Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island

Chapter 11- Tourism Awareness Week

And I'm oh so tired of running, I'm gonna lay down on the floor.
I've gotta rest sometime, so I can get to run some more.
-The Who, "My Wife"

     It's Sunday, 4:15 a.m., and the phone is ringing.  It's Stephanie.  "Are you ready?" she asks.

     I can't think of anything in my life that I've been ready for at 4:15 a.m., unless it was "taking a leak and going back to sleep." 

     But sleep is not on the agenda, not today.  Today is the first day of Tourism Awareness Week 1998.  Today, I'm going to learn about "Sustainable Tourism Development: for you, for me, for Palau," by running 2 1/2 miles in the dark.   

     Jill is to blame for this.  On Wednesday night, she told Stephanie that there was a new issue of the Tia Belau out.  Tia Belau is the established local newspaper that traditionally comes out every other Friday.  Weighing in at an average of 16 pages an issue, much of which is given over to full-page legal notices, strange proclamations in Palauan from remote states in northern Babeltahup, and ads for the local outboard motor dealership, it isn't quite the Washington Post.   But then again, that's probably what attracted the new upstart competitor, the Palau Horizon to town.  Coming out weekly, and thus theoretically providing twice as much news (or at least twice as many outboard motor ads), the Horizon spells serious trouble for the older, complacent Tia Belau.  Maybe that's why a new issue of Tia Belau inexplicably emerged on a Wednesday, after having just gone to press days earlier.  Whatever the reason was, it was good news for Jill and Stephanie.

     "There's a cook-off coming up," Jill explained.  I yawned.  Unless it included a category for "Best Food Made With Hand Tools," I wasn't really interested.  Cooking had not been a big priority for me here, since the U.S. Government, under the auspices of the postal service, was apparently using a box containing all my kitchenware to test whether the current rash of nostalgia for things from the '70's had prompted mysterious cosmic forces to once again open the Bermuda Triangle for business.   Stephanie, on the other hand, was captivated by the idea of a cook-off, and dragged me around downtown Koror on my lunch hour trying to find a copy of the paper that mentioned it.

     Needless to say, after the first three places we went to didn't have it, I started to get skeptical that this aberrant issue of Tia Belau even existed.  "After all," I asked, "isn't Jill the one who told us that some previous female clerk was allegedly raped by an angry litigant after she helped work on a decision someone here didn't like?"

     "No," Stephanie said, "that was me who told you that, and it's true.   I heard it from a guy who knows someone who worked here in the '80's."   My point thus being made for me, I shut up. 

     Which is good, because by the time we got back from our hour-and-a-half lunch hour, the law librarian had the new issue of Tia Belau on her desk.  Inside was an ad for the multitude of events that constituted "Tourism Awareness Week 1998" (which, inexplicably, was only 5 days long):

     Like I said, I didn't really care about a cook-off, but the "3.7k walk/run" caught my eye.  Not so much because of the running, but for the free t-shirt.  Since the bulk of my clothes were still in the custody of the U.S. Postal Service somewhere other than in my house, an extra t-shirt meant an increase in my wardrobe of about 14%. 

    And, hell, it was only 3.7 kilometers.  At 2.2 kilometers a mile, hey, that's only 1.7 miles!

    "Um... I think it's actually 2.3 miles." Stephanie said.   "There are only 1.6 kilometers in a mile."  After patronizingly explaining that she was wrong, and jumping on the internet to prove it, I had to admit she was right.  Apparently, the powers that control the metric system must have recently decided that the kilometer I had grown up with was much too short, and needed to be lengthened.  Steph had a hard time accepting this explanation, insisting that it was far more likely that I was just an idiot. 

    Regardless of how far it was, running a couple miles seemed like a small price to pay for being able to now wear a different t-shirt every day of the week.  But I didn't like that "5:00 a.m." part.  Not one bit.   After carefully weighing the pros and cons, I decided that a few extra hours of sleep were worth more than having a genuine Palauan t-shirt I could show people back home.  "I'll pass," I said when Stephanie suggested that we run it. 

