-The Buddha

Sometimes you have to give up the illusion of control to the universe and cease the struggle against the currents we all float along in. Regardless of the provincial names we assign the forces that govern the current and tides in our lives, they are forces far greater than any among us could hope to comprehend. We suffer and hurt no more or less than we are meant to.

Perhaps in the end, the value and richness of our life isn’t determined by a net sum of our positive and negative experiences reconciled against one another to yield a “final accounting” of how good our lives were. Maybe the people who have the most of both overall should die the most satisfied.

Your heart, adrenal glands and tear ducts don’t know the difference between positive and negative stress; crying and trembling while your heart pounds because you just threw away the love of your life or because you just got the love of your life back. Our bodies don’t know one from the other. At the fundamental level of our physical existence, our autonomic functions, we experience emotion objectively, with no regard for its nature. The only thing our bodies respond to when we experience emotion is its intensity.

My studies up to this point dictate that the more spiritually engaged individual should follow suit, with detached gratitude for the highs and the lows. I know I will endeavor to do so.

My core spiritual value, as always is reinforced by this experience. Gratitude not for the way things unfolded from one moment to the next, relative to my fleeting desires and thoughts. Gratitude for the way things ultimately are: perfect. I will continue to laugh at the sky.

If I slow down and turn the music off, the only thing left to listen to will be the ghosts of the day’s decisions. Inevitable though the ghosts are, their say is not welcome.

Ignoring them won’t do, of course. My nervous and endocrine systems won’t accept the denial and they will make me lightly sweat, squirm and shake all day just like they have been. My body will rightfully punish me with adrenaline dumping and cortisol saturation for my stubbornness and flight from reality. I will continue to ache and feel unrest, but I won’t have to open my mind to what’s going on and embrace the void that I created. Confronting this new truth will only hurt the parts of me with no cells to answer to.

It’s childish to run from a decision that I made. But I need to, for now.

Doing what has to be done doesn’t mean that it can’t hurt. A whole lot.

I wish that I were the only one who had to live with the decision.

But at least the sunburn was manageable this morning; sitting here in Saigon I only notice it now when I take my shirt on and off, or when I shoulder my backpack (AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH).

- Ann and I just barely got to breakfast on time, I demolished another pound of watermelon, pineapple and dragonfruit (my breakfast staples on this trip – dragonfruit’s unavailable in the US and is awesome) and walked back to the villa to pack. Ann and I went into the ocean one more time even though the resident off-shore wind continued to whip the water into an illogical, non-rhythmic frenzy and even though I was covered in sunburn. I’m glad I did because before this trip I had forgotten how much I like sea water; I kind of rediscovered a love for the ocean. We ate lunch by the resort beach wall and listened to the surf, 50 feet away and just out of view. It was time to go.
- I’m sitting at an overpriced cafe in Tan Nat Son Airport in Saigon after walking through an outer neighborhood of the city and having a final street-side pho dinner (ordered in Vietnamese that the proprietor actually understood!). It will take getting-used-to when I’m back in the US and meals cost more than $2.
- Catching up now on these journals to ensure I don’t surrender my memories to the passage of time. The vacation’s not over yet by any means; I will have a 10 hour layover in Tokyo to recount that hopefully will include real live sumo wrestling, real Japanese sushi, and more adventure. Oh, and 20+ hours of airports and planes before I get home.

Thoughts To Wrap Up Vietnam:
- It might be impossible to ignore the chaotic hodge-podge of Chinese, Buddhist, Cambodian and French Colonial influences that have swept over it in the last millenium, but this country definitely has a claim to a unique and vibrant culture. At first glance they seem dissonant. One looks at this society and sees an awkward country wearing strips with polka dots, but the mix is the message; Vietnam has taken colorful pieces of its many past trespassers and woven them into a daily energy and texture that I found myself appreciating and now already nostalgic for.
- If nothing else, tourists should be able to leave here appreciating the food. I’ll be spending more time at Eden Center after this trip.
- This will make one more country I’ve visited where people opened their doors and minds to me; when people say that the natives in “X” country are hospitable and nice, they are missing the bigger picture. PEOPLE are hospitable and nice until society or an urban urgency makes them otherwise. Everywhere. Israel and the Middle East, Spain, Africa, Canada, Asia. Communist, Capitalist, Fascist. Black, white, yellow. We are missing the point. People mean well and every new place I spend time confirms this.
- Beaches are special. For some reason I had almost given up on them. They suit me as a more reflective grown-up then they did as a high-schooler, I guess. Just wear sun-block.
- I’m getting addicted to travelling. I wonder how long it will be before I jump for another passport stamp.

These pictures are going to come together well, I think. There are still several to put together. I will do my best not to let them sit.

- Arriving on Friday was everything it needed to be, as discussed in the previous entry. Cassia Cottage demurred until the final moment when we walked past the reception pavilion and realized how personal and elite our venue was. There were two staff members for every guest, you could get a drink or meal served at any spot on the premises, and everybody knew which room you were in. It didn’t hurt that the beach was 70 feet from my bed and I could (and did) sit on the front porch at least once a day and watch/listen to the surf.
- Phu Quoc is usually in the “Top 5 Beaches on Earth” conversation for its combination of natural awesomeness and lack of commercial development. I would say it lived up to that in degrees. Friday night and Saturday morning were the best of the beach in terms of the ocean and time in the water. It was like being in a swimming pool; calm waters, as warm as the air. I spent half the time floating on my back and watching the clouds (really good ones, especially on Friday) and the other half diving along the bottom to hunt for hermit crabs and holding my breath competitively with Ann, Alex and Thao (I won with a self-impressed 2:27 underwater).
- We woke up to early morning rain on Saturday, but by the time we left the villa for breakfast, it had stopped and showed signs of clearing up. After eating heaps of fresh fruit with Kenyan Chai (my souvenir from Africa) we jumped eagerly into the ocean and proceeded to allow the sun to sneak out overhead during the 3 hours we were in the water. This proved to be a turning point in my beach experience, as I contracted a world-class unprotected sunburn on my whole back and calves.
- Skin warning me of unhappy times ahead but not yet critical, we rented scooters around noon and set out for a self-guided trek around the island. Yes, we wore helmets, and yes, I observed the most conservative interpretation of the absurd local road rules, but no; I don’t want to ride things with both a motor and 2 wheels at any other point in my life. Even after navigating fluidly through a couple of denser areas on the island, I can’t fathom how people do it in the surging tumult of Saigon’s streets. I can only assume that people do die and get maimed, and that these statistics go unpublished since nobody can afford a car anyway. We road South along shore road (all poorly maintained red dirt) with a brief stop at a pearl farm and around the South tip of the island in the village of Anh Thoi. Along this leg we got to look on across cottage properties and open swaths of sparse coconut palms at untouched stretches of beach and lazy, anchored fishing boats off shore. The wind was picking up and blowing off of the ocean across us. Anh Thoi has a chain of protruding smaller islands where the best snorkeling/diving is found, and we thought we might find a beach with a view of them; no such luck as development and fishing industry occupy the shore there. We turned the corner and proceeded up along the East coast of the island. The East side’s roads were paved but farther interior; our view now was of the island’s lush forests and ancient volcanic hills. We drove through small roadside outposts (food stalls and hammock bars), past small family homes with chickens and semi-wild Phu Quoc dogs laying around, past small peppercorn orchards and fishing villages in inlets. Though not having been there yet, I imagine the landscape of Phu Quoc’s interior to be somewhat similar to the Hawaiian islands. We ended our ride before returning the scooters in Duong Dong a couple clicks north of our resort. I was in town with a single mission: to find Banh Bao, steamed meat and quail-egg filled buns. We succeeded and they were awesome.
- Unforeseen benefit of the scooter ride: I extended the morning’s unwise sunburn to the tops of my legs, which laid unprotected in the sun for the 4-hour ride. Joy.
- By the time we left for the Duong Dong night market to eat dinner, I was getting a better idea of how unpleasant my folly would be. I had full-body chills and couldn’t put a shirt on without wincing. Apparently it was also a mistake to go the whole morning and scooter ride without drinking water. I was exhausted and an idiot. Dinner was amazing though. Fresh seafood from a street vendor with a seating area set up on the market’s main drag: grilled prawns (about 4 ounces each, seriously.), scallop kebabs, grilled squid, steamed snails and other Vietnamese delicacies for 8 people, to the point that everybody was stuffed full, all for $75 US. 8 people. That meal would have cost $45-$60 each in the states and we got it caught-that-afternoon fresh on 18″ stools on a sidewalk in Vietnam for $9 each. That’s what I’m talking about.
- I woke up Sunday morning really, really regretting the sunburn. This sentiment endured the whole day, spent in a mini-van on an “essential Phu Quoc tourist attractions” tour that lasted 8 hours. We saw a Phu Quoc museum with terrible but appreciated english translations on the wall plaques, another pearl farm, a peppercorn plantation that I bought the next 2 years of gourmet grinding peppercorns at for $5 US, a huge fish sauce (Nuouc Mam) distillery that smelled unforgettable, and spent lunch time lounging on Sao Beach, the icnonic white sand beach on the East side of the island. Bai Sao (Star Beach) would have been awesome, except that I had to wear a hat and a buttoned shirt the whole time, couldn’t go in the water, and wanted to sit in an ice bath. It was pretty though, and the spicy scallops were very very good.
- By Sunday morning the ocean on the west side (our side) of the island had given into the now constant 15 mph winds coming from the ocean; gone was the blanket of meditative, lapping water and here to stay was a choppier and less inviting Gulf of Thailand. Whatever, I was on the burn ward anyway and content to steal half hours where I could in the resort pool outside our villa to disperse some of the extra heat my lobster-red skin was producing. Sunday was the worst day of sunburn.

