No Hurry in J.C.

An Appropriate Screening

2012-01-25T09:07:00.000-05:00

I headed up to Journal Square on Friday night to see "Cinema Paradiso" at the 1929 movie palace with Roberta and Ray. This was my first trip to the cool old movie theater since I've been back.

Ray loves to take photos and not surprisingly, he took a great shot of the cinema lobby using his iPhone and a stitching app.

Ongoing Conflict

2012-01-23T11:55:00.002-05:00

My adopted hometown got a facelift while I was gone.

Downtown Jersey City has been going gourmet and poofy for some time—certainly before I left, restaurants that serve upscale food had started to survive rather than tank within a year. Some still faltered, perhaps because they were too ahead of the curve and the potential audience wasn't quite here yet. I only managed a few Vietnamese sandwiches and some half-assed knitting lessons (it's a fact, I suck at knitting) before the banh mi store tanked and before the knitting cafe called it quits.

Late last week, I was running errands, getting printouts and faxing from PostNet, when I stumbled over something...how can I put this...ridiculous. A cupcake cafe. Here. Where once we were excited when a Subway sandwich shop opened up across from a grimy Chinese place that later became a mainstay Cuban restaurant, two blocks from a bodega and refrigerator shop which eventually became a popular restaurant and a coffee shop, respectively. This block once housed Whitegirl dress outlet and Cornucopia foods, two fantastic places so far ahead of their time, barely anyone even knows they once existed.

And here's what's funnier about the cupcake shop.

We have two. Why? Well, what are you going to do if one of them is closed? Doesn't every emerging neighborhood need two cupcake shops? And another attempt at a gourmet pet supply store? Sure, why not.

I think back to when I lived on Avenue B and we lost the combination hardware store/hair salon, with mom-and-pop Puerto Rican businesses turning into restaurants I couldn't afford, which seemed to specialize in duck.

Am I complaining and resentful? Maybe a little. But only because it feels like what was once mine has slipped away. I don't recognize the newcomers. They are so much younger than me and they seem to have a lot more money than I do.

But then, who doesn't? I made a lifestyle choice many years ago. I'm tempted to go back on it now, to make a decent living, to patronize new restaurants and buy new clothes and even try a few cupcakes.

It's unclear how my internal employment conflict will resolve itself. Making comics four days a week worked pretty well in the past, but I'm not sure I can survive on part-time work anymore. Dammit, I want to buy cupcakes with the young newcomers who seem able to afford so much more than I can.

Poofy and gourmet can be kind of cute. On Avenue B, in extreme-gourmet Brooklyn, in downtown Jersey City. I'm past the point where I want to navigate around drug dealers and dog shit. I'm enjoying access to good food and adorable local businesses, which are all so much better than Subway and the greasy Chinese place that used to be on Grove Street. I'm loving having a great pilates gym across the street. I adore the efforts that local artists are making 100 feet from my apartment, opening studios and offering acting and dance classes in what was once a private hospital.

The conflict is primarily financial--how can I keep living here? Will the property tax revaluing drive me out, as it drove out so many old-timers in 1988, the last time the city revalued?

I'm not going anywhere. I'm pretty sure of that. Maybe I'll even get a normal job, so I can eat cupcakes with the young'uns. Anyway, a real job wouldn't hurt as I have to pay off the huge credit card bill I incurred from going to Tibet, Bhutan, and the Marquesas during MariesWorldTour 2011.

I went up to Journal Square today to drop my car off with Mike, the mechanic I've been going to since 2004 or so. Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus seems none the worse for wear for sitting in place since February of 2011.

I walked back home, down the hill along Newark Avenue, snapping some crappy iPhone 2G photos as I went. And you know what? Old-school JC is still up there, right up the hill.

I can stay here in Cupcake-Ville, and visit any time I want.

Squirrel Day

2012-01-21T16:52:00.000-05:00

It's snowing here, which has me cowering in the chill of my apartment, but it's also Squirrel Appreciation Day, which reminds me of the time a squirrel leapt from the top of my old apartment building and landed three stories down in the yard. He looked kind of stunned, then walked away. I can't imagine he survived, though he hadn't appeared to break anything.

He probably thought the berry net would be covering the yard--it went up in mulberry season and came down the rest of the year. The squirrel had probably been using it as his own personal shortcut down to the yard.

Here are a few squirrels that Steve and Yancey drew for me when I was working on a top-secret squirrel project that never got off the ground.

Field Trip to Bayonne

2012-01-18T11:25:00.000-05:00

I remember when J.C. had a humorous public exchange on whether or not we wanted this sculpture.

The response was nearly unanimous.

We did not.

It's in Bayonne now, in the perfect spot on a spit of land by the cruise terminal, not in anyone's backyard, all alone at the end of a road through an industrial area. I kinda like it there, where we can go and see it on a weekend, but no one has to look at it and snicker all week long.

Sickly Ford

2012-01-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

Poor Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus has seen better days.

The longest I've ever left him alone before was seven months, and he started right up when I got home. But ten months seems to have been a little too long. The battery is completely dead.

Ray and the Arrow tried giving Henry a jump. His dashboard lights came on after a while, and I could hear a little click, but after about 15 minutes, we still didn't have enough power to turn over. I thought about continuing to charge up, but I'm worried about build-up on the brakes, so I'm going to call AAA for a tow this week and head up to see my trusty mechanic—Mike at Alpha-Omega—near Journal Square.

Marquesan Festival of the Arts

2012-01-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

Tony, who was the ship's videographer on the Aranui ship, has finished a few videos of the festival we attended last month.

They're great--check them out here and here on the Aranui YouTube channel.

Opening Mail

2012-01-12T12:19:00.002-05:00

I'd sent about a dozen (or more?) packages to Michael Kraiger at our office over the ten months I was traveling.

And now, I've been steadily opening the boxes up and bringing my souvenirs home.

On Monday, my Polynesian paddle showed up. Our receptionist laughed at me, but she's used to us getting strange things in the mail.

Yesterday, I got a "material removal pass" and took my odd-shaped package out of the office building. I kept it wrapped so no transit police would get cranky at me on the way home.

And I opened it...and it was intact. I'd been afraid something would break. I'd gone to a lot of trouble to pack this properly on December 23rd in Tahiti, picking up cardboard boxes on the curb, bubble wrap from Tourist Information, and brown paper from a stationery store across from the post office. Fish and Wildlife had opened my package up when it hit the US, but they'd wrapped it back up without breaking anything.

Now I just have to figure out how to display my Polynesian paddle.

Up the Hill in J.C.

2012-01-10T21:57:00.001-05:00

It's good to be home.

Cleaning House

2012-01-09T21:47:00.001-05:00

I've been home exactly a week now and haven't moved too quickly. Okay, that's not entirely true. But I mean as far as my stuff—my apartment, my garage, my car—goes, I've been dragging my feet.

The 31 wire hangers my tenants left me are still banded together and waiting by the front door (with the broken lock) to go back to the cleaners. I partially dismantled the bed they broke (mattress is now on the floor but that's okay, I think the mice are gone now), but I have to break down the frame and carry it down to the curb. I cleaned the refrigerator, but haven't bought anything to go in it. I cleaned the mouse turds out of some cabinets but I keep finding dishes and utensils stashed in strange places (I assume that when my tenants got married, they received gifts, and rather than, oh, put my stuff in a box, it was easier to put a few forks on a top shelf, a knife and a plate up with the Bundt pan, rabbit sculptures made of dust behind doors and under tables, and to cleverly place a container of blueberries in the microwave—genius!).

Ray, who stayed in my place from November 15 to January 2, did what he could. He managed to kill the mice, left me a can of Cafe Bustelo, slept carefully on the broken bed, and built me a monster of a desktop computer system—but he couldn't bring himself to touch the freezer.

"Because," he said, "I wanted to see your reaction to it."

Uh-oh.

I gingerly pried open the freezer door last Monday on my first night home.

Fortunately, Tuesday is trash day.

Home

2012-01-06T10:32:00.002-05:00

I'm done with MariesWorldTour.com until 2021.

Home, and looking at a messy apartment, garage, and a whole lot of freelance work that needs to be done.

Waning Days of MariesWorldTour.com

2012-01-02T12:56:00.002-05:00

After a few days of late-Christmas at my mother's house in Virginia, I headed up to DC to meet my college friends Anne and Leah, as well as Vern from last week on the Aranui.

We had a grand time getting manicures and pedicures (well, not Vern—who met us later—but Anne and Leah's daughters went to the spa along with us), grabbing dinner, and then on Monday morning, I headed back north on one of the $25 DC-NYC buses.

I texted Michael Kraiger as the bus passed Snake Hill in Secaucus, and then again as soon as the bus pulled into Manhattan, out of the Lincoln Tunnel.

"Be there in three minutes." I watched the familiar-but-alien landmarks whiz by the window. And the crowds! So many people in Manhattan—they were all traveling at the end of the holiday.

Michael Kraiger was at his office—once mine, as recently as February—which is a block from all the discount buses. I'd mailed him my keys, garage door opener, and watch back in March, remember? He brought me my keys and garage door opener.

The watch can wait, along with the dozens of boxes I'd sent him from around the world. I'll have to come in with my car one day and pick them up.

The day was warm as I waited, hugged against the wall of a shoe store with my backpack behind me.

A familiar face, dressed in black and with a stylish hat over gray hair, turned the corner.

"Hello, Marie Javins."

"Hello, Michael Kraiger."

We've been doing that for years (decades?). In a pinch, he'll call me Marie, but I never call him Michael except in business correspondence that other people might read.

He handed me my keys and held my backpack while I wound my arms through the straps. I left him—I'll go to the office next week, since I'm still on a 25-hour-a-month contract—and headed into the Manhattan Mall, down the escalator through JC Penney, and onto the PATH.

Today was a holiday, so the train was on a reduced schedule and went to JC via Hoboken, but I was surprised at how fast the ride was. Zoom. I was across the river.

I texted Ray from Grove Street. "I'm waiting in front of Grove Cafe." My plan was to wait next to this because he could pull up in his truck, which was full of his stuff. He'd been housesitting for me since November 1, and was moving to a sublet in Fort Greene tonight.

"Be there in 8 minutes."

And he was, and I watched as he zipped past me and drove on down the street. Penance was he got to carry my bag to where he'd parked.

We checked my garage. Door opened, car wouldn't start. What a mess in there! Some things had toppled over, presumably during the earthquake, though maybe something had just settled. I grabbed a random bag, which I later learned fortunately contained some of my winter clothes.

Ray took me to Liberty State Park before going home. This seemed fitting, and I thought back to the end of MariesWorldTour.com 2001. I'd come in alone to Port Authority on New Year's Eve, then taken the subway to Babcock's apartment. I'd sat alone at midnight, listening to the cheers outside. In the morning, I'd taken the Staten Island Ferry to get a sad and realistic look at the ailing Manhattan skyline, which had lost two icons just a month-and-a-half earlier.

Today, the evening light over lower Manhattan was beautiful—all gentle pinks and blues—and ten years later, a new building had sprung up where there'd been nothing at the end of my last trip.

I heard the whirr-whirr next to me of Ray shooting photos. He really can't stop himself. But I didn't blame him. I self-consciously aimed my point-and-shoot, to try to capture the light on the city. To freeze the moment, the brief wisp of optimism and wonder at the end of a long journey around the world—quick, grab it before it evaporates into the mundane reality of daily life.

*Missed the world tour? Click here.

Taking A Break

2011-03-23T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm taking a break from this blog for a while, but don't worry. I'm just moving my posts to MariesWorldTour.com for the duration of my round-the-world trip.

I'll blog here again when the trip has ended.

-Marie

Touring Naughty-Boo

2011-03-23T19:14:00.004-04:00

Two guys leapt to their feet in the guard house at Camping Chez Abba. This popular backpacker/overlander place had been sold out when my friend Anne Marie tried to go here some years back, but I'd hit it at a slow time.

"Do you have a nice room for me?"

The older of the two (and by older, I mean about 32 years old) nodded. "Of course."

They showed me an exhausted hostel type room that had about six beds in it, and an attached "private" squat toilet (if you don't include the giant cracks that showed into the kitchen). But the price was right. I could have the whole room and toilet for $11. The shower block was around the corner. And that's when I realized I was poorly prepared for showing down the hall. I had a mini-towel (quick-drying) and a skimpy nighty.

I didn't think I could shower, though. Towels didn't come with the room and I was reluctant to travel with a wet towel.

The younger man, Musa, offered to help me with anything I needed. He told me where I could catch the "taxi brousse" in the morning (a jitney) and where I could get some pasta for dinner. Then he gave me instructions on how to get to the place of shipwrecks.

At one point, Nouadhibou had an impressive collection of rusting shipwrecks off its coast. "Many of them have been taken by the Chinese for scrap," explained Musa, so I tried not to get my hopes up.

He flagged down a shared taxi for me and off we went. Five minutes later, the driver slowed, stopped, and waved me across the road. "Ships!" He sped off with his remaining passengers.

The number of wrecks were disappointing but atmospheric. I was alone on a beach in Mauritania, after a crazy day of driving among sand and landmines, and I laughed out loud.

"Welcome to Mauritania!" Musa biked over a dune. He'd come to check on me. I was apprehensive, but he walked his bike next to me, and showed me a shortcut back to town. We walked along the railroad tracks of the iron ore train. And on arrival, he took my Moroccan dirham to go and change it for me ("I will get a better rate than you") and he took my passport to get 50 copies made.

"The police are stopping you all the time. Be ready with the copy of the passport."

Okay.

I worried a bit, as so often this is a ploy for a big tip, but I'd had such good luck with my Bamba, my Mauritanian taxi driver. Maybe Mauritanians were just plain old hospitable.

I headed out for some pasta and then somehow, in the dark, got a taxi to bring me back to Chez Abba.

Border Day

2011-03-19T14:27:00.008-04:00

Bamba was trying to tell me something. He kept motioning at things. The glove compartment. The dashboard. He wanted me to do...what? He'd speak to me in French, because he'd gotten it in his head that I understood French, though I'd repeatedly said that I did not. Perhaps saying this in perfect French isn't a good strategy.

I fumbled around, trying to help him out. He kept putting one hand to his ear. I dug around in the glove compartment and produced some earbuds.

"No."

He pointed to his ear again.

Oh, there was a rattle! He wanted me to find the rattle. Bamba was deputizing me. Co-driver.

I enthusiastically sought out the rattle, but couldn't find the source. Actually, I couldn't even hear the rattle. But you know how drivers are. They precisely know the sound of their cars.

Right about then, something far worse than a rattle kicked in. One of the two women traveling together decided we should all be subjected to the songs on her phone, MP3s played through a tinny speaker. Wretched.

Bamba lit another cigarette and tossed a small carpet into the back seat. The woman on the east side of the car requested the window go down and back up a bit—the window console was in the front—so she could stick the carpet into the window crack. The Saharan sun is merciless. Bamba himself used the cloth that he'd been wearing on his head last night. I had my scarf on deck for later when the sun hit my side.

We drove for a few hours through the end of the world. Or what looked like it. Sun, sand, and billowing plastic bags as far as the eye could see. The road was the only color, and I'm not sure black counts as a color. Mercedes or Peugeots occasionally raced by, only to have us overtake them later when they were pulled over for a pit stop.

One of the women in our car needed a pit stop. I couldn't understand Bamba's response to her, but I understood the sweep of his arm and the questioning town of his voice.

"We're in the middle of a desert. Where?"

She ended up gathering up her billowing cloth to squat behind a knee-high shrub. We all looked the other way.

When she got back in, one of the other women passed around bread and UHT milk.

"Non, merci." I was afraid to eat. I'd been sick just two days ago and I was afraid that eating food might create a bad situation that no shrub would be able to handle.

About three hours into the trip, after several more police checkpoints where I handed out more paperwork (except when Bamba motioned to me to hold back until asked by the guard), we stopped at a rest stop, a small shack-like place that served tagines and tea. I braved the squat toilet, but nibbled only on bread. The day was still young and though the border was just ahead, the trip supposedly took five hours. I couldn't see how though.

I sat with the women, but Bamba motioned us all over. "We should all sit together," he said, hospitably. Or maybe he said "Get your ass over here." It's all the same to me in French.