     Steph and I had gone running together down at the local Community College track a few times.   When I went, we wound up doing 2 1/2 to 3 miles, and for about the last mile or so, I kept up with her only by dint of sheer masculine ego, being more willing to risk vomiting and passing out from exhaustion rather than telling her I needed her to slow down.  Apparently, the front I had put up at the track had convinced her, because she then set about trying to convince me to do the "Walk-a-thon" with her.  "It's only 2 miles," she emphasized.

     "But we're booked to go diving Sunday," I whined.  For being a passive sport, diving really exhausts me, and I tend to come home from a day of diving and flop into bed.  I figured that alone would be enough to excuse me from the run.  But Steph was having no part of it.

     "We're not diving until 9:00 a.m.  The run starts at 5:00 a.m.," (she said that last part quickly), "and will be over by 5:30.  You can go home and go back to bed for two more hours after it if you have to," she countered. 

     "Unless you're too slow...," she added.

     That did it.  Not only was I not too slow, I insisted, but I didn't even need the sleep anyway.  Instead, I said, we'd run the race, and then I'd take her out for breakfast at the Rock Island Cafe afterwards.  Then diving.  "Then leave the air tank strapped on me, because there's a good chance that after that, I won't have enough energy to fill my lungs," I failed to add out loud.

     So the phone rings at 4:15 in the morning.  I had slept fitfully the night before, waking up every hour or so hoping for the sound of rain pounding down on the tin roof of the house so as to give me a credible excuse to not do this.  But the rain never came, and the phone call did. 

     We had agreed that, to make sure we were one of the first 50 participants, and thus eligible for the free t-shirt (the one condition I had placed on my participation in the event), we had better leave for the starting line by 4:30 or so.   Running is a reasonably popular sport here, and the bi-weekly "hash runs" through the woods tend to draw a pretty sizeable number of participants.  With only 50 free t-shirts available, I was not about to get aced out of a shirt by 49 early birds.

     Slightly nauseous from lack of sleep, I got in the car and drove to pick up Stephanie at her apartment.  At 4:30 a.m., it's still pitch black outside, and if I'm not mistaken, the curfew that takes effect at 2:00 a.m. in Koror is still in effect.   That must explain why there is absolutely nobody else out on the road.  By 4:40 a.m., we're on our way to the starting line at the base of the K-B Bridge, and I'm starting to get a little worried.  If we arrive only 15 minutes before the race starts, the 50 or more serious runners will already have shown up, needing at least that long to get warmed up. The idea that we might have waited too long, and that I might have gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to run 2 miles and not get a t-shirt to show for it made me even more queasy.

     At least that's the explanation I'm going with for the anxiety I'm having, but it could have been something else, something that has so little to do with the main story that it probably doesn't deserve to be included here.  But it will be anyway.  

     I'd nearly had a heart attack while talking to Stephanie on the phone a few minutes earlier.  Two days ago, I had gotten up for a drink of water in the middle of the night.  Turning on the light in the kitchen to find a glass, I saw the biggest gecko I had ever seen, lumbering across the kitchen counter.  Describing it to friends the next day, the best I could come up with was "the size and appearance of a baby crocodile"-- a good 12 inches long, 4 times the size of an ordinary gecko.  This junior leviathan, with dark marbled patterns along its back, couldn't even skitter around like his smaller brethren.  He petulantly hauled his giant frame up the wall and into the rafters as if on his own schedule, perturbed that I had disrupted his nocturnal activities.  It spooked me a little, but I figured that so far, geckos had been o.k. housemates, and as long as this one stayed away from me, he was permitted to waddle around my counters in the middle of the night to his heart's content. 

     But two days later, standing in the dark of the living room at 4:15 a.m, talking on the phone to Stephanie, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a huge dark stain on the wall next to me that seemed to dribble down the wall about a foot and a half before dissolving into little splotches.  

     "Holy shit!," I thought, "the giant gecko was just the beginning.  There must some huge creature living in my rafters and pooping down on the walls." 

     From the size of the stain, which seemed to be about as long as my forearm, it had to be something about the size of a beaver, hidden up in the dark recesses of the ceiling, directly above my head.  A creepy feeling of panic ran through me, and my pulse jumped about 30 beats. 

