Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in marksouthbend's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
10:00 am	Lagos We'll be in Venice in about an hour, 6 days after leaving Malaga. Going to Portugal before Italy was an idealistic decision based on the fanciful notion that we can see it all. With 3 weeks left in the whole trip, we have to realize that seeing it all is impossible and make sure that trying to do the impossible doesn't keep us from going the very best places we can with the time we have remaining. We paid for 1 great afternoon in Lagos, Portugal with 6 days of gruelling train hopping--all the way West through Spain and all the way East through Spain, after we had just spent 3 weeks in Spain and were sick of it already. Still, I can't say I regret the decision to go to Portugal, for which I take a lot of responsibility, because I argued for it with great determination. Lagos was a resort town, and I've seen people and restaurants like Lagos has many times before. But I have never seen a beach like it has. We walked down a staircase to get to the sand, and there were moderately sized ocean waves rolling in regularly. I hate the beach. On a sunny day, I spend all day looking for shade, and your average beach has none. But your average beach doesn't have 50 foot cliffs on both sides of it to offer shade at any time of day. You can sit in the sun if you like, but give me the shade, where I can still see the bright sunshine as it hits the water and sand. It just doesn't hit me. And I can still feel the misty breeze and listen to the waves. I was happy. There were also many rocks of the same substance as the cliffs, standing out in the middle of the water. Some were as tall as the cliffs and too steep to climb. One rock was not too high and not too far out and easy to climb. Each of us swam out to that rock, climbed on it, realized that it was made of sharp shell fragments pressed together by geological forces, cursed the pain, thought it over, and then jumped off into the ocean 20 feet below. And then swam to shore, aided by waves and impeded by undertow. We also all played in the waves, and the waves played too rough. They were big enough to flip you over and mop the floor with you. When I got out, I was a bit dizzy from being teleported against my will from place to place by waves, and tired from trying to swim to shore, trying to stand up, trying to walk out of the water, trying to maybe rinse off some sand. You couldn't use these waves for rinsing. Each one had its mind made up to kick your ass. When I got to shore, I plopped down on my towel and caught my breath, and swept my hand through my hair and found tons of sand. Way more sand than I've ever thought my hair would hold. And I realized I must not have been imagining things when I felt like the ocean was dragging me across the seabed upside down. I mean, that's what it felt like, but I thought I might be exaggerating due to disorientation. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
7:00 am	Nice, France I haven't been amazed at anyting I've seen for a while, with the exception of the rock sheltered beach and huge, man-spanking waves in Portugal. I look around me and I don't feel like saying anything, let alone writing. I'm tired of talking to strangers just because they're pretty, tired of it going nowhere, tired of it having nowhere to go. I'm tired of cool traveller guys hanging out with us for a day and then going a different way. Tired of walking around at night looking for a free place to sleep and finding turds everywhere. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
8:00 am	Lagos, Portugal We left Malaga and headed West so as not to exclude lowly Portugal from the party. We don't want to miss anything, and this impulse usually comes out in the form of making inefficient use of our time. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
3:00 am	Huelva I'd just like to get excited about simply telling stories in this journal. Greg has joined us, and tonight is our first night away from Malaga, and it was our first day riding trains with him. So a lot of what was going on today was showing Greg how we do things. A couple of the more fun things to show or tell him were how we look for a place to sleep, i.e., climbing up a giant unfinished wooden boardwalk and when you get to the end, alying down. And another thing I took particular joy in informing im of was when we picked up an unopened bottle of water off the side of the street and began drinking. he was like "where'd you get that?" And the answer was "oh, that happens sometimes..." I've been feeling slightly ill for a couple of days now, but I did enough stuff last weekend that was so far outside of my normal routine that it's hard to know what to blame for the illness. I did have rather close interactions with Barbary Apes in Gibraltar. Gibraltar has a big rock to hike up, whose fame somehow reached me in the United States, and halfway up the rock is the only place in the European Union where real apes are naturally found. So many people visit these apes that they're rather tame and rather skilled thieves. You go up there and like 30 monkeys hang out with you waiting for the chance to steal your food, and you put up with their constant plotting for the chance to hang out with them. Carl was really bold and brave about getting close to the monkeys, but the pictures on my camera make me look more bold and brave, just because Carl takes better pictures of me than I'm able to take of him. So, I did have wild, or at least not pet, monkeys taking food out of my hand, and one sat on my shoulder and pulled on my ear and liked me enough to make sure I was properly groomed and give me a monkey hairstyle. As we were walking back down from the apes, Carl reported feeling nauseous, and then proceeded to vomit an alarming amount. He felt very sick, and it lasted a couple of days. I still felt fine when Carl was coming down with monkey plague, so I was able to help him get home. Gibraltar was just the last stop for Carl and I on a crazy safari weekend. It wasn't a real safari, but we did go to Africa. We went to Tangier, Morocco with another volunteer at the Malaga Media Center, Brian. Brian only stayed one day, and it was the day we followed all the advice we'd heard and used a tour guide. Just as we got off the ferry from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, we were accosted by a well-dressed fluent English speaker offering to be our tour guide for as long as we stayed in Morocco. An hour hadn't passed before this tour-guide pimp passed us on to a man he called his "brother". (Comment on this)
Monday, July 30th, 2007
10:00 am	Malaga Malaga Media Center is a branch of Avant Ministries, a multi-national missionary organization. I don't know exactly what they do there, but it's my fault, because I'm sure they would have given me the tour if I had shown up in the day time and introduced myself instead of creeping in like fog at night. After I was through in Barcelona, i took an overnight train to Malaga with the intention of reuniting with Greg and Shane, who are volunteering 3 weeks of their time there. Johnny and Carl left Barcelona ahead of me, and I assumed they had already achieved reunification. i got to Malaga in the morning, but since no one knew exactly when to expect me, I thought I would put off the task of trying to find everyone and use the day to write. I was so doing in the mall when Johnny, Greg, and Shane walked past me by coincidence. They seemed to get a kick out of the succinct way in which I notified them of my presence: "hey". If I can't always be cool in the presence of danger, at least I can usually pull it off in the presence of irony or coincidence. I told them my Barcelona stories, and they told me Morocco stories, because they were just coming back from there. None of us knew where Carl was, but it would be damn challenging anymore to try to panic at all over that. The guys had Morocco stories to last all the way back to the house where Avant had them staying, which was a walk, a bus ride, and another walk away from the mall. Carl was already at the house when we got there. He arrived in Malaga to discover everyone he knew was in Morocco, but the people in the missions compound invited him in and treated him well, as people often do with Carl. Suddenly all of us were back together physically, but mentally we were still far from the unity which we'd honed over the course of a solid month. I was coming off a thrilling victory, Carl was desperately strategizing to avoid defeat (financially), Shane was occupied with service, and Johnny's mind was set on going home early. When Shane left Barcelona, and the group of 4 broke apart for the first time in memorable history, it was a bigger moment than I had thought. It was the end of SuperTrip as we had come to know and love it. And all I said was "see ya". Greg and Shane came to Malaga Media Center through the front door. They applied months ahead of time. They turned in resumes. I guess Shane was a few days late coming through the front door, and pirates and serial killers keep their beards neater than his was, but at least they knew who he was. Johnny, Carl, and I took up residence in the house with Shane and Greg quietly, with devastating, unpreventable, virus-like speed and efficiency. The quiet was only punctuated by several events caused by our lack of social graces which we had forgotten or abandoned on the road. It attracted attention when Carl elected to sleep on the front lawn. I was guilty of a bigger faux pas when I walked into the upstairs level of the house where we were staying, looking for a stairway down. I was locked out of the lower level, and I did not realize that the upper level was the domicile of a missionary family with two small children, and was not connected to the rooms downstairs. So I walked in looking for stairs, found only a kitchen and bedroom, and then the wife and mother found me, in her house, and screamed bloody murder while I hurried to explain that I wasn't there to hurt her or her babies. The director of the media center called us all in for a meeting, and got to see us all together for once, and get an accurate idea of how many of us there were, instead of trying to piece it together from random sightings and a string of reports of sketchy activity. In this meeting, I expressed my undying love for exhausting manual labor in the hopes that I could continue to stay with Shane and Greg under what constitutes luxury to a vagabond--a roof. Carl also expressed his willingness to work, and Johnny assented by his silence, while wondering exactly what had come over us. I spent some time in Malaga with Johnny, relaxing and making sure nothing interesting happened to me, because I didn't want to have to write about it. We ate Chinese food and had coffee, and thank god that's all I have to say about it. I spent other days with Johnny and Carl trimming hedges around the compound, working off my debt and keeping my big fat word. Many a hedge yielded to our loving but liberal pruning. We did good work, and worked hard at it. Even though I was in Barcelona at the time doing what I'd rather have done than anything else, I was still sorry to have missed sharing Morocco with Shane, Johnny, and Greg. Their pictures and stories were the very stuff jealousy is made of. Carl felt the same way, especially since Woody Allen doesn't make his world go 'round. Shane and Greg still had some work to do in Malaga, so Carl and I decided we'd see Morocco for ourselves. There was another volunteer at Malaga who wanted to go and had never been before, so we invited him too. If I wanted to stereotype Brian, I would say he's "on fire for God". (Comment on this)
Friday, July 20th, 2007
8:00 pm	Barcelona/Woody Allen On the 15th, soon after we had returned our scooters, Shane stood up from the table where we had fast food dinner and set off on his own for Malaga.  He made a missions agency a promise to be there for 3 weeks, so off he went.  I had my own pledge to fulfill--I did not intend to leave Barcelona until I found Woody Allen.  Carl and Johnny both decided to stick around with me to help out and document my progress on film.  They each asked me, separately, how long I thought I´d spend in Barcelona, worst case scenario, if the search went poorly.  They reacted similarly to my answer--¨eh, I´d say, 7 weeks¨--with patronizing looks that said ¨ah, that´s nice Mr. Fromer.  Let me show you to your padded cell.¨  The night of the 15th, we didn´t do much of anything.  We just had ourselves some dinner, made sleeping arrangements, and got used to being without our rudder, Shane.  I did start my search for Woody on the internet.  i found out which hotel he´s staying in, where the production headquarters are for his film, and I found out two members of his Jazz band from New York have a 3 month gig playing at a hotel in Barcelona, and there was a new story saying that Woody had played a show with them last week.  I therefore circled 3 locations on my map. On the 16th, I couldn´t really procrastinate any more and call it preparation.  I started visiting the spots I circled.  Hotel ¨Casa Fuster¨, where even the fruit in the bowls is 5 stars, came first.  Eddy Davis and Conal Fowkes, playing banjo and piano respectively, were being heavily promoted.  There was a sign outside the hotel with small flyers for the taking that said the cheapest ticket was 25 Euros.  Davis and Fowkes were mentioned by name, and their pictures were on the flyer, but there was a mysterious flying clarinet (Woody´s instrument) superimposed on the edge and in one of the photos, there was a 3rd man on stage, of whom you could only see his shirt and bald spot.  I asked questions at the front desk, and they told me that it was likely Woody would play again this week, and it was unlikely it would be the weekend.  Other than that, they couldn´t say when he´d be there, because it was often late notice.  I looked in at the Cafe Vienes, where it would all go down, and it was pure luxury.  If there was a flat surface without a bottle of champagne adorning it, I think it must have been oversight.  So, if all else failed, I knew where to see Woody in concert, if I had the patience, which goes without saying. We paused to appreciate La Sagrada Familia from the outside on our way to Torre Agbar, the location of production headquarters.  La Sagrada Familia is an unfinished cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi, famous and unforgettable because of its tall, slanting spires.  On close inspection, there´s a lot more to it than its distinctive overall shape.  The surface is covered with fantastic sculpture in many competing yet strangely complementary styles.  One of the first things I noticed were colorful fruit shapes on the tops of some towers, like the Trix rabbit has just hopped through and transformed the boring old world into cereal wonderland.  Churches should have raspberries on them.  I dón´t know why nobody thought of that before.  And a lovely, traditional, realistic sculpture of the nativity, which dominates the front of the building, is capped by a giant pine tree that isn´t stone grey, but green.  Around the back, where the Passion is the theme, the sculpture is more modern and stylized.  I noticed Christ on the corss wasn´t given his usual swaddling underwear, which I thought better captured the shame of crucifixion. Torre Agbar is a sky scraper of moderate proportions, but the top of it is competely rounded, which is an interesting variation from your typical sharp edges or spires.  Carl thought it was easier to appreciate the volume, in this case the immense volume, of a rounded shape.  