Field Report 9:
Brentwood, LA, California, July 20, 1998, 1:45 PM

By Chris Kostman

 
Dear Friends:

I am happy to be home, home, home! It wasn't easy to get here, that's for sure. As I explained in my last email report, I finally gave up on ever obtaining the military security clearance for most of our archaeological team. After three and a half weeks living a mere 2km from the archaeological site, but not being allowed to visit or work at the site, it was time to cut my losses and head home. So home I came.

(And home in the U.S. of A. I really am: last weekend my father and I attended the funeral for Roy Rogers, the 86 year old "King of the Cowboys" who always wore a white hat and demonstrated in film, television, and song that the good guys always win.)

The watershed for many of us came on June 20, an afternoon that we will forever remember as "the mutiny." Basically, we all got fed up with sitting around on the beach with nothing to do but sleep, eat, and dive. That might have been fine if we had all signed on for a ten day dive vacation to Egypt, but that wasn't what we had signed up to do.

The point of the trip, not to mention the several thousand dollars we each spent on airfare and other related expenses, was to work on the Sadana Island Shipwreck Project hosted by the Insitute of Nautical Archaeology - Egypt. This was to be a ten week season, working six days a week, living in a remote encampment on the beach alongside the Red Sea. This project officially began back in the Summer of 1995 and this year was to have been the final excavation of the wreck, which dates to about 1765 and was carrying coffee, Chinese porcelain, and other items from the East for sale in Europe.

My personal investment in working on this project was not only monetary in the form of airfare, travel costs, equipment, and other supplies, but I also personally built, and currently host at www.adventurecorps.com, the entire official website of INA - Egypt, which was about a $25,000 in-kind contribution to the project. Additionally, I left my full-time, salaried job at Bodies in Motion, put everything I own in a pair of 5'x10' storage units, and kissed my girlfriend and entire life goodbye for three months.

All of the other fourteen diver/archaeologists from around the world who were denied the opportunity to work at the site also made similar major commitments and went to equally great lengths in order to work on this project.

So we all got screwed.

We lost time, money, and more. We all, to a one, lost at least some faith in any of those for whom one would sacrifice so much in order to volunteer time, talents, and much more in the pursuit of scholarship and adventure. And I don't just mean this project. I mean all projects. Every one of us will look a lot more closely before we put down our own hard-earned money and make huge time commitments before we work on ANY project again.

And did the director of this project, Doug Haldane, show any real remorse that he screwed us? No. Did he apologize profusely? No. Did he have the common decency to contact the remaining team members who were scheduled to come to Egypt later in order to give them the option of waiting for clearance back home instead of on the beach in Egypt? No. Did he offer to pay us back for our plane tickets? No, no, hell no. He didn't. He didn't do anything that any reasonable person would have done.

(And as of yet, as I have heard through the grapevine, the clearance has not come through. So it's a good thing I didn't stay on, helplessly hoping that it would come through.)

That fact feels like some kind of vindication for all of us who left, but in reality, it's all just a bummer. It could have been a great project. We could have all learned so much and made a significant contribution to archaeology and history. We could have all left Egypt with only good things to say about a country and people who need all the good PR they can get.

But that didn't happen.

Of course, it's not Egypt's fault. Sure, the bureaucracy never managed to get around to granting a simple clearance for a bunch of archaeologists and marine scientists who wanted to contribute their time, talents, and money to a project which, in the end, would mostly benefit Egypt. But still, the bureaucratic system does work there. Hundreds of archaeological projects operate in Egypt every year and they all manage to obtain the necessary permits and clearance. Like anything, you just have to know to work within the system. Clearly our project director does not know how to do that. That's why we didn't get to work.

This is a diatribe. I know that. I came home pissed off, but I've been home for nearly three weeks now and I've largely processed and dealt with all my feelings of hurt, anger, frustration, and disappointment.

I'm enjoying being back in LA, with Linzi, with my friends and family, with my bikes, and NOT WORKING. It's not the focused singularity of purpose I expected to have in excavating a shipwreck, it's not logging 120 or more deep water working dives in the Red Sea, but it is nice.

I'm lucky. I am surrounded, near and far, with great people who mean so much to me and with whom I enjoy adventures and rich moments of life. I can't complain.

Let me give you a few positive notes and snapshots of Egypt, and then I'll close with a look towards the rest of the Summer and beyond.

