

# Wanderlost

## Shots of literary tequila for the restless soul.

## by

## Simon Williams

##

Copyright © 2018 by Simon Williams

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of nonfiction. Names, places, and incidents are real except where the book notifies, they have been changed due to laws prohibiting the author using the real names. Any persons or animals harmed in the making of these books either fell down a hole or were hit by a truck.

Published at Smashwords

Cover photo by Wojciech Kozielczyk

First Printing: August 2018

ISBN- 9780463732939

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

CONTENTS

Preface

Waiting a half century

Consequences

Small world

The first time is the best

It is only 7922 miles

Rough landing

Rough landing - part 2

Bonkers in Honkers

Bonkers in Honkers - part 2

Heartland

Heartland - part 2

Heartland - part 3

Education on the beach

Winter Blues

Winter Blues – part 2

Get that India

Get that India - part 2

Get that India - part 3

Insight

Almost Famous

Postface

# Preface

As a child I always had dreams of growing up to be someone else. I do not remember a single day where I was happy with being myself. There was a gnawing feeling inside me, that I was simply not a valued person. That I would never be relevant to anyone. That I was invisible. Simply being draped in my own skin was uncomfortable. Part of this thinking came from what other children said about me, part of this came from my inability to anything as impressively as other kids could, but mostly it came from the negativity I kept telling myself.

This self-doubt always left me caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side was my feeling of certainty, that if I tried to do something I would likely fail. While, on the other side of the equation, was a dreadful awareness that if I did nothing, I would never be anyone, or go anywhere. In essence, I always felt trapped, caught between trying to scale two unclimbable walls of fear.

As a teenager, one day I wrote out a fanciful wish list of things I wanted to have happen in my life. It was my first attempt at making positive affirmations. The piece of paper was later discovered by a lad three years older than me at school, he shared it around his grade, and I was ridiculed mercilessly for it. I still remember most of what I wrote.

I Simon Williams want to: be important enough to be defended by another; to give a speech and command an audience; to take on a challenge that none of my friends would attempt; to live in the moment; to have the courage to express my deepest, innermost thoughts; to be the coolest man in the room just one time; to travel the world; to be a father and have my son look up to me; and to be loved because someone chooses to love me. Or to at least not live life constantly heartbroken.

The resultant bullying and persecution for writing a few positive lines of text on a scrap piece of paper, worked insidiously to undermine my confidence for years.

# Waiting a half century

March 27, 2018. If I survive the next two days, I will have made it to 50 years of age. Half a century. Teeing off on the back nine of life. Not quite senior discount territory but, closer to incontinence in adult diapers than to incontinence in nappies. Where did the time in my life go? What have I accomplished? The concerns that I had as a young man are still ever present in me as an adult. Does this mean I have not lived my best life?

My doubts are compounded knowing that my oldest friend, James, died last year in an unfortunate accident, a week after his 50th. Along with his loss, it seemed most of my best childhood experiences disappeared with him. It felt as if the first 20 years of my life had been vacated, while I have already been suffering with an unimaginable heartbreak for the last decade. The confluence of these two tragedies has lately led to a great deal of introspection on my part.

The actions of my life had always been largely dictated by the avoidance of the fear I was more terrified of, fear of failure or fear of stagnancy. I tried my best in life to overcome my fear of failure, simply by rationalizing to myself that to remain the person that I did not want to be when I was younger, was by far the worse alternative. To attempt to overcome my self-doubts, I always took the opportunity to travel. One day I am a gangly 20-year-old nervously packing my backpack with extra underwear, preparing to head overseas alone for the first time to prove something to myself. Then I blink, and suddenly another 30 years, and more than half my existence, is in the rear vision mirror. Instead of a glass of Dom Perignon vintage 1969 to celebrate my 50th, maybe a half cup of stale Chicha, the ancient Peruvian spit drink, might be more appropriate.

When I first set out into the world to find myself, I was as naïve, foolish, and timid as I think a person could be. The only upside was that I was not limited by the boundaries of age. There was no anxiety to meet mortgage payments, organize the kid's vaccination schedule, or even what North Korea's nuclear capabilities might be. I was simply praying that soaking in the worldly experience of life on the road would give me the answer to the question, where I could find happiness with myself.

Now, at almost 50, I realize that I spent nearly every single day of my entire adult life searching, always searching. Concealed behind the drawn curtains of my wishful eyes, was an unsightly decorated interior that I never showed guests. Deep in my heart, I always felt lost. I appear lost. Nothing about my thoughts and actions portrays certainty. My sock drawer is pedantically organized, while my underpants drawer could be described as haphazard at best. This disparaging approach to life was often compounded, not relieved, as result of my mobile quest for self-actualization. I have had a recurring nightmare for decades, where I either cannot find a gas station to fill up my rental car tank before returning the car to Hertz, or I simply cannot find the rental car. I always wake up feeling stressed and unrested. All of this was never spelled out in the unwritten manual of how to survive life, that someone neglected to give me.

With the benefit of retrospection, the demeaning experiences in my life can be latter written off as being innocuous. The snide comments I received on the playground, the snickers of laughter heard as I stumbled to give a class presentation at university, the muzzle of a semi-automatic weapon being brandished in front of my face in Bulgaria. Even with obfuscating the bad moments, now is the time to evaluate whether the high times in my life have defeated the lows? Can I say I lived a happy life? Can I? At almost 50, my life now teeters with unbridled excitement when I wake up at 6am without having needed a midnight dash to the bathroom.

My step kids would probably tell me I lead a boring life. Most youngsters think that of their parents. They only get to witness my occasional sullenness, an adult manifestation of my self-doubt. A mood stemming from my worry over answering these daily questions, am I still a good parent to my son whose life I am maliciously not permitted to be involved in, could I have done things differently, and am I going to be happy with the person I turned out to be at fifty? A few years ago, my failings had me one night contemplate suicide. My new family are not aware of the almost constant anguish I suffer with, neither are my friends, or my siblings. Years of struggle with insecurity, have finely honed my skill to put on a smiling face, while deep inside I am in agony.

I notice the old man who bags groceries at my local supermarket always has a smile on his face. How can he be so happy? I am a well-paid professional, employed at one of the country's largest most profitable corporations, and yet I never exhibit the same joy when I am at work. Is the problem me, or is the problem it took me a month of pleading to be permitted five consecutive days off to celebrate my birthday? I am inclined to think the problem still lies with me.

My new family do not know the lengths I have gone to, or the distance I have traveled, in my life to overcome my demons. This is because I have never been secure enough to ever share many of the stories of my ventures in the world. My step kids think I only become animated when addressing them about how tough it was in my day, or when discussing the latest in prostate health with my mates of a similar age. While the step kids themselves possess an extremely limited appreciation of my sarcastic cynicism, or how the bills of the house get paid.

If I had not learnt how to laugh at myself, I most likely would not have made it this far.

When my family and I arrived at this lodge in the Colorado Rockies, I start thinking I need to find a special way to mark the occasion that I am going to make it to 50 years in life. So, I decided to write a book of memorable travel anecdotes from my life, even though my name may not be famous enough to warrant a manuscript. My exploits are not the subject matter of any urban myths. I am not being invited back to my alma mater to give an address at graduation ceremonies. No one is calling on me to throw out a commemorative first pitch. There are no glaciers named in my honor.

I do not think there has been a personal accomplishment in my 50 years that was worthy of a single by-line of press. Should this be telling me something? How could I believe that I have done anything in life worthy of interest, if I am still so anonymous? As an ordinary person walking this earth, the exploits of my life may not have much relevance to anyone, but the hopes and dreams I had for myself should have meaning to all.

I have been a tenant of everywhere, but a resident of nowhere. I have never felt that I belong anywhere. Rarely have I been settled enough to consider fully unpacking my suitcases, hampered by the fear that tomorrow I may need to leave in a hurry. To rush to a new location that might bring me the happiness I am looking for. Along with not having contentment, there are scant belongings in my life, no large house, no bookshelves filled with souvenirs. The only thing of possible value I have in my possession, are my stories. So, penning a book is sort of the only option I have, by default.

Certainly, writing a book is not the most foolish undertaking I have found myself involved with. There have been many moments when I have wondered how I ended up where I was, while second guessing my every move is already a daily habit. By committing my memories to paper, maybe I will uncover something about my life that I have overlooked. This might also be helpful to anyone who also identifies with my issue of self-worth. At least, if I were to die tomorrow then maybe someone, somewhere, will relate to the heartbreaking context as to why the police in New Delhi walked up to my taxi and stuck their guns in the window at me.

Outside the window of my Colorado ski lodge, falling snow is floating softly to the ground. The scene is a perfect advertisement for white linen. Pristine, gorgeous, and sanitary. It is so beautiful it brings a tear to my eye. This is how I once hoped all of my life would be. There is no suggestion of regret, sorrow, or fear. Only unbridled calm muted with the raw peace of a clear snowy morning. If only the groin strain I suffered while standing still on a pair of cross-country skis yesterday was as comforting. That is as good a sign as any that someone is really on the downhill slide in life. To pull a muscle while engaged in the strenuous activity of motionlessness. Every midlife crisis begins with an innocuous injury, such as a mild muscle strain, a broken arm, or the failure of one of my kidneys.

It is 5am and I have been awake since 3. This is what happens when I change times zones for a relaxing vacation. Less relaxation. I have only gone from Eastern Standard Time to Mountain Time, but my body feels like I have just woken from 25 years of suspended animation in a Stanley Kubrick film. I would readily subscribe to the flat-earth dogma, if this group would advocate for the complete removal of time zones. Make it 5 o'clock everywhere at the same time. If that means early morning light for some and late evening darkness for others, the world can adapt. I somehow made it through the mad cow disease scare intact.

Despite the fact I am enjoying being in the Colorado Mountains with my new family to celebrate my impending birthday, the trip has not been all smooth sailing. It never is for me. The first day together we went food shopping for the week and, after packing all the food into the car, I locked the keys in the trunk with our supplies.

After finally getting into the car and retrieving the keys, I have then at some point driven over a nail. That started a slow leak, that I emptied the tire. I drove as cautiously as I could to the garage, but still destroyed the tire rim. This required me to rent another car locally for the day, while I waited for a new tire to be sent up overnight from Denver to be placed on my car first thing this morning. Surely when I stare down the barrel of 50, life by this stage should have become less of a constant battle. Two more days for God's sake. Let me just make it two more days, so I can have my celebratory cup of Chicha.

Oops, it is already 6.55am. Time to get moving, so I can drop off my second rental car at 7.30am, to avoid another day charge, and retrieve my first with the new tire from the garage. As I am about to open the door, I experience a wave of pessimism crash over my body. I shrug it off. The worst has already happened on this trip, nothing more could go wrong. I am reassured that I have survived far more serious calamities than this one in my time. Still, it my instincts are usually not wrong. Thankfully, my wife remains asleep. After the groceries in the trunk incident forced her and the step kids to walk a few miles back to our ski lodge, I am presently trying to avoid worrying her with any further negativity all costs.

As I am about to leave the ski condo my wife stirs from her slumber. 'Are you going to take back the car?' She asks.

'Yes dear,' I reply, 'I will be back in time to take the kids to their ski lesson.'

'Are you feeling alright?' She inquires suspiciously.

I hesitate. 'Yes, I think I do. I am just having a needless worry attack,' I sheepishly confide. 'I am always nervous dealing with a rental car.'

'It is a rental. Who cares?' She gripes.

'I care.'

'Oh my God, whatever. It is too early in the morning to deal with you having a midlife crisis,' she muses as she rolls over in bed and falls back asleep.

Her timely return to slumber gives me the opportunity to reflect on that momentary feeling of trepidation. Whatever I was sensing; I just need to be back in time to get the kids to their lesson by 8.30am. My hopeful imagination foresees the envisioned success of this upcoming early morning operation as being a welcomed early 50th birthday present. As long as my instincts were wrong, and I can pull it off.

# Consequences

They say the life of a soldier is 99% boredom and 1% being scared out of your wits. I would have thought life for most people is comprised of protracted patches of monotony, occasionally punctuated by a sharp moment of unexpected chaos. Life certainly seemed that way when I was a child. School, cricket practice, math homework, bath time, Dad standing up on the gondola in Queenstown, New Zealand and rocking it from side to side causing Mum and me to freak out, English assignment, soccer training.

The Queenstown gondola is the southern hemisphere's steepest cable car ride. Ascending from the base of Bob's Peak to the summit restaurant in about 12 minutes the ride offers breathtaking, scenic views over Lake Wakatipu and the The Remarkables mountain range. The steep ascent is frightening enough, with the cable car seemingly perpetually heading towards crashing into the rocky cliff face, but when Dad stood up and start swinging the gondola back and forth it made that 1% of my life certifiably terrifying. Followed by a 500-word English essay on Eskimos. That was my childhood. The overt personality and reckless spirit of my father was not passed down in the gene pool to me. It may well have been hidden somewhere inside, but it would take an epiphany to bring it out. Most of my early life experiences seemed to reinforce the firmly held notion amongst my peers that I should stay quiet, sit in the back, and remain unnoticed.

When I was about seven my Dad took the family to Magnetic Island for a get-a-way. Magnetic Island sits a short 25-minute ferry ride north of my hometown Townsville in the tropical north-east of Australia. Townsville, for all the bad wraps it gets as a boring town associated with the mining industry, it is actually much worse than that. It is dry and boring.

I grew up in a dusty, brown mining town that existed in a rain shadow less than 200 kilometers from the wettest spot in Australia, and one of the wettest places in the world. Despite being in the tropical north, everything about an existence in Townsville was always somewhere on along the moisture scale between arid and parched. My deep-seated aversion to dying of dehydration meant that any opportunity to leave the city was always welcome, even if it was a 25-minute boat ride across the bay. This was more than far enough away for me to consider it a daring international excursion to a foreign land. It was on par with Viking ships crossing the Atlantic, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigating the globe, or Thor Heyerdahl sailing the Kon-Tiki from Peru to French Polynesia. To an innocent seven-year-old, 25 minutes on a ferry was next level escapism.

Life was a lot more basic back then. Mum would spit in her hankie before wiping my face. There were two channels on the television in Townsville, but four in the state capital of Brisbane. To have been in a car that had electric windows, was considered an event worthy of a phone call to tell grandparents. As innocent as that sounds, every person was still expected to take everything life threw at them on the chin. However, I was slightly clingier than most kids of the same age. Heavily dependent that my Mum would always be there to wipe away my tears with her saliva drenched hankie.

Our family's destination, Magnetic Island, earned its name from the apparent crazy magnetic effect the landmass had on the compass of Captain James Cook as he sailed past on his ship HMS Endeavor as he scooted up the Australian Coast in 1770 scaring the local inhabitants. It is referred to by the locals as Maggie Island, because in Australia it is near impossible to give something a name and then not have the population shorten it to something simpler. Rockhampton- Rocky. Tasmania - Tassie. Brisbane - Bris Vegas. This getaway location for the locals of Townsville could have also otherwise been named, 'The Captain is smashed drunk again and can't find his way to read the compass' Island. Then shortened to Hammered Island.

Over the four days of our trip, my family explored the island from bay to bay in two mini moke vehicles. This is a mode of transport peculiar to Maggie Island, with the equivalence in style and power of attaching a 2-stroke engine to an open sardine tin. Heaps of fun though. The lack of side panels and roll over bars for passenger protection is more than offset by the security feature that a mini moke cannot achieve a speed faster than 20 kilometers an hour. One afternoon while scuttling between the bays, we come to a small nature park exhibiting native animals, that is inconveniently hidden down a quiet backstreet. The type of tiny, Mom and Pop wildlife park that young kids of seven would adore before someone came up with the concept of first-person shooter video games. For Maggie Island this was a solid step up in entertainment quality from the Sunday afternoon toad races at the Arcadia Bay Hotel.

My father addresses my siblings and me before we enter the park. 'Don't mess around with the animals. Understand?' We all nod explicitly, me more readily than my brother and sisters. He smiles as he looks at me. 'You don't have to be scared of them, Simon.'

'Yes, Dad,' I answer.

Dad would always single me out for extra coddling when it came to risk. Except for me, he probably had close to the perfect family. My older brother was the family genius and the smartest pupil in his entire school by quite a distance. My older sister was the accomplished ballet dancer and athlete. My younger sister was the glass ceiling breaker, the fearless achiever. Then there was me, my claim to fame was that I could eat more than any other person I knew.

At this early stage of life, I did not yet think of myself as a wimpy kid, as glasses did not arrive on my face until I was eleven. But I was always uncomfortably aware of why the other kids at school teased me as they did. If there was someone who needed to have his head kept underwater at the pool, have his lunch sandwiches filled with sand, or have the gear chain of his bike pulled off the sprocket, it was always me. That is the life curse for a kid with red hair and freckles growing up in Australia.

The family starts the park visit with Dad buying us all an ice-block. On a steamy summer's afternoon in North Queensland this is a necessary enticement by parents to help keep all children in check. The oppressive heat and humidity of this region would send a pious monk crazy with a disemboweling knife in less than five minutes. Best to keep overheating, hyperactive children in check with some cold treats. I am the fastest eater in my family by a factor of about ten. So, I have opened my Redskin Split and denuded the popsicle stick of ice-cream and its top layer of cellulose fiber before anyone else has torn open their ice-block's wrapping. I rapidly return to the 99% of life that I find the most frustratingly boring, and what likely spurned the development of my fanciful imagination, waiting for others.

I carefully get up from my seat and take a look around. No one pays me any attention as I gradually meander further away from the safety of my family. The entire animal park is not so large that I need to hop on a tram to transport myself to view an expansive animal enclosure mimicking the habitat of the African Serengeti, but not so small that I wasn't able to disappear from view and become an afterthought to everyone engrossed in their ice blocks. I am roaming free.

The gate to a kangaroo enclosure had not been secured correctly, and an open gate attracts a young child like a moth to a flame. At the threshold to the pen I hesitate. To walk into the enclosure would have violated every drop of the well-behaved ethos that my Dad worked so hard to drum into me. What path would my life be following if I did this? Breaking the animal park rules could be the first step of me turning to the dark side. But for a seven-year-old, the temptation of an open gate is just too great.

I wander into the pen, without a single park employee noticing that an unsupervised child was now mingling with the caged fauna. Inside the pen most of the kangaroos were listlessly lying around scratching their groins, as these animals tend to do most of the day. Their life is most likely 99% boredom as well, until some inattentive staff member also leaves the gate to the crocodile pond ajar.

Once I am in the kangaroo pen, I am momentarily enthused by my act of bravery. If stretching the limits of the law always felt this empowering, then maybe I am headed on the road to ruin. I wonder how many big-time criminals got their start because they had red hair. One medium sized Big Red kangaroo stretches itself upright, then laboriously rolls forward on its front paws to nibble on the tufts of grass. Observing me, he slowly paddles his way over to inspect the newest occupant of its pen. I stand frozen, with equal measures of palpable fear and apprehension. The animal sniffs at my face with its sizable, quivering nostrils. It is a disconcerting feeling and it takes all my limited courage to not have my knees buckle and collapse. Holding my breath, I desperately attempt not to flinch as the roo perches in front of me and engages me in a staring match.

If my legs were not two sticks of gelatinous whale blubber sheathed in sausage casing, I would have run for my life. The kangaroo slowly leans forward and gently taps me on the chest with his paw. Barely a glancing touch, but still a threat. Even the native animals of Australia want to pick on the red-haired kids. I am well aware that I could not fight my way out of a wet paper bag if I had a swastika tattooed on my forehead and holding the Jaws of Life, but I am so weary of being pushed around by bullies. On the very bottom of the pecking order of God's creatures, it is always lowly beasts of burden, kids with red hair, and finally the French.

If I can stand up to anything in my life surely, I can stand up to a kangaroo. If anyone is powerless in this situation, it should be the animal. It should be scared of me. With this rash of audacity, I raise my tiny fists. There, I did it. I have just moved myself ahead of marsupials on God's pecking order. Let me see how the roo likes how it feels.

What is the worst that could happen, I am thinking? Be arrested by the Magnetic Island Agricultural Crime Unit for propagation of violence against animals? To non-Australians and animal rights activists, pretending to fight a kangaroo is not considered animal abuse. At this time PETA was probably still a bunch of hippies sitting around in their parent's basement trying to work out which generic animals they wanted on their protected list. Cows were an obvious one. Sheep and ducks got included. PETA in their formative years mainly stuck to farmyard beasts. They played it deliberately safe.

Due to the fact 99% of Australia's native species can kill a person with so much as a disgruntled look, they were predominantly overlooked as needing protection. Stone fish, freshwater crocodiles, blue ringed jellyfish, the Coastal Eastern Taipan, none of them have ever made a PETA most endangered list. Even the humble imported cane toad was ignored, no one raises a finger when they are taken out. People can run them over with a truck or swing at them with a golf club and no one cares. I still do not see any PETA material with 'protect the cane toad' plastered on flyers placed under windshield wipers. They certainly did not protest the cruelty of the toad races outside the Arcadia Bay Hotel on Sundays.

Besides, it felt good to stand up to a bully.

I had not yet heard the historical yarns of daring sheep shearers boxing against spirited kangaroos at outback travelling carnivals during the Great Depression era. What brave men they must have been. There are very few men nowadays who could summon the courage to climb into a boxing ring with a belligerent, full sized Big Red. I think back and consider I must have been insane at age seven to walk into an enclosure with a herd of disinterested kangaroos listlessly fiddling with their gonads.

While ubiquitous, the kangaroo did not truly become a major symbol of Australia till a boxing one was included on a flag when we won the America's Cup in 1983. The kangaroo had always been on the country's coat of arms, but how often do people bring up to the coat of arms in the course of normal daily conversation? Most citizens in Australia would not be able to name all the things on the coat of arms. A kangaroo, an emu, a can of beer, Mad Max's V8 interceptor... that is all people can recall with certainty. The kangaroo was a largely underutilized symbol of the land down under for most of the 20th Century, but that all changed in 1983. We won the America's Cup as prohibitive underdogs, and the consciousness of the country changed. Flags of boxing kangaroos are now a dime a dozen at every duty-free shop in the country. I wish I had seen a flag with a boxing kangaroo on it in 1975, before I walked into the pen.

As I proudly stand with my fists up, the roo raises its cavernous nostrils to sniff at me once again. This unnerves me. Time to go. I already have so much to worry about overcoming in life, let me not try and add to the pile. Sliding my heels backwards over the dusty floor, I carefully start to retreat, never taking my eyes off the animal or dropping my fists. The beast merely turns its head in studied amusement as I inch myself away. It is probably still uncertain whether I could pose a danger to it. At a distance of about four feet, I feel I have escaped the threat area bubble, and so to bestow upon my ego some saving grace of accomplishment, I throw a slow left-hand jab that a blind mosquito with a broken wing could have easily dodged. My action gives me the briefest taste of unearned achievement, a feeling that is usually reserved for when people get a tax refund check in the mail.

