Riding the Iron Rooster

¡Viva Costa Rica!

2010-07-06T08:24:00.020-05:00

I arrived in San José expecting very little. Most of the commentary I´d read or heard directly from others suggested that San José was a city best experienced not at all.

To my surprise, then, I discovered many pockets of this city easy to appreciate, including the vibrant central market (with its delirious lunch-time parade with marching band and mascots) and the common scene of friendly Ticos gathering for a mid-morning break to appreciate a World Cup match.

The rains — my first encounter with Costa Rican "wet season" — were impressive, as well, but thankfully fairly brief, and confined to afternoon hours best spent in repose or over a tasty cup of café con leche.

I caught a performance of one of my all-time favorite pieces of classical music (Grieg´s "Aase´s Death" movement from Peer Gynt) at the National Theater and enjoyed the leafy enclaves and mostly well-translated exhibits at the National Museum of Costa Rica.

So, I remain confused about what´s not to like about San José, even though I would not pretend that my 36 hours were sufficient to get to know it. Having somewhat arrived, at least, in my temporary country, I boarded a bus bound for the coast, off to the beaches of Playa Sámara.

The beaches were impressive! I´m not 100% certain the horses were wild, but they certainly appeared to be, and their morning wanderings along the shore lent a certain "lost somewhere far away from home" quality to the beach. Being awoken by the eerie cries of howler monkeys certainly had the effect as well.

In many respects, Playa Sámara was an easy place to linger: the swimming and body surfing were lovely, and several restaurants did great business by broadcasting the morning and midday World Cup matches, but after a few nights I found myself not quite craving the same surf-and-cerveza vacation that most of the beach combers seemed to be pursuing. I followed my own cravings north and inland, to Liberia, regarded as a more rural "cowboy" town, a side of Costa Rica that my guidebook suggests many fear will vanish.

Liberia proved to be an easy place to arrive, largely because of the immensely helpful staff of the Hotel Liberia, centrally located just a half-block off of the central park. After wandering Liberia´s streets for an afternoon, I decided to break the heat with some air-conditioning... and a Spanish-subtitled screening of "The A-Team," known here by its Spanish title, "Los Magnificentos." Magnificent entertainment (of the summer-block-buster variety), even with my limited familiarity with the original.

The next day took me further north to the nearby Rincón de la Vieja national park, regarded as Costa Rica´s little Yellowstone. Yellowstonita, indeed, with many examples of paint pots, gurgling mud pits and a baby volcano (or volcancito), in addition to the two full-size volcanos whose craters are accessible via a day hike. Not liking the potential for clouds rolling in, I chose lower elevations, and enjoyable walks to glorious swimming holes and waterfalls through lush forests and rolling hills.

The next day, I headed south for more mountains, this time the cloud forests of Monteverde. They´re known as cloud forests because the clouds are often resting lazily on the mountain-side, and even when it´s not raining, plants extract moisture directly from the clouds, making it one of the mossiest places I´ve visited. The cool temperature and high humidity are so constant that the trees do not even develop rings as they grow. They just grow more or less continuously, robbing arborists of the seasonality that produces tell-tale rings.

The bus-ride up the mountain on rugged gravel roads, often in first gear with passengers packed to the rafters, was also memorable because my trip happened to coincide with the last day of school. (The public buses winding up the mountain also double as the region´s school buses.) It was great fun to see the affable driver greet every single child by name as they boarded or exited the bus, and the little gifts many of the children´s families had packed to give the driver (fruit, juice boxes and cash being three examples I could make out). A lovely little slice of Tico mountain life.

Another aspect of Monteverde´s climate (and Costa Rica´s in general) is that it is very hospitable for insects. Lots and lots and lots of insects.

Those who know my predilections best are probably aware that I am not the biggest fan of bugs. Well, I should say that intellectually, I marvel at them. I have a great appreciation for their diversity, the ingenuity of their adaptations, the complexity of the social orders created by some of them, and the sheer physical beauty of many creepy crawlies. I´m just not a huge fan of being surprised by insects. In my room. Or on my body.

Thankfully, Monteverde offered a great opportunity to appreciate bugs in their own environment, and few occasions to experience them in mine. Perfect!

I lost count of the variety that I saw, in the forests around Santa Elena (the region´s principal town and tourist accommodation), but I am sure I stood next to far more than I identified, thanks to incredible camouflage, like this walking stick:

There´s a bug museum in Santa Elena, as well, which I didn´t visit but have on good authority was rich with examples of amazing insects and spiders. A night hike gave me a chance to see a tarantula in its den, guarding its eggs, a blue morpho butterfly the size of a dinner plate, fluttering right next to me, and countless insects that look like leaves or sticks or, strangely, polished, high-sheen-metallic-painted Volkswagens.

The next day, my new hostel friend Amy and I had a chance to walk across a series of suspension bridges, gazing down at the forest below while some of Monteverde´s fauna performed morning rites.

And then came the ziplines!

I confess to being a little skeptical about the ethos of this particular brand of eco-tourism. But my poseur pretensions aside, the skepticism was quickly replaced with exhilaration as the little boy in me finally had a chance to experience what must be the best way to get around a dense forest: with a pulley on a high-tension cable!

I´d ridden a zipline before, with travel buddy Daniel, across a lake in China after a fantastic hike on the Great Wall. This zipline experience was completely different, passing through a lush tree canopy ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred feet off the ground was absolutely thrilling, trees whizzing by left and right. Whereas my last zipline experience was 30 seconds of pure adrenaline, this time riding the cables quickly became peaceful, even serene, as I developed confidence in the systems to control speed and orientation on the cable.
Well, serene until it came time for the "Tarzan swing!" (Think low-altitude bunge jump.) Our last ride, though, was in some ways most spectacular, allowing riders to be hitched to the pulley from the back, traversing the highest and longest stretch in "Superman" position. If that´s not the fulfillment of a childhood dream to fly, I don´t know what will be.

But the fun in Monteverde was far from over!

Ficus trees grow into giants here, and the manner they do so is quite remarkable: they are known as strangler trees because they use another tree as scaffolding to establish themselves, eventually completely cutting off the original tree´s access to light, strangling it. Sometime later, the original tree rots away, leaving a hollow core which, in two unforgettable cases, allowed Amy and I to climb up the inside of the tree toward the canopy!

It is hard to describe how it feels to have a living, organic tunnel so perfectly shaped to permit your passage upward (a feeling that one fellow-climber described as "safer than any ladder" he´d ever climbed). To me, it felt a bit like a vestige of an elf city, or something you´d see on Pandora. But there were no movie sets involved. Truth, as they say, is stranger...

After the thrills in the forest, I also participated in a deeply informative tour of a coffee plantation, lead by one of the plantation´s roasters. (Costa Rican coffee, tending toward the lighter roasts that I prefer, will be sorely missed!)

Finally, the time came to bid adieu to Monteverde, via a scenic mini-bus ride through the mountains and foothills, to my date with a boat that would take me toward a volcano!

The Arenal volcano, one of Central America´s most active, is a stunning, towering cone as one approaches it from the west. Its entire west flank is scorched by the nearly continuous lava flows and ejected material. Even a dozen kilometers away, one can regularly hear the rumble of the volcano expressing itself.

I stayed a night in the town of La Fortuna, a place overrun with tourists and tour operators, whose proximity to the volcano (facing its verdant, eastern side) will probably keep that arrangement in place for the foreseeable future. Shame on me, but I kept imagining the modern Pompeii that might be created if Arenal ever exploded so dramatically, Americans frozen in ash, shielding themselves with their MasterCards and their tiny cocktail umbrellas. For the blight of the town, though, the volcano dominates. I had the good fortune to see two eruptions on the western side at night, a stream of red lava and incandescent boulders flowing like a river that has burst its banks down the side of the mountain.

Lots of unforgettable memories so far in Costa Rica. In a few minutes, I head for the Caribbean coast. More to come!

Annika goes to Washington, part 2

2010-06-23T07:19:00.014-05:00

And now, for the conclusion...

I made it out of Montréal with cleaned carbs, new O-rings and new filters thanks to Stéphane and his team at LaShop Motosport, Annika roaring better than ever. Scarcely more than an hour later, I was faced off with a surly American immigration officer, who after a series of questions posed as though he would catch me in a lie, he deigned to let me back into my home country, while not seeming particularly pleased about it.

Thankfully, Vermont's welcome was more fitting, with a quick visit in its quaint and cozy capitol city of Montpelier. I crossed into New Hampshire on winding Route 302 through the White Mountains, and saw a marked increase in the number of bikes on the road.

Only later did I realize this was because of my arrival coinciding with the Laconia Motorcycle Week. (From what I saw, New Hampshire's twisty roads would be a lovely staging ground for a motorcycle fest. The moose towering on the shoulder of the highway, not so much.)

Continuing my path east, I crossed into Maine, and set up camp in an otherwise empty campground just over the border.

The next morning, I continued east, finally intoducing Annika to the Atlantic and both of us to the lovely harbor of Portland, Maine.

My destination for the evening was Nick and Noelle's warm and inviting home, with their three fabulous kids in Newton, Massachusetts.

Luckily, my arrival again was propitiously timed to let Nick and I catch Wendy, our friend and partner in our one-percenter researcher club, during a singing recital. She's got a great voice, and the bourbon afterwards wasn't too bad, either.

After lunch the next day with Nick, Noelle and Wendy, I set off for New York, arriving at Josh and Jessica's just before sundown.

Josh and Jessica are among my oldest friends in the world, and our time together always passes too quickly. That's only more true since they've added adorable Charlie and (just five weeks ago!) precious Lila to their family. Here's Charlie with his trains.

We spent most of our visit together taking walks, playing in playgrounds, visiting the fabulous Hall of Science in Flushing, and lingering in the kitchen and dining room. Too quickly, I had to set off for my date with Washington, DC.

After impossibly scenic vistas of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, en route to Staten Island, I continued south, finally arriving at my cousin Bill's place in Kensington, Maryland after a long and sticky afternoon of riding.

This visit was also my first chance to meet Bill and Michelle's youngest, Daniel, ever a reliable source of renewable energy. We celebrated Father's Day with a trip to a toddler-friendly diner and a screening of Toy Story 3. (Pixar, I ♥ you.)

