Dogs, Ponies and Lions

Saturday, June 24th

At the risk of sounding queer, I’ve got to say that today, I feel fat. Wow. No exercise + no nicotine + hours spent lying around reading manuals + boredom eating= Jesse feels fat. I think its quite justified. I feel like I do nothing more than sleep, eat and read, with a random car ride mixed in here or there usually for the purpose of getting a beer or two. I sincerely hope that this is not a precursor of what’s to come, otherwise the next time you all see me I’ll be a rotund deuce and a half.

The past week was by no means an exceptional show of excitement, but had its definite highlights. Last Saturday the four of us took an outing to Pilanesberg National Park, up along the Botswana border. It was up in the high, arid, scrub-lands bordering some 8 to 9000 ft. mountains, quite reminiscent of southwestern New Mexico, eastern Arizona or even the area around Santa Fe (Laura!). Despite our better judgment we took the Hyundai Getz, that super manly, chick magnet of a car, off-roading into the African grasslands. We looked quite incongruous yet again, 4 guys in a tiny car, being passed on dirt roads by curious onlookers, comfortably lounging in Landrovers and I swear I could hear the zebras laughing. We nervously joked about whether the park gate guards placed wagers on whether the 4 idiots in the tin can would make it out alive.

While driving around the park for about 5 hours or so we spotted most of the renowned African animals everyone knows…hippos, rhinos, zebras, sparrows, chickadees, giraffes, waterbucks, and wildebeests along with…various monkeys, baboons, gazelle, and the rare twizzle-horned pixie dust eater that Bryce claims was nearing extinction. Bet you forgot about them, huh?

The drive and park were cool experiences, but I would have much preferred a hiking tour of the area for it seemed like that SUV commercial where the two lazy bastards drive up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, roll down the window, snap a picture and say “OK, been there done that” and leave. Yeah, if it weren’t for the numerous STAY IN YOUR CAR OR YOU WILL BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY signs or the INSTANT DEATH AWAITS OUTSIDE YOUR FLIMSY CAR WINDOW signs or the HAVE ANY FAMILY MEMBERS YOU’D LIKE TO EXTERMINATE? PUSH THEM OUT THE CAR HERE signs, or my personal favorite, the DOES THE THOUGHT OF EVOLVING INTO A LION TURD APPEAL TO YOU? NO. THEN STAY IN YOUR CAR DUMBASS signs posted everywhere, I would have surely gotten out and done some exploring. But such was not the case, so I resigned myself to the uncomfortable back seat of the Getz with an occasional jaunt to the roof of the car when wildlife was spotted. The only disappointment was that we did not see any elephants or lions, the two big names we hoped to cross of the list. All in all it was a great experience and I’m hoping it was a bit of a warm-up for another real safari in Tanzania or Kenya, or the like, in my future. I did realize I need a new digital camera as well, most shots I got were of large animals’ back legs kicked up in the air, or of nothing at all because of the horrendous time lapse between when you press the shutter button and when it actually reacts. I was left with quite a few “this shot? This is where a hippo was. Cool huh? Yeah I know its only grass. There was a hippo there, I swear. Yes I know hippos don’t run faster than 1.5 mph. Leave me alone.” pictures. But I salvaged a few as well.

The other entertaining thing we did this week was heading to a lion park about an hour west of Pretoria. Now that was great. Once again you could either take a organized tour thru it or do a self tour. Once again we chose the Hyundai self tour. It was amazing, you could drive right up next to these humungous cats, and they pretended like you didn’t even exist. Talk about awe inspiring and majestic animals. They behaved just like big housecats, lounging around, lazy, stretching here and there, acting annoyed when you ran over their tail and blared the horn in their face while laughing and throwing cigarette butts out the window, so like I said, just like big housecats.




The greatest part of that trip, though, was when we got to play with the lion cubs. Not to use the same analogy again, but they were just like 50 lb. kittens, playful and mischievous, yet probably capable to take you down if they really wanted. See pics below...



Bryce had one latch onto his stomach, leaving a huge bruised bite mark as I laughed and took pictures, and Ed got hit by a threesome which ended up making him bleed. I was a bit more fortunate but some of my clothes ended up casualties when I wrestled a few cubs at once. If you turned your back to any of them it was only a matter of seconds before you ended up with a 50lb fur-ball clinging to your back. Yep, I’m ready for the real Africa now, if I can survive a lion attack the rest is cake.

Besides that this week was spent in simulators and in class rooms, where we studied up on riveting subjects like dangerous goods (Hazmat) and CRM. While in the dangerous goods class I got a good laugh. The teacher was explaining that poison and live animals, such as dogs, didn’t go well together in a cargo hold (go figure!). Yet every time she said “poison” in her South African accent it sounded like Pony to me (I don’t know how). Questioning and annoyed glances were shot my way when I started giggling like a little girl every time she noted that Dogs and Ponies do not belong together in a cargo bay of an aircraft. Its nice to be easily amused.