parisbaconpesto

New guy at work.

2012-01-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

There's a new guy at work. He's young, he sleeps most of the day, he has no qualms about being nude, and he is prone to fits of irreconcilable sadness. Naturally, the girls all love him.

They're like, Oh, he's so cute, Oh, he's so cute, but here I present evidence that he is in reality a total slacker.

We commute together. I always am the one to drive.

Occasionally we stop for coffee. I always have to buy.

He's given to bouts of crying, but that just seems to make people like him more. Usually, he just lays around in my office, demanding time that I should be devoting to correcting other people's grammatical errors.

He sleeps, drools, and is fascinated by this stuffed lion that sings a jungle song when you pull its tail.

At the end of a long day we commute home together, too. If it's cold, and sometimes this winter it has been, I have to wrap him up.

When I'm not charged with his care, I do manage to get out and do some skiing. They call this season 'winter', but barring one record-setting snowfall it's been more like a protracted fall slipping into an extended spring. Anyway, here's what the 'hood looked like after 'the storm'.

And here's what Rogers Pass looked like.

Here's the view from atop Wisherd Ridge. The truck is 'down there'.

Skis are a magical thing. For a relatively small sum of money, you can strap them to your feet and venture to the most amazing places. After about 300 days of this, however, the old ones wear out and it's time for a new pair.

Family togetherness: we went to see a dog sled race. (They tie the dogs to the trucks so they don't run off prematurely.)

Seeking better snow, I went back to Sheep Mountain, which is a nice place to watch the sun rise.

And so is the St. Regis Basin.

Pattee Canyon is a nice place to watch the sun set, if you're looking in the right direction, that is.

Look who got a passport!

The Corps of Discovery.

2011-12-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Cooper’s middle name Meriwether honors patrilineage in Laura’s family: the name was used a handful of times on the Patterson side of her family, and her dad traced the family’s connection to that of Meriwether Lewis. Lewis drew an impressive vita in his 35 years, though he’s best known of course for leading the Corps of Discovery. Much of the landscape of Montana, and even that of the Missoula Valley, is tied closely to Lewis and Clark’s trek westward and back east: there’s a state park honoring their encampment a few miles south of our house, there are historic markers detailing the journey up and down two of the valleys here, and there is a plaque downtown noting where the explorers walked. Much of this noted history is kept alive today because of the journals that Lewis penned and which were published after his death; they memorialize the journey as one of the greatest in American history. But while the expedition of Lewis and Clark was perhaps the West’s most famous, it was by no means the longest or most perilous of the early explorers, or even the most adventurous.

(The group traversed the Bitterroot Valley from south to North--right to left in this picture--after crossing the Continental Divide twice.)

The title of most adventurous goes to Jedediah Strong Smith, who in 1826 (when he was in his early 20s) crossed the Mojave on his way to California, and then crossed the Great Basin on his way to Utah. Of all the routes through the West, wrote Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert, Smith chose the longest, driest, and least hospitable. Smith’s diaries are a record of discovery and description. Upon reaching the Great Salt Lake near the end of his cross-Nevada march, he wrote in joy, ‘Those who may chance to read this at a distance from the scene may perhaps be surprised that the sight of this lake surrounded by a wilderness of More than 2000 Miles diameter excited in me those feelings known to the traveler, who, after long and perilous journeying, comes again in view of his home. But so it was with me for I had traveled so much in the vicinity of the Salt Lake that it had become my home of the wilderness.’

(Today, Interstate 90 traverses what the group called the Headwaters of the Missouri, west of Bozeman.)

David Thompson, a Canadian explorer, trapper, and surveyor, traveled tens of thousands of miles across the Northwest, from Manitoba to the Oregon coast, and lived for years in primitive wilderness camps. Beginning in the late 1700s, he established posts in spots that would later become important waypoints and was the first Anglo resident of Montana. In total, he’s credited with mapping some 3.9 million miles of Northwest wilderness using only a sextant.

(U.S. 12 now makes the ascent of Lolo Pass much easier.)

The most harrowing account of Western exploration I’ve come across was that of Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1789 traveled to the Arctic Ocean. Three years later he crossed the Canadian Rockies near Jasper and descended toward Fraser Canyon before abandoning that route and crossing the glaciated Coast Mountains, arriving in what is now Bella Coola, British Columbia. He was forced to retreat almost immediately, however, after an attack by Indians; his journal includes a vivid description of an Indian placing a chokehold on his neck.

(Looking down the Hellgate at Missoula. Lewis' half of the split party, with Clark retracing the former route into the Big Hole, crossed the Clark Fork near the middle of the picture on their new-found shortcut back to Great Falls.)

While all of these travelers left journals which today portray the West as a place of unfettered beauty, wonder, and difficulty, none compare to those left by Lewis (and, too, Clark), whose journals do more to capture the beauty of the place than any I've come across. A few years ago the University of Nebraska republished the journals into an exhaustive nine-volume set which takes up the better part of a shelf in the Missoula library. I read the set last winter and together they detail a party of explorers who have found a landscape of unimaginable pureness and rarity, and the words themselves express revelry in the surroundings which has been unmatched before or since. Many of the images painted by Lewis live on today. This one can be found on many book covers, roadside monuments, and motel brochures:

'This immense river waters one of the fairest portions of the globe. Nor do I believe that there is in the universe a similar extent of country. As we passed on, it seemed as if those scenes of visionary enchantment would never have an end.'

(Past Lolo Pass into Idaho, the group crossed above this grove of giant Western redcedar.)

Others may be less poetic, but tell still the journey of the Corps of Discovery. Many of the most profound describe Montana. Here they are, unedited:

May 3, 1805 (central Montana)
The country in the neighborhood of this river, and as far as the eye can reach, is level, fertile, open and beatifull beyond description.

May 5, 1805 (central Montana)
Capt. Clark and Drewer killed the largest brown bear this evening hich we have yet seen ... it was a most tremendious looking anamal, and extrmly hard to kill notwithstanding he had five bullets through his lungs and five others in various parts he swam more than half the distance across the river to a sand bar and it was at lest 20 min befor he died he … fled and made the most tremendous roaring from the moment he was shot

(Across the Clark Fork, the party left the main river and followed the Blackfoot, which leaves the canyon on the center-left of the picture. Upon meeting Indians in Lolo, the party learned the previous summer they had taken a major detour through the Big Fork, to Salmon, and up the Bitterroot--a month-long journey which was now, with the correct information, shortened to a handful of days.)

June 12, 1805 (near Great Falls)
From this hight we had a most beatifull and picturesque view of the Rocky Mountains which were perfectly covered in snow ... they appear to be formed of several ranges each succeeding range rising higher than the preceding one until the most distant appear to lose their snowy tops in the clouds; this was an august spectacle and rendered more formidable by the recollection that we had them to pass.

June 13, 1805 (facing Great Falls of the Missouri)
I wished for the pencil of (a Titian) in that I might be enabled to give the enlightened world just some of idea of the truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man ... I hope still to give the world some faint idea of an object which at this moment filled me with such pleasure and astonishment

June 14, 1805 (near Great Falls, after an encounter with a grizzly, a mountain lion, and a stampeding bison)
It now seemed to me that all the beasts of the neighborhood had made a league to destroy me, or that some fortune was desposed to amuse herself at my expence.

June 29, 1805 (near Dillon)
It may well be retained on the list of (attributes) of this neighborhood towwards which nature seems to have dealt with a liberal hand, for I have scarcely experienced a day since my first arrival in this quarter without witnessing the appearance of some uncommon object

July 4, 1805 (in the Big Hole)
I thought it seemed probably that these mountains might have derived their appelation of Shining mountains from their glittering appearance when the sun shines in certain directions

August 18, 1805 (near Lost Trail Pass)
This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period wich I am to remain in this sublimary world. I reflected that I had a yet done but little, very little in deed, to furhter the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had then been judiciously expended.

(Clark) Sept 15, 1805 (Lolo Pass)
From this mountain I could observe high ruged mountains in every direction as far as I could see

(Clark) Dec. 3 1805 (near Portland)
I am unwell and cannot eat. O! how disagreeable my Situation.

Lewis, June 2 1806 (near Lolo Pass)
We are obliged to have recourse to every subterfuge in order to prepare in the most ample manner our power to meet that wretched portion of our journy, the Rocky Mountain, where hungar and cold in their most rigorous forms assail the waried traveler; not any of us have yet forgotton our sufferings in those mountains in September last,and I think it probable we never shall.

June 24, 1806
...from this place we had a extensive view of these step down mountain principal coverd with snow like that which we stood we were entirely surrounded by these mountains from wich one unacquianted with them it would have seemed impossible to have ever escaped

June 29, 1806 (Lolo Pass)
...in passing of which we have experience cold and hungar of which I shall ever remember

July 11, 1806 (near Great Falls)
...through a level beautiful and extensive high plain covered with emmense heards of buffalo, and ther are such numbers that there is one continual roar

July 15, 1806 (near Great Falls, again, and at the close of a day with many run-ins with unfriendly wildlife)
There seems to be a certain fatality attached to the neighborhood of these falls, for there is always a chapter of accidents prepared for us during our residence at them

Visitors and Gifts and a Run for the Border.

2011-12-16T08:09:00.001-08:00

Cooper was born on a warm, stormy night in October. We spent most of three days in the hospital in Missoula, which was nice but for the fact that the hospital was almost entirely windowless. I snuck out a few times each day to go home and get the paper, wash my hair, and walk the plott hound, and each time emerging into nature from the antiseptic confines of the hospital was a strange experience--I was surprised to see that day had ended, or barely begun, that winds were howling, or had grown silent, and that it was still warm, or cold air was arriving. The day we brought Cooper home from the hospital new snow ringed the valley and two mornings later the temperature on our backyard thermometer dropped to 21 degrees, bringing down leaves in constant flurry and ending what most people would call fall.

The arrival of Cooper also heralded the arrival of lots of friends and neighbors. We had a dinner train that showed up at our front door for more than a week, including one neighbor who brought over fresh Mexican from a downtown restaurant. There were baskets of goodies, parcels of gifts, and bags of used and new baby clothes. Two family friends sent quilts, one neighbor gave us a crib, my work gave me an Eddie Bauer high chair (!), Laura's work gave her a hand-made rocking horse, and a thoughtful friend gave me a very large bottle of beer.

Concurrent to these items arrived friends and family bearing more gifts and the warm scents of the South. Laura's sister Meri came from Atlanta for four days. The next week was followed by the arrival of Laura's mom, also from Atlanta, and later Laura's best friend Liz, yet again from Atlanta. (No word yet on when those direct flights to ATL will start.)

With Meri we went to the Day of the Dead parade; with Liz we went skiing on Lolo Pass and to the Lumberjack--yes, at age seven weeks, baby's first bar visit. (And by Montana standards, according to a woman there, a bit tardy.)

The final visitor of the year was my mother, who came from Houston. Around this time Cooper made his first smile. Among other things, we went to the museum.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all the visitors, I was able to get around some into the mountains this fall. I made it up Illinois Peak in the stateline area before snow closed the road for good. Later I did a stretch on the trail of Lewis and Clark.

I climbed Jumbo late one brisk afternoon.

And made my first turns of the season up on Lolo Pass.

The next week, the plott hound got some action up on Lost Trail Pass.

I made two early morning climbs up Sentinel: one to look down on fog

and one to look out on the moon.

Last week work told me I had a use-it or lose-it personal day. Like any new father, I decided to make a run for the border. After making it across the border (I get more grief crossing in to Canada than practically any other country in the world, by the way) I spent a day on Kootenay Pass in the Selkirks

and camped on the pass in the back of the truck. Next day I ventured into too-cute Rossland

and poked around the Rossland Range for two days, getting up close and personal with Old Glory.

I made it back across the border into Washington, and after a stop at the new Trader Joe's in Spokane (the Houston of the Northwest--my apologies to the Houstonians out there) drove across the mountains back to Missoula just in time for the start of winter.

(Cooper wearing the Christmas outfit I wore some ... years ago, which my mom somehow saved.)

The story of Cooper.

2011-11-25T13:55:00.000-08:00

Laura and I each had lists of possible names for our baby -- boy and girl names each. I had better girl names, Laura had better boy names. I wanted Porter, but Laura felt it was too reminiscent of a dog I had when we met, who was, in fact, named Porter.

There are a handful of associations with Cooper, but Laura's main one was that on our second date she tagged along with me while I reported a story for Utah.com and the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin on the Hawkwatch International raptor count, atop Goshute Mountain in the remote Toana range. Near the end of our weekend with the biologists and bird counters, someone snared a Cooper hawk, banded it, and handed it to Laura who held it in her open palm for a moment before the bird realized the trick and resumed, in an instant, it's flight to South America.

I had a photo of Laura holding the bird before it fled, but that does not survive digitally--only in a now-yellowed paper copy of the Transcript-Bulletin. Here, however, is the Utah.com story, reprinted, which tells that story ...

Raptor counting with Hawkwatch

Pressing both eyes into his binoculars to peer at a flying object so far away it is not visible to the naked eye, Jerry Liguori calls out: 'Kestrel, over the Pequops, adult male.'

Looking another second at the hawk, he drops the binoculars and punches a multi-buttoned tabulator on a makeshift table here on Goshute Mountain, 9,000 feet high. Probably about a minute later I see what may be that kestrel as it zooms by, but by that point Liguori has picked up his binoculars and spotted a half-dozen more birds headed south. Shielding his eyes with a floppy broad-brimmed hat and draping red bandanna, he scans the sky and horizon northeast again. There are kestrels, males and females of unidentifiable age, sharp-shinned hawks over ridges to the north, a rare turkey vulture and Cooper's hawks and Swainson's hawks. In all, on this cloudless Saturday, over 1,600 raptors will be counted.

This is the 21st year Salt Lake City-based HawkWatch International has stationed volunteers, college students and raptor experts atop Goshute Mountain to count birds during the seasonal southward migration. That length of time makes the site, which sits about 25 miles due south of Wendover along the Utah-Nevada border, one of the best in North America for gauging the health of raptor populations.

The counting season, which typically lasts from mid-August until late-October, involves not just sharp eyes, good bird identification skills and altitude-adjusted lungs but also the sort of detailed logistics sufficient support a dozen or so counters - most of them in their 20s and 30s and almost all of them holding at least one college degree - on top of a mountain for a full season, through blinding sun, shivering cold and driving rain and snow.

But more than that, perhaps, it offers a chance to see a bunch of wildly beautiful birds up very close, and a glimpse into the rarefied world that raptors inhabit.

The reason for the count, said HawkWatch executive director Howard Gross as we stand atop the windswept mountain, is to gauge the health not just of bird populations but also of the environment in general. Raptors prey on a variety of animals, fly from one country to another, and are easily affected by pollutants or habitat degradation. Therefore, counts such as the one on Goshute Mountain offer a snapshot of the health of the roughly 17 species who fly by each fall.

Goshute Mountain is a focal point for counting due to its unique geographical setting. Northwest winds push the birds gradually east as they make their way south. But past the Goshutes lie the Bonneville Salt Flats - a dry area birds want to avoid. Trying to keep along the ridge tops and being pushed by upslope winds, almost all hawks end up flying over the peak, most at 20, 30 or even 40 miles per hour. They appear as a dot in binoculars for a few minutes, then come sailing by, some just feet above the observers. Wildlife observers call this the Intermountain flyway.

My friend Laura Patterson and I stand looking north, watching the hawks descend toward and past the peak like shooting stars. But as much as we look out for the hawks we also spend a lot of time just looking. I don't know how many of you have ever stood on top of a mountain but I have stood atop a bundle yet don't think I will ever entirely get used to it. From the peak, one mile down the valley curves away at weird fish-eye lens angles, lonely dirt roads cross playas and cow trails lead to water tanks. To the east, the salt flats shimmer, Deseret Peak near Grantsville sparkles along the horizon, and Interstate 80 is but a thin line on the desert. South, high peaks like Moriah, Schell and Wheeler poke skyward. Westward, the Ruby (one great mountain range, should you ever make it to Nevada), Independence, Peqoup and Humboldt mountains fade into the horizon. To the north, Pilot Peak is the beginning of hundreds of peaks that lead to Idaho. On this particular Saturday afternoon a patchwork of cloud and shadow blanket the surrounding 100,000 square miles - most of it devoid of humans - and virga cut across the sky.

Identifying the birds is much more complicated than seeing what color they are and then comparing that image to a picture in an identification book. Since the hawks are often so far away and backlighted against sky, clouds or mountainside they usually appear in relief, devoid of color. Identification then comes down to factors like stability in flight and proportional differences in head size, wing angle and tail length and width. Making an identification under these conditions take years of experience, said Gross, 'and a mind like a flow chart.' Liguori, who is from New Jersey, apparently has one of those mind. He once spent over 1,000 hours counting hawks from a site at Cape May, N. J., counting every day from August 15 to November 30 - save one, when he went to his brother's wedding. 'It killed me,' he said of the day off. 'I felt like I was missing something.'

Though Goshute Mountain, which straddles the Utah-Nevada border, is perhaps the most important raptor counting site in America, there are a handful of other sites producing significant and important wells of data. But it was the site on Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania that started it all. Hawk counts there have been ongoing since the 1930s, and it is that data that Rachel Carlson tapped to show that the pesticide DDT was killing huge numbers of birds. Carlson wrote 'Silent Spring,' the book many think was responsible for the modern environmental movement.

Just downslope from Goshute Mountain's observation area, a group of about six men and women trap hawks and take detailed measurements of the trapped hawks. At a trapping area observers use a dove, pigeon and sparrow to attract passer-by hawks. The lure birds are in a harness attached to a tall pole, and when a hawk is spotted the lure birds are yanked into the air to mimic injured birds. If the observers are successful, the hawks will dive on the injured but get caught in netting traps. After an hour, the lure birds are given a break and freshies take their place. Once caught, observers like Debbie Sandack measure tail length, leg length, talon length, wing fat and determine if there is food in the bird's stomach. One Sharp-shinned hawk she held was amazingly patient, like a dog being assaulted by adoring children. Sandack held the bird as though it were an ice cream cone and the hawk, mouth open and eyes ablaze, looked back at her. Prodding finished, she tossed the bird, and it took off. From trapping to release, the entire procedure took just 15 minutes.

'This sparks a flame for people,' HawkWatch executive director Howard Gross said both of the birds and their restoration programs. 'We are often the first environmental group a lot of people join, and one of the things we try to do is expose people to lots of ecological principals and the effects humans can have on the food chain or their own environment. Oftentimes what we can do is get someone to adopt a power line, and have them go out and identify electrocuted raptors. When people start doing that, believe me, pretty soon the power company is out there putting up raptor detractors to keep the birds away. All of the sudden this person has power and has taken responsibility for what is going on, and then they can say, I feel that I have saved that raptor's life. This way we can work with these people and make them understand how they can have a positive impact on their environment.'

Pulse of the Planet

Sharp-Shinned HawkGross told the story of a HawkWatch observer who followed the Swainson's hawk migration to the southern pampas of Argentina. There, the observer saw tens of thousands hawks who apparently died after eating grasshoppers. The grasshoppers had been sprayed with a heavy-duty pesticide that killed the birds after consuming only a few of the bugs; the chemical had been applied by a farmer who wanted to kill the grasshoppers but who gave no thought to the birds who might eat them. Now, conservation groups have begun to work with farmers and government agents to protect wintering birds from previously unforeseen threats. Similarly, last winter Gross was bird watching in Costa Rica and while watching a black-necked stilt he realized the bird probably spends summer in the marshes around Great Salt Lake. He turned to his local guide and told him that the bird 'comes from my home, and at my home I do what I can to protect it. I hope you would do the same. His forehead wrinkled, but then you could tell that he got it.

'To me, the bird migration is really the pulse of the plant,' Gross continued. 'It is a measure to see the health of the planet, and it really is something you can measure.'

Back at the raptor measurement station, Sandack, who trades her position with other observers every hour or so, works out of one of about a half-dozen tents set up on the mountain. Over the summer the Bureau of Land Management brought up 20 helicopter loads of supplies, each load weighing 500 pounds, including about 1,200 gallons of water to last the summer. The dozen or so 'volunteers' - two counters, two educators, one project coordinator, one cook and six trappers - live on top of the mountain in what roughly resembles the backpackers' handmade village in that movie 'The Beach.' Several dozen tents are scattered about in a medium-density camper's village just off the top of Goshute Mountain, snuggled into a beautiful forest of spruce, single-leaf ash and vibrant bristlecone pines. There is a common mess tent, a composting toilet, a gathering area with chairs and assorted outbuildings and shelters that house supplies, observation blinds, measurement stations, and the lure bird aviary.

Most volunteers - they are paid per diem - stay for the entire migration season, taking one day off a week when they usually head down to Wendover to shop, do laundry and play the nickel slots in the casinos. (A Wendover casino owner gives observers free rooms while they are in town.) The hike from the trailhead back up the mountain covers 1,800 vertical feet and takes at least two hours.

'I've been here a month but I can hardly imagine what it is like to not be up here,' Helena Kokes, one of the educators, said one night as everyone sat on the 'back porch' - a slab of rock at the edge of the mountain - watching a fat red moon rise over Deseret Peak. To the north, lightning rang over the salt flats. I had only been there about six hours at that point, but I already could envision what she meant. Up on the mountain, watching the world turn from a solitary spot, civilization and cities seems very, very far away. Late at night, a single pair of headlights is visible for a half-hour as it winds through the hills far below and toward Wendover. A satellite flips through the air overhead. The volunteers read for a while, talk, maybe smoke a cigar, and call it a night. This is the world.

The next morning, within a half-hour of sunrise, Liguori is back at work on the peak. Hawks are soaring south. 'They are coming already,' he says against the cold morning wind. 'I had hoped to ease into it.' Later, he adds: 'This is not just bird watching. This is hard work.'

Most observers, when asked why they do it, cite the importance of data gathering for species and environmental health. But another certain draw is the simple beauty of the birds themselves and the metaphoric mystery of their lives. Most hawks weigh a pound or less yet commute every spring and fall from one end of the planet to the other - it is 9,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina. Kirsten McDonnell, one of the educators on the mountain, gently handed me a hawk the first afternoon I was there. She gave another to Laura, a transplanted Georgian with a sweet Southern accent who now lives in Salt Lake City. The bird wriggled some, but mostly kept still and stared back at me with clear, unblinking eyes. Its feathers were precisely patterned, its body honed by millennia of evolution.

On Sunday afternoon, as Laura and I were getting ready to troop down the mountain, someone brought out a small battery-powered transistor radio, and tuned it to Salt Lake's community radio station, KRCL, the best station in the world.* (* The second best, incidentally, is Radio One out of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.) 'It seems like we get every radio station in the world out here,' McDonnell said. Later, she handed me a Cooper's hawk. The hawk had been wrapped in her hand but she placed it slowly and gently into my palm. The bird, thinking it is still trapped, rests there, its heart beating madly. It looks forward then sideways, and in a seeming nanosecond it takes off on its unimaginable journey south.

On the radio, a folk guitarist sings:
We got things so good
it seems hard to believe
we live on the outskirts of town

Before/After

2011-10-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

A few photos showing mid-summer 2010 vs mid-fall 2011 at the house in Missoula. It's an ongoing project, but I think to a large extent we can declare 'mission accomplished'. (You know, whatever that means.)

The garage, side view

The garage 'driveway'

The front

More of the front

The pergola

and

And the back

and

The Interlude.

2011-09-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

I've thought of the month since we returned from the Oregon coast as sort of an interlude, one where I can tick off a few more to-do items around the house before winter arrives and where we can both get a few things done before that 'other thing' arrives (Oct. 22).

The day after we got home I decided to build a new driveway. I've owned two homes, and neither have had driveways. In North Carolina it was a simple procedure: I called around, got a few quotes, and two weeks later we were driving on new pavement. In Montana, where the official state motto is 'You're On Your Own', things were not so simple. We could find a paver who would not excavate, and an excavator who would not pave, and more than a few who said they really were not interested at all. So in the end, as with most things, it's just easier to do it yourself.

