bus that was our ride back to the start, and off we went, at a blistering pace of 15mph, driver had a cowboy hat on, Texas country music blaring, non-stop chatter and shouting, and I thought to myself 'hmm, I'm definitely in Texas.'
Apart from the river float, Austin was absolutely beautiful, with neighbourhoods the likes of which I'd never seen, hands down the best place to live that I've seen since coming to the states. Jessi, her brother Eric and his partner Ali, and their friends made me wanting to stay, and the 6 hour drive back to Todd's house and my home was not as exciting as it usually is.
I have made my first web album of photos with Google's Picasa, which is awesome by the way, and I'm going to use it to share all of my photos from now on. The link for Austin pix is below.
I had initial plans to go to the Schlitterbahn Water Park in New Braunfels, which is apparently the biggest and best water park in the US. But the word on the street was that the big kid's Schlitterbahn was floating the Guadelupe river (one of many), which involves lots of young people, sun, skin, alcohol and no queues. The lure of hydro-coasters and surf chutes and waterslides was strong, but finally I was convinced.
Saturday morning was stormy but everyone was keen to go, and from when we arrived at midday, loaded with cans of various beers and pre-mixed drinks and margaritas, the weather was fining up. I quickly got the impression that it was rather popular, by the dozens and dozens of people walking around in swimwear and the big warehouse with hundreds of truck inner tubes stacked to the ceiling. $20 got you a tube, with or without a wooden board lashed to the bottom, a bus trip back from the finish, and a tube with a bottom for a cooler and a mesh bag for rubbish.
The river was huge, it reminded me of the Logan Creek at Big Riggen that I floated down on tubes as a kid, only about 20 times the scale. It is fed by a freshwater aquifer that is 68F (20C) all year round, perfectly refreshing on a hot summer day. After the initial traffic jam on the shores while everyone got into the water and into groups, we were off. It was just minutes before we hit the first set of rapids, which turned out to be the most severe of the whole trip!
If you can imagine a scene of absolute chaos, Jessi flipped and scrambled for her tube, I got dunked but stayed upright, the sound of rushing water, everywhere people were calling out, trying to re-group, swimming around to pick up tubes, hats, thongs. There were unopened cans of beer floating down the river at a rate of one every 10 seconds because some poor person had upended their cooler tube, the contents emptying into the river. We lost the contents of the smaller of our two coolers, thank god because my Jimmys were in the big one, and I'd already dropped mine (which sank!) because I was paddling about retrieving 4 other beers that were floating past!
After we re-grouped and resumed drinking, floating in the cool water in the hot afternoon sun through the lush green countryside, it was right up there with some of my most favourite experiences. My waterproof camera drew a fair bit of attention, I had it strapped to my rip cord which was strapped to my key cord in my pocket. So many funny things happen on the river. Jessi was scared of the fearsome snapping turtles (I saw at least a half dozen of them), while she squealed and scrambled to lift her butt out of the water she tried to convince everyone that they could bite your finger off. Some guys had a blow up doll. Others had waterproof speakers. We had to drink from our unnatural hand, if someone spotted you using the other hand they'd cry 'buffalo!' and you'd have to skull/chug the rest. I asked 'why Buffalo? What's that go to do with drinking, or using the wrong hand?' I was missing the point, you could say anything, Buffalo was a country thing. I was in Texas, after all. Guys were doing flips and jumping off a rope swing, I saw two guys with their heads split open, cuts that definitely needed stitches coz they banged their head on a rock. And then with each set of rapids, protect the cooler! Eric and I were ready to put our bodies on the line to save our remaining drinks, only he got swept down the main rapid while I got swept in another direction, the cooler nearly went on its side but he held it down with one hand, the other holding his hat, legs in the air with a classic 'oh sh$!' look on his face. It was legendary.
By the end, several rapids and 4 hours of drinking later, we were all thoroughly plastered, and the last rapid ends quickly and you have to get to the side before you get swept under a low bridge. A girl had drowned under the bridge the day before, and so event organisers sat on the bridge instructing wayward floaters how to safely go under, and cops were walking about. Other staff lugged around 5ft tall bags full of empty cans. I didn't notice until later the little slashes I'd inflicted on my foot. We piled aboard the old school bus that was our ride back to the start, and off we went, at a blistering pace of 15mph, driver had a cowboy hat on, Texas country music blaring, non-stop chatter and shouting, and I thought to myself 'hmm, I'm definitely in Texas.'
Apart from the river float, Austin was absolutely beautiful, with neighbourhoods the likes of which I'd never seen, hands down the best place to live that I've seen since coming to the states. Jessi, her brother Eric and his partner Ali, and their friends made me wanting to stay, and the 6 hour drive back to Todd's house and my home was not as exciting as it usually is.
I have made my first web album of photos with Google's Picasa, which is awesome by the way, and I'm going to use it to share all of my photos from now on. The link for Austin pix is below.
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| Austin, Texas (13-15 July 2007) |
15 June 2007
Oklahoma D-Day 2007
For those who want to skip my little story (u slackers) and just check out the photos and videos, go ahead and click the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=dineroseguro
A few weeks ago, at the end of May, I was on the net searching for 4WD destinations within Oklahoma, looking for an easy trail to christen my Jeep. There's not very much, one hit finally claimed to have trails, but off-roading wasn't the main attraction of the place. Called the D-Day Adventure Park, it hosts an annual event named Oklahoma D-Day, which claims to be the largest paintball event in the world. Intrigued I read on, and learnt of how it's classed as 'woods' scenario paintball, with Allies vs Germans in a re-creation of the battles of D-Day 1944 in Normandy. I then noticed with a shock that the start date was less than a week away! June 4th to 10th, it's a week long event with a series of scenarios and skirmishes, including a night game, culminating in the day-long battle of D-Day involving 4000 players!
My other plans for the night went out the window as I read through the facts, history and discussion forums, all the while forming a plan to go, as it was guaranteed to be an experience unlike any other, and it was the 10th anniversary of the event. I found a forum post from a guy named Patrick from Indiana, who had 3 friends drop out recently and was selling cheap tickets. Online registration was ending the next day, and the ticket price of $65 was about to go up to $110. I told Todd, asked him to pass it onto his mates, next day I told a bunch of people at work, the original plan was to go just to the night game taking place the following thursday night. I emailed & left a voice message for Patrick letting him know I was keen for those tickets. Only my work neighbour Kevin actually committed, being too expensive or short-notice for everybody else, and late that night Patrick called me back and I had the tickets for $35 each. Unfortunately, wednesday morning Kevin broke his thumb in an accident at his rowing club when he was moving a boat rack. So plans changed, and I ended up getting my boss to agree to giving me friday off, and I would go solo staying from thursday right through to sunday.
