Rowdy Roadie

Rowdy Roadie

So there I was on Koh Tao sitting at Maya Beach Club enjoying a sunset on New Years Eve thinking what a Rowdy Roadie year it has been. It all began in Alaska getting a new passport and finalizing the house for sale before stepping back out on that elusive path into the unknown. I met a lot of traveling friends and even more acquaintances this year and I can’t count the number of pictures I took. I managed to finish a book that is now in its final stages of pre-publishing, The Women of Cho’ should be out soon.

In the process I managed to cross the globe from Alaska to Ireland, the long way round. And again, I can’t pin down the best pictures but I’m going to give it a try in this recap. Starting off in Alaska where I still have a voting card and a P.O. box I went to California to visit my hometown, Mill Valley, where I grew up and saw a few friends before flying off to South Korea.

I still had a little research verification to do for the manuscript so South Korea was an important stop over visit on my wayward path. I spent a few weeks in Seoul hopping from some of the Palaces to museums and ancestral shrines for the dead among others. I taught English in South Korea many moons ago and that is actually what got part of the first book going and certainly kept the second book in motion and will give enough momentum for the trilogy.

I had recently picked up diving as a hobby whilst at Asia Divers Resort on Koh Tao and that sent me splashing down in such places as Borneo and Sulawesi but I wasn’t close to finished so after south Korea I flew due south-west to the Philippines where I had pre-booked some time on Sangat Island Dive Resort. I was immediately introduced to wreck diving and borrowed one of the guides go-pros so I could have a memory of it and I am still looking at the footage now that I’ve bought a go-pro myself and can now edit a little bit. The resort is one of the nicest I’ve stayed at and I will return to the Philippines to dive more probably down near Cebu. Here is a still from one of the clips. The wrecks are part the WWII fleet of Japanese boats suck by the U.S. Navy. There are also a lot of boats in Luzon Harbor to the north. I spent about ten days there and spoke with others that took a chartered sail boat from Sangat Island out to the outer reef and the stories they came back with were epic so it is a ‘MUST’ see in the future.

I ended up back in Luzon and everybody I spoke with had different places for recommended must go see. I ended up blasting through Manila and headed for Baguio, an old JI r & r spot that has grown exponentially up the mountainsides between the rice fields. I met Sigurd Hogsbro there and we still make contact every now and again. He showed me the brewery and I knew we were kindred spirits.

I flew back to Incheon, South Korea for a brief visit with the KGB Bar staff and catch an early flight to Bangkok, Thailand where I needed to pick up a visa for Nepal and fly off to Vientiane, Laos to actually sit down and finish the manuscript before heading off back to Thailand for some diving on Koh Tao just to stay in practice knowing there isn’t any diving in Nepal that I know of.

This was my first time to Nepal and boy, what a doozy; new sights, smells, earthquakes, Rhinos, Elephants, Wild Boar, deer everywhere, Crocodiles, Garials, Bison, trekking in the outback of Bardia National Park where I made some most excellent friends that I will not forget.

A Scottish friend I made in Rangoon told me to go visit a Yorkshire man living and working in Thakuduwara and partnering a trekking company called Wild Trak Adventure, www.wildtrakadventure.com. After a few days in Katmandu I flew to Nepalgunj and met Sitram and Johnny. I stayed with them for a month of trekking through the Bardia Nation Park and doing some trekking on the Babe, (phonically Ba-bay) River following tiger, bear, and leopard tracks and avoiding wild elephants en mass.

Now I can’t show every photo and some of you may have seen some of the good photos before in previous blogs so I hope I surprise you.

Returning from the jungle we felt the first earthquake and I bolted for Pokhara to see the damage and see if I could help. The damage was extensive but the supplies were not reaching the needy so I joined in with Hands Helping Hands and volunteered time and money to buy supplies and run them into the mountain areas where they were needed until Unisef and Red cross began showing up. I moved on south to Chitwan National Park to see the Rhinos there before returning to Bardia for more fun in the jungle.

 Chitwan was amazing.

