Gone Gear-Hunting

It was a rainy Saturday that the local R.E.I. stores (an outdoor person's heaven on earth) held their garage sale for members only. For a one-time $15 fee, I signed up last week just for this, so that I could get some gear to send to my hiking buddies back home.

I ended up using that membership just for myself this time. I bought a Coleman backpacking stove that my friend Glen asked me to get, but that wasn't on sale. HOWEVER, I did get myself a nice little fleece jacket (in not-so-perfect condition) by The North Face for a bargain price!

Seeing that I wouldn't be buying anything from the garage sale besides that, I decided to shop around first in order to get the most for my money. Sure enough, I found a few items at a sporting goods chain called The Sports Authority: a couple of stoves and, I wonder why I hadn't thought of this before, some two-way radios. (Flashback to Pico de Loro last month where half the group got lost in the woods at night tired, out of water, dehydrated, and lights out of batteries. )

R.E.I. still has the best choices when it comes to reliable equipment especially for extreme weather conditions. They also have the most selections when it comes to lightweight cookware that I had planned on getting. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of large size pots and pans like we use to cook enough rice for 6 people at a time, and two of that going on simultaneously. (You kinda get used to how our guys gobble up rice with gusto after hours and hours of hiking uphill with a 25-pound backpack.)

Sunset at Papago Park

On Monday, which was, coincidentally, Valentine's Day, I felt like driving around town for a while and doing some photography. So I headed to the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Spent about two hours walking around and taking pictures of plants and flowers and, unlike the last time I was there (April 2004), I now had a macro lens for closeup shots!



I was there from about 3 to 5 in the afternoon, and when I left I had about an hour to go before sunset. Whenever I have a few things on my mind, like I did that day, I sometimes like to head out somewhere safe, quiet, and with a nice view. I went to a place called Hole-In-The-Rock in Papago Park, which was just two minutes down the street from the Botanical Garden.



Last month, my friend Mike and I had checked out the place, so I pretty much knew where I wanted to go. I parked the car, got my camera with just the wide angle lens, my tripod, my digital camera, and my two essentials: car keys and cellphone. On the way up to Hole-In-The-Rock, I took a few photos of the steps leading up the side of the rock.



There weren't a lot of people, just two or three couples spending valentine's day together, and some families coming and going. I picked a spot away from the overhang where they all were, set my camera up on a tripod, and waited for dark. It was cloudy that day, so there wasn't much of a sunset to see, but I took some pictures of the area once all the city lights came on after dark.



All in all, a nice change from my usual day off.

Secret Familial Habits Uncovered

It's amazing how you notice certain traits among family members that even span generations. I don't mean physical traits like facial similarities or height or how fast you get your waistline back after you give birth. I mean habits, patterns of behavior so much a part of your every day that once you notice it in someone else, it's almost as if a light goes on and WHAM! A big-deal revelation. Like some ancient secret were uncovered, or a sysadmin password hacked, or Mcgyver's first name finally figured out. (It's Angus, dummy.)

One familial habit I've discovered is what I call Self-Inflicted Sleep Deprivation.

For years, even before I moved to the States, I've been staying up every night until about 12 or 1 in the morning. This despite my having to wake up at 5 a.m. in order to be at work by 6:30. So yes, I'm accustomed to getting through the work week on only 4 or 5 hours of sleep every night, and lately, even 3. Though that didn't work out too well; on the third day of doing that, I got headaches, felt light-headed all day, and was nodding off in mid-code.

Still, no matter how many times I tell myself that I'm going to be in bed by 10:30, I continue to stay too long on my laptop working on something. I invariably keep pushing my deadline back, half an hour at a time until, I'm disappointed to see on my Windows systray, it's 12:00 again. (Sometimes I even make a long-distance phone call to Manila, use up a $5 phone card, and punish myself even more.)

So, casually aware that I am lowering my life expectancy, imagine my surprise when I realized I had not one, not two, but three close relatives, spanning two generations in two continents, who apparently possess the very same "Deprive self of sleep and life will be more fun!" gene.

The first is my Auntie Fidi from Oklahoma. I visited her and her son, my cousin Josh, in October, after not having seen them in ten years. But I didn't even realize she was on a crazy sleep schedule until my second visit a month later, when Josh mentioned she'd stay up until 2 in the morning watching TV. WHAM! No wonder I'd see her curled up on the recliner, wrapped in a blanket fast asleep!

