The Day That Never Happened

DAY IN LIMBO: Remember this conversation in India from Day 386: Trinidad. Erik Trinidad.?:

"Which way are you going?" [Bea from the Miami Ski Club] asked me [en route to Udaipur's Lake Palace].

"The way that you earn a day."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how when you cross the International Date Line [across the Pacific from the west] and you lose a day but then you gain it back?" I said. "I'm only gaining a day."

Yes, I had found a way to cheat the rotation of the world, play God, and teleport instantaneously like they do in Star Trek -- without having to lose a day either. According to the calculations of my booking on Zuji.com, the transit time going from Singapore to Vancouver -- factoring in a layover in Taiwan, time zones, and crossing over the International Date Line -- I'd depart on Friday morning at 8:10 a.m. and arrive at the very same time on the very same Friday morning. My entire journey from Asia back to North America would happen all on a day that never happened.

FOR A DAY THAT NEVER HAPPENED, it was a pretty eventful one. The Singapore Mass Rapid Transit train didn't take me directly to the terminal of China Airlines like I thought it would, so I had to hop on the inter-terminal SkyTrain to transfer. On the way, I saw that my flight bound for my layover city of Taipei would leave on time at 0810 (picture above).

Check-in with my e-ticket should have been easy, but Sun Liu Xu, the friendly woman at the China Airlines desk asked for the printed e-ticket receipt.

"I don't have one. It's an e-ticket."

"That's okay." She processed my check-in, tagged my bag, and printed me a boarding pass -- but couldn't exactly give it to me just yet. The Canadian government had posted a flag on their computer system insisting that any passenger entering the country had to have proof of onward travel.

"Do you have an onward ticket?" asked Sun Liu Xu's supervisor.

"Yeah, it's an e-ticket," I said. "Air Canada."

"Where is the receipt?"

"I didn't print it out."

"[You need a printed receipt.]"

"I got an e-ticket so I wouldn't have to deal with paper." I argued and pleaded and told them I could just show them my confirmation on my laptop if there was a wi-fi connection in the building -- there was, only I didn't have a subscription to it -- but no matter, they let me slide anyway provided that I find internet access to get it printed before my connecting flight in Taipei.

IT WAS A SHORT FOUR-HOUR FLIGHT to Taipei Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport -- Ha, I remember when four hours in transit seemed long; that's nothing now -- which I spent furiously working with my clamped iBook on Blog duties until my battery was near dead. I was days behind as usual and wanted to get at least one up before the long remainder of flight time; I hoped that in my hour-long layover in the airport there would be a fast internet connection to get it uploaded, and to hopefully print out that proof of onward travel for Canadian immigration as requested.

The hour allotted for the flight connection was just enough time to get from one terminal to the other and check-in with just a little time to spare -- or to check-in and rush through an internet session. "Is there an internet point around here somewhere?" I asked the English-understanding woman at the transfer desk.

"No."

"Aw..."

"If you have a laptop..."

"Oh, is there wi-fi?"

"Yes." She told me it was available in the terminal I needed to go to, which was a good thing. However, when I picked up the signal, nothing was connecting. I tried over and over for a good amount of time with no avail, and it was no help that I had no juice left in the battery -- plus attaching and removing the clamp on and off to keep the screen lit was sort of annoying since I kept moving from place to place seeing if it'd make a difference.

"Is there wi-fi here?" I asked the cafe near Gate D6, soon boarding the on-time flight bound for Vancouver in five minutes.

It caught me off guard, but the Taiwanese employees barely knew any English, and the conversation was a lot of smiles and nods and hand gestures. Eventually they got it and showed me the wi-fi server behind the counter.

"Oh, okay," I acknowledged. Suddenly I was up and running, but ran out of juice and had to go running for an outlet in the other direction from my plane. C'mon you bastard. Time's running out. Plug, plug, clamp. Then the connection went out. What the fuck? I fiddled with the whole thing again with no luck and frantically ran back to the gate.

"Vancouver?" asked the guy at Gate D6 when I rushed back not to board, but to find out what the point-of-no-return was.

"What's the last time I can board? I need to get to the internet!" I was getting pretty frantic for no real good reason -- I had completely forgotten about the "requirement" that I had to print out an e-ticket receipt for Canadian immigration -- and was only thinking about The Blog.

"Ten minutes before the flight, so 1:50," the guy said at 1:41.

Nine minutes. Get the entry up. I flipped open the iBook to see if I could connect. Nothing. I ran over to the Taiwanese coffee counter. "Uh, can you reset the server?"

Blank stare.

"Uh... off, then on," I said with flicking hand gestures, one down, one up.

"Ah," the confused guy said, smiling.

"Off, on," I repeated with the hand gestures.

"Oh," he giggled. He motioned me to look behind the counter; he had accidentally unplugged the internet connection temporarily to make a credit card authorization. He did the old switcheroo -- How do you say that in Taiwanese? -- and soon I was back online -- until my battery died and my screen went out.

Run, plug, plug, clamp. Three minutes. Go go go! Okay. Copy. Paste. Save. The photos were already on the server, which saved me lots of time. I posted a quick comment, unclamped, unplugged, and dashed for the gate. "Just go!" the gate guy said, recognizing me without checking out my boarding pass. I was the last one to arrive on board, and without a printed proof of onward travel. Luckily I had it handwritten somewhere, and later on I discovered that the Canadians didn't even care to check.

IT WAS A NINE-HOUR FLIGHT from Taipei to Vancouver, across the International Date Line and back in time to the exact time that I left. I spent most of that day in limbo handwriting entries, but was distracted too many times by China Airlines' kick ass entertainment system; each individual seat (in coach) had an electronic touch-screen with a controller in front of it for video games, on demand movies, and TV shows you could start, play, fast forward, and rewind at your leisure. There was also a fairly big music library of about fifty select CDs of every genre, where you could select tracks and put them in a playlist of your choosing, like in iTunes. Amazing. This isn't my father's airline! (Wait, he never had an airline.) Even better than that was that for take-off and landing, you could tune in and watch the feed from the camera mounted in front of the plane and see what the pilot sees.

In those respects, the flight was pretty exciting, but otherwise it wasn't. I worked, I ate, I watched, I played, I slept, repeat. I could make up tall tales of screaming children or barfing passengers, or even talk about a near miss collision, but none of that would be believable on a day that never happened anyway.

SAVE THE DATE; DAY 503 IS COMING. MARCH 5, 2005, NYC.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE TRAILER.
PLEASE R.S.V.P. WITH YOUR HEADCOUNT BY POSTING A COMMENT BELOW.

Our Greatest Ally

DAY 495: In a stirring post-Nine Eleven speech that was obviously written for him because I sure as hell know he didn't write it himself, U.S. President George W. Bush once ended a sentence with the words, "...our greatest ally, Great Britain." While historically speaking that may be true (except for that whole little American Revolution thing), I beg to differ (yet again) with the American President. Based on my experience on my trip around the world, "our greatest ally" is not the UK but Canada, the U.S.A.'s friendly neighbor to the north.

In my experience, I have met nothing but the nicest, friendliest, funniest, and most hospitable people when it comes to Canadians, from Angie and Denise in Egypt, Sebastian in Morocco, the pub-crawling Torontonians in Berlin, Liz in Japan, and "The Other Erik" in Boracay. Of course I mustn't forget that many hardcore and enthusiastic fans of this Blog post their comments from Canada, including Td0t, Janice, Lisa, and Rose.

And so, in true Amazing Race style, I decided to make my last destination before re-entering the States a cold one, one offering outdoorsy snowy challenges -- and there was none better in Canada than Vancouver, British Columbia.

"WHOA, IT'S REALLY COLD HERE," were my first words as soon as I stepped off the plane and onto the catwalk linking to the terminal gate in Vancouver International Airport. Having traversed the north and south hemispheres in accordance with spring or summer for sixteen months, I hadn't felt cold temperatures like that at sea level in a long time, and it was a good thing I had kept some warmer clothes in my baggage after all. Despite the cold temperatures, I was happy to be back in North America and was ready to be greeted by the ever-so-friendly Canadians. However, what I was greeted with felt a bit more "American."

"Passports."

Up ahead the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (Canada's federal police, a.k.a. "The Mounties") were sternly checking individual passports of everyone getting off the plane, right at the gate even before the customs lines, just to weed out suspected terrorists. Not surprisingly, the two innocent Arab-looking guys on the pre-dominantly Asian-faced China Airlines flight were flagged and delayed for questioning. Later on, randomly selected people were selected for a hand search of baggage, right at the luggage carousel. That's pretty fucked up, I thought. I thought The Mounties wore red uniforms, not blue. Has Dudley Do Right been deceiving me all this time?

Canadian hospitality was back on track when I finished entry formalities and pushed my stroller into the arrivals hall. "Erik!" called an unfamiliar voice. It was Vancouver Blogreader-turned-"Trinidad Show" character anthony (real name Anthony) who had e-mailed me saying that he'd be willing to pick me up at the airport so that he could meet me, and more importantly, to see the famous blue clamp I have to attach to my iBook laptop computer to keep the screen lit up. "What do you want to see?" he asked as we drove away. "[What do you usually see first when you enter a new city?]"

"I usually go around and get an overview."

In his luxurious Mercedes-Benz, the 34-year-old Canadian entrepreneur drove me around town, from the downtown sights of downtown Vancouver -- the coliseum-like public library, the art museum, the Euro-styled Fairmont Hotel Vancouver; to Stanley Park, "Vancouver's version of Central Park," as Anthony told me; around Northern Vancouver; and to the hippie-turned-yuppie neighborhood of Kitsilano in the south.

"Everyone raves about Vancouver," I told him from my experience. "They always say you can go snowboarding in the morning and then to the beach in the afternoon." While that was possible -- Anthony proved it by bringing me to a beach where you could see the snow of a local ski resort in mountains just behind -- it wouldn't have been at a world-class ski resort (Whistler is still 2-3 hours away), nor at a world-class beach.