It would not have required a boxing expert to discern I did not possess the physical attributes to even feign a left-handed jab. I am not athletically gifted. A bespectacled Harvard scholar in advanced calculus, or a drunk homeless man with no teeth who could play a few notes on a harpsicord, could have seen that. And if they all could, then a six-foot kangaroo with itchy testicles could work it out. I should have just kept on walking, left the enclosure, and not thrown the punch. However, my brain is not yet fully developed with regard to the concept of actions and the consequences of those actions. I am probably still two or three years away from realizing that if I jumped off the roof of my house with a red towel tied around my neck as a cape, I would not be able to fly.

I am preparing to take another step back when suddenly the kangaroo rears up then it violently lunges forward. It smacks me across the jaw with a right jab so vicious it sends me sprawling to the dirt. It all happened so fast; I had no time to react. When it comes to being an easy target to hit, I would be one step up from a heavy bag. I crumple to the ground and lay there dazed, instantly emotionally regressing from the next possible undisputed WBO champion back to being a 7-year-old who has just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, except the cookie jar had been outfitted with a bear trap. The sting of the impact zone on my jaw makes it painful to even moan. The kangaroo towers over me for an anxious moment. I am not sure if it is going to kick me, or pee on me to complete the humiliation it has already piled on. A cascade of tears erupts down my cheeks. This is not my finest hour.

Then one of the animal park staffers appears and the kangaroo dutifully retreats away to a safe distance. The man pulls me up to my feet and guides me back to where my family is seated at their table still finishing off their ice blocks. 'Try to keep your children out of the animal enclosures,' he firmly states. The look on my Dad's face is one of abject awkwardness. He is most likely wondering what he did to deserve this dishonor that I have now bought upon the rest of his well-adjusted, responsible, paddle pop consuming family. He knows he now has a black sheep.

When I was a child, parents would always explain away odd behavior by their progeny with the phrase, 'the kid was probably dropped on his head at birth.' No one had ADD or ADHD, it was never the governments fault for underfunding social youth programs, and kids did not have child psychologists to analyze their emotional trauma. Acts of foolishness or stupidity were always the result of unfortunate blows to the head suffered while in the delivery room. If I had my wits about me, I could have tried to expunge myself of all responsibility for my actions by laying the blame squarely at the feet of Mum's ham-fisted obstetrician. But I do not think for a second my Dad would buy it.

I loved my Dad too much to want to be a problem child. He was raising a family far from his home, while the extra burden of having a son who made life difficult would have been an unbearable shame. For many kids in Australia in the 70's, a feature of their parents extolling educational value on them was a swift, hard clip upside the ears when they did something wrong. This was not my Dad. He would always talk things out and explain what us kids might have done wrong. He probably already knew that life was going to give me enough cuts and bruises.

I cannot imagine that my older brother would have learned any more of a lesson after throwing a hammer at a fish tank, if Dad had spanked him. Or my younger sister to never again swallow a nail. For Dad there was no ill that would ever need be handled by hitting his children: a failure to keep a bedroom sufficiently clean; getting an F on a school assignment; severing an artery in my neck playing around with the circular saw. It does not mean that us kids were not afraid it might one day happen; it just never did.

After walking into the animal enclosure after specifically being told not to, I was expecting to feel the palm of his hand against my ear lobe as my punishment. The flow of tears in my eyes increases. But my Dad does the same thing he always did. He wipes the tears from my eyes and puts his arm around my shoulder.

'It isn't fair, ' I blubber.

'I know, son. But you need to expect bad things to happen if you don't watch out for what you are doing,' he tells me.

'Yes Dad,' I say, 'I am sorry.'

'Did you learn a lesson?'

'Yes. I did,' I stammer.

'Good,' he responds, 'that is the most important thing.'

Looking back 43 years after this seminal moment in my behavioral development, as I start compiling all the memorable escapades that have befallen me in life, there is something I need to let my father know. It did not seem to matter how well behaved I was, as trouble always seemed to find me out.

# Small World

On the back of my older brother's bedroom door at home was a poster of Ansel Adams's Half Dome in Snow. In the days before on-demand travel video snippets on cell phones, posters in the bedroom were the YouTube of their day. A simple glossy piece of paper 40 inches by 60 was considered entertainment. Kids would stare at an inanimate photo of Buckingham Palace, or Heather Locklear, for hours. This portal to the great wide world resting on the back of my brother's door left a lasting impression on my psyche one day.

I was probably about eight the day I locked myself in my brother's room, then refused to come out for two hours. That day, my parents had engaged in one of their very infrequent arguments, this one being particularly heated, and it was about money. It so happens that earlier this day, I had asked my mother to buy me a new toy that I sorely desired. The coincidence of me asking my mother for money, my father explaining that the country's economy was doing poorly during the 1973 recession, and the family needing to watch every penny, hit home with me. I was nothing but a financial burden on my family.

I was in the process of sneaking out of the house to run away when my father saw me. Instead of bolting out the front door, I ran to my brother's room and turned the lock to barricade myself inside. There were several attempts by me too run away over the years, mostly I made it to the end of our dead-end street and then had a change of heart. During one spectacularly ill thought out attempt to run away, I made it as far as the end of the driveway with a suitcase filled only with clean pairs of socks.

Holed up in my brother's room, I stared at the poster for over two hours begging to the Universe that I be magically transported to the base of the mountain, while my parents attempted to convince me to let them in the room. The vision of that snow-capped peak left an indelible impression even though, after monetarily destroying my family, I did not think I would ever be worthy enough to see it. The pessimist's lament.

The reason I ran to my brother's room and not mine was that my bedroom had a door handle and lock that could be easily unpicked using a 5-cent piece from the outside. This unnerving characteristic of interior home security was discovered during a friendly game of older brother beating up younger brother years earlier. I had fled to my room and locked myself inside, where upon my older brother unpicked the door in less time than it took me to lock it, then came in and handily won the game. Did the designer of this style of door handle realize that these things have such a crucial design flaw? It was an element of my youth that caused me great unease. If a crazed maniac were to break into our house in the middle of the night searching for a young boy to molest, then he could easily force his way into my locked room if he had some loose change in his pocket.

Despite being on the losing end of most sibling beatings, younger brothers tend to idolize the paths taken by older brothers. My brother and I followed this pattern when he took advantage of his first opportunity to travel to Europe. I was about 15 or so and envious beyond belief. Watching my brother prep for the journey was as disheartening to me as leaving a pet rescue without the means to take home a dog scheduled for euthanasia. He and his best friend were embarking on a 25-day Contiki Tour of the continent starting from London. Their itinerary included many of the iconic European sights and cities that I dreamed of seeing. Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Monaco, Pisa, Munich, Switzerland, Holland. All I longed to do at that point was to go overseas like he was doing.

When he came home, one of the most unexpected stories he told me was that the guide on his tour was from New Zealand. It seems I am not the only person who grew up dreaming that life as a tour courier was a viable career option. The only note-worthy detail I can remember about this man was, that he always started the day by waking up the sleeping passengers on the Contiki bus by playing the Steve Wynwood song, While You See a Chance.

My parents immigrated to Australia from New Zealand before any of us were born. This is not entirely earth shattering, but it gets more intriguing. The tour guide had been a member of the Red Beach Surf Life Saving Club. While my uncle and aunt on my mother's side owned a beach cottage at Red Beach close to the Surf Club. In fact, the guide knew my uncle and aunt very well. How that came up in conversation, I will never know. When people travel it seemed that every aspect of their life can get laid on the table.

My brother was halfway around the world, on a tour bus with 32 people he has never met coming from dozens of countries and discovers that someone on that tour personally knows a member of our extended family. Before this occurred, I would have favored that the odds were heavily against that sort of thing happening as there are seven billion people on the planet. It is almost impossible that such a 'one person' degree of separation could have been made. What a truly, incredible, small world we live in.

That story as it stands would be remarkable enough on its own to sum up how unique the experiences of travelling can be, but it took another 34 years before this tale added another extraordinary layer.

I have been living overseas since 1991. Far enough removed from the day to day life of my family in Australia. Then the cousin of my father contacted me out of the blue two years ago. I had never met Dad's cousin, even though we share the commonality of having our birthday on the same day in March. He had a good friend in England who was suffering through a similar devastating issue of separation from his son, that I had been dealing with in my own life for the last eight years. My Dad suggested to his cousin to contact me via email and hopefully connect me with his friend, who was at a low point in his life. During the course of conversation and email exchanges with my Dad's cousin, somehow, someway the subject matter of the Red Beach Surf Club came up. This surf club is not particularly famous, or even noteworthy, it is just a regular surf lifesaving club sitting on a beach on the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand. However, it seems to be the Kevin Bacon of surf lifesaving entities. Anyone can be connected to it in varying degrees.

The reason it is significant is that my Dad's cousin also had another younger acquaintance he knew from an association with his local rugby club in the south of the North Island. He had not seen him in some years, but he knew this man had been a member of the Red Beach Surf Lifesaving Club. As a lark, he thought perhaps he might track him down to see if he possibly knew of the identity of the courier my brother had met decades before.

As it turned out the man from the rugby club now lived in Switzerland, but my father's uncle obtained an email address for him and sent it to me. I fired off a quick email with a brief description of the loosely held connections and wondering if he had any insight. It took less than two days and there was a reply from him in my inbox. In his email this man stated that he himself had once been a tour bus courier for Contiki in Europe and, as unlikely as it seemed, that he might be the person I was looking for. I sent an email back with just one question. Did he play a song every morning on the bus to wake up the travelers on his trips?

Yes, was his reply. Steve Wynwood's, While You See a Chance.

I always get a tingle in my spine and my eyes get moist when I think of the beautiful absurdity of how this long-lost connection was ever uncovered. It is much the same as how, when a person stands at a site that they may remember from seeing long ago in a photograph, or in a magazine, that inspired them to seek out that location for themselves. The saying, a picture paints a thousand words is true, but to be able to express those thousand words a person must experience any destination firsthand.

It was like this the day I first stood in Yosemite National Park staring up at the monolith of Half Dome. Words, pictures, and video can never do that feeling justice. The moment elicited many emotions associated with having finally made it to a legendary place that, until that moment, had existed solely as a glossy fantasy secured to back of my brother's bedroom door. The daunting mountain, and the efforts it took to arrive there, uncovered within me personal feelings of tremendous satisfaction, accomplishment, and the lingering uncertainty over why I would ever run away from home and only choose to take socks.

# The first time is the best

The first trip a person takes away on their own is a defining chokehold moment in the emotional wrestling match of their life. It can be a daunting undertaking. A time of cutting the apron strings from always being reliant on having a parent step in to comfort me with every disappointment. My father always told me that I will build my self-esteem from the experiences that I have in life, not from the objects I could surround myself with. So, I apprehensively anticipated this moment to occur. Some people readily plunge into the experience like a drunk uncle doing a belly flop into the pool at a redneck BBQ on July 4th, while some of us approach it like the introverted cousin who doesn't mix with the rest of the family because she was adopted from China.

My first solo excursion, that involved leaving the city limits without a chaperone, was my inaugural ski trip not long after I turned 17. It was to the Thredbo Ski Resort in the Australian Snowy Mountains. I have never been so nervous and so proud of myself at the same time. Jetset tours ran a low season$199 bare bone special from the city of Brisbane in the late 80's. For that price it meant I would be travelling during a period that was so warm that it was highly unlikely that I would get to experience any snowfall. But it was all that I could afford.

Anyone who knows me has always considered me tight with my money, and this is because I came from modest means and was taught to appreciate the value of a dollar. Throughout my life, I have been able to survive on the barest minimum, while often choosing to do so. From a young age I had a fearful premonition that one day a great tragedy would befall me that would require a great deal of financial resources to deal with. If, and when, that day came, I needed to be prepared.

However, being frugal has never deterred me from travel. It just required more planning and sacrifice. Taking a cheaper cruise in the Caribbean during hurricane season, a less expensive white-water rafting trip during the dry months when river flow is barely present, grabbing a bargain totally inclusive package to visit Pamplona, Spain two weeks after the running of the bulls.

I was so overly excited at the prospect of my first time being on snow, that the intimate relationship between the presence of snow and warm late autumn weather had yet to properly stake a claim in my brain prior to the trip. The trip package included a 24-hour sub-luxuriant coach travel to the snow fields and back, and a week's accommodation in Jindabyne, the bedroom community 35 kilometers from the slopes. Breakfasts and dinners were also provided for, while lift tickets and ski gear hire was separate. In 1987 that set me back a further valuable $125. If a person wants to know what inflation feels like, compare this to the trip I booked for the family to Colorado from Florida during low season on my 50th birthday. To cover the costs involved my wife remortgaged her house, sold her entire IRA stock portfolio, and we still need to mine three Bitcoin.

I was travelling with a loose group of other kids I knew from high school. All of them had their parents buy them the trip, while I had saved the money myself. As we board the bus in Brisbane, we are greeted by an affable 18-year-old male who is in charge of the tour. Here is a young man in his first year of university study who is essentially getting the trip for free to oversee the passengers during the trip. Tour courier was one of those plumb jobs available to mature and worldly university students that, when I was 16, I dreamed about one day growing up to do. As a perpetually broke teenager I considered many occupations to be a possible career goal. Movie theater attendant, water park lifeguard, ski lift operator. The people in these jobs seemed to have limitless access to the most enjoyable places on earth and were getting paid to be there. How lucky were they? Life sometimes seems to dangle a carrot in my face that turns out to not be as tasty as I expected. I never considered how difficult it would be to pay for a child's braces, or a bathroom remodel, on the hourly wage of a water park lifeguard.

The skill set of a ski tour guide involves having the ability to greet people as they walk onto the bus, inform us that it is in fact called a coach, and then fine anyone who refers to it as a bus during the 24-hour trip at a rate of $1 per offence. Ski trip economics 101. This is to ensure that there is a healthy pot of money to pay for the tour guide's drinks when at the bar in Jindabyne. Our tour guide would take moments out of his busy work schedule of watching the road and talking with the bus driver to ask the passengers questions designed to evoke us to use the word bus. Of course, he chose to always pick on the ranga, and the one person saddled with a reflexive inability to refer to the coach as a bus, me. One third of my $100 for petty cash on the trip was transferred to the tour guide's beer money kitty before the bus reached Canberra, two hours from our final destination.

The town of Jindabyne sits on the rocky shores of Lake Jindabyne, a man-made reservoir used to provide water to the Snowy Mountain Hydroelectric Scheme. This development was an engineering marvel of its the time. There are 16 major dams involved in the project, 145 kilometers of tunnels, 80 kilometers of aqueducts, nine power stations, and one switch that turns the whole thing on and off. Snow melt water from the Snowy Mountains that would normally flow eastward to the ocean is instead diverted westward into the major river system of the Murray Darling basin. This means that one man gets to decide which portion of the country will get to have water and which remains under crushing, drought conditions. One man who can decide the fate of millions. If any man had dreams of becoming Australia's first tyrannical ruler, rather than bother to get himself elected Prime Minister by the normal democratic process he could just barricade himself in the Snowy Mountain Hydroelectric control tower, turn the switch to the neutral position and hold the entire nation to ransom.

As an added bonus to the irrigation benefits provided to the productive Murray Darling farming region, the 800-meter drop in elevation of the water as it flows through the tunnels supplies 30% of the electricity for the entire eastern seaboard of the country. Powering the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane. All it would take for an enterprising splinter group of ISIS extremists to completely paralyze the Australian power grid would be to truck in a semi-trailer full of Charmin ultra-soft toilet paper rolls into the Snowy Mountains and find the main inflow tunnel.

These are the types of detail orientated thoughts a 16-year-old boy has on a sleepless 24-hour bus ride.

My parents had agreed to help me pay for the trip, in return for me travelling home from boarding school on the less expensive train. While I diligently saved every dollar that I could earn in half a year. I shredded paper, at the firm my father worked at, for 50 cents an hour. My father deftly avoided any claims of nepotism at the firm by smartly designating me into the category of underpaid child labor. While the other boys on the trip sported brand-new ski gear and clothes, my skis would be rented, and my mother sewed me a ski suit onesie.

Apart from having the desire to maybe see snow for the first time, I desperately wanted a chance to show my parents that I was growing into an accountable and self-sufficient young man. (My father still had lingering doubts nine years after the kangaroo enclosure debacle) This was a vitally important accomplishment for me to attain.

Even though I had been taught during social science class that the Australian Alps receive more yearly snowfall than the country of Switzerland, there is not an ounce of white stuff to be seen when the bus arrives in Jindabyne. So much for my dreams of starting a snowball fight the moment we can finally get off the bus. When the snow conditions are horrendously bleak in the Australian Alps, they are Great Chinese Famine horrendously bleak. Not to be deterred I think that perhaps the further 400 meters of elevation we must climb to reach the base at Thredbo will bring us well up into the snow zone. Wishful thinking on my part.

I have never been to a ski resort before and Jindabyne seemed to be in a strange location for one, beside a lake surrounded by low hills. I had seen plenty photos of European mountain towns with people walking down the main street in their ski boots with their skis slung over their shoulder and perused hundreds of brochures of travel packages that included ski in/ski out accommodation, whatever that entails. It certainly does not entail staying 30 miles from the slopes.

The next morning, the bus chugs its way up Alpine Way towards Thredbo proper. My initial impression of the Thredbo Ski Resort is that it is merely a valley of ski condos, with low overhanging cloud cover, and not a snowflake to be seen. I start thinking that perhaps I should have paid $20 more to come another two weeks closer to winter. The tour guide keeps my spirits high with the promise that there is snow, just at higher altitude. He informs us that we must ride the chairlifts up to where the snow is located. That seems a novel idea. Why didn't they build the ski resort where the snow is at the top instead of at the bottom of the valley? So, people do not actually get to ski down the mountain? That is just a marketing gimmick? Avid Australian skiers must first be shuttled up to the highest elevations just to get to the snow, then ride the chair lift back down to go home. Seems to defeat the purpose of skiing to me. But what did I know? I am a novice.

The ski runs of Thredbo are at the base of Mt. Kosciuszko, Australia's highest peak. At an elevation of only 7310 feet the mountain only requires a pair of sturdy shoes, a decent map, and a half a Red Bulls' worth of energy to conquer. In fact, the map is overkill, as there is a clearly marked hiking trail that delivers a person to the top. A person does not even need rope. It is not a difficult summit. There are over 50 cities in the world with populations greater than 100,000 people that are at greater altitude than Mt. Kosciuszko's summit. There are deep underground mines in Peru that are at a higher elevation. How someone claims this place gets more snow than Switzerland is beyond me.

The Kosciuszko Express is the main detachable 4-person chairlift that whisks skiers up to Australia's highest restaurant, Eagles Nest. It is here at the top, that I get my first taste of dirty, slushy snow. Barely enough to cover the one short run that was open. On this one slope, my ski class is taught to ski over a patch of snow five meters in length. Just enough space to grasp how to form a snowplow with my skis, then turn, and stop. That is not so difficult, and I am full of aspiration. I can now strike 'learning to become an expert skier' off my bucket list. Sprouting from the fertile imagination of my brain is the belief that I am already 90 percent prepared to enter the alpine downhill race on the treacherous Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuhel, Austria.

At the exhaustive end of a vigorous two-hour introductory lesson, that leaves me as competent on skis as any young European prodigy growing up in a permanently frost bound mountain village in the Pyrenees, I must hop on the chairlift to ride back down to the base of the valley. My homemade ski suit was not as waterproof as it needed to be, it was soaking wet while I was terribly cold and uncomfortable.

The decks of the stations on the Kosciuszko Express chair are bereft of any snow, so to get positioned to sit down on the quad chair I must carry my skis in my hand and walk to the boarding zone. The idea of a resort being ski in/ski out must only be for those lucky enough to holiday in Europe or Canada. In Australia, we have walk in/walk out. It is apparently not possible to even ski, as 90% of the runs on the main slopes are grass. I am teetering on the edge of not getting my full money's worth for $199.

Halfway down the mountain is the Meadows lift station. This stop must be for all those hardy people who are exhausted at the prospect at sitting down for the entire 10-minute ride to the top at Eagles Nest. Approaching the station on my descent, a large sign directs chairlift riders to keep their ski tips up. I might have given more thought to the safety implications of what this meant if Mother Nature had given me an opportunity to wear my skis while riding the quad chair.

The world has too many signs telling people what they cannot do. No parking here; stay off the grass; do not bring guns to the NRA convention. For a free country why does the government not just let people work things out for themselves? There could be signs, do not put your children in the laundromat washer. Or society could take this approach, let people put their children in the washer and see what happens. Why don't we? I guess because there are people like me in the world. Sometimes a person needs to put their children into a washer two or three times. That is what it takes them to learn how things in the world work.

As my lift chair passes over the Meadows station, I amuse myself by dragging the front of my ski boots along the wooden boards of the deck. Clack, clack, clackety, clack. I am happy that I have seen snow and learned to snowplow. It is now fun to drag my boots across the station. I had accomplished my first major goal in life and was a contented man. The advice of my father had given me after the kangaroo incident was a distant memory.

Unknown to me is that due to the rare occasions when there is actually snow on the mountain the colored metal grate, used to designate where to stand to catch the chairlift, is slightly raised relative to the boards of the deck of the station. This allows riders who are on skis to be able to slide up to the mark where they can sit down on the chairlift. There is little doubt that no one on the chairlift station design team expected for people to be dragging their ski boots over the wood floorboards while riding on the chairlift when they signed off on the final plans.

The front of my boot clatters along the wooden boards then abruptly lodges against the raised grate. My foot is wedged in place as the chair lift continues moving forward. If someone on the design team had an inkling that this predicament could unfold then he decided that the best thing to do would be to make sure that the grate is well and truly bolted to the chairlift station so it could not be torn loose. With my foot held firmly in place my body is dragged from the seat and under the metal railing used to hold the skiers in place on the lift. It is like being sucked off the chair by a giant vacuum cleaner latched onto my leg. I desperately wrap my arms tightly around the safety bar and expect for my body to be ripped in two just above the waist.

This is when I realize that I am truly on my own. My parents are not around to save the day for me. It is during pressing times like this that the average person might find God. They recount past sins and prepare for their ascent into heaven where hopefully the extra altitude might deliver a better snowpack. This is the standard go-to reaction for any unfortunate soul caught in a plane crash, a commuter train derailment, or a freak chairlift dismemberment accident.

I have always wondered about the logistical hazard of living a life of envy, gluttony, and sloth, then trying at the last minute to simply ask God for forgiveness. From a purely technical standpoint it should work but there is one overriding risk factor, what if God had a bad day that day? I always tended to lean towards the camp that favors not taking the chance. Live a life of patience, diligence, and kindness, and try to go easy on the gluttony and sloth.

The quad chair swings back at an impossible angle, as the rules of physics decide which is the weaker of the two opposing forces being applied to my body. The strength of my arms holding me to the chairlift, or the strength of the knee ligaments keeping my femur bone attached to my lower leg. The tearing to shreds of either will be worthy of earning at least an honorable mention in this year's Darwin awards. An alternative scenario to having my body torn in two by this winter, medieval torture device, is if I turn out to be Bruce Willis's character in Unbreakable. In which case the first thing to snap will likely be the high-tension cable that all the chairlifts are attached to, sending every person currently sitting on a chairlift ten meters above the slopes falling to their deaths. These are the types of detail orientated thoughts a 16-year-old boy has during the anticipated final seconds of his life.