Returning to Bardia was amazing.

I flew to London to get my computer fixed. Somewhere along the way the screen had shattered and it drove me crazy so I hopped a tube for the Apple store in London and they were to busy to deal with it but a lovely woman at Apple recommended another fix-it place close by. Meanwhile I did research for another book in the making as of now, among many beginnings.

I love London but boy is it expensive. I moved north by train seeing friends in Liverpool and there abouts, all people I have met on the road, mostly in Thailand be it Pai, Ton Sai, or traveling across northern Lao and down the coast of Vietnam; lovely people from all walks of life.

I spent a bit of time in Edinburgh, Inverness, Isle of Sky, and returned back to Glasgow to jump a boat for Belfast where they were still building a pyramid of pallets to be burnt in the near future. I walked that road where the British flag is on one side of me, and the Irish on the other. Not a safe place but seeing as I’m a yank and dress differently I figured I’d be safe and was safe. I had people looking after me from unseen places. Thank you boys.

A friend I met in Ton Sai grew up in Cavan and off I went to visit. This was one of the best decisions I didn’t have to make. I met a family at the other end of the world and their friends that made me feel like a long lost cousin, 3 times removed. Caroline Fay is a wonderful artist and had a painting class that I joined in. Her boy friend Rob, a part time DJ in London and a great person in general, arrived and a merry time was had by almost all. There was some late night light flickering from pops upstairs and we heeded the call for beds. I had a date with a lawn mower the next day to make up for miss-spent moments of adulthood. All went well.

Dublin was a blast just wandering around the live music pubs and watching Beck play an outdoor concert. It was a really great place to have fun before heading back to Liverpool and Manchester and south to London.

I took a train into Paris, France to be part of a movie crew but that deflated rather un-climactically but I stayed my course and took a train to Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls. I met two characters from Oakland, California on the train to Pamplona. We met up frequently and shared a lot of laughs; Dave is a DJ and Lee is a drummer among other things. After I had seen and had my fill I wandered up to San Sebastian and enjoyed the ocean and food for a few days. It was the end of a particular lump in my craw so from here on out nothing was intended and my mind began to wander across the globe.

But while I was on this side of the globe a quick stop in Lisbon, Portugal was mandatory due to an artist friend of mine who had painted such beautiful landscapes and life there I had to go. I took the train down the coast wanting to stop a lot more than I would allow myself but I made it to Lisbon just in time to watch a Sting concert. That was great and again just by luck. The architecture and history in Lisbon is thick and the food and growing art scene were worth every minute. I saw a bridge that looked like the Golden Gate suspension Bridge there and found out later that the same builders did them both. I saw this from a castle on top of a castle on top of a castle all buried under one another. Musical notes soared through the alleys as I wandered home.

From Lisbon I was trying to get to Sicily, Italy but the flights were so expensive I changed directions and went to Venice for a few days. Again, walking through history and the heat put me in a great mood and it was time to get on my way.

I met a friend in Sulawesi who lived in Slovenia but I missed her at the airport and then miss understood some friends in Switzerland so I didn’t go to Germany nor Poland and just high tailed it back to Paris and on to London for the return trip to some place.

(San Sebastian)

I got into Paris for two nights so I’d have time to get a ticket for London.

In London I needed a few days to get a new tourist visa for Nepal where I decided I was going to help my friends Johnny and Sitram build a new dinning hall and bring a few tools with me. Hyde Park is always calling so I spent a lot of sunset hours wandering and shooting pictures. Before I left I met up with my Scottish friend, Fergus, I met in Burma at the Strand Hotel Bar and had a few laughs with him before heading out and making a round trip.

To Be Continued

www.davidcdagley.com

Euro Bounce

Euro-Bounce, First.