I had also seen this building from a distance at night, when the entire exterior is lit up in a mixture of blue and red.  I believe the bottom was nearly entirely red, and the top nearly all blue, and the two colors clashed in a jagged line in the middle, although I could be mistaken about what color was on top.  From up close, I learned that the color effect wasn´t achieved with blue or red lights, but rather by shining bright white lights onto the painted surface of the building.  And the building was covered with panes of glass all extending out at the same slight angle, like scales on a fish.  The panes were like windows that open on the bottom and swing out and up, but their purpose, I gather, was just to reflect light.  The real windows would have been fouund just beneath.  I counted entrances:  one main front door, and a below ground parking structure, where Woody´s driver could drop him off without any interference from the likes of me.  I went in the front door and drifted through the lobby, with one security guard watching me.  I would have whistled an innocent tune if I knew how.  I had to settle for folding my hands behind my back and looking dreamily skyward.  I watched as someone looking not-so-very important approached the gates separating the lobby from the elevators, and had the gates open automatically in front of him.  I adjusted my undercover persona from ¨ innocent¨to ¨on important business¨ and I approached the gates, which didn´t budge.  I guess there must have been some electronic key card you keep in your pocket or something.  I left Toree Agbar feeling like I could get around the gate and the guard if I needed to, but not sure what use it would be.  If I had to evade security to do it, I´d better face facts, I was making myself and nuisance and an ass. We moved on to Hotel Arts, and I went in and sleuthed to the best of my ability.  The realization that sleuthing was kind of creepy and unbeffiting my respect for the man was slow dawning, I´m sorry to admit.  I rode elevators in the building and gained access to the upper floors by nefarious means, but I realized after I left, and I stated it on the record to Johnny and Carl, that I didn´t like the way I felt and I had no desire or intention to intrude on Woody´s privacy. I decided to buy a ticket at Hotel Casa Fuster and repeat as necessary, until Woody played with the band.  Johnny decided to move on to Malaga.  Carl decided nothing.  2 nights in a row, we had commuted outside the city at night to split a 37 Euro hotel room three ways.  That put us on a train back in to Barcelona on the morning of the 17th.  Johnny was going to get off at the main train station and make arrangements to ride on to Malaga.  I thought I´d also get off there, bid Johnny farewell, and take the metro to Casa Fuster to buy a ticket, with or without Carl.  I wasn´t entirely sure I wanted Carl with me, because he had recented started babbling incoherently about asking Woody Allen for a job, and I didn´t want his spur of the moment, long shot fantasy interfering with my own dear, premeditated fantasy, which was becoming ever more realistic.  I was hoping for the chance to ask my hero for a minute of his time and an autograph.  Carl was trying to ask a famous stranger for a high paying termporary job.  It didn´t sit well with me, but I think I would have had to yell to rattle Carl out of his oblivion, and it wouldn´t be much like me to do that.  Nevertheless, when our train made a stop in Barcelona prior to the main train station, and I realized that the stop was within walking distance of Casa Fuster, I told Johnny ¨I think I´ll get off here.  Bye.  Take care, man.¨ I kind of knew I was changing plans too fast for Carl to keep up, but I asked him anyway ¨are you going with me or staying with Johnny?¨  Carl said he had ¨no idea¨, and he didn´t get an idea before the metro doors shut behind me.  Now it was just the two of us:  me and my mission. I bought a ticket to the show that night and arrived early.  The hotel staff showed me to a seat off to the side, next to the bar, and I wasn´t really happy with where they put me at first.  I felt a little disrespected.  But it happened that the bar was where Eddy and Conal stood to hang out before the concert, after, and during intermission.  I recognized Eddy, the banjo player, kind of the front man, from the promotional cards the hotel printed, and there he was, standing right in front of me.  I was eavesdropping on his conversation, just like I would with anybody standing close to me.  I downed my complimentary flute of champagne, and I think that might have been the catalyst for my decision to stand up and talk to him.  He was already talking to 2 other people, one of whom was Fowkes, but I didn´t recognize him, and the other I thought might be a lady friend.  I said ¨sorry to intrude, but would you be offended if I asked you about Woody Allen?¨ And he said ¨I guess that depends on what you ask.¨ I kind of remembered from the documentary ¨Wild Man Blues¨ that Woody´s fame tends to unfairly overshadow the incredible musicianship of the other members of the band.  That´s what I meant by ¨would you be offended?¨ and by the way he treated me the whole night, I think he might have understood what I meant and appreciated it.  I talked to them  for a while, and they asked me questions, and seemed to care where I´m from and what I´m doing.  Eddy is from Lafayette, IN, so we had that.  And what meant the most to me, and finally got rid of me and put me back in my seat, was when Eddy told me he´d get me in on a night  Woody is playing. The music was amazing.  I brought my journal and thought I´d get some stuff done while I had pleasant background music.  But when they started playing, I snapped the journal shut and paid attention.  I couldn´t afford to miss a note or a word.  I reopened the journal periodically just to record a song title or memorable phrase or to try to define Davis or Fowkes.  The best songs for me were the slow ones.  The old standards that rhyme perfectly and often and get love exactly right.  ¨My house of cards had no foundation...Castle of sand has crumbled...I still am hers, body and soul.¨ She doesn´t want your body anymore, dude.  But that´s what makes it so painful.  The songs brought buried memories up, and I cried, but it was half out of joy and gratitude that I even knew what those old ballads are talking about.  I felt lucky, even while I currently lack what I know I need to be truly happy.  That´s the best kind of pensiveness.  I also thought of Carl several times during the show.  I wasn´t quite ready to share Woody with him, but would have been great to share this music with him.  I know how much Carl appreciates good, live music, and music in general. --All this before intermission.  At intermission, Eddy and Conal came over to the bar again to take some sips of water and relax.  A few minutes earlier, a woman from the audience had called out a request for the guys to ¨play something nice, and my friend will dance in front.¨ Eddy had quieted her with the ad-lib ¨oh my, is that the queen out there?  I´m sorry, I didn´t recognize you.¨ And he said ¨what are you implying, that the songs we´ve already played weren´t nice?¨ She came over to talk to Eddy, and I thought ¨oh, that´s good that she wanted to apologize.¨ But what she really wanted to do was talk incessantly and give Eddy a pain in his ass during his break.  But it worked out pretty well for me, because I was the guy closest for Eddy to turn to with looks of astonishment and frustration.  And I shot him back plenty of looks of commiseration.  After the woman went away, I sent Eddy back on stage with the reassurance ¨don´t worry about it.  You guys are kicking ass¨.  And then the lazy Tuesday night crowd didn´t welcome the performers back on stage with applause.  It was just me clapping, so I clapped about 4 or 5 times, and then just shrugged and kind of waved at Conal, who gave me an appreciative smile.  I was glad of that, because I felt like I had some ground to make up after failing to recognize him.  After the rest of the show, I thanked the guys for a great performance, shook their hands, and let them know they could expect me tomorrow. I was alone in Barcelona, but I felt like my life had some order and direction.  In the morning, or at least as early as I could get around to it, it was head to Casa Fuster and buy a ticket for the same night´s show.  Then spend the day writing, as long as I could remember not to put myself in a place where I´ll be distracted (for instance, where beautiful women disrobe and apply lotion).  Attend concert from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m.  Sleep somewhere.  I was just about to commence phase 3 for the second day when I saw Carl.  That took a little bit of the order out of my life, but I wasn´t all that sad to see it go.  It´s easy, all too easy, to have order when you´re alone.  I was genuinely glad to see Carl.  I was half inclined to send him an e-mail and tell him to come back to Barcelona after I heard what Eddy and Conal were layin´down.  But Carl never actually left.  When he got to the train station, with Johnny, he decided to stay and he believed (because I was mistaken at first, too) that the first concert of the week was on the 18th.  So here he was on the 18th, meeting me at the concert, the only place he was sure I would be.  I told Carl about the show last night and about chatting with the band members.  Carl told me in full detail for the first time about his desperate financial situation, and it helped me understand why he was clinging to such a blatant pipe dream. I was glad the show was great again, because Carl spent money on it that he didn´t really have.  But he really enjoyed it, as did I, apart from its value as an investment in meeting Woody Allen.  Carl opened his notebook and wrote down some of the same song titles, and even the same exact lyrics, that I had jotted 24 hours earlier.  And Eddy and Conal did me a big favor and made me look cool in front of my friend when they pointed at me and smiled while receiving their due applause, and said ¨hey, he´s back!¨ And it was just nice that they remembered me.  After the second show, I again approached the performers and thanked them and extended my hand, but before Carl could do the same, Eddy and Conal got busy talking to other people.  Now, I was just intending to demonstrate to Eddy and Conal by my actions how much I was enjoying their music and how serious I was about seeing Woody, i.e. I was going to keep showing up and clapping like mad and shaking their hands.  I kind of felt like additional schmoozing would be instrusive and presumptuous and maybe manipulative.  So, after having said my words of thanks, I was ready to leave and do it again tomorrow.  Carl was set on staying, though, and telling both men at length how their concert had turned his life around.  I guess Carl and I just have different thresholds of tolerance for awkwardness.  My tolerance for awkwardness is probably too low, and Carl´s is very high.  But I´m not in a position to say ¨too¨high this time, because standing our ground, and waiting for a very long time to talk to the guys some more worked out really well.  We met Eddy´s girlfriend, Ruth, and Conal´s mom.  And Conal finally said ¨well, do you guys need to be rushing off (clearly not) or can you stay and have some champagne?¨, which was really kind and generous of him.  We stayed, and we made friendly, playful conversation with friends and bandmates of Woody Allen, and we toasted Conal´s 40th birthday, which the hotel staff had interrupted the concert earlier to announce and celebrate.  It was just a really nice time and it was an honor to be included.  Eddy told stories about Woody.  Somebody pinch me. On the 19th, I did not buy a ticket in advance, beause I was a lot more certain that I could depend on the band members to help me get in if Woody was playing, and I also wasn´t sure if I should keep spending money every day if Woody wasn´t going to be there--I´m not exactly made of the stuff, either.  Plus, Carl wouldn´t be attending unless Woody was there, due to financial limitations, and I didn´t really want tot leave him on the outside looking in, with those puppy dog eyes.  So we just stopped by Casa Fuster a little before showtime to look for indicators of Allen´s presence.  We actually sat down to have a snack across the street from the hotel, and I went over on my own to look around.  When I looked at the stage in the cafe, there was a 3rd chair up there, which sent electricity down my spine.  I promptly approached the ticket table, and when they confirmed that Woody was going to play tonight, I asked for two 25 Euro tickets, and got shot down.  I was told ¨I´m sorry, we´re sold out tonight.¨ Ooh, well, okay, no problem, wild card:  ¨oh, I´ve seen the show a couple of times, and Eddy and Conal told me that they´d be sure to get me in on a night that Woody´s playing.  Would you mind speaking to them for me?¨ I was getting fairly comfortable taking advantage of 5 star service after buying tickets two consecutive days, and checking my bag and enjoying the concert two consecutive nights, and being thoroughly coated with politeness the whole time.  The second day I came in to buy my ticket, I even took a perfect apple out of the bowl ont he reception desk and casually took a bite as I left.  The girl at the ticket table went in and spoke to Conal, and then she came back and said ¨all right, just go over to the other desk, no problem¨.  But when I went over to the other desk, I was surprised to hear again ¨I´m sorry, we´re sold out of the 25 Euro tickets.  We do have some left at the 94 Euro price¨.  Okay you bastards, one  more time, from the top:  ¨I can´t afford that.  I know the guys in the band, and they told me they´d get me in, even if it was sold out.  I´d like to pay 25 Euros, like I have the past two nights (when you all were far more courteous and helpful)¨.  When I heard again ¨I´m sorry, no¨, I had to get more forceful.  ¨You don´t understand, the lady already went in and talked to Conal and then came back and said it was all right.¨  They tried to call the girl who had helped me the first time, but they got the wrong person, and the girl who came over to handle me now was under the impression that she was somebody very important.  When I wouldn´t take ¨no¨for an answer from her, either, she started fuming and looking at me with real hatred, which only got me more worked up.  She tried to tell me ¨you need to walk over to the other desk and check again, because we´re sold out¨.  I retorted, authoritatively, ¨I was already over there right before they sent me here.  You need to go over there (accompanied by the finger motion for walking) and then come back here and tell the people over here that everything is cool, like I was told just a minute ago¨.  She was really pretty, but in a snobby way, and it was a thrill to have her hate me so.  Anyway, we finally got in, thanks to Conal, on two specially imported chairs in the back, but the view of the stage was straight on.  Woody sat on stage with the other guys, without fanfare, and they started playing.  The first few songs there were a lot of flashbulbs going off and it didn´t seem like anyone except the performers was paying attention to the music.  It annoyed me and it must have annoyed the musicians.  Woody left some doubt in my mind after 2 songs whether he could really keep up with Conal and Eddy, but left no doubt after 4 or 5 songs.  He was seriously blowing some hot stuff up there, with his knees bouncing, body swaying, and eyes closed.  