This meant about 45 cumulative hours of removing, by hand, some 60 years of compacted Glacial Lake Missoula sediment. Not fun.

When I wasn't excavating the bedrock that made up our driveway, I climbed Red Mountain, the high point of the Scapegoat.

And watched this thing from about 500 yards.

I'll never know what it was because I changed directions pretty quickly.

Jen and I hiked Boulder Point in the Rattlesnake. While I enjoyed the view, she enjoyed the excellent cell coverage.

Back at home, Laura bought a dresser for the baby/guest/gear room.

Suddenly, it was fire season!

What family doesn't love a good forest fire?

I partook of the brief, brief swimming season over Labor Day with a dip in the clear, cold Clark Fork.

We saw Acoustic Syndicate for free at the River City Roots Festival downtown; don't ask me who all these drunk people are. A lot of spectators actually wandered to the show fresh off tubing in the river.

I climbed Trapper Peak, the high point in the Bitterroot.

We made chimichangas.

And the Washington School band got in some practice time in our side yard.

When I wasn't looking, Laura finished the dresser.

And when Laura wasn't looking, I climbed in the gorgeous and empty Flint Creek Mountains.

And managed a side trip to the Pintlar Mountains above Anaconda.

Where I found, not altogether unexpectedly, that the larch are changing.

(These at-timberline trees did not get their leaves until the second or third week of July, making for a sub-60-day growing season.)

The view from the turnaround on Mt. Haggin. I realized six hours into it this is one of those climbs you need to start at 4 a.m. if you hope to finish by sunset.

And that leads us to this: more than three weeks, two tons of cobblestones, one ton of playsand, and one broken rake later, the driveway is complete.

The Oregon Trail.

2011-08-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

It had, it turns out, been not only a year since we'd been on vacation, but even longer than that since we'd been out of I guess what you would call our 'bioregion'--the Northern Rockies. So on Laura's suggestion last week we packed our bikes and our tents and headed to Oregon.

Barview Jetty.

The first thing I noticed when I left the mountains is that without peaks on the horizon the sky seems to lose its anchors. And, once you leave Montana, everything is crowded. It was hard to get used to lots of people being everywhere.

15 miles down on the first day.

We drove through the ugliness that is Pasco, Wash. (though they've got lots of Mexican stores, so it's hard to hate the place too much) and sneaked into a municipal campground just over the Oregon border. In the morning we drove through the Columbia Gorge, stopped at Multnomah Falls, and tooled into Portland, where we made an all-important stop at Trader Joes. Driving the freeways of PDX was by far the most dangerous thing I've done in a long time, but somehow we managed to get the Altima pointed west and enjoyed lunch overlooking the Pacific.

We visited the Tillamook cheese factory, but were not as impressed as some others were...

Spectacular Cape Lookout on Day 3.

For the next eight days we worked our way south. I biked the coast, starting in Oceanside, a few miles south of the border with Washington, and each day pedaled anywhere between 40 and 70 miles. Laura, who is too pregnant at this point to do much long-distance road biking, stopped at each and every state park and public beach along the way, occasionally meeting me for lunch, and then headed on to one of the campgrounds where we had luckily had the foresight (thanks to the encouragement of my dermatologist) to make reservations.

I met Laura for lunch on windswept Seal Rock.

I drank beer at the Rogue brewery, just under this bridge. Laura watched.

Oregon state parks are plentiful, sprawling, and quite nice. Most are beachside--literally--and feature amenities you can only dream about in a Montana park, such as hot, free showers, places to wash your dishes, and the guarantee you won't be woken up in the middle of the night to find a grizzly rooting through the nearest trash can. They were also packed, and we got the opportunity to observe that strangest of American species, Homo camperus, in detail. Campers cart a staggering amount of shit around with them. Most campsites featured 40-foot RVs, which pull SUVs, and many had separate trailers packed with bikes, boats, eating tents (not to be confused with sleeping tents), tiki torches, outdoor rugs, full-size BBQ grills, and pets, relatives, neighbors, and children. On the other hand, the campgrounds come sunset, despite being totally full, were nearly silent, since everyone went inside their RV to watch movies and eat popcorn.

A few miles into the incomparable Cape Perpetua.

U.S. 101 on Cape Perpetua.

The note on the sign said, 'Wait for a break in the traffic, push the botton, and pedal like hell.'

The Oregon coast is indeed fantastic. We enjoyed stellar weather, with highs never topping 70 and lows never below 50. There was a consistent and strong north to south wind, meaning I always had a push in my favor. The only drawback to the road was the traffic, which is intense and pervasive, except late in the afternoon. The traffic is what keeps the route from being truly world class.

Heceta Head. The lighthouse was a half-mile hike. Who in the world wants to hike a half-mile to a lighthouse? No thanks.

Because I like to keep track of things, here are some numbers from the trip. I pedalled 376 miles in seven days, and was on the bike for a total of 31 hours. I averaged about 13 miles per hour. My fastest speed was 39.0 mph. I had zero flats, and only two minor run-ins with drivers. (It's telling that the driver of a 40-foot RV, pulling a boat, thinks that it's the 18-inch wide, 4-foot long bicycle that is the one in the way.) Starting about 7 miles shy of the Washington border, I made it to milepost 312, or about 40 miles from the California line. So no, not a true border-to-border jaunt, but a good one nonetheless.

Laura and I did some short segments together. Here we are north of Port Orford.

And on Cape Arago.

I'm used to mountain climbing. You start early in the morning and at some point make the decision that you are going to make the peak or not. You turn around in defeat or summit in triumph. Biking is different. I started the trek in a public parking lot in a beachside town and finished up in a campground overlooking the ocean. I felt like pedalling a bit more, so I arranged for Laura to pick me up in a half-hour, and I made another 6 miles before she caught up to me in the parking lot of a botanical garden. It was a fine accomplishment, but the road wound on another 40 miles to California, and then some 850 more to Mexico, and then a thounsand or so more to Guatemala, and so on. There's no apex to the thing, just a stopping point where your ride arrives.

The end of the road south of Humbug Mountain.

So Laura picked me up, we went back to Humbug Mountain, had a great dinner, walked on the beach, and were up at 6 the next morning to make the trek back to Portland (and Trader Joes) and then on to Missoula. Maybe, next year, I'll tackle California. Who knows?

A final stroll on the beach at Humbug Mountain.

The most fun you can have with your ski clothes on.

2011-08-01T20:48:00.001-07:00

Somewhere, at some point, the 2010-2011 ski season went from being good to great to awesome to epic to historic.

March: Mill Point, Bitterroot Mountains.

But because there was no one defining blizzard, or record setting cold spell, when those transitions occured was not always obvious. For me, earlier in the winter I felt like we were just getting lucky, and it was not until much later in the season, when snow did not melt that should have melted, that the true grand sweep of the season began to come into focus.

April: Lolo Pass.

April: University Mountain.

It's cliche and boring to brag about powder mornings and face shots. What you might not really appreciate about such a winter, in fact, is how much just plain old bad weather you wind up with on the road to history. Everything that happened the past 10 months happened in grand proportions, whether it was bouts of cold weather, unexpected periods of rain, or a streak of cloudy days that began sometime in April and did not let up almost until the first of July.

May: Rattlesnake Mountains.

My ski season ran through the middle of July; actually, the last two days I skied in July -- July 18 and 19 -- I was able to drive to snowline and start skiing literally from the car's front bumper. That often does not even happen in January.

June: Lolo Peak.

June: Glacier National Park.

And ending the season in July was by no means an easy choice. Just yesterday I was half-arguing with Laura that I ought to get at least one more day in during August, to stetch the ski season to 10 months.

July: snow-stuck in the Clearwater Mountains.

July: Mission Mountains

There's fun things to do in the summer, she said. Summer things. Fine: next week we're biking the Oregon coast. But I'll still be wondering if I shouldn't have squeezed just one more day in.

July: Glacier National Park.

'Brook and road were fellow-travelers in this gloomy pass'

2011-06-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

This spring and summer in northwest Montana has been a near-continuous cycle of storms and cloud, making travel into the high country difficult even though snowpacks have stayed impressively large. Last weekend there seemed to be a short window of opportunity, so we headed up to the wild east side of Glacier National Park.

Our planned campground near Marias Pass was still drifted over and closed, so we plugged on to Two Medicine, itself open but half snowcoverd.

Two Medicine Lake, 10 p.m., June 24.

In the morning we woke to broken skies and moved camp to Rising Sun campground. Road crews have cleared Going to the Sun Road to within a mile of either side of Logan Pass, but the road remains gated--at Avalanche on the west side and Jackson Glacier Overlook on the east. We drove up to the gate. I stuck my boots and skis on my pack and pedalled 2 miles up to Siyeh Bend and began skinning toward Piegan Pass on a still-thick snowpack.

The weather deteriorated and at Piegan Pass I had clouds, strong winds, and intermittent snow. Thankfully the view was still clear when I made the pass between Piegan Mountain and Pollock Mountain for the view south into central Glaicer.

The descent was a skiff of new on a firm surface.

Lower down the surfaced softened nicely.

In the afternoon we hiked to a few waterfalls, went to a ranger talk on wolverines, and called it an early night.

On Sunday we woke to blazing blue skies that quickly detiorated. I was back at the gate by 9.30 a.m. and pedalled 4.5 miles to where the plows sat idle. The impasse was a wall of snow called "The Big Drift", where winds sweep off Logan Pass. This was a curious crux: the drift itself was too steep to cross, and the slope above had too much exposure. Below, in a mellow bowl, snow was creeping off its hold on a line of cliffs in a sort of mellow crevasse; I found a snow bridge and was atop Logan Pass, where it was slightly eerie to be alone in a place which a few weeks from now will be packed with people and their vehicles.

The visitors center: not open.

Looking down the valley toward St. Mary, a Wordsworth poem, The Simplon Pass, came to mind:

—Brook and road
Were fellow-travelers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn

From the pass, it was a straightfoward skin up the apron below Clements Mountain, and then a traverse along its base in periodic heavy, wet snow.

The view out to Bearhat.

The view down to Logan Pass. A few inches of new snow enlivened the skiing.

Crossing the Big drift was much easier coming back, and I made a few short runs out of it.

Naturally, once we were out of the mountains it cleared up beautifully. We enjoyed a two hour sunset on the way home: 11 p.m., near Bearmouth, Mont.

Visitors

2011-06-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

When you live closer to British Columbia than you do to the nearest Sam's Club it should probably come as no great suprise that a lot of out of town friends and family don't just casually stop by. Nevertheless, Montana has its charms and we have had a few visitors this spring.

As mentionned earlier, Laura's brother spent spring break here and enjoyed a typical April week full of blizzards and close encounters with wildlife.

Laura's good friend Liz came from Atlanta in June. We learned a valuable less on her arrival--Northwest makes just one flight a day to Missoula, and if you miss it, you're going to spend 24 hours in Minneapolis. Well, at least the mall was close by.

We took Liz up Pattee Canyon, around downtown, to Maclay Flat

and later up into the Swan Mountains to Holland Lake.

The next week my parents came from Houston. We went to the farmer's market and bought beef from the rancher, did some shopping

worked in the yard, saw some of the countryside, and reveled in the Montana days which, as Norman Maclean described in A River Runs Through It, "are almost Arctic in length". Indeed, it's interesting to walk the dog to the park at 9:30 p.m.--in broad daylight.

We took an afternoon and hopped over the border into Idaho, visiting the bridge to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs

and this giant western redcedar forest, where we ate lunch.

They also enjoyed the weather--when they weren't shivering. I told them to bring jackets and sweaters; falling on ears in Houston it may as well have been a message from outerspace. But they indeed wore jackets most of the time.

The next weekend we all went to Schweitzer, the ski resort in far northern Idaho where Laura and I spent part of our honeymoon. Though it was mid June there was still plenty of snow, so I sneaked in a couple of runs before everyone woke up. That was not hard to do as the sun came up bright and blinding at 3:45 a.m.

Schweitzer overlooks Lake Pend O'reille--an impressive sight.

On the way back we swung through Couer d'Alene and walked along the lake there on a sparkling 65-degree afternoon.

With the parents on their way to Yellowstone, we hosted a second batch of visitors--my Spanish class. I've taken a year of Spanish at continuing ed and we end each quarter with a small party.

And we've got one final visitor to mention--Laura's having a boy on October 22. As an early gift, I guess, my mom handed back many of my baby clothes: here's a sweater knitted for me by her mom!

Latent spring.

2011-05-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

This epic winter has turned into an epic spring. Snowpacks in the backcountry continued to grow right through March and April and even into May. Many locations in northwest Montana continue to show 15-foot snowpacks on May 15. The result has been some spectacular skiing, some long runs, and what the National Weather Service is calling an epic flood season. Here's Murphy Peak, looking very midwinter on May 8.

And here's Point Six on May 1. May 1?

It's like it's all lurking up there, ready to pounce. Fifteen feet of snow in mid May is a lot of latent water in waiting.

I try to go to a new mountain every week. A lot of the time, starting out from the car first thing in the morning, you look up at the mountains and think, This is going to be easy. Like this delightful morning, looking at East Como Peak in the Bitterroot.

But it almost ever is easy. Here I am, eight full hours later, not even halfway up. I don't think there's any way to climb this mountain in a day.

Despite the difficulty, I do find good places to ski. This gem became my afterwork haunt through April. It's five miles from my front door to the trailhad.

The other side of that same canyon provided a nice outing on a stormy Saturday a few weeks back.

Lately now it's been warm (and dry) enough to get outside and do some work. We skipped over the yard last summer in favor of work on the inside of the house. Now we've moved outside. When the snow melted in March we made plans to build a pergola.

All it took was a truck full of wood. And then a truck full of rock. Thank God for trucks.

Here's the mostly finished result.

Back in March we won a $500 shopping spree from Ace. I guess we're boring people, because we spent the money on boring things. Like computer desks and fire suppression equipment.

Despite the never ending backlog of work, there's always time to get out in the mountains. I like to wake up early and get things done. Here's the Missoula Valley at sunrise from high atop the Rattlesnake Mountains, May 15.

As the bullwheel turns.

2011-04-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

Laura's brother Bill came out from Atlanta last week for spring break. On Saturday we woke to rain, so we spent the day in town. On Sunday we woke to snow. A few flurries at 7 a.m. accumulated to 3 inches before we finished breakfast.

A sunny day **and** new snow!

We went to Discovery ski area for the day; it was their last day and lift tickets were discounted to $19. Disco had 6 inches new and it snowed for much of the day, the snow broken with brilliant sunshine. It was a fitting way to end the season.

Bill, deep-breathing before his first turn on Terminator.

Ski areas around Montana for the most part came to a rest last week and this week. The bullwheels stopped turning not for a lack of snow. Whitefish is advertising their 'deepest base in 20 years'. Lost Trail has 12 feet of snow at the bottom of the mountain. And Lookout Pass has nearly 200 inches of snow on their summit. But with afternoon temperatures in Missoula often climbing into the 50s, well, of course it's obviously time to garden.

The buried 8-foot snowstake at Lolo Pass two weeks ago; it's snowed several feet since then.

This has certainly been a memorable ski season. I've skied 40 days this year and can't think of a single one when it had not snowed in the previous 36 hours; only two of the days had what you could call 'bad' snow--a feat unmatched even during some 14 winters in Utah.

Laura three weeks ago at spectacular Moonlight Basin.

Yes, the bullwheel has stopped turning at almost all the Montana ski areas, but the season of course is far from over.

The bullwheel stops its turns at Discovery, April 3.

Nearing the summit at Moonlight.

A Journey to the Interior of Canuckistan.

2011-03-07T20:36:00.001-08:00

Of course it's open 24 hours. Because the Canadians like to par-tay!

You call this a ski lift? It's all they got at Pass Powderkeg, Alberta.

After a day of skiing, I hit the golf course.

Dusk patrol on the Continental Divide.

Looking toward the prairie.

Back at the lodge.

Lovely Wapiti Ski Club ski area, Elkford, BC

Parting shot: Fernie at dusk.

Meanwhile, back in Montuckey...

Montana is one of two states unfortunate enough to have a budget surplus. (The other? Nortrh Dakota). I say 'unfortunate' because the lack of a focusing effort has left our legislature with too much time on their hands. Following are some of the Montana House's major efforts to date:

-An effort to legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears.
-Elimination of incentives to create wind power.
-A repeal of laws prohibiting concealed weapons in banks, schools and churches.
-Support of the U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.
-Official designation of the 'Code of the West' as the Code of Montana; the code includes such inspirational encouragements such as 'Ride for the brand.'
-Nullification of endangered species laws.
-Elimination of educational requirements for persons running for state schools superintendent.

None of this should come as too much of a suprise. In 15 years of covering officials ranging from vice presidential candidates to at-large irrigation district board members, it was state representatives which left me, ahem, least hopeful for the future. (The best, by the way, were city councilors, followed my mayors and elected county attorneys.) Our budget surplus was maintained by Democrats, who were voted out in November in favor of Republicans, who pledged to 'create jobs' and 'eliminate wasteful spending.'

Luckily, the Montana legislature meets only every other year, so we get a 22 month break beginning in April.

These Mountains

2011-01-24T17:05:00.000-08:00

"That was one of the main things that kept me from thinking of deserting when I first got to the mountains. It's a terrible shock to be suddenly plopped into that environment, especially when you're not prepared for it physically or mentally."

"You can't see in the mountains. Everything is dark at first, until gradually you start seeing like a cat. You start to differentiate among the dark shapes to make out the lay of the land. But at first it all looked the same."

"I never did figure out if I loved the mountains or not. Because it hurt me to leave them. But I also hated them; I came to hate the mountains. But I loved them too--who knew what the [heck] was going on inside of me."

"I remembered the railroad in Leon, when I took the train for the first time, and the thought of the train also brought back my childhood; coming down from the mountains in the truck was a continual coming and going over my own past, with the velocity, the agility, of a monkey ... That was how you went from your childhood to the mountains, from the mountains to the city, and so on--in a rapid-fire juggling, a sort of mental trapeze act over little bits of your life--going farther and farther back in time."

"Before entering the mountains I had no assessment of either the jungle or the forest, no conception of what the mountain really meant. So I went to bed with that standard beside me; I kept it always with me; I folded it neatly and put it under my head like a pillow, and went to sleep."

"Before long you quit listening for the noise of cars, or of bicycles, or television or radios, or for the shouts of kids hawking newspapers or Chiclets. You quit listening for that typical city tone in the cries of the kids. You no longer see movie houses, or billboards for films. And you keep going; no electric light. And on. Then no more colors, nothing but green; no colors but what people are wearing, and even those colors are starting to fade. You end up color blind."

"That night in the safe house in Leon a flood of sensations overwhelmed me; one of the things I felt most intensely was the sense of the absurd. Distances in the mountains are measured in time: eight days, let's say, or seven days, or a month. It was a minimum of three hours to get from one place to the next, right?"

"My God, I thought, the dialectic has stopped! As if the whole year I had been away was just one second, see? I didn't know if I had really lived it, if I had really been in the mountains, if I had really lived all those days, one after the other, until finally I had come back here. Or if, in fact, I had never been anywhere at all."

quotes from "The Mountain is More than a Wide Expanse of Green" (1982) by Omar Cabezas.

VIVA LA NINA!

2010-12-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

Last week I made it to the summit of Stuart Peak after getting skunked on the mountain the previous two attempts -- once when I came across distressingly fresh grizzly tracks and once when I simply ran out of daylight. Stuart is not the biggest mountain around but is visible from the entire Missoula Valley and is a 16-mile trek. The trail to the summit starts in a leafy neighborhood, is flat for 3 miles, straight up for 3 more, and annoyingly flat for the last 2.

(Snowghosts on Stuart, Dec. 3, 2010)

This time, I was up at 4, hit the snooze a few times (LAZY!), had two espressos, and made it to the trailhead by 6. I hiked for 2 hours by headlamp then enjoyed full sunlight -- and cold temperatures -- the rest of the way. I made it to the summit just before 2 and was back at the car by 4.

The summit ski was made easier this time both due to the predawn start and the snowpack down low. When I attemped the summit last year on Christmas Day the bottom 3 miles of trail had less than a half foot of snow, and even halfway up the mountain there was barely enough snow to turn. This year the trail had perfect coverage the entire way, and the summit had more than 5 feet.

(From the summit, north into the Rattelsnake and Mission.)

The difference? Last year was one of the strongest El Ninos on record, which left Montana high and dry and Montgomery nearly as snowy as Missoula. This year is one of the stronger La Ninas on record; it started snowing the first week of November, things picked up with a Thanksgiving week blizzard, then the temperature went to minus 12, and things have not really let up since.

There's been more good skiing already this year.

Looking down 3,500 vertical on Sheep Mountain on Saturday after a delightful predawn start.

On Thanksgiving Day, Paul Smotherman and I found some surprisingly nice turns on Lolo Pass, that old standby.

Two days later Laura and I made a very important stop here:

(The new Florence Coffee on Brooks.)

Which helped us get here:

(Madison River, Yellowstone National Park.)

More to come!

James Meriwether Patterson

2010-11-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I left work early, rode my bike to the airport, and flew to Atlanta.

Laura had gone on Monday and I was joining her a few days later for the funeral and wake for her dad, who died the previous Thursday. The funeral, held in Stone Mountain, was well attended; there were more than 450 by one count, and in any case the crowd overflowed into the balcony. Well attended, too, was the wake, held at Laura's sister's afterward in Dunwoody, where about 100 came.

Laura's mom had asked me earlier to write an obituary for Jimmy. I like writing obituaries and wrote as many as I could as a reproter. What I wrote was eventually changed quite bit by the family, but I was happy to do it anyway. Here's my version:

James Meriwether Patterson, an engineer, commercial real estate developer and two-term DeKalb County commissioner, died Nov. 4 due to complications from cancer. He was 73.

Frustrated with rising taxes and administrative roadblocks facing developers, Patterson ran for the commission as a Democrat, serving consecutive terms beginning in 1978. He lost a bid for a third seat, but not before working to shrink the county administration, keep taxes low, and add common sense principles to county government.

Patterson’s time as commissioner grew in part from his work as an engineer and developer in the city’s growing east side. On the commission he used his engineering knowledge extensively, especially as the county expanded municipal water and sewer lines.

Patterson was born July 24, 1937 in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. to Mary Elizabeth Montgomery and Howard Meriwether Patterson. He graduated from Decatur High School in 1956 and received an engineering degree from Auburn in 1960. He worked with his father at Patterson and Dewar, an engineering firm still in operation, and after obtaining his professional engineering certificate opened his own firm, Patterson Engineering. Often working with his brother Charlie, Patterson developed residential and commercial properties across DeKalb County.

From a young age, Patterson was a traveler. He hitchhiked to Kentucky when he was 12 and to Mexico when he was in college. A third generation Rotary member, he traveled to Russia on a goodwill trip in the 1980s. He began flying when he was 16 and sailed extensively in the Caribbean. He was active in Stone Mountain tennis leagues.

Patterson is survived by his wife of 43 years, Patricia O’Callaghan Patterson. He is also surived by his: brother Charles Patterson, of Stone Mountain; brother Howard Meriwether Patterson, of Destin, Fla.; sister Catherine Jane Patterson Bath, of Monroe; sons James O’Callaghan Patterson of Telluride, Colo. and William Lee Patterson, of Stone Mountain, and daughters Meri Patterson Miller of Dunwoody and Laura Patterson Schmerker of Missoula, Mont.

By happy coincidence, my parents were in the 'hood, so we had a two-family reunion during this sad event.

We arrived back in Missoula Sunday afternoon to rain and snow, ending the most exhausting 55-hour weekend of my life.

Not yet winter, barely still fall

2010-10-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

Time to hike. I leave the house early, before Laura's up and the sun's awake. After a few hours, I get here:

It's sunny in Montana, but cloudy off over Idaho.

