Risk Game at Camp

Finally, it was Friday night, the night that all of the counselors looked forward to for the whole week off because that was when the “Risk” game was to be played.  Some of the guys even came back early just so that they could watch the game because the best players at Camp Van Dorn agreed to play in what was considered the championship game.  George, Scott, Bill, Zolo, Danny, and, of course, Polk were in the tournament of champions. 

   Even while camp was in session, Friday night was the traditional “Risk” night.  The night wasn’t chosen at random.  The campers knew that Friday night was their last night at Camp Van Dorn and they were determined to make the most of it by staying up as late as possible.  The only thing that they had to do on Saturday morning was to pack up their suitcases and meet their parents for the long drive home, so why not make Friday night one big party.  If they could make it to dawn then they had bragging rights of staying up all night until they came back to camp the following year.  The counselors knew all of this and they further knew that there wasn’t a thing that they could do to stop the campers so they may as well make the best of it by playing “Risk” for three or four hours.  When the game was over, at some time around midnight, then the chiefs went to the campers cabins and told them to go to bed.  There were always some mild protests from the campers but it had been a long week and secretly they were relieved to be told that their party in the woods was over. 

   By the end of the week the counselors needed a way to blow off some steam and “Risk” was the only board game that all of the counselors liked to play.  The object of the game was to conquer the world, an idea that was like red meat to boys who, having done nothing in life so far, thought they could accomplish anything.  They imagined that they were the next Napoleon or Alexander the Great.  The game always started off well enough, with the counselors choosing colors and then throwing the dice to decide which countries they would start on.  Then they placed their limited armies on to the board.  With each turn, a new throw of the dice would determine how many new armies the player would get then he had to decide whether he was going to attack another player out if he was going to redistribute his armies for a future attack or to receive an attack.  “Risk” is played with five dice; three for the offense and two for the defense with the tie going to the defender.  You never knew what was going to happen with the role of the dice but the game favored the defense.  The fun of the game was to watch the board slowly turned the color of your armies and each color had its own nickname.  For example, there was “The Black Plague,” “The Red Menace,” “Gang Green,”  or “The Yellow Peril.”  It was very satisfying to line up all of your armies into one long barrier as you marched into one country after another, as your color took over the world.

   There was always a buzz of excitement in the mess hall before the game began.  Fr. Jubal Early never played the game but he did allow the counselors one last night to drink beer at the mess hall.  He should have outlawed alcohol years ago because almost all of the staff were under twenty one.  Still it was his camp and he got to make the rules and after this night Camp Van Dorn became a “dry” camp.   The mixture of alcohol, a very competitive board game, and the testosterone addled teenage brain, could only lead to trouble.  

       The game always started out well enough and there even had been some good-natured ribbing between the counselors throughout the week.  “You are going to lose you sloping forehead, slack jawed, knuckle dragging, moron!”  George used this line a lot because it was difficult to think of a comeback for it.  “Shut up, Scarbs,” Bill said in reply, using George’s nickname from school.  “If you had any brains you would be dangerous.”  And so it went back and forth except for Polk.  No one would make fun of Polk because he took the game way too seriously and most of the other counselors were a little afraid of him.  As the counselors filed into the mess hall for the big game, Bill leaned over to Scott and said  “look at Polk!  He is all puffed out in excitement for the game.  I’ll bet Polk masturbates over the idea of winning a ‘Risk’ game!”  Scott laughed out loud but quickly straightened when his laughter drew the attention of Polk.    
   Before the game began, and as they were setting up the pieces, there were a few rules to discuss.  First of all, the Flatheads were not allowed to play as they were too young and this was considered to be a man’s game.  Lo and Skirrel were always regulated to the back benches but would secretly hold their own games in their cabin to get better so that when they were allowed to play they would be ready.  Another rule was that when your armies were defeated in battle then only the owner of those armies were allowed to remove them from the board.  Temperatures ran hot during the game, especially when players dramatically removed their opponents pieces from the board.  One time this led to the unfortunate incident when Polk dramatically flipped the board over when it was clear that he was going to lose, ending the game for everyone.  Some of the counselors swore that they would no longer play if Polk was included in the game.  And yet, by the next Friday night, after tempers had cooled, the counselors all secured their place at the table for the big game and Polk was the first to commit.

   Zolo was the first one out because Danny kept attacking him.  Zolo knew that he was being singled out and meekly said, ‘you are pissing me off by attacking me all of the time.”  Polk knew an opening when he saw it and said, “an angry Zolo.  That doesn’t sound that scary to me.”  After Danny’s offensive, Zolo only had two armies left and George took him out of the game.  Zolo was relegated to the back benches with Lo and Skirrel.  For no reason whatsoever, Zolo quoted his favorite line from “Smokey and the Bandit,” which had had just finished watching after the Pickett’s Cave outing, “I’ll have a Dr. Pepper and a cheeseburger and make it snappy.”  It made absolutely no sense but Zolo felt like he had to say something.  Anything.

   The makers of “Risk” assumed that this was a game of individuals.  However, some of the counselors just had to win and they made alliances with each other.  Sometimes the alliances were made even before the game began because best friends always worked together.  At other times the alliances were made up on the spot and a matter of convenience as the game progressed.  The pact usually was no more complex than “I won’t attack you if you won’t attack me.”  Of course this interchange enraged the player whom this alliance was working against.  If the offended player complained then a chorus of “Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!” was yelled out from the other players and even the bystanders in the peanut gallery.  No one wanted to be called that name and even the calmest of the counselors became irritated when baited.

   Scott was out next but he refused to lose his temper.  Every time he lost an army he would exclaim, “Poopies!”  The thought was that it was better to cute it our rather than to get really mad.  Polk and Danny had been attacking Scott and provoked his by saying, “We’ve got him by the balls and are pulling hard!”  When Polk went in for the killed he said, “I’ve got him by the short hairs!”  Scott removed his last “Yellow Peril” army from the board and left the mess hall.  He could not give the others the satisfaction of letting them see that he was upset.

