Travels With My Hoegaarden Glass

I recently flew to Saskatoon for the day to visit my friend John. Every time I make that trip I am reminded of the first time. It's a story that does not put me in an especially favourable light so I was at first reluctant to release it into the wild on the internet, but then I remembered that nobody actually reads this blog. In fact, my recent viewing statistics reveal that the blog is getting the most hits from people searching for pictures of "cow shet" (sic) and of the Karachi airport. Those few that do read the stories are those whose arms I've twisted to do so and who have already heard this story. More than once.

So, a little background first. Veterinary medicine is a fine profession, but it has few tangible perks and fringe benefits. Stacks of post-it notes from pharmaceutical companies and bottles of homemade wine from grateful clients more or less cover it. I did, however, discover that I could accumulate Aeroplan points on the clinic's purchases of drugs and supplies by having a work Visa Aerogold card in my name. This amounts to a lot of points. Picture a fire-hose. As the points began to pile up it occurred to me that an appropriately decadent use would be to fly, jet set style, to Saskatoon just for the day to drink with John.

I arrived about 8:30 in the morning and by 10:00 we were into our first beer. In fairness, my flight back was at 5:30, so we had no choice but to start early. The wisdom of this decision was confirmed when we were each given an enormous complimentary Hoegaarden glass for being the first customers of the day to order that beer. Hoegaarden is a Belgian "wit" (wheat ale) and is served in a glass the size of a baby's head. I mean this literally. Giant Hoegaarden glasses in hand we headed to John's place so he wouldn't have to drive anymore.

The afternoon passed enjoyably in an ever thickening fog as beer piled upon beer. When it was time to call a taxi to the airport John broke out the Irish whiskey. The well-worn expression "the final straw" comes immediately to mind. Before we knew it the taxi was there. I lurched towards the door while John careened into the kitchen. He emerged with a plastic Safeway bag for my Hoegaarden glass. Can't forget that!
After a round of back-slapping hugs I was out the door and into the cab.

I sat in the front passenger seat with my Hoegaarden glass in my lap.
"No luggage sir?"
"Nope! Just this!"
The driver was lifelong Saskatonian and since I had grown up there we were able to swap jolly tales of the "good old days". Everything was very friendly and cheery until we pulled up to the terminal.
"That'll be $21.50 sir."
I began feeling my pockets and slapping my sides. I could see the cab driver's facial expression slide from happy to puzzled to irritated to borderline angry in seconds.
"Uh."
He stared at me.
"Uh, my wallet and keys and ID and everything were in my waist pack. I must have left it at my friend's."
He stared at me some more.
"I don't have a cellphone; can I borrow yours and try to call him? Maybe he can get it here in time."
"Ok." Very terse.
I dialed John's number and it rang and rang until eventually the answering machine picked up. John was evidently too far gone to answer the phone. But then I remembered that I had my PDA (remember the old Palm Pilot PDAs?) in my jacket pocket and I had my credit card number recorded in it.
"I'm really sorry man. Really really sorry. But I have my credit card number written down, can you just take that?"
"I guess I don't have a choice." Still very terse.
I read out the number, wrote a $10 tip on the slip and then bailed out of the cab, mumbling more apologies.

That was the easy part. The hard part was getting on the plane. This was the fall of 2005, four years after the September 11th attacks and well into the era of hyper-security.
I approached the Air Canada counter, mustering all of my self control to walk a straight line. I did, however, sway very slightly when I stood still.
"Hi! I'm on the 5:30 to Winnipeg, but I accidentally left my boarding pass, all my ID and everything at my friend's house! Is there any way I can still get on this flight?"
The agent raised an eyebrow. The other agents stopped what they were doing and looked over. I might have been a bit loud.
"No ID?"
"No, but my name is Philipp Schott and I was on this morning's flight! The flight number was 8981 and the pilot's name was Dave!"
The agent raised her eyebrows a little higher and glanced over at her colleagues.
I swayed a little.
She paused a long moment and then smiled at me.
"Do you have any luggage?"
"Nope! Just this!"
I held the Safeway bag high.
"It's a beer glass!"
I wanted to be helpful.
She smiled again.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you!"
I smiled back and gripped the counter with my free hand.
There was the clatter of a keyboard and the hum of a printer. The agent made a cryptic note on the boarding pass and then handed it to me.
"You should go through security now."
And off I went.

At security they asked for my ID, which is not usual, but perhaps not surprising given the fact that I was reeling towards them, clutching a plastic shopping bag. I began to explain about the ID when they cut me off saying, "Oh, you're that guy!"
"But you'll have to put that into the x-ray scanner." They indicated my Safeway bag.
I gingerly placed the bag on the conveyor belt so that the glass would remain upright. The security people grinned broadly as the Hoegaarden glass made it's stately progress through their machine. I think I made their day.
"Thanks!" I shouted as I tottered towards my gate.

There is nothing quite like flying buzzed. It's just over an hour from Saskatoon to Winnipeg and every minute of that I spent staring out the window being amazed by.... stuff. On arrival I remembered that I didn't have car keys either and that my car was in the airport parking lot. Moreover I had used my credit card, now at John's house in Saskatoon, to get the car into the lot and would need it to get it out again. In retrospect it was, of course, rather a good thing that I didn't have access to my car then. So, I grabbed a taxi and asked him to wait when I got home so that I could get some money for him from my wife. She was a little surprised.

For a long time I wanted to write to Air Canada to commend that agent on her humanity and common sense during the "War On Terror", but fearing I would actually get her into trouble I thought the better of it. I still have and use that Hoegaarden glass and I still go to Saskatoon every year to visit John, but now I keep my wallet and ID and everything in my pockets.

Rutabaganess

It's time to talk about rutabagas.
I'll be kind to those of you who didn't bail out after that first sentence and will try to keep this brief and informative.