"It's not really sand," Anthony told me. "It's sort of a sand-like substance."

While driving in and around central Vancouver (picture above), Anthony pointed out that Vancouver boasted a huge Chinese population, with most of the downtown city land bought and developed by Hong Kong companies. "[They call it] Hong Couver," he told me. Vancouver differed from Hong Kong in one immediately recognizable respect; it wasn't nearly as crowded. My initial impression of Vancouver, a city of just two million people, was that it was very uncluttered with moving bodies and had a lack of "hustle and bustle" -- very unlike a city in my opinion. Where is everybody? I thought. "It seems empty around here," I told my host at the wheel.

"You think this is empty? I think this is crowded," Anthony said.

"Well, I was just in Jakarta."

He was starting to get concerned with whether or not he'd be able to get used to the heavier-populated cities in his upcoming trip around the world -- a trip he'd been postponing and postponing until he could find a reliable person to manage his company. Anthony was quite an industrious entrepreneurial type, the kind of guy with Donald Trump books on the shelf and a playlist in his iTunes software labeled "Tony Robbins," who had built up a lucrative and profitable business in auto detailing, which was way more than a mere "car wash;" he serviced mostly luxury cars for Vancouver's business elite, guys who paid $15-$20 as a tip for professional services costing much more.

Anthony went back to work, but extended his Canadian hospitality by giving me the keys to his nearby downtown apartment, which was a much-appreciated gesture. I mean, I'm always wary if I'm being invited by potential ax murderers, even if they are from the country of "our greatest ally," but it turned out he had similar qualms. "[I left this new girl at work] to pick up a stranger at the airport whom I've never met before and hope is not an ax murderer," he told me.

Anthony's downtown apartment was a great place to crash for the day, with a PowerMac on the desk with really nice speakers and more importantly, a high-speed DSL internet connection -- although for him it was too slow and would soon be replaced with a higher-speed fiber optic connection. I only used it for so long because I was jetlagged like hell, and just spent most of the afternoon sleeping on the couch. I was soon joined by his curious cat Goofball.

Goofball climbed off my chest when I woke up later that afternoon, refreshed. Anthony came home, followed by his girlfriend Kathy, and the two of them took me out to dinner that evening for sushi and conversation about the inner workings of maintaining a Blog on the road. Anthony's non-murderous hospitality was only extended even more when he offered to lend me all his snowboarding gear if and when I went snowboarding during my stay in B.C., a stay that would not be with him but with another Canadian, a rather funny and hospitable one that I traveled with through Morocco, who went by the name of Sebastian -- or so I thought.

"UH, I SHOULD PROBABLY TELL YOU SOMETHING," Sebastian said as we moved my bags from Anthony's car into the house in Kitsilano where I was dropped off. "I've been deceiving you. People around here sort of know me as David."

"David?"

Apparently, during Sebastian's semester abroad in France, he had reinvented himself by going by his middle name "Sebastian" and not what his Canadian friends in and around the University of British Columbia (UBC) called him: "Dave." More specifically he was sometimes referred to as "The Dave," at least in the on-goings of that night; I had arrived just in time for a Friday night college house party he and his roommates were throwing, that was billed as a "Spring Fling" cocktail party so that not only could they dress up in neckties at an age when that still might be fun, but get trashed on mixed hard liquor drinks instead of the regular college beer from a keg. Mixing the cocktails were the resident hosts of the evening: the studious but enthusiastic Aviv, the ever-grinning Adam, visiting backpacker passing through Mike, and of course, my liaison to the UBC scene, Sebastian -- er, Dave.

It was hard to adjust to the sudden change in monikers, but at least some things didn't change. The Dave's sense of humor remained in tact, and there was Laughing Cow cheese and olives available -- staples in our diet in Morocco. David Sebastian's hospitality didn't end with cheese and cocktails; he really rolled out the "red carpet" for me, and by that I really mean a floor mattress with a pillow and pillow case with Spider-Man on it. Awesome.

"I have a song to play for you," he said before running over to the PowerBook hooked up to speakers. With a flick of his fingers in iTunes, out came E.S. Posthumus' "Pompeii," the super-charged song that I used in the Day 503 trailer.

"You downloaded it?"

"Yeah, this song's awesome!"

And so, with the hard-driving electric guitar, drums, orchestra, and apocalyptic-sounding chorus, the reunion party of my first night in B.C. began.

I HAD ARRIVED FASHIONABLY LATE, just as everyone else, but soon the three-bedroom basement apartment of a big house was filled with college kids not only from UBC, but also from Toronto, Holland, Denmark, and France. I drank enough not to remember any names or details of the party, but to sum up, it was your usual college party where alcohol flowed as much as the hormones, a night of dancing in the living room and sucking down Jello shots in a bedroom, a time when some guy shoved me because he thought I was hitting on his girlfriend. For some reason, thirty-year-old me fit right in, probably because I didn't look my age.

"So are you a UBC student?" someone asked me.

"Actually, I'm a lot older than a student," I said.

"Twenty four?"

I gave him a thumbs up, and had to explain it meant "higher," not "correct."

"Twenty seven?"

"Thirty," I revealed.

"Thirty?" He could barely believe his eyes and ears. "Are you married?"

"No."

"Do you have kids? A house?"

"Uh, I'm at a UBC party." What do you think?

For me, the experience was sort of like being in the movie Old School, where thirty-somethings revert back to their partying college days by opening a community-wide fraternity. While there was no late night streaking -- it's cold in B.C., remember? -- there was the time I chugged from the big bowl of Sangria like Frank the Tank (Will Ferrell). Once it hits your lips, it's so good!

It's too hard for me to reconstruct the happenings of that night -- my brain was still too busy trying to process the fact that his name was "Dave", not "Sebastian" -- so here are some pictures I took, along with some that David Sebastian and Aviv took, all in a little series of photos I like to call:

"Random People Having Innocent College Fun"
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

(I'm told the guy in that last picture "chucked some vom," as they say in Canada.)

In the end, the night was a big success for the boys and their social lives, and a great welcoming for me on my first night in western Canada. The Canadians, truly my greatest allies, I thought the morning after. Now if could just get this stain off my shirt...

SAVE THE DATE; DAY 503 IS COMING. MARCH 5, 2005, NYC.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE TRAILER.
PLEASE R.S.V.P. WITH YOUR HEADCOUNT BY POSTING A COMMENT BELOW.

The Canadian Identity

DAY 496: According to a factoid I read, the border between the U.S.A. and Canada is the world's largest undefended border, at about 5,500 miles long. This is because Canada, at least to the American majority, is no real threat, almost a counterpart of America anyway -- it's been called by some, "America's Little Brother" and "America's Biggest Suburb." To quote a line from the song "Blame Canada" from the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, "They're not even a real country anyway."

Canadians of course hate this; they struggle to find their own identity to separate themselves from those crass Americans, even if it's by the simple attachment of a Canadian flag patch on a backpack while traveling, the superimposition of a Canadian maple leaf on familiar American logos, or just by the simple adding of the word "eh" at the end of most spoken sentences. Canadians probably want to stand out with their own identity because foreigners often confuse them for Americans -- a nationality that in this day and age doesn't seem to get good press internationally -- and would rather retain the friendly "good guy" image they've seemed to acquire over the years. This wholesome image of Canada is exemplified in what I think has become my favorite piece of Canadian paraphernalia, the new five-dollar bill. While other currencies show images of historical figures or buildings, the back of Canada's blue five-dollar note is a happy wholesome image of kids playing in the snow -- my favorite one is the innocent-looking kid in the corner sledding down a hill. Aww... who could hate a nationality with a wholesome image like that?

THE WHOLESOME IMAGE OF CANADA could have been thrown right out the window if you saw the aftermath of Aviv, Adam, and David Sebastian's "Spring Fling" college party; their apartment was pretty trashed when we got up that morning. Visiting friend Mike was passed out on the couch, bottles and plastic cups were everywhere, and the kitchen floor was a bit sticky. We did the American and Canadian teamwork thing -- I was on vacuum detail and even got rid of carpet stains with stain remover and a little elbow grease. By late morning the place was back to the normal college apartment (with the obligatory M.C. Escher poster on the wall), and my day to explore the Canadian identity began.

Sebastian, who only revealed to me the night before that his real name was Dave, led me on a casual bike tour around the hippie-turned-yuppie neighborhood of Kitsilano near UBC where they lived, to give me a sense of the Vancouverite vibe. This vibe apparently involves a lot of rain; like San Francisco, USA, Vancouver is mostly covered in fog and rain clouds, so much that some call the city "Raincouver." The damp weather didn't stop Vancouverites from playing outside. In the fog, people were still running, cycling, playing croquet and bocce, and even beach volleyball, all under a Canadian flag proudly waving high above in the misty air (picture above).

"What's the history of Vancouver in fifty words or less?" I asked David Sebastian when we rode by some historical and significant totem pole. He didn't really know -- most people don't know jack about the history of where they came from -- but I looked it up briefly in the Lonely Planet book they had in the house. To make a long story short, Vancouver was founded by some guy named George Vancouver and the rest is history.

We biked around Kitsilano and up to the marina at Granville Island -- "Tourist central [of shops and cafes]" as David Sebastian put it -- where he left me so that he could go off on a "date," which I put in quotes because it was one of the on-going jokes in the house; anytime someone had a meeting with any girl for any reason (no matter how insignificant), it was automatically called a "date" and she was automatically your "girlfriend." This attributed to one distinct characteristic of the Canadian identity: sense of humor. Canadian's have a great sense of humor; let us not forget that Canada's greatest export to the States is the comedian, including Michael J. Fox, Mike Myers, Tom Green, Howie Mandel, Alex Trebek (his moustache was kind of funny-looking), and the entire cast of Degrassi Junior High. My theory on why so many entertaining people come out of Canada is because there is an underlying inferior complex living under the shadow of America, and that drives people to excel or prove themselves. (The same goes for the many celebrity entertainers coming out of New Jersey, living with the inferiority complex of living in the shadows of New York.)