So I moved on out of Pamplona, Spain for the coast by bus to San Sebastian. I was hoping it wouldn’t be so busy but being only an hour or so away from Pamplona a lot of over flow went there and Bob Dylan was playing there the night before I arrived. Needless to say, it was packed. I walked into a hostel and the Aussie at the reception explained that they were full up but could hop on line and see what was available. He did and he found me Luca’s Hotel for 100 Euro. It was more than I wanted to spend but my choices were narrowing and the sun was setting. It’s what I equate to the desperate hour when you take what you get and suffer the financial consequences without remorse. Unfortunately the Aussie pointed me in the wrong direction and off I walked. I ran into an interesting foursome, one woman with her ex-husband with his wife and her new husband. I didn’t ask a lot of questions but they were in the mood to help me out since they were going towards the same direction for good food and they were right. The narrow streets of old town are literally packed with bars that serve food on the counter and copious amounts of alcohol of every variety under the Spanish sun. My hotel was on the same street on the 3^rdfloor overlooking the alley and the boisterous crowd singing and dancing in the street. Almost like clock work a mobile garbage can would be tipped over and emptied into a bigger one. The clank of glass was as common as the church bells around the corner.

Unfortunately Luca didn’t have room for me at ‘this’ location but he did have space in another hotel 10 minute walk away which was really 20 but so what. I walked with him and some young Spanish princess to the other hotel where I dropped my bags and proceeded out into the night to eat, drink, and try and find Mary. I ate; I drank and laughed with a pair from Australia. The woman lives in San Sebastian and her cousin and I ate, drank and they explained pretty much everything I would need to know for the next couple days.

I sound of the waves drew me to the beach and to another Bistro on the waters edge. I sat with two French men and had a lot of laughs about the combat surfing sessions they had gone through over the last four days. They also said that the waves weren’t as good as they had been during the last storm, still overhead but more of a wall than a break left or right. It was getting late and I made my way back to the hotel room and didn’t bother opening my bags since I was going back to the other hotel the next night. I actually slept a great sleep with waves crashing through my dreams. It reminded me of spending time in Coronado as a kid at my grandpa/ma’s place across from Star Park. When my parents would ditch me there I’d wake up in the morning and if I could hear the waves then I knew it was worth getting up and hustling to the beach because later there would be a stack of people. I would grab my fins and skateboard and press on down to north beach, which was at the south end and have waves virtually by myself. Growing up there off and on when my folks would take trips abroad and with my ma chucking me in the Hotel Del Coronado salt water pool as a 4 year old and swimming on my own by 6, this was a no brainer. San Sebastian took me back that far in an hour of sitting in the sand and watching the city light up the white lip of the waves, the shimmering curl and the anticipation of the inevitable crash and froth all on a seemingly eternal level. I just get to see and hear a fraction.

Tea in the morning is a staple for me as coffee is for others. Before the mob of people arrived on the scene I sat next to a group of four old men who never engaged me but knew I was within earshot and glanced periodically. They giggled and each told a story and all laughed, and repeat, and repeat. I didn’t understand much nor care. I have some other ways of understanding people that includes body language, hand gestures, and eyes. I didn’t need the details these guys had known each other since grade school or before.

I went back to the beach to watch the locals get up and go while the tide was right but it crowded up pretty quick and still the locals seemed to be able to pull off a lot of the waves where the outsiders kind of surfed scraps for awhile. And one kid, a great surfer on a little board played hard on the smaller inside waves with great cuts and a good edge or enjoyed launching over the top and playing it out.

I went for a swim and the water was more comfortable than Alaska water where you get hypothermia in about six minutes depending on your body mass and fat, give or take a few minutes or the water at Stinson Beach where I grew up with the Great Whites and Sea Lions just outside. We still shivered after being in the water after an hour. No this water at San Sebastian was comfortable but most of the folks surfing wore thin wetsuits, just enough, but for playing in the waves for half an hour, no problem.

I grabbed my gear and moved to the other hotel and showered and got ready to go explore the town. There are a lot of beautiful buildings and bridges to see in San Sebastian but the local people are the true highlight all generous, courteous, and genuine. Once all my stuff was in my second room I did a quick roam around old town and then on up to the statue of Jesus on the hill for a look about and wandered off to sort out my next move, Lisbon, Portugal. I went to the bus station and thought better after trying to talk to them both of us with raised shoulders and hands out not knowing what the other wanted. I moved on to the train station which was considerably closer and sorted out a ticket for the following day.

