The Gabster

Black Von Treasure Hunt

25 Sep 07 @ 10:15 AM  category » adventure

Big hand for Felix and Michelle Salmon, who are organisers par excellence of fun actitivies. This past Sunday they arranged a Pirate Treasure Hunt around Wall Street, Battery Park and the South Street Seaport. The planning - which they said took two months - was meticulous. There were maps, and clues on envelopes, with more clues if you really needed them *inside* the envelopes. There were about 40 of us - 6 or 7 teams of 7. Our lot were on bikes and rollerblades. We pitied the team on foot. One of our lot was in fact on foot, but Oliver was a stud and cycled her around on his handlebars all day.

I learned a lot about downtown Manhattan on this trip. I've never been to Battery Park, and never knew Castle Clinton was an Opera House when it was built. I'd never heard of the oldest drinking establishment in the city - the Bridge Cafe - and I didn't know that Alexander Hamilton was buried in the Trinity Church graveyard. Nor that the Deutsche Bank building is on the site of the home of the Pirate John Pitt.

Anyway, there were points for arriving at the pub (St. Dympna's, on St. Mark's) first, with the least number of opened envelopes, and more points for the Pirate flag and the map we made, and the song we created. Our song was spectacular, and got 17 out of 10 points, but that might have been to make up for the fact that I failed to read the instructions properly and spent ages drawing a detailed map of the area but forgetting to mark on the map where we had been. And we didn't pay attention to the carefully written notes on the back of the Pirate pix that were at each location, and hence couldn't answer any of the quiz back in the pub...still, the Stunning Cunts song was memorable, with a chorus that got them all singing along:

We are a bunch of Stunning Cunts,
Stunning Cunts are we,
We're hotter, and wetter and slicker than you
Because we love the sea. (aside: - men)

You get the idea.

But it was the hunt for the Grand Prize that really made me laugh. Felix told us that there was an individual in Tompkins Square Park in possession of a treasure chest, and the first person to bring the chest to him by the fountain in the park would win the grand prize.

You have likely never seen about 20 grown up New Yorkers dash out of a pub, sprint down the street, and then run madly about in Tompkins Square Park in search of a treasure chest. It's a highly amusing sight. But after about 10 minutes I got bored, since everywhere I turned there was another pirate, but no chest. Still, seeing a bunch of crazy people harrassing the locals in the park, asking them if they had a chest - that was amusing.  I thought Felix had been too clever by half and in saying an "individual" rather than a person, he meant it was sitting in the hands of a statue or something. So I wandered around looking for statues (there aren't any, except one on top of the fountain).

Much to everyone's frustration in the end, it turned out that there was no chest on display. An elderly black lady (the mother of a neighbour, I believe) had the chest wrapped up in a shopping bag. And the winner of the prize had literally gone round the park asking everyone with a bag if they had a treasure chest.

And the prize? A (to be) custom made 24 carat gold pirate tooth (cap, to fit over your own tooth). Ha.

Lots of fun was had by all. I am noodling on themes for a rematch later in the year.

Stings like a Bee?

13 Sep 07 @ 09:30 AM  category » adventure

I just returned from a trip to the West Coast. My few days in San Francisco were lovely, catching up with old friends and seeing new additions to various friend's families; then a few days in LA where I stayed with friends up in the Hollywood Hills. I went for a run the morning after I arrived and, following a dirt track, turned a corner and found myself quite literally underneath the Hollywood sign, which towered maybe 200 ft above me. A pretty cool location to be hanging out in.

At the other end of town, I spent a couple of days surfing by the pier on Venice Beach. And now I find myself torn. If I were ever to live in LA - which I occasionally think about, mostly half-heartedly - then would I live in the hills, with the views and the breeze and the quiet, or would I live in Venice, so I could go to the beach every day? A dilemma. Since it can take up to an hour and a half to get from one to the other, there is no way of combining the two lifestyles efficiently with one home.

I decided I'd have to live in Venice so I can become a better surfer, but need to have friends or a partner who lives in the hills so I can escape for weekend visits.

So, there I am on Sunday, trying to catch a few waves before driving down to the iMedia conference in San Diego. I'm on a surfboard that's too short for beginner me, but I have a new wetsuit which I am most excited about, and is keeping me happy in the water for ages, and I'm having fun falling off all the time. That is, until I was standing there after a fall in the breaking surf, and felt a sharp stabbing pain in the top knuckle of my big toe. Combined with the breaking wave, this made me trip over, and I wrenched my big toe back. When I lifted my foot out of the water to inspect it, there was a small puncture on my toe and it was bleeding. And the stinging was pretty intense.

