That night, I gathered about 800 throwing size stones in a pile next to the door of the tent. I also found a stick that by all rights could be called a log. I was ready.

Come 3 A.M., right on schedule, the boys were back in town. I decided to turn on some lights, get out of the tent, talk loudly, etc. I kind of left Alicia alone in the tent. She kind of hates me for it. She describes herself as a “morsel” in conversations hence. Anyway, there was no fear on night #2, or any following night. I was convinced that I could make a big enough fuss to keep them at bay. From there on out, the trip was pretty sweet…

… well, until we were at a nature display in Colorado and saw a stuffed 2 yr old female mountain lion that weighed 180 lbs… Those had been back there in the Grand Canyon too. Only the adult males aren’t just 180 lbs. And they aren’t afraid of people. And they are attracted to noise. Oh well, glad I didn’t die.

Oh, and just for kicks, here is a wall I REALLY wanted to climb. It’s not easy to tell the scale, but it’s amazingly tall and awesome.

3:00 A.M.

Alicia (screaming in whispers): Jesse! Jesse! What IS that?! What is that sound?!
Jesse (who had been sleeping): Whahumwhah?
Alicia: Jesse, WAKE UP! What the F@$# is that sound?!

We both listened to what sounded like children giggling. Well, children who had been possessed by Satan, but small demons for sure. There must have been at least 5 different “voices”. I could make them out pretty distinctly, and they were close. It didn’t take us very long to figure out that we were dealing with coyotes. A pack had wandered into our campsite and was raising hell. My instinct was to make a bunch of loud noise. In general, there are very few animals who are attracted to big scary sounds. I had a whistle and a flashlight, but Alicia wouldn’t let me get out of the tent. To her defense, I wasn’t 100% sure they wouldn’t attack me, but I was pretty sure. At one point, I heard what I thought was pawing at the side of the tent, and them some panting. I also heard hooves? I chalked it up to paranoia and delirium. After what seemed like an eternity, it all calmed down. I’m not sure I slept again that night, but I don’t remember much after that until morning.

We talked to other campers the next day, and all the pieces came together. A pack of coyotes did enter the campsite. They were pawing around the tents (I found footprints within inches of my head). Also, they quieted down because a ranger had come through on horseback (hence the hooves) to scare them off.

We wanted a good hike that day. We were tired from being up all night, but wanted to make the most of our time there. We headed down the Bright Angel trail. It’s super steep, and there are resting stations at 1.5 and 3 miles down into the Canyon, and then the next isn’t until like 7 miles (but that’s for people who want to hike down and camp).

We decided to go to the first station at least, and if we had it in us, go to the 3 mile point. The way down was a breeze, so we kept going to the 3 mile stop. Newsflash, hiking downhill is easy. The return… well, not so easy. Picture climbing a set of stairs with legs that are too short as someone shoots you with a jet of boiling water in the face. This is compounded by the fact that horses have used the trail which have left a variety of land mines and frothy pools to avoid stepping in. There is no avoiding the smell, and as you breathe heavily in the hot canyon air, you are suffocated by the smell of rotting organics. Anyway…

At the 1.5 mile station on the way up, there was a park ranger telling people not to continue down past this point. There was a storm coming in and they didn’t want people getting caught in it. I pulled the ranger aside to have a chat with her.

Jesse: So, is it VERY common to have packs of coyotes wandering into your campsite?
Ranger: Pack?! No. They are usually loners, and are pretty skittish. In packs though, they can be like a pack of wolves – pretty brazen.
Jesse: Oh, so what’s the best way to deal with them?
Ranger: Well, this morning at sunrise I was on my bike, and I saw one and started taunting it. You know, like yipping at it and making faces. It started to run at me, but then I just yelled and waved my hands and it got scared and ran away.
Jesse: Soooo, you yell at them?
Ranger: Yeah. Do you have a stick? Get a stick. That should do it. And make a lot of noise. Get some rocks. Ooooh, throw rocks, yeah.

I turned to Alicia and gave her the “I told you so” glance. Indeed, you should get in their face otherwise they’ll take advantage of your hospitality and hang out all night near your tent.

