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Yikes. I haven’t blogged in ages. Four countries have gone by without documentation. A person shouldn’t dwell in the past. Anyway, that’s my excuse for not playing catch up. In reality, the fact that I’ll be home in a month makes it pretty hard not to dwell in the future. I’m basically returning from retirement back into the world of responsibilities. Believe it or not I’m eager to get back to work. I suppose a lot of people would choose to travel if they were told they had only a year to travel. I’ve traveled already, I think I’d work…and go camping a lot.
So here’s what’s going on in Africa:
Today I’m a substitute farmer at my friend Hein’s farm on the Zambezi river. Hein had to make a trip to Uganda, and since farms require lots of attention (footloose farmers fail… I think that’s the rule of thumb) he asked Jeremy and me to look after things while he was away. I’m not sure I could handle looking after animals all the time, but substitute farming is great, especially here.
You’re supposed to count sheep “right” before you go to sleep. Not me though, I listen to hippos while I fall asleep and count sheep “wrong” after I wake up. I took three accounting classes in college, but none prepared me for this early morning task. Theoretically there are 531 sheep, including four newborns this week. My totals have ranged from 526 to 538. By the way sheep are sooooo dumb…can a guy who can’t count say that? But seriously, I’m humbled by the fact that humans are analogous to sheep so often in the Bible. Sheep don’t have the first clue about their own wellbeing. They’ll look at a fence, pause in obvious recognition of the obstacle, and then try to run through the fence anyway. The whole time the gate that they’re meant to go through is about one meter to the left. Idiots.
Before coming out to this farm we were at a much bigger farm/project Riverside Farm Institute, the place where Jeremy and I were based during our years as student missionaries. Reuniting with Alan and Pauline -our “African American” parents- has been a highlight of the trip. Alan took us on a church building trip. We camped out, reminisced, told jokes, and guessed at constellations while our fire flickered below. Oh yeah, we built two churches as well. Things were right.
On my first visit to Riverside as a student missionary in 2007 I went straight from the Lusaka airport out to Riverside. I got my first taste of Africa at Riverside and Riverside became the lens through which I viewed Africa. The lens, I realize now, was rose colored. On this trip, coming overland from Ethiopia, I saw Africa in a new and more sobering light. Poverty and spiritual decline are prevalent. It makes me appreciate Riverside and its development model more than I did the first time I was here. Riverside is an epicenter of happiness and vibrant life in Southern Africa.
Africa has been a hopscotch game for us from one mission post to the next. It’s been interesting to see mission work done in a lot of different ways. Our missions page hasn’t been updated during the past several geological periods, that’s something that will have to be remedied.
I’ve been carrying a small anatomy book in my backpack since Seattle (September). I wanted to be ready to study a bit in case I was accepted to medical school. Jeremy found me under a mango tree the other day and told me to read the facebook page he had left open on his lap top. It was a week old post from my mom telling me my letter of acceptance had arrived at home. Jeremy might not have seen it if a friend we met in China hadn’t mentioned it to him in another facebook message that she had seen my mom‘s post and wanted to congratulate me. So I guess I was the last to know, but it’s big news for me, and I’m putting my little anatomy book to use….and dwelling in the future more than I should be. Oops.
I think there are more donkeys than people in Ethiopia. Armies of asses trudge dusty roads bearing aqueous burdens from distant wells back to parched villages. A five or six year old child usually serves as the marching Sergeant on the way to the well, but once four 20L containers of life’s liquid have been strapped to the donkey’s hide, the Sergeant can go and play. Left to his own desires the donkey invariable points his nose homeward and walks deliberately, never resting, until he reaches his village.
I feel like an ass (it‘s not the first time, though historically I‘ve described it in different terms). This trip’s finish line is in sight, and I find myself chomping at the bit to get to the end and return home for whatever life will bring next. I’m having to remind myself that I don’t get to Africa often, and I need to milk this experience for all it’s worth. Two months remain before the first of my “appointments” in America, but 10 days of hard travel would probably wrap this whole thing up. I’m road weary. One of the reasons I love travel is because everything is changing/new everyday. But at this point change has become normal. I want to do some “normal” things for a change.
Even if I feel impatient sometimes, Africa has a spell on me. I’m enchanted. Sometimes visiting a place I’ve seen in the movies is disappointing, some places turn out to be less cool than I had imagined. Africa always delivers though, it’s better than the movies.
From Addis Ababa (“new flower”), Ethiopia’s capital, we began hitching rides towards the Kenyan border; ultimately we hitched all the way to Nairobi, Kenya. Hitchhiking is a great way to travel through Africa, a little cash provides good incentive and pretty soon you find yourself bumping along dirt tracks in a Land Cruiser - or a 10 Ton truck full of goats. We spent 24 hour straight in the latter. One chemically enhanced driver (“chat” leaves are quite the stimulant) drove the entire 24 hours at breakneck speed across the worst road I’ve ever been on. It’s a road the government wants to pave the but the lack of water in the area makes it an extremely expensive project.
I had no idea it was possible to make a vehicle go that fast across a road that bad. I admit I made sure I was right with the Lord. I don‘t know how spiritual goats are, but if ever there were God fearing goats they were the ones in that bucking Mitsubishi who were repeatedly launched nearly over the sides of the bed‘s 10 foot high side walls before gravity slammed their whirling bodies back onto the truck‘s steel bed with a bone breaking thud.
I’m sure the Chalbi desert of Northern Kenya is the roughest stretch of earth we‘ll see on this trip. I’m too soft for that kind of life. Water is incredibly precious and tribesman toting AK-47s defend dwindling puddles. The women don’t wear many clothes, though beads slung around their necks mostly cover their breasts.
We reached a small canteen of a town called Mega and got out for a stretch. A throng of playing boys came to beg for money and entertain us with shenanigans. Their ring leader pantsed one of the smaller boys right in front of me to the great amusement of his friends. Soon several of the boys were showing off by sneaking behind the small boy and pantsing him. The small boy eventually started crying so I had to chase down the ring leader and hold him so the small one could properly spank him. Vigilantly justice can be fun.
Ummmm……The End
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I just clicked the internet availability indicator on my computer’s task bar and was informed that no networks are available, so I clicked “troubleshoot connectivity problems” and received error message #321 which reads: “you’re in Ethiopia fool, what do you expect?” No telling when I’ll publish this.
I’ll hit the highlights since the last time I wrote: From Armenia I took a direct bus to Istanbul, Turkey. The bus was “direct” only in the sense that its passengers didn’t have to change buses en route. Geographically speaking it wasn’t direct at all. We headed North instead of West and when we arrived at the border I was sorry to learn it was the Georgian border, not the Turkish. Armenia and Turkey aren’t on good terms, so the border cannot be crossed (this was news to me). I’ve now been to Georgia twice, accidentally both times.
I hated that bus ride for a lot of reasons: Vodka, cigarettes, and Armenians (who tended to annoy me even when sober) yelling, stealing my seat, and sleeping off their hangovers on my shoulder. My lips were the only lips on the bus capable of forming English words, and my teeth were the only teeth that met a toothbrush during the 36 hour trip. My stupored seatmate kept slumping over onto me and expelling the fermented contents of his lungs across the geologically fascinating, but hygienically revolting, layers of tobacco residue and scum that had collected on his teeth.
Istanbul was worth the bus ride though; Incredible. That city doesn’t know whether its Muslim, Orthodox, Christian, Eastern, Western, Arabian, European or Asian….heck, I even made friends with a Jehovah’s Witness. Nobody cares though, it‘s Istanbul. Go there, I can’t imagine anyone not liking it. Istanbul….diversity….cool.