He ordered tea and proceeded to prepare it Mauritanian-style, something I'd only read about in guidebooks. Mauritanian tea just isn't tea until it has a frothy head on it. This froth is achieved by pouring the tea from far above the glass, and then from that glass into another and into another. Three glasses are used and the tea is poured over and over until it froths. Or maybe those rocks I took for sugar are actually soap. Either way, I didn't drink any, because I had my eye on a disgusting concoction that the pharmacist in Dakhla had assigned me to drink for five days.

We got back into the Renault, where Bamba lit another cigarette and my friend in the back seat went back to serenading us with her screechy phone. Within minutes, we were at the Moroccan border post.

An official at the gate wrote down all our details on forms and charged us five dirham each. Too late, I remembered the entry official in Beni Nsar giving me the same form "for when you leave." I'd even filled it out already.

I made it through quickly, and Bamba threw his passport and registration at me when I got back in the car, trying to get out of the wretchedly hot sun. He had been stamped out already, but was going to help the Senegalese passenger with some kind of border issue. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the paperwork, so I sat stiffly and tried to look responsible. I stole a glance at the details, and that's how I learned we were in a 1993 Renault.

We drove through the gate, and on the other side, we all had our passports stamped.

"Where are you going next?" The border guard was curious. "After Mauritania? Senegal, Gambia, Mali..."

"Then home?"

"No, then Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria..."

He drew in his breath.

"You are crazy to do this alone. Mali and Nigeria are very dangerous. And you..."

I waited for the obligatory comment on my gender.

"With this passport! With an American passport! This is crazy."

I laughed. So it wasn't my gender but rather my nationality that was likely to get me into trouble.

The officials became bored of me, and I got back in the car again, cowering from the sun. The benefit to the car was now clear to me. I couldn't imagine walking through this border post with my backpack in the sun. And we hadn't even gotten to no-man's-land yet. We were still on the Moroccan side.

As I sat in the car, with Bamba out at some border post doing something with some of the other passengers, another official walked up.

"You are six in here?" He laughed. "The driver will be a rich man."

I nodded and didn't point out that we were actually seven in addition to the driver.

Eventually, we were all gathered up by Bamba, and we drove past the end of Morocco and into no-man's-land.

After a minute, Bamba started driving a little funny...sort of swerving a bit to keep us from getting stuck in the sand, because there was no longer an actual road. And then I saw the first overturned, rusting car. And that's when I started to remember something about land mines.

Yes, it's good to be in a private car sometimes, rather than being dropped off at the border by the bus and then being at the mercy of a grand taxi driver who can charge you whatever he pleases to take you across an area where land mines might blow up if you go astray. Bamba wrenched the steering wheel left. He seemed to have some kind of innate knowledge of the route.

"Left at the half-a-Toyota with one door. Right when you pass the upturned hood of the Peugeot."

I tried to ask. "Qu'est-que...cars...?"

"Shocks," said Bamba.

I almost laughed right at him. Really, shocks? Did I look that fragile that I couldn't know about the land mines? Though I suppose it isn't wise to frighten your passengers.

We made it through the mined border intact, and by now, I really did believe the hotel-man back in Dakhla. Bamba probably was the best driver. Or at least the top of the field.

When we finally reached the Mauritanian border post, Bamba had a strategy in mind. He pulled me into the border guard's office at a certain time, in an order only understood by him. I was through quickly.

The Senegalese guy wasn't so lucky. The rest of us sat, bored, for a half-an-hour while he was repeatedly questioned by the Mauritanian authorities. Eventually, we took to amusing ourselves. The women tried on my sunglasses. I modeled my headscarf for them. One of them showed me the jewelry she was carrying to Mauritania. I wasn't clear on the specifics, but she seemed to buy jewelry in one country and sold it in the other. I changed money, and I nearly got the SIM card seller in trouble with the currency exchange guy, when I let it be seen that we were cutting a currency deal. I ended up back with the currency guy, who wouldn't look at me as he tossed my new money down on the desk.

Finally, the Senegalese guy was through. He and his Mauritanian friend took their overnight bags and checked into the guesthouse at the border. The remaining five of us got back into the car, and Bamba started the engine.

And promptly drove BACK into the border post, where he picked up two women and a baby to replace the two men who had left.

"Hey, what happened to the other two guys," yelled a border guard.

"They're in that hotel. They're going back tomorrow!"

"Really?"

As we pulled away, I could see the border guard walking up to our two former passengers. I liked Bamba a lot by now, but I really wish he hadn't said that.

On we drove, past more people looking for lifts (yes, it's a damn good thing I didn't take the bus) and more police checkpoints. About ten minutes later, we pulled over and left our last remaining male passenger with a relative who was standing there waiting for him by the side of the road. Now we were six women, one baby, and Bamba.

Eventually, we pulled up into a heap of dusty and short, lopsided shacks called Nouadhibou, which is pronounced Naughty-Boo. We drove around back alleys, looking for the places to drop off our passengers. This wasn't something I'd see on the tourist trail, that's for sure.

The jewelry woman's relatives shook all of our hands, and the jewelry woman herself seemed genuinely sad to be leaving her traveling companions. Bamba was sad too, because as he dragged all her crap off the roof, he notice that the Renault's roof rack had broken in one spot. He'd been planning to go to Nouakchott the next day, but maybe not.

The only passengers left at the end were me and the 32-inch flat-screen television.

"Blah blah blah blah camping hotel?" Bamba asked me where I was staying.

"Abba," I answered. The guidebook recommended this overlander's lodge.

He drove me to the front door, and then said that I should call him if I wanted to go to Nouakchott tomorrow. I think he said he's at 4675 3233 and that I should ask for Bobacar Vans. But maybe not. Maybe he said "Screw off, you're a lousy co-driver." The entire day's narrative might exist only in my head given my lack of linguistic comprehension.

Except for one thing. The original guy who'd put me in touch with Bamba, the Hotel Sahara guy, had made a big deal out of claiming that Bamba wanted 350 dirhams, not 300. And he's "negotiated him down" for me.

I now tried to give Bamba that extra fifty dirhams. He'd certainly earned it.

But he looked offended.

"Absolutely not." He pushed it back at me and reminded me to call him if I needed him.

I said good-bye and walked into Camping Chez Abba.

Wasta

2011-03-18T18:13:00.009-04:00

I was at the Hotel Sahara at 7:30. But there was no car in front. I walked up the stairs and surprised the guy at the front desk.

"I'm meeting a driver..?" I was hesitant. I didn't have my road legs yet.

He nodded. A minute later, I heard a horn.

I looked out. There was the early nineties Renault mini-van I'd seen the night before. But the man in the gallibya and head wrap thing was gone. This guy wore trousers, a gray hooded coat, and a shirt that buttoned down the front. And he was packing stuff into the vehicle. Including...was that a 32" flatscreen TV box he was piling into the back?

"Is that him?" I had doubts.

"Let me see." The front desk clerk looked out the window. He smiled and waved at the man in trousers.

"Yes, that's him. Go on."

I descended to the street, where the driver, Bamba (I think), took my bag and stuffed it in the back. He was really struggling with that television. It just didn't want to fit.

The only other passengers at the moment were a tall dark man in a blue gallibya and black turban-y thing...a Tuareg, maybe, though I'm not sure how you can tell a Tuareg by sight...and a chubby woman draped in bright green-and-white cloth. She smiled at me from under her headscarf.

As we waited for the packing to finish, a stranger approached me to sing the praises of his hotel.

"But I'm leaving," I said.

"For when you come back."

"I'm not coming back."

"Well, you can 'like' us on Facebook then."

"Does your hotel have wi-fi?"

"You want to know if I have a wife?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

"You are very lucky today. You have the best driver. This is the best driver, right here."

I hoped he was right. Right now, I wasn't all that impressed with the best driver's packing skills.

The TV still wasn't working out, so all the luggage came back out of the vehicle. Bamba and the maybe-Tuareg and the wi-fi guy had a discussion, then piled a bunch of stuff up on the roof and tied it down. The television was now in the back and my bag was on the roof.

Shit. I hadn't counted on my backpack going through the Sahara on the roof. My bag would get filthy. This wouldn't have happened on the bus.

Two more passengers showed up. These were young guys, mid-twenties, in cool jeans and fashionable T-shirts and belts. They wore nice sneakers too. One was from Mauritania and the other from Senegal. They each carried a small overnight bag. Later, they'd explain to me that they were working under-the-table in Morocco—one in Agadir and one in Marrakesh. They were both on visa runs, going to Mauritania overnight so they could renew their tourist visas when they returned to Morocco the next day.

"It's a little hard to explain..." the Senegalese one had begun.

"Not at all," I said. "I used to have to do this when I was working in Kuwait."

Of course, I'd gone to Sharm El-Shiekh, not some shitty Saharan border town on the Mauritanian side. But in principal, we'd done the same thing.

We started at about 7:50 a.m.. Bamba motioned me into the passenger seat, directed the three tall men into the smallest seat in the back, and the plump woman into the middle seat. I tried the seatbelt. The receptacle didn't work. Bamba turned the key in the ignition, then looped his seatbelt over himself, without worry about trying to plug it in anywhere. That can't possibly work at all, I thought, and then followed suit. Not like I had a lot of choice.

We drove a few blocks into the back streets of Dakhla, then stopped on a dusty block. Bamba honked the Renault's horn, a few quick taps.

Two more short, plump, cloth-swaddled women emerged from a doorway. More rearranging occurred. The women plopped down into the middle seat with the other woman.

Bamba lit a cigarette. SHIT, I forgot about cigarettes. I mean, totally forgot. They just aren't in my world anymore. Another home run for the bus.

We drove ten minutes north. Dakhla is on a peninsula and we had to drive north to U-turn and head south. We pulled off the road near the police checkpoint and Bamba cut the engine. Four men sat on the ground in the shade of a truck. Drivers waiting on some kind of police procedure?

Bamba spoke sharply to the the four men in Arabic. One of them slowly rose to his feet, then a second. Bamba, the maybe-Tuareg, and the two truck drivers proceeded to remove all baggage from the Renault and start to pack again.

"Good god," I thought. "We're going to get a bait-and-switch. They're going to put us in a tiny Peugeot." I was thinking about the time that had happened to me and Yancey in Jordan, when we'd agreed to private transport in a shiny new SUV and then been traded down to a Peugeot wagon with five Egyptians and a driver.

But no. Bamba just wanted help packing the roof. The men struggled to pack it properly, and then one of the men who had remained sitting snarled in disgust. He seemed to be the expert on these things, and they all deferred to him. He stood up and starting barking orders and tying knots.

"My bag is going to fly off the roof in the middle of the desert," I thought. And of course the problem with having second thoughts in this sort of situation is that there isn't a helluva lot that you can do about it.

Finally, the packing was finished to the satisfaction of the barking-orders man. We could proceed.

And proceed we did, at least 50 feet to the police point. I pulled out one of my fiches, my printed out travel details that I handed out like candy to trick-or-treating policment.

The policeman sternly took my fiche, glanced at it, and then his eyes lit up. He looked in the window at me, laughing.

"The 99 comic book!" It was my pal from a few days ago, at work again. He waved us on and we drove out of Dakhla.

Car or Bus?

2011-03-17T18:44:00.008-04:00

My dehydration-illness had vanished in the night, and I approached my morning dose of bread and coffee with enthusiasm, then typed away for several hours in the part of the lobby that the hotel wi-fi reached.

I was working on a new invoice-and-pay system for the job I'd just left. I had been the check signer, and there wasn't anyone else to do it, so I had spent a lot of time gathering up info and sorting out a digital system. It was working out well but taking a lot of time as I made various screw-ups along the way of instituting the new set-up.

Fortunately, I had nothing else to do in Dakhla, which is a dusty Saharan town seemingly at the end of the world. My only real mission was finding onward transport. Not so long ago, tourists were required to travel by military convoy to the border of Mauritania, then recently it was done by private hire, and now, rumor had it that you could just catch a daily CTM bus.

After carefully copying down the French I needed from Google Translate, I walked to the CTM office in early afternoon to inquire about this rumor.

Yes, there is a daily CTM bus from Dakhla to the border. It leaves at 9 a.m. It had been running every day for about two or three months now. It's 160 dirham.

"Does the bus go past the border?"

"No, only to the border."

"How do we get across No Man's Land?" I'd read that there were at least two kilometers of nothing in between the border post.

"Grand taxi."

Ah, share taxis waited at the border. That seemed reasonable.

Delighted with this tidbit of information, I walked over to the Hotel Sahara to check on the private transport rates. All the guidebooks listed Hotel Sahara (which is a budget hotel, not the place I was staying) as the place to get a lift to Mauritania.

Hesitantly, I climbed the steps to the budget lodge. The place was full of men, several of them soldiers. I would have been uncomfortable staying there.

I approached the man at reception, who told me his name and said that a ride to Mauritania was 300 dirhams. He suggested I come back at 7, and said he'd check on a driver. I considered a moment, then decided not to pretend I didn't know about the new bus option.

"But what is the advantage of the car over the CTM bus?"

He didn't miss a beat.

"You don't know that driver. What will happen if something goes wrong? Me, I know this driver of the car. So you can trust him."

I considered the absurdity of this for a minute, since I didn't know the guy at the desk of the Hotel Sahara in the slightest. So his vouching for the driver was certainly not anymore helpful than him not vouching for the driver.

"But what if I wait until 7, the driver doesn't go tomorrow, and then the bus is sold out?"

"Are you in a hurry? Why leave tomorrow?"

...

"Okay, I will check at 7."

I walked slowly back to the Regency. I ran into the German-speaking Moroccan guy, who fervently extolled the virtues of CTM in German.

"CTM hat zwei drivers. One sleeps and one drives. Und CTM hat die..." He made a circular motion on an air-dashboard. "Tachy..."

I nodded. I didn't know the word in English or German, but it was that paper thing that goes in the speedometer to confirm that the driver never speeds. I didn't ask if it was better to go slow. Sometimes you just want a driver to hurry up and get the trip over with.

What to do? The bus is cheap and reliable. The driver...will he even go? What is the advantage of a driver? I knew better than to assume it was comfort. We were leaving the tourist-comfy zone, and this meant cars in all states of disrepair, with overloaded roof racks, and far too many people shoved in together. The bus had the advantage of definitely going and of me having a reasonably comfortable seat.

But crossing a border with a bus meant a really long border crossing. That's a lot of people all converging on the passport-stamp guy at once.

I decided not to decide. I'd got at 7 to Hotel Sahara and see what there was to see.

At 7, a tall man in a blue gallibya, his head wrapped in a giant black cloth so you could only see his eyes, sat in Hotel Sahara.

"This is Bamba, the driver," said the reception man. Or maybe it was Bomba.

I couldn't tell anything about Bamba given that he was swaddled completely. All I could tell was that he was wearing reading glasses.

"He told me it is 350, but I told him 300, see, I make this deal for you."

Yeah, yeah, I thought. The driver didn't look all that fussed about it. I doubted he'd said 350.

"Are there seatbelts?" I asked.

The driver affected a shocked expression.

"Of course."

"What time do we leave?"

"7:30. In front of Hotel Sahara."

Okay, sure. Why not.

Still, I had reservations. I remembered waiting for hours for the private transport in Ethiopia once, then finally giving up, catching a truck, and that's the one that was overloaded and turned over in the middle of the night.

The bus probably is a better bet, I thought.

But I was committed now.

And in the morning, when I finished packing, I realized my passport was missing.

I frantically patted all the spots I thought it might be. I thought back to the last time I'd seen it. At the police checkpoint into town.

"What is your job? What kind of editor? Really? What is the name of your comic book?"

I'd put it back into the passport pouch. How could it be gone when all the money was still there? Why hadn't the thief stolen the money?

Well, that put a damper on today's plans. I got ready to walk over to Hotel Sahara to tell the driver I wasn't going.

Then I laughed. Reception. My hotel receptionist had taken my passport when I'd checked in. I'd never gotten it back.

I collected my passport and walked to the meeting point. On to Mauritania!

To Dakhla

2011-03-15T05:42:00.006-04:00

Four days of tartine in a row. Gah.

Tartine is like toast, but it's baguette bread, not sliced bread. I'm not a big bread-eater, but it's all that's keeping me going these days. Every day, I get tartine and cafe au lait (lots of lait, unfortunately) for breakfast. Ever since I hit the Africa continent, it's been bread, bread, bread for petit dejeuner.