So I got out of the water and went in search of a lifeguard. It wasn't really a major issue, but I wanted to be sure it wasn't something to worry about, insofar as I was about to get in a car and drive for 3 hours, so some delayed spasmic reaction would not have been a good thing.

The lifeguard squirted it with saline, saw the blood, and asked me how painful it was on a scale of 1 to 10. I said about a 2 or a 3. He said in that case it could not be a stingray, and anyway, he could not see the spike in my toe. He said that I had probably been stung by a bee.

You're kidding, I said. I was standing in surf. My toe was underwater. Possible, he said: the bees get too close to the water, their wings get waterlogged, they fall in, and can't get out. But they take a while to die and are pretty frantic meantime.

OK, so I can't ever recall having been stung by a bee, so I can't say I know what to compare the feeling to. So I had to believe him.

Well, by Wednesday, my toe was really throbbing and strangely enough, my toenail was the most painful thing of all, Just touching it was inordinately agonising. I could barely walk. That might have had something to do with the fact that for 3 nights I'd been standing around in high heels at a conference (my only other shoes being flip flops), but anyway, it wasn't great.

And since I have a triathlon to run next Sunday in Sag Harbor, it was pretty clear that I may not be up for that now, or at least may not be able to do the run part.

Still, it's a story: I sprained my toe after being stung by a bee underwater while surfing in Venice Beach. You just can't make this stuff up...

Smooth Harry

30 May 06 @ 09:31 PM  category » adventure

My friend Harry is a character. He loves film festivals, though he has no professional connection to the industry (he's a doctor). He also loves high end parties, and is extremely good at getting into them, invite or not. I think he considers it a sport. He's quite dishy, and he usually gets invited along by some fabulous female film person who takes a shine to him and adopts him for the week.

So I was in Cannes at the tail end of the Festival this past weekend, hanging out with a friend. I knew Harry was around, and sleeping in a tent on the beach to boot (an added frisson for his sport is to see who will offer him a better place to stay than the place he initially organises) but on this particular night J and I were tired and decided not to go through the shenanigans of trying to meet up with others. My friend Mark, who was working for the week in Monaco for the Grand Prix, but who happened to be organising a flash charity dinner for AmFar at the Eden Roc in Cap D'Antibes that night, had also called to say that maybe J and I should go along to the afterparty but that it might not be possible because the guest list was very strict, and so if at all, if could only be the two of us. So I didn't call Harry to tell him I had arrived in France.

Later, Mark calls to say come on over to the afterparty, and thus I find myself standing there with J and Mark, happily sipping a drink and taking in the sea view, the breeze, and the unbelievable dresses around me. Suddenly I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn around as a laconic voice behind me drawls, "Hello Gaby". Yes, of course, how dumb of me to even think that there could be a party in town that Harry *isn't* at!!!

High jinx in the South of France

29 May 06 @ 07:09 PM  category » adventure

Well, that was an entertaining weekend. My transport for the past few days has included car, motorboat, waterski, bicycle, scooter and helicopter.

I thought I was coming to Cannes to see a few films, and a few friends, and then, if I was organised enough to get from Cannes to Monaco, watch the Grand Prix in Monaco from a balcony suite at the Hermitage hotel, courtesy of an invite from a friend who was getting married there this weekend.

But instead I found myself gate-crashing fancy parties in Cap D'Antibes and then ending up in Monaco with an invite to the La Dolce Vita Ball, hosted by Wyclef Jean in aid of his charity Yele Haiti. Petra Nemcova tried to help stimulate the bidding on the auction items (a Harley Davidson, a recording studio session, a hand made race car, diamonds, you name it, it was there) which was fine the first time, but quickly became extremely tiresome. Pretty lady, not so smart. Oh well, she doesn't need to be.

Then I got kicked off my table to make room for an extremely well-oiled Bono who turned up for an impromptu sesh with Jay-Z and Wyclef. The funniest thing about that was that when the production company shooting the footage tried to get it on to the networks the next morning, no-one was interested. No interest in Bono, Jay-Z and Wyclef singing together? Why not? Because the Brangelina Jesus Child had been born the night before! God, I couldn't help but chuckle at the sheer meaninglessness of it all, but I do feel bad for the people who worked so hard on this for nothing. And poor Bono, upstaged by a baby? Ouch.

