here today, gone to bali

Much action since last posting; in chronological order:



• November 4 – 9: time at the TEDIndia conference in Mysore, India where Jib shared about the future of business, and we all connected with old friends, met new ones and began a temple and sacred-spot visiting regime that hasn’t begun to slow



• November 10 - 30: After a night in Calcutta, a wild flight into high mountain kingdom of Bhutan. Nestled between the economic powerhouses of China and India, the Himalayan country is the world’s youngest democracy and home to the only real political attempt to define an alternative development model, which they call Gross National Happiness. Here Jib met with the Prime Minister and rowed a boat on the first raft descent of the Drangme Chhu River, a 7 day class IV-V gem through the heart of pristine lowland forest all the way to the Assam, India border. If you look close at this short video from Bio Bio Expeditions you will see me tumble out ass over teakettle out of the cataraft. During this time, Marci and Skye braved wild, one-lane twisty mountain roads filled with Buddhist drivers, roadside water-driven prayer wheels and cliffs as tall as Half-Dome to visit the Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries, Temples, Zhongs, Festivals, Pray Wheels and Stupahs that make up the daily life of this country of 600,000. They also did a small rafting trip of their own and got to visit the reserve of the Black Necked Crane, considered one of the world’s most endangered species.



• December 1-7: from there we traveled to visit our friend Ajeet Bajaj and his family in Delhi, India. The ‘Sir Edmund Hillary of India’, Ajeet met Jib on the banks of Siberia’s frozen Chuya River in 1988 and they have remained friends ever since. Ajeet is founder and owner of the best adventure travel company in India, Snow Leopard Adventures and is one of the countries’ top explorers having been the first Indian to ski to both the North and South Poles (among many other accomplishments). During our short stay with the Bajaj’s we traveled to the holy city of Rishikesh on the banks of the upper Ganges River, where we rafted and stayed at the Snow Leopard camp. Here we saw Puma tracks on the beach and Sadhus galore in their orange robe ascetic wildness at and around the daily sunset Ganges worship session at the local ashram.
• December 8 - Now: we’re in Ubud, Bali and have unpacked our bags, done laundry and will settle in through the new year with our friends who live here. Skye will continue her home school routine and spend time at the innovative Green School, Jib will review and compile and share his notes on the amazing people and projects we’ve seen, Marci will do yoga and consider the merits of sourcing, and we will all reconnect with friends and family over the holiday season, while we begin to make plans for the next half of the trip.

Vietnam

Vietnam. A cacophony of the senses. Old Town Hanoi, our first stop, is a maze of alleys all filled with food vendors, tiny $10 hotels, knock-off stores, and motorbikes, motorbikes, motorbikes. Gas powered two-wheeled vehicles moving every which way, everyone in a peripheral vision flow state, somehow avoiding the inevitable crash (most of the time) due to everyone using their horns all the time. It makes one wonder what it was like when it was only bicycles. It must have been very quiet.

From Hanoi, we visited the World Heritage Site of Halong Bay. Thousands of limestone cliff faced islands off the northern coast. Like everywhere we went in Vietnam - in fact all of asia - a clear day is one filled with a fog-like haze. The sun and stars are nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, our overnight ride on a Junk Boat entertains: kayaking, cave walking, and odd boat mates, all make this a worthy venture.

Then we meet our friends Melany and Duncan Berry and head to Thich Nhat Han's Root Temple (aka a nunnery and monastery) near Hue in the central part of the country. For 5 days we are their guests. Dharma talks, singing, meditating, silent meals, helping build a rickety robe rack, walking meditation fill our days. The nuns want to keep Skye - she is their size; taught a great english class (the highlight being a rousing round of 'twinkle twinkle little star'); and impressed them with her badminton skills. The mutual adoration between Skye and the nuns is heartwarming. Skye is very clear that as of today she's not becoming a buddhist nun. Just in case you were wondering. They sleep on desk tops, wake up at 4:30am for morning meditation and eat all vegetarian meals in silence.

Now we're in Bhutan after a week in Mysore, India. Tomorrow we head to the far east of this small country.

TEDIndia Conference

We're in Mysore, India. Just finished the TEDindia conference where I had the privilege to speak on day 2 (yesterday).

Entering the TED world felt like landing on the moon after Africa and 2 weeks in Vietnam where we spent the majority of our time in and around a Buddhist Root Temple in Hue.

Photos and more coming soon.

