Tag Archives: travel

Road Therapy

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My stay in San Diego didn’t really go as planned. I found myself inheriting and amplifying the stress of everyone around me, my own stress level steadily increasing, leading to me drinking more than I should have last night, and this morning I had an urgent need to just get out of there. So I snubbed several friends and even a couple of dogs and I just legged it out of town.

By El Centro, California, I was feeling a little better, but I figured that the smaller the road the more therapeutic it would be. I popped into In-N-Out Burger and took my atlas inside to have a meal and plan my route. Let me say categorically that El Centro In-N-Out at lunchtime is not the place to soothe jangled nerves. The place was a frickin’ zoo, with people jockeying for tables, and clusters of customers waiting for to-go orders blocking the aisles. I found a spot to sit and opened the atlas, conscious of the covetous eyes longingly staring at my prime table. So much for lingering and enjoying a meal.

And yes, I could have just gone somewhere else, but I kind of had a hankering for the classic. Had I picked up the vibe while standing in line I probably would have left, but there was no guarantee that other places weren’t also crazy.

After lunch, things got better. A few miles north of El Centro I joined highway 78, an old-school road that rolls with the landscape rather than the cut-and-fill style of more modern highways. I remember from family trips in the long past signs reading “Dips”, but those roads are rare now, although they are still just as fun as they were when I was a kid. Passing over Imperial Sand Dunes there were some spots with significant sand buildup, but otherwise the road surface was in good shape and the car was running like a champ. Life started to seem a little better.

I took the interstate over the Colorado River but soon after I hopped onto highway 60, which wasn’t terribly exciting, but as I made my way up toward Prescot things got steadily more fun. As the sky turned purple in my rear view I climbed up onto the Kaibab plateau, twisting and turning up the brand new surface of highway 89, a road made for driving.

(Yes, I know that pretty much all roads are made for driving, but there’s driving and then there’s driving.)

Flagstaff. A cheap hotel, a meat loaf sandwich in a brightly-lit diner. Just me. Here, the only issues I have to deal with are my own. I feel bad about not seeing so many people, but I don’t think I would have been much fun anyway.

Thanks!

The Road Less Traveled

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The shimmering blacktop stretched out before me, undulating across the desert floor, and I knew I was in the right place. No place. Just me, tiny, alone, crawling slowly across the face of the world. The road rose slowly but steadily, carrying me to the base of the San Bernadino mountains, then winding ever upward through switchbacks and icy corners, up into the snowy forest.

At Big Bear City I opted for the smaller road for the next leg of my journey south, happy that it was a work day and therefore the road was free of skiers from Los Angeles and San Diego. The only obstacle I faced was an accident scene near the top of the pass; a big rig and at least two other vehicles had tangled. One SUV had been hit broadside by the truck, and almost pushed over the edge for what would have been a long fall. Emergency crews were on hand, cleaning up glass, measuring things, and directing traffic. There was room for me to squeeze past the wreckage and once more I was on my way.

Down from the mountains I continued south, aiming for Hemet and a very small road due south through the metropolis of Sage. Alas, I couldn’t find the dang road amidst the runaway housing developments in Hemet, and I wound up taking the larger highway 79 down to Temecula. Boy, was that depressing. Everywhere the land was scraped flat and where there weren’t new houses all lined up, there will be soon.

Many of the future buyers of these houses will commute every day down to San Diego. Once I was on the Interstate I saw the truly massive expansion efforts under way to funnel these people from the north down to where their jobs are. Someone needs to build a railroad or a commuter blimp service or something.

I was tempted to leave the freeway again, to take the really long route to San Diego, but highway 79 had robbed the day of its magic, and I decided to just get here and meet up with folks. And that’s where I am now, sharing a sofa with a cat, tired, and very soon for the land of nod. Overall, I’m glad I chose to go around the city of angels, even if it did mean extra miles. A lot of those miles were of a particularly high quality.

Thanks!

