Riding the Iron Rooster merged feed

Aw, thanks, Lucas! Excited to hear you are contemp...

Eric — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:12:32 -0800

Aw, thanks, Lucas! Excited to hear you are contemplating some diving adventures as well. Julie and I are just back from our first dives together, and I can't express how much fun it is. In any case, thanks for staying in touch, sister!

Eric (and Mrs. Eric), Reading about Bali from your...

Lucas — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:20:11 -0800

Eric (and Mrs. Eric),
Reading about Bali from your perspective is just delightful. You give me pause for thought and hope that I too can take in another culture with such respect and grace as you two are doing. With love!

Balinese discipline

Eric — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:48:00 -0800

Life in Padangbai continues to reward in its gentle, relaxed fashion. We've now spent more time here than any other place in the journey -- and our familiarity with this place is rewarded by people greeting us by name as we walk its few blocks of warungs (shops), hotels and restaurants. (Well, truth be told, I am greeted with Eric -- pronounced enthusiastically as "air-EEK!" -- and Julie is greeted as either as Julia or, much to her chagrin I'm sure, Mrs. Eric.)

I have been relishing finally taking time to dive into long-deferred projects that I envisioned dedicating my presumably abundant free-time to earlier in our trip. (That's a vision that did not contend with the demands of camping and near-daily motorcycling, to say nothing of the wonders of Hawai'i and New Zealand.)

At the moment, I'm sitting at the Buddha Bar, one of several frequent haunts, all of which provide ample shade from the intense mid-day sun. The Buddha Bar is unique in town in having a prominent salt-water pool, and a relaxed policy about patrons using it. When hanging out here, my routine is typically to order a mango juice ($1.25, and containing nothing but juiced mangoes, but so sweet you doubt it), crack open Proust (fittingly enough, I'm making my second attempt at In Search of Lost Time) or pop open the laptop and work on various coding or video projects. Might not be your cup o' fruit, but it's definitely mine. That is, when we're not spending the day snorkeling, swimming, or scuba diving.

We have several days left before leaving for Ubud, often called the cultural heart of Bali, but honestly, I am not eager to leave. Little did I know that I'd fall so completely for this routine and rootedness. Little too did I know that in so short a time I could become proficient at discerning a really, really exceptional mango from a merely really exceptional one. (It's mango season here right now, so those are the only two varieties on offer.)

The U.S. State Department -- typically, the most conservative travel advice you could find on the planet -- describes Indonesia with a tacit chauvinism that feels so unjust given our experience here. To be sure, Bali is not typical of Indonesia, but even the way our government describes traffic patterns here, namely, as "undisciplined," feels both needlessly antagonistic and inaccurate. Traffic here moves very differently from back home, but it abides its own discipline, however chaotic it might first appear to Western eyes. Drivers are attentive, communicative and frankly, quite skilled at maximizing the number of vehicles moving on the two-lane trunk roads throughout the island. In the space that two cars moving in the same direction would occupy on a similar roadway in Minneapolis, there might be a fully loaded dump truck hauling a load of dirt or lumber, a hired car straddling the center line, looking for a safe moment to pass, and a dozen scooters with an average load per bike of 2 adults, various satchels and packages, and a child or two wedged into the spaces between the rest. At the same time, there are dozens of scooters and motorbikes moving in the opposite direction, pinching without complaint down to the portion of their lane remaining which allows the hired car to stay over the center line. "Undisciplined" does not characterize the utter absence of road rage, the fact that every driver seems to view making space for every other driver on par with their objective of reaching their destination.

Dear President Obama,

I know you have a soft spot for Indonesia. Spending the time we have here, Mr. President, I see why! I know you have a lot on your plate right now, what with the economy, and the opposition to resolve our health care crisis, to say nothing of the violence and wars you inherited, but if you and Ms. Clinton could perhaps see whether your travel advice writers could make their travel advice demonstrate a modicum of respect for the places they describe, this traveler would be most grateful.

Thank you for presenting an American face to the world we can be proud of, instead of embarrassed by.

Eric
Padangbai, Bali, Indonesia

Of course, accidents do happen. We had an opportunity to watch Padangbai spring to action during a traffic accident last week. Apparently, a small SUV was parked in our hotel's driveway, with the keys in the ignition. Someone who did not know how to drive wanted to listen to music, so turned the key to activate the accessories. In doing so, they inadvertently started the car, the manual transmission of which was engaged in first gear, at the same time that they had their foot on the accelerator (again, not knowing how to drive). The car started, and rapidly accelerated, careening across the street, over the substantial, foot-high curb, onto the beach, colliding with and shattering an outrigger canoe, pulled up on the sand awaiting passengers.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, which is nothing short of miraculous. I'd just left our hotel to head to (you guessed it) the Buddha Bar, and had just set my stuff on the table when I heard the ruckus. By the time I'd walked a dozen paces to see what had happened, it seemed that all of Padangbai had done the same, a large circle of people around the car, while its "driver" exited the vehicle, stunned and shaken. Julie talked with one of our sarong-selling friends on the street, whose stand was the closest thing to the boat destroyed by the impact. She, too, was shaken, grateful the car had not gone ten feet further down the road, and hit her instead.

As I imagine might happen with a traffic accident on Main Street in small town America, this was the event of the week. People lingered, making sure the vehicle was safely removed from the beach (this time, by a qualified driver), and conferring about what happened, what each person saw, and who was responsible for what. Interestingly, in talking to one of our drivers here about the accident, he suggested that the owner of the car bore some responsibility for the accident as well, since he should not have left keys in the car.

The big event for this week has been something on an entirely different scale, however.

Every six months, the three main temples in Padangbai host a ceremony which locals say brings "all of Bali" to this tiny village. While my estimates suggest it's a fair shot short of the millions of people that claim would represent, it is certainly impressive to watch thousands and thousands and thousands of people filter into this town, clotting the parking area and streets with buses, scooters, temporary food and festival-merch vendors and the countless pilgrims. They arrive day and night, as the ceremony continues for three days, from 5:30 a.m. until midnight each day.

The main road along the beach (where we are staying) is closed to vehicles, and filled with a continual progression of people in ceremonial attire, beautiful offering baskets containing fruit, flowers, food and incense balanced atop the women's heads, as they walk down the beach toward the temples. These before-and-after photos of the main road give some sense of the change that has come over this normally sleepy village.

Seeing Padangbai's temple ceremony has been an unplanned, unexpected stroke of fortune.

Comfortably ensconced in my disciplined uncertainty, I don't think of myself as a spiritual seeker, and am even less drawn to regimented religious practice. That said, I have near bottomless curiosity for how people have organized themselves around humanity's eternal questions (why are we here?, where do we come from?, what happens when we die?). I hope, in participating in the ceremony, that this curiosity expresses itself as genuine, engaged interest, and not as a kind of cultural voyeurism that is particularly uncomfortable to participate in as an affluent, western white male observer (relishing neither the role of the vulgar cowboy "Hello! Make way! Anyone seen God around here lately?" or his subtler prostituting cousin "It's just so exotic, all these fancy costumes. And the people are just so peaceful, don't you think?").

In any case, Bali's Hinduism (akin but distinct from the Hinduism I've encountered elsewhere in the world), its ability to draw thousands upon thousands upon thousands of adherents from all over the island to this tiny village, and the gentle, joyful and communal way that these ceremonies occur... well, all of this is pretty darn intoxicating. And the people do seem pretty peaceful, in fact. Hmmm.

I guess there's something elemental that speaks to me about faith practices that make extensive offerings of fruit and flowers. Where the men and women are adorned with blossoms, tucked into their hair, behind their ears, resting on their head during prayer. Where each prayer service's "benediction" involves affixing grains of rice to your forehead. Add to that a stunning gamelan ensemble featuring our friend Martini greeting us on our visits to the temples, along with a thousand smiles, friendly glances and introductory questions ("Hello, where are you from? Where are you staying?"), and suffice it to say: this ceremony has been unforgettable indeed!

Our next destination, Ubud, is famous for having dozens of nightly performances of Balinese culture for tourist consumption. Seeing Balinese culture, here, in practice, somehow feels more grounded, less sanitized. Besides, it surely can't hurt to put a good word in with Ganesha for our trip, right?

Thanks, friends!

Eric — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:46:48 -0800

Thanks, friends!

Very cool!!!! Your writing is wonderful; makes me...

Linda — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:09:37 -0800

Very cool!!!! Your writing is wonderful; makes me feel like I'm right there.

CONGRATULATIONS ERIC !! We are so happy for you an...

Mary — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:36:40 -0800

CONGRATULATIONS ERIC !!
We are so happy for you and can't wait to join you for a diving adventure. Way to go !

I love that you can watch the ceiling and feel con...

Lucas — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:02:03 -0800

I love that you can watch the ceiling and feel contentment. It would definitely delay my rising each day, that's for sure!

Blub, blub, I think I'm in love

Eric — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:45:00 -0800

It will surprise no one that a bad day in Bali beats a good day in lots of other places. Here, even the humdrum is pretty darn fantastic.

Yesterday was not just a day in Bali. It was a great day in Bali.

We've settled into a lovely rhythm here in Padangbai, waking up to the crowing of the roosters (honestly, not an embellishment nor literary device!), lingering in bed to admire the vanes of the ceiling fan circling behind the translucent the mosquito canopy overhead. The view of the draping canopy -- with its a wooden hoop spreading the gauzy fabric to cover the mattress and also focusing its rise to a single point above us -- somehow never fails to conjure Arabian music in my head. I can observe it rocking gently in the fan's breeze for far longer, and with far more contentment, than I care to admit.