Off the alpine, there's not much color left.

Hiking in the Scapegoat, Laura practices her ... her ... something.

Nearby, Heart Lake and its exquisite color.

I got a new light for my bike. Makes the commute to class easier.

I start to like waking up earlier and earlier to hike. Here's Missoula from Blue Mountain.

And when it's rainy or snowy, there's always house projects. This is a glass door handle from secondhand and scavenged parts.

Meanwhile, Laura takes a spin on the new saw.

Snow all up and down the valley this morning.

Ah, it's autumn in Montana.

2010-10-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes. It's fall in Montana. The leaves are changing, snow is dusting the high peaks, and grizzly bear are crossing U.S. Highway 93.

I guess in most of the world, they put up signs like this warning of congestion ahead, or construction. In Montana, they are used to announce the presence of megafauna.

Did I say snow in the mountains? Here's the Missions on Sept. 26.

We went to Glacier National Park a few weeks ago, but Logan Pass was closed. You could get little further than this:

So we went to Whitefish Lake instead. This picture has that real end-of-summer feeling.

Then we went up to Big Mountain Ski Area. A few years ago they changed the name to "Whitefish Mountain Resort," but as a friend said, "Only (idiotic people) call it Whitefish Mountain Resort."

We also went here, to the Clearwater Mountains. Never heard of them? Neither had I until about two weeks ago, and they're just 60 miles from downtown Missoula.

Nearby is this lovely Western redcedar forest.

Briefly, the Bitterroot burned:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Laura worked on pimping out the doghouse.

Together, we did the front porch. (Technically, yes, not a porch.)

And I got a new job, which we celebrated by opening the 15 year old champagne (lowercase c, yes) which the former tenants forgot in the basement. Good times. And my mom will recognize the old fondue set.

It's weird to not be a newspaper reporter anymore. But three weeks on the new job and I have yet to be lectured to about the Constitution. Good times.

Meanwhile, Missoula slumbers along.

On our many camping trips, Laura has perfected the art of morning camp coffee. Witness:

She's also worked on her lake jumping skills. No, she did not let go this time.

Meanwhile, I've perfected hiking with the plott hound. Not as easy as it sounds.

We're neck deep in the orange-and-tan time of year.

Storm's coming!

Snowfields and Butterflies

2010-08-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

The tools of the trade make the truck stand out even on the jumbled assembly of vehicles crossing Kootenay Lake. People en route with us take photos of the mountains -- and the kayaks.

The other tools we use are less photogenic. They take us to great places, too, but leave us hobbled at the end of the day.

And so where do we go? With the Perception we cross Slocan Lake to enter Valhalla Provincial Park. Anywhere else we'd be in a national park; here in southeast British Columbia the main entry to this little-known park is by boat.

The next day we do find a road to the Valhalla; it's narrow, steep and in horrible condition. Laura walks part of the route ahead of the truck to guide the wheels and roll boulders out of the way. I think of ourselves as pioneers up until when we reach the trailhead, which is full of vehicles, even a Ford Taurus. Some pioneers we are. A short hike, however, regains the feeling. No footprints mark the rock ledge overlooking Mulvey Lakes, still frozen in late August.

Of course others have been here. I counted six climbers on nearby Gimli.

There's more spectacle to this corner of British Columbia than I imagined. Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park is a short steep drive from Nelson. It smelled like bears but the trail was marked with people of all ages. Gibson Lake hid below; after the hike we kayaked the lake in alpine twilight.

We crossed out of the Selkirks and Purcells and into the Rockies. Immediately the country opened, vistas deepened and narrow roads spread out into broad valleys. Why are there horses on this dead-end road? We saw them both ways.

Elk Lake Provincial Park must be the most boring name for a park ever invented. Elk? Lake? Who cares in this elk and lake studded country. We saw no elk, but the lakes were mere backdrops for the alpine beyond.

We hiked to box canyon ringed with glaciers spilling torrents of water into a small bowl. A party was just packing up. Again we wondered who could possibly have trod before us from a barely-marked trailhead at the end of a 65-mile dead-end road through grizzly country and a trail washed out by glacial melt? People who had spread out a picnic cloth and who were drinking red wine and who had a 4-year old in tow, that's who.

I hiked to the cirque above. I agreed with Laura I'd be back in 90 minutes, which it turned out was not enough time. I'll have to return, I guess.

We had planned to head down to Glacier from Elk Lake, but Glacier is easy to get to from our house. Waterton Lakes, not so much. We padded into Alberta and into one of Canada's gems. After a week of below-the-radar provincial parks, Waterton Lakes was annoyingly formal. Crowds. RVs. Entry fees. Rules. But also: more lakes, more mountains, more grizzly.

I left Laura alone for a day of photography while I climbed over Carthew Pass to Anderson Lake. August snow is one of the rarest of things; it's always surprising to me how many August snowfields in the alpine are colored by butterflies.

Butterflies aren't the only high-altitude residents, of course. This bighorn followed me for a few minutes while I hiked downhill toward town. I hadn't eaten my lunch yet but I was not about to share.

A storm was bearing down on the Rockies. The wind had been howling for three days, especially along the lakes. We paddled Cameron and put into lower Waterton, but gales and waves made progress uncomfortable. We entered the US and checked our voice mail, stocked up on cheap gas and cheap food, and caught the forecast: freeze warnings as far south as Missoula. We put in at one more lake, Two Glacier on the remote eastern side of the park, and paddled across. Clouds drew and we hugged the shore for protection from the wind. At the far end we pulled up on a beach and changed into hiking shoes; 3 miles beyond was Twin Falls and Upper Two Medicine. We strapped the kayaks back on the truck and drove home.

It rained much of the way.

Summits

2010-07-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Which is an easier way to get up mountains: afoot or aski? On skis you may slog through snow and grapple with weather, but from the top you have a leisurely schuss down. On foot your muscles carry you the entire way, but the days are likely longer, the weather likely more favorable, and the avalanche danger likely nonexistent.

Lolo Peak, June 26

On June 26 I made the last turns of the season from atop Lolo. I made my earliest start yet -- alarm at 3:30, out the door at 4:40 (What in the world do I do for an hour? Well since Laura's been gone I've been using only a stovetop espresso machine for my coffee, which takes 14 minutes from bean grind to coffee pour.) and atop Lolo Peak by 10:30.

Descent to Carlton Lake

Summer on, the snowline had retreated noticeably from the week before, and where there was snow it was often difficult to ski. But where it was not difficult to ski -- well, it was some of the best skiing of the year.

Endless 1,000-foot vertical runs from Lolo Peak's north summit

On July 3 I decided to leave the skis at home and don by new Zamberlan boots -- one of the few manufacturers who still make their boots in Italy. I slept in this time -- until 5 -- and headed up the now snow-free Sweeney Creek Road. I guess I should have brought skis as an hour into the hike it began to snow, and came down nicely for nearly two hours.

A breeze swept across this pond, creating a brief fog

While the sun did come out it stayed cool the entire hike. I was turned around at Holloway Lake by ice and snow.

Holloway Lake, July 3

Sweeney Creek Canyon

Last weekend I bought my first piece of new gear in a while -- Counter Assault bear spray -- for a jaunt into the Mission Mountains. Half of the Mission Mountains is Forest Service wilderness. The other half is in the Salish Kootenai reservation and is not wilderness -- as a management tag, it's nothing at all. There are a few unsigned roads, no trails, no markers and lots and lots of grizzly bears. Bear spray is certainly not a safeguard, but it's proven to stop bear attacks 92 percent of the time. And it's potent. I'm quite fearful of accidentally spraying myself with it; a direct shot to the eye at close range would blind me, or so the cannister says.

Most of the Missions on the Indian side actually close to human entrance from mid July to mid October so the bears can have a person-free summer and fall. The Missions are unique as they are a range not only full of the animals but also one where grizzlies are occasionally seen not just down low in forests and along streams but also crossing high peaks and passes. Surely that must be an incredible sight.

East St. Mary, Mission Mountains, July 10

I was up at 4, hit snooze a few times, and out the door by 6 (yes, another two-espresso breakfast). The trail up East St. Mary gains 4,000 vertical feet in an incredible 2 miles; the last two miles takes you up another 1,000 vertical. It's ridiculous, and nearly a full week later it's painful to descend stairs or even curbs.

Gray Wolf Peak, Mission Mountains

I made it to the summit by 11.20 a.m. It's an incredible experience to be atop a great mountain in fine conditions, and atop East St. Mary it was clear, calm and cool.

Glacier lilies

I could have brought my skis here, too, as the sprawling bowl between East St. Mary and Gray Wolf and northward holds an incredible amount of snow. The descent took two hours, and luckily I did not see a bear. After having seen one in Glacier a few weeks back I can say confidently this is one animal I never want to see again.

West St. Mary from the summit of East St. Mary -- I did not climb it. It looks hard!

Summit, East St. Mary, Mission Mountains, 9,500 feet, 11.20 a.m. July 10, bear spray at the ready

Art

2010-07-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

On our two round-the-worlds and on our other trips we focused on buying affordable art. There are artists all over the world, I guess, and I was always surprised at the quality you could find even in non-touristy areas.

Some of the best pieces we bought were tapestries and wall hangings, which we got everywhere from Uruguay to Laos. Undoubtedly the best single piece of art we bought was a thick oil painting picked up for about $30 at a sprawling arts market in downtown Buenos Aires.

Here are three pieces we picked up that have been packed away until recently:

We bought this water color on the central plaza in Salta, in northern Argentina; I think we paid a few dollars.

On the back of this reads: "Marco Mamarra Argent. Salta Los Gauchos Trabajando 24/9/2008" Translated it is titled "The Working Herders" though the use of gaucho in Argentina is interesting. Elsewhere it generally means rancher but in Argentina at least can also mean someone who is "of the common people" and can be used to refer to Indians or even someone with gruff manners.

One day in Bangkok I took Laura on a "date." We went for a coffee and pizza and a ride on the river and took a visit to an artists' fair in the National Museum's Art Gallery, part of a sprawling complex. These small watercolors were less than $1 each.

Seascape. As the Thai coast on both sides is fairly placid, I'm not sure where this is supposed to be set.

Typical southeast Asian boats. I remember well walking through the artists' area. It was a typical hot, still afternoon and everyone was drugged into a semi-comatose state.

This one shows a line-up of Thai temples, though Thai temples look similar to those in Laos.

These Haunted Mountains

2010-06-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

It's pale light at 4 a.m. I roll out of bed, start the coffee and take an aspirin. The signals blink red and yellow and only a few others are out. At 5:45 I'm at the trailhead for Lolo Peak.

I was up here a month ago, headed to the North Summit; in the 30 days since the snowline has receded by approximately 800 vertical feet -- rather astounding given the season.

5.45 a.m. in the Bitterroot.

On Tuesday morning, Chris Spurgeon followed this same trail alone on his outing to ski Lolo Peak. On Friday afternoon, searchers motioned a helicopter into place and lowered a winch down so a sling could lift Spurgeon's body from the summit.

I did not know him but we shared much of the same demographic: similar age, outing alone, skiing a big peak in summer. The coroner announced on Sunday that Spurgeon died in an avalanche.

From the looks of tracks in the snow there was a sizeable party searching for him. A party on horse tried at least three approaches to the ridge, all unsuccessfully, and other parties blazed and even marked new trails to the ridge, which is the halfway point and the dividing line between protective forest and windswept alpine. Atop the ridge itself tracks go in every direction, and there was the remains of a campfire. Notably, it was a group of his friends who went to the summit on skis who found the body.

I got lost headed downhill from the ridge toward Carlton Lake, and stumbled through mud and marshes and snowbanks as I wound across the wrong side of the water. Once I got to the head of the lake, however, the route was clear; searchers had put in a safe ascent trail and it was nice to let someone else do the route finding for a while.

Easier to just scruff your skis across rocks than take them on and off.

Final push to the summit.

I traversed the full length of the ridge, looking for evidence of a slide; I saw nothing. It's obvious, however, that the mountain took on a lot of weather last week; there was at least a foot of new snow in the areas where the surface had not been baked clean by Friday's sun. The final few trees on the way to the summit were rimed and so was the rock.

Like it always is, to be atop a beautiful mountain in spectacular conditions is a mesmerizing moment. I could not help but be happy -- and for a moment to wonder if that happiness should be accompanied by guilt. After all, I was standing near the spot where someone probably a lot like me had died a few days before.

Feels good to be on top.

"You could see that he ended up in the rocks," the coroner reported. "His skies [sic] were quite a bit farther down the slope. Very difficult terrain, very steep terrain. I think the lesson to be learned is if you're gonna ski in those kinds of places not to go by yourself. According to all his friends he was very highly skilled, very capable and he got in trouble."

There's some truth to that, but also some non-truth. Having partner can help you in case of an accident, but a partner can not prevent an accident. And, two or three or five or ten can die in an avalanche just as easily as one can on his own.

South from the summit.

I pushed off to centerpunch the bowl and got two turns into it and did not like the feel of the snow -- gloppy new snow atop a semi-frozen surface. I traversed to the north and put in 50 beautiful turns to the bowl's midpoint, then traversed south and took a rest, kicking off a small sluff that broadened as it pulled out a cornice below.

Second half of the descent.

I skied along the right side of the lake this time headed back and had a nice mud, rock and snow ascent to regain the ridge. The descent from the ridge in the serrated snow was difficult and eventually I figured it was easier to hike than ski the patches. I talked conditions with some of the hikers headed up and made it home by 2, cooked up a plate of bacon and started to work on the house.

Carlton Lake and the summit. Descent was on the looker's right shoulder, then a traverse to the center, and down the middle of the bowl from there.

The Other Side

2010-05-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

I got last Friday off from work, and intended to put it to good use. We are buying a home in downtown Missoula that needs, well, "work," and figured that now might be the last chance to head out of town without worrying if I had finished caulking around windows or wondering if the primer had dried in the bedroom.

But driving home from work on Thursday, knowing my bags were all packed, I started to feel guilty: Laura had to work on Friday, and I could not see not taking her along.

I had been planning three days of, of course, skiing: one in the Flathead near Kalispell and two in Glacier National Park. We've both been to Glacier, but not for years. I could ski, I figured, while she hunted moose and grizzly with a Sony.

So instead of leaving on Thursday evening I woke up early on Friday and hiked Lolo Peak's false summit.
Mon
The false summit of Lolo Peak can be seen from all of Missoula. With the May 15 opening of the Mormon Creek Road the approach to the summit is cut from 12 miles to 3 miles. I was drinking coffee in my kitchen at 5:45 and atop the peak by 10:45.

Missoula in the upper right:

North summit Lolo Peak, an easy morning climb:

At 4 we headed north through Seeley-Swan and by 9 had set up in a closed campground just shy of the Continental Divide.

We woke to clear skies and calm weather and bee-lined to Glacier's east side for St. Marys. The road is plowed 9 miles to the Jackson Glacier Overlook. I biked 2 miles to the Piegan Pass trailhead and skied from there while Laura stayed below with the Sony and the plott hound.

Climb:

Watch out:

The upper pass is blown free, and I leave my skis behind to climb the last bit. The transformation from the valley behind to the valley below is like passage from The Known World to The Other Side. There's few views on Earth that compare to it:

Ski down, bike down, and meet Laura. Skip rocks into Lake St. Mary in the afternoon:

Nothing says camping like an empty beer bottle and 2-foot-tall bag of tortilla chips:

Chalet du Nissan:

Rain and snow overnight. Up at 5 to check the weather: heavy. Skies clear a bit at 7 and Laura drops me off again at the gate:

Three miles later, step off the bike onto a head-high snow bank:

Later, a 100-yard long tunnel has drifts all the way through it, the entrances marked by scores of prints:

Progress is halted just shy of Logan Pass by whiteout conditions and a 30-foot tall corniced snowbank. Nice view, though:

On the way home we see a black bear and grizzly fight over a deer carcass and a bald eagle on a fence post.

Today we sign for the house.

More From Around the World

2010-04-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some more images I scanned from our first around the world, in 2002-2003.

A crisp fall day at 11,000 feet outside the Potala Palace, boyhood home of the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa, Tibet. The Chinese were converting the old city opposite the palace into a sort of mall.

Detail at a temple in Kathmandu.

Luang Prabang, Laos -- a spectacular and beautiful city.

Detail from a wall at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. At Angkor Wat you tend to look at the big-picture palaces, but the detail of many of the public area carvings is astounding.

Yacht harbor in Monaco. Earlier in the day we had been in Milan, coming out of the Italian Alps and headed to Barcelona. We could not for some reason buy a ticket to Barcelona so we got one to Monaco. The train was leaving for Monaco and the departures board also listed Innsbruck and Salzburg -- not cities on the way to Monaco. I went back to the ticket window and the seller pointed at the platform and told us to run. I said, No, I want to go to Monaco. He said, Yes, Monaco! I said, No, Monaco! We went back and forth like this for a while. Turns out the Italian word Monaco means Munich -- Monaco, the principality along the French Rivieria, is something different. Anyway, we made it, had dinner, walked along the harbor, felt very out of place, and got a ticket heading on to Barcelona.

We took a local train to Sighishoara, Romania and this guy sauntered in to our cabin. He insisted on chatting with us although we shared not one word in common. As we were approaching Sighishoara he started pointing to his stomach, making scissor-cutting motions, and asking for money. We tried to ignore him. We tried to ignore lots of annoying people on our trip. It never works.

Easter morning at Mt. Cook, South Island, New Zealand. We were biking and camping, and it was cold. Somehow Laura arranged an Easter egg hunt around the tent.

A memorable day. We were on a camel trek in southern Morocco and Hamil made "le pain du desert" -- bread of the desert. He made dough and buried it in the sand and stacked rocks atop it, then built a fire atop it and let the coals burn. Bread done, he pried the coals and rocks off. It was about 110 degrees when I took this picture. Hamil spoke five languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, but not a word of English. We got by in French.

Diwali festival at the Paropakar Orphanage, Kathmandu. Diwali is the festival of lights -- a combination Christmas, New Years and Halloween. Laura volunteered at Paropakar, playing games with the boys. They invited us to the festival, where the boys were given gifts of fruit and incense.

Temple near Kathmandu.

Laura in southern Morocco. One of the best photos of the trip, taken on a magical afternoon with a sort of stillness which does not exist today.

Laundry day in the Nepalese Himalaya. We were lucky to find spigots and concrete pads where we could do laundry. We'd usually use a special bar of soap we could buy for a buck or so. It had an abrasive agent which really scrubbed clothes clean but also wore them down quickly. This was on about the tenth day of a three-week hike around Annapurna.

Me looking quite emaciated after three weeks of hiking in the Himalaya -- and about to board this hulk for the eight-hour rumble back to Kathmandu. This bus was anything but "Peace and Heaven."

Skiing

2010-04-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

I think the woes of Montana's winter are by now well-known, but when everything is new, even a bad year holds plenty of adventure.

Tom and I put in a beautiful set of tracks high above Lookout Pass in March.

Come spring, the sun came out. Here's the view from my office window. That's Downing Mountain in the background.

Two weeks ago I took Laura to Bozeman to put her on a flight to Atlanta. I did some skiing along the way, and the next weekend when I went back to fetch her.

Near Big Sky:

Beehive Basin, Madison Mountains

Buffalo Jump State Park:

Bridger Mountains:

Mt. Blackmore, Gallatin Mountains:

And as a parting shot, the plott hound at work:

The other Round the World

2010-03-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

Laura and I went around the world in 2008-2009. It's a bad habit we learned back in 2002-2003, when we did the same thing. We were both living in Utah. I quit my jobs, sold a lot of stuff, and put the rest on a trailer that I hauled down to Texas.

We left June 2 and flew to London. We hopped and skipped across Europe, Turkey and Morocco for three months before flying to India. Stuck, we went to Bangladesh, where we got stuck again and wound up in Nepal, where we spent two months. I went to Tibet and then we flew to Bangkok. We moved around southeast Asia for several months before flying to New Zealand, where we bought used bikes and camping gear and spent three months circumnavigating the South Island. We sold the bikes and went to Tahiti, where we island hopped on freighters for a month. We flew to Los Angeles and took Amtrak to Houston, and that was a year.

We each had a camera on that trip, but we used film cameras. In all, we took about 800 photos -- a lot, but a piddling compared to the 18,000 or so we took on our 08-09 trip, when we both had digital cameras. Anyway, we printed our photos and put them in albums, occasionally assaulting visitors with "Would you like to see our trip photos?"

I've got access to a scanner now, so I thought I'd post some.

November, 2002: A hike around Annapurna, Nepal

August, 2002: Hamil loads our camels after a lunch break outside Zagora, Morocco

September, 2002: Laura in an old Bedford taxi in Calcutta

September, 2002: Quite an amazing photo, considering the circumstances, and difficult to this day to look at. We took a Trooper from Calcutta to Dhaka. We left at 6 a.m. and had three flat tires. We were left alone to walk through the border into Bangladesh. They kept us in a room where Laura got a marriage proposal, and the bus left without us. A boy came with a bike and pedaled us to a new bus, which poked across the Bangladeshi countryside before loading onto a boat which crossed the Ganges in the dark, surrounded by thousands of other boats, in what I can only describe as a scene out of Dantean novel. We arrived, with Laura now quite sick, in Dhaka at about 9 p.m.

November, 2002: The morning of our flight to Bangkok, at Amar Hotel, where we stayed for several weeks in Kathmandu, often the only people there. Amar is on the left.

February, 2003: A minibus ride from Medan to Bukit Lawang, Sumatra.

February, 2003: Me looking quite sweaty in the jungle in Malaysia.

January, 2002: One of my favorite photos. Laura on a perfect beach in Ao Nang, Thailand.

August, 2002: Dolomites, Italy.

November, 2002: Another amazing photo -- downtown Lhasa, Tibet, with Potala Palace, the boyhood home of the Dalai Lama, in the background. Lhasa sits at more than 11,000 feet above sea level.

June 2003: Round the world, completed. Laura in Atlanta with Jimmy and Bill.

Urban Wilderness

2010-03-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about Missoula is that I can wake up on a Saturday, have breakfast and coffee, and make plans for a day in the mountains.

(This is the view my boots have all day long)

One of the main factors that finally won me over to the Smokies and life in Waynesville was that I could drive 30 miles from my house and been in deep wilderness. Some of my best days there were on the Smokies' long trails -- 17 or more miles with 3,000 vertical feet of gain and a bike shuttle or hitchhike to round the day out, plus an evening's worth of limping around in pain from the exertion.

(Bass Lake)

There's that same kind of challenge in western Montana, only you don't have to go looking for it, like you do in North Carolina, and purposefully set yourself on to a punishing mountain. Here, you have to make a conscious decision not to overexert yourself.

(The remote headwall of South Fork Lolo Creek)

With three major ranges converging on the Missoula Valley, it's almost hard to narrow down your options.

(Tom pushing off from Little St. Joe, the Bitterroot Valley more than 5,000 vertical feet below)

Two Saturdays ago I drove to the Bass Creek Trailhead and set out on skis up Bass Creek. Eight miles and five hours later I was at the mouth of Bass Creek Lake. I skinned across the lake and climbed the east face of Bass Creek Peak, turning around short of the summit when I experienced signs of snow instability. I made it back to the truck at 6 p.m. exhausted and limping.

(View into the Great Beyond)

On that trip I saw exactly one other skier -- Tom, a recent transplant from Maine, who told me he got to the trailhead at 6 a.m. This, I figured, was someone I needed to get to know.

Last week I picked Tom up and we went back to Bass Creek Trailhead, but this time bushwhacked up a steep ridge until we found a trail and put our skis on. Six hours later we traversed across the summit of Little St. Joe, 9,033 feet, and took in the nearly monochromatic expanse of rock, snow and tree that make up the background of the surrounding few thousand square miles. From here, we could see into the heart of the Bitterroot and off into Idaho. The Bitterroot Valley, brown under the effect of a warm winter, slumbered more than 5,000 vertical feet below.

