Quarter Year » scooter

If he’s Jesus he’ll do this anyway

Mike — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:59:12 +0000

by Mike

Ok, it only took me about 24 hours, but I got it – he looked at me and said, “I’m looking at the sinner.” Before I put all the pieces together I was planning on handing a piece of paper to him with my own personalized message, “I hope for the happiness of my enemies.” But then I figured it out. I had been walking around judging people and then he looked at me and judged me. Then I was going to impotently try to be holy. So I crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it away.

This morphs

Today I rode the scooter to Castelmola and into the hills behind. Several times I stopped and just looked at the magnificently sculpted landscape – the terraces and farms, the roads like worm tracks in mud. The light was dramatic – it was socked in in Castelmola, so much so I was startled to turn a corner and find the day had gone dark. But as I rode high in the hills behind that tourist town I got so high I reached places where blue sky poked through the drifting clouds and the sun even shone. One dramatic moment had the sun illuminating from behind some ancient-looking trees that grew out of abandoned, feral terraces. It was striking. I didn’t even bring my camera, which was a mistake, though I suppose there will be other pictures.

Another cool moment was cresting a hill and seeing a city in the distance, then realizing it was Gardini Naxos, and that was the sea behind it. What a joy, being surprised by the sea. I coasted down toward it on a broken road, engine off, until the road suddenly went to dirt. As far as I could see down the valley the road was dirt, and cars were driving carefully, so I started the engine and went back where I came from.

On this drive – and this was worth the 30 Euro rental fee – I learned that I simply need to continue ascending, not get stuck in the fog. Pretty clear allegory, thanks.

In one ear I was listening to Thich Nhat Hanh quietly lecture about touching the earth. He said that I am my physical ancestors – in the transmission of their genes I became them. It helped me see again that these places are not separate from the past. The past is not elsewhere, it is here, we are it, the genes of Moses and Jesus and peasants and bakers are not in some distant past, but they’re as close as the next person, and that makes them (and me) holy.

So I went back to the guy in the hood with a new message written on a piece of paper and rolled up.

I walked up to him confidently from the front and dropped a coin in the basket. He reached in his bag and handed me a rolled up piece of paper, and then he smiled wide as I handed him mine. His read, simply, “Perché,” which translates to both “why” and “because.” In mind I wrote, “Keep ascending.”

This whole business of passing paper back and forth reminded me of a short story I wrote in 2003.

Here's the story.

An author out of Flagstaff, Az wrote a book called, “A Way to Live” and published it himself. “A Way to Live” made its way to bookstores on the West Coast, particularly because the world was searching for a new Vonnegut. “Kurt’s getting old,” liberals thought, “and we desperately need someone to replace him.”

A young man in Seattle picked up the book out of the self-help section. He had just gotten paid and figured $4.99 was a fair price for direction.

The book was about another young man named Chris, who was directed to grab a piece of lined, white notebook paper.
He did so.
Theodore, the young man in Seattle, did this as well.
He was also directed to grab a writing implement.
Chris chose a pencil in the story, and Theodore chose a red pen in his dining room.
Next Chris was directed to write any message on the paper – something he’d say to god if there were a god and if he were to meet him and if he were a he or spoke a language or cared about his creations.

“Ahem,” thought Chris. “Dear god. Hope you got the letter. No, that’s a song.”

Theo: “Ok, god… why is there so much suffering in this world?”

Chris tried again, “I’m sure you’ve got other prayers to answer and all, but I need some direction in my life right now.”

Theo disagreed with the book, “Why would we ask for direction, will god even respond?”

Chris agreed. “I need to write something that will be more of a command.”
“Or maybe less a command and more a suggestion.”

“to make the world better, to help people change their lives.”

“Ok.” they agreed.

Chris wrote, “Life, please be more rational.”

Theodore wrote, “People should share themselves.”

The book ended with a bunch of tax tables and geological surveys, but Theodore didn’t. He folded the paper into thirds and slid it into an envelope, slapped on a stamp and addressed it to:

“God
North Pole, Canada”

Do they have zip codes in Canada? Probably not important in this case.

To his surprise, the postman accepted the envelope and took it to the processing station.

This was in December, so a postwoman understood the letter to be for Santa and threw it into a pile with the other envelopes that had pictures of reindeers and divorce papers. “On Christmas I’ll be at my dad’s house, since it’s a weekend, so you can deliver my presents there, Santa.” The postwoman’s name, however, was Gloria Orenthal Demeules. “god,” she said. “It’s addressed to G.O.D.”