   That left Polk, Danny, Bill, and George as the game entered into its second hour.  As the night wore on the friendliness of the game left the mess hall and the shouting began.  Polk made a secret alliance with Bill by using a wink and a nod.  However, Bill only kept alliances for as long as it was convenient for him and, inevitably, when Polk was at his most vulnerable, Bill yelled “Fuck the Treaty!”

   “Wow!” Replied George.  “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”  It was his way of trying to lower the temperature in the room with a joke.  It didn’t work. Bill directed his black pieces to attack Polk’s Brown pieces.

   Polk took the game way too seriously and being attacked was like being personally challenged.  He was able to survive the Banzai offensive and dedicated the rest of the game to taking Bill out, even if it cost him the victory.  Knowing that he was a marked man, and that Danny and George would take him out after Polk weakened him, Bill yelled “Attack Me! Attack Me!  I want you to attack me!”  It was so unlike him have outburst like this that it startled the other players and the back benchers.  The other three players, and some of the bystanders who were watching from a safe distance, yelled in glee when Bill was attacked and removed from the game as the “Black Plague” had no more pieces on the board.  As he left the mess hall, Bill called over his shoulder, “I’ll go play with the campers because they are better at the game than you are.”  The three remaining players ignored him.

   As the game entered its third hour, Danny realized that there was no way that he was going to be able to win.  He didn’t want to play for another hour when the conclusion was already forgone.  And besides, it had been a long day and he wanted to go to bed, so he decided to do a suicide attack on George.  This was unexpected as George and Danny were friends but with “Risk,” the players realized that they had to leave friendships at the door step.  Besides, Polk was so big physically and had such a hot temper that Danny was afraid to attack him.  

   George was usually unflappable at Camp Van Dorn but during a game of “Risk,” he flapped.  When Danny attacked him, George’s reaction was to snort absently.  Snorting was the only way that the other players could tell that George was upset and, as he took the attack as a personal challenge, he picked up the defenders dice.  Danny didn’t take George out but he left him badly wounded.  The suicide attack worked and Polk took “Gang Green” out of the game.  Danny couldn’t help but launch one last insult on the way out of the mess hall by proclaiming, “my loss only proves that this game is more about luck than skill.”

   Now that the game was in the fourth hour, all of the former players and most of the peanut gallery had left.  Fr. Jubal Early entered the mess hall to see how the game was progressing.  When he saw that there were only two players at the table in the corner of the room, and two Flatheads watching, he quoted one of his favorite sayings; “Far be it from me to question the antics of the counselors at Camp Van Dorn.”  Usually this line got a laugh but everyone was so intent on the game that they ignored the old priest.  Polk and George were the only two left and it was clear that Polk was going to win.  When George started throwing the dice to attack his last competitor, Fr. Early said that “you can either be the hero or the goat.”  And then he would mimic the sound of a goat by saying, “Baaaa!”  That line also fell on deaf ears.  Fr. Early was tired on being ignored so he silently left the mess hall and made his way to the administration building.  Sometimes it was tough being the only adult in a camp full of kids.

   “The Red Menace” was slowly disappearing from the board.  When Polk sensed that George was getting upset, he purposely fanned the flames of Scarbs’ despair by egging him on.  He used a fake high pitched voice, yelled “Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!”  It didn’t work this time because by the end of four hours of play, George was exhausted.  He silently removed the last of his black pieces as the board was covered in brown.  It was so anti-climatic that a casual observer would wonder what the big deal was.  It mattered to Polk because he got the bragging rights after winning the tournament of champions against the best players at Camp Van Dorn.  Things were frosty between George and Danny after Danny’s suicide attack, in effect, took them both out of the game.    

   And yet, when a game was offered the following Friday night, few counselors could resist the temptation at a shot of revenge.  Besides, the Flatheads desperately wanted to play to get bragging rights over the older guys.  If they could win against the counselors and take their prestige down a  notch or two, then they could add to their “Risk” resume.  Meanwhile, the Flatheads would have to earn their bones by playing separate games before they could play at the big table
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Lifeguarding at Camp

   The Gong was an old tire iron, taken from a railroad car, and chained to a wooden stand.  Whenever an activity was finished and it was time to transition to a new activity, George took a sledge hammer to the Gong and rang it five times.  The sound was loud enough to hear throughout the camp and for a good part of Forrest State Park as well.  There was a lot of pressure to hit the Gong just right.  If he were too shallow in his swing then he could miss the Gong completely but if his swing was long then he would hit the Gong with the handle of the sledgehammer and break it.  Also, there were always a couple of campers standing around to watch George and they rated each swing with boos and catcalls. 

   George rang the Gong to signal that the swimming pool was open.  He was the head guard, the only counselor who had was certified as a lifeguard, which was good for Fr. Early because he was reliable.  It was bad for George because he had to sit in the chair for two hours twice a day, every day.

   After George rang the Gong he began the long walk to the pool.  His cabin was Fourth and Broadway, which was a pretty good hike away from the pool, and some campers waited for him to put the sledge hammer away so that they could follow him to the pool.  He started in the upper unit, made his way through the lower unit, and then followed the trail to the pool, picking up campers all the while so that by the time he made it to the gate he looked like a celebrity with paparazzi following him.

   The pool was fenced in and only George had a key to the gate.  There was always a crowd of campers waiting outside of the fence and they cheered George when he arrived.  It was the little things that helped the counselors keep their sanity over the course of the long summer and one of those things to George is that he liked to put on a big show of opening the gate.  The crowd of campers turned into an angry mob as George pretended like he had brought the wrong key to unlock the gate.  Or he insisted that the campers take ten steps back until he was ready.  Then the swarm that had surrounded the lifeguard pushed their way into the pool area and spread out over the whole deck.

   The campers lined the pool and waited for George to get up into his chair and blow the whistle, which was the signal that they could get into the pool.  Part of George’s schtick as the head guard was to make the kids do a call and response before he let them in.  His favorite was to yell out “Urrah!” And the campers would have to respond with a high pitched “Whoop, Whoop!”  This done, George pretended to blow the whistle so that some dupe would jump in.  When the gullible camper got back out of the pool then George blew the whistle for real and all of the campers jumped in at the exact same time.  Yes, the whole routine was silly, but when George was in the dog days of mid-summer, he knew that he had to find a way to lighten up before he spent the next two hours in the chair.

