July 8th, 2010 Scott
Summer is here. We were lucky this year as we had a longer rainy season than we’ve had the last two years which created cooler temperatures until late June. Then we suddenly had 83 – 88 degree days with 90% relative humidity. Working out now outside is much slower and requires carrying a great deal of water to survive. Coming from spending my entire life in a summer environment where the night time temperatures drop into the low 60′s, I find opening our door at 5:30 AM to a blast of hot, humid air to be very peculiar. Actually though, 82 degrees now feels relatively cool compared to later in the day when the sun comes out.
The marine corps bases here have a system of calculating a head index that takes into account temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and sun light. From this data, they will post either no flag, a green flag, a yellow flag, a red flag, or a black flag. Most days this week have been black flag by 10:00 AM. That indicates that no physical fitness activities outside are to be undertaken. Even though the air temperature might be around 88, with the sun and humidity factored in, their system has registered a high of 120 for a couple of bases this week. Any number over 90 seems to generate the black flag. You can see what the current conditions are for yourself.
We have about a week left here before we leave for our summer travels. We will be heading to Washington for a couple of weeks, then going to Germany to visit a friend for a short week. After that, Gina travels to Los Angeles to visit with her sister while I go to Ireland for photography workshop. I’m looking forward to all of it.
I’ve settled on my athletic goals for the upcoming school year. I will enter the Izena 88 Triathlon, the Tour of Okinawa 85k Road Race, the Naha Marathon, and the Ishigaki Olympic Distance Triathlon. Izena is close to a 70.3 or half-ironman distance and will be my first long course race. The Tour of Okinawa is a challenging bicycle race that I’ll enter to support a good friend of mine who wants to do well in it. The 85k course is very hilly and consequently very challenging. I will do the Naha Marathon in hopes that I finish strong rather than weak as I did in the Okinawa Marathon early this Spring. And finally, the Ishigaki Triathlon is one I’ve wanted to do for three years but haven’t been able to due to scheduling with work obligations. This Olympic Distance race will be my #1 priority race for the season. がんばって！
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December 27th, 2009 Scott
I write this a couple of days after Christmas and hope that everyone had a good holiday. I’ve had a week off from school and am just now starting to feel recovered and have been thinking about getting going on several projects. Some of them are related to school and others are more for fun.
I’ve gone on my long runs with another guy training for a marathon that last two Sundays and I’ve done well on the 10 mile run last week and we did the 11 mile run today in 1:39 (actually 11.5 miles). That’s about 7 mph average which is good enough for a 3:45 marathon pace. Of course, that’s assuming constant speed to the end which is unlikely. Nonetheless, I’m starting to think I could do a marathon. He’s training for one here in early March and I’ve decided I’ll try it with him. Should be interesting and different from my previous bike race or triathlon training. I’ll continue with biking and swimming of course, but the focus will shift to distance running. It should be good for me as long as I stay away from injuries. So far so good on these last two.
At school, I’m co-chairing the lead of the Far East Music Festival this year which means I have a thousand little details to coordinate and take care of before the week of the event (the last week in April). I’ll be happy when I can tie up all the loose ends from that project when we get to May.
At home, I’m trying to catch up on my back log of photo editing from the last few events like the Kyoto trip in November. I’ve also finally gotten all my printer settings dialed in on the new Epson 3880 and my two favorite papers. Upgrading to Snow Leopard was a hiccup in the process, but now everything seems to be working out well and I’ll start churning out some of my newer photos to put up around the house. I’m also firing up a new photo-blog that I’ll post my better shots on to share via the web. This blog is a little different focus so I’ll publish the photo blog at another location. Check back for the link when I get it done.
New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and I hope the new year brings health to everyone. I intend to be more frequent about updating this blog as well as my new photo blog. After living here a couple of years it’s difficult to remember that what seems normal to me will likely still be interesting to people who don’t live here.