(A phalanx of rock, snow and tree: the view from Little St. Joe south into the central Bitterroot)

We got back to the car at 7 p.m., making for an even 10-hour outing, and I was so sore that Sunday was for the most part a loss.

Disco, the Mav, and the Big Hole

2010-02-16T14:58:00.000-08:00

Feeling the need to get out of Missoula last week, I begged Monday off work (President's Day, after all) and got off early on Friday. We loaded the truck, threw the plott hound in, and set off down the Bitterroot.

We stopped for coffee in Lolo and picked up some rain in Hamilton, which turned to slush then snow past Darby and heavy snow on up Lost Trail. At Lost Trail Pass, in the dark, we turned east and crested Chief Joseph Pass before descending into The Big Hole in snow and blowing snow. The Big Hole is one of those great Montana landscapes: a few hundred thousand square miles of valley and wolves and the towns of Wisdom and Jackson.

With no traffic on the road and snow crossing it in great drifts we pulled off the highway at Big Hole Pass and camped in the truck.

On Saturday we woke to pink skies, a few flurries and heaped snow around the truck. We pulled out and motored down the pass and up to Polaris, home of Maverick Ski Area.

In the base lodge, we found more dogs than people.

We also found lots and lots of orange carpeting.

Maverick is 1,520 vertical feet served by a 1962 Riblet.

Coverage was thin and grooming was spotty, but what can you really complain about for $30 lift tickets?

We knocked off early and went to Dillon, where I had romantically made reservations at the finest Motel 6 in town. First things first, however: the Patagonia outlet's President's Day sale.

On Sunday we were up to high overcast. We went back up to Polaris and I took off to climb Comet Peak (10,200 feet). I thought I had scouted a good route up the west ridge but got lost in a thicket more suited to machetes than skis and lost about two hours. Made it only to 8700 feet before having to turn around.

On the way back to Dillon we stopped at Bannock National Historic Landmark.

And took in the immensity of the Big Hole.

We drove up I-15 and drove up to Dewey, where we camped in the truck in a BLM campground.

On Monday we woke to snow and made first tracks over the Continental Divide, popping out in Anaconda, before heading up to Discovery.

Discovery is an exceedingly pleasant place, and with lift tickets costing $35, my type of mountain.

There was a few inches of new snow here, but even that could not mask the fact that this mountain, like every other place in Montana, in is real need of snow.

Lots of variety here -- from 50-yard wide beginner slopes to tons of chutes and cliffs.

Disco has a new lift opening what looks like interesting terrain on the slope toward Phillipsburg -- and will add to the vertical -- but there was not enough snow down low to open it and anyway it did not look like the installation was complete.

We skied till four, took in Georgetown Lake on the way out and stopped for a Montana original: Huckeberry slurpees (free, with that day's lift ticket!)

Lost Photos

2010-01-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

Just before I went to Austria in the winter of 2008 Laura and I went out and both got new cameras. Laura had been using the old Canon film camera I got as my high school graduation present and wanted something more, ah, modern. I had been using the latest in a string of profoundly cheap and crappy pocket digitals which never seemed to be as good as their advertising claimed.

Laura wound up with an "SLR-like" Sony, and I got a small point-and-shoot Sony. Her's is a larger, better camera while mine is smaller and simpler. Her's is what you use for important shots. Mine is what you use when you don't want to lug a big camera around.

Mine has performed admirably. It is now on image 12,367 -- that's right, the shutter has snapped more than 12,000 times in a little more than two years.

About three weeks ago I started having problems with mine. While the camera is definitely well used -- with scratches, dings and cracked plastic -- it's worked fine until now. Then lately I started getting low-battery warnings when the batteries were fresh. Later, the camera refused to turn on when it was cold. Living in Montana, that was a problem.

Last week, having had enough, I went out and got a new Sony point-and-shoot. This one was actually very cheap and nearly as good as the old one, though it does not feel as solid or perform quite as well.

Most of those 12,367 images were taken on our year-long around-the-world trip. The small Sony was handy in places where you did not want the risk of carrying an expensive camera, or when social situations called for something the locals wouldn't take much notice of.

One day early in the trip, in Peru, we took a day-long guided trip into the Cordillera Blanca outside of Huaraz. This was a longish hike and we went light, taking my smaller Sony.

A few hours into the hike Laura called out to me -- she was taking pictures but got a warning message that the memory card was full. Since we had gone out of our way before the trip to outfit our cameras with large memory cards, that should not have been the case. If the camera was malfunctioning in Peru -- a country not known for its electronics superstores -- then we'd have a problem.

Earlier in the day one of us had replaced the batteries and must have accidentally hit the button which releases the memory card. When Laura handed me the camera I saw that was what happened and popped the card back in. It worked fine.

When the memory card is not inserted into the camera, all images are stored on the camera's very small hard drive -- there's room for about eight images. That's why Laura got the warning message -- while there was plenty of room on the external card, the internal memory had filled up.

Last night, when we were setting up the new camera I popped the memory card out of the old Sony and put it in the new Sony. Then, just to see if the old Sony was feeling like working, I turned it on and snapped a picture. Immediately I got a warning -- memory full. Weird, I thought. So I reviewed the images in memory and found, to my surprise, eight pictures which Laura had inadvertently taken when the external memory card was popped out. I had never thought to look for images on the camera's body and had forgotten about the incident altogether.

While only 14 months old, these are not exactly a time capsule from the distant past, though seeing them last night did for a moment take me back to a time that already seems very long ago.

(Huaraz from 14,000 feet)

(Looking deep into the Cordillera Blanca -- a range of massive proportions.)

(Me midway up the hike, a scene forgotten until now.)

The January Thaw

2010-01-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

Laura got me a book for my birthday called "Downhill in Montana." It's a history of skiing in Montana and focuses on ski areas.

(Lower Lolo Canyon)

Like many states in the U.S., Montana is peppered with ski areas that opened in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, operated for a few or 10 years, and then closed up. Many of these ski areas opened during periods of unusual snow and cold only to find that when conditions returned to normal their once-great ski season had shrunk from five months to two, or less. The author interviewed one former ski area owner who noted that no matter how warm and snowless a winter can be in Montana, there was always one thing he could count on: the January thaw.

(Crystal Theater)

While we've had our moments of snow and cold here, it's been overall a dry and warm winter. Such winters are particularly frustrating when we are new here, excited to get out and ski peaks only to be confronted by brownery.

(Lolo)

My first winter in Salt Lake City was the same way, as was my first winter in Tooele, so maybe we can write this off to a sort of first-year phenomenon.

(Crystal Theater)

So, the thaw is on. Missoula is about to totally melt out, which means lots of puddles, mud and piles of melty black snow. Apparently it also means lots of fog, which we've had almost every day for two weeks.

(Looking to Idaho from Lolo)

The Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers are now wide ribbons of flowing water edged by ice and stranded bergs. South faces above the valley are snow-free. Jumbo has two wild ribbons of snowing arcing up the west face where south winds deposited drifts; elsewhere on Jumbo, the winter elk herd has all the grass it can eat.

(Fresh lines in the Crystal Theater)

(I'm not the only one making tracks here)

Of course, though we are in thaw there is still snow -- just much less of it.

(Laura at Lost Trail)

(Lost Trail is great, but it sure has a lot of flat spots. Every snowboarder needs a telemarker, if for nothing else than to loan poles.)

Let's hope winter resumes before spring begins.

(Stevensville)

"The Whole Reason For Winter"

2010-01-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, as temperatures rose, snow settled and skies broke, Laura and I headed up to Snowbowl.

Properly, the ski area is called Montana Snow Bowl, but over the years it's also been called TV Mountain, SnowPark and Missoula Snow Bowl. Either way, the ski area is about 11 miles from our front door and visible from all over town. On radio and TV commercials we're told Snowbowl is "the whole reason for winter.

Snowbowl is best known for its steeps, accessibility and low lift ticket prices. It's rather infamous for its rickety facilities and southern exposure. (One sticker plastered on a chairlift tower on the Grizzly lift says "Snowbowl: The Whole Reason for P-Tex.")

Montana is filled with funky locals-only hills like Snowbowl. Each have their bonuses, and each have their drawbacks, but all are uniform in that they are cheap. I tried to figure a formula for comparing Montana ski areas against those elsewhere in the country and never decided what were the appropriate factors to use. Nevertheless, you can't argue with the prices. Lookout Pass is $33. Lost Trail is $34. Discovery is $39. And Montana Snowbowl is $39 as well.

In many respects, you get much more than you pay for. In others, you get exactly what you pay for. Swanky on-mountain lodges and high-speeds lifts do not have a home in our part of Montana (and really only are those found in a few places in the Treasure State). Snowbowl's access road is dirt, its chairlifts squeaky and ancient, its parking attendants look slightly crazy, and the lodge could use a good scrubbing. And all those reasons are precisely why it's also so loveable.

Oh, and then there's the skiing.

All this stoke comes from Laura. Enjoy.

Christmas Vacation

2009-12-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 7 I began work at the Ravalli Republic, a five-day-a-week newspaper in Hamilton, Mont. I cover the sorts of things I've always covered: county commissioners, city councils, growth, taxes, budgets and everything else in between.

The start my tenure as "staff reporter" at the Republic marks the end of 18 months of unemployment which saw our travel to some 26 countries on six continents and address changes that pinned us to four states. The only real downside to my new job is the commute -- it's 45 miles from Missoula to Hamilton.

(Christmas Eve on the commute to Hamilton. The sun rises at about 8:40 a.m.)

It's probably not fair, really, to call it a commute. A lot of people come here from around the country every year just to see the sights that stand along the road. On my Wal-Mart road atlas, there's dotted blue lines along that section of U.S. 93 -- it's a "scenic corridor." So no, it's not a commute in Houston or Atlanta, that's for sure.

Since Dec. 7 we've had our share of winter weather here. That first week of work it never got above 12 degrees and was as cold as minus 17. After 45 minutes of driving 60 miles per hour you could still see vapor coming out of the tailpipe, and there was a ring of frost and ice around the back of the car where tailpipe vapor had frozen. After the cold we had a foot of snow over three days, then two days of freezing rain, then two days of drizzle, some more snow, and now it's cold again -- it was 3 degrees with a windchill of minus 14 this morning. The Clark Fork and the Bitterroot rivers are freezing over again, and it's getting hard to tell what color cars on the road are. I accidentally brushed against the car yesterday and came away with my side slicked with mud, sand, frozen slush and grime. It's hard to wash your car when it's 8 degrees.

On Wednesday we woke up to snow and I drove Laura to the "Missoula International Airport." Not only were no international flights departing, but I did not even see a plane on the tarmac. In terms of airport activity, it's even sleeper than Asheville Regional Airport was.

Laura went back to Atlanta for the holidays, leaving me and the plott hound to guard the homestead. Most people would be sad to be left alone in a city where they had no friends for a major holiday. I looked at it as an opportunity to get to work on some major projects.

On Christmas Eve I got off work early and the plott hound and I hiked up Mount Sentinel to get a look at our first objective: Stuart Peak. Stuart was a summit I got turned back from in October due to deep snow and recent bear tracks.

(Stuart from Sentinel, Christmas Eve)

While up on Sentinel we took in the view of downtown Missoula.

(Grizzly Stadium, downtown Missoula, Christmas Eve)

On the way back we stopped by the Clark Fork. After a brief thaw last week, this major river is icing over again.

(Clark Fork backed by Mt. Jumbo)

CHRISTMAS DAY

Two factors impact skiing right now -- the lack of snow at low elevations and the lack of daylight at any elevation. Just a few inches of snow covers the ground at valley level, and the sun comes up well after 8 a.m. and sets well before 5 p.m.

The hike to Stuart Peak began with about 4 miles of this:

The hike leaves from the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area trailhead about 4 miles north of downtown and heads due north into the adjacent wilderness area. After about three hours

I was up into decent snow and put my skis on. After six hours I was within sight of the summit but still too far away to make an attempt.

I had a snack, stripped my skins off, and made nice turns in settled powder down to 6,000 feet. From there it was combat skiing in low snow and tall brush, and then a long, long hike in twilight and then darkness.

BOXING DAY

Up early again, I headed south this time, into the Bitterroot. While there is a good network of developed trailheads in the mountains here, most stop at canyon mouths. One that does not is St. Mary's Road, which goes to nearly 7,000 feet on the way up St. Mary's Peak, which sits at about 9,400 feet. (It's important to get perspective here. Treeline is generally around 7,000 to 8,000. At 9,000 feet and higher you find permanent snowfields on north faces).

St. Mary's Road was plowed at the base, but had slick ice for a mile starting at 4,000 feet -- so slick when I got out of the truck to scope the conditions I could not stand up. I parked the truck in the first pullout and walked up the road and past the plowed section.

Three hours later I was here:

Here I saw some of the largest surface hoar crystals I'd ever seen. These were more than a centimeter in diameter.

I made it to the end of the road and climbed for another 45 minutes before I hit my cutoff time and had to turn around.

(Trapper Peak above the inversion)

(A look across the valley at the Sapphire Mountains)

I had a few dozen good turns before the snow surface became a melange of crusts. I idled down the mountain road with the truck in low range and four wheel drive and made it home about 5 p.m.

SUNDAY, DEC. 27

Eager for an easier day, I drove up to Lookout Pass, on the Idaho-Montana border. This pass, at 4,800 feet, sees heavy snow at lower elevations. There was about 3 feet at the pass and 4.5 feet at 6,000 feet.

Here's where the sun sits at 12:45 p.m. Mountain Standard Time:

I found very good skiing on light-density snow and edged in a couple of runs. Here's the view from the summit, looking down at Lookout Pass Ski Area and across at the St. Regis Basin:

And here's where the run ends, at Interstate 90:

Laura's gone for another week. My project list, meanwhile, continues to grow.

Oregon

2009-12-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I am no longer unemployed. I have a job as a reporter at the Ravalli Republic in Hamilton. I got the good news two weeks ago, but the job was not to start until Dec. 7. So, to fill the time, I decided to go skiing in Oregon.

I left Missoula the day after Thanksgiving at 9 a.m., drove over Lookout Pass in light snow, and stopped in Spokane for gas and groceries before cutting southwest across Washington to Umatilla, the Columbia River Gorge, and finally a narrow forest road where I camped at the snowline.

Saturday: good morning Mt. Adams!

I took a shortcut up to Mt. Hood Meadows, only the road was unplowed and I had to turn around just 5 miles short of the highway. An unfortunate 60-mile detour ensued.

Up on Mt. Hood I picked up a Sno-park pass and visited various trailheads before settling on White Salmon.

I climbed for 5 hours in and out of fog.

Suddenly I heard voices and car doors slamming. I looked up and I was at Timberline Lodge. I climbed up the south face of Hood for another hour before dropping in. Some good snow, some bad snow. Nice views all around.

Back to the truck by sunset.

I slept in the truck in a Sno-park.

Sunday: Coffee in Government Camp.

I checked out Summit and Mt. Hood Ski Bowl, both areas I'd been interested in, but with a forecast of clear skies and calm winds I decided to climb Hood. Hood's a simple climb, but a rather monotonuous one, too. The view is unchanged for about the first 4 hours. I skinned above the Palmer Snowfield and kept going.

Lunchtime.

At the caldera rim, at about 10,200 feet, I decided I was getting over my head.

The summit proper. It's all ice axes and crampons from here on up.

A long, long ski down. Drove to Redmond, got groceries, and camped in the truck near Sisters.

Monday: Coffee in Sisters then skiing on Santiam Pass. Not much to ski up here within an easy walk of the road, and no refreeze overnight meant manky snow. I got in two runs on a black butte next to Hoodoo ski area.

I drove down to Bend and walked around a while. We had thought about moving to Bend, so it was interesting to have a look. It reminded me of some cities in Colorado: clean, livable, unaffordable and highly masterplanned -- much of the city felt like a golf course community. Drove up toward Bachelor and slept in the truck in a Sno-park.

Tuesday: Five cars in the lot at Bachelor but I skinned up Tumalo. Nice.

Drove down to Willamette Pass and slept in a Sno-park. I was exhausted and fell asleep at 9.

Tuesday: I was woken up at 2 by the sounds of an engine turning over. I looked out the window and there was a truck parked 20 feet from mine cranking but not catching. Weird? A trap? Drunk? I piled my clothes on and went outside. The truck was still there but the driver was gone. It was an ODOT Dodge Ram. In the morning it was still there.

I drove to Willamette Pass ski area and was surprised to see it closed: weekends only in the early season. With few options, I decided to drive to Crater Lake National Park.

I climbed a peak adjacent to the rim lodge. In firm snow it was easier to boot than skin.

Well, Crater Lake: it speaks for itself.

A 2-hour climb. On the run down I ran into every conceivable form of snow, including 20 turns of deep recrystalized powder that made the trip.

I drove back to Bend, and back to Sistes where I camped in the forest. I was awoken in the night by something crunching on the snow but when I looked out there was nothing there.

Wednesday: After coffee I went back up Santiam, this time plunking down $42 to ski at Hoodoo.

There was, quite literally, almost no one there.

Not a bad little mountain, complete with everyone's favorite ski run.

It was a cold day and I knocked off 15 minutes early for the drive to Bend, where I stopped at Trader Joe's to stock up on groceries and then made the drive to Pendleton. I took back roads and kept having to check my maps and it made for a long night. Slept in the truck in a rest area off I-84. Not as bad as it sounds.

Friday: up at 6 and coffee in Pendleton, then drove to Ski Bluewood, near Dayton, Wa.

Bluewood is a smallish area but has good snow and great tree skiing. A cold, cold day.

I skied until the lift closed then drove to Lewiston, Id. I meant to have my first hot meal of the trip but that city's screwy series of overpasses, bridges and intersections thwarted all attempts to get to Taco Time, so it was another night of sandwiches and chips in the truck. Slept in the truck at a rest area east of town.

Saturday: Woke to an inch of fluffy snow. The drive to Montana is 170 miles of this:

Hardly a town, a home or a gas station. Just three hours of wilderness driving.

At Lolo Pass it was 12 and snowing sideways. I made a run on the Montana Shot but there was not quite enough snow to really turn. So I decamped, packed and was in Missoula 45 minutes later.

Nice trip.

Jumbo

2009-11-19T13:54:00.001-08:00

Mt. Jumbo is one of the broad-shouldered treeless (and homeless) mountains that back Missoula. It's a 10-minute walk from our frontdoor to the base of the mountain.

Did I say treeless? Oops. Here are two.

The plott hound sniffing the wind.

A cold morning. Yesterday's skiff has melted off down low. The trail runs on to the north for miles.

BC in BC

2009-11-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

With me unemployed and Laura looking at a three-day weekend, we decided to get out of town. We went to British Columbia.

We drove past the Missions.

And then Flathead Lake.

We camped at a still-open state park near Eureka, a half-hour shy of the border. On Friday morning, under lightly-snowing skies, we crossed into Canada and went to Fernie.

We toured downtown and took a short hike before heading over a quite snowy Kootenay Pass to Salmo and then on to Nelson, where we gave in and spent $74 on the cheapest hotel we could find. I love BC, but man, is it expensive. The cheap combo meal at A&W is nearly $10, and gas rang in at about $4.40 a gallon.

Pretty place, though.

In the morning we headed up to Whitewater ski area, which was closed but sporting a few inches of new snow and a parking lot half-full with locals skiing, hiking and sledding. Laura took a short cross-country tour while I skinned up to overlook Ymir Bowl.

Parties toured higher. There was about a half-meter at the base and a meter or more at 6,500 feet -- enough to ski, but not enough to venture into the rocky bowls.

This party went halfway up The Nose before dropping in.

With it still snowing lightly we went back to Nelson to visit its great coffee house, Oso Negro. Nelson is truly a spectacular town but we did not want to blow more money on sketchy hotel rooms, so we drove back to Whitewater, this time in heavy snow, and camped in the parking lot. The wind blew all night long.

In the morning we headed down to Salmo and then up Kootenay Pass, the highest "all-use year-round paved road in BC," or so the sign at the summit stated.

With light snow and low visibility our few ours on the summit was more a tour than a ski, but I did get in some turns.

We crossed into Idaho south of Creston, stopped for a coffee in Sandpoint, and took a swing by Lookout Pass, which had just opened for the season.

Back home by 7, happy and tired.

Waiting for Winter

2009-11-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

It seems to get a few degrees colder every day. We've had snow every few days now for the past 10 days, but always less than an inch and it always melts off pretty quickly.

The job hunt continues, but there's only so much to apply for. That means plenty of time to hike.

Attempted to follow the Mt. Jumbo ridgeline to Sheep Mountain yesterday. All we found were deer and a trail which disappeared. But I think now I know where to go ...

Rattlesnake from Jumbo

Lower Rattlesnake National Historic District

North summit of Sentinel Peak

Missoula on a snowy morning

So Long, Scarpa; Hello, Bitterroot

2009-11-09T15:12:00.000-08:00

Before we went to South America last year I bought a new pair of telemark boots. My old pair was still in good condition but was nearly nine seasons old. The problem was, if anything went wrong in South America I knew ahead of time there was no place down there to pick up something new or repair broken telemark gear. So in July I went to REI in Houston and picked up a new pair of Scarpa T2 boots for $569. Yep, I paid full price.

(Stuart Peak; 11/9/09)

The Scarpa plastic boots revolutionized telemark skiing. They first came out in the early 1990s. At about that time I bought a pair of Heidelberg leather telemark boots at a ski swap in Salt Lake City in 1991 and used them for just two years before getting a used pair of Scarpas at a different ski swap. I used those boots until 2000, when the plastic tore. I sold both the leather boots and the old Scarpas at a ski swap and picked up a new pair of Scarpas at REI for $359 (yep, I paid full price again) in Salt Lake City while on my way down to Elk Meadows to go skiing for Utah.com. Those old blue boots were fantastic.

(Sheep Mountain: boots, Plott hound, backpack; 11/9/09)

This summer, when we returned from our trip, I placed the old Scarpas on Craigslist in Houston, and got exactly one queery (from, it later turned out, a guy in Vermont). When I pulled the trailer up to Missoula from Houston I stuck the old pair in with the other baggage at the last minute. If nothing else, I figured, I could sell them for a hundred bucks or so.

(Bear Creek; 11/7/09)

I stuck the boots on Craigslist once I got here and again got no response. Then on Saturday came the SOS ski swap at Big Sky High, and I figured I ought to consign them there. So on Saturday morning Laura and I drove over, waited in line for a few minutes, and signed them up for the Sunday sale. SOS takes 20 percent, so I priced them at $120. Then, we went to the Bitterroot.

(Near Hamilton; 11/7/09)

The Bitterroot is a valley, river, mountain range and string of towns, all of which begins about 10 miles south of Missoula and runs for some 50 miles south to the Idaho line at Lost Trail Pass. I'd applied for a reporting job in Hamilton, the biggest town in the area, and we wanted to check out the area some more. So we got a coffee and headed south on US 93.

(Laura in Bear Creek, Bitterroots; 11/7/09)

Once you get past the turnoff for Lolo, the highway is marked every few miles with brown signs. The signs either point to the left, where there are access points along the river, or right, where there are roads heading to the base of the mountains. We picked a random trailhead called Bear Creek and followed the road up a few miles until the trailhead.

(Near Hamilton; 11/7/09)

The Bitterroot Mountains are fairly easy to describe. They are massive, both in scale and physical size. They are untouched: there are a few trails which pierce the canyons and then, like the one we took up Bear Creek, seem to wither away. And they are practically devoid of people.

(Bugs at work in Bear Creek; 11/7/09)

The bulk of the mountains lie in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Along with national parks, the creation and support of wilderness is one of the great American inventions. Managed by the federal government and owned collectively and equally by all Americans, wilderness areas are free to use by everyone and anyone, with two real caveats: you can only hike or ski in, and there can be no permanent structures. (I wonder how many people decrying America's "socialism" these days also think about national parks? Would they destroy national parks, too?) The Selway-Bitterroot contains 1.3 million acres. It is separated from the adjacent 2.4-million acre Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness by a dirt road with a 600-foot right of way. And the Frank Church directly joins the 205,000-acre Gospel Hump Wilderness.