During the remaining days up to thursday I was hunting for gear, I went all the way to Del City (20 miles) in my lunchbreak only to find the army surplus store closed due to family emergency (what can you do). But in Okla city's surplus store I bought camo pants & matching jacket (even with the 552nd AGS insignia patches still sewn on), $15 each. Cheap boots from Wal-Mart for $15, borrowed an esky from Todd, a marker (paintball gun) from Nate with all the gear, and set up homemade fly screens for my Jeep as I would finally test out sleeping in the car.
Struggled through work thursday and scooted early in the arvo to haul ass up to Wyandotte in the NE corner of the state near the Missouri border and Grand Lake. That area is called Green Country, and is quite scenic, where patches of thick forest hang over the roads and rolling hills. It's the most scenic country I've seen since the plains infront of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I got to the D-Day park & met Patrick at the entrance, following him the short distance to the left where he was camped with the rest of Charlie company, 1st Infantry Division. Everyone was camped according to which forces they were assigned to, to improve group coordination, communication and to not disturb others with differing deployment times. I met Travis, Patrick's mate, a likeable bearded 19yr old who looked my age. All I had time to do was queue up for registration, get my blue allied hopper cover (a hopper is the paintball container attatched on top of the marker, which is the gun), watch the introduction video, jump in my camo, grab Travis' spare Tippmann 68 Carbine and head over to chrono. 'Chrono' is firing the marker through a chronograph so that it shoots paintballs at 250fps (feet per second). This was lower than the standard 285fps because the night game involved close quarters combat, sometimes point blank. After chrono, we went to the assembly area to form up with Charlie company.
I was amazed at the number of players, everyone fully decked out in battle gear vastly exceeding anything I'd ever seen at a paintball game, looking seriously fearsome. At least I looked the part, except these guys had belts strapped with pods of paintball ammo, allowing them to easily carry several hundred, even 1000 paintballs. the Allies had won the toss apparently and elected to assault a place called Coleville, the Germans defending. In the failing light, our company marched off along the road through the forest to the area on the map that represents Coleville, a large circular clearing containing concrete bunkers, tubes, and grassy trenches and mounds, with a single flagpole near a tower in the center flying the red German flag. It was very intimidating looking through my yellow visor to see all of the German forces dug in all throughout Coleville right to the outermost trenches, some barely 10m from the Allied lines! As we encircled them, exchanging humourous trash talk, I had a feeling I was jumping in the deep end. I was to find out later that the numbers were roughly 500 on 500, all contained within Coleville, less than 200m across. The stars were coming out, the night air was warm, the last twilight glow had 15mins left to live, and the German trenches crawled with silhouettes moving about. Referees stood spread out between the lines in bright fluorescent clothing that begged 'don't shoot me'. A megaphone announcement sounded 1 minute to game on, and all the movement stopped; everyone was ready. I focused on my objective, the nearest mound, left of straight ahead about 15m away...
Game on was an explosion of sound, the combined noise of overhead fireworks, booming concussion explosions, shouting, the rumble of soft thudding boots running on grass, and an amazing crackle of gunfire. I could hear my breathing inside my mask as I sprinted with a couple dozen allies for the mound and half-dove to the ground behind it, those who didn't fit lay flat on the ground behind. I lost Patrick and Travis within the first minute and didn't see them for the rest of the game. The sound of gunfire was constant until the last glow of twilight had gone, and then it reduced to sporadic popping and short bursts. During the dark, quieter periods, troops strategised, grouped and made advances. You couldn't see much beyond the nearest 5-10m. But every few minutes, the organisers would fire off some kind of pyrotechnics, the best of which were flares. Suddenly a whizzing orange light would shoot up from the forest line high into the air to the windward side of Coleville, and people would start shouting "Flare, Flare!" as a sign to either get ready to shoot, or take cover. The flare would fly 100m high I guess, and then there'd be a pop (parachute deployed) and then gradually over about 5 seconds, an eerie orange glow illuminated everything and everyone around you. Every single flare was the trigger for a massive firefight that would last a minute until the flare burned out, and the scene would reduce back to darkness, the gunfire reducing again to bursts and pops shortly afterwards. Travis later told me he was in the middle of crawling prone on the ground between trenches when a flare went off, and he just laid still and somehow wasn't seen (or shot). It sure was a spectacle, on a couple of occasions I stayed behind cover and simply watched, as a flare began burning and illuminated dozens of allied players all laying on the ground around me, half of them shooting like crazy, some of them getting shot with blotches of orange paint, turning and raising their gun in the air and getting quickly out of the line of fire. The din of gunfire was as if you filled a microwave with popcorn and turned it on, multiplied by 100x. Paintballs whizzed through the grass just above my head, and dozens more spattered on the concrete tube just above & next to me where a couple of Allies hid behind, leaning out to shoot briefly before pulling their bodies back and drawing heavy fire.
I heard a few good stories later about the gameplay, apparently a lone German came from the side upon a trench full of unsuspecting Allies in the dark, and after asking them if they were Allies, he ran along the trench barrel tagging about 8 players before someone shot him. A barrel tag is where, in extreme close quarters (ie. next to each other), instead of shooting at point blank, you either demand surrender or you touch the opponent with your gun. Patrick also told me he was involved in probably the biggest Allied push of the night towards the flagpole near the end of the game, and he ran and jumped and touched the flag, but got 'lit up' (slang for being shot several times) by the surrounding Germans. I got shot a couple of times, resulting in trips to the 'Dead Zone' where dead people wait until every quarter hour a field commander regrouped everyone and marched them back out to re-insert into battle. After an hour of play, a fierce storm with constant lightning had been approaching from the south, adding to the amazing atmosphere as flashes of lightning mixed with fireworks. But before the Allies could take the flagpole, drop the red and raise the blue flag, the game was called 45mins early on account of the impending severe storm, so the Germans won one of their few victories of the event.
It turned out to be one hell of a stormy night. Half of the campers had left earlier in the day ditching the night game, booking out motels for miles around, as everyone had advance warning throughout the day. Those who remained (the better half) were told by organisers on the PA to secure all their gear and take cover in their 've-hicles'. I'd barely had enough time to walk back, snap some lightning pics and change when the first storm hit. What's funny was the boys had put together a neat pile of wood and were attempting to light a big fire, squirting something flammable onto it just as the first gusts of wind blew through. It lifted all this dust from the road and I rushed to close my car doors and jump inside, and then the rain hit and the guys went scrambling for their cars and the fire was out in seconds. I ate dinner (trail mix sandwiches) safe inside while outside it all went pretty nuts for about 10mins. Then it was over, organisers drove around announcing it was over (duh), and said there was a 'slight chance of some more rain but the worst had gone'. I was woken up at about 12:30am by a second, even bigger storm, with constant lightning, wind rocking the car and rain lashing the sides. I could see, with each flash of lightning, the big-top in the center of the grounds waving about wildly, directly upwind of me. Then my phone rang and it was Jessi, she was out clubbing and had seen a tornado warning issued for my county and called to see whether I was in the storm. I said 'yeah, im pretty sure we're in it' as the wind gusted in a circle around my car so rain lashed the left side, then paused, then the right side. I spoke to her for a while and watched the tents around me being blown flat by gusts of wind, and while I was glad I was sleeping in the Jeep, it was tense watching that big top, for if it blew apart, who knows what destruction it would cause for the tents all around me.