At some point, I get up (the early riser of the two of us) and migrate to the balcony of our little two-story hut to read or watch the village of Padangbai spring to life again, heralded by the sweepers in every establishment, scratching of straw brooms against stone pavers and polished tile. At some point, I climb down the stairs from the balcony, walk a few paces to the breakfast counter, and place our order. Fifteen minutes later, a pancake or egg dish, fruit salad and two cups of the tastiest coffee on planet Earth are delivered to our door. We eat, pondering how to spend the day. (Walk a block down to the fabulous snorkeling beach? Walk across the street to the main beach? Or just pick a new restaurant to try their versions of various Balinese dishes, or fruit juice, or get an early start on a Bintang, the ubiquitous local lager?)

Most days, we continue this pace until after sundown, letting our appetites for food, drink and activity be our guide. It's a gentle rhythm.

Yesterday before breakfast, I finished coding my first non-trivial iPhone application, completed as one of the assignments for the Stanford University iPhone Application Programming course I've been following, whose materials (including videos from the course) are available for free online. (You may ask, "this is what he does in Bali?" Yes. It is.) Meet Hello Polly, my polygon rendering application that I'm sure will make millions on the iPhone App Store.

After breakfast, yesterday's activities included my last two training dives. The first took us out to a wall extending to about 50 meters down, coral and countless varieties of sea life clinging to its vertical face. Hovering at various depths down to our maximum of 18 meters, a gentle current carrying us laterally along the wall, I have never felt closer to flying in all my life. Practicing maintaining buoyancy -- achieved primarily by controlling the amount of air in your lungs -- only made the experience more sublime. Want to ascend slightly? Take a deeper breath. Descend? Release more air on your next exhalation. To my surprise, this quickly becomes second-nature, require little more thought or concentration to change your depth that it does to walk down the sidewalk on the surface. Complement this buoyancy control with a kick from your swim fins, and voila, you are able to navigate the underwater world fully in three dimensions!

I was relieved and amazed to discover that, contrary to feeling like shark bait, diving (at least in Bali's waters) feels like walking through an underwater garden. Fish and coral and crustaceans and plant life abound, but none of it felt the slightest bit threatening to me. (Is it possible that Bali's underwater dwellers are Hindus, too?) At one point, we came upon a group of five squid, each the size of a terrier, hovering and darting in their other-worldly way, communicating with electric colors on their skin, raising their tentacles as if to say, "'ay, you, come on ova here!" I felt zero trepidation, and following my dive instructor's lead, held out a hand, wiggling my fingers. It was fascinating to watch their eyes pivot in their sockets, examining us, knowing that with their jet-like propulsion, they could disappear in a flash, but seemed, too, to understand that we were no (immediate) threat. And, instead of hearing the klaxons of a red alert, I was imagining the Cousteau's lovely lilt: "'ere we 'ave the squid in 'is natif 'abitat, peacefoully exploring 'is surroundings, much as we are."

(To say this experience makes me second-guess consuming squid at the dinner table is an understatement.)

Our final dive -- all that stood between me and certification -- took us out to a ship-"wreck" and an artificial reef. The scare quotes are warranted because this ship was sunk deliberately as a diving attraction, a common but to me distasteful practice in areas vying for the diver's dollar or pound or euro.

My favorite moments were finding little spots along the "reef," a cylindrically-wound metal mesh, contorted, unrolled and dropped to twist along the bottom. The metal gives coral a place to grow, and provides protection for fish, and so attracts both. In appearance, it looked less like a reef to me than an underwater roller coaster. Soaring just inches above its undulating length was great fun (as well as another good test of buoyancy control), and at several points I would spot something of interest attached to or just underneath the mesh, and would pivot to observe, often hovering head down, a floating underwater handstand of sorts. One of my biggest surprises of scuba diving is how gracefully and acrobatically it is possible to move, wearing 60 pounds of gear.

After the reef, we proceeded to the final skill check before heading back to our boat. Our last skill was complete mask removal and replacement, something our practice in the pool showed me was easier than I imagined it would be. Like most things in scuba, the trick is just to remain calm, keep your head and follow your training. After successfully replacing and clearing my mask, there was an underwater celebration of sorts, handshakes, and slow-motion high fives. As we ascended to the surface, I went slowly, looking all around me, savoring my last moments underwater for a while.

Thanks to my excellent instructor, Laura Stolzenberg, and all the staff at WaterWorxx in Padangbai for an absolutely unforgettable, fun and successful training course!

Now that my days aren't full of dives, Julie (who's been certified for years) and I are contemplating our next dive experiences. I can hardly wait to try diving with my new dive buddy.

Bali calling

Eric — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:56:00 -0800

We've now spent only five nights in Bali, but what a transition!

Our plan during our visit (in contrast to much of our travels so far)
is to remain relatively stationary, camped out in a comfortable,
affordable two-story hut opposite the main beach in Padangbai, on
Bali's southeastern coast.

It's been a different kind of exhilaration to adjust to the temps
consistently in the upper 90s Fahrenheit, perpetually blue skies, the
equatorial humidity, the consistent tropical equinoxes. Balinese
culture -- literally, an island of Hindus in an Islamic archipelago of
17,000 islands -- is intriguing, complex, and incredibly, incredibly
friendly.

As Elizabeth Gilbert describes in Eat, Pray, Love, there are a
bewildering array of stunningly beautiful ceremonies that take place
seemingly every day among the countless temples. Little Padangbai,
alone, has three temples (for Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), and transit
on every road way takes you past so many others it is difficult to
keep count. Every day, our hut is adorned with beautiful offerings,
typically in a tiny woven basket containing flowers, rice or fruit and
a burning stick of incense. The sidewalk is... (to say littered would
be unjust) decorated with these offering boxes, and during various
times of the day, the air throughout town is perfumed with incense. We
arrived on the day of the full moon, and many of the nearby temples
are celebrating this fact (the full moon's, not our, arrival) every
night for this whole week.

For a westerner like me, these rituals seem mysterious, intoxicating
and somehow impenetrable. I have repeatedly found myself imagining
what I would experience if I arrived from Mars and stumbled into a
Christian Christmas service. Surely, I would be no less bewildered.
The striking difference here, I suppose, is that these rituals of
faith are so much more pervasive, so much more frequent, such a felt
part of life in these communities.

We spent our day yesterday visiting a number of major temples on the
eastern part of the island (the Mother Temple and Holy Spring Temple
stand out as perhaps our most meaningful glimpses into Balinese
faith), which attests to the depth and breadth of the spirituality (or
spiritualities) practiced here. It's a gentle and joyful -- if
nevertheless unsettled -- experience, drifting in a sea of belief that
I don't really understand. The journey is the thing, right?

We have planted ourselves in a somewhat out-of-the-way port town,
visited mainly for its ferry connections to other islands, and
secondarily for its diving and snorkeling. Despite our explicit intend
to get away from the tourist towns, it is clear that tourism is a
major driver of the economy here.

And the economic imperatives of tourism put to shame our modest
attempts to learn a few critical phrases of Bahasa Indonesia (thanks
to the Learn Indonesian podcast) before arriving. Most of the Balinese
people we interact with can be heard in the space of a few minutes
switching between passable English, to French, to German and then back
to Indonesian as the language of their interlocutor suggests.

Bali also marks our first real encounter with the social economic
disparities that will accompany us on many of our travels. From our
few conversations with locals about it so far, it seems that most of
the gracious Balinese who are making our stay so gentle here can
scarcely afford to leave the island, much less contemplate a round-the-
world trek. I sense that many people are content in this place, but it
does not change the irresolvable tension from the inequities of
personal wealth between the typical Balinese and the typical tourist
or traveler, here on holiday.

While I want to be conscious of this aspect of our travels -- the
contrast between sometimes unfathomable luxury of so many months of
travel and the daily needs of many of the people we meet -- the
solution is surely not to disengage from the world, or to opt not to
experience this gulf (a gulf which will widen substantially along our
itinerary). It, too, remains unsettled and unsettling.

I'll be (begging your forgiveness) diving into this fray in a
different way today, as I begin my PADI open water SCUBA certification
courses. (No pressure, Riley!) Even when swimming in fresh water, I
can all-too-easily conjure that iconic image from Jaws, two bare legs
dangling appetizingly from the surface of the water, as the shark's
mouth opens... So wish me luck, 'kay?

More to come!

Wonderful post! We too have been waiting to hear ...

Linda — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:01:24 -0800

Wonderful post! We too have been waiting to hear more about your time in NZ. We'll have to get there one day....soon :-).

Shucks, thanks, friends!

Eric — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:39:28 -0800

Shucks, thanks, friends!

Great to read this post. I'd say, you've done the ...

Linda Jean Kenix — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:11:03 -0800

Great to read this post. I'd say, you've done the place justice. Good on ya, mate. Best of luck on your future travels and we'll see you in England!

One post to rule them all - a fitting title, indee...

Erika Madison — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:42:21 -0800

One post to rule them all - a fitting title, indeed. I've been waiting patiently for the NZ update, and this was such a thrill to read.

One post to rule them all

Eric — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:34:00 -0800

When our dear friends Susan and Greg described their first visit to New Zealand, they said something remarkable and surprising. They said they'd considered not returning home. Shucking their comfy life, in their comfy home, in comfy Minneapolis, to set up shop anew in NZ (which the Kiwis pronounce "en zed").

At the time, still getting to know the two of them, I thought perhaps they had a wild, spontaneous streak I'd not previously detected. I knew them to be avid, enthusiastic travelers, but come on. Who decides never to go home? After only a month in a place?

Spend a month in New Zealand, seeing it as we have anyway, and the soundness of their reasoning becomes more apparent. I've lost count of how many times, in the last month, that Julie and I have begun conversations speculating about the lives we could create here.

Each day has been so full, a chronological treatment of our visit would be neither svelte nor sufficiently illuminating. Here, then, is a different kind of account of this place, populated with our personal examples of why New Zealand is a place you ought to visit -- or hell, contemplate relocating to -- if you haven't already.