Then, as I started to wake up a little, something else occurred to me.  Yesterday, I had gone to a dive shop, gotten a map of dive sites in Palau, and taped it up on the wall next to where I was standing.   Giving my eyes a few more seconds to adjust to the dark-- and my adrenal glands a few seconds to be ready to freak out if something big and furry dropped on me from above-- I peered closely at the stain on the wall, only to realize that it was just the dark islands and grey reef on the white background of the map impersonating the stool of some hidden, defecating terror.   Try it for yourself-- take a look at this map out of the corner of your eye.   (For best results, do so at 4:15 a.m.)  Drawn as dark landmasses fringed by a grey reef and white lagoon, the geography of Palau very closely approximates the smeared excreta of some giant, diarrheal bird.  In the spirit of Tourism Awareness Week, I hereby offer that exact descriptive analogy to the Palau Visitors Authority for future advertising purposes.

     4:45 a.m., approaching the south end of the K-B Bridge.  "The starting line must be on the other side of the bridge," Stephanie helpfully suggests.

     If it is, that's a good explanation for why, instead of 50 runners in free t-shirts, the small park next to the collapsed remains of the south span of the bridge is filled with all of one parked pickup truck and a fat guy sitting on the shore of the channel, fishing.  We drive over the replacement bridge to the other side, and continue on up another half-mile, figuring that, even if we're the 51st and 52nd people there, at least we haven't gotten up at 4:00 a.m. for nothing if we still run the race. 

     Finding not the faintest indication of life on the other side, we head back to the park at the Koror side of the bridge.  By now, my fear over not arriving early enough has been completely eclipsed by my fear that I've shown up at 5:00 a.m. for a race that isn't going to occur.

     We park the car and get out to walk around just to try and wake up a little, when two women get of out the darkened pickup truck.  Both are wearing matching Tourism Awareness Week t-shirts, and one is wearing shorts and running shoes. 

     "Are you here for the walk-a-thon?" one asks.  Inside my head, I start imagining the glory of wearing a clean t-shirt to bed tonight.   As it turns out, the event is on, but the rest of the organizing crew is running a little late.  How late?

     "Oh, maybe an hour," they figure.  Apparently, walk-a-thons happen a lot in Palau, and standard operating procedure entails starting them at 6:00 a.m., not 5:00, and that people park down at the finish line and get a ride up to the start, rather than vice-versa.   The volunteers, apparently, are just starting to assemble 3.7 kilometers away, and there's still water stations and various other administrativa to be set up. 

     I briefly entertain the thought of explaining that a good principle of Tourism Awareness involves making tourists aware of the actual starting time of an event, not some hypothetical starting time.  But I decide that, until that free t-shirt is in my hands, I better at least be agreeable. 

     It works.  After enough humorously sarcastic remarks about getting up early, about the turnout, and about the run ahead of us, the two organizers decide that we're really going to participate, and one of them fetches a couple of t-shirts out of the back of the truck and hands them to us.  "Now we can go home and go back to sleep," I whisper to Stephanie, but she has wisely learned to ignore me.

     With excruciating slowness, an hour passes.  By 5:55 a.m., the number of runners has swelled to about 20, most of which, I'm told, are friends of the organizers who were recently rousted out of bed to fill out the event roster.  Getting a big crowd to run the race is important, since the Visitors Authority has arranged to make a video of the week's activities for broadcast on the local cable access channel, thus displacing the tape of the 1996 Miss Belau pageant that seems to run there continuously now.  Flitting about the mostly lackadaisical crowd is a guy with a steadicam, variously filming the pre-race activities and taking shots of the sunset. 

      Finally, a police escort arrives, followed by an ambulance (uh-oh), and the guy with the camera climbs into the back seat of a sedan and leans out the window, training the camera on our crowd, who have now assembled into a loose pack along an invisible starting line behind him.  Someone has managed to get their hands on a starter's pistol, and with a crack!, the 1998 Tourism Awareness Week is underway.

     The "course" is simply the main road, running from the K-B Bridge across a causeway along the ocean for a good half mile, then up a steady, winding, mile-long climb up into Topside.  Cresting right at my house, the road then heads downhill for the second half of the run, finally leveling out at the beginning of downtown and running another flat half-mile or so to the finish line at the college track.  I'm glad that the route runs by my house, especially since I've already gotten my t-shirt.  If I time my approach to the top of the hill to have a slight pack of runners around me, I might be able to disappear halfway through the run and still catch my two hours sleep. 