Out of Africa

We have arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam after a wonderful and enlightening road trip up the West Coast of South Africa, into Namibia; followed by a small plane flight into the Okovango Swamps, Botswana; onward to Victoria Falls and then to a remote village in Malawai; before time on the beach in Plettenberg Bay and a couple of days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia en route to Asia...

along the way we've seen amazing wild animals, met with inspirational people, experienced inspirational examples of positive deviance, and reconnected with Africa the place where Marci and I met 24 years ago.

Its beauty, tragedy and uniqueness is astounding.

No Internet in the Bush

Sorry to be out of touch.

We've been traveling extensively in the bush - as they say here - with no internet access. Now we're in Johannesburg, South Africa, but only briefly as we leave in 2 hours to fly to Blantyre, Malawi where we will spend the day with leaders from Millennium Promise and UNEP visiting one of their Millennium Village Clusters exploring how to create market-based economic inputs that will sustain the progress they have made in eradicating extreme poverty.

We just spent the last few days in Zimbabwe and Zambia on either side of The Smoke That Thunders, Victoria Falls. We stayed in Vic Falls with friends from 24 years ago. Zimbabwe is just emerging from a complete economic collapse - their currency, just after printing 10 Quadrillion (yes, quadrillion) Dollar bank notes, totally collapsed and now they use only US Dollars. Meanwhile, the funky, isolated Zambia of 1985 - where you couldn't enter the country if you had a South African stamp in your passport - has become one of the new economic darlings of the region, with a 5 star hotel sitting directly on top of the grass roofed huts where us Sobek guides lived at the Rainbow Lodge. We had the pleasure of hooking up with two Zambians with whom I worked - Rachel and Dominic - who took us on the grand tour of Livingstone to see Nanda's Mini Market, Dombwa street Market, the Boat Club and Nakatindi the ghetto where all the Africans who worked with Sobek lived. After dinner we crossed the border from Zambia to Zimbabwe the other night at immigration the lights were out (black out that had started the morning we left) so we entered the ramshackle immigration building in total darkness saying ‘hello? Hello?’ and then all of a sudden a cell phone LCD light come on and a polite voice says, ‘yes, can I help you?’ as if nothing was unusual… It was surreal, but classic - everyone was relating to that as if nothing was unusual in any way... those LCD lights in the cell phones are very popular in Zimbabwe.

There is so much more: lions, leopards, elephants and hundreds of other species in Namibia and Botswana; road trips through the coastal desert mountains where we didn't see another car for 5 hours; hiking to the top of the world's tallest dune and then skiing down the face skye burning the bottom of her bare feet; meeting with the leader of a most practical and innovative approach to land/biodiversity conservation in Africa; feeding running orphaned cheetah's 2 kg slabs of donkey meat from the back of a careening truck... After we return from Malawi I will put together a proper travel log and share it. I also, will encourage Marci and Skye to begin to post.

Now off to meet the executives from South Africa's largest retailer before getting on an Air Malawi flight to Blantyre.

POSITVE DEVIANCE I

Patenoster, South Africa

August 28, 2009

It was in the market in Patenoster, South Africa that Skye called out, ‘hey, papa come look at this cool thing!’ Fully expecting a troll, trinket, or other tacky tourist item to maneuver my 11 year old away from, I was surprised to find colorful boxes made out of the bottoms of 1 liter coke bottles. Instead of recycling, or throwing them away, this woman had masterfully cut the the bottles in such a way that they would close. In order to make them pretty, she had taken napkins and glued them on in such a way as to make them sturdy and translucent so the light could shine through. And at 12 Rand – approximately $1.50 USD – they weren’t expensive.

She did a brisk business, so we were lucky to get one. She’ll make more tonight and be back tomorrow at 11am next to the dried fish, shell mobiles and other brickabrack.

Holding this thing, which I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with as we continue our road trip north into places wild and unknown, I started to think about principles. What are the common elements of projects that might make up an instance of positive deviance?

• Sustainable Value – it adds demonstrable value to multiple stakeholders – including the shareholder – and importantly, doesn’t take away value from other people, communities and nature. In simple terms, an instance of positive deviance should do no harm and bring value to many. In the case of the little box, she was making decent money on a ubiquitous item that was heading to a landfill, incinerator or energy intensive recycling plant.
• Cost Effective – the economics must make sense at scale within the communities in which they operate. In other words, it could work at scale and isn’t simply for the wealthy or extreme niche. If ‘sustainable’ cotton (or pick your commodity) can’t compete with ‘conventionally’ grown cotton, it won’t make a difference. At 12 Rand, these sturdy boxes were accessible even to the local fishermen, and were an absolute bargain to tourists. I could easily imagine thousands of these being made all over the world.
• Beauty – the direct outcomes and unintended impacts of the product or service should somehow enhance the richness and diversity of nature and society. If things add economic value and do no harm, but they detract systematically from diversity or beauty, then in the long run they won’t make the cut. My market entrepreneur didn’t need to add the napkins to the coke bottle boxes. They would work have worked without them just fine. But it was that extra move to thoughtfully bring beauty along with the practical innovation that make it appealing, and led to its being snapped up like hot cakes.