A Bumpy Day of Travel

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I’m sitting now in a Denny’s in Selma, California. I did not plan to stop after covering such a short distance, but sometimes even plans as nebulous as mine go astray.

It all started when I bid my gracious Piker hosts goodbye and hopped in the car for a fairly routine trip down the central valley. If things went well, I’d add a couple of hours to the trip to go around Los Angeles. I turned the key and… nothing. The battery was dead, after racking up significant highway miles yesterday. One trip to the auto parts store and a jump start later, and I was on my way. Clearly, though, the months of storage and little use had taken its toll on the battery. Wherever I stopped for the night, it was a safe bet that I’d need a jump start in the morning. The auto parts store didn’t have a battery for a Miata — it’s some kind of mini-sized high-tech thing. I would need to go to a Mazda dealership.

Then the road. Highway 99 south, an easy drive despite fairly heavy traffic. Zipping along, I saw a sign by the highway. Selma Auto Mall. Mazda. Well, heck, I’m going to be buying a battery, so why wait? I pulled off at the next exit and began to work my way back to the dealership. It was not obvious how to get there and I was in a residential area when I pulled out from a stop sign and turned to see a car coming right at me. The girl driving locked up her brakes and slid on the rain-slick pavement, slowly slowing, and right up to the end I was able to hope that disaster would be averted. As she came to a stop the noses of our cars kissed. Ouch. Although a more skilled driver might have been able to avoid me, the collision was, without a doubt, my fault.

We pulled to the side of the road. I’ll say this for the flexible plastic parts at the front corners of our two cars, They really handle this sort of impact admirably. There were some scratches and paint swapping, but everything was fundamentally intact. “I’m going to call my dad,” the other driver said. While waiting for him I gave her my insurance info and whatnot.

Dad arrived, looked over the damage, and said, “I don’t think we need the police.” I readily agreed. Not knowing what else to say, I told Dad that I had already given his daughter my insurance info. “Do you want to use insurance?” he asked. “I know a guy.”

The prospect of just taking care of the repair without taking a hit to my insurance premiums was attractive, to say the least. So, we all formed a convoy, dad in the lead, and drove across town to a backyard body shop just past the city limits. They all exchanged pleasantries in Spanish, obviously old pals, and one of the guys looked over the scratched-up bumper. he named a price, less than what I expected, far less than the hit to insurance premiums would be. Now all that was left was getting to a bank machine for the cash. Dad gave me a lift in his pickup truck, and on the way we had a nice conversation. he used to live in Mexico City, but much preferred the small-town life. He had 40 acres of farmland, and had just been offered $50,000 per acre for it, but he hadn’t sold. Where would he go? He liked it where he was.

Overall, that little automotive bump could have gone a lot worse than it did. It cost me precious cash out of pocket, and time, but thanks to the fact I was dealing with reasonable, friendly people it all turned out OK. Then it was back to the original destination. I was due for an oil change, so I went ahead and had them do that while I was in the neighborhood. Once that is done I’ll hook up the new battery and I’ll be off and running once more. Let’s hope the rest of the trip is without unexpected bumps.

+++++

Evening has arrived. The service guys were kind enough to set my clock for Pacific time; it took me a while to realize that I wasn’t experiencing a premature twilight caused by the low clouds. I could have pressed on, worked my way through LA, and arrived in San Diego late in the evening. I chose not to. LA is a big obstacle, but with planning and a little extra time, it can be avoided. Rather than plow through the hellish traffic of Los Angeles, I chose to go around. Tonight I am sitting in a place called Molly’s Pub, poised for some fine back-road driving in the morning.

Tune in tomorrow for: The Road Less Taken!

Thanks!