   The pandemonium began with as many as forty to fifty campers splashing around.  At the beginning of the summer, when the counselors were still wide eyed and innocent, they would swim in the pool with the kids.  The rule was that the campers could not dunk each other but could dunk the counselors.  Everyone knew this rule so the counselors entered the pool at their own risk and it was like putting blood in shark infested water.  At first the counselors made a game out of it by picking the campers up and throwing them as fas as they could.  However, they sobered up when a camper tried to jump on their back, missed, and then used their fingernails to claw their way back up.  It didn’t matter that they didn’t mean to hurt the counselor because the result was always the same.  The campers would show their friends the skin of their favorite counselor under their fingernails and the counselor would show his red lined, scratch filled back to the other counselors.  “Well,” their unsympathetic fellow counselors would say, “that is what you get for getting into the pool with feral campers!”

   Polk was a particularly attractive target because he was so popular and very strong.  He was quickly encircled.  Picking one kid up after another, Polk felt like a super hero fighting off a legion of bad guys.  The trick was to throw a kid into a place where another camper was not because the worst thing in the world was to hurt a kid; no one wanted that to happen.  This was harder to do than you might imagine because the kids were swarming around Polk, but he was so big and powerful that he was able to throw the campers over the heads of the swarm that had surrounded him.  Not being a true superhero, Polk quickly tired out and left the pool early but not before several campers climbed onto his back.  They wrapped their arms around his neck so he had to wrench their arms off of his neck, pull them around to get them off of his back, and then throw them away.  As soon as one camper was removed, another had already climbed on, and the whole process began again.  Finally, Polk submerged, carrying the campers until they let go to get some air, and jumped out of the water when he was free and clear.  Polk swore that he would never get in the pool with the campers again, but they loved playing with him and pestered him so much that he gave in and got into the pool every day.

   “My God, this is boring,” George thought to himself as he had to guard twice a day, every day, for two hours at each session.  He hoped that no camper would want to swim that that so that he could have some time to himself but, invariably, a few diehards showed up at the gate no matter how cold the weather was because they didn’t have access to a pool at home.  They arrived early and stayed for the swim period every day.  There had to be two guards at the pool even when only two are three campers showed up and the counselors took turns to do this duty.  When it was Polk’s turn to guard and he saw so few campers in the pool, he said loudly but not directly to George, “this is a waste of time.  I’m leaving.”  This left George in a bind because if a camper was hurt then one guard was expected to stay with him and the other was to get help.  But if George complained to Fr. Early then he would be a snitch, so he let it go.  This dilemma brought a lot of tension between Polk and George and the two barely talked to each other.

   One of the other counselors gave him a lanyard made out of Gimp.  George thought that weaving the strings to make a lanyard was “woman’s work,” so he never bothered to make one on his own.  This attitude added to tension between George and Polk because Polk was in charge of the Gimp craft, was rightfully proud of his work, and was pleased with how much the campers, and even the counselors, especially Danny, enjoyed it.  George through Polk’s line about lifeguarding back in his face.  “This is a waste of time,” he said, only now he was talking about Gimp, and let it go at that.  As long as he had a lanyard for his key and whistle, he was happy because he could twirl it through his time in the guard chair to put the key to distract himself.  

   Another way to pass the time was memorization.  Starting with 1901, George memorized one important event for every year leading up to 1980.  He made out this list before coming out to camp and when the list of events got old, he memorized the order of all of the U.S. presidents and at least one thing that made them important.  Finally, when he tired of memorizing lists, he memorized the geography of the major countries in the world.  As the head lifeguard, he was not allowed to read while in the chair so the next best thing was memorization.  The other counselors would not understand his need to keep his mind working all of the time so George kept this exercise to himself but he would sneak into conversation a part of the list and was proud of the fact that he knew the difference between Bolivia, Bangalore, and Botswana while no one else knew or cared.  

   If things got really slow then George amused himself by challenging the campers to kill as many horseflies as they could, stack them in a pile, and whoever killed the most would get a candy bar.  The campers would do anything for a free candy bar.  There was an infestation of horseflies that summer and the end result was a horsefly holocaust with piles of the dead insects around the pool area.

   Just because he was bored didn’t mean that George didn’t take his job seriously for he knew the consequences of lax discipline when it came to the rules.  On his second week on the job a camper was running inside of the pool area, slipped, and fell and bashed his head on the concrete deck.  Since it was a head wound, it began to bleed immediately.  George picked the kid up and carried him back to the main camp so that Scott could take him to the hospital.  There was blood smeared over George’s stomach and arms by the time he got the camper to the lodge to wait for his ride.  And since George hadn’t had the time to put on his shoes, he had to run across the gravel path barefooted; he was so excited that he didn’t feel any pain.  The camper was taken to the hospital and it turned out that he was fine and didn’t need any stitches.  But is was the image of someone else’s blood all over his upper body that haunted him and that was why he took his job so seriously and resented Polk for leaving.

   George always thought that his main job was to protect the campers and if any of them did something stupid that put themselves or other campers in danger, then they had to be punished.  A time out of up to ten minutes was the sentence and every time the camper complained or asked how much more time he had to spend out of the pool, George would add  another minute to the sentence.  If the camper was a serial offender then he had do a duck walk around the pool.  If they couldn’t do it properly, or if they couldn’t go the distance, George would have them restart the walk.  This would go on for ten minutes because few campers could do the duck walk.  Only after ten minutes would George grant the campers their freedom and recidivism usually wasn’t a problem at the Camp Van Dorn pool.

