The Gradient

Read my newest blog at: www.thewholeworldround.com

I attended a boarding academy about three hours away from home. Once a month I’d drive home to visit my folks. One landmark that helped me gauge my homeward progress was the Tennessee River. Especially on particularly monotonous trips I would make it my goal to reach the river, thereby deriving a feeling of progress when I did. On one particular trip I remember puzzling over whether or not I had already crossed the river. When I finally realized I had indeed crossed the river twenty miles before, I scolded myself for letting the river pass by unnoticed. I’m certain that neither Lewis nor Livingston crossed any half mile wide rivers without realizing they had done so. I felt embarrassed that, in my cruise-control induced stupor, I was oblivious to the things that lay along my path. That instance made me realize how easy it is to go places without experiencing things along the way.

Getting beamed around the planet in a jet liner allows you to taste a world different than your own. The problem is there are hundreds of rivers that you’ll soar over unaware. Somehow you’ve got to find a way to travel overland.

I’ve watched culture after culture fade away, each yielding to its northern neighbor. Argentina and the U.S. are vastly different places. No ten kilometer segment of our route would demonstrate much of a difference, but little changes add up. I find it extremely gratifying to have experienced the subtle differences, the gradient I suppose, by which one place becomes another.

Something I find markedly less gratifying is the job I’ve done documenting the trip thus far. Generally I’m either too tired or having too much fun to write. I go so long in between blogs that I can’t possibly write all that should be written without compiling a blog Britannica. So, in the oxymoronic spirit of exhaustive brevity, I’m resorting to a bulleted list to cover some recent notables:

-Volunteered for a week at Camp Wawona in Yosemite –Taught Climbing, helped build a barn, lifeguarded, washed dishes, and had a good ‘ole time with people I love.

-Spent four days in Palm Springs and got my first massage. Incredible! Thanks Wilhites!

-Chopped off my mullet for my medical school interview….oh yeah, I applied to med school btw.

-Discovered a Mexican restaurant that makes tortillas from scratch! Life will never be the same.

-Surfed in 60 degree water sans wetsuit. BURRR!!!

-Bought a 1987 Toyota Camry station Wagon ($800) to drive to Alaska. Think she’ll make it?

-Enjoyed natural hot springs near Mammoth CA. Definitely something the hippies got right.

-Went rock climbing in the high Sierras. Breathtaking! Literally, there’s no air up there.

-Traded my 65 liter backpack for a 36 liter pack. Less is more right?

-Rode dirt bikes in the Sierra National Forest. Got my adrenaline fix. Thanks Jerrod and Anthony!

-Did my first solo overnight trek into the wilderness. Solitude.

You can see I’ve been busy having a good time. Jeremy and I have been able to do a lot of things that would have been impossible without the resources of generous friends. To those friends and others, THANK YOU and don’t forget to take full advantage of my couch/shower/fridge when you become a wayfarer. I hope I get the opportunity to treat you as well as I have been treated.

America!

This is my blog archive, www.thewholeworldround.com has my most recent scribblings.

I don’t know why I expected the bus from Mexico City to Tijuana to actually arrive in Tijuana at the advertised time. You’d think I’d know better by now. I foolishly bided my time in Mexico City so as to reach my destination in the morning (on the third day) with plenty of time to cross the border into California. My frustration at arriving 12 hours behind schedule was easily forgotten at the joy of getting off that bus. I was the only person who rode the bus the full distance from Mexico City to Tijuana. Stopping every hour to be searched for drugs got pretty old. Surprisingly, the Tijuana bus station isn’t a bad place to spend the night. I woke up refreshed and boarded a Greyhound for Riverside, CA.

The ticket to Riverside, by some odd glitch in the system, cost more than the ticket to the city beyond Riverside along the same route. I only needed to go to Riverside but I bought the ticket to the further city knowing I could just get off early. When I got off in Riverside –giddy to be on U.S. soil- I told the clerk that I wasn’t going to use the remaining portion of my ticket, in case someone wanted my seat. The clerk said he couldn’t sell the seat to anyone else, but that I could mail my ticket stub to Greyhound for a refund of the unused portion. I won twice!

A friend from college picked me up at the Riverside bus station. I had learned through facebook –by frantically sprinting to Mexican internet cafes during ten minute bus stops- that Sarah had a personal goal to climb Half Dome. Yosemite was where I wanted to go, so it was perfect. We left that same day.