And the next day? Waylaid from our trip to the Hermitage, I ended up lying on the back of a yacht on the T watching the race on a huge screen above the tunnel. Funny isn't it - you can't see the cars if you are on the water, so you end up watching TV. But BOY is it loud. Holy crap, I've never heard anything like it. Forgot the earplugs. Stupid me. But what a way to experience the race first earhand.

That night I was smuggled into another flash party, and then, at some point in the wee hours of the morning, when I thought we were going home, my friend ran into an old friend of his, who insisted we follow him...down to the jetty...onto a tender...and out to a huge yacht in the harbor. Where we proceeded to continue dancing, and generally having some great hi jinx until the sun came up. There was, I kid you not, a stage on the top deck with a revolving velvet platform under a mirror ball suspended from a columned pergola-like structure. No one ever said money could buy you style, that's for sure.

But pain-au-chocolat and champagne for breakfast at 8am on the water? Yeah, that was memorable. And I am certainly not complaining, we all like a bit of glamour in our lives. it was all quite fab, even if I have to take the piss just a little bit!

Big thanks to those who made it all happen. If you are reading this, you know who you are. x x x

On my To Do list

17 Jul 05 @ 02:14 PM  category » adventure | sports

Sports near NYC:

Skydive Long Island
Skywalk Kiteboarding Amagansett 212 433 0886
Espo's Surf and Sport, Easthampton.
Sag Harbor Sailing

The Great Outdoors...for city dwellers

13 Apr 05 @ 05:14 PM  category » adventure

From the Manhattan User's Guide. Shipwreck diving? Hmmm....

Why not to Kite Surf...

20 Jul 04 @ 04:37 PM  category » adventure | sports

A perfectly reasonable explanation from David Galbraith on why he wonn't be taking up kite surfing any time soon (via email). I, of course, will ignore him.

1. It looks too difficult.
2. I would inevitably 'catch some air', fly off the beach and through the plate glass windows of the second floor of someone's beachside bungalow.
3. It looks way too difficult and requires 3 square miles of uninterrupted beach front per person.
4. Flying a kite is not supposed to be an extreme sport, but something safe, quixotic and romantic that makes chicks think you are a sensitive type that may be worth sleeping with.
5. Why would I expend energy failing miserably at something that requires a huge amount of effort to get laid, when there is a lazy, safe, cheap alternative?
6. I already have a 2 foot kite of the quixotic genre; but am willing to watch other people do it with the same relish that watching Formula 1 with the specific unspoken aim of seeing crashes provides.

The day I met a shark...

03 Jul 04 @ 09:20 PM  category » adventure

I was thirteen. My mother, my sister and I were on a caravan holiday in Devon, parked on the land next to a cottage of family friends. The beach was nearby, and of course, that’s we spent most of our days.

Arriving early on the beach the first day, I immediately noticed the shack a little way down the beach where three tanned and tousle-haired teenage boys fiddled with windsurfing equipment, setting up a row of boards and sails, and hanging out wetsuits on a rack next to the shack, joking and laughing as they worked. I turned to my sister Alex and asked her if she wanted to learn how to windsurf. She did, and mum said it was ok, so off we went towards the swaggering boys and soon found ourselves signed up for a day’s windsurfing course.  There were four guys running the windsurfing school – a bunch of out of work actor friends, they were taking the summer off and making a bit of money down in Devon while indulging their passion for watersports. They’d rented a couple of motor boats for the summer, and had the system down pat: straight rentals for those who knew what they were doing, and sessions with up to four people per group for morning, afternoon or all day courses for beginners. The boats were for training and rescue use, and two of the boys lazily puttered around the bay following surfers, shouting instructions to their students.

Just the two of us in our group, Alex and I started our full day on the beach, with a board set up on a roller mechanism that dipped and rolled as you changed your stance. It was, I imagined, a pretty good approximation of the pitch and roll of the waves, and it took a while for me to get my balance. Scott, our blonde and green-eyed Adonis instructor, patiently led us through the basics of the sport: the theory of wind direction, getting up, keeping your balance, maneuvering the board. After a few hours, I was impatient to get in the water and have a go for real.

Finally, Scott said that we could go in the water. I turned excitedly to my sister and grinned. She didn’t smile back.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. “ she said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, I don’t want to go.”

