The island has been wearing on Sara and I recently. We haven't been off-island since October. With (relative) stress at work ramping up with trials for both Sara and I pending for next week, we've been feeling the need to get away from paradise.
Late last week, Sara took the initiative and got us tickets to (Western) Samoa, to the island of Savai'i. It is a large, minimally populated island. We're eager to get there.
Especially after the last few days. We sweated our way through another hot, humid few days. Last night, Sara found a mass of fire ants battling with termites in one of our extra bedrooms. After spraying the bugs and only getting a few bites, we were able to fight back the invaders.
This morning, we cleaned and ran some errands. I spent the morning trying to figure out what the ghastly smell in our bedroom was. After cleaning my dresser, closet and bedroom, I started to clear the rugs to our deck, only to find the source of the stink, a rotting rat corpse. It was well along its way to decomposition. After pulling the dead rat from between the deck boards with a long handle garden hoe and hosing off the maggots I was able to chase the stink from our bedroom, with only the slightest amount of dry-heaving.
The rest of Saturday was spent cleaning, on errands and watching a sevens rugby tournament. Yeah, I'm ready to get off-island too. Can't wait until Thursday.
Sara and I have been spending a fair amount of time during the wet season cooped up in our house. After about a month of this we broke down and ordered a TV from Walmart (one of the few retailers that will ship stuff to American Samoa through the mail). Prior to this we were watching movies on one of our laptops, which was far from ideal. A 13-inch screen is not how you're meant to see most media. Once we ran through the DVDs we brought with us to the island, we started branching out by trading DVDs and digital files with people in order to feed our entertainment needs.
We reeled through all five seasons of HBO's The Wire over November, December and January. Once we finished with the mean streets of Baltimore, Sara and I needed to find new shows to continue to feed our pop culture habit.
Freaks and Geeks went too quickly to tide us over for long. It only lasted us a few evenings and a sick day. With another series down, we continued to scrounge for things to keep our minds and eyes busy.
We reeled through the first season of Game of Thrones with a group of palagi, Sara and I were already big fans of the books the show is based on (which we have been actively foisting upon our group of friends here in American Samoa). We did regularly scheduled viewing parties on Sunday evenings, and are eagerly awaiting starting these up again when the second season starts on April 1st.
Our Boardwalk Empire viewing parties started up after finishing up with Game of Thrones and needing something to fill to void in our social calendar. We've been watching them with a group of paediatricians from the hospital on Tuesday evenings. We just did a marathon session to finish season 1, not sure when we're going to start up again with season 2.
Sara and I have also been piece-mealing along with some pulpier/trashier shows in the form of seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood and season 1 of RuPaul's Drag Race when we have an evening with nothing going on. We've also been keeping up with the series we were watching on the mainland, like Archer and Project Runway.
I've also been working through Star Trek: The Next Generation, during the evenings after Sara goes to sleep (yay, needing less sleep). I've nearly finished season 3. Need to keep by nerd credentials up while I'm here.
So as you can imagine, with this many shows, we spend our evenings without plans and weekends when the weather recommends us from going outside (either from too mush rain or skin searing sun) on the couch. As much as I enjoy the media, I'm ready for the dry season to come back and let us get outside a bit more.
In early January, we opted to join a large group of our friends for a kayak adventure. We met up at Coconut Point, everyone was dragging ass (as usual...), but eventually we got loaded up and going.
We headed out to Fagasa, one of the few villages on
the north side of Tutuila. We pulled up to the small
boat ramp that one of the National Park marine biologists (who was leading the trip) regularly launches from. He introduced us to the matai, in Samoan chief, who lives next to the boat ramp. He was lounging in his lava lava and happy to meet us, since we are friends with the National Park guy, who he considers family. He offered to watch our cars if we parked next to his house. We moved the cars, unloaded and launched.
The paddle out was great, there were some large swells in the open water, once we got outside the mouth of Fagasa Bay. It was a beautiful way to see the island and it was great to out with a large group exploring the otherwise inaccessible North side of our island.
We paddled several coves to the west and ended up landing in Sita Bay. The route into the Bay was a little dicey.
To reach the beach, we needed to paddle in the ava, which is a narrow channel in the reef. The channel mainly serves as the drain for the basin of water that builds up behind the fringe reef as waves break over the reef. As a result, the ava has a strong outward current. This is further compounded by the waves breaking over the shallow reef. This is challenging, more so if you're not comfortable in a kayak. A number of members of our trip were rookie kayakers, so we had varying levels of panic following our paddle up the gullet of the ava.
Sita Bay was a cool place to explore. Our Samoa friend caught several coconut crabs and taught a few of us how to identify their burrows and how to grab them so as not to lose a finger to their claws that can crack coconut shells.
Sara did her usual seashell hunt and came away with some great shells, which is a great advantage to infrequently visited shores.
After a little rain, we launched back out to sea and continued west to Fagafue Bay. Most of our group landed here, but Sara and a prosecutor from our office did not want to brave another ava, so we decided to paddle back to our starting point. It was a beautiful day and stoked my fire to spend so more time kayaking while we're here.
I want to say I've been remiss in updating the blog due to all the excitement and adventures we've been having. The reality is not that thrilling. The (fairly mild, according to the veteran members of our community) wet season has us firmly in its grasp. Days where we're not in the office are spent either beating the heat or hiding from the rain.