This is not all over Africa, of course, This is purely a French influence thing. I'm pretty damn sick of bread. Though I must thank the French, as at least the bread is, without fail, delicious. And the coffee is generally decent. I didn't bother carrying my own coffee works this time, just put some little packets of instant into my pack. The Nescafe guys were handing out free samples on the street one day, and my tenant gave me a Starbucks sample, so I have at least eight days worth of potential caffeine in my pack.

I choked down my morning tartine and cafe au lait on the morning of Tuesday, March 8th, on the rooftop terrace of Le Grand Large riad in Essaouira. Lovely scenery, though the help has to shoo away seagulls once in a while. The weather was a little chilly unless I sat in direct sunlight, and I hate direct sunlight, so I wore my fleece to breakfast.

Back in my room, I packed and re-packed, forgetting a puzzle piece each time. I'm not overburdened, but I am still carry a few zippered packs of random stuff I haven't gone through yet. I have established that neither pack holds my watch, which certainly is en route to New York. So it's good I went to the trouble to get a new band and rehabilitate my 2001 watch. It'll look great in Michael Kraiger's office desk drawer, where it will sit until December.

Today was going to be a doozy. Rather, tonight would be the doozy. I'd booked an overnight bus to the southernmost city in Morocco, Dakhla. Which might actually be in Western Sahara. I suppose it depends on who you ask.

I trudged over to the Supratours bus terminal for the 2:30 afternoon bus to Agadir. This was half-empty, which meant I got two seats to myself. The road wound sickeningly along the coast, up and down some mountainous roads. I thought I might vomit, and looked around for some type of bag, but fortunately the journey ended three hours later, where I changed buses to head south.

I did vomit the next evening in Dakhla. The overnight bus took 20 hours, involved about eight or nine police checks, and a sold-out bus. The passengers liked to toss litter on the ground at any opportunity. And in the bus. The guy next to me threw his ABC gum right on the floor where he sat. I handed out what they call "fiches" to the policemen. These were little coupons of my details, my passport number, my profession. I'd read to be prepared for this on overland websites. It sped the process up when people didn't have to fill out forms at each checkpoint.

The first rest stop was fine, but after that they got seriously skanky. I didn't eat anything after some cashews at 10 p.m., and I drank only sips of water for fear of having to utilize some rancid hole in the ground. I regretted not doing the trip over two days, stopping in Laayoune, but I'd thought it best to just get the hell over with.

In Dakhla, I checked into a swank hotel. That's an overstatement--the Sahara Regency is one of those hotels that can only be considered swank if you've just gotten off a 20-hour bus journey through the desert. It would be a suitable two-star at home. Which hit the spot given my headache, queasy gut, and dehydrated state.

I saw a pharmacist, conveyed my illness in half-assed French, had a long chat in German with a Moroccan man who said I was having an "abenteur" (adventure), and drank an orange juice in hopes of rehydrating. I started eating at my hotel, got through about three spoonfuls of soup, and proceeded to just make it to the ladies room sink where I vomited three times.

Lesson learned. Marie is not quite as sturdy as she used to be. No, that's not quite the lesson. I think it might be "Marie is stupider than she used to be." Not eating or drinking all day and night is stupid.

I went to sleep in my two-star bed. Better luck tomorrow, when I'd awaken with the call to prayer. And see how the morning tartine agreed with me.

Essaouira

2011-03-13T07:24:00.005-04:00

Couscous. I'm over you. Tagine...you're lovely but please leave me alone. Chicken schwarma? You're pushing your luck. Mint tea? We're still friends.

In the end, I lazed around an extra day in Essaouira. There wasn't much in the way of formal sights. I wandered the ancient medina, walked around the city walls, visited the fish market, bought fresh-squeezed orange juice, and sipped coffee at a little coffee shop beneath the ramparts. My riad was cozy and comfortable. My laundry came back stiff and not particularly clean, reminding me that I needed to start doing my own laundry in the sink. My search for a manicure and the
rumored 200 dirham unlimited data SIM led me outside the medina and into the buzzing modern city which was, with its open storefronts, streetside kebab vendors, and small businesses, a good deal easier to comprehend than the ancient chaotic city of tiny rambling alleyways.

I chose the post office at the center of the medina for mailing home my souvenirs I'd picked up in Marrakesh, thinking they were used to tourists sending home silly crap. They were, and the clerk zealously ushered me through the process, barking orders at a subordinate who was charged with putting my package together. Easy.

One afternoon I wandered down to the pier where the fishermen bring in their catch. I paid 10 dirham to climb up onto a preserved city wall, where I had the view of the Atlantic on one side, and could surreptitiously snap shots of fishermen on the other. My reward was a seagull shitting on my head, so I did get punished for my attempt at photos-without-asking.

And I wandered into the spice market, where a young man tried to sell me perfume in the shape of soap. That seems like a good idea, and it did smell good, but I don't even wear perfume in the shape of perfume. He also presided over pyramids of spices.

"How do you get the spice to make that shape?" I have long wondered how this is possible.

"Magic," he whispered. Then laughed and showed me that the pyramids of spice were window dressing, made of glue and some stuffing covered in spices.

I stayed an extra day in Essaouira, because I was still wrangling the new banking system for the job I just left, and trying to figure out how to pay freelancers remotely, and still processing pages for comic books. And because I'm a little lazy, and I doubted I'd see such a comfortable 20 euro a night hotel again for a long, long time.
And in the end, I bought a coach ticket for Essaouira-Agadir, then connecting Agadir-Dakhla, the southernmost major city before striking out into the desert en route to Mauritania. I'd be traveling for over 24 hours. HELL. But I thought I'd just get it over with instead of breaking it up into shorter legs.

I arrived early at the Supratours bus terminal, where I was able to leave my bag for 5 dirham. And I went to the nearby coffee shop and turned on my Kindle's wireless, and this week's New Yorker magically appeared on my Kindle.

Magic.

On to Essaouira

2011-03-12T02:45:00.005-05:00

My night in my warm sleeper passed well, and the tap-tap on the door in the morning meant that the conductor thought it was time for me to get up. My iPhone had told me the same thing, of course, so I was already up and waiting for my 40 minutes overlay in Casablanca.

I grabbed a cappuccino in the train station, tried the wi-fi (as broken as the Beni Nsar Internet had been, so maybe it was system-wide), then moved onto one of those glamorous new first-class trains that Morocco acquired a few years back. I flopped into a big, cushioned seat and relaxed for the 3-hours-and-change ride to Marrakesh. So fast! The trains are good in Morocco.

My final destination for the day was not Marrakesh, but it was the end of the train line. From here to the end of Morocco, it was all buses and shared ("grand") taxis.

But I did want to stop in Marrakesh. I had a mission, to go buy a few trinkets, some folk-art on wooden slabs for the souvenir program I'm developing. But I didn't want to drag my luggage around town. I walked into the information office at the Marrakesh train station.

"Is there left luggage here?"

"No." Ah, okay. So it's more like a US train station than a European one.

I walked to the Supratours bus station around the corner. Not only did they have no lockers or baggage storage, but they also had no tickets left for today. This wasn't surprising—the guidebooks all point out that Supratours is considered the top bus company in Morocco, and you must always buy your ticket the day before. But I had been hoping to get lucky.

I considered my options. I could go to the main bus station and try again. Or forget the trinkets and head to Essaouira on a different bus or in a shared taxi.

But first, one more try.

In the end, I begged the bellhop at the hotel next door to hold my bag for me. I did tip him handsomely, but he seemed to do it out of pity.

Now luggage-less, I walked to the street and hailed a taxi. Good. The guy used the meter without my asking. He didn't know where the hell we were going, but I named the nearest sight (the Kasbah) and that go us close enough.

I negotiated heartily for my trinkets but paid much more than I'd planned too. A British woman overheard the transaction and grabbed the same deal. The artist thanked me for the additional sale, and then the British woman thanked me for the deal.

I walked over to the Djemaa El Fna, the touristy center of Marrakesh. This is what most people think of when they think of Morocco. Snake charmers, vendors, hustlers, henna, and magicians. For me, I was interested in the four dirham freshly squeezed orange juice. And maybe some lunch.

The juice was perfect, but it was too early for lunch.

I got into a taxi to go back to the gare, but the driver demanded fifty dirham.Hey, where's my commission?

"No. Meter."

"Okay, 40."

"No. Meter."

"Okay, 20."

"No. Meter."

He shrugged and motioned me in. He started driving and then said "20."

Whereupon I let loose on him a stream of anger, demanded he stop, and got out. First taxi driver argument of the trip. Not bad.

The next guy used the meter without my asking. Ten dirham back to the gare.

I got my luggage, grabbed another ten dirham ride to the grand taxi station, and bought two places in a Mercedes bound for Essaouira. The usual number of passengers in these cars is six. That's four squished into the rear seat and two into the front seat. This is as uncomfortable as it sounds, so I wanted none of it. I bought the two seats in the front, but my plan to be safe and comfortable was thwarted when I realized there was no seatbelt.

The four teenagers who had bought the back sheet shot daggers at me. They also "entertained" for two hours with their mp3 players on their phones. Joy.

The driver sped to the coast, and just a few hours later, I pulled my pack onto my back and wandered around, hugging the coast for direction, and found the medina, and then my riad.

In off-season, rates plummet. So I'd gotten a gorgeous riad for 20 euros a night. I settled in, showered, then raced up to the ramparts for sunset.

Beautiful.

The Hunt for the Gare

2011-03-10T06:17:00.000-05:00

I walked into Morocco following my memory of a Google map I'd looked up the night before. The rain had left muddy the wide, main boulevard that led from the border, and so I walked along the potholed sidewalk instead of traversing the street, which I'd usually do, since I try to avoid climbing curbs and stairs when wearing a heavy backpack.

Lessee, train station should be just down there and to the left.

There were two train stations in the town of Beni Nsar, or Beni Ensar. (Arabic doesn't have standardized English-equivalent spellings, so it's just phonetic.) One was, according to the Moroccan trains website,) "Beni Nsar Port" and the other was "Beni Nsar Ville." The Port one, according to the Google map, was close enough to walk to from the border.

But I try not to be too stupid, so I stopped and asked a Moroccan man in front of a coffee shop.

"Pardonnez, ou est la gare?"

"Du train?"

"Si. I mean, oui. Train."

"Taxi." He waved his hand to indicate a large distance. A second man, next to him, sagely nodded.

Just then a third man, with somewhat bloodshot eyes and James Dean-style hair (in gray), leapt out of the coffee shop.

"Non, non! Train ici!" He pointed around the corner to the left, where the map had indicated.

The three men then had an animated discussion that seemed to end in agreement. They motioned me up to the left, indicating that "Oh yeah, the train is there."

I followed their instructions, which exactly matched my memorized-map. The wide street I turned onto was line with new buildings, advertising money-changing services and travel deals. I crossed the end of the rail line, located behind a large fence, and stopped, puzzled. Ahead, perhaps another kilometer, were the giants lifting cranes of a seaport. Everything seemed right, except that there was no train station. At least the rain had stopped.

An ATM presented itself, so I got some Moroccan dirham—realized too late that a bunch of large-denomination bills wasn't going to be that helpful, like presenting fifty-dollar bills for a pack of gum back home—then headed back, reversing direction and crossing the tracks again. I went into the next building I saw, which seemed to be official. At least, it had an open door and a Moroccan flag on display.

I approached two men at the reception desk. One of them wore a uniform, which seemed promising.

"Ou est la gare?"

"La gare? Du train? Deux kilometers. Two. English?" He waved his hand to indicate a long distance.

"Oh. Can I walk?"

One of the men replied yes, but the other looked at my luggage.

"No. You should take a taxi. It is only ten dirham. Catch it right over there." He walked me to the door and pointed at a gathering of petit taxis. (In Morocco, little taxis take passengers within town, but grand taxis—Peugeots or Mercedes—travel long distances and cost more.

Defeat. I thanked the nice government officials and caught a taxi.

"Gare du train, s'il vous plais." I said it with confidence, as if I had some notion of where I was going.

The driver nodded and set off. Partway there, I realized I didn't have any small bills to pay the fare. Shit.

But it worked out. When we pulled up to the brand-new, sparkling Beni Nsar Ville station, I offered him my one-euro coins—two of them. That's twice the fare in dirham, so the driver was quite happy with this. And as a bonus, I didn't have to carry euro change around anymore.

I walked into the station and was surprised to see that the gare was bare. I mean, really bare. Like it had just been finished yesterday and no one had moved in yet. The kiosk had no occupants, the counters were mostly unoccupied. There was a security guard, bored on a bench, and one ticketing agent, chatting on his phone behind glass over a counter.

He hung up when he saw me, and enthusiastically undertook my case. Here was a good chance for me to remember the French I'd taken in ninth grade. I'd unfortunately not gotten around to picking up a Lonely Planet French phrasebook in my rush to get through everything at the end of my time in NY/NJ. I was going to regret that repeatedly as I traveled on.

"Je vais a Marrakesh. Un billet, s'il vous plais?"

Eventually, we established that I could have a sleeper on the overnight train to Casablanca, connecting there to Marrakesh. There were no couchettes (shared four-berth compartments) on this train, but there were private rooms.

"May I have one?"

"Of course."

He made a few calls. "The Internet is down." I heard him ordering my ticket, and then the phone cut out. He called again. Near the end of the process, his cell phone battery ran out. He reddened. He removed the battery, clipped it into a charger, and plugged the charger into the wall.

"We wait."

We waited.

After a few minutes, a friend of the ticket agent dropped by. A process was initiated, in which the friend's phone was dismantled, and the SIM swapped out with the ticket agent's SIM. The agent finished the booking process on his friend's phone, and then they swapped back.

I had my ticket.

For four hours hence. I've arrived early so as to have the best chance at booking a sleeper. But the station had no services—no left luggage, no kiosk selling water, nothing but a few toilets. So I sat, bored, appreciating the situation of the security guard and ticketing agent, who sometimes sat together staring at the wall, and sometimes apart.

And eventually, when I got onto the train, I knew I'd be helpless. Where was the right car? Who worked here? I'd been through this on Moroccan trains before. In time, I'd find my cabin and nestle into my tiny closet, alone, warm, and safe for the night.

But first, one more thing.

"I tried to leave from Beni Nsar Port..." I'd told the booking agent.

"Ah, the station that only exists on the Internet." He'd given me a mischievous grin, but no further explanation.

The mystery of the reputed Gare of Beni Nsar Port shall remain a mystery.

Crossing the Border

2011-03-08T04:28:00.005-05:00

I rose to meet Melilla with a cheerier mood than I'd had when I went to sleep. Hotel breakfast was a few slices of toast, a coffee, and some orange juice. Oh well, it was free.

I went straight to tourist information, looking for info on where I could get the meningitis vaccine. I'd balked at the $140 they'd wanted in the States. My last had been in Kampala in 2005 and had long since expired. I'd intended to get it in Malaga, but had been overcome by crushing weight of responsibilities and it hadn't happened.

The tourist information woman looked at me blankly, so I went to two places I'd looked up online. En route, I gazed up at the architecture along the main street. A man named Enrique Nieto, a disciple of Gaudí, had designed many of the art nouveau/modernisme buildings.

Unfortunately, the nice surroundings had little bearing on my mission. Which was a failure. The two places I'd looked up were closed and deserted. The clinic I found on my map sent me to a private clinic, which sent me up a hill. Halfway up, I quit and went back to my hotel for lunch.

In the afternoon, I got antsy. Time to go to Morocco.

I caught the #2 local bus to the border for .75 euros. It started to rain as I walked across the border. Three men tried to sell me the free forms that I needed to go through passport control, but I waved them off and hurried on, eager to get out of the rain. A security guard directed me to the passport control point, where a man asked: "Have you been to Morocco before?"

"Yes, but not on this passport."

He punched a few buttons on his computer.

"Three times you have been to Morocco."

Astonished, my mouth gaped. I recovered. "I didn't know you could see that on the machine."

"The machines know everything," he said. "One day we will not even need borders, because it will all be on the machine."

He stamped me in and I walked through the mud onto the streets of Beni Nsar, Morocco.

Melilla

2011-03-05T15:30:00.004-05:00

I felt a tiny jolt of excitement as my ferry pulled into the port of Melilla. A crowd of women in headscarves buzzed about the exit door, anxious to disembark after eight stir-crazy hours on the Mediterranean.

