honk

Today I just got honked at while biking.....one single honk.  One.
I was crossing legally on the bike path, on a green bike crossing light and I was in the middle of the street at the time of said honk.

Looking behind me at the older gentleman driving his beat up truck with his fist in the air staring in my direction, I saw anger in his face and a little resentment...thinking something on the lines of....

"Damn bikers, they think they can just bike however they'd like!  They think they own the street as well as their beloved bike paths!  Stay off my god damn streets you good for nothing sons of $%^$!"

What does he do to express all of this deep feeling?  A SINGLE HONK!

Well this whole thing got me gruffed and riled up to shout a single profanity at....no one!
RIGHT!  Just me!  Waiting to legally cross the other intersection, patiently/peacefully waiting my turn accept for one verbal outletting of...

"What the F*** was THAT?!?"
and.... I felt better!

Thinking about this afterwards, I started laughing at the incredible midwestern passive aggressive weirdness that just occurred in comparison to so many other places....

One honk.  One F bomb....and that was enough to release the tension.  In comparison to Jakarta or Bangkok, Santiago, Buenos Aires, New York City.....I can't imagine the same 1:1 ratio of honking to profanity....just one!  It just doesn't happen!  I almost miss the continual non useful honking now....what a continual release of inner stress!  To be allowed to honk and not mean anything by at!  Yes...it's flipping annoying to everyone else...but to be the honker ....not just letting it go once, but 50!  WOW!
and then!  To be on the receiving end...where one can feel comfortable to rip open...arms flailing...words flying....screaming, ranting....letting it all go!  Well, in comparison, my one little baby f bomb at no one 20 seconds after being honked at....pathetic!

I mean...heck...he could have even been honking as a caution!  "Hello biker...I have no breaks...I'm turning right behind you...my sincerest apologies!"  Here in the midwest, this is just as likely.

I'm befuddled by it all!

biker food

Now that I'm living back in the States, my husband and I were inspired to see if we could live our lives solely based on bicycle transportation our car died while we were traveling 

This has a lot of pros and cons to it financially and environmentally...
No worries about car insurance!
No way to buy a desk and get it home.
It saves money on gas!
It makes trips to visit the folks 5 hours away a little more complicated....
It's hard to say what's best!

Biking as my main form of transportation really has been a smooth transition in comparison to carrying my entire life on my back for the past year....it all comes down to weight...particularly when it comes to buying food!

As far as purchasing power and grocery shopping, not much has changed from our days of deciding whether or not to purchase food based on its weight and temperature and how far we had to carry it!
*A major reason why my husband still won't let peanut butter or jelly enter our home is because it was the only thing I knew how to eat as an American that was light weight, cheap, easy and could be eaten at any time.  PB&J, the classic American treat will stay American....mmmm...a PB&J sounds kind of good right now!

This conundrum of space/weight/dietary and physical needs, has lead me to all kinds of critically odd purchasing decisions slightly different for a home then for a hostel...it's ok to buy bulk when you know you'll be around for a week, but with no space to carry it, it's kind of weird!

• Buying things like toilet paper....how do I get home 36 rolls on my bike?  Hmph....4 pak it is...
• For a while we switched from milk to half and half, because it's smaller!
• Wine or beer?   I'll admit I'm now a major fan of the Napa Valley!
• 20 fancy napkins for $2 or 500 not fancy napkins for $2....I guess it's time for a tea party!
• We literally shop and look at the 7 different brands of something like rice and decide now based on size!

I think this fact has actually helped us watch our waists!  Sugary beverages and chips are immediately off the list due to the fact of their weight and size.  Chips are light, but in a backpak, they are ridiculously huge and by the time I'd get them home, they would be mush! Coke comes in sizes of large and larger, which just doesn't work when I have almost enough space for a tub of yogurt and a little bag of almonds......I'm just sayin....as a way to burn off some excess...it seems to be helping just in what I can physically carry home!

What's really funny about all of this is that our new refrigerator in our new permanent apartment is HUMONGOUS!  I hear it whining along with dollars flying out the window with it's inability to stay cool for very long, all for the benefit of a small portion hard salami, a tomato, 3 bottles of beer and a stick of butter....it just doesn't seem right.  This refrigerator was obviously meant for a resident who happened to own a hummer...not a Fuji 10 speed!