Later that evening, I took Annika across the Virginia border for an engrossing visit with Jamey, his lovely new wife Kate and witty and fabulous kiddos Alessandra and Lucia. The time passed so quickly, I didn't even snap a photo!

Finally, the day arrived: the moment to deliver Annika to Jennifer, and say goodbye to my riding companion for this journey. After a handwash to remove (at least the first layer of) accumulated road gunk, Annika was home.

Lucky me, I was able to catch dinner with her very busy owner, on the eve before the release of the first-ever inter-agency federal plan to end homelessness, her labor of love (and product of blood, sweat and tears) since arriving in Washington. It's a great plan. Mostly because it's hard to imagine how as a nation we would apply the considerable amount we know already about how to end homelessness successfully and cost-effectively if we didn't have a plan.

Thus concludes my 2,500 mile, 16-state/province/District-of-Columbia-spanning soujourn east! And now, I am off to experience Costa Rica, thunderheads over Cuba accompanying my flight south.

More to come!

Annika goes to Washington, part 1

2010-06-14T10:54:00.029-05:00

Greetings from Montréal, where I am at the halfway mark on my sojourn east to DC, following a meandering path north, east and south with a few zigzags west for good measure.

I am lucky to have had good company on this ride, including my brother Jesse astride his Sportster who rode out to Hammond, Wisconsin with me to start the trip.

Kelby surprised me by turning up in Green Bay, giving us a chance to check out Lambeau Field together, and enjoy a very wet ride through scenic Door County in eastern Wisconsin.

We are among the small subset of riders who would label that day's ride as a fun one. (I'll confess that I started second-guessing my judgement on that point during the last hour of torrential rain, blustery winds and plummeting temps.)

Our route took us to the tip of the Door County peninsula, then southward again for my date with a ferry across Lake Michigan.

On the way to the ferry, Annika's horsepower seemed dramatically reduced. Hoping that it was just water somewhere it shouldn't be, or perhaps just a bad tank of gas, we pressed on, topping poor Annika out at 60 mph on the freeway. The problems continued, but the ferry waits for no man, so I decided to continue onward, while assessing the problem and potential solutions.

Annika lashed to the car deck, I stretched out on the sundeck as the ferry pulled away from Milwaukee, the weather cooperating that day with great visibility, brilliant sunshine and calm waters.

A few hours later, we pulled into harbor at Muskegon, Michigan, where I headed to a bike mechanic. The front cylinder's plug showed signs that it wasn't firing properly, suggesting carburator issues.

With a new sparkplug, fresh gas and a jetted air filter doing nothing to aleviate the problems, Annika and I continued our wheezing way eastward, stopping for the night in a campground in Chesaning, Michigan.

Having found that the carb issues didn't compromise my enjoyment of two-lane highways very much, and being eager to spend time in Montréal, if I had to be pinned down anywhere, I made a date with a mechanic who inspired confidence in his ability to resolve the problem quickly, and crossed into Canada.

(If only I could have snapped a photo from the apex of the Port Huron bridge! Stunning views of Lake Huron on this Great Lakes tour.)

A few hours later, I was bibbling along the coast of Lake Ontario, rolling into a hostel, my lodging for the night, in downtown Toronto.

The next morning, I packed up and set out, grateful for having had other opportunities to explore Toronto more adequately.

My first order of business on reaching Montréal was to deliver Annika into the capable hands of Stéphane, who will tend to her carbs. Then, get to know the city!

Littered with churches, sidewalk cafés and green spaces, it has been difficult to decide where to linger longest!

On strolls throughout its eminently walkable core, I've caught snippets of sidewalk conversations in countless tongues (yesterday including my first contact, as far as I'm aware, with Macedonian), not just the abundant French. If there's a better sign of a city's cosmopolitan nature, I'm not sure what it would be.

The exuberant street festivals this weekend, the relaxed saunter of pedestrian traffic and the chic, showy attitude of many residents and visitors shout that this is city to be enjoyed. A city of bon vivants, indeed.

Tomorrow, Annika willing, I head back to my home soil, south and then along the eastern seaboard toward Annika's ultimate destination and my flight to Latin America.

More to come from the road!

Off again

2010-06-08T09:17:00.001-05:00

Surgery... check!
Recovery... check!
Great times with friends and fam... check!
A borrowed motorcycle and leisurely route east... check!

And so I'm off to Latin America for a month, by way of a three-week
trip to DC by motorcycle, by way of Montreal, Boston and New York. The
adventures continue, and hopefully these blog posts will catch up with
them! Until then, happy trails.

Once around

2010-05-06T16:50:00.007-05:00

A month has passed since I returned home. I continue to experience culture shock amid the joyful reunions with family and friends, and the comforting familiarity and quality of life of the Twin Cities. My surgery was a success, I'm now already two weeks (a third) into my recovery period, and I am turning my attention to the next legs of my journeys. Although I've been inclined to think of my stay in Minneapolis as an interlude in the longer story of my trip, the reality is that planning to set out again feels a lot like planning a new trip.

Before focusing too much on the road ahead, though, I want to spend a little more time reflecting back on the past ten months. Here's one such reflection, by the numbers:

7 countries (plus time in the airports of three more)

292 days

47,902 miles

Two thirds of the total distance covered in the air

18% of the distance on a motorcycle!

Here's what the journey looks like on a map.

In time, I hope to share more reflections about the travels past and visions of the voyages to come. Until then, happy travels!

Halfway home

2010-04-03T11:59:00.000-05:00

I have been struggling to gather my thoughts about the past several
days, to say nothing of the past several months.

In four and a half hours, I leave India.

In 26 hours, I arrive back in Minneapolis.

Both come as a bit of a shock, feeling so immersed as I have in my
experience here, coming to enjoy and deeply appreciate so many of the
places I've visited and the people I've met. My life feels so
radically changed in the three months that have elapsed since my
arrival. I find myself traveling alone. I feel lucky to have found a
home-away-from-home in Palolem. I have met and shared my time in India
with so many amazing, vivid people. I inhabit a body that feels the
impact of daily yoga practice, stronger and more flexible and also
calmed by this routine.

I am trying to bring this sense of calm to the most recent challenge I
have been facing: a hernia that appeared suddenly 10 days ago,
requires surgery to repair and has diminished my confidence to travel
in the physically demanding way that I am accustomed, lugging the
luggage, schlepping that which must be schlepped, hiking where I want
to hike and generally taking my physical well-being for granted.

The hernia was diagnosed when I arrived in Mumbai, the day after
finally leaving my little hut in Palolem. Since the diagnosis, and
learning more about the condition, I have been paying more attention
to these physical capabilities that I have taken for granted. After
mailing a bunch of stuff home from Mumbai to lighten my backpack, I
was surprised to discover that it still weighed in at 22 kilos, or 49
pounds. My daypack, with my laptop, guidebook, and sundries, is easily
another 10 pounds. I have reluctantly realized that traveling this way
with this condition is asking for trouble.

So I'm heading home to regroup. I hope to see family -- arriving just
in time for Easter dinner (thanks, fam, for postponing it for me!) --
and friends during my visit, and sort out where and how my travels
will carry me next.

What I can already tell you is that I feel changed. Changed by the
whole trip, changed by these transformative past three months. How
I've changed is harder to say. I feel like I am still trying to work
out how to put this into words. I can only hope that in time, they
will come.

And so, after spending the past ten months making it this far around
the globe from my home, I close the rest of the gap in a single day.
Farewell, India. I will miss you, and I will be back.

And thank you, dear reader, for your patience. Fear not, these
adventures are far from over. I invite you to stay tuned.

---
PS. re: the pic, taken this morning in the blue city of Jodhpur on the
edge of the Thar desert, look closely at the baseball hats, especially
on the left side of the table. The relevance may be more difficult to
ascertain if you're not a fan of American football, or familiar with
Minnesota's team. ;)

One in a billion

2010-02-10T07:00:00.004-06:00

Please forgive the silence, dear reader.

It's been three weeks since we split up. Julie boarded the night train to Mumbai; I remained to haunt the beaches of Palolem.

The reasons are, of course, complex, the implications dramatic. There is much to say, and likely only more with the passage of time. But, apart from this post, this blog is not the place.

We spent our last day together walking the beach, holding hands, crying. Wishing each other well. For me, time has dragged slowly since her departure. I spent the first night in our room, newly cavernous and lonely. Now I am between Mars and Jupiter.

I'm in a tiny but well-appointed hut just off the beach that somehow missed the celestial naming conventions of the rest of the compound — "our only one for a single person" intoned the incredibly kind hotel manager. When he agreed to the rock-bottom price that I could justify for moving from the room we shared to this little hut near the beach, I nearly burst into tears and hugged him.

Between Mars and Jupiter is where the asteroids orbit, their mutual attraction perpetually thwarted by the meddlesome gravity of their environment. A ring of icy shards and rocky fragments where a whole complete world might have been, unseen sunsets and beaches of its own.

Between Mars and Jupiter, I have been oscillating between the supreme patience befitting a giant (no worries that my masala chai will take 30 minutes to deliver this morning) and the urgent desire to punch someone in the teeth (note to obnoxious laser-pointer wielding beach-combers: make sure your dental insurance policy is current). Thankfully, the warlike impulses have been subsiding thanks to the soft sand on my feet, the persistent wash of the waves and the time spent each day on my life raft in the shape of a yoga mat.

In addition to affording helpful time to focus and the visceral sense of being embodied that I love about the discipline, it's remarkable how much spending ninety minutes a day in yoga practice can release, and not just in the muscles and connective tissue. As the first waves of emotion about my new circumstances recede, the next waves of sadness, grief and uncertainty present themselves. I can only trust that with time these too shall pass. Or at least soften.

I've also been lucky to have found a group of fellow travelers in this place who help it feel much more like an interim home than a generic place to stay. (And, paraphrasing the sagacious George Latimer, "interim" is an unnecessary modifier, since in fact everything is interim, a notion reinforced many times in these travels.) My new friends were the first people I told about Julie and me, and it took weeks to feel ready to talk to the more permanent constellations in my life. (This is unusual — Julie and I are both lucky to have amazing people in our lives, and my instincts in times of drama usually lead me immediately to family and friends. This time, it seems, is different.)

