A to B Update: Blizzard!!!

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost

It's one thing to return to Boston and another to return in winter in time for a huge blizzard. They call this type of storm a nor'easter. I haven't experienced snow and bone-chilling cold for a long, long time. Somehow, I'm just not appreciating it the way I should.  I've had brief moments of nostalgia as I caught snowflakes on my tongue and thought about all the forts and snowmen I built as a kid. The fond memories dissipated quickly when I was brushing off the car and copious amount of the freezing white stuff filled up my borrowed boots.

I'd always heard that the native Inuit people of the Arctic region have ~400 words for snow. In actuality, that's an urban myth, there's less, but still they know their snow. They have closer to 50 maybe … about as many as I have. There's powder, wet snow, heavy snow, damned snow, I'm sick of snow. I could go on, but you get the gist. This snow, by the way, was heavy, wet and sticky … snowball snow.

It started snowing about three days ago. At times, visibility was 0 and it snowed horizontally, thanks to the wind. The weather forecast called for 4-8” and was revised several times as the 8”, then 12”, then 15” marks were met and exceeded. It looks like about 20” total fell and it's a proverbial winter wonderland out there. Along the seacoast, exceptionally high tides and winds swept away a home which had been sitting precariously on an eroded cliff … just snatched it up and sucked it away. There was lots of coastal flooding and beach erosion. Here, a bit more inland, there are lots of broken branches and downed trees and deep, heavy snow.

I do remember the quiet, muffled sounds in a post-snowstorm neighborhood, the snow insulating us from noise. No traffic on the unplowed roads; just the occasional sound of someone shoveling in the distance. The quiet was palpable. Despite the dark gray skies, the brightness of the reflected snow hurt my eyes. All that white. The evergreen boughs bent way over, straining with their load. Icicles dangled from the eaves and tiny branches. It's that way here at the moment.

I had to memorize Robert Frost's poem as a child. For all my complaining, I did watch my sister's woods fill up with snow. It was beautiful.

As an aside, David is working and sweltering in Adelaide. We'd like to exchange a little of his Adelaide heat for some of my Boston cold, but we haven't figured out quite how.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Save a Spider Day

Fat Chance!

Pi Day

A day to celebrate that mathematical constant (π) and its never ending value 3.14159... It's also Albert Einstein's birthday (1879). Makes you want to calculate the area of a circle, huh?

On the Airwaves

Gentry, blog mistress extraordinaire, forwarded us an email from our Just a Little Further blogsite. Damian from ABC Radio in Hobart (that's the Australian Broadcasting Company not the American version) had just read our blog about walking in the Queen's Domain. ABC was interested in chatting with us about our sailing adventures and our time here in Tasmania. Wow!

ABC Radio Studio

We rang them up. “Could we come to the studio for an 0720 broadcast tomorrow morning?”, Jo, the producer asked. “Absolutely!” The studio is about a 10 minute walk from the wharf and we reckoned we could pull ourselves together and get there by 0715 without too much trouble. At that time of the day, we were pleased it was radio considering we looked a bit windblown by the time we appeared at the studio's front entrance. We arrived early and paced around for ten minutes before ringing the entry buzzer. Jo met us at the door as planned and showed us into a waiting area. We hadn't been in a radio studio before … ever. This is ABC's radio and television broadcasting center in Tasmania and it's pretty plush.

ABC Radio in Hobart

ABC Radio broadcasting

Talking live on a radio program would be a new adventure for us. They hadn't provided any questions in advance, so there was no prepping or preparing. I concentrated on not saying “ah” and “uh” too much and hoped the words I was thinking would actually come out of my mouth. I cleared my throat a lot while we waited. I asked for some water.

ABC

Jo ushered us into the studio at around 0715 and we sat opposite Ryk Goddard, the young, good-looking, affable morning talk show host. Jo got us settled. We put on the headphones and sat in front of the microphones. Hopefully, there would be no trick questions. And then we were talking with Ryk. He introduced us while he adjusted knobs and dials, looked at his computer to see who had just “tweeted”, consulted several monitors and generally multi-tasked to the Nth degree...all the while chatting into the microphone. Things happen quickly.