Woody decided which tunes they´d play by faintly running through the melody on his own.  It was painful watching Eddy and Conal crane their necks and squint trying to pick up on Woody´s hint, because it was always very faint, but often very brief as well.  Eddy confirmed after the concert:  ¨Yeah, it´s damn near impossible to tell what he wants us to play.¨  The three of them played for 3 hours non-stop, with Woody always coming up with one more tune, until at last he pulled on his hat, which I understood meant he´d be making his getaway soon.  I had my pen clicked and my book in hand, and Woody walked right past me on his way out, but the crowd was pressing in and Woody didn´t look comfortable, so I didn´t try for the autograph.  I said ¨good set, Woody¨, which I´m sure would have made him remember me forever if only he had heard it.  But, at least I wasn´t the woman tugging on his sleeve and rubbing his back, trying to get cured of leprosy. Carl and I hung out with Eddy and Conal and their friends and family again after the show.  They were starting to feel kind of like friends now, which I mean as a tribute to their tolerance and kindness.  I think Carl was hoping that Woody would be hanging out after the show, too, and I myself didn´t really know how far-fetched that idea was until during the show, when I saw the flashing cameras and people competing to get close.  He´s got about as much worldwide fame as anybody.  I couldn´t be disappointed, though.  I didn´t have an autograph, but I had three days of palling around and chatting with Woody´s personal friends, listening to insider stories.  And, only by the pianist´s special intervention, I got to be in the room while Woody left his heart on the stage playing the music he loves.  As I said my thanks and goodbyes after that amazing night for me, Conal threw out ¨hey, if you´re in town a couple more days, call the hotel, and we´ll have coffee or something.¨ What a guy. Carl and I left the hotel and walked toward the Arc de Triumph, where we´d slept last night without incident.  Carl was a little disappointed because of course he wasn´t employed, but he could also see the bright side, and he knew he´d see it even more clearly after some time had passed.  Meanwhile, I was focused so much on the bright side that I couldn´t see an easy way to make things even better until I woke up the next morning.  Sometimes I wake up and just know things, and the morning of the 20th I woke up knowing I could get my book signed.  I was sure either Eddy or Conal wouldn´t mind asking Woody to sign it next time they saw him.  All I really had to do was ask one of them, and then maybe buy a box at the post office and address it to myself to make things easy.  It wasn´t quite the same as asking Woody myself, but it would still mean an awful lot to me.  So I bought a box, called Conal, and asked him if he´d be willing.  I had intended to take him up on his offer to have coffee, anyways.  He said yes, he´d try, and we also set a time to meet. Carl would have enjoyed having coffee with Conal, but he was also feeling pressure to go ahead to Malaga and start looking for work.  I came down in favor of him going to Malaga, and I think that tipped the scales.  He went.  Conal and I had our coffee from 11:30 to 1:00 on the 21st, at which time he tipped me off that Woody was coming to Casa >Fuster for a practice session at 3:00 p.m.  He invited me to hang on to my book a little longer and give it a try myself, and added that he´d still help me out if that didn´t work.  That was exactly what I wanted to hear. I took the best seat in the house, front and center, at about 2:10, and there was no one around to begrudge me for it.  thee was only one other small group of people in the whole cafe, and they were just there to see how inefficiently their vast store of money could be used to buy refreshments.  I ordered a 12 Euro whisky sour as my ticket to stay, and I only nursed it down about a half inch by the time Woody showed up at 3:00.  Conal was at the piano in jeans, Eddy had on shorts and sandals.  Woody was in about the same clothes as at the show on Thursday, khaki paints cinched snug with a belt and white dress shirt with the top button open, but his demeanor was much more casual.  He was 10 or 15 feet from me, in a chair facing mine almost directly, and he was taking his clarinet out of the case and screwing it together.  He looked around the room, which I didn´t catch him doing even once during Thurday´s show, and his eyes rested on me for a while.  I found myself nodding slightly and smiling, the way I do at pretty girls.  And then I remembered it confuses them too, and I thought ¨oh God, what am I doing?¨  The band played well, but this was practice, with all its mistakes and pauses and talking back and forth, which made it even better for me.  I was close enough to hear when someone thought the tempo wasn´t right or didn´t know how many times a certain phrase repeated.  I had enjoyed the show before, but this felt like privileged access, and they played for just as long, maybe longer, and just as soulfully.  The crowd grew larger as time went on. People trickled in, probably mostly by coincidence or accident, but nobody trickled out once they were in.  I started to get concerned that it might become like Thursday night, when the crowd was too big and too eager for Woody to comfortably dally after the show.  Eddy had told me, with firsthand certainty, that Woody doesn´t mind giving an autograph or two, but he doesn´t like to get stuck in an endless cycle of signing, which is what can happen if he gives even one autograph in an excited crowd.  Woody opened his clarinet case before the last song, which cued me to get my book and pen ready.  When the song ended, he started taking apart his instrument and cleaning it.  I wanted to give him time to pack up, I didn´t want to stress him out or rush him while his hands were full, but I also wanted to beat the crowd, if there was going to be madness.  A man in a white suit and matching hat (in my opinion, jumping the gun a little bit) approached first, with ¨Woody, I just want to let you know that you´ve made my 65th birthday very special...¨  That seems to be the standard reason for approaching a celebrity.  Everybody ¨just wants to let him know¨ something.  He can´t possibly know all the things people want him to know.  How long is he supposed to know that for?  What exactly is he supposed to do with that knowledge?  When that guy went forward, I could hear people getting out of their seats behind me, so I couldn´t wait any longer.  I got near Woody at about the same time as 5 other people, but I was standing right in front of him.  Eddy, always protective, said loudly ¨all right, let´s not get too close now.¨ And that left an opening of silence for me to say, calmly, ¨Mr. Allen?  Do you think you could sign my book before you go?¨ He took it from me, and as he looked for the title page, he said ¨oh, this is my old book.  I have a new one that just came out.¨ I said ¨oh, yeah, I know.¨ He signed and handed me back the book and pen.  I said ¨thank you very much, sir¨and returned to my table to sit back and watch, totally satisfied.  I was happy with the voice I´d projected: sincere, yet sane.  Conal´s mom asked me if I had any luck, then congratulated me.  Woody didn´t seem to be in a hurry to leave, despite the fact that the crowd had become much bolder since he consented to sign my book.  He stood still while people swapped positions next to him to be in photos with him. My mission was accomplished as soon as Woody Allen´s signature was safely, permanently in the pages of my book.  The spell that held me in Barcelona was broken instantly, and I was ready for Malaga.  Carl had been there the other night to suppress my instinct to run when things get awkward, but I have a similar instinct to run when I´m extremely happy,  which Conal and Eddy helped me hold in check this time.  I approached them, while Woody was still in the room, to say ¨thanks¨and ¨good-bye¨and run off into the streets, high as a kite.  But Conal told me ¨whoa, ahng on a minute¨, and Eddy turned to Woody and said ¨hey, this young man wants to get in to film (he was confusing my story with Carl´s).  He knows all your movies (all me).¨ Woody smiled a little bit and his eyes twinkled.  He said ¨oh yeah?  Let me tell you something, I´m what not to do.¨ And I think he repeated it to make sure I heard, because I was just about in a trance. His eyes twinkled, like they do when he´s about to be witty.  He said the same thing twice, in his nervous way.  He toook the time to say something mildly clever and meaningful, to me.  Now Conal thought I was ready to be released into society, completely delirious with happiness. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
7:00 am	Barcelona overview/Scooters I drew myself up a rudimentary calendar just now.  It´s the first one I´ve seen for weeks, but it tells me that I´ve been in Barcelona for about one week now.  It was last Wednesday, the 11th, that our train pulled in to Sants-Estacio (these calendar things aren´t so bad).  At that time we were talking to a guy from New York City named Devin.  He´d been testing himself against the bulls in Pamplona, too, and he had made friends with some highly sociable guys who had also befriended us, and who seemed to enjoy playing matchmaker.  These two California guys let us know up front of Devin´s hardcore traveller credentials:  firstly and lastly, he had come to Pamplona with only the shirt on his back, no bag.  Now, a giant, unwieldy backpack can convey strength and dedication, but on the other hand luggage can definitely be a sign of weakness in certain circumstances.  It pretty much broadcasts:  ¨I enjoy changes of clothes and soap.¨ Devin was cool to hang out with, though, because when we shared a nice meal, he was just as irrationally excited about it as we were, leaving the waiter no choice but to conclude that we´d never seen a plateful of food before.  And he had no problem sleeping with us in our tent on a kids´playground in the middle of the city.  Some people´s body language would have made us feel pressure to apologize:  ¨sorry, it´s not much, but you´re welcome to join us...¨ No, Devin was laughing with us, and he made us feel like we could make exactly the same decisions we would make if it were just the 4 of us, without embarrassment, and even enjoying the absurdity. Devin rode off into the sunrise on the morning of the 12th.  We spent the day wandering around, for the most part aimlessly, wearing our heavy backpacks and carrying on an endless, exhausting debate about what to do.  We all know by now that a backpack in hot weather affects your brain:  you don´t really know what you think or what you want, and you don´t really care about anything.  But that doesn´t make you compliant.  It´s more like no options sounds really good to you, and for each suggestion there´s always somebody irritable enough to shoot it down.  And we were so tired from Pamplona that we didn´t even care to unstrap ourselves and correct the problem.  All we did that day was swim in a pool, and that was by no means unanimous.  Sleep on the night of the 12th was good, though.  We were walking down Barceloneta Beach, figuring we´d be pitching our tent on the sand, but when we got to the end of the beach, what had looked in passing glances like your everyday rocky outcrop wasn´t actually made of rocks.  It was a collection of really big man-made concrete cubes.  Now, I know when I say ¨concrete cubes¨, you immediately think ¨comfortable sleep¨, and you´d be exactly right.  Actually, it was pretty great.  A few of the cubes had one side facing up making an almost level surface, and we slept 2 to a cube, our bags safely zipped up with Johnny in our tent (sans tent poles), and the Mediterranean Sea lapping up the sides of our beds.   The blazing sun friend us awake the next morning.  It was pretty hot by 9 a.m. and very bright.  Walking back down the beach the same way we came, some of the visitors were not wearing anything at all.  Sorry, I´m not going to stretch this out for comic effect.  It´s been done.  And it´s not even like ¨oh my gosh, we accidentally slept on a nude beach!¨, because I don´t think ¨nude beach¨really means anything here.  I think swimwear is optional on every beach.  Do please grow up.  I know I, for one, entirely extinguished 25 years of cultural training to sexualize nudity near instantaneously.  I beseech you to do the same. We spent a couple of hours on the 13th at the Picasso Museum.  Without meaning to, I had overstated my familiarity with and love for Picasso when I was talking the other guys into going.  I learned so much at the museum that I realized I didn´t really know anything before.  My favorite thing to learn about was the Blue Period.  I had heard references to it in pop and high culture, and I´d probably even heard it lucidly explained in no uncertain terms once upon a time, but the concept struck me with new force.  For 3 years, every painting Picasso made was blue.  He had an idea, a conviction, and he followed that sucker for 3 years.  And the paintings I saw from the period were brilliant, and I believe it´s because they were completely in line with what the artist believed and felt in his heart.  The second most intriguing part of the museum for me was the room of pornographic scribbles Picasso did at 21 years of age in Paris.  Like most great art, Shane not only claims to be able to do it, but contends that he already has in fact done it, when he was much younger.  Although the nude sketches came from the relatively late Horny Period, as opposed to the more abstract work of Shane´s grad school days.  Hmm, I guess I just implied that Picasso´s drawings of menses and defecation are great art.  I don´t know about that.  I guess I´m just interested in the private parts of Picasso´s young mind that are disclosed in them. And the only other thing that was important about the 13th was that we set ourselves up for the best of good times on the 14th.  Between the afternoon of the 13th and the morning of the 14th, we did some research, some shopping around, some document fabrication, and lots of little things to get ready for 24 hours as the proud, defiant lessors of mopeds.  Between the 4 of us we rented 3 scooters.  Johnny didn´t meet the age requirement to have a scooter of his own, but he meets all the requirements to ride be-yotch with me anytime.  Carl met all the requirements, but ideally he should have had an International Driver´s License, which is just an overpriced document translating one´s own driver´s license into other languages.  It´s a language cheat sheet for a police officer struggling to read your license when he pulls you over.  Carl and I arranged his driver´s license and several relevant pages of my international driver´s license, folded just so, on the face of a photocopier and put him together a pretty mean makeshit international driver´s license.  This doesn´t relate much to the story, I just mention it because I was proud of our end product.  It was clearly not an attempt at forgery, but it did everything an international driver´s license could do. I was a little shaky on the scooter in the beginning.  Johnny put his faith in meñ  it was my hog he chose to straddle first.  We had to go through a series of alleys to get from the rental headquarters to the open road, and it was difficult to stay steady at those slow speeds.  Johnny´s weight on the back felt awkward, and my coordination with the gas and break was nowhere near the subconscious comfortability of driving a car.  I was smiling a wide smile, though, because it was fun already, and I felt like my balance and feel for the scooter were improving.  