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It’s been 36 days since I’ve been back on U.S. soil. The assimilation process into my life as a corporate man has not been as dramatic as I had anticipated, although it became very clear to me when the Continental Boeing 737 left Amsterdam and I began relentlessly gnawing at my finger nails that the thought of returning to my banal corporate existence weighed heavily upon my mind. Incidentally, my finger nails have always been the tell-tale sign of what’s going on beneath the surface. While traveling throughout Europe, my nails looked as strong and healthy as when I was in Africa. By the time I arrived in Seattle at 11pm, twenty hours after leaving Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, there were no nails left to bite.

When I went to bed that evening, I wanted nothing more than to sleep for two days, but there was very little sleeping for me that night in my Phinney Ridge neighborhood…and so on the next night…and the next as my mind struggled to remain in Europe despite the fact that my body was now in Seattle.  

The following morning through no choice of my own I was up at 7:30am. “Wow…” was all I could think as I looked around my basement apartment. You would have thought Hurricane Katrina had swept through my room as the night before I delved into my bags to remove my toiletries and a massive 11 Euro chunk of Old Amsterdam Cheese, and in the process spread this and that here and there.

Around 8am, tired but wired, I walked up to the Phinney Market to grab a Sunrise Breakfast Sandwich and a cup of coffee in preparation for the Herculean task of unpacking and reorganizing my room and life. Little by little I picked apart the pieces that had been a part of me for the past five weeks, things I had either brought with me or collected along the way. Little by little I organized these possessions and artifacts into smaller, more manageable piles. Little by little order was being restored to my world. This is the process by which I do most tasks in my life, whether it is cleaning, writing, solving a problem at work, and so on; break up the mass, divide it into smaller, more manageable parts of similar characteristics, and eventually put them back together in a new way. It is a process that has always worked for me for everything from doing laundry to writing paragraphs.

That morning there were two things lying on my floor besides what I brought back from Europe. The first was a photo album I must have been looking at the night before I left for Europe while pulling an all-nighter so as to not miss my early morning flight. I picked up the photo album and randomly opened it to a picture of me and an old girlfriend who was the first real love of my life. It was with the girl in the photograph I learned about love, about needs, about longing, and about the concessions one must make in a relationship. It was with her that I learned about the things two people can do and express with their bodies when they are in love. And it was also with her that I experienced my first real heartbreak which took me to new, uncharted depths of sadness.

This photo stopped me dead in my tracks as I stared at the younger version of myself looking back at me through a mirror of time. It was humbling. There in the album, preserved and protected behind a sheet of cellophane was a carbon copy of a past moment and time in my life. My past was looking back at me through the eyes of a kid who was as full of hopes, dreams, and goals as he was innocence and naivety. From the outside, this timeless kid looked as if he had everything going for him, and yet on the inside, the life he was living felt very different. On the inside there was a deep-seated pain and sadness that seemed to come from nowhere, and a pain that seemed to be going nowhere soon. That familiar kid wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to feel any differently than this feeling he had come to know – and to be quite honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. All he knew was that this pain and sadness had become like a lover with whom he became so comfortable and complacent with that the love had long since moved on and all that was left was familiarity. You know that feeling you have when you’ve been dating or married to someone for so long, and then one day you wake up and you’re on your own? It is as terrifying as it is crippling. Who would this kid be if he did not have this sadness to identify him to himself?

But being that I was the person who experienced the intense feelings and emotions of this kid, I was able to see that photo as if it was a holographic image. In the photo I could see the many layers and levels of that person. One of the images I saw was of an ambitious kid who had a vision of a life he wanted to live; a life that was full of unbounded freedom, raw life experience, and deep self-reflection. The problem was my mind was not yet strong enough to imagine what living that life would actually feel like – or even look like – and without being able to to imagine it, how could I become it? I really can’t fault that kid though; he simply didn’t have enough life experience to form a foundation of faith upon which he could stand.

I’ve spoken of this faith before. Simply put, there is nothing miraculous and divine about this faith and yet that it is where the miracle and divinity is found. That faith is simply about being strong enough and having the courage to realize that somehow, even amongst the darkest despair of your youth, adolescence, and 20s, if you just keep persevering, things will eventually get better. What an awful cliche it is when you are at the bottom, but tomorrow is always another day. What if that one night years ago, in my darkest night of the soul as St. John of the Cross penned, when I felt I was walking alone through the deepest, darkest valley I had ever known, when I thought I could no longer go on because of the weight of the pain and sadness, I actually followed through with my thought to take my own life? That is the thought of a young mind, a mind spiraling out of control.

It is the natural progression of human beings that we must traverse the peaks and valleys of life for if we didn’t we would never learn anything or evolve as individuals, societies, or human beings. Nature partakes in the dance of evolution and we are a product of evolution, so why too wouldn’t the soul of the individual undergo evolution as well? To evolve, one must make great strides in adaptation and one way to do that as a human or spiritual being, is to move through our pain, as opposed to numbing it, keeping it at arm’s length, or keeping it in the peripheral. 

There will always be peaks and valleys on this journey of self-discovery, but I think as you get older, sometimes you get lucky enough to hang out on some really cool plateaus for a while. Although I only have 33 years of life experience, from watching those around me, it seems every decade these plateaus become more and more expansive and the peaks and valleys less and less steep; either that or years of conditioning have prepared us for these parts of the journey.

This is not to say there will not always be something right around the bend that will challenge us and shake our tree of life to the core. What we must remember, however, is that when that tree is shaken, from its boughs and limbs fall fruits and seeds, and from this regenerative process, the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, continues and perpetuates.

There was one other thing that lay on the floor that morning which I had rediscovered when I moved into my house several months prior. In an effort to not misplace it, I Scotch-taped it to the wall where it blended in and once again I forgot about it. But there it was on the floor, a message from the past that was as timeless as when I first received it. It was a note my friend Eileen had written me several years prior on a piece of paper torn from a “While You Were Out…” memo pad. On it the quote read, ”The universe expands or contracts in proportion to one’s courage.”

I continued the process of organizing and sifting through the mess my travels abroad had now made in my room. Since I am a writer, or perhaps a more accurate description would be an archivist of my own life, I was amazed to see the things I had collected on my trip. Each item was an artifact from an archeological dig of the mind, body, and spirit. Each artifact brought with it vivid images that would forever link me to a time, place and a unique feeling I experienced at one brief moment of my life. Among the items were; maps of cities such as Amsterdam and Genoa, tickets to museums, business cards of people who I had briefly encountered, scraps of ripped out notebook paper with phone numbers, a lighter from a coffee shop in Amsterdam, a small bag of “coffee” hidden from my final inspection before I left Amsterdam, airplane boarding passes, train and ferry tickets, a travel insurance policy, index cards with ridiculous questions on them, a handful of Euros, my own business card of a “company” that brought form to a formless idea (which turned out to be the driver of the whole trip), five books that I dragged to Europe, two of which I carried in my backpack all over the south of France and none of which I actually read. How can I be expected to read others people’s books when I barely have enough time to write my own? My mind went back to the planning phase of the trip and I could hear Bret say, “Timbo, all that crap adds up and you don’t need it. Your pack might feel OK now but after a few hours on the trail it’s gonna get a lot heavier.” Every morning in a different village in Provence, I would pack up my gear for the day’s walk and Bret would say sarcastically, “It’s a good thing you brought those books, huh Timbo?” To which I would reply with matched sarcasm, “I am getting so much reading done.” It was part of our daily routine.

***

Perhaps the hardest part of returning to my daily life in Seattle is that my dedication to my writing suffers. As the daily hum-drum existence of going to work slowly eats away at the mountain of inspiration I’ve been hoarding, I find it harder and harder to be disciplined and make time to write. As always, I have either my journal or a small pocket notebook at arm’s length and as always I am writing down ideas, images, or pieces of conversations. Finding the time to formulate these sketches into something of form is proving to be challenging, however. It may sound ridiculous to the layman, but as a writer or as with any type of creative person, not being able to get those thoughts, ideas, and feelings out of you weighs so heavily on your mind that it can throw off the balance of your entire world. And thus as a creative person, going too long without being able to express one’s self means walking a fine line between madness and depression.

To carry the momentum of inspiration that a grand experience like travel affords a person requires one to really be conscious of maintaining it. Part of that challenge is learning to keep your eyes fresh and attentive to the minutia of your daily life and surroundings; in other words, being present in the moment and being able to draw inspiration from the smallest and sometimes seemingly inconsequential things in your life. As our new friend Darby from L.A. said at a wine tasting in the little hill town of Giogondas, “It’s not hard to be present in Provence, but being present in your daily life is an entirely different challenge. It’s fucking hard,” she added.

That first weekend home there was plenty of celebratory drinks to mark my return. One evening a friend of mine said to me, “There is something different about. I can’t put my finger on it. You seem more grounded, centered, at peace or something.” I couldn’t help but think about this comment the next day. It made me once again think about my trip and my life as an ever-evolving process and unfolding. I think part of what occurred on this trip, and what continues in this part of the process I am living, is that I shed the final layers of a former angst-ridden and uneasy self. This most important part of the life-process I underwent and continue to undergo, began when I made the decision to go to Africa ten months ago. Will this wave of momentum and good-feeling continue? Is it real? Is it just the delusions and grandeur of an inspired soul? How long it will last I can not tell you.

What I can tell you, however, dear friends and readers is that it began when without a clue as to what I was getting myself into, filled with fear and trepidation, I put one foot in front of the other and took that first step forward. With that step I said “fuck it all” and went to work in an orphanage in Africa by myself. It was a blind leap of faith I think even Kierkegaard would have been proud of. 

If there is one thing I learned through that leap of faith, it’s that fear is just a wall you have to blast through if you ever want to get anywhere. I’ve found in my own life that with every wall of fear you blow through, as you burrow and mine your way from center earth to the surface on your ascent towards the heavens, more and more light fills your life. And consequently each wall you move through is easier than the last. Perhaps that incandescent light that illuminates the sometimes cavernous regions of our souls is the light of faith.