My time at Cassia Cottage was winding down and had been worth every minute; even if half of them were spent in tender, burning misery. I hope to go back to Phu Quoc and use more sunblock, earlier.

Rac Gia Notes:
- We arrived in the southern coast town of Rac Gia to catch a ferry to the island of Phu Quoc (everybody’s final destination, I would be there for 4 days less than the others). Like most coastal towns, it has a huge market which we drove through, and a vibrant fishing industry.
- We waited in an improvised cafe on the side of the ferry station. This day in that cafe between a grill and large, bare concrete pad was the hottest time of my entire trip. Did I mention that Vietnam’s hot?
- The “Hydrofoil” was, indeed a high-speed ferry by nautical standards. Inside, it was a very close cousin of the Chinatown Bus of old as far as I’m concerned. Traits: 100 or more asians for every white person, salty looks from the locals, crowding combined with an un-American omission of climate control, a funny smell, and most classic of all, terrible asian low-fidelity movies playing on the tv’s. Whatever, it got us over about 100km of the Gulf of Thailand in an hour and a half, although I wouldn’t have minded a better view of the many islands we glimpsed out of the dirty, high windows en route.

Arrival Notes:
- Phu Quoc: as advertised. We got off the ferry and caught prearranged taxis across the island to Duong-Dong, the most developed town at the head of the largest beach/resort area on the west coast of Phu Quoc. At first I drew comparisons to Isla Roatan in Honduras – obvious natural beauty and typical poverty among natives in a locale with limited options outside of under-developed tourism. We didn’t really know what we had until we got to our home, Cassia Cottage. Until the last moment; Duong Dong turned out to be alot smaller than I expected as we drove through, the road turned to dirt 100 meters out of town, and the turn-off for Cassia Cottage, with no beach in site, was so steep and rough that the taxi high-centered for a second while scrambling onto the lane leading back to the resort.
- It was the most genuine and striking hideaway I’ve been treated to. After wondering for an hour what we were in for, we got out of the taxi in the middle of the dense tropical forest at a wrought-iron gate, walked through and were met with manicured grass and tropical trees, opening down a narrow walkway to a glaringly small collection of buildings and…the beach. We were greeted at reception with fruit and a briefing, then shown to our rooms – Beach House 1 and 2, flanking the pool, opening to the ocean. Wow. It took about 12 hours for the thought that I could watch the surf from the front porch to sink in. But I was ready to be here for the rest of my vacation, that is for sure.

Afternoon Notes:
- Chau Doc’s a highly diverse town right on the historically contested Cambodian border. Smuggling here is a huge back-door economy as Cambodia’s tax structure is really weak compared to Vietnam’s and there were inumerable scooters driving away from the border with cartons of cigarettes loaded up on the back. Because of the location, Chau Doc has a large population of Khmer (cambodian) immigrants and also significant groups of ethnic Chinese and also Cham minorities. The Cham people are now a severe minority but represent the remnants of a civilization that was dominant in central and southern vietnam well into the thousand-year long occupation by the Chinese. After the Vietnamese rebelled and expanded their own kingdom into the South the systematically pushed out and compressed the Cham communities and they are now confined to small backwater villages.
- We headed out quickly from the hotel to check out a floating community outside of Chau Doc – these people all live in simple, small houses on floats in the river off of town and are exclusively fish farmers. Their homes sit on top of large underwater pens that maintain as many as 100,000 fish, used for their own food and sold to merchants for livelihood. You can’t grow rice from a floating house. Despite being told that this community was expanding, we noted a distinct sense of poverty among these people – they didn’t seem to care. It’s an interesting way to live.
- We stopped as well in a Cham village farther up-river. This setting was not unlike the tribal villages I saw in Kenya, with very simple housing – in this case on flood-conscious stilts – and dirt thoroughfares between homes. I got a little suckered and bought some souvenirs from them, but it WAS really cool to see a few girls working on looms across the “gift shop” under somebody’s house, making the same items. Maybe soccer isn’t the only international sport after all – boys in the village had a volleyball net set up and were playing an older kids vs younger kids match that was a bit one-sided but energetic. I’ve since seen a few nets up in yards along the canals. Another popular sport here is an asian version of hackeysack that uses some kind of plastic weight with feathers coming off of it.
- After we got back into town, we headed past the hotel to Sam Mountain, a spiritual site. The “mountain” is about is only about 600 feet tall, but it stands in the middle of a very flat area. It’s been a spiritual site for all of the populations in the area, with various shrines and temples at the base and on the hillsides. There is a tourist trap area at the base of the mountain centered around a large temple. It’s hard to define the faith here because there is a lot of folk tradition interwoven with confucianism, ancestor worship, and buddhism. We hitched rides on the back of local mopeds to top of the mountain, which I didn’t enjoy at all – as soon as we all got off the bikes Ann and Alex told me I was uncomfortable with my “gay moment” riding behind some Viet/Cambodian guy on the back of a bike. I was quick to correct them that it was a “not raised to use vehicles unfriendly towards my ability to walk upright” moment and I had never been on a motorcycle, moped, or even scooter. The meanest I’ver ever gotten was a Segway. At least they gave us helmets; I wouldn’t have been willing to go up without one. There’s not much more to say about Sam Mountain because we were kind of rushed – I’d have preferred to hike up and down, allowing time for reflection and maybe taking in some of the spiritual significance of the mountain. There were dozens of tombs and shrines on the drive up – like Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, people pay a lot to be dead somewhere important.

When we got back, Ann and I ended up sleeping all night. Not much to report but it was awesome. I have found on most long trips, especially with itinerary and schedules involved, that it’s worthwhile to push pause at some point and force yourself to slow down and rest. Could we have gone to dinner, drank and shot pool with our guide for a second night in a row? Yes. Might I have stood a chance this time? Unlikely. But sleeping was the pro move.

Afternoon Notes:
- The boat ride from Cai Be to Vinh Long made a real impression on me that I am hoping will have been captured in the pictures. We got a look at the lives of thousands and thousands of people who depend on the many backwater rivers and canals of the delta. One group lives on the water permanently, in long shallow boats that work like a home office; a long, open cargo hold in the front that you take your fish or transported produce to the floating markets in, a rear canopy with a hammock in it to lie in while you steer or take a shift, and bunks below, perhaps with a stove. The other population of people lived in small villages and neighborhoods that dotted the banks of the waterways. I saw children playing in the yards opening to the water, bathing in the river, men working on their boats and loading goods off to friends on shore, and some people just getting through the day on hammocks under the jackfruit trees. It was a beautiful, simple setting to see – similar to the way our guide grew up.
- We came to Vinh Long, a larger and bustling town on a huge (maybe half-mile wide) tributary of the river that’s known for a sprawling market. Our guide and I looked first for a cobra to buy and eat later but the vendor didn’t have any King Cobras, which is pretty much the point. I’m hoping that another opportunity will present itself before the end of the trip. The array of unwelcome smells and sights that you get when you walk into a live market in Vietnam is something you can’t prepare for. I have never even thought about that many dried, pickled, live, fresh, salted, preserved, chopped or wriggling options for a squid. But they are all there. And stink. And people eat that shit. And like it.
- We got back into the van in Vinh Long to go the rest of the way to Can Tho. This leg of the drive featured some of the first sprawling views of rice patties on the trip – it’s awesome how solid green everything in the fields was.
- There’s a newly built, world-class suspension bridge right outside of Can Tho – really neat architecture from the Japanese. Vietnam’s growing pains continue – apparently 70something people were killed in a huge construction accident due to shoddy subcontracting by the Chinese firm hired to build the bridge – that shit doesn’t happen in the First World.

Evening Notes:
- Can Tho was an awesome town, and I knew it would be a highlight immediately. Sometimes on a trip you hit a point when you have everything clicking for good photography – good scenery in a diverse looking town on a busy riverside, a neat landscape feature in the bridge, and the rain we have seen on the way into town cleared up as soon as we arrived, leaving a dark sky with dramatic breaks of light. On top of that my hotel room opened right onto the river and bridge, and a rainbow formed next to the bridge 10 minutes after we walked in. Serendipity. The sunrise pictures the next morning were even better.
- Can Tho’s “action” is mostly along the river in kind of a strip that our hotel was at the top quarter of. Ann and I walked around before dinner and saw more of the neat scenes Can Tho had to offer – it’s not as packed to the gills with people and things as Saigon but still has over a million people. The streets weren’t as dirty but still had the character of neon lights and signs, busy low-lying markets spilling over the sidewalks and copious scooter traffic. Being on the water was pleasant- we only saw the Mekong River in Saigon for a minute.
- After an awesome dinner on the water with our guide and van driver, Ann, Alex, Thao, myself and our guide broke off from the adults to check out the nightlife in his hometown. The five of us piled onto a cyclo (moped with a carriage seat attached to the back, super safe) and sped down the main streets to Xe Loi, the numer one location in town. Xe Loi is a combination of a huge, well lit outdoor garden courtyard lined with big open porches that have lounge seats and pool tables. The second part of the club is the interior, a Vietnamese interpretation of “Western Stlye” which means all-wood interior to look more rugged, and a lot of scotch. Johnny Walker – from the bar to the ceiling along a 100-foot wall. Maybe a thousand bottles on display. There was also a house DJ pumping away already at 11pm. We got our drinks from the girls in wierd leather cowboy hats and got ourselves a pool table. A staff member stood by the table handed us the bridge, retrieved scratched balls for us, and racked each game. Service. Unfortunately the luxury of the atmosphere didn’t keep our guide from destroying me twice in a row. Apparently his 6 years of bartending in a Saigon pub counted for more than my two years of Fast Eddie’s in college.

Between the boat ride through the delta backwaters and the scene in Can Tho, I might even get a few pictures out of this trip. They will come – I’m behind on my journal and haven’t had time to sort pictures yet but I think I will when we are in Phu Quoc and itinerary-free for the final leg of my trip.

