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2001-08-30 - 11:21 am Wendymail: A Monkey on My Windshield My diary is acutally an evolution for me. My adventures on the internet actually began with Nia's office, a place I've never been but where I'm apparently famous. Many a Monday morning, I would get an email from Nia talking about this and that and usually ending, "� and how was your weekend?" So I would write back. Unbeknownst to me, whatever I said would usually have Nia in hysterics at her desk. This led to her coworkers asking what was so damn funny. So she would read them my latest tale of woe and tragedy. Two interesting phenomena developed. Most of her office didn't believe I existed. They figured she was getting this stuff from some humor forwarding list. To this day, I'm not sure her coworkers think I'm real. Her IT security people once went after her for all the 'nasa.gov' email she received from me. So she forwarded them my stories. Which lead to hysterical laughter, disbelief, and her IT people adding my email address to the allowed list. A ritual developed where people would stop by her desk and inquire for updates. Do we have Wendymail yet? When Nia received my missives, she'd read them, deem them fit for public consumption, then stand up at her desk and shout, We've got Wendymail! Kind of like the AOL mail notice, but different. People would gopher out of cubicles and tramp off to Nia's desk for storytime. Consider this. If my stories are funny to read, think about Nia reading them out loud, complete with hand gestures. Slowly, a trend developd where I would write up the adventures of some incredibly strange weekend and forward it to my 'Wendymail' list - a select group of friends that had expressed interest and would still speak to me after I told them about my real life. My husband says I'm a magnet for weirdness, some sort of nexus between this world and an alternate reality - but then he does have to listen to my dreams. These stories are one reason Gen really wanted me to post a diary. And aren't you sorry now, Bubbles? Sad things I know are true: ~I'm funnier in print than in person. ~My life reads like an internet joke. ~Teachers are not paid enough. ~Just to completely devalue my existence, one day I'm going to find my stories on those Urban Myths websites. Since nothing startlingly funny has happened this week, and I still haven't seen our border collie chase the geese, I figure this entry will fall back on old material. Yes, Gen, I'm going to post the monkey story. Monkey on My Windshield This is something I wrote about three years ago when Nia asked how NASA engineers did surviving in Japan. Even in Japan I cannot escape the weirdness that consumes my life. In the fall of '97, NASA sent me to Tanegashima, a little island just south of the Japanese mainland in preparation for the launch of the TRMM mission, a spacecraft I have been working on for about four years. The spacecraft was successfully launched from Japan on Thanksgiving Day, 1998, and is doing beautifully. Anyway, the Japanese launch facility is located on Tanegashima, a beautiful little island much like Hawaii with less flowers. A lovely place to work. The people are friendly, even if you don't speak the language, the beer is cheap and the food is cheaper. The space center has it's own beach and coral reef so you can snorkel after work; what's not to like? But, we are American tourists. Can we stay in one place and watch the ocean? No. That would be why Zen gardens aren't that prevelant in America. During our duty assignment we had one day off and we choose to venture to the next island over, Yakushima. Why? Because we are Americans and we cannot be content, especially when the Yakushima is famed for its incredible wildlife preserves, large cedar forests, hiking opportunities, hot springs, and the local monkeys. So we sally forth and twelve of us take the hydrofoil over to Yakushima. Then, we attempt to rent a car. Despite our abhorent command of Japanese (the lady finally gave up and called her friend that spoke English) we secure transportation for twelve: A four person car and a minivan thing that seats nine. You know that moment when fifteen people are standing in a parking lot trying to decide which restaurant to go to? Well, we had that moment about driving. Once we had secured the cars, it then became a question of who's going to drive. I'm not going to drive, you drive. Not that van up those mountain roads. Well I'm not going to do it. Who brought their international driver's license anyway? What does Wendy do? You guessed it. Sickened by the lack of progress, Harry and I volunteered to drive on the condition we did not have to navigate. And guess who had to drive the van? That would be the person that drives a large vehicle (my Tahoe) and grew up in the mountains. So here I go, me in a van driving on the left in a foreign country where I can't read the road signs with seven hecklers in the van with me. Lovely. Slowly we wind up this mountain. Much like Hawaii, we have sheer embankment thirty feet up on the left and sheer cliff three hundred feet down on the right. Guardrails? No. But instead the shoulder is marked by rain gutters a foot deep and just wide enough to stick a tire in. Slowly upward. The road narrows. The road squeezes. The road is now one lane through construction around blind corners with three miles to go. You know the mirrors they post in the corners of 7-11 so the desk clerk can see all corners of the store? That's what they put at those blind corners in Japan so you can see a blurry flash of movement before the oncoming car ends up nose to nose with you. Harry is following