Panama Travel Journal II - Day 1

Glass Frog with eggs

December 8, 2009
-By Bob Chastain

Tuesday - It’s funny how life can turn on a dime. One second the world is piling up around you and the next second your Dad is having open heart surgery and nothing else matters. The call you MUST make matters little as you rear end the car in front of you. Panama is the same.

We left my house at 4:04 this morning to make an 8:30 a.m. flight. The snow and subzero weather made us worry. Turns out we made it to the airport with two hours to spare. Loading went well, and it seemed we would be on our way, except for that darned engine #1. Engine #2 worked just fine, but engine #1 did not want to start. Switch this, bang on that and still nothing. Then some brilliant person thought it must be cold. Two hours later and an external heater, we are off. We are scheduled to land at 2:15 p.m. and the flight to Panama and the three life lines that we are sending to the frogs there are nowhere to be found.

When we land in Houston the captain comes on and says, “The flight to Panama has already left. Please go to customer service.” Then a lady comes on and says, "They are holding the Panama flight. You will have to run if you want to catch your flight." Run we did. Houston is a big city airport with multiple terminals. The run had us sweaty and tired when we reached the gate and they say, “We were never told to hold the flight and it left seven minutes ago.” The airport turns “Matrix” and time stops. What was a huge rush 30 seconds ago has now turned into timelessness. Everything is slow motion now. We are told there are no more flights to Panama and given a hotel in Houston. The world returns to normal.

It’s funny how people react to things like this. Some are angry. Very angry. Some frustrated. Some crushed. Me? I am calculated. I think to myself, “Does getting angry at the lady behind the desk help, or does niceness help?” I try to use the best strategy to get the result I need. In this case, we have frogs to save, but they will have to wait one day. They will have to fight Chytrid in the wild for one more day. They will wait, as we wait.

For a solution to the problem at hand, we get booked into a hotel; make about a half of a billion phone calls to cancel horses at the Panamanian trail head. They were to meet us tomorrow after a 5:00 a.m. departure. The project director will now have a day to make final preparations in-country and the other expedition members will have to put hope on hold. We make the second half of a billion phone calls to check in at work, deal with the latest problems, rebook hotels in Panama that are now full, and look for something to eat.

Modern airports are like small cities with plastic knives. Since we are in Houston, near the coast, we decide on a seafood place and a three hour lunch. We miss the 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. buffet by 20 minutes. Just our luck, since now the expensive dinner menu starts our 3:20 p.m. lunch. But I have to admit, the service was nice and the food was good. We talked to the lady at the restaurant about why all their nice meals come with plastic knifes. You guessed it. National Security. We discussed why people don’t care about forks. They seem dangerous. We talked about how the whole world takes off their shoes in airport security because of one man. Strange place we live in…..

I have stopped taking Malarone, my malaria medicine, because my Achilles tendon is hurting. The one known side effect with Malarone is that your Achilles tendon can just rip and detach for no reason. I am more than a little worried about the walk tomorrow. I have iced it and taken ibuprofen, so we will see what happens. I am sure, right now, you and I are in the same boat. Too many things to think about and not enough time to control all the variables. Who knows how life would turn out if there were no variables? If left to our own designs, I am afraid we would sit wrapped in our version of our “perfect world” with little left to live for. Nobody hates discomfort and “unconvinced” more than me. Without it though, the desire to learn and grow would be lost. Relationships would have no passion. That to me would be the tragedy I would never want to face.