The official border between Europe and Asia (since we pretend they are different continents) is at Istanbul. I crossed from Asia into Europe on a bridge across the Bosphorous. Although they comprise a single giant landmass Europe and Asia are so completely different that I’m inclined to excuse the false geographic distinction. My bus between Istanbul and Athens was soooo nice. Sooo clean, comfortable, quiet, and on time. The roadside rest areas had automatic doors and free restrooms (two things that are extremely rare in Turkey, and even more rare farther East). I’m a sucker for a free bathroom. It felt good to enter the Western world.
In Athens I met back up with Jeremy, and his parents flew in for a Weaver family vacation. They let me come along and made me feel welcome (except for the fact that Mrs. Weaver kept encouraging me to move out of our hotel and into the local prison… “hey Bjorn, climb up on that 3000 year old statue, I’ll take your picture).” We had a really nice time though. We ate, drank, and talked about being married (I’ve noticed that married people know a lot more about marriage than unmarried people. Good talks).
We visited ten or so historical sights including Sparta, Delphi, Thermopylae, and Olympia. I sprinted the 192m dirt track in the original Olympic stadium, and Jeremy did the shot put. We felt honored to represent the U.S.A. and, perhaps because no other competitors showed up (but perhaps not), we both won our respective events.
You’ve seen more news than I have about Egypt. Our original plan was to find a ship from Athens across the Mediterranean to Alexandria and continue through Egypt. Long story short: We flew to Ethiopia. The downside is we had to sacrifice our “overland” goal. The upside is that we didn’t get kidnapped and we can travel at a more enjoyable pace through the rest of Africa. I hope to come back someday and complete the overland bit between Addis and Istanbul. We did have a layover in Cairo, and since nobody at the airport thought it would be dangerous, I went and saw the Sphinx, the Pyramids, and the Nile before the short flight to Ethiopia.
I have no idea why there aren’t more Ethiopian restaurants in America. The food is unbelievable. It’s light, so you can eat a lot without committing gluttony, and it’s terrifically delicious. The toilets in Ethiopia, however, are not up to the challenge created by my love of such food. Even industrial, high pressure, commodes back home often choke when pitted against my metabolism, and the trickling little potty at the house where we’re staying didn’t stand a chance. I gave birth in that toilet, I feel certain that healthy newborns have weighed less. There was no plunger. I had to go outside and get a stick. I used the stick to divide my creation into five pieces. I pinned four pieces to the side of the toilet with the stick and tried to get the toilet to accept one piece at a time. I’m not even kidding, the toilet couldn’t flush one part in five. I had to use the scoop and carry method and fertilize some bushes outside.
We know some cool missionaries in Ethiopia (I apologize to those missionaries for not transitioning into this paragraph more elegantly), and plan to visit them before heading South to the Kenyan border. I asked a local guy how long it will take us to get to the border, “At least three days maximum.” Hmmm. I don’t know what that means, but I love it. That’s Africa.
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In the eight months since I left home I’ve lived out of five different backpacks. I just ordered my sixth and I’m praying it arrives at Jeremy’s parents house before they fly out to meet us in Greece. My pragmatic approach to finding the right travel luggage is made possible by REI’s no-questions-asked return policy. I wish I could get a career with a return policy like that.
I’m a dreamer. I dream about small things… like accessible pockets for backpacks, and about big things…like how I should spend my life. Some weeks go like this: On Monday it occurs to me that I’d like to sell hot dogs on a street corner (I do apologize if you have trouble resonating with my examples, perhaps we have different values). On Tuesday I see a movie in which there is a nomadic bee keeper who keeps bees in the back of his truck and sells honey wherever he goes (Incredible! I don’t know if I can stand not doing this). On Wednesday I’m still excited about bee keeping, but by Thursday I’m on the fence between architecture and plastic surgery. I wish I could approach my career choice in the same way I‘ve approached my choice of backpack. It’d be great to be able to “return” or “exchange” careers. I suppose if I did things as simple as hot dog selling switching would be pretty easy, but I think I want to be a doctor. Doctoring is a career that doesn’t come with a return policy.
Conversations about my plans for the future have historically frustrated me. I have felt judged by well-intentioned older folks and their questions about my goals. What do they want me to say? “I’m on track to do something great with my life…see Bjorn run…see Bjorn succeed.” I don’t like disappointing people who want to hear me say those things, but I also don’t like lying. I don’t know how to answer my girlfriends’ parents when they ask what kind of work I intend to do (actually I don’t have a girlfriend, I bet that‘s why). Are there wives for the whimsical? I don’t want a marriage with a return policy, just a career.
Traveling has been fun because the strangers you meet and talk to, unlike your girlfriend’s parents, have no incentive to judge you. If I’m not going to see you again I’m not worried about sounding consistent. I can tell you about hot dogs, bee keeping, or anything else that intrigues me. It’s a bit like “trying on” a career.
Friendly Questioner: What will you do when you‘ve finished traveling
Me: I’ve though of opening a kitchen design studio.
Next Questioner: Same question.
Me: I need to find out what it takes to get into cattle ranching in Mongolia.
Next Questioner: Same.
Me: I may go to medical school (I “try this one on” a lot because I’m serious about buying and there’s no return policy).
The conversations that follow these questions are edifying. I find myself learning how serious I am and whether or not I’m well grounded in my thinking by trying to answer the questions my new friends ask. My new friends have a lot less at stake than my hypothetical girlfriends’ parents, so they don’t judge me. It’s great. The only person who could judge me in regard to consistency is Jeremy, and while I do suspect he thinks I’m crazy, he doesn’t seem prone to judging.
Speaking of Jeremy, I haven’t seen him or any other English speaker in a week. Where I’m at there are a lot more terrorists than there are tourists. I heard through the grapevine (which is to say through face book) that Jeremy is in Poland. I’m in Armenia. Jeremy likes WWII history. I like getting off the beaten track. We decided to divide and conquer. We’ll meet back up in another week. Traveling alone is a good time for self discovery. Thanks to traveling alone I’ve learned I prefer not to travel alone. Could this have been learned any other way? I think not. Also I learned some other stuff, but that’s the main thing.
I’ve been relentlessly on the move since I left Jeremy in St. Petersburg, sleeping every night on trains, ferries, or buses to cover more ground and to save on hostel costs. The buses don’t have bathrooms but I’ve got a few tricks to keep myself from needing to use the bathroom. Being thirsty sucks, but so does needing to pee, so when I’m thirsty I eat oranges. They’ve got enough liquid to quench thirst w/o making me need to pee. To keep from having to poo (what an odd word…I think we have a major lexical gap. “Poo” is a cute word for something that‘s not cute and “Defecate” is way too bookish and medical sounding for regular people) I eat white bread ‘til I‘m constipated. There are great bakeries in Turkey and Armenia, btw. I had everything under control until yesterday when I became painfully aware that my two methods are at odds with each other. I was properly constipated, but I got really thirsty and ate too many oranges. I forgot how fibrous oranges are. Things happened kinda fast.
“Pull over!!! Pull over now!!!” I frantically shouted to the driver of the bus. This was one of those “pack ‘em in” buses, the isle was completely crammed full of people and stuff. I knew I’d have to crowd surf my way to the door. Crowd surfing requires team participation, so I did a quick motivational charade in which I acted out what my body was about to do. This produced the desired effect from the crowd. I made it out of the bus. There were no trees. There weren’t even bushes. Everyone just watched. I think I was supposed to feel embarrassed. I certainly felt bare-assed, but I was too relieved to be embarrassed.
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In my notes I’ve reminded myself to write about the smugglers who I met and unwittingly abetted on the Trans-Siberian RR, about the veritable “Wild West” (in the far east) that is Mongolia, and about how entering Russia from Asia (as opposed to entering from the Europe) made me realize how similar I am to the average Russian. I’ve never really thought Russians and Americans had a lot in common, but when it’s just me, a Mongolian, and a Russian together in a room, somehow the Russian and I are brothers.
According to my notes those are the things I ought to write up, but somehow their moment has passed. I had another theological discussion this morning and it’s on my mind.
