Too Tired to Drive

I took Henry the Ford Taurus--or rather, he took me--to Virginia today for his annual physical. I keep meaning to switch his registration to New Jersey, but then I keep leaving the country and it doesn't seem to matter what his plates say when all he does is sit in the garage.

He passed with flying colors in spite of his advanced age. We then went to visit my family.

It's after 11 at night and en route to JC, I find myself sitting in the Maryland rest area that has wi-fi, along I-95. Which is great. But the vending machines are broken and I kind of need a cup of coffee, because I'm about ready to fall asleep behind the wheel.

Maybe I'll just crawl into the back seat and nap. Henry doubles as a camper van.

Pleasant Manners

Welcome to my blog! My name is (obviously) Marie. I like to live in other countries, write books, and make comic books. Sometimes I am able to do all of these things at once.

No, actually, this name tag is left over from when I was 16-18 years old and worked at Roy Rogers. It's a fast food restaurant, then owned by Marriott. This particular branch was in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia.

Maybe I'll try wearing this badge to my office.

It Isn't Easy Being Green

At the end of the Lonely Planet presentation last night, a quiet woman in the audience posed a question about green travel.

The Wheelers said something along the lines of supporting responsible travel, took one more question, and then signed books.

Which is a shame, because I wanted to ask something big.

"How do you reconcile promoting recreational air travel with being green?"

There isn't an answer to this question, but I like to hear what people say, because I am still forming my own views.

Plane travel is regarded as the devil of CO2 offenders, but it isn't really an issue with much awareness yet in the US. So let's look at a few facts.

-How bad is flying for the environment? Undeniably bad. A round-trip flight to Australia burns up a half-year's carbon footprint for an average person. That's a lotta C02.

-What's the worst kind of flying? It depends. Long-haul flights go higher and longer than short-haul flights, which means they emit contrails, or vapors that contribute even more to global warming. Not good. Short-haul flights don't put out anywhere near the same amount of CO2, plus a lot of these are on budget airlines with new fleets. These planes are more energy-efficient than old planes. But most business travelers are more likely to take many short trips a year than many long trips. And lower prices, while great for the consumer, encourage people to fly short-haul rather than go by ground transport.

-How does flying stack up against other emitters? Flying is the worst form of transportation when it comes to CO2 emissions. But driving is only a little better. And many of the people up in arms about flying think nothing of driving to work every day, or of cranking up the air conditioning, and eating beef products (cows are a tremendous source of C02 emissions).

-The skies are getting crowded as the aviation industry grows. More flights=more CO2.

-Can you just pay your carbon tax to one of those groups that plants trees, and fly wherever you want? Paying a small fee to offset your guilt doesn't actually take away from what is happening--your ticket to ride is damaging the atmosphere. It is perhaps better than nothing.

Okay, fine. Flying is bad. And I prefer taking local buses anyway. I'd rather take a ship any day than a plane, but this isn't usually realistic. Transatlantic ships are only scheduled a few times a year, and are wildly expensive. One way on a ship is about three times the cost of a round-trip Transatlantic flight.

Let's look at my upcoming trip to Cairo. I'd have to spend about $1,200 to get from New York to Southampton, and then I'd still have to find my way to Egypt. There's no ferry. I could get to Tunisia, but could not cross Libya. I could go the long way around, but it would take weeks and cost a fortune in visas and hotels. But I have an office to get to promptly, and taking three weeks and $4,000 to travel there and back is unrealistic.

Supposing we all quit flying tomorrow and just used Skype to hold conferences, and took the train to the beach for our holidays.

Then what about all the countries that depend on tourist dollars? What about world peace being achieved through grassroots interactions? What about the teenager in Cambodia who has learned eight languages to speak to tourists?

What's the answer?

There is no single answer. It's a conundrum. My compromise is to drive infrequently, switch my energy supplier to wind and solar power, go by surface transport if at all feasible, and indulge in few cow products.

Maybe if I'm serious, I'll turn off my computer more often...

Lonely Desert

Last night I went to a bookstore to see Tony and Maureen Wheeler (the founders of Lonely Planet) speak. There weren't many people there, but the audience raptly followed the slideshow and trade-off narration. He'd narrate a slide, then she'd pick up with the next. They were old hats at the presentation. I'm sure they'd done it dozens of times since the book they were supporting--newly published in the US--has been out in many other parts of the world since 2005.