Snowbound in the Sierras

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Things I have in common with the Donner Party:

  1. We both took an indirect route to get to the pass.
  2. We were both forced by the weather to stop on the trail
  3. We both ran out of beef jerky

The key difference:

  1. There was a restaurant 100 yards from where I was stopped on the freeway

After waiting more than an hour for traffic on the freeway to move, I trundled up the shoulder to the exit and stopped off for a nice lunch. I arrived to hear Willie Nelson’s “On the road again,” sat with a view of the stationary vehicles out on the freeway, and read my book while waiting for the police to open up the freeway at Donner Pass. The wait was no big deal, but it did render my new set of tire chains unnecessary.

Thanks!

On The Road Again

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Yesterday was a day of travel, but just the little-t sort of travel that is concerned with destinations. This morning found me in Oak Creek, just south of Sedona, Arizona. I pulled out the atlas and discovered that there really was only one sensible route to take to reach my destination in California. I didn’t go that way.

The air was brisk, but it was certainly a top-down kind of day. Beef jerky, Gatorade, and the open road. This, my friends, is what America is all about.

I went up Oak Creek Canyon to reach Flagstaff, and wow, what a pleasant stretch of road that is. The leaves on the (I assume) oak trees were still changing, and there was some big, energetic symphonic thing playing on the radio. (I regret now that my little voice recorder is in Prague.) At the top of the canyon I stopped for pictures, then headed toward town. In the days of yore, mariners welcomed the sight of sea gulls which heralded their arrival in the new world; in a similar fashion the pizza delivery truck announced my arrival in town.

I rolled into Flag in a mood for small roads. There is a road out of Flagstaff, due north, that I had never driven. And hey, I needed to go north… a bit. We won’t discuss the three mountain ranges I put in my way by going north, then west, rather than the other way around. I turned my back to the winter sun and north I went.

Highway 89 was a bit of a disappointment. The map showed it running right up the edge of the painted desert, but it follows the echo cliffs, which block out the vast panoramic views I was hoping for. From just above Flagstaff I was under overcast skies, and there was a gloomy aspect to the Indian crap stalls lining the highways, deserted, “OPEN” banners flapping in the wind.

One crap shop that was open was Chief Yellowhorse, which, with a bright red-on-yellow lettering, promised “FRIENDLY INDIANS”. Whew! That’s a relief!

North and north some more, past the turnoff to Tuba city, past the UPS party (bunches of UPS trucks parked off the road, shuffling trailers), heading for Glen Canyon dam, and all along the way the grandeur of nature was undermined by the scars of man. Down this corridor power transmission lines, roads, and run-down buildings, abandoned vehicles, and a general feeling of decay predominate. Farther north, however, the road becomes more interesting as it climbs up onto the Kaibab plateau and makes a run for Utah. At the Glen Canyon Dam (the one Edward Abbey wanted to blow up), there is a cool rock formation that looks like a beehive. It is obscured from the distance by the power station for the dam, and one shoulder of it is cut away for the visitor’s center parking lot. The power station I can understand, and the rocks will be there long after the station has rusted away, but I think the marketing boys didn’t see the value that cool rock would have as an identity for the dam, and they harmed it’s value while catering to the very people who would have appreciated it.

I came out from under the overcast skies somewhere around the Utah border, as I added a bit of west to my journey. I passed though a little farm town in southern Utah, nestled in a narrow valley, that was named Orderville. I am careful with speed limits in all those small towns, but in this place even the name suggested that there would be no shenanigans tolerated. Sure enough, at the school crossing (just past the sign advertising handmade caskets), a truck with police lights waited at the side of the road. At the wheel I couldn’t help but notice the long graceful neck and the full red lips of the cop inside. She was fast asleep. I didn’t take a picture, I just kept driving.

The last time I had been in those parts I had driven through Zion National Park, so this time I elected to pass to the north, to see some new scenery. It is time to add Utah Highway 14 to the list of best roads in the country. I would have enjoyed it more if it weren’t for all the warnings about how I was doomed to die if my car wasn’t equipped for deep snow. When I got to the summit, to my right was a breathtaking vista, the forest a patchwork far below, bare deciduous trees mingled with the conifers, open meadows with pristine white snow, shimmering with suggested rainbows in the low sun. I just looked; I didn’t take a picture, I just paused and kept driving. The trip down the other side twisted and turned, taking me past a frozen cascade and into a narrow canyon. If you put this road on your to-drive list, I recommend going west to east, as sharp corners are more fun going uphill.

