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Wednesday

adventures / photo / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Jun 26

Our flight out of Cape Town was canceled

We should be in the United States. We are not. Here is what happened. Remember how, on Monday, I said it was an indoor, rainy kind of day? And remember how there was a haze and a fog and a low cloud cover yesterday? That’s going to come up.

One of our former professors and colleagues was at the next hotel over, also for the conference. We picked her up in our Uber and went across town to the airport. I carried most of her things because she is in a knee brace and on a cane. I also carried my things, which I’ve gotten down to an overstuffed backpack. We checked our checked bags at the check-in counter. Check. We passed through security. This moved quickly. We passed through the border control point. This took more time. But that’s OK, we were at the airport hilariously early, it turns out, for our overnight flight. We went to the lounge, but airport lounges, no matter where you go in the world it seems, are one of the few places that concern themselves with the number of people inside. We were turned away. We found another lounge. We waited until it was time to go to the gate.

We went to the gate. Or toward it. We waited for the sectional boarding process, which was, in truth, a sectional-just-come-this-way process. In between, though, was another security checkpoint. This was a manual process. And it could take a long time. Or it could take no time. This was not thorough or consistent. Also, my backpack has 10 pockets (that I’m aware of) and I had stuff everywhere. I mentally steeled myself for a woman to pull everything out, one-by-one, and explaining what this charger does, or why I have so many Band-Aids and the like. She glanced into two pockets and decided I was harmless.

Remember those views from Table Mountain yesterday? This was one of them. We’re looking down on the clouds and the city below.

Last night I was watching something like that roll into the airport. Never mind, though, because eventually our section of the plane was called to board. I could not convince our friend to go on early, despite her many pieces of carry-on luggage, her cane, and her limp. But the number was called and we took the long walk to Namibia, or our plane, whichever one came to first. Boarded, got settled. Waited. Waited.

Waited.

Over the course of a few hours we heard from various members of the flight crew and the messages could be distilled to this.

“You need 500 meters of visibility to take off. We don’t have that right now. Hopefully it’ll clear up.”

“One of our co-pilots has fallen ill. So we’re down a man. We’re still ready to fly. Waiting on this fog to clear.”

“We’re trying to find alternate routes. Maybe Puerto Rico. Doesn’t look good. And we’re almost out of time.”

Pilots, by law, can only work for so many hours a day. This is a long flight. When one pilot can’t work, the math changes and their flight window narrows. And this is a long flight.

By long flight, I mean retreat from the airport. Our flight was scheduled to depart Cape Town last night at 8:05 p.m. I think we arrived there at about 5 p.m. After waiting on the plane, leaving the plane, collecting our luggage, officially entering South Africa again, walking through the whole of the airport, finding an Uber — which is never not frustrating — and then driving back across town, we arrived here at 2:38 a.m.

My travel companions are take charge people and we most assuredly got out of the airport faster than the other passengers, some of whom waited for airline busses bound for who knows.

So we’re at the Westin. And this was our view from the lounge this morning. This is the Foreshore Freeway Bridge. This is downtown, in the central business district. Designed in the 1960s, built in the 70s, and ground to a halt in 1977 because of budget problems. There is talk of getting back to finishing the thing. But I’d bet a lot of people have grown used to the look of it. These days it is a tourist attraction.

We didn’t do anything today. Slept in because of the late night. Sat around a bit stunned at the events and trying to make sense of being rescheduled. Our friend, who we are now traveling with, is probably having the slowest day of her life. To be fair, she’s recovering from knee surgery and fighting off pneumonia.

The good news is we’re flying tonight. Our original plane has a similar itinerary and this is the atmosphere just before we head back to the airport, and home.

We must now grab our things, get downstairs, pile into another Uber and do it all again, for the first time.

adventures / photo / scholarship / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Jun 26

At a symposium

We visited the University of the Western Cape, today where my lovely bride delivered some of the opening remarks and chaired a session. She was a co-host, our university logo was on the literature and the International Association for Communication and Sport, where she is the executive director, was one of the co-sponsors.

I wrote a tiny bit of her opening remarks, and listened to the scholars. We heard about research on sports reporters, owned media in Germany, various papers soft power in sporting events (which I talk about a lot in class), Simone Biles’ portrayal in German tabloids, crisis management by sports leagues (which I’ll talk about in a class this fall), memories of Munich, and several others. I took a lot of notes, and photographed several slides which will come in handy in my own thinking and teaching.