These may not be right, but it’s a good northstar to start.

WILD ECONOMY

September 9, 2009
Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park
Ten lions, a dominant male, two females, five cubs and two young males nearby, rest in the afternoon heat. The male Kalahari Desert lions are known for their flowing, dark, beautiful manes, which grow fuller than most due to the lack of vegetation and underbrush. It’s hot, dry and primal out here in this bright African afternoon. The cubs rough-house, chew on sticks and nurse; the dominant male lazily sits up to survey his domain; the mamas nap only moving to stay in the shade; and the young males shift restlessly to survey the main pride to which they hope to have access someday. Mostly they all sleep.
They pay us no mind even though we’re but 20 feet away for two hours in the 35 degree heat. A few german tourists in self-drive 4x4’s toting massive cameras and lenses come and go. Still we sit, sweating yet mesmerized by the spectacle of wild lions in this wild place.
Like the Germans, we are on a self-safari in this remote game park on the border between Namibia and South Africa. We are in a rented Kia Sportage bound from Cape Town to the Angola/Namibia border and have our own small array of electronic recording devices (not too much: remember our carry-on provision), and are in the process of surveying two dry river valleys where the game collect from Twee Riverien to Nossob and over to Mata-Mata searching. Watching the King of Beasts playfully swat an frisky cub, it occurs to me that our ‘market economy’ means nothing to these wild creatures. They are affected by markets surely; but they know and care nothing of them. For them life just is.
In contrast, I live, observe lions in Africa, and am able to write this by virtue of my active participation in market economies. What’s especially interesting about Africa is that there are fair numbers of people who, like the Kalahari lions, are influenced by market forces, but as a practical matter they know and care little about them. For a good portion of humanity life is still pretty basic – living moment by moment hunt for food, shelter, sex, and harmonized social relations. And this is an economy of sorts – a wild economy. It’s older, more raw and as I gaze at the lions, realize isn’t going away anytime soon. Market economies are a structure of human interpretation with agreed to rules and norms; wild economies are somehow different.
In New York I met with folks from Millennium Promise, an NGO committed to eradicating extreme poverty consistent with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. In early October Marci, Skye and I will visit one of their projects in Malawi to explore how to develop markets for agricultural goods in communities with no infrastructure and no investment capital. Theirs is a problem of transitioning people from a wild economy to a market economy. According to Millennium Promise there are one billion people living in extreme poverty world-wide. That’s a lot of people living close to wild economics. I’ve grown up in market economics – I know nothing else – and the last 5 years have looked deeply into the unintended impacts – good and bad – of markets. What I’ve learned is there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Participation in the global economy has clear benefits, but also its costs. And because it works on human-created rules, one has to choose to participate in order to make it work. Thus I suspect that this is why most ‘aid’ fails and why the WTO will continue to have challenges. Ultimately, people must choose to participate in markets; to let go of the wild, ancient and raw – with all its benefits and costs – and embrace the new.
And as I sit, sweat and commune with the Kalahari lions I can almost see a kind of picture into that wild human economy. But not quite.

We are on our way to the Kalahari and then into Namibia. More posts coming soon when we get reconnected. Its a long road.

BORDER LAND

BORDER LAND

August 22, 2009

Airport Transit Lounge, Frankfurt, Germany

The experience of leaving one country, but not yet fully arriving in another country is odd. It is a zone of no-country, a place between the known and unknown, a domain of uncertainty and anticipation, an experience of being and becoming. Its unsettling.