Finally, it was all over, and I heard raised voices, some dude was complaining loudly and swearing about all his gear being soaked. I was thinking about telling him to give it a rest when he yelled 'nobody told me I was in the f%&$#ng amphibious unit!' I laughed out loud in my car and greatly lifted my opinion of him, and found out the next day it was actually Travis! Yeah, the next day I woke up, and people were laying all of their gear out in the sun, some tents had collapsed, and news was getting around that there had actually been a tornado a few miles away approaching Wyandotte, but it'd dissipated before it hit any inhabited areas. It was the second time in the 10yr history of Okla D-Day that a tornado was reported in the vicinity during the event. One family came back and opened their tent to find ankle deep water filling the downhill half of their floor.
So friday was basically about cleanup, gearing up for the next day's game, and the parade. I bought my case of paintballs, $65 for 2000 rounds, carried as 4 tickets that you swapped for 500 round bags. I also picked up a belt that held 5 pods, and bought 5 pods, all for $14! I also had to buy a barrel condom for safety (incase my gun accidentally went off). There were amazing guns for sale, ranging from $25 to $1300+, and a ridiculous range of accessories, the paintball market is huge in the USA. After lunch there was some entertainment, rumour got around the camp like wildfire that there was a dance-off going on. Sure enough a huge crowd was gathered around 2 pairs of girls and 2 pairs of guys, dancing for some prize. Two teenage girls in hot pants were trying to out-do two 21yr old girls decked out in camo and khaki, while two guys were drawing laughs from the crowd with silly antics and the other two guys basically sucked. The crowd was 99% male so you can imagine the calls and comments being made. The organiser had a good sense of humour, it was hot and the dance-off had been going a while, so he called for some water to hydrate the dancers, reminding everyone again of the importance of hydration which had been drilled into us all in the intro video. A big drum of water was carried out, but they poured it all over the girls instead of letting them drink it. One of the younger girls cried out 'I have white pants on!' The announcer had to cut in above the cheers of the audience, 'hydration is important, everyone please be reminded, this is a family event...' and they kept up pouring water. Patrick's camera batteries ran out in the middle of filming and he actually ran back to the car and got spares! The camo girls won as obvious audience favourites, coz they never stopped dancing.
The parade was very impressive, if you can imagine thousands of people arrayed in full battle gear, some in real military uniforms, carrying flags and banners, standing on trucks and tanks, chanting catch-crys and marching. I assembled with the rest of Charlie Company under Captain Sulley, 1st Infantry Division Charlie Company Commander. Also with us was Master Sergeant Spike, 1st Infantry Division Beach Commander, who led most of our shouts that went along the lines of 'Who are we!?' 'First I.D.!' We also marched near General Sulley Sr, Allies Omaha Beach General. The speeches were good, the owner & founder, Dewayne Convirs, talked about the history and heritage of the event, telling of why they hold it, to acknowledge the sacrifice of those in the name of freedom, and of course the patriotism, paying tribute to the American flag and the cross atop the flag flying high in the middle of the grounds.
So after turning in early, we woke up not long after dawn the next morning for 'the big game.'
It was quiet and serious when I got up, people were progressively getting up and going about getting ready. I had brekky, strapped my feet with duck tape to avoid blisters, and geared up. My kit involved: camo pants, my D-Day shirt (haha lucky I proof read my posts, I just noticed a missing 'r'), camo jacket, socks & boots, 2 water bottles in leg cargo pockets, car keys & paintball tickets in breast pocket, camera and hanky in left leg pocket, my ammo belt with 5 pods of over 500 paintballs, my hat on backwards and mask on forwards and my marker. I have no idea how much that all weighed but it was a fair bit. But as for others; I saw a kid with 4 paint grenades and 2 smoke grenades hanging off the front of his utility jacket, he was as wide with gear as he was tall. Sgt Spike was lugging around a yellow smoke canister the size of a fire extinguisher, weighing several kg, strapped over his shoulder. It contained enough smoke to blot out a huge area for 15-20 mins, probably as effective as a half dozen smoke grenades. In the Allied assembly area we witnessed combat divisions loading onto troop carriers and buses bound for Utah beach, while General Sulley gave us our pep talk.. "By lunchtime at noon, I want to be eating my sandwich on the top of Omaha beach!"
Omaha beach was to be my theatre of battle, along with the 1st I.D., and we 9 engineers of the 238th Mechanical, of Charlie Company, walked out to our staging area about 1km away. I had to laugh at one kid, I photographed him walking down surrounded by adults twice his size, he was armed to the teeth, carrying a beach ball! No doubt a sly-humoured Dad was nearby. Initially my crew and I were slotted to enter the fight on the second wave from the land-based drop 'boats', but at the last minute Capt Sulley called on the radio and needed our unit over at the water-based boat. While we were relocating, the battle started, and the forest filled with shouting and crackling gunfire. We were about the 3rd or 4th wave of reinforcements to go over the water boat, which was a wooden ferry designed just like the amphibious troop carriers seen in Saving Private Ryan, with a front ramp that dropped onto the shore. We were informed that we were invulnerable until we cleared the first trench line, then we'd enter play, and getting shot would result in up to half an hour at the dead zone. We boarded and our boat was half full, everyone huddled on knees against the sides of the boat, as we slowly ferried across the 30m pond to Omaha beach. I was filming the entire time, we approached through smoke, as we were about to land a spray of paint was coming off the front of the boat, then the ramp dropped and we ran like crazy under heavy fire to the first bunker. I jumped to the ground against a small wall barely 2 feet high protecting my camera, I got shot at least 3 times, and I got shot on my pods, my marker and my legs while I laid in that spot. I then found out that my gun wasn't shooting! Turned out it had leaked during the night and was out of gas. I had to leave the battle, extremely disappointed, and hurry off to diagnose the problem, finding the gun needed some repairs. Fortunately I ran into Patrick who gave me his car keys and I went and got Travis' Tippmann which I used on Thurs night. Upon my return, the Allies had advanced at record pace, and we were already half way up the 100ft high hill.