   Finally, after two hours of guarding, George blew the whistle to tell the few remaining die hards that it was time to get out of the pool.  George liked to call the select few who stayed for the whole swim period his “bitter-enders.”  The campers had enough at that point and they put on their shirts and shorts to make their way back to the main camp.  Most of them just used their swim trunks as shorts and never bothered to change out of them before they went to the next activity

Southeast Asia Blog

    When well meaning friends ask me how my vacation to Southeast Asia went, and I have to remember that they don’t realize that our tour was a test of endurance as much as it was a vacation.  For example, on our return trip to get back home, we left the ship at 3:00 am on Friday morning and didn’t arrive at our condo until 1:30 am on Saturday.  If that doesn’t sound too bad to you then you may have forgotten that there is a thirteen hour time difference between Singapore and Louisville.  A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that we spent about thirty six hours traveling back from Southeast Asia.  And yet the pleasure was with the pain as we were able to experience things that we would never have done or seen in the West.  I have written a short itinerary of our trip and have kept it in a day by day format so that our journey is easier to follow. 

Saturday, December 23, 2023: Ko Samui 
    We spent our only day in Thailand by touring three temples.  The first one that we visited was the Temple of the Mummy Monk (Wat Khunaram). The Thai people believe that death is an opportunity to to be reborn into a next, and better, life.  And since I don’t want to be reincarnated as a Dung Beetle, I am going to be a good person in this life.  Loung Pordaeng is the name of the dead  monk who is on display in an upright glass casket so that he may be worshipped.  The site was disturbing for me, especially since sunglasses were put on the monks’ head in order to hide his cavernous eye sockets, but it looked like the dilapidated body was being mocked.  
    The second temple that we visited was the Big Buddha Temple (Wat Phra Yai) and it is the home to a 39 foot gold plated statue of Buddha.  It was built in 1972 and is so big that it can be seen from several miles away and can be easily spotted from an airplane.  Tracey decided to go native as she put on a sarong to receive a blessing from a local monk at the foot of the statue.
   The Temple of the Happy Buddha (Wat Plai Laem) was our third and final temple for the day.  It is a 98 foot high statue of a fat Buddha and it was completed in 2004.  A fat Buddha represents wealth and prosperity while the long ears on the statue represents a long life.  The Buddhists believe that if you give alms to the gods then you will receive happiness in return.  Wat Plai Laem is a temple complex that houses many gods and many versions of Buddha.

Monday, December 25, 2023: Phu My, Vietnam
   The Golden Buddha Temple is an extensive monastery and temple complex which acts as an educational and religious center.  Monks are invited to use the complex as a retreat.  The main temple has a huge statue of Buddha and it is surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens.  I saw a monk who was determined to study his books while trying to ignore the tourists who were taking his picture.  Another monk was wandering around the complex in contemplative silence.
   If this had been our only stop in Vietnam then I would have been bitterly disappointed, which is why a seasoned traveler has to view these trips in the aggregate.  We flew half way around the world to visit Southeast Asia and I wanted to get the most out of this trip.  The temple was great but the rest of our tour was a long drive, a visit to a “typical” house of Vietnam where they tried to sell us orchids and motorcycle helmets, and we were invited to shop at a local market.  Calling it a market gives it a glory that it does not deserve.  The Dollar General Store was like the Mall of America as compared to this public market.  Still, you take the good with the bad on these excursions and we looked upon our experiences in the aggregate as opposed to any singular attraction.
   The thing that I love about travel is that you never know what is going to make an impression on you.  In Vietnam, it was the motorcycles.  They were everywhere, buzzing in and out of traffic, even on the sidewalks, ignoring all of the laws of self preservation.  Cars are very expensive to own and motorcycles can be bought for $1,000, so everybody had them.  I saw young teenagers driving them, and mothers with their children propped up front, merchants carrying their wares, and couples obviously on a date.  Vietnam has a population of 94 million people, and 35 of those people are killed on these motorcycles every day, and that adds up to about 10,000 people every year.  It is statistics such as this which make me appreciate my life in the U.S.

Tuesday, December 26, 2023: Saigon, Vietnam
   I really didn’t know what to expect for our trip to Saigon but I could feel the excitement well up in me as we approached what was the capital of South Vietnam.  When we were still a couple of miles away from the city, I could see the skyscrapers from a distance and yet there were rice fields within a stone’s throw of the luxury apartments.  Tai was our guide and he took us on a ride in the canal that flows through Saigon where a traditional Vietnamese woman sang to us and we were allowed to free a bucket full of catfish into the water.  While we were on our drive to the market and the post office that Eifle built, Tai gave us a history of the Vietnam War from his country’s perspective.
   The Presidential Palace is where the Republic of Vietnam made its last stand.  It is a complex of buildings but the main one held the governments offices and meeting rooms.  We passed by the old American embassy, where the helicopters took away the last of our ambassadors and staff via helicopters in 1975.  Our tour brought back a lot of memories of the end of the Vietnam War, not because I was there, for I was only thirteen at the time, but because I had seen so many documentaries on the war.  Seventy percent of the Vietnamese weren’t even born at the time of the war, so the tank which crashed through the gates of the Palace, which is still on the grounds, meant little to them.  Instead, it was a holiday in Saigon and many young girls took the opportunity of a beautiful day to have their pictures taken in the Palace with orchids.  They wore traditional dresses and were busy reapplying their make up as we passed by them on our tour.  It was weird to see our symbol of a lost war festooned with the promise of a new generation.
   The problem with Saigon is that it is over-populated.  The French built the city in the late 1800s and intended that it hold about 250,000 people.  Today it holds about 10 million people.  If you looked closely you could see traces of the old boulevards, based on the Champs Elysees in Paris, but small markets and apartment buildings have crowded out what was once a well laid out city.  The French architecture is everywhere but the builders would not recognize it for what it has become.  For example, two of the old apartment complexes have been turned into a museum and a market.  Signs of decay, and those pesky motorcycles, where everywhere.  Even the canal system was filthy with trash floating on top of the water.  I think that if a Vietnam veteran were to come to Saigon today then he must think to himself, “Is this what we were fighting for?”  