Rutabagas have been on my mind since our family road trip this summer took us through Cumberland, Wisconsin. For the few of you who don't know this, Cumberland is the home of the annual Rutabaga Festival. Without the festival Cumberland would be just another dull rural Wisconsin town, but with the festival it becomes... it becomes... it becomes what? I suppose it becomes a dull rural Wisconsin town that once a year bursts into colour and life with all manner of rutabaganess. Apparently there is a 12 mile "Rutabaga Run", with some of the runners dressed as rutabagas. Apparently there is a rutabaga smoothy drinking contest (One imagines the winner is someone who actually drinks one...). Apparently there is a Grand Parade down Main Street. Apparently "The Dweebs" were going to headline a big outdoor concert. We didn't have time to stop, but it did get me thinking. What, exactly, is a rutabaga? How does it relate to the turnip? And what's with the funny name?

The mobile internet being the marvel that it is, we were no sooner installed in our hotel in Minneapolis when I had my answers. While the children became ever more crazed with anticipation for the Sponge Bob Splat-O-Sphere in the nearby Mall of America, I quietly immersed myself in rutabaga lore. First of all the name. "Rutabaga" apparently comes from the Swedish for "root bag". Now you know. Along with smorgasbord, that makes for two useful words passed on to us by the Swedes. IKEA, as a proper noun, doesn't count. Not unless we insert it deeper into the language by using adjectival expressions like, "Yeah, their apartment is totally ikean!" Or, "She has a very ikean sensibility." But I digress. The Swedish connection is strong enough that the rutabaga is called a "swede" in England and Australia. That's useful to know. Now you will no longer become alarmed when you are served "mashed swede". Or, on second thought, perhaps you still will be. In Ireland rutabagas are confusingly called turnips. Whether this is just ignorance or a linguistic quirk is unclear. Regardless, the "turnips" which were originally carved into jack o'lanterns by the Celts as a precursor to the modern Halloween pumpkins were in fact actually rutabagas. In Scotland it's also endearingly called a "neep" and is traditionally eaten with, you guessed it, haggis.

So now we know something about its name, but what about what it actually is? It turns out that the Halloween connection to the rutabaga goes even deeper because the rutabaga is a kind of Frankenstein vegetable. It is - are you ready for this? - a 17th century Bohemian cross between a cabbage and a turnip. That's right, two of childhood's most hated vegetables together in one convenient package. If horticulturists could figure out a way to further cross it with asparagus they'd achieve a trifecta of dinner table horror.


Is that enough rutabaga information? Probably. Thank you for your patience.


(The Rutabaga King and Queen)

(A traditional Irish Halloween rutabaga. Way scarier than our wimpy pumpkins.)

Travels Among The Winkle Pickers

We had our first serious doubts as we were peddling away from the Headcorn railway station in the rain. We were jet-lagged, riding dodgy bikes and trying to remember to stay on the left (as Land Rovers came hurtling past) while glancing repeatedly at the map to navigate our way to the first of the series of pubs we intended to visit that day. This was less fun in the rain.

Fortunately the rain was brief and what had been misty grey surroundings resolved themselves into brilliant green sheep-studded fields bounded by dark green hedges in a patchwork laid out like a chess board drawn by an epileptic chimpanzee. And even more fortunately the first pub was nearby, so we were able to roll up to the "Bell & Jorrocks" in Frittenden (not quite as funny as Headcorn, but amusing enough when muttered darkly) just in time for its 11:00 a.m. opening. Incidentally, if anyone knows what a "Jorrocks" is, please do let me know. Most pubs have more comprehensible, if somewhat curious names, such as "The Slug and Lettuce", "The Cat and Custard Pot" and "The Donkey on Fire", but "Jorrocks", although it sounds faintly rude, is beyond me.

So, beers at 11:00... Anyone have a problem with that? I will confess that morning beer, although fun to think about, is something I've always thought of as... unwise. This was different however. To begin with there was already an English gentleman at the bar, enjoying a pint and not looking at all unsavory. Secondly the publican's small children were sitting at a nearby table in their pajamas, playing handheld video games and eating cereal, so it had a very relaxed family atmosphere. Thirdly cask-conditioned, hand-pulled English ales are only about 3.5% alcohol on average and are flat and warm, so it feels more like sipping tea than slinging frosty lagers in the mid morning. Honestly. In any case it was lovely. The beer, the pub, the atmosphere, the whole package. They even played Pink Floyd. And then as I sipped my Woodforde's Wherry (or was it the Sharp's Cornish Coaster...?) to the strains of "Wish You Were Here" the sun broke through the clouds and pointed a sunbeam through the window right at my beer. It glowed.

Onwards to "The Bull at Benenden" we rode, quite literally "over hill and dale", through a postcard English rural idyll. "The Bull" was even more absurdly atmospheric with it's ancient half-timbered ceilings, giant brick sit-in fireplace, creaky floors, multiple nooks and crannies (yes, nooks! and crannies!) and hodgepodge of antique furniture. It was even fully stocked with English people! It was veritable a carnival of cliches. There was an old gentleman in tweed with extravagant eyebrows nursing a pint by himself in a corner while muttering (probably about the war, or possibly "Frittenden, Frittenden, Frittenden"). And then there was a younger fellow up at the bar with the ruddy cheeks and over-sized yellow teeth. And there were also the schoolchildren, well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-behaved, but clearly evil, sitting with their families for lunch. I could go on, but I fear I am either boring or frightening you. It was marvelous though. We didn't want to leave. And we almost didn't, but we had a train to catch back in Headcorn and one more stop to make on the way.

