bring your flip-flops…and your unlawful combatants, too

Welcome back to the Odyssey, now entering its third month here in the everyday suburbia of Guantánamo Bay. Gitmo has turned out to be a bit of an absurdist paradise, 47 square miles of cognitive dissonance, where you can start the day by attending a military commission for the notorious “9/11 Five,” break for some Taco Bell down at the local bowling alley for lunch, and wrap your day up with some “Classic Beach Lifestyle,” as the adjacent t-shirt suggests, indulging in a little leisurely beachcombing beneath the razor wire of the Camp Delta detention center. “Bring Your Flip Flops,” for sure, but mind the concertina, all the same.

you can practically see the cable cars!

Given the notoriety of Gitmo since 9/11, we can all be forgiven for visualizing it as a grim dungeon peopled exclusively by cackling CIA agents in rubber gloves and executioner’s hoods. So, it can be rather jarring when you first pull up to your sparkling new duplex in the Nob Hill subdivision and are greeted by smiling neighbors bearing plates of cookies, gaggles of apple-cheeked children curious about new potential playmates, and, naturally, a lovely view of the distant Sierra Maestra mountains, a view that is only briefly interrupted by a US guard tower on the perimeter fence and its Cuban counterpart somewhat further in the distance.

well, hello, gorgeous! revolution over yet?

The surreal sensations continue more or less everywhere you go. Turn right instead of left when leaving our subdivision and you find yourself jogging along a lovely country road through the coral tideflats. Gaze left and let your eyes linger on the lovely white cranes and graceful herons searching for their evening meal in the sun-shot, pink-hued gloaming of another lazy, Caribbean sunset.

not nearly as much fun as camp winnipesaukee

Gaze right and let your eyes recoil at the rusting bands of razor wire, overgrown with scrub grass and, naturally, the faded and deteriorating remnants of Camp X-Ray in the chain-linked distance. Yes, that Camp X-Ray. The one that earned Gitmo the nastier sides of its reputation in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Still right there, just a mile or so from Nob Hill, as you can see there at right.

If you keep going past Camp X-Ray, you eventually come to the Northeast Gate between GTMO and Cuba proper. I mean, you would get there, if you were brave foolhardy enough to go past all the signs telling you not to go any further and you somehow managed to ignore the armed Marines waving their hands for you to stop. And the gunfire. And the anti-tank Czech hedgehog structures straddling the road at strategic choke points. Not that I’ve, err, tried this or anything. Cue nervous laughter and sheepish shuffling of feet.

You’re never going to get there, dude

Just as well – aside from the monthly meeting between the US and Cuban border guards, the Northeast Gate’s been closed since the revolution. Not that any of that stops the occasional gaggle of grandmas visiting the base from pushing a stroller down that road, past Nob Hill, past those warning signs, and into the waiting klieg lights of the Marine Corp Security Force Company. Sorry, grandma – it’s the enhanced interrogation techniques for you.

tell me more about that cognitive dissonance thing

This fundamental incongruity between expectations and how the place actually presents itself is probably what you notice most about Guantanamo Bay. It’s absolutely jarring in many respects, whether it’s:

• 

  the new patio furniture is here! the new patio furniture is here!

  The endearingly prosaic announcements on the reader board outside the commissary (“Patio Furniture Has Arrived!”).

• 

  of course there’s an irish pub in gitmo…it’s gitmo!

  The fact that there really is a credible attempt at an Irish pub here. It’s possibly the only Irish pub in the world staffed exclusively by Jamaicans, but that’s something that works entirely in its favor. Honestly, I can’t think of a single service in the world that would not be improved by being staffed exclusively by Jamaicans.

  Case in point – it’s not easy to find the phone number of anything here, even though the phone numbers are all only 4-5 digits long. So, we constantly find ourselves dialing Directory Assistance, something I haven’t done since, like, 1985. Anyway, after I thank the laid back Jamaican who’s given me whatever number I need this time, he always closes with a lilting, “Coooool, mon.” Man, I live for that. I call directory assistance three times a day just because I crave that kind of reassurance. Sure, I’ve got worries about my 401k and credible doubts about my ability to parent a teenager, but everything is cooool, mon. I gotta get a recording of that guy. And start writing down the phone numbers he tells me.

• 

  welcome to springfield, cuba

  The overarching sensation that much of the base presents as nothing more than your classic American suburb, plucked out of the midwest and plunked down on the dry side of your average Caribbean island. I mean, so long as your version of the “average” Caribbean island has been avowedly socialist since its revolution in the fifties, was the target of a failed invasion sponsored by the CIA in ’61, very nearly housed Russian-sourced nuclear weapons in ’62, and, since 9/11, has been the site of the world’s most notorious prison. In that case, yeah, totally average.