Wednesday, December 27, 2023: Vung Tau, Vietnam
   The Buddhist Temple (Thich Ca Phat Dai) was completed in 1963 and it includes a monastery at the foot of a large hill and a huge white statue of Buddha at the top.  It is an expansive complex and, while it was beautiful, it was almost impossible for a blind person to navigate.  The stone staircases did not have a handrail so Tracey had to place her hand on my shoulder to get up and down the steps.  The stairs were decorated with statues of white dragons, and there were several gardens to make the place look peaceful, but we were not able to get past how inaccessible the grounds were for the handicapped.  We left the temple a little overwhelmed by our climb.
   The White Palace was constructed as a retreat for the French governor in 1898 and it was built on the slope of a large mountain.  There is always a breeze coming in from the beach which allowed the governor some relief from the heat of Vietnam.  The building is three stories high and includes fabulous art and architecture.  Our tour guide for the day was a man named Phi and he told us that the White Palace was used by the French officers as a retreat.  They could get a weekend pass for some rest and relaxation at this glorious compound.  

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday: At Sea
   The “at sea” days were a trial.  The excursion to Nha Trang, Vietnam had been cancelled due to the rough waters and we decided not to get off of the ship at Celukan Bawang, Indonesia, because we had arrived at the port late, the excursion was six hours long, and I wanted to pace myself for the next three days of touring.  As it turned out, I was right about Celukan Bawang in that it was just an industrial city with nothing to see.  If you didn’t book an excursion, there were not enough taxis to give the tourists a ride, so there were 2,000 people, with their pockets bulging with money, stuck at the dock with no way to spend it.
   So now I had three days at sea to deal with.  A buddy of mine from the gym said that he didn’t like the cruise ships because he found them so confining.  Well, they are, but the thing to do is to stay out of your room.  The gym opened at 6:00 am and I was there every morning to lift weights.  Tracey and I would then go to breakfast and, while she laid out in the morning sun, I enjoyed my first daiquiri of the day.  I need to be around people so when I read my book I sat in the main lounge area.  When I needed a break I walked to the casino and watched the poker tournament, or I would go to the theater to watch the dance class.  I don’t like to spend much time at the pool because it was so hot and there are a lot of old people wearing next to nothing and it was disgusting.

Sunday, December 31, 2023: Lombok, Indonesia
   We spent much of the morning at the Sasak House.  The native people of Lombok are known as Sasaks and we visited their village.  The tour included watching a fight between young men who used a stick and shield in combat.  We were also treated to a recital of drums, which the locals beat while dancing.  We saw the traditional dwellings, where the roofs are still made with palms, and then a community building that was in the process of being covered in cow dung to help with its preservation.    One lady allowed me to take her picture while she cooked her rice dinner and posed in front of her bamboo wall.  It was all pure schtick but we enjoyed it thoroughly.  
   In a study on contrasts, we left to Sasak House to visit the Pullman Beach Resort.  It is a first rate hotel built on the beach and included all of the amenities, like suites with private pools, and was meant to compete with the properties in Phuket.  We were invited to use the running trails or spend some time on the beach.  However, there were only seven people on this tour and the minimum was supposed to be eighteen to make it worthwhile to the Pullman.  The end result was that the resort served us enough food for more than twice our number.  I thought that the rice and noodles and beef were our meal but then the servers kept on bringing out new courses including pizza, soup and salad, and then four different desserts.  After witnessing the poverty of Indonesia, it was hard to not feel guilty about eating so much, and wasting a lot of it, in a land that has so little.   

Monday, January 1, 2024: Benoa, Bali, Indonesia
   The Mengwi Royal Temple was built as a place to worship the ancestral spirits of the kings and was named a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 2012.  It is a royal family temple, built on flat land with a fish pond surrounding it, so it looks like it is drifting on water.  We saw statues of the Buddhist gods like Vasudhara (goddess with six arms who represents compassion), Ganesha (god with the head of an elephant which symbolizes strength) and Sun Wukong (the monkey god who represents devotion).  I love to take pictures of the places that we have been to on our tours, and then write about them, but neither pictures nor the written word can describe the beauty of the Mengwi Royal Temple.  As always, my only criticism of being at places like this temple is that I wish that we could have spent more time there.  Many of the sites that we have visited are tourist traps and are cheap imitations but this was the real deal.  I would have liked the opportunity to just be present for awhile to take in the beauty of the architecture and landscaping of the place.
   Tanah Lot means “Land by the Sea” and it is a temple that sits on a large offshore rock which has been shaped continuously over the years by the ocean tide.  In fact, when the tide comes in, one of the temples is inaccessible because it is literally surrounded by water.  The complex is purportedly protected by a giant sea snake.  Since it was the first day of the new year, a lot of locals were at the temple because the grounds are so pretty and there is plenty of shade which makes it nice for leisure time.  Our tour began, and ended, early so that we could avoid the afternoon heat and the traffic.  While that makes a lot of logistical sense, I felt rushed and, just like at Mengwi, I would have liked to have spent more time taking in the greatness of this special place.  
   
Tuesday, January 2, 2024: Benoa, Bali, Indonesia
   Our first stop was at a traditional family compound, which was a large lot surrounded by a stone wall.  It was filled with several small structures, some of which held mini-temples for their gods.  We also went to the Bali Cultural Center to watch a play but I couldn’t figure out the plot and since I had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t describe it to my wife.  The beautiful dancers and the amazing costumes made this side trip worthwhile, however.  Finally, we went to the aviary where we had birds perched themselves on our arms.  It made for a nice moment and I have several great pictures of us interacting with the birds.
     Indonesia is 80 percent Muslim.  Benoa is a city on the large island of Bali and the majority of the people on Bali are Hindu.  Because of their strong religious faith, there is an elaborate Spirit House in front of major establishments, like a hospital or a condominium building, while lesser Houses are in front of residences and small businesses.  The Balinese believe that their gods reside in the Spirit Houses and that is why they are everywhere.  They also have huge Hindu statues of their gods at major intersections and in the middle of the roundabouts on the busy streets.

