Unwanted fame in Spain

The band is playing "Smoke on the water", badly. I don’t care I am jumping up and down like an idiot and laughing. The sound echoes of the stones walls of the houses around the cobbled square, I notice Phil appear from the brightly lit bar in the corner carrying another round of ridiculously over sized and under priced gin-y-tonica’s. This is another fiesta in another mountain village in the Spanish Pyrenees where we are celebrating the life of some obscure saint by dancing to bad cover versions of 70’s rock music. As always we are having a blast. We have been around the region long enough that some of the locals recognise us and smile when we show up. This is the summer of 1986 and we are working in the area making geological maps. This is in a time before fast, EU funded motorways will bring these rural communities within 3 hours of Barcelona, making them perfect for holiday homes, superficially tidying them up but ripping away a thousand years of tradition and spirit. For the time being, these villages are truly rural, water and electric are not ubiquitous, people work the land with their hands and there is a real sense of community. The annual fiesta is a big event in the village. For three days everyone parties, the very old dance with the very young, obscure games are played and the people celebrate being a community it which everyone knows and respects each other. That makes our welcome even more of a privilege that we appreciate.

For the last six weeks we have been hanging out with the local police. Four young guys, at least two of whom, Martin and Carey, signed up to avoid conscription in to the army. They are our age and always up for a party. Their jobs mean that they have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the villages and towns within a 100 km radius, including, most importantly where and when the fiestas are happening. So every evening we sit in the local bar, exhausted from a long day and they appear

"Hola, que tal?" (Hi, how are you doing?)
"Bien, que pasa?" (Good, whats happening?)
“Fiesta esta noche en Bialo?” (Fiesta tonight in Bialo?)

Where the fuck is Bailo – “Donde Bailo?”

Not that it really matters because we will cram four or five people into a Fiat 126 bubble car and go anyway and we will pretend we want to come home at 2am and then crawl back into our tents at 5 or 6, only to be woken by a baking sun at 9; get up and then go to work, because we have a ridiculous protestant work ethic. And then the next evening the process will start all over again.

Only tonight, in Bailo there is a minor annoyance. A small mean-looking guy, about 50, who is very drunk keeps barging into Carey, from time to time punching and pushing him. Carey is a small, hyperactive and utterly lovable guy. Totally unsuited to being a policeman. Nobody should ever be mean to Carey.  I have no idea who this guy is but he is really starting to piss me off and I am probably a bit too drunk to ask why Carey is not trying to stop this really obnoxious behaviour. I try to ignore it as well and go back to dancing.

A short while later the guy reappears and grabs Carey around the neck in an arm lock and starts to drag him around the square.He seems to thing this is funny but nobody else does. I have had enough, so I step forward and grab him by the throat. He looks extremely surprised and releases my friend immediately. I am a lot bigger than him and its fairly easy to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and toss him backwards

“vete a la mierda, maricon!”

He stumbles and falls on his arse, I turn to Carey to ask him if he is ok and he looks genuinely terrified. That is my firsy incline that maybe that was not such a good thing to do.

The mean guy is straight back, purple with rage and screaming at me. I stand my ground.

I realise that things are probably not so great when the bands stops playing and people gather around. The arsehole takes a swing and I step back and avoid it, he flails wildly and almost ends on his arse again. I look around and there are a lot of people just watching us and I wander what the hell is going on. The entire atmosphere has changed and I am sobering up very quickly. I try to reason with the guy…

Los siento pero Carey es me amigo y…

(I am sorry but Carey is my friend and..)

He is too angry to listen and just screams in my face

Carey is talking to him in very fast Spanish, I can only follow about half of it, but the gist is "he is English he doesn’t understand…"

This annoys me, I do understand. I understand that is guy is a cunt and he is rapidly heading for a my fist in his ugly fuckin face. I am starting to get very angry and figure the quickest way to end this is to lamp the bastard very hard and be done with it.

Carey skilfully maneuverers himself between the two of us and keeps talking, everyone else looks on and there is a real air of fear and menace. How did it change so fast and why do so many people care if two drunk people swing hand bags?

Then almost as quickly as things flared up, they dissipate. The angry man steps back, points to me and says something that I take to be a warning to watch my back and he stomps off out of the square. Before there is time for anything else to kick off the band start up again and people go back to dancing.

Carey takes me by the arm and leads me into the bar at the side of the square. There he hands me a drink and in a very over excited and clearly freaked out way explains that Snr Angry is the local police chief and a real nasty bastard. A hang up from the Franco era who has never had anyone stand up to him since he was the school bully, 40 years earlier. He is genuinely concerned for my well being and things start to fall in to place but I am still drunk enough to be brave so I shrug my shoulders and in my poor Spanish I try to explain to Carey that he is my friend and friends don't let friends get pushed around, but he is too worried to take it in, so I down my beer and we go back to dancing.

Nothing happens that night, although I stop drinking and like the man suggested, I watch my back.

The next day, news of the nights events has spread rapidly. My friends who own the local bar next to our unofficial campsite think this is the greatest thing they have ever heard. It seems that Angry man is well known and not very popular in the region. At subsequent fiestas, people I do not know pat me on the back and buy my drinks. I never see the guy again but I am never fully relaxed and my new found fame sits uncomfortably, its only a couple of weeks until I leave but all I wanted to do was drink and dance badly until the small hours.