Any of you who’ve read this blog with any sort of regularity know that this trip, for me, has been a spiritual journey at least as much as it has been a regular journey. I’ve made a habit of posing the question “do you believe in God?” as often as I get the chance. Answers have varied drastically, and in most cases kicked off some worthwhile dialogue.
I woke up early this morning to blog. I was firing up my laptop in the hostel’s kitchen when three noticeably drunk hostel fellows whom I hadn’t met before came in. They’d been drinking all night. They were pretty sloshed (one fell out of his chair at one point, and another just laid his face on the table and started snoring), but w/o my provocation they started philosophizing. I stopped writing and started listening.
The burly Finish fellow was of the mind that death is all there is. “We may as well die, there’ s nothing besides death anyway.” Some of what he was saying would have fit well in Ecclesiastes, except he never thought to add the “fear God and keep His commandments” bit. He had a black and white picture of things, but it was more black than white. His less profound French companion (the one who wasn’t conked out and drooling on the table) argued that life was better than that because of the it’s “high” moments. “Even if you are sad more than you are happy,” said the Frenchman, “happiness is worth more than sadness so it can overcome your sadness and make life worth living.” He thought that buying a new laptop might be one such “high.”
I wasn’t at all sure I should enter the conversation because it was obvious that our ideas were quite different and would hinge on the discussion of whether or not there is a God. I prayed that I wouldn‘t make a fool of myself and opened my mouth.
I made a case for the existence of a God based on the idea that there is an identifiable moral code within ourselves (more fundamental than those that various religions arrive at) that we feel compelled at least to recognize if not to obey. I’ve not worked extensively with this stuff, but that was the angle I took. If there is such a thing as real, absolute right and wrong then there must be a writer of that code, a “something else,” a God.
Coming up with concrete examples is something C.S. Lewis is a lot better at than me, but I did my best. I tried to make it raw and poignant. “If I sleep with the woman you love (ladies you’ll have to adjust the example accordingly) you‘ll be well convinced that the thing I did was ‘wrong.’” I claimed that outside of any religious structure, and outside of any fabricated moral code that a culture has adopted, it would be WRONG for me to do this thing, and that the fact that you would be eager to smash my skull with a heavy stick means you are recognizing my wrongness.
Drunk as they were the guys were really great to talk to. They even helped me revise my example. They weren’t sure how the feminists would feel about the “ownership” that a man’s right to be angry at another man for taking his woman implies. So we changed question to “what if I kidnap your son and make him my slave?” Did I for sure wrong you then? Is that wrong enough to be described as absolutely wrong? Is it wrong beyond any “wrongness” that some well meaning but polluted moral thinker may have come up with in the process of inventing a religion?
At this point the Atheists made historical conjectures, and I made historical conjectures. We agreed that such behavior would illicit indignation in ourselves and in anybody we’d ever met, but they argued that there was most likely a time and a people in the past who would not have recognized this behavior as wrong. I think there was never such a people.
The guys were pretty staunch on the idea that everything we’ve ever recognized as right or wrong is only right or wrong because it’s come to be called right and wrong by the prevailing culture. I can’t prove otherwise my experience points me in another direction.
They’ve got their experience and I’ve got mine. That’s that. They may have been drunk but they weren’t stupid, and they weren’t lazy or wishful thinkers either. The guy from Finland praised the Christian moral code for what it was. He doesn’t think it’s “truth” but he does think it’s useful.
So what does a Christian disciple look like here? I don’t know if better apologists with better angles than me would be more convincing than I was. I kind of think there are enough words and theories floating around. For me the challenge is to be the real McCoy. If this Christianity stuff is legit people will see it in my life and want it. Integrity and authenticity are two things my generation demands. That’s good as long as I’m legit. Am I? Are you?
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Have you ever played the game Mad Gab? If you have skip the rest of this paragraph: the “it” person reads a short phrase off of a card aloud to his team. To him the words look like complete gibberish. The card might read “yewl bees or re,” which makes no sense, but to his team hopefully it actually sounds like (or approaches sounding like) “you‘ll be sorry.” The team tries to guess as many phrases a they can before time runs out.
They’re playing Mad Gab in China without knowing it. The Chinese character system is so complex that, in order to give foreigners an outside chance at literacy, there’s a hybrid (written) Chinese language that uses the English alphabet (It’s a phonetic rendering of Chinese sounds with accent marks denoting the proper tones). For an American the system makes reading possible. But for Chinese, this “pinion” language amounts to a game of Mad Gab in which they not only have to be the reader, but also the guesser (they must say the sound indicated by the pinion letters, and then ask themselves…the word that I just said, what did it sound like?) if they hope to derive meaning.
One of the coolest things about Chinese characters is their basis in practical reality. They‘re like hieroglyphics (perhaps they are hieroglyphics) -sketches of real things put together to tell a story. For example, when I’m in the valley of decision (trying to figure out which bathroom is for dudes) I need to look for a drawing of a field that includes the pen-stroke for strong. “Field Strong,” that’s “man.” The symbol for woman is harder to read, I think it’s “nag strong.”
There’s a lot of history in the characters too, some of which will really make your socks go up and down if you’re a fan of the books of Moses: the symbol for “covet” is a woman between two trees, the symbol for “boat” indicates a vessel and eight people. All this in atheist China, crazy huh?
Today we arrived in Beijing and introduced ourselves to the city’s infamous public transit system. Since arriving in Asia it’s been my dream to see the Packers in action (actually I did catch a few minutes of a Greenbay game on TV in Bangkok’s U.S. embassy waiting room, but that’s not the kind of Packers I’m referring to). The Packers are the people who are employed by the subway system to physically compress crowds in order to fit them onto trains. Today I not only got to see them working, I got packed!! I was the last person on one of the cars and that little packer pushed her hardest (yeah it was a girl, and she really had to lean into me) to make my shape fit the shape of the empty space remaining on the car.
Funny situations arise when people are in such close proximity. Breath is particularly noticeable when you end up in the front-to-front position (a position Americans customarily reserve for making out). It’s hard to figure out which air is yours to breath and which is theirs. Where should you look? What if they’re breath isn’t so bad and you wind up being attracted to them? Should you tell them or just try to remain aloof, all the while enjoying their closeness?
One guy sneezed all over his three friends. They would have liked to reach up and wipe millions of tiny snot rockets off of their necks and faces, and to beat their friend in atonement for his iniquity, but their arms were irremovably pinned to their sides by their neighbors in the train (I was one of those neighbors and narrowly avoided the blast zone). If the first guys arms hadn’t been pinned perhaps the whole ordeal could have been avoided by a well-placed hand over his sneezer.
Getting off the subway is the process of birth: Proper pushing, squeezing, and breathing must all be used to make it from the middle of the subway car to the door. Fortunately the “one child” law in China left a lot of midwives looking for work. Many of them now earn their living holding clinics on rhythmic breathing and other birth-related skills that equip people for success in moving small masses of human flesh through narrow openings in larger masses of human flesh. And what a worthy work, what is life but such movement?
Speaking of movement I’m glad I won‘t have to move far for the next few days. We’re taking a train to Mongolia, but there’s no train until this weekend, so we wait. For a person who does a lot of “passing by” it’s wonderful to stop for a bit, find a place to sit, and let the rest of the world do the passing.
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A great friend from college, Scott Kabel, flew in from Taiwan and spent Christmas with us in Thailand (it is my hope that those who don‘t know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand are forced to realize the distinction by the fact that they have now appeared in the same sentence). We made our way North to Chiang Mai and had a good ‘ole time reminiscing about college and Zambia (although none of us were in Zambia at the same time Jeremy, Scott, and I were all student missionaries there so we hold a lot of memories in common). Another thing we have in common is that we’re all single, and for a moment I thought this was a great coincidence, but then I realized, duh, of course we’re single. No one with a wife or girlfriend would be spending Christmas with two other bachelors in Thailand.