I'd never witnessed anything like it in my life. It was full trench warfare, you plucked up the courage to get up and run from one trench to another, every move drew enemy fire, I could see the paintballs coming at me. Once I jumped into a trench that was shin-deep with water without realising, I was so focused on getting to cover, and another time I crawled prone for 8m through mud to get a clear shooting position at the corner of a trench. You don't care. You're in the game. The biggest paintball game in the world, adrenaline pumping, sweating from every pore you've got, mud and minor injuries from jumping and crawling didn't matter, all you wanted to do was shoot the enemy. Advance, re-group, and charge. Charging was the best rush, although it resulted in me getting hit a couple times. Towards the top of the hill, the front lines widened out and became two fronts, one to left (Coleville) and the other to the right (St. Laurent). Allied forces were spread out for probably 200m, but I was in the push for Coleville.
It was hard to imagine the scale of the battle, everything I was seeing was only a fraction of what was going on, while other Allied forces fought for Utah beach to the north and Sword beach to the south, over a km away. Some members of the Allied command structure would walk around behind our front lines assessing the battle, and radio in reports to Allied command back at the campgrounds, where I found out later that there were military strategists plotting the fight on maps and directing resources. The field commanders would then gather ex-dead men who had served their timeout, give them new objectives, and re-insert them to reinforce gaps in the front line. Everywhere they went barking orders, motivating the troops, spurring them to advance or defend, and they were remarkably effective. I went through my first 500 paintballs and died and went to cash in a ticket and gas up my Marker bottle with CO2. I passed General Sulley on the way back, and heard updates about the battle and how we were setting records, then he headed off, fully geared and carrying a radio pack; he'd had enough of strategy and wanted to see some action. It was inspiring!
I ran into a few more from my outfit, and we exchanged stories. In fact, all conversations I overheard were related to the battle, about heroics, about strategy, about equipment. I discovered I'd lost a pod and couldn't carry my full payload of 500, but I brought the bag of up the hill anyway. After getting to the main Omaha hill bunker, finding the Germans were pushing us backwards (coz I wasn't there, tsk tsk), I ran into Capt Sulley. He was known to a lot of soldiers and everyone supported him and followed his orders wherever he went, he was a very effective leader. Patrick later joked to me how Sulley had just finished high school, and he was gonna find him after the game and congratulate him on graduating. I offered my spare paintballs in the bag to him and he gladly accepted. After reloading, we all came under fire from a group of advancing Germans that entered parallel trenches to the right. Eventually, we pushed them back, the Allies won the hill, and then we pushed across the open to the town of Coleville. A German tank came upon us spraying what looked like orange coloured water at our troops but amidst everyone's screams of 'Tank, Tank! Take cover!' an anti-tank crew came to our rescue & shot it with the special anti-tank paint before it did much damage. This part of the battle held another of my highlights of the day. I ran forwards on the edge of our line to where there was only 2 Allied guys putting up a hell of a fight, I guessed we were outnumbered 4 to 1. I crawled to their right and into a concrete tube, which then had another concrete tube on the end of it at a slight angle. This gave me 2 gaps in the sides to shoot out of from almost complete protection, and the end of the tube to shoot in any direction. Germans were running across a clearing on the edge of my range, but fortunately none looked into the tube (they were busy getting to cover). I was able to alternate between the cracks and the tube end, scampering back and forward in the tube on my knees, I drew fire numerous times without dying, and managed to take out 3 guys who'd shot at me, and 4 others who didn't know I was there until it was too late.
Another highlight of the day was mid-afternoon, when Allies had control of Coleville and were pushing north through forest next to St. Laurent towards the Airfield. After a big standoff across a gully in this forest, we finally got the upper hand and shot the Germans out of their foothold on the opposite edge of the forest. From there they went into chaos and retreated into the Airfield, and I was at the front of the charge. Allied forces threw at least a half-dozen smoke grenades into the clearing, and I advanced from the forest across the clearing under the cover of smoke, walking and firing toward scrambling German forces. When I drew fire, I quickly moved back behind the smoke screen, sidestepped and crouched, somehow I was lucky enough not to get shot. I'd kick the grenades further forward (they were too hot to touch) and I was at the front of the biggest advance of the day, we took 100m of ground from the forest out through the Airfield in a matter of 5-10mins, and I got some good footage.
The rest of the day was fun but otherwise not spectacular. I followed the advance all the way up to Utah beach, which we finally took in the last minutes of the game in a small skirmish. I shot my gun until it ran out of gas and wouldn't fire any more. Later I was to find out that the Allies had won a major victory, with 2400 points over the German's 1400 points, points being awarded for achieving objectives within set time limits. I'd had plenty of water, but was seriously hot in the afternoon sun and 80-something degree heat (I'm guessing 29C). I was soaked in sweat but couldn't take my mask off even after the game, while still out on the field of play. I slowly walked back up the hill toward the Airfield dead zone, several hundred metres away, and by the end I wasn't walking straight. I spent about 5 minutes fumbling the buttons of my shirt jacket while walking before I got it off. I walked through the meshed entrance, pulled my mask off for the first time in a couple hours, found a flagpole and sagged against it. I was so stuffed I couldn't bend over to sit down, I slid down the pole till I fell on my backside. I reckon I was close to collapse. I pulled my camera out and got someone to photograph me, more for my own amusement later, as I'd never felt so exhausted and hot in my life. I'd seen the event take its toll in heat stressed players throughout the day. Occasionally shouts would go out calling for ceasefire, and eventually within half a minute everyone would stop shooting while someone was evacuated either for dehydration, heat stress or injury (rolled ankles etc). I was re-inserting once when an ATV drove towards me, the masked driver with one hand on the handlebar, the other behind holding a chubby fellow upright from falling off, as his head lolled about in a state of near unconsciousness. I sat for 15mins recovering, drinking the last of my water, trying to cool off. Just about everyone had headed back by that time, so I got up & walked off again. A guy drove up with a troop carrier and called out if I wanted a lift, I declined, 'no thanks mate, I walked all the way down here, I'm gonna walk all the way back'. Probably the heat stress made me stupid but for some reason I was determined to walk back under my own steam. It was a nice walk though, got to see all behind the German lines, and where all the tanks drove about etc. Managed not to get lost, and when I got back to camp, I sat down for 20 mins with a cracking headache, took two paracetamol, moved my Jeep out of the afternoon sun into the shade, stripped to shorts and passed out in the back for an hour. I felt better when I got up, Travis & I jumped in Patrick's car and we drove off 20mins to grab dinner, then headed to a motel they knew of with a pool, and I swam in a pool for the first time since leaving home. Of course, at the motel we ran into people from the event (all motels were booked out for miles around), and exchanged stories with a few dudes from the French Resistance (a division of the Allies). We then hit Wal Mart, and Patrick and Travis were dumbfounded that I had never heard of Smores, America's most famous campfire snack, and so they grabbed marshmallows, hersheys chocolate, and crackers and some YooHoo chocolate drinks (a weird drink, like a chocolate milkshake, but there is no milk!). When we got back to camp, we joined our local 1st ID campers around the fire, I got out the laptop and loaded the day's footage and everyone crowded around...