The first thing to give out are my knee and ankle ligaments, instantly followed by the outer lining of my ski boot. My foot is deftly surgically removed from the wrecked boot, still jammed against the metal grate, and the chairlift swings wildly as its forward motion can freely resume. I frantically claw my way back up onto the chairlift seat, pleasantly surprised that I somehow retained possession of the skis and poles in my hands during the drama. Good thing to, as I need the deposit back. I lean back against the uncomfortable metal bar at the back of my seat. If that is my first real taste of adversity in life, then I want no further part of it. In the future, I will only ever play it safe. I see no reason to ever stick my neck out and take a risk.

Of course, the three other people sitting beside me on the chairlift absolutely soiled themselves.

Postscript: There was no way to convince the steadfast, young girl behind the rental counter that the missing ski boot simply disintegrated under the intense pressure of my cutting turns while in the snowplow formation and so that ended up costing me. Restitution was $45 for the cost of the boot. This left me only $5 change out of my last $50 travel check, which was quickly applied to the tour guides beer kitty when I called the coach a bus five times while waiting for it to pick me up to take the group back to Jindabyne at the end of the first day.

# It is only 7922 miles

On the doorstep of an Australian summer, I stand at the old Fisherman's Wharf Tavern bar at the Gold Coast on the first Saturday of Schoolies' Week 1988. This is the tradition for high school seniors and university students after the finish of end of year exams. For many celebrants, it is the time to reinforce long standing friendships and forge new ones. For one, it is a time to reflect on the highly sociable lives of others that seems to elude me.

I sit quietly by myself with a glass of Coke, as the crowd in the beer garden splashes jugs of beer together in celebration. There is a more excited buzz than usual that hangs over me this year, even as I sit in seclusion from the heart of the revelry. In a week's time I am flying off to the USA for my very first independent trip out of the country. It is a trip I have been planning, and saving for, for over two years. This year, while everyone I knew would be living off the familiar fumes of Schoolies' Week for the next three months of summer university break, I would be in the ski fields of Colorado on a university work exchange program.

Across the bar I can see a mate Dono, holding court with a large crowd of people. Even though he is only half a bar away, it may as well have been half a world. As I watch him talk, I can see the crowd hanging on his every word, laughing and cheering. Whatever he is telling them they are all lapping it up. Dono and I have known each other since we were 12, gone to high school together, played rugby together, knew most of the same people. But that is where the similarities end. He is an immensely popular person amongst our peers, while I am someone that people may say they think they might have heard of. There is as much chance of having other people understand life from inside the bubble of my world, as there would be for try and invite myself into their bubble.

I take a sip of my Coke and wave at Dono's ex-girlfriend, who seems to be waving at me. Turns out she is waving at someone else.

I hear through the grapevine a few days later that Dono had been having his own celebration that Saturday at Schoolies'. The next evening, he was off on a plane to visit his brother who lived somewhere overseas. I was told that when Dono went to enter the departure lounge, a horde of his friends, fifty strong, gathered to make a tunnel to cheer him as a sendoff.

When I leave Brisbane airport for the USA, I am there with my older sister and my Dad. Mum is too nervous to be there.

Dad pulls me aside before I have to leave him to get past immigration to join the 30 strangers who signed up for the work program at the start of the year. 'Have a great time, son, watch out for...' and he never finishes the sentence as he becomes choked up. I guess it is the measure of pride he has to see me taking this large, individual step on the road to try and develop into my own person.

My flight to the USA is with Continental Airlines via a short layover in Hawaii. Travel in these times was as uncomfortable and restrictive as present day COVID lock down. For a 10-hour flight we are given only two inflight movies, neither of which I would rent on VHS for a Saturday night even if I were bored to tears. Smoking is permitted on flights. A seating assignment was designated to be in either the smoking, or the nonsmoking section of the plane. To hermetically seal off the two compartments from each other, airline engineers had invested a great deal of resources into using a flimsy, permeable curtain.

Even a rudimentary understanding of the process of diffusion, where particles in an area of high concentration move to an area of low concentration, would have even a village simpleton deduce that the non-smoking section of a plane will be as equally polluted with second hand smoke within a time frame of, **r** **∝** **1/(M)** **½** **.** **An entire generation of humanity put its trust in the hands of engineers who could devise the weight to thrust ratio necessary to get the aircraft in the air, but who couldn't appreciate the basics of Graham's formula for the rate of effusion of gases.**

After a few hours at Honolulu airport, there is another five hours of flying time to LAX. From there all 30 people on the exchange must find their own way to their work locations in different states and resorts. Some are going to Utah, some to Colorado, a few to Montana. After the perilous escapade of renting a car, learning to drive on the other side of the road, and being abused by a pimp, a group of 4 others and myself drive out of downtown Los Angeles to embark on a 4 day drive to Steamboat Springs, Colorado

We are all as excited as diabetic kids with low blood sugar in a candy store.

The work program intermediary who met us off our flight in L.A., had given us the details of our employer in Steamboat, the Sheraton Hotel. Upon arrival, the hotel Human Resources Department tells us they will put us up in lodging for two nights then we will need to find our own place to stay for the rest of the winter.

The first night in Steamboat, we stay in a modern, wooden apartment building located in the middle of Ski Times Square, the central hub of the resort. The hotel provides us a two-story loft to bunk in, it even has a fireplace. This place is fit for royalty, not five scrubby university students on summer break. I feel I am living a dream.

Jim and Ted, as the two most senior in the group, call for a house meeting to establish a plan for securing housing beyond the day after tomorrow. It is too much for me to be able to handle that level of responsibility at 20 years of age, and so I must defer my obligation to the others to look after me. The other members agree they will look for an apartment in the morning, and then decide that I need to join them as they go out to celebrate the first night in the ski town.

None of the group has much in the way of experience walking on icy surfaces prior to tonight. The state of Queensland, where we are all from, is notorious for its sunny, hot weather and chronic shortage of snow. The township of Stanthorpe, in the far west of the state, is the coldest location in the state. The television weatherman signs off every night's weather report with the low temperature expected in Stanthorpe overnight, as if it is a novelty. 'It is sunny and warm along the coast, with temperatures in the low thirties. Out at Stanthorpe, the mercury will drop to fifteen degrees Celsius.... The thermometer will hover at a bitter eight degrees Celsius near Stanthorpe.... Expect brutal lows overnight in Stanthorpe of around six degrees.

Queenslanders wonder how does anyone, but a lunatic survive in Stanthorpe? The temperature in Steamboat is minus five Celsius, or 23 degrees Fahrenheit. I am not sure the lunatics from Queensland's frigid far west have any more of an idea on how to walk on ice than me and my four buddies.

We cautiously descend the exposed icy stairs to the ground floor. Fresh off the boat from Australia, we are underdressed for the conditions. Sweaters, jeans, and sensible shoes. In front of the apartments is the snow-covered parking lot, which we need to cross to walk down the street to find a bar. The thin frosting of white snow in the car park inadvertently conceals the slick, bare ice underneath. I am the first one to smack the ground. The others cackle at me, but as they each take two haltering steps onto the parking lot, their legs are swept out from underneath them as well. Two, three, four, all five of us are down.

A first time fall on ice is a brutal experience. There is no learning curve. It is like being run over by a semi-trailer that has been sprayed in liquid nitrogen and it occurs far too quickly to be able to react to it. Normal human reaction time is not suited to the expediency at which shoes can succumb to the lack of friction on ice. Worse still is that a person does not fall straight down. The entire body first somehow elevates horizontally to approximately shoulder height. Pauses, as if the force of gravity is momentarily suspended, then crashes to the ground at a speed faster than gravity to make up for the period of hang time that was experienced. I would rather fall into a deep hole in a tropical jungle that has sharpened stakes at the bottom.

As we try to stand up, we all inadvertently somersault to the ground again. Bowling pins do not get flung as violently on a clean strike. Our footwear is perhaps better suited to a day at the local shopping mall, than for high mountain conditions. A Laurel and Hardy movie marathon does not contain as much pure slapstick as the first five minutes of us standing in the parking lot. If a Japanese game show production crew happened to be passing by just at that moment, they would have seen ratings gold.

One of the older, wiser guys hits on an idea, 'let's just drive to wherever.' If there had been a bar 10 meters across the parking lot from us, it did not matter, we were going to use the car to get there.

As our car is about to turn onto the main street, an inattentive pedestrian steps out in front of us. The sudden application of the car's brakes causes the wheels to lock up and slide on the ice. Thankfully, the car's momentum stops short of running the person over. This avoids raising the total indignity of our evening to a combination of, 'unable to walk across a car park' and 'manslaughter.'

I rub the interior of the windshield with my gloves to clear the condensation. Is that Dono on the street?

Out on the street, Dono stares back at me with a look that is equal measure terror and gleeful surprise. This is a wholly unexpected reunion. It is exactly 7922 miles from Steamboat to Brisbane, while Dono's trajectory after he left could have been in any direction. But somehow, we find ourselves in the same place at the same time.

'Simon, how the bloody hell are you?' Screams Dono, and literally pulls me out of the car to give me a bear hug. 'This is great. This is awesome. I am so glad you are here. You have just made my winter.'

I have to smile. This is probably going to make my winter as well. If not for my gross inability to walk over ice, if we 30 seconds more organized or 30 seconds less organized, I would have missed crossing paths with Dono. Even over a three months winter in a small ski town, we might never have bumped into each other again. If there is a God, he must choose moments like this to make a person feel significant.

It is at this moment that I recall my brother's experience in Europe. Now here I am, less than two weeks into my own trip overseas, having my own incredible moment of coincidence. If all I have to do is travel and I can expect this type of thing to happen, then as of this moment, I am hooked.

# Rough landing

Everyone on the plane feels the abrupt arrest to our descent. We all glance around at each other's nervous faces. What on earth just happened? The affable voice of the pilot comes over the loudspeaker of the Canadair CRJ-100 aircraft. 'Well good evening again folks, we were just about to complete our landing into Flagstaff airport and I was putting down the landing gear and the little light that comes on to tell me that the wheel is down and locked in place didn't come on, so I had to abort the landing. Sorry about the bump.'

The news puts all of us onboard the SkyWest Airlines flight in a delicate spot of froth and bubble. (Rhyming slang for trouble) We are trapped on an airborne plane that may or may not have working landing gear. It is not something that is often put up for debate as to what should be considered a part of the essential triad of functional systems to safely land a plane. I think wheels, wings, and brakes sweep the vote every time. The current situation can only guarantee a duopoly.

Those fortunate enough to be in window seats peered outside. Those fortunate enough to be sitting next to someone occupying a window seat just climbed all over them to gaze outside as well. The fading light at dusk made seeing anything impossible and that does not even account for the fact that aircraft wheels are situated under the fuselage and would be out of sight in broad daylight. That does not stop a single passenger from trying to obtain the best vantage point by wrestling for position at a portal. The captain continues, 'we will have to turn back to Phoenix, so we can be watched by emergency services as we land. In case the landing gear gives out.' Everyone's face presses harder against the windows to try and see. On a scale of one to ten the apprehension in the plane was at an eleven point five. Not that our combined anxiety amounted to much of any solution to resolve the problem at hand. However, there are special occasions when it is considered perfectly acceptable to let your raw emotions out in public, I think everyone on the plane considered this to be one of those times.

I am on my way to Flagstaff to realize a dream. To tick hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon off my bucket list. To be fortunate enough to just to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon is a surreal experience. There is no single location in the world that so perfectly addresses one's psyche with the full-frontal assault of, a human and their problems are insignificant. At the Flagstaff airport I have a car reservation waiting for me and a local hotel booked. Tomorrow morning, I plan to drive to the national park and enjoy the splendid views from the rim. The day after, I intend to brave the chilly December winds and ice coated trails to hike all the way to the bottom.

Less than a year earlier I had been killed in a car accident. Sporting multiple broken bones and massive internal injuries the first night in the ICU I coded three times. Somehow, someway the doctors had managed to resuscitate me each time. Nothing like a near death experience to make someone realize that we may only be bestowed one chance at life, occasionally two chances.

That car accident was a defining moment in my life. While it did not change my fear of public speaking, or with being put on the spot, it did spur me to look past my anxieties and to access the courage to attempt all the things that I talked about wanting to do, but never actually did. I had been given a green light to go forth and chase my dreams. Initially after the accident I suffered severe depression while also holding onto a great deal of anger towards the person who crossed double white lines to hit me. To the point where my sole motivation during rehab was to get strong enough to go around to the address listed on the police report and impose my own personal justice on him. My older sister told me that the best retaliation I could have on anyone who hurts me, is to ignore them while going out and having the best life possible. A remedy I had never thought of.

Now my older sister and I may not have agreed on the specifics of what I needed to do to have the best life possible, but we certainly found common ground with the confirmation that it needed to happen. Just get out and enjoy life to the fullest. It really is the perfect reprisal against the injustices of the world. Totally legal, simple to implement, and with no requirement to spend 15 to 20 years in jail on manslaughter charges. After leaving Australia and ending up in Los Angeles I had found myself stagnating. Tireless work in the endless basin of LA, the pursuit of money, and the associated pressures that come with that had walled me off from the idealistic hopes I had left my home with. All the places I was still dreaming of experiencing, I gave myself permission to go. High on that list was making the trek to the depths of the Grand Canyon. So somewhat ironic that I had cheated death which lead to me to be inspired to embark on a trip that now might kill me.

How is it that every time I read an article in a glossy travel magazine extolling the wonders of a person taking a dream excursion that I never see it mentioned that the plane nearly crashes or the protagonist never dealt with finding a leech on their testicles? Either everyone else on the planet seems to have the greatest trips in the world, the articles are all lies, or I am cursed.

I am inclined to think that people cannot be completely honest when it comes to describing their travels. Most humans have a difficult time embracing the joy that is an irksome inconvenience. Missing a connecting flight, losing luggage, or having to use pages of their passport to substitute for toilet paper on the African Savannah. Collectively we should all be ashamed of this. I discovered at some point in life that the true enjoyment of our world come at the edges, at the moments when start wishing that we had stayed home safely on the couch.

A person like Bear Grylls should likely need to renew his passport after every episode of his survival show because he has no more pages able to be stamped? Most people I know think Mr. Grylls is the role model for leading an absurdly challenging life. Does anyone else notice how underprepared the man is when he goes places? He never has so much as a box of match to start a fire. Why does he then find it such a surprise if things on his trip start becoming so difficult? I plan every detail down to the color of my underwear to wear with different weather conditions and still end up being swamped by unforeseen disaster. Mr. Grylls can make wrestling three wild bears in Alaska while wearing a meat jacket seem less dangerous than it would be for me to stand in line at a taxi rank in Athens.

For example, everything I read about trips to Nepal focus heavily on it being a joyous ethnic and alpine experience. The mountains, the culture, the friendly people. When I was there, not only did I get a biblical case of the runs, but I had to endure the frightening discovery of finding a leech attached to my testicles. This is not a first world problem. Yet this possibility has never once been mentioned in Outlook magazine articles about exotic white-water rafting trips. That experience perfectly describes how much of my anticipated safe exposure to seeing the world somehow wound up becoming a religious experience on all that could go wrong. No better example than right here on this plane flight to Flagstaff, Arizona.

The flight back to Phoenix takes less than 30 minutes. Twenty-seven minutes of the most solemn silence I have ever witnessed. People were not this quiet and reflective watching the TV news replaying the assassination of JFK. No one makes a sound. Every sentiment, every feeling was transmitted between passengers with purely a glance of the eyes. When people face near certain death, they prefer to have it be done and over with, this tragedy was inescapably dragged out for a tortuous half an hour. The unease inside that flying aluminum casket was palpable. It could have been handpicked, wrapped in a tortilla, and rolled into a burrito of despondency. It did not help matters that they suspended the inflight drink service. If the flight attendant had attempted to ask anyone to return their seat to an upright position the wound-up tension onboard would have erupted. If people are going to die, let them at least die with their back comfortable and with a little more leg room.

Humans typically react quite irrationally in moments of panic. No one ever stands up and calmly states, 'hey this seems like fun.' The terror feeds into more panic and then people need to find someone else to blame for their alarm. Look at any Supermarket Karen who wants to shift the entire weight of the destruction of her civil liberties and constitutional rights for being required to wear a mask during the corona virus onto the poor kid whose sole job it is to collect the trolleys. In times of crisis we are all Karens. All the passenger in seat 11B, with a Joe Dirt mullet hairstyle, did was buy a ticket and board a plane. He is an apparent innocent. But as soon as he let off the nervous squeak of flatulence, he suddenly became the person responsible for not checking the hydraulic pressure levels in the actuating cylinder of the landing gear for everyone else inside the cabin.

This same accusation scenario occurs in all the great disaster movies of the 70's. Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Concorde Airport '79. Someone always needs to be made the scapegoat for the impending catastrophe. In the movies that person is usually the oldest person left alive, a black man, or the annoyingly loud female role and generally that person is killed off before the second act. Mr. Seat 11B nearly made it all the way to closing credits before his indiscreet toot signaled his guilt.

For the entire trip back to Phoenix I sit quietly in my seat. As in that pressing moment on the quad chair in Thredbo, I seek forgiveness from God for even my smallest dereliction of avoiding the temptations of gluttony and sloth over the last several years. Once again life has proven to me that I will be bestowed at times with good days and at times with much graver moments. Like the other desperate souls on the plane I eventually succumb to laying the blame on my predicament at the foot of another. Back in Grade 3 I thought my life was over when Annette Svain, the girl of my dreams, rejected my advances. If I must blame anyone, then I will blame her. Every single decision in my life that has inexorably directed me along the path to be on this plane, on this date, started from the instant Annette screwed up her face and screeched, 'eww with you, no way.'

The lights of the aesthetically unappealing grid of Phoenix expand into view. I try once again to peer out my window and around the belly of the fuselage to where the front wheels of the plane are causing trouble. I am no closer to seeing the problem. The concerned frown on my brow registers with the passenger in seat 11B. He attempts to stifle a gasp of alarm, which I think succeeds him having him pass more gas. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Well that does not apply to this gentleman. The plane begins its final descent into Sky Harbor International Airport. Game time.

The plane is inches off the tarmac when the fire engine, that is supposed to rush to our aid as we crash, comes into view out my window. Then it just as rapidly disappears behind us as it is outrun by the speed of the aircraft. As a young boy I can remember watching an old, yellow ambulance that would follow behind every plane as they came into land at Townsville airport. I have no idea what one ambulance could do if a DC-10 filled with 125 passengers skidded off the runway and ignited into an inferno. Would not a fire engine be more appropriate? Maybe the lone paramedic driving the ambulance was there to provide CPR... to save one person.

At least at Phoenix we had a fire engine, but those things are certainly not designed with acceleration in mind. The seconds arduously tick by after we leave it in our dust. Why do they not have it sitting at the end of the runway? That will save a few precious seconds that could be the difference between second-degree and third-degree burns. Put someone with common sense in charge of airport safety for god's sake. It makes sense. How long after impact before a plane erupts into flame? By my recollection of 70's disaster movies, it normally takes about two minutes of screen time which translates into 10 seconds of reality. Whether the plane lands properly, or breaks apart and fireballs it, we will still end up at the end of the tarmac. Right where the fire engine should be.

The back wheels touch down. Step one complete. The nose of the CRJ-100 hangs aloft for an uncertain moment as if with the frightful anticipation of someone about to sneeze. Then the front of the plane slowly descends. Careful. Careful now. After an eternity, the front wheel assembly hits the blacktop! Everyone on board holds their breath, which means the man in seat 11B is just forcing out more gas. One second, two seconds, three seconds. The front of the plane does not buckle into the tarmac, the wheel strut stays in place. We are going to live; we are going to live! Every occupant inside the plane breaks into a furious ovation for the pilot, the solitary flight attendant as well. Fantastic. Can we resume the drink service now miss?

Back in the late 70's and 80's, passengers on all the flights I went on used to applaud after every landing. The same way we would clap in the cinema at the end of the movie. Plane flight at this time was still considered somewhat of a novelty. The post landing applause was always done at a speed faster than a golf clap but slower than applause at a daughter's music recital. Reassuringly happy, but never desperately enthusiastic. Tonight, the rapturous ovation given to the pilot was on the level of extolling Jimi Hendrix to come back on stage at Woodstock after he just performed the Star-Spangled Banner. Fervent, delirious, and passionate. The passenger in seat 11B can no longer control himself and empties his bowels of the remaining gas. The rest of us no longer care. It reminded me of the sounds of trumpets welcoming home a victorious army.

We disembark the plane and relax in the comfortable lounge of the terminal as we await instructions from the SkyWest staff. After 30 minutes, we are told that there is the option of being put up in a hotel for the night and flying tomorrow, or the plane will be ready in maybe two hours to resume the journey. But there is no guarantee. Two people decide on the hotel option while the rest of the intrepid group decide that a few hours more will not kill us. Surely this eventful night could have nothing more in store.

How wrong I was.

# Rough landing - part 2

The two hours turns into three and a half. We re-board the plane at close to midnight. The prolonged wait at the airport has dulled the enthusiasm we all possessed for being delivered alive just a few hours before. Everyone is now exhausted and drained after our kidneys have filtered the adrenalin from our bloodstream. The pilot gets the plane into the air without any drama and we all settle back for the short hop to the altitude of Flagstaff.

The captain comes on the intercom to inform us that every system is now in perfect working order and there is even a comforting report of gentle snow now falling at Flagstaff airport. The flight is nearly full but the choice of two people to take a hotel for the night means I now have a spare seat beside me. I have room to stretch out. At six foot two while at an angle of 45 degrees to the seat, with my feet occupying the space in front of the spare seat beside me, it still means I do not have enough room to be comfortable. The Canadair CRJ-100 aircraft was obviously designed for performance in mind and not to be able to comfortably seat men the height of an average freshman high school basketball squad.

There is no such thing as me grabbing a few minutes of refreshing shut eye in the economy class of American domestic air travel no matter how weary I am. My body at best can only lapse into a groggy, trans-meditational state that I have long considered to be similar to slipping into a diabetic coma. The 30-minute flight has the feel of an uncomfortable deep space voyage where I have failed to achieve full suspended animation.

My ears pop and my state of arousal instantly increases. I can sense the plane is slowly descending in altitude. Several of the other passengers take a cursory glance out of their portal. The hesitant looks on their faces suggests that society no longer has any trust in what they are told by airline authority anymore. I look out my window as well. No sign of anything bad as far as I can see, nothing to indicate things are any better than they were the first-time round. My Dad is an engineer, which gives me more qualifications than most to logically evaluate the ambiguous characteristics of any situation.

The captain comes on the intercom, 'folks, prepare for landing.' I straighten myself, put my seat up, and secure my tray table in the upright and locked position. The plane continues its descent with only the odd shudder to indicate the severity of the wind it is flying into. Everything seems on track. A sudden, loud whining replaces the endless purring of the engines and the plane once again pulls up in a hard ascent. 'Sorry ladies and gentlemen. But we have quite a blizzard going on up here at the moment and it was just a little hard to see the runway lights. Not to worry, we will be going around again and see if we cannot find our way down,' reassures the pilot.