HOSPITALITY

If there is a theme emerging from our travels around the world, it is surely the staggering hospitality of our friends, old and new, as well as total strangers. We have been hosted and shown such wonders by so many kind-hearted people, I don't think I will ever look at traveling the same way again. In addition to making our voyage-on-a-shoestring possible, our time in people's homes, listening to stories of local color, and seeing places through eyes that know it far better than we do has enriched our journey beyond measure.

The Kiwis, and our friends old and new who call this place their home, have only added to that experience.

Julie has described the people we've met as attentive. It's apt. Hospitality -- whether in a friend's home or interacting with someone in a service industry -- feels engaged, but also notably relaxed. Absent are any sense of servility and any of the fuss that sometimes is associated with being of service to another person.

We spent a week staying with our friends Jen and Linda Jean and their two adorable, happy, curious kids, Grady and Zoey. Five minutes after arriving, we felt like part of the family, and the subsequent week only continued to reinforce that sentiment. They made it clear that we were to make ourselves at home, and indeed, we did, happily and with gusto!

Out for a stroll through a Saturday art market, we met one of Jen and LJ's neighbors, Greg, selling his remarkable, iridescent jewelry. Five minutes later, he'd invited us out for spring skiing at Broken River, 90 minutes from Lyttelton into the central mountains. I ski whenever I can, especially if it's in the mountains, and Jen grew up skiing in Colorado. Some discussion later in the afternoon, and we decided to accept!

Greg arrived the following morning, precisely on time, and equipped with a complete line of ski gear and outerwear so that we'd have everything we needed (and which, as you might expect, might not be among the accoutrements of a 'round-the-world traveler). Greg drove us to the ski field (a project requiring his expert navigation in four-wheel drive up windy, snow-covered roads), and oriented us to the rather technical demands of riding the steep rope tows, using a contraption called a nutcracker. (More on that, later.) He was a great ski buddy, leading me into off-piste terrain that offered some of the best tracked powder skiing available, but which would have taken me a while to reach on my own.

Describing the hospitality of friends of friends -- now friends directly! -- wouldn't be complete without sharing the experiences we had courtesy of Rex and Trish, friends of Greg and Susan's in Wellington, who took us under their wing during both of our all-too-brief visits to their lovely city.

On our first encounter, Rex took us on a tour of Wellington's sites, with an insider's point of view. We visited a storied pub across from the nation's Capitol complex, which houses three-dimensional caricatures of its politicians. We saw the city from the peak of Mount Victoria, the Botanical Gardens, rode its famous cable car and prepared our list of other spots to visit (especially the magnificent Te Papa national museum).

Our first visit occurred after just a few days in New Zealand. Our next pass through Wellington occurred at the very end of our trip, with a quick afternoon and overnight before bee-lining for Auckland and our date with a plane bound for Bali. Hoping to help us make the most of the time we had available, Rex cleared his calendar to give us a guided tour of the beloved Martinborough wine region, an hour from Welly. We visited vineyards for tasting (some of the best stuff I've ever had), met the creators of the (who knew!) New Zealand olives being produced and marketed domestically and internationally, including in our own home town, as the ilove olives sold at Lunds and Byerly's. John and Helen took time to talk with us and give us a tour, despite ostensibly being closed at the time, and having just returned from some travels themselves.

There are so many more examples, I simply couldn't list them all, so I'll limit myself to two more.

Julie took over Jen & LJ's kitchen, and we were joined by their well-travelled, quick-witted friends Dorji and Keryn, who spent the evening filling us in on great options along the West Coast, and for other destinations on our trip, over a delicious feast (thanks, darling!) of New Zealand's unique and gigantic green-lipped mussels.

Back in Auckland, Anna hosted us (along with two other couch surfers), and welcomed our participation in any number of events that this multi-talented woman undertakes, including dancing, choral singing, sword-fighting and, oh, making her own chain-mail armor.

Suffice it to say that Kiwis, from our experience at least, seem to possess a deep-rooted understanding of how to help folks enjoy and experience this amazing land.

NUMBER EIGHT WIRE

Homemade chain mail also seems a fitting segue to the remarkable Kiwi ingenuity. Greg (a guy who has at least three lines of work that keep his talents and interests engaged at any point in time) put it well, I think, when he told me that Kiwis have a knack for doing things creativity because "no one told them they couldn't." I see it as an interesting intersection between an island economy and something of a frontier ethic. If your truck breaks down, mate, you best figure out how to fix it, because the nearest mechanic's shop is likely to be a long way away. But take your time, and no worries.

This ingenuity is often mentioned with reference to "number 8 wire," the ubiquitous gauge of metal strung between fence posts to keep the sheep in their paddocks, but often employed for all manner of other purposes. It is the Kiwis' version of duct tape and baling wire, perhaps, but used (metaphorically, at least) by the Kiwis even more prolifically than duct tape by MacGuyver.

SCENIC BEYOND MEASURE

I recall Peter Jackson, discussing the making of the Lord of the Rings films, saying that he grew up thinking that he lived in Middle Earth, with all of New Zealand's stunning and varied scenery.

It's little wonder the films were so capably set in these landscapes, since they defy superlatives: mountain ranges that appear as the frozen waves of a churning ocean, beaches evoking every archetype of tropical postcards, fiords (the NZ spelling) that evoke the fjords of my people's homelands in Scandinavia, glaciers reaching for the ocean with their broken azure fingertips, volcanic peaks and geothermal wonders (and spas!) as other-worldly as Yellowstone, forests full of birdsong that stretch seemingly forever, and the mightiest oceans wrapping the whole package in a fierce embrace.

New Zealand, indeed, has a lively continent's worth of scenery packed into each of the two main islands.

Part of what is so surprising, too, about this density of scenic beauty is that you can, in the space of a day, pass through so many biomes that one begins to think you've entered an overgrown Epcot exhibit. One wonders, "are the waterfalls cascading over that cliff part of the painted backdrop, or are they really there?"

On our five-day hike along the Abel Tasman track on the north end of South Island, Julie joked that with the well-marked walking paths, the amazing views and the total absence of any predators (for humans, at least), it's hard not to think that Disney had a hand in creating this place. It is stunning in every way you'd want your landscape to be, yet unthreatening in the way that many amazing landscapes aren't.

ADRENALINE-LOADED

But it would be a mistake to think that the comparative serenity of this place makes it sedate. Rather, it's a spot jam-packed with hair-raising experiences. Whether it's exploring those picturesque landscapes or the surprising joy of catching sight of some rare fauna, New Zealand's natural wonders shine here in a way that touches a chord. (A short list of unforgettable fauna from our visit: glimpsing the world's rarest penguin or, later the same night, watching rafts of the world's smallest penguins storming the beaches of Oamaru; a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins following the wake of our water taxi after our hike on the Abel Tasman track; or the innumerable, convoluted bird songs heard in every woods.)

Julie's birthday fell about midway through our visit here (the first time she's celebrated her birthday while flowers bloom), and she decided to make the limestone caves of Clifden part of her birthday experience.

The Clifden caves consist of a network of dozens of underground passages, with three openings out to the surface separated by about forty-five minutes of exhilarating caving in between. Sometimes down on all fours scrambling through a tight passage, sometimes craning our necks to take in the scale of enormous underground caverns, we traversed the caves from their main entrance as far as possible until our progress was blocked by a large (and we later learned, deathly deep) pool. Along the way, we had the caves entirely to ourselves.

Well, that's not completely true. We shared them with countless glowworms. Glowworms are tiny creatures which, like a spider, extrude sticky filaments from their bodies, and glow with a star-like bioluminescence. Their light in the largest caverns reminded me of being in a planetarium. And, apparently, for their prey, too, since insects drawn to the light will end up mired in their sticky web, and then become lunch.

One of the most striking aspects of this natural caving experience was how different it might have been in our (more litigious and safety-conscious and lacking-universal-health-care) homeland. Here, there was simply a sign saying, in effect, "you best know what you're doing, mate" and off ya go, underground! This, despite the fact that as we were talking to locals, researching the caves, we met a volunteer firefighter who told us how they were frequently called upon to rescue under-prepared cavers, some of whom risk running out of air by entering the caves when they fill with water after heavy rains. Suffice it to say, we travelled cautiously forward, and with multiple sources of light.

We also came across the round boulders that give California's Bowling Ball Beach its name, at Moeraki Beach, the only other spot in the world these particular formations exist. We have joined some strange fraternity, I suppose, by being two people who have seen both of these places on a single trip.

There are plenty of UNNATURAL ways to pass the time at your own risk here, as well.

The nutcrackers we used while skiing at Broken River -- consisting of two metal flanges attached at a hinge with a bulbous end for pinching the rope -- allow you to affix yourself to a rope that passes directly over metal pulleys, without running your fingers or gear between the pulleys and the rope. (Accidentally doing so resulted in several rips in Greg's loaner jacket, and confirmed viscerally that one's fingers would fare far worse.) The nutcrackers are attached to a climbing harness, which also functions as a place to sheath the device when skiing. This entire arrangement, from one point of view, is an elegant, low-impact and simple way to ascend a mountain on skis. From another perspective, it is a series of accidents waiting to happen, with some extra potential for danger sprinkled on top. Without even mentioning the physical challenge of using these things for a full day of skiing, let's just say that the nutcracker may have gotten its name from its similarity in general appearance to the familiar culinary gadget, but having a heavy piece of metal dangling on a rope between your legs while skiing suggests some other naming inspiration, as well.

But what could be more unnatural, more counter to instinct, than leaping from a great height to jagged rocks below?

It's been said that Queenstown, New Zealand is the world capital of recreational thrill-seeking. The bungy jump was invented and popularized here, the skies are... peopled, I suppose would be the term, with paragliders doing pirouettes that make spectators on the ground dizzy, and there are more ways to pass time here prefaced with the word "extreme" than any other place I've visited.

My parting gift after twelve years at Hearth Connection was a gift certificate for not one but two jumps in Queenstown. Including the highest in New Zealand (and third highest in the world), the Nevis Highwire.