Lunch Notes:
- We went back into town and straight to the family home of Ann’s Great Aunt for lunch – we had a lunch scheduled as part of the tour but Ann’s mom found out that the relatives were expecting the kids and it was important not to disappoint them.
- The hospitality they set forth from their 800 sq ft home without AC blew away any I have been shown in a mansion.
- I made friends with one relative who had a surprising grasp of English – way better than my Vietnamese. I might have been one of the only foreigners he had met.
- We ate Chinese spinach, garlic tofu (dau hu), pork puree (jaa) and fresh fruit with a load of rice and fish sauce (nuoc mam) – everybody kept looking at me to keep eating and minimize leftovers and I thought I was going to die but it all tasted awesome. Their dining area was a second floor “sunroom” that was completely open to the outside patio and had 4 fans in it. It was sunny out and we had shade but we could look out to the neighbor’s roofs and adjacent alleys. Don’t ever try to use a roadmap to find a residence in Saigon. Waste of time – folks around the corner from Ann’s relatives couldn’t tell us which way to go to find their house. Labyrinth. Second time in as many days that we got lost looking for a private address.
- Tiger Beer. 333 (Ba Ba Ba) is the leading export if that counts for much, but it’s a lot lighter (Greg and I found 333 in Chinatown, NYC before I knew). Tiger’s an awesome lager, somewhere between MGD and Yuengling. Most importantly, it’s Vietnamese. I do a couple with meals out here to keep up with her family.
- On our way out Ann’s relatives noticed me getting on my Fivefingers shoes. Pandemonium ensued in a language I don’t speak but they seemed to all want a pair. I think. They seemed positive about it.

Evening Notes:
- Ann and I got full-body massages offered at our hotel (not full-release, Greg) for $7 plus tip. Why not. That girl was 4’8″ with the hands of a professional arm wrestler. I found out from Ann’s mom at dinner (another happy customer) that they have a leasing agreement with the hotel whereby they get free food. We take these things for granted. Lease = food. We don’t have to do that math in the US.
- We slept through dinner and I went out for a photo walk around 11:30pm. Needless to say, in Saigon after dark I stick out like a sore thumb.
- Lesson #1: When a guy on a scooter or cyclo starts badgering you to offer directions/transportation/tours you wave him off because you don’t speak vietnamese and you keep walking briskly. Stop to have a conversation or hear him out and his friends will notice.
- Lesson #2: When you’re alone you check your 6 every 50 feet for lazy scooters.
- Lesson #3: Hookers offer combo-deals after 11pm.
- Lesson #4: The 5-star hotel across the street from yours has security guards and no, you can’t use the swimming pool even though you told them you were staying at a made-up room number and left your key upstairs.

I did get some cool pictures though. Patience Jeff.

Propoganda Notes:
- The main event today was a van tour of the down-town sights including the Reunification Palace (Presidential residence during the South Vietnamese government and now ceremonial grounds/”We Kicked Their Ass” monument) and the War Remnants Museum (Propaganda Gallery).
- It’s easy to forget about the war and this being a communist country. Until you visit either of these venues.
- Reunification palace: The South Vietnamese Air Force Pilot who became a double agent and bombed South Vietnam’s “White House” with its own ordinance is considered a national hero by the Communist Regime. There’s a nice little gallery outside the bunker on the basement level that explains the US agression towards Vietnam during its struggle for self-determination. I’m not sure how our tour guide feels about this, or how anybody does. His words: “A lot of what we learned as children in this country was very one-sided” plus nervous laugh as he continued the rest of his tour.
- War Remnants Museum: Graphic photos of Vietnamese people affected directly by violence or especially US military misconduct. Graphic photos of babies affected by Agent Orange defoliation accompanied by captions alleging US malice and hopes that Agent Orange would harm people as a chemical weapon. Quotes from the US Declaration of Independence.

Let me just say this about propaganda, Communism, and the unexpected need to punch somebody about 20 minutes into the afternoon’s festivities. I’m not a Communist and I’m not Vietnamese. But mostly I’m not a blind consumer of obviously subjective information being foisted on me as cold hard fact. It’s annoying to me to be a member of a society that is being vilified by the Vietnamese communist regime. They tortured, assassinated, corrupted and tainted members of their population while all the while waging an intense war on the free flow of information to their constituency. They still do. Not that Americans have the moral high ground in this kind of discussion, but seriously. Fuck the Vietnamese communist regime and their “museums” full of misinformation and blatant lies. By tomorrow this segment of my trip will have concluded and I will be able to focus completely on the positive, interesting aspects of the culture and environment here. Rant over. More tomorrow, when I’ve returned from crawling in another “museum” made out of old Viet Cong tunnels (literally).

On a lighter note: people are all about their scooters here. Another thing that Vietnamese women are all about is avoiding a sun-tan. Seriously – it’s a residual custom from the days when being high-class meant you didn’t have to work outside in the sun. A lot of the women here believe they will be unattractive if they aren’t as pale as possible and combining that with the ubiquitous use of scooters gets you…

VIETNAMESE NINJAS!

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We ended the day with a treat – Ann’s father met up with a close childhood friend who’s remained in Saigon and we were all invited for dinner. It was really cool to get a look at how “real Vietnamese people” live and eat, and especially to share a meal. We ate a bunch of fried clams and “finger-nail” clams, and heaps of rice vermicelli with nuoc mam (fish sauce) and fried pork spring rolls. These folks are fairly well off in this culture, with a government job and owning their own property (a five story townhouse that would make plan inspectors in Arlington County shit their pants). I didn’t understand a word of most of the conversation being exchanged but I got my phrase of the day “This is amazing!” in at a good moment and made some friends. The 333 Beer and home-made wine helped the headache temporarily. We also got to go up on the roof where they have a patio. It was neat to see all of their split-ductless HVAC units and solar hot-water system – I was so inspired I gave him my business card. The guidebook said this is an act of endearment among the Vietnamese and should be done whenever possible. He didn’t seem to give a shit, but thanks for playing Lonely Planet.

Tomorrow we will explore the tunnels (and anti-American fact displays) of Cu Chi in the morning, walk around some more in town and experience “the number one buffet in Saigon” according to multiple sources. I’m also going to start my Malaria meds, which I have been putting off because of fears about side effects. Here’s wishing I don’t experience dizziness, excessive depression and anxiety or central nervous system damage!

Main Flight Notes:
- Invest in a good neck pillow. I didn’t sleep much on the plane, but when I did I didn’t wake up sore.
- Don’t fly american on international flights if you can avoid it.
El Al (when I went to Israel) – free drinks, unlimited food, full accomodation, stewardesses A+.
British Airways (when I went to Europe) – free drinks, unlimited food, unlimited blankets/pillows, 20+ movies, stewardesses B.
KLM (when I went to Africa) – free drinks, unlimited food, unlimited blankets/pillows, 50+ movies, stewardesses A.

American Airlines – Drinks $7. 2 meals during a 15 hour flight. No extra blankets (50 degrees in my row). 18 movies, 2 worth watching, stewardesses C-.
- In-flight movies
Invictus – B+ – feel good but predictable. Without Morgan Freeman, C.
The Book Of Eli – B – good environment/mood but sparse on plot, crappy/hurried resolution.
- Al Green while flying – A+

Tokyo Layover Notes:
- Plastic food recreations outside of each food place at the terminal to show you the menu = AWESOME.
- The ground crew outside our flight stood at attention, saluted us and bowed as the plane pulled out. In the US they just flick you off and smoke.

Saigon Arrival Notes:
- Walk off the plane at 11PM and this is instantly the most humid place I have ever been.
- Hot scene – kids making out on parked scooters lining to city parks we drove past heading downtown.
- Warnings from every member of Ann’s family starting as soon as we get off the plane and issuing into the next morning that indicate they all see me as a stupid and imminently vulenerable American cowboy.

So far, I see a lot of interesting similarities between Saigon and Nairobi. Both are developing and expanding with an influx of new business and stability, but Saigon’s 20 years ahead of Nairobi and has several advantages being in Asia. Take the signs off of buildings and they would look like similar scenes. I don’t have a clear concept yet but I think that Nairobi’s huge bottom class (4 million plus shanty-town/slum outside of the city) is NOT mirrored here. There is a large lower class but they all seem to have a place in the city’s life, or at least all have scooters. Granted, a lot of the people in that category in Nairobi were refugees and there isn’t any ethnic cleansing or displacement going on here. Long story short, Saigon is benefiting from a much higher upside than Nairobi. As nice as it gets, Nairobi will still be the economic center of East Africa…

Going out shortly for a tour of the local semi-indoor market with a friend of Ann’s father, then a guided tour of downtown Saigon. More tonight.

I like the power-focused approach to training that I have developed, and want to continue to focus on lifting heavy weights with core exercises. My focus is shifting to back towards peak body composition without worrying about an escalation in bulk. I would rather move back to a diet that doesn’t leave me with any question marks about beating on my pancreas with simple carbs (white potatos, white rice) or loading my bloodstream with low-nutrient calories by ingesting high amounts of omega 3 and 6 oils (alot of flax oil, nuts/seeds and olive oil). I know what peak health and performance means when it comes to nutrition and caloric density in the foods I choose – there is a good chance that stopping the free (really forced) flow of calories will result in a loss of some gained mass but that was really an experiment. I wanted to see how much more muscle my frame could accomodate without a maximal effort. Was I walking around with the most muscle I could sustain during a normal lifestyle and training program? At 162-165 I pretty much was. I think that a more burning focus on quantity of calories and frequency of training could have taken me farther but I don’t have the time or ultimately the need for those gains. I didn’t start out this experiment as a 98-pound weakling or a dissatisfied “hardgainer” with nothing to show for previous efforts.