On the second time attempt at a landing as the plane pulls up out of its dive, I do not know which groans more, the engines or the passengers. The plane tilts its wings and we slowly circle round for a third attempt. The impassive calmness of our captain finally starts to crack. He does not come over the intercom to inform us of the situation, he flings open the door of the cockpit and simply yells back at us.

'Dammit. Listen folks we have a complete white out going on out here. I am not certain if I can see the landing lights and it is dangerous trying to land. I think what we do is put it to a vote. We can head back to Phoenix, or we can give it one more try and...'

The 46 passengers explode in chorus, '... just land the fucking plane!'

'Are you sure?' Asks the pilot.

'We don't care anymore, just try and land it.'

I have often given thought to what it must take to make people behave in the opposite of what is in their self-interest. Why people refuse to sell their stocks even as they watch the market tumble, why a person would run back into a burning building to save their cat. The answer is obviously complicated. If I had to choose a way to make 46 people voluntarily decide to risk their life I would do it exactly the way it had been done tonight. Wear them down, exhaust us. To make plowing into the side of a mountain seem more appealing than a 30-minute flight back to Phoenix. Perhaps Hitler was not the charismatic leader history portrays him as. Quite possibly he was mercilessly boring. After three hours of listening to him give a speech, the German people were willing to court death by invading Europe just to get him to shut up.

They say that three of the most stressful events of a person's life are: divorce; job loss; and relocating to a new home. I am quite surprised to see that preparing to die in a plane crash did not make the cut. At least when a person gets a pink slip, they do not need to organize search parties to comb the wreckage looking for bodies. Moving to a new house never involves being doused with airline fuel then incinerated. Divorce, well in my experience divorce is incredibly traumatic, so plane crashes should at least be the second most stressful event in a person's life. As the seconds tick away preparing to begin our second 'final' descent of the evening, final being the operative word, I once again all seek forgiveness from God for whatever extra sins in my life I may have accumulated while waiting in between flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

The American South West has some of the most unique geographical features on the planet and I have come back again several times over the years to experience as much of it as I can. Even after a half dozen more trips to the various National Parks in the region, there is something new I discover each time. Unlike the dry conditions of Townsville where I grew up the more arid Southwest never seems to lose its appeal to me. It has taken me seven years since I first saw the Grand Canyon from the rim to come back to it on this trip with the goal of hiking to the bottom. In a moment, I will still have 'hiking it' remaining on my bucket list, but I will be able to tick off 'being in a plane crash.' After I have just finished rubbing out the tick from the earlier near crash of the evening.

My biggest concern with crashing in a blizzard is that my corpse could be a meter deep in fresh snow by the time the rescue workers make it to the crash site at first light. This could mean my body might remain undiscovered until the spring melt. At which point my decomposed remains will look horrific. The person in charge of preparing my corpse for viewing in the casket will have his work cut out for him. To be reduced to a charred, decayed remnant of my former self, I can deal with. Then as my last wish, I' would like my family to have my body returned to Australia and taken to Annette Svain's house. I would like it left on her front steps along with a little note, Annette, this is all because of you.

The storm wind has picked up as the plane jostles more abruptly from side to side as it approaches the runway. Or as I assume it approaches the runway. From what the pilot has told us we could be heading towards Flagstaff Elementary for all he can discern from the conditions outside. After we crash into the school at least the kiddies might be benefactors of this debacle. They will likely get a day off school.

Of the 46 passengers inside the plane, 49% are steadfastly peering out the window, while 49% have their heads between their legs. The remaining 2% are the man in seat 11B, who strangely enough looks rigidly, well composed, and me who is watching what the guy in seat 11B is doing. I am assuming he is desperately holding onto another massive, unwelcome smell. My hands grip the armrests tightly. As the slow drop in our flight plan continues the plane once again falls deathly quiet. The drone of the engines even seems to diminish from the background. Surreal. Hopefully, the engines are still turning, and it is simply the numbness of the experience that is blocking out all external stimuli. Maybe we hit the mountain and instantly perished while my mind was frozen on the last memory I was experiencing? Maybe this is what heaven feels like? The cramped uncomfortableness of limited leg room.

The sudden roar of the engines as they are thrust into reverse vibrates the fuselage and catches everyone by surprise. The pilot comes over the loudspeaker, 'welcome to Flagstaff everybody. We have landed.' There is no applause this time. Everyone's hands, like mine, are probably struggling to release the death grip they hold on their arm rests.

The landing on the tarmac in Flagstaff is the softest I have ever felt. So undiscernible that I fully expect the pilot to come back on after he announces we have landed and laugh, 'sorry folks just screwing with you. We are still flying around waiting to die.' The gentle touch down was in probably in large part due to the amount of snow on the runway. The plane's wheels just tenderly sank into the half meter deep lake of powdered cushion. The pilot did not even need to apply the brakes. The drag on the wheels from pushing through the snowbank decelerated the aircraft to a delicate stop. In the end it was all rather painless. I do not know why the other 44 passengers, apart from me and Mr. Seat 11B, were so tense.

The stewardess lowers the front stairs and the grateful passengers file off the aircraft. We are all so exhausted we just nod out thanks to the pilot rather than offering him gratitude for our lives. I think once a night for heartfelt appreciation is sufficient. If society starts hailing pilots as heroes, every time they overcome such minor trivialities as broken landing gear and obscene weather conditions to land a plane, where will it end?

The passengers gather at the base of the stairs. The snow is so blinding that none of us can determine which way to head. The lights of the plane reflect off the wall of falling snow surrounding us so that it seems like we are trapped inside an eggshell. It is impossible to know which way to go to get to the terminal. The man from seat 11B trudges off blindly into the white soup on his own. I was not too concerned if he ended up becoming lost. Any tracker dog could pick up his scent in a heartbeat.

An employee of the Flagstaff airport appears out of the night with a flashlight. He indicates for us to head in the opposite direction to which the other man had gone. There is a reason I am not so brave as to be able to make critical judgements like that and act on them. I could have been swallowed by the blizzard and perished. Annette Svain can be forever thankful that she likely made the right choice in rejecting me and is simply fortunate that fate intervened to prevent my rotting corpse being delivered to her doorstep.

# Bonkers in Honkers

The Hong Kong policeman donned in his impeccable pressed uniform is incredibly polite, or perhaps he is mistakenly in awe of me. Maybe it is because I stand a good foot taller, weigh 30 kilos more, or maybe it is simply the heroic vibe I am giving off. The thin bath robe I am wearing clings to my body with the soaking I receive in the tropical downpour. Underneath the flimsy terry toweling I have nothing else on. I am suppressing the fact I am panic stricken with the fear I will be arrested. As I appear, for all intents and purposes, to be a tipsy foreigner standing on the streets of Hong Kong dressed as if I am late for a curtain call in a C-grade pornographic movie.

Traffic is steadily backing up in all four directions of the intersection we are standing in the middle of. I cannot read what the names of the streets are, and even if I were sober it would not matter as I have no idea where anything is in this my first trip to the city. All I can rightly assume is that I am stranded miles from my hotel when a cab ride from Hong Kong Stadium to my lodging should have been less than five minutes. Being rightly thrilled to have participated in a successful campaign to win a trophy at the Hong Kong 10's rugby tournament I have slightly over indulged in celebration and a taxi driver thought he could pad my fare home by taking me on the scenic route. A golden rule of travel - be wary of cab drivers.

This is the only time in my life that I have ever stood up for myself after being taken advantage of by a cab driver. I do not consider that I stood up for myself during that the time in New Delhi, or that little episode I had in Cape Town. But at no other time had the police need to become involved. Well, except for the occasion in New Delhi. Most definitely this is the only taxi incident I have ever had in a financial hub of South East Asia and certainly the only one while dressed in bath wear.

Normally I am easy pickings for taxi drivers. I have been taken advantage of by cabbies my entire life. Which is why on my list of least favorite groups of people they sit below 7th day Adventists, telemarketers, and drug smugglers. That means I would invite Mexican kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman over to my house for dinner before the average yellow cab operator. If a person drives a taxi and they want to raise their class standing in life, then I suggest they start a brutal drug war with the Sinaloa Cartel.

This animosity towards cabbies exists because they have scammed me for hundreds of dollars over the years, while I am a person who has always been extremely careful with his money. The broken meter scam, the rigged meter scam, the longer than needed route to get home scam. I have experienced them all. However, taxi drivers are my kryptonite. To avoid confrontation, I will always just pay what they ask and rue my soft decision later. I am always an easier mark if I am inebriated. I need remain constantly vigilant whenever I get into a cab if I have even drunk a half glass of Malbec. They can literally sense that this is when I am at my weakest. I am always too polite to offer anything other than a, 'are you sure that is the fare,' then paying.

On one notable occasion during my early twenties, while coming home from a night out, a taxi driver who only had to drive a straight down literally a single street to get me home for under ten dollars decided he would pad the fare. He took me at least seven kilometers and two suburbs off the direct route home. To avoid confrontation, I paid him the $40 he demanded and even said, 'thank you, sir' as he drove away from my residence. So, within the context of my historical mistreatment by taxi drivers it was clearly the Hong Kong driver's desired interest to meander through every side street and back alley he could find to increase the fare before dropping me at my hotel.

Hong Kong is a schizophrenic-paced city, and I think there is nothing else that a person could do to get the locals more offside than to be a drunk, gringo staggering around a busy inner-city juncture wearing an item of clothing reserved for the bathroom while daring to complain that their taxi driver is ripping them off. This was before the policeman showed up.

Normally I travel alone, and my conservative choice of attire would lead me to be indiscernible amongst any group of my peers. However, most of my experiences with group travel are on rugby tours, which can be an entirely different animal. When tightly ensconced with a bunch of rugby players it is unfortunately a moral requirement to dress as they dress and follow their lead. There is safety in these actions because there is safety in numbers. But as any aficionado of David Attenborough's wildlife documentaries would know, for an individual to become unfortunately separated from the herd this will likely lead to their death. Or in downtown Hong Kong a night in jail.

Traveling in a country with a different language and different traditions is a great way to find myself on the short end of an asymmetry of power. Other countries hold distinctive people with unique considerations toward culture. Natives have the home field advantage. A foreigner will always find that they are in the minority, and that can be an intimidating place. Standing in a street intersection arguing with a taxi driver while wearing a bathrobe during a tropical deluge being surrounded by aggrieved locals is an even more intimidating place.

What beating of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the world lead me to be having this interaction?

Three months previously I was sitting at a bar in Santa Monica, California vaguely organizing plans for a trip to Australia with my travel agent and close mate, Jonesy. I have a lot of time for Jonesy. At any hour, day, or night, if he needed me to be there to have a beer with him and someone to talk to, I would be there. For me, every person on the face of the earth falls into one of two categories. Someone I would be happy to have a beer with, and those that I would rather avoid. Scores of people will likely walk in and out of my life during the course of my time on earth. I believe it most prudent for me not overly complicate things and keep my other-human-being rating system simplistic.

If I am grateful for anything in this world then I am most grateful for the good people that have been walking past me in life, stopped, and then stayed on as mates.

As my travel agent, Jonesy intimately understands the most important issue to consider with regard to organizing my travel. I am extremely uncomfortable spending money. He knows this as well as any of the lucky people who have got to travel with me. I am extremely lucky in this regard. One of the very hardest things to do when traveling is to develop the depth of friendships that people can do easily in their home country. It is never easy. As much as people think that humans are all the same, they are not. For instance, people in England drink warm beer. That would be sacrilegious in Australia. It is indeed a tremendous feat to develop the type of intimate friendship with a foreigner where the two of us can exchange an entire conversation of ideas simply by looking up from our beer. Even if I rarely drink more than one. If I had traveled the world and seen nothing but made one life-long friend, then I would have enjoyed a rich life.

Another great mate Corky was also with us at the bar. I have the utmost respect for Corky as well, although I am always surprised that on every occasion he has two or three beers, he always weirdly develops narcolepsy. The three of us all play for the Santa Monica Rugby Club. I love rugby for two important reasons, playing a rough sport makes it easy to hide my emotional fragility, while playing on a 15-man team I have ample opportunity to hide my physical fragility behind the other 14 players.

Out of nowhere, Jonesy states that I should take a stopover in Hong Kong on my way back home to see my family on a planned trip, as in his words, 'you are going to be passing close by.' With a plethora of direct flights available from LAX and any number of cities in South East Asia falling under the umbrella of being 'close by,' I do not know where his inspiration to choose a layover in Hong Kong came from. It was probably the beer talking. It is an idea that I had not given a sliver of thought to prior to his drunken declaration.

'Maybe you could go to the 7's,' adds Corky.

'Hmm,' I reflected. This now classifies the conversation as reaching a level of deep intellectual thought.

Corky's suggestion sparks my interest a great deal. The Hong Kong 7's is a near religious yearly event, akin to the Hindu pilgrimage to the River Ganges without the need to bath in contaminated water infused with cow dung. It is the duty of every able-bodied rugby tragic to travel there at least once in his lifetime to pay homage. I am a certifiable rugby tragic. After watching me play the game the only way after to adequately describe what a spectator witnessed is with the word, tragic.

The date of the event I will attend in Australia coincides almost exactly with the tournament event dates in Honkers such that cheap flights for an extra five-day stint in Bali can also be worked in by Jonesy. From a dream to reality in the time it took the three of us to finish a round of drinks at the bar.

Then Corky gets back to me that an old colleague of his, Tom, who had worked in Japan for several years played on a team that regularly competed in the Hong Kong 10's. A less professional, but still highly competitive, event that is played over two days prior to the 7's. Two emails later and I have gone from merely establishing that Hong Kong lies within a circumferential radius of 7000 kilometers from Brisbane (And this qualifies it as being close), to being a reserve player on the Tokyo Gaijin touring squad. An assorted team of ex-pats from Australia and England who live and play in Japan. Well that escalated quickly. I had better find my mouth guard and boots.

I have never met Tom personally, but from word of mouth I hear he is the type of person that I would have all the time in the world for.

Thus, my time in Hong Kong was not to be merely a spectator of this grand festival of sport, but to be a participant. I am expecting the Tokyo Gaijin to be a group of weekend warrior types like me, who ply their trade on the fields of Japan with little attention to the cumbersome details of fitness or skill. I am a little on the nervous side, knowing I will only have nine people on my team at this event to cover for me. But, on meeting the guys on my arrival at the hotel after the squad had completed the first day of competition, the captain is supremely disappointed that I am the player who is joining the team from America. He was obviously expecting something else.

I am slightly alarmed to discover that the players, and the opposition for the tournament, were in fact mostly semi-professional athletes. They are all at least 10 years my junior and I have more broken bones and arthritis than the lot of them combined. I was slow enough before I broke my leg in the car accident, I am another speed down now. To my chagrin, the 10's tournament is not simply a run around for has-beens and never-was, it is a highly regarded competition. There are major event sponsors, and it is often host to former international superstars. I have no idea what Tom told the captain to get me on the team, but the lies he told must have been inspired.

On the first day that I have just missed, my team had won two of their three games against fiercely contested opposition and were on track to be able to take home some silverware if all went in our favor on day two. For all to go in our favor I had to hope that I was never called upon to take the field.

I was supplied with team jersey, socks, and shorts. I had also seemingly missed the memo that should have informed me that it is traditional for the Tokyo Gaijin Touring Party to attend the games and after match party dressed as samurai as our official team number ones. Thankfully one of my new teammates loans me his bathrobe to use as my samurai kimono. Despite my misgivings to the idea I am heartedly encouraged to be prepared to go commando under my samurai to attend the post-match function. This was in the time-honored Japanese tradition of men swinging their swords around freely. Considering my rising anxiety at the thought of partaking in a rugby game with athletes who could throw me further than I could kick the ball, I thought it best to just do whatever I was told lest it be found out that I was in fact a mediocre athlete. It also fortuitously turns out that as I unpack my travel bag, I realize that I was careless enough to forget to pack my rugby boots.

Thursday morning dawns. The teams assemble at the recreation ground at the Happy Valley Racecourse for day two of the tournament. The home ground of the Hong Kong Rugby Club the immaculate pitch where the games will take place is nestled beneath a panoramic backdrop of towering skyscrapers. A sight almost as daunting as the idea that my inadequate rugby skills could be put on display. After a vigorous day on the playing field, the Tokyo Gaijin side is rewarded with not only winning the plate competition but also the prize for the best dressed team of the tournament. I am forced to borrow a pair of boots as my services end up being required for a not brief enough final 30 seconds of a game to spell an injured player in preparation for our appearance in the final. Despite my presence on the field for half a minute the team was still victorious, and I was warmly thanked for my contribution for the tournament by my new friends. They were all very understanding of disparity in rugby skills between themselves and I and it became a factor in our bonding. I would be ecstatic to buy them all a drink again, whether it be in five years or 25.

The team continues our celebration at the post tournament dinner in a hotel convention room across the road from the Hong Kong Jockey Club. My last recollection of being with the squad was on stage at the presentation of medals. Dressed in our kimono number ones, sans underwear, we performed the team's choreographed samurai war cry that someone had to quickly teach me in the bathroom five minutes before we were called up in front of all the other teams. It is at this point that there are more congratulatory back slaps, a final toast to the success of the team, another visit to the bathroom, and a return to suddenly find myself being literally the last person left in the banquet hall. Normally I am the one who always stays sober to look out for all my other teammates. Tonight, one of the few times that I let go so that I could go out and celebrate and then I am forgotten. I exit to the street under ominously threatening clouds and hail a taxi to forge my own path back to the hotel.

A taxi pulls up to the curb as the first pellets of rain start to plummet. Safely inside the cab, with the skies beating a thumping melody on the roof, I hand the diver a card with the hotel address printed on it. It had taken only 10 minutes to walk to the ground in the morning from our accommodation, so I am satisfied that the trip back will be short and sweet. I lean back in the seat and close my eyes with the intention of doing so for just a second.

I wake up with the sound of rain still pounding on the roof and the taxi meter clicking over to HK$400. This is US$50 for a trip that should be less than five blocks and I am somehow still not at my destination. That is why, with the taxi hesitating while halfway through an intersection, I open the car door and exit the cab. The driver yells that he wants me to pay him while I simply stand there, stare at him passively, and answer with a calm, 'no.'

The taxi driver leans on his horn and continues to scream at me which draws the attention of nearly every person within a two-block radius. Maybe if it had not been Hong Kong, or maybe if it had not been fiercely pelting with rain, or maybe if I was not wearing attire that normally only Hugh Hefner would feel comfortable wearing in public, I would have not relished the ridiculousness of the situation I found myself in to the extent that I did. I steadfastly refuse to accept the driver's claims of payment all while standing before a horde of onlookers as my thin robe became more sodden and more transparent. All I do is keep repeating the word, no. The peculiar situation gave me the surge of confidence that would not allow me to simply roll over and let the cab driver bilk me. Who could ever accuse me of committing a misdemeanor if they would struggle to believe the absurd details of the crime?

Flashing blue lights reflecting in the downpour signaled the arrival of the well-dressed policeman. This is where things could go pear shaped. Thank goodness the cop does not carry a firearm, only a baton. Contrary to how I am standing up for myself against the taxi driver if the policeman so much as motioned to slide his hand across his belt to where the baton was cradled, I would have immediately thrown my body to the ground and subdued myself.

The taxi driver does himself no favors by continuing to scream irately. I had learnt my lesson in New Delhi regarding the correct way to interact with law enforcement involving matters relating to taxi drivers. Keep my wits about me. The answer is not to get mad, not to get rowdy. But to psychologically overwhelm my opponent. So, I proceed to give the cop a quietly spoken, rambling breakdown of all the events in my life that lead up to this moment, starting with the beer Jonesy, Corky and I shared at the bar in Santa Monica.

I describe the events that had unfolded using my best imitation of Morgan Freeman's voice when he narrated The March of the Penguins. Even toned, calm, devoid of even a shred of emotion or empathy. 'Life in the Antarctic can be unforgiving. The baby penguin watches on as its mother's defenseless body is torn to pieces by the razor-sharp teeth of the killer whale. Without its mother to provide it the sustenance to survive the coming lean winter months the baby chick will soon perish and become food for any number of carnivores roaming the ice shelf. Elsewhere on the frozen continent, another baby penguin has been run over by a polar expedition snow cat...'

In regaling my tale I initially forget to mention that I neglected to pack my rugby boots and, as I consider this a key element of the saga, I backtrack through the story to make sure that I wasn't confusing the poor man by leaving any unexplained holes. The policeman's expression is one of pure bewilderment, undoubtedly perplexed by the fact that such an articulate and forthright gentleman could depart for a rugby tour and forget his boots.

After suffering through ten minutes of steady, methodical diatribe the policeman exhausts his tolerance for documentary style commentary. He decides that I will not be responsible to pay the abusive fare and requests the taxi driver to leave the scene. Now I am in a pickle. Dripping wet, half naked, and stuck in downtown Hong Kong with no means of transportation and highly unlikely to be able to procure any.

'What about me?' I calmly enquire of the policeman.

'You go,' the policeman sharply intones.

'No, I can't. You just made my cab leave. I am stuck. How can I get back to my hotel? Listen mate, can you just give me quick lift in the police car? I promise I'll have an early night and go straight to bed.'

The policeman is even more bewildered. After needing him to step in and resolve a public dispute I am now brazenly asking him for a ride in his police car. The ludicrous nature of my appeal was its persuasive genius. The officer has no other option but to agree to my courteous request.

The police car pulls up outside the team hotel and I climb my way out of the back seat. Several of my teammates witness my arrival through the lobby window.

'How was your trip back?' Thy questioned me. The incredulous looks on their faces displaying the newfound level of respect they just acquired for the elder statesman on the team.

'Uneventful,' I reply.

# Bonkers in Honkers - Part 2

It is a joyous weekend for me witnessing the Hong Kong 7's. A lifetime dream accomplished. While waiting at the bar to buy the team drinks, I randomly run into the younger brother of a girl I went through university with. A chance meeting 7000 kilometers from home. He told me he had recognized me out of the crowd by my red hair. What an amazing, small world it is.

My departure from the hotel on the Monday morning, is significantly less problematic than from the post tournament function. Well it begins less problematic. The team has taxis ordered for a 10 am pick up to deliver us to the airport express train station in downtown. The taxis efficiently arrive 20 minutes early and we have even the stragglers checked out of their rooms and squeezed into the cabs right on 10. The motorcade arrives on time at the station and we unload our bags from the cars.

Then an unexpected argument erupts over the fact that the drivers want to charge us for the 20 minutes waiting time they spent outside the hotel because they arrived early for the designated pick up time. Is there ever an end to the ways taxi drivers will try and take advantage of people? The verbal exchanges are loud enough between the team captain and the four taxi drivers that a squad of policemen stride up to adjudicate the matter. This is unparalleled drama for me. One weekend, two cab rides, six immaculately uniformed cops. Hong Kong has certainly given me more than I expected. My flight departure is a different airline with a more pressing timeline and so I bid farewell to my teammates with the advice that they speak to the police how Morgan Freeman would.

I present myself to the Cathay Pacific counter and hand over my ticket to Bali along with my passport. The elegant female attendant behind the counter purses her lips as she peruses my travel document. It would appear I have a problem. She explains to me that my passport expires in four months and Indonesian law requires me to have at least six months left before expiration to gain entry to the country. This is apparently a serious matter with no leeway to let a month or two either side just slip by. Who do they expect to be following these things? Obviously not the city state of Hong Kong because they just let me waltz right in.