That all being said, having a refrigerator in and of itself is an incredible thing in comparison to always moving around and never getting to finish a bottle or a can of something, because you have to go on to the next town.  Traveling in Africa, we were able to cook in many of our hostels, so I began carrying with me an emergency cooking kit consisting of 1 bottle of vegetable oil, a small packet of salt, what I think was a whisky bottle of homemade chile sauce we bought on the street at an outdoor market and two plastic plates.  I'll admit the most used cooking tool we had was my husbands swiss army knife!

At least I don't have to bike with my kitchen on my back now, just grocery shop!  The supplies I have at my disposal nowadays would weigh down a larger sized elephant!

What's going to make this biking for food experience even more interesting?
These past few days have had a chill in the air!  I can't wait to find out how this works in a snow storm!

Around The World

You may already know this, but last year, after working 60 hours plus per week for many, many months, I had finally saved up enough to do my favorite thing in the world (no pun intended) -- Travel!

This time the trip was going to be around the world. Now, I am a planner and I usually like planning, but have you ever tried to plan a multi-month trip? It's not so much that we had to plan the day to day things, like buses and accommodation, but we did have to plan a few things ahead of time.

Here's the deal. We had the option of 6 stopovers. That means we could get out of the plane and stay out of the plane for over 24 hours SIX times. However, we got 16 "segments". A segment being any flight from point to point. For example, when flying from San Francisco to Madrid, we had a layover in Atlanta. So, SFO - ATL = 1 segment, ATL - MAD = 1 segment. 2 segments down, 14 to go.

At first it seemed like a lot. I mean, with only 6 stops, 16 segments should be fine, right?

But I haven't told you everything yet. This flight was being funded using airline miles. Have you ever tried to book an awards ticket? There are black out dates; you get the worst flight times (3 am flight anyone?); you have to fly from New Orleans to San Francisco via Boston. They don't always make it super convenient for  you.

So. We set out to plan. Not only where we wanted to go but how long we wanted to stay in each place. This is hard. This is already hard if it were only me planning it and it was a ticket I paid for so I could have any flight I wanted. Now, throw in a boyfriend who wants to go to Europe for 1 month, meaning 17 countries in 2 weeks and Portugal for two weeks. So, yeah, we had different opinions on EVERYTHING. How long we would stay in each continent was a discussion, let alone how long we would stay in each country!

I am of the "rather stay in one place longer than try to cram in many places" school of though. He is (was actually, but that's another story!) of the opposite school. Anyway, we finally narrowed it down after many arguments discussions and many weeks of planning. We decided on the 6 countries AND which city we would fly into and out of. Then we did all the research online. Which flights we liked the best, what times we wanted. Sounds great, right?

This was only the beginning. Next, we spent the ENTIRE day, and I do mean ENTIRE, on the phone trying to book the flights (You are not allowed to do it online. Poop). Delta had different ideas then we did however. We wanted to fly from Amsterdam to Cape Town. It's a direct flight. It would be perfect. What did Delta do? (WDDD?) They got us a flight from...Paris to Dubai to Nairobi to Maputo. Do you see any of the cities we picked in this list? No? Me neither. Now do you see where the segment thing got eaten up really fast? This counted as 3 segments! 3 x 6 = 18! This just would not do!

So it went like this. We would ask the lady about flight X. She would, inevitably say it wasn't available but that if we took flight Y, we could start in a city miles from where we would be, get rerouted through 4 different cities and then end in a city miles from where we wanted to be. Would that work for us?

And it did. I am making it out to be worse than it was, but we really did not get any very many of the flights that we wanted. However, it turned out fine.

The funny thing is, like I said above, I am a planner. Usually I like everything planned in advance so I know what to expect. When I travel, I don't mind throwing the spreadsheets out the window and doing things differently. If I love a city, I will stay for a few days, even if I thought I would only be there for a day. If someone says to me, "you have to go here! It is great!", I will go there and it will be great!

And picking these flights was the same. We threw the spreadsheets out the window. We let Delta do the picking. Because it doesn't really matter where you go, it only matters that you enjoy it, wherever it is.


Have you ever planned a really long trip? Did you have to plan anything beforehand? Was it hard? How did you do it?

Danger! Peligro! Achung!

Bolivia has a lot of things that sound like they may be quite scary. Here are a few examples. You can decide whether or not YOU would be scared.

The Death Train: This is a train that goes from the border of Bolivia and Brazil to a town called Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I am not sure why it is called the Death train, because it was not as bad as I thought it would be. It was long, to be sure (21 hours, I think) but it was not scary. The hardest part was getting tickets. 

Death Train -- doesn't look so scary!