I stopped at Cedar River (Cedar something, anyway) to warm my hands and fuel up, then it was off into the sunset, west toward the Nevada border, into a spectacular sunset that used the whole sky. It got dark quickly once the sun had quit the scene, and I turned on the heater to blow onto my red hands. I was rolling.

When I joined the “Extraterrestrial Highway” (no idea why it’s named that, but it’s even labeled on the map), I passed a sign reading “Next gas 150 miles”. I glanced at my gauge and thought, “No problem.” Ten miles later I looked again and was considerably less confident. I pulled over and put the top up for better aerodynamics and slowed down to 59 miles per hour, rather than the posted limit of 70. Slowing down also extends the time of uncertainty, but after I have covered the first 110 miles I could see that I would make it with plenty of gas to spare. I didn’t speed back up, though; that pace just seemed so comfortable at that point, just rolling along quietly, the road mine and mine alone.

A bit of perspective for European and Eastern US readers (Australian readers need not bother): In the 240 km for which I was driving 18 kph under the speed limit, I was never passed by another car. In fact, I traveled more than 100 km, more than an hour, without seeing any other car moving in either direction. In more than two hours of driving, I met four cars total. This was in the evening, between 18.30 and 21.00, not the middle of the night. There are some big, open spaces out here, places people can (and do) disappear.

I rolled into Tonopah, by far the largest town for a long way in any direction. There were several hotels, and some of them advertised free Internet. My first try was the Clown Hotel. It didn’t look that great, but I wanted to open this episode with “I’m at the Clown Hotel.” You have to jump when you have a chance to use a line like that. You can be sure it will show up in a story some day. Perhaps “From Clown Hotel to Space Age Lodge: A voyage across the desert southwest.”

It was full. So was the Best Western. I wound up at the Ramada, which doesn’t suck but it cost a bit more. My WiFi signal is sporadic, but here I am and here I’ll sleep. There is a casino here, but it only has slot machines, so there’s no temptation on that score. There is television, however, and the late-night cartoons of Adult Swim are doing a wonderful job distracting me. Why does every anime dubbed into English use that horrible, horrible, girl for one of the voices? She must be the worst actor in the world with a steady income.

For all the driving I did, I’m not really that much closer to my destination, and now I face mountain passes and winter storms. Not the smartest bit of route planning I’ve ever done, but you don’t look down from the summit on Utah Highway 14 in the winter when you travel intelligently. I guess maybe I should sleep now. At the moment I don’t have a signal, but hopefully I can post this soon.

Thanks!

The Journey Begins

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I’m sitting in the Prague Airport right now, waiting to be allowed wait in line to go through security. Oh, yeah, modern travel. The idea that wireless Internet connectivity is a basic human right, right up there with clean drinking water and oxygen, has been slow to take hold in this country (though some parts of Prague are embracing the idea), but I do have access to electricity, so I feel an obligation of sorts to open up the ol’ blog and type something.

Not that there’s much to say, yet. Metro, bus, terminal, check in, get passport stamped, sit. My layover may yield more stories, depending on the policy of the airport concerning overnight stays in the terminals. It’s a long layover.

Well, the travel part of the day (starting in the evening) hasn’t amassed any significant events, but it was a pretty good day doing some shopping with Delilah. No big deal, but a nice break in the frantic cleaning/packing cycle.

I’m sitting right now at the start of one of those moving walkway conveyor belt things to help folks traverse the long corridors that typify modern airports. This particular moving walkway is not moving, however. I would say that roughly half the people who approach it stop on the threshold, pause, and when the conveyor doesn’t come to life they back up and go around, preferring to walk next to the conveyor at exactly the same speed they would travel had they just kept going. Too much thinking. It’s a malady I know only too well, myself.