me, driving the car, because he wants me to die first. I'm beginning to understand where the concept for Donkey Kong came from. Onward and upward. The scenery is lovely, we haven't hit anyone yet, and all is going well. Wait, what luck! A small mule deer! We stop the van to point at the deer, which runs away. But look! On the other side! The monkeys! Oh joyful! We so wanted to see the monkeys. See how shy they are! Oh a cute family. We all roll down our windows and lean out with cameras. Here monkey! Koochie-koochie! Oh, funny monkey. Look. Shh everyone, don't scare them. They're coming closer. Bam. Two monkeys on my windshield. EVERYONE ROLL UP YOUR WINDOWS NOW! Panic ensues. Don't monkey's carry ecoli? Rabies? Fleas? Argh! (* See note below*) Here we are trapped in the van with monkeys climbing all over it. Our companion car behind us is not faring any better. They've got a big one sitting on the hood making faces at the driver. This is quite amusing for a bit as we all take pictures of the monkeys, but after ten minutes we are feeling claustrophic and the monkeys are looking at us like the filling in a twinkie (Japanese vans are shaped like that you know). Beeping the horn is irrelevant to the monkeys (okay, it's a pitiful little horn anyway). Windshield wipers, just makes them jump around in a vaguely amusing fashion. Well, we can't go anywhere with these monkey attached. But if I drive, I'll hurt them. Okay, okay, everybody stop yelling at me. I let the van creep forward a little. Oh, poor babies they are spooked. They jump off and flee into the trees from whence they crept. Laughing and relieved, we drive to the top and spend several hours hiking beautiful trails through waterfalls and cedar forests that were ancient before America was a country. What a lovely afternoon, but we must get down the mountain and catch the boat home. Ten minutes later we come to ... monkeys in the road. Three tiny cute cuddly babies that you don't want to hit are sitting in the road. I slow and stop so I can veer around them and BAM two monkeys on my windshield. WAIT A MINUTE! Cute creatures my ass! They are con artists! They put the babies in the road to lure your sympathy so they can trap you. The locals are wise to this maneuver and whip through the barricade of adorable monkeys, scattering them and getting away home free while we are stuck with extra passengers. So the tourists fell for it. No problem, we've been through this before. When you drive, they jump off in terror. Or not. Maybe instead they jump climb to the side view mirrors and surf the breeze like California boys. So we drive and they are hanging off the sides letting it all blow in the wind. Picture trying to drive with a money butt plastered to your windshield and you'll get the idea. (Free trivia: unlike Barbie, they are anatomically correct.) A mile later I slow down. Maybe if we slow down, they won't be afraid and they'll jump off before we go too far. The monkeys climb on the roof and start jumping up and down. This is not an improvement. Our companion car behind us has the big father monkey sitting like Buddha on the hood of their car, gesticulating forward as if to say Wagons Ho. Think. Everybody think. Eight engineers should be able to outwit two monkeys. Oh, thank god, Sam brought Ritz crackers. So the guy by the rear window, opens it, risking letting the monkey in the car, sticks his body halfway out and starts yelling "Here monkey" and waving Ritz crackers. (It looked as exactly absurb as it sounds.) The monkeys go for it. He throws the Ritz, leans in and slams the window. Monkey grabs the Ritz and JUMPS BACK ON THE CAR. The guys in the car behind us are taking pictures. Okay, okay, we just have to be faster. Another Ritz. This one goes too far into the trees; the monkeys aren't interested in that much work. We pause for an ethical discussion on whether to feed monkeys people food and isn't this just teaching them bad habits? Maybe we should feed them paper? Isn't that littering? Poisoning animals? What if we're taking a momma monkey too far from her babies? Well, we didn't make them jump on the damn car. Shut up and throw another Ritz. The third Ritz works. One monkey away and I floor the van. The big guy is still hanging on to my side view mirror. We repeat the manuever with a fourth Ritz. By now this monkey has been with us for three miles. Fourth Ritz he grabs and jumps back on the windshield. Fifth Ritz is perfect. Not too far for him to loose interest, just far enough I have time to floor it. The car behind us has also shed their monkey boy. We drive like lunatics for half a mile until we feel safe from the commuter monkeys. But our ordeal is not over. We have to gas the car before we can return it to the rental place and no one speaks Japanese and there are all these uniformed attendents gesticulating madly at us. Drive right? Drive left? Give the receipt to the monkey? What are you saying? Is that anatomically possible? Sigh. * Note * Here, gentle reader, we insert our fellow sufferer and my former officemate, Sam's, comments pertaining to the *starred section for you consideration... Now, I don't want to sound like a disease snob, but I think Wendy meant to write Ebola, not ecoli (which should actually be written as E-coli). The only way us van-riders could have risked E-coli is if we had caught the monkeys, skinned and gutted them, and then improperly handled the monkey meat before eating them. I thought I just had to mention this. Ladies and Gentlemen, my friend Sam. Yes, he needs a life. Yes, he has the Center for Disease Control Website bookmarked. -editor � � � 
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