So we pulled up to a ramp leading from the sidewalk down just a little ways onto the street.  Shane merged, and Carl made the turn as well, and I crashed my damn scooter and had it and Johnny laying on top of me before I knew it.  I was trying to get out onto the street before oncoming traffic got too close, and I guess I turned the wheel too far with too much gas, and we went over kind of headfirst, after a brief series of wobbles trying to recover balance, reminiscent of a wounded duck.  The cars behind me coasted easily to a stop while Johnny and I picked ourselves up.  Johnny lifted his weight off me with his arms, but his foot was trapped under the bike, so we worked together to get that free.  I felt pretty awful.  My left leg hurt where the bike and me and Johnny had all fallen on it, and my right elbow was scraped a bit, but that was just the beginning.  I was embarrassed, really sorry, and worried about Johnny and, of course, my deposit.  I could see right away that the scooter was scraped on an exterior panel, and Johnny´s left knee and foot were bleeding a little bit.  I rode the scooter to the end of the block, looking for a ramp back onto the sidewalk, and returned to the scene thoroughly pissed off at my own incompetence.  Johnny and I bothed seemed ¨okay; we were walking around and bending joints and doing okay.  We turned down offers from passers by to call for help.  Shane and Carl found their way back to us before long, and we took an official inventory of the damage.  Johnny had scraped his knee, pretty much like a playground injury, and we bandaged it.  And there was a little cut on his foot which required no attention.  I had abrasions on my elbow that weren´t bleeding enough to need to be covered, holes in my pants in two places, and a charley horse that made me limp, but didn´t feel too serious.  I´m still limping, 5 days later, but it´s getting better every day.  I think it was just a really deep bruise of  a really big, useful muscle.  And then, finally, the scooter seemed to have only cosmetic damage.  One panel was scraped top to bottom, but everything else seemed okay.  The mirror had a tiny spot where it was roughed up by pavement, and so did the brake handle, but these weren´t especially noticeable.   We had all run with the bulls 4 days ago.  It was fresh in our minds, and since the completion of the run, it had been making everything else seem tame.  but now, with 2 of us wounded, and 23 hours remaining in a winner-take-all face off with pavement and traffic, we all agreed that this was far more dangerous.  Carl was all about ¨taking a minute¨ to think.  He was just as uncomfortable and inexperienced with the scooter as I was.  So, Johnny goes on teh back with Shane, by default basically, and we dust ourselves off and try again.  Shane and Johnny lead, Carl cautiously follows, and I manage to get onto the road this time, but with poor control and poor perception of traffic signals and lane markings and all the other complicated data inputs that become second nature with a little practice.  But remember we´d been pedestrians exclusively for about 6 weeks at this point, so obeying the laws of the road took some getting used to.  I wasn´t careening out of control or anything, but I felt like I was never in the lane I was supposed to be in, and I missed a lot of turns at first because I didn´t feel confident changing lanes on short notice.    Carl and I stuck together and helped each other out, letting each other in to different lanes, when necessary, and we took all the same wrong turns, like good buddies should.  Shane and Johnny had to keep pulling off to the side to wait for us. But we got out of town, onto some more open road, and the fun came back.  It wasn´t all that hard, and we were all getting better at it by the minute.  The weather was beautiful, the sky was nearly cloudless, we were riding along the coast and the water was deep blue and the people were beautiful and bronze.  Our plan was to ride Northeast along the coast, spend the night somewhere, and ride back.  In the process, we didn´t mind if we proved the rental guy wrong when he said we couldn´t use up a whole tank of gas in a day.  We sure did.  We got at least 108 kilometers North and East of Barcelona, because that´s how far Barcelona was when road signs along the way back first considered it relevant to mention the distance to a town so very remote from us. We ate up the road voraciously, and slept on reddish rock jutting out of the turbulent sea (a-gain).  We got skilled neough with the machines to see what they could do, and that´s about 85 km/hr on level ground.  we took the highway back to Barcelona, and I maxed out at almost exactly 100, on a downhill slope in a tunnel, where wind resistance was reduced.   I guess there´s only one more event to report about our time on the scooters, and it´s not good news, but it went a long way toward saving my pride.  About halfway between Barcelona and the little town where we slept, we pulled over in a sandy parking lot by the beach.  We might have been stopping to think about directions, or maybe just to hydrate and take in the view;  but anyway, we stopped.  And when we were ready to start again, Carl was filming, and Shane was feeling cocky enough on the scooter to try some acting.  He was putting on a good show.  He had the bike properly angled for the camera, every little action was delayed, prolonged, and exaggerated for maximum coolness.  And then Shane took the sweet throttle in his gloved hand and gave her a twist, to make that bat take off outta hell.  But the wheel was turned a little too far, and what we got on tape was the tell-tale wobble of doom followed by another total wipeout.   Johnny got up this time with an utterly incredulous expression.  His face unmistakeably said ¨what the hell is the matter with you guys?¨ He hit the ground with the same knee as before.  The bandage he had so meticulously tied around his wounds had slipped down to the middle of his calf, and he was scraped up all over again.  Who was he supposed to ride with now?  In the crash, the end of the hose on Shane´s hydration pack came off, so when Shane stood up, he had a stream of fluid pouring out from his torso.  It wouldn´t have been funny if it was an artery, but it was a huge relief and pretty damn amusing to find out it was just water, not lifegiving blood, that was pouring all over Johnny.   So, we damaged two of the bikes, to about the same superficial degree, and we got separated on our way back to the rental place once we got back into the traffic of the city.  And, uh, we were getting back a little later than our contract specified.  Carl and I were together, but I´m told that as soon as Johnny recognized his surroundings in the city, he asked Shane to let him off, so he could walk.  I think he was just happy to survive, and didn´t feel like pressing his luck.  The people at the rental place were expecting 4 guys to return 3 scooters and 4 helmets.  but Johnny found the place on foot faster than Shane could do it on the scooter, so what they got back was 1 guy, no scooters, and a helmet, 2 hours late.  I´m not one usually to glamorize irresponsibility, but I found that a pretty comical shortcoming. We´re all safe, the repairs costed less than I expected, there was no extra cost for being late, and we had an incredible day.  (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
12:00 pm	In the arena It was a thrill as well to stand in a stadium packed with bloodthirsty fans decked out in white and red and cheering me on as a competitor in their favorite sport--the timeless sport of antagonizing an animal and hoping it doesn´t seriously hurt you. I couldn´t enjoy it, though, or soak it in, or any of that nonsense.  I thought about all that sentimental stuff only afterwards.  The only celebration or exultation I allowed myself were a high-five and a pat for Carl, who I found first in the stadium, and then hugs and such for Johnny and Shane, who Carl and I found just a minute later.  Shane had been escorted out of the race roughly, but then released, at which time he promptly escorted himself right back in.  I didn´t celebrate much, because I had no way to realistically gauge how much danger I would now be facing in the arena, or how long I would be facing it.  If I was to believe the guy on the train, I was up against likely impalement, or, at the very least, lifelong Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When the first bull was let out, I knew I had a lot to learn, and I believed my survival depended on learning it quickly, so I got right down to work.  I tried very hard to keep an eye on the bull, but when I couldn´t, I did my best at reading the body language of 100 people at a time.  I got visually acquainted with the first bull right after it was released, while it was at its fastest, most energetic, and least predictable.  It was black, snotty, and huge, and it was spraying sand behind it as it ran.  I tried to stay back and observe, but I found I wasn´t entirely able to control the distance between myself and the animal.  It changed direction too suddenly, and it could cover ground quickly when it took a notion to.  This was about the time I renewed my commitment not to let my guard down for a second.  At the same time, though, I noted the bull´s inability to single out a target for very long, and the ease with which it was distracted, and its limited agility from side to side.  ¨Ah, so these are the innate weaknesses that keep this bull from killing us all.  Excellent.¨ I was also happy and relieved to see the bull slowing down after a minute or two.  Bulls aren´t wise budgeters of energy, they generally go for broke from the start.  And then finally, I was glad to find out that one thing we were all worried about--the prospect of haivng two bulls loose in the arena at once--we were simply misinformed about.  the second ¨bull¨was actually a steer, intimidatingly large, but not aggressive.  The steer was nothing to be afraid of, as long as you could stay out of its way, because it wasn´t going to chase you, and it was actually going to lead the bull out of the ring, trotting behind the steer like a contented puppy. Halfway through my 45 minutes in the ring, after 2 or 3 fresh bulls, I had to take off my bandana.  Somehow I knew I wasn´t cool enough for it, and seeing myself on video afterwards confirmed it.  The other guys commented on my cocksure strut, but you couldn´t help but notice that I was nearly always strutting as far away from the bulls as possible.  Also, there was fear in my eyes and face.  I wasn´t using my face to send out messages to anybody; no fronting at all.  I was using my face and all my senses to detect and avoid danger.  I never forgot the danger, for the entire time in the ring.  Johnny and Carl were watching the same events I was, but they both took more risks and put themselves closer to the action, especially Johnny. 7/22/07 18:00  Johnny in the arena I know a story that I haven´t told yet.  I was with Johnny in the arena that day, and I saw his encounter with the bull with my own eyes.  I wasn´t near him the whole time, because I couldn´t do what Johnny did that day, and where Johnny went, I could not go.  But I was watching when it mattered. When Carl and I found Shane and Johnny in the arena right after the run, Johnny already had one up on the rest of us.  ¨I touched a bull, and I got smacked with a pole!¨  Johnny had come into the arena with the last of the steer before the gates were closed.  He touched or smacked a steer on the way in, and one of the people responsible for guiding the steer hit Johnny with his cow-spanking pole.  It might have been accidentally, or it could have been on purpose, to reprimand Johnny for distracting the steer.  I didn´t see this part, but it´s based on Johnny´s testimony and confirmed by Shane, an eye witness. Very early on in the arena, while I was still on highest alert and trying to get a feel for life in the circle of torment, I ran into Johnny, who once again had ¨touched a bull!¨ It seemed like everytime I turned around Johnny had touched a bull.  It was annoying.  I think he was raised by bulls or something.  And this time, when I ran into him, he said I should try it myself.  He said I had to, it was great.  And then I only saw the back of him as he purposefully walked back into the fray.  This induced me to try to get a closer look at what was going on on the front lines.  I got close enough to see that there was an inner circle of people around the bull, and that Johnny was a card-carrying member.  The people of the inner circle touched the bull.  They talked to it, teased it, taunted it, and smacked it and hollered at it when the bull was roughing someone up, to distract the bull from its target.  And when the bull needed a target, more often than not it drew from this inner circle. One time the bull singled out Johnny.  I happened to be watching.  It ran toward him, lowered its head and knocked him down, and then kept thrusting at him on the ground and pushed him through the dirt.  I didn´t see Johnny turn away and try to run.  I saw him put up his hands to soften the blow, scuffle a few steps backwards, then curl up on the ground while the bull stood over him.  That´s about all I saw with my own eyes, probably because people ran in to help.  But it seemed to take them a long time to get there. That wasn´t enough for Johnny.  I only saw this on video, but after having been bowled over, Johnny ran up behind a different bull, smacked it on the ass, and then ran back to the camera with his arms in the air.  He was leaping in excitement, but it was a little more graceful than a quarterback celebrating throwing the winning touchdown.  No, he was deeply, emotionally excited, kind of like a figure skater winning gold. Interpret all of this as you like.  I can´t really help out.  I can´t make sense of it.  Johnny just wasn´t afraid.  I kind of don´t even feel like I ran, now.  I can´t get inspired enough about my own performance, after seeing Johnny´s, to even brag.  Poor Carl felt like he had to run again the next day, when he compared himself to Matador Jr.  I would have liked to keep up with Johnny.  I tried to figure out what he knew that I didn´t know.  I´m the first one to do something that looks dangerous if there´s a clever way to minimize the danger.  But the only method I could discern in the madness was to wait until the bull was tired, perhaps even wait until the steer was leading the bull out of the ring, and then swoop in and cop your feel.  But, in my best judgment, the bull was still strong, relatively fast, and unpredictable, even when tired.  These are animals who put up a struggle to the very end, to the bloody death, in the bull fights.  I still think it was more madness than method.  I think it was dangerous.  Johnny either didn´t know or didn´t care.  (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
