Homer's Odyssey Chapter 2: Tom Visits and Homer Gets Tempermental

When Tom visited, we had a great time out on the Rock Islands, swimming at PPR, hiking to the waterfall, and rubbing elbows with the President (aka, seeing him nearby at a restaurant). But that doesn't mean he was pampered the whole time--he was driving Homer after all.

One day, I went to work and planned to give Tom the car over my lunch hour so he could explore Koror a little if he wanted. About 20 minutes after I got into work, the marshals called to let me know that one of my back tires was completely flat. Oy! So I took my errand time and headed to a nearby gas station to fill it up, hoping that the tire would make it through the day. I let Tom know that he should keep an eye on it, but that he'd be able to drive around town without too much trouble. So I was relieved when at the end of the day Tom picked me up and the tire was in tact! But then I saw the expression on poor Tom's face. He informed me that the folks at PPR had to fill up Homer's completely flat tire. Way to take care of your little bro Island Girl!

Hearing this, I thought OK, it's almost 5 and all the auto repair shops will be closing...and I told Tom we'd go out for dinner. And obviously we didn't want to spend the night walking back to my apartment. What to do?? Then I remembered a small shop on the route back to my apartment with the sign reading "Fix Tire Available Here."

We pulled up, and the shop lived up to the hype...after 20 minutes and $4 (woohoo!), the tire was fixed. So Tom and I hopped back into Homer, happy to head to dinner. But apparently Homer wasn't in the mood for sashimi because he wouldn't start. Arrgh! And because the sign described the entirety of that shop's services, they didn't have jumper cables or a booster to get Homer up and running. And of course the auto shop next door closed 5 minutes before we realized Homer had died, and no mechanics I knew were answering their phones. To add insult to Homer's injury, Tom was nursing a sunburn that only a Wisconsin boy on the equator could manage, and the flies were starting to bite.

I looked around helplessly at the men at the repair shop, and one of them, who'd just stopped by to pick up a few tires for himself--and didn't actually work there--grabbed a set of jumper cables from his nearby car. I figured we were saved once he volunteered to help out, but when he tried to start the car, Homer wasn't budging. He took a look at my battery and announced it was "too small for the car." Hmmm...not a question I thought of asking when I bought Homer...lesson learned I guess!

So now what? Well, isn't it obvious? Our good Samaritan promptly walked over to his car, took the battery out, walked it back to Homer, took out Homer's battery, put his battery in Homer, my battery in his (smaller) car, and successfully jumped Homer.

Whaaa?? Now, I've mentioned that I have little to no car expertise, but this isn't a run of the mill tactic in car starting, right? I mean he was basically juggling batteries back and forth between the cars. I was half expecting an explosion...but I really wanted to get Homer up and running so I just kept my distance and crossed my fingers.

Given that we were able to juice up Homer's mini-battery, our friend switched the batteries back, but Homer was just being stubborn and still refused to start. And that's when Tom and I learned just how fantastic folks in Palau are. This man offered to switch the batteries back, follow us to my apartment, and then switch them back so that Tom and I could get home together and I could have a mechanic come to my apartment the next morning instead of the side of the road.

I'm going to guess that it wasn't part of his evening's plans, but he insisted and we gratefully accepted. So we performed the battery switch-a-roo once again, Tom and I ended up enjoying a large amount of poke sashimi, and I tallied yet another time I've been helped out by complete strangers. I guess I have Homer to thank for making me appreciate Palau in a way I wouldn't have otherwise!

Palau Half Marathon: My Quest for T-shirts Continues

I'm still in Palau and haven't forgotten about the blog! Sorry about the silence over the past month, I've gotten a bit caught up in diving, running, basketball-ing, zip lining, playing in treehouses, swimming, and (of course) car repairing. The silver lining is that all my running around has provided excellent blogging material. So let's start with running!

The Palau Half Marathon took place on April 2, 2011, just a week after I returned from visiting Jesse in Hawaii. After almost two weeks where I consumed only macadamia nuts, coconut syrup, and waffles, and my training consisted of boogie boarding and playing about 20 games of foosball a day, I wasn't feeling all that confident in my half marathoning abilities. But...

Yup! Somehow I managed to win for the women. And a picture made it into the Island Times...a picture that was immediately post-race and will never leave Palau if I have anything to say about it. So you'll just have to settle on a few of the photos that I had editorial control over...

(A post-race photo with all the participants. The last 100 yards or so were across the beach at PPR. Hopping into the ocean after finishing the race wasn't half bad!)

(Some of the ladies from the judiciary raced too!)

Overall, the race was a ton of fun. But man, there were some low points! The race started in the state of Aimeliik, which is on the west side of Babeldaob about six miles away from the bridge to Koror.

(Aimeliik is the light green state on the west side of Babeldaob. We started there and ran south over the Japan-Palau Friendship bridge into Koror, then onto Arakabesang, where PPR, the finish line, is located.)

It was scheduled to start at 5:30 in the morning, so participants met in downtown Koror at about 5 am and drove up to Aimeliik. We started on a gravel road about a mile and a half off the main road, in complete darkness. It was pretty funny to see everyone standing around waiting to start the race...or, I guess to not see everyone waiting around to start the race. But we had a few trucks to guide us, and a few runners had lights on their hats or shirts, so we were able to start running without running into each other. The first 1/2 mile or so was a lot of fun...I felt the great surge of adrenaline and excitement that I usually feel at the start of the race.

