One Ski to the Sky - Fallen on the Trail in Small Town Michigan

(Note: I guess my New Orleans writing really fizzled out, huh? Ah well, on to more fertile plains...)

The temperature hung just above freezing. The sun lit up the woods in a blessed winter scene, a still snow globe of trees and untouched white ground and silence. Little could disturb the Currier & Ives setting, a state park full of deer and American Beech trees and less so of intruding humans, of skiers like me. There was nothing that could disturb the cozy feeling of walking through, of skiing through a Robert Frost poem. Nothing that could ruin a first winter in three years, a first winter month spent in the solitude of a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan, one so pristine, so idyllic.

Nothing except me lying on my right side, left knee pulsing with pain, voice uncontrollably emitting curses. Nothing except my hubris and surety regarding the safety of cross country skiing and my growing skills on the long sticks. Nothing except the forever fear of the uninsured, the fear of a serious injury with nothing to pay for it. For a few seconds, a minute, it appeared that somehow this beauty would receive its first major blemish, one wholly my fault and, let's be fair, apparent only to me, beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

And even then, rendered horizontal from my point of view and somehow responsible for my woes, the picture remained pretty.

***

A Trail Sometimes Taken, Though Unclear If More or Less Often

When I tell people that I'm spending a month in Michigan cat-sitting my girlfriend Amy's cat while she is not here, people, after laughing at me for a few seconds and trying out their lamest jokes about cats, pussies, being whipped, and so on, ask me, "What the hell do you do there?"

Wait, let me rephrase. Were I to actually talk to people, I imagine that the conversation above is close to what we'd have. What with phone connections and bad internet and cold weather and snow and my anti-social inclinations and all, I don't talk to many people out here.

But if I were to answer that question, the what the hell do I do here, in Ludington, Michigan, a small town on the coast of Lake Michigan known for being a summer vacation spot and for having a ferry that runs over to Wisconsin (the venerable S.S. Badger, bringing you into Manitowoc, about an hour south of Green Bay! That's Baahadger, with the flat Midwestern "a". And no, it doesn't sail in winter), I would say: "Oh, you know, about the same thing I do anywhere - use the computer, cook myself food, read a lot, write a bit, look for work, work out every now and then, listen to music, play guitar, and so on." Such is the glory of the Internet age, after all. It doesn't matter where you live, because there you are, wired and well-connected! And I'm a pretty self-contained person besides, easily lured into the labyrinth of infinite information available online that makes me know way more about way too many things than I need to know about.

I might add, "The only difference between being here and anywhere else is that I here spend time feeding, petting, playing with, and catering to a fat pussy. A fat pussy cat." I tell lame jokes too, sometimes.

The pussy cat in question.

I could, however come up with a list of a few things I'm doing here that I don't normally do. For example:

- Cooking soups. Hearty hot winter soups. Like french onion soup, sweet potato soup, or borscht, the famed Eastern European beet soup.

- Eating those soups. And when I eat the borscht especially, I take off my shirt, so as to not stain my shirt, which would only lead to Amy buying more shirts, offending my anti-materialistic sensibilities. Beets, as I discover when cooking them, are very messy. They easily mess up the counter, the sink, the dishwasher, the floor, the wall, and, eventually, the toilet. The beet tinge washes out of all of those places, but who knows if it washes out of clothes. So shirtless borscht eating.

- Studying French. Though that has nothing to do with Michigan, really, unless I decide to dig up Pere Jacques Marquette's diary and study it for good tips on where the best hot springs and cherry trees are in Michigan. But still.

- Cross-country skiing. Which brings me to this story.

***

Cross-country skiing is a very low-key, quotidian sort of activity. Best done in a relatively flat area with short hills to climb and, one always hopes, slightly longer ones to ride down, XC skiing is a lower thrilled, higher energy workout than downhill skiing. I believe the better one gets at XC skiing, the more of a workout it probably is; my level involved a lot of huffing and puffing, but felt more like hiking than running, say.

Including these past two days of skiing, I have strapped skis on 3 times since I was 14. Up until the winter I turned 14, skiing was an annual activity, mostly of the downhill variety. Some of my earliest memories involve family vacations in the Catskill Mountains - for whatever reason, the steam room they had at the resort remains embedded in my mind as some holy room of warmth and comfort. I could downhill satisfactorily from the age of, say, 8 or so, and enjoyed trying to keep up with my younger brother who was inevitably a faster, more reckless, and better skier than I. Good thing he switched to snowboarding before too long.

When I was 14 and a freshman in high school, I went with my family on a ski trip to the North Conway area in New Hampshire. Between Attitash and Bear Mountain, I had some of the best, most challenging skiing of my young life. We also went cross-country skiing at some trails nearby, my first time on the flatter trails. I remember my mother being fond of it from her Moscow childhood, I remember it being hard, and I remember liking it. That could be a false memory, the last bit, but it stuck with me.

After that winter, I didn't ski again for 8 years. The intersection between skiing season and wrestling season prevented me from skiing for two reasons - more legitimately, that I had no time to go skiing; more spoken though less importantly, the risk of injury from skiing. Not that there's no risk of injury when skiing (I'm pretty sure the Michael Kennedy death happened around the time I was 13 or 14, as an exaggerated and morbid example), but I never really had any good chances to go skiing in the winter, so why bother with the threat? And, as I thought of it last week, cross-country skiing probably would have been a good way to cut weight and a low injury risk anyway. You can't get hurt if you're not going very fast or very much downhill, I figured.

This abstinence ended in a rather ironic way, then: my college coach Clar insisted the team go skiing on our trip to Reno my last season at Duke. My last being, as the final one, my most important season, and this trip marking my return to competition after my time in Russia. As Clar always says, good athletes don't get injured, so I guess I was to prove my athleticism.

Even then, ever cautious, I suggested that maybe I go XC skiing instead of downhill. This didn't fly with the relentless abandon we were supposed to display, and I headed out for the downhill slopes. After a bunny run or two, I realized the enormous intelligence of the body (and believe you me, my body is dumb as rocks as far as bodies go): my muscles remembered how to make it down a mountain upright, even if I had no idea what they were doing. Naturally, I quickly advanced from blue square intermediate hills to following a teammate, who had spent some time as a kid in the Swiss Alps, weaving down off-trail paths and past short trees, rocks, and other natural obstacles. I came out of this with a few falls, at least one instance of splitting a tree (i.e. straddling it with my skis; I'm not sure if there's a technical term for it, but splitting it makes sense - fortunately, the tree was not waist height, or rather, not slightly less than waist height), and a new appreciation for the process of finding a path, of going fast for two seconds downhill and then stopping to consider the next turn, and of earning a route. Blitzing downhill for a sustained time is fun once or twice, but the rush gets old; this sort of bit-by-bit downhill skiing really appealed to me. I hope to do it again.

In the meantime, there was at last the option of XC skiing again. Michigan, and the Midwest in general, is not known for its hills or mountains. Stranded here by the water in the middle of winter, with little to do and time on my hands as ever, I was free to try this old hobby out and see if it still suits.

After a day where I didn't leave the house or dress in anything sturdier than pajamas, I took the long walk of three blocks through Ludington's downtown and dropped in on the local sports equipment shop. I inquired as to whether one could rent cross country skis, and if so, how much it would cost. "You certainly can," the woman working there told me. The price was reasonable. I left the store and trudged another giant block to the local fresh foods store (this was the day I cooked my borscht).The next day, I saved my energy and drove to the ol' sports shop. The same woman helped me along in picking out my skis, my boots, and my poles (all for one low price), and within ten minutes I was back in my car and on my way out to the park.

Ludington State Park, home of sand dunes and ranked #1 state park in the Midwest, lies near the Lake Michigan shore, in between the great lake and a more local one, Lake Hamlin. Driving there, an 8-mile trip or so from the center of town, involves taking Lakeshore Drive, a.k.a. Michigan Route 116. The first half mile the driver can see the lake, then the shore juts out and the road runs over a bridge traversing Lincoln Lake, a lake now frozen; looking to the left, the driver will see a beautiful home perched upon a hill overlooking the bridge, and on the left just past that is a golf course, suggesting this is the more affluent part of town. Past the golf course, one takes a left as Rt. 116 splits off from Lakeshore Drive and goes more coastal again, and this is where things get interesting.

Lake Michigan's Wintry Shore.

On the right, dunes of eight to ten-feet height vary with a little outpost home and flat territory. On the left, an eight-foot tall or so sand dune covered with snow and patches of sand sticking out like missed shaving spots stands as the only barrier between the eye and the lake. Dunes of course undulate, and so the careful eye can spot Lake Michigan in all its glory. Its winter glory is an interesting brand, with a six to ten foot layer of ice stretching from the coast outwards; six to ten feet from the coast I mean, a width measurement, the length stretching as far as the coastline goes, and I can't tell you the depth. Then there's the steady water, clean and chilly even in summer's peak, when the savvier beachgoers get out of town and drive these extra ten minutes for relative seclusion compared to the downtown beach, surely hypothermia-inducing at the end of February. But the shoreline is beautiful, and one looks out due west to watch any number of technicolor sunsets, with a bluff sticking out to the south to add to the picture.

