Picketwire Canyon, Colorado

In the 19th century, a group of Spanish explorers died exploring the canyonlands in southeast Colorado; because there were no priests in the party to perform final rites on the doomed men, the river they died near came to be known as el Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio - which was shortened to simply Purgatoire River by French explorers who came to the area years after. Local accents bastardized the French word into Picketwire, and that is how Picketwire Canyon is still known today.

We weren't able to finish the entire 17.4-mile hike, but we did enjoy the best parts of the canyon. A group of geologist cyclists were kind enough to point us toward some pictographs carved into some boulders about a mile or two into the hike, and we made it as far as the dinosaur tracks before turning back.

Valentine's Day Sky-Diving

I spent all this morning psyching myself up for the jump. I'm normally a brave person, but the idea of jumping out of a plane had me rattled. With skydiving, you have a lot of time between realizing that you're gonna be painting the ground red and it actually happening. But, as I repeated to myself, the odds were for me, and even though it wouldn't be a pleasant way to die, it would definitely be an impressive one (imagine the obituary!).  So I was feeling pretty confident - even cocky - as I zipped into a speedsuit and my jump-partner, Randy of Out of the Blue Skydiving, tightened my harness.

The six of us (Dean and I, our jump-partners, and our cameramen) were squeezed inside this tiny little propellor plane before I remembered - I'm terrified of flying.  I'm an atheist, but you know that saying, there are no atheists in foxholes.  Flying is spitting in God's face; that metal tube is really just a giant middle finger to an omnipotent and vengeful deity; if humans were meant to fly, we'd have been born with wings!  And on and on.  Given the options between jumping out of the plane and staying in the plane, suddenly jumping out didn't seem like such a bad idea.

And it wasn't.  Skydiving is wonderful, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had the money.  The first few seconds are admittedly terrible - that roller-coaster feeling of your stomach hitting your throat cranked up to eleven - but then you hit freefall and you feel like you're flying instead of falling!  It ended way too quickly, just as I was really getting into it and wondering if Randy would hear me if I asked him to flip us over or something, the chute popped - far more gently than I would've predicted - and we were floating down to earth.

Penrose Airport from 5,000 feet in the air

Here's the exciting part; I could tell something was wrong after the chute popped because Randy was shifting and twisting an awful lot.  Then suddenly we started falling again.  I learned later that our first chute had malfunctioned - the lines were seriously tangled and it would prevent us from landing safely.  Randy had to eject that chute (hence the second fall!) and pop the back-up chute, during which we fell another 1,500 feet. We ended up landing safely (on our feet even), and everyone kept teasing me by telling me how lucky I was that I got two rides for the price of one!

People keep asking if I was scared.  Honestly, I wasn't.  It all happened too quickly for me emotionally react; I was aware what was going on, but it was like my neurotransmitters hadn't caught up to it.  Mainly I was thinking, "Of course this would happen to me."  By the time I was able to think things through, I was safely on the ground, and then there was no point in panicking.  In the end, I was pretty happy that I had such a good story to tell my friends later.  I asked Randy how many times this had happened to him before, and he said 26 times in his 5700 jumps!

I eat a tarantula

Glenn overcooked it and it was several months past its expiration date, but it was good. Now the most unusual thing I've ever eaten.

Bizarre Foods films the Denver Adventurous Eaters' Club at P-17, or I eat jellyfish, chicken feet, and caterpillars

The menu:

• Ant larvae beignets with a kaffir lime sauce
o Scharffenberger Cellars Brut Excellence, NV

• Jellyfish salad, granny smith apples and sansho buttons
o Mui Ne Mule with Van Gogh Blue vodka

• Goat agnolotti, chrysanthemum, ricotta salata, lemon basil oil
o Bila Haut Rose, NV

• Tom Yum Taley with pork uterus, baby octopus, baby water crabs
o Nigori Sake cocktail with Basil Seed Caviar

• Fermented Soybean Spring rolls, hot mustard
o Asian Manhattan w/Buffalo Trace and pickled plums

I have never disliked anything Chef Mary's served before, but *christ* these were disgusting. Most of the plates were full when they recollected them before the next course. Fermented soybeans are not for me.

• Confit of Duck tongue, corn flan, kasu sake lees
o Chateau des Jacques, Moulin- a-Vent

• Coq au vin with Silkie chicken, toriashi, puff ball, bailing and king trumpet mushrooms and Chinese red dates
o Rocca delle Macie Chianti Classico Reserva

Silkie chickens are known for having black skin and bones, hence the big black chicken foot sitting on top.

Somewhat perversely, Chef Mary brought out 3 live Silkie chickens for us to pet at the same time we ate their brethren. This is why I love this club.

• Coconut Caterpillar Torte, pandan ice cream
o Rumchata

Not included on the official menu were a couple of surprises, alligator dumplings and the cobra vodka!

UPDATE:

Greece: Day 10

Location: Athens

The Acropolis was open today!