Thursday, January 4, 2024: Singapore
   Our final excursion was in Singapore, the setting for the movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” and we saw some of the locations from where the film was shot.  The pictures that I took of us in front of the Marina Bay Harbor look like they were professionally made for a postcard.  The marquee building is a casino and hotel combined but it is three buildings standing together and it looks like someone had laid a giant surfboard across all three to connect them together.  The bay also includes skyscrapers, a mall, and the giant Merlion Park statue, which has a lions’ head on top, a fish body on the bottom, and it spews out water from its mouth.  The whole scene was so beautiful that is hard to describe.  
   At the center of Singapore is Harmony Street, which earned its name by being a home to a Methodist Church, a Hindu Temple, a Buddhist Temple, and a Jewish synagogue.  We took a brief bus tour of Singapore that included Harmony Street, Little India, Chinatown, and a Muslim neighborhood.  Our guide let us off the bus for awhile so Tracey and I visited a couple of shops which allowed her to feel the mini statues of the numerous Hindu gods.  Another thing that I noticed is that since cars are so expensive is Singapore, there was comparatively light traffic, and I didn’t see a single motorcycle of the road the whole time that we were in the city.

   We have been back from our cruise to Southeast Asia for a week and we are feeling really good about having completed it.  At the very least, this cruise has given us bragging rights because we have done things, and been to places, that most people can only dream about.  Sure, it was difficult, but anything worth doing is, and I think that the pleasure was worth the pain.  If someone were to ask me if I would do it all over again, my fast answer would be, “Yes!  In fact, we just signed up to do a similarly grueling trip in the Baltic for the summer of 2025!”  Life is worth living.  Let’s go live some of it!



The Guides
   Oye Oye was our guide in Ko Sumui and she could not have been sweeter.  For example, she sang to us at the end of our tour and it was a nice moment for everyone on the bus.  It is natural for the tourists to ask personal questions to the guides, which they usually deflect, but Oye Oye was just a kid and didn’t mind sharing.  She works six days a week; two at Ko Samui and four at Phuket, which is a six hour bus ride for her.  Life is hard and Oye Oye turned to alcohol for relief but gave it up when she blacked out and couldn’t remember how she had driven her car home.  Since then she obtained the Buddhist philosophy of B.C.D., which stands for Born Choose Die.  You decide whether you are going to be happy or not and Oye Oye decided to choose happiness.  She was just so open and honest that I gave her one of our U. Of L. coasters with the cardinal bird on it and Oye Oye seemed truly honored to receive it.  
   Bin was our guide in Phu My and he was only concerned with getting a large tip.  We didn’t learn anything about Vietnam because he wanted to give us a comedy routine.  He hoped that we would give him more than a five dollar tip because he wanted to feed his family and to buy a new car.  The tip should be in Vietnamese currency because he didn’t want to have to spend all afternoon in line at the bank to exchange our money.  To help out with this process, he offered to exchange our money, but he didn’t explain the rate of transfer so I am sure that he made a tidy profit from the transaction.  He took some of the tourists to a restaurant in the market where I am sure that he received a kickback for bringing in customers.  His comedy routine turned weird when Bin mentioned that the Vietnamese Viagra is snake oil, or rice wine, which is 45 proof when you drink it.  In spite of all of this, I gave Bin a tip, which he immediately counted right in front of me, something that a tour guide should never do.

Quotes
• I dressed up in a native crown from Indonesia.  I leaned over and told Tracey, “If I begin to die please remove this from my head!”
• In the same scene I was made to wear a sarong.  I told Tracey that “the last time that I wore a dress was at a Bachelors party and that was a wild night!”
• I had 65,000 people view my TikTok on retirement.  “If I do this a couple more times then I can claim to be an influencer!”  Marcia is a friend that Tracey made on the cruise and she asked that if I became an influencer, would I still talk to her. I said, “No, I won’t. I’ll put on airs!”
• “Who is blind?” Said the guy from Cuba.  He had talked to us for ten minutes but never suspected that Tracey cannot see.
• Cindy asked our guide how she managed to look so young.  “I lather on the coconut cream when I get out of the shower,” our guide replied.  Cindy said “I’ll have to try that when I get home.”  Cindy’s father said “It’s too late for you.”
• “I’m going swimming, aren’t I Daddy!” Said the little girl on the way to the pool.  “Yes, everybody!  She is going swimming” said the amused but beleaguered father who was taking his daughter to the pool to give his wife a break.  The little girl was so cute in her little pink hat and the bright purple floaties on her arms.  

The Problem with Old People
• I am beginning to lose faith in my fellow man, especially old people.  They are at their worst when they travel.  At least, I hope that they are not like this when they are home
• They were complaining all of the time: about the stops on excursion, waiting in line, not being told to bring a passport even after it was announced and it was in the bulletin.  They always want to eat or drink but so overweight that they can hardly move. They talk during the presentation and then ask questions about what the guide had just covered. 
• When asked him nicely to get out of the handicapped spot, the old man declared himself handicapped and refused to move.  He called me an asshole under his breath and I later saw him sprint up a flight of stairs so that he could be first on the bus.
• One old lady was upset because the guide stated that we were going to swing by a famous hotel and we didn’t do it.  She said, “I’m going to tell the cruise director” in such a way that she sounded like a moody teenager who had been deprived of her iPhone.
• We had just finished a grueling day at Ko Samui and the tender line to get back to the ship was so long that it would have taken us an hour and a half to get back.  Fortunately, a member of the crew saw Tracey’s cane and took us out of line and sent us on the next tender.  An old woman, who was on the same tender, instead of being appreciative for the extra service, said “That was a waste of time.” She either didn’t understand, or didn’t care, that we had just been rescued and took the absolute wrong attitude about being saved.   

Good Things about travel.
• As an experienced traveler, I find that I have developed the patience of an older man in that I take the good with the bad and appreciate our good fortune to be able to travel at all.
• It was such a relief when it was over.  I couldn’t wait to get there and then I couldn’t wait to get back.  Travel makes me appreciate my life in Louisville.