Friday Fun

Some things that made me laugh this week

Wednesday Movie - Apple's $100 billion

Apple has lots of money. Apparently they have $100 billion down the back of the sofa.
Here is a nice video that suggests the top ten things they could do with that much money.
Here are some other ways to get $100 billion

Interestingly none of them include "buy a company that takes out-of-focus, fuzzy pictures for a billion dollars"

Friday Joke - The youth of today

Another field season in Utah

Its May and that means Utah. As always when arriving in Salt Lake City it almost feels like coming home, the place now has such a familiarity to it. I am just heading home after two and a half weeks. The first 10 days was spent running our student field course which is always fun. I also ran into a lot of the usual suspects running their own courses out in the Book Cliff. One evening there was 4 separate field trips in Green River. Forget Melon Days in September, they should celebrate "Geology Days" in May.

After the trip finished I spent a couple of days around Salt Lake City with Lene who is doing a source to sink project on the shorelines of Lake Bonneville. That went well and despite many of the outcrops having houses, golf courses and a University on top of them, we found what we needed.

The sediment went from there....                                                            to there. 

This source to sink stuff is pretty easy!

Then headed down south to the Book Cliffs and did a couple of days field work on my own. It's been a long time since I just went out, on my own, into the field and collected data. It was very enjoyable. After that I spent a day in Colorado National Monument and a day the San Rafael Swell looking at structural geology with Haakon, which was also fun, in a faulty sort of way.

Spot the fault! This structural geology is also pretty easy 

A very peaceful Wooside Canyon, one of my favourite places on Earth 

Then back to Salt Lake for a day which involved a lot of shopping, mainly for my girls, at REI, Patagonia (or Patagucci as Ian calls it) and Best Buy. I can cope with shopping like that! Then to the airport and the flight home which is hopefully less eventful than the flight out.

Journey from Hell

In 1914 Ernest Shackelton led a team of explores to Antarctica on the Endurance. The ship became stuck in the ice and eventually sunk. They endured a winter, first on the boat and then in cabins made form the upturned row boats. Shackleton then left them at Elephant Island and rowed/sailed one of the rows boats across the southern Ocean to South Georgia which he then crossed before going back to collect his men. It was the pinnacle of heroic endeavour and after yesterdays travel from Leeds to Salt Lake City, I feel I can fully empathise with him.

It all started well, a taxi to the airport with an excellent sailor with mafia connections. Then a simple hop to Amsterdam before getting my plane for the long journey west.  The initial part of the flight was fine right up until the last hour. A very loud bang and a flash, silenced the whole plane, while people looked around shocked and scared, checking-out that we were still flying, as opposed to plummeting ground ward and then just looked nervous. A few minutes later the captain announced that we have been struck by lightning, but everything seems to be ok (yes he did say “seems to be…”).

Ten minutes later he announces that Chicago was closed due to the storm and we are headed to Milwaukee. Hmm not looking good for my connection to Salt Lake. He also promises that we will refuel and then finish the final hop to Chicago once the storm had cleared. We land, it was a bit bumpy but no big deal. The stewardess sitting across from me assured me that this was normal and nothing to do with lightening strike. I am more sceptical since we didn’t even circle Chicago before giving up and ditching.

Once on the ground we sit there for 4 hours. We refuelled but then the captain announced that because of the lightning strike, mandatory checks on the plane were required and we weren’t going anywhere for a while and when we did it was by bus . Like Shackelton, we abandoned our primer vessel and headed off into the storm, like the crew of the Endurance we must now continue overland or perish.

Milwaukee is an international airport – Wikipedia says so and it has three immigration desks. Wikipedia suggests that the only international flight is once a week to Canada. So you can imagine that immigration at Milwaukee is not geared up for a 747 full of Europeans. It toke over an hour to get through and I am near the front. Then a two hour bus ride to Chicago before we were dropped outside the baggage claim with no real hints about what to do next. Chicago airport rapidly became my Elephant Island, with thousands of refugees of the storm, standing around, chattering loadly and shuffling awkwardly in long queues,  like penguins on the ice shelf.   

So I go to Delta and they say that they have booked me on a US Airways flight to SLC which leaves at 9.05 – in an hour in another terminal. I go to US airways and the check in shuts at 8pm and a sign tells me – for later flights use United check in which is in another terminal. I get there and the full magnitude of the impact of the days storm becomes apparent. It is a total war zone. Huge queues zig zag around the check in hall. Sleepy children are crying, women are crying, men are crying, most people are just standing zombified in long long queues, in the helpless knowledge that they are going to miss the flights that they are rebooked on because the checkin is taking so long.

By flashing various cards, I get into a shorter queue but it still takes me an hour to get to the desk, by which time the flight has left and I am stuck. Now I am just trying for damage limitation and a bed for the night.  I need to “over winter” another night on the ice shelf of Chicago and the woman from United says its not her problem since I am booked on a US Airways flight and doesn’t have any suggestions as to what I should do next . Once more into the unknown.

So I head back to the Delta terminal and all the desks are closed. I manage to grab a women in a delta uniform who is on her way home. After a bit of charm and a lot of looking pathetic and beaten, she agrees to help me and opens up the office. She then books me on to a flight in the morning (and upgrades me to first – thank you) and finds me a hotel room. She was an angel in a Delta Uniform.

The zoo that is the scrum for the shuttle buses is no big deal after the horror show of the United check in hall and after finding my bus and then waiting another 30 mins to check in, its 10.30 (4.30 am UK time) and I am safe for the time being, like the crew of the Endurance on Elephant Island I can take stock and plan the next stage of my journey.

Next morning I am up at 5.30 for a shuttle at 6 and a final check in for my flight to Salt Lake. I feel a bit like Ernest as he left for South Georgia although my first class seat (courtesy of an upgrade  is a little more comfortable than his boat filled with rocks. 

Friday Joke - Bible bashing

Being in the Land of the Large always gives me a strong urge to bash the bible... so here we go!

Have a nice weekend