***

As I said in the beginning of this story, through processes I can’t explain, the tectonic plates of my interior life have been shifting and on the move for some time, and when tectonic plates shift, they alter landscapes, mountains, oceans, and continents. I think within me a new continent has been formed. Perhaps it happened on Bastille Day, the most powerful “Serengeti Moment” on this trip. Unlike the original Serengeti Moment (which actually occurred in the Serengeti), this was not an introspective happening that gave birth to an epiphany. Instead, Bastille Day brought me to - and opened me up to - a new space for joy in my life. There is an ever-growing part of me that believes this is what life is about; experiencing the unexpected and unbounded joy that is found in the loving of your own life. After all, you can’t begin to love others until you love yourself.

Again, as I said before and as I continually (perhaps even annoyingly) reiterate, you can frame this internal experience I speak of in a thousand different lights. Earlier in the story I called it a part of the spiritual experience of life. Regardless, language limits it. If you mixed all the colors on a painter’s palette in all the possible variations, you still couldn’t touch this experience for it is beyond human communication and exists as an intangible wave of internal feeling.

The best way I can explain it is that this spiritual experience is about finding and bringing it into the world the joy, peace, creativity, inspiration, freedom, and truth that exists in each of us. It is about bringing form to the formless. It is about being a master of your fears and the lighthouse of your mind. It is about giving up the fight and, like water, taking the path of least resistance. It is about becoming free enough to move in the many directions your life will take you. Most importantly, it is about doing whatever it takes to find that within you that gives you joy, because we were made to experience and create joy in this life - at least that’s what I think. You can either look at the world as I did for so many years as a place full of pain and despair, or you can look at the world as a place full of love and hope. I choose to live by the mantra of the latter.

I’m feeling these days like I’ve been given a chance to start fresh and anew. I feel like time is no longer mastering me, but instead for the first time in my life I am the master of time. I feel as if I have made new clearings in my life, clearings to be filled with an abundance of love and creativity. I am excited, revitalized, and focused on the goals I have ahead of me. The challenge for me I know, the challenge for all of us, is to be the gatekeeper of our thoughts, and to keep our thought focused on the abundance of blessings in our lives in the form of friends, family, love, and support, because like any free-standing structure, a human being needs support as well. No man is an island, as John Donne said in an attempt to portray the interconnectedness of mankind. 

Although it is somewhat scary at times because we have a tendancy to fear a crash when things are going well in our lives, I feel as if I am in a space of my life where I am attracting into my world that which I need to take me to the next level, whatever that level may be or mean. What is new for me is that I know, after feeling stuck for so many years, that I am moving forward into new and exciting uncharted waters of my life.

It’s not just a mere hope or wish anymore that I become that which I have always wanted to be, but instead something I innately know and feel in my entire being. I am. And when I am feeling at my best and living as I am these days in a healthy mind, it’s as if every living part of me is aware of the process of movement my life is undertaking, and every part of me, down to the cellular level, is working in communion toward Creation. I think it comes down to me recognizing and accepting the person within me, the person who I have always been, and the person who I have always been meant to become. It was only a matter of having the fortitude to learn to how to use the vessel I have been given, setting my sails to the wind, and righting myself on the course upon which I have always been meant to travel. Sometimes you just have to be lost for a while to find your way home.

The windows through which I have been looking out most of my adult life have been cleaned. Instead of peering through the muck, dirt, and grime of failed expectations, disillusionment, and seemingly paradise lost, I once again peer out through the windows of my youth. I am, at least in this moment, a soul who is more at peace with himself then ever before. The windows are clear and clean, the view unobstructed, and on the other side of this pane of glass is a world that awaits my imagination to transform it into a playground.  

(stay tuned!)

Kim and I said our goodbyes at the train station in Vernazza at 7:15am and so began a long day of traveling by train, bus, and plane. As I was boarding the plane from Genoa to Amsterdam, I was not thinking about the new no-liquids in flight rules so they tagged me for trying to take down a plane with Olive Oil, Wine, and a lemon liquor (In their defense, it can be a lethal combo if paired with the right foods). This meant I had to either depart with my purchases or pack them in my carry-on backpack and check them at the ticket counter. So I checked my backpack with near certainty that it would be reduced to a sopping wet mash of shattered glass. I was convince it would be the only bag on the carousel that could be sautéed with vegetables. 

I was in a tired haze the whole day and as a result, continued my clumsiness by knocking over a glass of water on the flight from Genoa to Amsterdam, which happened to spill into the shoe of a cute girl who was sitting behind me. As luck would have it, the spilled glass of water served as a conversation piece as Saskia, the girl with the one wet shoe, and I were exiting the plane.

As you do when you are traveling and meeting many different people, sometimes briefly, you give them your two-minute download-life story and why it is you are traveling and meeting at this moment in time. Saskia was a classical and jazz cello player who had been playing music and vacationing in Barcelona. We discovered at baggage claim that Judith and her boyfriend Wouter were common friends. The world is so small sometimes. We carried on talking because it appeared that AlItalia Airlines lost my bag and her suitcase. We waited for a good hour at baggage claim as flight after flight was unloaded on the carousels with no apparent sign of either of our luggage. We walked off to baggage claim and Saskia said that since I only had two days left in Amsterdam, I should enjoy it and not have to worry about coming back to the airport to get my luggage. She said she could pick it up and we could meet for a drink near where she lived. While filling out our claims for our missing luggage, mysteriously my bag appeared after an hour-and-a-half, miraculously intact. We said we would like to get a drink together in the next day or two, but unfortunately I ran out of time and that just never happened. I made my way back to Susan’s around 7pm and fell asleep early.

My plan for my final two days in Amsterdam was to spend one day with Bret and one with Judith, since her internship had ended and Susan was working. The following day, however, Judith had come down with the flu. While we were traveling together in Africa, she came down with malaria and she has not been healthy ever since and seems to be susecptible to sickness more than others.

***

When Bret and I met up Tuesday morning in Leidseplien our energies were a little off, but after a while we were back in the groove. I rented a bike and we took a ride outside of town and had a picnic on a canal. Afterward, we stopped at a park for a “coffee” break and continued the conversation of, “What the hell is Jack Will Travel? What are we going to do with this?” It was feeling to me as if Bret was not interested in a common vision as he was talking about doing all of these other videos and posting them on his site. Then what is the purpose of Jack Will Travel, I was thinking? But in the mean time, he was feeling as if I was driving all of this traffic to my Web site as opposed to Jack Will Travel. There was some head butting going on but there had to be a way to marry these two visions.

We went back to Bret’s place and looked at some of the pictures and videos we had taken on the trip and traded a bunch of music. He also introduced me to the wonderful world of podcasting and video blogging. During this session our creative energies were coming together and we discussed perhaps creating a spin-off of Jack Will Travel where we would create identities for small businesses, since after all that is what we did for Jack Will Travel. We created something out of nothing, which was a “perceived” company with an identity – or at least an identity we wanted to portray – so why couldn’t we do this for other people? When Bret and I come eye-to-eye in one of these creative spaces, the possibilities seem endless. There seemed to be any number of directions we could take Jack Will Travel. I left Bret around 6pm and headed back to Susan’s place on my rented women’s bike. She made me dinner and we had another mellow evening as she had to study for work the next day.

The following day I awoke on the earlier side and headed to the Van Gogh museum before meeting up with Bret. I got there at 9:45am where a line had already formed for the 10am opening. As I was walking through the museum, I was overcome with emotion and almost brought to tears. I knew very little about Van Gogh besides what most people know, that he cut off part of his ear while under the influence of absinthe (supposedly). His “psychotic” episodes were more likely caused by epilepsy it is now believed.

Van Gogh spent his early life working for an art dealer until he was fired at the age of 26 for his overtly-religious views. It was at this point, with the support of his brother Theo, he decided to become a painter. Imagine that, at 26, with no experience as a painter to decide to just become one. This was just one of the many aspects of Van Gogh that moved me and inspired me. As I walked around the rooms of the museum, I noticed the evolution of his brush strokes and subject matter as they moved into the realms Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, which eventually gave birth to his own style, Expressionism.

I find when I go see an art exhibit, it is not necessarily always the work of the artist that moves me or that I identify with, but the struggles and pain the artist endures for his or her own vision of truth, beauty, and expression. What moved me so much about Van Gogh was his sheer determination and focus to become an artist and to have the courage to create works which were not the norm of the day. This fact was compounded by the fact that Van Gogh’s entire body of work, which consists of more than 2,000 works, including 900 paintings and 1,100 drawing and sketches were produced in a ten year time frame. Van Gogh shot himself in the chest at 37 and probably died thinking he was a failure. Imagine that. What moved and humbled me most was the single-pointedness of his focus, desire, determination, and quest for truth, and I hoped that some day I too could possess an ounce of that drive.

After the Van Gogh museum, I met up with Bret and we drove around the city for the afternoon on our bikes. We stopped by the old Olympic Stadium and finally came to a shared vision of what Jack Will Travel will become (more on that later). The true challenge, however, is; can we continue this momentum and inspiration when we return to our colloquial day-to-day lives?

For the rest of the day as we drove throughout the city, my mind was consumed by the vision what Jack Will Travel could become. The conversation moved in and out of Jack Will Travel all day. At one point we sat on the edge of a river on the island of Ijburg, which is a residential neighborhood in east Amsterdam and the island is completely manmade. Apparently, many of the architects and designers who built this island have been recruited to help build The Palms in Dubai. As we were sitting by the water, we started talking about the future, which included wives, kids, etc. He told me a story about when he was a child, how his grandmother used to drop him off at her friend’s place who was 70 and never had any children.

“I don’t know if my grandmother dropped me off because I was such a hyper-active kid and she couldn’t handle me or if she felt sorry for this woman because she never had any children,” he said. “But this little old lady said something to me that I will never forget. She said, ‘Don’t go childless, Bret.’” How is that for an impression-bomb to drop on a ten-year-old? I feel like somehow that has haunted him his whole life. It’s almost as bad as when my family put coal in my stockings when I was ten-years-old, but that is another story for another time.