The "Bell & Jorrocks" was early 18th century, "The Bull at Benenden" was early 17th century and "The Three Chimneys" was early 15th century. And "The Three Chimneys" was closed. Or closing. We had gotten significantly lost on the way and had just missed last call for the afternoon. We couldn't even beg a half-pint from the barman; we could only gape at the extraordinary medieval interior before being ushered out. Bummer. We consequently arrived in Headcorn with twenty minutes to spare, which, it turned out was just enough time to enjoy that missing half-pint at the jolly "George and Dragon" before boarding our train. We scanned the taps and immediately made our selection: "Winkle Picker" bitter. A very English end to a very English day. Cheers!

Crossing The Circus Bridge

Bali. Beautiful, weird, bewitching, get-under-your-skin Bali. This is a place that attracts more than its share of hyperbole, much of it justified. This is also a place that attracts more than its share of hurling Australians, but I digress. Did you know that Australian English has more synonyms for vomit than any other form of English? But I digress again. Fortunately the chunder from Down Under is pretty much confined to the Kuta Beach area and the rest of the island remains the land of hyperbolic beauty. One of the best ways to explore it is on a bicycle. Or so we thought…

All of Bali slopes. It slopes continuously from the shore to the tops of  the dormant volcanoes at the centre and it is notched regularly by deep, canyon-like, river valleys running back down from the summits to the sea. Consequently cycling becomes an exercise in going up, up, up, and then turning around and going down, down, down. Or vice-versa for true masochists. Lateral motion is dependant on the infrequent bridges across the rivers.

One day Lorraine and I set off in mind-buggering heat on heavy iron bikes and began laboring up the slope. We ground along on these rusting pigs until we could grind no more. At this point there happened to be a bridge across the deep gorge immediately to our west. We went over the bridge, pointed our bikes downhill and hurtled down the slope like cartoon fools. Chickens, children, old women, mangy stray dogs – all of them had to jump out of the way as we whipped through village after village. The canyon was cloaked in jungle so it was hard to assess how far we had come down relative to how far we had gone up, so we stopped to check the map.

Where we were was a long, long way down. We had missed the next bridge back over and were so far down that we would have to either fight our way back up for many kilometers or keep going down, cross, and then similarly fight our way back up on the other side to our guesthouse. Then I noticed a small line drawn across the canyon quite close to where we were. This line was marked “Circus Bridge” and appeared to be connected to the roads on either side by a winding dirt path. Our guesthouse was pretty much directly across. Score!

“Dunno what the ‘circus’ part is about, but if it’s a bridge we’ll take it!” I said.

Lorraine agreed and so we walked our bikes on the jungle path down to a point where we could hear water rushing. Then, as we rounded a bend, we saw it: the “Circus Bridge”. 

It was an I-beam. 

Someone had laid an old iron I-beam across the gorge. Water surged over boulders six to eight meters down. The beam was perhaps 15 cm wide. And it bounced when you put weight on it.

I don’t consider myself to be truly afraid of heights. What I’m afraid of is falling from heights. If I have a hand-hold that protects me against the prospect of a mangling fall, then I’m reasonably okay with being up high. But if I don’t have a hand-hold I am decidedly not okay. And so it was. No hand-hold. And two heavy bikes. I tried pushing the bike ahead of me, but it began twisting in a suicidal fashion so I quickly retreated. I tried putting it on my shoulders, but I felt wildly unbalanced, so I abandoned that plan as well.

We were just about to turn around and trudge back up to the road when an old man appeared at the other side of the bridge. He waved to us, flashed a toothless smile and then trotted over briskly.

“You want come over?” he asked.

“Yes, but we don’t think we can get the bikes over,” I said.

The old man chuckled, picked up my bike, hoisted it to his right shoulder, put out his left hand behind him for me to hold on to and then led the bike and me across, much as if he were helping an invalid across a city street. I flapped my jaw noiselessly while he skipped over to get Lorraine and her bike. (At this point Lorraine would want me to make note of the fact that, unlike me, she did not need to have her hand held. What this has to do with the story is beyond me.) 

“Thank you, thank you sir! How can we repay you?” I asked once I got my voice back. I reached for my wallet.

The old man smiled his toothless smile again, shook his head and said, “You like the woodcarving? You come my shop! Buy if you like!”

He didn’t want money for helping us, he just wanted to sell us some woodcarving. We had been wanting buy some Balinese woodcarving, so this was perfect! He led us up the path a short distance to his shop and ushered us in. Once our eyes adjusted we saw that he had, without any doubt whatsoever, the singular most god-awful, hideous and tacky collection of woodcarvings on the entire island of Bali. The entire island.

But it was a small price to pay to cross the Circus Bridge.

Careful With That Wrench Senor

This entry takes us back to Europe, to the same rail trip with my friend Mark that was in the previous post, "Alpinism Explained".

Careful With That Wrench Señor

“Hey, you think there’s dining car?” I asked, after we had been rattling along in the Spanish train from the border for about twenty minutes. I had had half a tub of questionable yoghurt in the aisle of the much larger train on the French side earlier that morning, but that was not enough and it was too long ago.

“Uh, I kinda doubt it.” Mark leaned sideways and scanned up and down the aisle, which afforded him a view of the entire train. It had four little cars and an engine. There had been no lunch facilities at the border, but the trip down to Barcelona was only scheduled to take three hours, so we would be in the city in good time for a substantial late lunch.

With this question settled we returned to gazing out at the steadily diminishing brown hills of the Pyrenees as we gradually wound south, halting frequently to load up with manic school children. These stops were, sensibly enough, at train stations, but then at one point the train abruptly came to a standstill in the midst of what was conspicuously just an unpopulated field and not a train station. We sat quietly for several minutes, observing that it was significantly hotter here than it had been up in the Pyrenees. Then the train began slowly rolling forward again. This rolling brought it about twenty meters further along before it stopped once more. It was now very hot and it was very still. Even the school children became subdued. The heat made everyone sleepy.