“Don’t be silly.” I said, tutting at her. Alex was less adventurous in those days than I was, and I thought she was being the square older sister. “Come on, it will be fun!”

Alex shook her head and turned to Scott. “I’m tired.” she said, “I’m not going in. Can I go out tomorrow morning instead?”

Scott shrugged. “If that’s what you want, yeah, I think that would be OK.” They were pretty relaxed, these surfer boys, and the school wasn’t super busy.

So she turned away and went back up the beach to join my mother, and I finished getting my equipment ready and then turned to Scott.

“I’m ready!” I said.

“OK, so follow me then.” he said.  We walked down to the water’s edge; I strapped the leash around my ankle, and walked into the water. Scott stood next to me in the water, and gave me some tips on how to swim out across the breaking waves. He then told me that I should go ahead and just practice, and he’d go and get the boat to follow me.

For about an hour I was as happy as Larry, getting up, falling down, then getting up, and staying up for a few minutes before getting blown over again as I lost my balance in the gusty wind. It was fantastic, and exhilarating. Scott followed me for a while, shouting instructions at me. Then at some point, he was gone. I looked around when I fell off the board at one point and couldn’t see a boat anywhere nearby. It didn’t bother me, so I just carried on, happily playing in my own little world, trying to master the basic tricks.

Then I started to get tired, and after falling for about the hundredth time, I looked around only to realize that I was a long way out from the shore. I looked up, and saw that dark storm clouds were gathering, and the sun had gone in. Suddenly I felt cold, and realized that the wind was picking up. Looking around again, craning my head out of the water, I saw that there were no other windsurfers in my vicinity, and that in fact I must have been about quarter of a mile out from the shore. And with every attempt to windsurf, I was going further and further out, carried by the increasingly strong wind. And then I realized I did not know how to tack, to get back to shore against the wind by zigzagging back and forth across the wind. I did wonder what I was going to do, but still, I wasn’t too bothered, as I thought that Scott would come out and get me soon enough. So I pulled myself up onto my board again, willing to have a go at this tacking thing.

It was then that I saw it. At first I thought it was a paper bag floating past. But when the paper bag started moving deliberately around my board, I realized this was no bag. It was the fin of a shark. I froze, on my knees on the board, hands on the rope poised ready to stand up, and my heart started to pound. Very slowly I dropped the rope, and turned over to sit cross-legged on the board. I hugged my arms around my chest. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I couldn’t try to windsurf again, because I’d just fall off. I certainly couldn’t paddle my hands in the water and try to move that way, or I’d look like a deal or some other tasty morsel. I wasn’t letting my limbs go anywhere near the water.

I’d just seen Jaws 3 in 3-D, to boot. That really didn’t help. I started to panic, but couldn’t scream, because that might make the shark attack me. The fin circled my board lazily, tauntingly. It must have gone round me six, seven times. All I could do was sit there, in shock, hugging my knees and rocking back and forth in terror. I don’t know how long I waited, but when I look up again I couldn’t see the fin. For another five or ten minutes I just sat there, too afraid to do anything because how could I really be sure it had gone?

When enough time had passed and I thought it really had gone, I starting screaming at the shore.

Meantime, a very different story was playing out on the beach. My sister and mother, happily ensconced with their noses in books, would look up periodically to watch my progress. At some point my sister noticed that there was no sail in view, but thought (she told me later) nothing much of it, since I was falling a lot. But when she looked up a few minutes later she could see me far out in roughly the same spot, and still no sail. She roused my mother and told her that she thought I must be tired, as I wasn’t trying any more.

My mother sat up, now worried. She and my sister went over to the beach shack and spoke to John, the guy running the show.

“I think my daughter is really tired, she isn’t trying any more.” Said my mother. “Can one of you go out and check on her?”

John shook his head. “’Fraid not.” He said. “There’s no boat available.”

“Well, what about that one there?” said my sister, pointing to a powerboat moored in the shallows not ten yards from where they stood.

“Sorry, no can do.” John shook his head again. “That boat has broken down, and that one” - he pointed to a boat a ways out, on the far side of the bay – “is out saving some idiot who is killing himself on the rocks over there. But don’t worry, she’ll wash in with the tide!”

By this time, Matt another of the surf boys, had wandered over to join the little group. Scott was out on the rescue boat with Steven, the last of the crew. Matt laughed at John’s words, but my mother was distinctly unimpressed with this suggestion, and summoned her most imperious tones to tell John in no uncertain terms that he was to go out and get her daughter – immediately. And then Alex, who had been staring out at me, standing a little way off from the group, turned to them and said quietly “I think she’s shouting something. I can hear something.”