"Should I get the Lonely Planet book or the Bill Clinton autobiography?" I'd asked the young woman working in the upscale mall bookstore in Gaborone, Botswana two years ago. She'd smiled sweetly and pointed to the Clinton one. "He is very interesting."

Nevertheless, the weight of the Clinton autobiography sent me to the LP book. I was already carrying a huge backpack and a laptop. And probably a Lonely Planet guidebook to Southern Africa.

When the Wheelers finished their slideshow last night, I squeezed in a question about their participation in the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge, as they'd mentioned that the Mitsubishi they'd driven had cost $600.

"I thought cars had to cost less than a hundred pounds and preparations could only cost fifteen pounds," I said.

"They're more suggestions than rules," said Tony Wheeler.

Boy howdy. I'd dismissed the idea of driving in the rally after Anne-Marie had suggested it, because the last thing I want to do is be in a car that overheats once an hour in the Sahara Desert. Even my trusty Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus is a thousand-dollar-car, not a hundred-pound-car. And he gets cranky once in a while.

I'm not saying I'm driving in any rally. It's infinitely cheaper to take the bus to Banjul from the UK. But $600 seems less crazy that 100 pounds.

"We had one puncture in this $600 Mitsubishi," said Tony Wheeler. "That was it. Not one mechanical problem." And they'd sold it for more than twice what they'd bought it for, with all the money going to charity.

Maybe I should give this expedition a little more thought before ruling it out completely.

Spelling Lesson

Let's talk about search words.

Not a thorough discussion. I mean, just a quick note. I don't want to bore you with details of how everyone searching for "shark vs hippo" seems to find me.

No, let's talk about spelling search words properly.

I know there are a lot of people in the world who can't spell, but what amazes me is the simple words they struggle with.

So for all those people finding my blog while searching for "big dik" or "long dik" or "hot dik," I have only this to say, you dummies.

Your friendly neighborhood dik-dik resents you misspelling his name. It has a hyphen and repeat. Let's get it right, folks. DIK-DIK. And he is not long or big or hot (except maybe in summer). He is timid, small, and polite.

Owl-Eagle-Mouth-Two Strokes-Reed

Egypt. Seems like I was just there.

Wait... I was.

And here I am almost definitely heading back in a few weeks.

The office helper, a Nubian man from the Upper Nile region, kept offering to get me a necklace of my name in hieroglyphics.

"I have one of those from when I came to Egypt as a tourist," I explained. I didn't want anyone buying me gifts.

"But you don't have one from Aswan." His disappointment showed. But he didn't buy me a necklace.

I opened a box packed in 2000 today. At the bottom was a dusty box of jewelry. Most of it went right in the trash, except for things I'd had since I was a kid. I kept this, though I don't think I'd ever wear it in public.

Out of the House

I wasn't there, but the conversation probably went something like this.

Roberta: "I'm worried about Marie. She's working all the time. Can you help me get her out of the house on weekends?"

Michael Kraiger: "You're right. She's even worse than usual. She's a freelancer at heart. This full-time employment thing has broken her completely. I'll do what I can if you do."

The next day, Roberta showed up on my front steps with a bagel. A few days later, Kraiger emailed about some upcoming events. I agreed to go to two of the three. The third is ferrying kayaks across the Hudson on June 24th. I expect to be in Cairo by then.

So last night, I found myself across the street at a wacky performance art talent show. The last performers reminded me of why Yancey doesn't like performance art, but the first several were awesome. A heavy woman did the "can" as opposed to the can-can, because she purportedly could not lift her legs enough to can-can. A bright-eyed innocent Midwesternish girl played the concertina while rapping "I Got It Made" and standing on her head. A woman in a sparkly wig sang "I need a man, I need a man... because I'm afraid of bears." And a man in a tight "wife-beater" T-shirt and suspenders played the ukelele while singing "Material Girl" and sitting in a wheelchair.

Then today, Kraiger dragged me up to the Five Corners Library, where author Steven Hart spoke about his new book, The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway.

I haven't read the book yet, but the lecture was a fascinating account of the events surrounding the construction of what became then known as "Death Avenue," the Pulaski Skyway. It's a decaying three-mile bridge that rises a hundred feet above JC, ferrying commuters from the world-at-large over our wetlands and chaotic melting pot of a fair city--but to call it a bridge doesn't do it justice. The Pulaski Skyway is simply this: A skyway. That of "This Land Is Your Land" fame. There is no other.