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July 28th, 2009 Scott
For people who are serious about bicycling, a rain bike is a luxury item that actually has some tangible benefits. Such a bike is used for rainy days so you can still train but not get your $15,000 unobtanium gold plated carbon fiber kevlar laced super deluxe Schwinn all wet and rusty. I suppose you could just upgrade all the bits that rust to titanium and not worry about it, but I don’t know if you can get titanium bearing races or not.
At any rate, most rain bikes are simply lower end model race bikes so that the expense of replacing rusted out parts is less painful. I wanted to pursue something even more efficient by using a internally geared rear hub and no derailleurs. This arrangement is very clean (looks like a single speed) and at the same time fairly water proof to the tricky little expensive bits (like integrated shift levers and $300 + a pop). So I was going to build up a bike based on a single speed frame and use a Shimano Nexus rear hub. In the process of doing my research, I found that someone had already built my dream rain bike. The only problem is that they only sell it to walk in customers. Since I live in Okinawa and their shop is in West Newton, Mass., it’s unlikely I’ll get there. Hopefully I can talk them into selling it to me over the Internet.
My dream rain bike
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July 11th, 2009 Scott
On June 14 while competing in a triathlon in Gamagori Japan, I had a sudden loss of balance and coordination hit me as I ended the bike leg of the race. I was unable to control the bike or even stand up for a few minutes. It was very scary and my initial diagnosis was dehydration. Upon return to the states some two weeks later, I visited my doctor and failed one portion of the neurological exam with him(my eyes bounced around while looking at his finger to an extreme left or right). He ordered an MRI of my head and several blood tests. The blood tests showed that I have hypo thyroidism and am significantly low in my vitamin B-12 level. Both these conditions can create neurological issues so I had hoped that might be the end of it. Then when I returned to discuss the MRI with him, the results showed a 15mm x 5mm object in my cerebellum that was indicative of a stroke event. This was not good news. We scheduled an appointment with a neurologist for two days later and he ran a full set of neurological tests on me. I didn’t fail the eye portion this time, but when he put a tuning fork to my head, it sounded lower in pitch and softer in my right ear. It also was louder in my left ear when he held it centrally on my head. His review of my MRI was that I had an unusual blood vessel in one portion of my cerebellum, but that it was not indicative of a stroke event. Because of the tuning fork result and his assessment of the MRI, he feels I have a problem with my right inner ear.
So, the good news is that my head is okay. The bad news is that either I have Meniere’s Disease or they don’t know why I had the issue. Either way, I’ve been cleared to exercise however I’d like and that I need to get a couple of audio tests done on return to Okinawa to rule out Meniere’s. I have done some research on this disease this morning and it’s an ugly, ugly disease involving debilitating bouts of vertigo lasting minutes to days and there really isn’t a cure or 100% effective treatment available. Hopefully it will turn out to be something less significant that is wrong with my ear that can be treated.
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March 8th, 2009 Scott
Japanese lessons, musical rehearsals, curriculum development, triathlon training, assignment grading, etc, etc….it’s turning out to a busy month. The best part is that Gina has a new job! She found an ad in the paper for the local Internet Service Provider for all on base residences on the island. They needed a controller, and being a controller in the telecom business is exactly what she is very good at doing. She started last Thursday and is just getting settled in, but is looking forward to getting their accounting systems all set up.
The downside of all this is that she’s a lot less likely to experiment with new recipes on a nightly basis. I was getting quite comfortable with her regular foray into a new dinner recipe from the Cooking Light magazine. All those recipes are very healthy and mostly very good tasting as well. Makes for calorie counting and training much easier to do. I suppose I can learn where things are in the kitchen again…it’s just been a while.
We haven’t done anything terribly cultural (other than japanese lessons) for a while, but we have some ideas for things to blog about. I just need to get at it. We’ve both gotten quite comfortable with a variety of unique aspects of life here we need to share with you all. I’ll get to it sometime soon.
My triathlon training is going very, very well. I did a 18:26 3 mile run last week. That’s a huge improvement for me and I’m looking forward to the first anniversary of my first triathlon on March 28th at Torii Station. I think I’ll do much better this time around.