On the shuttle to the Highwire, our bus driver noted a respectable bungy platform cantilevered over the river we were following to our own appointments with fate. His timing was perfect, pausing so that each of of us wanna-be superheroes aboard could size it up, steel our resolve and don an expression of nonchalant curiousity. "The Nevis Arc is two and a half times higher than that one, and the Highwire is seven times higher," he said. Boom. Silence from the full bus, punctuated only with brief outbursts of nervous laughter.

Once arriving at the Nevis gorge, we were shuttled out to "the pod," where the big plunge takes place. Suspended on cables across a gorge, river coursing beneath, the pod is only reachable by an open-air cable car that holds no more than seven passengers. The floor of this shuttle is steel grating, perfect for experiencing the distance to the water below.

From one hundred and thirty four meters -- a third again longer than a football field -- a bungy-corded object hits 80 mph during the free fall. Dropping takes eight seconds. (Try screaming full volume for eight seconds. It's longer than you'd think.)

We traverse across the cables aboard the shuttle, unclip our safety lines and step aboard the pod. With the jumpers, three crew and Julie as an observer, there are about two dozen people aboard, but it manages not to feel too crowded. By the time we reach the pod, Joe, an Irishman from the sound of his accent, and the heaviest in our group, has already been the first to take the leap into the abyss. I notice that, with the reference point of a suspended Irishman for scale, that chasm is a lot deeper than it looked, and he dropped a lot further than I imagined possible.

On the pod, each jumper has a number written in blue magic marker on the back of their right hand and a number written in red, their weight in kilograms, on the left. Jumping proceeds from the heaviest to the lightest. (Fight-or-flight survival instincts apparently trump any reservations or vanity people may feel about having their weight telegraphed in Sharpie.)

A number of people precede me. I note the variations in their form -- how committed was their swan dive, how much occilation in their bouncing, how dilated their pupils upon being hoisted back to the mothership.

About midway through the pack, a crew member taps me on the shoulder, signally that it's time for the ankle harnesses to go on. That means I'm on deck. I watch the guy ahead of me, as they pantomime for him what his actions over the next several minutes are supposed to be. He steps up to the platform -- appropriately, it looks a lot like a high dive -- and the countdown begins. "5-4-3-2-1-bungy!" and he is gone.

I'm summoned through the gate, and the crew begins those same instructions again. Closer, now, to the pod's open doors, I feel the wind whipping through the canyon. The crew member's voice begins to sound like the teacher's from Charlie Brown. Wah-wah-wah-third-bounce-wah-wah-pull-red-cord-wah-wah-jump-out-and-away.

My harness now fastened to the bungy cord, which twists vertiginously in the open air below, and my ankles fastened together, I must waddle -- a full-on duck walk, which I perform as... confidently as possible -- to the edge of the platform. The end of my harness is now also hanging over the edge, taunting gravity. I look out straight ahead and hear the countdown begin. "Oh shit, this one is for me!" I think.

I barely hear him say "...2-1-bungy!"

Focusing only on the initial act of launching myself outward, I suddenly find myself in open air.

My god, it's too late!

Half a second after leaving the platform, some deep mammalian instinct is screaming for a tree branch. None to be found here.

I am dropping so fast, half-formed, preverbal signals -- panic battling exhilaration -- flicker through my awareness. An awareness dominated by a big earth that keeps getting bigger.

Something must be wrong! I...

...am...

...WAY...

...TOO...

LOW!

And then I feel the elastic start to pull.

It's a surprisingly gentle tug, and although it's slowing me down, I'm still dropping at a good clip, the features of rocks in the river becoming more and more distinct.

And then I'm bouncing. Bouncing, dangling like a carcass in a butcher shop.

Pulling on the ankle release strap, there's a sickening sound of tension in metal being released, and then all at once I'm sitting upright. The view is stunning. Survival is stunning.

Before I know it, I'm being reeled in, and find as I ascend to the pod that I'm clinging to the rope with both hands. My left brain is telling me that the harness is carrying my weight, and that I should just let go and enjoy the ride. My body is telling my left brain to fuck off.

I imagined screaming all the way down, and was surprised to find myself silent during the drop, apart from the deepest gasp for air I think I've ever taken, right at that half-second mark, when my body realized that gravity had me in its clutches. The whooping and shouting (okay, and cursing, too) started only once I was assured the cord had saved me from certain doom.

I returned to the pod exhilarated, adrenaline drunk and utterly grateful to be alive.

And then, I got to do it again.

My second voyage into thin air, the Nevis Arc, sends its lucky passenger out swinging over the same canyon in a harness, like the ultimate turbo-boost on a 100-meter playground swing you could imagine. It shared many common elements to the bungy jump, but one noteable difference: with the bungy jump, you launch yourself into the air. With the swing, you are suspended in the air and the staff release you. Once I was in place, the crew asked whether I wanted to have them surprise me, or to count down from five.

Well, guess what a control freak would choose? So, he started the countdown. 5... 4... Click! The cables release -- those bungy guys can smell fear! -- and I'm falling! There's a moment when I'm negotiating with gravity, tugging on the harness as if to climb it to safety. I drop and drop and drop and when my stomache is finally back in its proper location, that, too, was a hell of a lot of fun. Completely unnatural and terrifying, but in a good way.

(I don't feel compelled to try every extreme fill-in-the-blank activity, but this is about the best send-off gift I could imagine, so befitting the significance of this departure for me. Leaving family, friends, home and Hearth Connection's important work was an incredibly difficult thing to do. It was the biggest leap I've ever taken.)

RIGHT-SIZED

As I've struggled to put words around our New Zealand experience -- which has come faster than my attempts to describe it, and THAT'S saying something! -- the words that I return to are that New Zealand seems somehow right-sized.

In many other places, for instance, one-lane bridges would be a major detriment to the flow of traffic, to safety, to commerce. Here (where, in some parts of the country, one-lane bridges outnumber two-laners), it somehow just works. The place has enough people to find pockets of cosmopolitan city life (mainly in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, the country's three metropolitan cities), but also abundant and accessible wilderness. Its priorities are progressive ones, and whatever debates ensue, every Kiwi has access to health care, higher education and the economic resources to survive. It's a place that prioritizes caring for its incredible environment, and also, making investments (such as the Department of Conservation's huts along the innumerable hiking tracks) to help people experience and enjoy that environment.

As we prepare to leave (I'm writing this as we are about to board our flight to Bali), I recognize how easy it would be to romanticize this place, or to suggest in all the amazing experiences we've had that we have found a bit of utopia here. The truth is not far from that mark, but I would invite you not to take my word for it, but to come and see for yourself. Hope to see you there!

random russ

Dick — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:30:08 -0700

quote of the day

Allyson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:39 -0700

“It’s Halloween, time for the newborns to be dressed as some form of produce.” - Dee Ann

That's the one! Thanks!!!!!

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:35:14 -0700

That's the one! Thanks!!!!!

Hi Linda! I just checked my Pandora saved station...

Eric — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:47:50 -0700

Hi Linda!

I just checked my Pandora saved stations (which thankfully remain accessible, despite the fact that the music isn't, since they block connections that originate outside of the US because of licensing restrictions). On second thought, I think the station we listened to together was based on the music of Smoke City. So, enter Smoke City as the search term in Pandora, and it will probably select tracks akin to the ones we enjoyed together. Happy listening!

Hey Eric...we need your help! We've got Pandora s...

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:12:47 -0700

Hey Eric...we need your help! We've got Pandora set up now, but we cannot remember title of the music (not even sure how to word this) that you showed us we could type in and it would find similar music. Don't know if you remember or not...but we went to the Mum station and that doesn't seem to be it. This probably doesn't make any sense at all, but maybe you can decipher :-).

Thanks!
Linda

Hear, hear, Lucas! Thanks for the encouragement. A...

Eric — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:24:46 -0700

Hear, hear, Lucas! Thanks for the encouragement. And stay tuned!

Good news that Everett has made the leap! Certainl...

Eric — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:24:32 -0700

Good news that Everett has made the leap! Certainly, it must be some improvement to have a screen that works!

That music streaming service is called Pandora. In addition to the Pandora iPhone application, you can use your computer, too. You'll just need a cable that plugs into the headphone jack of either your computer or the iPhone on one end, and into the red and white AUX plugs (called RCA connectors) of your stereo on the other. Any electronics shop should sell a cable like that. A cheap one (like the one I have with me) should be less than $10, and they go upwards from there (a gold-tipped, shielded cable could cost $30 or more).

Sadly, I think Pandora is only licensed in the U.S., so we'll be Pandora-less for the next year of so. So enjoy the Mùm station for us!

Well, alas, it was a bit the perfect storm of tech...

Eric — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:20:35 -0700

Well, alas, it was a bit the perfect storm of technical problems.

I had been syncing my photos routinely before, but coincident with the latest major iTunes update, my Mac would no longer recognize the iPhone as a camera when it was connected. So, I'd been accumulating photos while investigating a solution for that problem. Online forums suggest this could be anything from a hardware failure on the iPhone (unlikely to yield to remedy), a faulty USB cable (least painful to remedy) or a USB driver failure requiring a reinstall of iTunes (a major pain in the ass).

Then, when I actually went to do the "technical persuading," the update process entered a point of no return which (I'd forgotten) involved wiping the device clean. Unfortunately, the routine backup process that's part of syncing the iPhone also failed. I realized this moments after crossing this point of no return, but there is literally nothing to be done, or you risk turning the phone into an unusable paperweight. (A function of the technical process of re-flashing the nonvolatile RAM.) I was just hoping enough of the backup finished that I wouldn't have lost everything.

Thankfully, enough other humans have encountered this issue that there are some software tools to help, in particular a tool that can read the files created by the backup process and another tool that can scan all of the iPhone's backup documents for files of a particular type of file. Using these tools, I was able to recover some of the lost photos from the incomplete backups. In the scheme of things, it's not the end of the world, but a humbling reminder that having technical prowess is not always enough, and that redundant backups are essential.