The Parthenon:

The Erechtheion

The Theater of Dionysus

The Temple of Hephaestus

Church of the Holy Apostles

I have to thank Glenn for forcing me to sit through that documentary about how ancient architects built the Parthenon, as it gave me a healthy appreciation for the effort that went into building this incredible structure. Alexis and I also walked through the National Gardens and the Ancient Agora, and we watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Alexis and I cautiously discussed with each other that we may have enjoyed the Ancient Agora and the accompanying museum in the Stoa of Attalos even more than the Acropolis. It’s one thing to see where people worshipped, but it’s far more interesting (to me) to see how they lived. The museum was filled with items like dishes, cookware, jewelry, and other pieces recovered around Athens (for really, people dig this stuff up in their backyards) that ancient people used in their day-to-day lives. There were also water clocks and the device by which ancient Greeks selected juries for cases. And oh my god, the sculptures!

One piece of the exhibit were the ostraka from Greek assembly votes (our word ostracism comes from this word ostraka); they are pieces of broken pottery on which members of the assembly wrote the name of the politician they least liked, and if a politician received over 6,000 votes, he was exiled from Athens for ten years (a sort of negative vote). Themistocles appears to have been particularly unpopula

As neither Alexis nor I could stomach any more Greek food, we were delighted to locate a greasy Chinese place. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping; we loved looking at the pretty European lingerie and we had a ball putting together outfits for each other in H&M. We had Italian for dinner.

Greece: Day 9

Location: Matala/Athens

I wanted to paddle the last leg from Agia Galini back to Matala this morning, but I worried my poor stomach just couldn’t take eight miles on open water. Instead Alexis and I were drove to Matala, where we used the time the others were kayaking to take a last walk around the town, the beach, and the caves. This extra time proved highly useful as Alexis and I had planned to take the ferry back to the main part of the country, and the ferries surprised us by announcing a strike; we had to scramble to book last-minute plane tickets to Athens, which cost a fortune since the only tickets left were business class.

The silver lining is that I got to experience travelling business class; the flight from Heraklion to Athens is only about 35 minutes, but we got newspapers, hot towels, alcohol, and really nice sandwiches.

Alexis and I got a room in a hostel in Athens where we stashed our stuff, and then we went out to do the city thing. Unfortuately, it was about four by the time we got started, and we found that most of the attractions close around five, so I basically showed Alexis around what I knew of Athens (Monistiraki, Syntagma Square), we did gyros for dinner and ice cream for dessert, and Alexis went to bed early while I checked out the rooftop bar of our hostel (deserted).  I chatted with my friends back home for a few hours and then went to bed as well.

Our hostel is such a change from the hotels we’ve been staying at. It’s a lot more like my cabin on the ferry than a hotel room (bunk beds, a shower, a toilet, and a folding chair), and the view outside is of the backside of another building, some climate control machines, and someone’s shoe lying on a shack. I like this place.

The Greek Capital Building, unusually free of protestors.

Greece: Day 8

Location: Agia Galini

Today was a bad day; I chose not to kayak in the morning, mortified as I still was from the vomiting incident, so Alexis and I rode in the van to our lunch destination, called Palm Beach. We got there early enough that I got some hiking in while Alexis relaxed on the beach. Palm Beach actually has a Greek name, but everyone calls it Palm Beach because there is a palm forest just inland from the coast. Hiking through the palm forest was amazing; I’ve never seen terrain or foliage like that – I wish I hadn’t forgotten my camera in the van!

Here is why it was a bad day: in the isolation of the palm forest, a man overtook me and did things to me before letting me go – not that, but enough to make me feel helpless and degraded. I sobbed to Alexis on the beach and didn’t eat lunch. I was feeling blue enough to spend the rest of the day moping in the van, but as I watched all the people prepping to kayak to Agia Galini, I felt the urge to do something, anything, so that getting touched by a stranger in a forest was not the most remarkable part of my day. So I hopped in a kayak.

Paddling turned out to be quite an adventure when the winds picked up (a steady 15 mph, with sudden long gusts at 25 mph). The rough water took my mind off my bruised feelings and churning stomach, and I was able to make it the whole way without incident (I told myself, “You don’t have time to think or to throw up, you’ll tip over or be blown out to sea!”). I also managed to land and launch my own boat, and jump in while it was floating in the water. Looking back I can remember this with pride, as a counterpoint to this morning’s incident. It set me on the right tracks for a good rest of the day.

Tonight is our last night as a group, and the hotel is swank-eehhh. There’s a shower curtain, and the water can reach tolerable temperatures between scalding hot and Arctic-cold. A lot of the hotels we’ve been in just have an area of the bathroom with a drain in it, and you can only tell it’s a shower by the spigot and the attached sprayer on the wall; you just have to hold it over your head and wash with one hand. Another weird thing about Greek bathrooms: you can’t flush toilet paper; instead you have to put it in the wastebasket provided. At the beginning of the week, I felt this was extremely gross, but I’ve grown to not think about it, and I can remember to throw the TP away about 75% of the time.

I just got back from dinner (prawns in garlic and barracuda). There is talk of going to a nightclub, although I’ve had a long day.