Dr. Marion Keim, who is a professor at UWC and has words like “UNESCO” and “Olympic” in her actual title, put this together with IACS to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue on the ways sport shapes societies, both locally and globally. The whole thing was quite nicely done. More people should take part. Maybe a lot of people watched on the livestream.

The symposium was held in the Western Cape’s Public Health building, which had some wonderful art on display.

These are papier mache bowls made by women from Wola Nani, which is Xhosa for “we embrace and develop one another. This is a non-profit program bringing relief to the HIV crisis in the Western Cape. It focuses on women and children, builds skills, personal coping strategies and a revenue stream. Wola Nani crafts became a self-help program to achieve better qualities of life.

These are papier mache place mats from Wola Nani.

The sign says this is from the top section is by Johanna Chauke and the artist that created the bottom section is Selinah Skhosana. This is an embroidery. This is part of a project called Mapula, which means “mother of rain.” There are more than 80 needleworkers making their living through the Mapula project.

They do custom works. I wonder if I could get some embroidery done like those beautiful roller and jacana birds I saw in the Kruger.

These are Mbenge, woven lids for clay beer pots. They are made from llal palm and natural dyes from Zululand. The matching baskets, not pictured were made in Zimbabwe.

These also had some wall installations without signs.

After a day of presentations and networking and some delicious catering, it was time to head back across town. And I guess they just have amazing sunsets here every day. This is two in a row, anyway.

We caught a ride with one of the local scholars. It was the driver and one of their students in the front seat. Three Americans in the backseat and, somehow, none of us died. But I found myself thinking, “After we crash, and we find out that everyone is OK, this is going to be a hilarious story. And we’ll have a nice view while we wait for the police to show up.”

But we did not crash. Everyone was safe. It was still hilarious (I am omitting details in the interest of brevity). And we still had great views.

We went to a mall tonight, because I needed a jacket, because the winter is rolling in here, and I may need a jacket tomorrow. It’s hard to pack adequately for a long trip as the seasons change. The forecasts I saw a week or more ago aren’t what we’re seeing for tomorrow. Plus, we’re going to see penguins!

adventures / food / photo / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
May 26

We took a food tour, and you have to guess where we are now

Here’s a short of lists of things that, if you have the opportunity to do, you should avoid.

If you have the opportunity to spend two nights in a row on an airplane, don’t. If you have the opportunity to be stuck on a plane when the ground power unit keeps failing, don’t. If you have the opportunity to do the above in the middle of the heat, you definitely should not.

If you have the opportunity to do that and meet the British Karen … actually do that, it is quite funny. And, look, British Karen isn’t going to get that plane flying any faster. You know that. I know that. I suspect she might know that. British Conspiracy Theory Karen might not know that. But what she can do is make the flight crew hand out extra snacks to mollify the human cargo. So thanks for that, I suppose, British Conspiracy Theory Karen. But, mostly, thanks for going quietly back to your seat when you scored the extra biscoff.

All of that is what we did last night. British Airways out of London and to points beyond. But to where? You’ve got just a little bit more time to guess, because the answer will become apparent below.

We got a bleary-eyed ride to our hotel. Honestly, I don’t remember much about it. I’ve not slept a lot on two successive airplanes and I didn’t sleep much the night before in anticipation of exhausting myself for two successive airplanes. On the way we heard a local newscast. People in the country illegally was the top story. The third story was the Senate primary in Texas. (We are in neither Texas, nor the U.S., obviously.)

We are staying just around the corner from the local stock exchange. There’s an American-style steakhouse out front. The hotel is gated. There is a private security guard. It all feels safe. Plenty of happy pedestrians are walking alongside a busy two-lane street. The hotel is nice. It is a sprawling affair. (We got turned around once, because who needs to pay attention to the desk attendant’s directions, anyway?) The hotel does not have amenities. It has experiences. The first experience was politely declining every bellhop’s offer to help. We’ve only just arrived, and we don’t yet have the local currency. We walked by two pools on the way to our room. They were small, and also cold, because winter is coming along. By this time I was the combination of tired and restless that put me close to tipping with every American dollar I had in my pocket. Just get me to a room, any room will do, so things stop spinning around me.

This evening we were picked up by a local driver who told us he spoke nine of the official languages. No idea if that was the truth, or, if so, why he’s a driver. He said there are 12 all told — they’ve recently added sign language to the list, but he hasn’t yet found a way to learn it yet, I thought about teaching him how to finger spell, but he was working, and I decided against telling him about the many dirty word tutorials on YouTube, because surely they are there. He said some of the languages were very similar. I assume this was easy for him to say, perhaps in several languages.