After a little while we were abruptly roused from our torpor by the conductor who came storming past carrying a colossal monkey wrench. He exited our car and by leaning out the window we could see him stalk alongside the train, glowering, and then suddenly duck underneath. This was followed by violent banging sounds after which he reemerged, dusted himself off, shrugged theatrically and sauntered back to re-board.

“You’ve got to wonder what sort of problem that stops a train can be repaired by bashing the underside with a wrench?” I remarked.

Mark shook his head, “Dunno. Can’t say that inspired much confidence, but as long as it works…”

It didn’t. We sat and we sat. Then we sat some more. And then, after a little while, we continued to sit. It grew hotter and we grew hungrier and we grew thirstier. At one point we took inventory of our possessions and found that Mark still had a small packet of peanuts from Lufthansa. This was divided democratically and each nut was given solemn individual attention. We also discovered that I had thoughtfully packed a trail map of Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan.

The peanuts, perhaps predictably, did nothing to alleviate our hunger and, moreover, made our thirst exponentially worse. Across the aisle two corpulent Spanish matrons were lustily slurping a series of Pepsis until one of them spilled an entire can onto the floor. I stared at it like a cat watching a fat sparrow hopping by. It took every jot of self-control to restrain myself from dropping to hands and knees and lapping up the sticky brown river as it coursed down the passageway.

This carnival of laughs dragged on for another couple hours until we were startled out of our growing catatonia by a sharp twack-twack sound. A rabble of small children had gathered outside to pelt the train with stones. Things were getting jollier by the minute. I was just about to eviscerate myself with a ballpoint pen in order to put an end to the pointless suffering when impulsively, with no warning or explanation, the train lept into action again and we were off.

We arrived in Barcelona five hours behind schedule. Late lunch was going to be late dinner, but at least we learned something: breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day.

Night Flight to Pakistan - Part Three

With the shock of arrival subsiding and with the porters no longer commanding all our attention we were able to begin to assemble a few rational thoughts. The first of these rational thoughts was that there was no way that the chaotic and fetid curb at the edge of the terminal was the only place to wait. The second of these rational thoughts was that there must be a PIA (Pakistani International Airlines) agent around somewhere who could help us. Armed with these thoughts I walked back into the terminal and, sure enough, quickly located the PIA counter. The agent looked at me with astonishment when I explained that we had a four hour layover and where told to wait outside.
"But sir, we are flying the jumbo jets every hour to Islamabad. I will place you and your good wife on the next flight." And with a few deft pen strokes it was done. The flight was leaving in ten minutes.

I ran to get Lorraine and we raced to security. Or, I should say, "securities", as there were two separate security clearance areas segregated by gender. Each featured a massive dark grey xray apparatus that looked like it had been built in the Soviet Union circa 1955 and probably delivered a strong enough dose of radiation to sterilize small mammals. I was then frisked in a friendly, but alarmingly thorough way while I could see Lorraine being waved into a black booth by a female officer. She told me afterwards that the two of them stared at each other for a moment in the booth, then the officer giggled and waved Lorraine out. The security process took long enough though that we were late for the flight, but either it waited for us or the schedule was just a loose approximation as this did not end up being a problem.

We settled into our seats and looked around us at the half-empty 747, once again noting that Lorraine appeared to be the only woman on the flight. The giant TV screens on the bulkheads showed a slideshow of various mosques while mournful Urdu music played. The no-smoking signs came on as the engines began to rev up, but they were hard to see through the billowing clouds of smoke that only seemed to get thicker in response to the sign. As the plane started to taxi on the runway various passengers got up and wandered around the aisles, casually chatting and smoking. This continued even as the plane lifted off, although they had to reach out to nearby seat-backs to steady themselves. It was around that time that it began to dawn on me that freedom is a funny thing. We live in a "free society", yet feel far more constrained by rules than many people in  societies that appear on the surface to be less free. They may not have political freedoms and certainly in some places the women have very little freedom of any kind, but otherwise one could argue that they are more free in their day to day lives. I'm not saying this is a good thing as much of that "freedom" is the freedom to do unhealthy or frankly bizarre things, but nonetheless....

After we had reached our cruising altitude Lorraine went off to the washroom. The male flight attendant came by a moment later and brought me a breakfast consisting of various brown and reddish brown objects that were almost inedibly spicy. After Lorraine returned the flight attendant came back, looked at her in frank bewilderment and said, "Oh, I'm sorry madam, I didn't know you were still here." He then scurried off to bring her breakfast.

"Didn't know you were still here"... ?? Lorraine and I laughed after he left. Where would she possibly go? Did passengers routinely disappear in mid-flight? I chewed on one of my fiery brown things, still chuckling, and looked out the window at the hazy tan-coloured plains below thinking, Pakistan is going to be fun.
And it was.

Night Flight to Pakistan - Part Two

Flying over Pakistan in the black pre-dawn is very disorienting. In North America and Europe the lights of houses and street-lamps are uniform in brightness and generally form a pattern allowing you to trace highways and the rough grid patterns of towns. In Pakistan the few lights below were of widely varying intensity and were scattered in such a haphazard fashion that it provided the very compelling illusion of looking at the night sky, except below us. Stars above and stars below. Like flying through outer space.

The plane touched down at Karachi Jinnah International Airport just as the eastern sky was beginning to color. Lorraine and I were quite nervous at this point and not knowing what to expect were relieved to see that the terminal was very modern looking. This impression was carried through into the customs and immigration area where everything was new and gleaming and clean. Nothing like the mental image we had had of Karachi. The immigration officers were very courteous and friendly and directed us to a set of doors leading to the transit area from where we would catch our onward flight to Islamabad.

