March 10, 2011 - 9PM - 10:30PM
Like many caching nights, kobidge and I had planned to go climbing first, then grab dinner (Subway is a general fave) before heading out for a night of caching. We didn't quite get the full climbing vibe this night, so we opted to grab dinner with my sister instead, then went out for our caching adventures. Since there is a bit of a discrepancy in our cache find numbers since I made the TBAS Series for kobidge's birthday in 2009, she has kindly been escorting me to the basic cache locations while watching me struggle (only a little, and mostly for show :) to find her cool caches. Tonight was no different, so I picked up part of her Spring Training Series (#2 Work Off The Burrito, #1 Dunkin..., and Smiles Minus Two) on our way down to Warm Springs and Milpitas, happy to see that most of them were in nearby, familiar places.
We found the first cache of our requisite 5 finds as kobatron with relative ease, and opted out of signing the log since it was soaking wet and we probably would have torn it. From there, we moved on to the cache in question and immediately began hunting in the usual hiding spots before we looked more closely at the coordinates and cache description. I was mid-hunt when my sister called me, and I initially thought she was calling about the parking musical chairs we often have to play since our driveway is full of moving boxes from remodeling that we finished...a year ago.
She sounded panicked, and informed me that a friend called her asking about the Earthquake in Japan. At first I thought she was referring to the 7.3 and 6.9 Earthquakes my dad had e-mailed us about two days before, where he mentioned not feeling them because he was sick and shivering so couldn't tell anything is happening (which is disconcerting in itself, since those are no "baby quakes" by any means). I tried to calm her down, mentioning that he was probably referring to those quakes from two days earlier, but I tried texting my dad just in case since it would be mid-afternoon his time in Tokyo. After texting and e-mailing just to see how he was doing, I decided to take to the power of the internets, and started searching for news on an Earthquake on my phone.
Finding out that an 8.8 (at the time) Earthquake had just struck 240 miles from Tokyo came as quite a shock, and suddenly I wasn't so calm about things. Even that information took a while to ascertain since everything pointed to "Earthquake in Tokyo," but eventually my Googling prowess helped nail down a few more details. I immediately called my sister back and tried to calm her down, letting her know that the phone networks were down and that the Earthquake was actually 240 miles away and not in Tokyo, but there was little I could say beyond that since I didn't really know what was happening. The next course of action was to figure out where my dad was exactly, and come up with other means of attempting to contact him.
I called his Secretary at around 11PM, apologizing for the hour but inquiring if she had heard what was happening. She had, and she was relieved for my call since she was trying to figure out how to contact me or my sister since all her contact info was at work. She got me the name of the hotel he was staying in, and his flight information, but I initially misunderstood what she said which led me to think my dad could have nearly missed the Earthquake entirely if he hadn't changed his flight, but this proved to be untrue. We agreed to keep each other in the loop, and after I hung up I tried calling the hotel and his company office to no avail. I called my sister once again to let her know what I had discovered, and kept searching for news and updates.
In caching news, by the point I finished talking to my sister after her initial call, kobidge had already located and logged the cache, so I wasn't really involved in the actual find, short of rooting out places where the cache was not hiding (I'm pretty good at that). Most of the texting and news lookup occurred once we made it back to the car, and the whole drive back I tried to stay positive while looking for more information online on my phone.
March 10, 2011 - 10:30PM -11:25PM
Kobidge drove us back to my house, where my sister was talking to a friend who was trying to reassure her. I continued attempting to call the hotel for some time but still had no luck. I also texted my dad again to see if he was OK, hoping we would hear back eventually. Once my sister got off the phone I tried to reassure her as best I could, but I had doubts of my own. I was still positive overall, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't freaked out by the whole situation. Luckily I remained calm and just tried not to think negatively since I had no information to base my reactions on one way or the other. During this period there was a lot of waiting and watching of CNN, and as I learned more about the location of the Earthquake, I felt slightly more relieved since it wasn't in the heart of Tokyo.
It was also during this time where we watched the loop of the tsunami making its way through the Sendai region, and its size, speed, and level of destruction didn't really hit me until about the fifth viewing since I was focused o the commentators to look for any updates. At some point when I paid attention to the visuals and saw that the water was picking up and moving mack trucks with ease, the sheer force and enormity of the tsunami started to sink in. It really felt like I was watching a home movie of someone pouring water on a miniature model town.
March 10, 2011 - 11:25PM to March 11, 2011 2:30AM
At 11:25PM on March 10, my dad responded on text message saying he was OK. This was an immediate relief to me, my sister, and kobidge, so once we got the update I contacted his Secretary while my sister called my Mom (we had held off on calling until we knew more, since we assumed she may be sleeping). We all felt a lot better by this point, and prior to the text message I learned that he was on the 16th floor of his work's building in Tokyo, which (at the time) sounded safe since it was away from street level and wherever water may go. Of course, the water didn't run through Tokyo quite like I thought it may, but it was a relief nonetheless.