We hiked for four hours in light snow before reemerging at the truck. We drove through Hamilton (nice) before heading back to Missoula.

(Sheep Mountain, Rattlesnakes; 11/9/09)

On Sunday we were up early and at the ski swap by 10:30 a.m. We were not there nearly early enough, though. The swap opened at 10, and I learned later that 600 people filed through the doors in the first 10 minutes. Already, by 11 a.m., we were poking around the dregs of the sale. I picked up some ski area trail maps and some stickers and we decided to go. There, on the telemark table, were my lonely boots.

I had started thinking a lot about my boots, and was pretty sad to think about selling them. I had skied with them in some of the most amazing mountains in North America: Rogers Pass, Banff, Kicking Horse, Whistler, Whitewater, Lolo, the Cascades, Lake Tahoe, the Sierra, the Stansburys, the Wasatch, the Smokies (!), &c.

(Sheep Mountain, Rattlesnakes; 11/9/09)

Home from the swap we had lunch, cleaned around the house, went on a short hike, and at 5 I went back to Big Sky High to pick up my boots. I looked through piles of sad unsold gear -- and piles, and piles, and piles. Where were the boots? I went back again and looked. Nothing. Finally I went up to the sales counter and showed them my receipt. The girl there flipped through a stack of receipts and held mine up. "Yep," she said, "someone bought 'em."

How about that?

Stuart Peak

2009-10-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

Since the sun does not rise here until after 8 a.m., it's pretty easy nowadays to do a dawn patrol. I took the day off from job hunting and hiked Stuart Peak.

Stuart Peak is a midlevel peak in the Rattlesnake Mountains National Recreation Area and Wilderness. The Rattlesnakes are a group of high peaks which back Missoula to the north. The entrance to the area is about 5 miles from downtown Missoula.

About a half-inch of sloppy snow dropped the night before in Missoula -- which translated to close to an inch at the trailhead, which is at about 3,500 feet.

The first 3 miles are wide and easy, then the climb begins in earnest.

It's dense forest much of the way, though you do get some views.

The summit is at 7,900 feet but I turned around about 600 feet shy of that when I ran into deeper snow, dense fog, strong winds

and big bear tracks.

I celebrated a successful hike with stickers!

16 feet of Nissan, 15 feet of trailer

2009-10-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Laura got the good news last Thursday -- she was hired by the school district, and would start work on Monday.

With that major hurdle out of the way, and nothing promising job-wise for me in the near future, we decided this was a good time for me to go to Houston and get the truck and trailer.

Buying a one-way ticket on short notice left us with few options. On Saturday we left the house at 5.30 am and drove nearly three hours -- including up and over the Contintal Divide -- to Bozeman, whose airport looks like an upscale ski lodge.

I flew from BZN to IAH via a six-hour layover at DIA. The flight to Denver took us over Yellowstone and the Wind Rivers and featured a great view of the Tetons. My parents picked me up in Houston, where for once the temperature was NOT 95 degrees, and we had a late dinner at Taco Cabana. I spent the next day packing and unloading and reloading the trailer when I realized there was too much weight on the tongue.

I left Houston on Monday and again went to Bryan, Waco and Fort Worth. It got dark way before the Panhandle but as there were no campgrounds I wound up pulling into the KOA in Amarillo -- perhaps the most expensive campground on Earth -- at 11.30 p.m.

I was up the next day and out by 8. Wanting to bypass Raton Pass, Monument Hill and the mess that is Denver I went north from Amarillo through Stratford and Boise City and entered the weird depopulated world of the plains. Living in the West I'm well acquainted with what appears to be abandoned towns, but in the West you are never that far from a thriving town even when in what appears to be a dead zone. In the plans, however, all you get is dead zone; there are no resort cities to buck the trend. Texas and Oklahoma were particularly bad for deserted cities; in Colorado, meanwhile, there seemed to be more emphasis on redevelopment and downtown beautification.

From Lamar I headed north to Limon and took back roads to Fort Collins, where I joined I-15. After raining all afternoon the rain turned to snow in Cheyenne and started to come down heavy. I spent the night in the truck at a rest area in Chugwater.

The next morning, with light snow falling but the roads cleared, I went to Caspar and then to Thermopolis and Cody before driving into the spectacular Absaroka Mountains at Red Lodge. I spent one final night in Columbus before making it home to Missoula in the early afternoon.

Laura did not like pulling the trailer, but once you get into the West, where there is more space and fewer people, I found it to be almost enjoyable. I set the cruise at 60 and idled along into the sky. Not a bad week. And now our home has furniture!

Montucky

2009-10-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

August: Life becomes single-focused and practically monastic. Ride in the morning. Job hunt all day. Ride in the evening. Make dinner with the parents.

My ride is just about the same every day: 16 miles out and back to the hamlet of Thompsons. The job hunt is just about the same every day: I've carpet-bombed the Interior Northwest with resumes and applications. Dinner is often different but often the same: we don't call it "Mexican food" we just call it "food."

September: More of the same, though it's not as hot. I used to think of my afternoon rides as "rendering the lard," now, 90 degrees feels like autumn.

The job hunts plugs along, though we gradually narrow where we apply to. I made a list of top tier towns -- places which have everything we'd ever want -- and a list of second-best towns. Missoula was a top tier town, and luckily it had the most job prospects.

But job hunting 2,000 miles removed from your goal is difficult, at best. Laura and I decided that if Missoula was the place, then we just ought to head out there. Then, in one day, we both got nibbles on jobs in Missoula. In one crazy 72-hour period, during one of Atlanta's signature downpours, Laura packed the truck and trailer and got them both out to Houston with but one mishap: a flat tire on the Southwest Freeway during rush hour.

We spent two more days in Richmond arranging things before shoving off north by west in the Altima (leaving the heaving truck and trailer in Richmond). For the first two days we followed the route pioneered during our winter ski trips: Bryan, Waco, Ft. Worth, Wichita Falls, Vernon, Amarillo, Dalhart, Clayton, Raton, Trinidad, Denver. We spent the first night in Amarillo and were up before dawn the next day. We saw the mountains at Raton, sampled the good-old Colorado in Trinidad (not to be mistaken for the new Colorado, which might as well be a different state) and saw snow in the Central Rockies. We had each applied to jobs in Boulder, Ft. Collins, Longmont and Loveland and we checked those towns out. I found them to be just what the accolades say: clean, quiet, well-planned and eminently livable. And also: kind of boring and rather suburban.

From Ft. Collins we headed into Wyoming and camped in Sheridan after checking out Buffalo, where I was offered a job I turned down. Finally, on Sunday we crossed into Montana and idled through Livingston, Bozeman, Butte and Deer Lodge before entering Missoula.

I'll always remember the first time I drove into the Salt Lake Valley: it's a magnificent event. Driving down Hellgate Canyon to emerge in Missoula is a level or two less intense than that of Utah, but still memorable: the city set against yellow hills, sparkling afternoon sunlight, and the mountains all around.

October: Our home for two weeks was the Misasoula KOA, which was fine unless it was raining, snowing, windy or very cold. We again fell into a routine: up with the sun, breakfast at the picnic table, shower and dress up, and into the job service, where we'd spend a few hours on the job hunt. We'd break for lunch and poke around town for a bit before heading back to the job office.

We took a weekend to go to the nearby Swan Valley.

We both got job offers which we both turned down -- mine was in a pretty small town not far from Canada, and Laura's was at a nonprofit here in town.

Then it snowed.

We took this as our cue to check out of the KOA, where we were the last campers left and where we'd worn the grass pretty thin, and into a very livable apartment, which was no more expensive than camping, really.

Hopefully, we'll get some furniture soon.

There's lots going on, but not a whole lot to report. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, here's the Bitterroot River above the confluence with the Clark Fork to keep you company.

What Does the World Look Like?

2009-10-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

So here's one of two nearly identical videos I made from photos of our year-long around-the-world trip. It's the first time I've used video editing software and obviously I had problems with some of the editing features (yes, I know I misspelled Uruguay!). Anyway ...

What It Cost

2009-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

In looking back at some posts this summer Laura recently reminded me that I had not posted up the final financial data from the trip. So here it is.

I kept detailed financial information from Day One to Day 366 and cataloged every dime, dinar and dirham we spent. I compiled and analyzed the costs and divided them into a host of categories so we now know, for example, how much we spent the entire trip on bus tickets and what our per day spending average was in Brunei.

While it might seem that such information is relatively useless to other travelers or would-be travelers because our experiences and route were so unique, I'd suggest that's actually not the case. Why? In the final analysis you see that for the most part the percentage of what we spent on certain activities was roughly the same across large regions. That means that while we went to Uruguay and you might not, what we spent on park entry there was similar in proportion to what we spent in all of South America.

I'll try and lay this out as simply as possible ...

ROUND THE WORLD

Total spent: $30,915 in 366 days, for an average of $84.47 per day (or $42.24 per person per day). This figure does not include the roughly $14,000 we spent on our round-the-world plane tickets nor the approximately $600 we spent total on health insurance, nor does it include what we spent before the trip to get ready -- such as Laura's new backpack -- but it does include everything else, including what we spent on plane tickets for flights we picked up along the way.

Accommodations: $8,531
Food: $7,353
Transportation: $8,402
Entertainment: $1,245 (includes tours, skiing, surfing and more)
Visas: $1,042
Parks, museums and guides: $835
Phone, post and Internet: $743

Transportation: 27 percent of total spent. Of that, 37 percent was for bus, 29 percent for flights, 6 percent for car and driver, 8 percent for bikes and 6 percent for boats

Accommodation: 27 percent of total spent. Of that, 91 percent was for hotels and 9 percent for camping

Food: 24 percent of total spent. Of that, 14 percent was for breakfast, 19 percent for lunch, 34 percent for dinner and 24 percent for groceries

Entertainment: 4 percent of total spent.

Visas: 3 percent of total spent.

Parks, museums and guides: 3 percent of total spent.

Phone, post and Internet: 2 percent of total spent.

BY COUNTRY

Chile: $2,157 for 23 days, $93.79 average (33 percent skiing, 18 percent food)
Argentina: $3,699 for 35.5 days, $104.21 average (31 percent skiing, 24 percent food)
Uruguay: $795 for 7.5 days, $106.08 average (33 percent hotel, 33 percent bus)
Brazil: $889 for 6.5 days, $136.88 average (37 percent visa, 26 percent bus)
Bolivia: $1,002 for 13 days, $77.10 per day (27 percent visa, 20 percent food)
Peru: $1,769 for 21 days, $84.26 per day (25 percent hotel, 24 percent food)
Ecuador: $823 for 12 days, $68.62 per day (31 percent hotel, 23 percent food)
Colombia: $135 for 3 days, $44.97 per day (46 percent hotel, 15 percent food)
United States: $1,124 for 10.5 days, $107 per day (32 percent gear, 17 percent meds)
Australia: $4,764* for 61 days, $78.10 per day (31 percent food, 15 percent camping)
Indonesia: $1520 for 25.5 days, $59.60 per day(30 percent hotel, 23 percent flights)
Malaysia: $890 for 16.5 days, $54 per day (38 percent hotel, 18 percent food)
Brunei: $169 for 1.5 days, $112.47 per day (58 percent hotel, 17 percent food)
Philippines: $738 for 10 days, $73.80 per day (30 percent hotel, 20 percent food)
Thailand: $2,747 for 30.5 days, $90 per day (33 percent hotel, 22 percent flights)
Sri Lanka: $1,065 for 14.5 days, $73.49 per day (33 percent hotel, 22 percent flight)
Taiwan: $1,202 for 14.5 days, $82.93 per day (36 percent hotel, 20 percent flight)
Laos: $268 for 5.4 days, $59.68 per day (29 percent visa, 28 percent hotel)
Myanmar: $273 for 5.5 days, $49.71** (22 percent flight, 19 percent hotel)
United Arab Emirates: $578 for 2.5 days, $231.44 per day** (68 percent flight)
Oman: $427.2 for 7 days, $67.45 per day** (70 percent hotel, 11 percent food)
Mauritius: $526 for 8 days, $65.75 per day (63 percent hotel, 30 percent food)
Madagascar: $1,483 for 14 days, $106 per day (38 percent car/driver, 24 percent food)
Tunisia: $709 for 11.5 days, $61.64 per day (47 percent hotel, 22 percent food)
Malta: $602 for 6 days, $100 per day (65 percent hotel, 23 percent food)
United Kingdom: $142 for 1 days, $142 per day (50 percent hotel, 29 percent metro)

*Cost shown for Australia is net. While in some countries we saw a "gain" of money -- usually through selling things -- it was nominal. In Australia, however, total gain was $250 due to the sale of gear and finding money alongside a highway. Actual total costs for Australia were $5,014.
**I alone traveled to these three countries, so the per day average is for one person, not two. Laura was in the US, and expenses there were catalogued under US.

Obviously, the longer we stayed in a country the more our expenditure percentages reflect the actual cost of things. Totals are skewed in country like Bolivia -- which was essentially dirt cheap but where they charge an arm and a leg (well, about %150) for a visa. They are also skewed in a country like Myanmar, where the cost of the flight figured prominently into the totals due to the short duration of my stay. And they were also skewed in a country like Oman, where accommodation was so outrageously expensive that it left me unable to do practically anything else. Once you get past those exceptions, however, you see that in general the cost of food, transport and accommodation were all fairly similar.

And some interesting budget facts, told in the total amount spent:

Snacks: $173
Coffee: $268
Water: $14
Taxis: $341
Parking: $1
Surfing: $20
Souvenirs: $311
Laundry: $42
Internet: $467
Maps: $10
Books: $191
Pay phones: $21
Newspapers: $6
Photo downloading: $86
Tips: $46 (for lack of a better category, could also be called "bribes" and "money to make people go away"
Toilet fees: $5
Camera fee: $5 (charged at some parks and museums)
Shoe storage: $1 (to enter many temples you have to remove your shoes; some places make you pay to "store" them)

It's So Over

2009-08-09T20:12:00.001-07:00

There's nothing quite like a jolt of reality to make you realize your vacation is over.

(Mountains to Sea Trail near Waterrock Knob)

The past few weeks have supplied ample evidence that our trip around the world was not simply over. It was totally finished, like, to the point where it's hard to imagine it ever existed.

(Laura and Lauren)

We spent about a week in Atlanta. Most of our time was spent shopping for a truck. I guess buying a vehicle is easy if you have minimal requirements and low expectations. We had neither, and it was a fairly involved process -- one which we could not see through to completion in Atlanta. Besides that, we cleaned our clothes (and cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned them -- some items will likely never come clean), had a birthday party for Jimmy, saw the nieces, saw Liz, and took general stock of life in America which we'd skipped out on for the past year.

(Super Dome, New Oreans)

Then we made it up to Waynesville, where life seemed to be chugging along as normal. We made it to the Folkmoot International Day parade, went to a party at Max and Sheila's totally refinished house, saw our old home (which is looking quite nice), visited with Janelle, saw Blair and Lauren and Harper and went on a hike, visited with my old boss Vicki, saw some of our great neighbors at a party, and had a five-course meal at Chris and Michelle's.

(Me, Chris and Michelle on the porch in Dillsboro)

Two days later I was on a Greyhound. I left Atlanta at 6 a.m. and got into Houston some 19 hours later at about 1 a.m.

(Jimmy's birthday party)

Greyhound is not the world's greatest form of public transportation, but it's not the worst, either. If you could ignore the grimy, gritty bus stations it was actually fairly pleasant, and I got to watch large portions of the Deep South slide by from a big picture window while I read a book and listened to the radio on my mp3.
I saw a guy get his bag stolen just feet from him in the Biloxi bus station, saw downtown New Orleans (the bus driver, a big guy named Demetrius, announced to us on the PA, "People, now we is in Nawlins"), and got to generally see life in places like Montgomery, Tuskegee and Lake Charles like I'd never seen it before.

(My view for approximately 18 hours)

In Houston I've consumed my body weight in Mexican food (really, don't call it Mexican food, just call it "food"), helped out at the church, sifted through the things we left behind, done more cleaning, enjoyed a few beers with Jon and bought a truck.

(Truck!)

I, with the help of my dad, finally realized it was not much more expensive to buy a new truck than it was to buy a used one. In my previous jobs I'd saved all my mileage reimbursement checks into a separate account; by the time I left Waynesville it totaled more than $8,000 dollars, and I planned to use it to buy a truck. Well, if you want a Toyota or a Nissan with an extended cab and four wheel drive, $8,000 gets you a 12-year-old vehicle with 170,000 miles on it. So we bumped that up to $16,000 and the pickings were better but not great -- six or so years old with 50,000 miles. We went up again, to $18,000, and could get something pretty nice, but then my dad pointed out for just a little bit more I could get what I wanted brand new. So a 2009 Nissan Frontier king cab four wheel drive is now sitting in the garage, thanks to an end of model year sale and factory incentives.

Although I bought it, it's going to be Laura's truck for a while, so she arrives from Atlanta next week to fetch it, leaving me with the old Altima. Truck out of the way, we are focusing on where to move to. After spending a year in some of the world's hottest places, and after spending a scant two weeks in Houston, I'm hoping we move to somewhere within commuting distance of the Arctic Circle. Laura is hoping for something close to an airport, so we might have to settle for Bozeman or Missoula.

And think, all we need to do is travel a little bit more to get there.

(Baton Rouge)

Round the World, Completed

2009-07-20T19:33:00.001-07:00

Our final few days in Malta were relaxing. We spent our mornings shopping and our afternoons at the beach. Shopping was for food, and as Malta is Europe, that meant that a shopping list eight items long meant a visit to eight different shops. The beaches were small and scenic and we got there by public bus; generally we found rocky coves with rocky shelves ending in deep blue sea, filled with mostly locals on an afternoon off or sometimes hordes of Italian teens there to learn English.

(Mdina, Malta)

On our last day we checked out of the Harbor View Hotel to move to the Asti Guesthouse. The Harbor View was spectacular; we had a balcony with a view of the busy seaport and the city's fortifications, which were floodlit at night. But the rooom was $65 a night. The Asti was just $50 a night, and the $15 saved meant a lot to us. But in return for our savings we got a view of an apartment, a stingy breakfast, a room hot like an oven, cold water in the shared showers and an ancient innkeeper who defined the word surly.

(Mosta)

How much we spent on things was a big deal on this trip. I kept a daily running of every dollar, omani and bhat we spent on this trip, and regularly totalled the spendings up into a running average. We kept the trip generally on budget. In all, we travelled for $43 per person per day, a figure which includes the short hop airfares we picked up along the way but not our round-the-world plane tickets we bought. I'm proud of the $43 figure -- we saw a lot on little money, and generally ate, travelled and slept in comfort, much more comfort than on our last trip. You find a lot of resistance in the world when you decide to do things independently and on a budget; keeping expenditures in reign was an often daunting task.

(Valletta, where business seemed to be on permanent siesta)

On Wednesday we checked out of the Asti, went to the beach one last time, then boarded a British Airways flight for London Gatwick. We arrived at Gatwick late and walked along a busy road to our hotel. In the morning we went back to Gatwick and after much debate, misunderstandings and confusion got a train to Victoria Station and then the tube to London Heathrow. I had hoped to see some of London but the time and expense in transferring between the two airports meant we only had time to grab a bagel before heading on to Heathrow. After trooping all across the Third World for 12 months, the First World proved to be surprisingly difficult, expensive and frustrating. British Air took us on a plane crowded with screaming babies to Atlanta, where we arrived Thursday night. We took MARTA to Decatur, where Laura's parents picked us up, and like that our trip around the world came to an end.

(Mdina)

We have now travelled around the world twice. Our world is an amazing place full of color and diversity and hardship and sadness. Sitting here in Laura's parent's house in Atlanta it's hard to believe that just a few days ago we were bumping along the north coast road in Malta headed to another beach. It's hard, too, to believe that at this very moment a packed louage is making the run between Sousse and Tunis, that ringtailed lemurs are jumping tree to tree in a national park in Madagascar's rainforest, that it is a steamy night in Vientiane with the sky lit by faroff lightning, that Tasmania, which we had seen in the height of summer, is now in the depth of winter, that a jet is circling Quito on the run in from Santiago. It's all out there, vivid as life.

(Floriana)

Having been around the world twice I've noticed that there are some areas of the world where improvement is needed. In fact, many of the problems in any one particular nation are also shared by most other countries. There's a lot of opportunity there for people who want to make a difference:

*Simple health: The leading causes of death in many of the world's nations are easily preventable illnesses, like diarrhea. Simple health education and practices -- things we take for granted but which elude many of the world's residents -- can go a long way toward making lives better.

*Water quality: Perhaps the most disheartening thing I have seen on this trip is the worldwide problem of polluted waterways. Almost without exception, when you see a body of fresh water almost anywhere in the world, it's bound to have trash, fuel or human waste in it. Mostly, pollution to fresh water appears to come from a lack of regular trash pickup and a lack of education.

*Trash collection: Most places in the world lack regular trash pickup. Trash is often burned, often left in city streets, and always present.

*City planning: In many places, particularly Asia and South America, large cities come close to approximating hell on earth. There are myriad reasons for this -- overcrowding, poor trash collection, loose or nonexistant regulation. Many of these problems, I believe could be solved by assistance in city planning and implementation of even basic smart growth principles.

*Driver education: It's common in the US to say that the drivers of a particular city are awful. But you haven't seen anything until you've witnessed driving in, say, Peru. A license in many places is granted to those who can pay for it, not those whom have passed any sort of proficiency test. This fact exacerbates the hard lives many people already lead, and causes untold suffering and grief.

*Global warming: It seems hard to believe there are still people out there who do not believe in global warming. We've seen it and seen its effects. It's changing landscapes, habitats and nations themselves.

(Mdina)

Our last day in Malta was a hot one. With an hour to kill before going to the airport we went to the city's south fort, which overlooks the harbor and catches a cool breeze. Sitting on a bench, I noticed the man next to me reading a Bible in Amharic, the ancient language of Ethiopia. I struck up a conversation with him. Renyu Sigiwi was in fact a former resident of Eritrea, and he willingly told me his story. Five years ago, with his wife pregnant and Eritrea slipping into chaos, Renyu snuck over the border to Sudan. In Kartoum he spent three months seeking a work visa for Italy. When that plan deadended he boarded a crowded LandCruiser which drove over the desert to Libya. He spent three weeks in Tripoli before boarding a 16-foot boat early one Saturday morning and heading north. On day two the boat ran out of food and water. On day three it ran out of fuel. Adrift in the Mediterranean, someone on the boat made a distress call to the Italian maritime authorities, seeking rescue for the boat's 28 occupants. But the call was dropped uncompleted -- the phone ran out of minutes. A few hours later the passengers were picked up by the Maltese coast guard -- help from a quarter they neither wanted no expected. Renyu was detained for 28 days while authorities determined his identity and immigrant status. He was eventually granted refugee status and given accommodations and a job as a welder. Four years later, he learned he has just been granted a permanent visa for the US as part of a program to ease the immigrant crush on small nations like Malta. He will go to Houston, where after some initial assistance he will be left to fend for his self. He told me he plans to bring his wife and daughter -- whom he has never seen -- to Houston once he is settled there. He added the newcomers wil stay in the US -- illegallly.

(View from the Harbor View Hotel)

With the sun lowering over the Valletta port, Renyu held up his Amharic Bible and told me its impact on his life. Your walk with God is like a vacation, he said. You never know where it will lead you, but you always have to be ready for where you go. So there you are. The world is crawling with travelers seeking a new experience or a new life. Maybe we'll always be traveling, even when we're not going anywhere. It's just that the scenery is different. It's weird being back in the US. Our first morning back I woke up early, still on Maltese time, and turned the TV on. Do you know what is on TV at 5 am? Infomercials for back pain solutions, weight loss exercises and personal injury lawyers. No, now we have found the truly exotic place in the world, I thought, the place where everything is strange and weird. Am I glad to be back? I don't know. But I can tell you it's definitely over.