ABC photo opp

There was no need for nervousness. Ryk seemed genuinely interested and asked some good questions.

“How did you start your journey?”, “How do you stay financially afloat?”, “David, where do you go when you're in the doghouse?”, “Where haven't you been?”. In between several other tasks, Jo appeared once again and snapped photos for us while we answered Ryk's questions. All in all, a delightful 8-minute experience that left us high for several hours after. As we said goodbye and left the studio, Jo had already e-mailed us a digital copy of the interview. Talk about efficiency. Now we can listen to ourselves talk.

Click here for the audio of David and Marcie's interview.

Sam Simon

Isolde rang us up from New Zealand the other morning.  Her husband, Gabor, would be arriving in Hobart soon as a crew member aboard the Sam Simon and she was flying here to meet him for Christmas.  We'd known the crew of "Kestrel" for several years now in the way that cruisers get to know each other...well and quickly.  We met them first in French Polynesia, saw them on and off across the South Pacific, spent Christmas with them in New Zealand, had Thanksgiving with them last year in Australia, and now here they were in Hobart on a Sea Shepherd vessel.

The acquisition of the Sam Simon, named after one of the original producers of The Simpsons who donated the $2M for the ship's purchase, was quite the coup for the Sea Shepherd orginization.  They purchased the ship from the Japanese government rather covertly under a pseudonym and under the guise that the ship would be refitted and converted into a private yacht.  The real goal, however, was to use this Japanese ship against their own in a "direct action" against whaling still practiced by the Japanese fleet in the Southern Ocean.  Sea Shepherd is a get-in-their-face kind of group.

The Washington-state based Sea Shepherd organization's mission is "to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to protect ecosystems and species."  Founder, Paul Watson, was also a co-founder of Greenpeace, but parted ways over philosophical differences - he wanted more direct action in the protection of marine life...less words, more deeds.  According to Sea Shepherd's website, "since those early days (1970's), Sea Shepherd has embarked on over 200 voyages covering many of the world's oceans and defending and saving defenseless marine life all along the way."  Marine life includes seals, sharks, whales, tuna and the fragile, unique marine ecosystem of the Galapagos.

Gabor had joined the Sam Simon in November in Cairns, Australia.  A Canadia/German, he'd been a merchant marine as a young man.  He was putting his old skills to the test as a second engineer aboard the Sam Simon.  Sea Shepherd is an all-volunteer effort.  Gabor paid his own airfare to Cairns to join the ship and has spent hundreds of hours getting the ship ready for the upcoming Antarctic whaling season.  One huge challenge he noted was that every sign, operator's manual and decal in the engine room, was in Japanese.  Sorting out the systems and machinery operation had taken a month.

The 24-person crew is a United Nations of nationalities and personalities.  Everybody pitches in...everyone does their part whether it be selling t-shirts and giving tours while in port or painting the decks and cleaning out the insides of tanks.  They get things done.  Everyone works towards the common goal of heading to Antarctica this season and preventing the slaughter of whales.

It's a vegan ship and it's dry.  No honey, no eggs, no meat, no milk, no butter...NO alcohol aboard.  Some of the non-vegans among the crew readily admit they head to the nearest pub for a pint and a steak when they reach port.

We got an email from Karen, an old friend from our Burdick days in Janesville, Wisconsin.  She'd just read that the Sam Simon was in Hobart and was wondering if we'd see it.  Could we send a photo or two?  She supports the Sea Shepherd organization with her donations and the "Sam Simon was HER ship" she said, "HER crew...HER heroes."  Click to learn more about volunteering or donating.

Isolde, by the way, isn't going back to New Zealand after Christmas.  She's decided to stay aboard and join Gabor as part of the crew of the Sam Simon.  What an adventure!