The first time I ever fainted, it was immediately after getting a yellow fever vaccination.

This was in 1998.  Our university nurse had offered, for the cost of the shot, to inoculate any student going on the Ecuador trip.  Practically the whole class showed up at the same time and, because yellow fever is a vaccine, she thawed out just four at a time.  I was second in line.

After I got my shot, I stood up and walked out into the waiting room.  There was a girl in our class that had a terrible fear of needles and, on my way out, I slowed down to reassure her.  I remember saying, “It’s really not bad at all, just a pinch.  I am feeling a little dizzy, however…”  Then, as I understand it, my eyes rolled up and I crumpled to the floor.

Always felt bad about that.

I came to just a few seconds later, but it felt like I was waking up from a long afternoon nap.  It took me a while to understand that there were voices around me and another moment or two to understand what they were saying.  The first sentence I could make out was, “Here, break this and put it under his nose!”  Suddenly, I knew where I was and what had happened.

I didn’t want to smell the smelling salt!  My eyes popped open and I exclaimed, “That’s okay!  I’m all right!”  But our school nurse was insistent and she persuaded me to take a little sniff.

I tried to get up after that, but she put her hand on my shoulder and gently, but firmly, forced me back down.  “You’re white as a ghost and profusely sweating.  You’re not going anywhere.”  And then, because the live vaccines had to be used before they thawed completely, she went back to work.  The next few students in line literally had to step over me because I had fainted in the doorway; she wouldn’t even let me roll off to the side.

I’d be much more embarrassed about what happened that day if two other students hadn’t also fainted.  One made it back to the waiting area and sat down at the table where we were supposed to be watching each other for signs of lightheadedness.  Unfortunately, they didn’t catch her in time and she fell forward and smacked her forehead on the table before sliding out of her chair.  On the way down to the floor, she scratched her cheek pretty badly along the corner of a desk.

After that, the nurse scolded us about our low blood sugar and wouldn’t let anyone else get vaccinated without first eating breakfast.

(Update: I completely forgot that there was a student reporter there that day, taking pictures for the campus newspaper! I found some of them — not great, but proof enough! — while packing up my photo albums. I’ll add them to the end of this blog entry…)

Since that day, I’ve only ever lost consciousness one other time, after struggling with a prolonged queasy feeling resulting from an I.V. put into my arm by an oral surgeon… but that’s another story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (35.9MB)

There was a wall of rock on one side, a 300-foot cliff down to a dry riverbed on the other.  Alicia and I were sandwiched into the back of a pickup truck with our rented bikes, gripping its sides as a car battery and broken glass slid around our feet.  Our driver seemed to be chatting with the three other men in the cab while he raced up the Andean mountain road.  Our tires literally squealed on the pavement as he drove us, more often than not, into the oncoming lane.  It occurred to me, while rounding another blind curve, that going over the cliff was the least of our worries.  At that speed, sitting in the back of a pickup, any accident was likely to be fatal.  I thought: This may be the scariest ride of my life.

And that was before they pulled out their guns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, finally time to put this one to bed!  I’ve been thinking about and working on this episode for a long time.  Since 2008, if the time stamp on my Word doc can be believed!

Originally, when I was mulling over about how to tackle a podcast, I latched onto the idea of using a homemade teleprompter.  In theory, this would have had all sorts of benefits:

• I could keep going with my blog-entry style of writing.
• I wouldn’t have to practice speaking without notes.
• At the end of the recording, I’d have a Google-ready transcript ready for posting.

In practice, however, the setup was clunky and the free teleprompter software really wasn’t very good.  I used our Sydney Opera House footage for a practice run and gave up well before the editing phase.  I did have the transcript written, however, and for fun, I’ve pasted it in, way down at the end of this post.  It’s interesting to see, after two years, what made the final cut and what was left on the cutting room floor.

Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t posted a blog entry about blogging in awhile.   Nothing more boring, really.  But sharing the jumble of ideas in my head is sometimes an effective way of sorting it all out.

As you may know, Oksana and I are gearing up to leave on a round-the-world trip and I’ve been busy setting up a new web site for it.  I don’t expect the new site to be 100% done until we start off on our journey (on, or around, July 1^st,) but that doesn’t mean it isn’t ready to be seen.  Consider this our website’s “soft launch.”  Please, take a look:  www.postcardvalet.com.

Setting up that website was a lot harder than I thought it’d be!  I spent a lot of time switching over my web hosting and domain name to Dreamhost and, once I figured out their new control panel, I set about importing my blog’s database.  One of my primary goals in this whole endeavor was to keep posting to my personal blog (A Midgett Blog, this one)  while having the new, travel-only blog (Postcard Valet) simply pull pertinent posts from the same database.  The Domain Mirror plug-in solved that fairly easily, but when I decided to buy the Postcard WooTheme, I ran into all sorts of difficulties.  A friend, Pat, is helping me smooth out some of the kinks, but I suspect there will always be a few things I can’t do, just because I need each entry to display correctly on both blogs.