I'm not planning any sudden moves. In fact, I don't have any plans except to let the yoga practice, the sand under my feet and the waves crashing on shore work their magic. I can only trust that whatever comes next will take shape in due course. In the meantime, I sit in my nameless little house, breathing and reflecting while time passes and the planets circle about.

Happy birthday, Chrissy, from some old friends

2010-01-25T05:14:00.005-06:00

Without question, my sister Chrissy is one of the most influential people in my life. She was born on this day in 1978. (My little sister, turning 32. Wow!)

Chrissy was born with a brain anatomy that can only be described as unique, the corpus callosum that divides and connects the two hemispheres in most brains is shaped radically differently in her case. The brain's incredible capacity to adapt and reorganize itself continues to amaze as neuroscientists slowly unravel the seemingly endless mysteries of this incredible organ. Chrissy's brain is no exception. Indeed, it may be an exemplar of this capacity.

In addition to her unique brain, Chrissy has repeatedly defied the odds and well-considered expectations on a number of fronts. Doctors weren't sure she would walk, much less ride a bike, something she has done with what could only be called reckless abandon. (Her vestibular system seems to involve the regular intervention of some guardian angel, pushing her back to vertical just at the moment that a crash seems inevitable.) Her health is complicated by a sketchily diagnosed neuromuscular disorder so rare that it lacks a name, and by epilepsy, diagnosed after years of puzzling over her staring off into space, and which has only in her twenties progressed from nearly invisible petit mal seizures to the grand mal, convulsive variety that people often associate with the disease.

Her medical miracle may be less television-ready than many human interest stories, but I find it no less compelling. The two most important factors undergirding her story are my parents' unflagging dedication to my sister and Chrissy's own incredible resilience.

As Chrissy's epilepsy began intensifying due to hormonal changes and possibly tolerance to her seizure-control medications, my parents were forced to navigate a mine-field of best guesses and conflicting guidance, choosing between known interventions with unsatisfying outcomes and cutting edge therapies with uncertain benefits. With incredible diligence and tenacity, they tried countless combinations of drugs and other therapies to manage her seizures. Chrissy, meanwhile, had to cope with a bewildering array of side-effects from these drugs, dropping, gaining and re-dropping weight, descending into depressive spells or states of high anxiety until the drugs and dosages that worked best for her could be determined. She also survived a harrowing period of hospitalization, during which her seizures were studied in the hopes of better control. At one point during these dark times, she endured more than a hundred seizures per day.

But Chrissy doesn't complain about much. She is usually cheerful. She seems to have a way of finding a bright side.

Case in point, her goldfish. To this day, Chrissy remains an avid fan of the fabric cast of Sesame Street, a show that was in such regular circulation in our home that all of us can recite, verbatim, a surprising number of its segments. (Thank goodness they had the foresight to include humor targeted to adult care-givers in them!) Such familiarity and repetition helped me develop a passable impression of Grover and Ernie, although I'm hopeless when it comes to Bert.

Chrissy is "awfully fond" of Ernie and Bert, so much so that when she had goldfish for the first time, she named them Talbot and Melissa, after the pair swimming circles in Bert and Ernie's apartment.

And how's this for resilience: when Chrissy's goldfish inevitably take that final ride out to the sewer system (she might be a little too enthusiastic in their care and feeding), Talbot and Melissa are not gone, only temporarily out of sight. Whether days or years later, whenever goldfish reappear in Chrissy's life, she recognizes them instantly. As Talbot and Melissa.

So, Chrissy, happy birthday to you, from two old friends.

Love,

Your brother Eric

Riding the iron peacock

2010-01-23T22:21:00.008-06:00

Travel by train in India echoes my whole experience of India: the sense of perpetual transitions (in time, in place, in culture); the anxious anticipation of a journey; the easy conviviality of fellow travelers; and the sheer, irrepressible inertia of this place.

We spent the better part of three days holed up in our cheap and reasonably comfortable hotel in Kochi (technically, in Ernakulam), limiting our ventures out to the aforementioned cinema. (By the way, The Three Idiots is the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, according to the review in The New York Times!) Our last day in Kochi was jam-packed with the some of the best this town — spread over a several islands reached by ferry — has to offer. We saw the famous and enormous Chinese fishing nets, gigantic wooden spiders on the shore, lowering their webs into the water through the labors of half a dozen men. (Observing their yield, it seems that tips received from tourists trying their hand at the nets must make up as much of their income as their paltry catch.) We visited the historic synagogue on artfully named "Jew Street" in artfully named "Jew Town." ("Mama, do we live in a ghetto?") We were carried along by clashing aromas while touring a spice warehouse, thousands of burlap sacks begging for your olfactory attention. (I opined that it felt like drinking a masala chai while smoking a clove cigarette and being lashed with a star anise hairshirt.) We had a short course on Indian rugs and ended our time in Fort Cochin with a performance Kerala's distinctive ritualistic theater, Kathakali.

An important part of Kathakali is watching performers apply their make-up while seated on stage, so we arrived early for this purpose. True Kathakali performances can last from evening until dawn (or longer); ours was a distilled-for-tourists show designed to be compatible with the schedules of the tour-bus crowd. The stories are told by silent actors in elaborate costumes through hand and facial gestures, accompanied by drums and a singer giving voice to the characters. For all the uniqueness of this particular form, I am fascinated by the theatrical conventions and themes that cross continents, cultures and currents of human history. E.g., the ceremonial transformation of the actor into their character through the application of make-up and costume. A play encompassing both entertainment and moral instruction. Characters drawn as deities or as archetypes of human dispositions. The all-male cast performing the female roles, offering no less insight into the local constructions of femininity than the Miss America pageant or any (other) drag show.

The particular tale told during our performance was only too familiar: a woman attempts to seduce a noble man, pleading with him to get to know her in the biblical sense despite his rebukes, is revealed to be the devil incarnate, and is attacked with a sword and sent away.

Sigh.

Like I said, common theatrical themes.

After boarding the ferry back to our hotel, we collected our things and headed for the train station. Our overnight journey would take us to the state of Goa, a special spot on the hippie trail. It would also give us another opportunity to experience India in motion: the affectionate parents tucking their two small children into a single bunk for the night; gregarious families eager to strike up conversation, hear our impressions of their country and encourage us to visit their home town; friends on the platforms bidding farewell to passengers, running alongside the moving train as it pulls away to say one more farewell.

I love overnight train rides.

Our arrival in central Goa by train would be followed by a rickshaw ride to a bus stop, and an overflowing, groping bus ride to the town of Palolem, our destination. Palolem is touristy, but also one of the loveliest crescent beaches I've ever visited. In contrast to my other experiences in India, Palolem feels like "India lite." There are more white faces here than we've seen since the ashram: bikini-clad Europeans and Russians pushing the limits of modesty to minimize their tan lines; families with giddy naked toddlers running on the soft sand, studying the crabs and the waves; and the ubiquitous aging hippies, their leathery skin tightening in the sun. (There are lots of Indian tourists, too, and they seem to be having the most fun here, but most Indian locals live inland or in neighboring Chaudi.)

Many restaurants don't have Indian items on the menu, or, if they do, they are at significantly inflated tourist prices and of mixed quality. There are persistent touts everywhere ("taxi! taxi!"), but thankfully most are friendly and have a good sense of humor, as if to say "look, man, it's my job to ask and it's your job to say no thank you."

To my surprise, I've found that these aspects which make Palolem so touristy and so unlike the hustle and bustle of Indian cities does not spoil its charm for me. No doubt extended stays in India merit some time for decompression. But more than that, there is something indescribably right in daily walks up and down the beach to watch the sunset. In hearing the waves crashing on shore. In daily rhythms guided by one's appetites. The morning yoga sessions are fabulous, too, led by a skilled instructor with a great sense of humor and a penchant for joking about sex while we contort our bodies into pretzels. Yeah, that's a little more like it.

Perhaps not so far from home

2010-01-14T03:58:00.005-06:00

We're in Kochi, India, having recovered from our first bout of serious food poisoning. Unpleasant, yes, but not enough to change our rather adventurous eating habits, much less spoil our excitement about our time in Kerala, our upcoming stop in Goa or the fun we had last night at the Bollywood cinema! (To its credit, The Three Idiots loses very little entertainment value despite the language barrier. Seeing it with an enthusiastic Indian audience certainly can't hurt, either. I can only imagine that when watching mainstream Hollywood cinema these audiences feel positively robbed that each film doesn't include the same masala of genres, boy-meets-girl-meets-coming-of-age-tale, all wrapped in a buddy-pic-cum-road-trip. With song and dance numbers, of course!)

Here's a quick flashback to the end of December: We were greeted by a surprise in a roadside bookstore in Penang, Malaysia, when browsing their travel selections. Just above their Lonely Planet collection, a sign that perhaps we're not so far from home after all.

'Nuff said

2010-01-13T03:53:00.002-06:00

From the gardens adjacent Le Meridien in Kuala Lumpur...

Half-ash’d

2010-01-08T22:11:00.004-06:00

Alert, dear reader! What follows is a verbose account of our first days in India, written perhaps too close on the heels of a memorable (cf., “trying”) experience. So you may want to grab a beverage before you wade in. Enjoy! -Ed

Our travels are nothing if not an exposure to that which to us is unfamiliar, uncertain or unknown. We arrived in India, to the city of Trivandrum (a widely-used but indirect abbreviation for its proper name spanning many more syllables), the capitol of the lush tropical state of Kerala at the southwestern tip of the subcontinent. Our plan was to visit an ashram an hour inland in the temperate Agastya hills, adjacent to a lake and in earshot of an elephant reserve, and spend a week or two studying yoga.

Three days later, we found ourselves on a train heading north for the touristy beach town of Varkala. What happened in between was nothing if not memorable.

While it will surprise few who know me that I value skepticism in my approach to most things, I also strive (with varying success) to be open-minded to the vast array of ways people have found useful in creating a meaningful life, especially when those practices have been developed and iteratively refined over countless generations.

Thankfully, there are some traditions in which open-mindedness happily co-exists with skepticism — the scientific method, analytic philosophy (at its best) and some forms of Judaism, to name a few. Encountering such traditions often feels like being reunited with some branch of my family tree, connected by a common tongue and sharing an affinity for critical, skeptical analysis, which instead of being viewed as heresy is considered a prerequisite for sincere engagement with a subject.