The night was loaded with singing and bottles clashing as they fell into bigger dumpsters. By the way, they take their recycling very seriously and there are at least three cans nearby at any point. The food at the bars is wonderful and there’s always a conversation going on. I walked into a sports bar and watched the Wimbledon tennis finals in London. Congrats. See you in Lisboa, Portugal. Lisbon, Portugal for those who don't know how 'they' spell it and only follow western English without knowing the difference.

www.davidcdagley.com

Paris To Pamplona

Paris To Pamplona

I arrived in Paris full of hope and inspiration hoping to find my friend in the same mood. I peeled out of the train station and asked how much to the Astrid hotel 27 Avenue Carnot, F-75017 Paris. I arrived and they hadn’t heard of him but they were willing to give me another room. I called him on his Internet phone and I couldn’t talk to him but two calls brought him down stairs to the front desk and, oh the lady remembered everything.

We went up dumped my stuff off and went off to eat something. While eating I broached the conversation with, ‘What’s the plan?’ And all of a sudden things sounded better than good but then again there was this poison in his voice that set me on edge directly. I met Brett back in London when we were part of an exchange program. 30 years passed in between and a great deal of water under the bridge and some over but our paths didn’t cross until a couple years ago. He had a n idea to do a ‘Sun Also Rises’ film. He could pin down if it was a documentary or art and to this day still can’t. All of a sudden I realized he really didn’t have a plan, it was more like an excuse to get out of the U.S. desert.

I was game for anything not as the director but more of a participant behind the camera and get in front of it if needed. That first meeting for lunch turned my free spirit as it saw chains for a few years with ideas run by him and only by him. That sounds like the U.S. government talking about democracy. It was either his way or the highway. I drank as much of the Tattinger Champagne that I just bought as possible and bit my tongue momentarily. We were to wake at 3 am for some film work so it wasn’t a long night but due to sleeping in the same room before I knew I needed to beat him to sleep before both chain saw snorers throttled up.

He woke me at 4 am asking me if I was coming. I bounced out of bed, chucked my camera in a bag and figured I’d wake up on the way. Off we went toward the Arch du Triumph for a few photos and then circumvented it to what he said was the Eiffel tower that turned out to be a hotel with a red tower of beacons. From there on we were absolutely going in the wrong direction and I didn’t know what our goal was or I would have stopped him and looked at a map and headed down the Champs Elysees and figured it out from there but no. We walked into the dawn until both of our feet were bleeding, blistered, or aching. We did get good material but my questions began nagging at me, why hadn’t this all been sorted in the first place. I was to arrive on the 1^stand I did and he arrived on the 28^th. What happened between the 28^thand the 1^st? I heard from him he took a bath and fell asleep. That just burned. Why didn’t all these little shots get taken care of? What? Yeah I wanted to be involved but obviously he had time on his hands and Paris isn’t cheap. I didn’t understand and still don’t. We eventually got a cup of tea and a croissant and headed out for a taxi to get home to get my wallet and sort out the shoe thing. Lucky for us we were in time for breakfast included and a shower. It was 730 am.

We peeled out for Notre Dam and the Shakespeare bookstore, which is a shell of its previous self and only a curiosity point of interest due to people like Ernst Hemingway and a stack of incredible writers before, during, and after him. Oh yeah we needed to go there.

