’35 hours to reach West Papua. Even more to get back.’

I watched this movie last night called Red Eye. It’s a pretty good thriller about a hotel worker thwarting a terrorist on a night flight. It’s not a new movie; you can tell because a plot twist involves one of those seatback phones you could activate with a credit card. Remember those? I was always too intimidated to use one, and now I’ll never get a chance.

I did get plenty of chances to mess around with my iPhone. (Plus watch many movies and plow through scads of e-books.) Since it took us forever and a day to get to New Guinea. We left (very early) on a Thursday morning, and didn’t get there till Sunday. Granted, we did cross the international dateline and “lose” a day. But still. Let’s just say I laid waste to the Connections archive.

But hey. I just re-read that opening, and I sound kind of elderly and crabby. Let’s lighten the mood, shall we, by mentioning that today is The Child and the SIL’s wedding anniversary. Yup, it’s been three years since that landmark Canadian fete. (Which you can relive through “Two Weddings are Better than One.”)

What on earth prompted Dude Man and me to put up with two back-to-back eleven hour flights (to Istanbul then to Jakarta) plus another eight hours to Biak (with a three-hour layover in Makassar)? The birds of paradise, that’s what. Basically, if you want to see the birds of paradise (or BOPs as they are affectionately called in birder shorthand), you have to go to New Guinea. Because New Guinea is where they live. Oh, there are a couple of BOPs you can find in Northeastern Australia. But for the creme de la creme (or plume de la plume) of BOPs, Papua is where you’ve got to go.

Incidentally, if, like me, you are “of a certain age,” you may remember “antimacassars,” I entertained our fellow layover victims by telling about how Makassar was where a popular hair oil was produced back in the Victorian era. This hair oil became so popular that these little fabric doilies — antimacassars — were invented to protect furniture from getting all yucky with it. My Gramma Peterson was an antimacassar fan. She also liked magazine racks. And pipe stands.

Oh well. The Makassar layover was endured, our last flight was flown — and we made it to West Papua. Biak, to be exact. Where we spent the next few days tracking birds and collecting bug bites. One of these days I will get The Dude to extract his very wonderful bird photos from his very good camera. (In the meantime, you can learn about BOPs here: birds of paradise and feast your eyes here: photos of birds of paradise.) I will leave you with a promise to get back to you with more on our New Guinean adventure soon. Oh. One last thing. I drove over to see Anthony, my haircutter, for a much-needed pruning today and he told me that his father, who served on New Guinea during WWII, would have been amazed at our going there. “You went to New Guinea?!? On purpose?!?” he no doubt would have remarked.

Amagansett, New York. August 2025