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Published: April 19th 2010
Well, here I am again on a train crossing Europe, writing another travelblog. Sorry to all those reading this on your computer screens at work. I hope that person in the cubicle next door isn’t having tuna again for lunch, phew stinks! Maybe you can come visit me in those four weeks holidays you have a year… Sorry
I wanted to attach a video of the trip to Istanbul last year which I finally worked out how to get on my pc. I had a minimal attempt at editing the video so its still a bit rough around the edges. I finally got it saved with music and everything and you know how big it was, 5gigs. Not sure the wifi connection here at the hostel could handle that much data.
Now in my haste to get back in to the swing of things in Sydney I left a couple of partially completed blogs unpublished. So for those of you who have some time on the hands, here are three entries I started writing as I was heading back to Oz in October. For those who don’t have time or those who I’ve just offended, the quick update is I arrived in France, a quick stopover in Antibes to visit the crew agents now I’m on my way to Palma, via a non work related weekend in Biarritz, a week in Barcelona looking for work and then on to Palma. More updates to follow
To paint the scene, I’m sitting in a sleeper carriage all to myself, heading from Cannes to Biarritz, Its 1047pm, passing through Marseille and I doze off and start having flash backs of last year… wwwooooooouuuuhhhhh:
The Happiest Man in the World
Brrr brrr brrr brrr brrr… Crap 6 o’clock, better get moving!
I’ve got two hours to get myself showered, dressed, drop off Bertrand where he’s going to spend the next 6 months in the safety of a friend’s stairwell, pick up my bags and get myself on the train out of Antibes.
Forget the moment you start packing your bag, it’s the moment of the alarm clock that it dawns on you that you’re going home. One minute you’re minds fleeting between those, bizarre marshmallow people and that hole in the back of the wardrobe that you swear you can crawl through and the next minute you’re struck with the fear of missing whatever form of transport you need to catch to get where you’re going.
Like anytime you take that first step out your front door as Bilbo Baggins once said you never know where you’re going to end up. Similarly any time you start the motion back towards that front door it tends to be accompanied by some thought to the whether the person you’ll see in the reflection of the front door will be the same that passed through the door all that time ago. There’s always some things that you need a bit of geographical dislocation before you can see clearly what may have been at the back of the cupboard the whole time.
I’ve just finished reading a book about a crazy US guy called Poppa Neutrino who amongst other things built a raft out of other people’s rubbish and floated it across the North Atlantic. It’s written by a journalist from New York and has a lot of material from interviews with the guy. Poppa doesn’t mind getting a bit of a monologue happening to give his ideas on the world. He’s my favourite quote.
“We’re all of us in this life and death swim, and death’s going to win, no question, but we can delay it. I am always asking myself, How can I become more involved, more passionate, and less vulnerable? When I see some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life, I feel I must be a terrible person, and some of the successes make me think I’m a great person, famous to myself. If I’d had a little more information, no doubt I might have done better… On this raft, as long as I’m in movement, if I’m in some place, and it’s not working, I’ll move to a place where it will. I’ll move from unsavory situation to pleasant ones. Eventually I will move across the ocean and maybe around the world. Where does it end? The grave, of course, but I’m going out of this life as what I have worked and striven my whole life to be, a free man-free of possessions, free of greed, free of worry and strife.”
For some reason I can relate to that line of thinking…
Meaning of life
It’s not often in the history of the world that one receives a glimpse this easily of the purpose of one’s existence. Fortunately for myself I seem to be constantly reminded of what mine is. I think the first time I had an inkling was probably around the time that I changed part of my trip to Thailand to meet who I thought was my friend Xavi from Spain, including booking new flights leaving Chang mai ahead of schedule, only to find that who I had actually contacted via email was a weird French guy called Xavier who I’d never met before but turned out to be a guy who a friend had shared a room with in a town in France while on exchange. (Feel free to ask for the full story when you’ve got a chance, although I’m not sure I’m the best teller of the story, I know Mr Liam Barry gets some good mileage out of it). Although, I probably should have known from the time when I was in Barcelona and I turned down an invitation to go sailing on the Costa Brava with an absolutely amazingly beautiful Spanish girl and instead going to London and mis-reading my flight information resulting in me spending two days sleeping in Victoria train station and Stansted airport.