I was jetlagged and exhausted, but this was significant. Setting foot onto the African continent, even the Spanish part, meant that my trip had started. (It also means I'm really far behind on designing my MariesWorldTour.com site, but one thing at a time.) And Melilla was new to me! I'd never been to a Spanish enclave on the African continent before.

Following the crowd onto the gangplank, into the ferry terminal, and down an escalator, I soon found myself in front of the old city walls.

The road alongside them curved along and led me to my hotel. I'd booked somewhere decent, knowing I'd still be playing catch-up on the wi-fi in my room.

I checked in and got a room number. #328. The hotel room stunk of old sewers. I don't know if you know what that means but it's common in old cities that never quite updated their plumbing. The bathroom had new tiles, and the floor was covered in fake wood veneer, but Hotel Anfora shows it age. I wrinkled my nose a little. I don't mind this in a cheap room. But a 45 euro a night room?

It could have redeemed itself if the internet had worked. I noticed that the signal was locked, so I traipsed back to the elevator and down to reception for a password. Back upstairs. The signal was one bar. I couldn't get on. Back down to reception. I got a new room, where the signal would work better. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I got off the elevator on the third floor and had to laugh. The room was about five doors down from the old room. Needless to say, this scheme did not work.

Never mind. I was hungry. I threw the laptop in my bag and rushed out to find dinner. It was 10:30 p.m. but people eat late in Spain.

In short order I learned that Melilla was and wasn't Spain. Almost no restaurants were open. How could this be? In fact, almost nothing is open. Why, it's against the Spanish constitution!

After rushing around searching for a cafe (I foolishly hoped for one with wi-fi), I went back to my hotel and caught the elevator upstairs to the restaurant.

The waiter told me (I think--my Spanish is pretty limited) that the restaurant closed in 15 minutes. My voice cracked as I said "So I can't get food?" It had been a long day.

He took pity on me. "Sandwich?" I nodded. "Y papas fritas?" "Si, por favor."

I didn't know what kind of sandwich but I didn't care. Then, just to see if it would work, I pulled out my laptop.

Moments later I was downloading my email while munching a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich with fries.

Melilla could have a second chance. Manana.

Shedding

2011-03-03T16:53:00.004-05:00

I threw my old jeans and purple sweater into a bag and went down to the used clothing bin I'd seen outside the El Corte Ingles department store, in front of the Citibank.

I tossed in the bag. That had been my plan, to wear old clothes on the plane to escape the New York winter, then to ditch them in Malaga, Spain.

For a moment, I hesitated. My plan had also been to throw out my winter coat there too. I'd selected carefully, choosing a thin coat I hadn't worn in years. And it struck me that I'd bought this coat from Mango in Barcelona in November of 2004, when the nights got chillier than I'd expected while living there for a few months. From Spain and back to Spain. I'd had to buy an XL size, which had struck me as absurd. In 2004, I was thinner than I'd been since I was 17 years old, due to eating like a Spaniard and living on a sixth-floor walk-up in Barcelona. But Spain has inconsistent sizing.

What if I needed my coat tonight in Melilla, the Spanish enclave I was boarding the ferry to in a few hours? What if it was chilly on the ferry?

I took off the Mango coat, checked the pockets, and tossed it in the bin. I heard it slip in, the gentle slide of fabric against steel. There. No turning back.

I got my daily max out of the Citibank ATM…I was stocking up, knowing I'd go through cash quickly once I got to countries with no ATMs. Then I crossed the street into El Corte Ingles and went up the elevator to the sixth-floor post office.

After spending all morning laying out my possessions and discarding bits and pieces, I'd come to what seemed like a tolerable weight for my backpack. In my rush to make the plane on time, I'd brought too much stuff and much of the wrong stuff. The Pumas I'd opted for weren't working out—too thin, no support. This was bad when I had on my pack, but I hadn't run across anything better during my afternoon whirl around Malaga yesterday. I'd be in sandals soon anyway.

I'd also brought the wrong messenger bag. My old one wasn't quite big enough for my MacBook (I covet the MacBook Air, which is light and sleek and powerful, but I don't cover it enough to buy and ruin a new one on this dusty trip), and so I'd bought a new one. A Crumpler brand named the "Considerable Embarrassment." Seemed like a good idea at the time. A built-in padded compartment neatly swaddled my MacBook, and there were all kind of zippered and Velcro pockets. I'd left my laptop sleeve at home and brought the Crumpler.

By the time I'd arrived at Newark Airport, I regretted the shoes and the bag. The bag was too heavy, the shoes too weak. By the time I got to Spain, I knew I had to do something about both.

The shoes are still on hold, but I'd purchased a new laptop sleeve at El Corte Ingles and now headed up to the post office to mail Michael Kraiger a gift. A nearly new Crumpler bag, conveniently full of my office key, my office access card, and my car and garage keys and door opener (that's not part of the gift).

The post office visit, like any post office visit anywhere, was excruciating and took ages. I started to worry at about 12:15. My ferry was scheduled for 2 p.m. The postal workers didn't seem phased by my anxious checking of my phone for the time. (I'd look at my watch, but I hadn't worn it. Come to think of it, where was my watch? I'd gone to the trouble of cleaning up my 2001 Timex Expedition and getting a new band. But I was still telling time with my phone. Where did I put the watch?)

Eventually, the package went and I hobbled—rushing as much as one can when hobbling on thin soles—back to the Hotel Ibis to pick up my backpack. It was nearly 1 p.m. How early does one need to arrive for a ferry? At least it's from Spain to Spain, not from Spain to Morocco. Officially, I mean.

I hurried down to the port, noting that my backpack was still much too heavy and my shoes still a problem. I ran through my possessions in my head, wondering what was going into the used clothing bin next. Or could the problem be me? Was I weak after five years of sedentary desk-job living? Was my weakness the reason I couldn't carry a reasonable amount of clothing and Doxycycline around the world?

Sweating, I arrived at the port.

Construction blocked the way.

So I made a big loop around and got into the port. And boarded the ferry with 45 minutes to spare.

The ferry was skankier than I'd expected. Not like the catamaran I'd been on a few years ago out of Algeciras. A cockroach scurried around the ladies room. The cheap seats, which I'd booked, were mostly broken, stuck in the reclining position.

I settled in for the eight-hour journey to Melilla. The fast ferry runs in the summer but this was low season. The ferry was barely populated. And this was my first downtime in days. I'd been frantic for so long, winding down my job, getting my possessions out of my apartment, chasing my passport which had just arrived in the nick of time from the Embassy of Mauritania, and here I was with eight empty hours ahead of me.

I fell asleep instantly. My last thought being this: I know where my watch is. I'd had it in my Crumpler bag. I mailed it to Michael Kraiger.

Too Much Junk

2011-03-02T08:27:00.000-05:00

The last few days were a whirlwind of no sleep, frantic day job working, and panicked packing. In the end, the kitchen faucet broke and I had a nice visit with the plumber (who replaced it), I contributed $42 to Jersey City by spacing out on the alternate-side parking times, and I threw everything into my car which I parked in my garage. I called a taxi to take me to Newark Airport and carried way, way too much with me.

A night on a partially empty plane (empty seat beside me!), a transfer in Zurich, and a scramble to try to find the Ibis since I hadn't had time to look anything up left me showered and ready to go hunt for a meningitis vaccine in Malaga.

But I have way, way too much stuff with me. Must cull.

Visuals

2011-02-28T06:53:00.003-05:00

One difference between my 2001 trip and my 2011 trip is the camera gear.

That's what I carried to Africa for my safaris in 2001.

And here's my camera set-up for 2011. I might take my Zoom audio recorder too. I have all my stuff laid out on the floor and need to see how much weight I'm taking so far before I decide.

More Ghana

2011-02-26T09:12:00.002-05:00

Oops.

Today I started reading about the next country on my itinerary. Togo. And then I looked ahead a bit, into Benin.

Aha. There's a big stilt village in Benin. Much bigger and not as out of the way as the one I was interested in on my Ghana leg.

So I'm revising my Ghana itinerary already. Now it's:

April 6: Kumasi to Cape Coast.

April 7: Cape Coast.

April 8: Accra.

April 9: Accra. (visa stop)

April 10: Accra to Lome (Togo).

Ghana

2011-02-25T21:46:00.001-05:00

I'm a bit frantic. Today I worked on sorting out filing some compliance documents for the work 401k, tracked down our unemployment percentage for the new payroll service, threw a bunch of stuff away, and brought home more boxes. I'm trying to get my trinkets and books out of my apartment, since my tenant is going to become two tenants in a few months. They'll need space.

And on the train, I read about Ghana. I'm no expert, but I think I have enough info to plan a trip. We're still pretending I'm racing around, because I need to understand the minimum time it will take me to cross Africa before I start factoring in longer stops.

April 4: There's a 7:00 a.m. bus on Sunday and Thursday to Kumasi, Ghana. Unfortunately, April 4 is a Monday. Let's face it, odd of me getting there precisely that day are slim. Anyway, I can use this as a guide. There are other buses, and if nothing else, there's the shared minibus for 2-3 hours to the border, walking across to Paga, Ghana, then hopping another minibus 90 minutes to Bolgatanga, then to Tamale (2.5 hours) and then staying there or getting another bus to Kumasi (7 hours—early start day).

April 5: Kumasi, Ghana. Kumasi is a city famous for its crafts.

April 6: Kumasi to Takoradi, 5 hours. That's in the west, along the coast. But that's not the end of the day. After that, I get a minibus from Takoradi to Beyin (3-4 hours), in the far west. Because that's the launching point for the trip I'm taking the next morning.

April 7: I'm not really going April 7, because I'm unlikely to be on this precise schedule by then. And that's good, because today's destination isn't open on Thursdays. I'm heading to a stilt village named Nzulezo, which is an hour away by canoe. The trip must be booked in Beyin, where I also have to pay for the canoe trip. The canoe goes through wetlands to the stilt village. I'll have a look around and then the canoe takes me back to Beyin. Then it's back to Takoradi, then on one more hour to Cape Coast.

April 8: Cape Coast is a nice coastal town with an old castle. Sounds like a nice place to spend a day.

April 9: On to Accra, which is only three hours away. There doesn't seem to be much to see in Accra, so my time spent there will be determined by how many visas I need. And then, it's 4.5 hours by bus or minibus to the border with Togo.

*You might notice that I'm not going to Mole National Park. I'm thinking of going on safaris a bit later, if at all. Living in a national park in Uganda kind of spoiled me.

Productive Procrastination

2011-02-23T23:15:00.001-05:00

I'm in full-on panic mode. I don't even have my passport back from the Embassy of Mauritania yet.

The best way to deal with this would be to get to work.

Instead, I made business cards tonight.

Introducing...Marie's World Tour 2011

2011-02-21T13:30:00.003-05:00

I spent my Saturday night moving a ten-year-old site from one server to another, and updating links that have probably been broken for seven years. What did you do?

Planes

2011-02-19T14:41:00.000-05:00

I finalized my ticket today.

Mali and Burkina Faso

2011-02-17T09:11:00.002-05:00

I'm having a harder time planning as my virtual weeks progress. That's because I don't have my passport back yet--it's at the Embassy of Mauritania at the moment. I hope. I don't really know where it is. I should probably look into that.

I am hoping to get more visas before I leave NYC on March 1. I've been collecting visas for months now, but have to get many visas at the last minute or else they'll expire before I arrive in the country giving me the visa.

And because I don't know how many days I'll need to acquire visas en route, I can't plan that precisely after Bamako. Will I be in Bamako a week while I collect visas? Or just two days? And then will I be able to hook up with a small group and a private vehicle when I get there, or will I be spending days on buses?

I won't know until I know, so I'm now into estimating territory.

Let's say I arrive in Bamako, Mali, on March 21. That's a Monday. I could then work on getting visas for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, then head off to play tourist as of Thursday night.

Then stops I want to make in Mali are:

-Segou (3 hours by bus from Bamako).

-Djenne (that's the home of that big mud mosque you see in photos of Mali).

-Mopti.

-Dogon country, via Bandiagara.

I'll just call it ten days, and then I'll head from Mopti to Bobo-Dioulasso (via Bla) in Burkina Faso. I'm estimating arriving in Burkina Faso on April 1, and hoping it's not a joke.

April 2: I'll spend in the town of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.

April 3: I'll take the bus early to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. I'll spend the rest of the day there, then I hope to proceed on April 4 to Kumusi, Ghana. Except I might have to hang around a few more days to get more visas.

So that's where we'll start next. With me arriving late to Kumasi, Ghani. The bus website seems to indicate that I'll be traveling from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. So Kumasi. Let's look at Kumasi next.

Planning

2011-02-16T09:22:00.001-05:00

Why don't I have the Burkina Faso book? I don't remember now.

A Hitch

2011-02-15T19:55:00.002-05:00

I'm subletting my apartment soon, so I need to pack up some stuff in boxes, get my car out of my garage, and put the boxes into the garage, then put the car back into the garage.

But I've hit a snag. All that snow isn't snow. It's ice.

Revised Timetable

2011-02-12T22:05:00.003-05:00

I woke up this morning thinking "What am I, crazy?"

I couldn't bear to contemplate that last leg from Tahiti to Auckland to Tokyo to LA to Houston to Lima to Santiago to Easter Island. Not when Easter Island is four hours away from Tahiti by plane.

So I sucked it up, as the kids, they say. I sacrificed Christmas.

Because my round-the-world ticket is on frequent flyer miles, the only flight available out of Tahiti later than Dec. 4 was on Dec. 25. I'd initially refused that flight, because I didn't want to miss Christmas after ten months away and after just missing Thanksgiving. But then I woke up with a moment of clarity, thought "My mother won't mind having Christmas on Dec. 27 or 28 or whatever," and I rearranged my itinerary again.

So now I arrive in Tahiti on November 21. That's too early. I can barely afford Tahiti.

I have some down time to do...something. Then I can go to Easter Island. Flights are $550 roundtrip and only go on Wednesdays. So I can spend one week in Tahiti, one in Easter Island, or two in Easter Island, or one in Easter Island followed by one in Tahiti.

Then I can go on the Aranui 3 freighter cruise around the Marquesas. But sacrificing Christmas, I can go on the special Marquesan Arts Festival trip. The festival happens once every three years. I hear it can be tough to get a room during this festival. Good thing I'll have a berth on a ship. Just a berth. I'm too poor to stay in the cabins. I have to stay in the dorms. This goes from Dec. 9 to 23.

Then on Dec. 25th, I'll start the long trip home. Tahiti-Auckland-Tokyo-Newark, arriving on Dec. 26th.

I'm giving up Christmas for Easter.

Timetable

2011-02-11T14:11:00.003-05:00

I've made my itinerary, more or less, with the help of a couple of amazing reservations agents at Star Alliance.

I couldn't get myself out of Tahiti anytime between early December and Christmas. So I am going to try to get to Easter Island from South America instead. The run from Tahiti to Lima is pretty brutal, and then I'll still have to get to Santiago after that.

Click here to see what is almost certainly what I'll end up doing. Unless I can get a ticket later out of Tahiti down the road, like if more seats are released.

A Solution

2011-02-07T21:33:00.003-05:00

Will I get to Kayes from Georgetown in one day? If I have to stop short of the Senegal-Mali border, wouldn't that lose me an entire day as all the transport onward to Bamako would be gone by the time I made it to Kayes the next morning, on the late side?

I read my Rough Guide to West Africa on the train today. I came home and opened up the Lonely Planet Mali PDF chapter on my computer. I went to Seat61.com and check the latest on the trains. I read the Lonely Planet Thorntree forum.

All reports agreed.

Kayes to Bamako=pain in the ass.

The train from Dakar to Bamako has been out of service for some time, but the Kayes-Bamako leg is running. Scroll down on this page to read a glowing review of that train journey.

And then I read this, from May, 2010. Eh, not so appealing anymore.

I scoured the guidebooks and the Thorntree. Everyone agreed. Bus or 4x4 from Kayes to Bamako? 12 hours. If you're lucky. The road is being built still, and some of it isn't quite done.

Then I found this, written recently, in December.

The road seems to be finished.

Or if not, pretty close.

March 21: Kayes (or border area) to Bamako. Overnight in Bamako at the Sleeping Camel. Yay! Now I get to get onward visas and then wander off into Mali.

Gambia to Mali

2011-02-06T22:48:00.003-05:00

I've been distracted by the incredible events in Egypt. At first I thought the protest would be put down quickly, and then it wasn't, and then the Internet went off. Blip. Just like that.