Coming from Brazil, we first had to cross the border, which is in a little dusty town which looked like an old California mining town. There you could change your money over into Bolivianos, which was also scarier than the train, as you never know if the money is going to be fake or not. Also, when we crossed the border, Bolivia had recently decided to start a reciprocation program with the USA, which basically means they charge you to get a “visa”. It is supposed to cost 100 dollars but it IS negotiable, and usually NOT in your favor. The border officials we met said that there was a “processing fee” and the amount of it was…well, how much money DO you have?

So we got across the border and then we had to walk to town to get tickets for the train. We bought the “first class” tickets, which means you don’t have to sit on a bench with a bunch of other people and their chickens. You get your own seat. However, the train did not have food or drinks, so the night before, we had to stock up!

The train ride was long, the first class seats were not that comfortable, but all in all, the Death Train was pretty tame.

The World’s Most Dangerous Road: This is near La Paz and it starts at about 4000 meters (13,000 feet) and goes down to about 1000 meters (3300 feet). We decided to mountain bike down it. This can be done in about 4 or 5 hours. Half of it was paved and half dirt, but the whole thing was a lot of fun!

Strikes and Protests: Pretty much every day I was in Bolivia there was some kind of strike or protest. The president at the time, Evo Morales, was prohibited from leaving one city by protestors; the protestors bombed a bridge to keep everyone in another city. A few days before I was scheduled to leave Cochabamba and go to La Paz, the roads were all closed and blockaded and people were protesting in the streets. I heard stories from the locals about how certain times the cities were closed in for days and people were going hungry.

However, I was there for a couple of months and I did see a lot of protests and strikes, but they were not usually violent. What they usually consist of is the everyday people rallying against the government, who, to be fair, are pretty much taking everything from them. By far, the biggest cash crop in Bolivia is Coca leaves, which are picked and then shipped to countries like Columbia, where they make cocaine out of it. However, the farmers and the little people don’t see any of that money. The government takes it. So people like Evo get rich while the little guys do all the (dangerous) work.

Altitude Sickness: Bolivia has some of the highest places that you can easily get to. However, this can pose a threat, since you really shouldn’t fly from sea level and land at 13,000 feet. This doesn’t stop people (my friend Heather) from doing it. We went to Lake Titicaca, which sits at about 13,000 feet, the day after she arrived and she was having a very hard time walking around! I suggest taking a few days at a lower altitude before jumping right to the high stuff! 

source

So, even though Bolivia doesn’t have (like Australia) the MOST deadly snake in the world… it has its share of danger, both real and imagined. However, even though they have scary names, I personally never felt like I was in danger there.

Have you ever been in a (real or imagined) scary situation? What did you do?

Also, this little blog was nominated for Best In Travel at For The Love of Blogs. Go HERE to vote for us (#48), or any blog you think is your favorite. Just click the “like” button below the one(s) you like!

A Method To My Madness

You’ve probably seen the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It’s been a long time since I have seen it, but I remember John Candy trying to get somewhere (for Christmas?) and he has to take all these different methods of transportation. I can relate to that! I thought I would go over a few different weird ways to get around that I have come across in my travels.

Bad quality photo...but you get the point!

Matola: This is an African bus. But it’s not really a “bus”. What it really is is a small pickup truck, stuffed to the gills with people. In the front, there are usually 2 or 3 people, not including the driver (and if you sit in the front, you will probably have to hold some random person’s baby). The back is also filled with people and the amount of people they fit in there is astounding. I rode in one where there were probably 20 people, at least, as well as a few 50 lb bags of maize, a guy with about 15 dozen eggs, our two huge backpacks (I think someone was sitting or standing on mine) and a couple of ladies with babies stuck to their boobs. Just when you think they can’t fit any more people, the truck pulls over and somehow another person gets on.

Speedboat: In Laos, there are no good roads, so you have to travel on the river. The boat I decided to take (because it was faster) was the speedboat. Now, this appears to be a canoe with an outboard motor. It fits only one person across and is roughly 6 people long. And somebody needs to fix the muffler, because it is VERY, VERY loud (like an airboat in Louisiana if you have ever been on one of those). I naively thought I would be able to get some reading done until I saw the boat. I was still a little hopeful until I heard the boat and once it started up and we went bouncing over wave after wave, I lost all hope and donned my mp3 player. Even though I turned it up as loud as I could get it, I could still hear (clearly) the drone of the engine. And my butt, you ask? Yes, it was pretty much numb. Imagine sitting on a piece of plywood for 6 hours without moving. Next time I will choose the slower boat!!!