I visited Ludington State Park to ski four times in the past two weekends; rentals go for 24 hours at said local shop, convenient enough to ski immediately after taking the skis and immediately before returning them. My first trip involved a lot of blundering around to find the trail and, in the end, about an hour and a half of skiing. The next day I lasted about 3 hours, skiing on the trail, getting lost and losing track of the trail, and then finding it again at the mystical #6 checkpoint that I had sought so desperately while being lost. A week later, after a new, light snowfall, I went back out to the same trail, the LSP South Ski Trail, and blazed my own ski tracks on the trail, mostly without getting lost.

The accursed signpost #6.

By the end of three days, I learned not to follow cloven hoof footprints in lieu of the trail; not to expect deer to stand still long enough for me to reach into my backpack, pull out my camera, and take a picture of them; and not to discount the reliability of the following survival pack: the aforementioned camera, notebook, two stubby pencils, two Reese's peanut butter eggs, an apple, and a bottle of water - that can keep the energy going and the body safe and sound for a while. I fell every which way possible - dramatic one ski to the sky losses of balance, mundane stumbles forward while going uphill, self-induced crumples for safety when concerned about veering off trail on the occasional downhill, falls where my ski got caught in a low-hanging branch or stump, and laughable series of falls from getting up the wrong way after falling one of the other ways previously, climaxing in a four-falls-in-two-minutes stretch. I also witnessed a large family barbecue (i.e. 50-60 folks grilling in the snow on a Sunday afternoon); the utter silence of the woods on two of the days especially, with no sound except for broken branches creaking, wind blowing, and my clumsy tromping through the snow; that silence observed and disturbed by a woman who walked along the trail and talked to herself, saying, "You're a crazy woman, you're a real trailblazer," moments she lifted her head and noticed me approaching from the opposite direction - the red in her face, I imagine, was equal parts embarrassment and physical exertion in the cold; and, of course, the beauty of my surroundings when sprawled flat on my back after many of those falls.

A Split Stump Fall, the Aftermath Of.

My skiing had improved too, despite the falls. I progressed from arrhythmic strides, terrible downhill-to-straightaway transitions, and overall slow movement that was more akin to hiking with really long shoes (the ski coming off the ground much to often as I tromped through the snow) to occasionally on rhythm strides, the ability to maintain downhill momentum some of the time, and more frequent ski to ground coverage. In other words, a slight improvement; by my fourth day, I knew just enough to be dangerous to myself.

On a fine Sunday, cold enough to preserve the snow but with a surplus of sun and a surfeit of wind that makes for ideal winter sports conditions, I trekked out for the fourth day. I decided to seek out the North Ski Trails, employing the unfailing logic that if the trails I took the first three times were known as the LSP "South Ski Trails", there must be a North Ski Trails set (I learned this from Encyclopedia Brown books). After an initial trip along the roads, I found my hypothesis to be correct and landed upon those North Ski Trails.

The North trails were simpler, a little shorter, and less exciting to observe on a map. Where the South Ski Trails had three or four loops over 11 checkpoints, the North Ski Trails featured a straight shot from checkpoints 1-4, then a loop around a 5th checkpoint, #9; hiking trails intertwined with the ski trails, adding many checkpoints for paths not groomed for skiers.

Despite its limits, the trail offered plenty of its own beauty, with a wooded forest that felt both more dense and more open, somehow, maybe due to the presence of the sun falling on my head. In addition, my legs' energy and general enthusiasm both ebbed a bit; I had skied about three hours the day before and didn't feel much of a need to repeat that feat as I cruised along, again alone and surrounded by nature's low volume. The trail ran at least an hour and a half without interruptions, especially at my slower than usual pace. There was no need, I'm saying, for me to branch off trail.

And yet, there I broke off from #3 to try the Lighthouse trail, plenty long and most certainly a hikers' trail and not a skiers' one. I figured that out when the trail led me to the top of a dune, and then gave no indication where to go on the other side of the dune. Later, after backtracking, backtrack being one of the most defeatist verbs there is for the masculine mind, I saw on the map that I was indeed meant to continue across the dunes to get to the Lighthouse. I conceded that my backtracking was not only practical but the only realistic option.

I skied around the trail dutifully, musing about creating sports blogs and European rail systems. The trail was unspectacular only in comparison to the South Ski Trails - the North held even more of the understated, low-frill thrills that make up XC skiing; easy downhill glides, a laid out path to follow, and less than too difficult climbs, with the woods all around. All I seek, all I sought from my skiing is the space to think, to sink into a reality divorced from my computer and the technological needs of the modern world, to allow my body's natural desires for movement and exercise to express themselves, and I sought for all of this in a palatable, entertaining, and occasionally challenging setting. So far on that day, I had received all of this. I had had enough.

And yet again, when I got back to checkpoint #3, I decided to go a different way back to my car. I decided to take a hiking trail again, the "Coast Guard" trail, thinking it wouldn't be much longer, and would offer fresh territory. I noticed that somebody had skied there before me, as there were grooves to follow. I presumed that I would be fine.

The trail ran fairly narrow; wide enough for one person, but hardly a lot of room for error. Scattered trees lined the trail. I began going up, and anybody knows that what goes up must come down. I came to a bluff as it were, a peak in the trail before a short downhill, a little left-breaking curve of about twenty meters. Nothing special about this curve except perhaps the combination of the elements mentioned in this paragraph, combined with my dangerous knowledge and my wearied attention.

In any case, I started down the short slope, hesitated as I didn't have great control, feared hitting a tree, leaned to my right either to fall or to stabilize myself, fell, and left my left ski behind, catching either snow, ground, or a root and wrenching my knee and ankle. Which brought me to the cursing.

My first thought as the pain shot through my knee was that a ligament had gone. My second was that I needed to take off the skis and straighten my legs to assess. I poked the buttons on the skis off and began feeling around the damaged area. I found all three ligaments known to me to be in place. Relief washed over my uninsured joints. I had dodged a bullet, considering.

The next step was to get up, test the knee, and get moving. I stood and found that I could bear weight. My initial reaction turned out to be my most overdramatic response to pain since I thought I needed arthroscopic surgery on my knee in 5th grade when I woke up and couldn't bend it; I had been reading about Mary Lou Retton and her similar injury, which explains my fears over missing out the LA Olympics (the solution to this "injury" was to take a few pills and wait a few days; it's something of a mystery to me when I think about it). All in all, it looked like I would live without need of helicopter rescue.

After a more mundane fall, the only pain to the ego.

There was still the matter of finding my way back, and how to do it. On the one hand, walking was probably hardly easier on my knee than skiing, and slower for sure. On the other hand, another hesitant ride on a narrow turn might not be so good. The head said walk back to the previous trail and then ski on known paths. The ego said get back on the skis, tough it out, don't hesitate, and get home. Naturally, after walking through that first bit where I had fallen, it was on with the ego's decision.

I plunged forward, first on boots, then on skis slowly down a stupidly placed downhill trail (seriously nature, what gives?), and then trudging along through the hiking trail. The trail dragged on. I wondered why it was so much longer than it looked like on the map. I wondered whether eating an apple instead of candy helped or hurt my energy levels as the trail kept going. I wondered how I ended up in the campground cabin area and whether that man walking out of his truck was going to follow me and abduct me for reasons unknown and best not speculated about. At last, much to my wonder, I came back to the initial, roadside trail that would lead to my car, the trail where earlier I had seen someone riding on a sled pulled by three dogs. Ahh, Michigan. I limped on in.

So ends my overdrawn, not quite as dramatic as 127 Hours story about skiing. A week later, I still ice my knee and ankle and take aspirins and wait to see if the weather and my body will cooperate for me to go out on the trails for one more two-day stretch. I promise to myself that I'll stay on the trails. Or at least, I won't hesitate when I veer off.

At least, if I don't get any more skiing this winter, I hear Luxembourg has a few trails, so it won't have to be a 12-year wait till next time around.

Couple o' Cafe Reviews (and a bookstore to Boot)

Introduction: I'm not sure if I'm going to do this kind of thing a lot. I can't say I'm an aficionado of "travel writing" as a genre, but I know that the stuff published in most newspapers, namely stories about where the writer ate, stayed, and visited specifically, with recommendations for travelers who want to follow their footsteps exactly, is not very good, to put it lightly. Nor do I desire to be a restaurant reviewer, though I always have a soft spot for a good review. 

After eating at the two places to be covered yesterday, I got the idea of writing about them. I think I've rationalized it in this way: I would like to share experiences at specific places that I found to be positive. I thought it would be fun to write about this. But mostly, in figuring out why people are in New Orleans and what they do, and why I'm in New Orleans and what I do, and also what and how I write, I thought this might be part of that exploration, in a helpful way. And so, on come the reviews of New Orleans establishments, maybe for the only time, maybe as a series.

Of course, I'm not sure why I bothered to write this self-justifying introduction. Between the fact that this is my blog and I do what I want, and the fact that I have about, if I flatter myself, 4 readers, all of whom will be supportive, I don't think it really matters what I write about. A writer is a writer is a navel-gazing solipsist is a writer, I guess.

