APR-A-8
A PRE-DAWN DEPARTURE
WITH THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
AND MRS. SHEN
TO TAIPEI TO BEGIN THE LONG SERIES OF INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS AGAINST THE
RISING SUN THROUGH TWO APRIL 10’S TO RETURN “HOME,” HOWEVER SO BRIEFLY BEFORE
PACKING UP FOR YET ANOTHER INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURE TO STILL MORE EXOTIC
DESTINATIONS
April 10
(A)—(B), 2004
I am aloft on the fir4st of my April 10.s aboard NW 22 enroute to Narita, for the long return toward a DC/Derwood brief stay with intermediate stopping in MPS. Almost immediately, within fifteen minutes for sure, the battery failure sign flashed and I was out of business. I had no time whatever in Narita to find a power outlet, and almost not enough time to get through security and boarded. I have had the most frustrating time trying to get a GPS mark on Narita which I have been trying to do for several years: for some diabolical reason, it is impossible for me to do. I get two satellites and then it cannot get a third to fix a mark. So, I suspect I am at least 25* above the Taiwan latitude I had been at for the last several weeks, but I cannot do that except from memory. I remembered as far back as when I was a kid and saw the lighthouse at Ludington on Lake Michigan which identified that point as at the 45th parallel, which put Ludington at the same level as Tokyo and many European capitals—which would put each of them half way up from the equator to the pole in the temperate zone. But, I cannot tell you the GPS coordinates on Narita in either of my two passes through it again this month.
I am now in MPS, where I got my first “toke” from an electric outlet to start up the dead battery again. It has been a very long pair of days, starting at 4:00 AM two April 10’s ago. I watched a rather good movie, the acclaimed one of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, a romantic comedy of first love of unlikely sixty year-olds. There were a couple more movies, but I simply zoned out during most of them since I could not think of a reason I would want to watch one of those rather than using the simple time I could finish my Congo book on Leopold’s legacy.
I am drowsy now, and will have to get one more flight to arrive at DCA and lug my stuff to the GW office and parking lot where I have the Audi. I have dropped the PhotoWorks film into the mail here in MPS, and will turn in the other pictures I had taken with the big Nikon and its telephoto, since I am packing the pocket cameras that are useless, since there were not reparable in Taiwan, so it is unlikely that there would be any yield on trying to get them repaired in the USA. I have made plans to store up the Photo Works digital pictures on files on the net and discs. I have the remarkable device that will allow me to store up to 256 Megs of text and pictures.
I had been introduced to the “Traveling disc” which was called the “thumb” in Taiwan, and I had admired it and furnished Kwon with 2400 NT to get me one if she could make it possible to store and carry the massive files in a very tiny gadget that may be a way for me to show pictures and the special files on many events each year, including the “books” of each of the adventure travels. I can’t wait to put them all into organization and massive storage capacity into this little “thumb” sized device.
With the battery juice I was able to sip from the outlet at MPS, I have concluded my story from Taiwan with this Apr-A-8, and have used this “book” of experiences to be the first part of the data to be stored in the thumb sized data device to carry along with me when I next hit the road—which will be very shortly indeed—within the week.
The Far East has been an interesting tour and with an interesting increase in the value added to my prior travel to Taiwan when I was only in the capital at Taipei, which I used this time only to take off or land with all my activities this time centered around the South and center of the island. So, I have a new appreciation of several items that are, as always in stretching across foreign cultures, mind-stretching and experience expanding. I hope you may have learned a bit about it through this window on that world as well, and that this trip, which was interrupted in my usual photographic mission right at the outset, got better at recording it with a newer digital perspective, now even miniaturized down into the data device that will be able to carry not only this, but most such experiences along with me, both in story text and pictures as well. So, as always, live, and learn, and teach along the way!