Granville Island wasn't so great that day; sure there were some street performers, but it was raining most of the time; I wandered a bit and then ended up at an indoor cafe to work on my iBook and my "iClamp" -- a big hit with the guys at the house. The rain let up by sundown, and I rode round again, over the Granville Bridge and into central Vancouver. I ended up checking-out the local Chapters bookstore (Canada's Barnes & Noble) where I saw something I hadn't seen thus far on the road: the Hyenas... travel humor anthology book I'm in; I hadn't seen it anywhere because I think the San Francisco-based publisher only distributed "domestically" -- which of course included Canada because, hell, they have a similar sense of humor and "they're not even a real country anyway."

Ha ha, that of course is a joke to all you Canadians out there, you guys and gals and your sense of humor -- I love it.

THAT EVENING, I rode back to the house in Kits to continue the search for the Canadian identity -- but not with Canadians Aviv, David Sebastian, Adam or Mike (an excellent vegetarian chef by the way). I had plans with yet another Canadian, The Other Erik who I met in Boracay, Philippines, who had just arrived back in Vancouver after his extensive travels through southeast Asia. He told me to meet up with him at what he called "Vancouver's best Irish pub, The Blarney Stone" in the Gastown district of central Vancouver. I was supposed to meet him around ten or so, but I was so caught up in conversation with my temporary Canadian housemates, I didn't leave the house until ten. None of them would join me, not even Sebastian -- er, I mean Dave -- for he would take a bus only up to a certain stop and then get off and bike over to another party he had obligations to go to.

To get to our first bus, we rode on bikes to the main stop seven blocks away from the house. Sebastian took his bike and I rode another that was on loan from a friend.

"[Can Erik take that bike?]" David Sebastian asked Aviv.

"Well, it's not really mine to lend out," he said.

"It'll be fine." I supposed that was the case. I mean, it was wholesome Canada after all, with happy kids sledding down snowy hills on their five-dollar bill. I locked the borrowed bike at the bus stop -- front wheel and frame -- while David Sebastian put his on the bus bike rack (most buses in Vancouver have them). David Sebastian got off at my halfway point while I rode all the way downtown using a borrowed UBC student bus pass with the photo believably scratched out of recognition. (Unfortunately, I lost that card in the events of the night.)

GASTOWN, NEAR CHINATOWN, shows off the seedier side of Vancouver and the fog blowing through the night under the street lamps only added to its underworld charm. I was told by some Vancouverites that it boasted North America's highest concentration of IV drug users, most of which I saw wandering the streets begging for change. I was told that methadone clinics in the district were open late on paydays because of the increased business.

Gastown was as "empty" as the rest of Vancouver, except for the big groups standing and waiting outside the many clubs, bars, and pubs, apparently for no reason but to build hype for the on-goings inside; many of the places were not full at all and just wanted to have the image of being popular. These lines were prime targets for the beggars of course, calling "Hey man, could you spare a quarter for coffee?" or as in one beggar's case, singing for his keep with a song about "Britney Spears and her twat."

The Other Erik was nowhere to be seen on the hour-long line outside The Blarney Stone. I had no choice but to wait for him there because without a phone, I had no way to contact him or vice versa. I figured he had wisely gotten there early with his entourage and was one of the people inside, but when I finally got in passed midnight he was nowhere to be found. To be fair, it was hard him with the sea of people, like trying to find Waldo in a candy cane factory. I never did find him or his Canadian friends that night, and there went my chances of further experiencing the Canadian identity. Later on I learned he had tried to reach me to tell me he had gone to another place because his friends didn't feel like waiting.

The night wasn't a bust though; while waiting on line I befriended a group of students, not from UBC, but from an international school teaching English to foreigners: a Japanese girl, an Argentine guy, a Brazilian girl and a half Finn/half Swiss girl. The Japanese and Argentine got tired of waiting around after some time, leaving me with Mayra, the Brazilian from Sao Paolo, and Riikka, the half Finn/half Swiss. It was with them I partied the night, drinking pitchers of cheap beer, dancing, and doing the Irish jig to the Irish rock musical stylings of the live band.

We partied until we were kicked out at the 2 a.m. closing time and then split a cab out to Kits where we all lived with host families. I was dropped off not at the house but at the bus stop so that I could pick up the bike I left there -- or so I thought.

"UH, I HAVE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS," I said to David Sebastian in his dark bedroom where I had a floor mattress set up for me. "Do you want the good news or bad news first?"

"Uh, take your pick."

"Well the good news is I got a girl's phone number."

"Alright."

"The bad news is the bike isn't really there any more."

Sebastian -- I mean Dave -- was sort of in shock but not so surprised. "Bikes still get stolen around here."

Bikes still get stolen around here? I thought. What about the wholesome Canadian good guy image? What about the happy little kid sledding on the five-dollar bill?!

I walked back to the bus stop at 3:30 a.m. to see if I had missed anything, but the only thing remaining at the bike rack was another bike that had been there before -- unlocked. We considered stealing that one to replace the one we lost, but after careful thought out analysis, we came to the far-fetched but conceivable conclusion that it was a decoy set up by the cops that had a tracer on it.

"[Why would they break the lock of that bike and not just take the unlocked bike?]" I asked.

"Don't worry about it," the laid back David Sebastian said -- another characteristic of the Canadian identity. "There's nothing we can really do. It's just money." He was pleased in a way because now he'd have the excuse to go out on a "bike-shopping date" with the girl whose bike it was.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, I realized I hadn't gotten as much insight into the Canadian identity as I wanted to, if there was even any one to be found during my day at all. While I saw that there's a side to Canada that is seedy and one that is funny, I spent the night in the company of the Japanese, Argentine, Brazilian, and Finnish/Swiss -- at an Irish bar with an Irish band in a neighborhood next to Chinatown, no less. While we're on the subject of other nationalities, I'll point out now that on the other pieces of Canadian money (that don't have happy little kids on them), there is still an image of Queen of England -- a remnant of the Canadian history of being under the rule of England as a commonwealth.

Wait, hold on. A country formerly under British rule? A nation now a melting pot of other nationalities, taking in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? All of this is starting to sound a little familiar... Hmm... almost as if... the Canadian identity was kind of... American... eh?

The Ultimate College Experience

DAY 497: "This is probably the Vancouver experience," David Sebastian said as we got ready for the activity of the day. The activity at hand was the quintessential Vancouver sport of Ultimate, a.k.a. Frisbee Football, where each of two teams advances a plastic disc towards its endzone in hopes that Janet Jackson's boob will pop out at half-time.

"Have you played before?" my host asked me.

"Yeah, I love Ultimate," I answered. "I used to play in high school. I got an A plus, the only time I ever got an A plus in gym."

"When was the last time you played?"

"In Tanzania."

Playing in Tanzania was a casual friendly game with locals and ex-pats, and no one really cared about winning or losing -- just how we played the game. This was a bit different in Vancouver where David Sebastian was captain of a team in the Vancouver Ultimate League (VUL), a competitive collection of teams, each with quirky gimmicks and names like in the movie Dodgeball. Our team: "The King's Pirates" -- as in David Sebastian King (his last name). Our gimmick: talking like swashbucklers of the sea.

ARRRRR!

In fact, Captain King had pink uniform t-shirts made up for his Ultimate crew, printed with a crowned skull and crossbones above the word "ARRRRR!"

"Peach, not pink," he said. (It was the cheapest color he could find.)

With my peach t-shirt on, I was already a member of the team as a substitute, which was a good thing because some players of the team couldn't make the game in the beginning and we needed subs anyway so that players could alternate between the game field and the sidelines to rest.

"Have you played before?" teammate Kelly asked me as she was tossing a Frisbee back and forth for practice.

"I got an A plus in high school Ultimate."

"When was the last time you were in high school?"

"Uh, it's been a while."

It doesn't matter, I thought. We're all amongst friends here. It should be fun. But later I learned that these were not Captain King's regular friends, but a random band of lads and lassies of varying skill levels put together at random (like all of the teams), to work out their differences and learn to work like a team. All of them expected me to have some sort of skill, especially with my A plus of a former life.

"These are my Ulti-mateys," Captain King said. Amongst the members of the team were skillful beginner Kelly, fast and furious Ancilla, speedy Gene, smartly intense Jackie, 31-going-on-22 Mel, Captain King, and me -- clinging onto a former high school glory like Al Bundy on Married With Children. Everyone was in uniform and gearing to go pirate style; even the idea of getting eye patches was made, but having no depth perception in a game of Ultimate probably wasn't a good idea.

For me, I think I was more excited about the prospect of talking like a pirate a whole 203 days before International Talk Like A Pirate Day, than actually playing the game. The pirate exclamations started with our opening huddle cheer as we held our hands on the disc and rotated it around (picture above) yelling in escalating volume: "P, Q, ARRRRR! P, Q, ARRRRR!!! P, Q, ARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!"

I learned fast that competitive Ultimate really has nothing to do with pirate lingo at all, but a lingo all its own. Suddenly the team was yelling crazy foreign phrases like "Pop up!" "Cut!" and "I need a dump!"

I need a dump?

"Erik you're a popper. Me and you, we have to bounce, this way. Like a triangle," Mel told me. "You can't stay in sidelines, 'cause then they have nowhere to go."

Huh?

This wasn't high school Ultimate at all. Mel, Jackie, and Captain King tried to coach me, but it was all in one ear and out the other. What about talking the pirate talk?! Like "Shiver me timbers!" "Walk de plank, matey!" and "ARRRRRR!!" But it was all plays and jargon with dumps and pops and confusing phrases of that nature:

"Gender across!"

