The China Journals, Ch. 2: Sumo Wrestlers and Paranoia

Five-hundred pound Japanese sumo wrestlers are playing hopscotch on the floor above me as I sit in a motel room in Millbrae, California. Occasionally they change to fast-running in place, or whatever you call that thing football (American football) players do when they move their weight rapidly from foot to foot in agility exercises.

Actually, all the noise is being made by one person, one person who runs the length of the motel room and back, and it is beyond my comprehension how one person can make such racket on a carpeted floor.

I've just returned from a country with a population of 1.3 BILLION, and the person in the room above me is making more noise than all of them put together.

The United Airlines 747 that brought me from Shanghai, China, to San Francisco landed about 8:30 this morning, local time. So far jet lag hasn't caught up with me but I suspect it isn't far behind. It isn't called jet "lag" for nothing, pardon the pun which I fully intended. What also hasn't caught up, as far as my netbook is concerned, is the fact that I'm back in the USA where English is supposed to be the language of the land.

Or, perhaps I'm being paranoid when I suspect that the communist People's Republic of China is still watching my every move. How else to explain this:

And this, when I was finally able to access this blog for the first time since leaving the US:

It wasn't for lack of Intenet availibility that I couldn't reach my blog. It was because, as one young, somewhat apologetic, woman in a hotel business center put it, "perhaps the government has blocked that site." I tried the backdoor approach, searching for other blogs and using their links to get to mine. They are all blocked.

Subversive? My blog? Blocked by the ever-watchful People's Republic? Totally too funny; totally too disturbing.

Following a lecture on Chinese history by a respected university professor, I asked her this question: "You said you have freedom of speech. Are you aware your government blocks certain Internet sites?"

"Yes. The government blocks sites where people write bad things about the government."

"No, I mean places like my blog, which has nothing to do with Chinese politics."

"All governments need to censor some things," she responded.

And therein lies the conundrum in visiting China and Tibet: whom and what to believe.

But back to my hotel room and the noise above me, where the sumo wrestlers have stomped aside in favor of a hyper furniture rearranger. After sleeping for six hours, showering, and inquiring at the front desk, I found I had three dining choices in the immediate area: an on-site Japanese sushi restaurant, a Chinese restaurant a few dozen yards away, or the Millbrae Pancake House about a block away. No brainer there.

Re-entry into Western food: a BLT and fries. I ate the sandwich and a few of the fries. The bacon was cooked hard. Not just crisp. Hard. Cracker hard. Snap off and crumble hard. I mention this because in China, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Russia, bacon is barely cooked at all. I mean, the stuff is warmed until the fat turns from opaque to something approaching transluscent.

"My first western food in three weeks," I say as the waitress puts the plate in front of me. She asks where I've been. and I mention China and Tibet.

"Did you see him today? His Holiness, the Dalai Lama? He's been here for three days. I saw him yesterday and today. He was at the San Jose convention center this morning."

I spend six days in Tibet, a land the 14th Dalai Lama fled as a young man when Chinese troops were "liberating the people," and find the much-beloved spiritual leader and I are in the same city on my return to America. There he is spoken of in discreet whispers. Here, admiring people gather to hear him speak of compassion.

And in China, my blog--this place for my words to go and be at home, for photographs and thoughts and nonsense and fun--is blocked to all in that country. In Tibet, my computer refused to work at all. Error message after error message--some noting Windows is shutting down to avoid damage to the computer--were common. Even when I wasn't trying to get on-line.

Alaska Airlines will take me from San Francisco to Seattle to Anchorage tomorrow. Late tomorrow evening I should be home, in my own bed, listening to a parrot named Pablo venting his anger at my long absence. I have a lot to process, a lot of photographs to tinker with, before I can continue this journal.

Plus, I leave in a week for Arizona and the Grand Canyon. But I'll be back. Never fear.

The Journey Begins

Monday, Day 1

Gosh, it's hard to leave Alaska right now. Especially now that summer finally arrived. The last two weeks have been stunningly gorgeous, even with an early morning fog that burns off by ten o'clock.




The lakes have been beautiful. The wind that whipped through here the past few months decided to calm down and relax, and my kayaking trips have resulted in pix like the one above.