The next morning I got up, packed, got everyone's contact details, said goodbye and headed off, having made good friends with Patrick and Travis, who have decided they are coming to Australia and out to Skirmish at Mudgeeraba and the three of us will take on whoever's there and show those bogans how to play real paintball.
I headed off, but not straight home; I had to detour briefly for a small town which was only minutes away. It was a strange hint of fate that D-Day was so close to this place, which I'd learned about shortly after coming to Oklahoma, but had no idea whether i'd be bothered making the considerable trek out to this corner of the state. My friends & family reading this would know that I come from a small cosy beachside suburb on the Gold Coast named Miami, nestled between Nobbys and North Burleigh. Well, Oklahoma also has a small country town that goes by the name Miami! But these Okies, they don't pronounce it Miami, it's Mi-am-uhh, as I was corrected. So I cruised through town & took a bunch of photos for folks back home, and wondered whether a bona-fide resident, not just a resident but a kid raised in Miami QLD Australia had ever been to Miami Oklahoma. I stood outside the Coleman theatre, Miami's claim to fame, wherein is housed the original Wurlitzer Pipe Organ, which by original I assume they mean the first. It was cool, the street intersections had a single 4-direction hanging traffic light, and I passed a community noticeboard for Miami High School. The best thing in the whole town was a budget self-advertsing sign painted on the wall of a business facing a gas station, which simply read 'Stuff N Things'. I saw that, and approvingly thought 'these Okie Miami locals are alright', before jumping back in the Jeep, onto the Interstate and back to Norman.
And that was my adventure to Oklahoma's North East and the world's largest paintball event, I guess I'm a veteran of sorts, and am I ever stoked that I discovered it by chance. Full credit to Dewayne Convirs and his hard working crew and supporting sponsors who put the show on every year in an awesome display of planning and organisation. And more importantly, an enormous thank you to Patrick, Travis, Nate and the other fellas who lended me equipment and time, without you all I wouldn't have been able to do it.
My photos and videos of Oklahoma D-Day 2007 have been posted here :
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=dineroseguro
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| D-Day, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (7-10 June 2007) |
A few weeks ago, at the end of May, I was on the net searching for 4WD destinations within Oklahoma, looking for an easy trail to christen my Jeep. There's not very much, one hit finally claimed to have trails, but off-roading wasn't the main attraction of the place. Called the D-Day Adventure Park, it hosts an annual event named Oklahoma D-Day, which claims to be the largest paintball event in the world. Intrigued I read on, and learnt of how it's classed as 'woods' scenario paintball, with Allies vs Germans in a re-creation of the battles of D-Day 1944 in Normandy. I then noticed with a shock that the start date was less than a week away! June 4th to 10th, it's a week long event with a series of scenarios and skirmishes, including a night game, culminating in the day-long battle of D-Day involving 4000 players!
My other plans for the night went out the window as I read through the facts, history and discussion forums, all the while forming a plan to go, as it was guaranteed to be an experience unlike any other, and it was the 10th anniversary of the event. I found a forum post from a guy named Patrick from Indiana, who had 3 friends drop out recently and was selling cheap tickets. Online registration was ending the next day, and the ticket price of $65 was about to go up to $110. I told Todd, asked him to pass it onto his mates, next day I told a bunch of people at work, the original plan was to go just to the night game taking place the following thursday night. I emailed & left a voice message for Patrick letting him know I was keen for those tickets. Only my work neighbour Kevin actually committed, being too expensive or short-notice for everybody else, and late that night Patrick called me back and I had the tickets for $35 each. Unfortunately, wednesday morning Kevin broke his thumb in an accident at his rowing club when he was moving a boat rack. So plans changed, and I ended up getting my boss to agree to giving me friday off, and I would go solo staying from thursday right through to sunday.
During the remaining days up to thursday I was hunting for gear, I went all the way to Del City (20 miles) in my lunchbreak only to find the army surplus store closed due to family emergency (what can you do). But in Okla city's surplus store I bought camo pants & matching jacket (even with the 552nd AGS insignia patches still sewn on), $15 each. Cheap boots from Wal-Mart for $15, borrowed an esky from Todd, a marker (paintball gun) from Nate with all the gear, and set up homemade fly screens for my Jeep as I would finally test out sleeping in the car.
Struggled through work thursday and scooted early in the arvo to haul ass up to Wyandotte in the NE corner of the state near the Missouri border and Grand Lake. That area is called Green Country, and is quite scenic, where patches of thick forest hang over the roads and rolling hills. It's the most scenic country I've seen since the plains infront of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I got to the D-Day park & met Patrick at the entrance, following him the short distance to the left where he was camped with the rest of Charlie company, 1st Infantry Division. Everyone was camped according to which forces they were assigned to, to improve group coordination, communication and to not disturb others with differing deployment times. I met Travis, Patrick's mate, a likeable bearded 19yr old who looked my age. All I had time to do was queue up for registration, get my blue allied hopper cover (a hopper is the paintball container attatched on top of the marker, which is the gun), watch the introduction video, jump in my camo, grab Travis' spare Tippmann 68 Carbine and head over to chrono. 'Chrono' is firing the marker through a chronograph so that it shoots paintballs at 250fps (feet per second). This was lower than the standard 285fps because the night game involved close quarters combat, sometimes point blank. After chrono, we went to the assembly area to form up with Charlie company.
I was amazed at the number of players, everyone fully decked out in battle gear vastly exceeding anything I'd ever seen at a paintball game, looking seriously fearsome. At least I looked the part, except these guys had belts strapped with pods of paintball ammo, allowing them to easily carry several hundred, even 1000 paintballs. the Allies had won the toss apparently and elected to assault a place called Coleville, the Germans defending. In the failing light, our company marched off along the road through the forest to the area on the map that represents Coleville, a large circular clearing containing concrete bunkers, tubes, and grassy trenches and mounds, with a single flagpole near a tower in the center flying the red German flag. It was very intimidating looking through my yellow visor to see all of the German forces dug in all throughout Coleville right to the outermost trenches, some barely 10m from the Allied lines! As we encircled them, exchanging humourous trash talk, I had a feeling I was jumping in the deep end. I was to find out later that the numbers were roughly 500 on 500, all contained within Coleville, less than 200m across. The stars were coming out, the night air was warm, the last twilight glow had 15mins left to live, and the German trenches crawled with silhouettes moving about. Referees stood spread out between the lines in bright fluorescent clothing that begged 'don't shoot me'. A megaphone announcement sounded 1 minute to game on, and all the movement stopped; everyone was ready. I focused on my objective, the nearest mound, left of straight ahead about 15m away...