He went on to talk about this older couple in the waning years of their lives and how Ernie, her husband, was practically deaf and used to hold a horn up to his ear instead of a hearing aid. “I mean, even at ten I wanted to be like, hey Ernie, there are hearing aids, you know?” He closed that part of the bike tour by telling me about the no-sugar rule his mother tried to lay down, which only last two weeks. He remembers being in someone’s house and spinning wildly round and round on a bar stool and his Mom looked over at him with a straight face and said, “No more sugar.” After spending all of our time traveling together, I could totally see that whole scene. My only question now is, what is fueling that wild energy these days?

We drove around more that day and ended where it all began several weeks prior, in Leidseplien. We had a final beer at Dan Murphy’s Irish bar, which had sayings on chalk boards such as, “Liquor in the front – poke her in the back” and “Life is full of difficult choices, isn’t it silly Billy?” Our Jack Will Travel talks continued as we hashed out some final details of creative differences, reaching the point where I think we both feel comfortable about what we are going to do next.

I gave Bret a hug goodbye and said to the him, “Imagine if we had someone pay us to do another one of these things? Think about all we’ve learned and what we could do to take it to the next level.” 

He replied with, “I want to move from a one-star hotel to a two-star hotel, and keep adding stars. Then you get better sanitary options, your own toilettes, new bars of soap in fancier packaging, TV, and then CNN on the TV, and so on.” 

We snapped a few final pictures, and I walked off towards the tram to head back to Susan’s.

My mind was still reeling with the possibilities of Jack Will Travel when Bret called out to me, “Timbo! Aren’t you going to return your bike?” Sometimes when I am locked up in creative thoughts I can be a complete space cadet. That would have made the following morning challenging, having to get back into Leidseplien to return the bike and then head out to the airport.

I returned the bike and got on the train back to Susan’s place. I watched a backpacker who was obviously exploring the city for the first time curiously and somewhat nervously looking at the sign which listed the stops of the train and then look out the window searching for names of stops or landmarks. Only a few weeks prior I was that same person, uncertain as to where I was going or where I was going to get off, much like all of us in life. We’re all backpackers in some sense, all trying to get somewhere, always moving from one place to the next, more often than not in a state of flux. Sometimes we land somewhere for a while, but mostly we are in transition, whether it is from one place to another, one addiction to another, one lover to another, one job to another, or one space in our minds to another.

When I did finally get home that night, Susan was waiting for me and we headed out for a final drink. Her neighbors saw a sight that had become common in her housing complex; her driving away on her bike and me running along side while trying to hop on the back as she drove me from one Amsterdam location to the next.

(P.S. – two more blogs to go. Stay tuned…)

“I’ve taken a new Italian lover!” was one of the first things Kim said to me after I settled in next to her on the train from Genoa to Cinque Terre. “His name is ‘Cousin Bob.’”

As you can imagine, this statement momentarily caused me great consternation as I paused to question everything I had ever known about Kim, her past, and her family. It was quickly clarified, however, that “Cousin Bob” was actually the cousin of the bride at a wedding she attended the weekend prior. It did not stop us from exploring the topic further as we discussed the pros and cons of dating your cousin;

Pros

• You never have to worry about who’s side of the family you will be spending your holidays with
• You already know the family and will likely be accepted by 87.4% of the them (sure there are exceptions to the rules and yes there is going to be some sibling and relative rivalries but…)
• You already know the in-laws and thus you already know what you are getting yourself into.

Cons

• Most likely learning disabilities and birth defects.

It was only a few days later that Kim actually found out “Cousin Bob” was not Italian but Iranian, and his name incidentally was not Bob, but Boback - but I mean come on – Italian, Iranian…who can tell the difference these days as international love lines become blurred? 

Ten minutes prior to meeting up with Kim as I stood on the platform waiting for her train to arrive, I had a feeling one of us had bad information and that one of us was on the wrong train. Kim was coming from Turino, Italy, where she was working and we were to meet on a train in Genoa, however, the time for the train she gave me did not match up with the train I was instructed to take. I ran across the street with my bags to an Internet cafe and quickly scribed a message to her which she never actually received. As it turns out, as I entered the train wondering, ‘If I were Kim, which car would I be on?” I looked to the left and lo and behold, up popped her head from behind a seat.

We spent the next two hours catching up since we had not seen each other since the morning after the National show when she drove me to the airport at 6:00am after I pulled an all-nighter. As we chatted, the train chugged along the tracks that were built into the cliffs and below us stretching to the horizon were the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean. Talking, talking, talking we carried on, so much in fact that we sailed right past our stop, disembarking two stops too late in the town of Riomaggiore (truth be known, I did stick my head out the door at the right stop and saw ‘Uscita’ and only later did I realize it meant ‘exit’ as opposed to a town me might be rolling through). The mishap was fortuitous in the fact that we met Daniel, an Italian bartender who had an air of Jeff Spiclolli about him, but Italian of course. Daniel told us about the Festa di Pirati, or Festival of the Pirates, occurring on Saturday night. “Yessa, Johnny Depp and all…” What that actually meant and the evening entailed we did not yet know. There were rumors of pirates coming from the sea, a DJ, and lots and lots of drinking. All the above did in fact prove to be true.

When we finally arrived, we were instructed to find the Internet cafe in the center of Vernazza, and from there we were to ask for our landlady, who would be renting us an apartment in her house. The cozy apartment consisted of two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a bathroom with a shower, and a refrigerator. When the woman and her Italian translator finally left us on our own in the apartment, Kim and I were dancing with elation.

Kim’s suitcase weighed about as much as her Mini-Cooper and when I saw some of the things she brought along it made sense. One of these things included iPod speakers. Brilliant. While she was on the phone talking with work, I went to plug the speakers in and the moment I plugged it in I heard a pop - and in that moment all the lights in the apartment went black and the outlet gave off the smell of an electrical fire. I blew the fuse and fried the iPod adapter as I forget to plug the European voltage adapter in. Rookie move. Kim and I grabbed a big lunch and when we came back to the room. Since she was still jet-lagged, she took a nap and I set off into town to check things out.

Vernazza is one of, if not the smallest coastal villages of Cinque Terre in the La Spezia province of the Liguria region. Cinque Terre literally means five territories. Its population only consists of 500 people yet it thrives on the business of tourism and the only way to access these towns is to hike in, take the train, or take a boat. Its layout is quite simple; there is one winding street that makes its way through the town and ends up in a square which is protected by a rocky harbor. On the other side of the rocks, the Mediterranean sometimes laps against the rocks and at other times violently pounds the shore. Behind the town, terraced vineyards rise straight up from sea level giving way to rocky, jagged, cliffs and summits.

As was similar to hiking through France, there are red and white dashed markers on rocks and poles to guide you on your hike from town to town, so I followed the trail behind the town south and found a nice little restaurant overlooking the town which was half the price of what they were in town. On my way back down, the streets were clogged with an old-fashion Italian wedding procession and a very attractive wedding party. Tourists and the wedding party mixed together in the streets as friends gathered to hug, kiss, congratulate, and snap pictures of the bride and groom. At one point the couple disappeared and reappeared in a third story window that was garnished with sunflowers. I thought they would be throwing the bouquet down as is common in our American wedding tradition and the person who received it would be the next to get married. Instead, basket after basket of candy was thrown by the fistful into the streets. I thought maybe they would throw five or so baskets but they must have thrown twenty plus baskets of hard candies and chocolates into the streets. Handful after handful they came from above like German bombs raining down on the streets of London. It didn’t take long before hearty Italian grandmothers were pushing me out of the way and diving on their hands and knees for the great candy grab of 07′.

Kim and I had a nice dinner that night above the town and afterwards we grabbed a bottle of wine and went to the town square to watch the merriment of the wedding party. Their dinner lasted hours and their singing went on for hours after that. In the meantime, Kim and I met two couples; Josh and Kristen from Washington, D.C. and Mary and Ryan from San Francisco. We drank bottle after bottle of wine and moved out onto the pier as the party began to splinter into individual conversation. From there, we joined the wedding party at a bar in town and danced until almost four in the morning. Kim and I ended the evening with one more visit to the edge of town where the rocks met the sea, and we watched as the full moon danced on the water, creating a shimmering carpet of moonlight that stretched on into infinity.

The next morning I was up and in the center of the town writing by 11 (writing the previous chapter) as Kim slept in until noon. By 1pm we were on the trail south to visit several of the towns along the way. It was a grueling but rewarding hike as the trail rose high above the Mediterranean, hugging cliffs and every once in a while revealing a hidden beach below. Kim and I stopped at one such spot and climbed down to the beach below. We swam like children enjoying the freedom of summer vacation and laid about the rocks like sunbathing-seals. We also had an impromptu photo shoot. In the late afternoon after getting a pizza in the town of Corniglia, we jumped on a boat in Mararola back to Vernazza. We showered, grabbed some dinner on the main square, and awaited the landing of the pirates.

Shortly after about 10:20pm, as the last hints of daylight were exiting the western sky, a cannon went off and loud speakers began blaring dramatic Italian music. Around the corner ten plus landing boats came to shore filled with many variations of Captain Jack Sparrows. Now Daniel’s comment about Johnny Depp made sense. They held torches and stormed the shore and at one point a pirate made his way to the clock tower to deliver a dramatic speech in Italian, which Kim kindly translate for us (despite that fact that she doesn’t speak Italian). When they landed, a Drum Major lead with his whistle and hand signals a drum line of twenty plus percussion players. Up through the streets they marched and back down again, ending in the square where they rocked out for maybe two hours as hoards of people danced in tribal and rhythmic movements. The drums were raising everyone’s energy and when the DJ finally started to play, the place was in a mad frenzy. Italian men ran about dancing with women and trying to kiss every one they possibly could. One man grabbed my drink, threw some pills in his mouth, took a swig, and handed it back to me. Kim and I danced with no inhibitions and not soon after our new friends Ryan and Mary were letting loose as well.