It turns out we‘re just “birds of a feather,” but I will say flocking, especially at Christmastime, is really fun. I’m super happy Jeremy and Scott were with me for Christmas because I identify with them easily. We share traditions, dietary preferences, humor, and language (not just English in a broad sense but the same Adventist University dialect). We’re the same in a lot of ways and it’s great.
I love being an SDA Christian. I love my SDA friends. I really love the Sabbath. It’s been really fun and uplifting for me this Christmas season to think about my roots and to bask in the joy and warm, yummy nostalgia that I get from singing carols, and reading stories about the traditions that I know and love. I identify with Adventists largely because (specific doctrines aside, that‘s for another discussion) I am Adventist. It’s what I know, it’s what I’ve enjoyed growing up in, Adventism is my culture and the lens through which I see the world.
All that being said, as a traveler, I have to stare down the obvious fact that I’m a product of my environment. I’m Christian, not Buddhist, because I was born to Sam and Susan Harboldt, not Chinh and Tranh Li. When I ask myself if I really believe, or if I’m really a follower of Christ, this keeps popping into my head. How authentic is my religion? I understand that there are elements of my beliefs that I should be willing to die for. I reckon when that time comes I better be pretty dang convinced of my authenticity and the rightness (and righteousness) of the cause for which I’m giving my life.
When I was seven or so I remember a church elder, one who I still hold a lot of respect for, told me this: “If Christianity is mistaken, and we’ve misunderstood the nature of Jesus and misinterpreted parts of the scriptures, we will still live happier, fuller, richer lives by following the moral law that Christ taught.” At the time I pretty much rejected this thinking right out. If Christ is someone for whom I may be giving my life at some point I’m gonna have to operate with a bit more certainty than that. Now that I’m traveling the words of my mentor don’t seem as far off. I think I’m seeing what he suggested manifested in the lives of many people I meet. The teachings that seem to bless these people, give them purpose, and cultivate a happy life, lived for the benefit of others, didn’t come from Jesus in the sense that ours did, but I think they may have come from God by other means.
I’m meeting people who don’t believe in Jesus, and some who don’t believe in God, who are better people than me. There are people who‘ve broken the habit of trying to prove their right all the time, people who’s brand of selflessness appears to consist of actually putting the interests of others ahead of their own, not just doing token acts of kindness (all the better if performed on the fringe of one’s comfort zone) to soothe the conscience. It seems that we Christians do not have the corner market on what we call sanctification (Romans 2:12 is a good place to start reading if you‘re curious).
The Bible talks about “losing your life to find it” and I think I see a lot of people from vastly different belief systems figuring out how to do that. I intuit that, for the moment anyway, this is the sort of “life losing” that deserves my focus. Not the martyr’s loss of the flesh life, but the giving up of my spirit to a better one. Dying to self.
Here’s the tricky business for me. The sort of spirit that attaches itself to being right (let’s say about Sabbath being the true indication of a remnant for a challenging example) is a spirit that likes to vindicate itself. It finds itself at odds (at least inside Bjorn) with the meek spirit, the one that willingly admits mistakes and doesn’t try to prove it knows better (tree of knowledge of good and evil should be ringing a bell) than God. I find the “old man” (the argumentative one) inside me isn’t quite as dead as I had hoped, and the “new man” not quite as alive when it comes to convincing others that they should switch to my belief system because it‘s “better“ than theirs.
So I’m trying to figure out what discipleship is. What does Jesus‘ commission mean for Adventists today? Should we be trying to get happy, well-adjusted, partially sanctified Baptists, Muslims, and Catholics to switch to our religion? Would we be doing them a favor by suggesting they leave the richness of their heritage, the things to which they have attached so much meaning, and enter ours?
One thing is for sure. There are plenty of people who definitely need more God in their lives. There’s still obvious discipling to be done. There are poor, widows, and orphans who are living without hope, and if we can jump start them by sharing with them a healthy way to relate to God (Christianity) it seems that must definitely be a good thing. I’m just curious about these folks who seem to relate to God well without Christ. I’m interested in your thoughts if you’d like to email me or leave comments on this website.
Bamboo School, where we spent the last ten days, exists to help Karen refugees, particularly orphans and other option-less children. Catherine Riley-Bryan Is affectionately known as “Momo Cat” by her “Bamboo Kids” and friends in Thailand. She told us that even though she’s old enough to be grandmother to her bamboo children, she prefers the Thai word for motherly endearment (Momo) since grandmothers are called “Pee Pee” (grandfathers, as it so happens are called “Poo Poo,” perfect right?).
Before Momo came to work in Thailand she did everything from earning the prestigious honor of Business Woman of the Year in New Zealand and Australia, to piloting rescue helicopters, to marrying a Manchester United footballer and traveling the Premiere League circuit on the arm of an Athlete. As Jeremy put it, “this woman has really lived.” Eventually she and her footballer settled down happily on a ranch in New Zealand, but when her husband died God began leading her through another astonishing series of events that has ultimately landed her on the Thai-Burma border having a rip-roaring good time running an orphanage, clinic, and ambulance service.
Momo is the kind of lady who gets things done and has a good time doing it. For example (and examples abound -I can’t listen quite as fast as she can tell stories), she was having a problem with some of the villagers releasing their goats on her property and eat her seedlings at night. She didn’t know who the culprits were so she corralled the goats and spray painted them hot pink. The next morning she hopped in her truck and drove down the hill till she spotted the hot pink goats, then had some words with their darker pink (blushing) owners.
It was inspiring to see how Momo serves God, and to hear her excitedly explain how thankful she is that God has given her a purpose. Even the lady who has “lived” finds she’s getting a lot more out of life now, as a servant to the poor, than she was back in her wheeling dealing days.
For my part, with only ten days at Bamboo School, I caught the vision but couldn’t quite figure out my place in the work. Hard work is a value that Momo is instilling in her kids, and they‘re catching on. There’s a schedule for chores; by the time I’d go hunt down a broom I’d come back to find the girls had finished sweeping already. The boys took Jeremy and me to cut Bamboo in the jungle for a new wall in the main building (the dorms and guest houses are straight out of Swiss Family Robison: floors, walls, and ceilings all from bamboo -these are two story structures, too). We got schooled in machete technique, and learned that, at home in Burma, these boys would likely have been cutting teak wood in addition to bamboo, and loading it on the family elephant (evidently it’s quite common for a successful family group to have an elephant, a strong one runs about $2000).
If I said, “I learned more from the bamboo kids than I possibly could have taught them,” I wouldn’t be being philosophical, I didn’t know how to split bamboo to make flooring, how to cut jack fruit, or how to feed a baby. I’m slightly ashamed but largely relieved to say that I still don’t know how to change a diaper -a skill that’s important for the older bamboo kids to know since they take care of their baby brothers and sisters.
One thing Jeremy and I know a little bit about is pouring concrete without much in the way of tools. We were able to put some of our energy, and your “Good Samaritan” money, to that end. We spent a day running plumbing and building forms in preparation for the pour, but the pouring day was the most fun: Bucket brigades with a median age of nine. I had a good laugh when I remembered and hummed the “Little Rascals” theme song. After we finished the floor for the “club house,” we “he-men” took the afternoon off and headed for the swimming hole. Everything was O’Tay.
-bjorn2bwild
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I fell in love with traveling all over again on the second half of our two-wheeled Vietnamese odyssey. My South Vietnamese premonitions were unfounded. The dense, feverish, mosquito infested jungle I expected never showed itself. There were wide open spaces and green hills under blue skies that had me wondering if we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Tanzania. The mighty “former rain” which had so thoroughly inundated our first week on the road left us unimpressed by the “latter rain” (about 15 minutes of drizzling…refreshing, really) two days before we reached Saigon. Mostly it was blue skies and balmy breezes. Perfect riding weather.