     We all lope away from the starting line at the sound of the gun.  Steph, myself, the running organizer, a couple other people we were introduced to in our hour of idle time had gone up to the "starting line" first, leaving the groggy draftees milling about behind us, and thus, we constituted the first wave heading off down the road.  For the first quarter-mile, everyone is sort of jogging together, making cute little jokes about dropping out, about catching a ride on the bumper of the police car that is poking along about 15 feet in front of us as our escort, and about keeping our good side to the cameraman leaning out the window of the sedan as it glides by.  The pace is a little slow, but being lousy at pacing myself, I'm not about to waste all my energy speeding up at the start. 

     By the time we hit the base of the hill leading up into Topside, one of the chubbier conscripts from the back has gone puffing by us, and has taken up the lead about 20 feet up ahead.   Having someone else to set a little bit faster pace is a relief, and I slowly fall into step behind him, leaving Stephanie and the others over my shoulder.  I feel a little bad about pulling ahead of Stephanie at this point, but I figure that by the last half-mile, I'll be wheezing my way towards the finish and she'll glide right by me, politely suppressing a snicker.  My only other running race experience was a 5k run I did with Michele in Niagara Falls one year, and after running side by side for the first half mile, my lovely bride got tired of me holding her back and took off, beating me by a full 5 minutes at the end of the race.  I fully expected Stephanie to do the same to me by the time this was over.

     As I ran along behind the leader, a third guy in long red basketball pants and carrying a walkman in his hand pulled up alongside us.  The three of us began chugging up the hill together, and I even took the opportunity between breaths to squeeze in the obvious joke while passing a "Speed Limit 15" sign by the side of the road.  No response from my competitors-- they were in the zone and not going to be distracted by such simple shenanigans.

     A quarter mile later, still climbing up the hill, the first guy had dropped back, and it was Red Pants and I setting the pace.  Up ahead, I could see where the road doubled back on itself along a ridge higher up on the hill, and it seemed inconceivable that I could keep running uphill to there and beyond, but I was at least matching the pace of Red Pants, which was all that mattered for now. 

     At this point, I was sweating like a fiend, partially because that's what happens when I exercise, and partially because running in 80 degree weather with 80% humidity will do that to you.  I started to wish I had had some water when I woke up,but it was too late now.  A few minutes later, coming around the inside of a curve, I snatched the lead from Red Pants.  I just figured that it was because I was on the inside of this particular turn, and waited for him to go by on the next curve where I had the outside.  But he didn't.  Suddenly, I had the lead, although it certainly wasn't by much.  The sedan dropped back alongside the police car that poked along a few feet in front of me, and the cameraman leaned out the window to preserve the moment for posterity. 

     By the halfway point of the race, cresting the hill near my house, I was still in front and now heading downhill.  Red Pants was still behind me, but I figured now that he had a chance to speed up a little on the downhill leg, he'd soon zip by me.  A water station was set up at the U.S. Embassy parking lot, across from my house, and I dodged traffic coming the other way to get over there for a cup of water.  

     I then realized that it was impossible to drink water and continue to run at the same time, and wound up spilling most of the water on my shirt.   I had already saturated the shirt with sweat in the first mile, so the water just dripped off me onto the ground.  Feeling bad about just dumping the paper cup along the road, where either someone would have to go pick it up or, more likely, just leave it there until the next downpour swept it away, I crumpled it up and shoved it into the pocket of my shorts.  The change in course, from uphill to downhill was rejuvenating, and while I chugged along, waiting for Red Pants and Stephanie and the rest of them to blow by me, I stretched out my stride, regaining much of my energy. 

     Passing the Mobil station near my house, I noticed a van from the local radio station parked  under the pumps and a guy with a microphone standing in the parking lot.  As I run by, he yells to me "Hey, it's supposed to be a walk-a-thon, not a run-a-thon!"  A fraction of a second later, I hear his comment boom out of speakers mounted on the van, and I realize he's doing live coverage of the race on the radio. 

    In a normal situation, I'd certainly have had a snappy response for him, but the bulk of my brain is preoccupied with keeping me from having a heart attack.   "Fine, tell that to the guy behind me," was all I managed to shout back to him.  Pathetic.

