Neolithic Stone Henge Adventure

I caught the sun rising on the Standing Stones.

Mainland Orkney is so far flung a part of Scotland that most Scots don't ever visit.

My journey began with a six hour bus ride from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, a wealthy oil town with buildings made of glittering granite. 

The public gardens in Aberdeen include an enormous granite statue of Robert the Bruce.

From there, I caught a ferry to mainland Orkney. The crossing takes about 8 hours. 

There are quite a few Neolithic sites on Orkney. One can spend a couple hundred dollars just trying to navigate the island and visit them all. 

Two of the most impressive, however, are absolutely no cost at all to visit and are open 24 hours a day.

The Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar are among the oldest manmade things on earth. 

They are stone henge monuments. That's the proper name for any stone circle. And they are Neolithic ruins, which means they predate the familiar stone henge monument that the world knows simply as Stonehenge. 

It was not sunny for my visit. Thanks Wikipedia!

Though The Standing Stones were once part of  a complete circle, only 12 remain.

The most significant stone, the Odin Stone, was used by locals to solemnize love relationships as recently as 1810 until the landowner, bothered by a steady stream of trespassers, broke it down. 

Though there is no record of what the Vikings, who built the circles, used the henges for, the thwarted local courtship tradition may point to one purpose.

At the time of my visit, it was late May and there was almost 24 hr sun. 

Still I figured there would be some photographic drama to dawn at the Standing Stones. 

The only drama was high wind and a downpour of rain, however!

The Standing Stones are located on the southern part of an isthmus, a strip of land between two lakes. In the middle of the strip, a single stone stands alone. This is known as the Watch Stone.

I'm 6'5", so you can get a feel for the height of the Watch Stone.

Just like it's partners in either ring, the Watch Stone is spotted with lichens and moss in red, green, grey, and yellow tufts like tiny dried up fireworks.

You can walk right up to these monuments. Touch them. Hug them. There are no guards.

To the north is the Ring of Brodgnar, a complete stone circle, surrounded by a peat bog.

Wikipedia photo of the ring of Brodgar. I tried to touch them all!

The sulphurous bog might have made torches burn brighter. The smell would certainly have overwhelmed the senses. 

The ancient Vikings might not have understood basic chemistry, but they certainly understood theatrics. 

Whatever Happened to Frequency Hopper?

 Matt's bear had his own seat on my recent flight to Denver.

My readership was up to about 2.5K around the time that I returned to the United States from Scotland in 2011.

A great feat for a plucky half-time traveler!

Then suddenly the wire went dead. What happened?

I suffered a junk tech meltdown:

I compose Frequency Hopper on legacy machines.

A glitzy laptop makes one a target for thieves. 

If one busts out a pink clamshell Mac in a busy Athens café there may be snickers of pity, but one gets to keep the laptop when one leaves.

The primary drawback to legacy machines is that they break down.

Pismo, my trusty 2001 Macbook, suffered a shock on the road back from Costa Rica. Pismo was succeeded by Iggy, a  2004 1Ghz g4 iBook.



l to r: Pismo at the base of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. Iggy at a desk across from Hulen Lake in Missouri.

When I came back to San Francisco this past August, Iggy suffered a crack in his welding. The Mac repair place said I was better off replacing him than fixing him.

So now I have Pablo, a 2005 1.5 Ghz PowerBook.

After several failed attempts, I rescued data off Iggy with the help of some C-clamps that pressed the pieces of his cracked weld together.

Pablo is more robust and I look forward to many new adventures with him.

In addition, I popped a 32 Gig flash drive with 2 years worth of photos and videos on it.

A consultant in San Francisco wanted $500 to recover that data, a task that mostly requires patience and skill with a solder iron.

While I’m in Colorado, I can get it done for a fraction of that price.

So, that’s what I’m doing to get promised posts to you all.

My flatmates all melted down:

Chez Dale was the site of flatmate drama this past year.

As soon as I left for Scotland, one of my legal subtenants staged a rent protest over the phone and then moved out.

He moved two people into his room while I was gone.  When I returned, both my former legal subtenant and his duo of squatters verbally assaulted me and cyberbullied me.