That's when I realized that this wasn't just another protest. I tuned right into Al Jazeera English online, and was riveted for days.

But MariesWorldTour 2011 is only 23 days away, and I need to get back to planning. I booked my first night in Malaga, my ferry ticket, and my second night in Melilla. There's no way to book the train tickets in Morocco from here, so I have to hope I get a couchette rather than having to spend the night in a reclining seat. And then I'll be in Essaouira.

So far, I've found good hotel rates on Yeego.com, Agoda.com, Booking.com, and even Expedia. I have some various point balances that will help me get a room here or there, but once I am south of Morocco, I won't be using many pre-booking sites.

Last we checked, I was planning the end of Week Three.

Well, I was obviously tired when I was working on March 20th, because it doesn't work the way I had it at all.

Here's the right way to get to Mali from Georgetown, Gambia.

March 20:
-Ferry off Georgetown back to highway. Catch shared taxi or minibus to Basse Santa Su, Gambia. (One hour drive.)
-Basse Santa Su to Velingara, Senegal. One hour.
-Velingara to Tambacounde. 2.5 hours.
-Tambacounde to Kidira border. 3 hours. Cross border to Diboli, Mali. Border closes at 6 p.m.
-Diboli to Kayes. 2 hours.

Easy in theory, right? The problem is that there is bound to be a lot of waiting for various forms of transport en route. So I may not make the border by 6 p.m. The guidebook does list a hotel in Kidara, so I'll just have to see how far I get.

Perhaps I will be in Bamako by the end of March 21. I'll look at that tomorrow.

Week Three: MariesWorldTour.com

2011-01-30T23:54:00.001-05:00

What day will I arrive in Senegal? Who knows? I'm going to finish my entire trans-Africa plan before I decide which option to choose in Mauritania. I'm starting with Option A, and then I'll add the corresponding number of days if I go with one of the other options.

I know it doesn't seem like I'm staying anywhere long. That's because I'm first trying to sort out the bare minimum I could comfortably get by with. Then I'll go back and expand the trip to fill whatever time is left.

March 12: Early trip from Nouakchott to the notoriously irritating Rosso border post. The ride down there is 3.5 hours (204 km) in a shared taxi. The border is crossed by boat or ferry, and there are a number of unexpected fees suddenly added on, as well as helpful "guides" eager to be employed. Sounds likes a hassle, and the Lonely Planet's memorable line about Rosso is "The town is full of hustlers and garbage." There's the lower-key Diama border not far away, but it is isn't clear that I can get there on public transport. After crossing through the hell-border, I get into another share taxi on the Senegalese side and head to Saint Louis, which is 106 km and two hours away. My goal for this day might be this campground, Zebrabar, or I might stay in town, like at this or this.

March 13: All day in Saint Louis, which will probably include an excursion into the national park.

March 14: Saint Louis to Dakar, 4 hours.

March 15: Sightseeing. Ile de Goree.

March 16: Dakar to The Gambia. Six hours. Overnight in a posh resort on the coast.

March 17: Sleep at that posh resort.

March 18: Maybe I'll take a day trip to Banjul and the Roots island and sleep more at that posh resort.

March 19: I'll go along the north road, which was re-paved a few years ago, from Banjul to the Wassu rocks, 20 km northwest o of Georgetown. Mini-Stonehenge. Then to Georgetown. The distance is 300 km, but most of the information I've found is for how long the ride took when the road was a mess.

March 20: Numbers get a little vague here in my guidebooks. I'll need to get out of The Gambia and into Senegal, which shouldn't take too long. From there, it's 200 km to Tambacounda, and three hours from there to the border of Mali at Kidira. From Kidira, I go to Kayes, and from there to Bamako.

Of course, nothing is telling me how long these legs take, so I'm going to estimate arrival in Bamako, at the Sleeping Camel, at March 22.

Week Two: MariesWorldTour.com

2011-01-28T10:54:00.000-05:00

March 10: This is where I'm not sure what to do. I cross the border from Morocco/Western Sahara early in the day. I can then stop once I cross the border, and stay overnight in Nouadhibou, Mauritanitia. Or I can proceed to Nouakchott, then to Senegal, where I am going to stop for a bit. Maybe here.

So I have four options. Like this.

OPTION A

March 10: Overnight in Nouakchott.
March 11: Nouakchott.
March 12: Early rise and cross into Senegal.

OPTION B

March 10: Overnight in Nouadhibou.
March 11: Board the iron ore train in the afternoon. The wagons are free and these guys make it look fun. But I'm aware of how inappropriate it would be for me to travel that way, plus it would be cold and filthy. But this woman did it. The experience and safety probably depend on who you ride with. The luck of the draw. Or you can buy a ticket for the passenger car, which seemed perfectly reasonable until I read about there being no windows and women being groped. Nothing like cowering in a corner on a cold train for 12 hours so that I can disembark at two in the morning, jump into a shared taxi, and continue for a few hours drive.
March 12: Early morning arrival in Atar.
March 13: Desert trips.
March 14: Desert trips.
March 15: Bus to Nouakchott. (Six or so hours.)
March 16: Nouakchott.
March 17: Early rise and cross into Senegal.

OPTION C

March 10: Overnight in Nouakchott.
March 11: Bus to Atar.
March 12: Desert trips.
March 13: Desert trips.
March 14: Atar to Choum by shared taxi. Choum to Nouadhibou on iron ore train (see above).
March 15: Overnight in Nouadhibou.
March 16: Bus to Nouakchott.
March 17: Nouakchott to Senegal.

OPTION D

March 10: Overnight in Nouadhibou.
March 11: Afternoon video and photo of the chaos as everyone jumps on the iron ore train, but don't get on myself. Then head to Nouakchott.
March 12: Nouakchott.
March 13: Early rise and cross into Senegal.

I guess it comes down to how interested I am in the desert and the iron ore train.

Week One: MariesWorldTour.com

2011-01-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to assess how long I'll need to traverse the African continent starting in March. I have it roughed into my schedule as needing about 12-13 weeks, but of course, that's not based on much real information.

I sat down last night to try to work out how long I really need.

And only got as far as Mauritania before falling asleep.

Here's how it works out so far.

01 March, Tuesday: Fly out of Newark.

02 March: Arrive Malaga, Spain at 12:30 p.m. The daily ferry to Melilla (the Spanish enclave in Morocco) leaves at 2 p.m. so I won't make that. Overnight in Malaga, which is just as well since I'll have jetlag.

03 March: Morning look at Malaga and last-minute kitting-out. 2 p.m. slow ferry to Melilla. There's no fast ferry in the winter. Set foot on the African continent at 9:30 p.m. Overnight Melilla.

04 March, Friday: Walking tour of modernist buildings in Melilla. Afternoon city bus to the border. Catch train at Beni Nsar at 1925, and head down to connect with the sleeper train at Taourirt. Overnight on couchette ($42) or in private cabin ($73). Seems to be impossible to purchase tickets from outside the country, so I might have to take what I can get. Which might be a seat.

05 March: Arrive Casablanca early morning, transfer to Marrakesh train. Arrive Marrakesh, and transfer there to the Supratours bus to Essaouira, which should get me there for lunch. Overnight in Essaouira. Maybe at Le Grand Large, which is on sale on Expedia.

06 March: Essaouira. Second night.

07 March: Essaouira to Agadir bright and early in a shared taxi. Catch a nice bus (again, I'm aiming for the the top-end but might have to settle for what is available) to Laayoune. There's a 1000 bus out of Agadir that arrives at Laayoune at 2000. Something like Hotel Jodesa sounds fine for a night of a late arrival and early departure. I'm tempted to make one long go of this two-day bus ride, but I think it's too early in the trip and too soon after the night on the train to stomach a 21-hour bus ride. Maybe I'll do it.

08 March, Tuesday: Laayoune to Dakhla. Eight or so hours by bus or shared taxi. I'm supposed to carry about five spare copies of my passport to hand out at checkpoints, to make the process go faster. Overnight in Dakhla. Visit Hotel Sahara to arrange for a lift to Mauritania, about 350 dirham.

09 March: Maybe I'll just sit tight in Dakhla for a day. Sleep, eat, wander around.

10 March, Thursday: Dakhla to Nouadhibou, Mauritanitia. Overnight in Nouadhibou?

or...proceed on to Nouakchott, to Auberge Menata.

This is where it gets confusing. How into comfort am I? How lazy? How much energy do I have? If I stop at Nouadhibou, it will be for one night, and then the next day (March 11), I'll take the (in)famous 12-hour iron ore train to Choum. It arrives in the wee hours, and then I have to bum a ride off someone to Atar. By this point, I will probably be exhausted, but I'll need to find someone--maybe a taxi driver or a tour operator--to take me to the local version of Uluru/Ayers Rock, which is called Ben Amira. Or maybe I'd just see that from the train. I need to read up more on Atar. I'd stay in Atar the night of March 12, when I'd probably be completely exhausted, then head to Nouakchott the next day, staying at Menata on March 13 before heading south 3.5 hours to Senegal.

No wonder I gave up last night. Each step requires a lot of reading. I'm going to have to plan this in stages.

More Gear

2011-01-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

I want to have a tripod for night shots, but I don't need much of one.

These are my three lightweight tripods. I'll probably take the lightweight one next to the hippo. But I might throw in the screw-on one too. It fits on any water bottle.

Gearing Up

2011-01-23T11:47:00.003-05:00

Let's talk about travel packs.

Conventional wisdom says to take a bag that can convert from wheelie bag to backpack. And I wish conventional wisdom were right. But conventional travel wisdom also direly warns you against taking jeans on the road ("Heavy! Take too long to dry!") and advises you to buy all kinds of hideous lightweight khakis for travel.

Long ago, I worked out that the best stuff to take with you on a trip is pretty much the same stuff you'd wear out of the house at home. I don't mean heels or business attire. Just whatever you'd wear to meet a good friend for coffee. That's what you want to travel in. And do take a pair of jeans. Throw it in the bottom of your pack and forget it's there until you have to go out at night. A pair of jeans is warm and also can double as stylish. Your country isn't the only one where everyone wears jeans.

Back to my bag. Also known as that f*cking albatross. Luggage is a nightmare. There's no way around it. Want to check something out during a stopover? First, you need a place to securely stash your bag. Having a fight with a taxi driver and want to throw money at him and run? Too bad your bag is locked in his trunk. Stop in for a coffee at Starbuck's? Oops, sorry I didn't mean to hit/trip everyone in the room with my luggage.

Can I do the no-baggage challenge? No, I can't. That's fine if you're traveling for a short time, but I'm not, and anyway, I do like taking my camera and my laptop and a change of clothes, so if you want me to do that, um, how can I put this? Screw off. Go do your own trip and leave mine alone.

My current pack is one I bought online in 2000. It's an Eagle Creek "World Journey" (women's fit) and weights 6 lb, 3 oz when empty. That includes the zip-off daypack. The daypack is just fine...you can't zip it on and stuff it with something heavy, or you'll tip over, but you can wear it on your front to balance out the weight on your back, or carry it on the bus while you main bag goes in the hold or on the roof (don't forget to put the rain cover on it for the roof, to avoid dust). And you can pod-bag with your daypack and a collapsible extra bag. That is, you can stash a pod somewhere, like in a hotel luggage room, while you run off with your pared-down bag on a short excursion.

Nevertheless, I had high hopes that the world of luggage had improved over the last decade. If so, I could shave off a few pounds. Every ounce counts on the road. Believe me.

And I read a few articles that were like OMG GET A WHEEL/BACKPACK CONVERTIBLE NOW, I INSIST! So fine, maybe they're lighter?

No. Smaller capacity and two pounds heavier. That's a shame. I can't add on two pounds. I wouldn't mind wheels. My knees aren't so great anymore and I'm a lot lazier than I was in 2001. But lazier also means not carrying an extra two pounds for ten months.

But what about regular backpacks, I though. Perhaps they'd slimmed down.

No. I can save about five ounces, but that means less tough fabric.

I guess I'll stick with my old backpack then. And as my pal Ray pointed out, I can always buy a new one halfway through when I'm in Bangkok.

The List

2011-01-22T09:04:00.003-05:00

Leaving a job where I'm the main (and only) upper management authority in the hemisphere has turned out to be a little complicated. I seem to endlessly sign my name to slips of paper in the process of altering the banking, contracts, and authority on each aspect. To top it off, I have at least 209 pages of material to generate this month, and then there's the freelance gig that had to be sent to the printer this week.

And in case I didn't have enough to do, I also had to get through the start-up procedures on a comic book and graphic novel packaging partnership I've set up with a friend. We had to learn everything there is to know about corporate structure, settle on a structure, learn about the legal aspects of getting that registered properly, and then traipse down to the Brooklyn County Clerk to get our paperwork filed and notarized properly, get a Federal ID Number, set up the books, then take various slips of certified papers to the bank, sit around, and sign our names for a while longer.

Then there's teaching. Yep, every Tuesday.

Now I have some other looming problems. Like subletting my apartment. Except the bathroom is deteriorated to where I think it's going to be a problem. The old caulk pulls away from the bathtub walls and is covered in mildew. So water might leak into the walls. And some of the tiles have come loose. I need to get the bathroom redone, but the man I was going to hire to do it had a family tragedy, so I may end up scrubbing it clean, caulking, and hoping for the best.

Then there's my own taxes, Federal, State, and property. And the corporate taxes, which I have to get all the materials together for. And I have to generate the 1099s for my company and finalize the 2010 books. Small (really small) business is fun.

I also have to get my visas, which is an ongoing project, and I'll have to scan and convert the guidebooks not available for Kindle, so that I don't have to drag heavy books around the world.

I have all kinds of little things to do too, like finalize my plane ticket, research hotels and the route, figure out what luggage and shoes to take, get old computer gear out of my garage and to the electronics recycling center, make a bag that I can take around the world, sort out gear and clothing, learn some French for West Africa, and oh, maybe I need to do this.

Build a damn website. MariesWorldTour.com, remember that? The main point of this RTW project? Right now, it's ten years old.

Gah.

So yeah, unless you want to do my taxes, rebuild my bathroom, or make a website for me, leave me alone, okay?

Slushy Beauty

2011-01-21T10:54:00.002-05:00

For a brief moment this morning, the snow outside my window is beautiful. Dogs are romping in it and children stand and stare, mouths agape.

But I'm about to venture out. Soon I'll be cursing what is likely to be slush within an hour or so.

RTW Roulette

2011-01-18T09:17:00.005-05:00

I have the basis of my Star Alliance frequent flyer mile round-the-world ticket.

It goes like this:

1) Newark-Malaga (Spain)
(overland)
2) Cape Town-Madagascar

3) Madagascar-Bangkok

4) Bangkok-Tahiti

5) Tahiti-New York.

I get six stops and one open-jaw. The last leg home doesn't count. Or maybe it does.

I get a different answer every time I call. Yesterday, the consultant put me on hold and checked with Star Alliance. They said I have four stops and an open jaw scheduled, and that I'm entitled to two more stops.

Other consultants, during other phone calls, have said that I have either five or six stops already.

I have no reason to believe that one person answering the phone knows anymore than any other person. Therefore, I have no idea how many stops I have so far.

I tried to get yesterday's helper to walk me through what else might be available to me as a stop.

"No, no one on Star Alliance goes to Vanuatu or Tonga. No one goes to Fiji. You can't go to Yap without backtracking. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't go anywhere and I'm tired and I already answered your one question about the number of stops and I have to pee, so will you please hang up and leave me alone?"

Okay, I made up that last bit. But, uh, you already backtracked me out of Madgascar and Tahiti where there was no other way out, no different from Yap or Tonga, and I can see perfectly well that Continental Micronesia goes to Yap, and that Air New Zealand goes to the other places, and if you'd look at the goddamned map, maybe you'd suggest Sydney or Perth or freaking Manila or Bali or Auckland but yeah, that would take a lot of work, wouldn't it? (Marie steams and manages not say this on the phone.)

I guess I'll try again and hope to get someone different on the phone. Two of the people who helped me so far were outstanding.

A High Bar

2011-01-15T15:16:00.000-05:00

So my friend Denise had a birthday. That's not so unusual. It happens about every year or so.

What was unusual this year was that right before her birthday, I got a Groupon offer for a half-price cupcake class in a former funeral home in the East Village.

Outstanding.