 Eco Cafe - 


On Monday morning I went for a walk eastward. I sought not the morning sun but a bicycle shop I deemed to be closest to my hotel; I needed a lock for my newly purchased used bike. I wanted to find a place to have breakfast, or at least to have tea and a pastry. I strolled through Mid-City thinking I would probably have to go past the bicycle shop and over towards Esplanade Avenue, which held, I had read, a few eating establishments. I crossed Canal Street, began walking past this main road, and then noticed the Eco Cafe.

If we continue the theme of first impressions that I so ponderously introduced in the previous post, we can explore why this cafe interested me, impressed me enough for me to stop in my tracks, retrace my steps, and tread curiously on the stone steps leading into the cafe. People, two men of a distinguished age if I recall, ate inside, which caught my attention - the place wasn't deserted. The place advertised that it served coffee, breakfast, and lunch. In the end, I helped myself to none of those things, but this still seemed significant. The pleasant red vinyled-building and the confusing existence of three sets of stairs that could serve as entrances to the cafe (I believe only two actually did) also attracted my attention. Ultimately, the fact that the place was on my way also played a major role.

In any case I entered. I met with a kindly New Orleans dame, also of distinguished age (both servers fit into this description, actually). I asked for tea, and then if they had any pastries: they didn't, only bagels. But there in front of my face, protected by a plastic cover, stood a most tantalizing piece of chocolate cake, the type of chocolate cake that is so luscious there's no place for asking about the price. I said I'd take that and she warned that if I didn't, she would, and we laughed as she offered to bring the tea and cake to my table. "I'm going to put the tea bag in the water first," she said, "I had an Englishman come in who showed me how to do it right." Reassured, I sat down by the window.

That's most of what there is to say about the Eco Cafe. Coffeehouse or cafe tea, 95% of the time, is straight from a bag and no better than what I can make at home when I don't have any infusers or tea pots, and worse than what I can make when I do have the tools. I fully acknowledge that when I order a tea in a cafe, I am spending $2 or whatever to enjoy the atmosphere and feel ok about it, like I'm not gypping anybody because I sit at their otherwise unoccupied table and read or write or judge others or what have you. The atmosphere at Eco Cafe was nice on a sunny MLK day morning, with sunlight streaming in through the windows, a sparse crowd, the kind servers, and unobtrusive music on the speakers (if any at all - I can't remember, proof of how unobtrusive it was). Eco Cafe filled the bill, in other words, despite being in a quiet area.

But what has to be covered is the chocolate cake.

How can one not cover this cake (with saliva, forks, hands, teeth, etc.)?

I didn't expect the actual cake part to crumble in my mouth as it did; I thought I was going to get moist, almost juicy cake. Instead it crumbled, broke apart in neat cubist fashion but hardly stale - if I counted up all the great-looking cakes I've eaten that have broken my heart due to staleness, unexpected nuts or fruits embedded inside, or the horrible realization that it was a German chocolate cake, it would easily outnumber the number of fair maidens' once innocent hearts that I've broken. Easily. Karma I guess. This cake did not break mine heart.

It wasn't a perfect cake, though it was better than the purported best chocolate cake in the world I sampled in NYC. As you might guess, if the cake didn't disappoint but wasn't perfect, that probably means it was a little too much of a good thing. The frosting and the inner chocolate (the chocolate that splits the cake, you know what I mean) was stickily rich, just a little too much so. I'm not complaining; I loved the cake and would return. When a piece leaves me weary and not sure if I want to finish or throw in the fork, it's not a comment on the cake's lack of quality. The quality was there, and then some.

Oh, and despite being too luscious-looking for me to ask about the price, it weighed in at a dainty $2.50. In these modern times, one cannot complain about that.

Corner Muse - 

Later on Monday, equipped with my new used bike and already moved into my room for the month, I cut through the Big Easy streets as if New Orleans was my oyster. A muddled metaphor, but in any case indicative of the surge in joy and freedom I feel when I'm on my own in a new city and blitzing through the streets on a bike, able to see the architecture and the people at a reasonable pace while still getting where I need to go when I need to (admittedly, I didn't really need to be anywhere at anytime), flouting the traffic rules with relentless abandon (something that used to drive me crazy as a car driver; in Israel I would justify it by saying I had little alternative, and everybody drives like that anyway, car bike or motorcycle; now, I just accept my role as rule-flouting traffic pest), able to get to all the parts of a bikable flat city like this one. Somebody told me Uptown was a good place to check out for young folks, which makes sense as it's near Tulane and a couple other universities besides. Magazine Street is the major shopping street in New Orleans from what I've read (though my investigation has found it to be more eclectic and bohemian than I thought, far closer to Durham's 9th street or Toronto's Kensington Market than LA's Rodeo Drive or Chicago's Michigan Avenue, and yes I'm showing off in ass-like fashion) and leads through the Garden District, home to many cool mansions, and Uptown, so I thought I'd take it. I didn't make it to Uptown until Tuesday, though, and finding the Corner Muse was a large reason for it.

Again, circumstance played a big part; the sun had already begun its westwards drift, I ready to eat had been on the lookout for a likely spot. While a part of me feels that it is better to explore as many options as possible in moments like this, another part of me senses that when a good option appears, one should take it. Corner Muse, with its purple and gold sign and its humble outdoor tables, appeared as that good option and I, a hungry young man of means as it were, took it.

The owner/server greeted me kindly and enthusiastically, breezing about the room as she waited on me and said hello to everybody in and near the coffee shop (I mentioned her in the previous post). I noticed at one point that a piano sat in the corner and that the cafe advertised live music; I naively thought to ask with my own amateur performance career in mind (I dance on my head while playing a bike horn in each foot, you gotta check it out) about the music. She gave me a genuine response, maybe knowingly, that served as the best possible response that didn't involve, "You play? We were just looking for someone for tomorrow night..." She told me that the music is geared towards kids who attend the school next door; Celtic music is on the bill in February, for example. I thought this was great. Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask, "So, do any of those kids like songs about minivans?"

The cafe was also sparsely populated and played pretty standard coffeehouse for the modern young person music; yes, that's right, they played Fleet Foxes, which I've definitely heard in cafes in at least two other cities, one in another country. The food they served was cheap and of high-quality: I ate a chicken salad sandwich that was actually a chicken curry salad sandwich, i.e. the chicken was curry sauced, which I found interesting and tasty if not extraordinary. Also, grapes on the sandwich, a nice touch. I also ordered an apple, a tea, and a very tasty cupcake that was essentially a Hostess chocolate cupcake, cream filling and all, if someone actually baked it. All this for just a shade over $11. Again, conceding that I paid a little bit for atmosphere and the right to sit somewhere besides in my room at my computer while I read and wrote, and that it's not quite nice enough to go lay in the park where it's free, it was a good deal. The Corner Muse is a new place, I think, but they're doing the job right.

Blue Cypress Books

My bike ride today took me to Uptown through the back way, the Northwest. It was again a high as a kite bike-riding day, at least until my bike chain snapped off (a story not for here, possibly for there). On my planned route, I stumbled on an interesting little street whose artisan signs drew my attention, drawing me away from my plan. The street was Oak street, a street home to a few cafes, the Maple Leaf Bar, and a bunch of other shops, apparently all local (i.e. not founded by carpetbagging Yankees, or at least newly carpetbagging Yankees, I infer). A nice community feel hung in the air over the street, even though it was mostly empty as it might well be on a January Tuesday about noon.

I detoured down the street, going until the signs stopped popping up, and then returning down the other side. Oak street is a little one, better compared to Durham's 9th Street in size and scope than Magazine Street, for example, so this detour didn't take me long. Didn't take me long, that is, until I decided that I just had to check out Blue Cypress Books.

It was just a used book store, not very big and not necessarily boasting anything unique except a few New Orleans themed shelves and a gray calico cat who, once she sniffed out my dropped backpack, was very upfront in getting to know me as well. Additionally, I am in a position where the last thing I need is more books; I brought 7-8 books with me, more than enough to make it through the month, and there are books at the house I'm staying in that I'll want to read if I get the chance. Buying books, no matter how cheap or interesting they are, is not what I need to be doing.

So consider it a mark of the quality of BCB's selection that I walked away with four books to stuff into my backpack, including one hardcover. My back and spine can justly complain to upper management about the wisdom of making them carry more weight for the rest of the day on my ride. I'm just afraid that upper management, while dutifully listening to their pleas, will do nothing about it, as they are the ones after all who benefit from the books.

Ok, that's enough for today. In case it hasn't come through yet, I am enjoying my time here. We'll see what's out there tomorrow.

New to N'awlins: Or a collection of Three Days

Let's face it: first impressions matter. You are familiar with this tired refrain, yes? Well, it's true; there is no doubt that a given first opinion about a given person, place, food, et al. is significant. Lasting even.

Prejudices also matter, for that matter. We'd all like to believe we live unprejudiced, open-minded lives (well, not all of us, but you know what I mean), but we definitely have pre-first impressions about certain things, ideas that form our perceptions, which make up for half of the fateful first impression.