  • I made a few new friends and got to know several people with whom I'll no doubt work on later projects and adventures. And I have to say I liked the whole team and would have truly enjoyed actually working with all of them.
  • I made about twenty epic dives in the Red Sea, experiencing unparalleled marine life, visibility, temperature, and innumerable sensory delights. The diving was world class, and for three weeks it was right outside the door to my tent. In fact, I was awakened each morning with the sunrise over the Red Sea streaming straight into my face through that always open door.
    • Two dives stand out: one carefully planned dive to a depth of 175 feet with David Clarke to find and photograph an old anchor we'd heard about (we found it), as well as to train in deep air diving with an extra, separate tank of air. We spent 15 minutes at depth and it was nearly an out of body experience for me due to the nitrogen narcosis. I handled it fine and could think and function, but it did kind of creep me out. The other stand-out dive was a night dive with Brad Eldridge which featured non-stop bio-luminescence in the water. We could even "activate" this flourescent green glowing effect by shaking our arms in the water. Little fireflies of glowing light would just shoot off our arms in the dark water when we did this. It was so wild and hysterical! Eventually we just turned off our lights, convulsed our whole bodies spastically, and cackled like madmen through our regulators while the "fireflies" flew off our wetsuits and gear in every direction. It was quite a sight!
  • Dave, Cheryl, and I made a neat roadtrip in one of the Land Rovers south along the Red Sea coast to the town of Quseir, home of an Ottoman Period fort that is being totally renovated and reconstructed under the direction of an English fellow named Nick (forget his last name), who is married to my Egyptologist friend Salima Ikram. Salima is a Pakistani woman who was mainly schooled in England and I was a student in the Egyptian Archaeology class at UC Berkelely about ten years ago for which she TA'd. (I'm digressing, sort of.) Anyway, north of Quseir we stopped and visited the only Pharoahnic Period site on the entire Red Sea coast. 3,600 year old limestone anchors still litter the beach there, disentegrating testimony to the early seafaring efforts of the ancient Egyptians who sailed south from this site to Ethiopia and then returned with monkeys, dancing dwarves, and other interesting luxuries.
  • I went to two really fun dinner parties in Cairo hosted by the above-mentioned Salima. Both were filled with an international cadre of intelligentsia (I fit right in, ahem). Both ended hilariously: one with a viewing of the movie "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and the other with throwing water bombs off her thirde floor balcony; the juxtaposition of such ultra-western fare while in a private home in the heart of Cairo (Zamalek) was too hilarious, to put it mildly.
  • Seeing Egypt again after a fourteen year absence was fascinating and somthing I'd been looking forward to for all those fourteen years. I am truly saddened by the terrible after-effects of last year's Luxor massacre, but am also hopeful for Egypt's future: a lot of good development seemed to be going on and nearly every place I remembered seemed nicer and cleaner and better organized than it was in 1984. And most importantly, the people are nicer than ever.
  • Speaking of nice Egyptians, I got back to Cairo by way of Hurghada, thanks to a ride there from Ahmed the travel agent, then thanks to a ride onto Cairo from three perfect strangers that I met in Hurghada, two more Ahmeds and a Muhammad. They were driving back to Cairo with a 3am departure, which got us back to Cairo by 930am and ahead of most of the heat. I then spent that day hanging out at the lush and elaborate Sheraton Heliopolis with fellow Sharm el Naga exile Mary Wiland of Boulder, CO, and her professor, Dr. Bob Hohlfelder, and his wife Kate. Then it was off to the airport to try my luck at going stand-by, which worked just fine, thank you TWA!

What's next?

Well, I'm absolutely loving riding my bike outside a lot. I hit the roads or trails about 4 or 5 days a week. That's a total blast and a real luxury. These last few years I've been too busy and energy-drained to ride outside much since I was always riding indoors as part of my fitness work. Not now!

Everywhere I go around here I run into my indoor cycling students and they're all asking me when I'm going to teach again. Soon, I tell them.

This week the Race Across America starts in Irvine. I retired two years ago from that race after 13 years of service as a race official, two time competitor, then creator of and five year race director of its team event. But here I go again! I'm going across with the race yet again, this time serving on the support team of Team PacifiCare, who are not only great friends of mine, but also the hands-down favorites to win the team event.

Business-wise, most of my creative and professional energy is going into a book I'm writing, plus organizing Furnace Creek 508, the annual 500 mile bicycle race through Death Valley that I put on every October. And of course, I'll be teaching indoor cycling again locally, plus looking to expand my indoor cycling instructor training workshops across the U.S. and around the globe (I have workshops planned already to give this Fall in Boston, West Palm Beach, Hong Kong, and elsewhere).

And that, my friends, is more than enough! (Not only for keeping me busy, but also for this email field report!)

Before I go, I want to thank everybody who supported my efforts in going to Egypt: Wayne and Shelby Kostman for financial ang logistical help and for inspiring my adventurous life, Linzi Glass for a new backpack and everything she does for me all the time and everywhere, Arnie Ramirez at Future Media for hosting my website, Dana Tanaka and Audrey Adler for the film, Chris Zietsman for the reading material, Deb Caplan for the Nikonos underwater camera system, Gigi Galand, Ron Hunter, and Liz Gammelin at Patagonia for the duffle bags, Bob and Susanne Evans at Force Fins for the new dive fins, Babatola Oguntoyinbo at Deep Blue Dive Threads for the cool clothing, and all my other friends and family for all their love and support.

With all my best wishes and regards, plus a big thank you for letting me ramble on about Egypt, and especially hoping this finds you well and happy,

Chris Kostman
 

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