I don’t think John liked being told what to do, but they listened and I expect they could hear me screaming, so he really had no choice. So he got out a board and windsurfed out to me. 

I had, at this stage, been sitting on my board for at least twenty minutes, and had been shouting for probably ten. I was cold, and afraid, so when John surfed up next to me, I was a wreck.

“What’s wrong, little girl?” he said - patronizingly, I thought.

“Sh…sh…sh…shark.” I was stuttering.

John didn’t hesitate a moment before replying. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he said, “we don’t get sharks down here.”

I muttered again, but was in no state to argue with him. He sat on his board and tied mine to his, and then he got in the water and detached my sail from the boom and the mast, and rolled it up. I did nothing to help him, just sat there shaking still. He tied the rolled up mast to my board with a bungee cord he had brought with him, and then told me to lie on my board over the sail. Tied together, he windsurfed me back to shore.

When we got to shore, a crowd had gathered. Mum and Alex rushed down to the water’s edge as I stumbled out of the shallows.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Mum put her arm around me. “Are you OK, did you hurt yourself?”

John dragged the boards up the beach a ways, to stop them drifting off.  He grinned at us all.

“This little girl thinks she saw a shark!” he laughed. So did everyone else. Mum dropped her arm from around my shoulders and looked at me.

“Don’t be silly!” she said. “Oh, you and your over-active imagination. Just like to be the center of attention, don’t you?”

Everyone was laughing at me. I was so humiliated. The cool surfer boys thought I was stupid. My own mother didn’t believe me. So I walked off in a huff, and wouldn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day. And I said I didn’t want any dinner either, so was left in the caravan whilst everyone else went down to the pub.

The next morning, we went back to the beach, but I took myself off as far as I could possibly get from the surf shack. I didn’t need to be humiliated again. Mum and Alex wisely left me alone since I was completely incommunicative and in a grump.

I lay on the beach, headphones clamped to my ears, Walkman on at full volume, reading my book. I didn’t hear or see the person hunker down next to me, didn’t realize there was anyone there until a hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Scott.

I glared at him - well, insofar as you can glare with sunglasses on. Maybe it was lost on him. I said nothing.

He spoke. “Gaby?” I ignored him and turned back to my book. He tapped my shoulder again.

“Gaby? Take off your headphones.” He gestured towards my ears. Reluctantly, I removed them.

“What?” I said.

“Listen to me. We’ve got an apology to make. The fishermen who went out last night? Well, they brought in a shark this morning.”

I stared at him.

“Yes, there’s a shark on the quay. You can go take a look if you like. A ten footer. But it’s only a basking shark, so it couldn’t have hurt you. No real teeth. I guess this summer is one of the hottest on record, and now Devon gets sharks. I’m sorry we doubted you.”

Yeah, it couldn’t hurt you. Hmm. Try telling that to a thirteen-year-old sitting on a surfboard with a shark swimming around her. Doesn’t help much.

I was glad that Scott had come, and not John. I couldn’t quite forgive him for humiliating me so in front of everyone.  Now, of course, everyone was very apologetic for not believing me, and it became quite the story in the little beach town. So I saw my shark (we do presume it was my shark, since no others were found in the vicinity), and I felt vindicated. And guess what we ate for dinner that night?

The real moral of this story? When my sister has a bad feeling about something, trust her.

Torres del Paine

09 Jan 04 @ 08:08 PM  category » adventure | travel

It's going to take a little while to collect all the photos together, crop and size them and make a decent gallery. I started this evening but got put off by the enormity of the task, and so will make it my weekend project instead.  So here's just one favourite shot of the blue blue ice...

Quite a mouthful

05 Jan 04 @ 07:01 PM  category » adventure | language

The man who was my opponent at chess on the boat from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales has the longest name - or most names, of anyone I've heard of in English. Or Cornish/Italian/French - which is where they all originate from. I'm trying to think of what you get if you cross an Italian with a Cornishman but all I can come up with is the rather predictable "Cornetto".  Must think of something better than that...

Anyway, his name is Piran Dibdin NanKivell Aglio Aelius Raphael Odo Diggory Denzil Montford.  Apparently the guys at the passport office got hacked off last time he went to renew and told him to stop taking the piss, so it is foreshortened there. But his driving license tells the full tale...