This reminder came in the form of my yachtmaster exam in Southampton. I was a bit apprehensive about the exam before it begun, and the week spent on the Solent calmed some fears but only acted to worsen others. After all it’s a fairly prestigious acknowledgement of one’s knowledge and general seaman-ness. If someone had of told me before starting the two day practical exam that I wasn’t going to pass, I might of said, fair enough, maybe I could have done with more preparation, or some more experience before taking it on. It was after all the first time I’d really spent a lot of time looking at charts ever. However if someone had said that I was going to pass everything in the exam, man over board drills, picking up a mooring boy under sail, turning in a confined space all with between 15-20 knots, and then slip up almost within sight of the marina, I’m not sure I would have believed it.
So it passed that before receiving my qualification, I was given the task of skippering the vessel for the final part of the exam. Taking us the 2 miles up the Southampton River, up the Itchen River, and into Kemps Quay Marina. Earlier on in the day the examiner had imposed on us the importance of looking after the well being of the crew, like making sure there’s always a kettle on the boil in time to have a cup of tea when you get to the anchorage or ensuring there’s enough naan bread to go with that night’s curry. So before taking charge of the vessel I made it a priority to go down below and put the rest of the case of beer they’d given us at the start of the week in the fridge so it was cold when we arrived at the marina. My night pilotage plan all put down in my notebook marking down the light sequence of each channel marker. As we turned off Southampton River and up Itchen River the guy I had on the helm said to me “Don’t worry Phil, I’ve been up this river more times than you’ve had women”. Which is an interesting statement, considering the fact that we then ran aground about 15 minutes after he made it. Maybe I had only imagined those years I spent as a single guy. I can’t put all the blame on my good friend Eric, the useless power boat salesmen who thought he’s try his hand and sailing boats by doing his yachtmaster. I should’ve paid more attention to my plan and less to his confident approach. So after almost 48 hours on the boat sharing the exam with 2 others, I failed, and had to face the prospect of re-sitting the exam in Australia. That 5 minute lapse in concentration ended up costing me over a thousand dollars by the time it was all said and done. But, in terms of the cost of running aground I think a sheltered spot on the Itchen River in soft mud isn’t a bad place. Considering that not even 36 hours beforehand the accident took place off Wollongong with Andrew Short’s boat, resulting in two dead and the rest of the crew scrambling onto rocky Flinders Island at 1am in the morning.
Bertrand et Moi
Coming back to Antibes after being in Southampton was a bit of a culture shock at first. Gone were the hordes of summer tourists and yacht crew hopefuls and in their place were the hundreds of gamins heading back to school after the summer break. Where did they all come from? It was like the adult population of Antibes had spent the whole summer procreating and given birth to full size 7 year old children. The comforting moment came when, as so many times before I’d come back up the hill to Amy’s apartment to find my good mate Bertrand, exactly where I left him, locked, against the wall of her apartment.
To be honest I’m sure that since I picked up my two wheeled friend from the antique market in Antibes I don’t think he was ever going to be the same again. Since I’d handed over the 30 euros to his previous owner he’d suffered 1 x flat tyre, 1 x dented rim (from riding home on the flat tyre), 1 x failed attempt at changing the brake pads, (resulting in reducing the number of functioning brakes on the bike from 2 slightly worn brakes to 1 fully functioning slightly worn brakepad, and 1 which could not be adjusted and only just made contact with the rim at full stretch), 1 x somewhat successful attempt at changing both the tyres (resulting in the number of functioning brakes changing from one and a half to a half, after the rear break pad fell off and couldn’t be put back in), and that doesn’t include the fashionable little canvas bag on the front falling off after I tried to load it with a big bottle of water, and 20 of my CVs rolled up.
But to again borrow the words of a wise man by the name of Poppa Neutrino, when it was suggested that someone in late middle age, thinking about crossing the Pacific on a homemade raft may have got more excitement in dealing with him than they’d planned on, he said, “Everybody I ever took with me, got more than they bargained for
So in the interest of leaving things in a better state than how I found them I wanted to make sure I left Bertrand in a fully functioning state. This also meant that I could spend my last few days in France taking Bertrand around all the sights we’d seen in the early days of our relationship, before the increased levels of activity started taking a toll on his health.
So now that Bertrand was sporting two nice new tyres I managed to find time to stop by the bike shop and get some replacement brake pads.
As a way of saying thanks to Bertrand for helping me get to know this little part of the world I took him for lunch a little tour of some of our favourite spots, stopped for a look at Plage Moorea in Juan les pins, passer par le Cap d’Antibes, ver Le Fort Carré, along le bord de Mer jusqua Nice. Ah, to be young again, Bertrand whispered as we passed by the ice cream stand near the old Chateau.
For anyone who stuck it out till the end, you're very patient. I'll have my first blog of this trip up soon.
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Pam
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thanks for the update Phil
thanks for the update