Long story short – I’m going to return to the diet I think will do the most for my body holistically and that’s going to mean less animal products, less simple carbs, and especially less calories. I will substitute increased greens and vegetable bulk for the “bulking” meals of the previous routine and allow my body to settle at a “natural” weight that will be easy to maintain (I was never in danger of losing weight or getting much thinner during training lay-offs). And then? And then I’ll focus on improving training consistency and become the strongest, most athletic pound-for-pound person I can.

I’ve rehabilitated the lower back from that early deadlifting over-reach and can come back at 100% exertion to my power-lifting now. Shit’s going to get real and I’m going to see my numbers climb.

In other news:
- Vietnam in 2 weeks! New carry-on luggage and I will be set.
- My (early) birthday party and UFC 113 this Saturday -Shogun Machida will possibly be my favorite fight this year.
- My little brother’s graduating from Mason next Thursday. I feel old.
- New hobby this spring/summer- food sourcing. Getting my first order from Polyface Farms on Wednesday and I’ll start getting produce from Farmer’s Markets before Vietnam. Nutrient upgrade.
- Didn’t I use to play a lot of golf? Maybe after Vietnam…

Kaizen is the practice (originally applied to industry) of constantly searching for deficiencies and making small improvements.  The most early proponent of this concept was Toyota, which used this proactive “tweaking” to make themselves the most prolific auto-maker in the world starting after WWII (ironic given current events, I know).

I’d like to think that I apply this concept to my views on my career, financial outlook, spirituality, personal relationships, health/fitness and general lifestyle.  Constant small improvements.  There is a sense of, as humbly as possible, trying to accumulate at least one new datum from each documentary, nutrition book, new health program, investing book and source of information I subject myself to.  It’s a great argument for re-experiencing non-fiction sources like Tony Robbins material, Stephen Covey or “The Millionaire Next Door” – there is always one more idea or key thought to take away that you didn’t absorb the last time around.  Lately I’ve picked back up the self-improvement circuit and went through “Seven Habits” last week – I’m running through “Unleash The Power Within” for the xxxth time right now.

One small course correction or refinement is enough to make a difference over course of a life.  You can never start too early, look too far ahead, and most importantly you are never done improving, tweaking, tinkering. That sounds like a winning vision to me.

Parting thoughts:

• Old Spice and Dos Equis (The Most Interesting Man In The World) commercials are amazing almost 100% of the time.
• I need to start on my conversational Vietnamese course immediately.
• Foxfield will be amazing this year.
• The feeling of getting bigger/stronger is absolutely addictive.
• It is really, really, really difficult for me to eat 3000 healthy calories a day on a regular basis

That’s all for today.

We will see if it works; one of the bigger obstacles may be my diet being too skimpy on most days! My typical day before thinking about “hard-gaining” or trying to add mass was good for somebody with my average metabolism who was trying to stay thin – only about 1500-1600 calories daily…a break-even to slight negative on energy consumption NOT counting the expenditure of any exercise.  A quick note on characterizing my metabolism as “average” to all my friends and acquaintances; yes, my metabolism is average or even slow…NOT lightning fast.  I only stay in shape by making a majority of good decisions about what I eat.  Don’t make excuses for yourself by rationalizing that I am just “lucky” and stay thin by burning more calories than you do…

The two things I needed to tweak in my diet for the new goal of adding muscle were 1) how to add calories to my diet without feeling like I was eating trash, and 2)how to accomodate training that required extra protein and carbs for thorough recovery.  The long and short is that I will be eating a bunch more rice, beans and nuts on the days I am training.  I am also adding a post-training shake that plays a big role in reaching carb and calorie goals as well as paying immediate attention to the needs of muscle tissue after training (restoring glycogen and providing proteins to regenerate new muscle).  I realize after retroactively studying my diet that I was getting alot of delayed soreness 18-24 hours following workouts simply because of how lean my diet was.  This shake and a hearty post-training dinner will hopefully address that.  Now I can get around 2600-2800 calories on training days, which should provide enough extra fuel to give me some gradual added muscle.  No hurry here, as I don’t want to sacrifice appearance for added bulk.  I could do some “serious” bulking by going up to 35oo calories a day and focusing more on powerlifting but I wouldn’t be as lean and this is a tweaking/steering focus, not a hard-core course correction.  I believe it best to make a positive adjustment over time rather than dropping everything and wrenching my body in one direction or another as quickly as possible.  Even the highest standards can be met with a moderate outlook!

I’m not looking to get to “he might be on steroids” levels of muscle, but I am curious to see what I look like at, say, 170lbs and 10% body fat.  I’m currently at 157 and 14%.  I remember being at 112 and 6.5% body fat during high school wrestling…YIKES!  Hard to believe that was 9 years ago…

So yeah; this is something I’m thinking alot about right now.  I won’t make this an all-out fitness blog, just like I don’t plan to become an all-out meat head.  I continue to work on philosophy/spirituality, prepare for the big Vietnam trip in May, enjoy Ann and my friends, and have fun.

I just live better when I have something to focus on and aspire to, which is ALWAYS!  Sailboats look most beautiful when in motion.

My philosophy of food and integrative health, based on years of research and success, i.e. an extremely healthy life to date:

1) The best food for us grows on trees, vines and roots. Fruits, vegetables and nuts are easy for the body to digest and meat and dairy are not.  Eat them every day.

2) The best sources of protein and calcium are dark green vegetables and nuts, not beef, not chicken and not milk. The hardest thing for the average person to accept. Eat them every day.

3) Eat real food. Nothing in a Hungry Man frozen dinner got there without being ground up by a machine, artificially colored and flavored, and pressed into a shape.  Your body will not recognize it as usable fuel.

4) Milk is for baby cows. There is a time when milk is good for us.  Before we have teeth.  Leave it alone.  I have never broken a bone and I haven’t had milk in my diet since 1993.

5) Cows, elephants, horses. All mammals. All vegetarian.  They weigh thousands of pounds and eat grass.  Stop telling yourself you need meat to have muscles.

6) Temporary diet, temporary benefit. If you want sustained health then you have to make an enduring change in your lifestyle.  A new habit.  Change your attitude about food.

7) Check the oil. If you aren’t pooping at least once a day, you are doing something wrong.  Besides a mirror, it’s the best test. Period. For tips, see 1-6.

“Goals make you strong, while plans make you weak”

Think about it.  I know I am.

I continue to work out regularly, to tangible improvement.  My diet has been righted; since New Years I’ve had two sodas, ditched coffee to go back to yerba mate, drink wheatgrass daily and stack most of my diet with fruit and vegetables.

Does it have anything to do with the New Year? No.  Just another chance to stop, evaluate, and make changes.  That’s what successful people do.

Jeff has me fiending on chess.  A good place to play is HR-57 on Thursday nights, or so I’m told.

Ann and I are eating at an awesome place called Tallula for Restaurant Week tomorrow night. We have been dating for 1.5 years!

This will be a year to mature in my work and in my relationships, shedding the final remnants of adolescence.

This year, I will graduate.

• Coffee – 1-3 servings a day where I used to only drink Yerba Mate.
• Near abandonment of my almost-ideal diet since the week of Thanksgiving in favor of 7-11 stops, Dr. Pepper at Galloping Way, increased drinking and regular what-the-fuck lunch decisions with Greg.  This combined with the absence of my 3-5 servings of fruit daily, drinking wheatgrass juice every day and eating at least a large serving of greens each day.  Big, nasty swing.
• Intellectual indulgence: I just finished “Live and Let Die”, and started “Moonraker” during a purge-happy Monday morning.  I should be reading about commodities investing.

On my work: I’ve made a habit over time of flouting the fundamental displays of discipline and professionalism that people whose careers I aspire to take for granted.  It’s unacceptable and childish, given my extreme sense of ambition.

Ambition without execution is a recipe for a life of resentful self-sabotage.  I’ve already sampled the thick, lingering, over-cooked flavor of mediocrity in my life.  It crowds the senses like a haze and makes the reaction to each minute of the day alike to that feeling which causes us to smack the “snooze” button twice more than we know we should. Below the murk of all the decisions we should have made, and the small promises to ourselves that we broke, we swim around, resigned to the sensation of drowning in the failed expectations we and others were so happy to assume of ourselves.

I hate the feeling of being so close to failure. Hopefully it is painful enough to be this close, and I will be driven away from the precipice. I’m trying my absolute hardest to turn away from my sloth and embrace the simple discipline of a productive day’s follow-through.  For two weeks I have met every commitment and delivered on any promise, no matter how small at work.

That will be the new way of things.  I will not leave work until my work is done, I will go to bed on time, and I will steal back happiness and clarity from within the walls of this office.  I will burn off the haze of mediocrity allowed to cloud around my mind for too long.  I will cast off the weight that drags me behind in this race with my own ambition.

I’m enjoying the weather turning crisp, the smell of the leaves and the vivid palette of the fall in the way that a four-season home allows me to: as if experiencing it for the first time.

Along with the weather come the mild bonuses of a pleasantly well-lit drive to work in the morning, weekend-warrior football, my favorite tweed jacket.

The warm prospect of the holidays and Wyoming.

I will have multiple friends eager to get onto the mountains and the opportunity to use my snowboard.  Ann and I will be hiking.

I look forward to my first weekend in New York in a while, with a new camera and Greg along to guarantee a memorable experience.

Speaking of my camera, I am a professional now.  More on that soon.

I’ve been working out for three weeks now, making up a single missed workout the next day.  The idea is to ramp up to the goals outlined in my training schedule; I am running through everything at around 50% right now and gaining each week.

When I’ve paid Ann’s mom for my plane ticket to Vietnam in January, I will start learning to fight.  I haven’t decided between Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, and other stuff like Jeet Kune Do but it doesn’t matter – this will be alot of fun, and I will be in shape for it.