I told a friend about your photo tragedy and he as...

jon olson — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:28:05 -0700

I told a friend about your photo tragedy and he asked "why didn't he have his photos synched on his computer?"
I started wondering this too. You still have your computer right?

This post is such a tease! There's so much more I...

Lucas — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:16:33 -0700

This post is such a tease! There's so much more I want to know, hear about, experience with you. Can't wait for more!!!!

I'm SO greedy!

OK...that's weird...but fun! Everett got an IPhon...

Linda — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:28:34 -0700

OK...that's weird...but fun! Everett got an IPhone Thursday. He claims I talked him into it. ACS won't release his number to ATT yet, which is driving him nuts, but hopefully all will be well soon. We'll have to check out Pano :-). And we'll have to figure out how to stream music like you did here. That was wonderful.

The life panoramic in Wellington

Eric — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:41:00 -0700

Julie and I have been enjoying Wellington, catching a rugby match on a
gi-normous screen at a lively pub; meeting up with friends of Susan
and Greg's (and fantastic Wellington ambassadors) Rex, Trish and Leah;
experiencing the blustering reasons it's sometimes called Windy
Wellington; and enjoying landmarks of its cinematic impact, including
the Embassy Theatre, where we had fun playing with my new iPhone app,
Pano.

Everett and I loved reading this, and passed on to...

Linda — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:33:06 -0700

Everett and I loved reading this, and passed on to Mick, who I am sure enjoyed it as well. Ev and Max were out at WL yesterday to do some emergency support of the workshop, and told me Trout Lake already has an ice layer, and all the rivers are now running ice. Ev said it was spectacularly beautiful, but it always is to me anyway.

Thousands of words

Eric — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:14:00 -0700

We have safely arrived in New Zealand, after an exhausting, 30 1/2 hour door-to-door travel marathon that took us from Honolulu to Seoul (9 1/2 hours), Seoul to Sydney (10 1/2 hours) and Sydney to Auckland (a speedy 2 1/2 hours), padded with layovers and bookended by bus rides.

Thankfully, we had some of the best airline hospitality we've ever experienced, first thanks to Korean Air (whose airborne service is only rivaled by the amazingly humane Incheon International Airport, just outside of Seoul) and second, thanks to Emirates Air (whose great onboard service was only slightly tarnished by a surly Aussie gate agent, who repeatedly scolded us for not having a document that was never provided to us throughout these transfers).

The comforts of the travel (our first and third legs, we might as well have been at an all-you-can-watch movie buffet, the personal A/V options were so staggeringly rich and diverting) were marred slightly when my checked luggage -- the backpack with my clothes, camping gear and various sundries -- failed to arrive with us in New Zealand. That gave us our first taste of Kiwi hospitality, however, as the folks responsible for such things leaped into action, conveying competence and inspiring confidence. And, sure enough, my pack is scheduled to arrive at our hostel later this afternoon. Fingers crossed. No worries, mate. Right?

Confidence and competence collided in a less fortunate fashion this morning, however. In my zeal to prepare my cell phone for use in New Zealand, a process that requires a bit of... technical persuasion, I ended up losing all of the photos we've taken over the past two weeks. Most everything in Hawai'i (save a few that had already been posted or otherwise accessible), our last days in Anchorage and the pics documenting our increasing loopiness as the hours of travel to New Zealand wore on. (I am particularly saddened to lose the photo Julie staged of me, feigning mouth-open sleep, with a sticker reading "Wake for Meals" plastered on my forehead instead of the seat-back.)

I'm sorry you won't get to see the lava we saw flowing into the ocean on the Big Island, more views from Mauna Kea, the signs warning us not to travel various paths we traveled, our walks on various lava flows and through the Thurston lava tube, as well as our campsites along the way, under towering eucalyptus in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, or at land's end at the county campground our last night on the Big Island, so close that the curling waves felt like they might give the tent a surfing lesson at any moment. You'll also miss the signs offering friendly warnings of falling coconuts or faulty septic systems.

There were lots of moments, in fact, we'd captured with these lost pics. I'm especially sorry to have lost a number of photos that I know Julie was looking forward to keeping, and using in various future posts. Sorry, darling, and sorry, too, dear reader. Of course, many of these images still exist, for now at least, between our ears, where they are harder to share and much more susceptible to erosion. Hopefully, we'll find words to compensate.

Our bodies are still catching up to finding ourselves living nearly a full day into the future from home (thanks to the wonders of the International Date Line), and getting to know this amazing place. We'll have to post some new photos soon, eh?

Wow. Wow. Wow. Great update. Thanks for letting us...

yoshinyc — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:39:15 -0700

Wow. Wow. Wow. Great update. Thanks for letting us tag along vicariously, guys.

May your wondrous travels continue as you leave the states.

Hard and beautiful

Eric — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:32:00 -0700

It has been two, action-packed weeks since our return from the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, and I have been at an utter loss for words to describe the experience. As our time back in southern Alaska and now in Hawai'i fill up the memory banks, it feels important to me to get my thoughts about the experience down, however imperfectly, before they are softened or blurred by too many other memories. That said, I've still been struggling to put words around it. The length of this post is testament. (You, dear reader, might want to grab another cup of coffee before plunging in!)

I've been helped in reading the exhilarating prose of Robert Marshall, who in the last decade of his life, before an untimely death at age 38, traveled extensively through the Brooks Range, and created the first maps of substantial portions of their wilderness, myriad drainages and soaring peaks. Through his advocacy back in Washington, he contributed to large swaths of the tundra being protected as designated wilderness areas, including the Gates of the Arctic National Park named in honor of his travels and the eponymous peaks he christened, so that others might have the same amazing wilderness experiences he and his companions had seeing and experiencing their untrammeled wildness. His Alaska Wilderness is recommended reading for anyone whose curiosity about this place is piqued by our experience. Much of the book is set within a few air-miles of Wild Lake.

On this trip so full of amazing travel experiences (visiting the summit and telescopes of Mauna Kea this week, for instance, is an unforgettable moment culminating a decades-old wish), our time in the Brooks Range is one of the best travel experiences of my entire life. Explaining how and why is a little involved.

First, our hosts. When Julie and I arrived in Anchorage, we were already stunned by the sheer generosity of Linda and Everett. They opened their home to us, repeatedly made it clear that we should just feel at ease and that we were under no obligations to them. Their casa, our casa. It was also immediately clear that these two people were each, as individuals, accomplished and enthusiastic adventurers. Together, they comprise a force of nature. Hearing their tales of reaching summits of peaks we'd admired respectfully from our motorcycles on a distant patch of comparatively comfortable tarmac, as they battled hypothermia or impassable terrain, stirred my imagination. These people live in a big way in a big world. Alaska is their perfect home base. But what is also striking about both of them is that, despite being driven and having every reason to flaunt their various accomplishments, neither seem to have appetite for any self-aggrandizement. In fact, quite the opposite: the two things that light both of them up were being outdoors somewhere beautiful, and encouraging and supporting others to experience the same. There is not a "look what I did that you couldn't do" bone in their bodies. Despite solid reasons why there could be.

Julie and I had been planning to use our stay in Anchorage for some much needed recuperation after 8,500 miles on the road, the last stretch of which was spent in near-constant motion traversing a gigantic forest blanketing mountains upon mountains for nearly two thousand miles. We were excited about -- gasp! -- having regular access to laundry, and catching up with friends, and cleaning and organizing and disposing of our gear before setting off on the next leg of our trip. Yet, when Linda and Everett invited us to share their unique, remote portal in the the arctic -- their cabin at Wild Lake -- a fire of curiosity was lit, which over the following week continued to burn brighter as we realized how vast a place Alaska is, and how difficult it is to take it all in, and how rare an opportunity we were being offered.

I've mentioned that our hosts are people with powerful wills and strong convictions, as well as generous, hospitable spirits. Our time at Wild Lake taught me much about how force-of-nature determination entangles with, dances with, subdues and is subdued by a landscape like the patch of the arctic we visited. Let me elaborate.

Everett began constructing the buildings that comprise their site on Wild Lake nearly 25 years ago. His vision for the site includes five buildings, including the main two-story cabin, a shop, a shed for storage, an outhouse and a cache. The cache is a small cabin perched atop steel posts 20 feet in the air, and is used for bear-proof storage and as an extra bedroom with great views of the lake and surrounding mountains. The Wild Lake penthouse suite, you might say. Presently, the cache is complete and the exterior of the cabin is nearly complete, with some interior finishing work remaining. That said, both buildings are as comfortable as any place we've stayed throughout trip. They are both compact, well-organized and, as they say, "thoughtfully appointed" for the local environment. That includes:

a heating system, which remarkably for September, we never had occasion to use, but which provides triple redundancy in fuel sources in case we had, including diesel, propane and wood;
the heavy duty sheathing and insulation (great when it's 60 below zero, I'm sure);
the solid steel window shutters (grizzly and storm proof, unlike many of the other cabins nearby, which have been ransacked at some point by Ursa A. Horribilus);
the steel mesh covering the screened-in front porch and the metal ramp leading to the front entrance (both of which cause discomfort to bears, and therefore discourage attempts at entry);
the location, orientation and coloring of the cabins (which made the buildings blend into the environment, and difficult to see from the lake);
use of screws, not nails, throughout the construction; and
the amazingly arctic-grade foundations of these buildings, comprised of a bed of gravel five feet deep to create a stable temperature barrier (when it melts, the permafrost has the annoying tendency to cause most structures to sink into and be consumed by the tundra), every cubic yard of which Everett moved into place by hand with a shovel and pick-axe, atop which rest the balance-adjustable footings which can be tuned with a wrench that looks like it was used to tighten the cables for the Golden Gate Bridge.

To imagine the passion, the determination and the sheer output of energy required to create such structures in this landscape -- a landscape which at every opportunity seeks to defy "permanent habitation" -- is staggering. To contemplate that every screw, board, piece of steel, tool, shingle and liter of fuel was carried into this place typically by airplane, occasionally by snowmobile and, in one near-disastrous incident, by helicopter gives me great pause.

