Chapter 19 The End...well, sorta....

Thanks for following the blog.

Unfortunately my Canon 7D has suffered a malfunction and I can't get it repaired.
Indeed. Trying to get a camera fixed here in backwards Belize is like trying to get
the space shuttle fixed at the local hardware store. Ive exhausted all options and will now
end the blog and just focus on cycling. A blog just aint a blog without the joy of photography.


Best of wishes to all.


Garrett
February 16, 2015

Chapter 18 Belize City

Time: February 11-13

Place: Belize City, Belize

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."- Aristotle 

The poverty of the world’s 3rd most violent city is severe. It is as bad as I have seen almost anywhere on the planet. Your eyes hunger to rest on something beautiful, something clean, a building well built, a wall well painted. But Belize city’s attraction is not to be found in building or beach, its in its people. Raw, unscripted human kindness flows through the streets by day, even as blood runs at night. They are you and I. Humans. Our global family who struggle daily to eat and survive. And despite the filth and dysfunction, the murder and the mayhem,  laughter and good nature thrive in the warm, well watered fields of compassionate mankind. 

In Dakar, Senegal I was assaulted with unwarranted attention like a bleeding fish swimming and flailing in Shark Alley…… -Beggars, Salesmen, Addicts, Touts…..

But here, although white, I seem to pass through like a ghost. 

Forget the glossy travel brochures. This is the real Belize.

I took this one for our former project manager James L. 

I wonder if he is following the blog.

If I ever get out of my size 36 Jeans, Ill throw them over this wire as well.

The light house of Belize City. 

Chapter 17 People

Time: February 11-13

Place; Belize City, Belize

“I never met a person I didn't like.” - Roy Rogers

I love people

I love to photograph people

I think people are inherently  more good than evil

I wonder if people know how much I care about them

I look back on my photos years later and I wonder how they are

I think mankind is more beautiful for its diversity even as a spice drawer is for its variety

Chapter 16 Remembering John

“There, I guess King George will be able to read that without his spectacles!”

-Patriot John Hancock (statement made after signing of the declaration of independence)

Time: January 20-24

Place: John Hancock Building

Chicago, Illinois.

Event:   Dining on the 95th floor restaurant “The Signature Room”

John Hancock boasted the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence.  Such brazen

rebellion would certainly get him promptly hanged had the British been able to put out the fires of insurrection. His “Screw you, Ill do what I want” American attitude was the brick and mortar foundation of all that was to come after him. He was the pot smoking, Harley riding, Hell’s Angel of his day.

His brash contempt for authority, and serpent like stealth in business, earned him the respect of all those in the financial field to come after him.

Fast forward 200 years. 

The John Hancock building in Chicago stands as a marvel of architecture. At 100 stories tall, this monetary megalith ominously towers over all that surround it. Residents no longer need to commute  to work, they press an elevator button that takes them down to the office. 

Shirts need laundering? Have them laundered in the bottom floor, and don't forget to hit the in house post office on the way. 

Yes, the John Hancock building is a mini city in itself. Those living and working in the same building no longer need to go out in to the arctic midwest winter, nor fight traffic or crime. Why jog outside when you have a fitness center in the building? Hungry after that workout? Grab a “sammich” at the local Deli. Need some new threads? A clothing store is waiting for you, just in time as you meet your date at the bars and restaurants below. Shoe shining, an electronics store and even a game room are all at your disposal.  

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Behind the Scenes: 

The view from the restaurant up top on the 95th floor is fantastic. Beers are 15 dollars a piece but disappear like misty haze on a sunny Chicago morning. 

Chapter 15 Cat Food

Time:  January 20-24

Place: Chicago Museum of Natural History

Chicago, Illinois

Event: My recent 4 day trip to Chicago

“Cats are like women, and women are like cats”

-Willy Holderied, (famous Munich/German artisan)

It was a glorious dream. A magnificent undertaking. It was the stuff of lore. And Britain, the greatest Empire the world has ever known, would show what one small nation could accomplish on such a colossal scale.

The plan was simple. Build a continuous railway system from the tip of South Africa all the way north and out the top of Egypt. This enormous vein of teak and steel would bleed Africa dry of its incredible wealth, all to the glory of England. Timber, gold, Egyptian cotton, animal pelts, precious stones and other exotics were waiting for the taking for he who would be the most bold.

 But they ran into a problem.

Death was a frequent visitor in Africa as it was. Malaria, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Sleeping Sickness, infection and lack of medical care rightly earned Africa its legendary name- “White mans grave”. But in an area called Tsavo, now in the country of Kenya, they were confronted with evil like never before. 

One by one, men started dying and disappearing. A scream here, a yell there, a desperate plea for help that came too late and stories of a nameless malice that stalked those terrified railway workers. Remnants of bodies, trails of blood, a discovered arm and sketchy sightings plagued the workers camps.The body count began to grow, and what seemed initially like a few small incidents of wild animals attacking man,  swelled. Something in the shadows had grown a sweet tooth for human flesh.