We should not linger on first impressions overlong, of course. First impressions, like prejudices, usually fail to ascertain the essence of a given object, as do in many cases second, third, and nth impressions. Allowing a first impression to define a view about someone or something is lazy and lame. This is one of the more frustrating things, for example, about applying for jobs or schools or anything else, the sense that all the applicant has is a fleeting window to make a positive, though superficial first impression, an impression that is his/her only chance to win the position or at least earn a longer window for making a deeper impression. There's no way around this in situations like open application processes, of course, but in our personal experience we should make sure to consider the pernicious effects of lazily allowing our first thought to stand unedited.

And with that, I dismount from my high horse and present to you the prejudices and first impressions that have guided me in my first three days visiting/living in New Orleans. I'm here for a month (at least), which reminds me of my two month visit to Madrid and allows me to test my new hypothesis that the 1-2 month stay is the best way to visit and get to know a city if you are not prepared to move there or anything crazy like that. Cheap room off craigslist, cheap used bike (also off craigslist), and a heavy dosage of Google Maps and online investigation to set up my activities for the month: this is how we get along in 2011, it seems.

Anyway, I present first the prejudices I have compiled about the Big Easy derived from popular culture and friends' reports, and then my initial impressions, sure to be laughable to me by the end of my month here, from the long weekend. Onwards with shallow thinking, yah!

Prejudices:

Live and Let Die, my favorite James Bond movie, was largely set in a decaying, brass band at a funeral New Orleans, good ol' N'awlins and all that thing. The movie pit, as my high school friend aptly and bluntly put it, Bond against just about every African-American (as well as African-Caribbeans from Haiti and/or Cuba if I recall correctly) in the world, excepting the one or two characters on his side. Hmm. At least this may prepare me for considering the actual racial tensions that I suspect are present in the Crescent City.

There are some cultural touchstones that among well-read people spanning from my age to maybe 15 years older have gained so much currency as to be cliche. Neutral Milk Hotel, great as they are/were, are a good example of this (also not completely irrelevant - Jeff Mangum is from Ruston, Louisiana if I'm not mistaken - sure that's all the way across the state and no doubt a completely different setting, but still). If A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole isn't, it should be. And I think it is a book that stands as something of a badge of pride for New Orleans; I found a statue dedicated to his famous character Ignatius J. Reilly on Canal Street, one of the main boulevards in the city.

For all the significance of the book, I can't remember a ton from it that influenced my view of New Orleans; the Reilly character overshadows much of the rest of the book, and my copy of the novel is currently indisposed, preventing me from brushing up. I remember the crazy feeling of the novel, the crowds and the pushing and what not, I remember (or remembered after hearing my shuttle driver say his accent was either New Orleans or South jersey) the preponderance of Jersey emigres in New Orleans, and I remember, well, again, Ignatius J. Reilly. Humph. I read another book last year, Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume, that took place partly in NO and is quite a good book, but didn't tell much about New Orleans beyond the obvious.

Then there is of course that obvious: New Orleans as a birthplace of jazz, home to Satchmo Louis Armstrong, for example. The Creole and Cajun and French and Spanish roots of the place. Katrina and the flooding and the canals and the gulf spill and everything. Who Dat and Dem Saints winning last year's Super Bowl (I'm sure it would have been a crazy arrival if I entered New Orleans with the Saints still in the playoffs; I'm not sure whether their losing was a good thing or a bad one for my purposes). Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, and the French Quarter. Those are the pieces of information (represented here in trivial sentence fragment form) that helped me form my initial picture of New Orleans. A crazy, high energy, low prosperity, possibly disharmonious city that knows how to get down, more or less is the picture I formed.

First Impressions
Southern Hospitality - Most people I have come across have been pleasant. In every eating establishment except the most touristy (Cafe Du Monde on Decatur), the service has been kind and timely; at one place, one of the overseeing waitresses (managers?) kept making sure I was taken care of and calling me baby (she couldn't be much over 30); at another, the older staff joked and smiled with perfect kindness; at a third, the cafe owner occupied the energy center of her corner cafe, engaging with her few guests, waving and talking to any and all passers-by - all acquaintances of hers, and providing a good and cheap menu to boot. At one eatery, the hospitality was of the faux-hostile form, i.e. when I asked to get the order for here, the owner good-naturedly scolded me about how I was getting it to go because it was closing time and time for them to go home if not for me.

I also had an exchange with a bus driver that made me smile. The bus driver greeted me by saying something like "What's chirping with you, champ?" (I really didn't hear what he said, but I remember "ch" sounds). A woman stood next to him, so I thought maybe he was talking to her. Then I thought maybe he said it to me because she didn't respond. So I said, "What?"
"Hello, sir, how are you doing tonight?" he responded with exaggerated diction. I found this all charming.

Colors - I haven't wrapped my head around New Orleans's layout, housing design, or overall set up, but the architecture has general themes to them: there are columns and balconies or roof space on many of the buildings, which along with the frequent vacant lots lends an air of decadent decline (an impression definitely emerging from my prejudices, I should say). There are neighborhoods I'm not comfortable walking in after dark that look mildly dilapidated but also joyous and grinning in the daylight. And New Orleans seems like a place full of residents who exude pride in spite of it all.

Mostly, I would attribute that to the colors of the houses. Purple and gold are common colors (possibly official ones) down here, but houses also come in greens, pinks, yellows, blues, and reds. It makes me think that, if color is your thing, why would you ever to paint your house anything less than an exciting, bold color? Why miss the opportunity? Looking at some of these houses, I felt a sudden yen, I of all people who is the last in the world truly concerned about this sort of thing, I felt the desire to own a house, if just so I could paint it cool colors (I'd accept a brick house too, I guess, but cool colors are, well cool).

Why people come to New Orleans - I sense that, should I decide to do some serious exploring in New Orleans, and further to use this blog space as a platform to catalog said exploration, I will have to discuss the societal tensions that to me seem to be obvious in New Orleans. Again, first impressions are shit, so I'm sure I'll revise or deepen that observation if I choose to pursue it, but there are at least three different major populations that I've come across that could cause tension for one another, or that I've heard cause tensions for one another, or so on. 

There are people who live in New Orleans because that's where they're from and they have little choice or consideration for leaving. I will not get ahead of myself any further than to say that I suspect that this is largely a poorer community, and that the ethnic makeup is significantly more African-American than the other groups.

Then there are the people who have arrived in New Orleans in the past five+ years to help revitalize the city in Katrina's aftermath, among other things. This would be a more affluent, white, young community consisting of today's relatively hip and open-minded 20 and 30-somethings, or tomorrow's yuppies. We'd like to think this group is wholly noble and selfless, and will blend effortlessly into the community and buoy all its members. Of course, while most people in this group are good people doing good things, that doesn't mean that the previous statement isn't rubbish. Even if well-meaning, these types can easily create some dissonance when contrasted with the first group. It reminds me of classes last year where we talked about how UN Peacekeeping forces, even when meaning well and following the rules, completely disrupted the economic system in the areas they worked, because the money and needs they brought with them distorted typical market calculations. I wonder if similar things happen here.

Lastly, there are the tourists. Tourists are usually easily ignored, laughed at and brushed aside. Here, where it seems to be a big part of the city's identity, and where the reason tourists visit is so in-your-face - my brother described to me how some people call San Francisco "Neverland" due to the prevalence of 30 and 40-somethings who refuse to settle down and continue to live in the city and party and live the wild life (I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, really, if that's what they want to do, but I digress); New Orleans seems to be, along with Vegas and probably a couple other places, the tourist's Neverland, a place where they can come to forget all morals and values and just have a fun time, because that's what people do here - it is probably harder to deal with that. Add in the large numbers of the young people in group two who do everything they can to show they "fit in" and are true locals, and it makes sense that group two might despise group three.

Before I mock group three too much, however, I should pass on what a native (though someone who doesn't fit into my neat categorization: drat!) told me when apprised of my plan to leave New Orleans in mid-February: that it was strange I was leaving before Mardi Gras, and that whether one parties or not, Mardi Gras is a good time to see the city put on its best face. There's no need, then, to say that partying is inauthentic or as make believe as Peter Pan or something.

Anyway, I'm going to watch out for the tension, among other things. You know, when I'm not face down drunk at the feet of a lady of the night just off of Bourbon Street  So about once a week, in other words. That's the beauty of the 1-month stay, however; it's long enough to get over the first impressions but not so long as to make it feel too much like home or stale to me (not that it feeling like home would be bad, but I might not have the time).

I'll end this with a line from my friend JS, who told me much about New Orleans. Aware of my international leanings, he tried to convince me to move to New Orleans by saying it is like a completely different country. I plan to watch out for this too. As there are no Bank of America ATMs within 40 miles of the city, I am inclined to give this view a thorough consideration, at least.

2010 Travel Outtakes

Among the countless stories that happen in life, especially on the road, and the many times I have been on the "road" this year, there are a few stories that inevitably don't get quite told. I thought I'd take some of my free time to tell some of those stories. At least two of them.

