*whimper*
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Tell me about it, Icky.
Le sigh.
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
We are taking it this year. Especially those who haven't had it bad before. Even if it goes as far South as Broward, we still had power and TV after Andrew.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
What about those of us who were in a house demolished by Andrew, who have sinced moved to Central Florida?
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
<---still happy he lives in an apartment and doesn't own anything
BTW, D batteries are already gone. Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
I meant areas not people, but I understand... Two hurricanes in one season hitting Orlando? Three hurricanes in one month hitting Florida? Who did what to deserve this? At least Orlando is inland enough so even a direct hit is considerably less powerful. If you're on the beach though...
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
I wonder if Pat Robertson is going around saying "I told you so".
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Ever since Benny Hinn relocated to Texas, things have been getting worse and worse in Florida.
Come back, Mr. Hinn! Come back and save us with your mighty cosmic powers!
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
I actually might get stuck in Orlando because of this. On Friday I'm supposed to fly down from Tallahassee to Orlando and then up to Boston to see the US play El Salvador. Depending on when and where Frances makes landfall either my original flight or my connecting flight could get cancelled.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Man, it wont be in Gainesville until Sunday, and we Monday off already for Labor Day. Hmmph. We better classes off Tuesday. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<shudders with fear>
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Latest advisory has it headed right toward you Ic, good luck. The whole coast in under a watch.
And now I'm definitely not going to Boston. Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
*pat pat*
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Icky, be careful....and as mentioned in an earlier therad....
None of this would be happening if you would just stop washing the ickymobile...
Good luck, and please keep us posted...if you can..
Kwea
Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :
My parents literally just moved to Florida. Tuesday, and they're already being evacuated (as of 2 PM today). Fortunately for them, their furniture hasn't yet arrived, so they don't stand to lose much. Though now the track is pointed just a bit south of them (they moved to Melbourne Beach in Brevard county). Yesterday it was like their house had a bullseye painted on it. Stay safe everyone.
Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
quote: Tuesday, and they're already being evacuated
It's a definite sign that I'm overly tired when I read this as "they're already being executed."
Maybe I should go to bed.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Ic, tell me you got your insurance changed to cover hurricane damage.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Nope. The physical structure is covered, but none of our belongings. Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I'm such a geek. I was updating my father on the change in the predicted course--it's still predicted to hit us directly, but the path to us has changed. I said, "Instead of being a y = 1/x, it's now become a y = (2/3)x or y = (1/2)x" Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
For purely selfish reasons, I wish you'd insure your stuff. Everytime a hurricane blows through I worry that you'll have all of your stuff destroyed. Good that you have the structure itself insured though; I had misunderstood, and didn't even think that you had that.
So are insurance companies in FL required by law to offer hurricane insurance? I would think that given how regularly the state gets slammed, few insurance companies would be willing to offer it if they weren't required to. Of course, I know very little about insurance, so I could easily be wrong.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Do you think I have CHOSEN this?!?!
My insurance company pulled out of Florida, loeaving me with nothing. The bank chose this insurance, until I can replace it. But then these TWO FREAKING HURRICANES decided to come, and nobody will sell me a policy now!
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Nah, not really. I thought it was possible that a summer of not getting paid had stretched your finances to a point where your hand was forced, but I hoped that wasn't the case.
Well, hopefully you'll luck out again, and then be able to secure insurance before then next one.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Have you got your house boarded up, Joe?
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Take care of yourself, Icarus.
Same to any of the rest of you who are in the hurricane path.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Icarus -- pack your stuff and come visit me in Kansas for a few days....
Farmgirl (in other words, as we say around here, "get the h*** out of Dodge)
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
I'll check with my in-laws, but I believe they have hurricane insurance and they're in Ft. Lauderdale.
Hurrican insurance in Florida has changed. There are now hurricane deductibles that are around 3 to 5% of the value of your home. Someone with a $200,000 home can have a deductible of $6,000 to $10,000. You can get a lower deductible, but with a higher premium.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
quote: Icarus -- pack your stuff and come visit me in Kansas for a few days....
We are now being told that unless you have been ordered to evacuate, sit tight. The highways are already gridlocked.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
quote: Though now the track is pointed just a bit south of them (they moved to Melbourne Beach in Brevard county). Yesterday it was like their house had a bullseye painted on it. Stay safe everyone.
OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I have a friend that lives in Melbourne. She said they were under a mandatory evac and were supposed to be leaving this morning. I didn't realize that Frances was bullseyed on them! Yikes!
Goody
Posted by AmkaProblemka (Member # 6495) on :
All I can say is, this is not a very funny dobie.
Prayers go out to all of you being affected.
Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :
Well, the most current predictions seem to have it coming ashore near Port St. Lucie, which is maybe 60 miles south of Melbourne. Which is good, my parents now live in Melbourne Beach, which is on a barrier island. Still, last I read, hurricane force winds were extending out 80 miles from the eye, so Melbourne may still get hit, just not quite so hard, if Frances stays on it's currently predicted path.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
We went to Tampa last night to buy plywood. We've been boarding since sunup.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Guys, as usual please check in as soon as possible after the storm. We will be worried about all of you.
Grisha, dear, try to think EAST. <laughs> Now after hitting every single person I love in the state of Florida, it looks like it's headed here to Birmimgham too, whee! By the time they reach this far inland they are always much less severe, of course. Still I have to wonder if this storm doesn't just love my family or something. And my grandmother's name was Frances! Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Shlomo and I are evacuating, since we are on a barrier island. JaneX and my hubby are getting her settled at college in MA.
~Ela
[ September 02, 2004, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: Ela ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
I'm so sorry guys, you'll be in my prayers.
My aunt and uncle from Florida are on their way up here too.
I don't have to put them up, they're staying with their daughter, but I'm going to feed everybody Saturday night, since we all want to take the chance to get together and I have the largest house in the family.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Thanks, Belle. Everyone stay safe. Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
quote: JaneX and the hubby
For a second, I thought she had gotten married.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Ick..
I empathize with you insurance situation, as well. I don't have insurance on my home either, and if we have a tornado/major storm, I would just be SOL.
And it certainly isn't by my choice -- years ago we had insurance and that insurance company pulled out of Kansas and quit covering homes here. Then we could never get anyone else to take us. The house is over 120 years old, we live over 10 miles from the nearest fire station; the wiring/plumbing haven't been updated in decades, etc. etc. We are too "high risk" for anyone to take a second look at us -- and believe me, I've tried them all...
Farmgirl
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
quote: Well, the most current predictions seem to have it coming ashore near Port St. Lucie.
<--- Is from PSL.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
kaioshin, do you still have family down there? Are they getting out?
Are you having a hurrican party in Gainesville? You kind of have to.
Posted by Derrell (Member # 6062) on :
Central Florida Hatrackers Be safe and,as ak said, please let us know how you are as soon as possible after Frances hits.
Take care.
[ September 02, 2004, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: Derrell ]
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Ic, are Banana and Mango handling this one well? I know I asked about it last time, and you said--if I remember correctly--that they weren't even really aware of what was going on. I wondered if having gone through Charlie had had an impact on how they'd reacted to Frances.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
My wife, sons, and brother-in-law bugged out this morning to go stay at a motel in Chattanooga til Monday. It's far enough away, and that way they can treat it like a vacation.
The original plan -- back when it was bulls-eying Daytona Beach, where I work -- was for me to join them later, but the latest paths have it moving south. There will still be plenty of wind and rain for my house, which is dead center between Orlando and Daytona Beach, but suddenly my workplace looks a lot safer. So I'll probably be here all weekend, updating stories for people who still have power and internet access. Assuming, of course, that this building still has power and internet access
[ September 02, 2004, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I hope everyone stays safe...God bless...
Kwea
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:We went to Tampa last night to buy plywood.
So...what did you do with the plywood from when you borded up your windows for Charlie?
Posted by larisse (Member # 2221) on :
You guys in Florida and the South East stay safe. You are in my thoughts.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Charley was supposed to miss, and it was travelling at over 30mph when it veered toward us. So there was no warning, and we were very far inland from the Gulf Coast, which is where the storm entered. We did not board up for Charley.
We told Mango and Banana we were preparing for another big storm. They said "Oh, no!" and whined a bit (what an inconvenience for them ), and then went on with their lives. They went to school today just like normal.
