Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Time	Event
11:17a	Submission to Outside Magazine Outside magazine has a place where you can submit one photo with a short, 300 words of less, story to go with the photo. They take there best for the magazine. I am planning on submitting the following. Julie, would you mind taking a crack at editing? -------------- Luckily, the ruins of la Cidudad Perdida, the Lost City, is in Colombia and not Japan. If it was in Japan, I would have to walk one step behind our guide, Walter, for the rest of his life until I saved his life in return. I do not want to have to hike that path again. I fell in the first of eight river crossings. I was swimming, or more accurately, aggressively floating to a large rock to try and pin myself. Walter dove in after me. Later he told me that he has almost died five times in that river and it has always been at the spot I fell in. As soon as we made shelter I crawled under a blanket. I slept 28 out of 36 hours underneath a mosquito net. I had a cough, my joints ached, and I had the shivers. I wasn't sure if it was malaria, a cold, or sheer body exhaustion. I prayed to God, and I don't pray to God often, to make it exhaustion. I did not want to be the sorry son of a bitch that they had to carry out of the jungle. It had rained for three days. The excess weight in my bag was both my and the jungles sweat. My notebook was wrapped in plastic, and then placed in my camera bag, which was wrapped in plastic again. Yet it was still moist. The internal lens misted over. My fingers and toes had wrinkled in the constant dampness. The pack weighed heavier every day. It rained as we climbed the last 1,800 moss-covered stones. The German, Volker, counted. He claimed that is what Germans do. The military men liked my camouflage poncho; they claimed it made us brothers. The ruins were round. (5 Comments | Comment on this)
8:02p	Summer This summer has not been bad. I been here for eight summers. At about the third or fourth one in most know whether or not they can take it for a lifetime. For some it takes longer. My first summer here I did not have air, which I think counts for two summers. Anybody who has been here for a while usually agrees. I spent that summer in a Honda accord. When I drove down the mountain from Flagstaff for the first time and turned the air on and it died I knew it was going to a tough one. That summer I discovered a litmus test of the different parts of the valley. I would count for curiosity how many other cars like me had their windows down. Then I would try to guess which ones had the windows down because they preferred it that way. In south Phoenix it is about 3 to 4 out of 10 cars with the windows down. Maybe one out of town by choice. In Scottsdale, sometimes it is 1 out 10 with the windows down, sometimes 1 out of 20. Few had them down by choice. I am not sure what this teaches us, besides the obvious lessons. (2 Comments | Comment on this)

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