Trabzon Terror and Turkey's North Coast

Turkey is an interesting place, and I'd love to spend more time there. Their political situation is interesting (even if not always the most encouraging), their culture a strange blend underneath a constructed form of nationalism, and the role Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey who forged the nation to his desired form in the interwar period) played fascinating, especially as the current government shifts away from certain aspects of Ataturk's Turkey. Yes, I like Turkey, and hope to go back someday and either live or visit thoroughly.

That said, looking back on it nine months later, I'm not sure what I was doing in Trabzon.

Trabzon is a city on the north coast of Turkey, along the Black Sea. It is the capital of the province of Trabzon. There is a football team in Trabzon, Trabzonspor, that is generally in the top 5 of the Turkish Super Lig table every year; this year, they currently lead the table at the halfway mark. By virtue of being so far east, Trabzon, a few hours away from the Georgia border, apparently boasts a Russian-speaking minority, one I didn't come into contact with in my very brief stay. Either my guidebook or something on the internet also suggested that Trabzon might be a port involved with either human trafficking or with former Soviet women coming over on their way west; they were, apparently, derisively termed "Natashas." I didn't come into contact with this either, exactly, but I hope you'll see that this isn't a completely gratuitous pair of sentences.

Those who have talked with me over the past year, especially anyone who studied with me in Israel, would have figured out why I was actually in Trabzon, i.e. what my reason for being there was: I was going to Georgia. It was the Passover spring break, and I wanted to visit Georgia for reasons of personal and academic interest. Professionally, I had led a Model United Nations trip to Ankara, receiving a free ticket to Turkey, as it were. I put the pieces together and decided that the best way to get from Ankara to Georgia would be via Trabzon. And though I originally conceived of a plan to go to Trabzon by bus, an overnight deal that could be nothing but miserable, I was convinced by my hosts at the MUN conference to fly there. For $45 (59 Turkish Lira), I had a one-way ticket to Trabzon, from where I would catch a bus to the Georgia border. So that's why I was in Trabzon.

I arrived on my plane and caught a bus to the center. Having been in Turkey by then for about five days, I had picked up maybe 10 words or phrases - I'm one of those jerks who loves to learn a few words and then flaunt it, as seen in my Rwanda posts. That said, I was out of my depth here - "hello" and "thank you" doesn't get you on a bus to the center easily. I found that bus and got off at more or less the right spot. "Goodbye" and "Ataturk" doesn't get you a place in a hotel. I walked around, generally heading downward, in this case north, towards the water. It was already dark, about 7:00 pm, and I was dragging around a backpack on wheels while wearing another backpack on my shoulders, and a bit of paranoia came upon me as I walked the streets. I tried to stay on well-lit streets, of which there were several, and away from alleys. Unfortunately, nice hotels are the only ones on well-lit streets, and cheap hotels are generally only in alleys in Trabzon, from what I could tell, and so after not managing to score a room at a nice place for cheap, I ducked in to a short alley and walked into the Otel Ufuk.

The Ol' Ufuk was as much a dive as could be. Two guys eventually came down to the reception desk on the second floor to greet me. After some linguistic confusion and some problems putting in my passport number correctly, they accepted my money and showed me to my room on the floor above. My bed was covered in dingy blue sheets and had a scratchy blanket that looked like it just came out of a cat's throat. The light bulb flickered above and the dresser creaked more than was worth thinking about or testing. Outside of my room, there was no toilet but just a hole to relieve oneself in. There was no shower, either, really; on the floor above mine out of the sink came a longer water tube, but I had to just stand there and wash while hoping the run-off would go down the drain appropriately. The only saving grace was a very nice painting of a soft maiden outside my room.

Now, if she was the one knocking on my door, maybe I would have been a tad more agreeable...

But whatever. I was only passing through, I'm cheap, I'm tough, I can deal with it. Not everywhere is a 1st world 5-star experience (actually, that's just what I had in Ankara for the first few nights - it's nice traveling on "business"). I put my stuff down, went out to an internet cafe and to buy some chocolate, walked along the streets as roars came from various houses with groups of people, mostly men, gathered around TVs - Trabzonspor was playing that night and would go on to a 1-0 defeat. I felt better. I had heard good things about Trabzon from my Ankara hosts, descriptions of the more colorful head coverings I would see on the women there, demands that I should go see the nearby Sumela Monastery, and so on. I was open to the experience.

Then I went to bed.

I went to sleep around 10pm, more or less. Though the mattress was hard and the blanket scratchy, I fell asleep after not too much time. I must have slept for about an hour or two without any real problems. This sleep may have lasted had I not been woken by noise coming from the "common room" a room or two down the hall. There, somebody had the TV on too loud and there was also conversation going on between two voices, one male and one female. The conversation was episodic, interjecting and overshadowing the steady buzz of TV sound at unpredictable but frequent intervals. This woke me up.

As long as I was awake, I figured I might get up and go pee. So I did. I put on my jeans and a shirt so that I wouldn't be inviting any unwanted attention. Alas.

Coming out of the bathroom, I encountered a short woman. She had her black hair pulled back tight in a pony tail. She was not slim, and not especially attractive, especially at that time of hour. She was of undetermined nationality, presumably a Turk at some point, and not Russian or former Soviet by any means.

Anyway, she said something to me. "Sorry, no Turkish," I said back in Turkish. She repeated herself and made the gesture of putting her hand over her fist. I made the gesture of shrugging my shoulders, hoping that my gesture was more universally understood than hers. She repeated the gesture and pointed at my fly, which I had left unzipped. I, still groggy and confused, continued to try to express that confusion. She repeated it one more time with a broad, salacious smile. Ahh. I was being propositioned. I said no thanks, waved my arms in a no gesture - hand going over hand, akin to a declining gesture, or how wrestlers defer choice in the second period - smiled, and went back to my room. Hey, I'm a white male who probably looks like he has money to spend on those things. It happens.

I returned to my bed, hoping to fall asleep. The TV seems louder, if anything, and the interlocutors outside are laughing more frequently, and it appeared my hopes would go as fulfilled as all my high school date requests (or college date requests). Which is to say, I wasn't falling asleep.

I can get riled up, for sure, and demand things every now and then. But for the most part, I try to be pretty easygoing and to avoid confrontation. It's not in my interest, as I see it. I try to train myself to deal with just about anything. So my natural inclination is to just suck it up and wait it out. And again, from the vantage point of nine months later, I think that still might have been the most reasonable response. I was on vacation, I had nothing important to do until I arrived in Tbilisi two days later, I had no absolute need of rest. I could have just turned on the light, pulled out War and Peace, and kept plugging away.

But, for the eternal desire to rest and turn off, I got up, put on my jeans and t-shirt again, and walked over to the TV room. There, I said please and made the universal gestures of "turn it down, mofo," (right thumb and index finger held a centimeter apart and twisting counter-clockwise as if a volume knob were between my fingers) and "I'm sleeping, come on now, this noise is too much," (pointing to my ears, tilting my head sideways to the right, placing my hands under my head as if for angelic sleep). The guy there, by the way, was one of the guys from reception. Not a great sign for the ol' Ufuk. That said, he seemed amenable.

And nothing changed. I continued to toss and turn, and to not sleep. I got out a little later to pee again and, in lieu of my other gestures, held my arms up and made a beleaguered face - yes, that's right, I pulled out the flying dolphin. My man showed a touch of sympathy and reassurance on his face, but otherwise, the results went unchanged. I stayed awake. And then came the insult atop my injured nighttime.

A banging came on my door. Fortunately, my door was locked, and so it could not be opened. Unfortunately, this did nothing about the banging, which continued. After the first couple of phrases, presumably in Turkish, my friendly Turkish woman of the night started a conversation with me in guttural Russian, which I will present to you in Russian, transliterated Russian, and then translated English:

Проститутка - Ты спишь? Ты спишь?
Уставший мужщина - Я сплю.
Несимпатичная Проститутка - Зачем?
Сердитий человек - Поздно!
Проститутка которая не знает когда перестать - Ставай, на хуй! Ставай на хуй!

Her - Tii spish? Tii spish?
Me - Ya splyu.
Her - Zachem?
Me - Pozdno!
Her - Stavai, na khui! Stavai, na khui!


Lady of ill-repute - Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Embattled gentleman - I'm sleeping.
Not so nice prostitute - What for?
Angry person - It's late!
Prostitute who doesn't know when to stop - Stand up, fucker! Stand up, fucker!*

*Loose translation, as she literally said "on a cock", which can be translated in a number of ways, many of them unknown to me. If I had to guess, she knew the phrase "idi na khui", which means "go on a cock", or "go fuck yourself."

All this happened while she continued banging (on the door, I mean). After a few more knocks, she gave up and went away. Sometime after this, I gave up and turned on the light to read. I kept reading until I heard the muezzin's morning call, and shortly after that heard them leave.

So while I don't know what I was doing in Trabzon, I can reassure you that it certainly wasn't her.