We are done boarding up.
This is either my last or my second to last post.
Good luck to the other people in the storm's path.
Posted by Zan (Member # 4888) on :
Good luck to you Joe. It looks like the storm is headed your way. My parents are right in it's path again as well. I'm pretty worried about them.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<prayers for Icarus and family, and all the Florida contingent>
I'm so sorry for planning a party down there! I knew I shouldn't have tempted fate like that! It's all my fault! Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I hope that the boarding up isn't necessary, but I'm glad that you've got it done. Stay safe! That goes for the rest of you down in FL too.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
Friday night I'll be playing poker most of the night...I am not sure what I'll be doing when the hurricane hits though. I'll likely just hang out at home unless one of my friends throws something together at the last minute.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Bye bye, y'all. See you on the other side of Frances. Posted by Derrell (Member # 6062) on :
(((Icarus & Cor))) Take care and stay safe.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Lupus... I'll be here We can do something!
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Hugs and prayers going out all in Frances' path!
Stay safe.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I can't get on IM for now but I want to post here, for AK, that Mom isn't going anywhere as far as I know. The hurricane is alot farther south of her than it was supposed to be when she was making those plans.
edit to add, cause I'm lame: Please, be safe guys. Take good care of your little ones.
[ September 03, 2004, 10:16 AM: Message edited by: PSI Teleport ]
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Its going sooo slowly. Yawn Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Central Florida Hatrackers [Group Hug] Be safe and,as ak said, please let us know how you are as soon as possible after Frances hits.
Uh...Some of us are in South Florida.
We closed up my house and left the Beach area last night. Shlomo and I are at my mom's and waiting to see what this storm is going to do...
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Ela, was going to call you if I didn't see you post AJ
Posted by Derrell (Member # 6062) on :
Oops, sorry about that, Ela. Please take care and be safe. (((Ela and family)))
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Ela, was going to call you if I didn't see you post
Glad to know your thinking about us, AJ.
I probably won't post again till after the storm is over. At this point, it looks as though the worst of it may be heading further north, but you never can tell.
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Its still going sooo slowly. Its down to 6 mph. I could literally, easily outrun it! It was supposed to hit 24 hours ago. Fortunately, in the meantime its breaking up and weakening which means by the time it hits me all I have to worry about is two feet of rain.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Hobbes Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
This darn storm is hanging around way too long.
Go away, Frances!
At least we have power at my mom's house. I am fairly certain there is no power at my house, though. Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
As of 11 PM the eye still hadn't made landfall. It was supposed to make landfall more than 24 hours earlier. It was supposed to have hit me by now. Instead I have to wait for days more even though its already hit the state. The whole state is going to be a swamp again with all this rain. A foot a day! This is driving me nuts.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Has anyone heard from or seen Rakeesh?
I am pretty sure he is being affected by this storm, also.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
No, I've been wondering how he is! Where does he live again?
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
[ September 05, 2004, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
And after Frances...we get Ivan!
Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan. I don't think Jeanne has been formed for yet, but I think we need to start watching our for that one too.
And that damn Frances is still over a day away from me.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Jatraqueros,
Here I am in Jacksonville having left Palm Bay, FL yesterday at about 11:00am or so. A stick got hung up on a power line at 7:00am and FPL had said they weren't sending anyone to repair until the storm was over-a sensible but frustrating policy . Things are OK for me back home-I'm in contact with neighbors.
I can't log onto gmail from this crappy hotel, unfortunately-could someone tell Ela I got her email and thank her for me, and I'm doin' alright? Same also with Twink's game, from which I have been absent and will likely be absent for another couple of days, at the least-been busting hump before the `cane preparing, then moving, now waiting.
Joe, Zan, Storm, Ela, and other Florida `Rackers whose names escape me for the moment, God be with you all and I hope you're OK-I am, and will pull through this little natural inconvenience quite well
J4
Posted by JaimeBenlevy (Member # 6222) on :
This hurricane sucks, most of yesterday I had no power but when I did the power would keep turning off and then right back on, making it really hard to play morrowind and then all today we had no power so right now I'm at my cousin's house because it was unbearable hot with no air conditioning, and we have trees covering our house. But as long as no one gets hurt I'm happy. And now they tell us Ivan is coming...
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Yep, Ivan's a nasty sucker. Four days from any landfall with 115 mph winds. Fortunately, Ivan is both smaller and faster which makes for a lot less damage.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
A tree landed on a car within sight of my apartment. Luckily, it only shattered the back windshield and everyone's OK.
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
That's why I like to utilize a garage. Good luck to all those currently dealing with the storm. At least all I have to deal with is rain and minor winds.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Heh, actually it was a car on the road. Driving.
[ September 05, 2004, 04:42 PM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
kaioshin00, that sounds kinda bad. Keep your head down dude, and stop looking out the window. Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Oh. It's not actually that bad here, I'm north of the storm. There's sporadic gusts of winds, and I live in a place called TreeHouse Villages, so...
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
I remember reffing a soccer game when a wild kick send the ball flying 80 feet out of bounds, over the fence, and onto the hood of a car passing the fields at 55 mph. That's got to be really scary just driving along when something hits your car, soccer ball or tree, the tree being much worse.
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
I still have a pretty good sized dent in the hood of our van from one day I was driving home. As I went under a freeway overpass that was being built, something that at the time I thought was a soccer ball bounced off the front of the van. Turned out that one of the people working on the overpass dropped his hard-hat. I'm just glad he wasn't still in it when it hit.
<Continued prayers and well-wishes for Floridians in Frances' path, especially the ones I know.>
--Pop
Posted by signal (Member # 6828) on :
Hey I just moved from Orlando a week before charley hit. Some timing huh? Well I hope everyone is doing ok. I'm prayin' for all of you.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Been at the newspaper online office since 11 am Saturday, will prolly be here til tomorrow afternoon, depending on curfews. Not bad -- big building, generator power, sandwiches in the cafeteria, a shower in the press guys bathroom... as shelters go, it ain't bad.
One drawback: I can't stop updating our pages. Every change in storm location is noticed, every wobble meticulously detailed. The Weather Channel became porn to me, I couldn't stop watching it even though there was no new information for hours at a time. I finally fell asleep around 2 am and got up in time for the 5 am projected path updates. It became an addiction. One my boss was happy to take advantage of, since it meant that we were providing up-to-the-minute coverage virtually all night long. Since he lost power early on and couldn't provide feeds or editing, and since we couldn't get a paper out today except for online, for a good chunk of the night I was The Voice of The News-Journal. Heady stuff. The urge to abuse it was incredible. Sadly, I remained responsible.
Spent today updating again, making photo galleries, and watching the trees in the parking lot bend over double. Now we're about to publish again, with stuff I didn't have to write, and I know I'll be getting up again to update another shelter occupancy number or something. I can't help it.
Another drawback: I have no idea what's happened to my house. It's 40 miles away and I can't leave due to the curfews anyway, even if I really did want to drive in blinding rain in the dark and just try to speed over downed power lines before they shocked me. So until tomorrow afternoon or so, my house is in a superposition of states, neither intact or trashed. Schrodinger's House.
Tomorrow the paper is going with the big lead we've been using online all day: "POUNDED," to describe what it's been like to have the ocean thrown at us for 24 hours. They wouldn't consider my suggestion, which was "RODE HARD, PUT AWAY WET." Elitists.
Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :
Oh, good grief. Just for good measure, Francis is now going to swing around and dump a ton of rain on me. I think it's just after my family. They just moved to Melbourne Beach, and have gone to Tampa to ride out the storm, which of course placed Tampa squarely in Frances' sights. And once it gets through there, she'll be coming for me.
Hope everyone's staying safe.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
kaioshin00, did you loose power? I'm over on 34th street and we lost power. I ended up comming into campus so I could get some work done...though I have to admit, while I have worked some, I have wasted a lot of time as well Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Jeff, glad to hear from you, and from all you other Florida Hatrackers. They showed some nasty pictures of damage near a Palm Bay marina on the TV today.
Glad everyone is okay.
Shlomo and I are home, now, thank goodness, and everything is fine around our home - some tree debris around, and the power was off for a while, but no damage to the house, and no flooding.