I was tempted to make comparisons between Everett's drive to complete these buildings to Fitzcaraldo (and Werner Herzog) moving a ship over a mountain in the Amazon, but the other thing striking about these two is how inwardly focused they are about this monumental project. When Julie and I resolved to accept their invitation and join them in Wild Lake, Everett took us out to lunch to counsel us against going, or at the very least to be sure that we really knew what we were getting into. Wild Lake is not at place for everyone, and he wanted to make sure our joining them wouldn't hurt us, or our trip, or damage our experience of Alaska. It was a profoundly compassionate gesture, which brings me to my next point.

Second, the work. I told Everett how after the summer of riding the motorcycle -- physically demanding, to be sure, but hardly exercise -- that I was looking forward to working hard with him at Wild Lake, pushing as hard as I could, and getting my body into swimwear-shape before heading to the tropics. I count appreciating the value of hard physical labor, especially with a tangible, visible outcome, among the lessons I learned from my father and my employment as a lackey for his construction company during summer breaks throughout high school. There's something existentially satisfying, for me, in piling lumber, clearing brush, framing a structure or (especially fun!) tearing one down. It connects to some little-boy-in-the-sandbox part of me, to see the world affected by my efforts in this way.

There was no shortage of such opportunities at Wild Lake. Indeed, I didn't know how long it would take to fill and position 100 sandbags, but that achievement represented days of combined effort for me, Everett and Max, Everett's eldest son, who joined us for the trip. The process goes a little like this: First, locate a spot on the beach with an abundance of sand with as little rock mixed in as possible. (Rocks make the bags heavier, and also make them uneven and inconsistent. The virtue of a well-made sandbag is that it is interchangeable and interlocking with every other sandbag.) Step two, locate your bale of sandbags amid the sizable cache of construction materiel deployed about the site. In our case, these were heavy-duty, synthetic bags Everett had custom-made to his specifications. Step three, since the bags were sown and baled flat, each one had to be turned inside-out before being filled. (The fabric had a coating with a nice abrasive -- shall I say, "exfoliating?" -- quality, too.) Step four, fill a bag with sand. I'm not sure how much they ended up weighing (our guesses were just on either side of 50 pounds a piece; as my arms and back adapted over the week, they definitely felt lighter). Step five, close the bag by rolling the top down and piercing it with "hog rings" (so-called because they are used in the pig-farm business to pierce hogs' noses to prevent their natural rooting behaviors, by causing discomfort when they do), using a specially designed pliers to crimp the rings through the top of the bag. Step six, stack the bags on the beach for transport. Step seven, load the bags into the canoe, motor them to the shore nearest the cabin, and stack them again for their last transport. Step eight, move them from the shore (one slung over the shoulder, or three to a wheelbarrow load) to wherever they need to be deployed. Step nine, finally, place them into a retaining wall. Everett alone, employing his master-masonry skill with the bags, earned with more than two decades of practice, alone completed step nine.

Now, repeat steps three through nine approximately one hundred times.

The retaining walls, in this case, were being used to prevent erosion of the new gravel pad for the storage building -- the first gravel work at their site being completed with the help of heavy-duty power equipment, an ancient bulldozer being driven and maintained by Mick Manns (and that's a story worthy of its own post). They represent the core accomplishment of three people's dedicated effort over long days (9:30am-ish until 8:00pm-ish at night, with a ninety-minute lunch and a couple of beer breaks in the afternoon) in frankly, optimal weather. (Although we carried all of our cold-weather riding gear with us to Wild Lake, anticipating snow, we ended up spending days in jeans, T-shirts, and rubber boots, with temps in the high 60s or even low 70s and enough sun to earn an arctic tan!)

This work had the desired effect on me. I fell asleep each night exhausted but satisfied that we'd done our damnedest that day. My body responded favorably to the constant lifting, torquing, hiking, carrying and otherwise exerting required by the work. Julie's experience during much of this week was substantially different from mine, and we both had this odd sense of being together but apart. I credit a good portion of that to my arriving back at the cabin for dinner so exhausted I was nearly catatonic -- not unhappy, mind you, just regressing toward the pre-verbal. (Yeah, me, at a loss for words!) Julie on the other hand was able to spend a big chunk of time writing and reading and editing video, and with Linda, took immaculate care of us grunt laborers through tasty meals, timely refreshments and clean up. (Thankfully, we did get to have some shared experience, too, on our canoe trip to Trout Lake.)

In addition to being a rewarding physical challenge, the work was a great window to get to know Everett better. Let me say something on that point that he would probably prefer that I not include here. Without revealing his age, I should have a substantial youth-advantage on him when it comes to hard work. (He, alone among those of us gathered, reserved the right to hold a figurative "age card." The few times he played it were in jest, pantomiming reaching into his vest pocket to produce it in his hand, and never to get out of hard work.) Combine this with the fact that the man has destroyed his back from years of back-breaking gravel work, and you'd think I'd be able to run circles around him. In fact, I could not come close to keeping up with him, and doubt that situation would change after months of getting in Wild-Lake-shape. He's a tiger, and if you don't see it in him at first, just try to keep up with him hauling gravel.

Of course, another thing about Everett, and Linda, is that they are both madly in love with the landscape that surrounds their cabin. And it's little wonder why.

Third, the land. Before arriving in Coldfoot -- the spot six hours north of Fairbanks on the Haul Road, where we'd board a De Havilland Beaver to fly into the landing strip across the lake from Linda and Everett's cabin -- I had some idea of the kind of landscape that would be greeting us. Linda shared numerous pictures with us, and together we watched an amazing documentary of another arctic traveller (and fellow Minnesota native!) who walked and paddled the Brooks Range from the Alaskan-Canadian border to the Arctic Ocean. What came through from these two-dimensional images was the barrenness of the tundra and the ruggedness of the endless jagged mountains.

Oddly, once arriving, I was astonished to learn how alive such an apparently barren place, in fact, is. The lakes were teeming with fish (except, that is, for the one Lake Trout I pulled from its depths), with ripples on the water where they'd broken the surface visible every few minutes. There were ducks and swans and loons and surely other waterfowl I missed. There were predatory birds, too, including a bald eagle that treated us all to a show by tormenting a pair of loons, who launched into just about every song in their repertoire (likely in the interest of guarding their young). There were abundant signs of mammals, too, like the rabbits, who inexplicably love eating the synthetic material of the sandbags, and the porcupines, who drop quills while munching on the plywood Everett has staged below the cabin, as well as abundant signs of wolf and bear (both black and grizzly, with grizzly being more common). Julie spied a fox dashing into the woods, and we saw a line of Dall sheep marching along a ridgeline from the air en route to Wild Lake (prompting our North-Dakota-native pilot, Dirk, to command them to "get in my freezer, now!") The primary large mammal we observed "in action" were moose. Our visiting corresponded to their rutting season. There were lots of signs of their activity and once when Max and I think we caught them in the act at the shore across the bay.

The lake is also an amazing sight. Nestled amid the mountains, your eyes would never disclose its true size: a long ellipse with a pinch point in the middle, it runs an amazing seven miles end to end. Beneath the peaks, determining scale seemed almost impossible. We'd look across the lake at a point off the bow of our canoe, the motor running full steam, and that distant point would just sit there, distant. I also could not fathom that this body of water runs 700 feet deep. The one person known to have drowned here, in 1974, was never found. It is easy to understand why.

There are also the skies, and the clouds, and the stars.

But the real stars of the show in the Brooks Range are the mountains themselves. They are endless. As Robert Marshall put it, they appear as the waves of a turbulent sea, frozen in rock, that stretch as far as the eye can see in every direction. They reflect so many different moods of the sun, sky and season. The reds of the abundant blueberry and cranberry bushes, the greens of spruce and grasses, the yellows of the deciduous trees preparing to drop their leaves, and the grays, charcoals and blacks of stone, and the white of snow and ice at the peaks.

We learned from a documentary about the Gates of the Arctic National Park that the Koyukon people native to this region have a tradition of not pointing at or referring to the name of a mountain, out of respect, since something so small and insignificant as a person should not presume to speak on familiar terms with something so powerful and eternal. Spending time in this place, I understand that sentiment. The mountains are simply awesome. And so, I hesitate to say more, lest lovers of mountains arrive in droves, but if mountains were my one and only, I don't know where else I should be.

There is so much more to say, about the gentle, predictable and pleasant rhythm of our camp life together, of Max's patient and forgiving fishing lessons for me (it had been a long, long time), of Linda's amazing cooking (constantly feeding all of us, every meal), of our day-off trip by canoe down the Wild River to Trout Lake, of learning to hike through sedge tussocks (akin to walking through a Ball Crawl), and of course, of the incredible generosity that opened this experience to us.

But this will have to suffice in conclusion: I will never forget my time at Wild Lake, and I desperately hope it is not my last time in the Brooks Range. Thank you for that, Linda, Everett, Max and Mick, with all my heart.

Our last Hawai'ian sunset...

Eric — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:25:00 -0700

...for a while, anyway.

This trip of yours is certainly a true journey. T...

Lucas — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:56:00 -0700

This trip of yours is certainly a true journey. The players you meet, or don't meet, along the way are part of that too. Hope this only intensifies the beauty of Hawaii for you, reminding you that life is fleeting and you'd best drink it in. Love you guys. Sorry.

Views from atop amazing Mauna Kea

Eric — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:15:00 -0700

A compound of gigantic eyes gazing skyward from a sacred place above
the clouds, with Mauna Kea's sibling, the majestic Mauna Loa, looming
in the background.

So very sad.

Linda — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:45:57 -0700

So very sad.