When I was younger, I nonetheless harbored not a small amount of fear about practices and traditions that were outside of my experience. This was true despite an education that was no doubt broader and more open-minded than that of many other white suburban midwestern preacher’s kids, including an incredibly influential introduction to meditation at an early age by my dear Aunt Lois. In the process of subsequently developing what I construed as a rational basis for my beliefs, I was quick in my late teens and early twenties to dismiss so-called “alternative” beliefs about health, wellness and spirituality as the musings of posers or as pacifying placebos for seekers trying to navigate their post-modern existence. I was, of course, the guilty accuser, grounding my own fear and uncertainty in a faith of a different kind: that with enough effort, my rational faculties could figure it all out.

Thankfully, at some point my curiosity eclipsed my fear, and in my early twenties I started to crack open the shell, finally realizing that I could expose myself to any number of belief systems — and even participate in their attendant practices — without requiring that I become an aspiring acolyte. A friend, mentor, and physics professor, Stu Anderson, helped distill this notion into a tidy expression, saying that he was always game to “do the experiment” — that is, give any set of beliefs their proverbial day in court. (I should also note that, as a preacher’s kid, Protestant Christianity remains a bit exceptional in its ability to find and push my pre-adolescent buttons.) In any case, this period of personal glasnost coincided with my introduction to yoga.

It took exactly one ninety-minute class in a sticky YWCA gymnasium ten years ago for me to appreciate that there was something much deeper in the practice of yoga than any mere stretching. Lying exhausted and elated on my back in sivasana (the evocatively-named “corpse” relaxation pose) at the end of my first session, I felt myself sinking through the floor and yet oddly light, ephemeral and, yes, more flexible. I was also dripping with sweat, endorphins working their magic during the cool-down. Whatever preconceptions I’d had about yoga being a new-agey dressing for the stretching techniques I’d learned in elementary school P.E. class, it was immediately clear that this was real exercise, and for me, an intoxicating combination of disciplined breathing, increasing strength and improving flexibility. To this day, I never feel so completely present in my body nor so conscious of its strength and resilience as after stretching its limits through yoga practice, and watching those limits expand.

We arrived in India imagining that spending a fifth of our time in this country at an ashram would be a memorable chapter of our Indian visit — ashrams being associated with so many people’s visits here — and also a great way to maintain our health and happiness for our continuing travels. We chose the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram (or “Sivananda” for short, pronounced “SHE-van-an-da”) from the few ashrams listed in our guidebook, since its program was particularly well-regarded for teaching yoga poses (or asanas) to beginners.

Neither Julie nor I had visited an ashram before, and if anything, my preconceptions were grounded in the positive experiences of our friend Donald, augmented by hippie folk-tales, the Beatles psychedelic sojourns and more recently Eat, Pray, Love. After doing some additional research, we learned that partaking in this particular ashram experience involved following a complete schedule of mandatory activities — starting at 5:20 am and, except for a midday break, continuing until 9:30 at night — of which the twice daily, two-hour asana sessions were only a small part. The remaining portions included twice daily group meditation sessions, shared vegetarian meals (more anxiety producing for my omnivorous travel companion than for me), and — gulp — Sanskrit chanting to the pantheon of Hindu deities and to yogic gurus both general and specific. My aspirations to open-mindedness be damned, this latter aspect touched off my anxieties in no small way. There were also daily acts of (mandatory, assigned) “selfless service” and a lecture on the history and philosophy of yoga, which one quickly appreciates applies to the entire daily regimen, not just the bendy poses.

Apart from these moderate anxieties about what we were getting into, we approached the ashram with excitement and few expectations. Indeed, we weren’t even sure what our sleeping arrangements would be, receiving no reply after emailing the ashram from Kuala Lumpur to inquire about the availability of rooms, and being told when we called that they couldn’t help us over the phone and that we should email them instead.

So after leaving our last hotel in Kuala Lumpur hours before dawn, a quick and comfortable flight (apart from our neighbor’s prolific throat clearing, a.k.a., “hawking,” commonly practiced in this part of the world, but no less unpleasant), and a stimulating hour spent clearing Indian customs, finding an ATM and riding an overflowing local bus and an auto-rickshaw to one of Trivandrum’s long-distance bus stations, we were on board another crowded but pleasant open-air bus for the one-hour journey to Neyyar Dam.

One’s arrival at the ashram is acknowledged with a sign indicating that cell phones are prohibited, and should be turned into reception. And then after a long wait in the queue labeled “reception,” we were asked to complete a forest of paperwork:

a personal information card;
a page in a bound registration book, reiterating (in triplicate carbon copy, no less) one’s personal information;
a “yellow card” onto which one deposits some amount of cash, like a credit account, so that the purchases at the “boutique” and “health hut” and elsewhere can be made without the hassle of handling money (except for the transactions that can be done only in cash, which seemed as common as those requiring a yellow card but were rarely indicated in advance, the net result of which was it made sense to bring cash and your yellow card before attempting any transaction);
a brochure helpfully describing ashram life and the plentiful rules governing it (except for the rules in the brochure that do not, in fact, apply, and for the places where the brochure is just dead wrong in describing life here); and finally
another sheet describing the rules, which is returned to reception with the participant’s signature, consenting to be kicked out of the ashram for failure to follow these rules.

It’s not the most welcoming introduction to a peaceful yogic experience, but we took it to be perhaps just an example of legendary Indian bureaucracy. And then the kind staff person helping us told us that a twin room was in fact available, delightful news to our eager but travel-weary bodies.

We were then given our key and guided to our room, which turned out to be far more spacious and comfortable than either of us had imagined, affording a modicum of privacy, our own bathroom and a private balcony for watching the sunset through the forest canopy. We spent our first half hour visiting the reception desk repeatedly, since we were shown our room, but not which of the winding paths one follows to eat, visit the aforementioned health hut or participate in the yoga practice, the group meditation, the chanting sessions (known as satsang) or the lectures.

Our arrival fell on the second day of a two-week introductory “yoga vacation,” consisting of a group of about fifty people, predominantly but not exclusively white Westerners, with many European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries represented. As a result, the asana classes and lectures did not presume much prior knowledge — a good fit for our needs. The first lecture by the ashram director, a white expat who described himself as being from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and was so flat in his affect that it was hard to determine whether he was bored, tired or completing these exercises with some robotic autonomous process whilst his awareness was focused on the fifth plane of yogic bliss. (I don’t know if there is a fifth plane of yogic bliss, but I am beginning to suspect that I’m not destined to find out.) Apart from some noise I have about scientific discoveries being, well, contorted as evidence of some religious point (“science has proved that all matter is energy...”) by a faithful practitioner who does not seem to understand the underlying science, the lecture helpfully described some of the basic principles of yogic philosophy. (A note to the faithful: scientists don’t prove, mathematicians and logicians do. Scientists test evidence against hypotheses, and iteratively refine or refute hypotheses by confronting them with data. It’s my impression that when people of faith lean on science in the service of proselytizing, what they are really doing is attempting to cow you into submission by donning a white lab coat and hoping that you are sufficiently impressed and don’t ask to see their data or inspect their standard deviations.)

I appreciated garnering from the first lecture a better understanding of the relationship between the physical poses (hatha yoga, just one form of yogic practice) and yoga’s ultimate aim of reuniting with the divine. What struck me was how much of that aspiration was couched in language of controlling and distancing one’s awareness from what is called the “physical body” (as opposed to your other ones). For me, one of the real beauties of yoga is to feel embodied, to change from the experience my sister-in-law aptly described as being a “brain on a stick” to developing an awareness of one’s physicality and the intricacies and hidden capacities of your very own sweaty organism. This is, I suspect, an irreducible parting of ways between my approach to and experience of yoga and its Hindu origins, in which having a little distance from one’s surroundings and fallible body might not be a bad thing, especially if you’re from a lower caste and hope to have any agency in your life. I’ll agree that this is an oversimplification, but not by much.

This first lecture also allowed each member of the group to introduce themselves. Julie picked up two early signals of what was to come during this process, but I missed them. First, this was virtually the only time any student’s name was used during our stay, which perhaps gives you a sense of the intimacy and warmth of our interactions with most staff and most other participants. (Think cattle, and not of the sacred variety.) Second, everyone, myself included, took themselves so seriously their introductions that it was only Nick, an American from L.A., who dared to stray from the humorlessness, inventing the following explanation of why he was visiting the ashram: “Well, a friend staked a wager that I would never be able to touch my toes, so this seemed like the most direct path to ten thousand U.S. dollars.” Instead of being greeting with laughter, his story clearly touched a nerve, the scolding and incredulous clucks of the assembled, serious students of yoga may not have been audible, but they were unmistakable nonetheless. (Isn’t there laughter on the fifth plane of yogic bliss?)

After the lecture, our first asana class began. I was overjoyed. Among the few fitness regimes and forms of exercise that I have pursued with more than a passing interest, yoga is clearly far and above the others in how it resonates with my body. This is so much the case that it is simply inexcusable that I’ve found excuses for not making it part of my daily life more consistently. One two-hour session at the ashram and I was reconnected with that calm elation I felt after my very first yoga session. Getting to do this twice a day in a such a supportive environment, I thought, what could be better?

The asana instruction was nothing short of great, in particular our morning sessions led by a Canadian expat who brought his humility and, thankfully, his sense of humor to the task of inspiring us to stretch our bodies and our concepts of our bodies. It was astonishing to note how after only a few sessions, my posture improved (a hour of daily meditation in a cross-legged position also has a way of rewarding good posture and punishing bad), my abdominal and lower back muscles felt significantly stronger and my flexibility increased substantially. After the first session’s unhappy discovery that my fingers and toes would not touch with my legs straight — even if there had been a sizable wager on it — two days later, I could place my toes in my palms bending straight-legged from the waist. The shoulder-stand position that at first seemed destined to send me to an infirmary with cracked vertebrae yielded to the plow posture, in which one moves from a full shoulder stand (elbows, shoulders and neck on the ground, with feet vertical above your head) to bringing one’s feet behind one’s head to touch the ground. In short, the yoga practice rocked.