Hope Ivan fizzles out... Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
We should have known Florida was having it too good these last few years.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
I am still alive. Frances is still passing overhead as I type this but the effects should be gone in another 24 hours or glacial epoch.
For most of us in Florida, we have been cooped up in one space for the last several days, as there have been curfews in effect. Even if we wanted to brave the walls of wind pushing cannonballs of debris before them, downed power lines, and quagmires of water, nothing can protect you against your fellow stupid driver who is also out in the storm. Might as well stay inside.
Do you love your family? Do you love your pets? You might think you do, but let me assure you that you love only a part of them. The exhausted, harried, oh-my-freaking-god, will the insurance policy cover the damage to the home part of them is not very lovable. Let me assure you. Hurricanes give you time to both spend time with the loved ones and fear for your life. Handy. Boring. Exhausting. Terrifying. All rolled up into one complete package. Reminds one of Neal Stephenson's LAC units:
quote: MY TRIP TO THE JUNGLE
or
THE DRUMS OF THE HUKS
or
GET A LOAD OF THIS
or
HE SQUEEZED MY TESTICLES
or
THE WEIRD TURN PRO
a tale of adventure and discovery in the majestic rain-forest of northern Luzon
by
Randall Lawrence Waterhouse
As I stepped on this unknown middle-aged Filipina's feet during an ill-advised ballroom dancing foray, she leaned close to me and uttered some latitude and longitude figures with a conspicuously large number of significant digits of precision, implying a maximum positional error on the order of the size of a dinner plate. Gosh, was I ever curious! Subject provided these numbers as part of a conversational gambit/thought experiment concerning the inherent value (as in monetary) of information, a subject (coincidentally?) of interest to us, the Management Team of Epiphyte(2) Corp. Examination of high-res maps of Luzon indicated that the lat. and long, in question were in a hilly (let's just go ahead and call it mountainous) region some 250 km north of Manila. For those of you not familiar with WW2 history, this area was within the final perimeter controlled by General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya and conqueror of Singapore, at the end of that war, when Gen. MacArthur had driven him and his approx. l0^5 troops out of the populated lowlands. And no, this is not just a fundamentally irrelevant historical note, as we shall see.
Relayed said data to one Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe (refer to my exceptionally colorful and readable status reports on cable survey for more anecdotal material concerning same) who asserted "someone is trying to send you a message" (note: all cheesy dialog hereinafter is DMS's) and offered his assistance with a vigor bordering on scary aggressiveness. DMS is energetic and enterprising to a degree that from time to time leaves certain persons (e.g. those burdened with a petty fear of death or torture) uneasy (see my prior speculation as to possibility DMS may have been born with a redundant Y chromosome) Primary role of Yours Truly became as follows: source of repetitious and evidently irritating counsels of caution, restraint, other virtues given a low priority by DMS, who cites his longevity (which unavoidably exceeds that of Yours Truly as he was born before me), network of close personal relationships (murky, globe-spanning, reputedly puissant), financial prosperity (commodities, e.g. precious metals, distributed among many locations DMS declines to reveal) and (as trump card) the corporeal perfection of his girlfriend (she must carry an umbrella while out of doors lest her face cause pilots of overflying commercial airliners to pitch forward, dumb and inert, onto their control yokes) all as proof that the ideas shared by Yours Truly vis-a-vis how to avoid death, dismemberment, etc. need not be given more than the most cursory attention. Yours Truly's only bargaining chips were appropriately and ironically enough, information: namely the final few digits of the lat. and long, which were with held from DMS lest he simply go there himself and check them out (note: DMS is honest to a fault, and so the concern is not that DMS might steal or appropriate anything but that situation would get out of hand, to the extent it ever was in hand to begin with)
Plans were made for a journey ("mission" in DMS parlance) to said lat. and long. Extra batteries were purchased for the GPS receiver (see attached expense report). Drinking water, etc. laid in. A jeepney was retained. Concept of jeepney is impossible to convey fully here: a minibus, usually named after a pop star, Biblical figure, or abstract theological concept, whose engine & frame come from American, or Nipponese auto company but whose entire body, seats, upholstery, & encrustations of lurid decor are locally manufactured by high-spirited artisans. Jeepneys are normally made outside of Manila in towns or barangays (semiautonomous neighborhoods) that specialize in same; the design, materials, style, etc. of a jeepney reflect its provenance just as good wine allegedly betrays climate, soil, etc. of its terroir. Ours was (anomalously) a perfectly monochromatic jeepney mfged. out of pure stainless steel in the stainless-steel-fabrication-specialized bgy. of San Pablo, with (unlike normal jeepneys) no colored decorations at all—-everything either stainless-steel-colored or (where use was made of electric lights) pure piercing halogen-white with bluish tinge nicely complementing hue of stainless steel. Seats in back were stainless-steel benches with surprisingly ergonomic lumbar support capabilities, Name of our jeepney was THE GRACE OF GOD. Readers of this memo will be disappointed to know that Bong-Bong Gad (sic), designer/owner/driver/proprietor of the vehicle, anticipated the inevitable "there but for THE GRACE OF GOD go I" witticism by unloading same on Yours Truly while we were still shaking hands (Filipinos go in for long handshakes, and the first party to initiate termination of a handshake—usually the non-Filipino—is invariably left with a nagging feeling that he is a shithead)
Yours Truly, in discreet one-on-one mode with DMS, adverted to lack of windows in the rear (passenger) section of THE GRACE OF GOD as prima facie evidence that it lacked air-conditioning, a technology widely adopted in Philippine Islands. DMS evinced skepticism as to moral fiber of Yours Truly, commenced with a series of probing questions aimed at establishing my commitment to Mission, fiduciary resp. to Epiphyte shareholders, level of physical & mental vigor, and overall level of "serious"-ness (being "serious" is some kind of umbrella concept strongly correlated with my fitness to live, to have the privilege of knowing DMS, and to go on dates with his daughter. This gives me an opening to mention what would normally be no one's business but my own but which in these circumstances it is ethically mandated that I disclose, namely, that I am infatuated with daughter of DMS and that while not exactly reciprocating these feelings at full strength she finds me sufficiently non-loathsome to have dinner with me from time to time. It has only occurred to me at this very moment that my pursuit of rel'nship w/the female in question, one America (sic) by name, would in context of modern U.S. society be classified as SEXUAL HARASSMENT and that if desired culmination is achieved it might be classified as SEXUAL ABUSE or RAPE owing to "power imbalance" existing between me and her. Viz, Yours Truly is on Management Team of Corp that has retained Semper Marine for large job & provided them with majority of their revenue during last fiscal year. Anyone with thoughts of summoning federal authorities to apprehend me upon arrival at SFO & expose my misdeeds & subject me to public disgrace & compulsory consciousness-raising workshops is advised to acquaint him or herself with the Shaftoes first & to at least remain open to possibility that Dad's martial prowess in combination with traditional feelings of psychotic protectiveness toward his female offspring, combined with Daughter's habit of carrying large Palawan stabbing weapon known as a kris, and Daughter's overall psychic fierceness & physical fitness & courage exceeding that of Yours Truly, mitigate any perceived power imbalance, particularly given that most of our interactions take place in settings which lend themselves admirably to discreet homicide & corpse disposal. In other words, I make you aware of this amor stuff not as confession of personal misdeeds but to make full disclosure of situation that could influence my judgment vis-a-vis Semper Marine and conceivably negatively impact shareholder value, or, much more plausibly, that could be SEEN as doing so by minority-shareholder lawyers who infest our industry like guinea worms, and used as pretext for legal action).
Back to the question at hand, then. Yours Truly asserted calmly (feeling that vigorous assertions would be perceived by DMS as defensiveness & hence a de facto confession of lack of "serious"-ness) that (1) a couple of days' travel in open AC-less vehicle through Philippine hinterland would be a day at the beach, a picnic, a walk in the park, & a sunday stroll all rolled into one, and (2) furthermore that even if it were the most hideous torture Yours Truly would gladly undergo it given that the stakes, for all concerned (incl. Epiphyte shareholders) were so high and generally Serious. In retrospect, (1) and (2) in close succession seem to betray some kind of hedging strategy on part of Yours Truly, however at the time DMS was mollified, formally withdrew previous accusations as to moral fiber, etc., and divulged that use of jeepney was tactical masterstroke on his (DMS's) part in that, where we were going, a Merc with smoked glass or fifty-thousand-dollar Land Rover, or (by extension) any vehicle with extravagances such as upholstered seats, windows with glass in them, shock absorbers dating from post-Kennedy-assassination era, etc., etc. would only draw undesired attention to Mission.