Around four in the morning, after we lost Ryan and Mary, Kim and I found in the center of town a small walkway that hugged the water and we curiously followed it, at one point, schooching along on our asses because there was not enough head clearance and we narrowly avoided falling into the water. When we made our way through this arched walkway, it opened up on the other side to the Mediterranean with sheer cliffs coming down behind us. It was the setting for an hour or more of some very intense conversations about our past, what we want from our lives, and our families. Being that it would have been my Father’s 84th birthday the previous day, he was weighing heavily on my mind and for the first time in a long time I lost it as I did those first few days after he died. It is hard to explain the experience of loosing one of your parents. You can talk about it in many different lights and angles, but when it comes down to it, it is actually something that must be lived and experienced to fully comprehend. The loss of your parents, or anyone you love in life is a wound that I don’t think ever fully heals. Beneath the surface, there will always be scar tissue to mark the life-altering event. But this in fact is not necessarily a bad thing. In many ways I find it comforting to still be able to cry so passionately over the loss. For me it is a reminder of how close the connection can still be. It is also a way to still feel him as closely as I possibly can in this temporal reality, an existence in which we are limited by the constraints and physics of time and space.

When that part of the evening was over, Kim and I met a few Kiwis (New Zealanders) and a few Irish lads. We chatted with them for a while and headed back to our room but upon arriving there, I realized I wasn’t ready to go to bed. Kim fell asleep and I went out to chat with Lindsay and Michael, two 21-year-old Irish friends traveling together through Italy on their way to Rome the following day. Michael eventually passed out on the concrete and Lindsay and I chatted on and on, past the departure of their train at 5:50am. I invited them back to our place to crash on the floor and they got a good solid two hours before they left at 8:20am. Out of gratitude, Lindsey drew me a picture of what she imagined Seattle might look like and Michael gave me a lighter “especially designed for a bong,” as he explained in the wonderful Irish accent.

The next morning, being the early-bird I am, I awoke at 1:30pm and we were on the trail north towards Monterrosa al Mare an hour later. The hike from Vernazza climbed straight up and it was excruciating. Because Kim did not want to carry a large bottle of water, she talked me out of the purchase and we both grabbed a small bottle of water for the grueling hike. An hour-and-a-half later when we reached the town, I was feeling faint and my leg was uncontrollably shaking. I was not only hung over, but incredibly dehydrated. As it turned out, the town was too much of a cheesy European resort so after re-hydrating and then topping off the re-hydration with a glass of white wine, we jumped on the boat back to Vernazza. As luck would have it, the water at the landing in Vernazza was so rough we had to go two towns down and take the train back up. I was looking forward to just getting home and was crushed by the prospect of not being able to disembark, however, Kim put a positive spin on it and said, “I can think of worse things to do than be on a boat in the Mediterranean.” We had another beer back in Manarola and just made the train back to Venrazza. As it turned out, back in Vernazza near the landing, there was a large pool of blood on the rocks and someone told us they had been pulling out people from the surf all day long as the angry sea hurled people like match sticks against the rocks.

Kim and I had a great dinner that night with a waiter who hated us. At one point we asked him what it was we were eating because we liked it so much and he said, “I don’t know,” and walked off. Not too much later I spilled an entire glass of red wine in my lap which was quite a buzz kill but soda water solved that problem. Kim bought a liter at dinner and poured it all over my lap. It was not the most comfortable dinner I have ever had. 

After dinner we met up with Ryan and Mary for a nightcap at the Blue Marlin, promised to meet up in Seattle or San Francisco for our own pirate party, said our goodbyes, and headed off to bed for our final night’s sleep in the magical, coastal town of Vernazza.

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

I am in paradise right now. I am sitting in an outdoor café in Cinque Terre, Italy, writing on Kim’s laptop. This is the life for me; cruising about Europe (or the world for that matter of fact) writing in its outdoor cafés, meeting its people, learning the different cultures and observing its many customs. In this moment, I am fulfilling a dream I have always imagined.

Time to rewind….

On the second morning in Genoa, I tried to negotiate a reduced price at the hotel. I thought I would be able to get them to drop the price but Jospehine was not at the desk and the old man, although incredibly kind, would have nothing to do with it. They were full, so they said, and the best they could do was the same price I paid the evening before. No matter. The people at the hotel were so great and accommodating I decided it was worth spending the 65 Euro for another night of peace of mind and air conditioning.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Italy was how expressive people were with their body language, especially their hands when speaking. The simplest things somehow have a dramatic effect. The next thing I noticed, walking up the main shopping street of XX Septiembre where my hotel was, was the amount of beggars and homeless people on the street. This also struck me in Paris as well. I am not sure why this stood out so much in my mind as any city has its homeless population. For some reason, however, these people seemed more destitute and extreme than the homeless people in the States, as if there was a sliding scale of homelessness. I guess I assumed in these European cities where they seemed to have the perfect mix of antiquity and progressive thinking that they would have somehow solved this problem. That is naivety at its finest. Perhaps because I am just a tourist and visitor, I was more aware and sensitive to these people and my surroundings.

Here is a question for you; how do you tell the difference between a Genoese and a tourist? We the tourists are unmistakably recognizable by how soaked our clothes are with perspiration. The Genoese will walk about their city in vests and long pants and you will see not even one bead of sweat dripping off their forehead. It was the same deal in Africa. You would have these Africans walking around the city streets in jackets and fleeces in more than 100 degree weather and not a one recognizable sign that they were uncomfortable in the heat. Meanwhile, a walk from my hotel to the corner store to grab a bottle of water would appear to be a Herculean task according to the sweat stains lining my back and under arms. In addition to the perspiration pouring off my body, had I committed a crime in Genoa, they would easily be able to pick me out of a police line up because I so obviously stand out in my unstylish, unsophisticated, breathable trail-wear.

When I left the hotel that morning, I noticed a flyer that offered a free walking tour of Genoa at 4:30pm so I organized my day around it. I began the morning walking down by the harbor and at one point I was so soaked in perspiration that I decided to just sit on a bench and take off my shirt to let it dry. I listened to my iPod on random and organized my notes, more for the fact that it gave me the appearance of looking busy and having purpose rather than sitting there in my white, tan-less, cheap Irish skin looking like a Polar Bear in the Sahara. Since I was right next to the Maritime Museum, I figured I should probably learn something about the history of Genoa and the oldest port in Italy.

After a two hour jaunt in the museum, I slowly meandered back to my hotel, taking in all of Genoa in its beauty and ugliness. I took a different route home and saw a bit of the underbelly of Genoa, which is I suppose is where the real population lives. It must have been a neighborhood where Italy converged with Africa. It reminded me of the streets of Dar es Salam, with people hustling and bustling to make a living and get by, selling Gucchi and Ray Ban knock-offs or whatever they could get their hands on.

When I moved beyond this neighborhood and back into the touristy and more affluent areas, I noticed something in the street-wear of the people; preppy is back. I noticed this in Amsterdam as well – people wearing yellow, pink, and green pants. Perhaps the preppy look never actually left and instead only made in the 80’s a great exodus from the states to Europe. Perhaps preppy has been hiding out in these two countries for all these years, or maybe the rebirth of the Izod brand has brought with it a whole new generation of patrons bound to purchase The Preppy Handbook.

After my first somewhat traumatic day in Genoa, I was ready to bail and just move on to Cinque Terre where I could just relax and be. The same thing happened to me in Arusha, Tanzania, but that place actually was a shit-hole and not worthy of spending any prolonged amount of time; but Genoa is a whole different story. I knew it was worth exploring and emails from Kim and Eva urged me to just spend the day relaxing, catching up on writing, and exploring the city. It didn’t take me long to wish I had a few more days to spend in Genoa.

The city of Genoa, like any other Italian city, is marked by countless Piazzas and winding streets not wide enough to fit a car, and lined by stone walls and buildings that are older than the discovery of the new world. Grandiose statues and monuments honoring the great citizens of Genoa and notable moments of its history jump out at you every time you turn a corner. The facades of buildings are monumental and stately and no detail was spared in their creation.

Genoa was Italy’s great crossroad where ideas, beliefs, languages, and religions melded together to create history. It was the gateway to the new world for it was here in its great port that the Mediterranean Sea linked different people, cultures, and goods. It is also here that its maritime history brought with it the Black Plague in the 17^th century, wiping out one third of the city’s population. The streets of Genoa are where a young, innocent Christopher Columbus played as a boy, not even yet capable of imagining the dream he would achieve, a dream that would change the face of the map and forever alter the course of history.

As the day slowly started to get away from me, I rushed home to take a walk through H&M to do some clothes shopping. I simple couldn’t resist. I dropped my purchases off at my hotel and quickly rushed back to the Church of San Luca for the free walking tour. As was typical and for the fourth time of the day, I was soaked in perspiration by the time I reached the church. Unfortunately for me, no one showed up for the walking tour so I did some more walking and sweating on my own. I found a beautiful park that crept up one of the hills of the city. It reminded me of Portland, Oregon, where they have magnificent parks within the city limits full of all sorts of uncommon surprises. As I followed this trail through the park, priceless gems such as hidden grottos, small decorations honoring the Virgin Mary, and coy ponds revealed itself to me. From there, I went back to the hotel to do some writing, shower, and freshen up for the evening.

As I set out on my way, a hazy dusk hung over the harbor. My iPod, one of the most impressive and revolutionary inventions of the last 50 years, beside the cell phone and the Internet, was playing on random and Little Trip to Heaven, a mellow, somewhat easy-crusing song by Tom Waits provided the opening tune to the evening’s soundtrack. It was a relatively uneventful and unremarkably evening until the end when I sat in the main Piazza and watched a young Italian couple passionately arguing, limbs flailing and body language expressing fury. The young man would step into her personal space arguing his point of view as she would back up and I wondered if he was going to hit her. I was hoping he wasn’t going to hit her because that would have required me to step in and be the hero, and consequently most likely get my ass kicked by a group of young Italian men.  On the sidelines, the couple’s friends looked off into the distance trying to keep their distance and keep a look of distant disinterest. I can still see the girl so clearly. She was incredibly cute but dowsed in her own tears. Back and forth and back and forth they let each other have it. I wanted to say to her; you are so beautiful. Why are you wasting your time with this thug – this mindless troglodyte? I wondered why she stayed in this abusive relationship because clearly he had the bigger problem than she did. But who can explain young love? We have all been there and for reasons unknown at that present moment, you just can’t walk away from that person you think you love, despite the fact that more often than not they make your life miserable. The only explanation I can give is young love is all heart and no head because you simply don’t have the life/relationship experience to have your head govern your heart. Young love is love at its best and worst. It is the beautiful and the ugly; the passion and the fury; the beginning and the end of innocence.