Puddle Jumper: In the Himalayas, they don’t have roads, so in order to get from place to place, you have to either walk (which we did plenty of) or take a 12-seater plane over the mountains. I am not afraid of heights or small spaces, but if you are, I would suggest the 5 day walk instead. There apparently was not a cargo hold, because a few seats were taken out and all of the luggage was put in front of me, including, you guessed it, a couple dozen eggs. The runway was on the side of a mountain and was probably about, I don’t know, 50 feet long.

Watch for spitting!

18 Wheeler: When there are no buses, you have to do what you can. What we could do was hitchhike. A nice guy in an 18 wheeler picked us up and even let us drive when he was sleepy!

Rickshaw type things: It’s a three wheeled motorcycle cart in India. The same thing in Thailand is called a Tuk-Tuk. In Malaysia, it’s an old guy with a bike who petals you and your heavy luggage around. You almost want to help him.

Camel: This was definitely the most uncomfortable of modes of transportation. We thought it would be great to sign up for a THREE DAY camel trek. After day one, I had already had enough. My groin and behind were so sore! However, we were not done. We suffered enjoyed two more days of it and boy was I glad to get off when it was over!

What is the weirdest method of transportation you have ever experienced? Have you ever ridden on a bus with a chicken? What IS the weirdest animal or thing you have shared a bus ride with?

Getting to Croc Camp in Zambia Africa

"I don't know Sarah, everyone is telling us to take a taxi.  I don't have a very good feeling about this..."
"I don't care!  This is bull#^*#!  I'm not paying  a taxi $5 to drive me to a $5/night campsite!  That's ridiculous!  I can see the entrance down the road!  They're just trying to scam us!  We're walking!"

R man and I were in the middle of a small village in Southern Zambia a half mile away from the entrance of South Luangua National Park and Croc Camp (a reasonably priced campsite that offers safaris) where R man had begged me to go so he could finally see his LION!  Men and their lions....we'd just spent 8 hours (4 hours waiting and 4 hours moving) in a very small minivan with 12 adults, 5 kids, a bicycle, a large screen television, enough toilet paper for an end of the world hideaway, two live chickens and about 15 dozen chicken eggs....I was not too excited about yet another form of Zambian style overpriced, ridiculously bad transportation if I could help it...

"But Sarah....you haven't seen their eyes!  Look into their eyes....they think we are walking to our death!"
"No. No. NO!  I'm walking!!!  I don't care!  They just want to rip us off again and have a good laugh at our expense.  I'm not doing it!"
"Ok....but, I'm taking a taxi."
"Fine!"
"FOR REAL?!?  Ok!  I'm your husband.  I love you.  You're crazy.  We are going to die, but I'm coming with you!  At least we'll die together.  Happy?"
"Yes! I don't see any hippos or lions, do you?!?"

And we begin to walk out of the bubble like village of men standing on the streets staring at us while drinking cheap beer and children running around us begging for money....we were most definitely the entertainment for the evening.  We leave the security of normal (for Africa) and step out onto the dusty road of nothing for half a mile, which became a tree covered area of the unknown shortly after that with a small wooden sign that you could just make out - Croc camp - $5 camping -   Looked pretty easy.  I had no idea what I was doing.

R man: "I sure hope you know what you're doing!"


We were about 5 steps out on the dusty road of abyss when we heard a voice that sounded like Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter "Hey!  Guys!  What ar' ya' doin'?  Yo' gonna get killed!  Stop!"  


R man:  "Oh thank god!  SARAH!  I TOLD YOU!"


The best part was, when he ran out to us barefoot, for a moment I really thought he WAS Steve Irwin!  Dressed in his best Khaki short and shirt combo, crazy wild blond hair and big!  As he loomed down over us with a scolding concerned face, I felt smaller and smaller...and a little stupid....


"Right past those trees is a whole family of elephants with a big angry daddy who will KILL YOU!"


Sarah:
"oh  uh.  ok."


"come over 'ere and I'll give y'all a ride"
You know...in his personally owned safari truck. 


Turned out the guy owned Croc Camp and knew what he was talking about.  Sure enough as we drove in right next to the side of the road was a heard of elephants...4 females, 2 kids and a great big DADDY!

He spent the rest of the week telling our story to fellow travelers, discussing how silly and idiotic foreigners can be to the point he'd forgotten who we were and told it to us, slapping R man's back and laughing in hysterics.  "Can you believe these kids?!?  HA!  Wanted to WALK!"


To this day, when we tell the story, Rodolfo still enjoys a good "I told you so" at my expense!
Plus, he lived to see his lion: