Setting Sail to Kissing Giraffes

11Jul08 (I think): I promised I would post an update once I arrived in country so here it is. I’m actually writing the first part of this on the last leg of the marathon flights. I’m about 2.5 hours outside of Nairobi and I’ve got a serious itch to get out of the air. Imagine that. I’m sure that some of you have taken longer flights than I’ve just endured, but damn, economy is no fun way to fly. Luckily the last two flights were only long. My first flight had me sitting there in a pool of sticky energy drink residue in a seat that wasn’t assigned to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself….

So in my last posting, I was at home anxiously awaiting for my adventure to begin, so much in fact that I was over worried about everything. Did I pack everything I needed? What did my bags weigh? Were the storms going to come through and delay or cancel my flight? Obviously, I didn’t want anything to get in the way of me getting started so I woke up early on the morning of the 10^th to a beautiful sunny day in Charleston. I flipped on the weather to hear our cheery weather man inform the low country residents that thunder storms were expected in the afternoon. So I quickly checked the web to see if there were any earlier fights out of Charleston to Dulles (there was) and I spoke to a wonderfully unhelpful representative from United Airlines that hadn’t quite mastered the English language and could only communicate sentences if they were written on a card for her. After about 15 minutes of speaking slowly and ensuring she understood my question, I was able to decipher that there were seats available on the earlier flight. So at 8:30 in the morning, I caught a taxi to the airport to see if I could possibly get on the earlier flight and avoid any delays due to Mother Nature. When I got to the airport, the agent informed me that there was 1 seat available on the next flight to Washington, DC but he couldn’t reserve it for me. The most he could do was give me a high priority for standby. Ok, not too bad. In the 15 minutes from when I spoke to one of the finest representatives in United’s outsourced call center to when I got to the airport, the multiple available seats had disappeared. So I said goodbye to my bags (possibly forever) and went through security. Once I got to the gate, I checked in with the agent there and she informed me that she just gave away the last and only standby seat, but I was first on the list if any other seats became available. I said fine, that’s why they call it standby. As I watched the passengers board the flight, I saw everyone get on except for just a few people sitting in the waiting area. The gal that was in the line ahead of me got called and then, much to my surprise, a flight attendant and her daughter were called to board as well. Somehow, I started as a high priority at the ticketing counter to being trumped by a 4 yr old girl with her Hello Kitty pull along suit case and her “In the business” mom. Oh well, such is life; unfair in so many ways.

So now I had 4+ hours to kill in the Charleston airport which I did uneventfully. I watched the window and saw the storms that the weatherman had talked about earlier which brings up the question, why are the weather forecasters only right when it’s inconvenient for us? For once I witnessed some forethought and planning when the airline decided to board the flight early to try to beat the storms. I put away my things and grabbed my ticket, wide eyed like a toddler on Christmas coming downstairs to see what Santa had left. The dreams of sugar plums and dancing nutcrackers came crashing down when I saw Anchor Ass sitting in my seat (you’ll see why I dubbed him Anchor Ass in a minute). Apparently in my decision to try to be proactive, United airlines saw it fit to double book my seat. Nice. So I set my bag and half drank energy drink in the seat in front of him to try to get a resolution from the sole flight attendant. As I did that, Anchor Ass stayed right where he was, clutching the seat as if it were the winning Powerball ticket and afraid that if he even moved slightly I would rush in and sit underneath him stealing away his chance to stay on this flight. When I took the 8.5 steps to the front of the plane (it was a pretty small commuter jet), the flight attendant looked at me blankly and told me to just stand to the side. Ok, so I went back to the seat in front of Anchor Ass and grabbed my stuff so it wasn’t in the way of other passengers and in my flustered state, forgot about my can of Rockstar. Once I got back to the front, I quickly realized I didn’t have the sweet nectar in my hand and went back to see where I left it. Apparently, I left it spilt all over the seat. Sh*t. So I got some paper towels and soaked it up as best I could all the while, Anchor Ass just looking blankly ahead completely unhelpful, probably celebrating his win mentally. Then I met the lady whose seat I just spilled the drink all over and she obviously wasn’t happy either. She grabbed another seat that hadn’t been recently washed with sticky sugar and caffeine infused energy booster. Finally the flight attendant told me everyone was on board and just to grab any seat. Well any seat meant the one that I had just wiped up because there were no others available. Lucky me. I didn’t complain though because it was partly my fault but it was also partly the fault of our friends in the outsourced call center. See if that lady hadn’t told me there were extra seats, then I would have tried to go standby on the earlier flight and then my original seat wouldn’t have been doubled booked with Anchor Ass and then I wouldn’t have spilled drink all over the seat that I was currently residing in. It’s amazing how the chain of events had led me to sitting in my drink, but I was just glad to be on the flight.

SWATCH's in Switzerland! Say that 5 times fast!

Anyhow, lucky for me that was the worst part of the all the flights. I got into Washington, DC alright and caught my next flight. I got to sit next to Roman of Zurich, Switzerland who was very nice and after reading an entire 300 page James Patterson book from cover to cover during this flight, he gave me an air tour of Switzerland as we made our approach. Aside from being an 8 hour flight, it went very smoothly and I must say that the food on International Flight has gotten increasingly better. The double fudge brownie that came with dinner was actually something to write home about (or at least mention in this blog). I made my transfer in the Land of the Alps and caught the 7 hour connection to Nairobi. This flight was also good and the food was very tasty as well. And unlike the United flights that I had taken earlier, this Swiss Air flight gives free alcohol so I drank 2 bottles of red wine to help sleep since I had only previously gotten about 2 hours in the past 27 or so. Ok, they’re the small bottles of wine but still, it was nice and helped me catch a little shut eye.

Once arriving for the first time in Africa, everything went very smoothly. My bags arrived as planned and my team was waiting for me! And for those of you who live in DC and Atlanta, you can’t complain about traffic. The traffic here in Nairobi was horrible and it took well over an hour to get to the hotel/resort. I even saw a bus drive on the tiny median and almost tip over to get ahead of some other drivers. They are crazy here! But I made it safely and got checked in. It was already dark so I didn’t get to see too much of the country or the resort, but from what I can tell, it is beautiful. I will try to post pictures once I get some. Next, I got unpacked and took a cold shower. They’re having problems with their boiler so the hot refreshing shower that I was so looking forward to, just didn’t happen. The water did feel nice though. After getting settled in, I went to the restaurant for a sandwich and a Tusker (it’s their national beer). Let me make this statement. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten a chicken sandwich and fries, with Kenyan beer watching old school Bruce Lee Kung Fu in 60 degree weather and listening to a mixed tape of rousing 80’s music in the background. And yes, I’ve realized it’s not Africa hot here. Even though we’re just south of the equator, it’s quite cool due to the altitude.

So that was my trip to Africa. By the way, my mom won the 10 points for getting the quote right on my last post, but Jansen Deloach wins the bonus points for getting the right one correct. Congratulate Jansen for searching the web during work hours to find the answer!

Anyways, yo ho ho and a bottle of Tusker! Take care all!

13Jul08: Jambo (Hello in Swahili) and greetings to all the followers of the Swashbuckler. Today you can call me the Giraffe Casanova however, which I will explain later. So I’ve gotten settled in pretty nice. Yesterday after getting up and checking out our teaching facilities, I and a couple of my coworkers took a hike around the grounds of the golf resort. This was my first opportunity to see wild sykes monkeys up close. It was amazing because they would let you get very close without getting scared. I’ve posted a few pictures here.

Look! It's a bird, no it's a plane, no it's super monkey!



Weird! A mutated monkey with 4 eyes!



A real friend checks their buddies for hemorrhoids!




Waaaazzzzuuuupppp!! Nuthin'! Chillin', watching the game!

What? Haven't you seen a monkey on a bench before? And no, that's not me!

After the hike, I decided to grab some dinner so I went to the hotel bar. Just after ordering, we lost electricity for about an hour. The infrastructure here is definitely not what I’m used to. I actually felt very rugged however, because the staff brought out a gas lantern and I got to read my Kenya travel book by its light. And it was so eerily quiet. I loved it.

This morning we got up and met our driver to see some of the sites around Nairobi. First, he took us to a baby elephant orphanage where they raise the babies until they get older and can be released into the wild. It was such an amazing experience. Here are some photos of both the elephants and of some wild warthogs:

Hakuna Matata!

Hmmm...I think he smells nuts...

They also have a blind black rhino that they care for which was also very friendly.

Who knew that rhinos pee backwards?

After that, we stopped at a souvenir shop, where I was able to pick up a couple of hand carved animals. They had a traditional Massai Warrior out front as well.

In case you can't tell, I'm the one with the hat!

Next, we went to a Giraffe Sanctuary where we could feed the giraffes. They were so neat to see up close and to eat out of our hands. I also found out that their tongues are very rough, very similar to sand paper. I found this out because after feeding one from my mouth, my chin and lips felt like they had been run over with 80 grit! Here’s some pictures to prove it:

Do we make a cute couple?

I just love a first kiss....