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September 22nd, 2008 Scott
See the low table in the back?
This week we ventured down the street to a local restaurant. They had about six tables, with half of those the low kind that you sit on the floor next to. Interestingly, this seating area was raised so that the level of the tables throughout the restaurant were all the same. Turns out their speciality is ramen noodles so they had several different varieties of ramen. We did the miso and I had garlic fried rice. I also had some dumpling potsticker type things that I don’t remember what the name of. Overall, very filling and inexpensive meal just a block from our apartment. There are two other restaurants equally close we’ll have to try sometime.
Our japanese lessons are paying off. I could read one word on the specials sign and I was able to ask what it meant. The only problem was that I couldn’t understand the explanation. Oh well; more lessons should solve that problem. Our teacher is a very old woman who weighs all of 75 pounds and teaches out of her house. She has stacks of things lying around the house that must be decades old. The only clear spots are an old couch and the two card tables that we sit at to take our lessons. She is a very gifted teacher but she doesn’t speak much English. She knows English well (was married to an Anglican Pastor), but speaks mostly in Japanese which can make the explanations and stories a little hard to follow, but will likely help us learn faster in the long run. This week we got through about 2/3rds of the writing of the Hiragana alphabet. That is one of two alphabets they use in addition to the 2000 or so Kanji characters that make up the written language. Each hiragana symbol is a very specific artistic drawing that is difficult to replicate. Megumi-san laughs a lot at our first attempts. She mentioned one day that she used to be a pilot and flew F-104′s for the Japanese government in research studies. I thought I had misunderstood her until she pointed out a picture on the shelf of a very much younger Megumi-san sitting in the pilot’s seat of an F-104 in a pilot’s suit. I was stunned that this little old lady living in what looks to be slightly above poverty level used to fly F-104′s. What a world.
Earlier in the week Gina found a big spider in the guest bathroom. I store my kites in the bathtub in there and it must’ve crawled into one of my bags the last time I was at the beach. It was hanging out on the side of the tub and took a while to catch because it would JUMP everytime I got anywhere near it. Ultimately, it jumped right into the tupperware bowl you see Gina holding. It was erie because I approached it on the wall where it was and it jumped and flipped in the air to land perfectly in the bowl in the opposite diretion it had been hanging on the wall; all in an instant.
Gina didn't like posing for this one
Gina’s expression says it all. this spider was HUGE. However, we saw one even bigger on Sunday when we went to a local temple cave and saw one the size of a dinner plate on the way into the cave. I’ll have pics up for that later after I process them off the good camera.
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February 23rd, 2008 Scott
It’s been nearly a month since my last post? I can’t believe how quickly the time goes by. January was fairly rainy here. Many long timers say that its wetter this year than they’ve ever seen it before. Still, I was able to get out at least twice a week on the bike so I haven’t found it to be too much of a hinderance. It has been fairly cloudy most of the time though, so the sun sure is beautiful when it comes out. I know how it must feel to spend a winter in Seattle now.
As many of you may have heard, we’ve been restricted to staying on base or at our residence (if we live off base) until further notice due to some continued untimely misconduct by some of our younger marines here on the island. While weekly incidences with these 18 & 19 year old marines such as public intoxication, DUI are fairly common, two weeks ago we had an alleged rape of a 14 year old Okinawan girl, then an alleged home invasion last weekend and some other misconduct that has the relations between the US military and the Japanese citizens very strained. In an effort to curb further possible transgressions at such a sensitive time, all SOFA status personal (anyone here that’s here because of the military – including civilians and their dependents) must remain on base until further notice. One interesting side effect of this is that many of the local businesses that rely on US customers are essentially deserted this week. Most of them have simply closed up shop until the ‘time of reflection’ order is lifted.
Generally, I don’t leave the base at all during the week and on the weekends I do as part of a 3 or 4 hour bike ride. This weekend we’ve been meeting here at Kadena and riding around the perimeter of the base. It’s 11 miles for one lap and that gets really boring after two or three laps. I certainly hope this order is lifted soon. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.