1:00 pm	Running with the bulls Across the aisle from us on the train to Pamplona, I saw a man reading a newspaper.  I nodded toward the front page, which faced us all the way he was holding it, and said something like ¨there it is¨ to Shane, Carl, and Johnny.  The cover photo showed a bull relentlessly pinning a man against a barricade, and the headline read to me, in my limited Spanish, like a tribute to the bull.  ¨Caramelo es el toro mas peligro¨it said.  Well, hats off to Caramelo for being so very ill tempered and dangerous.  We asked to borrow the paper, and we learned that the reader was one of a group of four gentlemen, a little older than ourselves, 30s probably, who had run with the bulls the day before.  One of them was more talkative and gregarious than the others, and he shared a lot of advice and warnings (not rare commodities at all in Pamplona, but we were all ears, this being the first first-hand testimony we´d heard).  He told us where and how early to position ourselves in the square to be sure to be included in the running, he spoke of the terror in people´s eyes when the bulls were coming, terror in the eyes when bulls weren´t coming but people thought they were, and he told us we would ¨feel alive¨.  One guy in the group was far more quiet and reticent than the others--one might say ¨shell-shocked¨.  He wore a knit cap pulled low over his brow.  His expression was always eerily blank, his eyes were glassy and he seemed to be using them to peer through the veil of appearances into the heart of darkness.  He did not lift his head from the headrest of his seat even to speak.  This man went further down into the spiral of the bull run festivities than his friends had.  He ran fast enough or positioned himself far enough down the course to make it into the stadium before the gates were shut.  I had kind of read up on it beforehand, but talking to these guys clarified some things and refreshed my memory. In the morning, there are two parts to the bull run.  The first part is when six bulls, the six slated to participate in the bull fights that evening (¨participate¨here means ´die in¨), are released from a holding pen and sent running through the streets in a specified path that ends in the stadium at Plaza del Toros.  People are allowed to be in the streets to either cower, climb, dodge, or run alongside the bulls, depending on their skill level and bravery.  It doesn´t take the bulls much longer than 2 minutes to get from pen to pen, and a group of more docile steer are released slightly after the bulls to be sure the bulls find their way and don´t get too preoccupied with being on an uninhibited murderous rampage.  The second part of the tradition, following the running through the streets, is for those runners who make it into the stadium with the bulls before the gates are closed.  The six bulls are safely locked away, but some other bulls, their horns dulled a little bit with some foreign substance covering the tips, are let out one at a time to play.  In this second phase, I´m guessing there are about 300 or 400 people in a ring not quite as large as a baseball field.  300 or 400 people, and a confused, lost, angry bull.  The bull is permitted to run loose in the ring until it tires itself out from sprinting on a non-stop search and destroy mission.  Then a huge, but much better behaved, steer is released to guide the bull back to the pen.  This is repeated 4 or 5 times, for a total of 45 minutes or an hour. But I didn´t get a good, thorough description of this from the guys on the train.  If I may shamelessly foreshadow for a moment, I picked up most of it through my own experience.  But anyway, the shell-shocked guy, who seems less to me like a weathered veteran and more like a bombastic pantywaste (sp?), told us with genuine horror glazing his eyes and dripping from his voice, ïf I had it to do over again, I would not go in the ring.  I saw a lot of people hurt in there.  It was an amazing experience, but I wouldn´t do it again.¨ About this time, Johnny is tugging at his collar and rubbing the back of his neck with his palm, saying ¨I probably won´t go in the ring.  I´ll probably just run.¨ I don´t point this out to embarrass him, only to make his reckless courage the next morning a little bit more surprising and inexplicable.  At this very moment of writing, I still find his actions surprising, inexplicable, courageous, and reckless.   On the train, listening to survivor stories, looking at graphic, lurid newspaper pictures, looking at casualty statistics on a pie graph, fear became real.  I felt it in my body, like a foreign substance slowly filling a vessel from bottom to top.  I had anticipated this moment back home in the States.  I´d already bragged to a few people ¨I´m gonna run with the bulls¨before I had a chance to really be still and alone with my thoughts, and then that sentence sounded a lot more like it ended in a question mark.  ¨I´m gonna run with the bulls?  Really?  Am I?  Um, why, again?¨ So, I felt the fear become real back then, and I knew there was more to conquering it than simply denying it.  It´s too real to deny.  And now I´m on a train to Pamplona, not in South Bend, Indiana. We met up with Mike and Greg and Chris and Sarah and Sarah in Pamplona, sat down together for a meal again, and the three guys had stories because they all ran that morning.  Greg and Chris had made it into the stadium, too, and they brought  it back down to earth a little bit.  Greg even had digital photos on his camera from inside the ring, which were impressive, but also soothingly demystifying.  Our friends confirmed a lot of the advice we heard on the train, passing on the unanimous wisdom of the ages to those who needed to hear:  if you fall, don´t move, just cover your head until all the bulls have passed.  If you want to make it to the stadium, make sure to start far enough down the course,  you can´t keep up with the bulls for 900 yards.  Do not stand in Dead Man´s Curve.  Listen carefully ¨Dead Man´s Curve¨ Yeah, don´t.  That´s where a group of bulls collectively weighing many tons slams into the wall because they can´t navigate a 90 degree turn at high speed.  We walked through the course with them, and Mike, Chris and Greg all pointed to the spots where they believed they were, to the best of their adrenaline-clouded recollection.  They left Pamplona with the extra touchy-feely goodbyes befitting possible death the next day. Pamplona was a drunken, orgiastic fiesta that night, but I was having none of it.  Shane was having even less of it--he left the city int he late afternoon in favor of a park across the river, where he set up base camp for us.  I think he had pretty much the same instinct that I did, to rest and prepare, mentally and physically.  I spent the entire evening at an internet port, where I worked hard but temperately at catching my online journal up to date.  When it closed at 11:00, I made my way through town toward the park, stopping only to buy some food for immediate consumption, and perhaps pick out a little something calming, plain, and ordinary to eat and drink in the morning.  The town was lively and pretty well buzzed at 11:00, and while that night I retreated to peace and quiet to get myself ready for the next morning, I saw enough with my own eyes the next night to interpolate what went on while I slept in the park, between 11:30 and 4:30.  In short, the town went ahead and got smashingly drunk.  People filled bars to overflowing, and flowed on out into the streets until the streets were full, too.  Dressed in traditional white and red, people danced and sang and puked and pissed all over. Shane set the alarm on his watch for 3:00 a.m., but that´s just something stupid we continue to do knowing full well that it has no effect.  Soft beeping does not wake a human being.  Nervous anticipation does a much better job of that.  I woke up naturally at about quarter after 4, looked at my watch, and calmly announced the time to the guys as  away to wake them up.  We didn´t have much to say to each other as we packed up and got ready to go to town.  There wasn´t really a surplus of conversation as we waited the 3 1/2 hours until the run.  We said what we needed to say, and we were all free to say what we wanted, but nobody abused the freedom to distract himself from the task at hand with nervous chatter. We got to the square in front of the governor´s mansion almost an hour earlier than even our most reliable sources recommended.  It was one of those things that are so important to you, and yet so hard to believe, that it makes you a little superstitious and obsessive-compulsive about making sure it happens.  I felt the same way about the trip as a whole before it started.  Speaking of superstition, on the way to drop off our packs at a baggage check place before the run, on the very same hill where they first release the bulls, a scruffy black cat ran right across our path about 10 feet in front of us.  I looked at Shane, and he said ¨that´s not a good sign, is it?¨ Johnny said ¨yeah, that black cat almost crossed our path.  That was close.¨  I couldn´t help laughing.  Almost?  I´ve never seen a more textbook case of denial.  We debated some about how close a black cat actually has to be to technically cross your path.  Johnny maintained, with all seriousness, that that one owas ¨too far away¨.  I maintain that that was my path, and the cat perpendicularly bisected it at a distance close enough to startle me.  I mean, what does the cat have to do, trip you? Darkness changed to daylight while we waited in the square.  We were there as they swept the streets, and then hosed them down for good measure.  We watched as they carted in and assembled the thick wooden barricades that would separate runners from spectators, and later conjoin runners and bulls.  It got crowded and noisy as the time approached 7:00 a.m.  A big machine passed a TV camera back and forth overhead, and people in the crowd of runners reacted  like they do at college football games, except instead of saying their team was #1, this time they had a little more right to say ¨I´m cool!  I´m #1!¨ Almost everyone had on the uniform, white pants and shirt with red neckerchief and red sash around the waist.  Carl went all out, and he had ¨the look¨ totally nailed.  Johnny and Shane were in street clothes, althought Johnny added a sash and Shane added leather gloves to further incense the bulls.  All I added was a thugish red bandana rolled and knotted and cocked to the side 4 Life. At 10 minutes to 8:00, officials removed some barricades around the square to give the runners a chance to go ahead down the course and find their spots.  I didn´t know exactly how to feel.  You don´t need to run yet, and there´s certainly no call for panic, you have 10 whole minutes before the first bulls are released.  But then again, you think ¨hey, it´s 10 minutes and counting, and this isn´t practice.  What if somebody gets to my spot before me, and what if there are too many people competing for the same spots?  Hasn´t everybody been hearing and recirculating exactly the same advice?¨  So my pace quickened or slackened depending on what was running through my mind at the time, and also how susceptible I was to the influence of the mob, whether they were moving fast or slow.  I was feeling out my footing on the uneven cobblestone streets, and I was also discovering on the fly how to navigate through people with my hands without doing them any harm or throwing them off balance.  I kept my hands up a lot of the time ot announce my presence to other people and detect what was in front of me when I was looking backwards.  I was definitely getting the hang of everything, and it felt good.  The four of us could only manage to stay together through about half the course.  Shane was spotted using his video camera by a cop, who dragged him forcefully outside the barriers.  I don´t think he could resist taping the people leaning over balconies, two, three, or four stories above us, cheering us on.  Then the first rocket sounded, signaling the release of the bulls, and the location of Carl and Johnny slipped to the back of my mind.  Apparently, I needed some ¨me¨ time.   My strategy for avoiding the bulls on the street was formed by transposing some advice I´d heard.  I´d been told that bottlenecks are dangerous parts of the run, because when the bulls have a wider space to run and they´re forced into a narrower space, they´re more likely to be running flush against the walls.  So I had picked out a place on the street where there was the opposite of a bottleneck, where the street widened slightly.  I thought that if the bulls kept running straight as they left the narrow space, there ought to be room enough on the side for me and maybe a few close friends.  I didn´t have time to be afraid as the bulls passed me.  They were going about as fast as a truck, and they stayed in the lane I wanted them to stay in.  I could have been afraid if they dawdled for some reason and took notice of me, but they didn´t.  I could have also been afraid if they didn´t notice me but weren´t where I expected them to be, but that wasn´t the case, either.  They flew by, and I didn´t have time for or reason to be afraid, but that doesn´t mean I didn´t feel anything.  I was surprised and quite impressed by how fast they were going.  They were moving so fast, all one bigwhite and tan blur, that I couldn´t tell how many there were.  I saw rippling muscle and horns.  They seemed to be covered with rippling muscle and horns.  Getting into the arena became my top concern.  The bulls had caught me standing still, and I knew that they closed the doors to the stadium as soon as all the bulls and steer are in.  Two groups of bulls had passed, and I didn´t know how far behind the steer would be, so this was the point where I ran with urgency and had to thread my way through the crowd.  As it happens, I won my race against time by the widest of margins.  It felt like the steer were several minutes behind me, but I got a charge out of coming through the tunnel into the stadium, a narrow bottleneck in its own right, without knowing how far behind me a herd of charging steer was.     (Comment on this)
Monday, July 9th, 2007