There is, of course, a method to the figurative madness here and it’s got everything to do with keeping literal madness at bay for those stationed here.

don’t you mean keeping it “at guantanamo bay”?

No, I don’t. Not even I would stoop to that pun. Which is why it’s fortunate that I’ve got a handy, imaginary “alternative me” making the really bad puns in headings like that one up there. Thanks, buddy.

you’re welcome!

could be worse — it could be on the barge

Guantanamo Bay is probably not the easiest duty station in the world. It’s isolated, it’s hot, it’s completely shut off from the outside world (only six flights per month!), and you almost never get new patio furniture. The grocery store suffers from occasional stocking issues. The internet arrives via satellite for most of the base and is two-tin-cans-and-a-string slow. Regular cell phones do not work. Anything you order over the internet arrives via a semi-mythical barge that is purported to arrive in GTMO once every two weeks. No one has ever actually seen this barge. Some believe the barge exists, if only because Amazon Prime orders eventually do arrive, sometimes as quickly as two weeks after the initial order.

Regular Amazon orders of the non-Prime variety? Yup – still on the barge, waiting to be delivered by the ubiquitous base iguanas and their perpetual bad attitudes. There’s a popular bumper sticker here that reads, “My other car is on the barge,” which I’m starting to think is just base code for “My other car was stolen by iguanas.” Very slowly, as you can see in that picture down below.

iguana delivery — when it really doesn’t matter when (or whether) you get it

 slow amazon deliveries? however do you endure, my good man?

In the greater scheme of things, most of these GTMO peccadilloes play as minor annoyances and, in some cases, are actually kind of nice. For example, it’s a semi-refreshing experiment to see how much your daily life revolved around obsessively checking email and the web when you can no longer readily do either of those things. Turns out I used to like to read and play guitar, Kristanne could bake bread from scratch, and both kids were accomplished belly dancers. Who knew?

at home in nob hill with the heatons

Still, the aggregate of these Gitmo Gotchyas (not a trademark…yet) can start to weigh on you, which is why the Department of Defense has put a whole lot of effort into making you feel like you never left Anytown, USA. Take for example, our particular suburb of Nob Hill. We live in an as-new, 3BR duplex, complete with a garage and a white picket-fenced backyard that make it feel every bit the averaged and idealized version of the American home. Even the attention paid to the standard American practice of giving subdivisions wildly optimistic names completely at odds with their surroundings helps you feel at home a bit. Sure, “Nob Hill,” Guantanamo Bay, has about as much to do with the real Nob Hill in San Francisco as “Cabernet Ridge” in Stockton has to do with vineyards or “Serenity Shores at Fulton Ranch” has to do with, well, much of anything at all, but that just adds to the Americanizing effect. Don’t I sound soothed?

hey, they were expecting us!

This is not to say we don’t love it here in Nob Hill. Quite the contrary, in fact. Not only did our house come with the perfect graffiti pre-carved into its backyard banyan tree, as you can see there at left, but it also has a seemingly endless supply of waving neighbors, hard-playing kids, and the we’re-all-in-this-together spirit that comes when you actually are all in this together. Plus, it’s all free. Yup – free! The home maintenance plan is excellent, too – you call and they come over to fix it, no charge. I much prefer this to my standard, stateside home maintenance plan, which I typically start with twelve trips to the hardware store, continue by screwing up the job in increasingly inventive and ever more expensive ways, and wrap the whole thing up by paying someone else to fix what I broke. Did I mention I’m not very handy?

So, yes, I’d most definitely like to take this opportunity to thank you, the American taxpayer, for all of this. Yes, you, the one muttering under your breath, angrily stamping your feet, and looking for new federal bird sanctuaries in Oregon to commandeer. Thanks, bro! I’m just going to have another sip of this free mint julep here on my air-conditioned back porch and check my portfolio while the government unclogs my toilet and massages my back.

REALLY HOPING THE TOILET UNCLOGGER GUY ISN’T MASSAGING YOUR BACK, TOO

helpful teenager or armed seditionist? you be the judge.

Taunting armed seditionists is much easier from Guantanamo Bay than in person, I find. If it makes you feel any better, I did have to pay my son to mow the lawn after he threatened to take over the downstairs laundry room while armed with Nerf guns. Armed insurrection has been a new hobby of his since we arrived here.

the ping-pong tables are on the other side of the curtain. really!