+++

A soulless hotel bar in Dublin. A well-poured pint of Guinness. A lighter wallet. Free WiFi. A really annoying television program on the flat screen. Won’t be getting much done here.

But I am here, and that’s not such a bad thing.

May as well post this, because I can.

+++

Only I couldn’t. The journey continued in an uneventful fashion, and now I’m in Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café. A whim, really; I was heading for Flying star but overshot and the rest is history. I ordered a green chile cheesburger, but they were out of cow. I got the Lebanese Wrap instead, and while it doesn’t have any real Lebanese in it, it is very tasty anyway. The Chinese tea with rose petals is remarkably good as well.

I just got my official NaNoWriMo winner badge. Woo Hoo! I’m still allowed to work on the story for the rest of the day, though. It’s starting to get good.

Thanks!

Late Night, Last Minute Thoughts

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I’m tired.

How the hell am I going to be ready to get on a plane tomorrow?

I really should respond to the emails from B, S, Iv, D, J, H, SB, Is, E, L, A, and M.

Maybe I should set an alarm for the morning.

Only 1100 words to go. I could nail that down tonight. Er, this morning.

I’m tired.

Thanks!

Travel Plans

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I put off buying plane tickets for my holiday travels because I was hoping for clarification of some rule changes for immigration in the European Union. Rather, I was hoping for some clarification of rules enforcement here in the Czech Republic. Word on the street is that if I leave I’ll have to stay away for a while.

I never got that clarification, but it was time to take some action. The plan: buy a ticket one way and figure out the rest later. This morning I went online to do just that. And…

Holy Cow! The first set of tickets that came up were ridiculously expensive. I tried the next day and there at the top of the list was a ticket that cost about 60% as much as the second-cheapest. It got me to Albuquerque via Los Angeles. I cut out the Albuquerque part of the itinerary and the price went down even more. A bargain, plain and simple (well, relatively…). I bought it.

The catch is that I planned to arrive in California with a car. There is one waiting for me in Albuquerque, although there are complications there, too. So, for me, the ideal plan is for someone to meet me at the airport, take me to the DMV to renew the registration and then drop me off in Albuquerque. Any takers?

Alternately, I could spend my California time carless, which is the environmentally responsible thing to do (and doesn’t make Shrub’s friends yet richer – even the sagging dollar puts money in his buddies’ pockets), but with all the different places I want to go, that could be a real Pain in the Patoot. I suppose I could look into Greyhound package deals or whatever. That would certainly be an adventure.

Thanks!

I think I could like this girl…

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… I said while sitting alone, far, far, from the woman in question, whom I have never met. But I said it out loud, and I think I could.

Thanks!

Holiday Plans?

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I’ll be back in the Western Hemisphere shortly, and more or less at loose ends for a while. I’m not planning anything on the scale of the Mini Road Trip (some of you in the background are sniggering right now that I even needed to write a sentence that started “I’m not planning…”), but I am looking forward to some time on the open road. Christmas itself I’ll spend in New Mexico, I think.

So… are there times and places I simply must be over the holidays? Do those of you who actually make plans in advance know where you’ll be? Any strangers out there who would like to buy me a beer somewhere? I’m flexible.

Thanks!

No Man’s Land

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I spent the morning at the Glitzy Vodaphone Café (actual name: FUEL, but I won’t be using that name again), drinking too much of the best tea available in Strašnice and working on a project that I’ve been putting off. The story is an account of my adventure on Mt. Etna, with all the facts and figures to make it suitable for consumption by mainstream travel magazines. I’ve been looking forward to tackling this project, since on that climb I learned several things that weren’t in the travel books but really should have been. Here is my chance to be entertaining, published in a major market, and actually useful.

