Grand Saipan

... cursing me wondering when the fun would start.<br><br>Once we got free of it and got to the cliff line, there were nice cracks and caves to explore and some good climbing. I crawled down into one underground cave, but there was nothing noteworthy there. We found a whole network of cracks, recesses, caves and passes at one point that took us all the way to the other side of the mountain ...

... jungle on the way out. The tide was high, so we weren't able to make it to the rock tunnel we had in mind as a target. The butterflies were in full force. The prettiest was a blackish purple one with large light purple or blue (blame my color blindness for the indecision) spots. The pictures show a bunch of them clustering on some budding fruits, but I didn't capture them with their wings open.<br><br>We decided to take off our shoes and walk back on the beaches ...

... was pretty disgusting and awful tasting anyway. I had some things I would have said, but I just couldn't do it. As adventuresome as I can be with food and as tolerant as I can be of substandard conditions, that was too much.<br><br>After the Hash, everyone and then some were invited to Godfather's Bar where Alan and Stephanie treated to food and drinks as a farewell. The music was a bit too loud to talk much, so after a reasonable amount of time, Suka and I went home.<br>

... we tried to showcase like the tunnel and the passageway carved through the rock on the way out through the back of the bunker. They bee-lined to where they saw us go down the hill. We took them down through a bunch of deadfall. At the bottom we had put a checking. I layed flour up the hill to where we had started the flagging tape. Well, maybe not as close as I thought according to their recount. I was anxious about running out ...

... frequently used for children, but can also be used in a comically exaggerated fashion. So the phrase is "dokkaebibanul dadak-dadak." I know. It's not that funny when you translate, deconstruct and write it without the cultural or aural support. Too bad. It gets us into stitches. It has even started to replace another Korean word as the fake syllables to sing to the tune of a song, sort of a musical "lorem ipsum." Which by the way, I just ...

I got off the plane quickly and was the first U.S. Citizen through the immigration checkpoint. My bag came out quickly so I ended up being the first person through the doors to Saipan. Suka had fallen asleep against the wall on the bench right outside the door, and I caught her by surprise. We're at a different apartment this time. Same building, different room. Her last ...

... Suka's immediate boss, thinks I'm completely crazy for caving. So much so that he said so directly, with humor, of course, but very sincerely. He even said that if his son said he had done that, he would hit him saying, "Don't do that! It's too dangerous!" That's very Korean of him and pretty funny to me. Suka's in between. She appreciates more of that kind of thing than most Koreans, but still thinks I go a little too far sometimes. Last night we went to the Street Market between ...

... of picking ticks off of them. In December, the boat dive I did was with Mike and Rose. Rose had sent me a message on Facebook that she would be at Lau Lau with some friends around 11:00. I wasn't willing to commit to that time given our history of slow morning starts. As it turned out, Rose and her friends were just getting their gear together when we arrived. That suited me just fine since she knew the area better and we ...

I got up at 6:00 a.m. for my daily conference call. For me it's Tuesday through Saturday to correspond with my team's Monday through Friday at 3:00 p.m. This time I found an e-mail that the company had sent everyone home early because of an incoming snow storm. I've managed to miss an ice storm and a major snow storm since I've been here, and we hadn't even had our first flake of snow before I left. Getting up and going right back to bed always messes with my sleep. I ...

... that night, but people cooperated covering each other that everyone on staff could take some time out to get dinner and join. She came up for a short while in the middle. After she was done at 10:30, she came up and we closed it down at midnight. I went there close to the starting time. They were okay with that, and I knew a few people. It turns out that Stan, the guy I met at last year's Hell of the Marianas and was originally supposed to ...