The Half Dome attempt, as Half Dome attempts tend to, waxed positively epic. We didn’t want to do the fixed cable tourist route so we borrowed some climbing gear and, at 2:30a.m., started hiking towards our route -Snake Dyke. The guide book describes a three hour hike to the base of Snake Dyke. People who don’t get lost along the way miss out on seeing a lot of things, mainly rocks, trees, and rattlesnakes, that we enjoyed during our eight hour approach.

The only reason we ever found the climb was because another team had come along and found us, befuddled, studying our map. The more experienced duo planned to climb Snake Dyke as well, so I figured we could still summit by employing alpine plagiarism. We were out of water and needed to get limit our time in the blazing sun. I hoped that following the same route as the first group, and rigging the same belays, would allow us to complete the 3-4 hour Snake Dyke route in less than two hours. They climbed exposed slab for the first 100ft, not bothering to use the crack system that would allow the placement of protection. The climbing looked easy enough, so I followed suit. I’ve never before climbed that high unprotected. I definitely got scared, but I know from experience that scared climbers become completely incapable of the task at hand. Ignoring my fear, battled upwards, and finally breathed a huge sigh of relief upon reaching a belay ledge. Unfortunately we didn’t climb much farther before lightning, thunder, and rain dealt our climb a final blow. The retreat to the car was rough. We still didn’t know where the trail was; bushwhacking took forever. Luckily for me I planned to stay in Yosemite, Sarah had to drive solo back to Southern California after our all night lesson in the relative sizes of God’s creations.

My arrival in the States was abrupt, but it took me no time to adjust. I’ve spent two previous summers in Yosemite, so I immediately felt like life was normal again. Over the past week I’ve actually been surprised and almost startled when it occurs to me that I’m only a traveler passing through.

Inversely Proportional Tenacity

This is my blog archive, view my most recent blog at thewholeworldround.com

Luckily Jeremy and I have both spent time in Central America before; our expedited pace is still painful, but somehow tolerable. Even going fast, we were in Panama long enough for both a good thing and a bad thing to happen. We visited the canal, this was good. I flipped my flop in a poop pile –bad. In the spirit of optimism i´ll elaborate only on the former event.
I didn´t know before, but the canal isn´t flat. A series of locks raise the boats up to a fresh water lake, and then lower them on the other side -so the boats actually go over a hill. The average freighter pays $250,000 for passing through, although Richard Halliburton paid only 36 cents. He swam.

To build the canal they moved enough dirt to build a wall, the size of the Great one our Oriental friends have, from San Fransisco to New York City. Woodrow Wilson is credited with removing the last bit of dirt that finally united water from both ends. He did so from Washington with the click of a telegraph that had
been wired to a dynamite charge.
We were delivered in Panama by ¨Fritz the Cat.¨ Fritz is a former restaurant owner from Vienna, the cat is his 59ft catamaran. We sailed five days with Fritz, from Columbia to Panama, exploring the San Blas Islands en route. The San Blas are home to the indiginous Kuna people who, to this day, maintain they´re own
sovereignty, culture, and language. I got a kick out of meeting people who, though they live a few miles from the mainland, don´t speak Spanish.

Fritz recently bought two new solar panels for the cat. He decided to give his older panels to Edwino, a Kuna man who lives with his wife and daughter on an island about the size of your backyard. We went with Fritz in the dingy to meet Edwino´s family and to help wire up the solar panels. I failed to impress Edwino with my spear fishing skills, but I did impress him with my Polaroid camera. I´ve been lugging the camera all the way from the end of the earth, but the Kuna made it worth it. The Edwino´s now have two things they´ve never had before, a family picture and light by night.

Nicaraguan beaches are spectacular, but don’t take my Word for it, watch the next Survivor. They were filming just around the point from where we were surfing. When it comes to surfing my tenacity is inversely proportional to the amount of skin that friction has robbed from my nipples. When I ran out of skin, I snuck through the jungle to spy on the Survivors. I´ve always wondered if survivor sets are as desolate as they appear on TV. In this case it was possible to buy a sandwich and a soda ten minutes away from the set. I reckon the winner will be the guy who sets up a sandwich/soda cartel through which he controls the other players.

Jeremy and I have argued heatedly twice so far on this trip. We decided to separate for a while. The fact that we argued has nothing to do with the fact that we´ve separated,I don´t even know how they got in the same paragraph, but I may as well elaborate. We argued once about whether or not children should be spanked, and once about when to apply Newton´s second law of motion. I don´t recall any of our discussions about where to go or what to do ever becoming heated. I rather like traveling with Jeremy and look forward to meeting up with him in California in a couple of weeks. In the mean time we´ve got different priorities, and no doubt it will be interesting to fly –figuratively of course- solo for a while.