Here is the conversation that followed via text message that night. starting with my initial text message touching base (prior to hearing the news) to my follow up text once I found out about the huge earthquake:
At this point, my dad called me and gave me the update on what was going on. We talked for a little while since he had already talked to my sister and mom (I think, I forgot at this point). He described the earthquake as "being on a boat in choppy waters, where you keep swaying back and forth while needing to hold on to something while walking." Fortunately, the office building he was in is super state of the art, and was built to handle something like this. It effectively took the initial energy of the Earthquake (which lasted around 6 minutes) and dissipated it over time, so the swaying and shaking lasted for 2 hours from the initial Earthquake, and the myriad aftershocks only added to things.
Some of the workers there had construction site type white hard hats on, and attempted to keep working. While he didn't get video/pictures during the initial quake (because, frankly, who would do that if you're not sure what's going on in a 9.0 Earthquake??!), but he has since showed me some video from the aftershocks or of the continued movement from the initial quake, several minutes later. It sounded like the window blinds kept shaking and sliding back and forth, and short of a few things falling down that were stacked (like tissue boxes, and several other small things), NOTHING fell off the walls or the ceiling, and seemingly nothing broke.
He later told me that everyone there responded with a surreal level of calm and collectedness, and that people actually followed the rules and suggested procedures for dealing with such a catastrophic event. It sounded incredibly impressive to me how everyone made efforts to take care of each other - the "We Before Me" mentality - and when asked to buy just one bottle of water that night or the following day, people actually did! There was also a nearby bicycle store that seemed to be taking advantage of "Opportunity Management" and sold out of all their bikes since the trains were shut down and the freeways were closed.
After our conversation I continued tracking CNN, and was about ready to go to sleep when I saw that the tsunami from outside Sendai, Japan was going to be hitting Hawaii and would eventually make its way to San Francisco and the whole West Coast! I have some good friends who were living near Ocean Beach at the time (though I didn't know their elevation at the time; really wouldn't have been an issue), so I texted them around 2:30AM letting them know the tsunami would be reaching them around 8:08AM. As it turns out, I knew a number of former classmates living in Tokyo/Japan at the time, and had friends living on various islands in Hawaii as well. I tried to touch base with everyone and wish them good luck, hoping they were all going to be OK (and they all made it through the tsunami/Earthquakes just fine!).
March 11, 2011 - 2:30AM - 7:00PM
I opted to keep watching the news and slept downstairs on the couch to monitor any progress, and planned to wake up early so I could see what was happening when the tsunami hit San Francisco. I was pretty exhausted since I got about 5 hours of sleep, but I woke up to a text message from one of my friends and turned on the news to find that the tsunami was working its way through a harbor in Santa Cruz of all places. It turns out that the tsunami was only a few inches by the time it reached San Francisco, and essentially had the impact of looking more like high tide when it was actually low tide, but little else. Later that day, I come across a picture of the tsunami making its way through the SF Bay, as taken from Emeryville. This is all still crazy to think that the force of that Earthquake made its way to where I grew up, all the way across the Pacific Ocean.
That day at work, many of my coworkers talked to me to check up on my dad, and he and I received a ton of support via my Facebook updates throughout the night of and following day. Many people were surprised to find they knew someone directly tied to the Earthquake, and extended heartfelt wishes and concern through such a crazy ordeal. I talked to my dad briefly when he woke up, and he mentioned trying to leave early for his 6PM flight that was already planned well in advance for this business trip to Asia. I concurred, and suggested he just take off since it was impossible to tell how long it may take to get there in what would normally be a 30-60 min drive or train ride. Flight information was almost impossible to obtain at the time, but since he already had a flight and they were allowing outbound flights, he was in luck.
At 5:17PM, I learned that my dad decided to leave early and was en route to the airport since he didn't want to hang around the hotel all day:
March 12, 2011 - 1:48AM - 2:40AM
That night, I got the following text when he arrived at the airport after an 8 hour taxi ride:
March 12, 2011 - 10:36AM
Once my dad arrived in Singapore, he texted me again to let me know he made it there safely:
All in all, this proved to be an exhausting ordeal for everyone (especially him, of course). Given that he was sick before he started the trip, then went through the craziness of a 9.0 Earthquake, dozens of aftershocks, an 8-hour taxi ride to a 12-hour flight that was luckily delayed by 2 hours, then a few hours of sleep before grabbing breakfast in Singapore and continuing with his business trip, it's hard to imagine how draining it must have been.
So how does the majority of this tie into caching, exactly? While I may barely remember anything about the cache itself (though I faintly recall where it is hidden, and somewhat how it appeared), I'll never forget that I was out caching when I found out about this devastating Earthquake, and many of the details from the entire evening will likely be etched into my memory for some time. While caching is a fun adventure in itself, it is certainly neither fraught with the danger and uncertainty that plagued this night, nor typically as action packed as this ordeal turned out to become. However, it is worth noting that the Geocaching community is showing its support for Japanese geocachers and making efforts to reach out and provide assistance where possible.