It’s not just the housing and maintenance that’s free, either. Gym? Free. Open 24×7, too, with two full basketball courts (one featured there at right), racquetball, enough free weights to make Jack LaLanne blush, and every aerobic machine under the sun. Electricity, gas, and water? So free it would give your average extortionary PG&E exec the full-on heebie-conniptions.

very large and very free

Swimming pool? Free. It’s also huge, uncrowded, and equipped with some fairly epic slides, the likes of which would make a stateside personal injury lawyer salivate, as you can see there at left. Golf course? Free, though you do have to pay to rent a cart (and trust me, Cuba’s standard face-melting temperatures will make you want to rent the cart. Plus, no sales tax!).

kristanne relaxes after massacring a few dozen skeeters at the lyceum

First-run movies? Free, and delivered to TEAM GTMO (check the sign in the background of the picture at right) in a charming outdoor theater somewhat ambitiously referred to as “The Lyceum.”

One of the great things about the outdoor movies here, besides being free, is that, if the movie stinks, you can always pass the time stargazing at the incredible Caribbean night skies and/or waging a ceaseless battle against fist-sized mosquitoes bent on malarial destruction. That’s usually an “and” situation, by the way, and not an “and/or.” That’s Kristanne there at right, flexing her way through her usual post-mosquito-massacre trash talk and taunt session, featuring lots of aggressive posturing and classic lines adapted from past adventures, such as, “Stupid little mosquito – all your friends are dead.”  They say Gitmo changes people, but I was really hoping they didn’t mean my wife. And rebel son.

…if only the beer were.

Beer? Not free, alas. It also occasionally comes with the reminder that neither is freedom, as you can see there at left. Somebody’s gotta pay the bill somewhere down the line, I suppose, starting with me, who has to face the horror of a single, solitary grocery store stocked nearly exclusively with mass-produced domestic lagers, full of rice, gingerbread, and other things that have no business being in beer. It’s an Anheuser-Busch hell here in GTMO, I tell you, and I am barely holding on. Somebody get me Directory Assistance on the line, stat.
Coo-o-o-o-oool, mahhn.

hmm…sounds like someone might have nothing to lose but his chains

where the “c” definitely does not stand for “communism”

The massive irony of all this free stuff, of course, is that we are living on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, a place that from the late ’50s to the collapse of the Soviet Union, was seen primarily as yet another Cold War domino, a staunch-but-lonely bulwark against the otherwise unchecked flow of creeping communism across our embattled US borders. A capitalist thumb in the eye of Fidel Castro, if you will. A beacon of democracy and freedom amidst the roiling waters of failed banana republic socialism, for crying out loud. All that, and here we are enjoying the fruits of the most enjoyably socialist lifestyle I’ve ever experienced (and, mind you, I’ve lived in both France and pre-1989 Poland, two places that occupy rather opposite ends of my highly subjective Enjoyable Socialism Spectrum). Heck, I may even invite Bernie Sanders to come on down, don the highly reflective waistbelt we’re all required to wear when outdoors after dark, and go for a little jog – it’s that enjoyably socialist, my friends.

Probably the best part of the GTMO lifestyle, though, is how it wholeheartedly embraces and actualizes one of the tenets of socialism that is not often delivered in practice – the part where everyone takes responsibility for what’s around them and works together towards a common good. Everywhere you go on base, there are people working. Soldiers working at their jobs. Soldiers cleaning up the base. Jamaican and Filipino workers keeping the base operating. Civilians working on lucrative contracts for Halliburton-like conglomerates making major, tax-free bank.

hey, that’s “Mr. Smarty Pants of the Week” to you, pallie

There’s really not anyone here who isn’t supposed to be here for some reason or another, except for, well, me. And frankly, after being crowned “Smarty Pants of the Week,” I’m pretty sure I’m newly in charge of Smartass Responses to the public library’s weekly trivia question on Facebook. Hey, you gotta start somewhere (and you might as well get two MWR GTMO Community Library bookmarks and a pack of “Nerds” for your trouble). Maybe if I win two weeks in a row, I’ll get some patio furniture. The dream lives on.

what’s up with the patio furniture obsession, weirdo?

That’s it for this week on The Odyssey. I still hold out high hopes for someday being able to write shorter, more frequent entries, same as I do for a successful Van Halen reunion with David Lee Roth and the return of my hair. In other words, don’t hold your breath, y’all. And, if you do, be sure to call Gitmo Directory Assistance right after. He’ll make you feel better right away.
Coo-o-o-o-oool, mahhn.

