All Tough, All The Time

Swimmin' with the Fishes

Some of you faithful readers (I should be so lucky!) are probably very excited to hear about my near death experiences on this weekend’s much-anticipated hash. Yes, it was built up as the ultimate test of endurance, an odyssey so death-defying and physically taxing as to make even a Navy S.E.A.L. cry for his (Charlie Sheen) or her (Demi Moore) mother in agony. But, alas, dear friends, such was not the case. It was rather like a cake walk, stroll in the park, or frolic through the tulips on a warm spring day. Normally, it takes a rip-fueled, beefcake Olympian 4 hours to complete the course (known lovingly as the “Berserker”), but I did it in a brisk half hour. Now, here I must make an extremely important distinction: there are normal hashes and then there are the berserkers. Normal hashes, in which maybe 60 people participate, are really difficult, or so I’ve been told. But berserkers, in which maybe 15 individuals take part, are absolutely insane. We’re talking out of control, cough-up-a-lung, bust-a-gut, crap-your-pants, lose-every-bit-of-metabolic-water-to-perspiration grueling…times 10. So, as you can see, I’m no ordinary human being for having accomplished this. Let’s just say, you can call me Clark and I’ll be chilling in the Fortress of Solitude if you need me. Yes, the Kodo drummers may run 10 miles on a beach every morning and engage in, what they call, intense physical training on THEIR pansy island of Sado, but things are immeasurably more difficult here on Guam. Here, we are…

Okay, so I’m lying. I didn’t do the hash! I admit it! I’m such a useless slob of a weakling that I couldn’t bear the thought of running through uncharted areas of this jungle-laden island, in the process losing precious bodily fluids by the gallon. I’m a two-bit, no-good hack! No, no, my friends, in reality it was postponed due to the fact that one of the main individuals responsible for laying out the course (along with Haldre) had to work all day. Because of this 1) the course could not be finished in time and 2) he would not have been able to participate in the hash, which is, of course, no good. Haldre and Brent had also spent all day Saturday laying out half of the course, in the process bringing both of them to near exhaustion. The prospect of having to endure tribulations such as the berserker the following day was just too much to bear.

The true test now will be to see if all the cookies I made for this epic event will last through the week. I made a double batch of your basic chocolate chip cookies (though bigger), one of which was about 8’’ in diameter and given to Haldre (in thanks for the cake she made me). I believe she has finished the whole thing by now. Most of the other cookies are still here, but I’m prepared to make more this coming weekend. I think I may even prepare several huge cookies so that each of the few participants in the berserker can have a gigantic treat at the end of their arduous journey.

So, I live another week… another looong week. Which is kind of tough, because now I have a little more time to contemplate my existence, contact friends and family one last time, and sweat out the week in anxious expectation of my impending doom. Not that this has been built up for me or anything, a fact which, at this point, I blame almost exclusively on Brent. That’s not really a bad thing, though. I have to admit he has gotten me pretty excited, even if some of his warnings are exaggerated (which, honestly, I doubt they are). For example, when I saw him Sunday morning (the first I had seen him since he laid out some of the course with Haldre), one of the first things he said to me was, “Dude, we’re gonna die [long pause]. Okay, for one, you definitely want to wear pants… and gloves. And your Camelbak. That’s a must.” It got worse from there. In a nutshell, I am prepared to lose either my manhood, a limb, some essential organ, or all of the above. I’ll impart all the gruesome details to you, I promise. Even if I have to do it from a hospital bed a la Steven King.

In lieu of more trying activities, we (that is, Andy, Brent, Haldre, and I) took a hike to some nearby caves on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day, hot and humid, but gorgeously sunny, much in contrast to how the weather has been over the past couple weeks (as far as sun is involved). We drove to the trailhead at the northern end of the island (about 15 minutes away from where I’m staying) and hiked in about half an hour. The trail was fairly well traveled, though at times a bit overgrown. It was also laden with what’s known in Hawaii as “'a'a” or “Really sharp volcanic rocks that make you say ‘D’OH!’ and other expletives when you step on them.” There wasn’t too much, though, and, given the short distance of the hike, it was not a problem.

What did end up being a little bit of a problem were the spiders. Good god, man. I was told that Guam had a decent spider population before getting here, but I had no idea what I was in for. There are hordes of them, their webs stretching across every meagerly open space at two-foot intervals. This is not, I repeat, NOT a place for those multitudes of you with arachnophobia. The one consolation for those to whom spiders give the willies is that these spiders are by no means aggressive. I have heard of no one that has been bitten by one, even when walking head-first into their web, which I have already done about seven thousand times. Of course, that probably doesn’t matter in the slightest to someone who hates spiders. Just the thought of having to be in presence of so many is enough to send them packing (Gram and Stacie, I’m thinking of you specifically).

Being the trooper (i.e., dumbass) of the group, I decided to take the lead or “take one for the team,” as it were, and sustain numerous faceloads of spiders and their webbing on the hike down. Most of the time I was flailing a short (in retrospect, too short) stick around at the air in preparation for the sticky, invisible threads that may escape my view. Often this worked in displacing the webs, but I still looked as though I was warding off beasts seen only to me, much to the amusement of my companions. Andy informed me that my thrashing reminded him of what Don Quixote may have looked like while on his quest. Thanks, friend. Other times, though, I still got a substantial amount of webbing lodged in my eyebrows, eyeballs, or mouth. This is why I’m a wildlife biologist, folks. As my aunt, also a wildlife biologist, recently said, “This is why we go into the profession. The opportunities to revel in the outdoors!”