The Packing List

2009-07-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked what we took on this trip.

The trip had three components: 'backpacking,' skiing and biking. Backpacking was what we did the whole trip: carrying things around in a backpack. We took additional gear for skiing -- namely, skis, boots, poles, gloves, ski pants, long underwear, etc. We posted all the ski-only gear home when we got back to Santiago. Biking entailed additgional gear as well -- gloves, tent, sleeping mats, bike shorts, stove, pot, plates, forks, knives, etc. We mailed a lot of that stuff home, sold it in Mebourne, or simply donated it.

Here is the list of items I carried basically for the duration of the trip. Laura carried a similar amount and type of gear minus the toiletries but plus a first-aid kit, her own and much larger camera, and laundry soap.

Our packs generally weighed 28 pounds.

Vortex backpack (veteran now of two trips, fairly falling apart)
Gregory pack cover (too thin, several tears)
Kathmandu day pack
Mountain Hardware ultralight jacket (also used as a ski jacket; too hot for wet tropical climates, not fully waterproof)
Mountain Hardware lightweight fleece
one pair North Face ultralight long pants
three pairs of shorts (key features: light fabric with lots of zipper pockets)
four t-shirts (two cotton, two wicking)
two short-sleeve button shirts
one long-sleeve t-shirt
two pairs boxer shorts
three underwear briefs
one pair long socks
one pair hiking socks
two pairs short socks
ball cap
Granite Gear stuff sack
Moonstone ultralight 35-degree sleeping bag (second RTW trip)
Smith sunglasses
Chums sunglass straps
Kathmandu microfiber towel (replaced old Sammy chamois midway through)
hankerchief

Keen sandals
Vasque Goretex hiking shoes

calculator
Sansa 4G MP3 (used 1 AAA battery)
Sony Cybershot digital camera (used 2 AA batteries)
Lowepro camera bag
digital camera card reader

pocket knife
diary
address book
small accounting book
graph booklet

REI money belt (unsatisfied with this; bought midway to repace old Eagle Creek belt)
passport
credit cards
ATM card
immunization card
cash US dollars
cash Euro
US dollar Visa traveler checques
traveler checque receipts
driver license

11 AA Energizer rechargeable batteries
10 AAA Energizer rechargeable batteries
Energizer battery recharger
international plug adaptor set

blank postcards
pocket watercolor set
black felt marker

12 zipper plastic bags
two zipper two-liter canvas bags
one zipper four-liter canvas bag

contacts
contact solution
contact case

duct tape
30 feet of line (for clothes drying)
packing tape

an average of 7 novels
one or more guidebooks

Nalgene bottle, one liter
Steripen UV water purifier (used 4 AA batteries; bought midway to replace ancient MSR filter)

Petzl headlamp (used 3 AAA batteries)

swim trunks
swim goggles

shampoo
conditioner
soap
soap case
deodorant
toothpaste
toothbrush
dental floss
razor
Q-tips

The Imagined World

2009-07-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

Our packs are now about 10 pounds heavier thanks to our little carpet buying spree last week in Kairoun. Laura, though, is happy to carry this new beast of burden. This means I'm carrying all the books, and this added weight has spurred me into a bookreading frenzy. I've downed four books in six days and honestly it's too fast of a pace as the likes of The Education of Little Tree is starting to run into Voltaire's Candide.

Laura in Mdina, Malta

We have been trying to pare down what we've got, make things stretch, or simply throw things out (like the disposible towel we were given in Taipei -- seemed that if we had not used it by now we were not going to use it). We are down to a handful of shampoo, one bar of soap, just enough floss and the final few pages in our diaries. And after a year of hard travel, what is left is in tatters. My pack has a broken back support, meaning it wobbles. My camera, now on its 11,000th image, is scratched and dented. My shirts have permanent and rather disgusting sweat stains.

Mdina

We spent two weeks in Tunisia and were totally ready to leave by the end of week one. The sights were OK, the hotels soso and the food pretty bad. But as is with many places it's the people who really make the difference and the people of Tunisia made things pretty unbearable. Tunisians have these intense personalities. They are quick tempered and seem to spend most of their time yelling at each other. These intense personalities mean that about 5 percent of the people we came in contact with are unbelievably friendly and kind; the remaining 95 percent of the people seemed to mostly be assholes. Never before have I traveled to a ruder, meaner place than Tunisia. It affected every part of our day, whether it was people cutting in front of us to get on the subway or a taxi driver ripping us off.

Sousse, Tunisia

Last week we decided to get even. I had given Laura a lot of slack when she bought her fake college ID for $6 back in Bangkok, but in Tunisia she put it to good use. Laura is, shall we say, a few years past college age, but no one at the historic sites and parks where she used her ID gave it second thought. We saved about $25 dollars. Take that, you swindling swine! (The pious would point out that all we are doing is robbing the government which is charged with protecting these ancient sites; not so: most park ticket sellers and takers run a variety of scams meant to enrich them and not the site, including bogus tickets and collection of unvalidated tickets which are then resold.)

Sousse, Tunisia, from the medina

The nicest spot we went to was El Jem, a small town out in the desert home to a staggering Roman coliseum. It's quite the sight, and we spent the afternoon there. The train back from El Jem was packed and I ended up standing next to a Brit -- one of the few independent tourists we've come across here -- who is retired and living in Phnomh Phen. He was back from Cambodia to go to a wedding but wound up booking the flight a month too early and so he had some time to kill. We commiserated about the state of manners in Tunisia and he mentioned that in two days he was heading from Tunis off to Lebanon. I was immediately struck dumb with jealousy. Lebanon! I want to go to Lebabon! I never get to go anywhere fun!

fort in Sousse, Tunisia

That's the sort of madness that travel induces. Only in the meanest rudest place I've ever been could I get jealous about going somewhere else. I want to keep traveling, but the fact is we have really run out of time, out of continent and nearly out of money. While we don't have cars or jobs or payments to make I am beginning to feel the burning desire to get on with something else. Laura is excited to find a town, find a home, find a job, make friends and be somewhere cool (as in, 'not sweaty'). I'm not really excited to do any of that (except the being somewhere cool part) but don't really know what else to do.

El Jem, Tunisia

On this trip we visited some two dozen countries on five continents, plus toured around the United States a bit, making it a full round the world trip. We've left plenty of the world still to see, though. Neither of us, for example, has been to Russia, central Asia or west Africa, and there are still innumerable island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific to visit, and even some European countries we managed to skip. One thing about the way we travel is we get relatively short takes on a large number of places. That means we know, for example, that we never want to go back to Tunisia, and also that we'd love to take our bikes to Taiwan and cycle around the island. We know we've probably seen well enough of Sri Lanka but that we could laze endlessly on Mauritius. And so on.

We spent five days in Malta, a tiny island nation in the middle of the Mediterranean. After the difficult months of travel in much of the world this is a real treat. Tap water you can drink! Friendly locals who speak English! Food that does not make us sick! Wow!

Two days from now we board a British Airways flight for London, where we spend the night, and then fly back to Atlanta the next afternoon. And so we have become part of this worldwide movement, a migration if you will, around the world. We are one of many on the move for a variety of reasons. "Na so dis world be," wrote Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

We were watching Al Jazeera the other morning and the broadcast was coming from Doha. Laura could not remember where Doha was so I brought out our Lonely Planet which has a small world map in the back and we picked out Qatar, Bahrain and UAE. Laura started to pack up our bag to head our for the day but I kept looking at the map. You know, the world is something like three-quarters ocean, and what a ripoff! I don't care for the ocean -- actually, I'm afraid of it -- but I do like the coast. All that ocean to me is a waste. Look at the Indian Ocean -- you could fit a goodsized continent in there, part in the Northern Hemisphere, part in the Southern, with mountains and African-like plains and tons of animals and strange cultures. It could be huge, and still you'd have millions of square miles of ocean left. And the Atlantic -- what if there was a continent in between Europe and North America? Part European, part American, damp and cold and windy. And a whole archipelago between South America and Africa, millions of tiny islands linked by sandy reefs and odd languages? And what about the Pacific? All that ocean and a few tiny islands. Just think -- why not massive glaciated islands off the Russian shore, flatter islands between Hawaii and Midway, something huge and magnificent with weird animals between Tahiti and Easter. I'd go to those places! I'd ride the buses, I'd fight the taxi drivers (for even on these new continents they will still be crooks), I'll hunt for hotels and decent restaurants and visit the parks and learn the languages and read books and stare at the sunset. Bring it on! I'll do it! I'll do it! I'll do it!

El Jem, Tunisia

The Things We've Bought

2009-07-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

It never ceases to amaze me that we can get on a plane and a few hours later step off not just in a new country but in a totally different environment. Last week we took a crazy series of flights to go from Antananarivo, the beleaguered capital of Madagascar, to Tunis, the bright faced capital of Tunisia.

Tunis

I'll be the first to admit this was a change we really really needed. Madagascar was nice, to be sure, but it was also pretty overwhelming. Tunisia is no walk in the park, but it's decidedly different and much easier to handle than Madagascar was.

Bulla Regia

It's hot here, and dry, and very sunny. The food is not so good and neither are the hotels but the ease of travel and just being makes life more enjoyable. They are used to tourists here -- though there are none at the moment -- and so you're more left alone. The culture is Arab and North African; it's man-based without being too manly, Muslim but relaxed, and African in its own way. It's also decidedly French, and I've bveen putting my French to work this past week as we make our way around the country.

We spent our first day in Tunis, mostly in the World Heritage listed medina, before taking a train west to Bulla Regia, where we toured the ruins of a Roman city built almost entirely below ground. From there we took a louage -- a sort of minibus shared taxi -- south through emerging desert to Sbeitla, where the locals spoke French with an Italian accent and where we visited the intact ruins of another Roman city. We then took a cramped louage east to Kairouan.

Bulla Regia

Kairouan is home to the Great Mosque, the holiest site in North Africa and the fourth holiest site in all of Islam. As with most Islamic centers, the Great Mosque is nothing much to look at though it is a peaceful spot.

The medina of Kairouan is also World Heritage listed and likely the nicest, though not the most interesting, medina we've been to -- the most interesting title, by way, would definitely go to Marrakech. It's got a fresh, clean feeling to it, and is genuinely friendly.

Sbeitla

Kairouan is also the home of the Tunisian carpet weaving industry, and a walk dozn the streets here is like a walk through a museum of fantastic hand woven carpets.

We came to Kairouan as much to buy a carpet as we did to see the mosque and the medina, though I do feel a bit guilty traveling to somewhere with the aim of shopping.

Kairouan

We have bought quite a few things on this trip, and since we have mailed all of the items home it's hard to recollect exactly what all we've got:

-big painting bought at the Sunday market in Buenos Aires
-hand painted pottery in Uruguay
-scarves in Bolivia
-wall hangings in Thailand, Laos, Philippines, Peru
-frankincense in Oman
-Iranian rug in Oman
-purse in Philippines
-jewelry in Malaysia, Thailand, Chile, Argentina and Indonesia
-essential oil perfume in Thailand
-rice baskets in Philippines
-woven bag in Madagascar
-handsewn hankerchief in Australia
-silk pillow cases in Thailand

Kairouan

There are few capitalist experiences in the world which match the process -- and I do mean process -- of buying rugs. If you are used to getting your rugs at a suburban shopping mall there is really no way to make a comparison.

Think of yourself, the shopper, as the girl, and the rug sellers as the boy. What you do is coyly walk down the middle of the rug street eyeing discreetly which shops have the carpets you might like to buy -- the carpets are not only inside the stores but hanging on rungs outside. You actually do have to walk in the middle of the street because if you are too close to the stores the rug sellers will actually physically grab you and pull you into the stores. As you walk down the street, trying not to make eye contact, rug sellers are going into a literal frenzy to try and get your attention, calling out in French, English, German and Italian for you to come inside out of the heat and just look -- always it's 'just look, my friend.' (Once a salesman said in a phrase we have always remembered 'Why you no love me no more? Today one said 'I love Kansas City.') As you choose your store and walk inside you can literally hear groans emitting from the other carpet salesmen.

Kairouan

Once inside legions of boys dozing in the heat just seconds earlier are barked into attention by the store manager. The boys unfurl carpet after carpet with flambouancy which itself is a part of the spectacle. Carpets are laid on top of each other. Merely shake your head at one and the manager snaps at a boy to get it quickly out of your sight. If you make it past the first few minutes and still seem interested the manager makes a call and the owner comes. Now we're getting somewhere.

With the owner in the store the boys assume a posture not unlike one you'd display before a commanding officer. Carpets are rolled up and scooted out of your way as fast as new ones are unrolled. Lights are dimmed and turned back on. Carpet jokes are made (the best is, turning the carpet over and saying 'you buy one side, you get the other for free). Not so funny jokes are made about buying five carpets and getting the sixth for half price.

Kairouan Great Mosque

Inevitably the pile is whittled down to three or four, the boys looking nervous, and the owner turns to you and says, Have you had our famous mint tea. Now is a critical time in the carpet buying escapade. While there is no promise to buy, the serving of the tea notches things up a bit. The owner snaps at the boy and says in English, 'Bring them tea -- and bring the good stuff this time.'

Never once has price been discussed during this entire ordeal, and it's a bit of a crapshoot. Nothing is marked, of course, so you have no idea if even a single small carpet is going to be affordable. That means you could have spent the preceeding hour wasting everyone's time. Nevertheless, because prices are so fluid, and the culture here so reserved, you simply can not come out and demand 'How much does the red one cost?

The owner brings out a big calculator and punches some numbers in, erases them and starts over, screams something in Arabic at the manager, and turns to you with a smile. Normally, he says, this carpet is 500 dirham, but because business is so slow I will give it to you for only 450 dirham.

The next half hour is a tense period of passing the calculator back and forth, plenty of 'Mon Dieus,' me saying in French, Do you think I am a cash vending machine? more cups of the famous mint tea, the boys folding the rugs up to show just how easily the carpets can fit into overhead luggage, and finally a handshake.

Deal over. Except for tipping the boys.

We got not one but two beautiful Tunisian rugs. The boys, in such a hurry to show how easily the rugs can be carted around, had wrapped them up even before the deal was finished. That means I can't post photos of them. But as proof of how nice they are, I can report that Laura is very, very happy.

Antananarivo, Mauritius, Dubai, Tripoli, Tunis

2009-06-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

Most of these pictures are from Madagascar.

We made it off Madagascar Saturday morning -- barely.

(Lemur at Anja)

We got to the airport at 5 for the 8 am flight. We had a coffee upstairs while the sun came up and we noticed all the Air Madagascar planes lined up and pointed nose first at the runway -- that arrangement made it easier to push start them, we joked.

(Tripoli airport)

It took over an hour to convince the airline to honor our etickets, and I was sure for a while we would be stranded.

(Anja lemur, with haute plateau in the background)

We had a short hop to Mauritius, where we now know our way around. We rode a public bus (nothing irks taxi drivers more than tourists on a bus at the airport) to Mahebourg, got croissants and paninis, and then took a second bus to the beautiful public beach at Blue Bay.

(Taking in scene at l'Isola)

We spent the day there, made use of the public showers, and rode back to the airport. The hours in the airport were enlivened by the fact that an Air India flight was leaving for Delhi. Let me just say: Indians getting on a plane = hours of endless entertainment (and abhorent body odor). Emirates lifted off at 11 pm and we crossed Seychelles and the equator before I drifted into a short nap.

(Canyon mouth at l'Isola)

(Dubai from the air with Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, on the right)

We arrived in Dubai just as the sun was rising and got hazy views of the city, its buildings and the constellations of artificial islands. We did not care to go outside and sample the brisk 87 degree 6am air.

(Chameleon eye watching me at l'Isola)

(Typical street scene in Antananarivo -- burning piles of trash with kids playing nearby)

From Dubai Emirates took us across Bahrain and the red sands of Saudi Arabia. We saw the Suez, southern Jordan and Israel, and the smog of Cairo.

(Laura with kids at Ilakaka, who look sullen because they are slowly coming to the realization that they will not be getting bonbons.)

We touched down in Tripoli just after noon to take on a soccer team headed to Tunis. Unfortunately they would not let us off the airplane but we did get a good sample from the window: endless drifts of windblown trash, olive trees and an unsettling number of junked airliners bulldozed into piles.

(bugs at l'Isola -- they become butterflies)

From Tripoli we flew over the Med and had a lovely twilight view of Tunis.

(Chameleon)

Tunis is very nice and atmospheric. We have just two weeks here before heading to Malta.

(Box canyon in l'Isola)

L'Amour En Les Temps de Madagascar

2009-06-20T04:43:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's easy to become enchanted with Madagascar.

The country is dotted with little villages which seem to have been airlifted, albeit with a few changes, from the European countryside. Restaurants serve steak au poivre vert (featuring fresh green peppercorns) for 4 dollars while roadside cafes have fresh baguettes and croissants as well as perfect little cups of cafe au lait.

The island of Madagascar was set adrift from mainland Africa 165 million years ago and since then its strange cargo of plants and animals have been evolving into weird and wonderful shapes ever since. The signature animal is the lemur, a sort of cross between a monkey and a rat which lives in families and holds hands and seems to hug its mates. The signature tree is the baobab, a startling monument to strangeness which seems to piece the sky. And much of the countryside is a jumble of granite domes and spires which have to be seen to be believed.

The gems of Madagascar are its national parks, and there are a lot of them filled to overflowing with forest and animals. We are here in late autumn; the weather is sublime. The people are proud of the country and its assets, and proud that you are there visiting. They are protective of tourists and rarely hassle you.

We arrived in Madagascar's strange French-influenced capital, Antananarivo, on an incredible sunny Saturday. We had great food, walked the cobbled streets, dozed about a bit, then got down to business.

Transport in Madagascar is fairly diabolical, so we did something we have never done before: we hired a guide and driver. Germain showed up at our hotel smartly dressed and with a smoke-belching LandCruiser. Between his English and my French we could sort of communicate. We toured south through Parc Nacional Ranomafina where we saw the elusive bamboo lemur. We visited Anja, a community preserve home to a remarkable nearly tame family of ringtail lemurs. We hiked through the immense open spaces and sunstarved slotcanyons of Parc Nacional Isola. We wandered through a loose forest of baobab trees tailed by curious village children who whispered 'bonbons, monsieur, s'il vous plait.' We ate steaks in small village restaurants and drank sumptuous cafe au lait with our petite dejeuner (ok, so the petite dejeuner, France's idea of the way to start the day; is really just a piece of stale bread and the aforementionned coffee). We had a very, very, very nice time.

For the most part, I mean.

Like many of the world's beautiful places, Madagascar is also heartbreaking and tragic. At times the country seems to be sagging under the weight of its own poverty, corruption and stupidity. After traveling the past 15 years to some 80 countries sometimes I have begun to think that nothing is shocking. In Madagascar, however, nearly everything is shocking. I could entertain (or sicken) you for hours with the most amawing and unlikely of stories. Here's one: we are in a bus where the gas tank has been removed and replaced with a bucket which sits next to the driver's foot; a hose snakes from the engine through a hole in the dash to the bucket, which is sloshing as we race around mountain curves. Not a big deal, except all four people in the front seat insist on smoking.

The tragedy of the country is its poverty, which is grinding, even when seen in the broader context of Africa. Such little stories like the smoking gas tank are a symbol of the country at large; the fact that such things exist in a country so beautiful seems to make it all the more appalling. What I have been trying to figure out is wether Madagascar is beatiful in spite of its poverty or perhaps because of it.

Like so many other countries we have visited on this trip, Madagascar has seen more than its share of political problems. Long suffereing from inept goverments, the country finally seemed to get a decent president a few years ago. Unfortunately, residents of the major metro areas did not see it that way and this spring took to the streets. The several-week-long war saw the ruling president flee and the upstart hopeful take power. The well publicized event featured rioting and civilian deaths. Predictably, the tourist economy, already weakened by a bad economy in Europe, burned to a crisp. I estimate that during our two weeks here tourist arrivals had slowed to a stunning two to three dozen a day ... and this during the height of the tourist season. In a country with poor education, no middle class and few opportunities for real advancement, association with the tourist trade is one of the few ways ordinary people in Madagascar can get ahead. Most of our time here, wether in hotels or parks or negotiating with guides, we have been the only tourists in sight.

Laura thinks the nexus of the country's problems is the lack of education among the vast majority of its residents. She's probably right, but I have to wonder how much the nation's colonial history has to do with it as well.

Madagascar was the domain of France from the mid 1800s to just before World War Two (in fact the country is still to a large degree trying to rid itself of its French heritage; the former president ordered that the new national language be English, not French). France has a long and storied history of colonialism in Africa, though excepting Madagascar all of its holdings were in West Africa. The history of colonialsim in Africa, and how colonialism ended, is complicated and open to multiple interpretations, but its fair to say that few former colonies in Africa have faired well. From my experience, those ruled by the English have fared better, especially if you look at examples like Kenya and Botswana. Those ruled by Portugal, meanwhile, have had the hardest go at things. None of them have fared as well as former colonies in places like Asia, where even the plight of a place like Laos looks enviable when put up against, say, Mocambique.

European countries seem, in my view, rather unwilling to make amends for the debts owed to their former charges, and debt is the only way to look at it. Countries like France and Belgium and England systemmatically raped Africa of its resources while installing puppet governments which were allowed to develop the largesse and corruption which rule today. One, I think, could forgiven for cynically supposing the French, seeing the number of espresso machines and the quality of the croissants here could sit back, smoke a Galouise, and say Mission Accomplished. It's by no means all France's problem, but their misdeeds on the continent seem to stand out the most illconceived.

(What the hell? Am I French bashing? What's next -- watching Fox News?)

OK, enough on France. Our last day in Isola I walked to the edge of town, trailed by the usual coterie of children, many of whom simpy wanted to touch my hair. The sky was wide and full of autumn. When the kids got bored and left me I could walk away into the countryside, the dry yellow grass whipping around my shins. We've spent most of the past halfyear in jungle and forest, where the horizon is just a few yards ahead. Here, I could see silent peaks 100 miles in the distance. Simply incredible, this place.

We head to Tunisia in 48 hours. Our trip is down to its final three weeks.

The Fifth Continent

2009-06-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

In the span of 48 hours Laura flew a full two-thirds of the way around the world -- from Atlanta to Tokyo to Bangkok to Dubai to Mauritius. She arrived in Bangkok after 1 a.m. local time -- I met her at our favorite hotel. We had a nice sleep, a good breakfast, and within 12 hours we were back at the airport.

On this trip I`ve flown in and out of Bangkok so many times it had become like a second home. This time, though, when I got our tickets and we got stamped out of Thailand, was the last of this trip. Thailand has been very good to us these past three months. I`ll miss the vibrant street scenes, the pleasant hotels and the killer food.

(Flic en Flac)

In the airport, waiting for our Emirates flight to Dubai, I glanced out the window. Sure looked like a big plane, I thought. It took me a moment to realize we were flying on an Airbus 380 -- the double decker plane. It was brand new and very nice. Best of all were the personal video screens and the ability to look at plane-mounted live cams positioned at the nose, the tail and the landing gear. Very cool.

We had a nice layover in Dubai; the airport, like the city, it really just a shopping mall. Who plonks down thousands of dollars on gold jewelry in airports, I wondered. Then a woman sat down next to us and opened her bag. Inside was a huge gold necklace. Well, there you go. Our flight to Mauritius left at 3 a.m. and we flew straight south, over Oman and into the Indian Ocean. We crossed the equator and at 9 a.m. descended into Mauritius.