We worried we'd get snowed out, as plenty of snow fell the night before, but by afternoon, the snow had transformed Manhattan into a city of slush, so getting to cupcake school was no problem.

We were assigned to mix up banana cupcakes with a couple from Fordham Law School. We learned how to scrape, how to pace adding in the flour, and how you want to add the banana at the opposite end of the process from the flour. We took home the valuable tip to use an ice cream scoop to measure the batter into the baking cups. Two other groups made vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. All of these went off to bake while we wrestled with cream cheese, butter, and sugar to create buttercream frosting.

The hard part was frosting the cupcakes. Here's how the professionals frost:

I guess it takes practice. Ours looked like this.

And at the end, after our group had frosted more than a hundred cupcakes, we each got to take nine cupcakes home.

Which sounds like more fun than it is. I shortly found myself staring at nine cupcakes and wondering what the hell to do with all of them. A few of them are still in the fridge at work.

Cupcake school was outstanding. I am not sure I retained all the info, but Denise and I had a fine afternoon. Later, her kid sat her down and told her that they were the best cupcakes she'd ever made.

Another Step

2011-01-10T18:50:00.005-05:00

The deed is done.

I cashed in 160,000 frequent flyer miles for a 10-month round-the-world ticket.

I have either one more, or maybe two more stops to add. I can change the dates for free so long as it's 21 days ahead of time, and I have to pay $75 to alter the route.

I do want to alter the route already, but the Continental agents advised I ticket ASAP to confirm the trickiest legs, and then screw around with the route later. And do it once, and well, and then leave it be.

Here's the current itinerary.

Newark-Malaga, Spain. March 1.

(overland)

Cape Town to Madagascar. June 3.

Madagascar to Bangkok. June 17.

Bangkok to Tahiti. November 17.

Tahiti to New York. November 25.

I'm not really leaving Tahiti on November 25. But the airline on that leg hadn't published its flights for December yet, so we had to get the latest one we could, with the plan to change it as soon as they release those seats. And I'll probably add Fiji or Tonga in between Bangkok and Tahiti, or maybe try to get somewhere in Central America on the way home.

Or...I don't know. I'm tired of looking at all the options. Someone else got any bright ideas? I can't go in reverse, say the fare rules.

Today's Forward Movement

2011-01-08T15:06:00.002-05:00

Star Alliance was able to add Madagascar to my round-the-world itinerary.

I don't think I need quite this long in Madagascar, but I can fiddle with the dates a little later.

Thanks, Peter, for the push.

Big, Big World

2011-01-07T11:18:00.001-05:00

I'm not too shabby at planning. But when my choices include the entire world, I get as overwhelmed as your average non-passport holder looking at a map of Cancun.

A few days ago, I was definitely going to take a Star Alliance Round-the-World flight on my mileage. This means six stops and only one open-jaw (meaning I have to fly in and out of the same cities except for once, which enforces a hub system on me). I have to fly in one direction which means no flying west.

I was looking at this:

1) NYC-Spain
--ferry to Morocco, overland to Cape Town via West Africa over 14 weeks (that's the open-jaw leg). It's more-or-less this route that Mali's Sleeping Camel/Surfing Camel trips follow, without the southern Africa legs.

2) Cape Town-Singapore.
--using Bangkok as my base, I'd spend at least 3 weeks sleeping, catching up, and going to doctors for whatever illnesses I've acquired in my travels by then.
--Loop up to Tibet via Thailand/Laos/China and then come back via Nepal, making my way to Bhutan, and maybe Bangladesh before using a one-way budget flight back to Singapore.
--Rest up for a few weeks in Ubud, Bali.

So far so good, right? But...what about Madagascar? I'd like to go to Madagascar. What would I do there? This? These? Does Star Alliance go to Madagascar?

No.

Sigh.

How does one get to Madagascar? More research required.

Planning an extended trip requires persistence. Links lead to links, clicks to new ideas, and wham, there I go down the damn rabbit hole again.

Let's say I found a way to Madagascar outside of the constraints of my RTW flight. It could happen.

So then we'll change #2 above to this:

2) Johannesburg-Singapore. We're making that change because JNB is the regional hub. If I end up paying for a flight to Madagascar, it's going to be out of and into JNB.

Back to Asia now. We've rested, recuperated, seen the $13 dentist, zapped all my excess parasites, and I've slept for several days straight. Let's pretend I've gone to the Thai massage pavilion at Wat Po 20 times in July and eaten so much mango and sticky rice that I've got a distinct orange sheen. Then, we've made the loop north and come back south and we land in...

Singapore.

--Singapore to Borneo and back on AirAsia.com. I've been admiring some group trips in Borneo. Some with my old friends at Intrepid Travel, and a few with Canadian operator GAP.
--Singapore to Denpasar, Bali by budget airline. Round-trip. Because after that loop around Asia, I need to sleep some more. I know it looks like I'm sleeping around the world, and I am, but I promise you it's needed. It's on my list of most important planning items. Quit job. Sublet apartment. Get vaccines. Remember passport. Plan to sleep a lot.

And when I'm done sleeping and fighting with pesky monkeys, I use the budget airline to go back to my hub of Singapore and resume my RTW ticket.

3) Singapore-Fiji. Or Singapore-Tahiti.

The Fiji thing is a bit of a whim. People like Fiji and recommend it. If I have a stop left after all this, it's on the top of my list of spare stops.

Otherwise...

Tahiti.

I don't need to go to Tahiti itself. Tahiti is a regional base. My local hub.

From Tahiti, I want to go on a trip freighter-cruise to the Marquesas island on the Aranui 3 ship. I initially thought I couldn't afford this ship, and then I looked at the costs of doing the same trip independently.

I can afford the ship.

Then I'll use my BA or AA mileage to get a roundtrip ticket to Easter Island.

And finally, I'll get to the end of the trip. If I went to Fiji previously, I have only one leg left, and that's from Tahiti to New York.

Damned if I can't make the Star Alliance booking engine do that though. Maybe it isn't possible. Which would throw a wrench into the works, to put it mildly.

At the end of all this, I have another thought that I can't quite shake.

What if I went from Tahiti to South America? And threw away my last ticket, and just went overland, including sailing around the Darien Gap?

Or...wait. I'm down the rabbit hole again, aren't I?

Hippos and Sporks

2011-01-02T14:50:00.001-05:00

Resolved for 2011: Marie will be sillier.

Route Map

2011-01-01T21:49:00.001-05:00

I made a potential route map for my trip, which starts March 1. This might work. I have the frequent flyer miles to get the blue lines free, and then I have to add on the orange lines.

2010: A Look Back

2010-12-31T20:02:00.001-05:00

Ah. Here we are.

Again.

My annual complaint list.

This blog...it's really five years old? Seems like just yesterday I had my inaugural New Year's Eve meltdown, right here with you guys after the worthless German guy split on me after I was in the hospital in Namibia, right after he dumped me for being...well, you know why. All that stuff in Uganda. We all know why, though I can't quite bring myself to say it. Good times.

A year later, I was still pretty raw, though I'd had some recovery time in Kuwait. Not a lot happens in Kuwait. It's a good place to recover. I mean, if some young rich Swede isn't kissing your ass trying to convince you to be his gal so he can dump you five seconds later when his ex-wife yanks the old leash. Screech...whoa...what? Again? Can I please develop an alcohol habit now? Oh hell, I don't drink, do I? No problem, this old friend of mine is in New York over New Year's to help me by...getting drunk and trying to kiss me? ARGH, cut it out!

Yeesh. What's a gal gotta do to get a break?

2007. Where were we then? Ah, yes. The next genius move. Does it even matter? Have we noticed a pattern by now?

My next male-related scheme involved fragile-me looking for something less risky...I'm all grown up now, right? I can just, er...look past someone's weight or hair loss or cringe-worthy picking of teeth at the table, right? And I know...someone who actually lives here. In my country, right across the river. Someone employed at a major news organization. Hey, a job and health insurance! My, how my standards have changed.

This seemed like a reasonable choice, but he might have been worst of all. Okay, second-worst. He was pining away for his ex-wife too. Am I now totally scared off of divorced guys? Yeah, maybe. He even managed to call me at the last minute on New Year's Eve to say he'd changed his plans and was in Brooklyn with friends, so our dinner was off, but he'd be in later to go to that party for a little while, where he'd check his phone the whole time because he couldn't wait to race back to see the friends.

This behavior turned out to be typical for him.

And it still took him six months to dump me. Yes, that's right. Dump me. You heard it here first. MARIE WILL PUT UP WITH ANYTHING.

Gah.

After that, I decided "Screw New Year's Eve," and went to Bolivia the next time. I sat on Facebook melting down in a hotel room while firecrackers went off in the street. Then next year, I went to a large foreign island south of Florida and...well, you know the drill by now.

Melting down in a hotel room. Questioning my choices, beating myself up for having not written another book, beating myself up for not moving forward in some manner and just treading water. For having whatever problem I have that men think I'm some kind of brilliant goddess that would make a great...friend. For not creatively moving forward. For allowing my brain to atrophy as I went through the mechanics of daily routine.

I don't want to sound overly dramatic. Actually, I already have. But I think it's clear that I have a dysfunctional relationship with New Year's Eve.

Not to mention with most men.

This year, I stayed in the US. I am taking myself to a party. No old friends are here to surprise me with sudden declarations of...well, not love, because it was more like "I'm drunk and you're in front of me." I can't say that I'm particularly strong and recovered from my years of whining and being a creatively spent deer-in-headlights. But I'm in my office in New York, and I'm not melting down, and I think New Year's Eve is silly, and I hope to get on the train before the masses do right after midnight.

It's something, right?

Oh, and did I mention that in 2011, I am going to do a 10th anniversary round-the-world MariesWorldTour.com?

That's why I don't care that it's New Year's. Because this year, I actually have something incredible to look forward to.

Family Holiday

2010-12-29T08:45:00.002-05:00

My mother posted this day-after-Christmas photo on her blog. Or on Facebook. I forget.

It looks fine of me, and pretty good of my mother. My sister looks like hell and is horrified at it. To which I remind her that she shouldn't have let her dog eat my shoes when I was 14.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-28T12:18:00.004-05:00

It's THAT time of year again.

God, how I hate it. I spend money, get involved in complex travel arrangements, and the worst part is thinking about what I have done over the past year, which means thinking about what I haven't done over the past year. And I am not the type of person who triumphantly crows about the glass being half-full.

Nope, it's not in my DNA. All I can think about is the unfinished book proposals and the brilliant-but-broken people I know whose problems I tend to make my own instead of running away screaming. (This is also in my DNA. My sister does it worse than I do—hey, look, I just saw a glass as half-full. Maybe I'm not hopeless.)

But this year things are going to be different. This year I'm going to do something about it.

You'll see soon.

The irony here is that what I'm going to do about it is what I always going to do about it. But louder.

Maybe this time it'll stick.

The Bounty

2010-12-25T21:42:00.002-05:00

Christmas, 2010.

I am now the proud owner of three sporks.

Two are titanium. One is BPA-free.

Because a girl can never have enough sporks.*

(*not actually true.)

Class Final

2010-12-22T08:41:00.004-05:00

Here's my final project for my SVA woodworking class.

And here's how I carried it home on the PATH train.

And here's the edge detailing that the teacher helped me with. It's just an angled cut with the table saw, and then a lot of sanding.

Woodworking school was excellent. I will cry every day now that it is over.

There's Always a Down Side

2010-12-18T13:59:00.004-05:00

I almost feel ungrateful for mentioning this.

The guys who developed the condo complex across the street went to great efforts to listen to the community. They helped renovate the wonderful park in front of my building, which is now home to two dog runs, a kiddie water park, and amazing playground, and two newly renovated tennis courts that are always in use. The basketball court is still active, the fountain works, the gazebo gets some use, and they even thought to add a funny crop-circle sort of thing for those of use who appreciate aliens and sit above the park, looking over it.

The lights come on at dusk and stay on until 10 or 11 depending on the season. The park was already wonderful--that's one of the reasons I refuse to go buy a condo somewhere and move out of my friend Yancey's place, which he rents to me. But now the park is even better.

And that's not all. The old nursing school across the street houses an arts center, a day care center, and my eye doctor. The middle part of the old St. Francis hospital is gone, and was home to the mini-golf course over the summer. The hospital tower and parking garage now house upscale condos, a fantastic gym, a wine shop, a kids dance school, and a gourmet-junk shop where you can buy handmade rolling pins and housewares.

I shouldn't complain. These are all nice additions to the area.

But my god...the parking situation!

I already have to haul my groceries and laundry up four flights. And now I get to haul them down the street too, from wherever I manage to find a spot.

Maybe I need a donkey.

Progress

2010-12-16T10:49:00.003-05:00

My table is coming along. On Tuesday, I get to glue it all together. I'll have to shellac it later at home. Did you know shellac is made from bugs?

Self-Preservation

2010-12-14T01:01:00.001-05:00

I recently downloaded and printed out each year of this blog into a single book.

It's not available for purchase to the general public, but my intent was for long-term preservation. Like a scrapbook.

I haven't finished 2005 yet. That one was a doozy. But the others are done. 2010 will be on its way in a few weeks.

Atlas in Softcover

2010-12-12T10:07:00.002-05:00

Check it out—my mother found a copy of my 3-D World Atlas in paperback.

I don't know where this came from or how you buy it. She found it on the used section of Amazon. Maybe it's a book club edition.

Pie School

2010-12-11T14:35:00.005-05:00

First, there was bag school. Then there was Final Cut Pro and Flash class, and quilt school, and knitting. There's been robot school and woodworking shop and god knows what else. It was all part of my master plan to engage myself at home in order to get used to staying in one place instead of being hooked on the daily novelty of traveling. It's worked.

And now there's this.

Pie school.

I loved pie school. The rewards were many. Okay, not so many. I got a pie out of it. A tasty, flaky, tangy apple pie. And I have a skill, or rather a semi-skill. I will have to keep working before I can claim to have mastered this one.

Aunt Karen and family had presented me with a gift certificate for the Brooklyn Kitchen for my birthday. I'd heard of it, but hadn't been, and as usual I was lost in my multitudes of responsibilities, so it took me a while to get around to using the gift certificate.

And when I did, I scrolled through the class offerings instead of buying a kitchen utensil.

And boy, am I glad I did. What fun.

Millicent, whose pie I'd had once before at one of my friend Tamara's dinner parties in Astoria, taught the class. She showed us the trick of working quickly with butter crusts, scraping the surface constantly, and of grating a little ginger in with our apples.

Love, love, love pie school. I'd go back if they had a second pie class.

And on the way home, I balanced my unbaked pie carefully on the L train. There, that mariachi band! Charming, sure...but also a potential pie-hazard. I held my pie tightly to my gut as they strummed by. And then, kids breakdancing. Those feet! Those arms! MIND THE PIE, please.

Pie and I made it home in one piece. I lined the oven with foil, like Millicent said to do, and baked a delicious apple pie.

And on Tuesday, I forced slices off on my students. After all, one thing I *don't* need to do, is eat more dessert.

Clamps and Glue

2010-12-09T07:12:00.001-05:00

My table is coming along. Two more classes to go.

Look, Up In the Sky

2010-12-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

I went up to J.C. Heights the other night to look at a two-family foreclosure. I'm looking for a backup plan, somewhere that my money can go and do some good for me instead of me just slowly spending it.

This is the elevator that goes up to the Heights from Hoboken.

Chill In the Air and On My Feet

2010-12-04T11:09:00.002-05:00

I headed home on the Amtrak the day after Thanksgiving. The train ride was more than 7 hours, and while I was going stir-crazy, I had two seats to myself, a power outlet, and a lot to read.

I thought I'd have time to get a sandwich in Washington DC, but I chickened out of leaving the train when one of the cleaners was vague about when the train would depart.

But one of the Amtrak employees gave me a slice of Bundt cake from her personal stash, so I made it home on sugar fumes.

I stopped by the office next to Penn Station to shuffle through some mail, and headed home. The weather was still nice out, but had just enough chill that when I got home, I changed into the socks that my friend Jessica had knitted me.

Family Snapshots

2010-12-02T20:45:00.001-05:00

This is Johnny Appleseed. He stands outside of Johnny Appleseed Restaurant in New Market, Virginia. Push his button and he'll sing you a song about his origin.

