As If It Matters

Bob Perkowitz is my Biking Jedi Master. In an effort to lose weight and inspired by Bob and other biking efforts (including Rob Ross’ bike tour of the Camino in Spain), I decided to take up biking a couple months ago. Bob has been an incredible guide and mentor in this sport, helping me to pick and outfit my Trek 520. So when Bob called and invited me on a four day bike ride through North Carolina’s Outer Banks, how could I turn him down? Never mind that I’ve never biked more than 45 consecutive miles in my life and I’m pretty sure my entire lifetime biking mileage to date is less than 300 miles. But here we go – a great adventure. Any advice? The plan is:

• Tuesday, July 8: Warm up ride
• Wednesday, July 9: Ride from Virginia Beach, VA to Nags Head, NC – 71 miles
• Thursday, July 10 : Ride Nags Head, NC to Ocracoke, NC – 86 mi. + ferry
• Friday, July 11: Ride from Ocracoke, NC to Emerald Isle, NC, – 50 miles
• Saturday, July 12: Ride from Emerald Isle, NC to Wrightsville Beach, NC – 98 miles
• Sunday, July 13: Home to see my dog!

I will be taking my Flip Video and my camera with me (thanks, Dave!) and there is always Twitter – so presumably you’ll see some updates from the road next week. My long suffering wife is one of the people driving the support van, so at least I’ll have someone to help me get out of bed on the last day. If anyone has any tips, send ’em my way. I’m hoping this will be a radical shock to drive me into a more regular exercise routine and a lower body mass index. Pray for me and my butt.

My grandfather spent a number of years working in Saudi Arabia, and consequently both my mother and my uncle spent a good chunk of their childhood there. My uncle returned in adulthood and has lived there a couple of decades now, working for Aramco. He recently sent me this email referencing an incredible National Geographic web feature you should check out, a documentary on the Empty Quarter – the world’s largest sea of sand. But my uncle’s memory of the Empty Quarter is pretty haunting:

Some years ago I was in the Rhub Al Khali (Empty Quarter) doing reconnaissance work for the Transportation Department of Aramco, hopping around from drilling rig to drilling rig by small plane to see how unhappy everyone was with the supply chain. I asked one Texas foreman how he was doing and he said “without”. One day we flew over one of our convoys, and I asked the pilot to drop me off in the next subka (salt flat between the dunes) and that I would hitch hike from there. We were flying a Twin Otter that can land anywhere, so he did, and I waited for the convoy. It was actually very unnerving to stand out there after the plane took off in complete nothing, no sound, no insects, no nothing for what seemed like a long time, but probably only 30 minutes before I heard the sound of the Kenworth truck approaching, and then a red dot came over the faraway dune. I waved, and I waved, and he drove right by, ghuttra wrapped around his head in complete tunnel vision. The next truck, same thing, he drove right by. Finally I placed myself in the path of the next truck and he stopped and said “Mr. Jim, what are you doing out here?” Good question…

The Radio Silence has ended. The last month has found me overwhelmed by my life, from every angle, and managed not to blog. Travel was big – North Carolina, California, New Orleans, Memphis, New York – but mostly I’ve been pretty bone-tired. And now I am blogging to you from an airplane — I kid you not, Harish is here with me and he just blogged — on my way to India. Bangalore, India. I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, but we were so late to the airport we got a free upgrade to business class. I guess it pays to be late…

I admit, I sound a little giddy in this particular podcast. But you have to imagine the scene: we’ve just spent several hours in a truck and then in a boat down the Usumacinta River. Now we’re hiking through the rainforest, up a ridge, and we stumble on to some Maya ruins on the top of the ridge, as if they just hacked off the top of the hill to create a plateau and then built this big complex of buildings there — part of a complex called the Acropolis at Yaxchilan. It is a glorious day, just amazing — the sun, the temperature, the howler monkeys, the buzzing alive-ness of the insects and plants of the rainforest, and the sheer wonder at the immensity of these ruins buried in the jungle — when, out of the simple beauty of the moment, I just start singing. Fly Me To The Moon, no less. And a little farther down, hiking in the jungle, I’m reflecting on the clarity and glory of the one moment we just had at the top of the Maya Acropolis on this high hill a long way from anything, and it was downright poetic. The ancients, the history, nature, the solitude — and suddenly a poem I had memorized many years earlier came to mind and I shared it with Dave. In fact, it occurred to me that the recitation of that particular poem at the particular minute in that particular location — well, it seemed obvious that it had all been pre-ordained, that the only reason I memorized that poem nine or ten years ago was to recite it right there and then. Of course, Dave managed to record the whole thing for your podcasting pleasure [listen here]:

The podcasts from the jungles of Chiapas continue. Episodes One and Two are available, but now we’re on to Episode Three where we discuss the Collapse of the Maya Civilization with Dr. Ed Barnhart of the Maya Exploration Center. It’s one of the great mysteries of the Maya, and a topic covered in many books, including Jared Diamond’s recent bestseller, Collapse.

Dr. Ed Barnhart was kind enough to share his time with us for the podcasts. He’s also doing some of the most exciting work out there, the sort of gritty field work that is far afield from classroom academics. Take a second to support a true explorer by making a contribution to support Dr. Ed’s work.