     By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, I was inexplicably still in the lead, but the rejuvenation from the downhill section had long faded.  I kept expecting-- hell, hoping-- that someone would sprint by me and give me an excuse to slow down and catch my breath.   But no one had stepped up, and I had no idea if there was even anyone behind me anymore.   The torque of even turning around slightly to look behind me was sure to overwhelm the tiny portion of my energies that were set aside to keep me balanced.   For all I knew, everyone else had all dropped out of the race outside my house and were right this moment raiding my fridge.

      I've never been good enough at anything to make being competitive even a possibility.  So I was shocked to find myself actually thinking "I might actually win this thing," as I hit the bottom of the hill, about a half mile away from the track.  I had about three seconds to mull that thought over and actually decide to try to win when I began hearing wet, thudding footsteps in the rain-soaked sand on the shoulder of the road behind me.   It sounded like whoever was behind me was behind by no more than a yard or two.  

     Having now decided that I wanted to win, I poured on a little bit more speed, but with no racing experience under my belt, I had  no idea whether I had enough energy for a "finishing kick" or not.  The footsteps continued behind me nonetheless, and I had to assume that the guy behind me was just hanging back the whole time, pacing me and waiting to make his move.  I thought to myself that there was no need to kill myself since it was obvious the guy behind me was preparing for a sprint to the finish, but I figured I'd try to at least finish with a good time, so I kept up my speed. Approaching the track, the course veered off the road, marked off with orange traffic cones turning towards the college parking lot.  Two young guys standing on either side were shouting encouragement at someone, and I'm sure it wasn't me.   Red Pants was probably right behind me.  I threw another little burst of speed on, knowing the track was only about 100 yards away.

     Heading down the concrete ramp to the track, I saw another line of cones curving away from the finish line.  With a couple of not-very-complicated hand gestures, the guy manning the cones pointed out that the race ended with a lap around the track.  Hell, I had pretty much spent everything I had just staying ahead to this point, and another 400 meters was not something I had planned on.  But I was still in the lead, and I pulled into the inside lane, hoping to cut down the distance to the finish line to the bare minimum.  Coming around the far turn, I was finally able to look behind me to see where Red Pants was, half expecting him to streak by me on the outside.  I could see someone still heading down the far side of the track, but my vision was blurry, and I couldn't even determine if those legs churning away on the other side of the track were red or not.  I poured on every last bit of energy I had on a sprint to the finish line just in case. 

     3.7 kilometers after we had started, I was the first one done. 

     As I crossed the finish line, one of the volunteers called out my time: 30:24.  Hmm.  "That doesn't sound quite right," I thought, in between gasps for air.  Even if it was 2.2 miles like Stephanie said, that was nearly 15 minutes a mile.  Oprah ran a whole marathon doing 10 minute miles.  I tried to do some math in my head as I watched Stephanie come down the ramp and start her final lap.  She crossed the finish line first among the women, and in sixth place overall, with a final time of about 32:00.  We gulped down a couple of glasses of water trying to catch our breath, and, since the organizers insisted, helped ourselves to another t-shirt each at the finish line. 

     We milled around for a little while at the finish, dissecting the race, talking to the people we had met at the starting line, and just regaining our strength.  Finally, we headed back up to the road to hit the Rock Island Cafe for breakfast.  I checked the clock inside the door.  It was 6:50 a.m.  On any other day, I'd still be asleep right now.

     After an "omelet" for breakfast (really just a thin scrambled egg wrapper encasing about a pound of mushrooms, black olives, and cheese), another five glasses of water, and a good half hour of just sitting there panting at the Rock Island, we finally managed to catch a cab back to my car at the starting line, and I dropped Stephanie off at home to get her dive gear together.  A friend had arranged a diving excursion for today, and we had about 20 minutes to gather up our gear, get a lunch fixed, and get down to the docks before the boat left.  

      Stephanie had arranged to pick me up around 8:20, and finally showed up at 8:40, cursing about running late.  This was only her second diving trip since coming here, and she was convinced that the boat would leave by 8:45, as she had been told by the guy who arranged the trip.  I, now being a veteran of this kind of thing after 5 diving trips, told her to relax, since the trip to the docks took only five minutes on a weekend, and the boats never left before 9:00 anyway. 