One stop along the way was for some camping in Grand Canyon National Park. Our original idea was to hike down into Havasu Canyon and spend a few days at the falls (look it up, it’s gorgeous). However, the fact that it was monsoon season (deadly flash floods) and a 10 mile hike into the canyon 100+ ºF weather, we decided to camp up on the South rim.

It being our honeymoon, we decided to pick the remotest of camp sites – Desert View. It was a pleasant spot; scraggly brush, warped trees and desert. Exactly what you’d expect the Grand Canyon to be. When we first rolled in, there was a group of ravens the size of midgets who were terrorizing something (or someone?) underneath a picnic table of one of the camp sites. We opted NOT to take that site. We searched around and found one of the most out of the way spots, furthest from the entrance and other folks. We’re not anti-social, but it was our honeymoon, and we wanted to be respectful.

We did some hiking that day and checked out the situation. I had never been to the Grand Canyon before, and when I finally stood in front of it and all its majesty, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, this sure is grand”.

It had been a long day of driving, and we were tired, so we turned in early that night. It was very quiet; very peaceful. I drifted off without a care in the world.

The return journey took probably 1-1.5 hours. Totally brutal. Every steep slope we had climbed on the way up looked entirely more treacherous on the way back down (especially now that if we started slipping, it was a face first dive into DOOM, which is for some reason more scary than rump first, if only because you can see the danger and cannot ignore it).

I’m obviously here to write this story, so we made it back safe and sound. That would be the end of the story in a non-ironic world, but we, at least Alicia and I, do NOT live in that world. When we reached the paved path again (this time it didn’t look so disappointing, even to us naturalists) we gazed upon a sight that we had missed in our eagerness to reach the falls so many hours prior. No more than 30 feet DOWNstream of the waterfall, there was a HUGE gorgeous pool to swim in, which required nothing but a hop over a fallen tree to get to, and provided everything we were looking for. Having just exerted ourselves in the California sun for 2 hours, we jumped in. And let me tell you, I now know joy.

We debated for a bit, and then our better judgment told us to go put on our hiking boots at least. With our proper footwear, we made the best of it, and climbed to the top again, nice and slow. It took us maybe 15-20 minutes to get to the top this time (in my first trip, I did some overly stupid things that I wasn’t willing to risk again). As we proceeded further, we realized that to get down the other side the way we came up, it would take a 5.7 down-climb of a vertical 15-20 foot wall, as well as various sections of gnarly slippery slopes that drop off into 50 foot canyons of doom (NOT an exaggeration). Actual DOOM. Working in tandem, we went ahead and did it, figuring that it wasn’t the right way, but we had come this far, and at least when we got there, the people there could tell us the easy way back. It was an slow descent, and not without a few moments of HOLY S*&#, but we did it.

Finally, we reached the pools!

Now, you would think it was time for celebration and rejoicing, but something was … odd. Everyone there…looked… the same? And, they had … ropes? It was at this very moment that Alicia and I found out what we would come to regret heavily later. The group of 40 individuals who served to bait us up there with the promise of an easy return was not in fact 40 separate individuals who had all made separate decisions to come, but one single family of 40 Vietnamese folk, who had made one decision to come. They had brought a safety rope and had worked as a team to arrive where we were. And indeed, we had come the way they had come. No easy return… AND, the pools where we were standing were pretty small, and to get to the really nice ones, you REALY needed a rope. To add insult to injury, they were in the process of packing up to leave, and taking their rope with them. We could have turned back then. Left with them and used their help to get down, but we’re stubborn and wanted our swim, even in these shallow wading pools.

We spent the next few hours sun bathing and swimming and enjoying the view.

It was very serene, but the dark cloud of the return journey hung over us the entire time. We finally mustered the courage to tackle the trip. I don’t know if you know this, but fear in your heart makes anything and everything more difficult. For example, that 15-20 foot down-climb of 5.7 that we were so ready to do when we thought we wouldn’t have to do it again, was now a 15-20 foot solo of dejection.

I started feeling EXTREMELY guilty for dragging Alicia into this. I mean, I’m a climber, I do this sort of thing, and it was I who went on ahead in the first place and said everything was fine. I was getting freaked, so I couldn’t imagine she was having the time of her life. My hiking boots are NOT climbing shoes (point of fact).