America Shaftoe remained in Manila to stay in touch with Mission via radio & (I supposed) to call in napalm strikes should we find selves embroiled. Bong-Bong Gad & his approx. 12-yr-old son/business associate Fidel occupied front seat. DMS & Yours Truly shared rear (passenger) section with three mysterious, precisely packed G.I. green duffel bags; approx. 100 kilos of drinking water in plastic bottles; & two Asian gentlemen in their 30s or 40s who exhibited stereotypical inscrutability/impassivity/dignity, etc., etc. during the first four hours of the journey, which were spent simply trying to drive from center of Manila to northern outskirts of same. Nationality of these two was not immediately evident. Many Filipinos are, racially, almost pure Chinese even though their families have been living here for centuries. Perhaps this explained strongly Asian features of our traveling companions and (I now had to assume) business associates.
Proverbial ice was broken as one consequence of pig truck incident which occurred on four-lane highway, narrowed by construction to two, leading N from Manila. Casual obsvn. of Filipino swine suggests that their ludicrous, pink, tabloid-sized ears function as heat exchangers, as do, e.g., the tongues of dogs. They are transported in vehicles consisting of big cage constructed on bed of a straight (as opposed to semiarticulated) truck. Construction of such vehicles appears to tax local resources to the point where they are only economical when maximum conceivable number of swine are packed into confines at all times. Heat buildup ensues. Pigs adapt by fighting their way to perimeter of cage & hanging ear/heat exchangers out over the side to flap in the wind of the truck's motion.
The appearance of such a vehicle when approached from behind can be easily envisioned without further description. Readers who devote a few moments' consideration to the subject of excreta need not be pounded over the head vis-a-vis what flies, sprays, drips, etc. from such vehicles either. The Pig Truck Incident was a humorous demonstration of applied hydrodynamics, though since no actual water was involved perhaps "excretodynamics" or "scatodynamics" might better fit. THE GRACE OF GOD had been following a representative Pig Truck for some miles in the hopes of passing it. The sheer quantity of excess body heat radiating from its vast phased array of flapping pink ears caused several of our drinking-water bottles to achieve full rolling boil and explode. Bong-Bong Gad maintained a respectful distance because of excreta hazards, which in no way simplified the problem of passing the truck. Tension climbed to a palpable level & Bong-Bong was subjected to steadily increasing stream of good-natured heckling and unsolicited driving advice from passenger area, esp. from DMS who viewed lingering unwelcome presence of pig truck in our planned trajectory as personal affront & hence challenge to be overcome w/all due pluck, vigor, can-do spirit, & other qualities known to be possessed in abundance by DMS.
After some time Bong-Bong made his move, using one hand to manipulate steering wheel and other to time-share equally important responsibilities of shifting gears and depressing the horn button. As we drew alongside the Pig Truck (which was on my side of the jeepney) the Truck slalomed toward us as if perhaps swerving around some real or imagined roadside hazard. The primary horn of THE GRACE OF GOD was apparently going unheard, possibly because it was competing for audio bandwidth against large numbers of swine voicing their displeasure in same frequency range. With aplomb normally seen only among senescent English butlers, Bong-Bong reached up with his horn/gearshift hand and gripped a brilliant stainless-steel chain flailing from ceiling of cab with a stainless-steel crucifix on the end of it and jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary honking systems: a trio of tuba-sized stainless-steel horns mounted to the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and collectively drawing so much power that our vehicle's speed dropped by (I would estimate) ten km/hr as its energies were diverted into decibel production. A demi-hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops twenty miles long was flattened to the ground by the blast, and, hundreds of miles north, the Taiwanese government, its collective ears still ringing, filed a diplomatic protest with the Philippine ambassador. Dead whales and dolphins washed ashore on the beaches of Luzon for days, and sonar operators in passing U.S. Navy submarines were sent into early retirement with blood streaming from their ears.
Terrified by this sound, all of the pigs (I would suppose) voided their bowels just as the driver of the Pig Truck swerved violently away from us. Certain first-year-physics conservation-of-momentum issues dictated that I be showered with former pig bowel contents in order to enhance shareholder value. This was evidently the funniest thing that the two Asian-looking gentlemen had ever seen and rendered them helpless for several minutes. One of them actually retched from laughing too hard (the first time that our vehicle's lack of windows came in handy). The other extended his hand and introduced himself as one Jean Nguyen. This is the French male name "zhohn" and not the Anglo female name "jeen." Jean Nguyen looked at me expectantly after telling me his name, as did DMS, as if they were expecting me to get a fairly obvious joke. Perhaps preoccupied with hygienic issues. I failed to get it. and they pointed out to me that when "Jean" is pronounced like "John" and "Nguyen" is pronounced the way a lot of Americans mangle it, the name sounds arguably like "John Wayne," which is how I was encouraged to address this Jean Nguyen from that point onwards. It seemed in retrospect that I was being given an opportunity to have a small chuckle at Jean Nguyen's expense and thereby to even the scales, in some small but symbolically important sense, for the pig shit incident. My failure to exploit this opportunity left everyone feeling mildly uneasy and like they still owed me one. The other gentle man was introduced as Jackie Woo. He spoke English with a vaguely East Indian crackle which led me to peg him, speculatively, as a Malay Peninsula native of Chinese descent, e.g.. from Singapore or Penang.
First day's travel got us across the central Luzon plain (rice and sugar cane) to the town of San Jose at the foot of the southernmost extension of the Cordillera Central (trees and bugs). By this point it was dark, and to my relief, neither DMS nor Bong-Bong was eager to brave twisty Cordillera roads in darkness. We stayed in a guest house. At this point, having devoted much time to detailed Pig Truck description I will elide various details concerning San Juan, its inhabitants (of various taxonomic phyla some of which I had never encountered until that night), the character-building nature of our lodgings and, in particular, their fanciful plumbing system which was a credit to the imagination, though not the hydrostatic acumen, of its anonymous creator. It was the kind of hostel that makes a traveler eager to get an early and explosively sudden start in the morning, which we did.
A note now about the physical properties of space, as perceived by human beings imprisoned within bodies of limited physical capabilities. I have long noticed that space seems to be more compressed, more involuted, some how psychically LARGER in some places than others. Covering a distance of three or four miles in the totally open scrublands of central Washington State is a simple matter, and takes less than an hour on foot. and only a few minutes if you have some kind of vehicle. Covering the same distance in Manhattan takes much longer. It's not just that the space in Manhattan is more physically obstructed (though it definitely is) but that there is some kind of psychological impact that alters the way you perceive and experience distance. You cannot see as far, and what you do see is full of people, buildings, goods, vehicles, and other stuff that it takes your brain some amount of effort to sort through, to process. Even if you had some kind of magic carpet that would glide past all of the physical obstructions the distance would seem much longer, and would take longer to cover, simply because your mind would have to deal with more stuff.
The same thing is true of a jungle type of environment as opposed to the plains. Traversing the physical space is basically an ongoing battle against hundreds of different combatants each one of which is, to a traveler, an obstruction, a hazard, or both. I.e., no matter which one of them predominates in a given ten-square-meter area, you are still screwed, as far as getting across that ten square meters is concerned. There are roads through the jungle, but even when they are in good repair they seem more like bottlenecks than vectors of motion, and they are never in good repair—-mudslides, fallen trees, huge chuckholes, and the like block them every few hundred meters. Also the same perceptual thing is at work here—-you can't see more than a few meters in any direction, and inputs, some of which, like butterflies, are (okay, okay) beautiful. My reason for mentioning this is that I know that everyone who reads this probably has multiple maps of Luzon on their wall or in their computer, which, when consulted, will cause it to seem as if we are dealing with a triflingly small area, and covering minuscule distances. But you must try not to think this way and instead imagine that Luzon is effectively as large as, say, the United States west of the Mississippi. In terms of the time it takes to get around the place, it is at least that big.