After that adventure, we had lunch at the Karen Blixen house where she had filmed a lot of the movie “Out of Africa”. If anyone has seen it, feel free to fill me in since I have not had that opportunity.

So that was pretty much our weekend. We start classes Monday morning and will teach all week. Next weekend however, we are going to try to do a safari. I’m hoping it will be one of the camping types as well. I promise to continue taking loads of pictures and posting on the blog. If anyone has facebook, I will eventually be uploading all of the photos onto my page. I’ve taken over 200 so far.

I hope everyone is well! Take care of yourselves!

Asante Sana (Thank you very much in Swahili)

Bon Voyage

Greetings everyone and I hope y'all had a wonderful Independence day!

So here I sit on the eve of my World Tour 2008, anxiously awaiting to set sail. I wish I could say "All my bags are packed; I'm ready to go" (sorry had to give John Denver a shout out), but I still have some things to do. I think I've got everything I need, I just need to pack it all up. My flight isn't schedule to leave until 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, but I'm a little apprehensive since we're supposed to have some thunder storms come through about the time of the flight. So we'll see what will happen. I'm not looking terribly foward to the 17 hours of flight time that I'm facing but luckily I have a few movies and some work to do. Tomorrow I fly to Washington DC, where I'll change planes and head off to Zurich, Switzerland. A couple hours later, I leave the Land of the Alps, Kingdom of Neutrality or if you prefer Homeland of the Swatch, and take off for Nairobi, Kenya.

I am going to try to update this at least weekly with pictures and any interesting stories. Feel free to drop me a line or if you have an idea for an interesting photograph, send it to me and I will do what I can. I would love this to be interactive if possible, so send your suggestions! I got a new camera for this trip so I'm psyched to play around with it.

So for now, I bid adieu and leave you with some recent photos from around Charleston and one of me sailing a drug boat.

"Worry about your own fortunes gentlemen. The deepest circle of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers." (10 points to whoever can tell me where that quote comes from)

Delayed at sea

To all followers of the swashbuckler…First, my humblest of apologies. It seems that this Blog thing is harder to keep up with than I had anticipated. But alas, I’m back to update my readers on my latest adventures while traveling the world, saving damsels in distress, and rescuing society from the clutches of dastardly villains. Ok, maybe it hasn’t been that exciting but a lot has happened since my first and only update. I started my new job as a government contractor in February and it has been everything that I had hoped for. My first assignment had me in Horry (pronounced ‘orry) County SC where I was the lead controller for a full-scale mock terrorist exercise at a mall requiring response from a multitude of local and state emergency management agencies. It was pretty exciting stuff in that it was my job to make sure the exercise followed the prescribed list of events and that interjections were made on time.

Shortly after that, I was on my first road trip to Cape Canaveral FL where I taught a course for Florida State University on Port Security to Security Officers, their Supervisors, and first responders. This was just a trial run before our actual evaluation that I’ll talk about later in the Blog.

As soon as that course ended, I was off to the beautiful Caribbean for 3 weeks. I know it’s hard to believe, but this really is my job and they are paying me to do this stuff. After a multitude of flight problems (due to snow in Atlanta), I arrived in Trinidad & Tobago a little after midnight and caught a cab to our hotel. I met with my team the next morning to prepare for the course we were teaching. The course was on Maritime Interdiction to Terrorism and was being funded by the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. It was taught to the T&T’s Coast Guard and Customs Officers. The instruction went very well and the students really enjoyed the lessons. And I must admit that no one in the world can party like a Trini. They call it ‘limin’ (pronounced lime-in). And it seems that their culture revolves around the next party. As I was told, “If it a hurricane’s a comin’, we drink rum. If someone gets promoted, we drink rum. If someone dies, we drink rum”. I even saw people pulled over the side of the road and begin ‘limin’ because of traffic. I guess that’s why it’s the birthplace of Carnival. We were able to make it out to the beach one weekend which was a lot of fun. I had my first “Shark and Bake” which is a real shark sandwich. If anybody has seen Andrew Zimmerman’s show on the Travel Channel, he lists this sandwich as one of hit top 10 foods of all time! It was very tasty to say the least. Below are a few pictures from the trip (with the last being a picture with the US Ambassador to Trinidad & Tobago).

Unfortunately, my Caribbean excursion had to come to an end and I was back in the US. Being sick of living out of a suitcase, I decided to get a place in Charleston. So I rented a 3 bedroom townhouse in North Charleston where the back deck literally sits on a lake (See the picture below taken off my back porch just prior to a storm). Luckily I had the help of really good friends (Robin and Bob) and the move went very smoothly.