We opened the doors and stepped into a different world. Immediately five men ranging from short and round to tall and bony rushed us like linebackers. Before we could blink, let alone say anything, they had grabbed our bags shouting all at once, "Hello good sir! Hello good madam! Where are you coming from? Where are you going to? I am helping you! I am helping you too! What is your nice name sir? I am carrying your bag! I am carrying your bag too!" and so on. We had four bags so three of them had a bag each and two made a show of carrying a small bag together. The verbal barrage continued as they moved forward in a seemingly random direction until I had gotten my wits together sufficiently to interrupt, "No, stop! Please stop!".
The five men looked bewildered, but stopped. After a brief moment's silence one of them repeated "I am helping you sir!"
"Yes, thank you, but we don't need help and in any case we don't have any Pakistani money."
"That is being no problem sir. We are helping and we are showing you and madam to the money changer where you can be changing your money into rupees."

And off they went again, weaving through the airport crowds, eventually ushering us to a barred wicket marked "currency exchange". We needed to change money anyway, but doing so with five porters crowding around and gawking at my money belt was not what I had in mind. Sleep deprived and my brain gradually turning into goo, my resistance crumbled and I gave the extravagantly mustachioed currency exchange officer a $50 traveler's cheque for which he gave me a two inch stack of worn Pakistani bills in varying shades of brown. The five men smiled hugely and nodded vigorously.
"Where is your next destination good sir?" one asked.
"Islamabad. But our flight isn't for four hours."
"On this particular case you cannot be going through security yet sir, so you and madam will be comfortable waiting here." He gestured to the curbside of the open terminal amongst gigantic burlap-wrapped packages and assorted unidentifiable detritus.
I was still clutching the brick of rupees and was beginning to thumb through it, trying figure how much to pay the men, but they were very eager to help with that calculation and after a baffling discussion I was left holding a one inch stack. They trotted off waving and smiling.

 Lorraine and I made a little space in the dust on the curb and sat down. The sun was coming up now. It rose like a pale yellow coin trying to shine through the dense morning cooking fire smoke that hung over Karachi. A hundred thousand cow dung fires. The smell was unmistakable. It was seven in the morning and already hot. People were continually jostling past us. Lorraine was looking upset and I was thinking, 'Four more hours of this? I don't think I can stand four more minutes.'

Night Flight to Pakistan - Part One

Lorraine and I flew to Pakistan in the fall of 1993. It was the first time we'd been to Asia and the first time we'd been to a true "Third World" country. This was a bit like never going to an amusement park and then hopping straight onto the Drop of Doom, followed by the Zipper and then the Ejection Seat. This is a longer story, so I'll break into several more easily digestible chunks.

At first it was all very exciting. We were the only Westerners on the Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Karachi, Pakistan. The plane was full and every other passenger was a Pakistani man wearing a white shalwaar kameez (long loose tunic over baggy pants). I should correct the previous statement though, we were the only Western passengers, the stewardesses were all tall blonde Nordic women. It looked like the aircraft had been hijacked by the Swedish women's Olympic volleyball team. That is, the Swedish women's Olympic volleyball team dressed in gauzy pastel "I Dream Of Jeannie" harem outfits. The effect was as striking as it was ridiculous.

The view out the window was fabulous though. The Persian Gulf slid below us like a sheet of polished black obsidian, gleaming in the full moon and punctuated by bright orange natural gas flairs from the otherwise unseen oil drilling platforms. Iran was to the north and Saudi Arabia was to the south. Pakistan was straight ahead in the east. I looked out the window for a good long while and then, as it was approaching midnight and we had a long day behind us flying from Cyprus, I dozed off. Lorraine was already asleep.

At 2:00 a.m. the shouting began. And I am here to tell you that there are few things in life that get your attention as quickly as being woken to loud shouting by exotic strangers in an aircraft dangling 30,000 feet in the air over the Middle East. My eyes popped open like a cartoon character's and were greeted by the extraordinary site of an old man walking down the aisle, hollering and waving his arms. His pupils were wide and bone-white with cataracts, but his voice was strong. Perhaps even more extraordinary, nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. Lorraine and I looked at each other and then I fingered the stewardess call button for a moment while casting nervous glances at the emergency exits. But neither of these seemed to be particularly intelligent options.

I don't recall exactly how long the shouting went on. Studies have demonstrated that the perception of time slows down drastically when our mind registers a serious threat. And my mind registered a serious threat. In any case, after a few seconds or a few minutes or however long it was, people started handing the old guy money. Crumpled bills were handed up the aisle and across the rows to him while he continued to shout and wave and then just as suddenly as he began, he stopped. Without saying a further word he turned around, found his seat and sat down.

Were they paying him to shut up? Was this a freakish performance of some sort? Was he begging for alms? It's hard to think of an explanation that isn't bizarre, especially in the context of an international airliner. Now we were wide awake and the coast of Pakistan was approaching out of the night.

Bull

Although this blog will mostly feature travel stories I do intend to occasionally write short essays about other items of interest. Well, of interest to me at least. 

The following carries both "dullness" and "obscurity" warnings.

            755 years ago on this very day Pope Alexander IV issued a papal bull forming the Augustinian order of monks. This otherwise entirely dull and irrelevant factoid caught my attention this morning because my mind was still on the leader’s debate last night. The coincidental juxtaposition of politicians and “bull” struck me as curious.

            A papal bull was a proclamation by the pope that was sealed with wax, lead or gold. This seal was rounded and knob-like and called a “bulla”. Fans of anatomy will recognize this word in a variety of non pope related contexts. Apparently similar words from the same root mean “buttocks” in some Eastern European languages, so that does take us a little closer to the modern usage of the word “bull”, but unfortunately not all the way there.

            It turns out that bull as it relates to last night’s debate is not, as I assumed, simply a contraction of bullshit. Instead, bull derives from the old French bole, meaning deception and scheming, and has been used that way since the Middle Ages. For example: “Sais christ to ypocrites ... yee ar ... all ful with wickednes, tresun and bull.” (c.1300). On the other hand, bullshit (also bullplop, bulldust or bullbutter, depending on where you live or on your tolerance for ridicule) has only been used this way for about a hundred years. So bull came first. Go figure.

