The only word I recognized from Harry Potter und der Halb-Blut Prinz was Gluck!

There have only been a few times in my life where the danger that I had exposed myself to was, as judged by a random selection of the people I know, more than enough to leave me dead; perhaps, when there was a 90% or greater chance that I would not make it out alive. Thrice did this happen over my summer adventures, and thrice did I escape my end through great propensity for luck. It's funny; this reminds me of how Harry Potter described fighting dark wizards (I listen to the books on tape to help me get to sleep; I can quote from Rowling without effort. Geeky, I know, but Jim Dale, the narrator, gave me the ability to employ a British accent at will). He says, essentially, that preparation can only get you so far; in the end, it is simply a matter of luck. I don't disagree with this, but I would say that one's will to live is the driving force behind whatever domain in which God chooses to place luck.

I will tell you about one of these instances; the others, those are for me, but the event that I lived through on the morning of August 4th is too proposterous to keep to myself. I may go back and talk about previous adventures in Croatia at some point, but for now, I'll give the basic situation. At that point, I hd been in Croatia for nearly two weeks; I'd done a fair amount of shepherding, traveled to Mostar with two fellow couchsurfers, got off a bus in Sarajevo with no idea what I was doing and spent the two subsequent days smoking hookah with a Sweed and a Canadian on a balcony overlooking the old town, done more shepherding in Dubrovnik, climbed some mountains, and played to my heart's content in the ocean. Now, it was not all fun and games; I had lined up a guy in a small town to couchsurf with while I was in Poland, and had secured a place to sleep at his home for most of the three weeks. Or so I thought; through vrious changes that his life took quite rapidly on him, it transpired that I became a bit of a burden very quickly. After returing to his home from Dubrovnik to find him upset, I had to quickly devise a way to get out of his hair. I had planned on camping along the coast before I got there, and it seemed like the perfect time to get out of that tiny town where everyone knew what was up. My host drove me to a popular place to camp and chill about 20 km south of the town, and I told him that I would be there for about a week, and that I would come through the town and stay with him one more night before I left for the north. I don't think he was even paying attention to that; he drove off and I was left on my own.

After some exploration, I found a small island about a sixth of a mile off land, and was able to bundle up my pack in a convienently discarded tarp and float all of my gear out to the island where I set up my home for the next week. I spent 5 days living off what I could find and catch, most of which consisted of squids and sea urchins. I would not reccommend eating sea urchins; not good for one's health. In my physical journal, I believe that I wrote, "Never, in the history of mankind, has anyone subjected themselves to the appaling sanitary conditions to which I have now sunk." It is because of this that I will never eat squids again. It is also because of this that I have had such little regard for the sanitary protocol of the majority of Americans; things like washing one's hands before eating and using a spoon to get raisins out of a shared bag in order to prevent the spread of swine flu are still taking time for me to get used to. I'm living under the assumption that if I did not die from some horrible disease whilst on the island, there is no germ, virus, or fungus that will ever be able to harm me again.

And so it came to the morning of that 6th day of seclusion, and I woke to a desperate hunger. I had discovered a sun cherry tree on the other side of the island a couple of days back, and was contemplating heding over and grabbing some breakfast. There was also the option of getting into the blackberries, but I had learned fairly quickly that wild blackberries are the most powerful laxitive in existance (I could discribe how I discovered this. Be thankful I am not). I unzipped my tent and stepped out into the little patch of small rocks that I had designated as my cooking area. I did my best to try to shoo away the yellow jackets that had been hanging around since my first meal at the beginning of the week. They got there before the sun rose every morning, and at first I was worried about getting stung, then I was worried about them crawling on my food, then I was worried that I might accidentally eat one that had gotten itself stuck to a piece of food. Then I just didn't worry. The air was crisp and the flies had not yet come, so all I could hear was the crashing of the waves in the bay behind me. (Swich to present tense for dramatic emphasis). I face the sun to the east and let the rays wash over my face so as to ensure that I come back from Croatia with some kind of tan. It feels good to have warmth on my body again; it's incrediblly relaxing after sleeping in a tent pitched over a bed of reeds that is supposed to serve as a rudimentary thermarest. I drink in the glory of a beautiful sunny Croatian day for a few more seconds, and then turn to the West to see a gigantic cyclone heading straight for me.

What followed was almost entirely mechanical. I had no fly on my tent, so my first thought was to stormproof the situation. I attached the goretex material to the half of my tent that was mesh and shifted four 70 pound boulders so that they sat on the corners of my rather flimsy looking shelter. I gathered all of my belongings and spread them out over the floor, adding several more boulders for good measure. After taking one more look towards appoaching doom, I got into the tent, zipped up and layed spread eagle across the pile. There was easily a good 250 lbs in that tent, but when the storm hit a few minutes later, I was nearly blown straight into the ocean. After about 30 minutes of desperately trying to keep the tent from going airborne, the gale winds and hammering rain broke almost instantly, and the sun popped out as if astonished that I wasn't out enjoying it's warmth. I was fairly pissed; my stuff was soaked from rain that had been blown straight under the fly and into the bottom of the tent, and all of the contraptions that I had set up to make life easier were either destroyed or gone. A couple of trees had fallen over, and that scared me. If I had been hit by a tree, I could have been stuck out there with no help and no one who knew where I was. My host knew that I was in the area, but I don't think he cared much about me at that point; I was on my own. I considered myself incredibly lucky to have survived the storm with everything intact, but I did not find out just how lucky I actually was until my return to my hosts town the next day.

After a 20km attempt to hitchhike back (To be fair, a pair of really nice Russians showed up with 1 km left to go), I came back into town to find that nerly everyone was gone. I asked where everyone was and found that they had all gon to insurance claims adjusters. I passed through, I noticed that several homes had large holes, missing windows, and a few that had caved in sections. Cars had plastic over the windows and all of the roofs were peppered with the exact same pattern of stippled dents. It was like I had left a normal town and come back to a war zone.

As it transpired, the cyclone had not hit the bay I was staying in directly, but it had hit my host's town, which was only 2 km north of where I was in costal distance. And this funnel of death wasn't just carrying water; it brought a rain of grapefruit sized ice that had completely destroyed the town; cars, homes, all windows, all destroyed. A guy had gone out to grab something and his arm had been broken by a chunk of ice nearly as large as some of the rocks I had used to weight down my tent. Needless to say, if the cyclone had hit shore even 1 more km south, the ice would have caught me completely unprepared, would have destroyed my tent, and most likely left me paralyzed and beyond the help of anyone. It was Croatia's worst storm in 33 years; 30 minutes of hell on earth.

If you do not have a sense of surprise that I can still count myself among the living, than you have lost touch with life and I would reccommend trying my Croatian Scampi sauce (I'll credit Boris with teaching me how to make that). My own experience was quite scary and frought with enough danger to be lethal, but by some magical stroke of luck, I once again avoided a disaster that would have been certain death. Just to clarify, I did not intentionally put myself in harm's way, but I was really asking for it. And thus, since I am allowed to delude myself into thinking my opinion matters, there are a few lessons here: 1) Be prepared for anything, even a tempest of ice bricks falling from the sky, 2) Make sure someone who cares about you knows where you are, otherwise no one will ever find your humorous journal entries, and 3) Sheep are simple; never leave their sides.

The next day I got on a bus and used my iPod for the first time in a month as I headed north. It was like citric acid was being poured into my crainial cavity; I was amped. By the time I hit Split, I was ready for my mext quest: The Search for the Satch (European Manpurse) of DOOM!