Bike trips are for dreaming. With nothing to listen to but the wind and the sound of my own thoughts, my imagination went totally bonkers and I got really excited about life, and the things I’d like to do with mine. I changed prospective medical specialties three times during the 800km of Ho Chi Minh highway that separates Hoi An and Saigon. Also it became momentously important to me that I own and run several businesses before I die: hot dog stand, peach orchard, ergonomic design studio, and ice cream parlor. As if all that and medicine won’t keep me busy enough, I solemnly vowed I would learn to sew (well enough to make suits and gowns) and that my culinary repertoire was in grievous need of expansion and would require an ample dose of attention when I get home. Do they have online Home/Ec classes for travelers?
We covered half the length of Vietnam in the last three days of riding. We were up with the sun, and in the saddle almost until dark. Every couple of hours we’d stop to stretch our legs and treat the sweaty hinder regions to some revitalizing breezes. A motorcycle trip, as it turns out, isn‘t a bad past time for a guy who‘s foot is out of order. I could keep up fine as long as we were on the road, it was the stopovers where Jeremy would have to pick up the slack in running errands and getting food and water.
Jeremy, as a rule, makes excellent consumer decisions, so I was happy in my handicap state, to leave hunting and gathering up to him. Everything he scrounged up was great, with the exception of the onion ice cream. That was foul. However, the irony in the fact that the ice cream truck, in rural Vietnam, drove off with it’s speakers blaring “It’s a Small World After All” was sufficiently delicious to leave me with a palatable memory of the experience as a whole.
As we finally entered Saigon I remember thinking passively, “Don’t Crash! Don’t Crash! Aaah there are cars everywhere I‘m gonna die!!.” Luckily I was able to postpone my foray into the maniacal throng thanks to the fact that I ran out of gas. What luck! After I hop-pushed my bike (still in one foot mode) to the next gas station, I realized I was having electrical problems to boot and had to use the kick start to get her going again (her name was Christine by the way…I christened her Christine for the sheer joy of making such an alliterative declaration). .
The goal was to drive to Saigon and sell the bikes. Christine made it to Saigon, and I suppose I should be thankful, but upon arrival, as a bid farewell I suppose, she hit me with a $25 repair bill (this might not sound like much, but it was by far the most expensive tab I ever paid on her behalf…stuff’s cheap in Vietnam). Christine got a makeover and I posted her on Craigslist and also taped a for sale sign to her. She sold easily, and for a good price, as did Jeremy’s bike who’s name escapes me at the moment.
Speaking of paying tabs on behalf of girls, I had a date in Saigon with a Vietnamese girl. Her name translates as “Picture” and as far as those go I thought she is well composed. She has a really cute smile. My attempts to get her to smile turned quickly into flirting, which turned into a date. She picked me up on her motorbike and we went to a restaurant on the river for rice-paper wraps. I was worried that people would think she was a prostitute and that I had hired her (a tragic amount of that business does go on in Saigon), but I think our laughter was too genuine to create that sort of confusion. It was a really fun date, her English vocabulary can‘t keep up with her sassiness. I thought it was cute when she would talk herself into a corner and want to express herself so badly that it looked as if she might explode. She said I could only be her boyfriend if I stay to live in Saigon. It didn’t work out.
“Uh oh. I’m gonna hit him.” I said to myself as a topsy turvy motorbike laden with a towering bundle of sugar cane veered unexpectedly into the full illumination of my headlight. My next thought was, “huh, so this is what it’s like to slide on asphalt.” By the time friction had finished grating me to a stop my main thought was, “man, I‘m afraid that may not have been healthy for my skin.”
Nothing hurt too badly as my body automatically dragged my motorbike to the side of the road and felt around for belongings that had escaped their bungees during the main event. I was happy to be alive and conscious, and it wasn’t until I managed to move my whole junk-show off of the tarmac that I realized the gravity of my situation: It was dark (we hadn’t yet reached a town with a hotel…so we had continued into the night), Jeremy was gone, my motorbike didn’t look good, I was in a very rural part of a third world country, I could feel my shoe was filling with blood, I had no idea where the nearest clinic was, no one around me knew any words in English or had any way to help me get anywhere.
Thankfully the guy I hit was fine (had he been hurt I might have found myself in jail or the recipient of some vigilante justice). He pulled his motorcycle to the side of the road and started giving me emphatic instructions. He may as well have been speaking Vietnamese (uummmm.) Another guy came along and picked my bike up off of it’s side. He started bending and kicking mangled parts back into alignment. He pressed the starter and, hallelujah, it started!
I fumbled around for ten minutes, reattaching my belongings to my motorbike and wondering what I should do. I hoped Jeremy would realize I wasn’t behind him anymore and come back. Every time a bike would pass I would shout his name. I couldn’t see who was on the passing bikes behind their blinding headlights, and since I was off to the side of the road I wanted to make sure Jeremy didn’t pass me if he came back looking for me.
Jeremy hadn’t returned and I knew I needed to get some medical attention. I didn’t know how bad I was bleeding, so I was worried that if I was really bleeding I might get light-headed and crash again if I tried to ride to the next town. I had a prayer and started down the road.
Jeremy was waiting on the side of the road less than a mile away, it was a big relief to see him. I took my shoe off so we could assess the damage. I couldn’t see the biggest gash (it was on the bottom of my foot) but Jeremy told me it was big. He wrapped my foot tightly in his bandana, but then I couldn’t fit it back into my shoe. I asked him if I could just wear his shoe, I figured his size 15 could accommodate my foot, bandage and all. He gave me his shoe and we started trying to figure out how to get to the next town that might have a clinic.
We were relying on sign language to ask for help and directions and we weren’t getting anywhere fast. Finally (this was a huge answer to prayer) we happened upon a kid who spoke English. He didn’t speak well, in fact he probably knew about 14 words, but it was enough to tell him I would pay him to lead us to the next town that had a hospital. We followed him about 15km to Thai Hoa. I rode with my injured foot slung up over the handle bars to keep it elevated.
The hospital was exceedingly primitive. A man lay grimacing on a table with a splint on his leg that consisted of two sticks bound together with a bunch of tape. As his friends hoisted him up from the table and carried him hurriedly through the door they came within a centimeter of slamming his injured leg into the door jam. I wondered what kind of care I could expect.
I presume the man who worked on me was a doctor. He said (through our 14 word interpreter) that we would have to come to his house so he could stitch me up. It seemed curious that he couldn’t do it at the clinic, but there was no way to ask why. We struck out again on our bikes, following the doctor across the small town and down a dimly lit alley to his home. I knew I was about to get some serious stitches, and I was pretty nervous, wondering whether or not this guy had any anesthetic.
Turns out he did have anesthetic, and other than the fact that his flea ridden dog sat right next to him as he stitched me up, it was a fairly sterile procedure. He produced several syringes and vials of mysterious serums which I hoped were antibiotics. All the labels were in Vietnamese so I just had him hit me with everything he had.
So now it hurts to walk, but luckily it doesn’t hurt to ride a motorbike. So we’ve continued our trip down Vietnam. The interesting thing now is that we’ve realized we would have been better off buying jet-skis than motorbikes. The flooding they mentioned in the news. They weren’t joking. We’ve driven through torrential downpours for the last few days. I’m trying to keep my foot from getting infected, but it’s a bit tricky since it has to spend it’s days in my soggy right shoe.
Now we’re in Hue, the old capital of Vietnam. I’ve made an invalid out of myself, mostly laying in bed keeping my foot dry. Jeremy runs errands and comes back wide-eyed with stories of people in canoes going down main roads. I really wanted to do a motorcycle trip because I was feeling like the train/bus method lacked a certain element of adventure. It hasn’t been hard to find adventure on the motorbikes. Not hard at all.