We finally made it to the cave, although I looked like Frodo after being pierced by the giant eight-legged freak in Return of the King. Luckily, this cave contained cool, refreshing water, just the right substance for cleaning up my sweaty, sticky self (don’t take that the wrong way). This cave was really cool, actually. The surrounding rock is mostly limestone, which is very porous, allowing water to percolate through and fill parts of the cave with pools. The limestone also acts kind of like a filter, so the water that drips though is fresh and quite clear. It’s probably really basic, too, although I don’t know that for sure (Damn me for not bringing my handy pocket pH tester with me!).

Another cool thing about this cave is that past visitors have filled the inside with candles. One of your first tasks upon entering, if you want the full experience, is to light the candles and then enjoy the very cool Dead Poets Society/Séance atmosphere. Unfortunately, there were no bats hanging out (no pun intended… okay, it was intended) in the cave (another thanks, in part, to the brown treesnake), which, fortunately, meant the cave (and therefore water) was not littered with guano. There were also some mediocre stalactites, cockroaches (not many), and moths flittering about. Other than that, it was just us, the cave..., and the ghost of long dead pirates protecting their precious booty!

My main adventure today was, for the first time since arriving here, swimming in the sea. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit that it took me two weeks to enter the briny deep. Even that description is a misnomer, given that where I was ended up being far from deep. It was, at most, neck deep the whole time. The location was a public beach in Tumon, where many tourists (or recently-landed biologists like myself) go to take a swim. The beach lies at the base of a large cove, the mouth of which contains a protective ring of reef. The waves break out there, leaving the inner sanctum of the cove relatively calm, shallow, and free of riptide. This outer reef actually surrounds most of Guam, allowing some fairly safe swimming. There are still plenty of dangerous places where one would not want to swim and this includes out beyond the reef. There are some incredibly treacherous currents surrounding the island and many people die every year as a result of trying to swim within them. One such example actually occurred yesterday. A man was snorkeling at the beach near the refuge and apparently got bashed around by some waves and swept out to sea in the currents. It’s tragic, but also stupid in that there are signs everywhere down there, in both Japanese and English (this guy was Japanese), warning about the dangerous currents.

So, using extreme caution in an isolated area with 3 feet of water, I snorkeled around looking at some cool tropical fish. The first creature I saw was a sea cucumber… followed by another and another. There were actually thousands of them, so I quickly lost interest. This shallow area was surprisingly abundant in fish and coral, allowing me the pleasure of seeing a ton of different species. Thanks to one of Priya’s gifts, a pocket guide to Micronesian fish and other critters, I’m now able to identify some of what I saw. These may not be quite accurate, but I saw, among other beasties, butterfly fish of various kind, some angelfish, a wrasse, a few parrotfish, surgeonfish, goatfish, trumpetfish, emperor fish, and numerous triggerfish, including one who was really pissed at me. This guy had apparently staked out his little round chunk of coral (possibly protecting his offspring, although I couldn’t see anything resembling eggs for baby fish around) and he wasn’t going to let some big oaf with a dumb mask and fake fins bust in on his turf. Each time I went near his piece of coral, which was often because I found him amusing, he would “bluff charge” me, much like a black bear except smaller and more colorful. Oh yeah, and without any ability to actually cause bodily damage. Apparently this guy was having a bad day because I saw numerous others of his species, all of whom had no problem with me and, with the exception of a few that swam quickly in the opposite direction in terror, paid no attention to me.

In closing, I’ll leave you with a fun task brought to me through my good friend, Westy. Westy, who some of you reading this may know, is a crackhead friend of mine from college. And, no, not a REAL crackhead. She’s just extremely energetic, except for when she’s sick (such as the time I went to visit her in Maine for a weekend soon before I left), in which case she’s brought down to the activity level of your average hummingbird. Westy lives on a farm in Freeport, ME, where they have about 40 belted Galloway cattle. While I was there, several of the females were pregnant (thanks to the valiant efforts of their big ol’ bull, Avery), but there were no births. Well, soon after I left the cows started popping out calves like there was no tomorrow (there are now at least 9 of them). One of these calves was born of my birthday… and he was a boy. And, no, they didn’t name him Isaac. As a birthday present to me, Westy has given me the honor of naming him. I would have named him something extremely cool (like Isaac), however, there are serious restrictions on naming these little bovines for the sake of keeping things in order: 1) the name must begin with x, y, or z (this is the 2004 coding), 2) it must have the same number of letters as the mother’s name, and 3) it must contain the first letter of the mother’s name (in this case “n” for Nadia). I told Westy I thought Zaeus would be good (a made-up version of Zeus, using the “ae” often used in scientific nomenclature), but I realized it doesn’t contain an “n.” I think I’ve decided on “Xenos,” which is Greek, meaning “favored guest.” I find this appropriate seeing that I was the friendly guest to their home who helped out with chores, including shoveling Avery’s poop.

Posted by Isaac at February 16, 2004 8:16 PM