It didn't take long for the locals to put a name to this “Ghost in the darkness”.

2 lions had begun to prey on all those working. The suddenness and stealth with which they struck was awe inspiring. What started as a few deaths had now rose to dozens, yes even scores of dead. Like a Voo-Doo curse that Tsavo had thrust upon them, it seems as if this fever of killing would not abate. 

In a climate of such fear, the railroad project froze with fear. Workers en-masse went home and chose to battle poverty and uncertainty over the threat of a carnal death.  Gnawed, nibbled, clawed, torn apart, eaten, dismembered and devoured- 135 workers never made it to their next paychecks.

Having his rail road bridge project now ground to a halt, the project manager, Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson had some time on his hands. Putting aside the construction, he now fell back on his military career. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. Alas, with no success. Finally on the 9th of December, 1898 Patterson bagged the first beast. Twenty days later the second Lion also fell dead to his tenacity and marksmanship. The fever had passed. The evil extinguished, and the construction crew returned to work on the railroad bridge which would be completed in February of 1899.

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Behind the scenes:

The incident with the Tsavo Lions was told in the Val Kilmer film “Ghost in the Darkness”

(This next paragraph was taken from Wikipedia)

The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp.  After 25 years as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were sold to the Chicago Field Museum in 1924 for a sum of US$5,000. The lions' skins arrived at the museum in very poor condition. The lions were then reconstructed and are now on permanent display along with the original skulls. Patterson's accounts were published in his 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.

My Photographs from the Chicago Museum of Natural History

Chapter 14 Churchill's Nightmare

Time:   January 20-24

Place: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

Chicago, Illinois

Event: My recent 4 day trip to Chicago

.. the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril’

 -Winston Churchill

Life aboard a German U-boot was Hell. Lacking desalination devises for potable water, that liquid lifesaving luxury was rationed like gold. 

If you've  ever skipped  a well needed shower, or failed to brush your teeth, then you know the personal discomfort and public embarrassment that one experiences from even a day away from such precious habit. For the forces of the German Kriegsmarine, however, this was

not laziness but law.

For tours of up to 6 months at sea, submariners were not permitted to bathe, brush teeth or wash the one set of clothes they wore. And shaving? That was just plain out of the question. Quarters were tight and space was treasured ,but in the crushing claustrophobia and reek of constant death, an unbreakable camaraderie was forged amongst those men like something tempered in the hottest fires of personal anguish and indescribable fear. 3/4s of them never lived to see the end of the war.

There was only one bunk for every three men who rotated around the clock in 8 hour shifts. The cots were always warm from the man you just replaced. One of the only 2 toilets was was full of food stocks that had to be eaten through before it would be available for use. And the single solitary toilet that was left available was often brimming with urine and feces, since flushing it would send out a sound that would alert prowling, nearby ships to their location.  

For hours, sometimes days the submarine might lay on the bottom of the ocean floor while cruisers and sub hunters circled and pummeled the waters with depth charges attempting to destroy the suspected unknown.

A  dropped wrench, a cough, a panic attack, a single conversation or the flush of the toilet would tip off to the enemy above where they were hiding and could prove the end of them all. Air would run critically low as they used up all the oxygen they had, patiently waiting for the allies to finally give up the hunt and sail away. 

Yet these terrifying and austere conditions brought incredible results. In the early 1940s, the time that the Kriegsmarine call the “Glückliche Jahre” (happy years) the German wolf packs were destroying an enormously high number of ships. At their prime in 1942 they were sinking ships at the rate of 3 per day. A stream of bubbles from an incoming torpedo might be the last thing you ever saw before descending to a watery grave.

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Behind the Scenes:  

During World War 2 off the West coast of Africa, the German Submarine U 505 was depth charged and forced to the surface. The American Navy subsequently towed it all

the way back to America where it now peacefully rests in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. 

The following photos I took of either the U-Boot or the displays at the Chicago Museum of Science.

Red lights meant "Battle Stations!"

Der "Tiefenmesser" (Depth Gauge)

Before being blown to the surface on that fateful day they descended down to the crushing depth of 500 feet. How many terrified men stared into this gauge and wondered if the hull would implode?

Captain Lange of the U-505.

An all around great guy who accomplished great things and 

was loved by everyone. 

Captain Daniel V. Gallery. The American captain 

who captured the fated German U-505.

A kill-joy, trouble maker and all around pain in the ass

who wrecked  all of our fun. Nobody loved this man. 

Chapter 13 'Nuff werk

Over the last year, my wonderful business partner Mike Wallien and I killed ourselves on the construction sites with punishing hours and crushing stress. As things wound down, it was finally time to take a break. On the same morning Mike flew out to Arizona to golf, I headed off to new territory for myself and charted a course for a small Central American country called Belize.

This travel blog now continues with a few days in Chicago and segues to my time now, slumming it in Belize.

(Just another day at the office.)

Welcome back to the blog.
Garrett