Game on was an explosion of sound, the combined noise of overhead fireworks, booming concussion explosions, shouting, the rumble of soft thudding boots running on grass, and an amazing crackle of gunfire. I could hear my breathing inside my mask as I sprinted with a couple dozen allies for the mound and half-dove to the ground behind it, those who didn't fit lay flat on the ground behind. I lost Patrick and Travis within the first minute and didn't see them for the rest of the game. The sound of gunfire was constant until the last glow of twilight had gone, and then it reduced to sporadic popping and short bursts. During the dark, quieter periods, troops strategised, grouped and made advances. You couldn't see much beyond the nearest 5-10m. But every few minutes, the organisers would fire off some kind of pyrotechnics, the best of which were flares. Suddenly a whizzing orange light would shoot up from the forest line high into the air to the windward side of Coleville, and people would start shouting "Flare, Flare!" as a sign to either get ready to shoot, or take cover. The flare would fly 100m high I guess, and then there'd be a pop (parachute deployed) and then gradually over about 5 seconds, an eerie orange glow illuminated everything and everyone around you. Every single flare was the trigger for a massive firefight that would last a minute until the flare burned out, and the scene would reduce back to darkness, the gunfire reducing again to bursts and pops shortly afterwards. Travis later told me he was in the middle of crawling prone on the ground between trenches when a flare went off, and he just laid still and somehow wasn't seen (or shot). It sure was a spectacle, on a couple of occasions I stayed behind cover and simply watched, as a flare began burning and illuminated dozens of allied players all laying on the ground around me, half of them shooting like crazy, some of them getting shot with blotches of orange paint, turning and raising their gun in the air and getting quickly out of the line of fire. The din of gunfire was as if you filled a microwave with popcorn and turned it on, multiplied by 100x. Paintballs whizzed through the grass just above my head, and dozens more spattered on the concrete tube just above & next to me where a couple of Allies hid behind, leaning out to shoot briefly before pulling their bodies back and drawing heavy fire.
I heard a few good stories later about the gameplay, apparently a lone German came from the side upon a trench full of unsuspecting Allies in the dark, and after asking them if they were Allies, he ran along the trench barrel tagging about 8 players before someone shot him. A barrel tag is where, in extreme close quarters (ie. next to each other), instead of shooting at point blank, you either demand surrender or you touch the opponent with your gun. Patrick also told me he was involved in probably the biggest Allied push of the night towards the flagpole near the end of the game, and he ran and jumped and touched the flag, but got 'lit up' (slang for being shot several times) by the surrounding Germans. I got shot a couple of times, resulting in trips to the 'Dead Zone' where dead people wait until every quarter hour a field commander regrouped everyone and marched them back out to re-insert into battle. After an hour of play, a fierce storm with constant lightning had been approaching from the south, adding to the amazing atmosphere as flashes of lightning mixed with fireworks. But before the Allies could take the flagpole, drop the red and raise the blue flag, the game was called 45mins early on account of the impending severe storm, so the Germans won one of their few victories of the event.
It turned out to be one hell of a stormy night. Half of the campers had left earlier in the day ditching the night game, booking out motels for miles around, as everyone had advance warning throughout the day. Those who remained (the better half) were told by organisers on the PA to secure all their gear and take cover in their 've-hicles'. I'd barely had enough time to walk back, snap some lightning pics and change when the first storm hit. What's funny was the boys had put together a neat pile of wood and were attempting to light a big fire, squirting something flammable onto it just as the first gusts of wind blew through. It lifted all this dust from the road and I rushed to close my car doors and jump inside, and then the rain hit and the guys went scrambling for their cars and the fire was out in seconds. I ate dinner (trail mix sandwiches) safe inside while outside it all went pretty nuts for about 10mins. Then it was over, organisers drove around announcing it was over (duh), and said there was a 'slight chance of some more rain but the worst had gone'. I was woken up at about 12:30am by a second, even bigger storm, with constant lightning, wind rocking the car and rain lashing the sides. I could see, with each flash of lightning, the big-top in the center of the grounds waving about wildly, directly upwind of me. Then my phone rang and it was Jessi, she was out clubbing and had seen a tornado warning issued for my county and called to see whether I was in the storm. I said 'yeah, im pretty sure we're in it' as the wind gusted in a circle around my car so rain lashed the left side, then paused, then the right side. I spoke to her for a while and watched the tents around me being blown flat by gusts of wind, and while I was glad I was sleeping in the Jeep, it was tense watching that big top, for if it blew apart, who knows what destruction it would cause for the tents all around me.
Finally, it was all over, and I heard raised voices, some dude was complaining loudly and swearing about all his gear being soaked. I was thinking about telling him to give it a rest when he yelled 'nobody told me I was in the f%&$#ng amphibious unit!' I laughed out loud in my car and greatly lifted my opinion of him, and found out the next day it was actually Travis! Yeah, the next day I woke up, and people were laying all of their gear out in the sun, some tents had collapsed, and news was getting around that there had actually been a tornado a few miles away approaching Wyandotte, but it'd dissipated before it hit any inhabited areas. It was the second time in the 10yr history of Okla D-Day that a tornado was reported in the vicinity during the event. One family came back and opened their tent to find ankle deep water filling the downhill half of their floor.
So friday was basically about cleanup, gearing up for the next day's game, and the parade. I bought my case of paintballs, $65 for 2000 rounds, carried as 4 tickets that you swapped for 500 round bags. I also picked up a belt that held 5 pods, and bought 5 pods, all for $14! I also had to buy a barrel condom for safety (incase my gun accidentally went off). There were amazing guns for sale, ranging from $25 to $1300+, and a ridiculous range of accessories, the paintball market is huge in the USA. After lunch there was some entertainment, rumour got around the camp like wildfire that there was a dance-off going on. Sure enough a huge crowd was gathered around 2 pairs of girls and 2 pairs of guys, dancing for some prize. Two teenage girls in hot pants were trying to out-do two 21yr old girls decked out in camo and khaki, while two guys were drawing laughs from the crowd with silly antics and the other two guys basically sucked. The crowd was 99% male so you can imagine the calls and comments being made. The organiser had a good sense of humour, it was hot and the dance-off had been going a while, so he called for some water to hydrate the dancers, reminding everyone again of the importance of hydration which had been drilled into us all in the intro video. A big drum of water was carried out, but they poured it all over the girls instead of letting them drink it. One of the younger girls cried out 'I have white pants on!' The announcer had to cut in above the cheers of the audience, 'hydration is important, everyone please be reminded, this is a family event...' and they kept up pouring water. Patrick's camera batteries ran out in the middle of filming and he actually ran back to the car and got spares! The camo girls won as obvious audience favourites, coz they never stopped dancing.