*** Postscript to Trabzon:

After blundering around that morning, I found my way to the bus station. At the time, I was still keeping open the option of visiting the Sumela Monastery. Instead, when I got to the station, I got sort of railroaded into getting on the bus to Batumi (or more accurately, Sarp, the border crossing town for Turkey-Georgia). I didn't get any clear indication of how long any of these trips would take. In all likelihood, I wouldn't have been able to go to Sumela and then make it to Batumi in time to catch the overnight train to Tbilisi that would have had me there in time for an appointment I had scheduled the next day. Still, I would have liked to have made a better informed choice.


The bus trip itself was beautiful and strange. We went right along the Black Sea, the road winding in between the coast and hills to our right, not more than 50 meters from either most of the time (That morning I had dipped my toes into the water, touching for the first and only time the sea my family used to vacation to back in the old country). That part of the Turkish coastline, at least, holds that quality we often call "rugged beauty" - rocky cliffs to our right, the flat sea to our left, and houses or port towns of varying size and stature on both sides. 

About midway through the journey, those continuing to Sarp were ushered off the bus. They then escorted us into a white van, cramming us in nice and tight. I sat next to a few jovial fellows in the back row, some with gold or missing teeth, all laughing and telling jokes eagerly that I couldn't understand but laughed along with as necessary. The van took something of a local route, taking stops to drop everyone in a preferred stop, leaving me in that location I continually find myself in, a state of confusion. At last they dropped us off at the border, the crossing its own state of chaos with line cuts, vague directions of where to go, and Georgian border officials who were very happy to see my American passport.


My Long Walk in Los Angeles

As you might have read, I took a long trip around the U.S. of A. a couple months ago. The trip concluded in California with a day and a half in San Diego, a day in LA, and a few days in San Francisco. I intended to write about all this on this blog, and didn't. At this point, I don't feel like digging up too much out of my memories and observations, as I don't think they were that unique, for the most part. I liked San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles were laid out weird and I didn't have enough time to grasp them, people are different, etc. Any East Coaster going out West can tell you these things. Instead, allow me a couple quick anecdotes I compiled and then a story about an LA feat that I think with reasonable confidence that only I am stupid enough to undertake. In many ways, this feat was a microcosm of my greater U.S. trip as a whole.

- First anecdote comes from my train ride from San Diego to Los Angeles. This was, as mentioned, my only intercity travel on something other than a bus. And without meaning to sound like one of those pompous, "trains are awesome and we should put them everywhere so as to be green and cool and European and keeping up with China" people, well, trains are awesome, and train travel is definitely the best way to travel. After all, I am one of those people.

So anyway, I get to the train station, show my necessary identification, get a ticket, and go down to the platform. As I stand there waiting, a woman starts talking. It's not clear if it's to me or to anybody else. She's talking about an issue she's having. At last she looks over to me, and I respond. We have a brief conversation. I found this indicative of California from my whopping 6 days there - people are very willing to share their conversations with you or to jump into your conversations. It comes from a collective personality trait somewhere between friendly and self-absorbed. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but it's different.

This train anecdote isn't about that. It's about being on the train, enjoying the view of seaside tombs and morning moons in a nearly empty coach (I guess San Diego to LA at 7:50 on a Sunday morning isn't a super busy time, huh). It's about our cheery conductor, who was all business whenever she walked into the cabin to check tickets or make sure things were in order, but was all chirpiness when on the mike announcing the stops. It's about what she said as we pulled into Anaheim:

"We are now arriving in Anaheim, for the Magic Kingdom, home of Disneyland, the Angels, and the Mighty Ducks. Welcome to Anaheim." Pause. "QUACK!"

- As for the other anecdote, it was upon arrival in LA's Union Station. I mentioned in the last post the roundabout and wasteful way I went about getting the necessary change to make a pay phone call. Once I had the $2.00 needed, I purchased a 3-minute phone call. I was calling a friend who had just moved out to LA from the East Coast. Our conversation:

Me: Hey, how's it going? Where do you want to meet?
She: Dan, good to hear from you! Hold on a second, I'm just checking something, I just want to check where I'll be.
Me: Ok, I should be in wherever in about 20 minutes, I just have to take the subway.
She: I don't know where to meet, hmm...
Me: (counting the seconds) I can go wherever, just tell me which stop to go to and I can get off there.
She: Well, we could meet somewhere on Hollywood, somewhere on Vermont, let me check on my computer.
Me: You have a car, right?
She: (humming as she searches, presumably) Huh? Yeah, I have my car.
Me: Then just meet me somewhere, it doesn't matter.
She: I don't know where, though, hold on.
Me: WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!

Eventually, we settled on Vermont/Sunset. Where, while waiting for her, I walked around with my leather jacket over my shoulder, stroking my beard, waiting to be discovered. Anyway, the anecdote was more about how environment affects us: the same girl who was a high-powered hipster living in Brooklyn and an popped-collar douchebag when I saw her in Nantucket this summer (kidding!) was little Miss Languid Los Angeles after her move out west. There's a reason the airport abbreviation is LAX, I guess.

On the phone with my agent. What can I say, it worked.

- Now, to the big story.

The thing about Southern California (again, speaking from a whole two days of experience), is that there are hills everywhere, the ocean is right there, but the cities are more sprawled out than a tired USC student after their post-finals drinking binge. There is a downtown area for both San Diego and Los Angeles, but I spent time in neither of them; there's no action in the downtown areas, and yet the other areas don't feel like cities anymore than, say, my Boston suburb hometown of Burlington does. So not very.

I've been spoiled, I concede. I've lived in Tel Aviv for a year, a city of near perfect size; walkable, bikeable, and easily navigable, but not so tiny to feel unimportant. I do most of my traveling in Europe, where walking, bike-riding, and metro systems are the best ways to get around and sufficient to see a city. In the states, I have spent most of my time in the cities of Boston and New York, again two cities that one can walk or ride the rails around in attractive fashion. I love to go walking when I visit cities; on this trip, I uncorked a couple good walks before getting to California, including a trek from Union Square area to MOMA and back, and one from Vanderbilt's campus down to the river in Nashville and back.

In LA, though, nobody walks. "You can't walk to get around," I heard. "It's just how it is," they said. "Go back to cowtown, man!" they told me. (Ok, no they didn't). As evidenced on the whole of this trip and in many other ways in life, there's nothing I like more than doing something (stupid) when I'm told I can't. Something like taking a long walk in LA, for example...

My Israel wrestling teammate (and former UNC Tar Heel) Dusty dropped me off at Hollywood, right near all the attractions, the famous theaters and what not, within eyesight of the Hollywood sign. It was about 4:00 pm. I had scheduled to meet with someone at 8:30 down at Union Station, where I had left my things. I had time. It was a nice day out. I was relatively unburdened, carrying only the clothes on my back, my camera, a slim book (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction), and a slim notebook. I couldn't do it. I started walking downtown.

I started about 6900 Hollywood Boulevard. I quickly figured out that LA was gridded, and that I probably had to get down to somewhere near zero. Union Station's address is 800. So 61 blocks. What's 61 blocks? I only had to go one way.

I walked down Hollywood Boulevard until the glitz disappeared and I was back in post-urban suburbia. So I walked over Sunset Boulevard, right through Little Armenia. The blocks were longer than I had expected, even knowing how long this would take, and so when I returned to the familiar Vermont/Sunset intersection, I figured I should throw in the towel. They were right, I thought. You really can't walk in LA.

I went into a tea shop on Vermont just off that intersection. I drank tea, ate a cookie, and read the LA Times. I recuperated and refocused. I watched as a light drizzle began outside. I considered. I returned outside. I went to the subway station and looked at the map. I noticed the Red Line went right under Sunset Boulevard. I noticed Sunset Boulevard led straight into downtown and Union Station. I thought about how many sentences i could write consecutively that began with "I". I looked at the stairway down to the subway station with dismissive disdain, put my hands in my pockets, and kept walking.

The drizzle came on and off, not quite enough to threaten my jacket. I walked as it grew towards dusk. I quickly got confused at the intersection of Sunset and Hollywood, and ended up wandering in a residential neighborhood up on some hills (right around Sunset Drive - see the second point in the map below), and had to ask my way back to Sunset Boulevard.


View Larger Map Of One Man's Ridiculous Journey

Los Angeles has many facets to its wider reputation, the one that reaches a naive young man from the Boston 'burbs. I had already checked that my route wasn't going through any neighborhoods like "the Wood", Compton, Long Beach, or Snoop Dogg's house. Nevertheless, a new sense of paranoia crept into my mind as the dusk slid over me. I figured out a way to walk with my hands in my pocket and through my pocket holding my camera, so that no one could readily see that I was carrying a camera. I got concerned about my 500 shekel jacket. I kept my head up and my path in the light as much as possible, my pace brisk. I began muttering to myself about my stupidity.

Wouldn't this make you paranoid?

At the same time, I realized that I was walking through a lot of famous neighborhoods. Echo Park came and went like an Elliot Smith warble; Silver Lake showed up, the hip neighborhood that I had visited earlier that day with a friend to check out an apartment; Angelino Heights struck me as significant even as I cursed its poorly lit sidewalks; though I never saw Dodger Stadium, I knew that the signs pointing me to it meant I was reasonably close. There was something cool about all of this, even amidst my paranoia.