After being back in the office for a couple of weeks, I again left for Cape Canaveral FL for another 2 weeks of teaching the FSU Port Security course. This time, I taught it to a larger audience, including evaluators from the Department of Homeland Security. After those 2 weeks, we were back in Charleston for the last 2 weeks of this course where the audience changed to Law Enforcement Officers, their supervisors, and port employees. Everything went very well and with any luck, these lessons will get the DHS, USCG and MARAD seals and then we can teach it across the country.

So that brings us to the present. This weekend, I’m heading down to Orlando to see Matt, Liz and Nicholas and then the following weekend I’m off to San Antonio for 5 days. My family is having what is called a decade party. My grandmother turns 80, my aunt 40 and I will be 30 this year so we’re having a little reunion to celebrate. And then it’s off on my world tour. I’m leaving somewhere around the 12th of July for Nairobi, Kenya where I’ll be helping teach a course to their government on how to train trainers. Yes, I’m training trainers on how to train trainers. It’s a bunch of adult learning stuff. I’ll be there for two weeks, and then I’m off to Mombassa, Kenya for the same course. I’m hoping to take a weekend and get out to one of the National Parks for a mini-safari. I’ll be sure to post pictures if I get the chance. From there, I fly directly to Sri Lanka for a 3 week course on maritime law enforcement. Both countries are listed on the State Department’s travel warnings list. It should be very interesting to say the least. Then at the end of August, on my way back, I’m meeting my parents in Germany for a week vacation at the base of the Alps in Garmisch Germany. That’s why I’m calling this trip the 2008 World Tour. I’m very, very excited. I’ll do what I can to take as many pictures as possible and share my adventures.

I hope everyone is doing well and again, I apologize for not keeping this updated. I’ll try to do better.

From the well-worn boot laces of a swashbuckler ~ All my best!

My ship's in the yard

Well this is my first blog post. My plan is to use this to post pictures and videos from my travels across the globe. You may be asking yourself why I chose to name the Blog "From the Boots of a Swashbuckler". Well aside from being a really cool name, I liked the definition of a swashbuckler. Wikipedia (yes I'm a geek) defines a swashbuckler as a fearless romantic archetype, a fictitious, adventurous, sword-wielding, male character who seeks to win the heart of a beautiful lady while rescuing society from the clutches of a dastardly villain. While that may not describe me totally, it's pretty damn close, right? (See photo below). At least me without the frilly shirts and funny hats.





Ok enough rambling. I was supposed to be starting my new job this week, however due to contract negotiations and such, I will not be starting until the beginning of February. I guess that's the world of being a government contractor. But being unemployed is....ummmmm....great. At least it beats sitting in a cubicle (no offense) and writing the same comments over and over again to appease the fill rate gods. Yes, you know what I'm talking about.


So while my ship is stuck in port, I've had the opportunity to get a lot done. I've been working to get my house on this slow-as-molassas-on-a-hot-Georgia-summer-day market that we're experiencing. By the way, anyone looking for a really, really nice and spacious 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house with a 950 sq. ft master suite on a .5 acre lot, 2 car garage in beautiful Paulding County for $219,900? No? Sorry, I had to ask.

I've also had the chance to do a little domestic travel. I flew out to Colorado for a few days for a skiing adventure with Casey. By the way, if you ever go skiing in CO, my advice is to stay at one of the resorts. We stayed in Denver, which without traffic, takes over an hour and a half to get to the mountains. Then if you try to drive on a Saturday morning, it takes over 3 hours. Not fun. Also, Ford Escape rentals suck. After one trip to the pass, the transmission died at about 10 pm and we had to wait for the rental company to bring out a new car. Sunday was an equally disappointing day. Like the transmission of a cheap domestic SUV, my beloved Dallas Cowboys folded. I could make excuses like Tony Romo shouldn't have gone to Mexico with Jessica Simpson, but I have to be real with myself. If I had that chance, I probably would've gone too. Can't blame the guy, right? So now the dreaded NY Giants are heading to a butt whooping in Arizona. Sigh...To my mentally incapacitated friends (Liz and Bob, you know who you are), at least you get to see your team at the Big Show!

Sorry, I had to go on a little rant there. The trip was a great time. And to commemorate the trip, I produced a little video. Keep in mind that this was shot entirely on a cell phone. Make sure the volume of your computer is on to hear the music. Not bad, huh?







So I think I've rambled enough for a first post. I hope all is well with everyone. Please leave me comments because I'm sitting at home wanting to feel the love. Savvy?



Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of Rum!