I had my earphones in but my iPod on mute and pretended like I was just a tourist listening to music and not paying any attention to them. The girl had her arms crossed over her chest and her body language suggested there was no way to communicate and there was no way he was entering the walled city she had built. The funny thing is, I would bet my wallet that they went home that night and fucked each other’s brains out, for what is more fun and passionate than the make-up sex of young love? I had the best taste of that in a small town on the island of Crete when I was 24 years old, but that is another story for another time. For this couple on this night, I can guarantee the same situation will happen over and over again until one of them becomes strong enough to walk away for good – or one of them takes a new lover.

I left the Piazza that night and walked home, and as is the miracle of the random option on the iPod, a lazy, drunken, meandering number called Virginia Avenue, by Tom Waits completed the circle; “Well I’m walking down Virginia Avenue, trying to find someone to tell my troubles to.”

There was no trouble on this night, however, besides the turmoil of the young, troubled couple. I made my way back to the hotel and laid my head down in the air-conditioning for a heavy, dreamless Genoese sleep.

If you knew anything about my travel itinerary, you are probably asking yourself, what is he doing Genoa? I often find myself asking the same question David Byrne posed; “Well, how did I get here?” I guess I should back up.

The morning after the party in Westerpark, I went back into town to meet Eva and Noa for lunch and to find and repair the flat tire. Eva and I dropped the bike off and then went for stroll and found a little sandwich place a few blocks from the touristy area. We had a great time walking around chatting about our lives and love, politics, and art. We were both sorry we didn’t have more time to get to know each other but sometimes encounters on the road can be brief but last a lifetime. I failed to mention she has a communications company and I will be doing some editing for her so we have not seen or heard the last of each other.

After I left Eva, Bret and I met up to discuss what our next part of the journey would be. The plan was to go into a travel agency and book a last minute flight to somewhere warm and sunny since it was cloudy and raining in Amsterdam. Our plans didn’t go as planned as we couldn’t find a cheap flight. We began discussing the possibility of doing a beer tour in Belgium but my mind was on the Mediterranean and I couldn’t shake it. We decided to hold off on our plans as my friend Kim, who I was house-sitting for at the earliest part of this story, was going to be in Cinque Terre, Italy. I wanted to explore the option of meeting up with her so we decided to chat the following day.

It didn’t take long after I left Bret and began my bike ride home before the tire went flat again. They charged me 17.50 Euro but I’m pretty sure they did the 7.50 job. I guess that is “typically Dutch” in the tourist areas as Susan would say.

The following day I received an email from Kim confirming the dates she would be in Cinque Terre so I walked down to the travel agency and booked a flight to Genoa, Italy as it was the closest place near Cinque Terre I could get to. I made all my last minute arrangements, packed up, and was ready to go by the time Susan got home that night.

Susan and I met up with Judith that night at the Concertgebouw, which would probably be the equivalent of New York’s Carnegie Hall, except much smaller. It was a beautiful, ornate building with a grand pipe organ in the back and around the balcony the names of famous composers from Strauss, to Wagner, Debussy and Tchaikovsky. The best seat in the house was dead-center above Mahler, and if you had those seats and the queen happened to show up that night, well, tough luck. Built in the 1890s, the sound was impeccable. Judith’s boyfriend, Wouter Huzinga, was playing that evening with Nynke Laverman so he got us some free tickets.

Nynke was born in Friesland, a northern Dutch province that more or less speaks their own language and for inspiration she travelled to Mexico and Portugal. What she brought back with her was a hybrid of traditional Portuguese music which she translated into Fries, so even Judith and Susan didn’t know what she was singing about. When I heard traditional music I wasn’t to excited but wanted to see the concert hall none-the-less, however, the music and musicians were quite impressive. It had a gypsy/mariachi feel which was accentuated by her dramatic presentation. After the show we had a drink with Wounter, and Susan and I made our way home.

***

The following morning I was up at 6:30am and at Schipol Airport well ahead of my flight. I looked for a book on Italy or a map of Genoa – something that I could ground myself with but to no avail. What the hell am I going to do when I get there? I thought. Dealing with a hint of anxiety, being as I had not been in Italy in ten years, did not know one word of Italian, and had no idea how big or small Genoa was, I gathered my senses on the plane and devised a plan. First, I needed to learn five phrases so I asked the stewardess how to say the following things;

1. Excuse me

2. Do you speak English

3. Hello

4. Please

5. Thank you

Yes, that should make my journey in Italy smooth. They either thought I was funny or another jackass-American.

Flying into Genoa, I was surprised that the city was much larger than I had imagined it. I guess when a city is named on a country map, and it is in larger type than any of the surrounding cities, that should be a pretty good indicator of its size.

As I was walking off the plane, I asked a cute Italian girl if she knew how I could get into the city. Turns out she was studying law in New York City and was here visiting her parents. She asked the proper authorities and I found out that there was a bus leaving in 15 minutes. Perfect, I thought. That gives me time to go to the information desk, grab a map, go to the vending machine to get a bus ticket and be on my way. I was so excited at how smoothly everything was going I forgot to pick up my bag at baggage claim. I am a simple man and my mind can only process so many things at once. No matter. The airport was small enough that I could buzz in and out and still have plenty of time before the bus left.

The bus left me off right in front of the tourist office so I went in and gathered some more information. This is great, I thought to myself. I am really getting good at this travel thing.

Patting myself on the back and using some of the knowledge I gained from Bret, I decided it would be foolish of me to jump at the first few hotel I came across. Instead, I made my way into town. After a half-kilometre walk I followed a sign to a one star hotel down a dark alley. I walked in and asked the woman if I could see the room, even though she wasn’t the most welcoming host I have ever come across. I went up to the room, checked the water pressure, checked the cleanliness of the sheets, made sure the fan worked, and all looked well for 35 Euros, with the exception that the shower was in the hallway. I should have called it a day but my head was getting so big I could barely get it out the door. “I’m just going to check one more place,” I told her and I could feel the tension and her anger in the air. I remember thinking, I have probably just insulted her.

I can decide to go to Africa or Europe, or move across the country at the drop of a hat and yet I can’t even decide what to order on a menu, so why should choosing a hotel be any different? No sooner had I walked out the door and stood on the street then I thought, what the hell am I doing. I just want to be done with this. It is hot as balls out and I am exhausted. I walked back into the hotel and said, “I changed my mind! I’ll take it!” expecting to be welcomed back like a sailor who has been long out at sea – but no. With people walking in the door she barked at me with her finger wagging, like a good Italian woman reprimanding her child, “No! Now you may not have the room!”

Bitch showed me. That was the biggest slice of humble-pie I’ve ever had.

It had me rattled for a bit and as I walked back into the sunlight from the dark hovel, the sweat poured down my face and it looked like I had just participated in a wet t-shirt contest. From there things just got worse. It was hot, I was dehydrated, tired, and I was having trouble finding hotels in the part of the city I was at. Of the places I did find there were no vacancies.

Finally, I came upon the Bel Sorroggio. Josephine was the kindest woman I have come across in a long time. The hotel was going to be full until about 8pm (because people who bring their boats into the harbor rent the room for certain times) but she offered me other solutions like renting a place at her flat for 35 Euros, but again, she wasn’t going to be off of work until about 9pm and I had to be out at 11am. I just needed to lie down or sit down. We finally agreed and for 65 Euro, I would have a place come 8pm. I went into the small bathroom, towelled myself dry, changed my clothes, went to the corner store and downed three small bottles of water in a row. Bret told me about one time when he got dehydrated in Shanghia and how terrifying it was. I was not that bad but I was not that good either. What did I say earlier; HYDRATE! HYDRATE! HYDRATE!

As luck would have it, when I returned from the water run, she had decided to just give me a double room instead of a single for the same price so I could go right to my room, shower, and rest for a while before I went out for dinner.

I awoke from a dead sleep and with ten minutes to check out I threw my things in my bag haphazardly. As Bret will attest, I don’t like to be rushed when packing. Every morning I would be up a half hour before Bret breaking my tent down and organizing and yet somehow he would always be waiting for me. 

We walked around Paris for the rest of the morning in a haze, drifting here and there and through the Latin Quarters looking for something to eat. I was somewhat tired and hung-over and just wanted to sit down but Bret wouldn’t have it because it was too touristy. In our hung-over state, we were getting on each other’s nerves a bit but when we finally sat down at the Beire Academy , a Belgium Beer restaurant where we had eaten two nights before, we were back on track. We decided it would be in our best interest to have a few Duvel Beers and crash on the train ride home, but has fate would have it, there would be no sleep on the Thalys from Paris to Amsterdam.

At the beginning of the trip on the TGV train from Amsterdam to Avignon, we sat across from an older women and a very attractive French girl about our age. She must have been in advertising as she was working on some proofs for a good part of the trip. I tell you this; if she looked at us once it was a lot. Bret and I got a good laugh at this afterwards thinking, how can you sit across from someone on a train for four hours and not even look at the person across from you and at least fake a smile. Are we that despicably detestable? This train ride would be different, however.

Across from us on this train ride sat Eva and her two-and-a-half year old daugter Noa. Eva had a bright, warm smile that I’m sure could even warm the heart of the apparently heartless girl we sat across from on the way to Avignon. She had a great energy about her that was at once welcoming and open. At first we were thinking, this could be a long train ride with a screaming kid across from us, but Noa was amazingly well behaved and had some of the most beautifully striking, innocent, and curious eyes I’ve seen. With those eyes and her mother’s spicy personality, she will surely be a heart breaker.  

From the moment we sat down across from Eva until the train pulled into Paris four hours later we were talking up a storm. She was on her way to meet up with some of her best friends in Paris and told us to come out the next night for ‘ladies night,’ and if that didn’t work, perhaps we could meet up the following day in Westerpark for Bret’s friend Thom’s birthday.