We headed onward! Not five minutes later, we reached a rock wall. It was really a slab wall, with a not terribly intimidating slope – kind of a rocky hill climb. I’d give it a 5.4. It appeared to go on for maybe 40 feet, so I told Alicia I would scamper on ahead and see if it looked like the right way. I spent about 10 minutes scrambling to the top, at which point I had a view down into the other side of the Canyon. Just as promised, there was an idyllic scene of maybe 40 people, young and old, splashing around and frolicking in the cool mountain waters. I came back down and told Alicia that we should go on ahead, with the caveat that I had no idea how to get from the top down to the other side. But, I had seen elderly folks and young children up there, so it couldn’t be THAT hard, right? If so many people had decided to come, it couldn’t be a bad choice.

Our first stop was King’s Canyon National Park. That’s situated right between Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. We chose this locale because Alicia had read about it in the New York Times travel section (her bible). They said that the park has all the natural beauty of the other parks, but about 1/10 the visitors due to the slightly more difficult time getting there. Whoever wrote the column also mentioned a waterfall that you can get to the top of and swim around in some pools formed by the mountain stream. So of course, we wanted in.

It was around day #3 in the park that we decided to check out the falls. We had done a 14 mile hike the day before and we were in the mood for some R&R in a mountain pool. We showed up at Roaring River Falls pretty early in the day. The path to the waterfall is fully paved (kind of a bummer for us naturalists) and we were wearing sandals and our swimsuits (it was a scorcher). The waterfall is really beautiful, but we weren’t interested in sight seeing. We wanted a swim, so we decided to head up to where these pools supposedly were. Immediately upon veering off the beaten path, we were met with a sign that warned us to go no further.

Only slightly less intimidating than the sign we saw when we FIRST arrived in the park…(we saw 2 bears on this trip, it was not an idle warning).

At this point, we figured that the hiking sign was just a formality. Park service Nazi’s, etc. We headed onward!

Alicia and I spent our honeymoon out West. We drove over 2000 miles, hiked over 50 miles and saw no less than 5 states. Along the way there were some interesting adventures. The next few posts will detail these adventures. Enjoy!

Three years ago, I went to visit a friend when they were working in Basel, Switzerland over the summer in the middle of July.

They knew I was a fan of hiking mountains, so while we were backpacking it around the general area for a week, we swung down to the Alps town of Lungern for a day. When we got there, the temperature at the bottom of the mountain was a pleasant 65-70′F and there was a fine misting rain (one you wouldn’t even take an umbrella out for). So, with our packs, we took a gondola lift up to the top of the mountain where it turns out it’s blizzarding with inches of accumulation!

The goat herder who ran the top of the lift for people wanting to go back down spoke only Swiss-German and not high German, so we couldn’t understand anything he was saying about the weather or the trails. Now thoroughly frustrated, we decided we were still going to do the hike. After putting on every single piece of clothing from our packs to stay warm (it was summer at the bottom of the mountain remember), our hiking path had become a four inch wide path of loose slate with a steep decline on either side. The visibility only went out for about five feet with the blizzard, so we knew if we slipped on the slate, we were going to continue down the mountain at considerable speeds until we hit an edelweiss covered rock or a Swiss cow, which were hanging out on the part of the mountain which was still grass covered and were the only other thing we could hear atop the mountain outside of the wind.

After hiking out for two hours, we decided it’d be a bad idea to get lost and turned around to go back to the gondola the way we had gone in. Considering the weather conditions, it was easily the most stressful hike I’ve ever done but also probably the shortest. I’ve enclosed a picture of the town of Lungern with the moutains in the background covered in clouds by the storm and a picture of the Swiss cows taken from the gondola.

My Dad has done a lot of travel. When I was a little kid I have quite a few memories of my dad arriving back from wild trips to China and Alabama with little gifts for us.

After his China trip he came back with slides too. I remember sitting down for his slide show. We saw pictures of him at the wall and all sorts of elaborate China places. When I went to the Great Wall, I saw for myself that the slides really didn’t do it justice.