She wondered if it was someone trying to get in touch with her – one of her neighbor’s cute kids who would send her a personal message out of all those faceless envelopes?… or perhaps the strapping bag boy at QFC was sending her a message… she’d told him about her job going through Santa letters from divorced kids. He knew she was G.O.D. Maybe he was telling her about sex, and how he wanted to do terrible things to her. She hoped.

(needless to say, Theodore was that strapping bag boy, but Gloria never found out she had been right.)

She opened the mail.

“‘People should share themselves’…. Why, that has nothing to do with presents.”

Against post office policy, she took the note home with her and put it on her mantle as the only Christmas card in a lonely season. She wondered about it often. She decided to live by the card that had been sent to her by forces unknown. (Despite her staunch opposition to religion, she came to the conclusion that only Santa could have sent this to her, as a reward for raking through the misguided wishes of divorcees’ children and filtering them out). “More than anything else,” Gloria told her sister, Wendy Althea Demeules, “I’ve been sharing my writing with other people. I mean, I don’t know if I was supposed go out and give charity or whore myself-”
“Oh Dear!” from the other end of the line.
“-but neither of those would have the effect Santa would want. ‘Share yourself’… it’s so… vague.”

Gloria went to poetry slams and read her material to an overly enthusiastic and privately judgemental crowd of white adults and black teens. She felt better. She didnt mind the lonliness anymore – or – perhaps – by sharing her poetry she began to be less lonely. Something like that.

Either way the next month Gloria realized other people could experience the same thing. She could help them change themselves.

She grabbed a red pen and sat down.

She wrote, “Lose some weight.”

She slid it in an envelope, slapped on a stamp and took it to work.

“Dave. I need you to do a favor – deliver this to anyone in the 98112 zip code, just randomly, ok?”

“You got it.”

Needless to say, Dave opened the envelope thinking it was a private message.

“‘Lose some weight’? What the fuck?”

Gloria left work that night in a car whose doors had been discreetly keyed. When she got home she prepared a number of other messages to be sent out – 25 in all. Here’s a few of the ones she wrote:
“People should share themselves.”
“Listen to new music.”
“Light candles tonight.”
“Feast on the rich.”
“Forgive your parents.”
and so on.

At work the next day, she handed a couple out to each postman, asking them to deliver to random mailboxes. Each of the envelopes was addressed to ‘god’.
Privately, all over the city, people read these messages, pondered for a few minutes whether they were asses of a joke or part of a chosen few, then quizzed their mail carriers. The postmen didn’t care to talk, and some even spat at the homeowners.
And so it began: dozens of Seattlites reacted the same way Gloria did – they thought of the letter, then followed the advice. Some thought it was a message from aliens, others thought it was from the postmaster general. Some thought the Chinese had given up on cookies while others were sure that astrologers had given up on newspapers (though cookies and newspapers continued to run fortunes, as far as the Seattlites could tell).
One woman, Elizabeth Liason Frye, got the message, “Drink 8 glasses of water a day”
Hugo Ulysses Goldberg received, “Don’t stand for injustice.”
And about half the people decided to send messages back, addressed to ‘god.’

and so on.

After a few months the media caught on and there was an explosion of letters to ‘god’ with everybody receiving at least one a week, then one every couple days.

By the time June rolled around it had become a morning ritual:

Hugo woke up at 7, ate breakfast while writing his daily suggestion, and tossed it in the mailbox on the way to work. Every day. And every day he received a new message in the mail, “Don’t shop at Fred Meyers,” or “Give yourself a breast exam.”
Hugo’s interactions at work became a reflection of these daily pieces of advice – people felt a lot more comfortable speaking their minds, leaving little slips of paper on their coworkers desks.
“I like the world more now,” Hugo would say. “We can be so much more open with each other.”

Theodore, bagging groceries for Gloria at the QFC, wasn’t liking the world so much.
“I don’t like the world as much anymore,” he would say. “Nobody says anything of value anymore.”
Gloria was a perfect example of this. “Theo,”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Did you know that I started this letter-writing trend?”
Lying bitch, I started it. “No, I didnt’ know that! What was your first message?”
“I said, ‘Lose some weight’, just some good healthy advice.”
Theo was quiet for a couple seconds.
“Ma’am? What if the person it reached was already thin?”
Gloria blinked. “Well, I guess I never thought of that.”

Gloria was 25 pounds overweight and Theo never shared himself with loved ones.

Scooter time

Mike — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:49:55 +0000

by Mike

It was so fucking great to get back on a scooter today – I went high into the hills at the base of Etna and then coasted back down all the way to the sea. Higher on the mountain the churches and walls and buildings were made of darker stone, probably volcanic rock. It was a charcoal grey and sometimes it looked almost blue. There’s a ring of clouds that’s been obscuring Etna’s peak this week – the whole coast can be sunny and warm then up there it’s dark and brooding.

