Subject:
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Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.adventurers
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Date:
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Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:57:19 GMT
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Viewed:
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3657 times
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Someone once defined adventure as someone else having a hard time a long ways
away.
What an adventure! :-)
I have a Congo African Grey parrot. Just take the gray Lego parrot and slap
some red paint on its tail feathers and thar ya go!
Bruce
In lugnet.adventurers, Mark Lindsey writes:
> Craig,
> I can speak from experience on this one. I was in the Republic of the Congo
> for a six month vegetation survey two years ago. While the river basin is
> stunningly beautiful it is at the same time one of the most inhospitable
> regions on Earth for Westerners. The vegetation is absolutely breath taking.
> Think of every plant, tree, vine, and shrub on a gargantuan scale and
> thoroughly pissed that you want to get by it. The fauna is everywhere. You
> can't turn around without find thirty somethings crawling, slithering, biting,
> or excreting on you. The weather is also powerful. Humidity remains at 99%
> to 100% for the entire year. Malaria is rampant (I got my second dose of it
> here). Water, while plentiful is not to be trusted, try brushing your teeth
> with beer or Pepsi. The locals who travel up and down the Ubangi branch of
> the Congo river are a mix of hunter-gatherer natives and Guerillas. As
> sketchy as it was to be mixing with dissidents, you were happy to have them
> around, because where there were no people there was an abundance of sleeping
> sickness, giardia, and tsetse flies. No people translated into low survival
> rates. I cannot imagine trying to film something here. Especially in the
> 1950's. You always think of the jungle as the cradle of life and assume that
> it is therefore nurturing to you. It is nurturing in a way. Nurturing to
> EVERY type of life...the majority of which are highly hostile to humans. The
> phrase, "It's a jungle out there" doesn't have much meaning to most of us from
> the West and I guess that is why Huston really wanted to film on location. By
> showing a thoroughly miserable Bogart and Hepburn, Huston captured the spirit
> of the Congo. If you can deal with the unbelievably calous dialogue, Joseph
> Conrad's The Heart of Darkness also captures this region. I will say this as
> someone who has been there, I have mixed emotions about it. I can't rightly
> say I would ever want to go back, but at the same time I could not say I would
> turn down the oppurtunity. It is a region that will truly test your mettle
> and then some. When I took the career path I did, I am a Climatologist
> specializing in vegetation patterns to be brief and nontechnical, I had no
> idea I would go some of the places I have gone. Of all my fieldwork that six
> months in the Congolese republic was the most hellish and wonderful. In the
> end I realized how utterly ill equipped I was to go without bathing, clean
> laundry, fastfood, clean water, steady bowels, etc., etc., etc. When you hear
> people berating Westerners for being gluttonous wasteful pigs just smile
> politely and be thankful that we are. I know this had nothing to do with lego
> but I thought I would share that with the world. This is what Adventurers is
> all about to me. And if you really want horror stories ask me sometime about
> Cameroon or Botswana, those are scary due to the political circumstances so I
> didn't include them.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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| (...) {{SNIP}} <grin> The version of this definition that I recall from some time spent hiding in Vietnam is: 'Adventure (or exploration) is the process of travelling to beautiful, exotic lands to find new and extremely messy ways of becoming dead.' (...) (27 years ago, 28-Oct-99, to lugnet.adventurers)
| | | Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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| (...) I love that definition Bruce. I think that is as rock solid as you will get in trying to define it. Glad you liked hearing of mine. Can your parrot talk? I bet he can say, "Don't read Piers Anthony. Awk!" ;) Mark L (27 years ago, 29-Oct-99, to lugnet.adventurers)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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| (...) and (...) Craig, I can speak from experience on this one. I was in the Republic of the Congo for a six month vegetation survey two years ago. While the river basin is stunningly beautiful it is at the same time one of the most inhospitable (...) (27 years ago, 28-Oct-99, to lugnet.adventurers)
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