-bjorn2bwild
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I’ve been indulging my audio book addiction, and it’s left me with little time for blogging. But I’ve got about 20 min so I’ll hammer out a quick update (I‘m writing fast, please excuse my grammar errors and my developing tendency to slip into Vietnamenglish):
Here’s what we’ve been up to since last time I wrote:
-bamboo raft down the Li River (look up online -grand scenery) to reach Southern China.
-tasted (just one sip) snake wine -it’s rice wine marinated in a bottle full of dead snakes.
-spent 3 days rock climbing in Yangshuo, China -very epic, see Jeremy’s blog.
-rented bikes for 80 cents a day and got around with out peddling by grabbing passing vehicles.
-got massages -the girl who worked on Jeremy was a lot cuter than the guy I got.
-long lists are boring…so this one is ending.
I hadn’t realized that U.S. citizens can’t get Vietnamese visas at the border, so we had to go to Nanning, in Southern China, to get our papers sorted out at the Vietnamese consulate. Nanning is a regular city. Tourists don’t go there. There’s nothing particularly remarkable to see but that made it a really neat place to spend a few days. People were genuinely curious about us since we were foreigners. Mothers would bring there children over to us and prompt them to say the four words which constitute their English vocabulary: “hello, how are you?”
From Nanning we took a bus to Hanoi, Vietnam. We had our first major hiccup at the border. Jeremy could not convince the Chinese officials that he was the long haired guy pictured in his passport. Despite a whole pile of documentation and identification, including his birth certificate, there was no convincing them. Finally we got out our computers and dug for pictures to demonstrate Jeremy’s Jeremy-ness. I had happened to snap a picture of him cutting his long hair off when we were in Cusco, Peru, so I made a little slide show documentary of the evolution of Jeremy’s hair-do. I’m not sure if the slide show was the reason, but after much ado they finally let us into Vietnam.
Vietnam: Central America is to the U.S. what Vietnam is to China. It got a whole lot more primitive and a whole lot less organized as soon as we crossed the border. Super fun! The people we‘ve encountered are incredibly sweet and enormously helpful. “We want help you first -more important. then maybe second we can make some money,” the pretty lady at the hostel desk said with here beaming smile when we asked here why she was so nice.
I should mention the youth in Asia. This was a big topic in ethics class and I never fully understood why. Anyway, in this part of Asia the youth are splendid. We are regularly befriended. Their help is extended. But my rhyming has ended. For the past two days two youth in Asia have helped us find, buy, and fix up the two scooters we‘re going to drive the 1700 miles to Ho Chi Minh City (plus possible detours into Laos and Cambodia). It’s time to hit the road….blessings, I’ll catch you later.
-bjorn2bwild
Flags
“You going see many flags.” The hostel manager explained to us over the phone in her broken English. Great, it should be easy to find then right? I quickly became frustrated with the directions, it was my understanding that these flags, which allegedly adorned Tokyo’s JGH hostel, would pop into view and guide our weary souls to the beds and showers we badly wanted. Even after retracing our steps we’d spotted no such flags. When we finally stumbled upon the doorstep I was ready to share a piece of my mind with the manager, but I realized the description of the flags had been correct. She must have meant “mini flags” not “many flags.” Had we been more attentive we easily could have spotted the flags from the road with an average pair of binoculars.
Tokyo, the big city of little flags, is not my favorite place. It’s a massive conurbation of cities (I think it’s the biggest metropolis in the world). Aside from a few parks there’s nothing like countryside for a long way in any direction. We did find hospitality. We were very lucky to be given a tour, and treated splendidly, by one of my dad’s classmates. Certainly Tokyo has a rich history and unique sights, but I’m finding it to be a sad place.
The desire for material wealth and career success seems to have a strong hold on the Japanese psyche. The job market in Tokyo is uber-competitive. Professionals and students struggle under colossal workloads and massive amounts of stress. The speedy Subway trains are frequently delayed by people looking for a way out. Jumping in front of the train is the preferred method of suicide.
As I travel I’m always looking for cultural elements that have value; I like to live eclectically, so I’m always looking for ideas that are worth borrowing. Latin siestas, sauna bathing like the fins, and the bidet method for post-fecal cleansing (our smear method is quite primitive when you think about it) are examples habits I think are worth adopting. Now I’m in Japan, trying to figure out what these folks do right. The public baths and simple floor plans of years gone by seem beautiful to me. But sadly the current state of affairs leaves little room for human interaction. Ear buds and smart phones serve as the only companions for hoards of lonely strangers on commuter trains during short trips home between long work days. Hopefully escaping Tokyo will revitalize my outlook on the country as a whole. We’re taking a bus to Osaka tonight.
Our flight to Japan included a 15 hour layover in Seoul, Korea. Even though we arrived in Seoul in the evening, we had an eventful, if short, Korean foray. You could call us “lucky scuzzes.” (Turner, Jessi)….(MLA way of giving literary credit where it’s due). As it turns out the night of October 9 is Seoul’s annual fireworks festival. The city was charged; millions lined bridges and streets, jostling for a better vantage point from which to see the shimmering display.
After the show we caught the tail end of a bustling evening in Namdaemon market. The market is the place to get right into the think of the culture, and to expose your palate to local flavor. Unfortunately for me, Korean food is my least favorite of the Asian collection; however the friendliness with which it was served makes up for what I think is a major lack of deliciousness. We ate in a tiny restaurant and watched a Korean soap opera with the three other patrons. I’m sure the consternation on my face, as I muscled down pickled vegetables, rivaled that of the unlucky lady on the TV screen who’d been betrayed
A kind, enthusiastic, slightly chubby 19 year old named Kim Taehyung was our volunteer guide on the way back to the airport. We were in trouble, unable to read the transit schedule in Korean and also unable to understand Kim’s well intended advice which came in the form of an epic Korean monologue. Jeremy finally managed to convey our urgency; our plane was leaving first thing in the morning, and the transit system was about to shut down for the night. Kim decided he better just go with us. We didn’t make it all the way to the airport before the transit system closed, but Kim made some phone calls and had us stay at a Jim Jil Bong (Incredible sauna/spa that has a sleeping area and makes a great place to spend the night). Kim insisted on paying for our night at the spa and wrote down our travel needs (in Korean) so that we could hand the instructions to a cab driver in the morning.
Nudity is mandatory at Jim Jil Bongs. There are separate areas for men and women. A troop of boys (8-14) years or so joined us in a steamy tub and gigglingly practiced their English on us. We were having too much fun to sleep. I finally laid down in the sleeping room on a small matt, but when I got up to pee somebody stole my matt. I ended up sleeping for a couple short hours on the wood floor with a stack of books for a pillow; eventually I opted to skip sleeping and headed back into the sauna.
So that’s how it’s been. Three more days in Japan and we’ll be ferrying to mainland Asia. There are ferries from here many Asian ports, including Vladivostok, Russia which is the city through which we originally planned to enter Asia. Since we’ll inevitably visit Russia in two months or so, catching the trans-Siberian railroad, we’re thinking of heading to Shanghai and seeing South East Asia now rather than starting in Russia only to retrace our steps.
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I’m in Sitka Alaska, the Russian capital of the Americas until the U.S. purchased Alaska (19 cents per acre) in 1867. 150 years ago there was regular ship traffic hauling payloads of otter pelts between here and Russia. At that time it was, of course, impossible to cross the Bering sea by plane, these days it’s quite a trick to cross without a flying.
Ten days of “shaking the bushes” up and down the Alaskan coastline, and we are well oriented with the challenges of floating to the Orient. It’s like this: After 9/11 cargo ships have very stringent security mandates and only a handful of freighters in the world are licensed to carry passengers, exactly zero of these visit Alaskan ports. Occasionally cruise companies run trips from Alaska to Japan, but these are prohibitively costly, and long gone by late September.