"[You have to block that side] because then you clear half the field."

"We're poppers. Our job isn't to score, it's to tire them out."

Et cetera, et cetera.

"Did you get all that?" Captain King asked me.

My head was spinning with the barrage of new terms. First things first. "Uh... so you're name is Dave, huh?"

The opposing team, named Urine Trouble, soon took the lead and it was evident they were the stronger team, even without a uniform. Every time they'd score in the end zone, they'd yell "You're in!" -- which of course sounds like "Urine!" -- and the urine gimmick continued whenever we'd score; a little Urine Trouble kid would come over with a bottle of what looked like piss for us to drink. Rumor had it that it was actually beer, but I warned it was probably beer that they pissed in. ARRRRR!

We played two games that tiring afternoon, first with Urine Trouble and then with FIVE™, who were both better than us band of pirate misfits. On the field, I ran around like a chicken with its head off, following my "marker." Ancilla, a short little Asian gal, yelled at me a couple of times for being in the wrong place. Clearly I wasn't worthy of another A plus -- more like a D minus. I can't even tell you how confused I was every time coach Jackie came up with a new play after analysis of each teams patterns.

Over time I got the hang of it though -- popping, bouncing, and cutting and all -- and I even scored a touchdown and made a key interception, both times by pure luck. In the end, our peach-colored uniformed team lost both games, but as Kelly optimistically pointed out, "At least we weren't shut out." Non-Ultimate-related fun continued at the end of each game when the teams did impromptu cheers to each other, chanting a phrase three times in ascending volume. For example, when we lost against Urine Trouble, we cheered, "When you're stranded on an island, you drink you're URINE!" When we lost against FIVE™, we chanted, "Five cheers for Five! Five cheers for Five! Five cheers for Five! Five cheers for Five! Five cheers for FIVE!!!!"

"And one for the wenches!" Ancilla added, representing the pirate wenches on our team.

The King's Pirates are nothing without the wenches.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, my entire body was sore, but feeling pumped. It was completely drained from nutrients -- and what better way to fill it up with the standard college staples of boxed instant food and chips! That sort of cuisine wasn't exactly the guys' style; they were actually pretty health conscious, with a box of fresh fruit at the door for quick, nutritious pick-me-ups, plus they had salad at almost every meal when they took turns making dinner in the week. But that's not to say cheap just-add-water food from a pharmacy wasn't available, and by my request to have a nostalgic "ultimate college experience," David Sebastian made us macaroni and cheese with powdered cheese goodness, followed by instant noodles. Aye!

Later on that night, the "ultimate college experience" continued when David Sebastian went on a "date" (quotes intentional) and Aviv and I went out to the 24-hour coffee house Calhoun's, a local UBC haunt where students studied and did homework after the Sunday night live jazz set from what I'd say is the best high school jazz band in North America. They performed covers of everything from J.Lo to the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." -- familiar songs that didn't come out of no where like most of the Ultimate lingo that confused me all day. I was thoroughly impressed. This is a high school band? Well, blow me down.

You can follow the standings of "The King's Pirates" on the VUL website. Also, don't forget:

SAVE THE DATE; INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY IS COMING.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2005.
CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION.

The Island

DAY 498: One of Canada's tourism slogans is "Discover our true nature," a pun that I think is quite clever, even by American standards. The slogan brings attention to the fact that the main attraction in Canada is its countryside, a magnificent landscape of rivers and mountains and honking Canadian geese. It is this nature that spawns the stereotypical Canadian image of guys ice fishing while wearing floppy ear flap hats and discussing hockey as a moose walks by. (I know I'm not the only one who has this image.)

Vancouver Island -- not to be confused with the city of Vancouver -- just a couple of hours away via bus and ferry, was where I'd see just how rural-- and kitschy -- a place like Canada could be.

I WAS UP AT "STUPID O'CLOCK" to take the first of two buses to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry terminal in northern suburban Vancouver. A high speed, modern ferry with food court, kids' playroom, video arcade, and office desks whisked me and about a hundred passengers across the Strait of Georgia to the terminal on the other end where I met my Vancouver Island liaison for the day.

"Hey!"

Angie (who I met and traveled with in Egypt) recognized me as soon as I stepped out the door. An Island Girl long returned from her own worldly travels and a three-year stint teaching English in Korea with her friend Denise, she was the perfect person to show me around and give me the essence of life on "The Island" as everyone in the greater Vancouver area called it. Or was she?

"What's this mountain range called?" I asked as we drove through the countryside.

"Uh, I'm not really sure."

It was understandable; it's normal for someone not to know jack about the place he/she lives in. No matter; what Angie lacked in information, she made up for hospitality and friendship -- I hadn't forgotten that it was her that gave me a friendship bracelet before we all parted ways in Dahab. (Sadly, I lost the bracelet just two weeks later.) Anyway, Angie was kind enough to call in sick from work to show me around The Island, and on her birthday no less. We had the instant rapport again and most of our drive time conversation reminisced about our travels in Egypt and the other places we've been to since.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Well, I don't really know what there is to see," I said. "Everyone tells me about Victoria though."

"It's just a city, but we can go if you want." Previously, she was pushing the nature stuff.

"Yeah, let's check it out, at least to get out of the rain." There was a drizzle coming down.

We rode about an hour and a half in her 4-Runner through the rural countryside of farms, forest, and pastures for sheep, and when we arrived in Victoria, I saw that it was indeed "just a city" that didn't really live up to the hype I had heard of. Well, that's not true; David Sebastian told me that there would be a lot of old people there, and the place was like geriatric ward. Within two minutes of parking the car, a guy in one of those old person electric wheelchairs zipped right by me.

That's not to say there was nothing but old people; there were old buildings too, and quite impressive-looking. As the capital city of the province of British Columbia, the city boasted classical architecture, from the Parliament building and City Hall to the fancy Empress Hotel. But Victoria wasn't all class; there was kitsch too.

"There's Miniature World," Angie pointed out. It was a kitschy "museum" of dioramas and model trains going around model cities and landscapes. I was skeptical on going to such a tourist trap, until I saw the sign outside the entrance that said there was a new miniature future exhibit and that Miniature World was "the Greatest Little Show On Earth."

"Is it really the greatest little show on earth?" I asked the cashier inside.

"I think so," she answered. Not surprisingly, she was an old cheery woman, the kind you'd expect to be a cashier at a place called "Miniature World."

"Okay then." We bought tickets and went inside, first into the Avian-1 Starcruiser, which sounds cool, but in reality is just a small dark hallway with two dioramas behind glass with miniatures of a sci-fi space station and little spaceships that didn't even move. The place was backlit, which was sort of cool; also there was a voice from a speaker welcoming everyone to "the future."

Out the door we were transported the past -- the past in miniature form that is -- with a series of dioramas depicting famous battles (including WWII) and the creation of the Great Canadian Railway linking Vancouver to Toronto and beyond. While this was all nice and somewhat educational, Angie and I paid attention to more important details, like little figures following off bridges, and falling down a hill (Jack and Jill in the nursery rhyme diorama).

"I'M NOT FROM HERE. What should I go see? What must I do?" I asked the not-so-old guy at the tourist information office. He looked pretty bored until we walked in.

"Are you into museums?"

"Not really."

"Oh, because those are the must do's [around here]," he said in a sort of snooty un-Canadian-like way.

Angie and I wandered the harbor area and stumbled upon two museum-esque things anyway, and she left it up to me. "We can go to the aquarium or the wax museum."

"Which do you think is worse?"

"The Wax Museum."

"Let's go."

THE ROYAL WAX MUSEUM LOOKED A BIT DESERTED and I thought Angie and I would be the only visitors. "Are there any people here?"

"There are lots of people here," said the old woman, the kind of old woman you'd expect to see working the front desk of a wax museum by Madame Tussaud. "They're just not alive."

Amongst the unliving were the Queen of England, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, the recent presidents of the United States (including the Clinton, Carter, and the Bushes), and the Prime Minister of Canada (whatever his name is) -- more important than him was Canadian hockey legend Gordie Howe. Rounding out the collection was an assortment of waxy figures like Everest trekkers Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay; Voltaire (or is that Liberace?); and Albert Einstein, who looked like he being secretive about releasing an SBD fart. Cleopatra was also there in full topless form, just down the hall from the information desk -- manned by fake wax figure. Things got interesting after that, with the Chamber of Horrors, featuring life-sized dioramas of torture chambers, and a twitching severed head with a slight resemblance to Uma Thurman.

THE CITY WAS NICE FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS, but we soon left town and head up north again to do more outdoorsy stuff. The highway through the mountains led us passed scenic viewpoints (picture above) and many totem poles, as well as many little towns that with the standard Canadian restaurants, the most popular being Tim Horton's.

"This is Old Person Central," Angie told me. Inside, I saw just how true that was, but that wasn't our concern; we wanted to try and stump the cashier with a couple of questions.

"The chicken and roasted red pepper sandwich," I ordered. "And a Nanaimo bar. Is that from here?" (We were in the town of Nanaimo, where the chocolate dessert originated from, although we didn't know that until looking it up on the internet after the fact.)

"I have no idea," the woman replied.

"We also want to know if you know who Tim Horton is."

"Uh, the founder of this place."

Another girl butt in. "He's over there." Angie was confused, but it was just a picture on the wall of the Tim Horton, a guy more popular than the Prime Minister of Canada (whatever his name is) since he was a hockey star.

CANADIAN COUNTRY CAME when we drove up and strolled the hiking trails of Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park, home of the impressive falls and river of the same name. Unfortunately there were no guys ice fishing in floppy ear flap hats talking about hockey, or any mooses (meese?) for that matter. We didn't stay long because the day was running out and my knee was bothering me; in fact, that was our last stop for the day. "I don't think we'll have time to see anything else," Angie said. We were still miles away from where I had to grab the ferry back to the mainland.