When I was 23 years old, I lived outside of Livingstone, Zambia in a one room thatched roofed hut at the Rainbow Lodge within view of the hippo and crocodile laden Zambezi River and Musi O Tunya – the smoke that thunders – Victoria Falls. After widening to over a mile and plunging almost 500 feet over the world famous Falls, the Zambezi then snakes its way 200 km down the remote and desolate Batoka Gorge home to the world’s rarest falcon, the world’s biggest navigable rapids, and one of the world’s most natural borders. In 1985 and 1986 I was one of seven whitewater river guides working for Sobek, the company that had done the first descent of the river two years before (it was on the seven day expedition where I met my sweet wife Marci, but that is another story). Just below the Falls, within walking distance from my hut, the top of the gorge is almost a ½ mile across and with the churning river 500 feet below, it forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. In 1985, Zambia was poor and Zimbabwe was not. Petrol, bread, cheese, meat - almost everything - needed to be purchased in Zimbabwe. To do this, we needed to cross a big bridge, checking out of Zambia on one side, driving across the bridge often getting out to admire the view, and then checking into Zimbabwe on the other side. In 1985 given what we were doing, it was not totally clear if once you checked out of one country, whether or not they would let you into the other one. I used to imagine living on that bridge between two African countries, stuck forever in the borderland where none of the old or new rules applied. A developing world version of that movie Tom Hanks starred in not too long ago where he was stuck for months inside JFK.

Of course, that never happened. There were unsettling incidents: normally placid guards made irritable by 120 degree heat and our sloppy misprints in paperwork pulling our bread, cheese and provision laden land rover apart, fines and threats to take passports because of undeclared wheels of cheese; subtle but firm pressure for bribes. But we always made it out the other side.

As we sit physically in Germany, legally nowhere, bound for Southern Africa, a country so far away it will take us 32 hours of travel to get there, where we will drive 2000km up the west coast of South Africa and Namibia to near the Angolan border, I see how we are in collective and individual borderlands in our lives – walking across a bridge between the known and unknown. Skye most obviously of all. She bravely walks in the border land between childhood and puberty, between fantasy and ‘reality’, between reliance on parents and self-reliance. She has so much trust and resolve. We have been on the road for over 4 weeks in Bug-Z and not once has she complained despite all manner of circumstance – breakdowns, boring dinners with adults, heat, rain, being lost, no friends, and hours and hours of loud diesel engine drone. Skye is pretty much content to be here with us come what may. Marci has wrapped up all of her design projects, closed her business bank account, and for the first time since we’ve been together is unencumbered by projects and the numerous details she masterfully manages everyday. She is free. As for me, the everyday routine followed faithfully for the last five has disappeared. Building Blu Skye, obsessively serving our clients, innovating to raise the game, being a small part of a growing movement to transform the way business is conducted on planet earth – all the structure and devices that have allowed me to do this are gone. And as I stare out the transit lounge window waiting for our flight to Cape Town, I realize that when we return home, it will all be different. For me and for all of us.

Now I know why people don’t choose to do a trip like this more often. Its unsettling, unclear and unnerving. Its also what creates the possibility for something new to emerge. We often tell our busy clients that once the analysis is done, strategy consists of only three tangible things. Those current actions which you will Stop; future actions that you will Start; and current actions that you will Continue. The hardest, by far, is stopping. But this is the only place where the opening for new action is created. We’ve all stopped a lot of actions and are engaged in a whole lot of new actions. It will be interesting to see what happens when we emerge from this border land.

Across the USA

Today we leave New York City bound for Africa.

A good beginning.

More to come.

Jib, Marci and Skye

Maximum Legal Carry On

Maximum Legal Carry On

When packing for a year long trip that includes latitudes of muggy dripping heat, altitudes of air thin and cold, and rain of all textures, what do you bring? A carry on.

There’s no way to prepare for all contingencies, so stay light and move fast. Maintain ability to catch a last-minute flight without checking bags in Malawi after getting stuck in traffic. Keep weight low to toss baggage onto slow moving trains in India. Stay compact to tie bags onto pack horses in southern Patagonia. When staying at a friend of a friend’s house in South Africa, one doesn’t want to show up with heavy, massive duffels filled with reams of unwashed cloths or unused gear (a friend once schlepped a full sized crab pot and accessories to eastern Siberia anticipating the mouth-watering king crab off the coast of Sovietskaya Gavan).

Packing the carry on for the year’s odyssey is good sustainability 101 practice: Take what you need. Need what you take. No more. No less. Let the constraint of the bag’s size force you to innovate.

Today we say goodbye to Bug-Z, our now-part-of-the-family Vanagon. Now the carry-on commitment becomes actualized. Although space constrained, Bug-Z had all the amenities: 2 double beds, cooler with iced drinks, food and snacks, music from the 70s and 80s that we played on the blaupunkt tape machine, I had my old stumpjumper mountain bike, marci and Skye had razor scooters, plates, cups, bowls, there was even a kitchen sink (although we didn’t use it). We had it all.