The sun wasn’t due to rise over the South African hills for hours and I had just woken up. I look at the clock: 4:30 AM. Ouch. I’m scrambling to put on some clothes and find my swim suit when there’s a tap on the door. “Miss Labbe, your transportation has arrived.” I gathered the rest of my stuff and stumbled down the stairs in a half awake stupor. It was too early to be excited, even if it was for great white shark diving.

A large white van was sitting in my hostel’s drive way. Emblazoned on the side is a shark saying, “Send more tourists. The last ones tasted so good.” A mild wave of panic set in but was quickly stifled with a yawn. I climbed into my seat and fell asleep. Suddenly I hear the doors rip open. It was daylight and we were at the beach. We walk into a glassed in patio overlooking the Cape of Good Hope and sit down to small tables covered in muffins, fresh jam, sausages, and mimosas. Now this is what I was talking about.

Over breakfast we talked about what we were about to do and how to put on our gear, etc. Just minutes later, we climbed aboard the Predator II and myself and about 15 others were on our way to the infamous Shark Alley. Shark Alley is situated between the southern tip of Africa and Seal Island (one of the largest seal colonies in the world). The combination gives the perfect feeding and breeding grounds for great whites and Shark Alley is tauted as the only place in the world to have great whites year round.

Our guide, Brian McFarlane, got on our boat and set course, dragging chum behind us to attract the sharks. When we finally arrived, there were several boats in the area. “They took our bloody spot! They always take my bloody spot. You’ll see though. You could go on their tours, but you watch. In an hours time they’ll have no sharks and we’ll have them all. They always follow me hoping to steal my sharks, but they can’t. I’m too good.” I rolled my eyes at the machismo and figured, “They’re sharks. How can one man control them all.” Then I see a book on the table. National Geographic’s book on sharks, and there in black in white, “Great White sharks with Brian McFarlane, the only man to ride a great white by its fins.” WOAH. I picked a good guy. Maybe he is as good as he said.

And sure enough, within an hour, sharks were circling our boat and none were around the other boats. Brian said it was time and the first group got in wet suits and jumped into a cage on the side of the boat. A wooden seal shape was thrown into the waters to make the sharks think a seal was floating around the boat. It wasn’t two minutes later when a shark dove out of the water and ripped the wooden seal off its line, much to my amazement and the horror of those in the cage.

“Don’t you take my seal you dummy. Thats my favorite one!,” yelled Brian. He pulled up the divers and drove the boat in pursuit of the shark and chased it down until it spit up the seal. Brian collected the seal and said we could keep diving now.

Next batch went into the cage and came out. And then finally, it was my turn. I pull on my wet suit and jump into the icy Atlantic. It was freezing. Bobbing in the ocean, we strained to see any sign of a shark. Nothing. Just my luck. Brian was telling us to come out of the water until he got some sharks just when he spotted a baby great white in the distance. Back into the cage we went as Brian tried to lure the unsure young one. Repeatedly he sent a tuna head to the shark and drew it into the cage. Little by little the shark was coming, and Brian left the chum by my face. Gross… but if it meant I could see sharks… BAM! I get thrown against the back of the boat, cage bent inward to my face, and I’m staring down into the belly of a great white shark. A large male was circling beneath the boat out of site and came up to the cage to get the chum that was sitting by my face. As Brian wrestled with the shark to get it to release the chum and get off the top of the cage, the other 4 with me were screaming. Finally the shark returned to the sea and they undid the cage to let us out so they could fix the cage. We get out and an assistant asks, “So do you need a new wet suit.”

I just replied, “THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVER! CAN YOU DO THAT AGAIN!?!”

They let me back into the cage a few times, but nothing nearly exciting happened. At the end of the trip Brian told me I was a lucky charm. They spotted 29 different sharks that day. A record for that month. Brian said the male sharks all thought i was beautiful and wanted to mate with me, so he took my picture and said on bad days he was going to put it up on the side of the boat for good luck.

If you ever are in South Africa and want to go great white diving, here’s their website (http://www.sharkcagediving.net/brian-mcfarlane/index.html ).

My first night in Ireland I witnessed a dude grab a young woman’s purse and run away into an alley.

It wasn’t cool.