It was nice to be away from the tourist culture here in Taormina – at places along the drive I could smell the smoke of vocation – farmers burning leaves and branches they had pruned, I could smell olive trees as well. Things I associate with actual place and culture. I didn’t have to strain to interpret life rhythms from pastries. Symbolism can be poverty, anyway. Think of how an adult puts out cookies on Xmas Eve vs what a kid thinks of that act. Symbolic gestures are a skeptic’s nostalgia – we lack enough evidence that we should probably consider our rituals literal. And by pushing together the literal with the unknown we create faith: simultaneously holding contradictory beliefs. Treating gestures as symbols cheapens that power. God I hate tourism.

At some point, as I got more comfortable on the scooter, I could ride up the hill and lean into each curve like I was flying. I stretched out both my arms like wings and leaned over the front of the scooter, putting my face out in the sun. Finally I lifted my body up behind me and was actually flying, eyes closed, arms out.

Here's the route

December 27, 2009

Mike — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:26:37 +0000

by Mike

In retrospect, the decision to relocate from Ubud to Medewi might have been a questionable one. We’re farther west than the tourism corridor, we’re out of Ubud, away from Kuta, away from Munduk and the capital Denpasar; and though we’re ecstatic any time we leave the tourist trail, our first sign of trouble was the price of the ocean-front hotel room: it was LOWERED to 100,000 Rupiah ($10) before we even asked. The staff was apparently resigned to run a low-quality establishment. (read more)

There are bugs in the room, and this evening I came home to the nastiest spider I’ve ever seen, relaxing next to our lightswitch with an air of entitlement. It’s definitely not the paradise Lonely Planet promised, but I reminded Azure, half-encouraging myself, that if we could overcome our dependence on nice rooms we would save a lot of money (and therefore travel longer). She reminded me that nobody at home would consider any of our rooms “nice,” and we do save a lot of money because of it. Oh yeah. Azure wrote a hilarious post about the hotel here: http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs

Right now, at 8pm, prayers are echoing in our room from two separate mosques, one voice from the east, one from the west. It’s beautiful, if haunting, and it’s a little bizarre that one muezzin is a child. This area does feel different than other parts of Bali. The young men leer more. Hindu locals have told us that this is what Muslim areas are like. I’m sure Muslim locals would say the opposite. I don’t know the religion of the young men, but, compared to the rest of Bali, Medewi is much less welcoming.

Two miles past Medewi beach we rode toward the water. Groups of young men perched on their motorcycles hanging out next to the ocean beaches, tons of men. There were some women here and there, but mostly just young men staring at us, calling out, “HEY! HEY MAN!” I don’t like when people yell at us. When we first encountered this in Kuta I wanted to ask the touts, “How would you feel if someone yelled, ‘HEY!’ at you?” Maybe not that bad, it turns out. At a homestay in Ubud the owners did exactly that to get a family member’s attention, yelling down to the courtyard, “HEY! HEY! HEY!” It really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s how they do it. A nasty old woman there was responsible for both the yelling and the loogie-haucking outside our window, several times a day.

Back in Medewi, to the west along the shore, a series of pens at the edge of the beach hold cows who graze the trees and grasses. Across the road rice paddies sprawl under the most plastic bag scarecrows I’ve seen anywhere in Bali. The bags are tied to strings that run across the mature rice, and when a farmer notices birds eying his field he yanks the strings and the bags jump. If that fails, a lady standing in the field yells and swings a large flag toward the flocks. From here a number of Hindu shrines dot a village road that lead us inland. We stopped to watch two cocks start a pickup fight.

We crossed the main road and drove toward the mountains, an hour before sunset, surprised that the small towns here aren’t as poor as we expected. The brick houses are well-constructed and the neighborhoods are cute and clean, even deep into the hills that roll down from the national park. The road pierces the jungle for miles and just when we were convinced it would cross to the opposite coast, it petered out to gravel. We turned around.

High in the hills we ran into a mobile vendor who sold us some tasty fried tofu snacks wrapped around beansprouts. The people were nice, most smiled at us, as is usual outside the cities. We were so deep I’m sure no other white people had been up that road any time recently, and the people who didn’t smile at us gawked in surprise. One side of the road teased glimpses across a valley that’s raw and thick with coconut palms and primary growth, jungle toppling onto itself. I wanted to take a picture of the natural beauty, but it would have been a picture that demands a pre-delete button, Azure and I joke. You know your next picture will be a throwaway, so you press “pre-delete,” then take it anyway.