I mention this not out of some impulse to mewl and convince you all of how strenuously I have worked, but because until you grasp this central fact of the effectively vast size of this part of the world. you will be completely unable to believe the dumbfounding facts that I am slowly getting around to revealing.
We went into the mountains. Around midday, we encountered our first military roadblock. Distance covered from San Juan was pathetic from cartographic p.o.v., but in terms of unexpected hassles creatively surmounted, wrenchingly difficult decisions made, & pits of despair climbed out of by the emotional fingernails, should be considered magnificent achievement on par with any given day of the Lewis & Clark expedition, (excluding, of course, anomalous days such as their first encounters with Ursus horribilis & their epic, stocking-foot traversal of Bitterroot Range.) Roadblock was established in the low-key Filipino style: one man in military uniform (U.S. Army castoffs) standing by roadside smoking & beckoning. We were at a rare wide spot in the road, a place where oncoming Chicken-playing vehicles could pull aside abjectly. Four members of Army (later pegged by insignia-savvy DMS as a first lieutenant, a sergeant, and two privates) had ensconced selves on parked Humvee type vehicle w/absurdly long whip antenna clamped to bumper. The privates, armed with M-16s, stiffly unfolded selves from repose & adopted positions flanking THE GRACE OF GOD from behind, keeping their weapons pointed vaguely at the ground, as if more worried about entomological threats than our little band of travelers. Sergeant was armed with what I first perceived as L-shaped nightstick fashioned from parts scavenged from plumbing aisle of home improvement store & painted black, but on further examination proved to be a submachine gun.
Said Sergeant approached Bong-Bong Gad's door & conversed with same in Tagalog. Lieutenant was armed only with sidearm & supervised these operations from a shaded area near the Humvee, seeming to espouse a hands-off, as opposed to micromanaging, leadership style. This inspection was limited to the Sergeant peering in through TGOG's glassless windows & exchanging hearty greetings with DMS (evidently Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo spoke even less Tagalog than Yours Truly). We were then allowed to proceed, although I noticed that the lieutenant immediately commenced a radio transmission. "The sergeant say there are Nice People Around," Bong-Bong Gad explained to me, using a coy local euphemism for NPA, or New People's Army, a supposedly revolutionary, but evidently somewhat feckless guerilla organization descended in a direct line from the Hukbalahaps, or Huks, the fighters who resisted the Nipponese occupation (but not so desultorily) in WW2.
We then covered an amount of distance equivalent, in terms of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, to one more Lewis And Clark Expedition Day, a convenient unit of distance, danger, perspirational weight loss, poor sphincter control, wishing you were at home, exasperation, & emotional toll which I will hereinafter abbreviate as LAC. So after 1 LAC we arrived at another roadblock similar to the first except that here there was a troop truck in addition to the Humvee, and some tents pitched, and a pit latrine, whose odor & appearance suggested a long-standing military presence in this area. A luckless private was made to crawl underneath THE GRACE OF GOD with a flashlight, inspecting its undercarriage. The three duffel bags were removed and their contents spread out. I should mention that upon my joining this expedition in Manila, DMS had gone through my bag with a level of inquisitiveness annoying at the time, refused to allow me to bring certain items (such as pharmaceuticals) and transferred remaining items to clear plastic bags of Ziploc type which were placed in the duffels. Merits of this highly modular approach now became clear as inspection of our cargo was wondrously facilitated: duffels were simply upended over tarps spread on ground & contents inspected by sight through transparent inner bags, sometimes by feel to check for compositional inhomogeneities. Certain of these bags contained cartons of American-brand tobacco products which as expected did not make it back into the duffels. Most of my DMS-mandated supply of alkaline AA batteries, which I had thought radically out of proportion to projected demand, also vanished at this time. We were sent on our way and after approx. 0.6 LAC (mostly occasioned by need to remove downed tree from roadway) arrived at a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in jungle valley, astride a river. Slept like a dead man in startlingly decent guesthouse that night. Woke up next morning & looked out window to observe large crowd of locals milling around in street below in their best meshback caps & American basketball t-shirts. Descended stairs to discover DMS in dining room, strategically flanked by Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo, at other tables in corners of room, wearing climatically inappropriate jackets & generally projecting the image of concealed-weapon-equipped badass mother****ers not to be trifled with.
Not wishing to interfere with this psychodrama, Yours Truly took innocuous position at yet another table, well away from projected gunfire corridors, accepted coffee from proprietor, declined local delicacies, negotiated (see expense report) for loan of bowl & spoon, breakfasted upon Cap'n Crunch & warm UHT milk from duffel bag (former had been packed into a Ziploc that when fully loaded adopted the distinctive pillow shape of an individual nugget of Cap'n Crunch, only much larger). Explosive crunching noises of nuggets caused Yours Truly to feel conspicuous and Western. Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo had declined all refreshments except tea, the better to project image of hair-trigger alertness & potential for instantaneous violence, DMS was eating an omelette with approx. diameter of a Hula Hoop & engaging in one short conversation after another with locals, who were admitted through front door of building one at a time by proprietor and allowed to present their cases to DMS as if he were a traveling magistrate. Between two such interviews, DMS noted my presence in room & bade me join him. I moved my Cap'n Crunch infrastructure to corner of table not occupied by omelette & sat with him during the next couple of dozen interviews, which were conducted in mixture of English and Tagalog. Crowd in street dwindled gradually as they were interviewed and then dismissed by DMS.
Subject matter of interviews could be induced by Yours Truly only by recognizing occasional English words & adopting a basically intuitive pattern-recognition approach not amenable to rational explication here. Most common keywords: Nippon, the Nipponese, the War, Gold, Treasure, Excavations, Yamashita, Mass Executions. Emotional tenor of these conversations consisted of polite but extreme skepticism on part of DMS, while confronted by desperate need to be believed on part of interviewees. In the end DMS did not believe any of them as far as I could discern. They either became obstreperous & had to be shown the door (glancing warily at Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo) or adopted a wounded & aggrieved stance. DMS was amused by the former & disgusted by the latter. Yours Truly mused silently upon inappropriateness of his own presence in this setting & fondly remembered predictable comforts of home, even of Manila. Upon completion of breakfast & of interviews, DMS divulged, in response to my inquiries, that he had been at it for two hours before I had arrived & that formation of this milling crowd occurs spontaneously before doors of any lodgings he takes in the Philippines owing to his reputation as treasure-hunter. We had avoided it in San Juan only because he goes there frequently and has already interviewed everyone in region with Nipponese War Gold stories found 99.9% of them lacking credibility, investigating the remaining .1% with occasionally lucrative results.
THE GRACE OF GOD had been washed and buffed by Fidel Gad in magnificently insouciant gesture of defiance of jungle elements. We proceeded across river. Racial variations were conspicuous on faces, and in physiognomies, of townspeople. Philippines were settled by countless overlapping waves of prehistoric migrants each racially & linguistically incompatible with the last; this in combination with the spatial involution phenom. which I have, I think sufficiently belabored by this point, makes for your basic patchwork of different ethnic groups. The fork in the river around which this town was nucleated was meeting-point of unofficial turfs of three such different cultures. Lure of bright lights, or even dim, flickering ones, has drawn thousands down from mountains in recent generations to establish several distinct barangays. This morning's interviewees were migrants from the mountains, or their sons or grandsons, who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of sites of Yamashita's hoards, or to have heard about same from late ancestors.
After covering about 1.6 LACs through jungle (roads, slopes, & conditions getting worse all the time) we encountered another military roadblock that had (somewhat incredibly to my mind) been established at a pass over a ridge, overlooking some rice terraces that had (even more incredibly) been hacked out of an essentially vertical south-facing slope thousands of years ago by the evidently fearsomely tenacious ancestors of the locals. Here we were thoroughly searched. My testicles were squeezed at some length by a sergeant with a pencil mustache, whose motives did not appear to be sexual, but who simultaneously looked me searchingly in the eye, awaiting a look of submission or hopelessness on the face of the squeezed. The others were subjected to the same treatment and probably endured it with more stoicism than Yours Truly. No lethal weapons were found attached to any of our scrota, but (surprise!) Jean ("John Wayne") Nguyen and Jackie Woo were discovered to be armed to the teeth, and DMS somewhat less so. This is the part where Yours Truly expected to be shot in the nape of the neck whilst kneeling above a shallow grave, but ironically the authorities were far more interested in my cache of Cap'n Crunch than the weaponry sported by my comrades. Negotiations took place between DMS and the captain in charge of this outpost, in the privacy of a tent. DMS emerged with a thinner wallet and full clearance to proceed, on the conditions that (1) all supplies of Cap'n Crunch be donated to the officers' mess, and (2) a full inventory of weapons and ammo would be taken upon our return & compared with today's findings to make sure that we were not smuggling arms to the Nice People Around.