Bad Things about Travel.
• The ship was rocking so badly that our excursion to Naha Trang, Vietnam, was cancelled and the ship put barf bags at the top of all of the stairs in case there was an emergency
• Internet doesn’t work on the ship
• Rude passengers who treat the staff like dirt
• I eat too much and drink too much and am filled with self loathing 
• Visiting these places that I have dreamed about takes away their power and their magic.  I no longer want to visit Australia and Japan, for example.

The Empire Builder

         “What would you do if you had all of the time in the world and money wasn’t as issue?  You would travel, right?”  That is the line that I used to give my students and I said it so often because I really meant it.  Now that I am retired, these trips mean even more to me because they take up so much emotional energy and they give me a reason to keep myself in shape.  They give me something to look forward to as I allow myself to become truly excited about travel.  And besides, I can hear the clock ticking in the back of my brain and it is telling me that I only have so much time to do these trips so I had better go while I am still young enough, and strong enough, to endure them.

Monday. November 20: Vancouver
        You just have to appreciate it when everything goes right when you travel and I was firing on all cylinders on my first day.  The Uber arrived at 4:00 am, my flight took off at 6:50, and I was on the light rail to Vancouver’s waterfront area before noon.  Like Baudelaire’s flaneur, a bourgeois who walked the streets of Paris for pleasure, I walked to the harbor, to Gastown, and to Granville Island in one afternoon.  It was a six mile walk and I was carrying a full backpack but I didn’t mind because the weather was perfect and there was so much to look at.  Still, at the age of 61, I was very proud of my vigor because this had been a long, hard day.

Tuesday. November 21: Capilano Bridge
        Our tour guide for the day was Byron and he led us around the major attractions in the area for eight hours.  Our first stop was Stanley Park, which overlooks Vancouver, and contains over 1,000 acres of open space.  It also includes over five miles of sidewalks for bikes and walkers.  After lunch on Granville Island, a tourist area known for its boutiques and restaurants, we drove to the Capilano Bridge.  The bridge and the cliff walk overlook a deep canyon and Christmas lights were strung up everywhere for the season.  It starts getting dark at about 3:30 in Vancouver so we got to see the lights in all of their glory.  Our luck held out in that it didn’t start to rain until our tour was finished and I was thankful for a great day with a really good tour guide.

Wednesday. November 22: Seattle
        I ran out of things to do so I walked part of the sea wall, or the seventeen mile long sidewalk that encircles Vancouver, before getting on the bus to Seattle.  After a five hour bus ride, which took a lot longer than usual because of traffic and long lines at immigration, I boarded “The Empire Builder,” or Amtraks’ line between Seattle and Minneapolis, where I relaxed in my private compartment before going to the restaurant car for dinner.
        Because there is only a limited staff with a limited amount of tables in the dining car, passengers are expected to share a table and I had three dinner companions.  Michelle was from Guangzhou and studied public relations in Boston.  She was traveling by herself so we bonded over that experience.  There was a man named Friday who was an engineer from Nigeria and currently works for Boeing.  Both Friday and Michelle had such thick accents that I could barely understand what they were saying.  Dr. Jocelyn is married to Friday and is a university teacher and a therapist for people who have experienced trauma in their lives.  The conversation centered on young people and the isolation that they feel because they spend too much time on their iPhones.  Our conversation took a bad turn when I mentioned that my only goals are to take care of myself so that I could continue to travel.  Dr. Jocelyn said that she “didn’t know what to make of a person who didn’t have any goals.”  I tried to explain that I had been a teacher for 35 years and participated in eleven Ironman competitions so I was pretty much done with setting high goals for myself.

Thursday. November 23: Thanksgiving on “The Empire Builder”
        I am embarrassed that I have to continually relearn the same lesson of “do not judge a book by its cover.”  When Mark and Jana sat down next to me for breakfast they were both wearing old sweatshirts and looked like they had just finished doing their morning chores on the farm.  My first impressions were totally wrong.  As it turns out, Mark is a news anchor and producer for a television station in Spokane and Jana is a conservator who manages the personal and financial affairs of old people who can no longer fend for themselves.  We spent an hour together talking about travel, our children, and our jobs.  It was wonderful to have such bright and engaging people to share my breakfast with.
        On the other hand, Thanksgiving dinner didn’t go well at all.  I shared it with a family of three; Kirby and her two children, Chris and Ari.  They claimed that they had driven twenty hours to Spokane to spend the holiday with their extended family but things went so badly that they abandoned their weekend and took a train back to Fort Wayne.  No one wanted to talk about what happened and, while the kids seemed indifferent to the disastrous Thanksgiving, the mother was clearly still angry.  When I tried to engage them in conversation, Kirby quietly seethed, Chris was thirteen years old and could only mumble a reply, and ten year old Ari was too concerned with her iPhone to look up and talk to me.  She did make it a point to burp loudly throughout the meal.  My thought was that this family of three will always remember the Thanksgiving dinner that they shared with a complete stranger on an Amtrak train.

Friday. November 24: Saint Paul 
        I shared my last meal on the train with James, an obviously gay young man who resides in Alaska.  He was gifted a thirty day pass on Amtrak and was determined to see the country by riding the rails.  James was genuinely interested when I told him about my many travels on the train and he took notes in his iPad when I said that the Salt Lake trip was the best because it was so pretty.  The conversation was going well when suddenly James said that he had enjoyed talking with me and then abruptly left.  He was an introvert and he wanted to go back to his cabin to do some crafting.  Amtrak is perfect for people like James because they don’t have to talk to anyone, if they don’t want to, and they can retreat into their private space any time that they want to be alone.
        I got off of the train after breakfast and started to walk; anxious to shrug off my two days on “The Empire Builder” but fully recovered from the Vancouver part of my trip.  This will be my last ride on Amtrak.  I enjoyed watching the snow fall on the mountains of Montana and the gentle rocking of my compartment as we logged the miles through the northwest part of America.  However, I have done all of the interesting lines that Amtrak has to offer and since I don’t believe in repeating any vacation experience, it is time to branch out and try some new things.
        I had to improvise because I thought that the train was letting me off in Minneapolis but in reality the station is in Saint Paul.  The capitol of Minnesota and the history museum were not on my list of things to do, but they were an easy walk from where I was let off, so I decided to take a risk and visit these two places.  Half of the fun of taking these trips is to post about them on Facebook so I took a lot of pictures of the statues outside of the capitol and of the exhibits in the history museum.  After I finished my morning in Saint Paul I took the light rail to Minneapolis where I toured the Mill City Museum and the famous sculpture garden.  All of the major attractions in the Twin Cities, like the Stone Arch Bridge, are outside and it was freezing outside.  When I checked in at the front desk at my hotel I told the clerk that I couldn’t feel my fingers because they were so cold.  They had literally turned blue.  I just couldn’t get warm so when I went to bed I piled all of my clothes and extra pillows on top of me to provide some extra warmth.  I wish that I could say that I am exaggerating but the cold really was that bad.