Something resonant with me about learning to fight: you can stop working out for a year and get out of shape, but muscle memory and physical knowledge stay in your bones.  It’s an investment.

I’m learning about investing in commodities because I am a massive dork.  If did have a net worth, I would be buying gold right now.  After a life time of being raised in real estate I am fascinated by the idea of pinning financial wealth to physical objects of intrinsic value like land or precious metals.  Securities and bonds don’t give me as much confidence.  When you spend a dollar on a share of stock, do you really own anything? What guarantee is a bond that represents a loan to a dishonest corporation?

All of the gold supply on earth can fit on one Oil Tanker.  Like land, “they aren’t making any more of it”.

When you own a bar of gold, no person or entity can do anything that changes the fact that you own a piece of something physical, finite, needed AND wanted. It makes sense to me.

In other news:

• The Icelandic music group Sigur Ros and Cannonball Adderley, saxaphonist and long-time collaborator with Miles Davis  are  awesome new finds.
• I am finally getting back into whole-body shape with a hardcore workout routine the likes of which I haven’t maintained since 2002.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and some of the momentum from the Marathon effort combined with the weather cooling down my golf habit has equipped me for action.  Yeah, yeah I just ran a marathon.  But I wasn’t feeling like I was in that elevated a state physically during the preparation; sure my heart rate and blood pressure improved a lot but running sucks and I have wanted to return to actual “working out” for a long, long time.

Fitness and working out is a highly individual thing and of course I feel my goals and decisions about how to design my regimen are the best.  The truth is that any sustained exercise effort is good for any given person.  The important thing is finding a combination of focal points and activities that motivate you.  Whether it’s “Body For Life”, P90-X or a celebrity workout routine from the internet, any repeated routine of exercise will help get a person in shape.

For some reason, what’s motivating me right now has been a move towards a “fight training” mentality with the following elements:

• High repetition calisthenics like pullups, dips, pushups and core work as the MAIN focus
• High-intensity interval training – “sprints” on the climbing machine, jumping rope and working on the heavy bag for concentrated periods to push up my aerobic capacity and staying power in a high-energy activity
• Working on coordination with a speed bag and the jump rope
• A couple of “power” lifts like medium-repetition deadlifts and lunges

This is a combination and “flavor” of work that I am excited about, and I plan to pursue an aggressive weekly routine of it through the winter season to get myself into a level of whole-body performance I haven’t been at since I was lifting weights regularly in high school.  By “fight training” I mean that I think of myself and this routine emulating some of the training a military or sport fighter would use to get the most performance out their systems over a short, concentrated period of activity.  I remember how much fitness it took to still have any energy left at the end of a third 2:00 period in wrestling – that’s the kind of capacity I am trying to work towards.  I’m not planning to become Jason Bourne or a commando, but I like the thought of being able to go at 100% way longer than the average person.  Just in case, perhaps.  Or maybe just for the sake of knowing that I can.

It doesn’t describe miles 1-12 of running a perfect pace and enjoying the weather in Arlington, along the GW Parkway and through Georgetown.

Or miles 12-16 of feeling my knees starting to hurt and give out and jogging in fits between walking, realizing I had to give up on my goal time and focus on finishing the marathon as I circled the Mall.

Or miles 16-23 of power-walking as my knees got more and more stiff, and my whole body began to burn and ache, feeling the sun and the concrete close in on me as I took 40 minutes to get across the 14th Street Bridge. I thought I would never get to the apex of the loop in Crystal City, watching a parade of people moving in the opposite direction feet away and thinking “they will all be done with this before me”.

Or miles 23-26.2 of throwing whatever was left inside me on the fire and walking fast enough to pass dozens of people who were still running, determined to finish the marathon in a fashion that I could walk away proud of, even though I was walking away an hour late.

You can try to cheat the marathon out of giving it your best, but it’s smarter and it’s tougher than you are. When you’re done being comfortable and plucky, there’s marathon left. When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, there are still miles to go. When you feel like you’ve burnt the last fumes in your tank…it will not let you coast.

It will get 100% of what’s not bolted down inside of you.

In my case it got 6 pounds on top of that.

PUNCHLINE: 10 minutes later, Ann told me she wants me to run it with her next year.

This year has thrown shin splints, runner’s knee, achilles heel tendinitis, plantar fascitis and a torn rectus femoris muscle (hip flexor) at me, with the latter creating a near show-stopper three weeks ago. EDIT: Almost forgot, I also had food poisoning and gastritis the first two weeks of running. Bad year for me. I couldn’t walk without a limp; the obvious calling card of somebody ready to run a marathon. Nevertheless, I jumped (figuratively only since I was crippled) into physical therapy. I was met with the serendipity of my friend Darren offering a month guest pass to his gym in Tysons. Using this access I was able to work alternative exercise like biking and swimming to eliminate impact on the leg and give the muscle a chance to mend while maintaining my conditioning.

On Sunday, in 4 days, I will run the Marine Corps Marathon. My goal is 4:30:00, but given the uncertainty around the “race-ready” status of the injury my only guarantee to the world is that I will finish the race. Regardless. It sounds like I will have a completely unexpected level of support from friends and family during the race, which I’m really excited about and kind of humbled by.

In other news, I am listening to Tony Robbins’ “Personal Power II” right now – what an amazing resource for those who aspire to dictate the terms and course of their life. My first experiment in practically applying his teachings will be to address my difficulty in waking up to an alarm clock (basic, yes, but a huge and stupid obstacle for somebody trying to be a successful professional). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Next step after the marathon: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and strength training through the winter – I’m psyched!

I am turning this one over. I had a conversation recently about the way we sometimes (me more than the average) generate negative stress from trying to control people and outcomes. Like so many spiritual and personal issues of development, the answer is simpler to grasp than the execution. Controlling others comes from immaturity and insecurity. Controlling yourself comes from maturity and security. I think that only the latter allows one to be in control of a situation without seizing and fretting on the outcome – we have to control our emotions and exercise awareness of the threshold in a situation where we no longer have any influence on the end result. If you can’t change something and make your emotional attachment to the outcome paramount, then you are surrendering absolute control to factors outside yourself; period. Who would want to do that?

On a training note, I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon through the Armed Forces Foundation, which will require me to raise $1,000 for aid to wounded veterans and their families. I’m glad to help, and had always hoped that my participation in the marathon would allow me to make some kind of contribution – the AFF seems like a very valid and also relevant cause to the event. I am slowly ramping up my miles per week – I’m grateful for a perfectly 1.75 mile loop around my neighborhood through downtown McLean – I’ll add a lap each week up to 10.5 mile runs, then cut it up to a day of speed work (800′s and mile runs at McLean High School’s track across the street) and a longer run to get me up to a “long” run of 18-20 miles once each week. I’ll cut training back for the week leading up to the race to a couple 10-mile jogs. This is really happening.

I had a good moment yesterday – I’ll only say that running in the rain produces a really positive feeling of isolation from the people around you. There’s nobody on the sidewalks and the sensation of the rain forces you to be aware of the immediate environment without having to sacrifice your own internal sense of focus – it’s a neat compromise.

I hope that my knees and shins hold out for this race – I am stretching, warming up and cooling down diligently. The orthotics make a difference.

Camping in the Shenandoah this weekend – I hope to come away with some fresh photography to post!

Every widely held religious faith shares the values of simplicity, inner calm and open-mindedness, even if their practice in the modern world doesn’t. Eastern religion seems to focus more acutely on this internal front because it’s less concerned with the mythology than Western systems are. I hope that I can continue down the path of enlightenment long enough for the people around me to benefit from my journey.

Moving into a new house presents a climate of change that, for me, is highly stimulating but after a certain period it starts to drain. I didn’t realize how much of my focus and time spent on my relationship with Ann was being siphoned off to accommodate the process at first. Now that things are returning to routine, we both appreciate the contrast in energy and time available to us relative to the Ikea bubble of 6/15-6/29. Of course, there is more to do but we are established now and the imperative (thankfully) has subsided.

I started exercising again and have begun running to get my body committed to the marathon. I’ll bet you forgot I said I was running one in October. My feet certainly did. I have relegated my training to “crunch time” now, since I would want to spend no less than 4 months in training to accelerate to marathon length. I have motivation and orthotics now, so it really only comes down to my knees and whether they respond to the orthotics and improved flexibility the way I need them to.

It would be disappointing, but an apt lesson from my body if my knees were to ultimately prevent me from completing this endeavor. If it comes to that, I will learn from the reality of my limitations.

I have taken 2 of 5 golf lessons given to me as a birthday gift; I believe that I can already break 95, which I will do on Saturday morning for the first time. The experience of having somebody with more wisdom in the realm of golf than I will ever have correct my swing forever in the first 10 minutes of the first lesson was a life-altering lesson in humility. I had been walking around arrogantly thinking I would solve every problem in my golf game alone for 2 years. My ego benefited greatly from the curb. We must not allow the ego to prevent us from accepting the wisdom/help of others – I felt so childish!

I had really started taking the gift of my opportunities for granted, and for a long time my work had suffered because I chose not to regard it with focus. The missing focus was necessary for my work to flourish, and was vital for me to have a future with my company, taking my place as a leader there. I still have a lot to learn before I can do that, but I was wasting my time and the energy of the people investing in my future; no more. I guess I had a wake up call about things, and I have been working over the past couple of weeks to eliminate my distractions and get back to basics. It’s amazing what a positive or negative multiplier your job performance can be.

When you mire yourself in distractions, your work piles up, you get down on yourself, and feel less like doing your work so you turn back to your distractions…the cycle repeats and by the end of the day you have nothing produced, but what’s worse is that you feel negative about your job. There you are, laying groundwork for the next day to be the same.

It’s a huge sense of release to walk away from that cycle and handle things in the present.