"This is our big town," Angie pointed out when we stopped for gas in Parksville, a town actually very small. Six years prior, size didn't matter because it was the site of a huge full-scale riot that spawned out of a fight that broke out at a sand castle building festival on the nearby Parksville-Qualicum Beach, if you can believe that. Angie told me that it was actually a pretty big deal; about 45,000 people (the entire population of Parksville) showed up to the event, only to end up in a huge brawl that wrecked storefronts and overturned cars. The whole thing should have filmed for a FOX special, When Canadians Go Wild! so that Americans might realize that Canadians might actually be a force to be reckoned with.

"WELL, HOPE YOU HAD FUN," Angie said as we parted ways again, this time at the ferry terminal on Vancouver Island.

"Hope you had fun, calling in sick and on your birthday."

"Yeah."

I rode back to the mainland and readjusted back to "big" city life, which didn't take too long.

"So how was your date? Where did you go?" Aviv asked me back at the house in Kitsilano.

"All around. Victoria, up north. I had a Nanaimo bar in Nanaimo."

"So is she your girlfriend?" David Sebastian asked.

"No."

"Oh, that's the wrong answer! [In this house, if you meet up with a girl, she's automatically your 'girlfriend.']"

Right. I had forgotten about that on-going joke in the house, much like I had forgotten the name of the Canadian Prime Minister -- but I guess that doesn't really matter because he doesn't play hockey anyway.

Worried At Whistler / Home Is Where The Nettles Are

DAY 499 (Part 1): Vancouver is a great city for outdoorsy-types as there are plenty of outdoor activities in and around town, from sailing to Ultimate. While sailing a boat and tossing a Frisbee around are good fun, they weren't what brought me to Vancouver. What did that (other than the chance to visit friends) was snowboarding.

The Vancouver area has several mountains for snow sport enthusiasts, but none are better known than Whistler Mountain, the Intrawest-run snow resort that has become synonymous with Vancouver. Whistler, along with neighboring Blackcomb Mountain, are more-than-formidable mounds for any skill level, from beginner to Olympian -- it's no wonder they, along with the city of Vancouver, are the proud Canadian hosts of the 2010 Winter Olympics. "Vancouverites" have already been getting the mountains ready for the international affair, and I put that in quotes because it's really the Australians doing it; a huge majority of Whistler/Blackcomb is staffed by Aussie snow bums working the mound in return for the opportunity play in the snow without spending the small fortune it costs to be at Whistler.

DAVID SEBASTIAN HAD BORROWED his parents' Subaru Outback and we had it packed up and ready to go by eight in the morning -- his skiing gear, plus all the snowboarding gear and apparel I had borrowed from Anthony the night before. It was still another two hours to Whistler from Vancouver along the Sea to Sky Highway, which flew by with our usual banter. Not surprisingly, on our way up, Canadian rock star Bryan Adams' "Run To You" came on the radio.

The first parking lot was full by the time we arrived around eleven, which was sort of surprising, it being a Tuesday and all, during what everyone seemed to be calling "the worst snow season in over twenty years." My time in Vancouver was during a warm spell, with unseasonably warm temperatures. While people in northeast North America were complaining about the accumulations of the snowy winter, I had heard many Vancouverites complain that they weren't getting any.

"It disheartens me to see it so bare," Sebastian said -- I mean, Dave said -- as we rode the gondola up to the midway station. The scene was different on the upper mountain; the higher elevation sustained the fresh powder that had started since the night before, and making the trip more worthwhile. The snow was still coming down in spurts, sometimes in blurring white out conditions, but it was better than nothing -- actually it was "the first decent day of the [Vancouver] ski season" -- a day good enough to make a Canadian proud to be back out there. We took the lift up to Whistler Peak and started the day off easy with easy green-marked trails and intermediate blue-marked trails, which was a good thing because it was hard for me to adjust to not only someone else's equipment, but to the fact that I hadn't done any boarding in a while, not since the time I was at the coastal sand dunes of Namibia.

"You gotta do the Whistler Bowl," David Sebastian said, leading me to the advanced black diamond trail. "Bragging rights." It probably wasn't a good thing that I was already sore all over from playing Ultimate a couple of days before, but I went anyway down the mogul-filled trail. My knees were shot already, putting all strain on my lower legs, and I cramped up to the point where I couldn't even walk straight. I didn't want to be a downer to David Sebastian so we split up for a couple of runs and met at the base of one of the chair lifts. Eventually I got my groove back after some rest and a Snickers bar, but soon other concerns sprouted up.

"[I think I forgot to lock the car,]" David Sebastian said with a look of worry. He asked me if I remembered him pointing the remote towards the car to lock it up; I did, only I couldn't remember if it was at the time we left the car for the day, or the brief time we went to take a piss in the bushes when we first arrived. We decided to ask the guy working the mid-station snack bar selling water and candy bars (at insanely inflated prices) about the security of the parking lot.

"I haven't heard of anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen," was his very neutral answer -- until he mentioned that he once had a board stolen in Whistler Village at the base. David Sebastian and I thought it out. Go all the way down? What if it's locked? We would have gone down for nothing.

"What are the chances something got stolen?" David Sebastian asked the guy.

"[I don't know,]" he said with a shrug.

"What are the chances that we locked the door?"

"Really, we're just looking for a scapegoat," I added.

"I'll say a seven out of ten chance."

"Okay, take his name down," I joked.

"Uh... Tony... Smith..."

We put our faith in the seven of ten and went up for a couple of runs. I was really getting my groove back, carving back and forth, riding with the best of them (picture above). Why do people complain about snow? You can play in the snow! I thought. Sebastian was having a good time too, but the thought of the car was always lingering in our minds. Was there anything important in the car? Well, our wallets and credit cards. But those can be replaced. But wait, what about the actual car being stolen? I sort of put my faith in the kindness of Canadians, but then remembered that I had a bike stolen just days before. Is the car locked? Of course it is; it's a reflex to lock it -- but wait; then why am I thinking of it?

"What are the chances of something getting stolen from the same guys twice?" I asked David Sebastian.

We shrugged until we figured we might as well just go down and get peace of mind. "I'm feeling responsible," David Sebastian said. I watched our gear at a bench in Whistler Village while my Canadian friend went to go check.

"What's the verdict?" I asked him.

"The fact is that the car is..."

"Stolen?"

"Not locked."

"And our stuff is..."

"Not stolen."

With that said, we enjoyed the last part of the day doing runs up and down the big winter wonderland of Blackcomb's upper mountain. For some reason, my lift ticket was missing -- it must have ripped off in one of my nasty wipeouts that morning -- but we managed to talk one of the Australian ticket checkers into bending the rules. "Your story checks out," the guy from Brisbane said.

"Alright. I love Australia!"

With each run I was getting more and more comfortable with the conditions and the gear, and the actual first names of my company. "DAVE!!!" I called out to David Sebastian at one point.

"Wait, did you just call me Dave?"

At the end of the day, we ended up having a good time, despite the cramps and the worries about the car. It's a good thing we checked up on it though; on the way home, news radio reported that a car was stolen from Whistler and the thieves were on the lam towards Vancouver.

* * * * *

Home Is Where The Nettles Are

DAY 499 (Part 2): People ask me if I get homesick being on the road for so long. "Yeah, in the beginning I was, but after a while you just sort of get used to it," is my usual response. Traveling from place to place like a vagabond just becomes your norm and it doesn't phase you.

"Where do you live?" some would ask me.

"Well, I got rid of my apartment, so I don't really live anywhere. I live out of a bag at the hostel."

"Don't you miss your friends at home?"

"Nah, most of my friends are on-line, so I talk to them all the time," I said. True; my virtual self never left, and being on-line with people at home had been the constant that had kept me sane on the road. "Home is where the internet is," I'd say.

Speaking of homes, that's where David Sebastian and I went that night after Whistler; not to the college house in Kitsilano, but his parents' house in the southern Vancouver suburb of Surrey, near Crescent Beach and White Rock, to drop off the car.

"I thought I heard car noises," said a voice from the front porch. It was David Sebastian's mom Wendy greeting us with open arms, and a special treat. "We thought in honor of your return, we'd do something new," she said. "The First Annual Crescent Beach Nettle Fest!"

"And what's a nettle exactly?" I questioned.

"You don't know about the stinging nettle?" David Sebastian said with a smirk.

On the front door of the house were signs welcoming not only us to the Nettle Fest, but two others; my arrival coincided with the arrival of David Sebastian's grandparents who had just come in on the train from their home in Toronto, and it was them that I met next as I stepped through the doorway. Wendy's father Larry had recently become a national celebrity after he had appeared in a famous TV ad for Buckley's cough syrup, where he read a letter to the Buckley's company on camera in a somewhat confused state. His demeanor in the ad became so popular that it was actually parodied by Canadian comedian Shaun Majumder in the Canadian news parody show This Hour Has 22 Minutes (a show similar to America's The Daily Show). I was excited to meet him since my friends and I at home were big believers in Buckley's -- it tastes awful, and it works.

The King household was very homey not just because of its rustic charm and cozy atmosphere, but mainly from its people. David Sebastian's parents and grandparents were a more-than-hospitable bunch; Charles, David Sebastian's doctor father, greeted me and led me to a bathroom where I could have a shower after a day on the slopes. While he went to the kitchen to prepare some nettle-related food, Wendy briefed me on the "Nettle Fest," first by giving me a printout of a web page explaining what exactly the stinging nettle was:

Stinging Nettles are perennials that belong in the nettle family Urticaceae and have opposite leaves. They are common in coastal areas of BC, Washington and Oregon and inland in south and central BC. They grow best in moist forests and prefer shady disturbed areas where they grow in patches...