My first encounter came a little before Echo Park, as I ran into a group of dirty looking kids my age or a little younger walking a dog. They asked me for change to buy some dog food. I asked them if they could tell me how far away downtown was. They couldn't. I think I gave 'em a quarter.

Then I walked past a short, wide lady in her 40s or 50s. She had frizzy light brown hair, and freaked out a little when I walked by her. Understandable: she might have felt the same LA paranoia that I did, especially walking in the dark. But then she said something about a black beard. I stopped to scratch my beard.

"A very black beard, like the ultra orthodox."
"That's what I look like," I said. She kept rambling about the ultra Orthodox.
"I don't have a hat," I said with a smile.
"See this coat?" she said, showing me the white coat over her bag. "This coat and bag, I got it for $3.50, that's a very good price. The Jews like money, so if I got it from them, that's a good deal, I did good," and she kept ranting. I walked away, confused.

The Hollywood Sign is in there, somewhere.

Not long after that, wondering when if ever I would arrive downtown (I stopped in CVS, 7/11, and a gas station in hopes of finding a map to get a sense of how long it would be, I asked for directions at a Burger King and was just pointed to keep going), I popped into a record store. I had already visited the gigantic and famous Amoeba Music on this walk, shortly after I left Hollywood Boulevard, hours ago as it was. This time, I noticed there was a gig going on. I got to hear a couple songs from the electro-funk stylings of Globes On Remote (I can't say I dug it all that much, but it was still cool).

Digging the show (just not so much).

I continued along the road as it turned into Cesar E Chavez Avenue over the 110. I knew by this point that I was close. A little ease seeped into my soul. I spotted a touristy spot and decided to detour through it for a few minutes. I had stumbled on the famed Olvera Street, a little pedestrian alley of shops and food stands, mostly Mexican in nature. I can't say I saw too much of it, but I did notice it was going to get closed down sometime soon.

This Chinatown dragon was also a sign I was almost there.

That was basically the end of my journey, except for the laughter when I told my friends at dinner that night. As much fun as it is to do stupid things people say I can't do, the best part is when I tell them about it afterward. Even if they're laughing at me, it's a good time.

And by the way, you really can't walk in LA. I think my story is mere proof of that.

The Long, Hard, and Stupid of It

A1: I'm a stubborn person.

Sure, I can be easy going. I don't seek conflict. I find it easier to agree with someone on topics that are not near and dear to my heart, or even topics that are, than to argue with them in situations where there's nothing to gain by arguing. I consider myself, all in all, kind of a softie. And a nice guy too, I hope.

That said, when somebody tells me I can't do something I don't want to do, or when someone tells me I'm an idiot for trying a certain path rather than another, easier path, or when I set my mind on a cool plan that is less than practical, well, it'll take a hell of a lot of persuasion, browbeating, and good logic to dissuade me from sticking to my plan. Actually, it will take clever, quiet diplomacy; the browbeating is only going to make me all the more likely to keep to my foolishness.

Qs: Dan, why did you decide to take the bus across the United States instead of flying? Why did you do this without a phone? Why do you make things so difficult? Why do we grow old? What's it all for?

Other possible answers:

A2: I was struck with a two week fear of cell phone signals and flying.

A3: My time in Rwanda inspired me to do more with less - this is also the reason I ate nothing but rice, beans, and potatoes (occasionally garnished with rabbit) on the trip and why I slept four to a room every night, which boy let me tell you created some weird situations.

A4: I did not have a bicycle, nor a unicycle suitable to such a journey.

A5: I thought it would be a good way to get a quick catch-up course on the country, the most practical way to visit the people I wanted to visit scattered across this great land, and an interesting story full of peculiar anachronistic circumstances that might say something about where I am in the 21st century, if not anybody else on a broader scale.

A6:


(As always, take Answer 6)

Whatever the case may be, I took the second half of October and traveled across the U.S.A., following the following likely route: Burlington MA-Boston MA-New York City-Washington D.C.-Durham N.C.- Nashville-San Diego-Los Angeles-San Francisco. The longest stop was a four day conclusion in San Francisco. I was blessed enough to have people to visit in all those cities (well, I guess I wouldn't have stopped by Nashville if I didn't), seeing 16 people in all from various phases of my life, not including assorted spouses, partners, friends, roommates and hangers on who welcomed me just as well as the people I visited. I traveled on this route without a phone (but with a Skype-equipped laptop), on a bus (except for a morning cruise up the California coast from San Diego to Los Angeles), and with no urgent priorities in my life except to get to the next place and to let the people who care know that I was still crazy.

As I hope you can imagine, there were interesting things that happened to me, and interesting things I noticed about our country and various people contained therein on the trip. I would like to share these things. Without further ado and no specific order, some of the notable occurrences:

- Arriving in downtown Washington, DC on a Saturday night in the middle of October is a cold experience, a collection of wide, empty streets deserted for the weekend, a surprising jolt after the bustle of New York. An ill omen perhaps for a city I may someday soon work in.

 Cold D.C. Street.

- In Nashville, on Broadway downtown, on a warm Wednesday afternoon around 3, you can find almost every single bar, country-themed of course, hosting a musician hopeful of finding a career in music city, strumming out a tune on their acoustic guitar; some of the musicians had somebody else to accompany them, some of the musicians had nice voices: none of the musicians had an audience of more than three or four people, including the bartender. There was something about this that was both depressing and life-affirming.

 - The Colorado River is dry at the border of Arizona and California. I believe I read about this before. I don't know that it's a good thing.

- Also in Arizona-related observations: in that fine state there exists a town called Gila Bend.

- One way to stand out as a weirdo in New York, no small feat, is to walk around the city with your towel wrapped around the handle of your suitcase. Even if this is a perfectly reasonable way to air out and dry your towel before putting it in your suitcase without it stinking up your suitcase, people will look at you strangely. Or at least, your NYC implanted cousin will.

- The bus system in Winston-Salem, NC carries ads for Rush Radio 94.5, featuring Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.

- The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has free entrance on Fridays, sponsored by Target. The line stretched down 53rd, up 6th, and back up 54th. A bakery gave out free food, their girls dressed in a zebra-striped outfit with orphan Annie red hair. Also, Max Beckmann's Family Picture was the only painting name I wrote down in my notebook besides the classic, hallmark works (Picasso's Les Mademoiselles D'Avignon, Chagall's I and the Village, Van Gogh's Starry Night).

Here's a set of observations specifically tied to riding the bus. For those interested, I rode Fung Wah to NYC, Megabus to DC, then Greyhound the rest of the way (except, as mentioned above, the Amtrak train from SD to LA):

- The Fung Wah stopped after the exit leaving the Mass Pike. The driver pulled us over to the right side of the road. I read my book. He pulled us over to median. I continued reading my book. A din of confused voices rose around me as we sat on the median for two, three, four minutes. I looked up and noticed our driver running back to our bus from the other side of the highway, where there was another Fung Wah bus. He entered our bus, shook himself off and took off his jacket, and returned the bus to the road. The Fung Wah.

- I rode with this guy from Durham to Nashville. He was probably about 5'10'', and had a pretty solid frame with a little extra layering. He was probably about my age, wore his brown hair in a pony tail, and wore a wispy goatee to go with it. He wore just a wife beater most of the time, unless he went outside and it was on the colder side, in which case he added a sweatshirt. He offered me fish which he had brought for his three day journey from coast to coast. Boasted of the healthy nature of his fish, too, and how he used to bodybuild, but that these days he just lifted a few weights that were in his yard every day.

  This is not the guy I'm talking about. Just a funny sign in Waynesville.    

This guy was an interesting one, and very much displayed some of the common behaviors and attitudes of Greyhound customers. He kept his bag splayed out on the seat next to him in hopes of dissuading anybody from sitting next to him: they would have to ask him for the seat, and his imposing stature and affected scowl would prevent that. Except that somewhere between Asheville and Knoxville, the bus filled up, making it impossible for him to achieve his objective of no neighbor. When somebody did sit down with him at last, a young man, he was nothing less than courteous in conversation and in offering his treats to his new neighbor. In fact, for all his stature and intimidating looks, he was bursting to talk, looking around with his big brown eyes to find anybody he could open up to about his trip to Phoenix, or the fact that his half-brother died somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, or about what he thought about things. To wit: "TV brainwashes people, it brainwashes you, I don't watch any of it."

He also told me, upon seeing me reading, that, "I read books. I got a stack of 'em."

You don't get that on the plane, I tell you what.

- You also don't get cologne on sale in the men's bathroom on the plane. You do get this in the men's bathroom of a rest stop gas station somewhere in eastern Oklahoma.

- On my first Greyhound leg, from D.C. to Durham, I paid $3 to a vending machine to get a Nestle Crunch bar. That is, I paid $1.50 for a bar, received no bar as the ring in front of the selection was empty, which I did not recognize beforehand, and so I paid another $1.50. Needless to say, the candy bar was worth it.

- On that same trip, we had a last stop before Durham in Raleigh. I needed to use a phone, so I got off the bus. My ticket suggested we might change buses, so I went to the driver to make sure that I didn't have to get my suitcase or anything, leading to this beatific statement: "It's going to Durham." He said it with a laugh, with an incredulous smile, as if he told me that I would be getting a Christmas turkey after all. "You don't have to change buses, it's going to Dur-ham." I thought I saw his wizened head bathed in light.