Travel story:

One time I went to Venice for the weekend. I was surprised at how much we were able to see in such little time. The Venetian airport is neat. It is completely surrounded by water, and you have to leave the airport via water taxi. We saw a lot of the city in those few days. It’s an interesting place because there is so much history there, but at the same time some sections are more reminiscent of a modern day metropolis. We took a gondola ride around the city.

The gondolas are all different and are painted with intricate designs and stories (and yes, the gondolier will serenade you if you ask!).

We learned that apparently you can buy a palace in Venice for only $700,000, but you must preserve it exactly as it was when it was built. The problem is that Venice is slowly sinking, and many of the buildings become eroded and flooded, and it would be your job to keep your palace in tip top appearance, down to the last detail including paint color.

Venetians are also famous for glass blowing (the famous Murano glass company is there). We went to see some live action glass blowing and it was fascinating.

Those guys are so quick, yet the pieces are so detailed! Amazing! It was also about 110 degrees F in there (43.4 degrees C). They also have lace shops and inside are two little old ladies hand making lace. I love worldly crafts and culture, and visiting Venice made me appreciate the beauty of tradition in a world where mass production and consumerism reigns. The amazing Italian food didn’t hurt either.

In Denmark little delicious breakfast pastries aren’t called “Danish” they are called “Austrians”

What do you do when you live in an apartment, but enjoy the taste of grilled meats? Buy a cookie cooling rack! Set the cookie cooling rack on top of a baking sheet to collect drippings and place the meat on the rack. Throw your triple decker into the oven on one of the top shelves with the oven set to high broil. Mmmmmm, charred.

During the summer of 2006, I attended a conference in Puerto Rico and was naturally thrilled at the chance to do some site seeing. After convincing my professor and crew to play hookie one day, we had the hotel arrange for us to go on a rain forest tour. It was beautiful. Water cascading down rocky cliffs, flowers with the most striking colors, …. and bugs. (Note: if you ever go into the rain forest, old navy flip flops are not proper foot attire. Cover your legs and feet!)

During our long trek through the wilderness, everyone was awed by the beauty of the place. I was swatting at mosquitoes and trying not to itch. By the end of the trek, I looked like my feet had the chicken pox. Just as we were about to leave i feel a sharp prick on the ankle. OUCH! Looking down I saw a large woolly spider on my foot. Being a huge girl when it comes to spiders, i jumped about a mile into the air and ran off to the car screaming. Spiders are just not my thing, especially when crawling on my foot. Exhausted from the trip, we went to bed as soon as we got back to the hotel.

The next morning i got dressed in my dress pants for my presentation, gathered my things, and put on my high heels…. or tried to. My left foot didn’t quite want to fit into the shoe. I look down and my foot was swollen. Having only old navy flip flops and jogging shoes besides my heels, i wedged my foot in and dealt with the pain. What can I say, I’m a trooper. But by midday, my foot was about to explode out of my shoe. My roommate slathered me up with hydrocortosone cream and got me back to the hotel. By the time we arrived, I could hardly stretch a old navy flip flop over my foot and the swelling reached my knee. Do I go to the hospital? Nooo…. I didn’t want to miss my flight!

We get to the airport later that night and I get escorted to my plane in a wheel chair. First leg of the flight was to Atlanta. Just a hop, skip, and a jump, and with only a 30 min layover I’d be home in no time. Here’s the thing though: rising in altitude makes swelling worsen. By the time we made it into Atlanta my whole left leg was swollen to the point I couldn’t bend at the knee. Medics wheeled me off the plane and asked me to go to the hospital. I said I thought I could make it to Bradley and promised I’d go straight to a doctor so they let me on the next flight. I couldn’t fit into my seat though without sticking my leg into the aisle. Since that isn’t technically allowed, I got bumped to first class with a whole second seat to myself to prop up my leg. :)

I made it to Bradley and saw a doctor, who scolded me for not going in right away because I could have died or something, but I survived and now I have a cool story and an actual reason to now be creeped out by spiders other than they look gross.

The VitaMix is a super effective blender. It can make hot soups from room temp ingredients just through the power of its wildly mad blending capabilities.

Oddly enough, it can also make soft ice cream or frozen yogurt type stuff as well, using frozen ingredients.

