BANGKOK -> CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Most people told me that the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was kind of a ripoff. It costs twice as much as the bus, takes twice as long and something always, always goes awry. I’ve never listened to a good word in my life and I was sick of buses anyway, so I bought a ticket for the hard sleeper and hopped on at two in the afternoon.

The train isn’t exactly luxurious, but being able to stand up and hang out of the last car whenever you please is luxury enough. There are no compartments in hard sleeper class, but around eight pm the conductor comes by and converts all the seats to beds. They’re actually really confortable, and when it’s time to crash the rocking of the car and Thailand’s lax perscription laws will put anyone right to sleep.

Sure enough, something went wrong. A few hours out there was an accident up the tracks (a train with sixteen cars full of concrete completely derailed; nobody was hurt, but we passed it later and was as awesome as it sounds) and we had to go back to the nearest town. We were told we could refund our tickets and buy seats on the next night bus. I stuck around for a bit, hearing the train’s re-departure time change from “tomorrow” to “five hours” to “very soon,” and when the beast finally set off again we’d only lost three or four hours. As some sort of cosmic compensation for the ordeal the sleeper car had nearly emptied out, leaving only myself, a French woman, her Indonesian companion and a Thai music student.

He carried a violin and a guitar; we jammed like there was nothing else to do.

ADAMS MORGAN, DC
A giant tree outside of my apartment building finally decided it’d had enough, so it collapsed onto the street and destroyed a Mercedes.

“I thought it was a bomb!” said the middle aged lady.
“Man, I saw it, and then it fell over you know?” said the drunk guy on the street.
“It really sounded like a bomb! I thought it was one,” said the lady, trying to stay upset.
“Oh goddammit, it’s Friday,” said the fireman.

The obvious solution would be to climb on the tree with some beers so we could all reminisce about the great Tree Party of Summer ’09, but nobody seemed down once the cops showed up.

all from the cherry blossom festival and a brief trip to the shenandoahs

Last Monday I was riding to Alexandria, trying to remedy a piercing mishap, when the chain popped off of my motorcycle. Nothing terrible happened, but I was right in the middle of 14th and Pennsylvania – L’Enfant’s Grand Avenue, a block from the White House.

I pushed the bike onto the sidewalk, pulled the tools out of their container and thrust my hands into its blackened innards. In twenty minutes of trying to coax that damn thing back onto the sprocket I must have been passed by half the population of the Midwest – it is tourist season, after all – and nobody said a thing. I was briefly hassled by the police, but I think they understood.

(near the west virginia border)

I was in Safeway tonight, held up in line while a young guy and the cashier tried to wrestle a giant pack of diapers over the scanner. Another guy behind him started an enthusiatic conversation about raising small children. It was awkwardly one-sided and I kind of hoped he wouldn’t talk to me, but we were all saved by an angry Latin woman yelling about how they’d scammed her. As she waved her receipt around like a badly-weighted epee, conversation guy popped open an box of nuts he hadn’t paid for and turned to me wide-eyed.

“Wow! Man.”

I looked down at my instant grits. “This place is never boring.”

“I know,” he said, bobbing up and down and throwing barbecued almonds into his mouth. “Life’s fun, right?“

“Hi, I was driving by and I saw your farm, I’ve always wanted to try unpasteurized milk…”
“We haven’t had any cows in years.”
“There’s a cow on your sign.”
“It’s a bit misleading, yes.”
“What do you do?”
“We’re a grain farm. Do you want a tour?”

So this guy took me for a tour of his grain farm, pointing out exactly how awesome each piece of machinery was. He gave me directions to a creamery and told me to hurry up, because they’re probably milking the cows pretty soon.

Eight crazed farm dogs charged me when I pulled into the driveway. I walked up to the house and knocked, where four more dogs and a ten year old girl came to the door.

“Uh, are your parents around?”
“I ain’t know where they at.”
“I mean, are they on the farm?”
“I don’t know. You can talk to Juan, he’s doing manure.”

Juan was riding a Bobcat through a herd of unamused livestock and their feces. I managed to flag him down, standing in an inch of poop behind a cow with an udder sac four times the size of my head. Juan didn’t speak a word of English, but after asking if I was immigration he dialed his boss and handed me the phone.

“Hi, so I’m on your farm, and I’d like to try some unpasteurized milk…”
“Ah well, I’m at the horse track. I don’t know where my wife is at. We can’t sell the stuff, but if I were there I’d certainly just give you some.”
“Okay, I’ll come back some other time.”
“No no, you ain’t came all the way out here for nothing. You go in that creamery there and take some cheese outta that big steel fridge. Just take some cheese, it’s free for you.”

So now I’m walking through the buildings on this farm, just taking stuff out of fridges, and nobody gives a shit but the dogs. Defeated but carrying free cheese, I stopped to pee. It took me a minute to realize I was surrounded by five mangled geese and I thought it was probably time to go home.

Spring soon. VROOM!

in which four daring souls mount mechanical stallions;
revisit a childhood forest full of danger and delight;
face the dreaded cat-tail with heads held high;
wet their feet in the tepid swamp of adventure;
and ultimately return home, inching ever closer to a life well lived.

Yesterday was Obama’s inauguration, and everything was absolutely packed. I climbed a tree in front of the Capitol and got a pretty good view, but you can see all those pictures in the news. So here are some tourists.

p.s. inauguration 1569, from Fr. inauguration “installation, consecration,” from L. inaugurationem (nom. inauguratio) “consecration, installment under good omens,” from inaugurare “take omens from the flight of birds, consecrate or install when such omens are favorable,” from in- “on, in” + augurare “to act as an augur, predict”

I love my backpack. It’s been to at least twenty countries on three continents, strapped to six different motorcycles and abused by more baggage carriers than a fifty year old bachelor. I’ve never come close to losing it and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart.

(a train in japan)

But man, it’s getting ratty. The nylon is stained with gunk from innumerable Vietnamese mudholes, it’s missing some buckles and I had to duct tape one shoulder strap to keep the padding from falling out. It’s understandable that an observer might assume it’s owned by a homeless person.

(north vietnam)

I was coming home at the beginning of September and stopped to get a burger next to the Columbia Heights metro. I saw a man out the window carefully shredding a copy of Express and putting it into different garbage bins. I finished my burger, put on my pack and started fishing through the trash to see what was on them. A guy about my age tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey man, you look like you could use a burger. Come on, I’ll buy you one.” I politely refused and said I wasn’t that poor.

(some dustpit in the vietnamese highlands)

Again, just the other day, I was standing at the corner of Columbia and Ontario with the damn thing when a kid of about seven and his mom passed me. As they walked by, I heard the kid ask, “Mommy, is he homeless?”

(a night in front of a japanese train station)

Stop judging me! And merry Christmas!