He delivered us to his colleague who took us on a walking tour of four nations cuisines. After the fact, I can say this: for years now I’ve had this idea of learning about food and eating the food and it is a bit like art, I am not exactly sure what I mean by that, but I’ll know it when I see it. This evening, we had food and culture and a lesson or two out of that and it is pretty close to what I’ve always been looking for. I suppose we’ll have to go on more food tours.

Tonight, we had Ghanaian, which was good. It was earth, rich, flavorful, and I will remember that as being a funny, spicy experience. (I am a spice wimp.) We tried Ethiopian, which was perhaps the best. The base of it is injera, or taita, a fermented, spongy flatbread made of teff flour. You eat it with your hands, tearing a bite of this off and using that to pick up the other parts of the food, family-style. I probably did it wrong, but the tour guide had to know that’s an occupational hazard.

I’m not a food photographer, but I would like you to know that everything on this tray was incredibly fresh and delicious. I don’t even like lentils, but those lentils were amazing. The other vegetables were freshly cut. The beef had incredible flavor. The spaghetti is there, I think, as an homage to the time that Italy tried to colonize Ethiopia and failed. The pickled beets I could do without, but it was all delicious.

We also had Nigerian, which was a bit similar to the Ghanaian, but not quite to that same level of satisfying, though I did enjoy our spicy stew sample. (This could have also just been the place we were.) It was also a bit on the spicy side. Lastly we had meat from a South African braai. The only problem is that we were full by then and we, thus, probably laid insult to the restaurant. South Africa is big on red meats. They barbecue in all seasons, and the braai has deep cultural routes in their cuisine. Also it is incredibly delicious. By the time we found this out, we’d eaten our way through three countries.

I’m going to want more of that. Fortunately, we are in South Africa for the next two weeks. I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity.

adventures / Ireland / memories / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
20
May 26

Now officially on summertime

I’ve been casually watching this for many years now, and I have noted, in that time, several days where I’ve experienced a 30 degree swing in temperatures. I know there are plenty of places where that happens a lot more regularly. It’s rare enough in the places where I’ve lived, I guess, to be remarkable when you see the forecasts. I am remarking on it now. On the days it has happened and anyone is within earshot I have bored them with my mastery of basic arithmetic. That’s a remark. It’s remarkable.

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that a 30-degree temperature swing seems to be about the extent of it. At least around here. (Here meaning wherever I was at the time.)

Today, the forecast called for a 40-degree swing. The high was forecast at 96 and the low was 56.

So we’ve ruined the weather, or we’ve ruined forecasting. Or both. Either way, this is bad.

We had our year-end faculty meeting today, a four-hour chat in a classroom. There was an agenda. We ended up having to rush through parts of it. I made three comments, two of them substantive, and that was more than enough. (I reminded people of a deadline that is now set for April 2027, and I suggested we see about getting some AEDs installed in the building. I am in the minutes as having participated in the meeting.) Much ground was covered, applause and good cheer was shared. Lunch was university-catered chicken-salad sliders.

And sometime soon after we got home the new weather system blew in. You could almost see it bearing down on us, coming out of the southwest.

We got a bit of rain — good, we needed it, and probably some more, we’re already in a severe drought — even as most of the system went to the north. Looked impressive.

Cooled thinks right off. After three days of 90+ temperatures we’ll be in the 50s through the weekend.

I might have mentioned this, but one of my university colleagues is an atmospheric scientist and she’s been doing some work in this area. Apparently the inconsistent spring is a signal of climate change problems. We broke the weather. Or the climate. Or the forecasting. Perhaps all three.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation and sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. Enjoy. I still am!

This is the last week of this feature. (For now, anyway.) We are spending it looking at the majesty of Malin Head, the northernmost part of Ireland.

Ireland / memories / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
May 26

Domestic hazards

There are two great fears in my home-life. One, that a cat will jump out from somewhere and startle me, or do some real damage. I wonder where the kitty could be …

The other day she hid under the covers that were bunched up and hanging over the foot of the bed. Where, oh where, is Phoebe? That little tail just swishing out in the air. I can’t see Phoebe anywhere!

The other fear is that a cat will walk across a keyboard at a critical time. There’s grading to be done. Fortunately, I convinced Poseidon to curl up and take a nap behind the laptop. It’s a heat source, and he likes to find the warmest spot possible.

The grading is coming along. It filled the day. I’ll be at it for a few more days. Things will probably be light here as I work my way through it all. The most important thing is that the cats are doing well, we are doing well, and you’ve got a video of an absolutely stunning place below. Enjoy.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This incredible view is of the Tra Na Rossan Beach on the Ros Goill peninsula.