After each session’s closing sivasana, I opened my eyes feeling lighter than air, energized and deeply relaxed. Reborn from the corpse pose, in some fashion. It was quickly evident to me that a few weeks of this daily regimen and I would not just be in better shape, I would be in the best shape of my life. More significantly, while I’ve always needed to find some reason to exercise other than just “working out” (e.g., commuting to work on my bicycle, flying over the snow on my skis or taking in the sights of a city on foot), this was pure joy, for its own sake. No other reason needed. Giddy with this liberating sense of possibility, I began to imagine making ashram visits a regular part of my travel and vacation routines.

At first.

If Whitman is right, and we do in fact contain multitudes, then I suppose it’s also true that we are all hypocrites in some form or another. Why, then, the hypocrisy of this ashram needled me so much is a subject worthy of more reflection.

I recently joked with a friend that one of the things which pushes my buttons most acutely is when stated, tyrannical policies differ from actual practices. (“Slightly less so when that discrepancy is beneficial to me,” I quipped.) I find gaps between policy and practice to be a constant source of perturbation, as I wrestle with the question of why the policy is written in this way, and who or what gets to decide when the policy should apply or be waived. Call this a deep-seated aspect of my confrontational nature, I guess.

It is infinitely preferable to me — and almost always more humane — to have a set of policies limited to the rules that really do apply without equivocation in 99.99999% of cases, and then empower people with explicit discretion to resolve the cases not governed by policy and the rare exceptions to policy that present themselves. Yes, this leaves decisions more subject to negotiation, makes it more difficult to maintain consistent quality in decisions, and usually ends up being more labor-intensive, but also leaves institutions more nimble and, if implemented well, it helps the people empowered to make decisions feel more satisfied in their roles and the people on the “receiving end” of decisions feel like they are being treated as and by a human being, rather than being clubbed by a stupid, obdurate rule. And yes, my strong predilections along these lines reveal both a strength and a weakness.

In any case, after being warned in no fewer than five places (three signs and two handouts) that we were absolutely, positively not to have cell phones on the ashram grounds, and that they must be switched off and turned into reception so that they do not interfere with the serenity of the ashram, doesn’t it seem a bit excessive to have eight cellphones interrupt said serenity on the first afternoon? Especially when some of those phones are in the hands and pockets of the ashram staff? Or when the director is interrupted by his phone ringing in the midst of leading a group session?

I am left to wonder: is this a rule, or isn’t it? Must one have already attained the third level of yogic bliss to be unperturbed when a ringtone of Hindi drum beats and sitar wrests the attention away from our chant for world peace?

Sadly, this ashram is riddled with such discrepancies, making it seem so much more “worldly” than its stated aspirations would imply. No place is perfect, but in the off-chance that staff from the Sivananda ashram are interested in some unsolicited advice, here’s a short list for some future staff meeting:

Seriously, with the paperwork. You are far from exceptional by Indian standards to require half an hour to complete the check-in process, but I was given to believe that you strived to be exceptional. Perhaps if information really, truly needs to be stored redundantly, staff or karma-seeking students can be charged with the task of copying it from place to place. Better still, ask and store your information once, and limit what you collect to the stuff you actually need.

Playing telephone garbles the message. If the brochure you provided me at check-in — and which you require that I affirm having read — states that the telephone is available from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., it seems reasonable that I might plan my phone use accordingly. No one would fault you for an interruption in the telecom service or a loss of electricity, but when you’ve changed your policy to drastically curtail the availability of the telephone by fiat, it would be both a sign of respect and just plain helpful to have the elaborate documents signed in blood not contradict your actual (and inflexible) practice. It’s not just the phone, either, but the timing of the laundry service, the availability of travel advice and just about every other fine detail in the brochure. If these details change too fluidly for the paper to keep up, I have a high-tech solution for you: drop the paper and use a white board in the lobby.

Shut up about it already. Repeatedly in signage and in the paperwork we are instructed to maintain silence during meals and after evening satsang until the following morning. I can fully appreciate the virtues of silence in a monastic environment. If, in fact, silence is available, I rather enjoy it. Breaches in the quiet might be understandable since some of your students might not be 100% on board, or might have somehow missed the umpteen articulations of that policy, and I would think these could be addressed through gentle reminders and articulations of the rationale behind the policy. Having it be staff breaking the silence, however, raises unwanted questions about the institution’s integrity. Again, is this really a rule, or isn’t it? I am not, by the way, referring to instructions to the group which may from time to time be necessary. I am looking for the staff to apply the same restraint that I am being asked to apply when, for example, they notice someone they want to converse with across the room.

Land wars in Asia. Each student is assigned a task for the upkeep of the ashram, referred to as one’s karma yoga practice, their acts of selfless service. Julie and I threw ourselves enthusiastically into the task we were assigned of helping to serve the morning meal. Until we met the German who may or may not be officially involved in the service, but who seems to view serving the morning meal as his turf. (It takes all of my yogic restraint not to give him a nickname which compares him, Seinfeldianly, with an atrocious fascist regime from his home country.) This gentleman (see, how polite I can be?) seemed not to appreciate the zest with which Julie and I served meals (if it wasn’t counter to the spirit of the ashram, I’d be tempted to say that we were lots quicker and more dedicated than the rest of our team). On the first meal, as I was hauling the handle-less, industrial-size metal mixing bowl of steaming rice (why are the other dishes, including the cold ones, served from buckets with handles but not the twenty pounds of piping hot rice?), my German friend came up to me and said that I should stop putting so much rice on each plate, since “the girls” (he pronounced this as Dana Carvey’s impression of Schwarzenegger would) wouldn’t eat so much and that it would be wasted. There was no shortage of food, and in fact food was served continuously until everyone was sated. Annoyed, and not feeling especially karmic about his unsolicited advice, I reluctantly complied. And I am petty, surely, but also vindicated for watching as every single “boy” or “girl” I begrudgingly shorted subsequently requested seconds of the same rice. The next day, he followed me around picking up several stray kernels of rice that missed or bounced off the tin trays, looking up at me as he did. Perhaps, dear friend, you would prefer to serve the rice instead? Or supply me with a delivery system that did not cause a hundredth of a rupee (gasp, a bazillionth of a penny! Our spiritual practice is doomed!) in waste? After dutifully ensuring that everyone had their skimpy portion of rice, I moved on to serving salad, filling the designated place on the tray (an indentation about a third of a cup in volume) with exactly one scoop of salad. Again, my friend approached me and suggested that I was serving too much salad, and that it would go to waste. Restraining the various biting replies that first came to mind, I suggested, in all faux-gic wisdom, that yes, everything could be wasted. He simply affirmed the sentiment and walked away. And the next second — I kid you not — someone called for my attention, requesting more salad. I guess I should not expect that there are no turf battles among volunteers, but he provided me with the helpful confirmation when, later, he refused to serve me not once but twice from the dish he was distributing. Ah, karma. Watch your back, Herr Power Hunger.

Begging your pardon. This may be picayune, and perhaps just a cultural artifact of ashram life, but I do find it rather silly that people interrupt one another or get each other’s attention by speaking the highly revered, so-called “universal” mantra “Om” instead of “pardon me,” “excuse me” or even “hey you.” I enjoyed hearing a group utter “Om” as a mantra together while starting and concluding asana sessions, each time distinct in its multiple harmonies and subtle variations in pitch and timbre. I guess you could say that later hearing someone say “Om, could you please pass the potatoes” cheapened it for me a bit.

Playing doctor. Lastly, our half-ash’d lecture on Ayurvedic medicine really fails to inspire a respect for the discipline when your chief resident doctor suggested flippantly — actually laughing as he said it — that based on their Ayurvedic constitution, various participants in the lecture were likely to develop manic depression, nervous disorders or any other number of ailments. But then, I come from a school of thought that diseases should be taken seriously, especially by medical professionals, and treated as such. (Yes, here’s a spot the humorlessness, or at least professionalism, would have been preferable.)

This laundry-list of complaints notwithstanding, I would hate to leave you, dear reader, with the impression that our ashram experience was entirely negative. In addition to the deeply rewarding asana instruction, I also enjoyed the group meditation sessions. (Well, in truth, I found maintaining focus challenging when the silence was broken by late arrivals, construction equipment or trumpeting elephants, but this is a perhaps understandable limitation of my concentration.) Furthermore, at the few meals that managed to maintain some measure of silence, there was something magical about being in such a large group of people with the only sounds being those of ingestion and digestion, much like the quiet that I imagine could descend on livestock while they are being fed (a comparison I offer with reverence, not sarcasm).

Also, despite my personal unease with participating in group chanting praising Krishna, Raam and the technicolor ensemble cast of Hindu deities, I do not resent this ashram nor any other monastic community for being grounded in a particular faith tradition, especially when this fact expressed so clearly upfront. Hindu chanting ain’t my cup of chai, but I don’t regret having tried it, the tunes are quite catchy, and I did learn a lot about the manifold manifestations of the one great spirit to which a majority of Indians pray. (Now if I can just get that Hare Krishna chant out of my head.)

On the question of faith, I think it comes down to the approach that I know would work best for me, personally, which of course no ashram is obliged to provide. I would respond so much more positively to an open-minded expression of a faith tradition that allows for curiosity and skepticism, inviting engagement, rather than simply being expected to “repeat after me” (especially when what is being repeated is in Sanskrit without translation). When staff would take time to unpack the ashram’s practices, they became some much more intelligible, so much more meaningful and so much more susceptible to the kind of inquiry that I think any serious consideration requires: ”Oh, so that’s what this means. So what do I think of that?”

Alas, perhaps I would just be better suited to a secular yoga vacation, as abrasive as the concept is to my man-of-the-world, when-in-Rome travel ethos. But the onus for those of us who seek to cherry-pick the practices that form our own sense of meaning — what Elizabeth Gilbert wittily appropriates the original R.E.M. in calling the process of “choosing my religion” — this responsibility of course does not rest with anyone other than ourselves.