When a human brushes by the plant and it touches their skin, the tiny hollow hairs break off and release an acid which irritates the skin and causes white itchy spots to appear. The degree and length of itchiness depends on the individual’s skin sensitivity. Some people suffer for as long as 24 hours, while others only have the sensation for an hour or so.

There was a bowl of stinging nettles on the table (picture below) for me to see, but not touch, and I was assured that they lost their poison ivy-like properties when cooked, and that they were actually rich in nutrients when consumed.

"[I called it the Noxious Nettle Fest,]" Wendy told her son. "[I couldn't think of another 'N' word.]"

"[How about 'nifty?']" I suggested.

"[Yeah, you're always saying 'nifty.']" David Sebastian added.

"[The Nifty Nettle Fest!]" Wendy said. She liked it.

"[You see where the banter in the Kitsilano house comes from?]" David said to me. He mentioned that his mother had been dying to have a nettle festival for quite some time, but never really had the excuse to throw it until the celebratory arrival of guests that night. In fact, streamed across the dining/living room was a line of hanging pendants, each one representing a celebration at the house, and I was asked to autograph the one put up in celebration of "The Global Trip 2004, Day 499." It was a family party after all, complete with a lovely dinner of nettle pastry puffs and nettle tempura, both yummy and lacking of anything poisonous or stinging. The epitome of the dinner party was when they brought out a cake that they had gotten for me and my arrival, a sweet cake with coconut and bananas and lots of icing, complete with a flag of the globe sticking out on top and a little wind-up walking globe toy.

"That's you!" Gwen, David Sebastian's grandmother, said.

"Aw, it's like a surprise party!" I said. Their welcoming couldn't have been warmer, and I felt like I was at a second home.

"Well, thank you for befriending our son," Wendy said.

"Mom," David Sebastian said embarrassingly.

"I'm just saying."

I entertained the group with my insights on traveling the world until it was time to go; David Sebastian had to get back to school to get cracking on a report he had due. His mom drove us back to Kitsilano, and thus ended the First Annual Crescent Beach Nettle Fest.

"You should come and visit again and when you go around the world the other way," Wendy told me when she dropped us off.

"I'll be sure to be back for the second annual Nettle Fest," I said.

David Sebastian and I settled back in the house that night with the rest of the gang, quite content of the events of the day. "[See, all that: family, a home-cooked meal... you can't get that on-line,]" Dave Sebastian said to me. "['Home is on the internet,' ha!]"

Touché. I suppose when you can't get to your friends and family on-line, home is definitely where the nettles are.

Old School?

DAY 500: "Staying here is sort of like the movie Old School for me," I told Aviv at the three bedroom Kitsilano apartment of University of British Columbia (UBC) undergrads he shared with David Sebastian and Adam. I was of course referring to the 2003 Todd Phillips contemporary comedy classic film starring Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as thirty-somethings who, in their Thirties Mid-Life Crisis, decide to open a community-wide fraternity so that they might re-live their wild college days of beer funnel parties and streaking nude across the quad and to the gymnasium.

"You should really see the UBC campus," David Sebastian suggested to me as a thing to do that day. He had raved about the beauty of his university's campus, with its gardens, golf course, and Museum of Anthropology. I really didn't have anything planned that day, so I decided to pay a visit -- besides, being on campus increased my chances of seeing college girls gone wild.

It was midterms week and everyone in the house had left me to get to class or a study session, so it was just me catching the eight-minute ride on the No. 17 UBC-bound bus around noon. It was sort of weird for me to be on a university campus again (picture above), as most university things look similar, and I was instantly transported to memories of lecture halls, bulletin boards, student union centers, textbook bookstores, cheap eateries of Chinese food and pizza, physics buildings, and libraries old and new. With my young appearance I blended right in, unlike some of the other obvious-looking non-students passing out flyers for Religious Leaders Day.

"[Yeah, I'll take one, if you give me directions,]" I said. I was looking for the Woodward Library to meet up with David Sebastian for a bit.

The guy tried to pretend he was legitimately on campus instead of an outside loiterer, looking at the flyer himself to see if the directions for Woodward were on there -- completely ignorant of the fact that the lecture he was promoting was in some other building. "Uh... Hmmm... I'm sure any student around here could tell you where it is."

"Oh, like this one?" I pulled over a random college girl walking by (not gone wild) and asked her. She said it was around the corner and down the promenade and so I went off, leaving her there trapped in a pitch about Religious Leaders Day with that stranger.

WOODWARD LIBRARY AND ITS COMMON HANGOUT AREA was a familiar scene, with groups of students gathered around with chips, soda, books, and way more laptop computers than back in my college days in the mid 1990s. The ethnic make-up of UBC included many Indians and even more Asians -- so many that there was even an Asian temple-influenced Asian Center building on campus.

It wasn't hard for me to find David Sebastian (a.k.a. "The Dave") with his signature curly hair, sitting at a table across from Brynn, his "girlfriend" (at least for the hour) for their "study date." The Dave introduced me to her but told me that I had actually met her at the party before -- I had no memory of it, much like I have no memory after many drunken nights.

They were pretty busy studying biology or something, so I left them to it to wander the campus. I managed to find the garden and the museum, but mostly I found many students totally focused on something called "studying."

Where are the wet t-shirt contests? The KY wrestling matches? The hazed fraternity pledges with cinder blocks tied to ropes securely attached to their penises?

Everyone was in study mode for midterms and it wasn't the stereotypical college scene at all. Seriously, not a kidnapped mascot pig of the rival school or a crusty old dean in sight. But that's not to say that studying was all serious; that night when David Sebastian was back at the house in his room trying to get a lab report done, Aviv walked in to exchange in their usual banter.

"Out," David Sebastian asked.

"Okay, don't let me disturb you," Aviv said -- before suddenly humming and dancing the Mexican Hat Dance.

WANDERING AIMLESSLY THAT CHILLY AFTERNOON, I decided to call up Mayra, the blonde Brazilian girl I had met at The Blarney Stone over the weekend to see if she wanted to meet up. I knew she was in class at her English school, so I was planning to leave the following Old School/Will Ferrell-esque message:

Hi Mayra, this is Erik Trinidad... I met you at The Blarney Stone last weekend... Anyway, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get some frozen yogurt, or perhaps a whole meal of food, if that would be agreeable...

However, she didn't have a voicemail system set-up, and every call I gave her (even later that night) ended up in a dead end. And so, I just sort of got caught in the whole studying vibe of UBC and spent most of the afternoon posing as a student even more but just parking myself at a desk in the Koerner Library with my iBook (and iClamp) to catch up on Blog duties since I was so behind. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, it wasn't much like being in the movie Old School after all -- or was it?

Across the street from the edge of the UBC campus was Wreck Beach, a beach frequented by students and Kitsilano hippie-types, which I stumbled upon that afternoon in my wanderings. It was too cold for anyone to be around for beach activities, but I went anyway to check it out. A sign designated the beginning of the short hiking trail that linked the main road with the shore below, through the trees of a Pacific northwest fores-- hold on, wait a minute... did that sign just say what I think it said?

It sure does.

WOOOOOOOO!!! WE'RE GOING STREAKING!! WOOOOO!! YEAH!! C'MON EVERYBODY, WOOOOOOOOOO!!!

In all honesty, I hadn't actually gone streaking in my former college days at all, but I guess when you're at the nude beach by a college campus, it's never too late to learn.

Preparing For Re-Entry

DAY 501: "[I have an early class tomorrow, so I probably won't have a chance to say goodbye,]" Aviv told me the night before I crashed in the living room couch (instead of David Sebastian's room where he'd be up all night writing a lab report).

"[Just wake me up, so I can say goodbye,]" I told him.

That morning, he slipped away without waking me, leaving a note instead, which I replied to underneath. It was a hard copy goodbye, for I would be out of the house and out of their lives (at least for the time being) before the day was over.

IF YOU'RE READING THIS BLOG as a guide for your own RTW planning ideas, may I suggest you do what I did: instead of going back straight to your home from a totally foreign place, spend some time in a similar country for a week to ease in the transition between your worldly travels and life back at home. As an American, this place for me was Canada, with its similar history, language, and sense of humor -- all the fun of the States, just with funnier looking money.

Helping me ease my transition to life back home was a fellow traveler who had already gone through the re-entry experience: Denise, who I had met and traveled with in Egypt. Originally from Vancouver Island, she had long returned from her own worldly travels and a three-year stint teaching English in Korea with her friend Angie. She was now going for her masters at UBC, with its campus conveniently located for both of us to meet up there.

"Do you still remember what I look like?" said the blonde with the familiar face as she met me right on time at the Pizza Pie R² place in the student union center.

"Hey! How's it going?"

Denise was her same old self, at least from what I remembered from her, just in warmer clothes and enrolled in school. "It's sort of like high school," she told me as we walked down a hall to drop her books off at her high school-esque locker. She had started her masters program just two weeks after her return to Canada from Korea; for her, re-entry was a fast and productive one, getting ready for school, and moving off The Island to her aunt and uncle's in central Vancouver closer to UBC.

"[So how is it being back?]" I asked. She was to be my authority on dealing with Re-Entry Syndrome.

"[Well, it wasn't that bad because I prepared myself for it,]" she told me. She told me that at a certain point in their trip, they got sick of traveling and actually looked forward to being home.

"[How's it being back in school?]" I asked her.

"It's good because I had something to do." For her "re-entry" was a starting over that blended new friends and new experiences with old friends and old experiences. She told me it was harder to cut class in the masters program because she'd always sign in and leave -- but totally noticed since she was the one tall white girl amidst a predominantly short Asian class -- and it counted against her since attendance counted for something.