When we arrived in Amsterdam, Bret and I left each other at Central Station and I went back to Susan’s for what I hoped would be a mellow Saturday night, this was not the case however. In the Bourbon Street Bar in Leidseplein, we ran Owen and his Irish cronies and Ron the Northeastern American expat. “I love Amsterdam,” Ron said. “Where else can you take your bike to the store and pick up some Milk, baby’s diapers, and some hash?” Needless to say, we didn’t get home until 6:30am that morning, and consequently, I did not make it out for girl’s night the following evening. I did not even get out of bed until 2:30pm. Bret did make it out for girls night and he didn’t get home until 5am. At that point, I don’t think my body was ready to handle two nights of that.

Saturday night I went out with Judith and Susan in the trendy Jordan area of Amsterdam for our African reunion tour and they caught me up on the rest of their trip after we left each other in Zanzibar. My favorite part was them telling me the story of a botched Safari they went on in a two wheel drive van with a driver who had barely ever driven off road. At one point he tried to cross a small river and said, “Hold on!” Well, the car went in and never came out. It was leaning in thigh-high water at a 45 degree angle in the middle of nowhere. He told them to get out and push and they said absolutely not as snakes were in the water and the area was known for some of the most aggressive Lions in Central Africa (at one point years ago when a railroad was being built, roughly 140 people were eaten by lions).

The driver said his phone didn’t work and after seven hours of baking in the sun with the  Judith said, “Give me that damn phone!” She was holding it up in different places all over the car and finally managed to get a signal and call into the station. To make a long story short, they got help and left the driver there for lion bait. When they got back to Nairobi, they called the tour company to get their money back but they would not give it up. Finally, Judith yelled into the phone, “Your gonna give me my fucking money or I’m going to burn your mother-fucking place down!” They got their money back. Sometimes you need to speak in a language the Africans understand. The two lessons learned here, a) if you are in Africa and go on a Safari, make sure it is a reputable tour company, and b) never cross a Dutch woman if you are a home or business owner. 

***

The weather in Amsterdam is incredibly unpredictable. Bret says you can get all four seasons in one day but sometimes it seems like you can get them in an hour. The following day, Susan had some things to do so she escorted me to Leidseplein on bike where she left me on my own to find my way to Westerpark. The moment we left her house the skies opened and we got stuck in a downpour. I was feeling a bit shaky on the bike as you have to cross train lines and watch out for other cars, bikers, and pedestrians, not to mention have a general understanding of the bike system. As soon as Susan left me on my own, however, and I got out of the busy area of Leidseplein, I was thinking to myself, this is really fun - I’m having a great time. The moment I had completed that thought, my back tire blew so loudly I was sure someone was using the American as target practice. I could do nothing but laugh once I realized blood was not pouring from any gunshot wounds. I asked several people if there was anywhere to get the tire fixed but it was Sunday and everything was closed so I was forced to walk the bike the rest of the distance to the park.

When I got to the party which was under a tent in the park, I changed out of my wet clothes and had some food and drinks, but in the back of my mind I was still thinking, what the fuck am I going to do and how am I going to get Susan’s bike back to her house? As my buzz got greater, that thought receded further and further into the back of my mind. At one point someone broke out a soccer ball so I decided I needed to teach the Dutch a thing or two, and while playing, Eva showed up as well. It was a great afternoon filled with good people, good food, and drinks, and the first sunshine I had seen in Amsterdam since the the day I arrived. There was even a little guitar action and the ‘Push It A Little Bit Harder,’ song was created, a song with descending chords about what I’m sure you can imagine. The last ten of us were singing the refrain at the top of our lungs; push it, a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder…I can assure you it is a catchy number and I sang it in my mind for the next few days.

At the end of the party, it was decided that I should walk the bike back to Leidseplein and lock it up over night, and from there I could take the tram back to Susan’s house. Westerpark and Susan’s home are on opposite sides of the city so there was just no way I could walk it all the way home that night, not to mention I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to Susan’s place.

As luck would have it, however, the tragedy of the blown tire turned out to be a blessing in disguise (at least on this day). Being that I was forced to walk the bike all the way back to Leidseplein, it forced me to slow down and really look around at the city – to pay attention to its architecture and to watch its people – and since the rain had stopped, a beautiful sunset was unfolding over Amsterdam.

On the ride home, or should I say walk, everyone was busy doing something. In Amsterdam, every one rides their bike; women in very, very short skirts, men in business suits, people ride with their children in small baskets on the front or back of the bike, and all the while they are holding bags of groceries, an umbrella, talking on the phone or texting and driving across train tracks and over bridges and canals. At one point I walked past a skate park and stopped to watch the kids who had no doubt been  riding the half-pipe all day - back and forth and back and forth. It was poetry in motion. They were fearless as their body and mind became one fluid motion.

After a while of hunching over the handle bars to walk the bike, I began trying to walk the bike by just holding on to the seat. It took quite a while to figure out the right balancing act. If you held on to the seat too tight you forced it to do something it didn’t want to do and if you held it too lightly, vice versa. You needed to hold it just right and gently guide it. Any force in the wrong way would make the wheel turn and buckle. I thought this was a good metaphor for life; you must hold on to the reigns of life while gently guide it, and in that process, it will take you where you need to go. If you force things, they just don’t work. I also realized you can turn just about any repetitive action into a Zen exercise or meditation by really being aware of what you are doing, whether it is walking a bike, walking down the street, or breathing. That night was one of the best walks home I have ever had.

The first day or two in Amsterdam I was overwhelmed at trying to get around and figure out their transportation system. To be quite honest, I think many Dutch people haven’t figured it out either. But I realized that night, the only way to figure out a city is to just do it; walk its streets, ride its transportation systems, follow winding streets that seem to go nowhere on a bike, ask questions, and meet its people. All you need is a penchant for adventure, a willingness to explore, and an insatiable curiosity.

Ah, the blank page. I know you so well my old friend and nemesis, and yet I know the only way to deal with you is to greet you and begin the conversation.

How to possibly catch up on the last few days since we left Pavel and the south of France? There was Avignon and my birthday, two nights in Paris, and a few nights in Amsterdam – one which included driving home on the back of a bike at sunrise. So much to tell, so many words to describe it, and as always so little time. This much I can tell you; for the children’s sake, I will not be able to divulge all the details because the content involves heavy sexual and drug content that is only suitable for a mature audience, and in no way do I want to influence a minor or suggest in anyway that what I do should be mimicked. I am after all an uncle to some very impressionable minors. Plus I must leave some air of mystery.

I guess I will just choose to fast forward to our main night in Paris when we met ‘Guy’. I won’t reveal his real name because I am pretty sure Interpol, the KGB, the FBI, and the Canadian Royal Mounted Police are looking for him, but if ever there was a character to meet in Paris it was Guy. The day before we received an email that said, ‘Are you interested in treats? I am going to see the Wolf tonight,’ so this piqued out interest as to who this international man of mystery was. 

Guy is a friend of the great ‘drinking man’s poet’ who I mentioned earlier in this story and in no way, shape, or form am I talented enough as a writer to pin him down in words. He is a true character, the kind you not only want to run into in Paris, but write an entire novel about.

We were supposed to meet Guy at the Bottleshop Bar near the Bastille on the Rue Trousseau, across the street from the Auberge International des Juenes at about 6:00pm. When we arrived, Up, Bustle & Out was playing, a Spanish band reminiscent of Morecheeba meeting Theivery Corporation and I thought, this bar has a good, familiar vibe to it. Not long after our first or second beer, the bartender changed the music to Ray LaMontaigne’s Barfly which has consistently been playing on my iPod throughout the trip and has served as a part of the soundtrack. If you know the song, it was the perfect scene and the one I had somehow imagined ever since I first heard the song. Here we were after traveling for the last two plus weeks on our second and last day in Paris, at the tail-end of a mad, mad trip, about to meet a character straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel. It was one of the first pauses in a go-go-go two weeks where we could actually sit back and enjoy our Grolsch beers.  

 The Bretster and I sat in an open window facing the street, looking over the drinking patrons on the sidewalk as we watched the garbage truck go back and forth and back and forth, and we wondered how much garbage could really be on this street. Behind the bar, a sexy siren from Fairfield, Connecticut, was serving drinks. She had the type of beauty and bone structure that made you wonder if at one point she had done some international modeling, and yet she had these far away eyes, as Mick Jagger called them. They were eyes that looked off to a distant place, a place that existed somewhere between the past and the future but in no way was a part of the present. Only a few hours earlier I said to Bret, `Paris would be the perfect place to go if you had to or wanted to disappear for a while.´ Beneath the archways, below the history, and in between the narrow winding streets and medieval buildings that stretch off into the distance, it is a place to very easily lose yourself and your trail.

It was one of those nights for me where I was somewhat amped with energy and I was ready to tackle any challenge. Bret and I have traded off these nights throughout the trip where one person’s  energy carries the other to a new level. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Guy was my friend’s friend so I had to carry the conversation and interaction throughout the evening until we reached that jumping off point where it didn’t matter any longer.  

As it turned out, even though this bartender was gorgeous and probably out of my league at any given bar in the states, I was determined to get her story. When she played Barfly I saw my window open. She was immediately impressed by my musical knowledge and said she had only come across a few people in Paris who knew of him and very quickly, even though the bar stools around her were filled with expats drooling over her, I gained some credibility and attention. As it turned out, I was right; Paris is a great place to hide out and there was something behind her far away eyes. Just a few months prior, while she was studying in Paris, her best friend died so she quit school and began bartending.  

It is at this jumping off point, as I said earlier, that I am going to have to refrain from some of the adult details. You will have to read about them in the book so I will fast forward through them, letting your imagination wander. What I can tell you is that Guy did in fact see the Wolf the night before, but what the Wolf gave him burned a hole in his pocket that night so he had to do most of it – in fact he did enough of everything the night before to wipe out on his bike on his way home. But being the professional he is, he had a potpourri of things and from the Bottleshop Bar we found ourselves walking the streets of Paris.

The Bastille is a very busy area and on this night it was no exception. Compound that with the fact that there was a pretty significant building fire on the corner of the Bastille with probably 10-15 fire trucks with their ladders moving up towards the people hanging out of their windows as the dark smoke billowed over the building. It is horrible that we took the opportunity to videotape and talk to a few cute girls from Houston, but after all, we are men. In my defense, no humans were hurt and every one was evacuated from the building safely.