Letting Go


It’s been a year of heavy lifting to realize this point of minimalism. The Vanagon is but the middle stage of our rocket ship leaving orbit. Packing up the house, finding Mike and Marne, putting affairs in order with Blu Skye, saying goodbye to family and friends, this was stage one. Today like an apollo moon shot, in order to get out of orbit we have to jettison mass, goods, gear, stuff.

Bug-Z's Pit Crew


So goodbye Bug-Z for now. The carry ons are still full and we now have 3 nights in Manhattan, NY before flying to Cape Town, South Africa to see if further culling is necessary.

Saddest of the Pleasures

Lewis and Clark ghost here
Bike ride aside Teton shadowed mighty Snake
Crowd adorned Major Sights in Yellowstone - 5 minutes off path nobody
Ascend and descend passes, past elk and bear
Jam with movie star under bright night big sky
Almost booted out of Roosevelt National Park in the Northern Bad Lands
Marci and skye experience Mare ultrasound - no baby - while papa logisticizes
Road weary to green mosquito lake in Minnesota called Leech after shopping local farm corn at park rapid walmart
Diesel overflow. again. And this aint bio. clean bugs off the window.
Sit up straight. keep breathing as the big trucks move on by.
World at 65mph used to be fast, not so anymore.
Still miles roll by
There's a lot of grass out there Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin
and hospitality
Not too many VW's in this part of the world. "nope. not here," says the woman in Duluth, MN, "we ship too much iron ore."
This is USA Car Country
As if on cue, on bridge to Wisconsin fussy german temperature gauge shorts - back to Minnesota, eat tacos at the brewpub and stay in the no-tell motel
Try again tomorrow
Tompkins once told me to read The Saddest Pleasure
Its a travel story
Just like this one
Still smiling

David Our Vanagon Liberator

'Are you sure this is the way to go?' Marci asked a reasonable enough question. We had spend the night by the side of the Snake River just above Hells Canyon in the scorching heat swimming, and gorging on the abundant wild blackberries and apricots that flanked the desert river. In the cool morning we sailed across the bridge into Idaho and powered up and out of the river canyon with the vanagon running cool and strong. Replacing the radiator in Ashland, Oregon had worked (thank you Zac at www.theshopinashland.com).
Feeling confident, enjoying the wind in our hair and drone of the jetta diesel engine, I decided that the conditions were perfect for a short cut to our destination for the day: Ketchum, Idaho. Short cut is an euphemism for going off the beaten path, often with limited information and always involves mountains, stream crossings and dirt roads. Most of the time it is shorter by mileage, but longer in time. Sure enough we soon found ourselves deep in the mountains on a gravel road with many unmarked forks in the road. I was feeling great - mountain springs, tall pines, clean air, a van with a new coolant system. Marci was wondering what we would do in the event of a breakdown. It was true, we hadn't seen many other vehicles, and we were often miles from little towns like Indian Valley, Pioneerville, and Crouch. All day long we drove over the Seven Devil Mountains, through Payette Range and finally over the 9000 ft Galena Summit flanked by the Sawtooth Mountains into Ketchum, Idaho.
At 7pm after crossing 3 major passes and driving 9 hours, we turned off the main road and drifted into the quiet mountain town. Downshifting at the first corner we heard a clunk, heard metal on metal and then lost power - the axle had come loose from the wheel. We coasted into a parking space across from the Moss Garden Center and called Dick Dorworth, the fastest man on skiis in 1963 (108 miles per hour on 220cm metal Head skiis and leather boots) and father of our friend Richard, now a 70 year old, fit, Buddhist writer, climber and skiier who had made Ketchum his home for the last 40 years. He was driving back from a weekend of 5.10 climbing at City of Rocks. "Call David" was Dick's immediate response, "he'll know what to do." Within 5 minutes, David arrived on the scene. It was immediately clear that we were in the presence of a true Vanagon fanatic: his rig was a buffed-out '87 4x4 vanagon with self-inflating tires, solar panel run freezer, hydrolic lifters for the pop top, and enough gadgets and gauges to satisfy the gnarliest of motorheads. "I like to go to the middle of the Utah desert for three weeks at a time." He instantly diagnosed the problem and dug deep into his spare parts and pulled out a new cv joint and a plethora of factory bolts and washers. "Never travel without the spare parts."
As a result of our breakdown we spent two days wonderful days in Ketchum - hiking mountains, learning about a really innovative local food distribution system, meeting eccentric and interesting people - before driving onto Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where we are today.
It is interesting - some would say lucky - that we broke down where we did instead of miles from nowhere. That said, a breakdown is still a breakdown - it triggers an emotional reaction that one tries to avoid. But in any case, you still need to play the hand you're dealt. 'It isn't an adventure until something goes wrong' Yvon Chouinard says. This suggests that the unexpected slowdown, the random wrong turn, the thwarted intention are the gateway into adventure, and one might say living. None of us learned to walk without quite a number of falls. Less than two weeks into our world tour, we're definitely already well into adventure. When I asked Dick Dorworth, who has traveled the world extensively, his advice for for our year, he said simply, "compassion, courage and humor." Seems like a good set of principles and smart strategy for getting the most out of our Odyssey particularly in the face of breakdowns. One hopes that the results of future breakdowns are as positive as meeting David and Dick and hanging in Ketchum.