This is one of the souvenirs you can buy inside Johnny Appleseed's. Before you think this is weird, bear in mind that New Market is the site of a major Civil War battlefield and museum.

And this? This is Flash, who jumped up on the dining room table and ate a waffle on Thanksgiving morning.

Thanksgiving Eve

2010-11-28T18:13:00.004-05:00

I was the only passenger to disembark at the Strasburg park-and-ride lot.

"Is someone meeting you here?" The bus driver was concerned.

"My mother is picking me up," I said.

"If she's not here yet, I can wait with you or drop you at the store."

Really?

He pulled into the lot.

"What does her car look like?"

I admitted I don't know. The car is new.

"That's her," said the driving, pulling up to a silver car and shining the headlights onto a woman who looked like my mother even to someone who'd only seen me out of the corner of his eye. He was right.

Mom and her husband and I went to have dinner with Aunt Peggy. Mom's husband took this nice photo of my aunt, my mother, and me.

Riding the Country Bus

2010-11-26T23:25:00.001-05:00

In the end, I shamelessly profiled.

I looked at the clusters of people waiting for buses. On one corner, I saw a suspiciously Shenandoah Valley-esque group.

Let's see, all white people, business attire but not too fancy, one guy with a USA baseball cap.

Spot the redneck, I chuckled.

I then admonished myself that this wasn't really fair. There was only one USA baseball cap, and that wasn't exclusive to rural areas.

I walked up to the group and addressed a man who seemed to have some answers. He was chatting with the guy in the baseball cap.

"Where does this bus go?"

"Front Royal."

"And the Strasburg?"

Yep, I'd successfully profiled. I joined the end of the short line and waited for the bus.

I was surprised at the small number of people riding. There must have been about ten commuters for the full-size bus.

We all boarded and I paid my twenty bucks. Then, the man I'd spoken to said "We have to wait for John."

The bus time change hadn't managed to find John somehow, and he was late.

"I'll call him."

The bus guy called his missing commuter. I giggled. This was a small operation.

"John, hurry! The bus is leaving early today! Get on the Metro and get to Rosslyn as fast as you can."

And so we waited. But we weren't in a good place to wait, and another bus driver approached ours and tried to start a fight with him. Our bus driver drawled back at him in his Shenandoah accent "There's construction up there. I'm allowed to stay here."

The other bus driver suggested that our bus driver get out and settle the score man-to-man. Our bus driver declined.

And we waited.

In the end, half an hour late, John rushed up from the Metro and onto the bus.

"Sorry I'm late."

And on he strolled, with a tip of his cowboy hat.

Gobble Gobble Hey

2010-11-25T11:40:00.005-05:00

Ugh, holidays. I have long held that they should be staggered, so that we are not all traveling on the same days.

Nevertheless, I am thankful this Thanksgiving that I don't have to fly anywhere, because I've been scanned before and seen the results which are *horrifying* and not necessarily for the reasons everyone is chattering about.

Remember, the scanner adds ten pounds.

So, I had to get to the Shenandoah Valley and back. Last year, I caught Amtrak there and back via Staunton. That worked out great, but I realized I could save a lot if I could stand the BoltBus in one direction.

Buses are great when you get two seats to yourself. You can nap. You can spread out your paperwork and get stuff done. You can go on the bus wi-fi and update Facebook every two minutes for the four-hour journey.

But when you share with a stranger, there's never quite enough room. Invariably, the stranger naps-and-sprawls into your limited space. The train seats are bigger, easier, more private. The only thing worse than a bus is a coach seat on a plane.

(Never mind that I spend a great deal of my travel time around the world on buses. Let's just chalk that up to contrariness.)

I'm a member of the BoltBus loyalty club, even though I hate it and all buses, so I strolled up to the stop near my office on the late side and still got on first.

As if getting on first to a bus matters. Hmmm, which small seat should I choose?

I chose a seat in the middle and puffed myself up, thinking large thoughts. "I'm huge! I'm giant! Look how big I am! Don't sit next to me!"

I'm not asshole enough to do what several other small women did, which is throw their carry-on bags across the seat next to them and immediately close their eyes as if asleep. I'm pretty sure you can get BoltBus jail time for that.

The bus still had about 20 empty aisle seats when they let standby passengers on-board.

"Pleasedon'tsitnexttome pleasedon'tsitnexttome ... shit."

At least the man who eyeballed the available seats and decided I was...what? Thinnest? Least hostile? Not pretending to be asleep across two seats? At least he was a thin man.

He hadn't brought anything to read, unfortunately, so when he wasn't staring straight ahead, he was sprawled out. His knee knocked my a/c adapter out of the outlet twice. I briefly felt guilty for tap-tap-tapping on my laptop keyboard while he was trying to sleep, but transportation time is work time for me. I get a lot done on buses and trains.

Though Thanksgiving eve on the BoltBus from New York to DC isn't the best time to realize you have an Illustrator CS4 compatibility issue with Kuwait, but it's not the worst time either. At least the bus has internet access. The train doesn't.

We were lucky with traffic. I'd gotten on the 8:30 bus (somehow--I struggle with alarm clocks) and the big traffic back-ups start later in the day. We pulled into Union Station, Washington DC, before 1 p.m., and I headed down to the little snack stand across from Barnes and Noble. IMHO, it's got the best quick lunch food in the train station. And you can usually find a table.

But before I ate, I made a quick phone call. My travel scheme was to take the commuter bus to the Shenandoah Valley, an area not served by Greyhound. The only trains go north to Harper's Ferry and south to Staunton. The Greyhound to Winchester was discontinued years ago, but my mother had found a commuter bus online, and I could get to Strasburg, which was equidistant between Mom and my Aunt Peggy.

But I'd checked the buses Twitter feed, and I knew there was a schedule change. I'd been planning on getting the 4:05 bus from Rosslyn, Virginia. Somewhere. There was no bus stop or sign, just vague directions. Twenty bucks from an unmarked street corner to a park-and-ride lot in Strasburg. If only I could find the stop.

So I checked the schedule the old-fashioned way.

I called.

"The bus has been changed to 3 because the government let out early today."

"I haven't taken this bus before. Will there be room for me?"

silence.

Then, a little titter.

"YES."

I gobbled my panini and got on the Metro, using all my New York 'tude to shove my way onto the crowded trains. Washington subway trains are smaller and more cramped than New York trains. There is only a tiny aisle in the middle for standers, not like in New York where the cars are aimed at standers.

Somehow, I forced my way on and off the packed cars, and disembarked at Rosslyn, going up one of the longest escalators in the system.

I canvassed the blocks outside the station, looking for a sign.

No sign.

How then, was I going to find the bus stop?

Still Have All My Fingers, For Now

2010-11-23T07:20:00.002-05:00

Bundt is fun and all, but meanwhile, back in the sculpture lab, I've been making table legs.

And I learned all about jointing and planing. By making mistakes. Hot tip: If you try to shove an uneven, big piece of wood through a planer without being careful about only taking off a little at a time, it gets stuck and then you get a big groove in your table leg, which you must then patiently plane out.

West Coast Bundt

2010-11-21T19:46:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday morning, the day after Bundt Day, I rushed to the post office and sent out care packages. I'd sliced and packed tiny pieces of each cake, and sent them off in Priority Mail boxes to a few select individuals.

Steve B got his Bundt-box on Thursday. He arranged the cakes on a plate, printed out an identification photo, and his family sat down to Bundt-taste.

Steve's favorite was the peanut butter and chocolate cake, followed by Roberta's pecan sour cream pound Bundt. Me? I like them all.

Bundt Gallery

2010-11-20T20:53:00.007-05:00

So I made cake.

Lots of cake.

I made chocolate cake.

And peanut butter chocolate cake.

And cherry chocolate cake.

Eve from college sent me a recipe for pumpkin spice Bundt, so I made that too.

Finally, I made a tunnel of fudge.

And Roberta brought over her own cake. So did Otis, for his dogs. Or rather, he mixed it, using pumpkin as a base. I baked it in my oven, because his is broken. I never tasted this year's dog-pumpkin-cake, though last year's dog-yam-cake was a big hit with people AND dogs.

Bundt Day comes but once a year. Damn good thing too. It was exhausting making all these cakes. About a dozen people came over. Michael Kraiger supplied the signage.

Complete set of Bundt Day photos here, including cakes that happened on the West Coast.

Bundt Happens

2010-11-18T10:42:00.002-05:00

My pal Erik sent me this photo of National Bundt Cake Day celebrations.

Happy National Bundt Cake Day

2010-11-15T22:28:00.000-05:00

Naked Bundt

2010-11-14T11:26:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again! National Bundt(R) Cake Day is tomorrow, Monday the 15th.

Here's my first effort of the morning, though it's cooling and unadorned at the moment. This is going to be a peanut butter and chocolate Bundt cake, once I figure out how to make peanut butter frosting.

Saturday on Snake Hill

2010-11-13T12:43:00.001-05:00

Boo-hoo, last week was so gray and dark.

Rainy, overcast, and I couldn't get out of bed in the morning because it was so dark.

Then on Saturday, the last day of Daylight Savings Time, the sun peeked out, illuminating the red and gold leaves on the trees in the park in front of my apartment. My mood changed from gloomy to antsy. What could I do to get out of the house? I had a lot to do...I couldn't go far.

Snake Hill.

Rising over the highway and railroad tracks heading from Secaucus into Penn Station is a giant rock. It's nice granite, and many have tried to destroy it over the years. Not out of spite, but because it's useful for building. There's been a mass cemetery and a sanitorium in its shadow.

Today there are baseball and soccer fields at the base of Snake Hill. I drove over and searched for a way up the rock. I'd missed the annual hike that the local conservancy hosts, which was in September. I'll be back in the future, someday when I get my act together and register in time.

Here are some photos of my morning wandering around the base of Snake Hill.

New Hat

2010-11-10T08:34:00.002-05:00

I agonized for a few weeks over this hat. $72! That's a lot for a hat.

Will I wear it? Will I lose it?

In the end, two of my male friends separately pointed out that the hats they have bought have been a lot more than $72. We're talking hundreds for fedoras.

So, fine. I went down to the hat store yesterday and bought the hat.

I hope I don't lose it.

Luang Prabang, 2000

2010-11-08T07:39:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine is living in Singapore with her family. The whole family recently took a trip, stopping first in Cambodia, then Luang Prabang, Laos, then moving on to Hanoi and Beijing before returning to Singapore.

Unfortunately, their camera, phone, and laptop were stolen from their hotel room. I'd been looking forward to their photos, but instead contented myself with going back into my archives to scan in some of my photos from a 2000 trip I took to Luang Prabang with Intrepid Travel.

Once is Enough

2010-11-04T09:23:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to get to the White House Sub Shop in Atlantic City for, oh, a decade or two. Ever since I first read about it in the 1992 book "Roadfood."

"The White House is a landmark for sandwich connisseurs; and like the cheese-stead shops of Philadelphia, it boasts a stellar clientele...(snipped)...These sandwiches, let us tell you, are elite eats...(snipped)...The White House Special is a tide of cold cuts—Genoa salami, ham, capicola, and provolone cheese—all rightly packed inside the loaf, lubricated with olive oil, decorated with lettuce and bits of sweet pepper."

And why hadn't I gone to it before? I don't know. I just never got around to it.

So on Friday, after visiting Lucy the Elephant, I caught the #505 bus from Margate back to Mississippi Avenue in Atlantic City, and walked up the block to the White House Sub Shop. I was alone, so I was able to walk in and sit at the counter after only a few minutes wait.

"What's the difference between the Italian and the Special?" I asked the server.

She shrugged. "Double meat and cheese in the Special."

"I'll have the regular, in a small size."

Here is the small size.

Oh. Oh my. Double oh my on a stick.

I wasn't even able to get through half. Which is just as well, as my medical doctor friend Lainie pointed out "That sandwich should come with a side of Lipitor."

I felt a little queasy—I'm not a big fan of nitrates—after I ate, and that might explain the brief mania that took hold of me when I then walked over to the Clark's outlet shop nearby and bought two pairs of shoes. I took a look at my phone (who looks at watches anymore?), noticed the time, and hurried to Caesar's to run through my free slots voucher. I won $9.75, and then used two of those dollars to catch the Atlantic City jitney back to Tropicana, next door to my hotel. I picked up my bag from the bellhop--another dollar, my $9.75 is going fast—then went to the Atlantic City Hilton to catch the skanky Greyhound back to Port Authority.

Which was even skankier than the southbound bus had been. Wifi? No. No wifi. Looking at the bus, I should just be glad it had basic safety equipment and a running engine.

Home again. Aside from one small stop.

I hurried from Port Authority, dropped my overnight bag off in my office, and went to see Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice. THEN, home again, from a long but entertaining couple of days.

Elephant Safari

2010-11-01T22:57:00.001-04:00

I got up just before sunrise, jumping out of bed and throwing back the covers, to check to see if the Atlantic City hotel I was in had bedbugs.

I happen to be an expert at bedbug spotting. That is, I can see wiggling spots of blood at the crack of dawn. Yes, I know this from experience. Travel enough and sooner or later they get you.

There! What's that?

Oh. Lint.

No bedbugs. The hotel was new and clean. It probably had opened up after the Great Bedbug Scare of 2010.

photo(shop) by my friend Al

I coughed up the ten bucks or so for the hotel breakfast, noticed too late that the shitty hotel across the street had a $3 breakfast advertisement on its roof, and then headed out to the beach.

Lovely. Deserted. Eww, sand.

I scampered right back up to the boardwalk. Or rather, Boardwalk. The walkway of planks isn't just any old boardwalk. It's THE Boardwalk. The original. Named Boardwalk. Like in Monopoly.

And I wandered up, passing Tropicana, Boardwalk Hall,and Chicken Bone Beach.

I love Atlantic City in the off-season. There's something about a summer resort town being empty that appeals to me.

But I wasn't here to visit Atlantic City. I was here to go inside Lucy the Elephant.

I've been to the outside of Lucy twice, and taken lots of photos of her. But I've never been inside.

And who wouldn't want to go inside a 65-foot-tall wooden elephant?

Lucy is a few miles away from A.C. in Margate City. I'd looked up the bus route on NJTransit.com, but that didn't stop me from getting on the #505 bus that terminated at Franklin Avenue instead of the #505 bus that went all the way down past Lucy.

I knew we weren't that far away, because I spotted a telling water tower.

I hoofed it from Franklin Avenue to Lucy, which was far enough, about a 20-minutes walk.

Lucy opened at 11, and I got a tour of her guts, before catching the bus back to Atlantic City to get lunch.

Here are some photos I took of Lucy the Elephant.

Overnight Down the Shore

2010-10-31T09:40:00.000-04:00

The phone across the aisle rang—loudly—all the way to Atlantic City.

And the bus sure was skanky. I'd been fooled by the Greyhound Lucky Streak website, which shows sleek wi-fi buses that feature power outlets in each row. Before you laugh too hard at me, note that BoltBus manages these things. And Greyhound owns BoltBus.

But Greyhound can dress up their websites but they can't dress up their buses. All skank, all the way down the Garden State Parkway.

When we turned east onto the Atlantic City Expressway, I started to get excited. At what, exactly? I really have to get out more.

I'd chosen the departure that left at 5 p.m. for Caesar's. I'd scored a $50 room at The Chelsea, a new four-star boutique hotel near the Tropicana. Which was a hike, I knew. If I'd taken the Academy 5 p.m. bus, I could have gone straight to Tropicana, but I'd elected to go Greyhound on the logic that they had wi-fi (joke was on me), and I didn't know what the situation would be at my hotel. Many hotels charge a fortune for wi-fi, and then I'd just use my phone for internet.

(Note to self: find out how to tether my phone so I can use my laptop with it. I could do this in 2002 with my Motorola phone and Verizon. How hard can it be with modern tech?)

On arrival at Caesar's, everyone on the bus got a voucher good for $25 worth of slots. But first we would have to go to the Total Rewards desk and sign up for the loyalty program.

What the hell. I did it.

The man behind the desk was good-natured about my probing questions. Could I turn in the voucher for cash? No. Could I use it at more than one machine? No. The deal is: You use it once, on one machine, or maybe come back later and use the same machine. The original $25 you never get back as cash. You only get your winnings on the $25.

I'd come back later for the slots. I pocketed my new Total Rewards card and my voucher, and walked down Boardwalk to my hotel.