Three days' excruciatingly slow travel, comprising maybe another 10 LACs, awaited us. According to my map and GPS we were circumnavigating a cluster of active volcanoes that frequently spew out lahars (mud avalanches) which, when they impact upon ruts in the jungle that I'm here calling roads, cause logistical problems well into the realm of the absurd. We passed entire towns that had been buried and abandoned. Church steeples projected at angles from the grey mud, held up by the same flows that had knocked them askew. Skulls of goats, dogs, etc. protruded from mud that had hardened around living animals like concrete. We bedded down nightly at small settlements after propitiating locals with gifts of penicillin (which Filipinos use like aspirin), batteries, disposable lighters, & whatever else had been left to us by the soldiers at the roadblocks. We slept on benches, floor, roof, or front seats of THE GRACE OF GOD, beneath mosquito nets.
Finally, when my GPS revealed that we were less than ten km. from our mysterious destination, a local instructed us to wait in a nearby village. We remained there for a day & a night resting up and reading books (DMS is never without a milk crate of techno-thrillers) until, at dawn, we were approached by a trio of very young, short men, one of whom carried an AK-47. He and his brethren climbed on the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and we proceeded into a jungle track so narrow that I would not have pegged it even as a footpath. A couple of km. into the jungle we reached a point where we spent more time pushing the jeepney than riding in it. Shortly thereafter we left Bong-Bong and Fidel and one of the duffels behind, the four of us taking turns humping the two other duffels. I consulted the GPS & verified that, although we had for a time (alarmingly) moved away from the Destination, we were now moving toward it again. We were eight thousand m(eters) away and proceeding at a rate that varied between about five hundred and a thousand m per hour, depending on whether we were moving steeply uphill or steeply downhill. It was around noon. Those of you with even rudimentary math skills will have anticipated that when the sun went down we were still a few thousand meters away.
The three Filipinos—our guides, guards, captors, or whatever they were—wore the obligatory U.S. t-shirts which make it so easy, nowadays, to underestimate cultural differences. They had not yet, however, attained transethnicity. While in town they were shod in flip-flops, but in the jungle they went barefoot (I have owned pairs of shoes less durable than the calluses on their feet). They spoke a language that apparently had zero in common with the Tagalog I'd heard ("Tagalog" is the old name; the government is ragging on people to call it "Filipina," as if to imply that it is in some sense a common language of the archipelago, which, as these guys demonstrated, is not the case). DMS had to converse with them in English. At one point he gave one a throwaway plastic ballpoint pen and their faces absolutely lit up. Then we had to scrounge up two more pens for his companions. It was like Christmas. Progress halted for several minutes while they marveled at the pens' handy clicking mechanisms and doodled on the palms of their hands. The American t-shirts were, in other words, not worn as Americans wear them but in the same spirit that the Queen of England wore the exotic Koh-I-Noor Diamond on her crown. Not for the first time I was overtaken by a strong not-exactly-in-Kansas feeling.
We slogged through the inevitable late-afternoon thunderstorm and kept moving into the night. DMS produced U.S. Army MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) from the duffels, only a couple of weeks past their stenciled expiration dates. The Filipino men found these nearly as exciting as the ballpoint pen, and saved the disposable foil trays for later use as roofing material. We started slogging again. The moon came out, which represented a bit of luck. I fell down a couple of times and banged myself up on trees, which ended up being a good thing because it put me into a state of mild shock, dulling the pain and jacking me up on adrenaline. Our guides, at one point, seemed a little uncertain as to which way they should go. I took a fix with the GPS (using the screen's nightlight function) and established that we were no more than fifty meters away from the destination, almost too small an error for my GPS to resolve. In any event, it told us roughly which direction to proceed, and we trudged through the trees for another few moments. The guides became animated and very cheerful—finally they had gotten their bearings, they knew where we were. I bumped into something heavy, cold, and immovable that nearly broke my knee. I reached down to touch it, expecting to find a rock outcropping, but instead felt something smooth and metallic. It seemed to be a stack of smaller units, maybe comparable in size to loaves of bread. "Is this what we're looking for?" I asked. DMS turned on a battery-powered lantern and whipped the beam around in my direction.
I was instantly blinded by a thigh-high stack of gold bars, about a meter and a half on a side, sitting out in the middle of the jungle, unmarked and unguarded.
DMS came over and sat down on top of it and lit a cigar. After a while, we counted the bars and measured them. They are trapezoidal in cross-section, about 10 cm wide and 10 high, and about 40 cm in length. This enabled us to estimate their mass at about 75 kg. each, which works out to 2,400 troy ounces. Since gold is normally measured in troy ounces and not in kilograms (!) I'm going to make a wild guess that these bars were intended to weigh an even 2,500 troy ounces apiece. At current rates ($400/troy oz. ) this means each bar is worth a million dollars. There are 5 layers of bars in the stack, each layer consisting of 24 bars, and so the value of the stack is $120 million. Both the mass estimate and the value estimate presume that the bars are nearly pure gold. I took a rubbing of the stamp from one of the bars, which bears the mark of the Bank of Singapore. Each bar is marked with a unique serial number and I copied down as many of those as I could see.
Then we went back to Manila. All along the way, I tried to imagine the logistics of getting even a single one of those gold bars from the jungle out to the nearest bank where it could be turned into something useful, like cash.
Let me transition to a Q&A format here.
Q: Randy, I get the feeling that you are about to lay out in detail all of the hassles that would be involved in moving this gold overland, so let's just cut to the chase and talk about helicopters.
A: There is no place for a helicopter to land. Terrain is extremely rugged. The nearest sufficiently flat place is about one km. away. It would have to be cleared. In Vietnam this was accomplished using "blockbuster" bombs, but this is probably not an option here. Trees would have to be cut down, creating a gap in the jungles conspicuous from the air.
Q: Who cares if it's conspicuous? Who's going to see it?
A: As should be obvious from my anecdote, the people who control this gold have connections in Manila. We may assume that the area is overflown by the Philippine Air Force regularly, and kept under radar surveillance.
Q: What would be involved in getting the bars to the nearest decent road?
A: They would have to be carried over the jungle trails I have described. Each bar weighs as much as a full-grown man.
Q: Couldn't they be cut up into smaller pieces?
A: DMS rates it as unlikely that the current owners would permit this.
Q: Is there any chance of smuggling the gold through the military checkpoints?
A: Obviously not in the case of a mass shipment. The gold weighs a total of around ten tons, and would require a truck that could not negotiate most of the roads we saw. Concealing ten tons of goods from the inspectors at these checkpoints is not possible.
Q: How about smuggling the bars out one at a time?
A: Still very tricky. Might be possible to hike the bars out to an intermediate point somewhere, melt or chop them down, and somehow secrete them in the body of a jeepney or other vehicle, then drive the vehicle to Manila and extract the gold. This operation would have to be repeated a hundred times. Driving the same vehicle past one of these checkpoints a hundred (or even two) times would strike them as, to put it mildly, odd. Even if this were possible there is the payment issue.
Q: What is the payment issue?
A: Obviously the people who control the gold want to be paid for it. Paying them in more gold, or in precious gems, would be ludicrous. They do not have bank accounts. They have to be paid in Philippine pesos. Anything bigger than about a 500-peso note is useless in this area. A 500-peso note is worth about $20, and so it would be necessary to bring six million of them into the jungle to perform the transaction. Based on some rudimentary calculations I have made here using a mechanic's caliper and the contents of my wallet, the stack of 500-peso notes would be about (please wait while I switch my calculator over to the "scientific notation" mode) 25,000 inches high. Or, if you prefer the metric system, something like two-thirds of a kilometer. If you stacked the bills a meter high, you would need six or seven hundred such stacks, which if jammed close together would cover an area about three meters on a side. Basically we are talking about a large Ryder box truck full of money. This would have to be transported into the middle of the jungle, and obviously, melting down cash and secreting it inside of a truck is not an option.
