Smokin’ Deal
Mendoza is a city of a million inhabitants, the capital of the province of the same name. Viniculture is extremely important in the region, attested to by the 1,100 wineries in the province. One day, with time on my hands, I paid a visit to the Arizu winery, the oldest of them all, founded in 1840. Actually, it was to their visitor center in the city, where I was given a personal tour of the place. A lot of it was underground, in deep tunnels with huge casks, dark and cool, really vast. We ended up in a room where they were bottling their very finest wine, a 5-year-old pinot noir. It was being slowly, carefully labeled by hand. They had been so kind to give me a one-hour tour, I felt I should buy a bottle to take back home with me to the States. Could I afford it? – I was traveling on a tight budget. The price was 4,150 Australes. Argentina was experiencing a rapid devaluation of its currency at the time, getting worse each day. U.S. dollars fetched a real premium, so imagine my delight upon learning that I would pay a whopping 92 cents for my bottle. Sold!
The Commission
Way back in the 1960s when I was still a university student, my friend Leroy came up with an outrageous idea. He suggested we get some business cards printed and pose as officials of a made-up, government-sounding organization. Before I tell you more about that, first a bit of background. In British Columbia at the time, most hotels had what was known as a beer parlour. Usually an open room with chairs, tables and little else. Waiters would bring you glasses of draft beer, which, if memory serves me well, cost 20 cents. These were smoke-filled establishments for the sole purpose of drinking beer, although you could also buy sandwiches and the like, as well as bottles of beer of a brand other than what was on tap. Many of them had a television playing in the background. Since we spent a lot of time drinking beer anyway, we thought we’d have some fun with it. The cards we had printed looked like this.
The idea was that while you were at a beer parlour, you’d fill out one of the cards and hand it to a waiter, thereby rating the place. Sometimes they would look shocked, sometimes pleased, or even annoyed. Often they would ask “Is this for real?” and we would, with a straight face, assure them it was. Some of the establishments were ones we visited more often, and there were waiters who came to know us and hoped for a good rating during that visit. We kept a list of all of the beer parlours we visited, and as time went by it really added up. Whenever Leroy or I traveled, we kept tabs on places where we drank, the only real condition being that you had to drink a draft beer, not bottled. By the time I quit keeping track of all the fun, my list had grown to almost 500 different pubs, a great many of which were outside of BC and even Canada. I only handed out the cards in BC, though. My list has been lost these many years, but I would love to be able to look back on it again. It was hard work drinking all that beer.
Fitz Roy
Patagonia has some of the world’s worst weather. One time I was there and walked in to the base camp that climbers use to prepare for their assault on Cerro Fitz Roy. It was a sad little hovel, but at least it was shelter from the storm. I think it was called the Río Blanco camp. It was a climb of almost 9,000 vertical feet to the summit from camp.
While there, I met Daniel, Susana and Julio, three Argentines who had been there for one full month waiting for enough of a window of fair weather in which to try to climb the peak. I spent a couple of days there, but the weather was still iffy. When I left the area on the bus from El Chaltén, it was nothing short of miraculous – the weather was crystal-clear. The driver pulled over on to the shoulder and stopped. He then announced that he drove the route from El Calafate to El Chaltén seven days a week (5 hours each way) and this was the first clear day in an entire month. He told us to take all the pictures we wanted, because it wasn’t likely that, as tourists, we would never see the peaks like this again.
I hope my friends seized the moment and made a successful bid on Fitz Roy.
Ass Kicker
In 1972, I visited Mexico with my girlfriend and her sister. On July 11th, we found ourselves at the Mitla archaeological ruins in the state of Oaxaca. This is a world heritage site, the most important in the Zapotec culture. We were the only tourists there early that morning as we walked leisurely around the place, admiring the ancient structures. Before long, we noticed that a disheveled-looking Mexican man had appeared and boldly walked right up to us. He may have been drunk, and he tried to grope one of the girls. She let out a scream. I was 25 years old at the time, and this guy was probably twice that. I’ve never been much of a fighting man, but at that moment I grabbed him, twisted him around and gave him a mighty kick in the ass – I was lucky I didn’t break my foot, but I think I came near to breaking his ass. He got the message and stumbled away as we hurled insults in his direction.
Unidentified
This may be the most difficult thing about which I’ve ever written, because it’s possible not one of you will believe what I’m about to tell you. That’s okay, because I’m gonna tell you anyway. It happened on October 7th, 2013.
