Welcome the most terrifying place in the world – at least to a Portuguese sailor in the early 1400s.
They called it Cape Bojador (pronounced BOO-jay-dur), a Portuguese rendering of the local name given it by area residents – which in turn comes from abu khatar, Arabic for “father of danger.”
It doesn’t look so scary or dangerous on the map – just a small bump in the African coast in what is now Western Sahara.
But the Cape’s true danger becomes apparent when you imagine that the year is 1434 and you are sailing a single 30-ton wooden fishing boat – with only one sail and a crew of about 20 – down the African coast. And then you look at this map of global wind patterns, with Cape Bojador marked by the green circle:
The channel between the African coast and the Canary Islands functions as a giant wind tunnel. For your small fishing boat, it would make for a quick trip – but remember, you also have to get back. And for a boat that small with only one sail, there was simply no way to fight against such strong winds to sail back to Portugal. A trip around Cape Bojador was doomed to be a one-way trip.
In the early 1400s, Prince Henry of Portugal was determined to find a way to sail beyond Cape Bojador, to discover and exploit whatever lay beyond. He founded the world’s first naval research school and laboratory at the far southern tip of Portugal, where seafarers looked for a way around.
A modern reconstruction of Eanes’s expedition (from a documentary made by Portuguese TV)
Their solution was as clever as it was terrifying. They called their strategy volta do mar, meaning “turn of the sea.” Rather than fight the wind to sail up the African coast, captains would order their ships to sail far out into the Atlantic, where they could pick up more favorable winds.
Of course, it’s one thing to have this strategy in theory, quite another to be the one to put it into practice. That dubious honor fell to Gil Eanes (1395-1450s?), who set off from Portugal in the small fishing boat described above. The expedition passed Cape Bojador and traveled as far south as what is now Mauritania, where they picked some roses of a previously-unknown variety as proof they had succeeded in their mission. Then they used the volta do mar to return home.
Within 20 years, the Portuguese regularly traveled as far as modern Ghana, unfortunately bringing slaves back with them to sell all over the world. Within 50 years, Portuguese navigators had rounded the southern tip of Africa; within 120 years, they had reached Japan.
UPDATE: Mayor Killer passed away on May 21, 2020 at the age of 14. His loyal subjects have created a memorial fund with Baltimore Area Rescue & Care Add a comment to say it’s for Killer.
Meet the neighborhood of Hampden in Baltimore, Maryland. Population 15,000. A former community for immigrants working at the nearby sailcloth factories. Today, it is a hip center for urban living that has stayed true to its vibrant working-class roots.
Now meet “Killer,” the unofficial mayor the neighborhood:
The Mayor holds an audience with citizens
Killer spends nights inside with a specific human, but spends his days wandering the streets, getting food and water from whichever humans set it out, and generally not caring what you think.
I don’t live in Hampden, but I live nearby in the city of Baltimore. I’ve met Killer, and he is every bit as cute as his Instagram account suggests:
You’ve probably heard the story: it’s Christmas. A young husband and wife are very poor, and very much in love. His dearest treasure is a gold pocket watch his father gave him; hers is her beautiful long hair.
Unknown to him, she sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy a chain to hold his pocket watch. Unknown to her, he sells his watch to buy her a set of jeweled combs for her hair.
When they exchange gifts, they realize how much in love they really are. The power of this story comes from its bittersweet irony, with just a hint of tragedy. Love truly is the greatest gift, but you can’t comb your hair with love, and love can’t tell the time.
The source is “The Gift of the Magi,” one of the most famous short stories in American literature. It was written in 1905 by American author O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter). Henry wrote hundreds of short stories, but this one was by far his most famous.
My lovely spouse
My lovely spouse and I just had an experience that reminded us of this classic story, but without the hint of tragedy.
We have recently become fans of the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears, a slice-of-life sitcom about three brothers who live together, and who happen to be bears. Grizz is a grizzly bear who is well-meaning but a bit dense and self-involved. Pan-pan is a panda who is girl-crazy and addicted to his smartphone (yes, I know pandas aren’t really bears, and I love how that is your first objection to this concept). But the star of the show is Ice Bear. Ice Bear is a martial arts expert who speaks only in short, direct sentences in a low gravelly voice – and consistently speaks of Ice Bear in the third person.
Here are some of his best moments from the show so far:
And so it came to pass that during one of my frequent Nights of Insomnia, I had just finished watching a few episodes, followed by the NBA TV rebroadcast of my hometown Orlando Magic’s exciting 149-113 win over the Atlanta Hawks. I mention that detail to explain what I did next: I logged in to my Amazon.com account to look for a Nikola VuÄević jersey. I found only a few, all far above my price range – but made another important discovery.
My lovely spouse and I share an Amazon account. We don’t normally share online accounts, but sharing one with Amazon makes life simpler because we can share the free two-day shipping to our address. And so when I didn’t add the Nikola VuÄević jersey to my shopping cart, I discovered something was already in the cart: a beautiful Ice Bear Believes in You T-shirt, size men’s large.
We are fortunately not even close to poor, much less as tragically poor as the young couple depicted in “The Gift of the Magi,” but with her finishing up a career-change master’s degree, we don’t always have immediate funds for purchases, no matter how awesome.
And so I figured she was waiting until her next paycheck to buy the shirt. I also figured she was buying it as a gift for our lovely nephew, a fellow We Bare Bears fan. And so I thought it would be an excellent time for a gift – not only the gift for our nephew but one in a more appropriate size for the spouse herself.