I wrote a draft of it this morning, and it came out all right for a draft, but it has a major flaw. My favorite parts of the article are not about how and why one would climb a volcano, it’s about why I climbed a volcano and my adventures along the way. The other parts of the article, while still in first person, are more devoted to the “useful” voice of travel magazines. At first I thought I had found a balance, giving all the necessary facts within a personal narrative, but on reading now I see that what I have is rather schizophrenic – passages of soaring prose invoking the mysteries of the world and the ancient gods, followed by workmanlike travelogue.

When I first reported on Etna in these pages, a friend told me, (something like) “This story has something that the stories in travel magazines lack.” That’s true, but the pity is that it’s something the travel magazines lack by design. Their stories lack a strong narrator, and for some reason that’s a good thing.

Ultimately, I suspect I’ll have to write two separate versions — the prosaic, useful one to sell to a travel magazine, and the other one. The gonzo one, that starts with beers with fuego the night before and ends twenty-four hours later as the fancy fish restaurant is closing around us and the crushing heat finally relaxes its grip on the city. It’s the version where I can include things I remember clearly, but maybe not what order they occurred in. I wasn’t taking notes. (In Sicily, the word ‘gonzo’ means ‘fool’. That works for me.)

The first of those two stories will be the more difficult to write. It still has to carry my identity with it; after all, travel is all about experience, and there can be no experience without an experiencee. It needs my unique voice or there’s no point in me writing it in the first place, but ultimately the reader has to relate personally to the story, putting themself in my rental hiking boots. In the end, it’s about the reader and the mountain, not me and the mountain. The people who pay for this stuff have made that point very clear.

As I ponder these two incarnations of the same story, it occurrs to me that above I have answered part of my own quandary. I can still sell the gonzo version, just not to travel magazines. I’m not sure right now just where I can sell it, but some of the literary rags still accept stories with narratives, as long as they’re nonfiction.

If I were to start a magazine, it would be a gonzo travel magazine. Not just about places, but people in places. Stories. Experiences. Cultural disconnects and lessons learned. Adventures. Life. Not necessarily the drug-addled craziness that the name’s association with Hunter S. Thompson implies, but journalism from a highly personal point of view. There must be a good supply of those stories, because every travel magazine goes out of their way to say that’s what they don’t want.

You just sit right there until I find out if GonzoTravel.com is taken. No, better yet, someone take that idea and make the magazine I was born to write for.

Thanks!

Waking Up

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I helped the woman with her coat. “Diky,” she said. Thanks.

I didn’t answer. By then I was awake enough to know she wasn’t real. Not in the same way I’m real anyway (or someone’s totally yanking my chain). One thing about real people, something that sets us apart from the dark-haired Czech-speaking girl of my dreams, is that while we’re doing all this existing we have a location that we exist at.

Enter the first problem of the morning. I had no idea where I was.

This happens often enough to me (all that time on the road, I suppose), that I sometimes make a little game of it. I lie with eyes still closed as I drift back home from the Land of Nod, and try to work out just where I might be. Not a game, I guess, because at the time it is very important for me to know where I am, and sometimes opening my eyes doesn’t seem to help at all.

This morning, I was quite surprised when I eventually worked out that I was home, in Prague, enduring the Curiously Uncomfortable Couch. What the hell am I doing here? I asked myself.

Fully awake now, I’m still not sure how to answer that.

Thanks!

Looking down the throat of Mt. Etna.

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It was already warm at 8:30 when we caught the bus from Catania Centrale and began our meandering way through the villages that cling to the sides of the volcano. Steadily we made our way upward until there were no towns left, then it was up a new road, winding its way up a new lava flow, past new buildings. We passed a rooftop almost level with the top of the flow, a tile raft that until 2003 sheltered a family. Apparently there were sighs of relief back then when the lava stopped short of the town of Niccolosia.