We coasted down the hill and stopped at a grocery store for some carb snacks – chocolate bread, jackfruit chips and peanuts. At a gas station Azure offered a chip to the driver behind us, and he happily took her up on it. Everyone lol’ed.

We stopped at some food stalls and ordered bakso (soup with balls of “meat”), though after watching a lady make an egg-filled, veggie-rich soto ayam (chicken soup) we second-guessed our decision. The bakso held its own anyway. While deciding where to sit we did the usual smile-at-people routine, and one little boy called, “Tourist! Tourist!” but his mom shut him up quick. It reminded me of something that happened regularly when I said something stupid as a kid. Specifically I remember the Canadian Exchange – a yearly event when players from a Canadian soccer team stayed with families from our American team, then a couple weeks later the roles reversed. I welcomed the Canadian kid to our home, saying, “Welcome to the lifestyles of people on Somerset!” imitating Robin Leech. My mom shut me up quick, even though it was just silly in my mind, because of course we weren’t rich & famous. It was just another house, to me. Maybe we were rich compared to that kid, though, I don’t remember.

One of the years I stayed with a Vancouver family who lived in an apartment. They ate french fries with gravy and had a toddler daughter named Sidney – I felt sorry that she’d grow up in an apartment. I called my parents collect (they were proud that I could pull that off), but I was homesick and scared because the family was unexpectedly different. I don’t know if I felt sorry for them or uncomfortable about being outside my bubble – probably a combination – but I remember crying.

Today, in Bali, as we drove through some of the poorer neighborhoods and watched the pickup cock fight, I thought about how last year we passed similar Colombian poverty and felt sick from a distance. This year we’re in it, on a bike of course, but we face the differences and keep pushing ourselves to understand it. As we went deeper and deeper into the mountains I started feeling nervous. I glanced at the gas, we had plenty, so I had to ask myself, “You’re not nervous about the scooter; do you trust the people?”

On this trip I’ve come to the conclusion that fear is not a good reason to not do something. Fear is an emotional response to perceived risk, and our perceptions are so often wrong.

Back at the food stalls Azure ordered a delicious pancake thing heavy with chocolate, peanuts and condensed milk, and the cook battled flying ants as dusk dropped to night. We drove home through a storm of flying ants, they were all over the road, maybe attracted by the headlights. They floated thick like Seattle’s cottonwood blooms in truck headlights, then rolled like dry leaves as the trucks passed. As we crossed the bridge into Medewi two swarms of larger bugs pelted my neck and chest, at first I thought it was gravel. It was disgusting. As soon as we got home, and I snuck past the enormous spider, I washed my face and hands. Not much you can do about that.

First days in Bali

Mike — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:34:02 +0000

by Azure

After 36 hours in transit, we arrived in Bali in the heat of the day. It was quite a shock stepping outside the airport to 90+ degree weather, having boarded the original plane in Seattle with near freezing temperatures. We got a cab to Kuta beach (the backpackers slum of south Bali) and found a guesthouse that we liked on the second try. Had the location been different, this place could have been a real hit. It had a pool surrounded by tropical foliage and wifi! (No photos were taken in this location) (read more)

But, as was the plan, we decided to get out of Kuta the next morning and head north via minibus to Ubud, another rather touristy hill town perhaps made even more popular by the 2006 novel, “Eat Pray Love” and subsequently Anthony Bourdain. Having arrived, again, in the heat of the day, we decided our best option as non-acclimated, sweaty white people was to wake up at dawn and do our sightseeing.

For some reason (jetlag), we’ll call it ambition, it was quite easy to get on the scooter by 6. We rode out to a whole different Ubud. There were people out in the streets, going to market, getting the kids off to school, but no one was asking if we wanted a taxi or a tour or some handicrafts, people were going about with their morning routine. Another great part was that it was cool — so much so that I considered putting on a jacket!

Armed with only our cameras, water and a map of the island with about the same detail as if I were to sit down and draw western Washington freehand, we began our climb north into the hills. We never had a real plan, but we picked a town and began our trek, stopping every half hour to make sure we were still on the right path. It was a beautiful morning for a ride. The sun was low enough that it filtered through the hills and the trees and made everything so surreal. Mike insisted that I pull out the new camera and take some photos from the back of the scooter, which I am now so thankful for.

When we finally got to our arbitrary destination, a town called Kintamani, it turned out to be a city on the ridge of a small mountain which overlooked the valley and another, strikingly large mountain.