It seems Indonesia thinks that my passport expiring in only four more months is going to cause the earth to spin off its axis and crash into the sun. What type of person comes up with these highly problematic immigration rules? School bullies? Career criminals? Taxi Drivers? I am due to fly to Bali then back to Hong Kong and connect with my flight to Australia in five days. I was looking forward to spending that time being economical with spending money while lying on Kuta Beach enjoying the sun and surf. Now some Byzantium law is going to prevent that.

'Isn't there anything you can do? I have paid for the flight to Bali,' I implore.

'You will be able to process a refund. You can stay in Hong Kong till your flight to Australia on Friday?' She offers.

I do not have the desire to spend considerably more money staying five more days in a Hong Kong hotel than I would to be sleeping in a roofless, stick shack by a beach in Bali. Especially considering the attitude of the taxi drivers in this city. This is a dilemma greater than having to conceal my sporting ineptitude the previous Thursday at the rugby tournament. Considering the dire nature of my financial circumstances and weighing up all my options I decide on the only approach that I think has a snowballs chance of being effective.

In a measured voice displaying even tone and devoid of empathy I start to explain to the young attendant all of the circumstances that have led me to be standing in front of her this day. Starting with Brian, Jonesy, and I having a beer in the bar in Santa Monica. This time I remember to include the aspect of forgetting my rugby boots. But as I get to my description of the thunderous deluge that occurred after I left the banquet, I realized I had not mentioned the fact the Brian gets narcolepsy and so start to recount everything from the beginning. The young girl frantically addresses the keys on her computer and hurriedly studies the information on her screen. She interrupts my presentation of how the wet bathrobe was clinging to my body with a nervous, 'I can exchange your flight for one to Phuket, if that is okay?'

'That would be lovely,' I state without missing a beat, 'I'll be checking one bag.'

Relieved, the girl gets to work routing me on flights to Phuket.

'Are there any restrictions to enter into Thailand?' I think to ask.

'No,' she happily confirms.

Well done Thailand Immigration and Visa Control. This has put my trip back on a solid ground hopefully charting course for some relaxation lying on a beach. I have done hours of prep work for a five day stay in Bali so have absolutely no knowledge of what to expect regarding the destination of Phuket. I am confident it would be cheaper than staying in Hong Kong and I am sure I will be able to work out everything else on the fly. Of course, I was not expecting the mess I fell into when I arrived.

# Heartland

Have I ever watched a TV series or a movie that featured an exotic locale somewhere in the world and thought, I absolutely must go there to see it for myself? Categorically, yes. There are many places that I keep adding to my list. The waterfall shown during the scene changes in Twin Peaks. The Italian landscapes featured in Under the Tuscan Sun. The enclosed island lagoon appearing in The Beach starring Leonardo Di Caprio. Indelible images that tempt me to simply throw in the towel at work and leave to go visit.

Then there are places that could be considered low brow, but still register an attraction. Like inspiration received from leaflet handed out on a street corner, or from a television commercial. During the early 90's there was an advert that ran on Australian television for Jack Daniel's Whiskey that I am embarrassed to say held me captive. Much of the ad only features old men whittling wood while sitting under trees or on porches. There was nothing super striking about the scenery, but something hypnotically alluring to me about grown men taking their sweet time to do nothing all. Lynchburg, Tennessee. This township became ground zero as a focal point for me to explore the known universe. If the municipality has batting cages, a drive-in movie theatre, and a Walmart, I might be a happy man to just plant some roots there.

My excursion to Lynchburg was part of a larger trip from Australia, traveling with my first ever girlfriend while at university. Of course, the relationship dissolved soon after the trip ended. We fly into Memphis from Las Vegas and from here rent a car. First stop, Graceland. Another fabled place on this earth whose reputation just attracts people to it and then holds them like a Venus flytrap. There is nothing I can say more about this place that has not already been written a thousand times in magazines, newspapers, and in reams of Greek literature by the poet Homer. It is history. It is legend. It is essentially a big house

But it is the second most visited house in the USA after the White House. From the casual fan to the overly obsessive Elvis enthusiast, Graceland is a must see for anyone looking for garish interior design concepts involving shag carpet.

I grew up a huge Elvis fan. I know exactly where I was on Saturday August 20, 1977, the day the announcer for ABC radio reported that Elvis had passed on while lying in his bathtub maintaining his meticulous, hygienic standards. I was in the backseat of the family car, Dad was driving, and the family tribe was heading to a Rotary family barbeque at the beach. Elvis died four days earlier on August 16, from what was officially listed as a heart attack, however in 1977 it took several days for any news of celebrity death to reach Townsville. Buddy Holly's 1959 plane crash was reported in 1966, while Jim Morrison's heart failure made the news in 1975, four years after he was buried in Paris. Everyone in North Queensland probably lives under the impression that Whitney Houston is still alive and touring.

As interested as I am in the life and times of the 'King of Rock and Roll', I pale in comparison to a family that I once saw featured in a TV program. A father and son team take turns watching 12-hour shifts of television and documenting every time that Elvis's name is mentioned. I am not sure what the point of doing this is, but I am certain it makes them minor celebrities in their trailer park. My only thought is, who monitors the television if they must take a pee while the other one is sleeping? My reverence of Elvis is what made me such a devotee of Tennessee whiskey. As the King would often wash down a handful of pills with a straight shot of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. The amalgamation of all these laughable justifications is why I maintained such a high level of devotion to visit the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg. My girlfriend was happy to be along for the ride.

Lynchburg has a population of less than 500 people. No batting cages, no drive-in movie theatre. The area is so sparse that locating the entire town is more of a challenge than finding the Jack Daniel distillery once I am there. The township is in Moore County, which is one of several dry counties in Tennessee. This means that even though it is permissible to make whiskey here, it is not legal to buy it. This convoluted rule dates back to the passing of State prohibition laws in the early 20th century. When the US federal government repealed the 18th amendment in 1933, ending prohibition, apparently no one thought to send a memo to the far-flung parts of Tennessee. The residents are still waiting for Al Capone to ride into town and have a showdown with Kevin Costner so that they can have a drink. This anomaly in the law rivals the regulations in many counties in the USA where it is permitted to sell fireworks, however it is not legal to set them off. These are just some of the deep, inner most thoughts I have at times.

My girlfriend and I arrive to the distillery early for the 12.30 tour. We have driven up from Huntsville, Alabama this morning after we visited Wheeler dam that stretches 6,342 feet across the Tennessee River. My Dad is a civil engineer and I know he will be thrilled to know that I went and saw the widest dam in Alabama. A man never grows out of wanting his father to be proud of him. My girlfriend was not as impressed with the construction as I was, and it became something of a friction point in our relationship. It is a Saturday and the usual increased weekend visitor traffic of Midwesterners with horrible dress sense will make spots on the limited number of distillery tours hard to come by. But I had taken this all into account and had it mapped out months in advance.

We purchase our tickets and wait for our tour to fill up with other arriving visitors. The attire worn by some of the people is spectacular. Sleeveless plaid shirts, sandals with socks, tight Lycra leggings on formless blobs of fat. I respected every bold fashion statement I saw. Then I stopped in front of a group of denim overalls clad tour guides sitting and whittling away pieces of wood. Just like in the commercial. Except far better in real life. The euphoria of my expectations is somehow exceeded with every sliver of wood that is cut away. My satisfaction with being present to witness this is worlds away from the deflation most tourists experience at the little mermaid in Copenhagen, 4 points in New Mexico, or the 'tree that owns itself' in Athens, Georgia. The Jack Daniel's Distillery is everything it could be and more.

My girlfriend and I must have looked the least fashion challenged people there as one of the managers approaches us with an amazing offer. He asks if we would be willing to go to Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House to attend a lunch. My girlfriend is excited while I am initially reluctant to go. Having attended boarding school for a period in my life I am all too familiar with what qualifies as both boarding house and prison food. Greasy meals served with healthy portions of disdain by overly plump women who all apply way too much mascara. So, I am not exactly jumping at the chance to relieve the horrors of one day asking Pearl, one of the kitchen ladies at school, for an extra helping of porridge and having her fake eyelash fall into my bowl as she dished it out.

The manager sets me straight. Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House is not what I am envisioning. It has been a venerable institution in the town of Lynchburg since 1913. It is an old Inn that serves up Southern hospitality, tradition, and warm charm to visitors and locals alike.

The history of the place is overwhelmingly small-town Americana. Jack and Mary Bobo had been neighbors and classmates as kids, then became lovers and business partners as adults. They took over the Inn, known as the Grand Central Hotel, from its proprietor Dr. E.Y. Salmon and renamed it the Bobo Hotel. Remarkably, the good people of the south still chose to frequent the place despite the uninspiring name. Jack attempted to branch out into other business ventures, all of which failed. A line of children's' toys, the Bobo yo-yo and the Bobo pogo. Then a disastrous gamble trying to run a nightclub in downtown Lynchburg, the Bobo go-go. Jack died in 1948 a bitter, disillusioned man, but Mary continued to run the inn and dining room for 25 years becoming exclusively tailored to feed the distillery's invited guests. After her death, just a few weeks shy of hitting 102 not out, the distillery bought the building to maintain the heritage that had been established by the good name Bobo. Dining at Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House has since become the hottest culinary ticket in the Mid-West. Reservations must be made well in advance, and for a normal Saturday it is a killer. To even get a look in for a seat at Saturday's midday meal in the time of year between Thanksgiving and New Year's a person must be a State Senator, a Clinton, or well connected to the Chicago Mob.

The scene at the restaurant is described as very old fashioned on a small brochure I find at the Distillery. A bell is rung to alert guests that the mealtime is about to begin, and names are read out by the table hostess to direct diners to their seat at the table. The hostesses are all young ladies of the town, who possibly have been considered unsuitable for marriage, whose job it is to keep the plates full and the conversation flowing. The tables seat up to 11 guests, including the hostess, and in the custom of good Southern manners the food being served may only be passed from left to right to find its way around the table to every diner.

On this Saturday two reservations had to call out with a very last-minute cancellation. An aunt had suddenly passed on. Now, cancellations at Miss Mary's are extremely rare. How rare? It seems the couple were still in the process of making it to the lunch, after Nan had been hastily tagged and bagged, when they found their car had a flat tire and they had no spare. This meant two chairs at one of the dining tables would be empty. As tradition demands, with two empty seats a lot of food would have ended up on the floor, or simply stopped circulating around the table, because heaven forbid people living in the grand ol' south might have had to stand up or reach across a chair to get it.

# Heartland - part 2

Life rewards the adventurous, so my girlfriend and I both agree to attend and fill up the spare seats at Miss Mary Bobo's. It is not like one of could say yes and one say no. She did not want to leave me alone at the Jack Daniel distillery with all the fine large women wearing Spandex to distract my attention. I did not want to spend the next leg of our journey with her complaining about all the food that fell onto her lap at the dining table because there was still one open passer spot. We are told there will be no cost to our meal as a sign of gratitude for our participation. Why didn't they tell me that to begin with? I will pass the butter as well as any man if it gets me a free feed. Two spots will be held for us on a later afternoon tour of the distillery. This creates a hiccup in my timeline for getting to our next sightseeing location, Mammoth Caves National Park by way of Nashville, but I think we can still do it. The manager urges us to hurry to Miss Mary Bobo's as lunch is about to be served. Thankfully, the Inn is only four blocks away from the visitor's center, straight down Main Street.

The tables at the restaurant do indeed seat ten, eleven with our hostess. The lunch time group of four other couples that I will be spending the next hour with is an eclectic assortment of characters. One couple is an outlier from the region, hailing from the Lone Star State of Texas, and the other six are a group of friends from Tennessee.

The delightful young hostess, Lilith, first gives an informative talk on the history of the building and of the extraordinary life of Mary Bobo. The failures of her husband Jack are largely pushed to the side and ignored. Lilith explains that after her death there was great concern that the restaurant would close its doors. It could have ended up becoming a fancy Starbuck's or been demolished to make way for a parking lot for a Walmart. I am thinking that surely the descendants of Jack and Mary could not be that business challenged. They must have inherited some of Jack's entrepreneurial genes. Even if worse came to worse they could license the place out to a national restaurant chain while still cashing in on their famous name. The Bobo El Pollo Loco would be a huge draw, while opening the town up to a whole new country, Mexico, from which to attract tourists.

Everyone introduces themselves at the hostess's request. That is part of the draw and charm of the place. Table chatter. Guests must find a way to associate with each other to not disrupt the southern style ambience. Everyone must leave their pretense or snobbery at the door lest Lilith has then sent to be strung up in the dock. Long before cell phones people did not find it easy to interact with strangers either. But the enjoyment of good food demands good company.

Things do not start well when I must explain to everyone at the table where Australia is on a world map. A gravy boat represented Australia, the salt and pepper shakers were New Zealand and the USA was a large pitcher of homemade iced tea. The other guests gave me not a single expression of comprehension. It was like Oklahoma was the edge of the known world. 'They are from another country,' assists Lilith. The looks of surprise on the faces at the table was slightly unnerving, while Bob from Texas was visibly sullen. He had obviously come to Mary Bobo's for lunch, not a geography lesson.

Thankfully, the staff at Mary Bobo's have been well trained to bring out the best in people so that everyone enjoys their experience. Judging from Bob's early reactions I can tell he will be the hardest nut to crack. Question is, is Lilith up to the task? It helps the mood in our dining room that the curtains are open and entrancing sunlight illuminates the spotless décor. The diners are not wedged into tight, dark booths that have less stomach space than your average economy class airline ticket with the tray table in the down position. That alone would have made Bob a nonstarter.

The food is first class and there is as much of it as I desire. This is not your typical restaurant where diners order off the menu, the dishes are set each day in advance. Pork medallions in a pepper sauce, seasoned fried chicken, steaming scalloped potatoes, fried okra, catfish casserole, and Miss Bobo's special macaroni and cheese from her own private recipe. The mystery of the mac and cheese is accentuated by the hostess telling us never to speak a word to the outside world that we have eaten this recipe. Miss Bobo's secret. To me it tastes like every other mac and cheese I have eaten in my life, but some of the other diners proclaim that indeed Miss Bobo had truly unearthed the secret of making the dish perfect. People are easily convinced of anything. I try not to allow myself to be overly influenced by lonely women, who desperately seek matrimony, and who dress in long flowing white frocks that make them look like they just walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie.

I have no issue that the menu is set. My meal is free. However, there will always be one in a group who complains no matter what. That person would be Bob from Texas. Bob wants ribs for lunch. He probably has had ribs for lunch every day of his life. The notion of changing this eating schedule has him spouting off like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Main when he cannot watch Judge Wapner. Bob also has the annoying habit of starting every sentence with, 'well in Texas we do it this way...' The notion that people travel to other places to do things differently from the way they do them back home is completely lost on him. 'How can gas in Tennessee be 97 cents a gallon? In Texas it is 89 cents.' 'What do you mean it snows in Alaska, the weather is always warm in Houston?'

I secretly wished for Lilith to lean across the table and smack Bob across the face with the ladle sitting in the fried okra. In my mind I am thinking, shut the hell up, mate. No one cares that you want to eat ribs. If you want ribs so badly walk across the street and erect your own restaurant and name it, Bob's house of Texas ribs. I would be the first one to avoid it knowing that Bob likely had his fingers all over the ingredients. Despite the instructions from Lilith regarding the set menu, Bob is one of those people that just cannot take a hint. He wants his ribs, goddam it, or the governor of Tennessee will hear about it. Bob must think he has a lot of sway outside of his home state. I am not 100% convinced that he is not a Klansman. He certainly comes across at times as being playfully racist or, maybe racism is a just a part time hobby.

The strangest couple at the table sit directly opposite my girlfriend and me. They are both extremely quiet and unassuming. Too quiet. They have all the trademark signs of being either fervent, religious believers, or serial killers. The wife is the personification of timid. Most of the time she looks as if the social context of the group setting is going to overwhelm her. She is terrified of being asked a direct question. Makes me wonder what she was expecting after she read the advertising pamphlet. An intimate dining experience for couples to experience a void away from all other human contact. Perhaps this is the way her friends decided they were going to help expose her to the world. By making her have lunch with some strangers. I think they could have done a better job by educating her that west of Oklahoma there three more US states and then a person arrives at an ocean.

The husband is not as bad but still he certainly has a long way to go if he ever dreamed of developing the charisma to compete as a professional wrestler. He has the slightly annoying habit of having to describe everything he is doing as he is doing it. I am now sitting down at the table. I am pulling the chair in. I am getting my napkin, now laying it out on my lap. It was like he was giving discreet commentary to his life. The most animated I see him is when the hostess asks someone to say grace and both he and I raise our hands. I win out because I am going to be able to do it in Latin. This is one of the useless skills I learnt in the boarding house dining room. I always thought I might be able to use it to win kudos while dining with the landed gentry in England before watching the men's final at Wimbledon. Instead I will try and use it to subtly infuse some class into Bob from Texas, because Lilith seemed reluctant to make a go for the ladle in the fried okra.

Everyone bows their heads.

Benedic, Domine, nos et dona tua,   
quae de largitate tua sumus sumpturi,   
et concede, ut illis salubriter nutriti   
tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus,   
per Christum Dominum nostrum.

Bob bursts out in incredulous laughter, 'ha ha, we don't say it that way down in Texas.' That makes me feel kind of small, but everyone else at the table offers me a surprised and dutifully impressed smile. Except for the couple directly opposite. They give me a prolonged, over-thoughtful stare, the way soap opera actors dramatically do at the end of every scene. Then the pair turn to each other and start whispering their own prayer amongst themselves. I guess having it done in a foreign language does not count according to them. Everyone else at the table must now wait for them to finish out of polite respect. Their private grace carries on much longer than we all expect. Lilith calmly indicates for us to wait and will not step in to speed along proceedings.

I can barely make out what they say to each other in their fervent hush. 'Thank you, god, for this bountiful meal. Thank you for the mashed potatoes. Thank you for the mac and cheese. Thank you for the flavored ice-tea. Praise GEESUS!' Writing this down on paper does not do the volume change of their voice justice. It goes from a baby whisper on the 'praise' part, to a full-throated willing a 40-1 longshot past the winner's post at the Kentucky Derby roar on the 'GEESUS.'

I had always learnt when I attended church as a young boy to pronounce the savior's name with a hushed voice like I was a commentator on the golf channel. 'On the green in two after a great approach shot from the rough beside the bunker. Jesus has what looks like a four-foot put to make par.' These two cried out GEESUS the same way I would if an alligator grabbed me by the leg. Then they would go back to whispered murmurs. 'Thank you for the catfish in the casserole. Thank you for the pepper used to make the pepper sauce. Thank you for the okra in the fried okra. Praise GEESUS!'

Finally, Lilith says something to break it up, 'okay, and thank you. That was lovely.' If she had not said anything, we might have been 20 minutes in and still waiting on them giving thanks to each individual herb and spice used in the seasoned chicken. But I have now learnt something new religious wise. In the Deep South, religion is like duck hunting, when praising their Lord and savior they like to go at it with both barrels. GEESUS! To add effect, sometimes a Pastor might add in a brief pause, GEE... SUS! As in, by the power of GEE... SUS! I absolve you of all your sin, in the name of GEE... SUS! I like this version way better than how I was taught as a child. Gives the man's name more authority. Like the way Bruce Buffer introduces UFC fighters into the octagon.

'IT'S TIME! Weighing in at 160 pounds, the great white hope. Trained as a carpenter until he found his true calling inside the ring. He will admonish you for your sins and make you beg for forgiveness. His signature move is the crucifix. Fighting out of Nazareth in the holy land... GEEEEEEEE... SUSSSSSSSSS!'

These are the types of nonsensical, obscure thoughts that filled my mind while sitting through a 10 minute sermon posing as grace before I could have my first tasting of something named fried okra at Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

# Heartland - part 3

Do not misunderstand me, I am not disparaging this couple's faith. People are free to believe what they want. With the strength of her faith in Jesus this young lady could have gone on to achieve anything she wanted to in life. Become a lead hostage negotiator for the FBI, an outspoken champion for woman's rights, or a leading advocate for the prevention of cruelty against carrots. And good for her if she did. Many times, I think I did not achieve the success I had hoped for due to a lack on my conviction.

I personally believe that Jesus would have had a very sarcastic sense of humor. He rolled the stone from his tomb and took off, so when his mates showed up, they had a fit that he was missing. I would love to share a beer with Jesus but knowing how things always turn out I would end up being the designated driver.

During the course of table chatter the young religious couple admitted they retained an unwavering belief in disgraced TV evangelist Jim Bakker, even now three years after his conviction for fraud. I seriously doubt the ability of these two to be able to grasp the satire of an article written in The Onion. Bob from Texas found that hilarious. He put in a few shots at Jim and Tammy, while helping himself to another portion of the fried okra, which I could not touch again after my first mouthful. Bob thought that any one was fair game for a good roasting, which was the Texas way. I have to side with Bob on that point. I quietly believe if God did not intend for people to good naturedly take the mickey out of each other then he would not have invented New Zealand and he certainly would not have invented sheep jokes.

All the guests at our lunch table excel at one point. We all unquestioningly pass the food around from left to right. Bob would often ask for something just off to his right so that it would have to circumnavigate the entire table to be given to him. When the item was handed to him, he would let out a great big belly laugh. If there was a lull in discussion Lilith stepped in and filled in the blanks with some history on the house, the man Jack Daniel, or the town of Lynchburg. Everyone always offers their polite amazement at whatever piddling item of interest she mentions about the history of the area. Except for Bob. I learn more about Texas than I do about anything else.

The most interesting tidbit about the Jack Daniel story is how he died. The oft told legend is that he died of septicemia, or blood poisoning as it used to be known, after he developed an infection in his big toe as a result of kicking his safe when he couldn't remember the combination to open it. This begs the question, who left Jack in charge? Jack did not have the best memory for numbers, apparently. It was a common occurrence that he would forget the combination. According to Bob, in Texas they would refer to him as being a retard. However, Mr. Daniel's modern-day biographer states that an incident like this being the cause of his sepsis simply is not true. Once again Bob offers perhaps the most interesting take on Jack's demise. 'Down in Texas morons don't go around killing themselves by getting infections in their blood by kicking stuff. They blow their own heads off with a gun.'

While I know next to nothing all about Jack Daniel, outside of what I learnt at lunch, that didn't stop me from having meaningful contemplation on his life as I dutiful waited to pass food dishes around the table to keep Bob amused. The story of Jack kicking his safe was a feature of the television commercial I first watched in Australia. It was repeated by the young lady at Miss Bobo's and again on our tour of the distillery in the afternoon. Three times by three separate people. All with the exact same version of events. I do not know how much more verification I need to pronounce this story - true! I know the religious pair sitting across from me at lunch believe it to be true. They would probably believe it if Jack Daniel miraculously came back to life three days later.