I'll end this part of the story with a picture of my dad on the train ride home at 2AM (about 12 hours after the Earthquake). As one of my sister's friends put it best, my dad is clearly the happiest man on this train:
- seanatron
MEGA P.S.: March 17, 2011 to March 21, 2011 - My dad's arrival back to the US and Tahoe birthday weekend
The strain of travel didn't end there.
When my dad did finally make it back from his long trip, he ended up getting back around 7PM on the Thursday night before we had planned a 3-day ski trip to Tahoe for his birthday. He was initially supposed to arrive that morning, and had planned to take the whole day to rest before we set off the following afternoon to beat traffic and enjoy a restful night before 3 days of skiing. Naturally, things couldn't be so simple.
I left work ready to head up around 2-2:30PM, but my dad was understandably exhausted, and opted to take a nap and look into heading up the next day. Kobidge had planned to head up that Friday night regardless, so instead of going up with my dad and sister during the day (which got pushed to Saturday morning), I opted to accompany kobidge on the long drive. As luck would have it, there was a HUGE 40 car pile up heading Westbound from Tahoe, where a big rig jack-knifed and traffic was stopped in both directions for 9 hours. We left the bay area at 8PM but still caught the tail end of this, and made it to where the accident had been cleared, but by then it was snowing so much that the roads were closed for No Visibility.
Kobidge and I ended up waiting around in a parking lot in Auburn near one of our frequent gas station stops for about 2 hours before the roads opened up, and we finally made it there around 4:30AM, after driving through chain control in near-whiteout conditions with snow flakes hitting our car that were the size of my fist. Upon arrival, we had to deal with knee- to waist-high snow on the walkway from the parking lot to the front door. After some snow swimming and quick shoveling, we made it inside and conked out around 5am.
The next day, my dad decided to leave at 7am to try and make it up and maybe catch a half-day at the slopes. Kobidge and I were still conked out from exhaustion, and ended up missing the ski day because we were so tired. Unfortunately, it took my dad 9 hours to make it up as well, except that he dealt with substantially more traffic than we did, and kept running into inexplicable stop and go traffic the whole way up due to chain control and timid drivers dealing with snow conditions. While it wasn't quite on par with dealing with the Japanese Earthquake, it still proved exhausting so we all went to bed early that night too.
Sunday morning, we were up at 7am and started getting to head out. I planned to shovel out the cars from any recent snow overnight, but assumed it may just take 10-20 minutes to get things going. I was wrong, and spent a good 30-45 minutes shoveling before we decided to skip skiing due to possible 100mph winds, tons of snow, and tons of shoveling.
I basically spent Sunday dealing with this:
And trying to clear out our cars with kobidge that afternoon:
Sadly kobidge had to return home Sunday night without having a chance to ski on what was one of the largest snowy weekends Tahoe has seen in a while, but she made it back safely with minimal traffic headaches (relatively speaking), and my uncle, aunt and cousin joined us Sunday night to go skiing Monday). Fortunately, the weather finally let up, and it only required "minimal" shoveling to get to our cars, and we made it to the slopes by around 10AM on Monday morning. However, the day would prove bittersweet and challenging since there was a lot of amazing fresh powdery snow...but it was still snowing all day, so we could barely see what we were skiing on.
This proved to be another exhausting aspect of the weekend, and after we finished skiing and packed up to head home around 5:30PM, we got stopped about 200 feet from Chain Control, sitting there for 2 hours before we exited the freeway. We managed to grab dinner at a local delicious BBQ joint right before they closed, and I monitored traffic to see when the roads opened. As luck would have it, we happened to be some of the first people back on the freeway to head home, somewhere around 9:30PM. Four and a half hours later we made it home at 2AM, giving the appropriate level of exhaustion to bookend the 3- to 4-day trip, and a final tiring weekend following my dad's tiring Asian travel ordeal.
One of the main positives with this weekend is that my dad finally caught up on a ton of sleep after the Asia trip, and fortunately was too tired to drive up on Friday because we would have still arrived around 4:30AM even if we left at 2PM as planned! I know this Postscript has nothing to do with caching, but it seemed worth mentioning since it rounded out the experience that tied to the Earthquake in the first place, and helps serve as a bit of closure to the ordeal. It's worth noting that kobidge and I did pontificate about caching once the snow cleared up, so maybe that legitimizes things. Just a tad bit.
In closing, my dad made it through the following over a 10-day span:
- A 9.0 Earthquake and ensuing aftershocks
- An 8-hour taxi ride to a 12-hour flight to Singapore from Tokyo
- A full, busy business trip in Singapore followed by 17+ hour flight back home by way of Hong Kong
- A 9-hour drive to Tahoe 36 hours after arriving in the US from the Asia trip
- A 3-day ski trip that only involved one day of skiing in white out conditions
- A 9-hour drive back home that (thankfully) involved turning around and grabbing dinner
He is a beast.