They called me a liar, framed all kind of personal attacks on me based on my age and my sexuality, wrote a running criticism on my generosity (their rent was under market by several hundred dollars) and basically made my life as difficult as possible.

It took three months of standing my ground and a thousand dollars in legal fees and blood money to get my apartment back.

To add insult, the temporary occupant of my room,  rather than cleaning my room to suit herself, moved my entire library, organized by author and genre, into the mudroom, “because the books were dusty.” 

She placed many of them against a sweating window where quite a few rotted.

How I typically organize a bookcase (l) and a book damaged in my absence (r).

Many books, rare, signed personally to me by authors, were utterly lost to black mold. Those that were not lost were disorganized and I spent many hours recovering what was left over from mistreatment. 

As a writer, I form emotional attachments to these volumes, which mark my twenty years in San Francisco. To recover, I not only had to overcome my anger and sadness and also take time out of my busy schedule to move, sort, and recatalogue 1500 volumes.

I've been working hard:

Travel blogging doesn’t pay the rent. Sometimes it pays the gas bill.

I could hit up travel companies to be my corporate sponsors. And I am aware that Kickstarter gave out more money in grants than the NEA did last year.

But what I do instead is temporary office and event work.

I make about ½ of what my employer charges to do work I am precipitously overqualified for. Some weeks I make enough to pay for a trip overseas, some weeks I make only enough to keep the gas from being cut off at home.

I do some side writing, research and internet work and then I save save save. Sometimes I have a windfall. Recently, I got compensated for work I did almost three years ago.

Since, I can save money on the road over the cost of living in San Francisco, I travel when I can see there is no work.

There has been work. I was fortunate enough to work all but four days between August 1 and President’s Day.

I’ve had some wonderful contracts with some big names. They are no substitute for creating my own employment and seeing the joy in the face of a travel provider when I feature their tour or vacation rental.

I fell in love:

I unexpectedly met Matt on Market Street one night when he was visiting the City from Germany.

He asked me for directions and I gave him my digits.

He called 15 minutes later and we became inseparable.

I asked him to spend the rest of his time in the United States at Chez Dale and we enjoyed six weeks of cohabitation.

He serenaded me with his guitar, went hiking with me, did laundry with me and ate the vegan meals I prepared every night.

His unexpected humor and lightheartedness is what I like most about him.

One night, I made soup with a bay leaf. He took the bay leaf into his mouth with the last drop of soup and then spit it out like a green feather as he made a bird call.

That’s what I’m up against!

Your's Truly and Matt, Matt and Your's Truly.

As the day of his departure drew near, the contradictory nature of the U.S. immigration system for same-sex couples became evident.

If Matt was going back to a country where he could expect to be tortured, imprisoned, or killed for being gay, he could seek asylum. Because he fell in love with a man rather than a woman he would be expected return to Berlin. 

One night at Café Flore, we debated about “flying to Iowa” to get married, but quickly determined it would be of no help.

I took his hand in mine. I looked him in the eye and told him, “WHEN I ask you to marry me, it won’t be because of the federal government! AND there will be a ring!”

It is impossible to see the United State's compelling interest in keeping same-sex couples from marrying, true. It feels personal. It's as though the federal government actually wants to keep us apart or make us miserable.

They are putting red tape in our way, and in the way of hundreds of other couples like us. Red tape that would never put in the way of a mixed-sex couple.

BUT…

Matt's bear looking out over the Rockies.

- My tech issues are nearing an end.

- I have two wonderful new legal subtenants.

- I’m on the road again. This week I leave for Ecuador and Peru.

- Matt comes back to me from Berlin in a few months.  He has a good stateside attorney and good advice from friends in Germany.  We’re determined to be together.

Matt's bear eating his peanuts.

You, dear readers, give me confidence that all these challenges are worth overcoming.

You’ve inspired me with you snail mails and your emails, your comments and your friendship.

Mostly, you inspired me with the stories of your risk-taking: especially those of you who’ve gone abroad to new places this year.

So please keep reading because I’m not done fighting! :)