9:00 am	Paris/Musee d´Orsay/Arc de Triumph We made it to Paris for the second time on the night of July 5th, and arranged on a borrowed cell phone to meet up with Shane´s friends at the Church of the Sacred Heart.  We got there before his friends did, but the church sits on top of a hill, so the magnificent view of the city gave us patience.  That, and the fact that we ourselves are liable to be in Sweden when we´re supposed to be in France.  Paris was stretched out in front of us, covered with the gentle amber glow of streetlamps, in a way we didn´t see on our first visit.  The city is densely packed with buildings, but since none of them are particularly tall, they don´t block the view of the buildings behind them.  With just a little elevation, like on a hilltop, one can see great distances, as if on top of a tall building.   We admired the city on the steps of the church until Mike, Greg, Sarah, Sarah, and Jeanie showed up and greeted us enthusiastically and passed us their wine.  When the wine ran low, we bought more.  Drinking and looking at scenery has lost some of its thrill over the course of a month, from frequent repetition, but its popularity is at least somewhat based on merit.  Paris was looking quite fetching, and people from the other group had the enthusiasm for this activity that we had in the beginning, 4 or 5 weeks back. The Musee dÓrsay the next day had the impressionist paintings that I searched the Louvre in vain for when we were in Paris before.  I don´t and probably can´t look at paintings and describe them with ärt¨ words.    When I look, I´m seeking emotional impact, and I can only really describe with any success what a painting makes me feel.  Few paintings in the Louvre, regardless of their quality or importance, had any effect on me, but there are many paintings and artists in the Musee dÓrsay that speak to me (and by speaking, give me something to say back).   I just jotted some notes there of what I wanted to remember: 1)  I have a love/hate relationship with the rooms in art museums with the fancy coffee tables and chairs.  I guess it´s supposed to be decorative art and show the style of the time.  I hate them, actually, in every sense of the word.  But I love that I can skip them and go on to the next room, with actual art in it, without feeling like I´m missing anything.  Otherwise, I´m pretty obsessive about trying to see everything and it´s exhausting.  I love having rooms I can skip without remorse. 2) Toulouse-Lautrec:  grotesqueness of culture, fashion Whistler:  loved his mother. Monet:  painting the same object in different light shows what´s important:  namely, light.  His paintings, however complicated, give off one, pure feeling. Degas:  voyeurism.  Objects of paintings are concerned with something else, sometimes something small while the viewer is concerned with the objects Manet:  a favorite.  Sense of humor.  Paintings so detailed and realistic and honest they´re shocking Renoir:  faces, social interactions, what people think of themselves Van Gogh:  how imagination can be triggered by sense.  Precise rendering of fantasy. We had a group of 11 people for dinner on the 6th when you throw in another of Shane´s friends, Chris, and Sarah´s brother, Dan.  We all took note of the milestone, but not at exactly the same time because there´s some considerable delay in communicating from one end of the table to the other.  And the message could have been distorted for all I know after going through so many messengers.  The next day, a good chunk, about half, moved on to Pamplona, Spain, while the 4 of us stayed in Paris.  We had rushed through Paris the first time with the expectation that we would take more time when we came back, but now there was a lot drawing us onward to Pamplona--the Festival de San Fermin was already underway, and our friends had already gone ahead and wanted to run with the bulls with us.  Nevertheless, the super 4 decided to stay at least one day more, and Jeanie, Sarah´s friend who was incredibly flexible and cool about accomodating Sarah´s horde of friends, relatives, and acquaintances, stayed true to her generous nature and put us up for an extra day and some change in her apartment.  The extra day and change gave us the chance to do some things it would have been a shame to miss.  We went inside Notre Dame and listened and looked around for signs of God in that big empty quiet dim staggering space.  Inside the cathedral, I drifted toward the end of the line to take confession (the shortest line I saw all day) but drifted away finally because I wasn´t up to doing it in French.  I lit a candle, the cost of which was entirely up to the visitor, according to the smaller print on the sign.  The larger print said 5 Euros, but I refuse to feel guilty if my desired donation differs from the suggested one by as much as 100%. We went to another church, Saint Chapelle, after Notre Dame to see stained glass, and it was everything Mike Mann said it would be and more.  But I think he said it would be ¨more¨ than he could possibly say it would be, so it really was just what he said.  From the outside of Saint Chapelle, the towering panes that make up the walls of the upper chamber appear drab and colorless.  As I was leaving, I could make out the faint outlines of the intricate designs in the glass, but I didn´t notice at all when I looked at the exterior the first time, before I had been inside.  From inside, these windows were absolutely shining.  The colors were kaleidoscopic, and every color was just as bright as the next.  Red, Blue, and Yellow competed for brilliance.  The air was filled with colored light.  Every window told a story in pictures, either a biblical narrative, or church history, or even the story of how the holy relics of the passion that were once stored in this building got here.  The windows were divided into tiny squares intended to be ¨read¨ in order from bottom to top and left to right, but they were difficult to discern, especially the ones near the ceiling.  And we somehow managed to place ourselves on top of the Arc de Triumph while the sun was setting and casting soft but clear light over all Paris.  We saw the dome of the Church of the Sacred Heart and assessed how its position on the hill had given us our lovely view two nights prior.  We looked far down 12 separate streets radiating outward in straight lines from the Arc, and admired how lush, green trees lined each one.   We saw the other, modern, Arc, to the west, with the sun setting behind it.  Due East, we saw the obelisk.  Closest of all, we saw the Eiffel Tower, its iron smoldering in the warm but dying sunlight.  As I looked at Napoleon in sculpted relief on the front, I was kind of happy someone was arrogant enough to build this. 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Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
4:40 pm	Norway/mt. climbing Today is the day that has been on our lips for a month.  People of every race and creed along the way have asked us, ¨what is your plan?¨and we´ve consistently responded ¨well, baby, we´re not so good with plans.  We´re not the planning type.  Oh, but, we´re supposed to meet up with some people on July 4th in Paris.  Aside from that, devil may care.  You know how it is.¨  Well, we had one deadline in a whole month, and we missed it.  We´re not in Paris;  we´re in Sweden.  We´re on a train headed toward Paris, though, and we´re going to stay on trains headed toward Paris until we get there, which should be tomorrow.   This is progress, because on July 2nd we were on a train headed far from Paris, to Narvik, Norway.  Narvik is the farthest North someone can travel using the Eurail Pass, and it is several hours of mountainous train travel above the arctic circle.  I think we were feeling pretty torn about choosing to head North while time was running out to keep our commitment to meet people in Paris, and it was all the more unsettling because we chose Narvik just by looking on a map, and just because of the little conceptual cookie we got out of using our Eurailpass to its utmost limits.  Luckily, it didn´t take long for Narvik or the surrounding region to prove itself worthy of our hopeful preconception of it.  We had been riding trains all day for 2 days straight, with no definite promise of reward, only the promise of definitely making ourselves late.  We saw snow-capped mountains on the horizon, which multiplied into a dozen or more peaks visible all around us, with haze and rainbows on the distant ones and waterfalls tumbling into blue lakes right outside our windows on the train.  The feeling that there was going to be reward for all our traveling and our decision not to turn back was very exciting. I think it was 7:00 p.m. when we arrived in Narvik.  We toyed with the idea of heading further North on busses, because someone on the train had innocently mentioned that the Northernmost land-locked point on the planet, called Nordkap, was in Norway.  Whenever we hear about the anything-most anything, we start looking at each other askance and saying ¨hmm...did you hear that?...Northernmost on the planet?!"  It would have taken 2 more calendar days of bus travel to reach Nordkap, so we decided against it, although the decision should have been easier than it was.  We spent some time trying to figure out how we´d get there, hypothetically, if we were going.  We spent some time talking about it over dinner.  We spent some time farting around town, checking e-mail in a hotel lobby.  I can´t explain it, but we ended up sitting on the same curb in front of the same hotel for hours, well into the middle of the night.  Our only excuse would be that we certainly weren´t tipped off that it was nighttime by darkness of any sort.   It was getting late, and I went walking ahead by myself to set up our tent, thinking about how to use our time in Narvik to feel less disappointed at being Northern, but not Northernmost.  I had already spoken up, at dinner, about finally allowing ourselves, for the first time in days, to appreciate where we were, instead of compulsively hopping from train to train. So, what did we have to work with in Narvik?  There was a mountain near the center of town, tall enough to be a real mountain, but not so tall or cragged or scary-looking as some others nearby.  It wasn´t Everest;  it had a big radio or radar tower on top of it, and it had ski slopes stretching about 3/4 of the way up.  But it was there, and so were we, and it seemed like a good match-up for us.  We wanted to take a hike while we were here, we knew we couldn´t really stay long, because of our obligations in Paris.  So, suddenly, at 1:00 in the morning, i had a lan to sell the other guys.  I had a specific mountain in mind (that one, right there) and a specific time (now), and even an exit strategy (3:25 p.m. train out of town the next day).  Now all I have to do is convince everyone that climbing that mountain right now, in the middle of the night, makes sense, meets our goals, and pretty much ties up every loose end you can imagine.  Johnny was all for it, immediately.  Carl was half for it immediately, and that was enough for a majority.   Shane, although very tired, was all for it if it was what the group was deciding to do. We started up the mountain on an overgrown ski slope at about 2:30 a.m.  It was a little hard to maintain the feeling of spontaneously sneaking up the mountain in the middle of the night with the sun beating down on us with all its Norwegian 3 a.m. fury.  When you climb a mountain, you soon realize there are no downhill, coasting portions.  It´s hard to train your mind not to look forward to anything easy for an indeterminate number of hours.  It was surprising to realize how often in normal life I´m just looking forward to the next downhill portion or the next bit of shade.  The ski slopes, which looked like grassy hillsides from the distance, were some of the toughest portions of the climb.  They were steep, but not steep enough to get your hands and arms involved to help.  They were overgrown with lots of menacing, angry, tangled grasses and other plants that you wouldn´t ordinarily stroll through purposely.  They were also furrowed and pitted and rugged.  Not having smooth or firm places to step started wearing on the knees early.  They seemed impossible to ski on without feet of snow piled on them, but I guess that´s the point, and it´s probably not a problem in Northern Norway.  Finally, the ski slopes were mosquito infested.  While you were walking, there was only the odd mosquito now and again, but if you dared to take a break, for a drink of water perhaps, you were thoroughly harassed and assaulted.  There was no glory in this part of the climb.  I´m not one to play mind games and pretend something doesn´t suck when it does.  This did, and I was well aware of the two reasons I was continuing--so as not to back down in front of the other guys, and in anticipation of the satisfaction of being done with it. When we finished with the ski slopes, there was a brief portion where the vegetation got thicker and higher.  There were no trees, just man-sized bushes.  Then it got rockier, with mostly moss and low grasses.  None of these changes, or the increasing altitude, was the magic element that we could survive but mosquitos couldn´t.  I´d look ahead and think, ¨maybe mosquitos can´t live in moss as easily as they can in grass.  Just a few more steps...oh, I guess they can.¨ We reached patches of snow, and balled up handfuls of it, and there were still mosquitos around.  It made me wonder ¨why do you bloodsuckers have to be, like, the most successful insect ever?  What animal do you suck when we´re not here?  Why are there 4 million of you on an uninhabited mountainside?  Who are your natural predators, and how can I lend them my support, in cash, if necessary?¨ We finally climbed high enough to escape the mosquitos.  The wind got strong enough that they couldn´t hover over their targets.  This was a triumphant moment in our ascent, and right around this time the rocks were getting big enough to make proper triumphant perches.  For the first time we could look down on the town and bay far below without receiving a dozen simultaneous injections.  We were high enough now to scan over the distance we´d already climbed and feel some pride.  It made me feel confident that we were going to finish, and I think it was the first time I considered not taking the easiest route to the summit.  The path we´d traced up with our eyes from the base seemed a little boring now.  I had developed a taste for climbing, using hands and feet in conjunction, and an extreme distaste for walking uphill. Johnny and I kept on pushing further ahead of Carl and Shane.  We´d pause, but we could never quite bring ourselves to wait for them to catch up entirely.  We had started going over or through a lot more intesting formations, instead of around.  At one point, we climbed over 15 or 20 feet of snow to get from rock to rock, and we did so by thrusting our hands and feet in to make holds.  That led us to a scenic resting point, with built-in rock chairs.  We took pictures, and waited there for Shane, aspiring to be immortalized on video-tape as we attempted the next phase.   Beside our resting place was a steep face with large rocks jutting out on either side that looked like sturdy handholds.  This was the way I´d planned to push on when I climbed over snow to get here--I thought it would look impressive without being really difficult or dangerous.  Shane and Carl weren´t coming, though.  They had taken a different route, so Johnny and I decided to climb away.  I went first, and mentioned that it might not be a good idea to climb right behind me, since we´d been warned earlier by a townsman about loose rocks.  Moments later, one of the two sturdy handholds I was supporting myself with came abruptly loose and went crashing, kicking up dust, past Johnny, who was wisely off to my right instead of below me.  This was pretty scary, because this was a rock I would have nearly bet my life on.  I´d tested it with a few good tugs, and I didn´t expect to see all 50 lbs of it skipping briskly to a much lower resting place.  It was scary as well because I was left with only one handhold that I was indeed betting my life on, and I had intially had no greater faith in the one I had left than in the one that had suddenly failed me.  The way up didn´t seem as clear to me anymore, absent one main rock to grab, and I believe the only way down was like a rolling stone.  I froze, and didn´t really know for a minute if any moment would be safe.  I didn´t reach panic state, but I suddenly understood how that could happen.  If I ran through my options of what to do and couldn´t find anything with a good chance of keeping me safe, I´m not sure what I would have done.  Fortunately, as I clung there, not moving a muscle and carefully thinking through which muscle I would move, and where to, and when, and how, I saw a way out.  I climbed up so very cautiously and precisely and I passionately embraced solid, level ground when I reached it.  Johnny came up the same way, against my advice, but without repeating my experience.  He kind of made it look easy, but that´s okay. We all reached the top of the mountain, and each celebrated in his own way.  I climbed partway up the radio tower, just to ice the cake.  Johnny took a nap.  Carl took pictures.  Shane peed.       (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