On President’s day weekend we spent a day riding out of Okuma and discovered an interesting road in the jungle. It wasn’t more than one lane wide and must’ve cost several million yen to build. Imagine the forest service paving one of its crazest cliffside roads and that is what this was like. The pictures might give you an idea:
It was the steepest paved surface I’ve ever been on. The best part is that it connected to a network of dozens of roads already in existence. It made no sense to be there that we could see. Riding here never ceases to amaze me.
The first triathlon of the year is coming up March 22 and I still hate running, but I’m going to try it and see what happens. The run is only 5k and hte bike is 30k so it suits my bike riding preference. We’ll see how it goes.
Off to school (since I can’t leave the base I haven’t much else to do but work). Until next time.
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January 27th, 2008 Scott
I’ve decided today that I hate running. I don’t get the joy out of it that I get on the bike. Perhaps it’s because it hurts so bad to run. It hurts on the bike too, but that’s different. I’ve been running regularly for about 10 weeks now and the massive knee pain that hits 20 minutes into the run hasn’t gone away. Whether I run hard or easy or 22 minutes or for an hour; it doesn’t matter. The outside joints of both knees feel like someone is sticking a knife in them and it makes for an unpleasant experience.
I’ve only gone swimming once. For two weeks afterward everything I heard was garbled. People talking, instruments playing, bands rehearsing…they all sounded out of tune. I’ve since had a doctor’s appointment to get my allergy medications going again and she said my ears were plugged spent about an hour blasting water in them to clear them out. Needlessy to say, it was unpleasant, but she finally stopped when what she referred to as ‘the plug’ came out. She says I shouldn’t have issues with water anymore, especially with the after swim ear drying solution she recommended. Whether I decide to do triahtlons or not, I want to be able to get scuba certified, so the ears must work in and after water exposure. Seems like I should be able to hear better too. We’ll see.
So maybe I won’t be a triathlete after all. I just don’t like running. It hurts too much.
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January 21st, 2008 Scott
They tell me that typical January and February weather here is the low to mid 50′s and rainy. so far I’ve only seen a few days of that type of weather. Most of the new year has been 60 at the coldest and as warm as 78 on occasion. We have been getting rain, but not too much and several days of sunshine as well. Makes for great riding weather all around.
The marines typically get an extra day off whenever there is a three day weekend federal holiday. So this last weekend when most of us got Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the marine core also had today (Tuesday) off as well. Two of my riding buddies are marines and reserved a room at Okuma Monday night to do some riding from there. Okuma is the major MWR (mental welfare and recreation…I think) facilty here. It is on the Northern part of the island where all the best bicycling is. It’s a narrow span of land with a huge, beatuiful beach on either side. They have several cabanas and campsites for rent. They have bicycles, golf clubs (9 hole par 3 course), beach gear, jet skis, ski boats, etc. It is a beautiful beach:
And as you can see, it is quite large. There is an equally large "South Beach" as well. The cabanas are relatively inexpensive to rent, but I’ve heard that they are booked as much as a year in advance for busy weekends. Our ride took us through the heart of the jungle up an amazingly steep road to this lookout:
It might be hard to tell from the pic, but you can almost see both sides of the island from this 1000 ft high ridge line.
We just kept going on this little unmarked roads and came across this interesting fence:
This is a gate in the fence with a picture of some small animal. This fence went on for several miles and hundreds of pictures of birds and other small animals. Occasionally we saw a couple of signs that said "no more mongoose" in English and we did see a mongoose later on. He was trying to get away from us through the fence but he couldn’t cross it. We then figured out that it was an anti mongoose fence and they were trying to protect all the animals pictured. Apparently the mongoose was brought here years ago to take out the Habu snakes (very poisonous local snake). Well, the mongoose left them alone and started eating all the eggs of the local birds. So this was a wildlife preserve of sorts. You can see the fence extending into the distance on the right of this picture of Steve climbing one of the steeper sections of the ride. This part was so steep that I had a very difficult time getting the bike moving again after I stopped for the picture.
