Life in vancouver

Back home! Pretty cool. I miss blogging though.

Did a nice road trip down the Oregon coast. My friends bailed 50m from the summit of mount hood, so I stood on the peak alone before skiing from peak to base. Three consecutive weekends in squeamish resulted in a nice start to the climbing season: lunch on the top of split pillar halfway up the grand wall with dema, lunch on bellygood lunch after a morning on stairway to heaven with tim dema and new room mate nate. Solid leads on some 9s and easy 10s. No lead falls yet for the season. Really loving it.

Back to the office I'm working on a tool which drives a novel quality process for web ui testing. Pretty interesting and I had a pretty intense couple weeks at the keys. I got an iPad, and a macbook and am starting to dev for the app store. Two feet always. Nice to get the brain going again.

New house is the best show in town right now. Four roomies: performing artists, musicians, photographers - beautiful people all around. "take it leave it Tuesdays" are our weekly dinner party and jam session. Means I'm playing with the keyboard again with aspirations of harmonica.

Coming up is a 24 pitch climb in the north cascades with shann. Approach includes a river crossing which I'm super psyched about doing. I'm psyched about alpine style climbing for this summer. Going to summit baker on skis soon as part of our "mountain a month" preparation for Aconcagua in December.

Work keeps me toiling over cool problems on most days and I get outside when i can. It's not Africa, but i'm still finding myself having fun every once in a while by accident.

Written from my iPad.

Trip Overview and Fast Action Replay

I've been getting a lot of traffic now that the sabbatical is over. Thought I'd give a little summary for new comers.

Shown is my actual route through Africa.


Fast Action Replay:

• Quad biking in the Namib Desert
• Wilderness safari in Etosha National Park [2]
• Hitch-hiking through Botswana and Zimbabwe
• Walking safari in the Okavango Delta with lion
• Victoria Falls and rafting the Zambezi River
• Radiculous travel companions in Malawi
• Relaxing on Lake Malawi
• Walking and camping on the the Nyika Plateau
• Learning to white water kayak on the Nile
• Gorillas, rainforest, and volcanos in Uganda

Pictures from sorted by country and are posted here.

Entebbe, Uganda - Heading Home

Wow! I'm in Entebbe living out my last moments in Africa. My flight home to Vancouver departs in just a few hours. Lots of great times in South-Western Uganda this last week with Shann - it's been great.

I had one professional development ambition for the sabbatical - to learn F#. Epic fail. Instead, I spent the time debating over extending my sabbatical indefinitely via a letter of resignation. Usually I thought about beginning a year long trans-continental sea kayaking expedition in the Mediterranean. But it turns out that three months was just long enough and I'm really very stoked about my return to Vancouver and put my nose back to the grindstone as employee 373952 next Monday. Truth is that I miss familiar friends and faces both in Vancouver and Seattle/Bellevue.

I'm wondering what happened to all my little projects and programs while I've been in Africa? What clever co-worker has mutated my tool to fill a purpose I never intended? I wrote three new programs the week before my sabbatical - I wonder if any of them were ever used. I see that Bing's maps are now integrated with photosynth. The future is now, man.

I also can't wait to see a doctor. I have so many things wrong with me: schistosomiasis, folliculitis, hemorrhoids, weird skin rashes, tooth aches, a soar throat, etc.

Lake Mutanda, Uganda

With only two days of time left, Shann and I headed to Lake Mutanda in the very southwest corner of Uganda. It was a nice motorcycle ride to a school by the lake and then a short walk for some much needed R&R. We ate pumpkin, swam, and played cards. Chill spot.

Whilst departing for Entebbe and home, I asked Shannon to hold my things so I could go interject in the soccer game being played by some unsuspecting school children. I ran after the ball and easily stole it from the first child, but the soccer ball was made of garbage bags and the grass was extremely wet. This surprised me and threw me off guard - I quickly tripped over myself and the ball and went sprawling forward. The whole school laughed uproariously and everybody simultaneously swarmed the field. The soccer game went from ten players to fifty, and Shannon was mauled by more than a hundred school children wanting to shake her hand. Eventually we ran out of the school away with giggling children buzzing around us like flies. Good memory.

I thought I'd let you all in on the drama of our rummie game. The graph has lost the time component as our data collection wasn't mindful of visualizations. Must be rusty. But as you can see - 'twas still epic.

Gorilla Tracking in Mhinga National Park

The most publicized tourist adventure in Uganda is the tracking of the families of habituated mountain gorillas. There are only a couple hundred mountain gorillas left in the world (all in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo) and they have never successfully been bread in captivity. So they're kinda a big deal. Kinda cool but comes with a heft price tag to spend only an hour with them.

The first guy I met who had done it was in Botswana. He paid $1000 for a gorilla tracking permit online. When this permit turned out to be fake, park rangers refused to let him go. He bought a second permit for $500 from the park rangers but fell ill and missed his tracking date. He finally got to track gorillas after purchasing a third permit. His experience consisted of thirty minutes of tracking and a one hour session with the gorillas. $1333 per hour? He claimed it was the best thing he had ever done.