(Flic en Flac)

Mauritius was not a destination we chose. We wanted to go from Bangkok to Madagascar, but our booking agent said we would connect through Mauritius and could have a layover there at little extra cost. After seeing what the price of accomodation was, always a factor in francophile nations, we decided we could afford to stay a week.

Mauritius was colonized by the English and the French. Socially, it`s a low key version of France. Ethnically it`s more like India. Economically it would rate as second world. Geographically it`s got a flat high central plain which slopes down to the coast, where jagged mountains meet the sea. Meterologically it was as close to perfect as you can get at 21 degrees south.

(Blue Bay from the air)

Mauritius is about the size of metropolitan Atlanta; there`s one city and a slew of dense villages and towns. We stumbled out of the airport to find crisp blue skies and a temperature in the 60s. We took a series of pokey busses across the island and to a beach town called Flic en Flac. I wandered down to the beach for sunset and bought a baguette but we fell asleep before dinner time.

There`s not a whole lot to Mauritius. Besides biking and swimming and chasing dolphins you can taste rum and then lay on the beach. All we did was sleep, eat and lay on the beach. The scenery was fantastic and the weather incredible, especially after the soggy warmth of southeast Asia. It`s a place we`d definitely go back to.

This morning we woke up to rain and chilly temperatures. We had cute little French pastries and took a local bus to the airport. Our Air Madagascar flight gave us a surprise -- a half hour in Le Reunion, an incredible island to the west of Mauritius and a departement of France. We landed in Madagascar at 2 p.m. local time. It`s Africa, but a part of France, too. For those of you keeping track at home, we are now on our fifth continent. We are down to the final month but are still trying to take advantage of every minute!

My Friend the Fundamentalist

2009-05-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

After several restful days in Bangkok (still alone -- Laura's back in Atlanta) I took a Thai Air flight to Dubai. When we touched down at 9:30 p.m. local time it was 100 degrees. My ATM card did not work and none of the exchange desks would take travlers checques. I went to the tourist desk and asked the scowling agent for the cheapest hotel he had. He had one all right -- US$70! Could I take a bus there? He laughed. "It's only a $10 taxi ride," he snarled at me.

Welcome to Dubai.

(Mattrah, Oman)

My main reason for coming to Dubai was to go to Oman. I have wanted to go to Oman since years ago I read an account of traveling there in that great American newspaper, the San Fransico Chronicle.

(Old Muscat)

My $70 hotel room in Dubai was pretty poor considering what you can get elsewhere in the world for half that, though it did come with a good breakfast -- pita, yoghurt, cucumbers and feta cheese. I spent the day in Dubai, which is a great place if you have a few hundred thousand dollars to blow. Otherwise it's a cultural wasteland dotted with fantastic highrises.

(Along the corniche in Mattrah)

I got the late afternoon bus for Muscat and crossed through a red and brown world of rock and sand and camels. Crossing into Oman the immigration officer waived my visa fee and as the sun set we cruised through small desert towns and into the sprawling suburbs of the Omani capital.

(Dhows in Aliya, Oman)

Muscat is a very nice city -- and much more interesting than Dubai, though it shares Dubai's handicap of a dearth of affordable accommodation (my $60 room was in a hotel which featured not one but two niteclubs with Egyptian and Indian dancers; pimps and drug dealers were a part of the lobby crowd). I spent two days in Muscat, drinking coffee and talking to the locals and walking along the spectacular corniche -- the seaside promenade -- at sunset. Like all Omani cities, Muscat is guarded by ancient forts, castles and watchtowers, which make for an intriguing background. It's also bestowed with a fantastic souq -- woodwork from Syria, rugs from Iran, coffee from Yemen, frankincense and sandalwood from the south of the country, antique swords and gold and silver jewelry from all over.

(Muscat's waterfront)

From Muscat I moved on to Sur, a small seaside city on the far northeast tip of Oman. I stayed in the souk (expensive hotel, but minus the dancers and drugs this time) and wandered narrow alleys of whitewashed buildings which dumped out on a wide sandy beach dotted with pickup soccer games.

(Overlooking Muscat from one of the city's many forts)

Oman is a country of great beauty, but it's likely the most frustrating I've been to. Most of the major attractions are not reachable by public transport, or if they are, they don't have affordable hotels. One way to visit them is to sign up for a tour and go as a day trip -- a great option if you don't mind plunking down $100 for 4 hours and a sack lunch. I did not feel comfortable spending that amount of money, and with few other options, I went old school -- I just hung out. I read a lot, I drank a lot of coffee, and I walked around aimlessly in the afternoons once the temperature dropped below about 105 (Oman, ever hot, was experiencing a heat wave e even the locals complained about -- morning lows were in the 90s and afternoon highs were more than 115.) I talked to a lot of locals and a lot of the people who work in Oman -- mostly Indians, who come over to work menial jobs at miserable pay in the blazing sun. For the most part, they are friendly and lonely but have appalling personal habits. Actually, meeting regular old Omanis was at times difficult. Most of the nation -- and the same went for United Arab Emirates -- is comprised of guest workers. They hail from all over the Middle East and Africa. The first thing you do when meeting someone is ask where they are from. I met Kenyans, Tanzanians, Afghans, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Indians and Bangladeshis, among others.

(The Arabian Gulf coast west of Muscat)

To every place I go I bring a set of stereotypes and expectations. In many ways these are useful tools, as a individual assessment of every culture you meet would be a mindboggling exercise. But I realize now that for me no culture has carried the sorts of beliefs and stereotypes than the Muslim Arab culture has.

(Sands in United Arab Emirates)

I met Salom and Omar -- both Omanis -- while walking through a park along the corniche in Muscat. They were crane operators on a dinner break from their jobs in the nearby port. Walking around alone you get constant invitations from men (and only men -- you hardly ever see children or women) to sit down and have a chat and a bite. They plied me with pitas spread with soft cheese, hot sauce and crushed potato chips. Salom did most of the talking. He asked about Thailand and America and Obama and if I had any interest in Islam. He made a number of offhand comments I was not sure what to make of. Most of them concerned women.

Salom's break was over. He and Omar had to go back to work. He said he wanted to give me something, and we made plans to meet back up at the same place the next night. Walking out of the park I got more invitations to sit down. One guy handed me an ice-cold Coke. Another wanted to add me as a friend on Facebook. I walked out to the beautiful seaside promenade known as the corniche and watched the sun set. The next evening when I came back Salom handed me a Borders bag. Inside were four books, in English, on Islam for new converts. They made for nice reads and got lots of friendly comments from the locals.

From Muscat I headed back to Dubai. There were no problems crossing out from Oman but I got stopped repeatedly entering UAE and got a full belongings search which held the bus up for about half an hour. I Dubai I went back to the tourist desk, this time one in town, and again asked for the cheapest room they had. $65!

Dubai is a sort of New York for the Middle East. It's a center of trade, finance, industry and politics. Dubai made its money on oil and the city grew exponentially beginning in the 1980s, though the growth seems to have accelerated in the past few years. Like anyone with lots of sudden money, you can do two things -- spend it like it'll be gone tomorrow or save it for a rainy day. Dubai has spent like no other city on Earth has ever spent -- smooth freeways, 160-story buildings, indoor ski resorts, sprawling artificial islands, expansive malls. Somehow along the way Dubai has convinced the world it's a great tourist destination. If you want to go somewhere, spend heaps of money shopping, dining and on hotels, and rent Ferraris for the afternoon, Dubai is perhaps the place to go. Beyond that, however, it's a pretty superficial place. It's top tourist spots can easily be seen in an afternoon. The heat is like opening an oven door. The traffic is legendary. It's got all the panache of a suburban American shopping mall. Top it off -- the locals are surly!

(Main Mosque in Der Dubai)

I spent another day in Dubai trying not to spend too much money before heading back to Bangkok. On June 5 we resume the round the world portion of our trip -- we fly back to Dubai and connect to Mauritius.

BOOKS

It's been a while since I updated this list. I long ago decided if I was going to waste my time reading I was only going to read good stuff. Most of these books are by Nobel winners. Not all, it turns out, are good, but all are important in that they represent the highest level of human art and cultural advancement.

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (very good)

Orhan Pamus, The White Castle (excellent)

William Golding, Fire Down Below (a disappointment)

Mervyn Brown, War in Shangri-La: A Memoir of Civil War in Laos

Albert Camus, The Plague (quite good)

Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born (a book of exceptional beauty)

Ernest Hemingway, Garden of Eden (great)

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (BORING!)

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Balzac, Eugenie Grandet (very nice book)

Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier (too hard to understand)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (very boring)

Emile Zola, The Beast in Man (quite good)

Monle Sayadaw, Formation of Five Aggregates, Four Noble Truths and Law of Dependent Origination (similar to many such Buddhist pamphlets I've read on the trip, this was so grounded in jargon and gobbledygook it was unintelligble. Such traits are common among Buddhist texts, I've found.)

Jim Harrison, Julip

V.S. Naipul, In a Free State (a great, beautiful book)

Heinrich Boll, The Lost Honour of Katharine Blum (deceptively complicated)

Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Manor (very nice)

BEER

Mandalay Beer, Myanma Breweries. Light tasting 7 percent beer brewed by the government

Sri Lanka Breweries Lion Ale -- soso

Gold Label Taiwan Beer -- chewey and skunky

Behind the Iron Palm Frond Curtain

2009-05-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

The night before we were to fly to Yangon, Laura got devastating news: her dad had cancer, and surgery was imminent; she might need to fly back to be with her family. After a consultation which went deep into the night, we decided it was best if she stayed in Bangkok while I went on to Myanmar. Nothing defines "dead end" like Yangon, and if she had to get out in a hurry it would be hard if not difficult. Bangkok, conversely, does not have those problems. So, nervous and somewhat scared, I went to Yangon alone.

Even before Laura got the bad news, I had been apprehensive about going to Myanmar. The country has been run by a military dictatorship for 24 years (it was hard line socialist for 20 years before that). It is not a place you associate with "human rights" and "fun under the sun." Reading about it beforehand, it reminded me too much of places I had been to in Africa, places where you could get in serious trouble by taking pictures of, say, a bridge or an airport. Plus, I had lied on my visa application -- they don't let in journalists, and while I am no longer a reporter they wanted a job history, and I fibbed all over. But I flipped through our guidebook one last time that night and decided I would go for it -- I was only going for a week, and there seemed so much to see. So I was up at 3 a.m. for the 4 a.m. airport shuttle. It rained hard that morning, and I had a long wait in the airport. The small Air Asia plane was only half full, and I I talked to an Argentine woman. It was a bright sunny morning in Yangon; I shared a taxi from the airport with two Americans. I went to a cheap hotel. I was in Myanmar.

A day in Yangon convinced me I did not want to roam far and wide in Myanmar. Conditions are primitive and transport verges on diabolical. I had originally thought of heading to Bagan, Inle Lake and Mandalay. I decided instead to do a tight circle around Yangon; go slow, go easy, enjoy things. I met a German girl and an Irish guy, and the next day headed to Kinpun. That afternoon we took a bus to Golden Rock, a place Buddha visited and where later a hermit donated three of Gotama's hairs; the rock, painted gold, seems to hang on the edge of the abyss. The summit was full of monks and hermits. They moved on the next day but I stayed and wandered around the tiny town.

Later I went to Bago, and was met at the bustling bus station by a boy on a bike, who drove me to a hotel and offered to be a guide the next day. Early the next morning he knocked on my door. Bago is a small city home to sacred temples, massive reclining Buddhas and a temple home to a gargantuan snake said to be the reincarnation of the temple monk's mother.

The next day it was back to Yangon, where I spent two days looking around the center of the city. By this time, as has happened to many other times on this trip, Myanmar was in the news (though not the domestic news, which is heavily censored, but from the number of police around you could figure out something was up): the nation's Nobel Prize winning democracy activist, already in jail in one form or another for two decades, had been arrested again. I kept a low profile.

In traveling to Myanmar I became one of just a relative handful of vacationers to go there. This backwards country is not on the tourist trail: it's hard to get permission to visit, it's hard to get to, and once you are there it's hard to do just about everything. The government is openly hostile towards its people. Many travelers are justifiably reticent to go there because as a traveler you inevitably wind up paying taxes and giving money in one form or the other to the government -- money which is then used to oppress its already rather helpless citizens. (I tried to minimize this by using private transport, eating in private restaurants and staying in private guest houses.)

So what is life in Myanmar like? It's presumptuous of a tourist who has been in the country for a week to make such an estimation, but I think it's safe neverless to say that life for the vast majority of Myanmar residents is pretty damn shitty. You could say the economy is in a freefall, but that would suggest it can still go somewhere down.

Most people eke out a desparate existence in any way they can. The sidewalks are full of people selling the random fragments of their lives: half used toiletries, dowries and family jewels, fruit culled from garden trees. Girls sell flower wreaths to the few passing motorists who drive rattletrap cars of no discernable make or model. Many live in once comfortable homes now rotting into the red earth. Most get around on foot or by bicycle. Cell phones are practically nonexistant, as are private phones and satellite TV.

Interesting for a dictatorship, however, is that the government really has little control over people's lives. In fact, the government simply seems oblivious. I think my most enduring aural memory of Yangon, a city of 5 million, will be the sound of twostroke engines. The capital has power for only 6 hours a night, and a few hours during the day.

Those who can get by with generators, which hum outside doorways and seem to add to the heat. The evening news is read by a stone cold sober woman standing in front of a picture of a power plant. After the news is a short video karaoke show: the current popular tune was a girl dancing in front of a hydroelectric plant. I'm sure the irony of it all is not lost on residents watching the news courtesy of a diesel generator. (After the news, BTW, is a game show called Puzzle Palace; occasionally the camera pans to show an auditorium devoid of spectators. And after Puzzle Palace is English soccer, relayed off India's Star Sports, played with the volume off so the Burmese announcers can give play by play.)

Such absurdities and injustices, however, don't outwardly affected the Burmese. They are quiet, look out for one another, and have the widest smiles in the world. They lead the purest, most innocent lives you can imagine. They listen to transistor radios. They touch each other tenderly when they are talking. They bemoan their plight only in private. Despite living in a rather filthy world they are always freshly dressed. Men and women alike wear long skirts called longyis, which are said to be good for dealing with the heat.

Almost all girls and women, and quite a few boys, wear mud on their faces. The mud acts as an allpurose sunscreen, makeup, perfume and moisturizer. On a handsome boy it is striking. On a pretty girl it is captivating, if not breathtaking.

Despite being shy, the Burmese love to talk to you. You can get a good sense for who you are talking to by how they refer to their country. If they say, How do you like Myanmar? you know you are dealing with someone who does not want to talk politics. If they say "Burma" -- the name the nation was called before the junta took over -- you are likely talking to a patriot. One such patriot was the owner of the hotel I stayed at in Yangon. He talked frankly about the country's troubles and his hopes for the future -- namely planned elections in 2010, which are scheduled to introduce democratic representation. He's planned ahead -- with his brother he has purchased 200 acres in Kinpun, and plans a sort of eco-resort. Such a purchase shows great hope in the future, as any land transaction involves hefty bribes and the knowledge the land can be repatriated at any moment. He is not alone in his hope for the future. Several others I talked to spoke of 2010 with hopes for change while keeping a realistic notion that change has been talked about now in Myanmar for a very long time.

(Of course, it's entirely possible that by the time change comes, Myanmar will no longer be the beautiful place it is today, a place where golden temples seem to light the sky and girls wear mud on their faces.)

Am I glad I went to Myanmar? Sure. I'm glad I have gone everywhere I have, if only for the knowledge that I don't want to go there again. There are plenty of places I never want to return to -- Peru, Bangladesh, Hungary. Those are places I either grew to loathe or whose benefits were far outweighed by their drawbacks. There are other countries I never want to return to, but for different reasons. One of those was Ethiopia, a country so exhausting and beguiling and beautiful it simply stunned the senses. I don't despise Myanmar because it's ugly. I despise it because I have no way of appreciating its beauty. "This is Burma," wrote Rudyard Kipling. "It is quite unlike anything you have experienced."

Laura stayed in Bangkok for three days before catching a flght via Tokyo for Atlanta. She got a roundtrip in hopes she can rejoin me on June 3. I head for Dubai and Oman on May 23 and return June 1. On June 5 we pick up again our round the world tickets, a complicated set of one way and round trip fares which are not changeable, not refundable and intricately linked. Now in Bangkok I'm airing my things out and restocking on provisions and trying to rest up for the next leg.

Lao PDR

2009-05-12T04:58:00.000-07:00

With a few days to kill last week we decided to heat up to Vientiane.

We spent several days in the Lao capital on our RTW in 2002 and loved it. On that trip we also went upcountry to Vang Vieng and the phenomenal Luang Prubang, but with the country's primitive roads and our limited time we decided just to hang out in Vientiane this time.

We caught a night bus from Bangkok which wound through the heartland of Thailand. It was a very uncomfortable 12 hour ride to a town just before the border, where we pulled into a nondescript lot in the predawn.

When the sun came up the bus took us to a sort of restaurant where we were handed immigration slips for the entry to Laos. We checked out of Thailand, no problem, and changed busses to cross the bridge and enter Laos (Laos drives on the right, Thailand on the left, hence the bus switch). At the Laos border post we had to apply for visas, and the line long, and to kill time I wandered over to the ATM machine.

I've marveled before on the incredible convenience of ATM machines worldwide. Card = cash. I stuck the card in this one and asked for 1 million kip (sounds incredible, I know, but it's actually a pedestrian $120). The machine crunched around for a while, seemed to hesitate, and then went blank.

And took my card with it.

A minute later the machine revved up, and a messaged flashed on the screen, in Lao, French and English: "Initiating startup procedure. Standby."

I guess I started to go into a sort of public panic, because a Lao porter wandered over and said something to the effect of "this machine, many card, bye bye."

But in true Lao fashion he whipped out his cell phone, dialed a number and handed the phone to me. It was the People's Development Bank 24 hour hotline. A man on the other end, in broken English, told me I could collect my card the next day at the downtown location.

Whew. And I actually got it back.

Forays into thirdworld banking systems aside, Vientiane is a nice place (but hot as hell). It's a national capital with a mere 230,000 people, decided lowrise, noticeably French, primitive yet sophisticated, and full of intrigue and great food. Russians, Cubans and Chinese mingle on the streets.

You can speak French as easily as English (in many ways, some 55 years after Bien Dien Phu and their ouster, the French seem to be gaining a cultural and political foothold here). And almost every restaurant features espresso, thincrust pizzas and steak au poirve for $6 in addition to a healthy wine cellar.

We saved $4 a night by staying in a hotel which once had been pretty spiffy but unfortunately had not been cleaned or renovated in the last few decades. We drank coffee. We ate pizza.

I had battered deep fried lemongrass -- a memorable meal. We visited the city's incredible wats with sacred Buddhas. We walked along the Mekong and took shelter during some unbelievable thunderstorms. We spent $30 a day!

Off to ... Oman?

2009-05-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

REASONS TO LIKE BANGKOK

Yes, Bangkok, the frenetic capital of Thailand, has a lot to offer. Sensuous temples, narrow alleys full of ancient shops, rivers that link the city like highways, smiles galore, and more.

We like the city, however, for other reasons. More than once while in some Indonesian or Sri Lankan backwater we wished hard for instant beaming to Bangkok, where you can get stuff that works, tastes good, and is fun.

Pirated CDs for $3? Hourlong foot massages for $6? Artists setting up on streetcorners when the sun sets? Bookshops with real books? It makes Bangkok a fun place to kill a few days in between flights. So here are some of those delicacies in photo ...

(Reason to like Bangkok #1: pretty boys, ah, I mean, pretty girls -- well, let's not think about it too much ...)

ON TO OMAN?

Like I said earlier, we built in about two months into this trip to stay in Bangkok ... not to see the sights but pick up some cheap airplane tickets. What I originally had in mind was much different than how it's working out. What I thought was we would buy one mammoth round-Asia package which would leave from Bangkok and go to -- get ready -- Colombo, Yangon, Shanghai, Taipei, Thimpu, HongKong, Beijing and Ulan Bataar before heading back to Bangkok.

When I really started to look into this package, however, a number of problems arose. Myanmar had implemented new visa procedures that made travel look iffy. China had increased its visa application fee to such a high figure ($230) that it totally put us off the idea of going there. Bhutan only allows tourist flights to originate from Bangkok -- and the roundtrip fare is close to $1,0000. And any flight to Mongolia was going to be hundreds and hundreds of dollars -- as much as $600 return from Seoul!

(Reason to like Bangkok #2: made to order diplomas and licenses -- about $8)

What we wound up doing -- which was probably a much better plan, anyway -- was picking up a series of roundtrip fares from BKK. We went to Colombo on Cathay Pacific and Taipei on KLM; next we are heading to Dubai on Thai and Yangon on good ol' Air Asia.

The flight to Dubai is not to take in the sights of United Arab Emirates but is instead to head into neighboring Oman. I looked for about a week for discount fares to Muscat from Bangkok but nothing rang in as affordable. I then broadened the matrix to have us landing in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and then bussing over the border, but even that was costly. Finally we went into a travel agent's office -- yes, we did it the old fashioned way -- and the agent immediately found a discount fare on Thai.

(Reason to like Bangkok #3: pleasant streetside cafes)

Why Oman? It's a place I've wanted to go ever since seeing photos of Muscat in a magazine article years back. But besides that, after months in south Asia we are both interested in a change of scenery. The Middle East is a place neither of us has really never been. Also, excepting for a few spots like Japan, Korea and China, we've run out of places to visit in south and east Asia and central Asia at this point is neither affordable nor safe.

(Reason to like Bangkok #4: cool t-shirts)

So how much is this all costing? Well, even cheap flights between farflung countries are pretty expensive, especially when our budget for Asia was to be $30 per person per day. Our flight to Colombo was about $250 round trip. Taipei was a tad more and Dubai came in at about $390 per person. Air Asia's flight to Yangon is a slim $55 per person round trip.

(Reason to like Bangkok #5: cocktail buckets for $7)

Flying incurs other costs, however, that we had not originally fitted into the budget. Getting to airports is expensive, often you have to pay a tax to board your flight and if you are stuck somewhere on a layover then you are looking at a pricey meal.

(Reason to like Bangkok #6: streetcorner artists)

I did the budgeting for this trip before we left. I did a fair bit of research into countries we would or might be going to -- both from guidebooks, our ealier travels and from posting questions on messageboards.

(Reason to like Bangkok #7: 24-hour juice stands)

My "budget" took into account everything we would spend in the course of a day's travel -- hotel, bus, food, deodorant -- but did not take into account the roundtheworld airfare, which we bought in two packages and go into a separate expense account along with insurance and pretrip expenses, like shoes and socks.

(Reason to like Bangkok #8: hour long foot massages for $7)

The RTW did not get figured in because it was impossible to figure out how much each leg cost, and the cost of continent hopping would have grotesquely skewed the daily cost of living. The daily budget did, however, need to include the smaller flights we have picked up along the way -- places like Borneo, Lombok, Philippines, Taiwan, etc. -- because I saw those as nonnecessary flights and, what's more, intercontinental rather than intracontinental. To wit: while in Asia we could have gone to Taiwan on a plane, or we could have taken a bus to Vietnam. Since a bus ride would have been figured into the daily budget, the flight should be to. (Incidentally, I used the same tactic on our last trip, when we picked up flights from Dhaka to Kathmandu, Kathmandu to Bangkok and Lhasa to Kathmandu along the way.)

(Reason to like Bangkok #9: Asia's best bookstores)

We did very well on our budget before coming to Asia, and actually the budget here did not come off the rails until just before flying to Philippines. In South America our budget was $45 per person per day and at the end of 120 days there we had spent about $44.50. In Australia the budget was $40 per person per day and we killed that by spending just $35 per person per day.