The only iffy thing about the blender is that the blender container is a hard plastic like the nalgene that has questionable qualities (like it can release a not-so-good chemical into the food and thus into you). The company says you’d have to melt the plastic to release the stuff, but that is the company speaking, so I don’t know about that. I use it anyway because I LOVE it so I choose to take my chances. If it had a glass container it would be PERFECT.

Maybe they sell one. I should check into it.

In Belgium, instead of ice cream trucks, they have waffle trucks. Waffle Trucks!! You go up to it, and you get Waffles!!!

Kitchen Gadget Short story

“Grief”

He laid there next to his brothers. All spiky haired and slim. They all were content with their lot in life, being a tool for another’s use, but not him. He had a purpose. He had a reason to wake up in the morning. Had. When he read the letter he cried silvery tears of pain. how could she. Every night they would see eachother. 14 years. a connection was made. A bond was formed. Vacations camping, family dinners….they were always together. No longer. Laying next to each other on their satin lined place, they shared good times. The crack that formed when they used to clash, was fixed with a glue stronger than any other. Love. or so he thought. They could weather anything together. or so he thought… The crumpled paper was the last he had of her. it was all she left him.

She had ran away with the spoon.

~fin~

One of the prettiest and most interesting cities we’ve been to is Savannah, with it’s beautiful squares, lovely buildings, and great food. If you’ve read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil you’ve probably developed a longing to see Savannah, so go there! You won’t be disappointed.

As far as driving goes, our trip into the Smokey Mountains was amazing. There are dogwood trees all over the forests and the mountains are fabulous. The Blue Ridge Mountain Highway is something you must see, though because the drop offs on the side of the highway freaked me out we only experienced maybe 25 miles of it or so. It was still magnificent from the regular road.

This is neither travel or kitchen per se, but it does involve a very short trip and food.

Alicia and I were going to pick up some Chinese food on Friday night. My cousin Tyler and his girlfriend Karen were on their way up, and it was late so we decided to take the easy out. We had decided NOT to go with May Mee House because their food last time was decidedly sub-par. We had ordered there previously because they were VERY close to our apartment and they delivered. However, their pork fried rice (PFR) was really just white rice made brown somehow with an afterthought of pork chunk, their noodles were …different… reminiscent of cardboard maybe? And the overall quality of everything was just kind of blah. We’re no Chinese food snobs, but this was too much. So we check out our options and pick The Happy Dragon. I give them a call to make our order for take out (they don’t deliver, but are only slightly less SUPER close) and I don’t have a menu:

Veggie lo mein (or chow fun if they have it)
Broccoli with garlic sauce (mild), w/ PFR
General Tso’s w/ PFR
2 egg rolls
1 order crab rangoons

There was very much language barrier in the way, but the guy on the other end manages to inform me they don’t do broccoli garlic, but he could just pick some broccoli out of the veggie garlic they have and make a plate for us. Since that was pretty much all Alicia was going to eat, we decided to call elsewhere. There is no lack of Chinese restaurants in Biddeford, so we call a place that we’ve never heard of, but that sounds great - King’s Garden! It’s the farthest of the three from us (which really only means about 2 miles) and it’s brand new, so we figure they probably are going to try their hardest to make good food in their opening month. We place the order (everything goes pretty smooth) and then head out.

When we got there, the place was not what we expected. First of all, it looked like a banquet hall, and was therefore HUGE. There were like 4 sets of doors to go through to get to a back room where there was a Chinese take-out counter. Along the way we were weaving through a maze of rooms that look not at all like a Chinese restaurant. Also on the outside door it had said “Only take out and delivery”. We thought this a bit odd. When we finally do get to the counter, no one is there. We wait, and eventually a woman shows up. She is EXCEEDINGLY bubbly - so much so it’s hard to not laugh. We ask about the setup and she says “Up front is sports bar, only Chinese in back”. Apparently their concept is to run a normal sports bar, but one that delivers Chinese food from the back room. Strange… She bags up all the food and then continues in her abundantly exhuberent way, “You know May Mee House? We own, five year. This our new location.”

Sucker punch.