We wandered off and I mean wandered off. I still had no goal, I still had no purpose being there. All this could have been sorted on a map and found before I even got out of the pubs in England. We wandered this way and that and turned corners and zigzagged away from the river. Eventually I asked. “What are we doing? What am I doing? What do you need me for? At this his personality broke free and he barked back, If you don’t want to be here then go. I was immediately tempted but I wanted it to work, I wanted to be a part of this but I wasn’t going to waste my time. I started asking random people who eventually pointed in the right direction. First was a well dressed elderly gent crossing the road with us. I asked and his eyes lit up like neon candles. We got to the far side of the road and he explained as easily as day. Go through the park at a diagonal and then walk some more and you’re there. I think he wanted to come and show me personally but the misses might think he’s out playin’ around. He was eighty something and looked like a kid telling a secret; I wanted him to come, I needed him and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

We followed his directions sort of and instead of crossing over like the man said my friend decided he wanted to turn off. This infuriated me because he couldn’t find his way all morning. We ended up following what the man had said to a point when I walked into a Tobacco shop and asked the nice, beautiful African woman where it was and she pointed up the road and said if you miss it lad, you need new eyes. There it was across the street. This is where it really picked up speed.

We took a stack of photos from the center isle waiting for the traffic to lull so we wouldn’t get any blur in the photos or film that Brett was trying to get 10-15 seconds of. We moved on in with the days work completed and sat in for a beer and food. A waiter who showed us two menus one for inside and one for outside dining at the restaurant where Ernst Hemingway ate welcomed us in. We decided outside thinking the people walking by might be a good distraction and sat down in a far corner where we ordered oysters, mussels, a cheese platter and a couple beers. Stress fell away briefly.

There’s something about the women in Paris, not that they’re sexier than any others, it’s that they wear clothes appropriate to their bodies and look exceptional while doing it. We made eye contact with a husband and wife couple sitting not far away at the Dome restaurant where a man was facing us and ordered what we had. His wife was Japanese and a looker. After eating I went out for a smoke where I had seen him go in the past and he followed me and we engaged in a conversation that drew my friend out of the corner and the man’s wife off her seat. The man and I are originally both from California and the man started in on Ernst Hemingway, that’s what drew Brett out of the corner.

They are avid Ernst Hemingway fans and began wondering why they were born so late in life and why they couldn’t have been born back then where they felt they belonged. Being Japanese the woman, Coco could only show us secrets we wouldn’t get anywhere else and off we went to an alley behind the Montparnesse Building. The saying or joke goes that the only place to escape the ugliness of the building is to be in it and really high. Take that either way. The alley belonged to some eccentric and famous artists back in the same are but Hemingway wasn’t really part of this group but for sure would have visited it with some of his lady friends or through an invite to a party that he was sure to have attended. The alley is now buried in vines and forms a sanctuary of solace and a calming aura in the middle of Paris that is difficult to find. Artists still use the studios holding the alley in place and on one side is a museum with some of the past famous artists works that painted, drew or sculpted in the 50 meter green vined silence. We wandered on to the Select Bar, another of Ernst Hemingway hangouts. We went to a few others and even though the times have changed you still got a feeling of Paris back in the day. There is no lost generation anymore and yet some of us slip through the cracks of time or we’ve all passed through and now look back and see the truth of it, that most of us are lost. Due to some unforeseen complications I have backed out of the contemporary filming of Paris, the Pyrenees and Pamplona San Fermin 2015 festival. But that hasn’t stopped me from participating in Pamplona.

I took a train from Paris the following night and arrived in Pamplona with two new friends from Oakland, California. Lee Jackson and DJ Dave were lots of fun and we spent a few hours each afternoon getting acquainted and people watching. They’ve moved on to Berlin and I will remain to the end. Something is happening somewhere in Pamplona at all times. From the opening rocket, the running of the bulls, parades, marching bands, fireworks, dancing and all marinated in Sangria and cervesas. There are bull fights every night at 630 pm and the stadium holds I think 20,000 people. There are few seats available but there are a couple scalpers hanging around the perimeter where you can get a nose bleeder seat.

Hotels are packed to the gills and the prices are high for the festival. The food is amazing and I’m enjoying it all at least once from beginning to end. There are a few more days and the temperatures are on the rise. The public pool is a great way to spend a few afternoon hours and there is a carnival atmosphere for the children with rides, food, games, etc.

I already bought a ticket out of Pamplona for the coast. I’ll be on the beach in no time.

www.davidcdagley.com