Being at a new home was also a tricky part for her; her uncle was quite a prankster and for some reason thought it would be funny to dump cardboard shreds all over her bed one day, just as a goof -- one act of Canadian humor I don't really get. To get back at him, she secretly replaced his credit cards with cardboard fakes, which resulted in a quite embarrassing scene when he tried to pay for something at the store. "'Uh, my niece is playing a joke on me.'""

AS SOMEONE BORN AND RAISED IN THE VANCOUVER AREA, Denise didn't really know of the touristy places to take me, so she was sort of a tourist in her own town as she brought me around -- but I guess that's what transition is, taking old and new experiences and blending them into one, like being a tourist in your hometown. We started off at Granville Island (which David Sebastian called "Tourist Central" once) where she hadn't been to since she was seven, to grab a coffee at preferably a Starbucks so she could use her Starbucks debit gift card and treat us.

"There has to be a Starbucks around here somewhere."

"Let's ask for directions at the coffee shop," I suggested. It was an organic coffee shop that looked very anti-Starbucks.

"We can't ask the coffee shop where the Starbucks is!"

I smirked. "Sure we can." I walked over and went inside, but they seemed really busy. Denise asked a patron sitting outside at a table and learned it was just down the street.

"ERIK!" called a voice from another table. It was a familiar face from the Spring Fling cocktail party, and I felt that in my week-long transitional stay in Vancouver I had become sort of a local -- although I was drawing a blank on her name.

"Hi... uh... I'm sorry but I don't remember your name."

"Mars."

Right. She was the half French/half Thai girl from the party I was dancing with at some point; Denise thought it was funny that she recognized her too, simply by reading the Blog. The Blog really puts people in the public eye, whether they like it or not.

Denise and I left Mars and eventually found the Starbucks and picked up some coffee to sip on while walking around the sites of Granville Island -- Granville Market, the Emily Carr Gallery, and the marina that overlooked the Burrard Bridge (picture above). She filled me in on the events since our departed ways in Dahab; Greg the Aussie guy in our group was apparently still there after all that time, integrated into the PADI Red Sea diving scene.

"Are we going to get shitted on?" I wondered aloud. As pleasant as it was to sit out on a bench and chat, seagulls started flying over in an aggressive way. We packed up and left.

"Can we go to Chinatown?" I requested. I had heard it was something to see.

"Okay."

DENISE DROVE US ACROSS VANCOUVER while continuing to play "guide." "There's our Space Needle," she pointed out. It was a revolving restaurant. "This must be Chinatown because of the red posts," she said. We parked the car and walked around the spacious red posted neighborhood to find the main Chinese gate, continuing to chat it up. She filled me on the Re-Entry Experience of being back home after such a long time -- for her, over three years with her teaching stint in Korea -- and she informed me that it was more or less the same, except you'd be behind on certain minor things.

"'You still listen to Zed [the radio station]?'" Denise quoted from one of her Vancouver friends. "'We don't listen to Zed anymore, we listen to The Beat.' And then they say, 'Oh, Denise, you're so cute.' Cute? I'm not cute, I've just been in Korea for the past three and a half years."

"Yeah, I was telling my friend whose wife is a big Tim McGraw fan about that Tim McGraw/Nelly song and he's like 'Dude, that's old.'"

She told me that there were perks to Re-Entry, like not having to worry about keeping your stuff out in a room or worrying about your bag. One great perk she told me of was the simple putting on old clothes again for the "first" time.

"Did that guy just steal a TV?" I interrupted as we walked on the border street between Chinatown and the seedy drug haven of Gastown. Walking by us was a rather scummy-looking guy rushing away with his arms wrapped around a small television set.

"I was just thinking that."

With that said, it was the end of our Vancouver tour. We ended our "date" off at a pastry shop with the thickest cakes I've ever seen before she dropped me off back at the house in Kitsilano. "Keep in touch!" I said, hugging her goodbye.

"Have fun at your party!" she said. She also reminded me to be on lookout for potential stalkers, a part of Re-Entry that she didn't have to worry about, not having a popular Blog and all.

"SO HOW WAS YOUR 'DATE?'" David Sebastian asked me back at the house after I had packed my bags to leave for the airport that night. Aviv was unexpectedly around too, so our note-passing that morning wasn't necessary.

"Great. We went around. Granville Island... Chinatown... And she's my 'girlfriend.'"

They smiled. "Yes! You're learning!" In my final hour at the house, I had finally remembered to use the on-going joke that any girl you meet up with for any reason is automatically your "girlfriend." With that said, it was a happy final goodbye for the guys and me. We hugged our manly college guy hugs and parted ways.

I was picked up by Vancouverite Anthony in his fancy Mercedes. I supposed it was poetic to end my transitional stay in Vancouver with the one person I started it with. Anthony was my final transitional person between foreign lands and the homefront, and we wrapped up final conversations when I took him out for sushi that night. Afterwards, he dropped me off at the airport so that I could catch the red-eye flight, homebound. Just like Denise, I was mentally prepared for it, what with my one-week transitional stay in Vancouver and all, and I was fully prepared to put on my old clothes for the "first" time again and hear new songs on the radio that everyone else has heard before.

Adventures In Homeland Security / Homestretch, U.S.A.

DAY 502 (Part 1; 501 days since last U.S.A. entry): Although the category for this Blog entry is "U.S.A.", our story begins in Toronto, Canada, which is okay I guess, considering it was there that I had to clear U.S. Immigration and Customs formalities before my "domestic" connecting flight into the States. As much as Canadians hate to hear it, Toronto is pretty much an American city anyway (just with funny accents); in fact, it's the ranked the second busiest American port of entry (after Miami) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

I had just about an hour to switch terminals, get my bags, and clear U.S. entry formalities, a process I had long-dreaded -- as a matter of fact, I intentionally went from Indonesia to Singapore to Canada first, to decrease my chances of being a suspected terrorist flying directly from Muslim Jakarta with a beat-up U.S. passport that had already been suspected of being fake in Argentina and Egypt. As everyone knows, airport security has been tight ever since Nine Eleven, and even the night before when I boarded the Vancouver-to-Toronto flight, I was detained at the security check.

"He has a clamp in his bag," one Canadian security officer said to another.

"Okay, show me the clamp," I was instructed, at the table next to the metal detector gate where my electronics were soon swabbed for explosive material. I did as I was told and revealed the harmless "iClamp" that squeezed the side of my iBook together so the screen wouldn't dim due to a faulty logic board.

"You can't bring this. It's a tool," the officer said.

"But I need it to use my computer," I argued. "Here, I'll show you."

He wouldn't let me demonstrate. "You have to send it or check it in."

"Oh, but I was going to work on my computer on the plane."

The other officer came over. "You can check it in with another bag. Or you can put it in storage."

"Can I?"

"Yeah, you can store it. When are you coming back?"

"I'm not. I'm an American going back home."

"It's a dollar a day here."

"Huh? Oh, I thought you meant storage on the plane."

"No."

What the hell is going on? I thought. National security is threatened by a 50-cent clamp I bought in India? There aren't any sharp edges! It's not like I have a bomb; it's not like I want to blow up the plane. Wait, can I even say "bomb" at an airport? Sure I can, I'm just thinking this in italics. Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb ba bomb! Wait, are they going to arrest me now?

All the commotion was holding up the line and the supervisor came over to see what the problem was. "[What's the problem here?]"

"He has this."

"Just take it on board," the supervisor said under her breath. "But don't bring it out on the plane."

"Okay."

"KEEPING AMERICA'S DOORS OPEN AND OUR NATION SECURE," was the slogan for the US-VISIT program on a sign posted by the U.S. immigration counters in Toronto. I got on line with my bags by my feet, passport and boarding pass in hand, and waited behind the line until it was my turn. Also with me was my immigration form with very limited space on "Countries visited." I just put the last four.

"How long have you been away?" the officer asked.

"Sixteen months. Well, sixteen and a half."

"What have you been doing?"

"Just backpacking around... and I'm finally home. Well, Canada."

He was a good-natured fellow and went through standard procedure of swiping my passport through the reader and pushing a bunch of buttons on a computer. Looks like it's gonna be easier than I thought. Being American with an American passport does have its advantages sometimes. Alright, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S-- wait a minute, why's he putting my passport in a folder?

"Take this and go through the door on the right."

D'oh!

The U.S. interrogation office was a sterile and boring looking place -- think hospital meets DMV without the long lines -- and it was there I was led to a counter manned by one Officer Mektar (sp?) who continued to question me on my supposed return to the States.

"How long have you been away?" he asked.

"Sixteen and a half months."

"Doing what?"

"Just backpacking around."

"Where did you go?"

"[Actually, more than what's written there; there was no room, so I just put the last four. Hmmm... Okay, the short version: four months in South America, four months in Africa, a month in Europe, then I took the train from Moscow to Beijing, then China for a month, Japan, then Nepal, India, Thailand, and sort around southeast Asia for a while.]"

"Must be nice."

"Uh, yeah."

"What company do you work for?"

"Uh, I was laid off," I told him. The officer started getting a suspicious look in his eye.

"Then what company were you working for?"

"This company called ACTV."

"And what did that stand for?"

"Uh, it didn't stand for anything." Shady, but the truth.

"And how old are you?"

"Thirty. Yeah, I know, I look young."

"And I assume you're not married?"

"No."

"And what are you going to do when get back?"

"Uh, look for work." Good answer, good answer.

Another federal employee came over looking quite beat from being overworked with security issues. She came over to see if she could help out. "Smile, it's Friday," I told her to brighten up their day and soften my character.

"Uh, we work weekends. It could be Tuesday for us."

Okay then. Just then, there was another guy beside me, waiting his turn.

"You take that one, this one will be a while," Officer Mektar told the other.

A while? I thought. "How long is this going to take?"

"[Just a moment. The system keeps shutting me out.]"

"Uh, my flight's at 7:15." (It was 6:55.)