And yes, their food is still as craptastic as ever. Despite what you might think, cooking it in the back room of a sport’s bar didn’t suddenly transform it into five star cuisine.

If you have ever poached eggs, you know that the egg whites often get stuck to the pan in spite of one’s best efforts, and you would know that it can be difficult to get the egg white off of the pan. Recently we received 2 sets of “Poach Pods”. These are silicone cups that can be used to poach eggs. The pods apparently float in the water, even when it is boiling, and the eggs cook in nice little eggy blobs, no whites leaking about. The pods can also be used to bake things, like cupcakes, but as you probably know, there are silicone muffin cups, so it’s probably not the best use of the Poach Pods.

We have yet to use the pods, so a full report on their effectiveness will follow sometime in the future.

If you have the Poach Pods and have used them, please report on their effectiveness.

I was in Windhoek, Namibia with a group of students from WPI working on my IQP two years ago, and anyone who’s worked on an IQP knows that at times, things can get a little stressful. In hopes of having a night of peace, I told my boyfriend, who was on the same street, that I wanted to go to see a movie. It had been what seemed like ages since I saw a movie. The two of us hailed a cab, and soon we were off to the only shopping plaza in the country, which also happened to have the “classiest” movie theater. We walk in, and they had an entire TWO movies to choose from: Ice Age 2 and something Lindsey Lohan was in. Not being a particular fan of Lindsey Lohan, we opted for Ice Age two.

As we’re headed in to see the movie, I decided that rather than risk having to leave the movie midway, I would run to use the little girls’ room.

And then, going to see a movie in Africa became an adventure.

I walk into the seemingly modern restroom. It had tiled floors, sinks with running hot and cold water (which wasn’t always the case in Namibia), and even the modern bathroom stalls and porcelain toilets. Nothing seemingly wrong. I pick the first stall, open the door, and see that someone who wasn’t accustomed to toilets had been there. I pick the second stall and find the toilet littered with cigarette butts.

Third time was a charm as I found a clean stall. I turn to shut the stall door and turn the lock. CLUNK! “Oh no,” I thought as I realized the lock broke after I had put it in lock position. I try to unlock the door but no luck. I was stuck in an African bathroom stall and no one was answering my screams. After ten minutes realizing my boyfriend would not be my knight in shining armor this time, I looked around to figure out my options.

Option 1: crawl under the door. With a mere 5 or so inches of clearance, I wasn’t looking forward to rubbing my face across the floor to escape.

Option 2: kick the door open. Seemingly better than crawling, I kicked as mighty a kick as I could, but alas, the door did not open.

Option 3: climb over the door.

I guessed this was my best option. I climbed onto the toilet, then onto the toilet paper holder, hooked one leg up over the top of the door, got half my body over and realized “HOLY CRAP THAT’S REALLY HIGH!” (The stall was about 10 feet tall or so. Much taller than the average stall) OK, so a fear of falling onto tile and cracking open my head set in. One I couldn’t overcome. I safely climbed back into the stall via toilet paper holder, and panic set in. I cant really have to crawl under that door!

I decide to give one last kick, if only to release my building frustration and with a mighty blow i was free! I washed my hands at the mirrorless sink station and walk outside. I look at my watch and realize i had been in there 20 minutes, but the movie still hadn’t started. Two steps later, my boyfriend sees me. At first he looked concerned at my absence, then relieved to see me, then, inexplicably, he burst out laughing. “Whats so funny? I’ve been trapped in a bathroom stall for 20 minutes! I didn’t even get to do my business and now I’m scared to. Stop laughing at me.” In between bursts of laughter, he managed to muster the words “your face… black… mirror.” I pull out a compact and sure enough I had some black fuzzy substance on my face. It must have been from climbing over the bathroom stall. I screamed and ran back into the bathroom and washed my face.

And with wet hair and a slightly soaked tshirt, still needing the girls room, we went in and watched Ice Age 2.

Hey, I didn’t want to go through all that for nothing!

Today’s going to be a split between traveling adventure stories and exciting kitchen gadgets.

I’m not quite certain what the spread will be… whether we’ll have more kitchen gadgets, or travel stories… But it should be fun either way.

Some of the travel stories are pretty intense. One even includes sharks.

Rock