After stopping to snap a few more photos, we decided to continue north and attempt to make it to the ocean since it was only 8am at that time. We set our sights on what we thought would be an equally easy place to find, as it was due north of where we were. In fact, it was not easy and seeing as the roads are not marked at all, we got lost. We were continually prodded forward by smiling locals until we found ourselves on what seemed to be a small, ill-maintained driveway for several miles. That, along with it being extremely steeply graded, we considered turning back. But, having nothing to really get back to, we decided to keep going. At some points we could look out to other hills in the distance and see no signs of human existence. At one such remote location, we came across a woman tending to some crops on a steep hillside and as we drove past we found that she was alone in all directions for at least 2 miles.

L’Ile Rousse plaza

Mike — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:12:09 +0000

We pulled into L’Ile Rousse (on the west coast of Corsica) late in the afternoon and immediately headed to the cute center of town. There were bunches of people playing petanque (bocci) in the main square, old men of course, and many just hanging out watching. That’s not our scooter.

We watched for a little while then walked down the two small streets that make up the centre ville and of course (of course) discovered nothing was open.

It’s an interesting little town.

No lesson learned

Azure — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:57:42 +0000

by Azure

We woke up yesterday morning feeling some of the residual effects of the night before. After resigning ourselves leaving the scooter at Jean Paul’s house and selling it for whatever price we got on ebay (I truly would have been happy to get half of what we paid for it) we went out to see the only American we know in Paris–a bar owner from Florida whom we met because he was the guy who bought the bar that Mike worked at in 2001. The night only ended with a reinvigorated hope and some good old American can-do attitude. He thought we could sell it here or there for this much and our eyes lit up and we thought that maybe we’d sell it easily again.

Nope. And luckily this revival of ambition didn’t last longer than 9am the next day. We really had to leave Paris ASAP and kept telling ourselves, we’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul. We’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul.

We packed up our bags and loaded the scooter for the real last time. It was a little nerve wracking because we didn’t have insurance and it was registered under Jean Paul’s name, so he was liable for us. And, as I pointed out to Mike, driving through and around Paris put us in contact with more people and police than we had seen the whole rest of the ride. We looked it up online, however and saw that the fine for driving without insurance was a mere 1500 euro fine, but no jail time. Of course our motto of the day was “No jail time!”

We made it ok, of course. We drove past the Palace of Versaille and I caught my first glimpse of the enormous place, up the side roads and made it to the “Buffalo Grill” parking lot where Jean Paul would meet us. There was one random checkpoint at one of the roundabouts, but we made sure to exit the roundabout before we got to the checkpoint. Of course my heart raced.

When we parked the scooter in Jean Paul’s garage and he said we could leave it there until next year when we came back to pick it up, I paused and thought, well maybe… My mind appears to be completely incapable of remembering pain or fear. We still had our helmets on when he mentioned leaving it, my heart was just slowing down from fearing the police, and I actually considered it. Of course we wouldn’t do something like that because that would be a pain for him, but now I think why wouldn’t we buy another scooter? We would just go about it differently. No lesson learned.

He invited us in for a glass of wine, we got to witness the most incredible being on the planet, Morgane’s dog and later, Jean Paul took us to the RER. The next part was shockingly fast, coming from a vehicle that went a top speed of 70km/hr, but averaged more like 50. To ride the scooter from Paris to Poitiers would have taken us about 14 hours, we would have scheduled two days for it. When we fell asleep on the train out of pure emotional exhaustion, we woke up to find we were over half way there. The whole ride only took 1.5 hours. (on another note: I just don’t think you see the country the same way when your are going that fast)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QHZFdDLx-Q&hl=en&fs=1]
“The most incredible being on the planet”

Nash picked us up in the old white chateau car. It was good to see that some things don’t change AND that some people appreciate good old vehicles. We pulled up to find many of the flowers in bloom and the place to be just as tranquil as I remember it. I feel like we’ve been put out to pasture here to spend the remainder of our time roaming about and doing projects on the grounds.

The Chateau car

We had dinner (Salmon topped with creme fraiche, caviar and mint, sides of potatoes, broccoli and salad and of course cheese and wine and chocolate) with Nash and Linda (the owners of the chateau), their son Syrus (sp?) and Patty, a woman I met my first time here who also cooks for guests and has made a really great part-time life here. We had great, easy conversation, though afterward I feared we talked too much about ourselves-oops. It turns out we have a lot in common, not only our living proximity to Greenlake, but our love of food and slow life and gardening and just the ability to live part, or in their case all of our lives over here.

We are staying in the building that is the back side of the chicken coop (this reference is probably only good for Kim and Adam). The chateau grounds house a small abandoned village, where all the work used to be done. There is a barn, carriage house, paper press building, a place to house the farm equipment, the list goes on. These buildings go about one city block along an unpaved road. All of the buildings are being turned into either living spaces (ours has been turned into a 3 bedroom apartment) or spaces to house events. Our room is lovely and the bed is the most comfortable we have had in a long long time.