And then it started raining. And I started kicking myself. Now, the day before, I'd been trying to figure out whether I wanted to wear sunglasses or a hat, and bored various people with my thought process (much like I'm boring you now!). Ultimately I decided on sunglasses only, thinking that the sunglasses were lighter and I could deal with the rain with just sunglasses, so they'd serve me better in the long run. What I didn't think about was that it would start raining when the sun wasn't up yet. So...once it started pouring, I had put on my sunglasses in the pitch dark. Nice planning Anna!

As I ran through the darker dark, I tried my best to protect my ipod, but there really wasn't much that could be done because I was drenched to the bone after about 15 seconds of the rain. There was no tree coverage on the side of the road, so I stuffed it inside my already soaked shirt and hoped that I wasn't breaking my ipod for the second time.

The heavy rain came down for about the first 30 minutes of the race, and then settled into a sprinkle, which was quite pleasant despite the fact that my shoes weighed about 3 times their normal weight. And thankfully the sun started rising so I could actually see where I was going. So from about mile 3 to 7, I was content running through Aimeliik on the compact road. The route was smooth, there were relaxing rolling hills along the way, and the rain made for a cool sunrise.

But then we hit the halfway point, and we had to climb the K-B (Koror-Babeldaob) bridge, the "friendship bridge" funded by the Japanese in 2002.

It looks so picturesque right? Well it's also steep and painful, and after finishing it, we had to deal with a steady incline over the next 2 miles or so. That was particularly painful. About a mile and a half into the incline, I was ready to walk. But as luck would have it, I passed by a water station, and lo and behold, the President of Palau was standing there, cheering on the runners! I refused to look like a wimp in front of him, so I plugged on, and finally got into downtown Koror, where I was able to glide downhill for almost about 15 minutes and get some encouragement from Holly and Veronica, who'd woken up at about 4 am to man water stations. They even made me a sign!

The last mile or so of the race on Arakabesang involved 2 steep climbs and some powerful sunshine, but because I live on Arakabesang, I'd run the hills before and knew what to expect. And of course, finishing the race running along the beach looking out on the Pacific made me completely forget all those hills. Despite the rain, pain, and subsequent limping, I'd say that I'd do it again--not just for the t-shirt.

(Boom.)

Kryptonite!

Even though most of the activities I report on involve the water in some way, the biggest sport here is clearly basketball. At any given time there are three difference leagues competing at the Palau National Gymnasium, there are basketball hoops in every hamlet (that's what they call neighborhoods here), and the last page of every issue of the Island Times includes at least two articles about that week's games.

Palauan basketball is impressive too. What may be lost in the height that the best players in the states have is easily made up for in three-point shooting, ball handling, and speed.

My sisters will tell you that basketball...well it's just not my sport. I played in grade school and for a bit in high school, where I promptly got cut at the the beginning of my junior year. So it's not that I choose not to play, it's that I've been asked not to play. And although the Schumaker fam has been known to play some pretty intense games of lightning, when I get involved it inevitably becomes a chance for Lisa and Kelly to play "tackle Anna." I get the impression that I serve more of a comedic than athletic role when we play. And to top it off, it's been literally over a decade since I've played in an actual game, so the little skill I have is rusty.

Given my spotty history, when Veronica asked me whether I wanted to join the Palau Women's League and play for a team called Sam's Kryptonite, it was a good thing I hesitated. But Veronica, Holly, and Justice Foster were all playing, so I decided to give it a whirl as well. After all, Kryptonite is coached by Jubilee, who's been coaching and playing in Palau for years, and is basically the go-to person for all things basketball as far as I'm concerned.

We started practicing in the beginning of December. I've figured out how to shoot and handle the ball again, but I'm definitely not playing point guard any time soon. And I've come to the sad realization that I'm getting old because my ankles are killing me! Thankfully, my sister Lisa has some fancy-pants basketball shoes that she was willing to send me. I've been told that wearing her "And 1's" made me legit. So even though my 5 foot 4 inch frame doesn't look like that of a basketball player, and I don't really play like one, from below the knee I'm [insert really good basketball player's name here].

Practice takes place on an outdoor court near one of the schools here. It's not too shabby, our court is on a cleared field surrounded by coconut trees, and it's somewhat high up. So we play until the sun sets, or until it rains to the point where we're slipping and sliding all over the court. I've had a few not so gracious falls during practice. Like I said, I provide comic relief!

During practice we split the court with some of the kids from the neighborhoods, and Jubilee and our tough-as-nails assistant coach Ryan (Holly's fiance) run us through some drills. And then we attempt to scrimmage the neighborhood kids--they consistently trounce us in bare feet. Turns out, the And 1's don't carry much weight here. Despite the fact that Veronica, Holly, and Justice Foster are all very tall and athletic, these kids weave around us and make shots--more often than not 3 pointers--every time. So before the league officially started, our confidence was pretty low.

But thankfully we've got a bunch of other really talented ladies with experience playing Palauan ball. So we pressed on, kept on practicing, and we're going into the playoffs with a record of 5 and 5 (if memory serve). We've had some tough losses, and learned the hard way the "take no prisoners" attitude. The teams to beat are Money and Bring It On. Team Money (and I thought we had the perfect team name) has at least four women that played on the national team during the Micronesian games this past August, so they were tough. We stuck with them during the first half, but they pulled away in the end, beating us by 8. And when we attempted to take on Bring It On, we failed pretty miserably. We don't need to go into the score...let's just say we lost by more than 8. It wouldn't be that bit of a pride issue, but as I mentioned before, the Island Times reports the scores, making a 30-point loss sting a bit more. But lately we've been making some great ground, including a 90 to 42 victory! Put that score in the newspaper!

This coming week we head into play-offs. I'll keep you all posted on how we do. I'll do my best not to trip over my own two feet, throw airballs, and get beat on defense--not that any of that has happened...

Let's go Kryptonite!

Here are the girls!