Q: Since the military seems to be the big obstacle here, why not simply cut a deal with them? Let them keep a big cut of the proceeds in exchange for not hassling us.
A: Because the money would go to the NPA which would use it to buy weapons for the purpose of killing people in the military.
Q: There must be some way to use the value of this gold to leverage some kind of extraction operation.
A: The gold is worthless to a bank until it has been assayed. Until then it is only a blurry Polaroid of a stack of yellow objects in what seems to be a jungle. In order to perform an assay you need to go into the jungle, find the gold, bore out a sample, and transport it safely back to a large city. But this proves nothing. Even if the potential backers believe that your assay really came from the jungle (i.e., that you did not switch samples along the way) all they know now is the purity of one end of one bar in the stack. Basically it is not possible to obtain full value for this gold until the entire stack has been extracted and taken to a vault where it can be systematically assayed.
Q: Could you maybe just get the gold to some local bank and then sell it at steep discount, so that the burden of transporting it would be on someone else's shoulders?
A: DMS relates the tale of one such transaction, in a provincial town in north Luzon, which was interrupted when local entrepreneurs literally blew one of the bank's walls off with dynamite, came in, and grabbed both the gold and the cash that was going to be used to pay for the gold. DMS asserts he would rather slit his own throat quietly than walk into a small-town bank with anything worth more than a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Q: Is the situation basically impossible then?
A: It is basically impossible.
Q: Then what was the point of the whole exercise?
A: To come full circle to the first thing DMS said. It was to send us a message.
Q: What is the message?
A: That money is not worth having if you can't spend it. That certain people have a lot of money that they badly want to spend. And that if we can give them a way to spend it, through the Crypt, that these people will be very happy, and conversely that if we screw up they will be very sad, and that whether they are happy or sad they will be eager to share these emotions with us, the shareholders and management team of Epiphyte Corp.
And now I am going to e-mail this to all of you and then summon the flight attendant and demand the array of alcoholic beverages I so richly deserve. Cheers.
—R
Randall Lawrence Waterhouse
Now, wasn't that more fun that reading about a stupid hurricane? I know it is more fun than living through one.
In conclusion, **** hurricanes.
Thank you.
ps. Ivan cannot hit Florida. I will it to be so. *rubs temples and wills it to be so.*
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Yeah, but I bet you're not taking the boards off your house yet, are you?
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Joe and Zan haven't checked in yet.
Hope you and your families are okay!
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
zgator, nope:)
*rubs temples anyway*
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
::waves at Zan::
Zan posted 2 minutes before me, and I didn't see that. I must have been typing while he posted.
So now we are waiting for Joe to check in...
[ September 06, 2004, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: Ela ]
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
I'm still alive as well. kaioshin00, did you hear that classes are canceled tuesday? Check out the UF homepage, and they have a message saying that classes are canceled tuesday...but will start up again on wednessday.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Yeah lupus, I've seen. Ain't that awesome? Lupus, do you have AIM?
Edit: I'm alive too.
[ September 06, 2004, 12:29 PM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
Just spoke with Joe. He and his family went to stay with Lisa's parents briefly, and are now returning (since they have to work tomorrow). Thus, they don't yet know the status of their home, although Joe called home and his answering machine picked up. So they at least have power and a working phone line, though I suppose the entire house could have blown away except for a single wall with a phone jack and power socket. Chances are that their house is relatively intact, though, which is good. Even better, they are completely intact.
--Pop
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Hobbes Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Glad to hear that Joe and Lisa and family are okay.
I just chatted with Saudade, and she is doing okay, too.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Got a call from a friend who drove by my house -- after lots of detours and tree-dodging -- and reported it to be there. Looks like some slight roof damage on one corner, nothing serious. No power, but that puts me in good company. Having remained calm and unconcerned all weekend, I can now let out a huge WHEW!
Glad to hear everyone's OK.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Is that everyone accounted for now? Glad you guys weathered the storm.
Dagonee
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Ummm, the storm still hasn't hit me. Just sitting here in the state capital, waiting, waiting, waiting...
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Is that a complaint, NFL?
I'd like hurricanes to stay FAR AWAY from me. Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
It ended up being somewhat anticlimatic in a long, tedious way. I have lived in Florida all my life and don't remember ever sitting around waiting for a storm for so long. All day Saturday, people sat in their homes waiting because we were told to stay off the streets and all the stores were closed. We didn't really see anything until late Sat. afternoon.
The winds and resulting damage weren't even close to what we got from Charley. We lost power for about 10 hours. I think most people are back up and running today.
All you Floridians, please join me in an email campaign to the networks telling them that 24/7 coverage of the hurricane is really not necessary. Show me updates when you have them, but I really don't need to see some reporter on the coast early Sat. morning pointing at a puddle of water stating that they're starting to see the effects of the hurricane. Or even worse, the reporter standing on the beach at the height of the storm crouching down afraid they might blow away. There are many traffic cameras out there these days that they can get a feed from to show us how bad things are.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
I agree totally.
Some people are saying that Floridians are so jaded by hurricanes at this point that no one will leave for Ivan.
Posted by Eruve Nandiriel (Member # 5677) on :
And now some of us are getting Frances' leftovers. Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Ela, huh?
By the way nothing happened. I was outside during it and didn't even realize it. There was just a slight cooling breeze and a slight cooling drizzle almost like a mist. Very refreshing, could have used that during the hottest days of summer. Not even any flooding.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
I went into campus today, and there were quite a few trees down and such...some of which are blocking sidewalks...though I am not sure it was enough to justify canceling class...and actually having a curfew in gainesville
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Zan, it was anticlimatic for you because you were not where the brunt of it hit. I'd say the people standing in line for water today, and trying to get gas and food, would not call Frances anticlimatic.
The TV coverage did get to be a bit much, but I think that was possibly mainly because it went on for so many days, as Frances moved slower and slower, and stalled in the Bahamas.
I sure didn't see anyone pointing at a puddle as evidence of the hurricane (I guess you were being facetious), but I was closer to where it hit, so there was more coverage of the wind, rain, surf and damage. Even so, I agree that it didn't have to be 24-7.
Someone wrote a letter to the Miami Herald today suggesting complete coverage of the latest hurricane news every 6 hrs, with just a quick 5 minute update on the hour. That might be a good idea. If they did something like that, I'd also like to see the latest run across the bottom of the screen, just to keep me up-to-date.
When you live one mile from the beach, as I do, and you are told to evacuate, you want to know what's going on, whether it's safe to go home, and just how much wind, water and damage are affecting your neighborhood. So I was pretty hooked to that TV coverage, even when it got boring and redundant.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I am glad that everyone seems to be OK....
Kwea
Posted by Rappin' Ronnie Reagan (Member # 5626) on :
er... this posted in the COMPLETELY wrong thread. O_o
on topic... it rained really hard today because of Francis. *shakes fist*
[ September 08, 2004, 01:44 AM: Message edited by: Rappin' Ronnie Reagan ]
Posted by Shepherdess (Member # 6115) on :
I agree completely zgator. Most of my family lives in north Florida now, though we all lived south of Miami before Andrew. They all lost power and a few tree limbs, but nothing more. To quote my dad, "These people still don't know what a real hurricane is, and I hope they never do."
In my mind, though, the problem with the news coverage is that they hype it up to the point that people would be justified in thinking it was a devastating natural disaster. "Look--I almost got hit by a palm tree falling down, but I still managed to remain standing--that's the fury of Frances!" I can't imagine them hyping anything more than they did Frances, even if it were a catastrophic storm. What about when that "big one" comes? Will anyone listen?
To anyone who was severely affected by this storm, I hope I don't sound callous. I realize there was serious damage in W.Palm, Melbourne and other places in the Eastern part of the state. All I'm saying is that people who only got remnants of this storm could easily think they've experienced the full fury of a major hurricane to hear the idiotic newscasters talk.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Not to worry, hurricane hopefuls.... Ivan is on his way. I always loved characters named Ivan in Russian novels. Maybe Vanya will be good to you all and show you a nice time. Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Did I miss Joe checking in?