If you take a look at Postcard Valet, you’ll notice that I’ve already seeded the site with a number of travel-related blog posts from A Midgett Blog.  That should at least give anyone that stumbles upon the site an idea of what to expect.  I’ve spent some time working on the FAQ (a great place to start if all this is news to you!) and Contact pages, too, but there’s still work to do on the About This Site, Archives, and a yet-to-be-created “Subscribe to the Podcast” page.

In the next week or so, I hope to find enough time (and knowledge!) to get our podcast listed in the iTunes directory (currently the “Podcast (iTunes)” link in the sidebar only links to my own RSS feed – but I think it works if you want to subscribe early.)  Oksana and I also plan to record video introductions for the About This Site page as well as keep plugging along on our “practice” video podcasts.

Speaking of.  Tomorrow will be the start of a regular schedule of postings, beginning with a video podcast we’ve been working on about the Sydney Opera House.  Hopefully that will kick off a new schedule.  From now until July 1^st, I’m going to try to commit to the following:

• First Monday of the month: A new video podcast episode.
• Every Wednesday: A written blog entry. (This may be a travel story, a short update on our travel preparations, or possibly even website-related stuff like the “How to Subscribe” or a “What is a Podcast” page.)
• Every Friday:  A “picture with a story” blog entry.  I think of this as “Photo Friday,” and it will likely follow the same format I’ve used in the past.

Considering all the packing and planning we have to do in the next three months (on top of our full time jobs!) I think that’s an ambitious schedule.  If you like what you see, do me a favor and keep me on task.  Any feedback you give, criticism or praise, translates directly into valuable motivation.

So, please, take a look at our new website, try to see past the rough edges for now, and let me know if there’s anything that’s missing or that we could be doing better.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (20.2MB)

Back in November, Oksana and I spent some time in Puerto Rico. While visiting one of the “Spanish Virgin Islands,” Culebra, we managed to fit in a two-tank dive with Aquatic Adventures. They took us out to Lana’s Cove and Carlos Rosario’s “The Wall.”

Oksana and I used the dives to experiment with a new underwater housing for her Panasonic Lumix TZ5. While not the best underwater gear, the whole setup is small, light, and travel-friendly. While the lack of a decent flash unit blurred practically every photo, it seemed to record decent video when we kept our movements smooth.

Because of a late start, our second outing unexpectedly turned into a night dive. I didn’t anticipate that the camera would be much use, but I brought it anyway. Glad I did.

On the boat, we met a couple, Michael and Kimberly, from Kansas who were enjoying their first few open water dives after getting certified. We had dinner with them afterwards at Mamacita’s. I mentioned that I’d pointed the camera in their direction a few times during the dives and I promised to send them a video clip or two once we got home. Well, I barely had two weeks back in Alaska before I left on a month-long Ecuador trip. Last week I finally got around to digging up those video clips…

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in November, Oksana and I spent a couple weeks exploring Puerto Rico.  We went mainly for sun and sea —  you can’t go wrong with a Caribbean island — but once we bought our tickets, I knew we’d be checking out the Arecibo Radio Telescope.

You may have already seen the telescope.  It’s been used as a backdrop for all sorts of movies: Contact, GoldenEye, and the X-Files.  If not, well, please allow Oksana and I to give you a tour!

On the technical side, putting this episode together has been a nightmare.  My Dell XPS M1330, which was rock solid for this sort of work up until a few months ago, is suffering from a failing cooling system.  I’ve inspected the inside, there’s not a spec of dust and the fan is working (overtime!) just fine.  I have a hunch it’s a design flaw and a cursory look at “the forums” corroborates that idea.  I’d go to town with tech support (or just fix it myself) if I were not: 1) Leaving for Ecuador, and 2) planning to buy a new laptop next spring.

In any event, the Amazing Crashing Laptop prevented me from posting this episode while we were still on the trip.  And it’s only by the grace of the desk-fan-pointed-at-its-keyboard that I managed to finish it up before my next trip.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hoo boy.  This was a tough podcast to edit.  I can remember working on the first cut on the airplane down to Seattle back in early September.  Why so difficult?  Well, I think I underestimated how much “story” I wanted to put in.  As I mention in the video, Oksana and I wanted to tie this episode back to the last, so we tailored our little speeches around that.  Unfortunately, once I started editing, I realized I had absolutely nothing to show while we talked — we’re not in the habit of taking videos of dive shop storefronts. Yet.

I decided to do what I could with what I had, but the real problem was that I lost one crucial little thing:  Motivation.  Eventually I battered my way through the editing process, but I’m not 100% happy with the results.  Oksana really liked it, though.  Maybe you will, too.

We did a total of four dives with Dive Key West and we’ve got a couple more stories to tell.  I don’t know if I’m going to jump right into that now or wait until we get back from our Puerto Rico vacation coming up in November.  That might be the perfect time to practice some “on the road” podcasting… we’ll see.

(Update: Never did get around to editing the rest of that footage, but we did go back and dive with Dive Key West again in 2010.  Check out our Lobster Season video!)

Read the rest of this entry »