I finally got all the chores done and finished packing. Proof:



Look, let's just pretend that this photo is in the right direction, okay? I'm tired of fighting with Picassa about it.

Pretend this one is upright, also. I got this at the state fair. It's a backpack on wheels, and it's my carry-on.

I don't have the heart to rip out the begonias, so I just put the pots in the garage so the tubers can dry.






This morning I made a final trip to the dump and the post office. As I broke over the top of Mile 34 hill, I saw the morning fog had combined with smoke from the latest Forest Service "controlled" burn. Except, ever since they lost control over a couple of them a few years back and almost burned down one of their own campgrounds as well as the settlement of Crown Point, they've been calling them prescribed burns--or maybe it's proscribed burns. Whatever.



Anyway, the smoke in the air added depth and definition to the mountains, kind of a nice look. Reminds me of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Mountains in Australia. The tour guides tell you the blue in Australia comes from eucalyptus vapor in the air, but there's more to it than that.  The oil terpenoids scatter incoming ultraviolet rays and that causes the blue haze.

Nonetheless, the smoke and clearing fog set up a fine shot at Trail Lake.






Well, chores done, house clean, Pablo at the parrot-sitter, and my bags packed, we headed for Anchorage to drop me off at the Puffin Inn for the night, prior to my morning flight to Seattle and on to San Francisco. I checked in and signed up for the 9 a.m. shuttle to the airport. Now, where else would you have to fill in the last column?




Tuesday, Day 2

Alaska Airlines has decorated their overhead luggage doors with a mural of all the various seafood available from Alaska. This is just one door.




Perfectly lovely flight to Seattle. Look at all those glaciers flowing together. Three percent of Alaska's surface is covered by glaciers, and Alaska has more than half the glaciers in the world.

Later.

Sea-Tac is in security lockdown. No planes moving, no boarding, no nothing. There's been an incident. Finally we get the "all clear" to board.

Just as I'm about to step into the plane, an "aircraft maintenance" man slips ahead of me and into the cockpit. Oh, man. Just what I don't need to see.

Travel is a journey of discovery, and here's what I've discovered so far:

1. I brought the travel clock with the broken alarm.

2. My lap top will not hold a charge, nor will it take a charge.

3. If you rudely yank the battery from the laptop and then just as rudely slam it back in its place, it will start behaving.

4. If you don't use your laptop for a while, it won't shut off when you need it to so you can board your airplane. It's busy installing update 32 of 45.

5. Alaska Airlines has up-graded its onboard food items for sale and now offers an awesome roasted vegetable ravioli with a basil cream sauce, served with a warmed soft breadstick. It also carries my beverage of choice--Coke Zero.

6. I continue to be as disorganized as ever during the initial phases of my trip. As soon as I learn where everything wants to live, I get much better at this.

Okay, midnight on the motel clock. Have to catch the 9 a.m. shuttle to San Francisco International terminal for the flight to China.

You might not hear from me for a while.

Ah, discovery--'tis quixotic as ever.

Hard Rock Dreams and Dreamers

I'm a dreamer. I'm a dreamer in every sense of the word, but especially a night-time dreamer.

My dreams are vivid in color, texture and content. Sometimes they scare me, fraught with every negative emotion known to humans that they are. Sometimes they amuse me, sometimes they comfort me, and sometimes they lead to endless confusion and uncertainty--like the story I'm going to tell you now.

For years I've had a memory of being a frightened passenger in a vehicle struggling through snow along a steep, narrow, winding road, climbing higher and higher in the mountains, and wishing I was the driver. The next two memories in this particular circumstance are of climbing a narrow wooden staircase to the second floor of a very old building, and of opening the door to a room holding a narrow cot. The next blurry slide is of a small room where food was offered for sale. Then, snow, a rope tow, and skis.

That's all. I never remembered who the driver was or whether or not I actually skied there, yet a insubstantial thought of poor snow conditions struggles to rise from the inkiness of forgotten memories.

Then a few years ago I was reading through some letters I'd written in 1965, and came across a brief mention of a friend named Bill inviting me to go skiing at Independence Mine on a particular weekend.

Since then I've been trying to remember if I did. Was that long ago trip the nucleus of my memories? Did I go? Or was the outing canceled and I just dreamed I'd gone? Could that feeling of fear I remembered as the driver tried to keep the car from plunging over the steep mountainside be real, or a dream memory?