Saturday. November 25: Minneapolis
        I hadn’t showered or changes clothes in two days because I had been on the train.  Feeling like a new man after some serious self-care, I boarded the light rail and was ready to visit some new attractions.  Minnehaha Falls was beautiful because it was most frozen over and only a trickle of water was coming out.  The whole of the falls was covered in ice.  Fort Snelling was nothing more than a stone wall with a turret in the middle.  To call it a fort is to give it a glory that it does not deserve because it was really just a muster station during the world wars and the area is known now as a “park and ride” station for the train.  To help break up the day, I signed up for a “Pedal Pub Tour” of the downtown area but it was cancelled with absolutely no notice.  Suddenly, I had the whole afternoon free.  The only major attraction that I had not seen was “The Mall of America” but I didn’t want to go there because I had such good memories of taking the kids to the mall when they where young.  Since I didn’t see any options, I took the light rail for a half hour ride out to the mall.  The thing is, if you take away the indoor amusement park, “The Mall of America” is just a mall and, after a brief visit, I took the light rail back to downtown Minneapolis.
        A word on the light rail.  I thought that it would be a cheap way for me to ride to the local attractions, which it was, but it also draws the worst elements of society.  The homeless made me feel uncomfortable, but there was also a group of young men playing their music on a boom box as loudly as possible in the back of the train.  It was if they were trying to convince everyone that they were having a great time at an impromptu party.  Another man became defiant when told by the conductor told him to stop smoking his JUUL.  Instead of putting the vaping device away, the man angrily and dramatically continued to blow smoke.  I saw young men and old men trying to hustle each other but what left a lasting impression was the mentally handicapped man who suddenly wanted off of the train.  He started to howl like a wolf and then flung himself on his back, arms and legs flailing, until he could crawl out of the door at the next stop.  When I feel threatened, as I most certainly did on the light rail, I have a few simple rules that I follow: do not engage, do not make eye contact, do not smile, and get up and move if there is anything that makes me feel uncomfortable.  I followed all of those rules when I rode the Minneapolis METRO light rail system for two days.  

Sunday. November 26: 4836 12th Avenue South
        I lingered in the hotel breakfast room for four hours because I couldn’t face the thought of walking around outside in the freezing cold again.  To kill some time, I made a TikTok about how Minneapolis was a complete disappointment and how scary the light rail system was to me.  All of the attractions in the city were outside and it was twenty degrees outside so no one should vacation in the Twin Cities if it were not summer.  Apparently, being bitter sells because my video had over 4,500 views.  I checked out of the hotel, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and met with Dan, my guide for a three hour tour of the downtown area.  It was a really good tour and afterwards I went to visit my grandparents’ house.  I had arranged a tour with the current owners, Mark and Jill, and I asked my cousin, Kathy, to join me because she had grown up in the house.  Mark brightened up when I told him that my sole purpose in coming to Minneapolis was to see the house, which was true, and he spent three hours showing off the changes that he had made.  I think that he really enjoyed hearing Kathy and reminisce over our fond memories of the house.  It was a nice way to end my trip.


        Was it worth it?  I put a lot of time into planning this trip and a lot of emotional energy into anticipating my time on the road.  I understand why some people don’t travel because it is such a pain in the neck to do.  And while no single part of the trip, Vancouver or Amtrak or Minneapolis, was worth it, in the aggregate it was a really good vacation.  Besides, there are tangential benefits.  I have gained a lot of confidence by having a plan come through and have learned how to improvise when the plan fails me.  Also, being on a hard trip makes me appreciate my wife even more and our marriage has been strengthened because I have come to realize what a great life I have.  Finally, one of the reasons as to why I love doing these trips is because there is always the possibility that something could go wrong.  Who knew, for example, that my most vivid memory would be of the crazy homeless man who threw himself on his back and began to howl, all the while flailing his arms and legs.  I will never forget him.   

Addendum
• I love being a chameleon on these trips, meaning that I can fit in anywhere.  I can be at a five star hotel in Vancouver one night and then be sleeping on the top bunk in a compartment on an Amtrak train on the next night.
• I love it when the people that I meet have a bad first impression of me.  Because I always wear jeans and a sweatshirt, and when I as carrying my backpack on a walking trip, people underestimate me.  But when I mention that I did the Ironman eleven times, have written three books, taught for thirty five years, and have been to Egypt and South Africa; their opinion of me quickly changes.
• I like to tip well, especially for the guides who work so hard to make a tour interesting even though they have been to the same sites many times before.  (Byron in Vancouver, Dan in Minneapolis)
• Tracey and I have the time, money, and desire to do these trips.  Out of these three things, it will probably be our desire which leaves us first.
• I cannot help but feel that my time is limited to do these trips, that I should do as much as possible as soon as possible.  I have no basis for this feeling but am probably remembering the early deaths of Tod Knight and Mike Triebsch.
• “Watch while no one else is looking!”  This means that I am an older man whom nobody is going to notice so I can fade in the background, observe other people and places, then take notes so that I can journal about them later.
• I prefer to take the walking trips alone because they are so hard but I do get tired of people asking me why I am alone and where is my wife?  There is always a mixture of judgement and pity when other people ask me these questions
• I must continue to make new memories because, if I don’t, I give my old memories too much space in my head.