(Reason to like Bangkok #10: Cds and DVDs for $3 -- downloaded to your mp3 for a dollar more)

In Asia our budget was $30 per person per day and so far we are clocking an average of $36 per person per day -- pennies, when you realize what we are doing, but significant in that we've failed to achieve a goal and do not have infinite amounts of money. In retrospect, I realize we are taking more flights than I had originally planned on taking. Also, though I adjusted our 2002-2003 Asia budget for inflation and a currently weaker dollar, I did not take into account the fact that we would just plain old want a higher standard of living this time around than last.

(Reason to like Bangkok #11: chicken satay with peanut chili sauce for 30 cents)

The budget for the remainder of the trip should not suffer as much as the Asia budget has as we will be in fixed countries for relatively small periods of time -- either one or two weeks -- and will not (hopefully) be picking up any more flights.

(Reason to like Bangkok #12: really cool stuff -- these are fold-up lanterns)

We were successful this week in getting visas for Myanmar (suckas!) and fly there (they don't allow entry overland) on May 14. For now we are going to take it easy for a while. We head to Vientiane, Laos on a night bus tonight. Vientiane was a real favorite of our last trip and we hope to indulge in some relaxation and French-inspired Lao cooking for a short spell before we get moving again.

Pig Knuckle to the Exploding Onion

2009-04-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Walking down a cluttered street in Taipei yesterday, headed from the metro to the city's main Confucian temple, Laura said (quite sadly, I'll add), "I don't know if we will ever get to come here again."

(Coffee time in Taipei)

I answered that we probably would not -- actually, most of the places we go to we will probably never go back to again. Taiwan is, after all, an island, it is not particularly cheap or easy to get to, and we have already spent two weeks here. There's so much more to see out there ...

(Tao temple in Tainan)

But Taiwan really is a pretty nice place. It's very easy to get around, it's fun and relaxed, the standards are high and there's a lot to see. The major downside is the food. It was hard to really figure out what was going on, since the preparation and presentation of most dishes, even those bought from street vendors, is spectacular. But when you begin to taste stuff ... eeuuww!

(Taipei)

The food train came off the tracks one night when everything I was served came with what I think was sauteed brains on it. Poor Laura, who was just trying to get a cup of plain rice, earned the sympathy of the chef who thought rice alone was not enough -- her rice came, too, with brains. Besides the occasional brain, you also saw lots of whole fried fish (people: do not ever give me a fish to eat ever again), intestines, stomachs, kidneys, livers, tongues and miscellaneous internal (and perhaps external -- who knows?) organs.

(Inscription at main Confucian temple in Taipei.)

And then there were the classic Chinese-inspired faulty menu descriptions. One, literally, said "Pig knuckle to the exploding onion." So I totally gave up, and Laura mostly gave up, and had fast food for the second half of the trip -- either that, or 7-11, which is ubiquitous here and serves a variety of microwave or add-hot-water meals. Oh thank heaven for ...

(Sacred forest in Alishan)

On our second to last day we left the famous resort of Sun Moon Lake to head to Taipei. The bus from the lake let us off in the island's second largest city -- ah, what was the name of it? Anyway, it let us off at the city's high speed rail terminal. High speed rail? We looked at each other. Why not?

(Alishan)

Why not, indeed. After traveling on high speed rail it's hard to fathom why we don't have this in the US. Here's how it works. Walk in to the granite-and-stainless-steel terminal, buy a ticket from an automated touch-screen kiosk, wait until the train is called (or shop in the terminal) and hop on.

(Rainy afternoon at Sun Moon Lake)

Like all trains in Taiwan, the HSR leaves exactly on time, and arrives exactly on time. We had comfortable forward facing seats. The train left the station silently and began to accelerate. The speed was posted on an overhead screen, and within a few minutes we were rolling along at 290 kph -- that's nearly 180 miles per hour. The HSR travels on its own dedicated electric line. To attain high speeds the train needs a practically flat and straight track, which in hilly Taiwan means it is almost totally elevated above the ground (or in tunnels). We crossed 100 miles in about an hour, the pace slowed by four stops. In the southern section of the country, where there are fewer cities, the average speed is much higher. We bought tickets for an off-peak train, and paid about $14 each for the ride. That's about 50 percent more than what you pay for regular express trains.

(Sun Moon Lake)

It was easy to see how such a plan could revolutionize travel in the US, where HSR would seen to be even more feasible. With just a few stops, for example, you could easily travel, say, between Atlanta and Houston in 5 or 6 hours -- about as fast as you can drive to the airport, check in, wait around, fly, debark, gather your bags and wait for a ride to pick you up.

(High speed train)

We left Taiwan on a beautiful windy day -- one of the few clear days we had. We trekked around downtown and went to the city's amazing main Confucian temple. We took a bus to the airport and caught our KLM 747 back to Bangkok. We arrived in BKK close to midnight and took the bus into town. As befits a city which just spent heavy rotation on CNN, it's very quiet here. The bhat is down about 5 percent and hotels are offering nice discounts. The receptionist at Sawasdee House actually hugged Laura when we checked in. "You're back!" she exclaimed. It's hot, but it's good be "home."

(HSR clips)

The Little Country That Could ... Exist?

2009-04-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

We made it to Bangkok's airport after a scary drive through downtown. The flight to Taipei was with a KLM 747. Taipei was quiet, calm and cool.

Taiwan ceased to exist for many nations in the late 1970s when China instituted its "One China" view of the world, which meant Taiwan was not the Republic of China but part of the People's Republic of China. The US agreed with PRC, but said they'd defend ROC if PRC did anything funny. Most other nations followed suit. So today only about a dozen countries recognize Taiwan as an independent nation -- and it's a pretty motley group, unless you cound Mali and Nicaragua as major world players.

Taiwan was not fazed. They became one of the world's industrial giants. Only they don't technically exist in the eyes of many.

I don't know about One China, but here's what we have seen to exist.

Crowds flock to Koahsing's night market.

There, they can find intestines for sale.

And waving kittens.

The simple lines of a Tao temple in Tainan.

And prayers posted inside.

Tainan's main Confucian temple.

With its prayers.

And carved door.

The boat to Green Island -- hey, why is the water up there?

Your author, demonstrating what happens to people on the boat when the waves get big.

Green Island: cliffs and beaches.

and beaches and cliffs.

And then there's Taroko, with its marble gorges.

And smoked sausages for lunch.

Bangkok is Burning

2009-04-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

(Hotel rooftop, Bangkok, 5:30 p.m., April 13 2009)

Sri Lanka continued to mesmerize and repulse right up until the moment we left. Despite fatigue, we kept on plowing our way across the country, traveling from Galle, a World Heritage Site, south to Tangalle and then back north to Hikkaduwa before finally heading back to the airport.

(Girl on a bus)

In Galle Laura came down with an eye infection, and we figured we should get it checked out. It was the start of the Sri Lankan new year, and so all the private clinics were closed. Our hotel called a tuk tuk for us and the driver took us to the Galle General Hospital. I had a lot of flashbacks to Kenya and Tanzania in 1994 when I had to be hospitalized there for malaria. If you do come to Sri Lanka, try and not get sick. Let's just leave it at that. Even so, I was amazed to find her care was free, courtesy of the taxpayers of Sri Lanka. I tried to pay something, and there was not even a way to accept money.

(Gratuitious sunset shot, Hikkaduwa)

The journey to Tangalle was extraordinarily difficult and painful. Pollution, noise, heat, cramped spaces, body odor (Sri Lankans are likely the stinkiest people on earth -- sorry, guys!) and the usual assortment of people barfing on the bus.

I took an afternoon to myself to visit a set of mountain caves painted with frescoes begining in the second century BC. I was the only tourist there.

(Laura goes under the knife, Galle General Hospital -- OK, it was only eyedrops, they all thought it was very funny I was taking this picture)

That night we took a tuk tuk through a night fluid with humidity to the beach at Remake. Remake is one of the best sites in the world to view sea turtles laying eggs. A conservation project pays villagers to look after laid eggs instead of what they used to do, which was collect laid eggs and sell them for about 20 cents apiece. We were assigned a guide, a mostly naked drunk man, and sat in the rain on the beach for an hour. Suddenly his radio crackled -- a turtle had landed. We took off running down the beach and made it just in time to see a green turtle -- five feet long and 500 pounds -- waddling a wide trail toward the crashing waves. For a moment I looked into her eyes -- a timeless and unforgettable experience. Later we found the eggs -- 138 buried in a deep pit. We took turns pulling the eggs out and warpped some of them in Laura's handkerchief to transplant them to a section of beach where they could be looked after.

(Frescoes, 200 BC, Tangalle Sri Lanka)

From Tangalle we headed back to Hikkaduwa, a ramshackle beach town where we stayed in a swaying palm tree hut overlooking the beach and its 10-foot waves -- no joke! The next day we lollygagged, ate Sri Lankan pizza (not really pizza, in case you were wondering) and took a bus to Colombo and then to the airport.

(138 eggs)

Security at the airport was heavy due to Sri Lanka's ongoing conflict. When we got through to our gate I was surprised to see free Internet terminals all over, and so we checked our mail and learned about the trouble in Thailand.

(Laura catches up on some very important reading, Hikkaduwa)

Thailand has had political problems for years. In 2006 a coup replaced the prime minister with the current one. Last fall protests erupted against the government by supporters of the ousted PM, who has fled the country -- those were the riots that closed the airports for weeks. Two weeks ago tens of thousands of protestors converged on a central park -- all of them wearing red shirts. Two days ago, the red shirt protestors swarmed a summit at a nearby beach resort, forcing some delegates from Asian nations to fleet the convention center by running down a beach to waiting speedboats. Protests then spread to the capital, where the government declared a state of emergency and banned the gathering of more than five people at a time. Government forces, however, stood by while rioters attacked government vehicles and swarmed toward the capital.

We landed in Bangkok about 6 a.m. after the overnighter from Colombo. We found the famous Land of Smiles had been replaced by the Land of Surly People. Out of the airport, we found many bus routes had been cancelled; we had to take a taxi partway. Protesters had parked busses at key intersections leading to the state house, and there were fires burning at some intersections.

We checked into a hotel in the famous tourist ghetto of Khao San Road, and from the rooftop swimming pool could this afternoon see smoke from several fires and hear intermittent gun fire. We have a flight to Taipei tomorrow afternoon, and have learned now all bus services to the airport are suspended. We plan on taking a taxi early.

The violence in Bangkok is being played against the surreal backdrop of celebrations of the Thai new year. In our district, most streets are closed and are filled with throngs of locals and tourists who spray each other with ice cold water and smear clay on one another. The fact that many people use huge water guns to douse each other stands as a bizarre juxtaposition to the rioting taking place just blocks away.

Here's hoping for calm times in Taiwan!

Gross National Happiness

2009-04-08T04:33:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago we stayed at a hotel here in Sri Lanka that had satellite TV, and one of the stations available was Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Islamic news station which got Americans irate a few years ago by posting film of Bin Laden. I suspect most of those mad at Al Jazeera had never actually seen any of its news broadcasts, becuase when it comes to objective news content, there are few networks in the world which are finer.

(Where's Waldo? Who gives a shit! Where's the bus to Galle?)

Anyway, one afternoon Al Jazeera had a story on drought in America, and the story showed images of dry fields, towns with no fire protection and empty swimming pools. Then there was an interview with a woman standing in front of a very large home in Atlanta, and it was fun to hear a Southern accent after such a long time. Having lived in North Carolina for five years, we are well aware of the problems of the drought. This woman, however, was speaking emotionally about the hardships faced by some Atlantans who, due to the drought, had to live with brown lawns. Some had spent tens of thousands of dollars to drill private wells so watering the lawns and landscaping could continue unabated. Viewing this from Sri Lanka -- even from the comfort of our hotel -- made me wonder if the woman in Atlata had lost her mind.

(Anurahadpura)

The more I think about it, the more Sri Lanka resembles Ethiopia. Both countries harbor vivid remnants of ancient religions -- in Ethiopia it was the Coptic branch of early Christianity -- and harbor physical relics of that history. In both countries travel is fairly difficult and uncomfortbale. Both countries had the same ability to simultaneously enthrall and repulse. (Street scene in Sri Lanka: belching busses, endless horns, fish smells, sewage, unrelenting heat, people on either side of you trying to sell bottled water and lottery tickets, and a mass of school boys yelling simultaneously, "Hello sir! Hello madam!) Both countries, also, have had civil wars. When I was in Ethiopia, in 1997, the country had just ceded a strip of land that had become Eritrea. Ethiopians were saddened by this. The song you heard at the time in every restaurant and on every bus was this grating pop tune titled "Zero-zero," though it was pronounced "cero-cero." The song said, in essence, that if Ethiopia kept dividing itself to appease every group that came along then "soon we will all be zero-zero."

(Pilgrims in Anurahadpura)

Sri Lanka has had a much longer civil war to deal with -- a war some 30 years long. The central government has been battled a group called the Tamil Tigers, a Muslim group which wants to create an autonomous state in the northern part of the island. Earlier this year the Colombo government announced it was breaking a cease fire in order to achieve peace by either killing all the remaining Tigers or pummeling them until they surrender. So far, the central government is pretty far toward achieving its goal. The Tigers, who just a few years ago controlled the nothern end of the island, have been pushed on to a 10-mile long strip of west coast, where they have surrounded themselves with civilians. It's hard to get a very firm idea of exactly the situation here as the media is rampantly pro-government, but jubilant people on the street predict that within a few weeks the country could be at peace. Unfortunately, news that peace was about to break out have been tempered by the realization that years of war have left the country bankrupt.

(Anurahadpura)

Sri Lanka resembles Ethiopia in another way -- low per capita income. When I visited Ethiopia in 1997, it had the world's second lowest per capita income -- $60 per person per year. The lowest, incidentally, was a country I visited a few months later -- Mocambique, where the annual average was $50. While I'm no economist, I do believe that the math is fairly simple. For every person at the time in Ethiopia who earned $90 a year, there was one earning $30. For everyone earing $120, there was one earning nothing. For everyone earning $240 a year, there were two (or is it four -- OK, now I'm confused) earning nothing.

(Musicians under the bo tree in Anahadpura. This tree grew from a graft of the tree in India under which the Buddha found Enlightenment.)

Well, good times have ensued and the per capita income in Ethiopia in 2006 had shot up to $180. (Mocambique, incidentally, had grown to $340 while the world's lowest was Burundi, at $100, followed by Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Malawi, and then Ethiopia.

(Anurahadpura)

In Sri Lanka, in 2006, the per capita was a respectable yet still lowish $1,300 per person. That figure is low enough to classify the nation as low to middle income and while the figure means many Sri Lankans face grinding povery on a daily basis, recent growth (6 percent is forecast this year) means it is rising at faster than world standards.

(Ruins of the 11th Century mountaintop royal temple in Siguriya)

It's difficult if not impossible to quantify just what it means to live in a country with a low per capita income, however. A few years ago, however, the king of Bhutan had an idea. Bhutan has a fairly low income ($1,321) and the king got tired of seeing the country, which is sandwiched between China and India, referred to as poor. So he created an alternate index called -- I'm not making this up -- Gross National Happiness.

(11th Century frescoes in Siguriya)

Gross National Happiness is easier to say than it is define, but it was the king's attempt to integrate cultral values into living standards -- i.e., money isn't everything. Some economists took the notion seriously, with one suggesting happiness be measured through a recollection of recent memories. A more accepted definition processed seven criteria including economic wellness (things like debt and income), environmental wellness (pollution, traffic and noise), physical wellness (health and illness), workplace wellness (unemployment, job change, workplace complaints adn lawsuits), social wellness (crime, divorce, abuse), and political wellness (quality of democracy, freedoms and wars). Wait -- is that only six? Oh well ...

(Girls in Siguriya)

The resulting list, not surprisingly, showed Bhutan ranked 8th in the world in happiness. It also, not surprisingly, showed many "rich" nations were unhappy, and many "poor" nations had good things going on.

(Local tourists in Polunnawara focus on what is really exotic -- Laura)

I haven't been to Bhutan, but I have been to a lot if not most of the world's poor places, and my experiences are that many of the world's richest nations -- America included -- are places where people are also pretty unhappy. On our last RTW, in Calcutta, there was an unbelievable downpour one afternoon. Calcutta, as you can imagine, lacks a lot of things, like storm drains. The streets filled up so high with water that store keepers made dams to keep their shops dry, and the cars gradually all stalled. Then, when it became quiet (the power was cut), the rickshaw drivers came out, all of them filthy, barefoot and seemingly much too skinny to pull people around. All of them had the most magnificent smiles on -- the busses were stranded, the taxis grounded, and they would finally get their day. That's happiness. Yesterday, grinding through rushhour traffic in Colombo, we glimpsed an empty lot amidst the tumbledown apartment blocks. There were piles of trash (Colombo went something like three weeks without trash collection this month), there were stray dogs, there were abandoned cars, there were people bivouakced in allwys. And in the middle of it all there was a group of kids playing cricket with a stick and a plastic ball. That's happiness. The woman in Atlanta upset about her browning lawn? Is that happiness?

(Monitor lizard on 12th Century ruin in Polunnawara)

(Polunnawara -- Buddha's feet)

(Polunnawara)

The Consecration of Sri Lanka

2009-04-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

I have this fascination with international airports I can't really explain. Well, it's not the airports so much as the places planes are flying to. Bangkok's incredible new international airport is one of the best I've been to, the departure board reading like a map of another world: Male, Addis Ababa, Tashkent, Tehran.

Our flight was to an equally exotic location, Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. We got a fantastic last minute deal on Cathay Pacific, an airline based in Hong Kong. It was one of the nicest planes I've ever been on, and the service was great.

We landed in Colombo at 1 a.m. -- after adjusting our watches an unusual 90 minutes to meet the local time. Asians fly with an enormous amount of luggage, and we waited for nearly an hour to collect our bags in the small airport. Then it was a quick trip to the ATM -- it's unbelieveable you can go to almost any country on earth, stick a card in a machine, and get cash. My card, from a local bank in Texas, gives me fee-free withdrawals worldwide. We took a taxi out of the airport and into the sticky Sri Lankan night to a hotel in a nearby beach town. We were not asleep until nearly 3 a.m.

The Sri Lanka we saw when the sun came up was one both familiar and exotic. We took a tuktuk -- a sort of three wheeled contraption -- to the bus terminal and took a series of busses to get to Dambulla, which is not a very scenic town but is situation perfectly in the heart of Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle.

For about 2,500 years the history of Sri Lanka has to a large extent been the history of Buddhism. Buddha found enlightenment under a bo tree in India a few hundred years before Jesus was born, and within a few years he had travelled to Sri Lanka.

DAMBULLA

Dambulla is an unattractive and dusty town at the base of a granite mountain. The top of the mountain has a huge overhand which starting at about 300 AD was filled in to create five caves. The dim caves are adorned with Buddhas and elaborate ceiling frescoes. The heat was intense and we stayed just a couple of hours before retreating to our hotel -- a nice one, with TV, a/c and a swimming pool.

(Dambulla caves)

POLUNNAWARA

Polunnawara, two hours north and east of Dambulla, was the capital of Sri Lanka for about 1000 years. Today it's a vast ruined city. We hired a tuktuk to take us around to the sites -- our guide book suggested renting a bicycle but with the temperature at 100 degrees with near equal humidity such an exercise was out of the question. Even being ferried around in the three-wheeled open sided contraption known as a tuktuk only offered us brief respite.

We've broken down this week and bought bottled water. Our UV pen water filter, cantankerous though it may be, is good at killing germs but apparently not effective at killing worms, which we've found in our UV filtered water several times.

(Dambulla caves)

SIGIRIYA

When the capital of Sri Lanka was not at Polunnawara, it was here, where the king resided atop a sheersided mountain today filled with ruins and monkeys. Halfway up the mountain, in a cave, are the untouched paintings of topless Sri Lankan maidens dating to the 4th Century.

ANAHADPURA

Andhadpura is not really a tourist site, though it is another of Sri Lanka's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It was the home of an collection of extensive Buddhist monasteries.

The Buddha attained enlightenment under a bo tree, and soon after a cutting from that tree was taken to this spot and planted. Within a few years the original tree in India died, leaving this specimem. Today it's encircled with pilgrims praying beneath its huge canopy. Nearby are stark white dagobas, each said to house a relic of the Buddha. Just to the north is an enormous brick dagoba built on a footprint of the Buddha.

(Monkeys under a bo tree at Anahadpura)

KANDY

As the Buddha was being cremated someone ran into the pyre and grabbed one of his teeth. The tooth of the Buddha remained in India for years until it was threatened with destruction; it was then brought here, to Kandy, where it resides in a golden chamber sealed off. Hundreds of pilgrims pray in front of it daily, lay lotus flowers and light incense.

(12th Century floormat in Polunnawara)

Sri Lanka, perhaps more than any other country I've been to except Ethiopia, has the uncanny ability to awe you with its beauty and madden you with its idiosyncracies. Lankans are incredibly polite. I've never been called anything but sir, and Laura has never been called anything other than "the madam," even when being spoken to directly. At a dagoba in Anahadpura yesterday, a man had his children bow before us, he said, to show proper respect to visitors. Hotel workers bow and clasp their palms when addressing us. It's humbling and awesome. And yet, one very nice hotel we stayed at had bloody buggers smeared on the wall. You can't cross the road without risking your life. The food is "character building." The heat is insane. The beautiful stupas often have a pile of trash burning near their base.

We've got another week to go before we fly back to Bangkok.

Wat Pho

2009-03-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

You have to take your shoes off to enter Wat Pho.

The edge of the concrete, when your bare feet hit it, is hot from the sun, but stepping into the shade and the marble floor you feel coolness take over. The reclining Buddha, at more than 100 feet long, stretches toward brilliant sunlight at the other end of the building.

Mostly it's tourists here to walk through Wat Pho, but there are plenty of Thais, too, who place sticks of incense in pots and kneel in front of the statue and drop small coins in a line of buckets along the back wall. The sounds of coins dropping into the buckets is strangely beautiful.

Wat Pho is a small respite from Bangkok, a frenetic city of sound and light. It's hot here -- 99 yesterday -- so hot that we've both felt sick at times while walking. There's respite from the heat only in air conditioning -- the low at night barely dips below 80.

Bangkok is the first real place we've been to on this trip that we have visisted before. We spent a week here in 2002 and several more days in 2003. For travlers like us it's an indespensible pit stop where you can pick up visas and restock on supplies while enjoying 90 cent beers and 10 cent sticks of grilled chicken and $4 hour-long massages. Seriously.

We planned about four months in Southeast Asia on this trip -- two months to see places we had not seen, like Philippines and parts of Indonesia, and two months to see where we could go cheaply. Bangkok is likely one of the world's great centers for cheap airfare. Travel agents in and around the backpacker haunt of Banglamphu advertise dirt cheap fares to all corners of the globe. One I saw yesterday was a series of one-way flights from Bangkok to: two cities in India, one in Kyrgyz, one in Jordan, two in Africa and one in Europe -- for US$699!

We had big plans for cheap flights in these two months, but as with many things once you start to look at specifics your range of choices dwindles. A number of things are complicating onward travel to destinations we had in mind. For example, one-entry visas for Americans to China are now $200; consular officials for Myanmar, a military dictatorship, now require visa applicants to submit to an in-person interview and are explicitly denying entrance to journalists, even those on vacation (interesting to note as so many are predicting the end of newspapers that even the presence of a journalist in some countries, presumably because they report truth, sends some countries into titters); and while comparatively cheap, airfare to some destinations we had in mind, like Bhutan and Mongolia, is still prohibitively expensive.

We have picked up some deals, however. Tonight we leave on a Cathay Pacific flight to Sri Lanka, an island nation off the south coast of India once called Ceylon. We got a quote for the flight on Thursday for a Sunday flight and had to scramble to get a guidebook and figure out how long we want to spend there. Two weeks seems a compromise between seeing the island's incredible sights and putting up with its, ahem, "eccentricities." And for about the same price -- US$200 round trip -- we have tickets for Taipei, too. We still have four weeks in May we need to figure out what to do with -- despite the visa cost, we are still contemplating China. And maybe by then we will have dreamed up other places to go to.