We reached an artificial town, a tourist outpost, and piled off the bus. The only bus back down would leave at 4:30 in the afternoon. We were directed to the headquarters for the guided tours, where we were informed that there were two packages available. The first involved taking the cable car, then getting in trucks up to a point within striking range of the top, then a trip back down by truck and cable car after exploring a minor crater there. The other tour used the cable car and the trucks, then included a hike all the way to the top, followed by a long walk all the way down, exploring other features. It was designed to arrive back at the bus stop just in time.

After the guy explaining our options said “central crater” there was no other question. Our boots (and just about everyone else’s) were rejected as being inadequate, so we had to use theirs. Their boots were better than mine, but I have somewhat odd feet and it’s hard to find shoes that actually fit right. For a while I hoped I could put together an odd pair and have boots that fit both feet for the first time in my life, but no luck. Thus it was with quite a bit of concern for my left foot that I set out.

Tram, truck, and then then climb began. It was not a long trail, but pretty steep, and I counted myself lucky that there was at least one person in the group in even worse shape than I was. We crossed a lava flow from march of this year, and then one from 2006. Then more cinder fields, up, up, up.

The most recent eruption was from the southeast crater, on May 7. One and a half months ago. It was a small eruption, lasting only eight hours, but the southeast crater is still smoking and generally being threatening. “There are a lot of fissures on its face,” our guide explained, “and a lot of pressure. I think it could erupt soon, like in days. Of course, it is hard to predict…”

Our guide was great. Very patient and very knowledgeable. He took time out to demonstrate the proper use of walking sticks on steep loose terrain to one of our number, and was always watchful and helpful. He has been climbing Etna almost every day for twenty years. “I used to be a guide on Strómboli, but… this one is better.” He would stop to tell us about eruptions, using words like ‘beautiful’ to describe a lava flow that came within a kilometer of a town.

Finally, winded, I staggered to the top as our guide circled the group and drew the layout of the central crater in the dirt. In groups of three he took us to the edge of the “new chasm” to peer down. “Good conditions today,” he said. “Sometimes there’s too much steam and you can’t see in.”

I peered down. I eased myself closer to the edge, and peered again. The sun was straight overhead, shining way, way, down. I took another baby-step forward, and looked farther down. The wind was pushing me around a bit; it would have meant nothing were it not for Certain Death awaiting any misstep. I stepped back from the Very Deep Hole.

There are three chasms in the central crater. We walked to where we could get a good look at all of them and take pictures. We milled around a bit, finding places where the sulfurous gasses escaping from the ground all around us weren’t so bad. Crater 1964 is blocked now, which happens pretty often in volcanoes of this type, and eventually leads to explosions. So we were standing on a time bomb with (geologically speaking) a very short timer.

The central crater as a whole has been pretty quiet for a few years now, however — most of the action has been from the youthful and blustery southwest crater, which is off limits right now. We climbed out of the central crater to the portion of the rim closest to the southeast crater, and the guide gathered us around a large chunk of basalt. “This was from the May 7th eruption,” he said. The rock was less than fifty days old. I imagined standing there while semi-molten rocks rained down around me. “We will only stay here ten minutes,” he continued. “It’s not safe.”

I spent eight minutes taking pictures and two minutes looking wistfully at perhaps the best venue for stacking rocks I’ve ever seen. Good rocks in a variety of styles, level cinder terrain good for photography, dramatic backdrop. No time. A good rock stack takes a long time to compose (for me it does, anyway). I don’t like stacking in front of people, but up there I think I could have.

It was time to go down. Down and down and down, at times ski-jogging down ash and cinder slopes, pausing periodically to empty the quarries out of our shoes. By the time we reached touristville my legs were rubber, and I was not the only one in the group stumbling on fairly minor obstacles. You don’t realize when you walk on fresh legs how much goes into recovering from minor irregularities in the terrain. When you don’t have the strength to perform these basic adjustments, suddenly the world is a much trickier place to walk.