In passing

Eric — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:23:00 -0700

Sunday morning, Julie and I made a new acquaintance, first by email,
then by telephone, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Janice had read about
our travels in Julie's post on Craigslist, looking for affordable
short-term housing options during our stay, and then purused the blog
to get to know us better. And, as with our fast new friends Linda and
Everett in Anchorage, Erika in Portland, and Tim and Joan in Point
Arena, CA, she decided to invite us, total strangers, into her home.
She even offered to meet us at the airport when our flight landed, with a sign with our names on it.

Monday afternoon, we arrived on the Big Island and scanned the people
milling about the airport for Janice. Sadly, we were not to
find her. After lingering for fifteen minutes or so, we were
approached by airport security, who asked if we were waiting for
somebody. Yes, I said, we were.

One security guard called over to another security guard, who
conferred with each other and a piece of paper that held fragments of
the story: Janice had been hospitalized and would not be able to meet
us, and we were instructed to talk to several friendly visitor
information staff, Beatrice with the Airport Vistor Information
Service and Linda with VASH, an agency to assist visitors to Hawai‘i.
We spent 30 minutes with them gathering information about our options.
Linda also provided the name and phone number of a social worker,
Becky, at the hospital who could advise us about Janice's condition.

Fast forward to the next morning: I called Becky and learned that
Janice died, about the same time we landed. Shockingly, her sudden
illness was unexpected and without prior warning. Also amazingly, in
the midst of her last hours, Janice's husband Bill -- who knew we were
coming but had no contact information for us, or even our names --
made a point of enlisting Becky, and then airport security, to find us
to make sure we, too, were okay.

I cannot imagine the shock and sadness that Bill and
their friends and family must be feeling. I am overwhelmed by the
thoughtfulness and hospitality shown to us at every turn in this
situation, when so little would be expected. I am so touched that such
kindness, generosity and hospitality were clearly a part of Janice's
life, right up until the end. We never really got to know Janice as
we'd hoped, but I know this much for certain: we lost a good one on
Monday. Rest in peace, Janice, and thank you for being such an example
of kindness and hospitality.

MOREMOREMOREMOREMORE!!!!!!!!! Lucas is greedy and...

Lucas — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:33:11 -0700

MOREMOREMOREMOREMORE!!!!!!!!!

Lucas is greedy and hungry for Hawaii!

Juxtaposition

Eric — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:51:00 -0700

Arrival, with good reading material, in Hawai'i.

quote of the day

Allyson — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:08:36 -0700

“I’m hungry like the wolf. Assuming the wolf would like a nice salad with feta cheese.” - Bill

You and Julie will have to come back in the winter...

Linda — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:05:26 -0700

You and Julie will have to come back in the winter and camp in a snowcave under the lights in the Chugach.

Scaling the heights, and other thoughts on arriving, and departing

Eric — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:41:00 -0700

You wouldn't be riding a motorcycle if you weren't an optimist.

—Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

As I've been contemplating the end of our motorcycle expedition, and the onset of a new, very different mode of travel, I'm filled with a great sense of abundance for the adventures this world offers. As I put it to Kelly during his visit with us, it's a mistake to think that we've "done Alaska," or the Pacific Coast, or any spot along this adventure. Instead of coloring the map in with bold, primary colors from edge to edge as we move across a border, a more realistic picture of our experience would be to trace a thin, meandering pencil line, narrowly winding across an immense swath of North America.

Adding the dimension of time only makes the slenderness of this journey clearer. As our hosts in Anchorage emphasized, to know Alaska requires knowing it in its many weathers, and especially, to see it in winter. Indeed, Alaska is rich with lessons in scale: the peaks that seem just out of reach are, in fact, days of determined hiking way; the water is bigger, colder and deeper than it seems; and the glaciers fool you into making comparisons with ice cubes.

The comparative scale of this journey -- not so much a 12-state and -province tour as a 8,500-mile, faint scratch in graphite, drawn at a particular moment in time -- is a source of great excitement, not disappointment. Lucky us, that we (can) never step in the same river twice. And that the water keeps coming.

As the journey changes and evolves with our first flight (overnight, doubling our mileage traveled), I am relieved at the successful, rich, unforgettable completion of our motorcycle travels.

R2 is off to have new adventures of its own, with its new owner Craig, after having spent 13 months and 13,000 miles with me. And I'm left with the thought from one of Alaska's most influential travelers through its enormous northern wilderness.

Adventure is wonderful, but there is no doubt that one of its joys is its end.

—Robert Marshall, Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range

Farewell, motorcycle journey. To the next adventure!

R2's last ride

Eric — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:28:00 -0700

In a few moments, we're setting off on our last ride on R2, delivering it to its new owner.

Yes, on the day we're leaving Anchorage, our last motorbike has been sold. T-minus about 14 hours before we say farewell to our new friends and many life-changing experiences here in Alaska.

As relieved as I am to have it sold, and as much as I aspire not to be attached to possessions, this transaction feels like more than simply handing over the keys to a motor vehicle. Like saying goodbye to a trusted companion.

Happy trails, R2. May the force be with you.

Back from the Brooks, our voyage through Valdez

Eric — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:37:00 -0700

We've returned safely after an amazing experience in the Brooks Range
(more in a separate post, later) to our last week in Alaska. We've
barely stopped to catch our breath since returning.

Right now, we're on our homeward leg of a two-day loop from Anchorage
up the Glenn Highway along the Wrangell Mountains, to Valdez (which
has been aptly described as the "sexiest" town in Alaska) and are now
aboard the Valdez-Whittier Alaskan Maritime Highway ferry across
Prince William Sound to Whittier, where we follow a tunnel through the
mountain back toward our home base in Anchorage.

But more importantly, we've joined by some great company for this loop
through mountains and glaciers and fjords: welcome to Alaska, Kelly!
We hope our first co-traveler from back home encourages others to join
us on this trek. It's been the best crash-course introduction to
Alaska we could imagine.

quote of the day

Allyson — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:15:40 -0700

“I don’t ask for much… oh wait - yes I do.” – Russ

quote of the day

Allyson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:28:34 -0700

“There are some extroverts that you just wish weren’t.” - Mark

And for our next trick... North?

Eric — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:25:00 -0700

After spending a week in Anchorage, enjoying this lovely city and its
surroundings, the Alaska State Fair and most especially the amazing
hospitality of our hosts Everett and Linda, we're joining them on a
week-long visit to their place at Wild Lake, in the Brooks Range,
which involves us driving (in four-wheeled vehicles this time) to
Fairbanks, traversing the Haul Road adjacent the Alaskan Pipeline (a
stretch of road made famous by the documentary TV show "Ice Road
Truckers") to an (aptly-named, I'm sure) spot called Coldfoot, then
flying in with a bush pilot from there.

An unplanned adventure, but one we're both excited about, for both of
us, our first foray north of the Arctic Circle!

More news and photos when we return...

The "trainer"....

Rob — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:26:00 -0700

Well, Sunday I picked up my "training" bike. I found a beautiful 1985 Yamaha Maxim 700 that will be perfect for putting some miles on this fall and next spring.

Thanks to Julie (previous owner), you have maintained this bike immaculately! Julie and Eric are on their own 18 month around the world adventure (check out their blog here ).

Since Sunday afternoon, I have put over 200 miles on and am loving every minute of it! This photo is the group that will be going on our Alcan ride next spring. Left to right - Me, Gary, Eric.

My 2 1/2 year old son is ready to ride! I took him for a short ride around the block and he was giggling out loud before we got off the driveway! I'm not sure how my wife will handle him on a bike though...

Activities Other Than Dancing We’d Like To See Done “With The Stars”

Allyson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:28:15 -0700

* Waxing
* Calculus
* Cleaning houses
* Smoking
* Philandering
* Urine testing
* Manscaping
* Drywalling
* Jäger-bombing
* Cage fighting
* Disrupting healthcare town hall meetings
* Trying to get some damn service around here
* Pantsing
* Audits
* Twittering

And then there was one

Eric — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:46:00 -0700

After spending the day deep-cleaning the Alcan off our bikes yesterday -- a process that took four hours and involved some industrial-strength solvents -- Julie had her first showing of Firefly to a potential buyer. Five minutes later, the bike was sold, to a friendly guy planning a charity ride up the Alcan, and we were down to one bike between us. Rather than thinking of herself as being "without bike," I'm encouraging Julie to consider herself "between bikes."

I'll be visiting the Honda shop in town, known to have enthusiasts for old Honda fours, in the hopes of identifying a buyer for R2. In the meantime, Anchorage and our hosts here continue to be incredibly kind. We're catching up on some rest and enjoying the comforts of our temporary home.

Bon voyage, Firefly. Long may she ride!

Our route, days 67 - 74, from Fort Nelson, BC to Anchorage, via the ALCAN, Fairbanks and Denali National Park

Eric — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:23:00 -0700

Days 67 - 74: From Kacee's Northern Suites, Fort Nelson, BC up the ALCAN to Delta Junction, then Fairbanks, Denali National Park and Anchorage (1,544 miles)

View Larger Map

We made it!

Eric — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:59:00 -0700

We safely reached Anchorage, and the end of our motorcycle journey!

I am at a loss for words to convey what the successful conclusion of our motorcycle trip feels like. I am elated, surprised, relieved, flooded with recollections of moments, images, people and landscapes we've encountered over the last two and a half months, and also experiencing tinges of that familiar feeling at the culmination of a big trip: "whew, we made it, but does it really have to be over?"

We arrived to the warm welcome and comfortable home of our hosts for our stay, Everett and Linda, fellow travelers -- at first total strangers we met through the interwebs -- who treat us like family and have offered to put us up for our entire stay in this city at their place overlooking the sunset in Cook Inlet. Hearing their (frankly, far more adventurous) tales of travel in the Artic, with naught but grizzly bears and their wits for company, is an inspiring reminder of what a wide world we live in, full of opportunities for unforgettable experiences.

For now, I am happy to have reached a point where we can pause, catch our breath and contemplate the adventures that lie ahead. Today's agenda includes preparing the motorcycles for their first showings to potential buyers, later this afternoon.