     As it turned out, we got to the docks at 8:47, and, like the race four hours ago, were the first ones there.  So early, as it turns out, that Steph, who had made herself a lunch and then left it at home in her haste to rush out the door, had time to walk over to a convenience store two blocks away and come back before anyone else from our group arrived.  

     As has been my policy, I will not attempt to relate details of the actual dive.   Effusively descriptive writing is not my strong suit, and there's only so many times I can write about "vibrantly colored fish" and "elaborate coral formations."   Hell with it, that's what diving guides are for.  But I will share one short story about today's dive.

     We did a dive called "Ulong Channel," the same dive I did my first day here. We were drifting along the channel about 45 feet below the surface, when I noticed some of our group making some odd movements up ahead.  As I got closer, I noticed that our dive guide had his small scuba knife out, holding it up defensively, and another diver was kicking his feet at a medium-sized fish that was just beyond the tips of his fins.

     Jill had repeatedly claimed that sharks were nothing of a hazard compared to triggerfish, and that she had once seen a friend bitten by a triggerfish and forced to get stitches.  I chuckled at her fear, since all of the fish I had ever seen here were either really skittish and would flee if you got too close, or big and lazy, swimming around like they were caught in the throes of a massive hangover, and were far too tired to bite anyone.  Besides, I wouldn't know a triggerfish if it was dropped in my lap.

     Now, I know better.  For a distance of about 60 feet along the floor of the channel, vibrantly colored triggerfish had nested in elaborate coral formations, and would swim menacingly at anyone who came too close.  "Menacingly" being a relative term for a fish that's no bigger than two feet long, but when one of them turned to face me head on, I could see that it had to very animal-looking teeth jutting out from the top and bottom of its jaws.  I had never given much thought to the idea that fish had teeth, but these were pretty serious looking. 

    As we'd drift closer to them, they'd angrily rise up off the bottom and swim vigorously to intimidate you until you had moved on.  Every time you thought you had escaped one, you'd drift down the channel another few feet and another one would pop out from behind a coral head or come up from the bottom. It was a little bit like the "Attack of the Triggerfish" videogame.  As we were helplessly swept along through the channel, wave after wave of hostile fish popped up at us from either side, above, or below until we had passed by at which point they receded back down to the coral.   I watched one nip at the tip of a fin of one of our group, and decided that things would be a little safer another ten feet up or so. 

     This story doesn't really have a snappy finish, except that after a while, we got through the triggerfish wave and continued with the dive, but it was kind of surreal being threatened by a bunch of fish.  Or maybe it just seemed surreal because of a lack of sleep.

      By the time we got back to the docks and were heading home, I was flat-out beat.   I had remembered Stephanie saying something about going to the cookoff, but I hadn't paid much attention.  As we rounded the corner near the legislature, there was a bustle of activity in one of the small, thatch-covered pavilions that had been erected on the lawn as an "Olympic Village" for the recently passed Micronesian Games.   "That must be the cookoff," Stephanie said excitedly, "do you want to go?"

     "If you want to...," I answered non-committally.  I don't make decisions like that very well, and would really just prefer someone to tell me what they wanted to do.  Even a question that gave some hint as to the answer that was expected--"Would you mind if we stopped at the cookoff for a while?" or something like that-- was better than this psychological game where one person has an agenda but wants the other to independently validate it.  Finally, after a good half-mile worth of "If you want to go, I'll go," and "It's up to you," and "Whatever you want to do..." repartee back and forth, I decide that this is another change I need to make in my life.  So rather than drag this surrealist Abbot & Costello routine out until we were all the way to my house, I suddenly announce, "Yeah, let's go to the cookoff."  As if she had been awaiting that kind of decisiveness, Steph screeched on the brakes and whipped the car around to head back to the event.   

     We got back down to the cookoff grounds and meet up with the organizers we had seen that morning, receiving congratulations and faint praise over our performance twelve hours ago.  Although the cookoff was vaguely advertised as being held "after the walk-a-thon," it had actually been underway for only an hour or so.  We sat around kibitzing while the "judges" sampled the different entries and submitted their score sheets.  The organizer sitting next to me was tabulating the results, and with a few sheets left to go, she looked over at one of the Palauan women and muttered under her breath "she always wins." 