Who honestly cares if this story is true or not? It is an integral part of the legend of Jack Daniel. Take this fable out and Jack Daniel has no distillery. There are no dozens of storage buildings filled with aging casks of Tennessee whiskey dotting the hillside of Moore County. There is no economy in Lynchburg. The USA does not have the IRS getting a check handed to them every two weeks in the amount of 8 million dollars to pay the company's taxes. Without those taxes the USA has no Medicare for its elderly citizens' healthcare. There is no annual budget for the military to protect the country from Iran's nuclear threat. Take away Jack Daniel kicking his safe to die of sepsis and we may as well take away the entire American way of life.

The table makes it all the way to dessert with nary a word spoken regarding politics, abortion, or gun control. I am sure Bob wants to explain to everyone his thoughts on white supremacy, but Lilith always expertly deviates the conversation in another direction every time he broaches the subject. Bob would come charging like a bull with some incendiary statement, but the hostess would expertly twist the narrative like a matador swirling their cape. Bob would be left shell-shocked, staring into a void, wand wondering how we all started discussing needlepoint.

Lilith deserved better than she had. I wished upon her the good luck for her next table be composed of ten handsome single bachelors all vying for her attention. I even considered it could be a million-dollar idea capable of being turned into a TV series. Every week Lilith could notify one unlucky gentleman that his amorous advances were no longer required on the show by serving the unlucky contestant a bowl of fried okra. But I dismissed it all as just another one of my crazy ideas.

For the final course of the afternoon we are offered baked apples coated in Jack Daniel's special sauce. The unwitting use of the phrase 'special sauce' has me pass on the tasty looking treat. Uncomfortable memories from boarding school. Everyone at the table agrees that the baked apples are the most amazing item they have tasted today, with Jack's special sauce being the kicker. The two opposite me even quickly offer up a prayer. 'Thank you, Lord, for Jack Daniel's special sauce. Praise GEESUS!' Stifling a chuckle, I decide I should leave a little explanatory note for Miss Mary Bobo's marketing department when I sign the guest registry.

At the conclusion of the meal the hostess Lilith encourages us all to go to the registry and leave remarks before we depart. As we rise from the table a conversation is started regarding the personal difficulty each group had to procure a reservation for the day's meal on this first Saturday after Thanksgiving. Bob from Texas secured the booking for him and his wife at Easter time, on the recommendation of a friend. Presumably, another Texan who shamefully had not forewarned Bob about the likelihood of ribs not being on the menu. The group of six had been put on a waiting list from the previous Thanksgiving, then finally secured a booking for all of them in January. I shudder at the thought these people had to go to the lengths of being on a waiting list since over a year ago. They anticipation of the meal had been their highlight of the last 12 months and I am sure it will crush them to know my girlfriend and I had just rocked up at the distillery that morning and been handed an invite.

'And what about you?' One of the six asks me.

'How did you know about Miss Mary's in Australia?' Adds in Bob.

Jesus, I do not want to answer this question. If anything, I need some time to properly phrase what to say. If my girlfriend can run a delay tactic then I should be able to invent some half-baked, but semi-believable story that I have been waiting half my life to try Jack's special sauce. I exchange glances with my girlfriend to see if she understood the gravity of our situation. She is smiling innocently at the other parties. GEE SUS, she has no idea.

My girlfriend unwittingly opens her mouth and speaks before I could move to fill it with a handful of fried okra. 'We had never even heard of the place. We arrived at the distillery this morning for a tour and they told us they needed someone to fill in two empty places from a cancellation'

Perhaps she did not realize what she was doing, or perhaps this was her way of embarrassing me after making her drive six hours to see a dam. All I know is that suddenly there were eight people in the room who deeply resented me and who probably despised Australia as well, even though none of them could find it on a map.

# Education on the beach

Brazil is the only country in the world where a person can observe a super model, a homeless man, and a goat, waiting together at a bus stop. It is a country of enormous contrasts and it is certainly a country where one can see some peculiar things. Many things that people from a western culture might look upon with surprise, are likely considered commonplace in places like Rio de Janeiro. The first time visiting this city I was amazed at one particular sight I saw. On a corner of the main arterial road of Ipanema, in the middle of a family suburbia, is a huge billboard of a rather nerdy, Caucasian man in a sleeveless T-shirt surrounded by three brown skinned, provocative looking women in their underwear. The caption of the poster spells out in other information that may be required, ASS-MAN!

A billboard is not the most effective advertising medium known to man, but the marketing approach of Ass-man certainly attracts attention. My interest was definitely piqued, as was that of many other folks who eyes were drawn upwards. This is despite the fact that in the early 2000's English is hardly spoken or understood by anyone in Brazil. Although the moniker Ass-man combined with a cohort of buxom beauties sort of speaks a universal language. The ad posed nothing but intriguing questions in my mind. Who is this Ass-man? What are the names of some of his more well-known films? Has he starred in anything mainstream? Too many questions for only one billboard to be able to answer sufficiently.

This commercial display is on my Mt. Rushmore of top 4 advertising campaigns of all time. The other three include the Jack Daniel's television ad, obviously, an iconic Australian Solo soft drink commercial where the main actor pours most of the drink down his neck not his chest, and an extended Nike spot that was featured during the Salt Lake City Olympics and of which I have an amusing tale of my misfortune to be involved with.

Even during the early evening in Rio de Janeiro, the stifling summer humidity is heartbreaking. With billboards for porn openly exposed in residential neighborhoods, I felt like it would not be a societal faux par for me to go for a run while shirtless along Copacabana Beach. There are wrinkly 70-year-old men wearing Speedos who calmly walk up and down the beach promenade, and nobody raises an eyelid. If I can be brave enough to travel to Rio by myself then surely, I can be brave enough to expose my pasty white skin amongst the throngs of deeply tanned locals.

My flight arrived this morning and I wanted to sweat out the jet lag and properly exhaust myself to make it easier to sleep without the benefit of air conditioning. However, if I knew that this evening was the time that I was going to be introduced to my future mother-in-law, then I would have at least worn a singlet. I am currently on my second trip to this country. The first to come back and visit a young lady who I sparked up an attraction with five months before and who had then flown overseas to visit me last month.

As I jog along the beach back toward the apartment where I am staying in, I am flagged down by my girlfriend and her younger 10-year-old brother. Yes, a ginger stands out that clearly on a beach in Rio de Janeiro to be picked out from over a kilometer away. They are standing on the curb directly outside of the Municipal School of Cicero Pena, a squat mixed-use building located beachfront on Avenue Atlantica. This tiny 4-story building is dominated on either side by towering 5-star hotels on arguably the most desired real estate for an educational building on earth. The students are on the doorstep of Copacabana Beach. During the day Cicero Pena serves the needs of high school aged students during the two shifts of education that are standard in Brazil. From 8 to 12 and then from 1 to 5. In the evenings till 10pm it serves as a school for mature aged students learning to read, write, and develop skills to help them maintain a living in the economy.

As my girlfriend and I chat on the street, a woman appears at the window of the top floor. It is my girlfriend's mother. The school is where she works as a teacher. She waves for us to come inside the building. My girlfriend asks me, 'do you mind going in and meeting her students. They will be so excited to meet someone from Australia.' No, I do not mind, but it is not like I am going to be exactly comfortable.

The security guard on the ground level stops me as I try to walk past the front gate. I may be overdressed for the beach, but the school has a dress code. He will not let me enter without a shirt on, something that is a measure of relief to me. This fortunate hiccup seems to have deep sixed the chance of meeting my girlfriend's mother, at least until I am better prepared. Meeting parents of partners is an awkward moment at the best of times, even if one has been dating for years. It is even more uncomfortable when the association is a fledgling long-distance relationship and a person knows that the parents do not speak the same language.

A scenario like this would not be unlike what the final judgement day will feel like. I am not going to be expecting it and I will have no idea what to say once it happens. I am anticipating what the likely response from the mother will be. 'Hi. Pleased to meet you. Look how white your body is. Sorry you are not good enough for my daughter.' It would have surely been an uncomfortable moment if it had happened. Certainly not made any easier by me basting in sweat after taking an 8-kilometer run in sweltering humidity beforehand.

I am about to resume my run to head back to my accommodation when the younger brother unexpectedly slips off his tank top and hands it to me. He smiles and nods to indicate that I can use his shirt to act as dressing cover. I did not want to appear disrespectful, but his item of clothing nowhere near my size. I stretch it out as far as I can and squeeze my torso into it with barely enough room left to allow me to breathe. The dry-fit shirt extends down only as far as three inches above my shorts. I now have a sexy Britney Spears muffin top going on. I could not look any less manly if Elton John were nibbling on my earlobes while fondling my nipples. If the security guard so much as snickers, I am going to disappear into my shoes.

The guard waves me through without any display of emotion although I am sure his eyes stayed focused on my midriff for much longer than was necessary.

My girlfriend takes my reluctant hand and leads me up the stairs to the top floor. At every step, my feet feel heavier and harder to lift. Stumbling into the classroom I am introduced to the 20 mature aged men and women collectively. My three words of Portuguese gets me through the introductions, I am hungry. The students are engaged in a class dedicated to them showcasing their skills at recycling thrown away items into useful trinkets to be sold in flea markets.

My role is simply to stand there and be a human showcase as my girlfriend explained to the class any elements of Australian culture that she knew while simultaneously pointing her finger at me. I am forever mindful of how tight the shirt is and how far it is creeping up above my belly button. There is a great deal of 'ahhs' and 'ohhs' during the discussion of how far away the country is, while the class burst out with the word kangaroo after being prompted.

After 10 minutes of mildly uncomfortable embarrassment the excitement seems to wear off and I nod towards the door. It is at this moment that a frail 60-year-old lady walks to the front of the room and presents me with a large glass jar decorated with a mosaic of hardened colored glue spelling out the word 'arroz,' Portuguese for rice. I am not sure what I am supposed to do with it. She speaks some Portuguese to my girlfriend then slowly walks back to her seat.

My girlfriend leans in to talk to me. 'She thinks you are like a superstar. And she wants you to have this. She knows it is simple, but she doesn't want you to think that she is unable to do anything and that she is useless,' she says. The huge lump in my throat threatens to choke me. Sometimes all it takes is a very humble act to completely expose the privileges that I have had in my life simply due to the location of my birth. Here am I, often times struggling with my first world problems, while this sweet, old lady who has nothing, reminds me how much better off I still am compared to most of the world.

A few students want to ask me questions about Australia that I quickly answer through the translation of my girlfriend. Basic stuff, mostly regarding kangaroos. But my eyes keep returning to the jar I cradle in my hands. How does someone who has so little find the strength to give away all they have? I continue to try and wrap the visit up as quickly as I can so that I do not start weeping in front of the class. When I finally have a chance to make my move out the door, I pause, and humbly smile in gratitude at the old lady who had given me the gift. Her tired and worn eyes show a momentary spark. She returns my smile with her own. Then she gives me a wink and turns to the student next to her and knowingly nods, 'Ass man.'

# Winter Blues

New Hampshire's weather during even mild summers can be chilly. During winter it is down-right Canadian. Case in point, I have spent the last 40 odd days with the mercury hibernating at -40 Fahrenheit while I have tried to survive in the northern region of the state. Being raised in tropical North Queensland this experience redefines to me what cold is. If a person wonders what -40 is in the metric system, because they do not live in America (or Burma) and so are not a devotee to 18th century German scientist Gabriel Fahrenheit, then it is -40 Celsius as well. The only point that Gabriel and Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius could agree on when designing their individual temperature scales was -40. The precise temperature level that a man's testicles freeze solid.

Thankfully, in March 2004, New Hampshire is struck with a heat wave. Temperatures skyrocket to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, -17 Celsius under the competing Swedish system. A week into this glorious weather change, that brings clear blue skies and temperatures that can only solidify carbon tetrachloride, every local in the small town of Littleton where I temporarily reside is walking the streets stripped down to T-shirts, shorts, and summer dresses. This is the first sign of impending warmer weather that already has Canadian children begging Dad to take them to the community pool for a swim. In Littleton, the increased temperature is enough to inspire the slightly less resilient type people scattered amongst the local population to go outside as well.

When the temperature outside is -40, skiing is not the first thing that springs to my mind when I think of activity. My thoughts go straight to blanket weaving, fire building, and shivering. But in New Hampshire, temperatures that low are still considered prime downhill weather. Who in their right mind straps on skis on a bitterly cold day then gets into a tuck to accelerate down the slopes further increasing the wind chill factor on their body? I found the wind chill on my exposed ears walking to work across the parking lot at a slow pace too much to bear. So, who does that? People who live in a state whose motto is, 'live free or die.'

Cannon Mountain is the closest ski location to Littleton. Its position on the northern curtain of the White Mountain range means that it is exposed to a greater velocity of wind than most other sheltered resorts. A skier is likely to suffer through -70 degrees conditions just riding on the chair lift. This is well below both the German and Swedish limit for testicular safety. Does not impede people from skiing though. I assume it is predominantly eunuchs and women who enjoy hitting the slopes under these conditions.

Conditions on Cannon Mountain are tame compared to what goes on at the nearby summit of Mt. Washington. This peak is the highest mountain east of the Mississippi River. The weather patterns on this monolithic pile of rock are erratic, lethal, and notorious. Wind speeds exceeding 350 km/hr. have been recorded at the summit. It regularly snows there in the middle of summer. The lowest recorded temperature on the mountain, including wind chill, is -107. At this point it does not even matter what system a person uses to measure it. That is wraithlike frigidity and perhaps the only conditions on earth comparable to the iciness of my ex-wife.

The weather observatory at the summit regularly ties for second as the coldest place on earth, along with Siberia, with 90 percent of Canada perpetually holding the top spot. Boiling water poured out of a teapot instantly turns to ice under these temperatures. Which begs the question why does anyone risk their life to empty the teapot outside when it can just be poured down the sink? Since official record keeping began, 150 people have died on Mt. Washington from weather related causes. (162 under the Metric System). Everyone from mountaineers and extreme skiers seeking a dangerous thrill to the climate scientists living in the observatory stepping out for a breath of fresh air.

Ski lift operators back on Cannon Mountain are trained to recognize the symptoms of hypothermia on skiers willing to brave the elements to prevent a weather-related tragedy from occurring there. If body temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the organs can no longer function properly. The primary signs that trouble is brewing are confusion, disorientation, and slurred speech. These are also the most notable side effects of drinking a bottle of Jägermeister before strapping on the boots, which would be mandatory for me to do before venturing out when it is that cold. So how does a Cannon Mountain lift operator tell the difference between someone who is hypothermic and someone who is drunk? Apparently, the employees also drink heavily during their shift and this enables them to attune themselves to the variations of the two conditions. People who have a dangerously low body temperature approaching hypothermia don't usually ask if they can have a swig of the lifties' stash.

With the warmer temperatures in the area, hypothermia cases on Cannon Mountain slow to a trickle and hard liquor sales nearly dry up. For me it is a chance to risk my fragility to exposure with Antarctic like environs and explore. The last 40 days have given me an intimate understanding of the term 'cabin fever.' Being locked inside for over a month is an unnerving experience. I started to accept why a person might want to force their way into a locked bathroom with an axe and scream, 'here's Johnny.'

On the far side of Mt. Washington from Littleton lies a guarded spot known only to a limited cluster of avid outdoorsmen and the local psychotic community. Tuckerman's Ravine. This precipitous cliff face makes any steep, double black diamond run at your average ski mountain look as imposing as a wheelchair access ramp. A 40-story high bowl of steep sided rock covered in barely enough snow to allow someone to be crazy enough to attempt to ski it.

What little snow there is, desperately clinging to the headwall, is littered with the punctuation errors of jagged black rocks. Words themselves can never adequately describe what a quick Google search of photos of Tuckerman's Ravine can show you. It is a phenomenally aggressive slope. Still, that does not deter an army of whackos who live in New England from hiking 2.4 miles from the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center at the merest sniff of springtime. Then they engage in literally the toss of a coin with their health as to whether, after attempting to ski the cliff face, they hike out on two legs or one at the end of the day.

Tuckerman's Ravine sounded like no place on earth that I would have any interest in visiting to put my limited skiing abilities to the ultimate test. However, I would be up for the hike just to watch the skiers thrown themselves off the cliff purely for the entertainment value.

Even though it is only a three-kilometer walk, mountain hikes always take longer than I expect them to. And that is even without having to carry up skis, boots, and a portable defibrillator like the others on the trail. Still, I struggle with the walk. Rather than sturdy boots I am hiking in a flimsy pair of joggers with insulation provided by as many pairs of socks as I can wear and still lace up the shoes. After an hour hiking behind a group of potential corpses, they stop to have a drink of water and a snack. Being the unprepared imbecile that I am when going outdoors, I had not considered the notion to bring water and nourishment with me. Thankfully, the other hikers on the trail were generous folks and took pity on my unpreparedness, they offered me a sandwich and some fluid to drink. I considered for them it was sort of like breaking bread for a last supper.

Australia, like all countries, has its fair share of idiots. In December 2001, a 22-year-old medical student from the city of Brisbane set off for a trek in Nepal. Coincidentally wearing joggers not hiking boots. He also has on a pair of tracky dacks (sweatpants), a padded jacket, and his favorite straw hat. December is early wintertime in Nepal, the country noted for having the highest mountains in the world, but this guy thinks he is dressed appropriately. His best mate and travelling companion, and another Australian who is with them, did not offer to give this bloke any fashion tips before they set out for a hike. As far as mate ship goes that is a tough call. What is the wisest course of action under the circumstances? Remind him of the reasons why Edmund Hillary did not scale Mt. Everest for the first time in a pair of tracky dacks or, let the fool figure it out for himself? The village locals and the two appropriately dressed hikers probably got a kick out of seeing him hiking in the Himalayas dressed as if he was a contestant from the reality show Redneck Island. This future doctor one ups me though on the preparation stakes, only because he packs two chocolate bars in his backpack.

Within two hours of setting off on the trek to the next mountain village this hero gets separated from his two companions. In doing so, he becomes so lost that he is not seen by anyone for another 42 days. This man hoped to one day successfully complete complicated surgical operations on people but, he did not have enough common sense to follow a walking trail. How then would he react in situations that exert real critical pressure on a person, such as performing a quadruple heart bypass?

When he is eventually rescued, he is later interviewed by an Australian current affair show. He would not divulge the brand of the chocolate bars that he claims kept him alive for the six weeks. He hoped to score a big windfall from the candy company in return for plugging them. I am uncertain how that advertising campaign might roll out. Snickers, the candy bar of choice for fools with a minimal concept of basic life skills. I do not normally buy swimming products based on the recommendation of people who nearly drown. However, after my unpreparedness of the excursion up to Tuckerman's Ravine, the next hike I go on I will make sure that I remember to take a few Snickers bars and my favorite straw hat.

# Winter Blues - part 2

I arrive at Tuckerman's Ravine to be more intimidated than when I was first told about this place. I felt like Gary Conway on the set of the 70's TV show, Land of the Giants. Gazing up at one of the giant's shoes, or a mop bucket, or a stapler, or anything that is awesomely huger than what it should be expected to be. Staring at what the people around me are telling is the ski slope my mind cannot process how steep the ravine gradient is. It appears almost perfectly vertical. The type of extreme pitch that, once witnessed, should not make anyone still decide that it was a realistic idea to strap on a pair of skis and descend it.

I could possibly imagine it might be more preferably to ski it blindfolded, as that would allow a skier to be unaware how steep the incline is before they set off. But that would require that a person be as dumb as hiking up there without bringing any food or water. Being somewhat dumb is the order of the day though, as a steady trail of people are climbing up the side of the gorge for their chance at immortality. Their skis are haphazardly slung over their shoulders they ascend to take their shot at taming the ravine. I was a smart man to want no part of this.

But the people who are here to ski are not cut from the same cloth as I am. These are the true adventure seekers of the world, the dare devils, the accomplishers. Men and women who hear of an impossible quest, then set out to conquer it to add it to their mantel of triumphs. By all rights, I do not belong here, I am not worthy to be in their presence. In the line to ski from this cauldron's face, there is probably a list of luminaries from the pages of Outside magazine. The first man to scale Half Dome without rope, the first woman to row across the Atlantic solo, the first teenager to ski across Greenland without skis, the first American to climb Everest without oxygen, the first person to climb Everest without oxygen in a singlet.

To drop an object from the height of the ravine, the time of the descent probably would take less than seven seconds. A quick calculation tells me that by the time the object reached the bottom of the ravine it would be traveling at 280 meters/second in near freefall acceleration. Whenever someone falls down the slope it takes about eight seconds. Their rabid, desperate fingers clawing at the mountain face acts to decelerate the body leading to it taking that extra second. That does not even consider the effect of wind resistance on the rapidly spinning torso.

The performances on the mountain are captivating viewing. The Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show on ice. The finest disaster of the day is a poor girl who as she pushes her ski boot down into her binding to close to the lip caused the snow underneath to give way. Her inability to regain her balance took three or four seconds before she finally succumbs to her fate and topples over the drop. She falls with such rapidity she has no chance to react to what it happening to her. Items of clothing are being spun off her body by the centrifugal force of her spins. She reaches the bottom and lies in a dazed mess before standing up then promptly falling over. This is followed by a round of applause by everyone who witnessed it. Worth the price of admission on its own. At least she is now at the bottom, unlike her other ski which remains at the top of the cliff.

After three hours of a procession of catastrophes, which never got old, for some insane reason the urge to be more than a passive observer grows on me. There is no way I was ever going to ski, but if I was to climb up a little higher in elevation from the base of the ravine I would have a better vantage point of the skier devastation and also of the countryside. I could look out over the heads of the professional lemmings throwing themselves off the cliff and probably see as far away as into the state of Maine.

I find another solo hiker and sole observer who, like me, has decided that his IQ is low enough that he should try and climb up to the lip of the ravine cliff. We plot out an ascent off to the right of the area where the skiers are attempting the drop of death.

Now, I consider my experience with scaling mountains to be below average. The closest I have come to climbing a genuine mountain is sitting in the auditorium of the University of Queensland listening to a lecture by Sir Edmund Hillary. However, mountain climbing should be a simple enough exercise. Face the cliff, reach my hands above my head, and keep moving in that direction to go up. To go down, just do the opposite.

The pair of us struggle climbing for a half hour, stopping for an obligatory photo at the midpoint, until we belly crawl over the top lip of the ravine. I survey the rolling landscape sweeping away at my feet towards the east. It is beautiful country in the far north east and I am looking at it from a vantage point that precious few ever will. Here is the crowning notch in my belt of underachievement in life. This moment will long be remembered every time I face a stairwell when the elevators are running slow.

Before I have a chance to pat myself on the back for my small success, a notoriously rapid change in the mountain weather unfolds. One-minute I am in bright sunshine thinking, 'I have turned myself into a stud.' The next I am in dense, swirling cloud wondering, 'how the hell do I get down?' On Mt. Washington, there is not time for the House of Stark to have three complete seasons of Game of Thrones to contemplate that, 'winter is coming.' A winter return on Mt. Washington arrives in the blink of an eye.

To now get down will take a grander set of testicles than I think even Chuck Norris honestly possesses. Forgetting to bring food and water on the hike can be excused as an oversight. To not realize that after I have climbed up a cliff that I will need to get down it again is a massive oversight. My climbing partner walks over to where the last skiers of the day assemble on the precipice edge. He picks up the abandoned ski of the girl who took the spectacular fall, still sitting in the snow, then calmly sits on the edge of the cliff before letting himself drop. As he plummets down the hill, he digs the ski into the cliff. This acts as a drag preventing him from carrying too much speed at the bottom and becoming wedged in the rocks. Bloody fantastic, so this is the safe way down then? My only problem is that the other guy had taken the only spare ski left behind at the top of the mountain.