Whew! We're here!

Feelin' mavericky

Eric — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:27:00 -0700

Thanks, David, for the awesome prop!

you say this comes from mexico? charming!

bethany — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:33:00 -0700

Eric spotted this one at a country club and suggests they are intentionally inauthentic, in a WASPy way.

Majestic Denali

Eric — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:55:00 -0700

Wow, wow and wow. In the opposite direction of this photo, McKinley
(which Alaskans often simply call "the Mountain") stands, regal even
75 miles away. These mountains are tricksters, disguising their
enormity through distance, and cloud, and by huddling together. We
were lucky enough to have *two* days of viewing the Mountain and its
attending peaks, first in Fairbanks and today in the park.

And now, off to Anchorage, and the (gasp!) conclusion of our
motorcycle adventure!

Top Signs That The Economy is Recovering

Allyson — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:31:22 -0700

by Stephen

• It’s starting to open up more and talk about its feelings.
• Sales of gold-plated spittoons up 20% in the second quarter.
• People learning that money stuffed in a mattress smells kind of musty after a few days.
• Who Wants A Pack of Smokes? no longer America’s #1 game show.
• Nation turning its attention to minor problems like health care.
• General Motors just sold a car.
• Bread lines are breaking out into conga lines!
• Dirty martinis no longer made with dirt.
• We’ve gone back to ignoring our 401(k)s.
• Only four weeks ‘til the premiere of Cougar Town.

quote of the day

Allyson — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:40:04 -0700

“Beer makes the world go ’round. Sometimes a little too fast.” - Chris C

Sunset in Fairbanks

Eric — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:21:00 -0700

We've enjoyed the warmest temps and sunniest weather we've had since
Seattle today here, in Fairbanks, the very northwest corner of our
motorcycle adventure and the furthest north either of us have been on
the globe (tied with Reykjavik, Iceland and the family homestead in
Leksvik, Norway).

Tomorrow, we get up close and personal (okay, comfortably less remote)
with the towering giants of Denali, especially the superlative-
inspiring Mt. McKinley, North America's highest peak.

Unintended consequences

Eric — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:05:00 -0700

"Uh, yeah, I'd totally like to pay for my campsite, but..."

Alaska!

Eric — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:28:00 -0700

We've crossed our last border on the bikes, and reached Alaska!

Less than 600 miles remain in the motorcycle journey, from our current
vantage point in Tok. Today's destination: the northwestern end of the
Alaskan-Canadian Highway in Delta Junction, AK.

Our Yukon Pot o' Gold

Eric — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:17:00 -0700

We're in Beaver Creek, at Canada's western frontier, having dinner at
Buckshot Betty's. We left the wooly mammoths and incredibly friendly
folks of Whitehorse, who had me feeling like a local after five
minutes in a local pub last night (thanks, Ryan and J.R.!), and spent
the day today skirting the very edge of a storm front blowing in over
an endless mountain range to our left (that is, west).

At several points we punched through the storm's leading edge, but
thankfully without too many miles of deluge. (The wavy, buckling roads
were tricky enough as it was on two wheels, thank you!) At one such
point, as we began our northernly journey along the western banks of
the enormous and beautiful Kluane Lake, we were greeted by the most
amazing, thick, bright and low rainbow I have ever seen. We could see
it end to end, and it's western terminus seemed to be beckoning us to
continue down the sun dappled but still damp road ahead. I've never
felt so close to the rainbow's end!

We're now just a stone's throw from the Alaskan border, and are
preparing to reach the end of this amazing time in Canada as we cross
back into home soil tomorrow.

Mind your language: Shanghai launches bid to end 'Chinglish'

(author unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:01:43 -0700

1,200 miles to go

Eric — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:16:00 -0700

Pictured: Julie examining the "trees" in the Signpost Forest, Watson
Lake, Yukon Territory

We're in Rancheria, Yukon Territory, having escaped yesterday's rain
and cold for the comforts and good company of the Rancheria Lodge.
We've spent the morning plotting the rest of our motorcycle voyage,
now down to 1,200 miles on some of the roughest, most remote but
thankfully still quite ridable roads we've encountered. Today's
destination is Whitehorse, Yukon's capitol and most populous city with
25,000 inhabitants. The adventure continues!

Lame Excuses For Not Attending a Wedding

Allyson — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:56:42 -0700

By Stephen

• “My cat needs her insulin shot.”
• “My DVR broke, and it’s the season finale of Ice Road Truckers!”
• “The economy, man. The economy.”
• “What?! The BigLots gift card wasn’t enough?”
• “Sorry. It’s Lobsterfest.”
• “I’ll catch the divorce party in a couple of years.”
• “My low-life brother-in-law has a court date… on a Sunday. Yeah, it’s serious.”
• “Russian paratroopers just seized our subdivision.”
• “I can’t find my pants.”
• “Free booze? Hell, I can get that at the casino.”
• “It’s not my fault you scheduled your wedding during the NFL preseason.”
• “If I walk into a church, I will seriously turn into a pillar of salt.”

#128 Camping

clander — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:13:31 -0700

If you find yourself trapped in the middle of the woods without electricity, running water, or a car you would likely describe that situation as a “nightmare” or “a worse case scenario like after plane crash or something.” White people refer to it as “camping.”

When white people begin talking to you about camping they will do their best to tell you that it’s very easy and it allows them to escape the pressures and troubles of the urban lifestyle for a more natural, simplified, relaxing time. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In theory camping should be a very inexpensive activity since you are literally sleeping on the ground. But as with everything in white culture, the more simple it appears the more expensive it actually is.

Camping is a multi-day, multi-step, potentially lethal activity that will cost you a large amount of both time and money. Unless you are in some sort of position where you absolutely need the friendship of a white person, you should avoid camping at all costs.

The first stage of camping always involves a trip to an outdoor equipment store like REI (or in Canada, Mountain Equipment Co-Op). These stores are well known for their abundance of white customers and their extensive inventory of things for white people to buy and only use once. If you are ever tricked into going to one of these stores, you can make white people like you by saying things like “man, this Kayak is only $1200, if I use it 35 times I’ve already saved money over renting.” Note: do not actually buy the kayak.

Next, white people will then take this new equipment and load it into an SUV or Subaru Outback with a Thule or Yakima Roof Rack. Then they will drive for an extended period of time to a national park or campsite where they will pay an entrance fee and begin their journey. It is worth noting that white people are unaware of the irony of using a gas burning car to bring them closer to nature and it is not recommended that you point this out. It will ruin their weekend.

Once in the camp area, white people will walk around for a while, set up a tent, have a horrible night of sleep, walk around some more. Then get in the car and go home. This, of course, is a best case scenario. Worst case scenarios include: getting lost, poisoned, killed by an animal, and encountering an RV. Of these outcomes, the latter is seen by white people as the worst since it involves an encounter with the wrong kind of white people.

Conversely, any camping trip that ends in death at the hands of nature or requires the use of valuable government resources for a rescue is seen as relatively positive in white culture. This is because both situations might eventually lead to a book deal or documentary film about the experience.

Ultimately the best way to escape a camping trip with white people is to say that you have allergies. Since white people and their children are allergic to almost everything, they will understand and ask no further questions. You should not say something like “looking at history, the instances of my people encountering white people in the woods have not worked out very well for us.”

Note: this works for all races!

iPhone app has us wondering if radio's future is on demand

nate@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:03:00 -0700

An Animated Film Is Created Through Internet Consensus - NYTimes.com

(author unknown) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:08:08 -0700

And the Oscar for the best animated short film goes to ... an Internet community?

quote of the day

Allyson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:26:51 -0700

“I need a time machine, and I need it yesterday!” - Scott

OMG

(author unknown) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:53:00 -0700

quote of the day

Kevin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:00:55 -0700

Pizza Personality on WCCO

(author unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:59:05 -0700

Metaphors that Don’t Quite Work

Allyson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:07:38 -0700

By Tina and Allyson

* Hungry like the chipmunk
* Colder than a bowl of cereal
* As happy as a four-legged dog
* Snug as a bug in a stew
* Hotter than Helen
* Built like a carport
* Flying like a badger out of hell
* Run like the clouds

At the Thin Man Bar

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:54:52 -0700

posted June 20, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Denver, CO

Today's fortune

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:48:58 -0700

posted June 17, 2009 at 6:48 am

April 11, 2009

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:47:19 -0700

posted April 11, 2009 at 9:47 pm

March 20, 2009

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:19:33 -0700

posted March 20, 2009 at 9:19 pm

Bon apetite!

February 11, 2009

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:49:28 -0800

posted February 11, 2009 at 5:49 am

Megabus to Chi-cago

Art Shanty Project (For Jayme, with us in spirit)

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:29:03 -0800

posted January 31, 2009 at 4:29 pm

posted January 31, 2009 at 4:28 pm

January 20, 2009

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:03:12 -0800

posted January 20, 2009 at 8:03 am

Rowdy revelers at the Riverview, ready for a new America!

posted January 20, 2009 at 7:28 am

Line blocks long for the inauguration telecast at the Riverview

Women's hockey at the DECC

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:32:03 -0800

posted January 10, 2009 at 10:32 pm

UMD Bulldogs trounce the Badgers 4-0

Deep relaxation

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:11:43 -0800

posted January 10, 2009 at 9:11 am

Blue sky, bright sun and a book in my lap

Bout!

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:03:40 -0800

posted January 10, 2009 at 9:03 am

Harbor City Roller Dames at the World of Wheels, Superior, WI

January 9, 2009

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:02:24 -0800

posted January 10, 2009 at 9:02 am

At the Thirsty Pagan, Superior, WI

Dinner for four

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:17:45 -0800

posted January 3, 2009 at 11:17 am

Octo-pie

Plymouth, Dec 28, 2008

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:43:22 -0800

Date: Dec 28, 2008 5:43 PM
Number of Comments on Photo:0