We returned our boots and caught the bus back down, winding cautiously down the steep road. Finally back in Catania we stepped off the bus and the evening heat hit me in the face like a steaming mackerel. Everyone, as they left the air-conditioned bus, said something like, “holy crap!” in the language most convenient to them. Something had changed while we were up on the mountain; the hot, hot sirocco winds from Africa had arrived and summer had begun. Time for one last seafood feast, and then back to Prague. News that it had been raining there made returning home all the more appealing.

Thanks!

The Island Life

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I am sitting now at a place called Moby Dick, near the hydrofoil dock in the city of Lípari, on the island of the same name. We ordered big beers, and we got big beers. Our boat back to the main island leaves in two hours. The wind for which the islands are named is kicking up a bit, making our stay under the bar’s giant umbrella quite pleasant. The view isn’t much, though.

Said fuego when we saw our room in the hostel in Canneto (just up the coast from Lípari), “did I hear the price correctly?” The cheapest place on the trip was also the roomiest, coolest (in the literal sense), and even had its own bathroom. It’s not quite the busy season on the islands, so the rate might be going up in a couple more weeks. The only downside was noise; our balcony overlooked the main road and people around here get up pretty early in the morning to buzz around on their noisy little scooters. At night, however, the streets are quiet.

After we settled in we made a grocery store run to stock the fridge and then we explored the town, which didn’t take long. We settled in at a sidewalk caf

Thanks!

Island Bound!

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Today has been a day devoted primarily to getting from one place to another. We are still in that process, on a high-speed boat from Messina to the island of Lipari. The island sounds like a pretty cool place to hang out, and it has the added bonus of being a stone’s throw from another island, Stromboli. There are many volcanoes hereabouts, but Stromboli is a particularly consistent one, throwing sparks out more or less all the time.

The best time to witness this phenomenon is at night, we have read, when the sparks are easier to see, so night tours to climb the volcano are a popular thing. That’s all the future, however, so I’ll wait until we actually do it to write about it. (This process is called ‘journalism’, I’m told.)

It was a tough call deciding to go this far afield, since the time spent traveling is time not doing something else. In the end, however, there are beaches all over the place, and Greek and Roman ruins more places than this. Active volcanoes, however, are a little more unusual. fuego called a hostel in Lipari, made a reservation, and we were decided. Now all we had to do was get there.

At the train station we checked the schedule and saw that a train was heading for Messina in… two minutes. The next one didn’t leave for hours. In fact, the guy in the tourist office said the next train wouldn’t be running because of a strike.

The train was still sitting there. We dithered for a moment and then I said, “let’s go get our other bags and see if the train is still here.” Without much hope we went back to hostel (just up the street), quickkly collected our things and hauled them back.

The train was still sitting there. We hauled our stuff out onto the platform and fuego asked someone if we could buy tickets on board. Nope. fuego stood by our bags on the platform while I went in to the ticket window. The woman there buying tickets in front of me was a Problem Customer. Time dragged. I stood, dripping sweat, while the ticket guy tried to work with this lady. Every time it looked like they might be about done she came up with some new way to introduce a problem into the transaction.

Worst case: the moment I buy tickets the train pulls out. The train remained put, however, and the uniformed guy who had answered our questions earlier would poke his head into the station to check on me once in a while.

Problem Lady left the window, with her son there to hold her place. The buildup behind me started saying something, and the ticket guy shrugged and gestured. “I’m in the middle of a transaction,” he seemed to say. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Uniformed Guy didn’t buy it. I don’t speak Italian, but I think he said something like, “The train can’t leave until you take care of these people! Screw the Problem Lady!” Whatever he said did the trick and sixty seconds later I had tickets. Uniformed Guy then showed me how to validate the ticket in a little machine and we were on our way. Well, almost on our way. It was still quite a while before the train departed.

Transfer from train to boat went smoothly, but it appears that we are not allowed up on top, and the windows are pretty much opaque, which limits sightseeing. It feels more like air travel than sea travel, right down to the crying children.

Thanks!