23rd Pslam

 Welp, around 4:00 p.m. on Friday I received notification that two more co-workers have come down with C-flu. Two that I work closely with and one of which I frequently converse with as his office is just across the hall from mine (and we share similar interests.) In other news, he had been fully vaccinated about two months ago. Talk about #thingsthatmakeyougohmmm Both are close friends of mine but both are healthy and probably will recover very quickly and I'll see them back at work in a couple weeks after their symptoms subside.

Siesta time, there were 3 lying on
the concrete & 1 on the compressor

These truly are 'snow' peas

So, it's been a boring week at work. Next week promises to be about the same. Schedule: get up early, drive to work in the crazy traffic, put in my time and try not to catch the C-flu, drive home.

Speaking of crazy driving - the other morning as I was tootling down the highway on my way to work this car comes zipping across all four lanes in front of me, at about a 45° angle mind you, to catch his exit. Fortunately my reflexes are still very good and I was able to slam on the brakes enough to just barely miss the corner of his car. Another tenth of a second and we'd both be doing 360s. As he looked back from the service road I hailed him with a good old Detroit salute. PMO to say the least - oh, and obviously he was out of blinker fluid in his car.

 

"That'll buff right out!" The guy in 
the van kept trying to use a 
tissue to show the other driver 
that he'd never notice the dent.

Bummer

Getting in to my work, covered
in oil - there goes one shirt.

 I was initially planning on being back in the U.S. for the past and upcoming two weeks. However, KSA decided not to lift the ban on direct travel from the U.S. to the Magic Kingdom. (They require a 14 day quarantine in a non-banned country prior to entry which tosses a monkey-wrench into the works.) I did find out a couple things after it was too late to get the time off and arrange travel. First is that there was another guy who works in my same department but in Riyadh who spent two 'fun-filled' weeks in Bahrain w/o losing his PTO and on Uncle Ray's dime. Wish I'd known that option was available sooner. The second is that apparently (unbeknownst to almost everyone on the compound - at least I haven't found one person who will admit to it) there is a 'letter' whereby one may fly direct from Dulles to Riyadh - but your name must be on the letter. Funny how only a couple people got back here that way. I guess RHIP is in full effect. To top it off now there is some finger-pointing and run-around on how to get put on that letter. Sheesh! Unfortunately, these things meant that I had to miss surprising my daughter at her MBA graduation this past Saturday. (Congratulations, honor well earned!) It would also have been nice to get out on the motorcycle even if it was a little cool in Michigan lately.

Anyway, I was going to try to put my 'holiday' time on hold by working this last week but someone here got their nose out of joint and put a stop to that. So, I ended up with a 'staycation' instead. Of course that gave me a lot of time to delve into my genealogy project that I started a number of decades ago. At this point I have over 17,000 individuals listed in my database of which I am related to just under 7,000 of them; that includes spouses. I've discovered two direct ancestors (one on my paternal side and one on my maternal side) who arrived in the New World aboard the Mayflower, one of which should be an easy path to prove for membership in TMS; at least seven direct ancestors (split fairly evenly) who were on the winning side of the Revolutionary War, I already am a member of the SAR through one and have a supplemental app approval to his son-in-law; at least two (one on my paternal side and one on my maternal side) on the winning side of the Civil War; and a few in other conflicts. I've also discovered a few other famous relatives, some direct ancestors, who were famous in their own right; among these is the astronaut Christa McAuliffe who was a distant cousin. Of course the only people who were really interested in all these details are long dead and I know I'm boring on this topic so I'll put it aside and hope that some generations down the road some of my descendants and relatives find the research I've put together interesting and useful. (If you want to make my day just ask me about my family tree - but please, at least pretend to be actually interested.)

I've been putting in time on my planning for the little hill climb now scheduled for early July. I will be flying to Moshi, Tanzania for a nine day hike up and down Mt. Kilimanjaro. It should be interesting to say the least. I've started to step-up (pun intended) my daily work out of at least four miles daily walk to include a mile at 15% grade on the treadmill - I can do 3 mph fairly easily so I'll have to bump that rate up a bit over the next few days. I'm going to add in some weight training just for fun, lol. So far I'm down below 100 kilos which is a very good thing (at least according to my doctor.) If any of you reading this wants to come along let me know, there is still room in the group.

So, it's back to work tomorrow, no one has mentioned the hours, since they changed over Ramadan, hopefully it goes back to what it was before. We shall see.

Boring week off :(

 So, it is the last week of Ramadan and then Eid al Fitr. Then I can go back to work. Yippie!

I just found out yesterday that my employer has a letter with a list of names on it whereby people can come back to KSA directly from the U.S. without having to spend 14 day quarantine in a non-banned country prior to entry. The U.S. is one of the 20 banned countries. (Can you say 'politics'?) However, the company neglected to inform anyone that this was even possible. Therefore I will be missing my daughter's graduation from her MBA program - Congratulations! PMO, b/c the return issue was why I didn't go ahead with 3 weeks off this month. Bummer all around. Now I will have to track down whoever is in charge of this 'list' and see what or if I can be added to it. One of the drawbacks I already know of is that the only flight this would apply to would be Saudia from Dulles airport to Riyadh - my opinion of Saudia flights has be a topic prior in a previous blog post.