With good reason. The Pulaski Skyway was a colossal mistake. Hart explained how it was built on a railroad model. The center lane was for cars going in either direction to pull over. There were no shoulders. On and off ramps had no merge lanes. There wasn't even such thing as a merge lane yet--remember, this was the first of the big highways. Today, locals drive in the left lane, leaving the right lane open for those poor souls who rev up the ramps only to encounter a stop sign and a long line of cars driven by panicked drivers hoping to go from zero to 60 mph the next time they see a break. Local drivers stuck on the ramp honk impatiently as if to say, "See that three-car-length space between those two SUVs doing 70? You're a wimp! You coulda made that."

And the author mentioned that JC was a city exploited by the railroads. This is true--my old condo was surely meant to be transient housing for railroad workers, the waterfront was owned by competing railroad lines, and today's PATH train was New York's first underground train, even older than the New York City subway lines.

Even today, the long-dormant railroads are still causing us problems. We fight over their right-of-ways. Developers covet the granite walls that held the tracks, planning condos. Residents dream of elevated greenways, bike paths that would connect the Hudson River bike path to the NJ Greenway in the state's interior.

The Pulaski Skyway is dear to my heart. It's so ugly that it's gorgeous. So decrepit that it's perfect. So dangerous that a flutter goes through my chest when I have to choose--the slower truck route, the safe but pricey NJ Turnpike, or the free Pulaski Skyway? How is Henry the Ford feeling? Is he warm? Is there any chance he might overheat if there's a traffic jam up top? Once you're up there in the sky, there's almost no way out.

But it is also means this. It is between Newark Airport and JC. The sight of the Pulaski Skyway means I am home.

DIY Addict

I'm a renter, and yet I cannot resist the call of DIY.

It wasn't such a big deal, the water leaking out of the spout while I was using the shower. But it seemed like a waste, and how hard could it be to fix?

Easy. One twist and the spout was off. I've just scrubbed the whole area and in the morning, I hope to prove that changing a spout is a cinch.

Local Advice

I went to the plumbing store to show them the old spout from Yancey's tub. The diverter has apparently been broken for a decade, so I took the whole contraption off and stuck it in front of the helpful guys at the plumbing store.

"What is this and may I please have a new one?"

Fourteen dollars and a few chuckles later, I found myself out by the cheap gas stations. It's all relative, of course, as $2.93 a gallon doesn't seem the least bit cheap to me, but Jersey has some of the cheapest gas in the country, and the stations between 440 and the highways over Newark Bay are some of the cheapest in JC.

I stopped at the station behind the Jiffy Lube, next to the truck stop. An Indian shopkeeper approached my car. I handed him my keys and asked if I should follow him back to the booth to pay. (NJ has full-serve only and these were not pay at the pump.)

"No, please, stay in your car with your doors locked. Many strange things happen here."

I looked around. Urban decay, deserted cars, trucks, and stacks of palettes, and in the distance, the tip of the Pulaski Skyway. It did look kind of dangerous. I just don't think about it that way since I've been driving through it for 19 years.

"That's why I don't wear a watch. It's dangerous," he explained further.

Point taken. I stayed in the car and locked the doors.

Friday Update

I've been slack on the blog postings and I apologize. Not just to the readers, but to myself. No matter how overwhelmed I become with work, I need to take time out to do my own thing. This own thing in particular. So I am trying to reform.

An update:

-I fixed the grasshopper to where it at least works. Not perfectly yet. Jon Babc0ck is going to help me with his mastery of music software. He doesn't know it yet. I assigned him the file and he'll find out next time he checks his email.

-I've agreed to go to Cairo if that is what is needed. It will be a long, hot summer. Maybe I can stay inside and work on Curse of the Hippo.

-I have not only fallen behind on the blog. I have to do laundry, buy a Delta slip-on spout with diverter, get my car inspected in Virginia or move his residence to NJ, do my very late taxes, and rejoin the gym. And no, I haven't finished unpacking yet. And this week the clothing issue reached a crisis point when I realized that I don't actually own anything suitable to wear to an office. Or to the park. Or the mall. Or the coffee shop.

As blog penance and to demonstrate my blog remorse, I will post three times today. Here is the first post.

While desperately searching my laptop for a page I lost during last week's crash, I came across this shot that Turbo took of me and Rob in China. It made me laugh. The clueless leading the lost.