We took this opportunity to realize that probably the Police were somewhat distracted and figured down by the water and canal it was fine to go have a cup of some of the Dutch coffee we brought down. The three of us sat there brewing a cup and told Guy the whole Jack Will Travel story. He was loving it and had a shit-eating grin on his face like Ralphy from A Christmas Story when he finally got his Red Rider BB gun.

When the cup of coffee was brewed, the Bretster was ready and had that look and energy about him so I grabbed the video camera, plugged in the microphone, handed it to him, and threw the camera on the uni-pod, which generally makes us look like we have some credibility (we were also supposed to have earphones to add to the prop-factor but they were just too much to carry at this stage).

Bret jumped into the walkway and began throwing the microphone in people’s faces (can you say ugly American?), but in actuality, at this point in the night, people were receiving it somewhat warmly and with intrigue. I’m pretty sure everyone in the area was smoking hash and drinking anyway. Guy, in the simplicity of his brilliance suggested the question, `We are in one of the fashion capitals of the world. What do you think the color for next year will be?’ One of the passerbys told us but I can´t reveal it at this moment as I want to be at the forefront of fashion this fall.

When the tomfoolery was over down by the canal, we walked around the area for quite a while, occasionally stopping to interview people. I peaked my head in one bar with the microphone in hand and the camera behind me and they more or less slammed the door in my face. This does not, however, deter an American with a buzz and a microphone in hand. With the gentle coercion of Bret and Guy behind me, I stormed my way into the bar and began questioning the small circle, asking such questions as, ´Why do French people hate Americans besides when they ask questions such as this and put a microphone in their face?´ It´s not quite as obnoxious as it sounds, or maybe they were acting similar to the passive-aggressive Seattle-ites I’ve come to know and love. Maybe they were just entertaining us, despite their loathing. From there we searched for a place that suited our mood and agreed that the only place possible would be the Bottleshop Bar, where the evening began.

Since Guy was the newest member of the ‘I have a girlfriend club,’ it gave him the authority to be pushy about hitting on the single women. It was the old ‘If I was single and I was you,’ routine which if at this point as the single guy, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that one I would be retired. The Bretster and I have had some fun on this trip when the time was right, but that hasn’t necessarily been a focus of the trip. But as I was stepping up to the bar to order some beers, Guy said, ‘Hey Tim, wouldn’t it be nice if you ordered some drinks for these ladies?’ I took a moment to think about it and thought, why yes – it is a lovely moment to do that.

I took the opportunity to buy a round of drinks, which turned into many rounds, for the five very cute French girls that were sitting next to us. We knew they looked young but later found out they ranged from 20-22. Age is so hard to distinguish these days. On the approach, I felt like I was storming Normandy Beach but without casualties. The only thing we were risking were bruised egos. In only a matter of minutes we had punched through their front line, secured the area, and showed these pretty girls that we were not just simple American G.I. automans, but human beings beneath all the guise.

At this point, I think I need to take a pause to say that throughout the trip, we have barely gotten a second glace from the French woman. They are tough nuts to crack. Here and there we have had minor victories but we had yet to win a battle. I don’t know if we are not good looking enough for them or if we don’t smell sweet enough, or if it is the fact that we look like German backpackers with our gear. At one point I told someone that the French had been great to us and they said that they are probably gauging that with how recently they had a run in with a German person. And yet again, the Germans we have met have consistently been delightful, warm people. Oh well – to hell with stereotypes anyway. But the French women – this is no joke my friends.

After we punched through the front lines, we used the opportunity to ask them again why the French don’t like Americans but as it turns out, they love Americans, at least this small group. From that point on, they were puddy in our hands and the girls took turns moving around the table and sitting next to us. I felt like a soldier who had just liberated Paris. As luck would have it of course, every girl sitting at this table had a boyfriend, but it did not stop them from exchanging information with us. Had we had one more night in Paris I think one or two of them might have forgotten about their boyfriends but hell – that is a dangerous game. Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again. Again, the index cards proved to be invaluable entertainment. I hope this secret doesn’t get out too far because it is money when it comes to meeting women outside of international waters. The victory was in fact, if they did not like Americans before, they like at least two of them.

We left them that evening (after Guy spilled an entire pint in my lap – luckily I had my shorts in my backpack) giving the typical two or three kisses goodbye and as is also typical, I went for five or six. Hey - I was a philosophy major and numbers have never suited me. We walked a good 45 minutes through Paris and I had to go on the blind, drunken faith that Bret knew where he was going. Of course, as the good navigator he is, he found our way home. I hit the pillow hard and awoke what seemed like seconds later with him pounding on the door saying, ‘Timbo, what are you doing? We have to check out in ten minutes.’  

A word of advice about renting a car in Europe; should you be under the constraints of a mileage clause, before you leave the parking lot, make sure you know how to check the odometer.

On the morning of July 16, our last day in Avignon, in my impetuousness I made the decision for both of us that we were going to rent a car, despite the fact that the Bretster was not looking favorable upon the decision. “I just hate to be cooped up all day in a car,” he said. I imagine for Bret it is somewhat like purgatory. My reason for renting the car was that we only had one day left so let’s see as much as we can in that amount of time. Granted, I ‘shit the bed’ on this one as they say because we only had 100 kilometers to work with and no idea how to view the odometer. Compound that with the fact that I also forgot to ask what the penalty was for going over the allotted mileage. I was looking for a little help from Bret when renting the car but he couldn’t be bothered and said, “This is all you Timbo. This is your thing.” Being that he is the consummate professional traveler, when he puts big things like this in my lap I am bound to make rookie mistakes. I suppose that is the best way to learn, however.

We were going to hit the lavender fields of the Luberon region, but that would have eaten up most of our guess-stimated miles so we went straight to the Colorado of Provence, a combination of the Bad Lands of South Dakota and Colorado’s Red Rocks. We walked around there for a few hours in a section known as the Sahara and it was just that hot. As always, did some filming and put the camera up on a little mini tripod to get us both in the picture. Next time of course we will have a camera man.

We cruised around more that day, traveling from one touristy hill town to the next. The Bretster said, “You see what happens when you rent a car? You fall into the circuit.” The towns we visited were laden with sun-burned tourist with multiple cameras around their necks and the streets were crowded with cars, bikes, and mopeds. In Roussillion, you would have thought were were in Paris with all the congestion and the languages that were being spoken around us. As always, however, very little English speakers or Americans. It was quite a different experience from the small, somewhat quiet (except when we were there) hill towns of the Valcluse.

You would think filling a gas tank would be a pretty universal experience but no, not in France. ‘Things are a little different around here,’ is what we always say. After a stressful experience of trying to fill the gas tank with about eight cars in line behind me, we returned the car with six extra miles to go. Score one for us.

The stage was set for a mellow evening that night. We went into town, had a small bite to eat, came back to the campsite and kicked it in our camping chairs. We split a bottle of Rosè and Bret read the the Herald Tribune while I listened to music and organized some of my notes and index cards. By this time the friends we had met at the campsite had moved on and it was basically us and some new people. One of the new men was a very drunk man about our age named Pavel from Chechnya. His effort to communicate with Bret fell somewhere between passion and desperation and Bret was kind enough to entertain him. Like a good wing man, I hit pause on my iPod to listen in, however, I didn’t take the earphones off so as to not be dragged into the conversation. Pavel was going off about this and that and after a long time, he moved on to me. I snubbed him a bit, leaning into my tent to get something while he was talking to me and he got the point and moved on. A new German couple with their motorcycle, roughly our age, was next to us and said, ‘Do you have any idea what he is saying?’ ’Not a fucking clue,’ I replied.  

“He is a wery, wery crazy man,” said the wiry, scraggly-haired German. We were surprised to learn that he was a Police officer and he confirmed our suspicion that his commander didn’t approve of look. ‘But there is no rule against it,’ he added. When he heard that our Jack Will Travel European operation was based out of Amsterdam, he said, ‘I like Amsterdam. It is a wery nice. Clean city,’ he added. ’But every one there smokes the shit.’ We concurred.

Darkness was fully upon us as we talked to this couple for a while and soon Pavel came back. We are not sure what he was saying but he was able to communicate with the German police officer’s girlfriend who was from Borat’s country of Kazakhstan. She was a little red-headed girl with a tight body but tried to convince us she was blond; she had vixen written all over her. Pavel realized he could communicate with her and was chatting away which made the German police officer not too psyched so in an effort to mark his territory as a dog might pee on a fire hydrant, he put his arm around her and pulled her in tightly to his body.

Pavel was going on and on about this and that and making some very exaggerated motions as if he was firing a rifle. Pieces of the conversation moved from Al-Qaeda and Islam to Christians and Christ and there were even hints of communism and fascism as well. He was very interested in the two of us and our opinions because we were Americans, even though we could not communicate with each other. It is in these instances interpretation takes on its own momentum and being that you can’t understand the other person, you mold what they are trying to say into what you believe they might be trying to say. What we pieced together from all of these seemingly non sequitur comments Pavel was making is that the U.S. Navy is fighting Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. Damn – I want to stay out of that war zone.

Our German friend became very uneasy and again I snubbed Pavel. I tried to tell him to keep his voice down because people were sleeping but he took it the wrong way and stormed off in a self-deprecating manner, as if he was going to start lashing himself with a cat o’nine-tails. Again, our German friend took the opportunity to tell us Pavel was a wery, wery crazy man and that he was going into his tent to get and sleep with his can pepper spray. In the meantime, Pavel was just pacing around the campsite as if he was on speed or meth. Bret started to get rolling and say things like, ‘Hey Timbo, we don’t want to fuck with this guy. He may have fought in the Chechnyan war or something. He could be really crazy.’ This comes from the fact that Pavel, who was pacing the campsite as a spy or a scout might do, was communicating with his friend over by their campsite making clicking and whistling calls back and forth to each other as one in the military – or a militia – might do. Bret was having a more fun time with this than myself. I had my rain fly on but Bret was saying, ’Man, I want to see what he is doing and if he is coming at me,’  so I took my rain fly off to keep an eye on him all night. I was imagining an ax or sledgehammer coming down through my tent and my obituary saying something to the effect that it was such a shame Tim didn’t make it to see the morning of his 33rd birthday. I was so riled up, the half a valium I took to make sure I got a good night’s sleep for once didn’t even work.