I made my best effort to leave no stone unturned (no number uncalled), but every time the search would slam to a stop against someone’s utterance of the word “impossible.” Nearly at my wit’s end I finally caught word of a fishing company out of Dutch Harbor (the port from the show “Deadliest Catch”) that dry docks a couple of boats in Yokohama, Japan after the Aleutian Cod season. I managed to reach them by phone and was elated when the crew manager enthusiastically suggested we hire on for the trip across Pacific.
The Cod season lasts through October, so those boats will cross in early November. The thought of waiting for more than a month is a bleak one, especially as the first snows are falling. The year’s last ferry to Dutch Harbor from mainland Alaska (a four day chug) leaves right away, so waiting in Anchorage (land of friends and warm coffee shops with internet) is not a possibility.
I was busy getting my courage up for a bone-chilling, lonely, expensive month in Dutch Harbor (wondering if we’d be able to find work on a fishing boat in the mean time) when the crew manager emailed me. They were already overstaffed so the owner regretfully said he wouldn’t be able to hire us. They, like freighters, are not insured to take passengers, so our invitation was withdrawn. This was our last good lead. Upon receiving the news we surrendered and decided to fly. The relief to not be spending a grim October in Dutch Harbor took the edge off of the disappointment of having to fly.
I reckon what we wanted to do could be done. But especially this late in the year it’s no longer worth the time or money to us. However, we were close, both figuratively and geographically: We visited Sarah Palin’s home in Wasilla and were able to catch a glimpse of the Kremlin from the veranda. Haha, I mean that kindly though. If anyone is sympathetic with her for that statement it’s me. Alaska and Russia are dang close. We drove the Sunbeam to Denali Park’s Wonder Lake, where we were only about 600 miles from Russia. Private vehicles aren’t allowed in Denali; that’s another good story.
Visitors to Denali are prohibited to drive their own cars into the park, they must climb aboard clamoring Park Service buses and take in the sights through little glass rectangles. We unwittingly arrived at Denali’s gate too late in the season for tourist buses. The tourist season had already ended. They told us we were out of luck, but they also told us about the Denali CarPass Raffle. For a few short days the whole park was open to winners of that raffle. All we needed was to win a raffle that had taken place months earlier.
Evie (the dreaded girl from the last blog 
The signs were to ask for people’s raffle passes as they were exiting the park. “What rhymes with “pass?” we asked ourselves, trying to come up with clever lines for our ad. We tried hard to think of how donkeys were relevant to Denali park, but in the end we went with a great line Jeremy thought of. “We’re low class, give us your pass!” And it worked. We gained full access to the park and had a great day among the moose and grizzles in the shadow of North America’s grandest peak, Denali (20,320 ft).
From Denali we headed to Anchorage, the last leg of the trip for both Evie and the Sunbeam. We pulled into Anchorage thanking God that our little $800 car had been such warrior. Jeremy listed the car for sale on Craiglist.
Jeremy, a horse trader at heart, had seen online (back in California) that cars sell for a lot more in Alaska than they do in California. This was part of our reasoning for buying the car, we hoped to offset some of our costs by profiting on its sale. We sold the car (on the way to church, incidentally….our ass was in a ditch) for twice what we payed for it. The profit from the car covered, nearly exactly, the cost of the gas we burned between Los Angeles and Anchorage. We actually underestimated what the car would be worth up here. Jeremy hasn’t had time to remove the Craiglist ad so he’s still getting calls everyday. The girl we sold it to offered us more than we were asking and flipped out with glee when we finally made the exchange.
We are over budget for the trip, but between Jeremy’s horsetrading skills, the generosity of friends, family, and our “store” visitors, we’re still crossing our financial straits (all but the Bering). Church members have been forthcoming with meals, beds, and cheerful smiles. Two Alaskan brothers, who we met on the way through Columbia, gave us a free ride from Anchorage to Haines (where I, of course, changed my underwear). Some kind folks payed for our auto insurance, and more recently a very gracious couple bought us ferry tickets all the way from Alaska to Washington (all the flights to Asia go through Seattle anyway, so flying from Seattle is cheaper and means we’ll only fly once).
We’re sitting on the ferry now, a few hours south of Juneau. We just saw a pod of humpbacks, one narrowly escaped being struck by the ferry. Some Dall porpoises are chasing us. I love it!
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A duo drove into Seattle, but a trio left. Evie Barnes of Boulder Colorado, a friend of friends from Southern, has joined us for the drive up to Alaska. Evie has dreadlocks and a long list of food allergies. One way she gets protein is by drinking chia seeds with her water (you remember “cha cha cha chia…the seeds that so easily sprout into thick green grass). I’ve petitioned Evie several times to plant the seeds in her dreads, thus achieving a truly unique style. Evie is closed minded when it comes to my ideas.
It takes only three hours to drive from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., so we made it to Vancouver in time to spend the evening in Gastown. Gastown is the historic and touristy part of Vancouver. Gas lights illuminate the narrow cobblestone streets. At the heart of Gastown a giant steam powered clock billows and ticks the hours away.
I’ve always felt indebted to the people of Vancouver. Once I snuck into a spinning restaurant atop a skyscraper a few blocks from Gastown. I wanted to see the panoramic view without paying $15 dollars to visit the tower’s observation deck. A dapper young man introduced himself in the elevator. Jason was a dump truck driver by day, and philanthropist of his family’s fortune by night. He had three underprivileged Chinese boys with him (Big Brother program) and he invited me to join their dinner party. The boys had trouble pronouncing and understanding the fancy names on the menu (so did I to be honest). Questions arose about many dishes, and Jason would graciously describe each dish, but he also ordered ever single dish in question (at $30-50 a plate) so that we wouldn’t have to take his word for it. He treated us like kings, and as I revisited Vancouver I was eager to return the favor. I found Mike, a hungry heroin addict. We went grocery shopping. Maybe Mike will blog about it someday.
From Vancouver we went up to Squamish to spend a couple of days climbing B.C.’s world class granite. In Squamish the Taco Bell is expensive, but the rock is incredible! We saw one of the hardest routes in the world, Chris Sharma’s “Dream Catcher” (5.14d, it’s only been climbed twice). The rain held off long enough for us to soundly abuse our underused climbing muscles. On the afternoon of our second climbing day we headed North and East to Kamloops.
It’s a bit of a thrill to call people you’ve never met and ask if you can stay at their house. There is potential for awkwardness, but there’s also the potential to encounter greatness. I’m so happy we didn’t pass Kamloops without calling Andy and Inge Anderson. We went to church with them, feasted on all manner of goodness from their garden, and listened to yarns of a couple who, as we do too, live life as a great adventure. It must be the garden food that gives Andy, at 70, a fire in his eye and indefatigable story telling energy.
The Andersons took us for a hike along the Adams river where we watched the Sockeye Salmon spawn. At the confluence of the Adams and a brisk mountain tributary Andy stopped us and pointed to a Sockeye in the midst of making a decision. The fish sampled the two currents, deliberated for a spell, then took off decidedly in the direction from which he had come four years ago and from which his ancestors have come for millenia.
Andy, the old story teller, marched with a large cedar walking stick straight up hills, over logs, and through thick undergrowth. His stride never faltered, nor did his stories. He told of a time he’d gone to the Ukraine to build a facility for the Adventist church. He drove across the border in a “peppy little Volkswagen” and told customs officials the truth: that he was carrying $100,000 in cash.
Not surprisingly, Andy wasn’t far from the border when he noticed a dark car was tailing him. After stopping for gas and groceries the dark car reappeared and confirmed the intent of its occupants to corner Andy and steal his payload. Andy had some church ladies in the car with him, and didn’t want to alarm them, so he mentioned he’d like to see what the little car could do and took the thrilled ladies on a joy ride through the mountains. Once he’d gained a sufficient lead over his pursuers (out of their line of sight) it occurred to him that the women might enjoy stopping to watch the sunset. He dipped off down a little dirt road, and led the Dorcas crew on an evening stroll. Once night had fallen they regained the road miles away from their befuddled pursuers. The ladies never knew.