The parade was very impressive, if you can imagine thousands of people arrayed in full battle gear, some in real military uniforms, carrying flags and banners, standing on trucks and tanks, chanting catch-crys and marching. I assembled with the rest of Charlie Company under Captain Sulley, 1st Infantry Division Charlie Company Commander. Also with us was Master Sergeant Spike, 1st Infantry Division Beach Commander, who led most of our shouts that went along the lines of 'Who are we!?' 'First I.D.!' We also marched near General Sulley Sr, Allies Omaha Beach General. The speeches were good, the owner & founder, Dewayne Convirs, talked about the history and heritage of the event, telling of why they hold it, to acknowledge the sacrifice of those in the name of freedom, and of course the patriotism, paying tribute to the American flag and the cross atop the flag flying high in the middle of the grounds.
So after turning in early, we woke up not long after dawn the next morning for 'the big game.'
It was quiet and serious when I got up, people were progressively getting up and going about getting ready. I had brekky, strapped my feet with duck tape to avoid blisters, and geared up. My kit involved: camo pants, my D-Day shirt (haha lucky I proof read my posts, I just noticed a missing 'r'), camo jacket, socks & boots, 2 water bottles in leg cargo pockets, car keys & paintball tickets in breast pocket, camera and hanky in left leg pocket, my ammo belt with 5 pods of over 500 paintballs, my hat on backwards and mask on forwards and my marker. I have no idea how much that all weighed but it was a fair bit. But as for others; I saw a kid with 4 paint grenades and 2 smoke grenades hanging off the front of his utility jacket, he was as wide with gear as he was tall. Sgt Spike was lugging around a yellow smoke canister the size of a fire extinguisher, weighing several kg, strapped over his shoulder. It contained enough smoke to blot out a huge area for 15-20 mins, probably as effective as a half dozen smoke grenades. In the Allied assembly area we witnessed combat divisions loading onto troop carriers and buses bound for Utah beach, while General Sulley gave us our pep talk.. "By lunchtime at noon, I want to be eating my sandwich on the top of Omaha beach!"
Omaha beach was to be my theatre of battle, along with the 1st I.D., and we 9 engineers of the 238th Mechanical, of Charlie Company, walked out to our staging area about 1km away. I had to laugh at one kid, I photographed him walking down surrounded by adults twice his size, he was armed to the teeth, carrying a beach ball! No doubt a sly-humoured Dad was nearby. Initially my crew and I were slotted to enter the fight on the second wave from the land-based drop 'boats', but at the last minute Capt Sulley called on the radio and needed our unit over at the water-based boat. While we were relocating, the battle started, and the forest filled with shouting and crackling gunfire. We were about the 3rd or 4th wave of reinforcements to go over the water boat, which was a wooden ferry designed just like the amphibious troop carriers seen in Saving Private Ryan, with a front ramp that dropped onto the shore. We were informed that we were invulnerable until we cleared the first trench line, then we'd enter play, and getting shot would result in up to half an hour at the dead zone. We boarded and our boat was half full, everyone huddled on knees against the sides of the boat, as we slowly ferried across the 30m pond to Omaha beach. I was filming the entire time, we approached through smoke, as we were about to land a spray of paint was coming off the front of the boat, then the ramp dropped and we ran like crazy under heavy fire to the first bunker. I jumped to the ground against a small wall barely 2 feet high protecting my camera, I got shot at least 3 times, and I got shot on my pods, my marker and my legs while I laid in that spot. I then found out that my gun wasn't shooting! Turned out it had leaked during the night and was out of gas. I had to leave the battle, extremely disappointed, and hurry off to diagnose the problem, finding the gun needed some repairs. Fortunately I ran into Patrick who gave me his car keys and I went and got Travis' Tippmann which I used on Thurs night. Upon my return, the Allies had advanced at record pace, and we were already half way up the 100ft high hill.
I'd never witnessed anything like it in my life. It was full trench warfare, you plucked up the courage to get up and run from one trench to another, every move drew enemy fire, I could see the paintballs coming at me. Once I jumped into a trench that was shin-deep with water without realising, I was so focused on getting to cover, and another time I crawled prone for 8m through mud to get a clear shooting position at the corner of a trench. You don't care. You're in the game. The biggest paintball game in the world, adrenaline pumping, sweating from every pore you've got, mud and minor injuries from jumping and crawling didn't matter, all you wanted to do was shoot the enemy. Advance, re-group, and charge. Charging was the best rush, although it resulted in me getting hit a couple times. Towards the top of the hill, the front lines widened out and became two fronts, one to left (Coleville) and the other to the right (St. Laurent). Allied forces were spread out for probably 200m, but I was in the push for Coleville.
It was hard to imagine the scale of the battle, everything I was seeing was only a fraction of what was going on, while other Allied forces fought for Utah beach to the north and Sword beach to the south, over a km away. Some members of the Allied command structure would walk around behind our front lines assessing the battle, and radio in reports to Allied command back at the campgrounds, where I found out later that there were military strategists plotting the fight on maps and directing resources. The field commanders would then gather ex-dead men who had served their timeout, give them new objectives, and re-insert them to reinforce gaps in the front line. Everywhere they went barking orders, motivating the troops, spurring them to advance or defend, and they were remarkably effective. I went through my first 500 paintballs and died and went to cash in a ticket and gas up my Marker bottle with CO2. I passed General Sulley on the way back, and heard updates about the battle and how we were setting records, then he headed off, fully geared and carrying a radio pack; he'd had enough of strategy and wanted to see some action. It was inspiring!