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Ela, I didn't mean to belittle what a lot of people did experience. It's just that here in Orlando, the damage didn't even approach what we had after Charley. I'm sure a lot of that is due to the fact that most of the trees that were going to go over, already had. The eye passed right over my parents in Lake Wales and they never even lost power.
And, no, I didn't make up the puddle story. This was before the hurricane was really close enough to be do anything to us, but there was our intrepid reporter in Brevard County. He had to say something. "Ooh look, a puddle of water."
I don't really mind the hype so much. Just that it was constant and for so long. Frances could have been much worse than it was. It could have easily picked up strength after the Bahamas and been Cat. 4 again and caused far more destruction than it did.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I am back home again. (Well, actually, I am back at work again right now, but that's a different story. ) No damage to our house that I am aware of. It does not appear that we even lost power. (Whereas the hotel we stayed in in Georgia the night before last did!) We will leave our plywood up until we see what Ivan does.
Anne Kate, I was afraid of hurting your feelings. We really appreciated your offer, and came close to taking you up on it, but in addition to Cor and me, and Mango and Banana, and our two dogs, we also brought my father with us. Five people and two dogs (who are only marginally housebroken) seemed like quite a lot to throw at somebody, and so we stayed with Cor's parents instead. Again, though, your offer was generous and kind.
Regarding the coverage, I appreciated it. I took Thursday off from work-- again--to board up my house. I left the TV on inside, and each time I came in the house for something, I was able to get an update. During the day, several stations went away from hurricane coverage, and I was grateful that when channel two switched to Elimidate, channel six was still showing it, and when channel six went to soap operas, channel nine still had storm coverage.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
at Zan
at Joe
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Ah, well, you would have been quite welcome! This IS the last hatrack homely house, after all! And what could be more fun than a house full of you guys? As it was we had a great party here, anyway. But I don't ever get hurt or upset if people find it better to make different plans. No worries! Just offering. We will get together sometime or other for sure. Especially since I have 2 fiances in Central Florida now. Posted by AmkaProblemka (Member # 6495) on :
I think we need to put the liberals in charge of the weather, so that we can equalize the amount of moisture that goes to every state.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
*snort*
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Gotta go with the "appreciate constant coverage" here. Partly because on the east coast of central Florida, we didn't know until the last minute if Frances might turn our way or, worse, bounce northward along the coast, and our evacuation options are basically I-95 and U.S. 1, both of which clog easily. And partly because, as Ic said, it was good to know I could turn on the TV and get an update immediately.
We are still without power at home. Got home late Monday night and couldn't really inspect, but Tuesday morning found that our huge tree in the front yard cracked at the top and about half of it is now draped over our power line. Didn't damage the house or the line, but it needs to be dealt with before power can come back on. Also there's a tree across the line in front of our house, same sort of situation.
Three houses on our street still have big trees on or in them. My brother-in-law a few streets over has a large oak leaning on his roof. Currently I have to detour several streets over to get home because another large tree is still crossing our road and resting comfortably inside a neighbor's living room.
Several streets and parkways in the area are still, four days later, impassable lakes. I'm going through photos to update our photo gallery and looking at all the houses and businesses damaged, broken, or just plain gone. While I'm very glad everyone here is OK and not terribly inconvenienced, there's no reason to bitch about the coverage. This was a big deal. Still is. The newscaster had to keep finding things to talk about because they didn't dare stop covering the storm, not when it was just sitting there hovering and could have gone in any direction and the more warning they can give people, the better. If constant coverage of an approaching hurricane bothers you, go watch a DVD or something.
If you have power, that is.
[ September 09, 2004, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: Not to worry, hurricane hopefuls.... Ivan is on his way.
My mom called this "eye-vun" yesterday and I thought, "Well THAT'S totally wrong. It's obviously ee-VAHN."
PSI
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Gotta go with the "appreciate constant coverage" here. Partly because on the east coast of central Florida, we didn't know until the last minute if Frances might turn our way or, worse, bounce northward along the coast, and our evacuation options are basically I-95 and U.S. 1, both of which clog easily. And partly because, as Ic said, it was good to know I could turn on the TV and get an update immediately.
Yeah, like I said, I was hooked to that coverage, even when it got redundant...
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
A different view of the televised hurricane coverage:
Excerpts from The Handbook for Roving Hurricane Correspondents:
Welcome to the exciting world of hurricane journalism!
While your highly paid colleagues on the anchor desk are broadcasting from the dry safety of a heavily fortified television studio, you and your camera crew will be out in the maw of the storm, risking your lives for no good reason.
• What you should wear: Always choose the flimsiest rain jacket available, to visually dramatize the effect of strong winds. All foul-weather gear should be brightly colored in the event you're swept out to sea or sucked down a drainage culvert, and someone actually goes searching for you.
• What you should televise: The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind. Never mind that the puniest summer squall can send a coconut palm into convulsions, your producer will demand this meaningless shot.
Once the storm begins, you can forget about swaying palm trees and concentrate on ficus, banyans, oaks and Austrialian pines -- the ones that actually go down.
Fallen-tree video is absolutely essential to hurricane broadcasts. The most sought-after footage is, in order of ratings:
1. Big tree on strip mall.
2. Big tree on house.
3. Big tree on car.
4. Small tree on car.
5. Assorted shrubbery on car.
Note: The Hurricane Broadcasters Code of Ethics forbids correspondents from purposely knocking down any native vegetation with a TV satellite truck to simulate weather damage.
• Where you should go: The days before a hurricane are the most challenging for roving correspondents, because not much is happening. Needless to say, if you've got a choice between hanging out at the local Home Depot or cruising the beach, head immediately for the surf.
When the storm finally comes ashore, always stand dangerously near the rough water and position yourself so that the spray hits you directly in the face. If it's not raining yet, take off your hood and let the wind mess up your hair.
Remember: A wet, tired and weather-beaten appearance is crucial to your credibility as a hurricane journalist.
• What you should say: When covering a hurricane, there's no such thing as overstating the obvious. And, let's face it, how many different ways can you say it's rainy, windy and miserable?
To break the monotony, you might take a guess at how high the ''storm surge'' will be, even though you won't have a clue. Tedious lulls in the action will also offer the opportunity to ramble on about ''feeder bands,'' which is the slick new term for squall lines.
And when the dry, well-fed anchorfolks back in the air-conditioned studio ask you to sum up the situation in your location, always say the following:
``Conditions are deteriorating, Dwight.''
• Whom should you interview: As a hurricane advances, it's standard procedure to chat with evacuees, hotel owners, utility workers and disappointed tourists.
The two mandatory video loops are (a) worried residents boarding up and (b) harried residents standing in long lines to purchase water, batteries and other supplies.
Once the storm is imminent and the coastlines are evacuated, your interview possibilities will be reduced to:
1. Police and emergency personnel who are out on the streets because it's their job.
2. Amateur ''storm chasers'' and other wandering dolts who wish to experience the force of a hurricane up-close and personal.
3. Surfers.
Of these, surfers are by far the most entertaining interview subjects for TV. Unfortunately, you could easily die trying to talk them out of the water.
• What to do when the hurricane actually strikes: Obviously the sensible move is to broadcast from the protected lee of a strong building, but for that you could get fired.
Your producer will instead order you to step into the teeth of the storm, where you risk being clobbered by flying glass, coconuts, shingles, patio furniture or surfboards.
This is an act of utter derangement, but it makes for amusing television. If you survive, your next mission will be to find and film a major piece of hurricane debris -- the money shot.
Remember, your viewers' expectations are high. They've watched that big slow mother whorling across the Doppler for a week, and they've been primed for devastation on a biblical scale.
Take no chances. Proceed immediately to the nearest trailer park, being extra careful not to crash into other TV crews on the way.
• What to do when the worst is over: A friendly reminder -- The Hurricane Broadcasters Code of Ethics strictly prohibits drinking on the air. However, only you and your camera crew need know what goes on in the privacy of the satellite truck. If anybody asks, you know what to say: ``Conditions are deteriorating, Dwight.''
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Central Florida Hatrackers ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
), and then went on with their lives. They went to school today just like normal. ![[Wave]](graemlins/wave.gif)
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We can do something!
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PSI