Final thought: to be completely alone on a golf course in dying light, in the rain is one of the most peaceful feelings I have experienced.

Unfortunately the keepers from the trip exposed the kryptonite of my non-SLR camera: high-speed subjects. At best, a 7 and a 5.

New layout/picture scheme to feature my own photography a little more – we will see if it’s a keeper, but it features more of the post body on your page without scrolling and I like that.

Steve, if you’re reading this, I made the change just for you. Also, kiss my ass.

I got out with Jeff last night for an inaugural expedition in Southwest DC, and I am pretty happy with the results I got out of the new toy! My pictures are up in “Photography” or here if you’re really lazy.

Hopefully I’ll have more pictures to report after the ball game tonight!

This is in the mail and with it I will get to start freshly exploring the fertile canvas of the Washington DC area.

This is my friend’s blog, which has recently been updated with the final entry of a two-month long trip in South America. It is a better read than several novels I own. Go to the beginning, read it all and enjoy the texture of his experience. He also references a film one of his colleagues is making about the trip, the trailer of which is here. I think that both media are amazing. They make me want to travel and they make me ache.

More on the new toy when it arrives. Don’t I have thousands of Alaska and Yellowstone pictures to sift through and get onto this website? Yeah. I do.

I like spontaneity and it suits me; I am far more comfortable handling information and making decisions on the fly than the average person, but a saturated work schedule doesn’t allow for much of it! If I know what my activities during the week are, then it gives me milestones to look forward to and focus on. I tend to obsess on my leisure activity, especially golf and focusing ahead of time is part of my enjoyment. Knowing what is coming, to a large extent, better prepares you to enjoy it. The real benefit for me with this schedule is that I will finally be incorporating a level of physical activity into my life that I am satisfied with again – I will be improving my fitness, not just maintaining.

Right now, finally managing some consistency thanks to the onset of 8 months of outdoors weather, I’m doing this:

Monday – Yoga or Chiropractic, then the Driving Range
Tuesday – Climbing/Working Out
Wednesday – Time with Ann
Thursday – Yoga, Driving Range
Friday – Climbing/Working Out
Saturday – Volunteer (DCCK or Inner City Outings depending on schedule) and a golf round
Sunday – Time with Ann – 2 hikes, 1 volunteer day per month

By having a schedule, I get so much more done with the small windows I have in my week. Added bonus: yoga’s included in my Sportrock membership so with climbing 6-8 times a month and also getting 6-8 yoga classes in, I feel like I am getting my money’s worth.

Dream Synopsis

Ann and I are sleeping and I awake to her weeping quietly and desperately. Jarred by her being so upset, I try to get her to tell me what’s wrong, and she resists at first. Then, the last thing I expect to hear comes out of her: she has to leave me. For some reason that she can’t explain, she doesn’t love me and we cannot be together. I try to bargain with her, rationalize in the face of her certainty, but it is impossible. As helpless as I am, she just continues to cry; she cannot change the truth of this revelation, and she wishes so strongly that it weren’t so. I feel the tears burning out of my eyes.

I woke up next to Ann, taking about two minutes to become lucid and realize that the events of the dream had not taken place. That she was not asleep next to me having passed out from the exhaustion of a night’s heaving sobs. That we were still together and the foundations of our relationship remained unshaken. One more searingly poignant reminder of how highly I value what we have together. I felt a sense of pain and the hopeless during that dream far more piercing than I have ever experienced in physical life.

I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her on the cheek, and went back to sleep with a renewed sense of gratitude for the people I love.

The first 1.5 years that I golfed, starting in the summer of 2007, I had a serious problem with slicing the ball; I would take a big manly swing, and if I hit the ball cleanly at all it would sail hundreds of yards to the right (as opposed to straight ahead). I tried (or thought I was trying) everything I could think of to change my swing, or at least isolate the fundamentals causing this glaring failure.

Kids could hit the ball straight. Old people could hit the ball straight. Old Korean women at Oak Marr could hit the ball straight. I couldn’t hit a barn 50 feet in front of me. My solution, reasserted countless times over 18 months? Swing harder. I became frustrated and risked burnout.

When I came to the range this year, I thought about the hundreds of articles I’ve read, and the amalgam of tips and core concepts I’ve absorbed. Like a photomosaic, I let all of those small ideas and thoughts drift together in my mind until they formed a couple of central, simple thoughts to focus on in my practice. Use big muscles in my hips, back and core instead of my shoulders and arms. Swing on a simple plane that can make clean contact without any compensation. Anyway, after two hours on the range with my new mindset I was hitting the ball better than I had ever done before, and consistently.

The change is not only gratifying, but indicates a maturity that I hope I’m able to apply to other areas of my life. I am able to focus myself on a simple thought, and strip away distraction and distortion. I was able to stop wringing myself mentally and physiologically around the issue and psychologically exhaled. It was a good thing. The Buddhists call it unclenching.

I’ve noticed that my tastes, routines, and methods of thought all tend more and more towards the simple. I like it. I think that it will allow me to enjoy the world around me more thoroughly, and stop “over-thinking” my life. We’ll see.

But you won’t see me out tonight, using an arcane Christian holiday as an excuse to get bombed. I like a drink, a good time and the opportunity to embarrass myself as much as, possibly more than the next guy but I suppose I just don’t feel the “pull” to be doing something just because all of the other white people in the United States are doing it too. I don’t feel the need to belong to a majority segment of the population at any one moment. I consider that a blessing.

I wore a green tie today because we are meeting with customers who might care.

On a related note, I am increasingly consumed by the judgmental attitude that people do not care about their bodies. I don’t know when I got this way, or how I get off feeling so self-righteous about things, but it is hideous how people treat themselves and how low they prioritize their health. It seems like my physical standards are meteorically high compared to the “average” person, and I am appalled at what people accept in themselves. What’s more, these are the same (majority) demographics that are mystified by the onset of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a littany of other lifestyle-driven diseases.

You eat shit, as a rule. You are physically as inactive as possible and when you get active socially you follow up exercise with drinking whenever possible. You idly dismiss or willfully shut out any common-sense knowledge regarding nutrition and exercise. You study football statistics for 3 weeks before choosing your fantasy team and go your whole life without reading a single paragraph of literature on nutrition or health. You die at 70, frustrated by years of physical deterioration and discomfort.

The motivation to change and improve should be elementary: If you have to spend the whole second half of your life fighting disease and decay inside your body, what’s the point of being alive? I’m not against drinking in moderation and eating the food that tastes good because it’s so bad for you. We all enjoy that. But those episodes should be blips on the landscape of a well-managed, vision-driven lifestyle. They should accent the routines and habits of a healthy life, not characterize it.

I don’t get it.

We have a lot to be grateful for at our worst; as Americans, as members of the employed class, being alive to begin with. Today I’m only talking about the people and things that we have in our personal lives for no other reason than sheer cosmic luck.

My soulmate. My family. My friends.

The family and friends are the easy part, because you have no say in the family and make voluntary investments in your relationship with your friends. I am grateful for all of them, of course. I owe my virtual birthright of financial success to my parents, and so many of my passions to friends who have provided paradigm-changing exposure to thought, music, and culture to which I would otherwise be oblivious. What humbles me – what I spend time every day thinking about lately – is how lucky I am to have Ann.

For posterity and to sharpen the point, I could have (very) easily spent the rest of my life with somebody whose company would have guaranteed me lasting repression, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Inertia and my need to have a plan were not on my side. Ann and I made independent decisions about people and life that caused us to meet, and because of that chance occurrence I get to love her for the rest of my life. Whatever else happens to me, I get to be with her.

Wow.

People with this kind of luck should practice active, intense gratitude. We know who we are.

It’s snowing and I have bright, white light and visual beauty on-tap, streaming through the windows and brushing the miscellany of an otherwise drab suburban landscape under the rug for a day or so. This is what Winter is supposed to be; nature’s been giving us Virginians the checks of the cold and the moisture without the balance of snowfall. All of my friends with BPD, SADDS and ADD have been suffering through the asymmetry. Don’t worry everybody, the amazing thing about this time of year is how quickly we all forget about the wintertime in April. Like George Harrison would say, Spring in Virginia arrives without a suitcase.

Thanks to the chiropractor and Sportrock, I’m now back in control of my body. With the weather warming and Ann’s ribs healing, it gets a lot better for my fitness from here; hibernation is coming to an end.

This ghost entry thinks it belongs here; it’s squatting on my front page.

In physical reality, I am FINALLY back at Sportrock – I’ll be going twice a week for the duration, plus free Yoga classes. Climbing is something I’m able to get past the sheer exercise benefit of and really enjoy; the challenge, the synthesis of thought and action. Not just more calisthenics and performance data. Now that I have two elbows and a lower back maintenance plan I’ll be able to keep doing it indefinitely if I want to!

What I’m behind on is the marathon program. My knee started really tweaking last week and research shows I have developed a common problem; “runner’s knee”. I need to dial back distance, and amp up flexibility and quadricep strengthening to try balancing out the dynamics down there and relieve the pain. Then Greg and I can finally pound into a routine and get on track for October. My goal right now is to be ready for the National Half Marathon on 3/21; ambitious but I know I can finish if I solve this knee in the next 2 weeks.

With warm weather around the corner, I will be able to start hiking with Ann again, and hit the golf course as well. I need to improve my commitment to being present at work, but my relationship with Ann is better every day, and my life is as enviable as ever. I’m grateful for the things that work at the moment, and I am really happy right now.

I’ll be able to show much more of my past photgraphy and continue posting.  Since this framework will be meant to invite more regular  readers/viewers…I’ll use much briefer entries from now on.

Stay tuned!