Let’s get this out of the way – I’m a terrible skier. I have balance issues, don’t negotiate sliding sensations with panache, elan, or any other French words, and my elephantine head gives my body the overall appearance of a titanic lightbulb once it’s been encased in the helmet that I rarely venture outdoors without, let alone onto ski slopes. Couple this with the day-glo orange jacket I’m possibly legally obligated to wear during all ski-related activities for the safety of others, and you know I’m cutting quite the dashing Alpine figure when I ascend le tapis roulant (ok, it’s the dang Magic Carpet) with the other five year olds. Ladies – swoon early, swoon often.

If you’re wondering why I appear to have sprouted a second head coming out of my left shoulder in that picture there, well, that’s something that just happens naturally somewhere around 10-15 years of marriage – you grow an “Extra Spouse Head.” Most people are able to disguise them better than me through a variety of clever wardrobe effects, but it turns out that Kristanne’s head is surprisingly persistent. Unfortunately for me, where most husbands seem to get the “Guardian Angel” variety of Extra Spouse Head, consistently advising caution and reminding their loved one that discretion is the better part of valor, I seem to have acquired the “Go Fast, Take Chances!” model. “Go off that jump!” it urges. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen?” The advice, I don’t mind so much; what I could do without, though, are the inevitable little “Bawk, bawk, bawk!” taunting chicken sounds that start to make themselves known somewhere around my 10th trip down the bunny slope of the day. What if I just really, really like the Magic Carpet, man?

I mention my relative Alpine naïf-hood by way of adding a few judicious grains of salt to what follows. Despite having rarely lived further than 45 minutes from good skiing, I do not boast the comprehensive array of schussing experiences that would allow me to form a carefully considered opinion on French skiing and how it fits into the larger realm of winter sports the world over.

To that, I say, “Screw it – it’s a blog.” Go hunt up Warren Miller and Jon Krakauer for the other stuff – I’m mainly going to crack a few jokes at the expense of French people and possibly myself. You’re welcome.

grenoble – they like to ski here

Skiing is a central part of the culture here in Grenoble, which is not surprising given the terrain. Le G nestles in a valley surrounded by three mountain ranges, all of which you can gawk at in the picture below. The Chartreuse massif is at the right in the distance, a gorgeous national park, full of scenic farm towns, familial ski stations, and lots of extremely good cheese. The Vercors is at the left, high place of the French Resistance during WWII and home to France’s best nordic skiing, as well as some positively remarkable cheese. The picture itself is taken from the Belledonne Alps, looking down on the Gresivaudan Valley below – the Isere River runs right to left between the Chartreuse & Belledonne before turning right and joining the Drac River and exiting out the back of your computer screen. These are perhaps not “map quality” directions but they are almost certainly good enough to let you find some darn fine cheese.

Vercors, Chartreuse, Belledonne, Oh My!

back when the winter olympics had snow

Grenoble hosted the Winter Olympics back in 1968, a gift that continues to pay dividends in the form of untold vacationing Brits (they fly in by the thousand-fold, trailing clouds of cigarette smoke and lager behind them), a questionable tradition of really bad semi-socialist architecture (the original Olympic Village seems to have begat an unending stream of conspicuously ugly cookie-cutter apartment blocks that would fire the passions of V.I. Lenin and probably no one else), and, importantly, Jean Claude Killy (three golds, baby!). That’s the top of the downhill Olympic course from 1968 at Chamrousse pictured below. No, I did not take this picture – Mark Tompkins did, because if I ever get this close to a black run on skis, I start to whimper and sob uncontrollably until they finally send the snowmobile with a proper array of sedatives and cart me down. Good lord.

Killy Was Here

If black runs reduce me to jelly, they don’t seem to have the same effect on the rest of my family. Because skiing is such an important part of what it means to be from this part of France, the public schools in Grenoble pay for every school kid to learn how during a series of six all-day field trips in January and February. The equipment and lift tickets are all on the city; if you can’t rustle up warm clothes, they’ll help you with that, too.

So, Quinn is 10 years old and gets to reap the benefits of this public largesse. For his first trip, they asked him if he’d skied much, to which he replied something along the lines of, “Oh, a bit, mostly greens and blues,” all of which was quite true. Somehow, when this bit of language was run through the French Experiential Transmogrification Machine, it morphed into, “Let’s strap ‘em on and bomb some blacks, baby!” Except with a French accent instead of the implied dude-speak, natch.