Andy and Inge’s stories were better than ours, I suppose that comes with maturity. No doubt we bored them with our pitiable attempts at orating. Andy’s ears did perk up though when Jeremy mentioned the mountains we saw in South America. Andy wants to visit those mountains since they’re his.
We salied forth from Kamloops two days ago, our northward drive serving to expedite autumn’s onslaught. Although the spruce maintain their color all year, the aspen leaves are already bright yellow. It’s chilly at night and the taller peaks are already receiving their fist dustings of snow. Yesterday we saw three bears. I accidentally hit and killed a ptarmigan with the car. I’m carrying it along in case I get fired up to gut and cook it, but to be honest my motivation for that has waned markedly post rigormortis.
Yesterday we stopped by the Alger river to munch on the primitive contents of our grub box. The scene was picturesque so I got out my camera bag (an old leather fanny pack that I wear like a shoulder holster) to take some pictures. A few miles down the road, after eating, I again saw a landscape worth photographing. The problem was my camera bag (in which I also keep my wallet and ipod) was nowhere to be found. I realized right away that I had left it on the roof of the car. A quick glance at the roof confirmed the sickening truth that my bag, my luggage’s analogue for the Sanctuary’s Most Holy Place (thieves don’t read this do they?), was no longer with us. We went back. The bag was laying in the middle of the oncoming lane at the first major turn North of our lunch spot, it had slid from the roof of the car at roughly 60mph. Luckily there’s very little traffic here (no cars had passed) so the bag hadn’t been run over, but my heart was in my throat knowing that a crash to the asphalt at 60mph had probably left me with a useless bag full of Canon and Apple shards. I was praying pretty hard and God really blessed. Everything works fine, and now that I have my I.D. back I’ll be able to leave Canada and enter Alaska (remember our passports are still in Seattle at the Russian consulate).
We’re about 30 minutes from Whitehorse, Yukon. Evie is driving and Jeremy and I are typing in anticipation of a good upload session in Whitehorse. Tonight we will camp on the marge of Lake LaBarge. Last night the northern lights were flickering and I hope they do it again tonight. We’re going to build a fire and read “The Cremation of Sam McGee” a poem set on the marge of Lake LaBarge. We just passed another bear! This is fun.
-bjorn2bwild
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I’m staying at my buddy Matt’s house right now. Of my good friends, he’s the one I’ve known longest. Matt, an opportunist if ever there was one, couldn’t help himself one day in our seventh grade Social Studies class. He had been laboriously extracting an enormous booger from deep within his sinuses. Finally it broke free, but before propelling it across the room with a mighty flick (Matt was renowned for mighty flicks), he elbowed me and held his finger out so I could admire his treasure in all of its splendor. My jaw dropped wide open at the sight of such a monumental specimen. I find it difficult to say what happened next but If you recall that Matt is an opportunist, and renowned for mighty flicks, and that my mouth was hanging wide open, you’ll figure it out. Our relationship was a bit rocky there for a bit, but I finally found it in my heart to forgive him. Now I’m at his house in Seattle. If he were here I’d make him breakfast in bed as a sign of the everlasting covenant of peace between us. He’d love my toe-jam omelets; I season them with the perfect amount of dandruff. Anyway that punk ran off to Florida to visit family. Something about prior plans. Hogwash.
Jeremy flew home for the weekend for his family’s reunion and the celebration of his grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. So I’m loitering in Seattle, a bit lonely but far from sleepless. I’ve been trying to use my time wisely: gearing up for cold weather in Alaska, beginning work on what I hope will one day develop into a book, and researching ways to get across the giant pond you’ve seen in the upper left hand corner of your map.
Last time I wrote from the rugged coastline of Southern Oregon. Lots has happened since then, let me fill you in. A week ago Friday we continued our drive up the coast. We passed the sea lion caves (you may confidently use your powers of deduction to figure out what we saw there), and a handful of quaint harbor towns before reaching Lincoln City. I took the wheel in Lincoln City and soon thereafter applied sufficient clockwise torque to alter our course inland towards Portland.
Between the coast and Portland we stopped only twice: once for a $3.99 lunch special at a Chinese place, and a second time to buy some tires from some friendly Turkish guys who convinced us we were getting a bargain. They did sweeten the deal by putting us in touch with their cousin who sails the Mediterranean. I left them half a quart of black berries I had picked the previous evening, partly out of good will, and partly hoping they’d go ahead and put in a good word for us with the Mediterranean cousin.
Portland required our attention for three reasons: One reason was male, but the other two were female (I hope my use of the past tense hasn’t confused anyone, the three “reasons” intend to maintain their respective genders indefinitely). Bryan and I worked together at Camp Wawona in Yosemite. We arrived at his house a bit late for the 13 mile hike he had planned, but we grabbed lights and decided to do it anyway. Hiking fast we could theoretically finish before midnight, but it’s impossible to hike fast when three different species of wild berries team up to distract you. We managed to summit Silver Star mountain just in time to watch the sun set. The glowing panorama included views of four of the Northwest’s most famous peaks: Hood, Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier (I named the last batch of pictures prior to learning how to spell “Rainier”). Normally it would be impossible to see that many peaks, and often none would be seen, but we were blessed with especially clear weather.
On the return hike Jeremy walked fast and got ahead, but retreated briskly and explained he thought we should walk together since he had just seen a bear cub. I was impressed with his calm demeanor since he had likely been very close to the cubs protective mother. Bryan and I still awarded Jeremy partial bravery points when his bear turned out to be a porcupine.
The two other reasons for going to Portland go by Lauren and Bonnie. Friday night had been an adventure in the mountains, but Saturday night was a social adventure. Several months had passed since friends at college had mentioned there was a cute girl named Lauren living in Portland. They had given me her number so I decided to call and ask for a date. It’s rough to get your courage up to call someone, and then get their voicemail instead of them. I wanted to talk to her in person. It was something like committing to bungee jumping, but at a surprise moment. “Ready Bjorn?”… ” Yeah, I think so.”… “Nevermind not yet.”… “dang it.” After several rounds of this my nerves were fully bewildered. Just about the time I started expecting to get her voicemail, she answered.
Lauren seemed pretty sceptical, but said if she could bring a friend (of course this was fine with Jeremy) we could go to the John Mayer concert. The concert was near George, Washington (they would name their town that) at an outdoor venue called the Gorge Amphitheater. Matt brought a group of friends from Seattle so we met them there. Our seats were a very long way from the stage, but my date was quite resourceful. She brought along a pair of binoculars. John Mayer himself was still kinda hard to make out with the binoculars, but if you used them to look at the jumbo-tron screen you could get a pretty good idea of what was going on. It can be hard to chat at a concert, but it was easy for us, we were far enough away it was almost like not even being at a concert. All the fun none of the hassle! I can’t speak for everyone, but I had a great time.
After the concert we said goodbye to the girls. They had driven their own car in order to avoid aligning their fates with people like us. They headed for a hotel and we followed Matt a few miles to a climbing area where we laid down to sleep in the dirt. As I gazed up at the night sky one of the brightest shooting stars I’ve ever seen burst into view. Matt didn’t see it but I told him about it and he suggested, since he’s been looking for employment, that I use my wish to get him a job. I’m not superstitious so this seemed silly, but just in case there was something to it I went ahead and wished aloud, “I wish there to be a Subway at the exit where we get back on the main road tomorrow.”
In the morning we climbed some picturesque volcanic rock before loading up to head for Seattle. We were starving by the time we got out to the main road. There was only one restaurant at that exit: a Subway. I had a footlong…. It was soooooo good.
-Bjorn2BWild