Footprints in the Sand

We pulled off of route 84. “Mosier, isn’t this where Arlene Burns lives?” A phone call later and we were in Arlene’s house amid a pile of gear being compiled for an expedition to ANWR – the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve – to photograph an expedition of a man and his 12 year old daughter scaling a mountain peak. I’ve known Arlene since 1988 when she wrote me a letter from Nepal where she was living and then came as part of a team of 8 women to compete at the International Peace Rally on the banks of the still frozen Chuya River in central Siberia on May Day 1989. From then on, she became a fairly core part of a young team of idealists who guided a small non-profit cultural/sport exchange program called Project RAFT (Russians and Americans For Teamwork) kept it afloat for the next 5 years. It was an intense time, but suffice to say we haven’t spoken for years as both our lives – like so many old friendships – have drifted into different channels. I’m realizing that in addition to searching out pockets of positive deviance, adventure and new learning, that our year will also be a time for reflection, reconnection and refining relationships and experiences that like footprints in the sand have a way of washing away.

Star Thistle

Siskiyou Summit pushed the van – now named Bug-Z – to the boiling point. Just 300 vertical feet from the 4200’ pass, we pulled over to let the engine cool before making the final push. We waited in a loud and hot void between the steady crawling semis and a wall of Star Thistle as far as the eye could see in both directions. Star Thistle is a particularly hardy and aggressive plant that dominates roadsides throughout the West. It has a beautiful yellow flower that turns into a spiked star sharp enough to go through a rubber soled shoe. As the green antifreeze (green in this case, doesn't mean eco-friendly) vaporized into the atmosphere, it struck me that we chose an interesting entrance into our global tour: the van issues are kind of like a blunt instrument forcing us to slow down, get out of routine, lessen our need for control and trust that it will all work out. Sure enough, we made it over the pass and drifted red-lined into Zac’s Auto Shop in Ashland, OR. There are a sea of Vanagon corpses and a few on life support in his parking lot. Hopefully, Bug-Z will prevail. A new cooling system is on the menu. Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter.

Mission Control We've Got a Problem

109 degrees in Redding, CA. Its day one of the Ellison Odyssey and I watch the thermostat of our bio diesel converted ’84 Vanagon rise. Skye who has a ice water soaked bandana on her forehead, calls out from the back seat, ‘hey, I smell smoke!’ Sure enough the charcoaly smell of burning oil wafts from the vents. The semi trucks, including a well-driven, ultra-efficient Wal-Mart Always Low Prices Always trailer slide by shimmering in the heat. In the fracas, I’m distracted. When I glance at the dashboard again, the thermostat is suddenly pegged with lights blinking red. This isn’t good. We’re almost at the top of the pass. I know if I stop it will surely boil over, but if I keep going it will surely boil over. How lucky. One of life’s dilemmas presented on day one: darned if you do; darned if you don’t. Faced with this choice, we continue, pulling off at the Highway 89 exit making a short right into a shady spur. Throw ice water from the cooler on the radiator and then back on the road, gliding finally to rest at the serene home of our friends Richard and Erika, where I dunk in the crisp, spring fed tributary of the McCloud River that runs through their back yard, sharing stories, laughing and planning to meet them in Bali – where they now live – in December.
Beginning a year around the world with the family is one thing. Choosing to start by taking an old van, sans air conditioning, through California’s Central Valley on a hot July day as part of a cross-country road trip is another thing altogether. A shockingly appropriate start to our quest to experience our world – its people, its places – in all its glory. I can’t wait for today.