            I can picture a group of bushy eye-browed Medieval historians sitting around discussing some pope’s controversial bull and one of them blurting out “That bull was bull!” to a round of good-natured but weary chuckles, but otherwise there is no connection between last night’s bull and the Augustinian bull of 1256.

            As a side note though, the Augustinians make excellent beer, so I am grateful for the bull.

Yes, You Climb Volcano!

As my focus has been on my other blogs this blog has been snoozing since our return from the around the world trip. I'll re-post a few old favorites in the meantime until I am able to properly shake it awake.

A number of years ago Lorraine and I were traveling in Southeast Asia when we ended up in a little flyspeck cluster of isles in eastern Indonesia named the Bandas. The Banda islands are each quite small and low and are arranged in a kind of loose bracelet around Gunung Api, an active volcano that rises in a perfect cone out of the sea in Banda harbour like a child's naive drawing of a South Sea's volcano. There is little to do in the Bandas other than snorkel and stroll and fully exercise one's passion for sloth, but after a week or so of staring up at that magnificent volcano I could sloth no more and began to think about climbing it.

The idea was, evidently, not original. Our host smiled and nodded vigorously - "Yes, you climb volcano!!" - and arranged for Bapa Saleh, the guide, to meet me at five the next morning. I say "me" and not "us" as Lorraine has an uncanny intuition for detecting when I'm being an idiot.

So Bapa Saleh and I set off across Banda harbour in a dugout canoe at five the next morning, with me in splendid anticipation of the magnificent view from the peak of Gunung Api that would be had of dawn breaking over the glittering Banda Sea.

This anticipation was almost immediately replaced by bewilderment and then ever-higher states of anxiety as it became painfully clear that this thing was actually going to be bloody difficult to ascend. The volcano was entirely covered by loose sharp rocks on a slope as utterly steep as gravity and the established principles of physics would allow a slope of loose sharp rocks to be. Consequently I was reduced to scrabbling up on all fours with three slips down for every four scrabbles up. In short order, despite the pre-dawn coolness, I was completely saturated in sweat, coated in grime (albeit exotic volcanic grime) and both my knees were bleeding.

At this point it probably bears mentioning that I am a (relatively) young and healthy man. Bapa Saleh was sixtyish, wearing only bathing shorts and a Kentucky Fried Chicken t-shirt and was in bare feet. Bare feet! Moreover, the man could move at an incredible clip and, perversely, his only English was "Slowly, slowly!" which he would periodically shout down to where I lay gasping and panting as he continued to skip up the mountain.

Then it began to rain. Hard.

I have few recollections of the rest of that climb other than that of a strong smell of sulphur and a hazy photo taken by the hugely smiling Bapa Saleh with me looking like something that might have been found in the trenches at the Somme, clutching an Indonesian phrasebook and sitting at the utterly socked-in summit.

Running From Rhinos

            “If rhino come you must climb tree! Only way to save life!”

           

This startling declaration from the guide would have been funny for its melodrama if it weren’t for the fact that it was clear that he was absolutely serious and absolutely sincere. It seems that rhinos will charge and trample people for reasons they chose to keep to themselves. This raised two questions for me:

The first was, “What trees?”. We were standing in the middle of a field of shoulder high grass. Trees were sparse and distant.

The second was, “Assuming we get closer to actual trees, how exactly am I supposed to climb one?” The trees we had seen thus far were absolutely smooth-trunked and only began to branch several meters above the ground. Alpine climbing gear or suction cups would be needed.

I hoped that adrenaline would do the trick if the time came. And indeed it did, but more on that later.

           

My wife Lorraine and I were in Chitwan National Park on Nepal’s southern border with India and home to 400 of the world’s 2400 remaining Indian rhinoceroses. If the thought of rhinos in Nepal conjures up incongruous mental images of sad grey animals trudging up icy mountain passes, pining for lush pastures, I should explain that the southern half of Nepal is in fact an utterly flat and quite marvelous rhino habitat.

           

After alarming everyone with his dramatic tree-climbing directive the guide returned to his previous gentle and smiling demeanor. He swished a machete about more for flair than actual practical effect as he pointed out various types of “rhino sign”.

            “This footprint here is rhino sign. See, he put his foot here.”

            We nodded and glanced about, I’m sure each one of us noting that the grass was easily high enough to conceal a rhino. A quiet sneaky rhino mind you, but who really understood the inner workings of the devious tourist-stomping rhino mind?

            “This dung here is rhino sign. See, he put his dung here.”

            And indeed he did. We stared at his dung in frank astonishment. It lay in a brooding heap at least a meter high and a couple meters across. I was about to comment on the scale of the rhino’s digestive apparatus when the guide explained that the rhino will return to the same pile again and again. Ah. He will also apparently kick at the heap to get dung on his hooves and allow him to leave a track of his own personal dung smell along his regular path. “His regular path.” Where we were. Ah.

            After an hour of walking along his regular path with our pupils fully dilated the rhino failed to make an appearance. So with an odd mixture of relief and disappointment we returned to the trailhead where elephants were waiting to take us on a sunset ride. The elephants we had ridden in India had been equipped with howdahs – essentially strap-on chesterfields – but these were not. Here we were going to be riding elephants bareback. Riding horses bareback has an exciting and romantic image. In contrast I can attest that riding elephants bareback is singularly unexciting and unromantic. The protrusion of the elephant’s spine affords one the convincing illusion of riding a pointy granite outcropping, and a drunkenly swaying pointy granite outcropping at that.

            It was nice, however, to be able to survey the rhino’s regular path from such a lordly (safe) height. But once again, the rhino was absent from his regular path.