And what about that bunkhouse, the stairs, the room with a narrow cot? What about the other fleeting images? Is my brain making them up to fill in the spaces between the stronger ones?

When I woke up in the bed of my pickup after cruising around the Alaska State Fair a couple weeks ago, a soft rain--more like mist--was falling. I packed up and headed north from the fairgrounds. I pulled into a gas station and topped off the tank, and drove north again.

Some miles later I made a left turn onto Hatcher Pass road. I was heading for Independence Mine, a place I know I haven't been since 1965--if I ever did go there to begin with. Soon I reached the Little Su river (Little Susitna).







And some signs about Hatcher Pass.








The road narrowed and began to climb into the mountains. I passed several bikers, in-line skaters, and their escort car. I think these were high school athletes in training.



Higher and higher I climbed, looking down on the switch-backed road and the Little Su far below.



Then, nearing the four thousand foot level, I reached the parking lot of the mine, which is now part of the Alaska State Park system.


Well, I thought, there it is--the bunkhouse I remembered. Or did I? Had I simply seen photos of the mine and incorporated them into my dreams?


I climbed the steps of the bunkhouse, the building with the red railings. All the doors were locked, but I was able to see through one window what appeared to be a small meeting room. That's when another memory surfaced--one of ordering food in this very small room.





I walked around the grounds, waiting for the Main House to open at 1 o'clock. I had some questions I wanted to ask. Finally I saw lights on and went inside.

That's gold in that ore.

The young woman at the counter couldn't answer my questions. "It's only been part of the state park system since 1989," she said. "I don't know anything about what was here in 1965."


Eventually I back-tracked out of the parking area and towards this road.



But first, I stopped at Hatcher Pass Lodge. I thought maybe someone here would know.



I placed an order for a turkey sandwich to go and wandered around the cafe. I asked a young woman if there had been a rope tow at the mine in the 1960s. She didn't know, and mentioned that Hap, the owner, had just left.

"Hap," I said. "Hap Wurlitzer?" She answered yes. I laughed. Hap is someone I know only in that I know who he is. I doubt he'd recognize my name, but his has long been associated with the skiing world in Alaska.


And then the lady who was preparing my order came out of the kitchen and led me down a long hallway. She pointed at the following picture.


And there it was--the rope tow in my dreams.

Out in the dining room was another picture, one showing the current metamorphosis of the area--cross-country skiing.


When my sandwich was ready, I went out to my truck and headed for the Hatcher Pass road just down the road.


I opened the lunch box. Well, REAL turkey. That's something I haven't seen from a restaurant since I sold my own place in 1996.



The turn off. This is substantially steeper than it looks in this picture. I wish I'd stopped and taken a picture of the road conditions after the turnoff, but I thought keeping the truck moving with both hands on the steering wheel was the better idea. Suffice it to say, I did a lot of boulder-dodging, and I do mean BOULDER.




No, there are no guard rails on this road.




Driving conditions.



On and on I drove, usually at ten to fifteen miles an hour. The scenery was spectacular. The mist and rain set the perfect ambiance for my dream/memories. I knew I'd never been over this section of the road, and I still wasn't sure about the mine part.

An operating mine.

A beaver lodge in a small pond on the tundra.

A closer view of the lodge and dam.

I drove on and one through misty mountains and tundra.

Then suddenly, in the space of one switch-back, I was back down below the timberline.


The rest of the drive was boring. There were lots of moose hunters parked and camped at various places along the road. Eventually I reached the Parks highway intersection in Willow, turned left and headed south--back through Wasilla (Sarah Palin's home town) and on towards Anchorage.

I thought about the journey I'd just made. My memories, or dream memories, of skiing at Independence Mine matched the weather--shrouded in mist. I still don't know if I ever went there, or simply lived that adventure in a dream.


(I leave today --Monday--on the first leg of my trip to China and Tibet, and don't have time to do justice to a story of the mine, so I'll post the following photos of informational signs. If you're interested in knowing more, click on the pix to enlarge them so you can read them. Or, Google Independence Mine.)















This sign is placed where you can identify, by comparing the photo with the terrain, the very spot on the mountain where the first gold discovery was made.

Invoice for movie rentals from Columbia pictures.