I ran into a few more from my outfit, and we exchanged stories. In fact, all conversations I overheard were related to the battle, about heroics, about strategy, about equipment. I discovered I'd lost a pod and couldn't carry my full payload of 500, but I brought the bag of up the hill anyway. After getting to the main Omaha hill bunker, finding the Germans were pushing us backwards (coz I wasn't there, tsk tsk), I ran into Capt Sulley. He was known to a lot of soldiers and everyone supported him and followed his orders wherever he went, he was a very effective leader. Patrick later joked to me how Sulley had just finished high school, and he was gonna find him after the game and congratulate him on graduating. I offered my spare paintballs in the bag to him and he gladly accepted. After reloading, we all came under fire from a group of advancing Germans that entered parallel trenches to the right. Eventually, we pushed them back, the Allies won the hill, and then we pushed across the open to the town of Coleville. A German tank came upon us spraying what looked like orange coloured water at our troops but amidst everyone's screams of 'Tank, Tank! Take cover!' an anti-tank crew came to our rescue & shot it with the special anti-tank paint before it did much damage. This part of the battle held another of my highlights of the day. I ran forwards on the edge of our line to where there was only 2 Allied guys putting up a hell of a fight, I guessed we were outnumbered 4 to 1. I crawled to their right and into a concrete tube, which then had another concrete tube on the end of it at a slight angle. This gave me 2 gaps in the sides to shoot out of from almost complete protection, and the end of the tube to shoot in any direction. Germans were running across a clearing on the edge of my range, but fortunately none looked into the tube (they were busy getting to cover). I was able to alternate between the cracks and the tube end, scampering back and forward in the tube on my knees, I drew fire numerous times without dying, and managed to take out 3 guys who'd shot at me, and 4 others who didn't know I was there until it was too late.
Another highlight of the day was mid-afternoon, when Allies had control of Coleville and were pushing north through forest next to St. Laurent towards the Airfield. After a big standoff across a gully in this forest, we finally got the upper hand and shot the Germans out of their foothold on the opposite edge of the forest. From there they went into chaos and retreated into the Airfield, and I was at the front of the charge. Allied forces threw at least a half-dozen smoke grenades into the clearing, and I advanced from the forest across the clearing under the cover of smoke, walking and firing toward scrambling German forces. When I drew fire, I quickly moved back behind the smoke screen, sidestepped and crouched, somehow I was lucky enough not to get shot. I'd kick the grenades further forward (they were too hot to touch) and I was at the front of the biggest advance of the day, we took 100m of ground from the forest out through the Airfield in a matter of 5-10mins, and I got some good footage.
The rest of the day was fun but otherwise not spectacular. I followed the advance all the way up to Utah beach, which we finally took in the last minutes of the game in a small skirmish. I shot my gun until it ran out of gas and wouldn't fire any more. Later I was to find out that the Allies had won a major victory, with 2400 points over the German's 1400 points, points being awarded for achieving objectives within set time limits. I'd had plenty of water, but was seriously hot in the afternoon sun and 80-something degree heat (I'm guessing 29C). I was soaked in sweat but couldn't take my mask off even after the game, while still out on the field of play. I slowly walked back up the hill toward the Airfield dead zone, several hundred metres away, and by the end I wasn't walking straight. I spent about 5 minutes fumbling the buttons of my shirt jacket while walking before I got it off. I walked through the meshed entrance, pulled my mask off for the first time in a couple hours, found a flagpole and sagged against it. I was so stuffed I couldn't bend over to sit down, I slid down the pole till I fell on my backside. I reckon I was close to collapse. I pulled my camera out and got someone to photograph me, more for my own amusement later, as I'd never felt so exhausted and hot in my life. I'd seen the event take its toll in heat stressed players throughout the day. Occasionally shouts would go out calling for ceasefire, and eventually within half a minute everyone would stop shooting while someone was evacuated either for dehydration, heat stress or injury (rolled ankles etc). I was re-inserting once when an ATV drove towards me, the masked driver with one hand on the handlebar, the other behind holding a chubby fellow upright from falling off, as his head lolled about in a state of near unconsciousness. I sat for 15mins recovering, drinking the last of my water, trying to cool off. Just about everyone had headed back by that time, so I got up & walked off again. A guy drove up with a troop carrier and called out if I wanted a lift, I declined, 'no thanks mate, I walked all the way down here, I'm gonna walk all the way back'. Probably the heat stress made me stupid but for some reason I was determined to walk back under my own steam. It was a nice walk though, got to see all behind the German lines, and where all the tanks drove about etc. Managed not to get lost, and when I got back to camp, I sat down for 20 mins with a cracking headache, took two paracetamol, moved my Jeep out of the afternoon sun into the shade, stripped to shorts and passed out in the back for an hour. I felt better when I got up, Travis & I jumped in Patrick's car and we drove off 20mins to grab dinner, then headed to a motel they knew of with a pool, and I swam in a pool for the first time since leaving home. Of course, at the motel we ran into people from the event (all motels were booked out for miles around), and exchanged stories with a few dudes from the French Resistance (a division of the Allies). We then hit Wal Mart, and Patrick and Travis were dumbfounded that I had never heard of Smores, America's most famous campfire snack, and so they grabbed marshmallows, hersheys chocolate, and crackers and some YooHoo chocolate drinks (a weird drink, like a chocolate milkshake, but there is no milk!). When we got back to camp, we joined our local 1st ID campers around the fire, I got out the laptop and loaded the day's footage and everyone crowded around...
The next morning I got up, packed, got everyone's contact details, said goodbye and headed off, having made good friends with Patrick and Travis, who have decided they are coming to Australia and out to Skirmish at Mudgeeraba and the three of us will take on whoever's there and show those bogans how to play real paintball.
I headed off, but not straight home; I had to detour briefly for a small town which was only minutes away. It was a strange hint of fate that D-Day was so close to this place, which I'd learned about shortly after coming to Oklahoma, but had no idea whether i'd be bothered making the considerable trek out to this corner of the state. My friends & family reading this would know that I come from a small cosy beachside suburb on the Gold Coast named Miami, nestled between Nobbys and North Burleigh. Well, Oklahoma also has a small country town that goes by the name Miami! But these Okies, they don't pronounce it Miami, it's Mi-am-uhh, as I was corrected. So I cruised through town & took a bunch of photos for folks back home, and wondered whether a bona-fide resident, not just a resident but a kid raised in Miami QLD Australia had ever been to Miami Oklahoma. I stood outside the Coleman theatre, Miami's claim to fame, wherein is housed the original Wurlitzer Pipe Organ, which by original I assume they mean the first. It was cool, the street intersections had a single 4-direction hanging traffic light, and I passed a community noticeboard for Miami High School. The best thing in the whole town was a budget self-advertsing sign painted on the wall of a business facing a gas station, which simply read 'Stuff N Things'. I saw that, and approvingly thought 'these Okie Miami locals are alright', before jumping back in the Jeep, onto the Interstate and back to Norman.
And that was my adventure to Oklahoma's North East and the world's largest paintball event, I guess I'm a veteran of sorts, and am I ever stoked that I discovered it by chance. Full credit to Dewayne Convirs and his hard working crew and supporting sponsors who put the show on every year in an awesome display of planning and organisation. And more importantly, an enormous thank you to Patrick, Travis, Nate and the other fellas who lended me equipment and time, without you all I wouldn't have been able to do it.
My photos and videos of Oklahoma D-Day 2007 have been posted here :
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| D-Day, Wyandotte, Oklahoma (7-10 June 2007) |
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