5:00 pm	Finland/Shane´s birthday Shane turned 30 years old yesterday.  He had mentioned a couple of days earlier that it was coming, but I forgot, and I guess we all had.  I have not often known during this trip what date or day of the week it is, but I wish I would have taken note of his birthday and tucked it away.  That would have really shown I care.  Despite my failure, though, I think I do care, and the day went well. Shane woke up on his 30th birthday on an island in Lake Saimaa near Lappeenranta, Finland.  He´s 50% Finnish, his dad is pure Finnish, so turning 30 in Finland might mean something.  I´m not sure what it means, but you don´t have to know exactly what to know something is special.  Kimmo deposited us on the island the night before with groceries, the power of handheld fire, our packs, and a borrowed axe to fend for ourselves.  It had been raining earlier in the day, so the fire took a long time to start and demanded near constant nurturing.  Nevertheless, when Kimmo picked us up the next day, we had a big pile of ashes, our food was cooked and eaten in a manly, primitive way, and we could hold our heads high. We treated Shane to a birthday meal later in the day at a Mexican restaurant in Joensuu, Finland.  The biggest element of birthday surprise that we could build in at the last minute was to order dessert in advance and have it delivered to our table at meal´s end with no prior warning for Shane.  And I also borrowed a sombrero from the wall and clapped and sang obnoxiously, since the wait staff in Finland was unfamiliar with their duties in this regard. Then we went to see Die Hard 4, which we talked about doing every time we saw one of the posters for it plastered across Europe.  I had a good time listening to Shane laughing.  He laughs hard at the appropriate times--at built in comic relief, but even harder at inappropriate times, like when something is just way, way cool.   (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 29th, 2007
12:00 pm	Finland/Sauna Last night we all took a sauna the way Kimmo and his brother Tommi do it in Lappeenranta, Finland.  We met Kimmo on the ferry to Turku, Finland.  The first time he saw the supertrip gang, a couple of us were wandering around the bowels of the ship inquiring about the on-board sauna.  With the ultimate sauna at home waiting for him, Kimmo must have thought to himself ¨ha, that is not a sauna.  These Americans have no clue what they´re doing.¨ I´m told Kimmo interacted with supertrippers again while he and they were having drinks or a little something to eat in a dining room or lounge.  He found out what we were doing in general, confirmed that we have no clue about the particulars, shared his pride in Finland, his family, his business and hobbies.   Later on, Shane and I were sitting with the Swiss girls we met.  Carl and Johnny had been there, but they were now giving us space or carving out their own space on the dance floor on another level of the ship.  Kimmo came to our table and bought us all beers.  As we talked to him, a few things became clear:  1) he liked what we were doing, getting off our asses and geting out of the U.S. 2)  He believed we needed help, that we would never know the real Finland without his assistance, we´d just be passing through it.  3)  He knows Finland, he is Finland, and he could provide the help we need--despite the fact that his wife would be having a baby within the next few days.  He told us that if we came to Lappeenranta, he would show us the way he lived--which includes having a pristine lake on the edge of your yard, travelling by boat to whichever of the many islands in the lake you feel like visiting, and using the sauna before bed.   Kimmo didn´t think we would come.  We told him right when he offered, ¨we´re going to come, you don´t understand, we don´t turn down invitations.¨ But he´d heard it before from Americans, even his good American friends, and no one had ever followed through.  He continued ÿou don´t understand, I live on the finest lake in Finland.  If you want to see Finland, you will come to my house, ride in my boat, use my sauna.  If you come, even if my wife is having the baby and I can´t be there, I will be sure that someone can show you around.  Supertrip?  What is super?  I will show you super.¨ And he arm wrestled Shane and I, and beat us soundly, to emphasize the point. It all came to pass, to the letter.  We took a train to Lappeenranta, although we slept through our stop and had to hitchhike back.  we called Kimmo when we got to Lappeenranta, and he arranged a place for us to stay, an apartment in town that he rents out, luckily vacant at the moment.  His wife was with him when he picked us up, and we shook her hand and wished her luck just hours before she was scheduled to have a baby.  The doctors had decided tomorrow was the day, 6:30 a.m. While Kimmo was with his wife in the hospital all morning, his brother Tommi gave us a ride to town and showed us how to eat like Finns before he had to return to work.  We each had a vety, which contains too many things to mention packed inside soft bread.  Kimmo himself picked us up later, after we´d had time to explore the town and his wife had time to have a healthy baby boy.  we purchased an ample supply of beer and meat for celebration.  We drove 15 kms from town to Kimmo´s house, but it doesn´t take many kms on a narrow dirt road in Finland to be worlds away from civilization.  Countdown to sauna had begun, by the way.  We ate sausages and drank beer.  We sped around Lake Saimaa on motor boats.  We asked Kimmo questions and celebrated, but I knew that at some point there was going to be a whole lot of nudity, and that I´d be asked to engage in an activity of which the point was to do it until your body can no longer stand it.  And I didn´t even really know what that actually entailed.  So, yeah, I was nervous.   Kimmo finally said ¨Now we take a sauna¨, a welcome relief, actually.  Much preferrable to waiting and wondering when I´d hear those words.  And my answer ökay¨, probably came back a little too rapidly, because it had been secretly running through my mind all night.  With my wide eyes and comfortable grin, I tried to say ¨let me at it!  Show me what to do!  I will take a sauna with you now, my friend Kimmo!¨ We went into a small log-cabin style building divided into 3 rooms.  The first room had couches, a coffee table, and a stone stove that Kimmo described with pride.  The stones were of a rare type, native to Finland, that absorbs heat quickly but releases it slowly.  While Kimmo explained it, Tommi and Mika, their friend, nodded in agreement and appreciation.  The second room had a shower, sink, and toilet.  I guess the word for it is ¨bathroom¨--let´s not reinvent the wheel, I guess.  And then you walk through the bathroom to get to the sauna room, which had  a wooden bench, which could also be used as a step to reach elevated wooden platforms, where one sits in the sauna.  In the first room, Kimmo handed each of us a towel, and some of my anxiety dissipated.  ¨How very tasteful.  I knew Kimmo had some class.  That´s quite considerate of him to take into account Americans´discomfort with nudity¨, I thought.  So I removed my clothes, but wrapped the towel around my waist and rolled it down a few times to make that neat little after-shower knot.  I crossed through the bathroom to catch up with Shane and Kimmo, who had already entered the sauna, and, well, the rules changed--or at least I learned them for the first time.  ¨No towel.  What you need towel for?  I have been in the Army...nobody cares about your dick...¨ The whole I´ve been in the Army argument--rock solid, you can´t argue with that.  It doesn´t take long to get over the nudity, though.  In about a minute flat it´s your personality that matters again, and you´re telling the same jokes and making the same comments you otherwise would. It was 96 degrees Celsius in the sauna the only time I heard somebody read off the thermometer over the doorway.  I think it may have gotten even hotter than that, but the exact temperature is somewhat beside the point and I didn´t keep track.  I had to trust that Kimmo knew what he was doing.  The only time I didn´t trust him was when he got a little overzealous, in my opinion, with ladling water onto the hot stove top.  Putting water on the heat doesn´t actually raise the temperature, but it creates scalding steam that rises up around your head and fills your lungs as you breathe.  A scoop or two of water intensifies the feeling of the sauna, slows down your thoughts and breathing and makes you live from moment to moment, with survival on your mind, enduring as long as you can.  3 scoops, or bypassing the ladle in favor of tipping the pot over the coals creates a rush of heat intense enough to cause panic in the novice.  When Kimmo added quite a bit of water on one occasion, I started to hunker down and endure it like I had learned to before, but then the heat just kept getting more intense.  Kimmo had made a mistake!  Carl was on his feet and fumbling for the door handle.  I was on the higher platform, further from the door.  Way too far from completing my new life´s goal--get the hell out of this sauna, alive.  I slipped on the tile on the ground floor, bashed my arm--not a problem, as long as I can still use it to pull a handle and push a door open.  Shane and Kimmo are still in the sauna saying ¨wooo, yeah.  Is he all right?¨ But you´re only halfway done when you leave the sauna, because it´s only a few steps to the 16 degree Celsius lake and that´s part of it.  You submerge, and you take your time swimming around to the end of the dock and climb out.  Then you must stand in the open air on the dock and marvel that you don´t feel cold.  You´ve lost your normal reference point for cold or hot.  Your body has just been weird and wonderful places never imagined.  Your body doesn´t really much matter anymore, but you use your eyes and you look over the lake and the islands teeming with evergreens, and the clouds that you can still make out because it´s not dark and it never really will be tonight, and you feel free and alive.  Or maybe something a little bit more than alive.  It´s something a little bit more powerful than just being alive.     You go back and forth between the lake and sauna 3 times, or as many as you like.  I did 3, and then I walked naked around to the front room, put my underwear on, laid on a couch, and sat as still as ever until sleep overcame me. 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Sunday, June 24th, 2007
10:30 am	Kierkegaard in Copenhagen Here only a short time but it is gain a tough struggle is forever over I rest myself in rose holes in perpetuity talking to my Jesus Once I comprehended what was written on Kierkegaard's gravestone, I cried, and felt all sorts of emotions, for his sake and for my own.  It wasn't difficult to find the site, just a short walk from our hostel.  Still, it felt good to have the other guys' cooperation and support for a goal that was close to my heart but pretty much mine alone.  Soren's resting place is in a beautiful memorial park that people actually use as a park.  A man was teaching his son to ride a bike, there, and a woman was teaching her dog obedience.  There's not really room for all these walks and bike rides, in my opinion.  The place is full of graves and most of the pathways are narrow, but people come anyhow, probably because the trees are too old and interesting and the flora too green to resist. Soren lays beside a busting extended family.  His parents' names are above his, and there are two or three other Kierkegaards on the attendance list.  There's a fairly large stone monument, and the whole site has an iron gate around it, but these trappings don't appear to be to celebrate Soren A., 1813-1855, in any way.  His name appears on a stone tablet propped up against the larger monument.  I approached the grave for the first time with affected reverence, but also impatience.  I'd been scanning gravestones for the Kierkegaard name for a few minutes, and my main interest was to find it so that we could sit down to eat a magnificent baked creation that I'd purchased on the way here.  This apple, frosting, cinnamon, layered, twisted, humongous miracle deserves a whole chapter about it, but that's another story.  So I read the Kierkegaard family name on this stone, found Soren A.'s name and dates, paused for a minute, and then found a rock to sit on and eat, and kind of wondered what else to do.  After I demolished the pastry, I stood up and approached again, and noticed that the 8 or 10 lines beneath his name were a poem.  There was something to do--find a translator.  The first old man I asked found it very difficult, I assumed because his English wasn't all that strong.  The next people I asked, a younger, educated-looking, strolling couple, gave me a good-enough translation, but they also explained that it was written in old Danish.  Poetry isn't easy to translate, anyway.  Poetry in archaic dialect is worse.  They stood there and worked through it diligently, the man giving his best try, and then the woman going through once more and revising.  All this description of details is probably just putting off describing emotion.  And the emotion, for me, was contained in these ideas, thoughts, fragments: Life is short.  That's enough to make you cry, if you really think about it. Lay down in roseholes.  Everybody eventually lays down.  Worms, dirt. Life is a struggle.  Lots of suffering.  I believe this, and it's worth crying over, periodically. Rest in Jesus.  I don't relate, and that's all the more reason to cry, because I was with Soren up to this point, and I don't really want to part ways and disagree with him, especially in something as final as death. I cried, but I thought I could control it.  Red eyes, maybe a tear or two on the cheek.  But I kept thinking the words "I'm crying", and it loosened my control.  At about the same time, I remembered my camera, and thought I ought to take a picture.  I lovingly walked up to the gate and pointed my camera over it, but I saw then that the gate had a door, which I tenderly but boldly unbolted and opened.  I felt entitled to be there--my motives were simple and true.  I opened the doors and took my pictures through the opening between them.  I stood in the gateway out of this life that Soren passed through a long time ago.  I loved him and mourned for him, and it didn't matter if I was worthy or unworthy to be there.  Maybe I don't know him well enough.  Maybe I'm not his biggest fan.  I didn't care.  I forget myself when I'm in love.  But when I remember in passing who and where I am, when I turn my attention just briefly from the object of my love back to myself, I see I'm at my best, and I leave that transient self-awareness reassured, and I go back to loving. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
12:00 pm	Amsterdam/bikes Amsterdam has lots of beautiful young people on bikes.  For 24 hours, it had 4 more than usual.  A bike is more useful in Amsterdam than a car, there are more cyclists than motorists, I'd days, and every time you see an angel go by on a bicycle (every 2 minutes, that is), it's the best possible advertisement.  We actually took the bikes we rented to the North side of the city on a free ferry and rode far enough away from prostitution and drugs to hit country side.  We slept out there in the country, where we woke up with a herd of bulls staring at us from 10 feet away, only separated from us by a moat that they haven't realized they could, in theory, get across.  They may never realize this--they're cattle.  Then, yesterday, we took a series of trains to Copenhagen, Denmark.  Shane, Johnny, and I took one series of trains, and Carl Wolfe took another, different, series, due to not being on time for our first train.  But we're all here together now, no sweat.  We accomplished finding a hostel, but that's about all, so far.  We tried to find live music last night, couldn't, and then nearly settled for the bar scene, but didn't.  Hearing some good music is one thing.  Trying to play the mating game in a big city is another.  But this is an open issue, and there's some difference of opinion within the group.  I'll speak to it later. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 18th, 2007