The wet season in American Samoa is the Southern Hemisphere tropical summer. Instead of the warm dry weather of California's Mediterranean-summers, we treated to maximum humidity all the time, searing sun and frequent heavy rains. Also, most tragic, we lost our trade winds from the south that would cool our side of the island. You wouldn't think a little sea breeze could make such a difference, but it makes a world of difference. Even during the dry season a little activity would work up quite a sweat. Doing the dishes or sawing through a piece of wood would leave you dripping, the difference now is that it's particularly difficult to cool off. In the dry season a little down time and some ice water would do the trick. These days you're sitting on the couch with your shirt off, with a fan pointed directly at you and slugging ice cubes and cold beverages and it still takes hours before you cease to soak thedorm furniture in salty water.
Sara and I still make an effort to get out and be active, but there is much more picking our spots. Instead of a hike and a snorkel every weekend, we're lucky to get a weather window to do either. Too many weekends have been spent on the couch watching movies to hide from the sun. Last week we had a cloudy and drizzly Sunday, so a group of us took another hike up Mount Alava. This was the best hiking I've done in months, mostly due to our avoiding the sun until the last little bit of the down hike.
Now that it's March, we're supposed to be on the up swing out the the wet season, but it can't happen soon enough in my mind. I'm ready for the heat to be slightly less and the breeze to stir our palm trees once more.
Got another dose of bad news today from the mainland. One of my best friends from high school, Chris Rudolph, was killed in an avalanche yesterday at Stevens Pass. I got to know Chris when he was the funny guy who lined up next to me in Mr. Walsh's freshman PE class at Campolindo High School. We both shared an interest in mountain biking and skiing. We became good friends during track season as both the high jumpers (me) and pole vaulters (Chris) spent most of their practice time lounging the on large foam mats at the far end of the track. After that we spent our high school years biking Mount Diablo and Canyon or stealing weekend trips to Alpine Meadows or Homewood. I still remember the time when Chris and I took High Traverse at Alpine and he stood up for me after I skied over Shane McConkney's prototype skis. I can also recall an incident with the Moraga Police that he managed to talk our way out of after one of my first keg parties.
Chris was the person who, following my winter in Tahoe and summer back in San Francisco, convinced me to give one last go at the mountain life and do a winter up at Stevens Pass. He was just hired on in the marketing department at Stevens Pass, he got me hired on as one of the coffee stand supervisors. We had some great evenings hanging out, but it was a lost winter, due to a lack of snow. The mountain was open for approximately four weeks out of the four months I was up there. This left plenty of days and evenings to hang out in Chris' cabin across from the mountain.
I've been a part of the ski community for enough years to know people that have died in avalanches, but it hits close to home when it was one of the people you came of age with. Chris, next time I'm up in Leavenworth, I'll raise a toast to you. It won't be the same without you.
The view from the Administrative Law Judge's courtroom looks out on the Port. The huge luxury cruiseliner dwarfs our otherwise small and sleepy harbor.
Cruise ships have become semi-regular visitors to our otherwise quiet island. It's an odd experience for those of us that work int he harbor.
Driving to my trial this morning was rather difficult due to the traffic that all the aiga buses caused trying to pick up fares in the form of island tours.
Furthermore parking at the ALJ Court was next to impossible, even the driveway was blocked by an aiga. It took blocking traffic and yelling to get into the parking lot. I ended up parking on the grass under the stairs (the only spot a bus couldn't fit). I also go accosted several times by people trying to take me to mediocre sights all over the island while dressed in time and carrying a file box full of exhibits. Sigh, just cause every other white person here in on vacation doesn't mean I am...
Just like on the mainland, Sunday was set aside for the Super Bowl. The Coast Guard Lieutenant hosted a barbecue at his house for the game. He rotisseried two pigs (that had been hanging out the previous day) and otherwise welcomed us for general revelry. We'd hoped to spend the day outside and watch the game with the benefit of a friend's projector, but the rain and wind conspired to keep us bottled by in the apartment.
After a half of jockeying for position to see the game, Sara and I bumped over to some friends of ours who were neighbors and opted to watch the rest of the game in the comfort of the couch.
One abnormality is that none of the TV station we receive in American Samoa have commercial access to the Super Bowl feed. Instead they mooch off the military feed for the game. This is great except for one unanticipated aspect: we don't get the commercials. The military feed has a number of military specific public service announcements in place of the commercials, think "loose lips sink ships" and the ilk. These are not allowed to be shown on civilian broadcasts, so instead American Samoa gets video feed from various churches during the commercial breaks. This seems to be the best alternative the broadcasters on the island could come up with.
As a person that does not go to church, this is a nice reminder as to why I prefer to spend my Sunday doing outdoor activities. Every image that is shown from these churches is people falling asleep in the pews or looking deathly bored. There's occasionally shots of the priest or preacher talking, but no sound comes through and they usually quickly pan to people dressed up in their finest outfits, sweating their way through Sunday. It's truly a testament to how much sway the churches hold here, that the local population all go to church and spend their Sundays looking insanely bored.
Glad I only have to experience during commercial breaks during the Super Bowl. But it also means I need to waste time later in the evening tracking down the commercials online.