When we walked back from dinner in the darkness I felt so at peace, so opposite of how I had felt the night before — we are already a whole world away.

Cheap hotel, plastic bottles of wine, lesser hell.

Mike — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:52:25 +0000

by Azure

We are still in Paris. My meh has turned to a MEH!!! We’re not actually in Paris, just outside in a really really cheap hotel. Although we’ve ended our long and abusive relationship with Avventura, the shop that sold us the scooter, we are still in Paris suburbia hell. Mike says there are days in Seattle when he feels like he has spent the whole day doing nothing. That is our existence here. We wake up, post some ads on the french websites listing the scooter and wait for emails to arrive that we neither fully comprehend nor have the means to respond to. That doesn’t stop us from trying, but it does hinder the amount of responses that we have gotten to our replies. Or maybe not. Maybe these guys are just too lazy to write back or come see the scooter.

Here are some of the correspondences over the last week (translated to English of course).

“Hello, I am interested in your scooter. Is it still available?”
“Yes, when are you available to come see it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter interests me very much, I propose 1000 euros?”
“Yes, that sounds fine, when would you like to see it?”
-nothing-

“40,000 miles, I will propose 800 euros.”
“No thank you.”

“400 euros.”
“Go fuck yourself”

“400 euros.”
“Sounds great, when can you come look at it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter looks perfect, but I can only afford 800 euros.”
“Ok, that will be fine, when can you come look at it?”
“I can bring 300 now and the rest in one week.”
-we’re leaving tomorrow?-

“Is your scooter still available? I can trade a computer and 100 euros.”
“Ummmmmm”

“I am interested in your scooter, I can trade it for my diesel truck”
“Thank you for your response, however, the ad says I must leave Paris and can’t take a scooter, how will I take a truck?”

And it goes on and on and on. Not one person has looked at the scooter. If they did, I know they would driven away with it. Mike finally wrote a rant on Craigslist, but since no one looks at it here, there were no responses, oh unless you count the fake response that you get every time saying that they want the “item” and they will pay by check and also pay for shipping. Um, do you know that it is 200 pound scooter?

Today we thought we had found luck when we called a scooter shop and they said they bought scooters. When we took it out there, the guys said it was of NO value to him. NONE! We said, well is it worth 10 euros? And he said, well of course. To which we responded, well how much is it worth then. We are starting to think that people think differently here. Almost everything in worth something, especially when it has taken two people to Corsica and back with no problems last week.

As we drove back, I kept looking at people walking. I thought we should give it to an immigrant man or someone who it would be of value to. At this point it is no longer about the money. Current Azure has already borrowed the 400 euro that she is losing from future Azure that is richer and has disposable income. Or maybe she is just less cheap. We respond to the ads where people are nice, they use common courtesy words like “hello.” We want the scooter to go to a good home, since we know what it has and can do for someone.

It is a difficult situation since we no longer want to be here, we are ready to move on, it’s time to put the scooter to bed, but we don’t know how. Tomorrow, we are planning to take it to Jean Paul’s house and sell it on ebay. After MUCH worry and discussion, it seems the best option. If all goes well, that will be the end of our journey together. If all doesn’t go well, we will be paying a 1500 euro fine for not having insurance. Just a little more to borrow from future Azure I guess.

As it turns out, we might end up selling it before it gets to the house. There seems to be a few serious options that we found tonight. We can’t count on people anymore. That is the hardest part for me, not being being able to control the situation at all. We don’t have a phone and email is hard for a lot of people. There are so many queries, but no follow through. It’s like dating and I can’t tell if it is them or us. As Mike says, we love her too much to burn her, so the search continues for someone else to love her.

There are worse places to be stuck.

Azure — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:00:24 +0000

by Azure

We arrived in Paris with a real “meh” attitude (meh is the noise one makes when they are whining.) The whole story is that we really didn’t want to come to Paris at all. We found out we were uninsurable soon after I arrived in Nice, but with all the paperwork, we figured no one would ever check up on it. We continued to ride because that’s what we loved doing. But, on our last day in Corsica, we got word from the scooter shop that we weren’t technically allowed to own the scooter and that it wasn’t registered. Hmmmm.

Not that we were being legal by driving it 1000km from Nice to Paris, but at least we felt like we were making an effort to be legal. Now that it is parked outside the hotel in Paris, I can breath a little better. There were a couple nights of up most of the night worry, thinking about Mike being arrested, but they passed and as soon as we mounted the scooter in the morning, I again realized that no one gives scooters a second look no matter what they are doing that is illegal.