In 3 days at that park, owned and managed by the Maasai tribe (like Samburu was by the Samburu tribe), I have seen lions on a recent kill, lion cubs, two leopards, baby cheetah cubs, cheetah cubs, cheetahs, and cheetahs on the hunt/chase twice.  It is an amazing place, and I can’t tell anybody now that there is a more vital place to visit if you are in East Africa looking for wildlife.  No contest.  The landscape there was different from the other locations we had visited, not unlike the western part of the Great Plains (think Colorado Springs or Denver) with long rolling fields and limited bushes/trees except in clumps and groves that back up to large hills and small mountains called the Escarpment.

We stayed in a tent camp again, run by the same organization as our camp at Samburu (Intrepids Camps, Heritage Management) and the service was ridiculous as expected.  On that note, I have to admit that there are some things I am looking forward to about getting home in 24 or so hours, like eating healthy, not ordering dessert, and exercise; all forgotten about during this trip’s combination of exhausting routine and readily available luxury.  I don’t mind saying that I had 5 beers in 11 days; not bad.  But I need to focus again on improving my condition, not just coasting on it and slowly losing muscle, definition.

Our last day in the Mara was eventful, seeing a cheetah stalk and chase a Thompson’s Gazelle although unsuccessfully.  She wasn’t very happy about that but we got to see the best part – an amazing demonstration of instinct and speed by both animals. Later in the day we found a den where a cheetah was taking care of 4 cubs – we tried not to get too close but it was amazing to see such young animals out here.  The cubs with the hunting cheetah were considerable older and didn’t look much like babies any more.  One of the tough lessons to learn about life for the animals in this environment was hearing that it would be dumb luck for more than 1 or 2 of them to survive.  Apparently any baby animal, including baby predators, becomes a Serengetti happy meal until they are fast or strong enough to defend themselves.  At dinner, our guide Stanley told us his best story, about a babboon climbing into his safari car to sit next to him and eat his clients’ lunch boxes and we all said our goodbyes – he is a really good person, found us all of the animals, and gave us some really candid insight into what it’s like living in Kenya.

We flew back from Maasai Mara to Nairobi on another single engine plane (I hate single engine planes) and ate lunch at “Carnivore”, a tourist trap restaurant that is known for providing (large quantities of) meat and exotic game meat.  I was a little disappointed to discover that nowadays the only exotic meats they offer are ostrich and crocodile.  I ate both though, and enjoyed them.  The crocodile had a bunch of small bones in it though, and was hard to extract meat from.

This has been an amazing experience.  I am going to try to upload my final, edited set of pictures now – if it doesn’t work out I’ll have them up in a couple of days but here it goes!

Lake Nakuru and its national park abut the fourth largest city in Kenya (Stanley’s hometown area) of Nakuru, which is a really dense third world-style city.  The downtown area is a long stretch of dense storefronts and mid-rise office buildings with fruit and knick-knack street vendors packing the sidewalks and throngs of people walking in and out of the street.  The street-boys here are famous for working over tourists, who frequent the park.  Dad and I got some new malaria medication and nasal-spray for grandpa here, and the drug store sold them to us for about 14% of the USA price.  This, and everything we bough was over the counter; there are virtually no drugs in Kenya for which you need a perscription.  I think most of the world is that way outside of the US – thanks, FDA.

Lake Nakuru is famous for it’s huge bird population, in particular its Pink Flamingos. I got to see them, although they have lessened in numbers recently due to crowding from pelicans.  The whole park is a pretty area and the lake, with all of the birds, is really smelly but beautiful.  Having the water in the background creates an unorthodox backdrop for a lot of African wildlife pictures.  We spent most of our time here trolling through the trees for leopards but came up dry in the end – yesterday we came in after our afternoon drive to hear that most of the people in our lodge had seen a leopard with a cub! Kind of frustrating, but at least that proves they exist.  Maybe we will see one in Maasai Mara, although unlikely since there will be very few trees there.  I did get some  great bird pictures (not usually my thing but they were nice on the water) and saw two baby rhinos playing together this morning – really really rare.  I also got a few shots of a lioness eating at a kill we found this afternoon – pretty cool.

Tomorrow morning we will head to Maasai Mara National Park, the finale of our trip.  Mara’s significantly more open than the other parks we have seen, and is more in the “traditional Africa” vein that people envision after watching the Lion King.  Open fields, lots more predators.  This will be my best (and last) chance for a cheetah, and better lion pictures – everybody says Maasai Mara is the best park, and most finish their safaris there.  Added bonus – we will be in a tent camp again.

Personal victory: I was able to eat 3 normal meals in a row today, thanks to fully recovering from Malarone poisoning.

These pictures aren’t editing themselves.  Depending on the internet service at Masaai Mara (do they have it or “have it”) I may not start getting photos up until Tuesday in Nairobi.

The drive from Samburu was really interesting, as we started out in a desert on the equator – hot, hot, and hot.  Dusty. Hazy. Dehydrating to think about. As we drove through the first stretch we witnessed a massive road project – most of Kenya’s signifcant roads are still gravel.  The “Great North Road” runs like I-95 from Johannesburg, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt and is an ancient trade route, still the fastest way to drive north-south.  Granted, it runs through Somalia and the Sudan so you don’t want to make that drive. The Kenyan government is trying to class up its section of the road by paving a huge swath of it and this whole stretch was spent driving on a really bad temporary gravel/dirt road and watching workers walking from tribal villages and work camps (read: shanty towns) to work areas and small supply depots along the road.  As we got past the construction we hit a paved road again and started to gradually climb through a couple of large villages and small towns into the Laikipia Plateau region.  Before our eyes, the landscape became greener and fields of pasture, corn, and wheat began to pop up.  People were not any wealthier in these areas but the land was way more forgiving.  After an hour we were driving along steep hills and through mountains/foothills under Mount Kenya in an area that actually looked like a cross between Wyoming and Switzerland – all you could see were terraced hills and wheatfields, with huge plots of greenhouses – apparently two emerging markets in Kenya are eucalyptus trees for renewable building lumber and exportable flowers.  I REALLY didn’t expect such a beautiful and not-African looking area.  The climate also became much milder, around 70-75 and breezy.  All of the locals we passed walking to jobs and school were bundled up like eskimos – kind of funny considering the ice storm I flew out of to be here.

As the hills flattened out into the plateau, you were still looking at Mount Kenya on one side and the Aberdares Range on the other – really not the intuitive Africa we all think of, like the Serenghetti plains or hot Samburu scrub area.  Ol Pejeta’s 90,000 acres are all long rolling plains with scrubby forest breaking up the expanse.  The grass is all really short because of the dry season, and Mount Kenya is visible from all points.  We did a PM game drive here on 2/2, an AM game drive at another nearby preserve called Solio this morning and a PM game drive again at Ol Pejeta today.  The most unusual new animals we’ve seen are Black and White Rhinoceri – there are only about 700 Black Rhinoceri left on Earth and Ol Pejeta and Solio represent about 150 of them.  Trivia: White Rhinoceri aren’t white-colored, the name comes from the dutch word “whyte” for “wide” because of their wide/flat mouths.  They are grazers and stick to grass, while Blacks with pointy mouths are “browsers” and eat the leaves off of bushes.  We are also starting to see some more plains-type animals like more varieties of antelope and alot of warthogs.  I’ve got pictures at this point of baby zebras, lions, giraffes, gazelle, warthogs, Vurvit monkeys and baboons.  Babies everywhere.

A quick note on the title and my mysterious illness – it wasn’t the temperature or my diet at all. It was malarone, my anti-malaria perscription.  If a doctor ever perscribes that to you, just punch him in the eye. Hard.  I switched perscriptions and can function now, 24 hours later.  We all wonder whether I would have been better off just getting malaria.

We’re headed for Lake Nakuru tomorrow morning, where I will hopefully bag flamingoes, a leopard and cheetahs.

Internet’s shutting down at midnight! Pictures soon!

Africa got the upper hand yesterday. Between the jostling of the land rover 8 hours a day, equatorial sun exposure and most importantly my blatant departure from a very healthy diet back at home…the bottom fell out. After lunch I felt like ass, and kind of ignored it but once we were on our afternoon game drive I just started getting dragged down and eventually had to tell Stanley “samama” (stop) so I could add some color to the dry African landscape. After that I spent the next 36 hours sleeping as much as possible and eating as little as possible, and generally feeling like a Samburu with doctor had cursed me. I finally recovered during the day today and I’m back on track – could have been really, really bad.

We had a good day out yesterday before the unpleasantness, the highlight of which for me was some excellent giraffe pictures and a morning session we spent watching a large troupe of baboons. There is a bridge at the entrance to the Samburu preserve where they gather every morning at first light – nobody can say why, but this seems to be a time of day when they feel safest being around the water and they are there like clockwork, adults and young swinging in the trees, traversing the bridge railing and running along the banks.

This morning we completed the “Samburu Special Five”, which are five animals unique to the Samburu and Buffalo Springs Preserves; Oryx, Jeranuk, Somali Ostrich, Greevy’s Zebra, and Reticulated Giraffe. The most unique of these animals is probably the Jeranuk – there seem to be dozens of animals that fit into the antelope family but the Jeranuk has adapted itself to the competitive food supply by growing a much longer neck and giving the animals an ability to go on their hind legs and reach food that no other animal can get to except for elephants and giraffes! They look like aliens. The Reticulated Giraffes are also cool because their ‘spots’ are more sharply defined than the ubiquitous Rothschild’s Giraffe that we will see in the other parks. Giraffes, for the record, also look like aliens to an American. There is no animal we have that can prepare you for seeing something so unique. I stumped Stanley today when I asked him what their closest relative was.