A howling wind picks up while the smothering clouds turn to full snow dump mode. My feeling of accomplishment disintegrates. This entire weather change has taken less than a minute. Men far more accomplished that I have not been prepared for this eventuality and perished. An invitation is not required for me to realize that I have only one option to get down from the summit in a hurry, although I prefer not as quickly as 9.8m/sec2.

The emergency doctor at the hospital I work at had given several forbidding talks on what adventurers should do when caught in a dramatic weather change on this mountain. I speculate that my certain demise from exposure is only minutes away. This is the only time I ever considered how nice it must be to ski on Cannon Mountain. The strangest thing about freezing to death is that as people get colder and their nerves are damaged, they feel incredible hot. That causes them to paradoxically undress, which speeds up the process of them dying of cold. This is to be my epitaph. Died while naked on a mountain he should not have been climbing in the first place.

Then the Universe loses concentration of picking on me for a moment. The second last skier poised at the top of the cliff face turns and offers me one of his ski poles. I readily take it. If I do not use it to help decelerate me down the drop, I can possibly use it as food, or to build a shelter to help survive the night. My confidence does not exactly soar after this skier goes over the edge. Possibly in no small part due to the fact he is asymmetrically balanced with only one pole, he stays on his feet two turns then falls. He slides headfirst for the last 80 meters of the run. It is a great confidence booster.

Isn't there another option available? Can someone call in a rescue chopper? I would even accept an ultralight. Why didn't I stay home nice and warm and just watch television? I vow right then to purchase a brand-new TV as the first thing I will do if I make it off the mountain alive. Lying on the couch watching television is like keeping a loaded gun in the bedside table, it helps saves lives.

Visibility is less than 20 feet when I realize I only have one option and not much time left to take it. With my anticipated speed of descent, I calculate I will have only .3 of a second before a rock I am about to hit will become visible. Which is comforting. Over awareness of what I am going to smack into is not going to assist me in this ordeal. With my two hands tightly gripping the ski pole, and another firmly cradling my genitals, I scoot towards the edge of the drop on my bum. This will be my first near death experience since the chair lift at Thredbo. Or death experience, I do not know yet. As I hesitantly approach that final moment when the force of gravity becomes greater than the grip of my backside cheeks clenching the lip of the headwall, I somberly send a thought to my parents that I love them.

Most men love to yell out machismo expressions in times of stress for one simple reason, they fantasize of being extras on Game of Thrones. The only line of dialogue needs to be, 'arrrrgghhhh!' Then these men allow themselves to be butchered in mindless wars that serve only to fulfill the authoritative infatuations of a childish king or a conceited dwarf. Loud noise obscures men's fear in times of doing something dangerous to their health, such as sitting through an entire episode of the Keeping up with the Kardashians.

I instead prefer quiet introspection in times of overwhelming stress. Mr. T as Clubber Lang in Rocky III was the epitome of bravado. He was constantly yelling to pump himself up. What happened? Rocky beats him to a pulp. Mind you, Ivan Drago in Rocky IV is not much of a talker yet he gets beaten up as well. Rocky teaches us all this valuable lesson for life, that we are damned if we do damned if we do not. Perched on the side of Mt. Washington I am in the same predicament. Stay where I am and die or let myself fall and die. Stay, go. Stay, go. I am caught in a moment of absolute indecisiveness. This is not my finest hour. My apprehensive mind races back and forth between the two choices, when suddenly the softer ice on the ledge make the decision for me.

I am falling.

The first few moments of freefall are almost surreal. I am weightless, liberated from the shackles of life's gravitational burden. It could almost be described as bliss. Then I connect with hard packed snow exactly where the car keys are in my side pocket. My Achilles hip, the spot right where there is no muscle to pad the bone. The word 'ouch' does not begin to cover it. My body is on the snow but is continuing to accelerate. I try to dig the ski pole into the slope to counteract my momentum, but the pole is torn from my grasp. I am now at the mercy of friction.

Eventually, my body grinds to a halt on the snow. I lie there, breathing hard but resisting the urge to move for fear I will find out what bones are shattered. It generally takes the body about four seconds to know it is still alive. Time to ask three questions. Where am I? Am I alive? Maybe this is what death feels like? Nope, I am alive, but it hurts so much I wish I were dead. They say a person must live through pain to really know they are alive. Well, I have the pain. My god I have the pain. So, this is what living feels like? I can pass.

I have just jumped off a cliff and fallen the equivalent of 40 stories and have lived to tell the tale. Who cares that my car key is imbedded into my acetabular socket? The brief feeling of accomplishment I had when I made it all the way to the top returns. I have done something so stupid few people will try and emulate it. Then I try to move, the wrenching pain in my back sends a spasm shooting into my tail bone. Oh my god. My eyes let out a few manly tears. Okay, this is obviously not going to work for me right now, so I sprawl back into the snowpack and relax. I will address the details of how I will hike out of the ravine in another hour.

# Get that India

Sometimes while travelling a person sees things, they thought they would never get to see, sometimes they see things they never wish to see again. They also say a picture tells a thousand words. I have a photo from a trip to India. One thousand words does not even begin to cover the circumstances surrounding this one picture, so let me put that myth to bed once and for all.

I will be upfront. I have never once harbored a desire to set foot in India. Never had a lukewarm yearning, not even an inkling of want. However, I do know people who swear by their experience in that country. They say India changes them as a person, that it opens their eyes to appreciating life. This quote by Keith Bellows of the National Geographic Society is one such example, 'there are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won't let go. For me, INDIA is such a place.' Well done mate, I am certainly impressed you put India in capitals to emphasize your point. But this does nothing to sway me to want to go any more than reading about BOMBAY or CALCUTTA. I am sorry Keith; I just do not seem to share your undying love for the subcontinent mate. I would honestly rather go on an excursion through war ravaged Northern Nigeria wearing a T-shirt stenciled with, 'Boko Haram sucks.'

As the fate of my life would dictate, I end up traveling to India, or INDIA as the National Geo likes to have it printed. After the car accident that nearly killed me, that inspired me to go on the trip to the Grand Canyon that nearly killed me, then inspired me to go on a round-the-world trip that will make me do the one thing I am more afraid of than death, spending money. While sharing time with my travel agent, Jonesy, I stupidly make a comment that he completely misinterprets, that I would not mind a photo in front of the Taj Mahal.

I am old enough to remember family slide nights. Dad would set up the projector, Mum would invite friends around and for the next two hours the entire glossary of the family trip to the Gold Coast would be on display. It was always replete with a dozen slides of the family standing next to dumb touristy stuff. There was always one photo that just encapsulated the simplistic pleasure of any family trip to a particular destination. The one shot everyone in the family agreed should be framed and hung at the entrance to the house. These were fun times for family togetherness. Once a person gets the 'slide night' factor into their genetic makeup, they never grow out of it.

Rather than Jonesy understanding the sarcasm in my voice that was meant to imply that, I always wanted a photo in front of the Taj Mahal until I found out I had to go to India to get it, he takes this to mean I have a deep seated desire to go. This meant that he could add India to the possible list of destinations that he was constructing me an itinerary for. Yes, that is correct. I left the entire routing of a 6-month round the world trip up to my mate so that it might hold a few more unexpected surprises for me. Plus, I did this so that he could get me the absolute rock bottom cheapest fare. By patching together a framework of inconveniently timed flights to unusual airports Jonesy was able to help me circle the world for far less money than it should have. He knows I hate to spend money.

I found out that he had put India on my schedule the next time we were at the bar together and he was breaking down the details for me.

'After Paris, I have you fly into New Delhi,' he tells me.

'Why?'

'You said you wanted to see the Taj Mahal.'

'I wasn't serious,' I exasperate.

'Well how would I know?'

'Because it is in India, mate. Why in your right mind would you think I want to go to India?'

This is perhaps the biggest risk a person faces having their travel agent be a good friend and drinking buddy. It can be extremely hard to hold him accountable for his mistakes as I know he has a heart of gold. To call Jonesy and I drinking partners is a stretch. Jonesy does all the drinking, while I sit and watch him, then drive him safely home. He is possibly close to being an alcoholic, but then so would be most of the other guys on our team. One teammate once celebrated the resolution of his liver cirrhosis, by downing a six-pack beer. The weird, wonderful, wacky world of rugby players. While I am an anomaly, always strait laced and sober while watching out for everyone else. So, through no fault, or planning, of my own this is how I find myself on a plane bound for India. Purely the result of a misconstrued statement that I wished to get a snapshot of myself standing in front of the Taj Mahal, even though I had no desire to go to India to do it.

I honor my word to the letter, as I am nothing if not principled. So, if I told Jonesy I wanted to get a photo at the Taj Mahal, then that is what I will do. In theory this could be quite the accomplishment, how many people can say they have travelled to India by themselves? In principle though, I will be in and out of the country as fast as I can. Hopefully be without catching malaria, seeing any poverty, or being forced to watch a cricket game in stifling 45-degree heat. I suppose if I can squeeze in a ride on top of one of their overcrowded trains, then I will consider that a bonus.

My flight from Paris lands into New Delhi at the ungodly hour of 2am. I brought with me a brand-new edition of Let's Go India, which I intended to thoroughly read on the flight, but instead I spent the flight being distracted by an Air France stewardesses who seemed to be pleasantly distracted by me. A few seconds before needing to stow my carryon bags before touchdown I scan the accommodation section for the city and see three or four hostels costing the equivalent of US$1 a night. I see trains to Agra run 50 cents. I may not be entirely comfortable the next three days, but I am hoping my entire stopover in India is going to cost me less than ten dollars. That fits nicely into my budget plans as I still have after midnight flights to Katmandu, Bangkok, Auckland, and Tahiti left to go.

Immigration at Indira Gandhi International is a breeze. There is hardly a reason for any person to be denied entry into India. A traveler can arrive without any money to support themselves and customs will let them walk right on in. They country already has 500 million people who do not have enough money to support themselves, what is one more.

The custom's official hands me back my passport, 'welcome.'

I wryly smile, 'yep, welcome to New Delhi. Tell me mate, is there an old Delhi somewhere?'

The official perks up at my question. 'Delhi is a very big city. Capital of India.' I nod in response. That is an unexpected windfall of unnecessary information, thank you Sunil.

I walk through to the arrival lounge and the first thing I need to do before I think about where am I going to sleep tonight is, where is a toilet? Before I can take a step in the direction of the little illuminated figure representing a male body, I am besieged by three hawkers for taxi services.

'Do you need a taxi, sir?' Asks the first.

'Do you need a taxi, sir?' Asks the second.

'Do you need a taxi, sir?' Asks the third.

I am extremely happy that transportation services will not be an issue at 2.45 am but the bathroom is still more of a pressing issue. I inform the trio that I quickly need to go to the restroom and then will happily come to negotiate terms with them. I stride off towards the toilets. In India it apparently takes a lot more than that to deter the touts.

The three men dutifully follow me into the bathroom, all the while asking me if I need a taxi. I open the door to a toilet stall and drop my backpack inside. 'Excuse me fellas, this is my stop,' I say. Undeterred, the three men have the never-say-die tenacity to jostle me into the stall. In what is truly a remarkable design feature of the toilets at the New Delhi airport, the stalls are four meters long. This is more than enough room for one piece of checked luggage, a laptop or personal item, as well as at least five or six hawkers. The taxi touts are more than willing to bunch up into the available space to enable them to continue propositioning me for their services.

I looked at them with disbelief, 'really fellas?'

'Do you need a taxi, sir?' They ask in unison.

I am assuming that National Geographic's Keith Bellows did not receive this type of welcome party when he came to India. Or maybe he had just a lone hawker intrude on him while he was in the stall and the sparks from their encounter is what endears the country to him so much. They say the true measure of character is what a person does when they are alone. I disagree. It is what a person does when in a bathroom stall in India after they are followed in by strangers. Please tell me, how it is possible to maintain a positive mindset in this situation?

I have experienced my share of weird things in my life. Pretty much everything that can go on does in a boarding school, although a person being in a toilet stall while someone else was already there is a line that was never to be crossed. When in Rome do as the Romans do. Does that apply in this situation? I am not sure that the sanitary habits of the Indian people are something I am willing to emulate.

I wash my hands thoroughly in the basin. Then wash them again, just to be sure. I am now down to just two taxi touts as it turns out the third man was just an amateur and not a true died in the wool professional.

'Do you need a taxi, sir?' The last two ask again.

'Guys, you have been asking me the same question for the last 20 minutes. I think we have established I need transport. Next one who asks me if I need a taxi will be out of the running, okay?'

Almost by instinct the first hawker smiles and gushes, 'do you need a taxi, sir?'

That man's poor choice made my decision making easier. 'Sorry sir, you have disqualified yourself.' I politely tell him. Then I turn to the final hawker, pull out my Let's Go, and am just about to show him my desired budget accommodation in the city when he snatches up my bag and starts walking away.

'It's okay mate, I have got it,' I call to him as I chase after him.

The man pays little heed to my words and just continues confidently striding away with all my possessions in his arms, as if he now owned them.

# Get that India - part 2

I manage to catch up to the taxi tout and tightly grab the straps of my bag. 'You don't have to, mate. If I can carry my bag around Europe, I can carry it here.'

The tout does not let go of my bag. 'It is okay sir. This is how we do things.'

I engage in a wrestle to try and have him give me back my bag, but I am too exhausted after my flight to put up much opposition. 'Listen mate, I just want to go to a hostel.'

I know a very good place sir,' he says.

'It had better be cheap. I don't want to pay too much. This is India, you people should be paying me to be here.'

'Very good sir. It is a very nice place.'

'Is it cheap?' I persist.

'Very nice sir. Very good price. For you very good price.' He continues babbling.

'Mate, I don't think you have any idea just how cheap I am willing to go. Even by your standards I'm sure you will consider me cheap.' The tout says nothing. I release my grip on the backpack. 'Alright let's go. I am exhausted.'

'Very good sir. You will love our city it is very modern,' he says uninspiringly.

'New Delhi huh? Tell me, is there an old Delhi?'

'Delhi is a very big city. Capital of India,' he replies.

The man finally introduces himself as Ashok. I follow him outside and across the road to the parking area. I had no choice; he has commandeered my backpack. The cut-throat nature of Indian transportation means that if he leaves me waiting while he goes and collects the car, it is likely that someone else will swoop in and convince me to leave with them. That is sound logic on his part. I have little loyalty to taxi drivers and certainly not when exhausted at New Delhi airport around 3am. By swiping my bag and running away with it he has guaranteed that the 15 minutes he spent scrutinizing my 'giving birth face' was time well spent.

We walk through a sea of identical, undistinguishable white vehicles until we reach his. His car is the classic Indian automobile, a Hindustan Ambassador. This style of vehicle was originally modelled after the Morris Oxford car series made by the British Motors Corporation in 1956. Remarkably, in the 55-year history of its production in India the model has not undergone a single upgrade. I guess if the country considered that the cars were that good to start with why would the company want to change them? We drive out of the airport and into the sprawling, baking incubator that houses 14 million people.

Ashok stops the car outside a dimly lit strip mall. The only business with a light on is a small travel agency next to a dry cleaner. This is not the derelict hostel I was expecting. He urges me to get out of the car and go inside. This seems extremely dodgy to me. I am fatigued, I am confused, but I really have no choice. I am alone and at the mercy of my driver. What is waiting for me outside the cab hiding in the shadows?

This is always the great anxiety to be overcome when travelling the world alone. How does a person manage wandering around a strange country and then the time comes to be mugged and left in a gutter? Over the years I have had to give this a lot of thought. I am sure there would be a ton more cache to my demise if it happened while I was surrounded by Islamic militants in Nigeria screaming at them, 'come at me you pussies,' than to be taken out back of the world's only 24-hour travel agency and bludgeoned to death with a sitar beside a dumpster. But we have to live with the hands that we are dealt.

I stumble inside the travel agency where I am greeted by a well-fed Indian gentleman sitting behind a desk. There is a computer and a large black phone on the table.

'Good morning to you sir,' he bursts out, 'how can I be of service?'

'What am I doing here?' I ask. He just smiles at me in response. 'I would like to go to a hostel,' I state.

'Delhi has many lovely hotel for you to stay at. Make a very good price. I take care of everything for your stay.'

The very fact the man is using the word price in a sentence means he has not been sent a memo by Ashok detailing that my ceiling for paying for accommodation in India is one dollar. I have no idea how much of a bare shack that will get me, but I want to at least see it first to let my pride decide if I will need to pay more. The gentleman, like his recruiter out in the car, is persistent. "Let me help you out, sir. I can get you in a very nice hotel. How much are you looking to spend?' He asks cheerfully.

'One dollar,' I reply.

The man laughs. 'No sir, seriously,' he responds.

'I am being serious. One dollar. There are some hostels here in my Let's Go that only cost one dollar a night.'

'I do not know of anywhere that cheap sir.'

I open my Let's Go and show him the page where the hostels are listed. His mind kicks into overtime as he must come up with a counter scheme on how to overcome my steely determination to go to a hostel and pay next to nothing.

'They are all closed now.'

'Why? You are open. What type of travel agency is open at 3.30am?'

'I call them.' He picks up his phone and dials a number, I suspect he is just dialing any number he wants, then follows with a 2 second conversation before he hangs up. 'They are full.'

'What? Are you sure they are full?' I am tired but awake enough to be suspect.

'They said they were.'

Then the next one,' I insist, 'here let me be the one to use the phone.'

He slaps my hand away, rapidly dials again and this time the conversation is even shorter. That hostel has no vacancy either, apparently. How is that possible? Have I arrived at the very height of the travel season for budget conscious travelers visiting the sub-continent? We argue back and forth for a further half hour over how long I will be in the country, what services he can offer me, and if he will let me be the one who uses the phone. Finally, the fatigue of my long flight and early arrival, coupled with my frustration of being the patsy of a well-orchestrated tourist shake down, takes full effect. Sensing that my guard is slipping, the man behind the desk launches into full on sales pressure. This sleep deprivation, this frustration, this fear can all go away if I just do as he says. Don't you want to lie down in a comfortable bed, he keeps asking me.

'Yes. Yes, I do. I want that more than anything,' I stammer, as my last defensive wall crumples and the travel agent now has the complete upper hand in the negotiation.

The Indian gentleman moves in for the kill. 'You are falling deeper, deeper. You are now completely under my spell. You will wake up when I snap my fingers. But first, where do you want to go in India? What glorious sights do you want to see?

'I just want a bloody photo in front of the bloody Taj Mahal!' I blurt out.

'Oh, very good. I am sure that will make your trip to India very memorable.'

'Nope. Having three guys watch me in bathroom has already fulfilled that aspect.'

'So, you would like to go to Taj Mahal, and get a picture.' He repeats.

'Yes.'

'And Jaipur?' He offers.

'Jaipur? What is that?' I ask.

'The pink city. Very beautiful. Very famous.'

'Never heard of it, so you can forget that.'

As tired as I am, I am well aware that the threat of being upsold a complete package tour of every trivial village temple in India is still very ominous. I surely can resist being outwitted by the graveyard shift manager of Sunil's All-Night Travel Emporium. In a lifetime of unfinest hours, I certainly do not want this moment to take the cake.

Despite my miserable mood I try and make some levity of the situation. 'So how much extra will it cost me to go to Old Delhi?'

The man looks at me with a broad grin, 'Delhi is a very big city. Capital of India.'

He pulls a calculator with a printout out of the drawer and starts punching in numbers to present as if he is actually making a legitimate calculation. He mutters as his finger rapidly flashes from button to button and the paper readout extends longer and longer. Three night's luxurious hotel accommodation including private vehicle transportation from New Delhi to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Gas. Tolls. Tax. No meals included, but this does not stop him punching in a figure. He asks again if I would I like to add in a return trip via the pink city of Jaipur? I decline again. As unappealing as the lure of adding an extra three and a half hour drive to see a city filled with buildings bedecked in my least favorite color would be, I had arranged to meet the Air France stewardess from my flight at her hotel on my last night for a drink. A cool gin and tonic with an airline stewardess, or visit an obscure, rose tinted city blistering under the hot Indian sun. Even accounting for the fact that she is French, that decision takes me all of half a millisecond to make.

I must assume there are standard protocols involved with bartering over prices for goods and services during daylight hours that would customarily still apply at 4.30 am. Normally there is some parry and thrust between parties, a little give here, a little coming down on price there. When I am told it would cost me US$220 for the entire package to cover my three day stay, I am sure there might have been some wiggle room if I wanted to try and fight. But I am shattered. I can only think, 'screw it,' and toss him my credit card. He could have even raised the price on me at this point and I would not have had the energy to fight it. At the end of the first round it had so far been a one-sided fight. India 1, Simon 0.

It is past 5am before my driver delivers me to what I was informed would be a 4-star rated hotel that is a member of a hotel chain that I will be staying in for the duration. I suspect that each hotel in the company had only been awarded a half star and the enterprising CEO had simply added those ratings together to arrive at a total of four. Normally I have no issue staying in a cock roach infested hell pit, that has stains on the sheets and no running water, but only as long as I am paying $1 for the privilege. Thank God the locally made, tiny, wall air conditioner is operable, because even at this early hour the humidity is stifling. I could have been wearing two sets of fleece pajamas in a Swedish sauna that was on fire and been cooler than I was in this hotel room.

My sleep, or lack thereof, only lasts until the sun comes up and the wall unit AC no longer has the manpower to keep up with the full-frontal assault of the heat. It is early May, so still in the Northern Hemisphere Spring. However, I am about to learn that India's seasons are more different than anywhere else in the world. Winter on the subcontinent runs December to February and then the country goes straight into summer. That season is over by June and then starts Monsoon season. Three months of continuous downpours is followed by the post-Monsoon season, because the Indians could not come up with a better description for it, then they are back to winter again.

So even though I had walked around Paris needing to wear a pair of jeans, I should have had a G-string thong easily accessible in my hand luggage to change into once I arrived in New Delhi. The temperature I am experiencing is like nothing else I have known, despite having grown up in a sun burnt country. I now better understand why Hindu, the predominant religion of India, does not believe in an everlasting hell. Because there is at least a post-Monsoon season to provide respite from the everlasting.

No longer able to be comfortable in my room, I peek my head downstairs to see if anyone is in the lobby. Even though I have already paid, I am still so fearful of being out of my element with my life in the hands of complete strangers that I give thought to making a run from the travel agency gestapo and making my way to a youth hostel. This is a violation of every travel rule I have ever followed being as frugal as I know I am. Running out on a pre-paid trip is like walking out of a movie theatre after buying the popcorn. Absolutely thoughtless and irresponsible. But this is how spooked I am with the whole situation. I have no idea where I am in the city, whether the driver is coming back to get me, or if a photo at the Taj Mahal is worth all this aggravation.