Later in the ride we stopped for a snack in a remote area. This was the beach across the road from the market. It was kind of a ‘general mecantile’ type store. It had a little of everything and looked like the center of action for this tiny village we were in. The northern part of the island definitely resonates with me more because it is so rural which I’m much more comfortable with than the urban landscape around the base. Here’s a castle we rode to the previous week. It’d be great to go back some time with the real camera. It was all shrouded in mist and very eerie.
Here is a house near the castle that is typical of the older generation homes that stickout around all the modern buildings made of concrete:
It’s finals week here at school. I can’t hardly believe that we’re halfway through the school year already. It’s gone by so quickly. I need to get out more and be more culturally enriched. That means I need to dig back into my study of the language. I haven’t been doing so well on that.
Until next time…
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December 22nd, 2007 Scott
Merry Christmas everyone. As you can tell, it has been a busy month since the last time I put in a blog entry. The typical band director’s busy December life combined with continued colds and the arrival of Gina has combined to leave me little time or energy for blogging. I’ll try to cover as much as I can remember from the last month.
I moved into my house over Thanksgiving and then get very sick with an intense cold. I ended up missing Monday of school and felt like I’d been beat up for the rest of the week. I thought it was the final big blow of a head cold I had been dealing with for a couple of weeks already. However, I had a deep chest cough for another two weeks aftwerward and finally felt normal for the final week of school last week. Unfortunately, I gave my cold to Gina and in the meantime I got another one just in time for the Christmas break. Go figure.
Gina and Graycie arrived late Friday night on December 7th after about 26 hours of travel time. Graycie was anxious to get out of her crate after that much time and Gina was anxious to sleep. The plane was a total of 5 hours late by the time I saw them and it took a couple of days for Gina to recover. She did better than I did because I felt jet lagged for over a week.
A week later our household goods shipment arrived. Gina packed up the bulk of our possessions back in September and they arrived here last week. It’s like Christams because every box you open has something in it that you want and love. So, we slowly have been putting objects away and getting the house situated. It’s a slow process when you both have colds.
Graycie is doing well, except that her ‘separation anxiety’ issues that she is prone to are intensified here. She broke a tooth one day when we were gone by pulling her blanket through the grate in her kennel door. Pretty amazing that she was so anxious that she broke a tooth pulling on a blanket. So, we’ve begun a series of ‘desensitization’ excercises to get her to relax when we leave. When we are home, she just sleeps. We need her to do the same when we’re gone.
Many of you should’ve received our Christmas Card by now. We wanted to do a picture of the family at a beach in shorts and we did do that photo shoot, but none of the shots turned out very well. Here are the bloopers:
The last picture is the original that became our Xmas card. Sorry about the poor quality of the print, I didn’t have my equipment yet and the one hour photo place butchered it.
The last three days our air conditioner has been running a lot. It’s been in the low 80s every day and cools down to 75 at night. This is unseasonably warm weather for Okinawa. Typcially it is 58 – 75 this time of year but we have some kind of warm wave weather system that also brought about 8 inches of rain two days ago. It rained hard for about 20 hours. I’ve seen it rain hard here, but never for that long.
I took Gina to Jusco a few days ago. It’s a large department start similar to Macy’s. We found a place in it that sells bulk teas and they offered Gina a sample of freshly brewed tea. It had seaweed in it. We ended up buying the tea pot they used for brewing and two types of tea. We have no idea what’s in them, but it was fun to go through the process of miming our intentions to the very pleasant Japanese sales lady. The tea pot has a screen in it so you just put the tea leaves into the pot and then when you pour, the leaves stay back. After purchasing, she wrapped everything up and put it in a bag. It was done so beautifully, I had to take a picture:
Riding has been great. You can’t beat 65 degrees and sunny for riding weather. Here are some random shots from last weekend’s ride. Most of these guys are marines that I meet up with on the weekends:
The jazz, concert, and pep bands have been busy and we are looking forward the next set of concerts as well as preparing for the Far East Honor Music Festival in Tokyo in April. More details to come.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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