More worry came in Pont de Vaux when a black cat crossed my path and I told myself not to be superstitious, but less than a minute later, I heard Mike swear and the scooter crash down. When I looked over, I thought everything was alright, but then on the ground was our right mirror. Crap. We drove out, worried that we would be pulled over for not having a mirror and it was a tense ride. We pulled into a couple places to see if they had mirrors, but they didn’t. We would have to go to a bigger city to find a Piaggio specialist.

Relief came when the last place we went told us it wasn’t obligatory to have a right mirror in France, only the left. Wow, lucky! We rode on, past town after town, Gendermarie after Gendermarie, each time trying to act cool. Mike would even wave at the motorcycle cops, but to no response. Thankfully.

When we got to Paris, we found a cheap hotel near the scooter shop and parked ourselves semi-permanently. We didn’t go into the city, Mike fell asleep before 10pm and I shortly after. We were exhausted from navigating our way into Paris on all side roads (it’s A LOT harder than you would think.)

Saturday we woke up and went to the shop to talk to Gilles about the scooter issue. No easy solutions, we can’t sell the scooter without a carte grise and we can’t get a carte grise without being residents, but we fiscally own the scooter. Hmmmm. We’ll either need to transfer it to our friend’s parents or to find a buyer ASAP. So, we have her up online, with URGENT: RIP US OFF PLEASE attached to the ads. We’ll see.

But not all bad things come out of being stuck in a beautiful city that has brought us much joy. We went to Mike’s favorite falafel place that he found roaming around in 2001. Every time we come here, we hit the shop, only this time, it has gotten popular. So popular that we waited 45 minutes for a falafel. We walked up Rue Rivoli and I got a new windbreaker. Later, we went out for a real night on the town. First the Absinthe bar that Anthony Bourdain had on his show. It turns out it’s totally a metal bar with Goth paintings of naked zombies and stuff. We tried a couple different kinds of Absinthe and ordered a second glass of our favorite. Then we totally college-kid’s-first-trip-abroad-ed out and went to The Moose Bar, a Canadian bar that was showing all the NCAA tournament games. We ate a burger and a stir fry and had Pastis. Mike was likened to an old Frenchman for ordering it, which I know he loved. He chatted up some youths from Maryland and we sat and watched the Huskies go down. All in all, we got back to the hotel in better spirits about being here and plans for what to do for the next few days while we figure out how to deal with our baby girl.

Bangkok

Mike — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:29:00 +0000

A woman in Bangkok accidentally showed interest in a bracelet

Hello Everyone!

Being on the sailboat for 5 days was interesting, we learned a lot about how self-sufficient a person would have to be to live as cheap as they do. I’d like to try some day (be able to live comfortably on virtually nothing), but not right now. Unfortunately it ended up being a bit cramped on the boat (7 people) and we didn’t really liking the guy who was the captain. He was arrogant and didn’t listen to a word we said. So after a few days in a harbor we jumped ship and stayed at this little beach called Ko Ma on the island of Koh Pha Ngan.

Ko Ma is an “islet” – a small island connected by a sand bar to the bigger island of Koh Pha Ngan, so it was a very cool environment to be visiting.

Ko Ma, with the sand bar disappearing

We lived in another cheap hut, motor scooted around the island and just hung out in general. Driving was tough on the island because – for some damn reason – they built their roads going straight up hills rather than around them at shallower grades. Some of the roads had “CAUTION!” for a 20% grade and when you went up the hill you were looking straight up at the sky, just holding on. The worst were the hills leading to the southern-most point on the island, Hat Rin.

One of the steep hills

At Hat Rin they have an immense Full Moon Party that attracts up to 25,000 people on two little connected beaches. We were lucky enough to be on Koh Pha Ngan for the full moon party! which we didn’t go to because it’s just not our scene.

Our scene is more like the following: A monastery in the jungle. We drive through the gates and down a long driveway to a series of small white buildings behind the main temple. It’s humid, warm and the light is beginning to die. There are people sitting on steps in sarongs or shorts, and we walk into a little courtyard where a guy shows us where to change. I got a plaid blue and red sarong. It was awesome.

We use a bucket and dipper to shower quickly, then up the steps and into one of the two doors for the sauna – men on the left, women on the right. Open and close the door quickly or people will complain. Inside, the first thing I notice is there’s almost no light except a little natural light coming through a couple slits on the side. The ceiling is about 5 feet high and the little room is about 4 feet wide and 12 feet deep – about the size and shape of a large coffin. It’s a steam sauna – very humid – and they infuse the steam with herbs like lemon grass and maybe menthol. Taking a deep breath cleans out your lungs, you can feel it go down your throat and into your chest. On each side run tiled seats where there’s – oh – 9 people packed in, sweating, talking, meditating. Because of the hot yoga I’ve been doing at home for the last 9 months, I felt confident enough to sit in the sauna without panicking, which I’m sure I would have done otherwise.