To my right were the dark, closed T-shirt shops and salt water taffy stores, dwarfed by neon-lit casinos. To the left was the giant sand dune, behind a railing. Just beyond is a beautiful beach and the Atlantic Ocean, but I couldn't see it from here.

I walked to Tropicana, then on to my hotel.

I stopped, blinked.

Oh.

The Chelsea is the old Holiday Inn. I've stayed there twice before, once with Turbo and once with Herr Marlboro. Given a choice, I'd have avoided it.

But I had prepaid on Priceline, and actually, it was a decent hotel even when it was a Holiday Inn. So I shelved any sentimentality, and headed through the revolving doors to Reception.

Oh, and wi-fi at The Chelsea? It's free.

The Quarter at Tropicana is intended to evoke Havana. To which I can only chuckle and suggest that the designers have never been to Havana.

Riding the Dog

2010-10-28T17:24:00.004-04:00

Boarding the Greyhound for the 2.5 hour ride to Atlantic City, I score a seat to myself. A minute later, a tall, athlete-sized man leaves the seat he'd chosen next to another man, and "excuses" the hand bag I'd plopped down next to me when I'd heard the bus door close.

I am the smallest person left with a double seat.

He sits on the corner of my jacket, then opens his newspaper. His elbow pokes my forearm as he turns the pages.

Seven rows up, a tiny baby howls. Why the hell is a near-newborn on a casino bus?

A phone ring--loudly--across the aisle, and a man answers it.

"Hello? What? Stand still, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. What?"

We're in the Lincoln Tunnel. Not the wisest place for a phone call.

It occurs to me that I hate people sitting next to me. In fact, I hate the bus. I love trains, ships, my car. But I hate the fucking bus. This does not bode well for my future of travel. After all, I specialize in public transport.

Using My New Hand Saw

2010-10-28T01:01:00.002-04:00

I made my first dovetail joint last night in woodworking class.

Woodworking school is SO much fun. I'm not sure why...perhaps it's because I get to do something totally different than what I do most of the time. I love it.

I Didn't Eat the Ears

2010-10-25T08:46:00.003-04:00

Last night, I went to Tamara's house for dinner. I'm not big on pork, though I like the really unhealthy kind (bacon). But I had to see this.

It's creepy, sure, but there's nothing wrong with having reality staring you in the snout. Best to understand the food chain, after all.

Just in Time for Holidays

2010-10-21T15:29:00.000-04:00

My friend Ursula stumbled over this today. It's the 3-D Atlas for sale on Mindware.com. Glad to see these are back in stores. They became scarce last Christmas.

Saturday Night

2010-10-18T10:36:00.001-04:00

I had to go to a wedding at 5:30 on Saturday.

The couple had been kind enough to have the wedding in Manhattan. At least I didn't have to fly anywhere and stay in a hotel.

At 3 p.m., I went to my go-to wedding outfit, and learned that I've been eating too many paninis.

Damn. Too small.

In a panic, I tore through my closet. Hey, whaddaya know. I still have the formalwear I bought for the QE2 in 2001.

I ended up with a shirt I bought at Lingo (a shop on 19th Street) last year, matched with a skirt I had made in Hoi An, Vietnam, in 2001. A dash to the mall resulted in $12 stockings and $5 shoes.

It worked out, even though I arrived late and nearly missed the ceremony.

The wedding was in the Puck Building, in my friend Tom's old office. It doesn't look like an office. It looks like an open loft.

Nice view.

I Am the Person Your Mother Warned You About

2010-10-17T08:13:00.003-04:00

My Google Alerts went off this morning.

Amusement.

Lathe and Laundry

2010-10-16T10:52:00.000-04:00

I'm overdoing it, as usual. This past week, I wrote three short articles on Atlantic City for the AOL SEED site, taught my class, got a freelance project to the printer, saw a gamelan opera, and did a half-dozen other little things, and today I have to go to a wedding.

On Wednesday nights, I have woodworking class at SVA. This is scary, because we use big power tools, but it's also utterly engaging, because it's so different than anything else that I do.

Unfortunately, woodworking class comes with homework. I took a few hours yesterday to do this week's homework, which was to make a mallet out of wood. We'll use these mallets to whack our chisels. My Friday night plan was to lathe at woodworking class, then head to the laundromat with my two weeks of dirty clothes and sawdust.

Here's my starting point. This isn't really a solid block. It's the piece we cut last week with the chop saw. We glued the two halves together and clamped them.

Progress! My block of wood is now round-ish.

This looks sort-of mallet-like. I really needed to work on it some more to smooth it out, but I was afraid I'd do more harm than good.

I never did get around to laundry.

Heads or Tails?

2010-10-13T06:03:00.000-04:00

On Sunday morning, I was trying to decide if I should go to an intermediate Photoshop workshop (no), or to finish my freelance assignment due Monday before writing my other freelance assignments due a day-and-a-half earlier, or to the comic book convention to talk to future possibilities (and maybe even boys, if I could find some single, age-appropriate ones).

"Heads, I work. Tails, I go to the con."

And that's when I saw this in the 14th & 8th subway station.

Confused Agendas

2010-10-10T08:06:00.000-04:00

Last year at New York Comic Con, I bought a cat-eared hat. A man in line at the movies flirted with me over my cat-eared hat a few months later.

This year, I bought a skirt at the con.

Not art, not comics, not Lou Ferrigno's autograph. Clothing.

They had a print with little dogs instead of this big blue and black head, but they only had a small. Sniff.

Be Warned

2010-10-07T07:23:00.000-04:00

This sticker adorns the top of the planer in the wood shop in class where I am learning woodworking.

Yikes.

And here is the wood I started with last night. We all use the jointer to shave level one face, then used the fence on the jointer to shave level one side. Then we got to rip the other side on the table saw. Sometime today or tomorrow I have to go in and independently chop-saw the board in half, then wood glue and clamp it together.

I don't know when I'm going to do this. I have a job, teaching, this woodworking class, two freelance comic book jobs (one of which is in hardcore critical mass this weekend), three small freelance writing assignments due immediately, a two-day-long Photoshop workshop this weekend, and a comic con on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that now is a really good time to not ask me for anything. I should have my own warning sticker. Caution: Contents May Bite Your Head Off.

And last, here is the type of table I am learning to make by mid-December.

New Fun With Spam

2010-10-05T21:16:00.005-04:00

I was horrified that you could download my books from servers until Tom pointed out that these aren't even the books. These are what he called "dynamic PDF spam."

I'm impressed. What a stupid way to get people to your...whatever you're trying to get them to. To sign up for your server? I must be missing something.

Like Every Sunday

2010-10-03T14:32:00.002-04:00

Today is J.C.'s artist studio tour day, as well as being a beautiful sunny day with perfect slight autumn chill. A great afternoon for wandering the streets and peering into people's homes to see their paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs.

Unless, like me, you're bogged down with a half-dozen project all due immediately.

Still, certain things must be done. Like this:

At the pizza place, I interrupted the chatty old guy holding up the counter to ask for a slice. The proprietor slid a slice onto a spatula and tipped it into the brick oven, while I pulled out my phone to check my mail for the few minutes it takes to heat up a slice "to go."

"blah blah blah?"

Startled, I looked up. The old man was looking expectantly at me. He had said something to me.

"What?"

"You looking at the art today?"

He was just being polite. Nevertheless, there was only one way to answer that.

"No. I'm doing my laundry."

"..."

Oh.

Souvenir Shelf: Tampon

2010-10-02T08:15:00.001-04:00

My friend Stephanie is headed to Hanoi soon with her family. That reminded me of this stamp that I bought in the old quarter of Hanoi during MariesWorldTour, on a street devoted entirely to tampons, which means these stamps.

I was worried that my little running Marie character might be too complicated for the stamp-makers, but take a look at this blog, and you'll see photos of much more complicated images.

I went back to MariesWorldTour and looked for photos of this stamp, but there were none. I remember why...it was 2001. A different technological world. Now, I would just shoot it with my digital camera and upload it via my netbook or MacBook in my hotel room, using wireless internet. Or I'd photograph it with my phone and upload it via the mobile networks.

In 2001, there weren't many people doing online travel narratives, because it was hard. You couldn't just type into Blogger or WordPress. I coded entries in HTML as I went. Digital cameras were new and heavy, and batteries ran down fast. You couldn't get the files off your camera without installing drivers on computers, which no internet cafe would allow. There was no point in putting your files on your laptop as there was no such things a USB sticks and you couldn't hook your own computer up to the internet. No wireless.

I could have gotten the images off the laptop a few at a time using a floppy disk, but no internet cafe would let you put your own floppy into their system, for fear of viruses. In the end, I left my laptop and digital camera at home. I shot film, and scanned in images in the computer centers of the world, using various quality scanners and half-assed imaging software. And video? That was out of the question.

What a difference a decade makes.

You've Got Mail!

2010-09-30T12:10:00.001-04:00

I trudged into my building last night, exhausted, and almost tripped over a box in the front hallway.

My name was on it! I dragged the box upstairs to my apartment.

Maybe it's my tools for woodworking class!

I'm taking woodworking this semester. I wanted to take something more hands-on than Flash, Dreamweaver, or Final Cut Pro. I look at a computer enough as it is.

Drawing? Ceramics? Ah...woodworking.

I am interested in ceramics as well, actually, but I decided to take woodworking since it's a more unusual offering. There's a ceramics studio in J.C., and I can sign up for their classes anytime. Woodworking is harder to find.

I have a metal combination square on order, but my other tools are here now. I already owned a chisel, safety goggles, a vise, various handsaws, and a small army of tape measures, but I'm starting off fresh, with well-made and lightweight tools.

And I'm now the proud owner of a double-sided Japanese handsaw. I hope to learn to carve out dovetail joints. And by the middle of December, I will reputedly know how to make a table.

We'll see.

Guest Post: Michael Kraiger

2010-09-27T17:09:00.003-04:00

Currently, Marie is super-busy and despairs over not having enough time to dedicate to writing her blog and worries that her loyal readers and the random cyber-stalker or two may grow bored with the occasional photo of a giant hot dog on a chair rather than an actual post.

So, here it is, Marie's blog written by one of the supporting cast. I'm the guy who turns up when she mentions baking pie, watercraft in the meadowlands, hiking small mountains or lifting heavy objects.

I'm not sure about this whole blogging thing, so I decided to give a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at the gal-on-the-go, Marie.

Mornings are a sacred thing to Marie, so her whole morning routine is shrouded in secrecy. I have sussed out that it involves an individually brewed cup of coffee (she buys the good stuff) and some very important ‘me’ time. House guests take note: When staying with Marie, it's best to pull the covers up over your head and pretend you're sleeping until she leaves for work, or I'll never hear the end of it.

Marie arrives at the office and immediately dives right into the day—Facebook, Sitemeter and whatever yelling at freelancers or "Can you believe it?" about the incredible nonsense work that needs to be done. Once work is underway, there's room for a little office banter, and the topic usually falls into one of two categories: how incredibly stupid the general population is (this based on comments on news stories or random snippets overheard on the elevator) or what incredibly cool things she's done since I last saw her. This is my favorite topic because I rarely have cool things that I've done since I last saw Marie.

Marie doesn't get nearly enough recognition for the work she does. As an editor in chief she's dealing with the home office in Kuwait, freelance creative types in England, Brooklyn, Des Moines, Salt Lake City, Arizona and a few scattered about California too. She’s juggling the schedule of a weekly comic strip (4-5 freelancers involved) and a comic book (5-8 freelancers involved) while providing answers to the aforementioned home office, various international magazines, an errant consultant, a couple of lawyers and whatever other weirdness slips in the door. She also knows the production end of things, and frequently corrects the goofs that occur, whether incorrectly drawn uniforms or misspelled word balloons.

And then one o'clock rolls around and I hear... "What am I going to eat today?"

After her panini is consumed with chips and a pickle—once in a great while it's pasta or a salad but mostly panini—it's right back to Facebook...I mean work.

Around three o'clock, I hear the familiar, "I'm sleepy, I think I'm allergic to dill."

That's when I jump in with the offer to fetch some coffee, and Marie says, "Good coffee or the crappy stuff they have in the kitchen?"

Back to work for another couple of hours and we're dealing with the answers to all the problems of the world (in the comic book) and the mental breakdowns of our close personal friends.

Then it's quitting time and Marie is off to who-knows-where, a concert or play in the park, or the class she teaches at SVA or perhaps it's a robot-building class she's taking in Brooklyn, or a reading by an admired travel writer. Sometimes it’s dinner or coffee with a friend, but often enough it's a short jaunt to an out-of-the-way corner of our great metropolis for an examination of something odd.

Two other things you should know about our gal-on-the-go, she reads an awful lot and her calendar is chock-full. I've seen it on her desk and the next few weeks are all scribbled in. So no complaints about this fill-in blog. She's busy.

—Michael Kraiger

It All Evens Out

2010-09-25T22:20:00.002-04:00

I scheduled too tightly this weekend, and managed to miss the movie at the 1929 movie palace last night, missed yoga today, and tomorrow I'll probably forget to do about 30 things I should have done today.

But I ran across this giant hot dog on a chair on the street. So I guess it's all okay.

A Half-Assed Offer

2010-09-24T13:15:00.000-04:00

I nearly bought a house last week, but chickened out after seeing how wrecked the interior was.

The house is a wreck, and I've had my eye on it since the end of 2005. It's a few doors down from my old condo up the block, and every time I've gone into an open house there, I've left flabbergasted by the state of the property. There are holes in the roof, even.

But the price was finally low enough that I wanted it. My friend Dmitry (Jessica's husband) went with me, since he is training to be an architect. And we checked out the house.

The agent gave me a hundred pages of disclosures.

I took them home and read them.

Mold. Collapsing extension. Collapsing roof on extension. Incorrectly installed French doors. Collapsing stair railing. Crooked floors. Leaky windows. And so on.

I chickened out. I put in a back-up offer, lower than the main offer. I couldn't see spending the main offer amount on something that needed gutting.

Then today, I went to look at a brick house. It's a lot bigger, nicer, and pricier. Someone was killed there two years ago. And it still needs a lot of work.

I thought about my old block, and the funny old men and women who have lived there since they were born, and the sense of community, and the brilliant characters that sit on the stoops...

...and I called back the agent.

"If the other offer falls through, I want it."

And now we wait.

Name that Mini-Corporation

2010-09-22T15:04:00.003-04:00

My friend Stuart and I are involved in packaging a graphic novel for a third party.

Towards this end, we'll be needing to form a two-person company so that we can do our taxes correctly as well as pay each other and our artists.

And so we must name ourselves. The current frontrunner is Botfriend Books...which is an inside joke based on a typo by someone I last saw in 1982 or 1983. He doesn't even know he might have named our company. Yet.

(Oops, now he knows.)

So...who wants to name our graphic novel production company? Or does "Botfriend Books" work for you? My friend Jessica runs Friendly Robot Studios, so perhaps she'd think we swiped her, and we wouldn't want that.

The Road to Sharm

2010-09-20T08:40:00.002-04:00

After the events of last week, where an Egyptian newspaper used Photoshop to move their leader to the head of this pack, Yasir issued a challenge.

"Make your own reality," he said.

So here. In my reality, a hippo shall lead them.

Africa Bus Travel Addendum

2010-09-19T10:05:00.001-04:00

One of my blog posts that frequently land strangers here is this one, from 2005:

Blueprint for Independent Africa Travel.

The post is not the most exciting, but the information is useful. Or was useful, until I just now read that the most reputable bus line in East Africa—Scandinavia Express—went bust earlier this year.

But the news isn't all bad. I checked the bus schedules on the website for The Eye, a free monthly magazine in Kampala, and found links that led me to this:

Kampala Coach not only services similar routes to the now-defunct Scandinavia, but it goes a step farther and provides, or plans to provide, transportation from Nairobi to to Ethiopia.

A quick Google search indicated a lot of people talking about this bus. Perhaps it is in the works and not yet active. Perhaps it runs once a week. Perhaps it never existed at all. But the map on the Kampala Coach site means...well, your guess is as good as mine, but mine thinks there might actually be a bus here, maybe on Wednesdays when there are not bandits along the road.

The Marsabit to Moyale leg was one of the last puzzle pieces needed for an almost seamless public transport route from Cape Town to Cairo. And by seamless, I mean regularly scheduled and enclosed, with actual seats. This still leaves tough parts in Sudan. But you need to have some fun, right?