What a coincidence, I thought. She's a bit like me!

The second culprit: my cousin Joey from New Jersey. I flew over there to see him and his family for Veterans Day weekend in November. Guess what I noticed on my first night, when I was about to take my shower at 11 p.m.? Everyone else had gone to bed, but he was up watching TV. He does that every night, he said. Just stay up and watch TV.

DING-DING-DING!

WHAM!

Last December, I visited the Philippines for the first time since I moved to Arizona five years ago. My brother Mark is now a web designer. He works flexible hours. Most times, he gets to the office at 9 a.m. and works until 6. When he gets home, he has dinner, gets on the internet, and plays this multiplayer online role-playing game called World of Warcraft. Guess what time he goes to bed? Oh, not too late... about 2 in the morning.

WHAM!

Amazing. This absolutely blows my mind.

I wonder how many more clan members are out there, bodies on crazy internal clocks, brains running on caffeine (or worse, blood and oxygen), risking life and limb while driving through the streets, reputation with clients hanging in the balance as we work on reduced cerebral capacity.

I don't know a lot of people who can function consistently on 4 or 5 hours of sleep every night. Actually, I know just one other -- my friend Mike from Oklahoma. But I think he's spent too much time with Auntie Fidi and them over there.

Now I'm not proud of this unhealthy practice, and I know I should be taking better care of myself. But after living alone for so long, one thing's for certain -- this sure has made me feel like part of a family again.

Oh my, look at the time.

My friends hiked Pico de Loro

This is what I missed on Jan. 29-30 because I wasn't back home:



This is my friend Ruby with the renowned Pico de Loro "beak" in the background. Pico de Loro ("Parrot's Beak") is located in Ternate, Cavite in the Philippines. I feel so envious... even though the trail was really steep and they got lost in the night on the way back. But at least I know they were thinking of me:


See my friend Alon.


LOL!

Watch the video: http://www.villegasonline.com/videos/growing_upPico.mpg to see the whole spiel inside the tent.

When You Are Old (One of my favorite poems)

Thanks to Lara for sharing this poem with me in our freshman year of high school. As followers of the television series The Twilight Zone, she helped me recall an episode entitled "Her Pilgrim Soul", in which a scientist watches a female hologram grow from infancy, through adulthood, and into old age.

William Butler Yeats. b. 1865

When You Are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Of Pilgrim Souls And Kindred Spirits

I believe that this lifetime is not the end-all and be-all of me. I mean, get run over by a truck, smack, that’s it, sayonara? Nah.

I believe that each of us is a soul traveling through the eons one lifetime at a time. I believe that in each lifetime, we learn lessons, build intimate friendships, and endure experiences that alter us at the very core.

I have a friend with whom I share a profound, and somewhat weird, relationship that neither of us can quite explain. We were close friends for two years before I moved to the U.S. and lost contact with him. But in the four years that we did not hear from each other, I knew – not just felt, but knew -- that he was right there. I could feel him in the back of my mind and knew he did not forget about me. I also knew without question that whenever I’d come home to visit, we’d meet just like old times, even though I had no phone number or email address with which to start looking. I did not know if he was married, or if he had kids, or what he was doing in life.

One day, I got the greatest surprise when he found a way to reach me, just a few months before I was coming home to visit. I met him with a bunch of old friends at the bowling alley that had always been our usual place. Such an unusual feeling, those first moments: he was sitting at a table, several feet away from me, and we were hardly even talking, but I felt calmness in my heart. Just from knowing he was there, even realizing how little I knew about his life after being gone for so long. But I accepted, even appreciated, that feeling of peace like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Since then, we’ve talked about our friendship; about how while I was gone, he could feel my presence as well; how when I was going through a difficult time, he would worry about me without knowing why; and how these days while I’m back where I live half a world away, I get this unmistakable feeling of him calling out to me at moments when, I find out later, he actually does in his head.

We’re not really close, he says. We haven’t been around each other enough to build that mundane sort of friendship. But what I believe, and maybe he does too, is that our souls have known each other for a very long time.

I imagine he perceives my pilgrim soul. He accepts me for what he sees, not even wondering about the stuff he doesn’t. Exactly how I’ve always felt about him.

And so this one soul's journey continues, through the eons, one day at a time. (Oh the plethora of stuff to write about!) And you're invited to come along.