The morning of what was to become our last day at the ashram, Julie and I were seated for the morning meditation, having arrived a few moments before it was scheduled to begin and installed ourselves along the walls near the back of the bamboo mats spread across the tile floor. It was still well before dawn, and we arranged ourselves on our yoga mats so that we could sit comfortably, without moving, for thirty minutes (something that initially seemed quite unlikely, but, by the third day, routine). One of the biggest challenges for me in maintaining meditative focus (well, apart from the people, machinery and elephants mentioned above) is to convince my inner narrative-writing observer to stop writing, stop describing, stop coming up with metaphors and analogies to relate whatever it is I am experiencing. So this particular morning, I thought that perhaps I could quell my curiosity by simply letting it gorge itself to satiety. I decided to sit in silence with my eyes open, fully observing the spectacle and allowing myself to describe it in my mind, although I committed myself to remaining as calm and motionless as possible so as to minimize the distractions I created for those around me. (Presumably from the fifth level of yogic bliss, such charades are transparent, but from such giddy heights (?) I can only presume that it’s trivial to ignore li’l ol’ me.)

What I observed was utterly, in some ways reassuringly, of this world. One woman seated cross-legged, wrapped in a sarong, carefully checking her nails. Dozens of people arriving late, many of whom slapped their mats down on the floor with reckless abandon (or perhaps misdirected frustration), seemingly oblivious to the quest for inner peace happening around them. Staff arriving late, padding stealthily into the hall, guiltily looking around and slinking onto their mats in silence at the back of the room. Two-stroke engines being started. Maintenance staff conversing with one another in decibels that might be audible in another hemisphere. Countless birds suggesting that it was time the world woke up (in the “what’s for breakfast” sense rather than the “give peace a chance” sense). And elephants making sounds from the forest that one imagines can only lead to more elephants. A narrative feast, it was.

When the meditation ended with the ubiquitous Om, I felt oddly satisfied, as though I’d managed to get that obstacle to my meditation out of the way. Next up was the chanting, something I’d initially joined in a tentative, provisional way, but that was increasingly chafing, creating a sense of disconnection from the experience around me. (I’m sure Saraswati kicks all kinds of ass, but silly me, I feel the need to do a bit more research before I plead in Sanskrit several times a day for her to protect me.) My metaphysical guard thus raised, Julie and I formed a small island sitting next to each other. Until a staff person — unappointed to the role of seating police, as best I could tell — asked us to move closer to the front of the hall. We were sitting in the back of the group, but certainly not away from the group — unlike many people, herself included, who arrived late. So in response to being asked why, she replied that she just thought it would be better for the “energy” of the room. (Science proves it, no doubt.)

We both took our commitment to live in the spirit and by the rules of the ashram during our stay seriously, and this was clearly no place to debate the point, so we complied with the request, but it was for me the final hypocrisy. (If we are, in fact, all one spirit, does it really matter where the little physical shell surrounding my tiny portion of that spirit sits? And whose spirit gets to decide what the best energy feels like?) In short, it flipped the final switch. The moment satsang ended, I said to Julie that I think we might be done here, and that perhaps it was time to pack up our things. (Julie’s reaction to this statement is more properly hers to share, but suffice it to say this was the broadest smile I’d seen cross her face during the satsangs.)

After partaking in our final asana class, bidding farewell to our favorite asana teacher and going through the elaborate check-out process, we earned our precious “exit pass,” a pink slip of paper that entitled us to leave the ashram without, presumably, being tackled by security. Nonviolently, of course.

With ashrams occupying their particular place in the popular imagination, it is perhaps unfair to malign so easy a target, particularly when we both signed up for the experience deliberately and with clear knowledge that it would stretch us mentally and physically. Indeed it did. I hope what I’ve managed to convey isn’t just that this particular ashram isn’t a place I’ll visit again, but that its apparent inability to play by its own rules is a big part of the reason why.

By the same token, this ashram is only one among a multitude, and whatever common themes there may be from one ashram experience to another, I suspect that there are more differences than similarities. Also, I don’t want to suggest that this one is without merit. Surely lots of people have had and will continue to have transformative experiences in this place. It is no small thing for a three-day visit to have provoked such a reaction in me. And of course, I bring my own baggage to the party. A party that is heading to the beach.

A new year in Malaysia

2010-01-02T01:56:00.021-06:00

Happy new year!

Our time in Malaysia is fast coming to a close, after a month of heterogeneous, haunting, not-to-be-forgotten experiences. Our travels — limited to just the west coast and the central highlands of the Malay peninsula — have spanned the bustling port towns of Melaka and Penang, the misty green mountains of the Cameron Highlands, the sleepy beaches and tropical jungles of Pangkor Island, and the thriving (often sleep-depriving) urban pulse of Kuala Lumpur (which locals call simply "K.L.").

I'm challenged, with so much variety and still being so close to the experience, to draw themes across these various Malaysias, but of course that won't stop me from trying.

Many of our experiences in this incredible country have already been documented elsewhere. What I perhaps haven't expressed is that above all else — above its lush natural environment, its distinctive museums, its tropical climate, its rapid development or even its delicious cuisines — I am struck by the richness of the coexisting diversity of Malaysia's people. I should admit to being more than a bit put off by a country having an officially sanctioned religion, flattening as it does the inevitably varied expressions of people's spirituality, even the variations within a single faith, and making thanks-but-no-thank-you folks like me feel a bit, ahem, left at the altar. So, upon learning that Malaysia is an officially Islamic state (as is Indonesia, save for the Hindu enclave of Bali), my presumptions about this place painted it in monochrome, a fascinating and beautiful Islamic portrait, to be sure, but still one daubed with a single brush.

Ah, presumptions. My time in Indonesia should have been more instructive about the gap between government-endorsed religion and daily life. Malaysia feels nothing if not multi-cultural, and faith hardly seems monolithic. Yes, I've seen more head-scarved women here than many other places I've traveled, but while Muslims are the obvious majority, they are far from the only game in town, and I have perceived none of the smugness that I imagined could be engendered by having the government recognize my god instead of yours.

Cuisine — ever one of my favorite lenses into culture — bears this out, with the dishes deriving from Chinese, Indian or Malays roots coexisting in adjacent food stalls, on the same menu and in the bellies of happy diners, regardless their ethnic extraction. (There are also lots of Western foodstuffs here, but in general, those aren't the kind of joints we patronize. With a notable exception below.)

We celebrated the arrival of the new year under the countenance of the enormous Petronas towers, the bustling, gleaming César Pelli-designed headquarters of the national petroleum company, amid a crowd peopled with as much diversity as any crowd back home: locals mingling with Malaysian tourists and foreigners like us; every hue in the spectrum in people's faces, in their clothes, and in their outward expressions of cultural and religious identity; every generation represented; and affection displayed straight and queer. (K.L. is still far short of a queer mecca, in my estimation, but K.L. seems the most open and liberal of the places we've visited in Malaysia.)

We were treated to a remarkable, and very different, view of Malaysia these past two days, thanks to some generous fairy godparents, with an all-encompassing two-day stay at Le Meridien, a cush, five-star resort with panoramic vistas from our corner 31st floor room of K.L.'s leafiest neighborhoods. We envisioned walking through the nearby gardens, taking in night markets and finishing our sight-seeing itinerary, but after reclining into the comforts of this place and appreciating its depth, we haven't left the compound! Nor have we needed to, between the nightly cocktails and appetizers, the 24-hour open snack-bar in the penthouse, the serpentine pools with three different temperature zones and, lest I forget, breakfasts and dinners at the Jean-George Vongerichten restaurant on the 8th floor, all included in our "package" deal. It's been an utter departure from our (adequate, but let's admit, four stars lower) accommodations of late. What an unexpected treat!

So we're soaking up this luxury for our last few hours in Malaysia, taking temporary leave of Southeast Asia for a five-week visit to India. If my brief, transformative visit to India five years ago is any guide, we have some indelible, wonderful, challenging experiences in store. Although sharing many cultural and historical roots with our recent habitations, India seems also irreducibly distinct. The economics of the place alone — a global economic superpower in aggregate, and one of the poorest nations per capita — hint at some of the paradoxical rush of visiting this place as a westerner. I anticipate that it will remain distinct in quality and in kind from the rest of our itinerary, a point suggested by the trending relationships between the wealth of a nation (expressed as per capita gross domestic product) and our travel budget for visiting each place. (Indonesia would have been more in line with this trend, but for the fabulous scuba diving.)

(By the way, I'd be curious to know who won the pool on how long it would take for charts and graphs to appear in these posts.)

After our arrival in India tomorrow, in the southern state of Kerala, we plan to spend our first week at a yoga retreat, acclimating to our new surroundings and stretching muscles actual and metaphysical. It may be a little while until the next post, but please don't let that stop you from chiming in in the meantime!

For my nephew, on his birthday

2009-12-18T00:01:00.001-06:00

What do you send your nephew to celebrate his fourth birthday when you're halfway around the world? Why, something created from local materials (and his uncle's curious hobbies), of course!

Happy birthday, Asa!

Love,

Eric and Julie

Made with Final Cut Pro, Voice Candy, Single Framer (thanks, Zach!), some Pangkor Island sand, stones and sticks, and a recording of children playing gamelan at a temple in Padangbai, Bali, Indonesia.

Having seconds in Singapore

2009-12-17T01:56:00.018-06:00

Ah, Singapore.

How many times have I expressed shock at the continual abundance of this journey? Our time in Bali was so enchanting, I wondered how we'd manage to leave. In a way, it helped to have an unplanned night in Kuta when we couldn't fly out standby on an earlier flight, as we'd hoped. One night in Kuta — the bustling, touristy wasteland of marauding Western vacationers adjacent to the international airport — was memorable (our first durian, and a spotlit, nighttime surfing competition), but plenty.

So, we left Indonesia for Singapore, after paying the airport tax on our excess overcharge fee. (Seriously, I'm all about having the tourist dollar support the local economy, but you won't believe how many extra trips to the ATM at the airport were needed to pay all the departure fees! It didn't help that our very cheap and otherwise excellent AirAsia flight came with zero flexibility, and did not include charges that other carriers build into their ticket prices.) In any case, with the aid of some helpful and (thankfully!) friendly customs officers, we forked over the necessary dough and boarded the plane. To Singapore!