In what I now view as a bit of an over reaction, I slept with my hand grasped to a knife on my chest that night. When I awoke, I would search for the knife as a child might search for his security blanket. It was a very restless sleep and every time I woke up, Pavel was still pacing. When I finally got up that morning, Pavel and his friend were packed up and just pulling out of the campsite in their car. They gave us a big, warm smile and waved to us enthusiastically. I am almost certain they didn’t sleep that night.

God speed where ever you were sleeplessly off to Pavel, my crazy incommunicative Chechnyan rebel friend…

The first time I met the Bretster, as I call him, we were at a party in high school. We went back to his house afterwards with another friend and went into his room to have a few more drinks and a smoke. He turned off the lights, put on a lazer machine and a black light, and all over his room he had painted abstract things that would only show up under a black light. He was also playing Enigma. At this point in my life, my musical repoitre consisted of classic rock and the Grateful Dead so this was pretty far out there for me. Who is this young, crazy, creative madman? I thought to myself. Whoever he is, I want to be friends with him. It is hard to believe that was almost 20 years ago. You think you know someone and then all of the sudden they say something and you think to yourself; “Wait - do I really know this person?” That is what I thought to myself on Bastille Day when in a drunken, dancing frenzy, the Bretster leaned into me and yelled over the band, “This is my favorite Christine Aguillera cover!”

At this point in the story, I have no idea if I have written a thought in this blog, my proper notebook, my pocket notebook, on index cards contained within the new filing system I have created, on a napkin, or if I said it on video. At all times I have been writing, writing, writing, logging notes and details in several forms. At any rate, the creativity is flowing at a furious pace and both of us are feeding each other.

It is July 17th, my 33rd birthday and what a great place to celebrate it. The days have been fast and furious but we have finally managed to slow things down a bit for the last two days. It would be hard to top Bastille Day anyway. As Thurston, our Harley friend said when I rolled out of my tent the day after Bastille Day, “That was quite a party last night, yes? Very hard to out-do, no?”

It was Saturday, July 14th and we rolled into town that night from our campsite (which is the closest campsite within a city yet) and had a bite to eat. As we have said every evening for the last week, “Let’s just have a mellow evening.” Somehow we never seem to find that happy medium, however.

After dinner, Bret and I were standing outside St. John’s Pub watching a band play a Jimi Hendrix cover when Thurston and Bridgette walked up (I was calling him Tomas in the last chapter). We posed for a few pictures and they invited us to sit down for a drink. As you can guess, one drink turned into many. There we were in the middle of Apt in the Luberon region of France - two American backpackers and two bikers with leather and tattoos all over (they are actually tattoo artists and work six months of the year). “All we need is a place to camp, a little bit of food and beer, out motorcycle and each other,” Bridgette told us. As I’m sure you can visualize, our table stood out amongst the rest. Here is another travel tip; always buy the first round. It is just in good taste I believe and a good way to make friends.

Since it was Bastille Day, the French Legion was in town, decked out in their full, crisp uniforms. They are an imposing group, chiseled from the Rock of Gibraltar and straight faced. A group of them sat right behind us and I think Bret and our biker friends were a little uneasy, but I thought it was exciting and I was determined to offer these gentleman in some way an olive branch.

As the trip has gone on, I carry the video equipment at all times. Bret hates to carry anything and he would rather miss a great opportunity than to be burdened with anything he has to be responsible for. Being the writer, I know a price-tag can not be put on the moment so I carry it at all times – just in case anything interesting might happen. As the wine from dinner and the pints slowly made its way to our brain, I had to use the restroom so I said to Bret, “Get out the video camera and get ready to film me when I get back.” 

On my return from the bathroom, I got right in front of the band and started dancing like a fool. There was no one else dancing except a street-drunk and there were maybe 50 people listening to the music, drinking, and watching the animated American fool. When I got back to the table, the men from the French Legion seemed to like this and they let us take some pictures of their “cappi blond,” which is their white hats. Sometimes all I need to do is something idiotic like this to push Bret and get the game on. Neither of us could have had the adventure we are having without each other. We are a great team and constantly pushing each other further in one way or another.

I didn’t know much about the French Legion but apparently it was formed at the end of WWII. People from all countries, including Germans joined the French Foreign Legion so it is a fighting force made up of people from all over the world. 1 in 5000 people are accepted into this elite fighting class, so Thurston told us.

The light was almost completely gone from the sky and a thunderous crack signaled the fireworks were about to begin so the party, as well as everyone else from the town, moved into the town square. The fireworks began and Bret leaned into Thurston and said, “These are all right but they are bigger in the U.S.” I am pretty sure Thurston knew we he was joking.

When the last crack of the grand finale ended, everyone was standing and facing the direction of the fireworks, looking up at the sky as commuters might look at the board for the track changes in Grand Central Station. With the square being shrouded in a midst of gunpowder, the band started immediatley and it was as if the track number appeared and the mass moved in one fluid action towards the stage. Thurston, Bridgette and I moved towards the closest bar.

At the first bar we went to, Thurston got served three drinks but they didn’t give him his and he was left there standing at the bar so Bret said, “Screw it. Let’s go sit outside. If they want our money they can come find us.” Brdgette has a collection of glasses from all over the world and her drink was served in a “51 Pastis” glass. Since she wanted it, we split the joint with the glass under her leather jacket and our free drinks, compliments of the French liberation.

I will probably never be able to hear “Billy Jean” by Micheal Jackson again without thinking about Bastille Day in Apt, July 14, 2007. The band that was playing, Kashmir, played a great array of covers from Lynard Skynard, to Micheal Jackson, to Bob Marley, but when Micheal Jackson started playing Bret started dancing like a madman. As I have said before, Bret has some seriously contagious energy. The guy at the next able was loving it so he bought us a round of drinks and then insisted we go out into the square and meet his wife and friends. We were putting it into fifth gear at this point.

Within no time, the crowd was dancing with a new, revitalized enthusiasm as they played one Micheal Jackson cover after the other. I broke out the camera and had it on a uni-pod so it looked as if we were somewhat professional, at least the 15-year-old kids seemed to think so. They started forming a breakdancing circle and then were fighting to get on camera. These kids were good.

There was one tweaker at the front of the stage who was probably on LSD or something similar and Bret became his puppet master. He was loving and feeding off of Bret’s over-the-top energy and at one point Bret dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups and the kid dropped down as well. The video is hillarious. All the while there were a few French Legion guys around us who were letting lose as well. It didn’t take too long to be arm and arm with them yelling “Viva la France!” at the top of our lungs. They even let us wear there “cappi blonds” which Thurston said is like a relic and, in his German accent said, “It is wery, wery rare. Wery, wery good for you.” As he said this, he would put his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger together, bring them to his lips, kiss them, and throw them into the air. It was his trademark move. It would be like a Green Beret in the United States army letting you put his beret on your head, he said.

 At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, but while I was gone, two military police came and removed one of our new French Legion friends because he was so drunk. The guy was absolutely plastered. He had this “googly-woogly look” as Bret called it that almost made him look as if he had some sort of palsy or retardation. Bret said, “Man, if they take this guy, they must take anyone.” When I returned, the googly-woogly guy was gone. Lucky for his friend, he was in the bar buying us drinks. It was quite a scene to see two bikers, two backpacking Americans, and two French Legion soldiers arm in arm dancing to Bob Marley and pretending we were smoking a Bob Marley classic. It was as if we had just liberated France and it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from; freedom was ours at last.

I tell you what - I have heard lot’s of stories about how rude the French are to Americans but we have been received with open arms. I think people are just so curious to see these two Americans walking through the region in weather that is too hot to be outside at the height of the late-afternoon sun, in the the middle of July, with all of their belongings on our backs.

With the military police lurching, we decided maybe it was time for us to move out before they sobered up and thought we might be subversives. We headed back to our campsite and took lot’s of pictures along the way such as Bret and Bridgette on a see-saw. At the end of the night we hugged our new friends good night, telling each other how great we thought they were, but we were not quite ready to go to bed. We had to review and breakdown the night. “I can’t go to sleep. I’m too wired!” Bret said. The boy has a lot of energy.

We had a cup of “Dutch coffee” and found a well-lit spot beneath a street light and I spouted some verbal diareaha into the camera. I was truly overwhelmed and having what I called a Serengeti Moment, which I touched upon at the beginning of this story and which I expounded upon in Jambo Tanzania. The Serentgeti Moment, as I call it, is a moment of clarity when all of your expereinces, thoughts, and feelings of your life come into one sigle-pointed moment of consciousness. It is as if all of the sudden the blurred image you have been looking at comes into focus and your life is forever changed. I don’t necessarily have time to expound at the moment, but as I said in the beginning of this story, the techtonic plates of my life have been shifting. I didn’t really know what I was writing down in the first six chapters before I left for France but now they make sense to me. Perhaps Bastille Day was the great earthquake that has reformed the landscape of my thoughts and life. I think it will be hard to look at life again through the same lenses I have been looking through. The lense is different, but the camera is the same. As always, that camera, that tool that captures the moment for me is the pen. I have tasted the cup of the life on this trip. It is brilliant. It is rich. It is nurturing. It is vibrant. It is varied. It is seemingly random, and yet it is calculated – meticulously created from the oldest and greatest recipe, made divinely by the greatest wine maker. How amazing is life that I had to travel first to Africa, into the heart of the Serengeti and Tanzania to taste this blend, and then to a small town in the heart of France’s Luberon Region to again imbibe in its rich, nurturing, inspiring, and life-filling taste.

As Bret said the other day, much like life, we are on a journey and these experience are just one of many GPS coordinates on the map that tells the tale of our lives. These coordinates are the experiences that enrich us and teach us about who we are and what our place is in the world.

Happy Birthday to me. Off to Avignon where the madness began. There is the Festival d’Arts going on there and we have met many people along the wwy who are performing in these small productions. Hopefully we will see some tonight.