After rinsing dead skin off our bodies outside the sauna, we find the host again. He takes us back to a small open building that has a roof and three walls, the last side being a curtain that separates the room from the main courtyard. A nun takes me, lays me down on a pad and sheet and gives me the best massage I’ve ever had – she uses tons of oil (again, herb-infused) and is very very patient. She knows her shit, you can tell. For an hour I just let her tell me what to do, and I relax and listen to the rain and whatever’s going on in the courtyard outside.

Finally, I return to the sauna and sweat the oil out of my pores and meet Azure, who looks like a new person.

The sauna at Wat Pho

Koh Pha Ngan wasn’t bad. We actually liked it a lot, probably our favorite place so far as long as we weren’t near Hat Rin.

Right now we’re in Bangkok, which is a manic mix of very modern malls, gritty neighborhoods and the most touristy backpacker areas you can imagine. There’s an immense flea market on weekends where we’re going to blow a bunch of money when we get closer to the end of our trip. Diesel Jeans for $10!

As I was writing this, Azure was booking a flight to Chiang Mai in the north. We’re leaving tomorrow evening. There are jewelry making classes, cooking classes and boxing classes. I’m… so excited.

I hope you’re all enjoying your Decembers. Write back with gossip!

Take care,

Mike and Azure.

Sailboat Time!

Mike — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:24:00 +0000

Hi Everyone!

So Azure and I spent a week or so on Ko Lanta and just loved it – the best thing we did was rent a motorscooter ($5 a day) and scoot all over the island. Most of the people who visit Ko Lanta stay on the west coast of the island, so Az and I made our way over to the east coast and biked through the little towns that aren’t as touristy – old chinese fishing villages, a community that lives in the mangroves (swamp-like forests that protected the community from the tsunami – currently under threat from resource harvesting), groups of monkeys, etc.

Whenever we’re scouting our next trip, I always search the internet for pictures of where we’re going and I’m always frusterated. I mean, what does Thailand LOOK LIKE? I find pictures of couples posing in front of a sunset or on the back of an elephant and that simply doesnt help, and I just end up hating those people. So I like the pictures that Az took because they look like what Ko Lanta looked like to me.

On Tuesday we left Lanta and came to the east coast of Thailand to meet up with an Israeli couple who are planning to sail from here (Ko Samui) down to Sinapore later this month. We were pretty convinced we’d join them until we found out they wouldn’t be stopping at all for 6 days, so we wouldn’t be able to swim or go to land to eat curry or anything – just throwing up from sea sickness and not sleeping is how I picture the voyage. But we are living on their boat right now and we’ll stay with them for another 4 or 5 days as we hop to another island for snorkeling and SPEAR FISHING.

Life on the boat is all about efficiency. This couple dropped everything about 10 years ago, sold all their belongings and decided to take off. They talk about Micronesia and Panama and The Phillippines like they’re stores down the street. They have so much knowledge about fixing electronics and using coconut trees to build houses and all sorts of stuff you can only learn through a decade of this kind of living.

Every system they have on the boat has a backup, so they have sails and a motor (and enough gas to go 1200 miles). They have a rain catcher and a water maker (converts seawater to potable). However, it hasn’t rained for 12 days and the pump from their water maker cracked so they’ve been hauling water from shore in these huge black jugs to fill their tanks.

Last night, after everyone went to bed for the night, Azure and I decided to take a shower on the back of the boat. So we got a bucket of fresh water from the jugs, got a cup and stood on the back deck dipping the cup in the bucket and pouring water in our hair, then shampooing, pouring more water and rinsing. Dipping the cup again and doing conditionner, soap, pouring more water and rinsing… It was so warm last night, we just stood there dripping wet and looking at where we were: in the middle of a quiet bay on an island in the tropics, the water was so calm I swear we could have stepped off the boat and walked to shore. The dinghy was tied 15 feet from the boat, but it looked like it was just hovering, held in the air between us and the dark mountain that makes up the northwest corner of the island. And of course the stars and half-moon and the clouds that actually brighten the sky. Just an amazing night.

The moon is different closer to the equator – it goes through its phases horizontally rather than vertically, so when it’s half-full it looks like a bowl. The stars are also different. I don’t know a thing about astronomy but when I was in India I immediately recognized that the sky looked different, and it’s the same here. You don’t know that you know your sky until you’re at a different lattitude.

Anyway, we’re healthy and safe and going spearfishing tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who’s emailed!

Take care,

Mike & Azure