11:00 am	Brussels What's left over from yesterday in my mind today is just a lesson or two.  It was not a triumphant, inspiring day for me, but I've learned to love a solid chastening as well.   Yesterday, we returned to the site of Napoleon's fall (we went on the 16th, too), because we happened to visit Waterloo, Belgium on the anniversary day of the great battle, and there was a large scale reenactment with everyone dressed in realistic uniforms; the horses and cannons were pretty darn realistic, too, I must say.  I wasn't altogether thrilled to be heading back to Le Butte de Lion, the monument commemorating the battle.  The Lion statue, on a fairly sizable manmade hill, is purported to be looking in the direction of France, to forever silently chide them for their defeat.  I don't really have anything against the monument--its design or implementation--althought I've found ways to criticize it when pressed.  I guess more than anything this monument will forever be synonymous in my mind with "the easy thing you do when you haven't planned anything else."  Watching the many tourists there getting milked of Euros and snapping digital pictures indiscriminately further turned me off. I was not openly opposed, or clandestinely opposed, to going to see the reenactment, however.  Not thrilled, but not opposed.  It seemd like a lucky break that we happened to be here when it was going on (Mrs. Christensen didn't even think they put together this production every year, but every two or five years, maybe).  I wasn't impressed with the reenactment.  I expected them to do a better job of reenacting what the soldiers did back in 1815.  The only thing I saw them reenact really successfully was how the soldiers got dressed back then, which is far less exciting.  I did not see a war, with athletic feats of daring heroism.  I saw a pillow fight in fancy costumes.  James, the Christensen's youngest son, went with us, but decided to leave fairly early.    Was he also underwhelmed?  I could use some support, because Shane, Carl, and especially Johnny really got a kick out of it. They enjoyed it just enough to mean the difference between catching the 1:17 p.m. bus to Brussels or the 3:17 p.m. bus.  We didn't know the bus schedule, so nobody is to blame.  But 2 hours is a long time to wait for a bus.   When Carl was telling the story of the day to our hosts when we got back at night, it was a story of frustration, disappointment, perseverance, and redemption.  Frustration at how long it took us to get to Brussels, and frustration at time spent waiting at a bus stop that he would have rather spent in the city.  Disappointment at the initial dirty appearance of the city.  But then Carl, Shane, and Johnny persevered, followed the plan, had a good meal, went to the Delirium Cafe and tried delicious rare beers, and the day was saved. I don't have a story to tell about yesterday that has much perseverance or redemption in it, due to my own miscalculation.  I thought I might need a little more flexibility and freedom.  It seemed to me that a group of four peoplecouldn't quite navigate Brussels with the carelessness and impetuosity necessary to be immersed in it and appreciate it.  So I decided to spend some time on my own, about 4 hours, which I divided neatly into 1 hour for getting lost, and 3 hours for trying to reverse the first hour.  It simply wasn't as much fun on my own.  By yourself, it's not as easy in a strange place to feel like you belong anywhere. My time alone wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as rich as it could have been, shared with the other guys.  There's no finer way to travel than with Johnny, Seawolfe, and Shane, through ups and downs.  And to stay with them for the downs and excuse myself from the ups was, let us say, boneheaded. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 16th, 2007
8:00 pm	Waterloo Waterloo is South of Brussels in Belgium.  It's famous as the site of Napoleon's last stand.  We're staying here with Chris and Laura Christensen and their son James and daughter Melissa.  They have another son David who Carl befriended in Washington, D.C.  We try to be good guests wherever we go, but with four of us traveling, taking us in can be fairly disruptive to normal life, and we appreciate the Christensens for having us.  They're hosting their son's friend, and their son's friend's friend, and their son's friend's friend's two friends.  And giving us all the comforts that a home can provide.   Tonight we're in a Belgian Evangelical church, where Chris and Laura are performing music.  Their family is musical and they tour under the name Exo.  Chris plays guitar and sings, Laura sings, James sings, I'm not sure what Melissa does, but let's say sings, and David plays drums (update:  they all do a lot of stuff and play a lot of instruments not mentioned).  As I understand it, there was a dearth of quality contemporary Christian music in the French language, and Exo has met the need.  I'll attest to the quality of the music, although I can't understand the lyrics.  People in this church know the songs, and every seat is full, and everybody is being affected by what they hear.  This church is living, at least tonight. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 15th, 2007
12:00 pm	Paris in one night We got on a train to Paris last night as a means to get to Brussels, Belgium the next day.  Paris is stunning.  It's not really a "means" to anything.  When you see this much beauty all around you, you know you've reached an "end".  Exiting St. Lazare train station, we found ourselves in a maze.  I don't say "maze" in an attempt to describe big-city bustle.  It really is like a maze--the city blocks are made up of solid rows of buildings, all connected to each other without space between, and all roughly the same height (about 5 or 6 stories).  We walked 5 or 7 blocks South, and all the way street level remained the bottom of a trench and the buildings were solid walls around us on all sides. It took us less than an hour to find magic in Paris:  sublime, mind-altering art.  We heard most of Faure's Requiem, one of my favorites, in Le Eglise de Madelein, a church that shocked me with its grandeur.  There are a lot of churches out there that try to be big.  Or at least a lot of them point to the sky with their steeples, trying to direct your attention heavenward.  Le Eglise de Madelein was actually, literally big enough for God.  If I was God, I'd live there.  I'm not trying to be casually sacrilegious.  Another way to put it would be that it was probably man's best architectural attempt, that I've seen, to boggle the mind and pay tribute to God's power.  And Faure's Requiem is as good a musical attempt as I've heard to make human life and death sacred and meaningful.   Listening to the music, in that space, made me think "culture makes human beings everything that we want them to be.  When I die, I want trumpets, then peace and beauty." After the music, we continued pushing South, until some space opened up and we saw the Eiffel Tower proudly lit in th distance.  We made a show of trying to decide what to do next, but I'm glad we all arrived at what my heart was begging me to do--go closer to that tower, stand under it, find out more about it than you could ever know from pictures or seeing it at a distance.  We drew heavily on our limited supply of strength and energy to get ourselves to the tower, which was impressive and satisfying.  But at 1 o'clock in the morning, we're still standing under it, without a place to sleep.  We started talking about what to do, and we just kept on talking about what to do, because everything we came up with seemed to involve some unappealing exertion.  As we talked, we one at a time slumped down beside an ice cream vender hut.  It felt good to sit down, still directly under the tower.  "Could we camp anywhere nearby, like the parks on either side of the tower?  No way, this is a national monument guarded by soldiers patroling with machine guns.  Sure is comfortable here, though.  Wonder when they'll make us move.  Well, should we get up and get a taxi?  Eh, let's wait until they make us."  And then we just kept on getting more and more comfortable.  We all closed our eyes for longer than just a blink at one time or another.  Johnny took out his sleeping bag and covered up.  All of us followed suit.  One at a time we each took a walk to urinate, and settled into our seats that much more comfortably when we returned.  After I was away, I came back to find Johnny's sleeping pad laid lengthwise for me to share.  This is getting exciting, because we're getting pretty obviously settled in, and the French army keeps on passing us by without saying a word. We slept under the Eiffel Tower.  Not near it.  Under.  And an elite battalion of the French Army kept watch over us through the night. And I'm writing this in the top floor of the Louvre, in a corner beside a painting entitled "Orphee descendu aux Enfers pour  demander Eurydice au La Musique."  Which I know means in English "Every woman in this painting Simultaneously pulls Down her Top." (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
9:30 am	legendary hospitality continues The gracious hospitality of our new friends continued and even intensified.  At 7:00 p.m. yesterday we called to see about taking them up on their offer of a place to sleep.  We came to find out that the invitation wasn't just something you say at a spontaneous party on the beach--they were completely sincere, and even seemd eager to entertain us.   We arranged to meet them in front of Le Memorial museum at 10:00 p.m., which we had assumed, due to ample signage, was located in the center of Caen.  Thinking that we had plenty of time to get there, we stopped at Le Chateau de Caen, a huge castle right in the middle of Caen.  We lost track of time climbing through the castle's many high towers and taking in views of the whole city around us, and then giving Carl a thorough, penetrating interview on camera with the city in slanting sunlight as backdrop.  I was listening to Carl give a good answer to a good question when I saw on my watch that it was 5 minutes to 10.  I thought I had already recognized Le Memorial building in the distance, so I picked up my pack and told the guys I'd run ahead to meet our hosts.  I was worried and disappointed in ourselves, because we were already deep in these people's debt, as far as kindness goes, and being late to meet them seemed irresponsible and somewhat insulting.   I started walking as quickly as I could.  When I got to the building I thought was the Memorial, it clearly was not, and I asked for help from some pedestrians.  They gave me accurate directions, but also warned that it was "very far".  I was undeterred, because I saw it as a chance to put my body on the line in order to spare these kind people the indignity of being stood up by ungrateful American knackers.  But I also didn't realize what "very far" meant exactly.  I briskly walked with my pack a kilometer in the direction I'd been steered, and then 2 or 3 or 4 kms went by in the same way, I'm not sure.  The distance between me and the other guys was accumulating, I was losing the race against time, and the signs giving directions to the Memorial just contined to dispassionately order me hither and yon.  At about 10:30, I asked a well-dressed couple walking along the street for directions again, feeling I might be within striking distance and not too late to meet our friends, albeit late nevertheless.  The couple began to give me verbal directions, but they still said it was far away, and they were clearly doubtful about the advisability of walking there.  After they consulted each other in French briefly, they motioned me to follow them, which I thought meant perhaps that we'd cross the intersection in order to get a clearer view of the road I needed to walk down, making it easier to explain the route.  But as I was following them, the parking lights of a mini-cooper car blinked on and off, and the wife got into the back seat while her husband helped me put my heavy backpack in the trunk.  These people drove me what turned out to be 4 or 5 more kms to the front of the Memorial.  Just more French kindness. We did more of the same with our Caen friends--lots of laughs--except in an apartment this time, not on the beach.  They cooked for us again and kept our glasses full.  We broke into 2 pairs and slept at two of their apartments.  Having known us for all of 2 days, they insisted upon leaving their keys with us as they went off to work or school in the morning.  When we left town, a couple of the guys came to the train station to see us off.  Carl connects with people quickly, they like his pure heart, I think, and he was sad to go.  I was ready to move on.  It was a stretch for me to even accept that much kindness, although I enjoyed and appreciated it.  I don't know how good I'd ever be at extending quite that much brother love.    (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
7:30 am	beach party At the internet hub yesterday, we had a bunch of e-mails from Carl telling us where he was staying and giving a phone number to reach him.  The subject line for one of the e-mails was "Lone Wolfe", which we all thought was clever. We didn't have to write him a response or make arrangements to meet him, though.  He just came up behind us while we were staring at our computer screens, and just like that, he was back.  Granted, in 3 hours, just like that, he was gone again, having failed to get on a bus the rest of us boarded.  Fortunately, we had to get back off the bus after a few stops when we realized it wasn't the right one, and we went back to the bus station and found him there.  We were close to losing him again in exactly the same way as before.  This second time probably got Carl's attention more than the first, even though the first separation lasted over a day, and this one only lasted 20 minutes.  We've all talked now, we understand each other, and I don't think it will happen again. We slept on a  Normandy beach last night beside a campfire prepared by a small group of young French saints.  They seem like ordinary people, about our age, with ordinary jobs, hobbies, and occupations, but their kindness and generousity has been extraordinary and inexhaustible.  We happened upon the same cozy spot they chose for their after-work picnic-barbeque, a bit of beach with a miniature cliff beside it.  They waved to us like old friends the moment they saw us, talked to us familiarly and asked us questions with sincere interest in their best school-book English, which was quite good.  They offered us everything they had, which was drinks, sausage, chicken wings, bread, chips, and they wouldn't accept payment for any of it.  Without hesitation, they offered us even their homes to stay in if we get back to Caen.  It was a beautiful experience for us, and they enjoyed themselves too, if I'm to believe the short note above their e-mail addresses scribbled on a notepad--"Thanks for the little party on the beach!"  Just being nice to one another and treating each other with respect and care gave us all a memorable feeling of connection.  They set an example for me on how to chill out and love other people.  They've got something figured out about how to enjoy life. Relax and share it.  (Comment on this)