Jake and I were camping at a remote spot in the Agua Dulce Mountains, about 5 miles north of the Mexican border. I won’t tell you the exact location because we had driven to a spot that was forbidden to all vehicular traffic. Anyway, it was late in the afternoon. We sat there and watched an amazing sunset while sitting in our folding chairs. Finally, it became completely dark. We were looking to the west. There was a mountain ridge two miles away. We noticed a bright light in the sky, down low but still above the mountain ridge. It was small, like a bright star, but clear and distinct, and it seemed to be beyond the ridge.
Before writing this, I called Jake and we reviewed what we saw that night. Even though it has been over 8 years since the event, we both agreed on every detail – it had left that strong an impression on us both. Understand that neither of us are prone to flights of fancy – we are both trained scientists, and have nothing to gain by making this up.
As we watched the light, something remarkable happened. The light shot away in a straight line. From a standstill, it moved incredibly fast – there was no acceleration, it just moved at full speed immediately. It stopped at a new location instantly, with no sense of deceleration. Then, without hesitation, the light shot off in a completely different direction, again in a straight line. The speed at which it moved was amazing. Every time it stopped, it would then take off in a new direction, always in a straight line and never in a curve. It did this over and over, while we watched, slack-jawed. We couldn’t hear any sound at all from it, but that may have been due to its distance from us. One more important detail – every time the light changed direction, it changed color. We remember seeing red, blue, green, yellow. The colors were very bright, easily visible even from that distance. Nothing created by the hand of man could move like that.
I’ve re-read what I just wrote a few times to make sure I got the details straight, and it is all correct. Oh, one more thing. This event lasted somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, so the light changed direction and color many times. Jake and I discussed this while it was happening, verifying for each other what we were seeing. We watched it with the naked eye, no binoculars. The light was always bright enough that we could see it clearly at all times. Then, it just disappeared – gone. It never came back. We were left there, sitting in the dark, gobsmacked. Over the years, we’ve discussed that evening several times, and our memories are clear and in complete agreement. We have no explanation for what we saw. For what it’s worth, it happened over land that was used by the military.
Playing With Matches
When I was 9 years old, I lived on an air force base. Like a lot of boys that age, my friends and I got into our share of trouble. One day, one of the boys had sneaked some cigarettes from home and also a box of matches. We went down to an area of the base where there was a lot of tall, dry grass, some distance away from all of the buildings. It was quiet and deserted. Each of us tried to smoke a cigarette, but that was a disaster – green at the gills, we soon gave up on that idea. One of the boys decided that we might as well have some real fun while there, so we lit some of the grass on fire – boys love playing with matches. It caught easily, then we stamped it out. We did that a few more times, letting it burn a bit longer each time before stamping it out. Our luck ran out when, the last time we tried it, we waited too long before trying to put it out. The flames spread quickly and were soon out of control. We panicked, realizing that we couldn’t put out the fire, and scattered back to our homes. A short time later, we heard sirens – the fire department on the base had arrived and, with their hoses, quickly put out the fire. Word spread, “probably some kids playing with matches”, and we boys were terrified that they’d find us out. None of us ever spilled the beans, though, and our secret remained safe.
Nass River Country
During the summer of 1967, I spent 3 months prospecting in far northern BC. Almost every day, I was out getting plenty of exercise going up and down mountains, and by the end of that time I considered myself to be really physically fit. I had just turned 20, and figured I could hold my own with just about anybody. Wrong! My company shipped me down to a camp near the Nass River, where right away they paired me up with a prospector named Jim who was probably 50 years of age. They flew us out by chopper to a soggy spot in the bush and left us there with a tent and supplies for a week. Jim was in charge and would set the agenda.
I swear it rained every day, typical Coast rain forest weather, but that didn’t deter Jim one bit. We’d head out wearing rain gear, tromping through the sopping-wet bush and battling the Devil’s club. Nothing slowed that guy down, he made me look like a pre-schooler. He was tough as nails, and I couldn’t keep up with him. He seemed pissed-off that he was always waiting for me to catch up. At the end of each day, we’d be on our cots in the tent with rarely a word exchanged and the rain pouring down. Each day was worse than the previous one – it was the week from hell.
A year later, I ran into him in a pub in Vancouver. We sat and had a beer together and recalled that week in Nass country when he kicked my ass and made me look like a complete inept. I think they broke the mold after they made hard men like Jim, and my hat is forever off to him.