I later met Joseph, likely the most experienced traveler I've ever met. He recounted the tale of his twelve-hour trek up the steep slopes of the Impenetrable Forest to find the illusive gorillas. He said it was fabulously worth while and a bargain for money. He also mentioned how deforested Uganda was now compared to when he visited many years ago and claimed that the future of the gorilla was bleak. He convinced me at the time, but in retrospect I disagree as gorilla tracking is now the third largest industry in Rwanda. With permit prices doubling in the next two years, even the DRC is protecting their gorillas.

Shann and I went.  It was pretty cool. Shann describes it better.

The silver-back screamed at our guides and walked to his lady via a path just a couple meters in front of us making eye contact. That put us in our place.		The baby swung around playfully.

The next day we stayed in the park to bag the three peaks of Mount Sabinyo in the Virunga range of volcanoes. It was a casual hike with a few new friends from New Zealand. On the third peak, we stood in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo at the same time. We played twister - right arm Uganda, left leg Rwanda above the border. We had lunch in the Congo - despite being brief, its the thirteenth country I visited on my sabbatical.

This was the closest we've been to the rainforest depicted in my dreams. I must say that the majesty of Jumanji continues to illude me, but it is still beautiful. The third peak was the highest and best as the last 200 meters were vertical and conquered by a series of sketchy wooden ladders. I think this might have been the first hike I've done with Shann which she actually enjoyed.

Isabel's Pygmies

My friend Isabel has always wanted to be pygmy goat farmer. We walked through a Batwa village and saw some pygmy children singing and playing. I just couldn't stop laughing when I saw their goats - though their was nothing exceptional about them.

It wasn't a pygmy goat, but I took a picture of the pygmy's goat thinking of Isabel.

Kigali, Rawanda

Traffic is so orderly: cars stop at crosswalks and motos yield to pedestrians. The streets are impeccably clean: we saw a woman cleaning dirt and throwing it out; and women sweeping the streets - but get this... the brooms have handles! What is this place? Where am I? Despite the orderly nature of the streets, I've been in several near traffic accidents. Eventually I realized that they were driving on the right side of the road. It feels so strange. I felt strangely comforted when a moto refused to yield.

Everything is so chic. It's Easter weekend - so we're seeing the best people have - but there are true signs of opulence here. Everybody seems to have a stylish cardigan to throw over their immaculately clean tailored shirts. Children wear three piece suits. Billboard advertisements for online banking? Really? In stark contrast, I'm unshaven and my white shirts are regularly soiled on the minute-long walk from the clothesline to the tent.

I'm moving at the pace of a man who's been on vacation for three months and I suspect it's maybe a bit slow for Shann. We spend most of our time sitting and eating, or preparing to sit and eat in a new place. Kigali has no shortage of venues for fine dining - even gas stations have nice restaurants with French, Italian, or Indian on the menu. We sat, played cards, and drank beer at the Hotel des Mille Collines and shared a somber moment on the rooftop overlooking the lights of Kigali. Two long dinners at Indian restaurants have been tasty and fabulously relaxing - but we can't quite seem to shake the stress of paying the "absurd prices" - costs comparable to home.

It's always neat when your expectations for a place are so thoroughly in contrast with reality. Its nice here, but I feel strangely unsettled by the luxuries. I'm self conscious of being so incredibly and illogically frugal - though I feel that Ralf was maybe right when he phrases it living efficiently. If the small luxuries of Rwanda irk me so, what will it be like to return to the wealth and luxury of Canada in just one week? It feels like it's all drawing to a close too soon.


[Edit: 8/4/10] In retrospect: although I seem to want to consider myself some sort of luxury averse wilderness explorer, in sober truth I'm craving comfortable beds, marathons of Seinfeld episodes, dinner parties, and lots and lots of time with friends outdoors. I'm really in the mood to re-watch familiar movies.

Francais c'est Joyeux

Shannon and I arrived in Kigali, Rwanda yesterday. English is an official language and the language of instruction in schools - but its too new - just French. I took nearly six years of mandatory French classes. It was my worst subject. I just didn't enjoy it - but oh, how things have changed! I recruit a pretty waitress to help me conjugate avoir on a cocktail napkin over breakfast. French is my favourite thing in Rwanda.

We're looking for accomodation at "St. Paul's". I'm pretty sure St. Paul's is a church. I ask a man "Ou est St. Paul's?" He becons for us to follow him. I want to confirm that St. Paul's is a church but realise I don't know the word for church after I've started the question .... "Qui es St. Paul's ... pour le Jesus?" Blank stare.

I camp - Je tente.
We camp - Nous tentons.

Shannon speaks better french than me, but she's too busy laughing at me or being embarrassed by me to ever use it.