- On the leg from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, there at some point coalesced an earnest group of young men who had a serious discussion about just what the pot laws were in different states, and what implications those laws had for their lives.

 

- I also sat next to a guy from Flagstaff to Phoenix who told me quite a bit about his life as a pot farmer. He reported that, living in California and growing weed on six prescriptions, his life would not change either way with the coming referendum on marijuana laws in CA. He said that he had been a bricklayer in Arizona ("That place has ridiculous laws,") but that he lost his job after 7 years to illegal immigrants, and this was the best option left to him. "I don't like society too much," he said, "I try to keep to myself as much as I can." He was thoughtful and well-spoken.

- For one short stretch, I think from Knoxville to Nashville but I could be remembering wrong, I found myself without a seat and had to ask a guy if I could sit next to him.

"Shit, I was waiting for a pretty woman,"

Seeing as there were not really any other seats available, all I could think to say was, "Well, I can smile nice, if that helps." He ended up being nice enough to me, anyway.

- There was another afternoon stretch where I was sitting alone when a young mother joined me. Here four year old or so boy sat across the aisle from her. They were clearly a Hispanic family, so I stewed in my seat, thinking of how to ask her in Spanish whether or not she'd like to sit with her child. I finally stammer, "Quiere sedir...do you want to sit with your child?" She said yes, gladly.

Somehow, the burn I felt for my cultural patronization equaled out whatever good feelings I had for my deed for a while. It's strange to be back in a land where English is the language, I guess.

- One has to get used to waves of smells passing over one's breathing space. Most of these smells are unpleasant. Such is life in the bus.



- The Ft. Smith, Arkansas Greyhound station was probably the cutest I saw on the trip, adorned with paintings depicting the consequences of and reasons against drinking and driving.

- In the southwest (Texas and beyond), each state has a border office. It feels like you're entering a new country, to a degree. In response, I presume, to frequent drug trafficking and illegal immigration, these states set up inspection booths and have border guards on patrol. In California, two border guards actually got on our bus and checked passports; I said I was from the U.S. and they trusted me, meaning I didn't need to flash my passport. Little did they know...

                                                                An illegal immigrant in Calexico.

- The one incident that led to trouble on my long trip happened on the first day, before we entered Tennessee. One man of pickled complexion and wearing bad cowboy-style attire (a yellow button-down shirt with red lines and cactus tree designs that screamed the southwest, and big ol' boots) had a bottle of wine and a little stereo. He allegedly improperly touched the teenage girl he sat next to. A few other, bigger passengers stepped in to encourage him to sit at the front of the bus, alone. We stayed a little bit longer than planned at our next stop in Waynesville, and he found himself confronted by a police officer at the front of the bus.

He stayed in Waynesville.

Some 30 hours later, I saw the same man in the bus station in Memphis, holding the same stereo, dressed in the same clothes. He had caught the same bus schedule a day later. While he didn't necessarily look any more sober, he looked glummer, in the least.

- Speaking of the Southwest, apparently Albuquerque is a major depot for drug trafficking. Our merry bus driver warned everybody that the bus would be searched during our layover there. "If anybody has anything they don't want found, better give 'em to me!" he said. All joking aside, several of my companions on the bus were quite unnerved. We passed through Albuquerque without incident, however.

- The scariest thing I heard came right before Nashville. Sitting behind me were two kids who were in either high school or college and appeared reasonably intelligent.

They were discussing Microsoft Office 2010, and specifically some of the new features on Word.

"Yeah, when I write my papers on Word, now," one said, "I can just copy-paste into the document, and then you go and you right-click on it, and you can paraphrase!"

"Oh, dude, that's sweet!" the other replied.

I shed a couple tears in my seat for my educator friends and my student days.

- In my whole time on the bus, logging something like 80 hours total including the final leg to San Francisco, I only peed on a moving bus twice. The first time was in New York, where my cousin rushed me to the bus after deciding that we didn't have time to stop somewhere. The other time was a cheapie in Gallup, New Mexico; the bus driver had earlier announced a stop, scheduled for about 2:20 am, but at the station itself we made an in and out two-minute quickie stop, hardly enough time to pee legally.

I figured we weren't going to get a chance, so I lodged myself in the bathroom, did what I had to do, and ambled back out to my seat...just in time to get up as we stopped at a KFC/McDonalds gas station site. Ahh, sigh.

- Between Memphis and Little Rock overnight, one woman in her 30s or 40s, black, full-bodied, and pretty, spoke to a younger girl straddling the ages of 18 and 22, skinny, less pretty, also black, about finding God and getting out of her troubles. There was something in her speech about the various plagues of lesbians and homeless youth. Eventually, when either one got off the bus or when one of them decided to go to sleep, the older woman pledged to continue the conversation on Facebook.

- The one bit of funny business I had to pull was getting on the bus in Nashville. I arrived just 15 minutes before the scheduled departure, and waited in line behind a minor who needed permission to buy a ticket, its own mess, pushing me dangerously close to being late for my bus.

At last, he finished his business and the attendant at the counter was ready for me. After printing my boarding ticket, she insisted I weigh my bag to make sure it met the 50 lb. limit. Despite my efforts to play with the weight, ultimately it was 6 pounds over. With no time to make it go run laps, I took out a few books and put them in my backpack until I made the weight. She printed my info and I was on my way to San Diego.

Except that I had enough time to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and conveniently switch back all the books I had just added to my backpack. No problems for the rest of the trip.

- I was late for one bus all trip: the last one, from LA to San Francisco. No one's perfect.

- I should mention that Megabus has wi-fi on their buses. This felt like a big deal at the time.


View Directions to 797 Cole Street, San Francisco, CA in a larger map

- On that Megabus from NYC to DC, I was lucky enough to sit next to a one Miss Shania. Shania was probably about 4 years old, a cheery little girl who taught me how to draw. Specifically, she shared with me her technique for the Pollock-esque masterpieces she churned out page after page: grab the pen (in light blue, pink, or green for boys), and go like this (bring the pen up and down the page in varying thicknesses and no discernible pattern, just an endless sprawl of lines) and you can do it. She was considerably prouder of having taught me to draw that than she was to have learned to draw a heart from me.

- And as a subset of interesting bus events, here are all the things I had to do to make phone calls without a cell phone:

1. Buy a pretzel from a street vendor across the street from the New York Public Library to get the change needed to call my cousin from a pay phone.

2. Call from Skype numerous times, most memorably using the wi-fi of the Megabus.

3. As DC's streets were void of pay phones as well as people, I ended up having to ask my cab driver for a phone to call my friend. This turned out well, as my cab driver wasn't sure how to get to my friend's house.

4. Using pay phones along the road at various times, with mixed success. Many of the pay phones in Greyhound stations are a little bit more expensive. Many more do not offer a long-distance coin option; you can only call locally or collect. You cannot call cell phones collect. I was mostly calling cell phones. This caused problems.

5. In one of those tricky situations, I ended up borrowing a fellow traveler's phone, after asking a few other fellow travelers for phones who didn't happen to have one.

6. It goes without saying that I borrowed my friends' phones very frequently on the trip.

7. In LA's Union Station, I had the microcosmic phone experience that summed up my macrocosmic trip. I needed change, so instead of asking someone for change, I bought something. Since I needed at least 40 cents to make it to a dollar, I bought gum, even though I don't chew gum. I thought it would be an ok sacrifice. I went to the pay phone, now with about $1.10 of change.

The pay phone required $2.00. I only found this out after I tried the first two of four payphones, which did not have a dialtone, and the third payphone, which did not accept coins, and then at last put my dollar in the fourth payphone. The return didn't work.

I went to a ticket counter, where I received a polite $2.00 in change. Change I could have received at step 1. Not my best traveling moment.

- But despite the bumps, and despite the moments where I spent more than I might have - a flight purchased in advance between almost any of my destinations, and certainly for the long distance ones would have been cheaper than the bus fare - the trip had a sense to it, and a reason. Beyond seeing the soft dew hovering above the grass on the side of the road in the Arkansas morning, and beyond realizing that Texas's skinniest part is 170 miles across, and beyond having the time to read and write or not have to fly on a plane or have the freedom to eat just peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and the occasional candy bar for two days on a bus.

I can't imagine doing this same trip eastwards. It could be that I am an easterner, and any journey that way would feel like going home, which one does not want to do on a bus. It could be that going west gave me a chance to open a new world, to experience new places in a way that going east would not have.

The trip, the bus trip, hit its logic after Texas. There was our descent into the sunset, a sense of oneness descending back onto me. After Phoenix, crossing through the desert in the morning, ripping through a new barren scenery that was not so distant from Jordan or Israel, for example, but still new; and then entering California and seeing how the landscape slowly grew gray and then green as the road emptied out to the valley before San Diego and the sun falling in front of us; there made itself felt every justification for taking the long way, the hard way, the stupid way.

Here's to the Long Way.

Here's to the Hard Way.

Here's to the Stupid Way.