This sort of seems to be par for the French course – if you’re signed up to do something you haven’t really tried a whole lot of in the past, their approach is that it’s probably best to just skip any sort of warm-up, discussion, or safety-related measures and just go ahead and do that puppy. French people definitely have the Kristanne version of the “Extra Spouse Head” attached to their collective shoulder. It serves them well when it comes to feats of Alpine derring-do, where they typically excel, but somewhat less well when it comes to managing southeast Asian colonies and, umm, rap music.

Wait, I Have Vitesse?

We already dealt with this paradigm a bit in Quinn’s first fencing class where they skipped any of the introductory niceties and just slapped helmets on all the kids, loaded ‘em up with sabres, and let them get to hacking one another, sans rules. “Rules suck,” says the Extra Spouse Head. “They’re for sissies. Bawk bawk bawk.”

Quinn came through the fencing just fine, limbs intact, but skiing, despite not involving swords, boasts a somewhat higher degree of peril for the “No Risk, No Fun” lifestyle.

To his everlasting credit, Quinn remained more or less unfazed, pointing them downhill and surviving the first black run without even falling by simply trying to keep up with the other kids. He took a few falls during subsequent runs but pretty much came through the experience none the worse for wear…and a much better skier, too. See, this is the advantage of the No Risk, No Fun ethos – you can improve extremely quickly. Of course, that won’t be of much benefit to you if you’re dead, but the point remains. I guess.

wait, they have a nationwide school for this stuff?

In addition to the public school system’s support, there is also a nationwide Ecole du Ski Francaise (ESF) with a whopping 250 schools and 17,000 instructors standardizing and inculcating French ski culture for new generations. Kids learn it early, passing a series of standardized tests over time that lets them graduate from Piou-Piou to Ourson to Flocon (and a host of other levels) until they finally make it to the coveted Etoile d’Or, with each test passed bringing a new badge and possibly some really tasty cheese. Possibly not.

The French school schedule helps, too.Kids get Wednesdays “off” here, though in this case “off” translates to “a day for hell-bent, pell-mell physical activity of many different stripes.” So, during ski season, tons of kids take Wednesdays as ski days, either through racing clubs, ESF programs, or just with their families. The same is true for the holidays that fall during ski season…the two weeks during Christmas and the two weeks in February. They ski a lot.

One of the first things that hits you about the French approach to skiing is how utterly inclusive it is. Everyone seems to do it at some level, whether it’s alpine, one of the many nordic flavors, snowshoeing, biathlon, or this wacky snow scooter contraption. It helps that there are tons of affordable options. Sure, there are high-end French ski resorts with lift ticket prices approaching those at Squaw or Heavenly, but they’re not the norm. It’s far more likely to pay something in the mid 20s for a weekend day at a quality resort. You can also go low budget and hit the – ALERT: RICK STEVES LANGUAGE COMING – quaint and charming family stations of the Chartreuse. (ALERT OVER: RESUME NORMAL READING POSITION). Many of these only have a half-dozen runs serviced by t-bars, but it’ll only set you back about 10 bucks for the day. No food service, no ski shops, just a cashier and a little salle hors sac where you can warm up and eat whatever food you packed. Awesome.

So, yes, we’ve been skiing a lot. Kristanne was already good, the kids are improving amazingly fast, and, defying the betting lines at an online casino near you, I’m still alive. And I’d very much like some cheese, if you don’t mind.

See you next time…on the Odyssey!

Shouldn’t You Be Wearing a Helmet?

Well, fresh from the “never thought that would happen” files, I seem to now be the new drummer for a French jazz combo! I had my first rehearsal with them last night and, aside from the novelty of counting off songs with “un, deux, trois, quatre”, it seems like music doesn’t need much in the way of translation.

The group is part of an “Open Doors” continuing education program at the Ecole municipale de musique, one of the many popular social programs made available to the community in France. It’s led by a kindly old cat (yep, I’m talking “jazz” here) of maybe 65 years, or so – a real sharp dresser with an artfully draped scarf, a wee, pointy goatee, and, yes, the requisite beret. He had a great way of alternately chiding and encouraging the players on their shortcomings and successes. Most of this was in French, though after one memorable dressing down of the two clarinetists, he paused long enough to glance at me and remark with a perfectly dismissive air, “I tell them they play like goats! Hahaha! Like goats!”

I love my new French jazz combo.

Can’t post without a picture, so here’s a lovely Kristanne enjoying the slopes up at Chamrousse. Yes, this has nothing to do with my new jazz combo, but you have to admit that it’s a refreshing break in the day.

A Postcard from Chamrousse (Photo: Mark the Shark)