Singapore impresses, right out of the gate. Like the whole country, the airport is famously tidy and well organized, and the public transportation system is, frankly, unparalleled. (I'm prepared to ruffle feathers on this point among the denizens of New York City and London. In our week in Singapore, we took trains and buses all over the city, and not once had to change buses or walk more than a block at either end of the trip. Combine that with the fact that buses run so frequently, our longest wait was, I think, 10 minutes. Most often, it was a minute or two. Freakishly awesome, Singaporean public transportation.)

It's true that one is also confronted quickly with signs of Singapore's strict social code, whether the posted signs warning of various offenses and their fines...

...or the anti-terrorism audio and video broadcasts on most trains and buses, warning riders to maintain vigilant watch for suspicious persons (which, as in post-9/11 America, have a cumulative effect that elevates anxiety, if not outright terrorizes those who hear them). These are the downsides of Singapore people often focus on. For us, they're little more than a footnote on an otherwise amazing experience.

Culturally, it is quickly apparent that Singapore is a confluence of Malay, Chinese and Indian peoples and histories. It is also heavily influenced by the West, although for want of a better metaphor, this feels a bit like the clothes Singapore wears, rather than its body (or bodies). Its vibrant diversity and distinct neighborhoods make for some incredible travel experiences. People say that Singaporeans' favorite pastimes are shopping and eating. We participated in both, but the latter much more extensively.

Owing in part to the politics surrounding the greening of the Singapore River, many of the city's historic food vendors (which previously operated out of little carts along or boats on the water) were relocated into dozens (hundreds?) of hawker centers dispersed throughout the city. Think of a hawker center as a food court on steroids, each with dozens of vendors selling made-to-order meals, most of which cost just a buck or two. You grab a seat at one of the numbered, communal tables, approach the vendor whose fare you want to try, place your order and provide your table number. Minutes later, your food is delivered to your table and exchanged for payment.

The process, though energetic and enjoyable to behold, is nothing compared to the product. The food we sampled at hawker centers throughout the city ranged from the excellent to the sublime. Julie joked that she was going to start having five meals a day to allow us to sample more of the variety available! We quickly realized that we could have every meal of our stay at the first hawker center we visited, just blocks from our hotel, and still not run out of delicious options. It is a place teeming with compelling food.

We sampled some of Singapore's best-loved dishes, including fish head curry, chili crab, char kway teow mee (fried noodles), laksa (a coconut-milk-based soup with noodles, prawns and cockles), a stunning Indian veggie platter, roti prata (an Indian fried bread with onions and, in my case, scrambled eggs), dosas, sardine murtabak, and a range of dishes whose names I don't know or can't remember and whose flavors I can't forget. We also had a broad sample of bao (stuffed rice-flour buns) and dim sum, and some of the finest coffee I've tasted, sweetened with condensed milk. Desserts also proved memorable, especially the slab of ice cream served between two slices of white bread (!) or wafers. Truly, some of the most amazing food experiences of my life were found in this city. Foodies, buy your tickets now.

If the food was the star of the show, there were other captivating attractions, too. We took in a great exhibit at the National Museum of Singapore... about food! The Museum's Living Galleries, covering food, film, fashion and photography, were excellent (especially the first two in that list), as was the Asian Civilizations Museum. In the latter, we encountered the complex, fascinating, tangled history of the clash, intersection, and melding of people living in this part of the world. More precisely, we just scratched the surface, a humbling experience to encounter dozens of civilizations I know nothing about, which have had profound impacts on the shape of things in this part of the world today. Abundance of a different sort, I suppose, that the sweep of history is so broad, but also so unfathomably deep.

As for Singapore's other favorite pastime, we did engage in some commerce as well, seeking to replace Julie's busted point-and-shoot camera with the latest model of the one Linda let us use in Alaska. I dunno, folks, I think Julie must have been trying to flirt with me, too, taking me to Sim Lim Square — a famous six-story hawker-center equivalent for electronics — on our first day in Singapore!

Filtering through the blitzkrieg of flashing signs, conflicting advice and mercurial price-quotes proved to be quite a project, but a rewarding one. She came away with a new cam, and it provided a different kind of lens (sorry) into Singapore. The art of haggling is practiced in a unique way here, with some vendors telling us to so much as shove off ("you'll find better deals upstairs"), others saying their neighbors would try to con us, and still others changing the price every time we asked.

We spent longer (7 days) in the city than we'd originally planned, mainly so that we could obtain an entry visa from the Indian embassy in Singapore. Many travelers we've met along the way suggested that three or four days was enough. For my part, a week felt like just the beginning of coming to know this place. In another common refrain, I look forward to our next visit, and spending more time in this unforgettable city.

An addendum for the family doctors

2009-12-14T19:02:00.009-06:00

A few more words about the final steps my Mom took in completing her doctoral degree.

My Mom's dissertation, on how schools can apply Total Quality Management and strategic planning techniques to improve student learning, is peppered with incisive observations about the state of education, and the challenges and opportunities for improving it. She quotes Andy Hargreaves' succinct description of how important this work is, that "education is the greatest gatekeeper of opportunity and a powerful distributor of life chances."

It was great fun for me to read this document, codifying the knowledge and experience earned through decades of work as an educator. In discussing how educational reform efforts are necessarily situated within a large social context, she writes:

A school is affected from the outside by the stability, support, and socioeconomic status of the community. A community in turmoil is less likely to lend support and prioritize education as a value.

In describing how a school's culture and process for decision-making can impact the ultimate success of school improvement efforts, she highlights how critical it is that all the people involved have a shared understanding of the process and its importance, and what happens without it.

What can easily be construed as resistance to change may in fact be uncertainty of the task or training needed to build capacity. Seldom is the desire to change problematic in a school when the need is evident, the process is clear and relevant and the belief is there that it will benefit students.

A dissertation culminates in a defense, the term of art for a committee review of the material including an oral interview by the committee. From the stories I've heard, it seems these free-form, no-holds-barred investigations of the material covered by the dissertation often go in unexpected directions, as committee members might be interested in hearing the candidate expound on a passing remark on page 57.

It sounds like my Mom's defense was a rich and intense discussion, giving her an opportunity to demonstrate her broad, confident knowledge of her material. The unexpected part came when after the committee's deliberations were complete, she was asked to follow the committee throughout the halls of the department, as her advisor rang an antique school bell — hear-ye, hear-ye style — introducing her to all of the staff and faculty as the department's newest Ph.D.. For all the pomp and circumstance of a commencement (which she got to experience the next day), so I love the image being invited into the ranks through the ringing of an old school bell, and striding the halls with those who have conferred the distinction. Once again, Ma, way to go!

I have also just learned that my aunt Kim successfully defended her dissertation yesterday. Congrats, Dr. Kim!

Much occasion for family pride, indeed.

Buttons bursting

2009-12-10T06:25:00.011-06:00

The title would be apt for our time in Singapore, the result of grazing at every conceivable opportunity on that city's amazingly diverse, abundant, inexpensive and delicious street food. But, in fact, we did a lot of walking, and it's pretty healthy stuff, so the buttons of our midsections — for the moment, anyway — remain intact.

No, this is not a post about our time in Singapore, nor our first impressions of Malaysia. Those will come. This is a post about family pride.

Tomorrow, after the considerable years of effort that the title always implies, my Mom receives her doctorate from the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota.

Congratulations, Dr. Mom!

I cannot fathom is how she managed to squeeze time for her research and writing between her way-more-than-full-time gig as an elementary school principal, her role as family matriarch, her primary care-giving for my sister, her avid grandmotherhood, her support for the whole damn clan and all the gazillion other interests calling to her — but I have evidence that most of it took place between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m.. No, I'm not kidding.

Mom, you're an inspiration for your persistence and dedication, and also for your ability to balance all of the many demands pulling at your attention. Kudos for hanging in there through the inevitable set-backs, changing priorities and plain ol' passage of time, and crossing the finish line with such style! Hooray!

On the list of buffo family accomplishments, my Mom is sharing the stage right now with my amazingly talented sister-in-law, whose well-loved writing has appeared, for the first time, in book form!

Drink This: Wine Made Simple, Dara's guide to wine, hinges on the dramatic, democratic premise that the most important thing about your experience of wine is — BEHOLD! — your experience of wine! Rather than sending you rushing for a thesaurus or fumbling for obscure imagery ("ah, this one has hints of reading Rilke during summer rains"), her radical idea is to help you get to know your own tastes and preferences better. Wicked! The experience of wine, expressed in the most important tongue of all: yours!

The book has been getting rave reviews (turns out those James Beard awards weren't for nuthin'!) here and here and here and lots of other places. Check it out!

So, hats off, Mom and Dara! These are big milestones, worthy of much celebration. A toast, a toast! To you!

In pictures

2009-12-07T20:57:00.007-06:00

Judged by any reasonable measure of consumption, Julie and I are cinephiles of the "frequent and vigorous" variety. Our regular routine in a more abiding abode would typically involve a weekly trip to an art house or one of our favorite second-run cinemas. Enter the trip.

To our pleasant surprise, cinema has also been appreciated in our destinations to date. Whether spending time with Tony at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, screening Up! in 3D, or visiting the WETA Workshop in New Zealand, we've been able to keep the cinematic flame alive and aloft. But who knew that Ubud, Bali would offer so many memorable movie-going experiences?

It began with a chance encounter on an evening walk up Monkey Forest Road, past a sign hawking what we could only take to be a joke:

Lord of the Rings 4?! What Halloween-costumed, Ren-fest-inspired, lilt-uttering massacre of all things Tolkien could this be? Natch, we had to go. (The short answer: a fan film, yes, but one with surprisingly high production values. If only their scripted dialogue hadn't tried so, so hard to sound like the original trilogy, it might have been quite engrossing. Note for future fan-film makers: your target audience already knows the original scripts too well to let you get away with reusing existing dialogue in new contexts, without killing the buzz.)

Later that evening, we passed one of Ubud's many DVD chop shops, huge storefronts packed to the gills with dubiously-obtained video, amazed to discover films available on DVD for US $1.50 that have not yet even reached the cinema! From the little I actually saw of it, Where the Wild Things Are appears to be a pretty incredible film. Do you suppose the sudden appearance of a tiny silhouetted figure on the lower bounds of the screen, walking toward stage left, is some inexplicable easter egg added by director Spike Jonze or co-screenwriter Dave Eggers? Or could it just be someone exiting the theater? I admire their daring choice to include audio of real children watching the film, particularly the high-pitched urgent query right at the end, asking Mama "Is it over now?"