I carefully scan the entrance to the hotel lobby. Unbelievably, there is Ashok standing guard at the front door. GEE SUS, I was not expecting this. That is too much Alfred Hitchcock type freakiness for my taste. Has he been standing there for the entire time since he brought me here? Is his boss worried I might still leave despite paying and not allow me to hand over more money to them during my stay? Is my credit card that valuable? Or perhaps I am being paranoid from too little rest and simply misreading the entire Indian approach to customer service? Ashok is so devoted to his client's needs that is not willing to have me waste a second of my time waiting to explore the sights and diversity of his wonderful country. For that he is prepared to camp out in my hotel lobby to make sure he is always available whenever I need him. So, he is either standing at the hotel door because he is prepped to be at my beck and call whenever I may need him, or he is the Indian Norman Bates.

'Good morning sir, are you ready to go? Can I help you with your bag? Have you already taken a shower?' He asks.

'Why? So, you can stab me in it?'

# Get that India - part 3

First stop of the day is Ashok's cousin's rug store. The only thing positive I can glean about being forced to go carpet shopping at 8am is that the shop is air conditioned. But that still does not excuse my driver from obliging me go above my objections. If I have seen one rug, I have seen them all and I remember seeing a rug when I was five. No doubt there is enormous craft involved in the multi-generational development of the talent to produce such braided masterpieces. However, if Indian culture had spent one tenth of the time needed to advance their skills in rug-making and instead applied that effort to developing air-cooling technology, then the country might be a more enjoyable place to visit.

The three-hour drive to Agra starts on a flat boring plain blessed with more soul sucking heat, highlighted by a horizon of shimmering distortion that makes the desolation of the Sahara Desert's landscape look inviting. The journey continues and ends the same way. Every God from every world religion has forsaken this stretch of highway. I must beg my driver to stop every 20 minutes at roadside stalls so that I can consume an ice cold, refreshing soda to prevent my body from going into hypovolemic shock from dehydration.

They say that the joy of travel is in the journey not in the destination. The people that have the nerve to say this have never been here. I would give the bowels of Hades five stars on TripAdvisor compared to here in the state of Utter Pradesh. While the north of India is graced with the majesty of the Himalayan range of mountains, peaks that uplift spirits and which force men to dig deep into their reserves of determination to overcome their individual mortality, the person who built the Taj Mahal didn't decide to build it there. That genius for some reason chose to do it in Agra, the overheating hair dryer of the Indian peninsula.

I am now discovering that travelers the world over make the trek to Agra not at all because of the beauty in the area in which the Taj Mahal sits, but solely because of the fame of the structure itself. It is famous for being famous. The Taj Mahal is in some ways the Kim Kardashian of world monuments. There is no other reason to acknowledge the building, other than that the simple fact that it exists.

Ashok pulls over to the side of the never-ending road at an arbitrary point and a random man jumps in the front passenger seat. This must be how fly-by-night tourism operators handle their abduction of tourists in India - they outsource it. How ironic. My irrational kidnapping fears are laid to rest when the man is introduced as my personal guide for my visit to the Taj Mahal. Wow, my own private chaperon, how pointless.

I do not need a guide to point out the Taj Mahal for me, I have seen it in pictures often enough. Any relevant history of the place that I do not know I prefer to make up by myself, which always makes it far more interesting. The architectural history of the world's greatest structures is so homogenous that it essentially follows a script. Rich, powerful people get regular, hardworking folk to build stuff for them. I only have one question regarding the Taj Mahal. Have I already paid for this guy to follow me around? If yes, can someone please remove that item off the bill and give me a refund. I only plan on getting my photo taken, leaving, and then finding a bar with a ceiling fan where I will chug a yard glass filled with ice cold water.

Another 15 minutes of driving and we arrive at a wall, behind which is apparently the Taj Mahal. It seems the Indians are smarter than the English. At Stonehenge there is only a chain link fence, this meant I could save a few bucks by getting a photo while not paying the entrance fee. Albeit from a fair distance.

I am hit with sticker shock when I see the disparity in admission cost. Entrance for my guide will cost me 10 rupees, which he insists I must pay, while I am stung for 250. In the western hemisphere this is considered discrimination, in India it is business.

Never one to be deterred from fighting inequality in this world, I make my guide buy himself a ticket at the Eastern gate and then we walk all the way around to the Western gate, so he can buy another discounted ticket with his ID. I use the second ticket, combined with a lot of frantic hand gestures and a riveting, obscure quote from Shakespeare about hot weather, to bewilder the official ticket collector and be let in.

'Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it does singe yourself. Anger's my meat. I sup upon myself, and so shall starve with feeding. If there be devils, would I were a devil. To live and burn in everlasting fire, so I might have your company in hell. But to torment you with my bitter tongue!'

The story behind the building of this translucent marble edifice is truly a love story for the ages. Commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, it was constructed to honor the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who succumbed to the pains of childbirth of their 14th rug rat. She was not his only wife, he had seven. Most men, after the arrival of their 14th child, are in the urologist's office asking to be snipped and worrying about how they will continue to finance the weekly grocery bill. Most men after dealing with the hysterics of one wife are not in the mood to go about marrying six more. But not our good mate Jahan, he was nothing if not a determined soul.

For the grand design to console his broken heart, he planned to spend the money in his children's university savings accounts to not only to throw up a glistening mausoleum to honor his lifeless Persian princess, but possibly also to construct an even larger, black marble one across the river for himself. Unfortunately, this was his undoing. Jahan's third son, Aurangzeb, angry that his father would no longer fund his dream of a liberal arts degree at Agra Community College, imprisoned him in Fort Agra until his death. Legend has it that he was given a cell with a small window overlooking the construction site of the Taj Mahal so that he could still try and spit on the grave of the wife that produced the son that betrayed him.

I wander the expansive grounds of the mausoleum in absolute awe that Shah Jahan could find any laborers willing to work at any price in this heat. Over 1000 elephants were employed to transport materials from all over the Mughal Empire to Agra, while 20,000 artisans toiled to decorate the structure. Stories abound of Jahan's ruthlessness in inspiring workers to bring his vision to fruition. He would cut off the arms and hands of workers so that they could never again build a more beautiful building. This is perhaps where the Hindu concept of a temporary Hell and reincarnation was born. If the workers knew they would be staying in Hell forever they would not have been so scared to go on strike and be executed. They would have been happy to accept they were going to a cooler place permanently. The concept of being reincarnated acts as a deterrent to work stoppages, as it eliminates the thought that there is any true escape from the purgatory of the subcontinent. It is much like my experiences when forced to go into an air-conditioned rug shop at the urging of my driver. It is a moment of relief, followed by inconsolable anguish, knowing that my time in that Hell will be only short-lived before I return to the pea soup outside.

The true beauty of the Taj Mahal is that the inside marble surface is decorated in a lapidary of precious and semiprecious gemstones. Artisans cut elaborately designed decorative elements, such as flowers, fruits, and vines, into the solid rock wall. These are then inlaid with the gemstones that have been perfectly shaped to fit without any bumps in the surface of the wall. Incredibly time-consuming stuff. Other notable features of the complex are the 35-meter-high marble dome that surmounts the tomb, and a 200m lap pool in the front yard that is far too shallow to swim in.

At the far end of the Mughal garden is the Great Gate, which is decorated with enough pink to satisfy any regrets I might have of forgoing my chance to visit Jaipur. Standing near the Great Gate with the Taj Mahal shimmering in the background, I decide that this is the place. This is where I will take my photo. My tour guide/remora fish eagerly offers to take the picture for me. I am very hesitant, apart from the fact that this man's abundant knowledge of the Taj Mahal had not exactly overwhelmed me with rabid curiosity, I am not about to trust him with taking what is likely to be the most important, and struggled for, photograph of my entire life.

The only thing he told me of interest is that when Princess Diana visited the Taj Mahal the authorities closed the complex so that she could experience it alone. No wonder the poor woman was always so lonely and depressed. Who wouldn't be if they did not get to experience one of the crowning jewels of antiquity without being required to pay twenty-five times the price of the locals?

'Do you know how important this photo is to me?' I ask my guide.

'I am very good at taking photographs. Very good,' he tells me.

'Please, you need to be very attentive. I want this photo to be incredible. This will sum up my enjoyment of your country.'

During my life, I have found that most people have not the faintest idea of how to take a good photograph. I am not talking aperture settings and light composition, I mean that if they are taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, that the Eiffel Tower actually makes it into the photograph. I hand over my camera. It has taken me the last 12 hours of unimaginable suffering to get to this momentous point, Krishna help me if he screws this up. Already today I have recycled 14 gallons of water through my body, through drinking and sweat, without needing once to go to the bathroom. If my guide takes a photo of me and behind me is only blue sky I will be upset. I have a kiwi mate named Snapper who I know if that happened to him, he would be prepared to urinate on the man's mother's grave. Although sadly for Snapper it is awfully hard in India to retain enough fluid in the body to produce urine.

This is all going on in the year is 1998 when digital cameras are not yet a thing, photos on cell phone cameras are not yet a thing, photography is still nitrate film and 1-hour processing. There is no way I will know the outcome of his photography skill until I am in Australia 3 weeks later and can get the film processed. No way can I know if I was photobombed by some random Indian dude in the background. No way to see if he cut off the tops of the minarets when framing the shot. There are any number of basic errors he could make that could spoil this coveted prize.

He lines me up, asks me shuffle to my left, and then presses his finger.

'Take another,' I urge him, 'take several.' Despite good Kodak film and processing being expensive, so I do not want him to go nuts and take a hundred shots, but at least get a backup.

'No need sir. It is a magnificent photo, very good indeed,' he replies with a grin.

I breathe an uneasy sigh of relief. If I cannot trust some random man that my psychotic Indian driver picked up on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, who can I trust?

To be continued...

# Insight

For the majority of my life I have felt lost. I do not mean like Hansel and Gretel, going missing in the woods being totally irresponsible for their own safety, type lost. I mean standing amongst a crowd of people and feeling I do not fit in type lost. For this reason, I loved to travel. Perversely, the more solitary I am on the road, the more at ease I feel.

I assume there must be other people out there that are saddled with similar insecurities. The doubt of wondering if I took a wrong turn in life. To spend hours second guessing my every decision for fear of being wrong. Doubts over whether I should be somewhere else. Doubts over choices I have made and directions I have taken. There is never an assuring morning when this is how I start the day.

When I first started traveling in my 20s, I experienced rare, scintillating moments where the accomplishment of arriving somewhere helped me feel like I could suspend my doubts about everything. It would give me an expresso shot of delight and energy. I could almost touch what it was like to be in that instant. But those moments were always too fleeting. So, any chance I had to travel anywhere I would take it. Thinking this was somehow the key to unlocking the door to know how to be happy with myself.

Back then I was free, and I did not even realize it. I was driven by fear, rather than a desire. I once jumped in a car and drove to the Meteor Crater in Arizona because I wanted to, 'get away,' rather than thinking, 'why not?' My motivation was always to escape. Often my travel would start without much of a plan, or an end goal, I just felt like I needed to flee. This was another constant fear I had to manage. While away, I could experience time being less of an insecure person than I could in my normal surroundings, where I was enveloped by people who I believed thought of me as an insecure person. Traveling gave me a chance to see the world exactly as it is, unfiltered, but it also served to keep me running from myself.

My travel experiences always seemed to be concurrently the most exciting and worst decision a person could have made, probably not unlike experimenting with smoking crack cocaine. To a wander luster, the world is really just one giant Chinese heroin den, full of endless fixes. Probably better that I enjoyed the rush of travel than to seek comfort in the bottle, while I am far too intimidated to ever try drugs. Traveling was always the psychological shot of tequila for my restless soul.

Every trip would always be accompanied with the nerves of like going on a first date, the apprehension is exhilarating and terrifying. I would always hope that every first date would be perfect, it would be lightening in a bottle. Although looking back now at some of my recollections, I see I never stood a chance. With some honesty, I now do not mind if things often went pear shaped. It was almost a self-reinforcing prophecy, and if I never had the many moments of disillusionment and uncertainty, then I would never have reached this moment to write about them. Even the worst first dates have moments of insight. Things may not work out, but hopefully it still gives the person a stronger desire to continue on searching.

The one thing that travel eventually taught me, is that the opinions of others do not matter to how a person should appreciate themselves. No one else can tell me what I genuinely enjoyed. Only I could make the determination if I relished my time in Canada, or Denmark, or Zimbabwe. Only I can decide if standing in line for 3 hours to view the statue of David in Florence is a worthy investment of my day. Only I need to know why I appreciate the sanguine beauty of Paris viewed from the Eiffel Tower at sunset. Only I know if I am willing to pay $20 for a beer at a bar in the Ginza District of Tokyo. Travel gradually taught me that the moments that are important to me are worthwhile and important, even if only to me.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. Paying $20 for a beer anywhere is just ridiculous- Lao Tzu

I would not be considered an expert in any field outside of knowing what I love and what I do not. I know I do not love fried okra, despite Miss Mary's claim that it is edible. I know, looking back from where I came from, that I do not want to take the problems I have had too seriously. For the longest time, I mistakenly believed that famous people had it all figured out, that this was an outcome of being famous. Martial arts icon Bruce Lee could not teach someone to ride a bicycle, as he could not do it himself. Opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti could probably tell me sweet all about Pilates. Rafael Nadal, the world's greatest exponent of tennis on a clay court, looks like a complete boob when handling high grade plastic explosives. It is a measure of comfort to know they do not have life all worked out. But, over the last 10 years I have taken to a lot of soul searching to discover the answer to a burning question inside me. Despite the hardships, despite the struggles, and despite the heartbreak, have I been happy with my life?

To quote the internet - the most dangerous risk of all, the risk of spending our lives not doing what we want on the belief we can buy ourselves the freedom to do it later. 'If not now, then when?' I am searching right now for comfort in the fact that maybe I enjoyed the freedom of my life more than what I even knew. Perhaps the true measure of a life is not that a person can accomplish great things. It is that they can screw up a hundred things they had no right to attempt in the first place. Such has been my time so far on earth.

# Almost Famous

In 1998 I am sitting on a near empty cross-town bus in New York City when a fellow passenger sits down in the seat in front of me. This was no ordinary run of the mill New Yorker because I knew him. Only I did not. He was both instantly recognizable and yet immediately forgettable. However, I cannot forget things I do not remember.

This much I know, he is an actor. That was easy. But from what vehicle of the acting trade did I know him? A movie, a television show, a commercial? What made this common experience even more unforgettable was that he was travelling on the bus with an Asian girl, who would likely be questioned for ID to be granted entry to a movie rated M for Mature. Normally this would not have drawn any attention from me if they were not rather cuddly with other right in front of me. Now I am desperate to remember what I had seen him in. Still nothing readily springs to mind. The only thing I am certain of is that it is not Roman Polanski, not enough hair.

If I was a celebrity and wanted to never be noticed while traveling around the town, then I would lean towards not putting myself on a display with a much younger partner while on public transport. However, I do sometimes like to think like a contrarian, and I can see some merit in this man's thinking. Doing weird stuff openly in public tends to lower the risk of people wanting to call a person out on it. If a man covered himself in silver pant and stood in my living room without moving for hours, I would think he was a basket case. If he does that on The Ramblas in Barcelona, then no one thinks anything unusual of it. So, what are the chances that a guy that looks like Tom Cruise who was urinating in the corner of the New York subway station is actually Tom Cruise?

If Tom Cruise likes to do that sort of thing, I would say the odds are better than 50-50 but, who is ever going to believe it is him? There is a great deal of variables at play here and I must guess at some to fill in the blanks. If I ask the guy that looks like Tom Cruise if he is Tom Cruise and he says, yes, do I believe him? Most likely not. If he says, no he just looks like Tom Cruise and why would I think megastar Tom Cruise would allow himself to be seen peeing in a subway, then he makes a perfectly rational argument. So, in reality, Tom Cruise has every chance of getting away with committing a misdemeanor no matter what happens. If he wore a hoodie no one would even be able to even see his face, so that gives him a third option. Tom has probably been getting away with this for years. Scientologists are smarter than I give them credit for.

These are the types of detail orientated thoughts that a 30-year-old man has on a cross-town bus stuck in traffic in New York City.

Turning to my friend sitting beside me, I ask her if she knows who the man is. She recognizes him as well but cannot place him either. I am torn as to who should have the greater feeling of frustration me, or actor. Me being unable to recognize him, and for him being not quite famous enough to be intuitively known.

My friend knows she has seen him on television. He is an actor on a show, which is all we have to go on. It is something really obvious too, that is the kicker. A show like Dancing with the Stars, Hollywood Squares, or Celebrity Liver Transplant. I am sure this happens to many people every single day, struggle to place a familiar face. I hate it because it starts to eat away at me. While for him being an actor, those types of people pray on PR and exposure. They should walk around with their head shot and CV stapled to their forehead so poor a Mr. John Q Public, like myself, does not have to wrack his brain to decipher what straight to video classic they have been in.

I am certain he was getting no joy out of the fact I have not tapped him on the shoulder and told him how I loved his work in INSERT FILM NAME HERE. I am not the type of person to do that anyway. I would just keep it to myself if I were on the subway and Sylvester Stallone came down the aisle and sat next to me. It would make me feel uncomfortable enough that likely I would get up and move, not start discussing his IMDB catalog with him. Famous people are famous for a reason. Those of us in anonymity like living in anonymity. The only people who crave this type of famous anonymity are bank robbers, serial killers, and general purveyors of terrorism. Bad actors who want to bask in the glory of their accomplishments while still avoiding the direct limelight. Not Hollywood A, B, or C listers. Most actors seem to have a pathological desire to be recognized even while fulfilling their hemorrhoid prescription at the pharmacy.

Normally the rules of engagement in this situation are clear. When trying to guess in what entertainment vehicle someone has seen a person, under no circumstances are they allowed to ask the actor directly. My friend wants to ask him, she does not care about the correct legal procedure. Of course, she can go ahead if she wants, just abandon the long-established societal norms for polite behavior. Perhaps people should be permitted more leeway to shelve good manners in times of war, famine, and during brief interactions on cross town NYC transport. I want to know who he is, but I am not going to inquire.

My friend taps him on the shoulder, so the man spins around and turns his eyes toward me.

He looks down at me over the top of his glasses as if to acknowledge that I have been caught cheating while playing the 'celebrity recognition game.'

I stammer out my words. 'I didn't mean... to interrupt... you, but where... do I know you from?'

'I am an actor,' he states in a surprisingly agreeable tone.

Well thank you mate I at least worked that part out for myself. 'I just can't place your face. What film would I know you from?'

'You might know me from my work in Woody Allen's films?' He says.

Did he think I looked like someone that would watch a Woody Allen film? I look at my friend and she is still drawing a blank. 'No that is not it.'

'Oh,' this news obviously takes him aback. Strange that people who grow up and live in Manhattan must not realize that 99% of the world's population have little interest in the cinematic work of a creepy Jewish filmmaker who makes neurotic pictures about living in Manhattan. 'Then maybe in Three to Tango? Clockwatchers? Conversation with the Beast?'

I have never even heard of a single one of these movies. 'I am sorry,' I reply. The tables have turned somewhat and now the actor is starting to show a measure of desperation to have something he has been in even be recognized. I am stuck and making no headway. How can it be that this guy is so recognizable and yet everything he has been in is apparently an obscure artsy film with a limited cinematic release? The celebrity recognition game would have been much easier if I had been lucky enough to be riding public transport on the day that Rudy Giuliani's car broke down, or Barbara Streisand decided not to ride her bike to work?

'Have I seen you in something with Kevin Bacon?' I ask. Not that that would help me much, I just know that Kevin Bacon has a prolific cinematic resume. The man has been a veritable cinematic remora fish, attaching himself to every project going. The mystery man shakes his head then, realizing that I am never going to be able to draw a line between the dots, becomes disinterested in my lack of true fan hood and returns to paying undue attention to his young companion.

At the next stop he and the Asian girl get off without leaving me the satisfaction of determining how I know him. This was going to stay with me forever, and it has. It sat away at the back of my mind and gnawed away for 20 years. Occasionally popping forward into my consciousness during moments of solitary reflection. I have had to push it back to the rear of my brain and carried on. There is only one certainty in life, and it is that things only move forward. There is no going back. Normally the tendency to hold onto memories of what happened in our past is a gratifying thing. The sounds, the sights, the people, the places, the parties. But there is nothing as irritating as holding onto the reminiscence of being unable to recall where I know a person from that I have crossed paths with.

As a matter of principle, I am not overly fussed with the notion of celebrity. Famous people are everywhere and if I stay out of their way, they will stay out of mine. A person will inevitably run into someone famous at some point when they are traveling. I have walked past David Schwimmer on Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills, eaten lunch near soccer star Ronaldinho, and at separate times William H. Macy, magician David Copperfield, and supermodel Naomi Campbell have been on the same plane flight as me. I even have a humorous story of the time I met the mother-in-law of rock legend Mick Jagger while at the beach.

I do not know what it was about this particular guy on the bus in New York City. He was a supporting actor at best, but something about his obscurity stuck a cord with me. I felt a sense of solidarity with him. It has haunted me for the last 20 years that I still have never been able to place him, or even stumbled across a quick piece of vintage tape that reminded me who he was. My struggle has gone on for 20 years and I thought things were tough enough over the long eight months in 1980 waiting to find out who shot J.R. on Dallas.

I guess that sums up how I have found my life to be while out discovering the world. Unexpected, mystifying, and infuriating all at the same time. And when I am struggling to find out who I am, it does not help to have the extra burden trying to discover the identity of an almost famous person from a random bus ride.

Oh, and I know what a person might be thinking... No... I do not think it was Harvey Weinstein.

# Postface

Thank you for reading this first book of travel stories that I compiled to mark my 50th birthday. In the beginning, I honestly believed I would struggle to accumulate enough material to fill one book, let alone the five that I ended up writing, with some left over for a possible sixth book one day. The stories chosen for this book were random, but I have followed a more linear pattern of telling the tales as they occurred through the years with the next four books.

Writing humorous, and hopefully engaging stories, became a therapy for me after the abduction of my only son to Brazil in 2010 by my ex-wife, when he was just one year old. After a ten-year legal battle, I still must constantly fight to be able to spend time with him. I have currently not seen him, even on Skype, since early March 2020, and the start of COVID-19. It is the greatest struggle in my life to comprehend that I can be a loved stepfather to my two step kids, but that my ex-wife can prevent me from being a father to my own son.

After my son's birth, my dream in life became to take him on many enjoyable trips that would serve to create irreplaceable memories for him, as mine have for me. I still live in hope of one day doing this. I wish to hike with him to the top of Mt. Kosciuszko, attend a rugby game at Twickenham, England, and drive the Grand Circle of National Parks in Utah. All of these hopes must likely wait until he turns 18 and he can leave Brazil freely of his own accord. All profits from the sale of my book series are to be dedicated to achieving these goals for him. I have devoted the last two years of my life to writing and improving these books, knowing that it did not matter if I might have failed at every other endeavor I have attempted in my life, I must not fail with this one.

Thank you.

Simon Williams

If so inclined please also feel free to read on with the series and to recommend my books to your friends.

Books by this author

Wanderlost

Wanderlost 2

Wanderlost 3

Wanderlost 4

Wanderlost 5

Twelve Life Lessons I Want to Teach My Son

TORN

TORN 2

TORN 3