But of course she was not buying it for our nephew. And thus arrived in the mail a few days later:
And so, far from Christmas 1905, I’ll adapt the words of the story’s lyrical closing to celebrate our love:
O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Ice Bear.
Click the Play button on the video above to watch this morning’s press conference as it happened. The press conference begins at the 33-minute mark of the YouTube stream.
Note: this isn’t something I’m directly involved in, I just think it’s REALLY REALLY COOL
10:15 AM UPDATE: The Press Conference is now over. Click the link above to watch the archived recording. I’m watching it now and I’ll summarize here.
10:04 AM UPDATE: The livestream is over, and there are so many fascinating results to unpack! Keep watching this space as I add more explanations and further resources to explore.
9:48 AM UPDATE: I’m learning about this at the same time you are. As I learn more, I’ll keep updating this post. This is so exciting!
Sheck Exley wrote the book on cave diving. Literally.
Sheck Exley (1949-1994) doing what he loved
If the title of his book Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival sounds dramatic, that’s because cave diving is dramatic. Imagine all the fun and danger of SCUBA diving, combined with all the fun and danger of cave exploration, except turned up to 11.
Irby Sheck Exley, Jr. (yes, that was his real name, on his birth certificate) was born in Jacksonville, Florida on April 1, 1949, son of a Volkswagen dealer. His younger brother drowned at age 17; perhaps that is what sparked his desire to make cave diving safer for others, but I don’t want to read too much into other people’s motivations. The important thing is that he did care deeply about making cave diving safe for others.Â
Aloha `Oe: An occasional series about people – famous to the world or just to me – who are gone but not forgotten
The one thing you must understand about cave diving is that it is completely insane. SCUBA diving is dangerous in itself – carrying your own air into a place where you would normally die is an obvious danger, but even if you do everything right you could still die of nitrogen narcosis.
Cave diving adds a new set of dangers. Sunlight can pass through hundreds of feet of open water, but not through rock, so it’s DARK in there, bring your own light. Some passageways are no bigger than you are, so you can go in only to get stuck on the way out. Swimming can stir up mud and silt, reducing visibility to near zero. And with rock above, around, and below, it’s easy to lose sight of where you are and where you are going. There are hundreds of ways to die, and if science has taught us one thing, it’s that nature doesn’t care whether you live or die.
Even with all these dangers, thousands of people enjoy cave diving. I’m not one of them, and I have no interest in becoming one, but I can definitely see the appeal. I have a great admiration for people who push themselves to the absolute limit of human ability, even in the most unexpected ways. Especially in the most unexpected ways.
And for people who love cave diving, there is no better place in the world than Sheck Exley’s northern Florida. There are only a few places in the world with both the right rock type and the heavy rains required to create karst topography, home of the most elaborate cave systems – Slovenia, southern Thailand, Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula – but northern Florida is unique even among these places because of its high water table. There are no above-ground cave systems like Postojna or Tham Luang there; all of Florida’s cave systems are underwater, with entrances at springs and sinkholes.
Even though I’ve never been cave diving – and the thought of it terrifies me – I have some experience with cave divers. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of camping at Florida’s Ginnie Springs, one of the most famous cave diving destinations in Florida, and thus in the whole world. That means I almost certainly saw Sheck Exley before his death in 1994, although I didn’t know it at the time.
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d1522.6639556274731!2d-82.7010931218036!3d29.835875477335396!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x88e8ce44cc5b59a3%3A0xce7dbc98f988825f!2sGinnie+Springs+Outdoors%2C+LLC!5e1!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1543545422817&w=400&h=300]Ginnie Springs, Florida
Exley took a job as a math teacher at Suwanee High School in Live Oak, Florida, so he could live close to his beloved springs. His list of SCUBA diving records, in both open water and cave diving, stretches farther than the deepest cave. He was the first person in the world to log 1,000 cave dives – all before he turned 24. He has had the deepest penetration of numerous caves in Florida and elsewhere. He was the first person in the world to dive to a depth of 800 feet (240 meters), a grueling dive that required more than 13 hours of gradual post-dive decompression.Â
But without a doubt, his greatest contribution to the sport of cave diving was his obsession with doing it safely. His book is now required reading for many cave diving certifications – meaning that aspiring divers can’t legally enter their first cave until they know how to do it like Exley did. He also helped popularize the use of the “Octopus,” a secondary diving regulator so that your buddy can breathe from your tank if theirs runs out.
Unfortunately, even for a man who literally wrote the book on safe cave diving, cave diving is still a dangerous sport, and ultimately it took Sheck Exley. On August 6, 1994, Exley died in Mexico’s Zacatón Sinkhole while trying to become the first person to descend to 1,000 feet (300 meters) in freshwater. His cause of death is uncertain, but likely due to the effects of breathing a mix of helium gas under high pressure – effects which are poorly-understood even 24 years later, simply because so few people have ever tried.
But there is one detail of his death that is both fitting and heartbreaking. When he didn’t come up at the scheduled time, his friends in the surface support crew knew he was gone – but they never expected what they were about to see when they pulled up the air hose. With his literal dying breath, Exley had wrapped himself firmly in the air hose, saving his friends from a risky mission to recover his body. But that’s who he was: right up until the end, finding ways to keep everyone safe.
Sheck Exley may be dead, but there are literally hundreds of people alive today because of him.