            We had just dismounted our elephants and dusk was thickening into night when one of our party began pogo-sticking up and down and urgently whispering “Rhino! Rhino!” while pointing across a meadow to a patch of grey in a bit of scrub perhaps thirty meters distant. Binoculars were fumbled with and sure enough, the patch of grey resolved itself into the rhino. He was facing the other way and we were downwind, so we felt safe in creeping a little closer for a better look. And then a little closer. And then a little closer still.

            Then he moved.

            What happened next is in dispute, but one way or another Lorraine found herself alone in the grass with the binoculars watching the rhino, unaware that the rest of us had panicked and had bolted like Olympic sprinters.

In the end the rhino was entirely peaceful and oblivious, but we did establish the principle that, “If rhino come you must (a) climb tree, or (b) just run faster than the people you are with.” 

Alpinism Explained (or, A Brief Lesson In Glacier Physics)

This story comes from a backpacking trip across Europe my buddy Mark and I took twenty years ago...

I am attracted to destinations whose names are fun to say. Luang Prabang. Nuku’alofa. Malapacao. Waga Waga. Saskatoon Saskatchewan. And so it was with Saas-Fee. At the end of a long ride across the center of Switzerland on the incongruously named “Glacier Express” (plodding views of fog and rock), we were faced with a y-shaped valley offering the choice of either Zermatt or Saas-Fee and Saas-Fee was judged to be the more fun to say. Moreover, what we had read about Saas-Fee promised one last chance to see one of the alleged glaciers up close. Good enough.

After a short ride on a snazzy yellow postal bus we were presented with a view of the town of Saas-Fee squatting at the head of the valley and embraced on three sides by high, snow-capped, mountains, as if in a massive amphitheatre. Italy lay just ten kilometers to the south, over Mount San Martino; Zermatt was a similar distance to the west, over the Alphubel; and I’m sure something really interesting was to the east, over the Fletschhorn. A fetching view.

We humped our packs down the steeply canted streets from the bus terminal in search of the youth hostel. Saas-Fee appealed to me immediately because cars were banned from these streets, but the hostel proved exceptionally difficult to locate as they had apparently also banned signage. As we had no map we resorted to systematically combing the town, like someone looking for a dropped ring in a field. Fortunately Saas-Fee was a tiny place and we eventually located the hostel in the far corner of the town where it curiously occupied the middle floor of a generic apartment building and was marked by a sign the size of a passport photograph.

Saas-Fee was most definitely not a backpacker hangout as it was well removed from the customary Eurail trail and had (unbeknownst to me at the time) a reputation for being fiercely expensive. Consequently the hostel had only three other occupants: a pair of unnervingly buff young Australian women and a very thin, blonde Dutchman about our age who strode up to us, his hand extended, and announced, without the faintest hint of irony, “Hallo! I am Peter Seisjener and I am an Alpinist!”

Okay.

It was difficult to know how to respond to that as he said it in a way that sounded like he was reading from a royal proclamation.

“Um, hi, I’m Philipp and I am…” I glanced at Mark, my traveling companion, who shrugged, “… a student.” I shook Peter’s hand.

“And hi, I’m Mark and I am, er… also a student.” Mark shook Peter’s hand.

Peter beamed at us and, after the usual where-are-you-from-how-long-are-you-traveling pleasantries, gave us a rundown on “alpinism” and his plans to climb some of the nearby peaks as well as get it on with the Australian girls. Actually, despite his quirky flair for being inappropriately dramatic about almost everything, he was quite a pleasant and agreeable fellow. It was clear that behind the macho bluster was a geek who used to get beat up at school just like us. We ex-geeks have an unspoken natural affinity for each other.

Peter suggested we go to a shop around the corner that would be closing soon in order to get supplies for dinner. The local restaurant scene was fantastically over-priced - positively daffy really, like twenty dollars for French fries - and the hostel had a kitchen, so this seemed a sensible enough plan. The three of us shared a meal of spaghetti (“Starch is essential for the serious Alpinist.”) and a bottle of red wine. Peter rapidly became drunk and incoherent but couldn’t work up his courage to make a pass at the Australians, who had just come back in from doing something dauntingly sporty like peak-to-peak running into Italy, so we all went to bed early.

The weather was shockingly good the next day. It had been raining for a week and we had resigned ourselves to seeing the Swiss Alps from the perspective of someone trapped inside a plastic grocery bag, so the sparkling sunshine and luminous robin’s egg blue skies were a joyfully received bonus. After a breakfast of chocolate and fruit (“Sugar is essential for the serious Alpinist.”) Peter headed off to go climb something while Mark and I decided to make for the glacier on the side of the Alphubel.

The trail wound up from the town through a meadow so Swiss Tourism Bureau poster perfect that we felt compelled to stop every few meters and exclaim how wonderful it was and take pictures. Yes, the meadow was as implausibly green as new pool table felt and yes, the views back down to Saas-Fee were head-spinning, but the key feature, the feature that simply made this meadow, was the fact that it also was home to a Swiss cow. We had seen Alpine cows before in Austria, but this was an actual Swiss cow. The difference is, to be sure, a subtle one – both are brown, both are passive, both have long eyelashes, both sport big brass bells hanging from ornately tooled leather collars – but to the aficionado there is nothing quite like the genuine Swiss version. We were positively burbling with delight. We took several photos of each other posing with the animal, which was entirely unmoved by our attention, and then stood around smiling like halfwits for a little while before moving on.

The only downside to the day being so utterly perfect for a hike was that everyone else evidently thought so as well and the trail was infested with astonishingly zippy seventy-year-olds wearing dazzling knee socks and clutching elaborately carved walking sticks. I tell you, Switzerland is like catnip for old people. Fortunately though they were all headed directly up the trail to some stupidly distant and elevated pass or viewpoint whereas Mark and I veered off about halfway along to get right up close to the glacier and touch it.