New Dec. 2020, after about
500 miles of walking around here.

Worn soles from Sept. 2020,
shoes I brought, ~2 y.o.

 Either shoes have gotten much worse wear-wise or the heat and distance I cover (~5 miles per day) has really taken its toll. I can't believe that I will soon have to go out and buy yet another pair of sneakers (for sneaking). Can't wait to see how my new hiking boots hold up.

I may have mentioned the hoopla when I was told to park next to the officer's admin person in our office. The guy actually made me go out and move my car to the third slot, right next to where the Col. & LTC park. The admin guy uses the 4th slot. There was a great noise about this with many of the Saudis complaining that they should have been bumped up to the slot instead of me. Side note: I am usually the first one in the office and unlock the door. Anyway, the LTC decided to removed the assigned parking (except for the officer's) and people would park where ever. I generously offered the choice slot to anyone who got in to the office ahead of me.

'VIP Visitor'

The picture on the right is a couple of fuzzies - the little one belongs to a guy here on the compound.

Someone thought my ears
needed cleaning.

 So, partly given the kerfuffle listed at the beginning of this post, but mostly because I had been threatening it for some time (I had planned to do this almost 10 years ago) I have scheduled my little hill climb. Anyone want to join me?

 

Starting from July 7th I am undertaking a climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. We will be back from the little walk by July 15th. If anyone wants to go with there are 9 more open slots for this hike. Tanzania has minimal C-19 restrictions and no issue with return to KSA except for the obligatory brain-probe via nostril. 

Little 9-day walk up the hill

I'll spend another week in Moshi, probably take in a couple day trip events like the coffee plantation and maybe the falls or hot springs. There is supposed to be some sort of artists area within the city and I also see there is a large market building. Adventure awaits.

We got new walls around the compound b/c the government wanted the roads back. Makes for a little more convoluted driving and some of the tenants had to move to units further in. So, the "MSP" has new walls.

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there!

'Pretty" new wall

"DANGER"

To the Crater!

 (This should have been published in April 2020 but things got in the way.)

So, I got up really early (3:30 a.m.) and headed out to see Al-Waba Crater. It's volcanic not an asteroid impact crater. If you are interested you can look it up online from various sites including Atlas Obscura. About half way there I caught the first glimpse of the sunrise. It's a four hour plus drive from my place to here. https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/do/adventure-activites/discover-the-al-wahbah-crater

Sunrise as I was heading into the hills.

There was the
obligatory traffic jam
for the camel drive.

Enjoying a cup of tea
with a young man who
was very interested in 
meeting someone from 
America.

I got there about 8:30 a.m. There was a little park and a (closed) museum near the parking lot. There are a number of kiosk/shelters around this half of the rim. I met a couple young men there with family and I was invited to a cup of tea. We mainly communicated using the translate app (very useful indeed even as rudimentary as it must be.) I was able to explain that I intended to hike down to the bottom of the crater. He seemed to think that you couldn't breathe down there (fumes from the volcano perhaps.) However the wind was very strong so I wasn't too worried.

He did head over the rim while I was changing into my shorts and sneakers. I started down in this area (wrong place to start but I didn't know any better) and he had completely disappeared. I didn't see where he went and thought that he had gone over the side - I hoped he hadn't fallen since it was a shear drop but I couldn't see over the side. So I drove over to where I was sure there was a trail. To my surprise when I headed down the Saudi was coming up the trail head, he had walked around the wide lower 'rim' and I entirely missed where he had headed off to.

So, starting out it was about 95°F with a good breeze and I had two 1.5 L bottles of water, I headed over the side, seemed like a fairly easy trail, someone put a lot of effort into it. Good/bad part is that the trail is from the north edge of the crater so while it is well lit it is probably hotter than if it were from the south rim. About 1/4 of the way down I ran into three young men (Indian most likely) heading back up. I had seen their car up at the top of the rim.

Three guys were headed
back up as I was starting 
down.

In the background the 'salt' flat can be seen of sodium phosphate. There was a lot of water there since it had rained quite a bit recently out here. The hike is about 850' down (and back up of course.) You could see the steam rising off the salt lake as it got hotter. Fortunately there was a breeze all the way down but the sun was heating up - I should have gotten started earlier.

It's a steep climb down although the top part of the trail is deceptively easy going, after you round the first bend you get the view of the 'long' portion of the trail twisting back and forth. 

Didn't walk around too much at the bottom, maybe next time. If there is a next time.

Salt pan from above

There was still water at the bottom, see the 
vapor rise, it was hot down there even with 
a breeze

Acacia type flora

When the salt/mud dries out it leaves a
porous structure

It is a little more than a kilometer across at 
the bottom

More tenacious flora

I trust this is the group which built the trail

...and quite the trail it is

A desert Djinn

Here is a video pan of the crater 'pan' > 

https://youtu.be/PEHR-02GEsE