Ha. While this is not the only bootlegged movie I've seen, it was easily the worst made. So, naturally, how could we pass up an opportunity to see 2012 the day before its US premiere?

Thankfully, this is a visual movie, so the absence of audible dialog did not detract from the expected apocalyptic images. There were some muddled but satisfying low-end reverberations that made it through the speakers whenever something large was being destroyed by something even larger, which was enough to reinforce the idea that "this can't be good." Besides, there's only so much dramatic tension John Cusack's love interests can really sustain for me. I decided if Cusack's character had motto, it should be: "Unlucky in love, lucky in class-C driving." But you judge for yourself.

Our cinematic highlight to date of the trip -- for me, anyway -- was attending the fabulous Ubud "flim" [sic] club, a group of Indonesian and expat cinephiles who gather weekly at the home of their gregarious host, Artur, a Polish Swede who with his wife and their two kids have made movie nights an important part of their extended stays in Bali. Artur found me on CouchSurfing, invited me to screen my own cinematic pride-and-joy, Friction, and generally made it an irresistible and unforgettable night. The company of smart, interesting fellow travelers and an... intoxicating, home-brewed concoction known as the Magic Coconut were potent icing on the cake. With some help from said company, I even managed to procure the ingredients for my signature caliente popcorn, but alas, the kernels would not pop! We screened the hilarious and chaotic Black Cat, White Cat as our main feature, followed with Friction and closed the night with trailers of the films to be screened at flim clubs to come. It was a joyful and light-hearted movie club experience, something I've missed having in my life for several years. I only wish we'd been in Ubud more than just the one week!

We are in Singapore now -- the time has flown with so many diverting scenic and culinary experiences -- and we have learned that we have more movie fun ahead in Kuala Lumpur, where purchasing movie tickets seems as complex as a tax form, with prices varying based on the time of day, day of week, size of seat, location and, naturally, availability of restrooms. It should prove memorable!

Left and leaving*

2009-11-30T02:11:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow, we depart Ubud, making our way to the airport and a plane
bound for the city-state of Singapore.

Leaving our quasi-home of Padangbai was difficult. Leaving Bali will
be, too. Our last morning in Padangbai was spent making the rounds,
saying farewell to our friends and the places we frequented, the
places where people knew us by name. We took some photographs with our
new friends, keepsakes to hold them and our time in Padangbai in
memory until our return, who-knows-when. Farewell Martini, and Regig,
and Made, and Nyoman, and Ayu, and Kesni, and David, and Wayan, and
Rini. Until we meet again.

Ubud, for its charms, did not quite fit as comfortably (for one, it is
far more touristy), but it too will be hard to leave. I made some new
friends here, too, especially a fabulous group of expat and Indonesian
film lovers (more on that to come). We have said our farewells to the
monkey forest, to our favorite local spots, and to a few dollars for
some clothing (though reasonably well-suited to the motorcycle
journey, I am officially done traveling in screen-printed T-shirts for
a while) and Balinese TLC (a facial for Julie and a massage for me).

I feel changed by our time here in ways I can't yet find words to
express, and also by the richness of an experience in a place that
previously had been only a blank spot on my mental maps. When I
reflect on the transitional trepidation I felt leaving New Zealand for
Indonesia -- followed so quickly by a sense of familiarity with this
place, then appreciation, then true affection -- it makes me eager to
find what awaits us in all the other unknown-to-us destinations ahead.
And it makes me eager to come back.

Thanks, Bali. Terima kasih and selamat tingal.

_______

*Thanks to one of my favorite albums of the Weakerthans for the title.

Gratitude

2009-11-26T01:53:00.004-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This is the first Thanksgiving I've spent outside of the U.S. since my senior year of high school, on my first trip to Europe with my parents and my brother Nathan, which I celebrated with cheese sandwiches (I wasn't a very creative vegetarian back then), wandering the streets of Munich, realizing that these Germans had no idea what day it was.

Today, Julie and I find ourselves into our sixth month of travel, enjoying the Balinese hospitality in Ubud, famous for its art, its temples and its monkey forest. Wonderous though it is, leaving Padangbai was difficult, having become so comfortable and so connected to others living there. More about that later.

As is fitting for this day, I want to reflect on the abundant good fortunes that let me write you from this place. By fortunes, I don't mean money. Or, at least, I don't mean just money. (People often wonder about the financing of a journey like this one. I hope to write about that at some point in the future, but for now, suffice it to say the money part of preparing for a trip like this has been much less complex than the people part.)

As I look back on the preceding six months, or on the preceding two years (when we hatched the idea for the trip), I am astounded by how many people have been integral to our finding ourselves here. First off, it's incredible how important it was to have family and friends supportive of the idea. Give up your comfortable life? Sell your home and purge your possessions? Quit your job, doing important work with great people? Say goodbye to family and most of your friends, not to lay eyes on them for a year and a half? And not to know when or where you will land, or what you will do?

Certainly, someone could be forgiven for thinking the whole plan was a bit daft. Instead of greeting us with skepticism or mental health interventions, so many people in our lives responded with "sounds exciting!" and "how can I help?"

The friends -- old and new -- we've met along the trip have made the journey far richer, less an expedition into the unknown than a circumnavigation of our address book. We have been invited into the homes and into the lives of friends in so many places, it is astonishing:

Jon, Jen, Ruthie and Gabe (Denver)
Dan and Sheika (Vail)
Kim and Jack (San Diego)
Tony, Tara, Jennifer and Claudia (LA)
Tim and Camille (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Carol, Bill, Nico and Paul (Berkeley)
Marty and Eileen (Stinson Beach)
Tim and Joan (Point Reyes)
Erika, Carel, Angie and Darren (Portland)
Donald (Seattle)
Tom, Emily and Shane (Vashon Island)
Linda and Everett (Anchorage)
...with Max and Mick (Wild Lake)
...and Kelly (Valdez)
Rex, Trish and Leigh (Wellington)
Jen, LJ, Grady and Zoey (Lyttelton)
Anna (Auckland)

And that's just the list so far!

Our families have been the very definition of supportive during our preparations and throughout our travels. In addition to hosting our remaining possessions in storage, they have provided incredible moral, financial and logistical support. My family swung into action, Viking raiding-party style (but thankfully sans mayhem and bloodshed), months before our actual departure, helping me prepare my condo for sale. This was followed by my real-estate rock star brother selling it in exactly the time he estimated, letting us leave liberated and with the promise of a little coin hitting the bank account. My father has been my point person back home for the closing on that transaction, as well as all of the miscellaneous details involved in continuing to have a presence in the world (fun stuff like bank statements and bills!). My mom has been a continuous link back to news of the family, and constant support to have fun, and to be safe. (Can you imagine, what we put our poor families through, riding our motorcycles to Alaska?!)

Friends have also made our departure possible, through their encouragement and well-wishes, by staying in touch, and (is there a theme here?) their back-breaking labor. (Thankfully, Primo, I am quite sure we will never have to move my behemoth of a desk again; but I'm afraid to say, Bone, that I don't think the same is true about the roll-top.) Ann helped us get our legal house in order, Steve sent us off prepared to head into the wilderness of Banff and Jasper national parks, and Jennifer gave us some of the best tips for her beloved islands you could imagine. My friends at work gave me such a send off, I'm still amazed by it. And finally, on the weekend before our departure, Lucas hosted our final, final bon voyage party.

It's quite a list!

I'm also struck by all the invisible supports, the keepers of the infrastructure that has allowed us to pass this way with so little encumbrance. I remember riding down one particularly isolated stretch of the Alaskan Highway, somewhere in the Yukon Territory. The terrain was formidable, and the road reflected its reluctance to be tamed by pavement, in undulating patches that bounced a rider from pressed firmly in the seat, to floating, feet barely on the foot pegs. What was surprising was that these patches somehow weren't visible to the eye -- you wouldn't know you'd hit one until you felt it. Or, when you saw a cone or little red flag on the edge of the roadway. We saw hundreds of these along the Alcan. I was amazed to think that in this place, such a subtle little marker -- nothing but a bit of red plastic glued to a piece of wire, posted upright in the ground along the verge -- could be the difference between enjoying the ride and skidding along the road. I felt such gratitude for the attentiveness of the highway workers, miles from their boss or supervisor, who diligently made sure these markers were in place where they were needed. It was a small symbol, surely, but a sign of civilization, of care and of human attention nevertheless.

But this is just one example. Broadening the circle of thanks in this way never really ends. The ripples of support and gratitude widen, intersect and merge, and it quickly becomes impossible to trace exactly where you should direct all of your thanks. Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat Pray Love, said it beautifully when she wrote:

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Amen, sister. Amen.

But there is one more person to thank for her role sustaining me, on this trip and in this life.

Perhaps it will surprise you (ha!) that I'm not always the easiest person in the world to travel with. Opinionated, strong willed, sometimes restless and sometimes unpredictably particular, there are gentler assignments than spending a year and a half linked at the hip with this particular wanderer.

Julie has, time and again, amazed me with her ability to adapt to the changing circumstances of our travels thus far. She is competent, generous, resilient, funny and sincere, in the unique combination that made her such a potent inebriant to me in the first place. We have been getting to know one another better, day by day, as we learn how we each respond to the constantly changing, often compelling, sometimes difficult, stimuli. She continues to surprise me, by saying yes over and over again to opportunities that provide rewards, but also call for sacrifice. (A week in the Arctic, anyone? How about a 35-mile hike along the New Zealand coast?) And she continues to surprise me, too, by time and again saying yes to the challenge that I earnestly hope provides the greatest reward of all: that of loving each other, of building a life together. I am lucky and grateful to have such a companion, traveling or not.

So, I have no pretensions of having "earned" this experience, or to ever be able to say thanks properly for getting to experience it. I can only repeat, as often as I can, thank you.

Balinese discipline

2009-11-19T20:48:00.009-06:00

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?

Blub, blub, I think I'm in love

2009-11-10T01:45:00.006-06:00

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

2009-11-06T17:56:00.000-06:00

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!

One post to rule them all

2009-11-02T04:34:00.018-06:00

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!

The life panoramic in Wellington

2009-10-04T15:41:00.001-05:00

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.