Ah, good old retrospect: in retrospect this was an idiotic thing to do. It didn’t occur to us that there might be a reason why no one else was ambling up to the toe of the glacier; we didn’t give it the scantest of thoughts. The other people were clearly idiots. We were clearly not idiots. We knew what was cool. Glaciers are cool to look at, ergo they must be even cooler to touch. Moreover, there were no signs telling us not to. Coming from North America this was significant encouragement as back there anything even vaguely hazardous was lavishly sign-posted. At the Hawaiian lava fields there are numerous signs that manage to be both humorous and ominous as they depict the universal stick figure capering into a big crack and falling into molten lava labeled “2000 F !!!”. The stick figure was expressionless as he met his igneous fate, but the implications were clear. Or so one would think – despite the arrestingly frank signage, hundreds of tourists could be seen meandering blithely right on past them.

So, not being expressly warned of obvious danger, Mark and I trotted up to the end of the glacier, happy as any two simpletons let out for the day. From a distance the glacier was gleaming and milky white, the very visual essence of purity, but up close it was disappointingly grungy. It did not end in a gentle slope like a long tapering wedge, but instead abruptly like a… long tapering wedge whose tip has been broken off. Arriving at the glacier we faced a three-meter high pitted and scalloped gray wall that afforded only glimpses of pale electric blue glacial ice flashing between the frozen dirt, muck and rocks. Glaciers evidently pick up all kinds of crud as they scrape along; then as the tip melts the water goes away leaving a higher and higher crud-to-ice ratio.

Nonetheless it was still all rather spectacular and it was definitely a thrill to be in such close contact with an elemental force of nature that one normally does not have ready access to at home. What we hadn’t counted on though was what would happen as the day became hotter. It was a sunny July day and it was well into midday by the time we reached the glacier. And now here’s the funny thing: both our fathers were physicists and both of us had achieved top marks in science at school, but we were unable to put together heat + ice + chunks of stuff in the ice until Mark came within a few centimeters of being brained by a basketball sized rock. We had even heard the occasional “crrrraaack!” and had been admiring the melt-water pouring off the glacier, but really only when the bombardment was already underway did we begin to comprehend the folly of standing beneath a rock-studded glacier on a hot summer day. It was like being under mortar fire. The astonishing thing was how fast it all began. One second we were gawking and posing for pictures and the next second rocks and boulders released from the melting ice were hurtling through the air and threatening to put our travel health insurance to the test.

“We’re so sorry Mr. And Mrs. Schott, because of his accident your son will never be able to finish university, but we encourage you to think positively about the many worthwhile and enjoyable programs available now for people in a near-vegetative state…”

Our reflexes were a bit sluggish, so we stood there, dazed, for a moment or two while our bodies sorted out whether this was a “fight” or a “flight” type of threat. Fortunately our bodies guessed correctly and we were off and running pell-mell down the slope before either of us could become an instructive news item.

I will still occasionally get out the photo I was taking of Mark when the first rocks began to fly. The expression on his face with his mouth half open saying something like “Aaaah!!!” is absolutely priceless (see top of story). 

We ran until we were well clear of the glacial cannonade and then we ran some more. Finally we stopped, wheezing and panting in the thin high-altitude air, bent over with our hands pressed against our knees.

“Whew… that… was…” pant, pant, pant, “really…” pant, pant, “dumb,” Mark gasped and then sat down on the meadow.

“Yeah…” pant, pant, “yeah…” and I sat down too.

After a few minutes of vacant staring and gradually lessening respiratory distress we began to chuckle, first Mark and then me. The chuckles turned into laughs and the laughs became convulsive roars and soon we were out of breath again and on the verge of tears. Near death experiences are such a hoot.

Thus feeling better we decided to return to the main trail and join the senior’s procession higher up the mountainside. This turned out to be a refreshingly good idea as this brought us into viewing range of all manner of Swiss wildlife. Who would have thought that the Swiss would have wildlife too? But sure enough, there, a little ahead of us and to the left amongst some biggish boulders, were some sheep or goat-like creatures nibbling on lichens and recklessly bounding between invisible footholds like stunt animals. Subsequent study of my childhood wildlife picture books revealed these to be Chamois. I’m not entirely sure what the relationship between these lovely creatures and the soft cloths used to buff cars is, but I sincerely hope that it’s nothing too disturbing.

As if the wild goat action wasn’t sufficient there were also marmots aplenty. I ask, who does not love marmots and who would not want to while away an afternoon where they are aplenty? They would pop up and down behind rocks and such like the plastic target animals at the fairgrounds, but, like the Chamois, they were far too charming to huck anything at.

All in all it was a banner day: Swiss cows, glacier-touching, excitement, danger, goat things, big views, marmots aplenty – enough to make think, “You know that’s enough. Life doesn’t get any better. We’ve peaked.”

And then it got better. I know that it is a most grievous character flaw to take pleasure in another’s misfortune, but I don’t feel too guilty because he was definitely milking it for everything it was worth. Peter “I Am An Alpinist” Seisjener hadn’t bagged his peak. In fact he hadn’t even made a serious attempt as he had managed to ingloriously twist his ankle on the walk to the mountain. You’d think that would have taken the bluster out of him and made him sheepish and subdued, but you have to give the man full credit - Peter had managed to deftly turn ignominy and failure into a tale of daring and vulnerability, crafted in such a way as to push exactly the right buttons with the two Australian girls who were serving him soup and smiling at him tenderly when we came stumbling back in. From the look on Peter’s face you would have thought he had just conquered Everest on a pogo-stick. To further give him credit, after the girls had left, he was more than willing to laugh at himself and the three of us enjoyed a raucous evening of self-ridicule and cheap wine (“Alcohol is essential for the serious Alpinist”).