    Ten minutes later, the results were announced.  "She," in this case, was some older Palauan woman who had won the cookoff last year too, and who jumped up and down and squealed with delight when her name was called.  I could see, at least in part, why she had won-- unlike most entrants who served their concoctions on paper plates, the woman had made up elaborately woven trays to serve her food on, and had garnished her table with overturned baskets spilling fruits out onto the table. 

     Once the winners were announced, the spectators were free to sample whatever was left over, and Stephanie and I quickly gathered up a nice schmear of the various contestants, then settled down for a free meal.  Naturally, we had to start with the winning dish, "Citrus Baked Fish," which tasted, well, like baked fish with a slice of orange on top.  Not bad, but not great either.  The second place entry, "taro leaf soup," was far too sweet to eat much of, and I put down my cupful of the pale purple glop on a nearby table with the intention of later abandoning it.  A second version of the soup, an alternate entry, was more like regular soup, and received dissenting votes from both Stephanie and I as being superior to its victorious cousin. 

     We skipped the third place winner, which was some sort of barbecued meat-something that most certainly offended our vegetarian sensibilities, and instead, turned to the deserts.  After one bite, Stephanie stopped talking about anything else, and just repeatedly praised some banana-pie something or other that she was eating.  I tried a bite or two, and, like the sashimi, couldn't really figure out what the big deal was.  But for the next ten minutes, she was in some sort of gastronomic ecstasy, muttering about "having to get the recipe," and making contented little "mmm" noises with each bite.  

     A couple of epilogues to this story: the next morning at work, Stephanie confessed that she got home from the cookoff around 7:00 p.m., took a shower, and went to bed by 8:00.  I'm not sure exactly what I was doing (I think I was experimenting with a new format for this website), but I didn't get to sleep until around midnight, nearly 20 hours after I woke up.  I'd like to say it was the thrill of victory keeping me up, but I had more or less forgotten about it by then.

     A couple of days later, I got an invitation dropped off at the court for the "Tourism Awareness Week Awards Ceremony."  Since Stephanie had forced me to do the run with her in the first place, I forced her to come to the awards ceremony.  There were about 150 people there, almost none of whom had any involvement with the race, but we spent the night listening to a couple of "yachties"-- an American expat and his Australian wife who had retired and now lived aboard a 30 foot sailboat moving from place to place-- spin yarns about this and that. 

     The top three finishers from the race were among those called up to the front to receive a certificate and prize (I thought it wasn't really fair that there weren't separate prizes for the top female finishers, but Stephanie sportingly claimed she thought it was admirably "progressive" to not make distinctions like that), which was dinner for two at the Palau Pacific Resort-- one of the nicest places in town.  I recognized Red Pants as the second place finisher.  I meant to say something and shake his hand, but he disappeared almost immediately, and I was unable to pick him out of the crowd later since he had apparently abandoned his unlucky pants for the ceremony.

     The certificate itself caused no end of entertainment to Stephanie.  Since it wouldn't work well as an image using my current setup, I won't put a photo of it here (yet), but the text of it reads:

Certificate of Merit
It is with great pleasure that we award
Brian Bergeuin
the 1998 Tourism Awareness Week
Run/Walk-a-thon
First Place
for outstanding running achievement in the TAW '98
walk/run competition.  Distance: 3.7k.  Time: 30:24
Given this 20th Day of November 1998
in the city of Koror, Republic of Palau

     Steph liked the misspelled name, but that was just icing on the cake compared to the fact that it memorialized for all eternity the fact that I had run the race at an average of 15 minutes a mile.  Here, I had finally won some athletic competition, and the only proof I had of my victory simultaneously confirmed that I had won it at a pace just slightly slower than the average small child or senior citizen. 

      In my own defense, I have since gotten in my car and driven the whole route while studying my odometer, and found out that the trip from the base of the bridge to the track itself was a full 5 kilometers, with the lap around the track adding another .4k.   That makes the whole run actually 5.4k instead of 3.7, or a total of about 3.3 miles instead of 2.2.  Even at 3.3 miles, a time of 30 minutes is an average of nearly 9 minutes a mile, which will leave serious runners snickering.  But apparently here, it's good enough for first. 

     Or, as Stephanie now says, I'm "the Fastest Man in Palau."

This chapter uploaded on 11/27/98.

On to Chapter 12...

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