The highlight today was visiting a Samburu village outside the park around lunchtime. The Samburu are a cattle-herding, nomadic society that lives off of their livestock without butchering the cattle – they actually live off of the blood and milk of the cows (yummy). Their lives, not surprising for being in a scrubby brown dessert, are very austere compared with what we are used to. They build their houses out of cow hides, sticks and cow dung and don’t have any extra possessions. That said they seem like a fundamentally happy group of people. They sang us welcoming and farewell songs, and their chief, “Stephen” showed us around the village. Their community has several small villages in it and they use all of the money they get from tourist visits and government aid to fund a small school system and medical support – these networks have arrested the nomadic element of their culture, and nobody seems to know how they feel about the trade-off. How do you evaluate whether people who lived a certain way for hundreds of years, without education of western medicine, or any knowledge of things outside herding and their own village are better off trying to integrate into our culture? Or assimilate even a small part of our world? Stephen was proud to relate that he was a guest on a previous season of “Survivor” filmed at the Shabba Hills Preserve next door. One woman in the village had a robe that featured a picture of Barack Obama – they get textiles through trade from the outside world used to make a lot of their clothes. When we pointed the picture out and someone explained to her what we were talking about she blushed and laughed, embarrassed. Seeing how they lived and how the outside world has affected them was fascinating.

Tomorrow morning we will pack up and head to our next location, the Laikipia Plateau and Ole Pejeta Rhino Sanctuary. While everybody in Kenya “has internet”…I hope theirs will actually be in working order so I can start updating everyone!

We woke up at 6:30am (10:30pm your time), ate breakfast and headed out to a smaller regional airstrip on the outskirts of Nairobi. We caught an “Air Taxi” from Nairobi to Samburu (80 miles north) near the equator, with a couple of stops on the way in other small preserve areas – since we were told the plane wasn’t going to be crowded, it was of course booked. We had to leave behind about 2/3 of our total gear to be flown out tomorrow morning which included all non-essential camera gear and 100% of our clothes and greater “checked” luggage, if only for 24 hours.

I have a good track record with regard to single-engine planes and motion sickness but today was not good. Since we were flying through hot areas (as the pilot related) the flight was especially bumpy and I would say I got to about an 8/10, with 10 having been a case of the rainbow hiccups. A lot of intense focus on the horizon and deep breathing for the last 20 minutes. Some of the things we saw before I stopped punishing myself by looking at the ground were fascinating though. The 800,000 person slum on the fringe of Nairobi, a massive tin and aluminum-roofed shanty-town. The sprawling Nairobi suburbs with thousands of tea and coffee fields, and huge rolling hills. The shift around Ninyuki from green hills to flat dust and scrub-brush plateaus kind of like the American southwest but with giraffes. The wildlife; from the air we saw elephants, giraffes, zebras, water buffalo, ostriches and even a pack of warthogs (yes, like Pumba in the lion king, which means “dummy” in Kiswahili). Mount Kenya, the second tallest mountain on the continent behind Kilomanjaro.

Once we got to Samburu Airstrip we met Stanley, a Kikuyu native (largest/most politically favored tribe out of 42 in Kenya and 80% of Nairobi residents) – he will be our driver and naturalist guide through the parks for the whole trip. As Kenya has an unemployment rate of about 50%, people take jobs really seriously – Stanley has a college degree specific to being a naturalist guide. This is a country where there is no mechanization or automation because the population needs the jobs. You will see people breaking piles rocks into gravel to repair the roads. Anyway, we took the land rover that will be our 8-hour-a-day home for the next 10 days to the Samburu Intrepids Lodge. Intrepids is a division of a larger luxury hotel lodge that manages Safari lodges in several of the Kenyan National Parks – I was told we would be staying in “nice tents”, which left me grossly unprepared for what we got. Think four-poster beds with mosquito netting, mahogany wood floors and a full bathroom with a walk-in shower and double-sinks. Did you know they had tents like that? Me neither.

After a quick deployment of camera gear and looking around slack-jawed at our “tent” we headed out for our first game drive. The way it basically works is that the National Parks and lodge companies have an old understanding, the lodge compounds are actually inside the park boundaries, and you go on drives through the park in open-roof land rovers on the “roads” looking for wildlife at dawn and dusk. For a first-out, half-day of photography we got REALLY lucky. We saw a herd of elephants including really young juveniles (a one-year old and four-month old for certain) that walked up and across a river, and by/around our jeep. We saw a Greevy’s Zebra, a really rare breed that people pretty much only see in Samburu. We saw a lion on our first day! Granted it was the heat of the day and he was sleeping, facing away from us. With a radar collar on, which I was told is exceptionally rare for the animals in these parks (not like Yellowstone where every other bear, elk and wolf has a collar). But a lion, that I have a token picture of nonetheless; I expect to severely top this “safety” lion shot in Masaai Mara.

We had lunch before the drive and dinner afterwards with Stanley, who is an awesome source of information about Kenya and the lifestyles of the native people here (aka the people who live in villages, use spears and do NOT have western lifestyles at all like the urban population). Samburu National Park is named after the Samburu tribe, a culture of cattle-herders who are very similar to the Masaai, the more recognized herder tribe in southern Kenya. We will get to visit a nearby Samburu village in a couple days – should be cool. I am learning a few Kiswahili phrases per day and although it is a non-pragmatic language with no relation to English or grammatical consistency…I do think that the colloquialisms compliment the people here and their hospitality very well. You can almost get by with just jambo(“hello”) and asante (“thank you”), because everybody everywhere will greet you.

Quick unsurprising note about Kenyan pop culture: Barack Obama is really, really big here.

So I will be posting this and last night’s posts in not-real time, hopefully on Saturday 1/31. They “have internet” at Samburu just like they “had internet” at the Fairmont Norfolk last night, which means they have a computer and a service/tech support appointment scheduled sometime in the near future. Except Samburu is 5 hours drive from Nairobi, where anybody capable of addressing an internet technology problem would be dispatched from. Maybe tomorrow.

Lala salaama (good night).

After an 8.5 hour flight and a 7.5 hour flight, several complimentary meals/snacks, a mini bottle of Chardonnay and a glass of cognac, I am in Nairobi.

The flight was actually pretty luxurious for a ‘coach’ class experience – I’m not used after all the domestic flying of the past 2 years to stewardesses jamming free drinks and food down my hatch every 20 minutes! KLM (and probably other airlines since my last transatlantic flight) has taken the individual TV screens to the next level – I could play games (reigning high score on Tetris at seat 20D) or watch any of a large library of loadable remote movies. I saw “Indiana Jones 4”, “Oceans 13” for the 5^th time, and “W” before all was said and done. The only thing I would change about the overall travel experience would probably be to buy tickets in a part of the plane other than the “Screaming Infant Class” section next time; I didn’t realize they all got sat together. Wailing miserable baby in Dolby 5.1. Both legs of the flight. In case you were wondering, Dutch, Estadounidense and African babies all sound the same when they are screaming.

The drive from the airport through downtown Nairobi was a good first look at the level of “development” here. I find it similar to Israel in a way – there are new construction projects going on, and industrial/warehouse looking architectures everywhere, but nothing is TOO polished or TOO clean looking – plenty of gravel and concrete rubble on sides of the road. The road that they drive on the “wrong” side of because Kenya was a British colony from the turn of the century until 1963. I hope to see more of Nairobi in the daylight on our final day here – I’m told there are enormous shantytowns to the north and east – not to be an inhumane prick but I think it would be fascinating to see something like that firsthand.

Exchanged US dollars for Kenya Shillings at $1 = Ksh $77 which is a slightly better deal than market rate for some reason. Their bills are like the Euro; a thousand is huge and 200’s, 100’s and 50’s get progressively smaller. Intuitive, but I prefer a homogenous stack of US dollars that folds evenly. It’s midnight here, around 70 degrees (they are wearing sweaters and jackets) and we are staying at a place called the Fairmont Norfolk – the first hotel I have slept in where you walk from the entrance, through the lobby, into a courtyard, and to your room from the courtyard…with no exterior doors anywhere because the climate is so consistent. We aren’t in Virginia any more.

We eat at 7am tomorrow and then take a small plane to Samburu National Park where I am told there will not be any internet, so I’ll probably post my first batch of pictures to the daily pages and blog from Ol Pejeta Ranch at the Laikipia Plateau in 3 or so days.

I look forward to talking about the REALLY different stuff I am going to see over the next couple of days.

BOARDING! Updates later.

We will fly out of Dulles (hopefully) at 6:30PM, and I should be in Africa around 10:30am EST tomorrow morning.

I continued putting gear together so that I’m not rushed at the last minute, and my new boots came in today.  After trying a few types of shoe on, I decided on these Merrells because I think they have just they right amount design consideration for agility/cross-training.  I didn’t want a boot that was only durable because it weighed 5 lbs and was designed for walking 500 miles in a straight line on flat ground.  These shoes will work for me in Africa next week AND continue to be an ideal all-around for the upcoming 10-mile hikes and train-ups in March leading up to the One-Day Hike in April.

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The toes do an interesting “turn-up” that other hiking boots don’t usually do and I think it’s a Merrell thing. It makes you feel like you are wearing running shoes and kind of propels you forward. Cool!

I will work on pictures and have them ready to post so that I can take advantage of whatever chance I get.

At a minimum, I should be able to get blog posts up and spend more time updating the galleries from Nairobi on the final day of the trip.

I started really setting things aside last night to pack, and looked at the pack that Ann got me for christmas as a primary; I think it will work and I’m grateful for a chance to really use her gift.  It’s a good pack.

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• Yellow Fever vaccine
• Hepatitis A vaccine
• Tetanus vaccine

Sound like fun yet?  Add to that the daily perscription for Malaria pills that are notorious for making people vomit.

Other than that I am getting really excited!

Over the next two weeks leading up to departure, I will be adapting it to my needs for the trip and learning how to best use it to record my adventures.  I plan to post my best shots and briefly describe the things I see and experience while I am there on an *almost* daily basis; it IS Africa after all.

Feel free to look around – I hope that you will visit, share in and comment on my experience as I try out this new medium.