Officer Mektar looked at his watch and hesitated a bit before reluctantly saying, "You'll make it." The system kicked in and I was registered -- probably flagged as a person to keep an eye on in the country -- and then was led for a quick X-ray of my bags. "Okay, you're free to go."

I rushed over to the bag check-in and then to find my gate, but still had to go through the carry-on security. They stopped me, not for my the iClamp this time (since I wisely stored it back in my big bag), but to check out my computer and such, which I showed them in haste. "Am I gonna make my flight?"

"We have nothing to do with that."

I packed up and ran down the hall before realizing it was the wrong one. It didn't matter because when I finally found my gate, it was already too late.

"Your plane just left," said the woman at the gate counter. "Where were you? We were waiting for you." They had paged me on the P.A. system, but I don't think there were any speakers in the U.S. interrogation room.

"I was delayed by the U.S. government."

She saw my passport. "But you're American."

"I know!"

"Must be the hat," her co-worker said. I was wearing my wool-knit hat from Peru.

"You have to take the next flight."

"When is that?"

"Boarding at 10:45."

"And arrives...?"

"One o'clock."

"What about my bag?"

"[If you didn't make that flight, they wouldn't have been able to fly with it -- it's the law -- so don't worry, it's still here. If you're on the next flight, it will be re-routed on that one.]"

"Okay."

And so, the plans I had that morning back in the States were shot since I had no choice but to spend most of the morning waiting around in Toronto (picture above), stranded at the airport like in The Terminal, just not as long. I spent the time drinking coffee to keep myself awake from the lack of good sleep on the red-eye the night before, until it was time to board my final flight of The Global Trip 2004, to my next, but not final, destination. Unfortunately, as I found out later, my bag did not make that same flight in the connection delay fiasco, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I guess it was sort of ironic; after sixteen months around the world, the first and only time my baggage was ever lost was at the very end, back in America.

* * * * *

Homestretch, U.S.A.

DAY 502 (Part 2): My initial plan for my sixteen-month trip around the world was to end off with a month doing outdoorsy stuff in New Zealand, followed by a classic American road trip from California back to New York. However, due to time and money constraints (mostly money), I replaced a month in New Zealand with a week in Vancouver, B.C., and a road trip across America with a road trip across the state of New Jersey. (Yes, I realize this is like trying to substitute filet mignon with the salisbury steak in a T.V. dinner, but hey.)

Actually a road trip across New Jersey is sort of like crash course in Americana; in just three hours, you drive through the woodsy Pine Barrens of the south, up passed the shore towns of the Atlantic, academic and scenic Princeton, the malls and residential neighborhoods of American suburbia, until you gradually get up to the more factory-filled area near New York City, an area secretly still crawling with the gangsters that The Sopranos were based on. Each exit on the New Jersey Turnpike has its own sort of identity (which inspired me to open an on-line t-shirt store), for New Jersey is a microcosm of American diversity (even on the political spectrum), a melting pot of opportunity and numerous locations of Staples and The Home Depot. In fact, there's a line in the classic Simon & Garfunkel song, "America" that goes, "...the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all come to look for America."

My road trip across the Garden State started not in New Jersey, but in Pennsylvania, more specifically the city of Philadelphia. As the birthplace of the nation, Philadelphia was the perfect place to make my re-entry into the United States of America after over sixteen months abroad, so that I may illuminate (or is it bore?) my readers with historical trivia one last time.

FOUNDED BY QUAKERS IN 1681, PHILADELPHIA became the first capital of the United States when there were just thirteen of them, in 1790. It is a city steeped in American history, for it was in Philadelphia that the forefathers of the nation did a bunch of colonial things wearing ponytails, knee-high stockings, and bi-focal glasses (after ol' Ben Franklin invented them in 1760, one of his better ideas -- I mean, c'mon, the guy wanted the turkey to be the national bird). Philadelphia is where the phrase "I just need your John Hancock here, please" originated when some guy named, not surprisingly, John Hancock first signed the Declaration of Independence against the British in 1776. After that, Philadelphia was on a roll, spawning the first American hospital, medical college, bank, paper mill, zoo, and U.S. Mint.

Speaking of being on a roll, Philadelphia is also responsible for giving us and the rest of the international culinary community the Philadelphia Cheesesteak Sandwich, a tasty artery-clogging slice of Americana I had not seen prepared properly since I left the country -- hence, another reason why I chose Philadelphia to make my U.S. entrance. Right from the airport, I went straight away to Pat's Kings of Steaks, the originators of the famous steak sandwich in south Philadelphia, to welcome my stomach back home. Thankfully, I still remembered how to order without being sneered at, and filled my empty coffee-lined tummy with greasy cheese and beef goodness -- so good I had another one right after.

WILLIAM PENN, ONE OF THE FOUNDING QUAKERS of Philadelphia, coined the nickname "The City of Brotherly Love" for he "envisioned the area as a place where anyone of any color or background could live together in peace and harmony" -- most likely completely ignoring the fact that many of the founding forefathers owned African slaves. In any case, it was in The City of Brotherly Love that I was reunited with my own brother, markyt (TGBTGBTB), who I had not seen in the flesh since his appearance on "The Trinidad Show" in Brazil a whole year before. Mark had been waiting for me, even after my delayed flight, so that for the second-to-the-last numbered Blog entry, he could show me around "his Philadelphia."

Of course, with the morning wasted in Toronto, we sort of rushed through everything that afternoon, mostly taking quick pictures of touristy and non-touristy spots so that you Blogreaders could whiz through the city vicariously: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's old hood of South Philadelphia, funky South Street, City Hall (featured in the film Twelve Monkeys, St. Augustine's Church (featured in the film The Sixth Sense), and some familiar locations where Sylvester Stallone once stood during the filming of Rocky. Mark was also quick to point out the McDonald's where the late Wu Tang Clan rap star O.D.B. ran away from the police when he was breaking parole.

But it wasn't all locations of movies and rap stars; Mark zipped me through the finer side of Philly, first to the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, site of the reception of his upcoming wedding reception (apparently he got engaged since I've been away), and of course, the historical core: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, where the sounds of freedom started ringing way before the U.S. started exporting it to other countries by use of Starbucks, McDonald's, and the United States Army.

IF TIME HAD ALOTTED, the drive across New Jersey (picture above) would have included a stop at different exits on the New Jersey Turnpike to show off the diversity of the American microcosm, including a stop at the self-proclaimed "America's Playground," Atlantic City, the former dumpy shore town completely transformed by Donald Trump. But it didn't take "The Donald" to transform the rest of New Jersey; the rest of New Jersey already shined with its own born and/or bred glitterati, spanning the different exits:

EXIT 2: Bruce Willis
EXIT 3: Linda Fiorentino
EXIT 7A: Danny DeVito, Kirsten Dunst, Jack Nicholson
EXIT 8: Bruce Springsteen
EXIT 11: David Copperfield, Jon Bon Jovi, Kevin Smith, "Count" Basie
EXIT 14: Meryl Streep
EXIT 15W: Jerry Lewis, Paul Simon, Kevin Spacey, Ray Liotta, Tom Cruise, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill
EXIT 16E: Frank Sinatra
EXIT 16W: Joe Piscapo, "Buzz" Aldrin
EXIT 18W: Tara Reid, John Travolta

Perhaps the most famous icon of New Jersey was from Exit 14B, a celebrity that didn't even do much but stand there. I am of course referring to Lady Liberty, a.k.a. the Statue of Liberty, which despite popular belief, is actually in New Jersey waters, not New York's, as settled by a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The New Yorkers across the Hudson River can claim some sort of bragging rights though, for Lady Liberty faces New York City; New Jersey just gets to see her ass. (Is that where the smog comes from?)

A quick stop at Liberty State Park at Exit 14B was significant for me, not just because the Statue of Liberty served as a symbol welcoming foreigners arriving in America, but also because it was the nostalgic park where I used to frequent and ride my bike after work when I had an apartment nearby. (Movie buffs might also be interested to know that I used to ride my bike on the road in the park where Clemenza recites the famous line, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli," in The Godfather.) My brother and I ran out to see the symbol of arriving in America (even if it was of her backside) for a quick picture, but then rushed back into the car because it was so damn cold. (I hadn't been that cold since trekking the Snows of Kilimanjaro.) Before hopping back into the car, I managed to take the most patriotic (or is it the cheesiest?) photo of my return back to the good ol' U.S. of A.

EXIT 18W WAS WHERE WE MADE OUR LAST STOP of the day, at the house we grew up, my parents' in Teaneck. It was there that I had moved back into the few months before I left for this crazy trip in 2003 to save some more money; it was where I would crash for a few months after my return in 2005 until I got back on my feet financially for a place of my own (or left the country again, whichever came first).

The front door opened and my parents greeted me with kisses and hugs, along with other relatives from the Trinidad and Rivera sides of the family that had relocated to the area. My little American-born cousins of "Rivera Clan West" were excited to see me -- they even made me a welcome back banner -- and were excited to stick pin flags into the world map I had on the wall. (We ran out of pins before we could finish off every place I had been.)

IT'S A FUNNY THING ABOUT HAVING MY TRAVELS on a public, daily Blog; during the big welcome family dinner that night, there really wasn't much to say. Everyone knew what I was up to for the past sixteen months, perhaps in greater detail than if I was just living in the New York area without a Blog, and there was no need to ask me "How was it?"; I had spent a good 2-3 hours a day on the road writing, telling everyone how I was anyway. With that said, family life pretty much returned to normal in an hour. My cousins just played Grand Theft Auto on my PS2; my friend Terence (a.k.a. wheat) stopped by and we simply just watched a DVD with not much conversation.

Weird. I thought I was gonna have some sort of reverse culture shock or Re-Entry Syndrome as I saw things again for the "first" time, but surprisingly it was almost as if the past sixteen and a half months never happened; in fact, my wall calendar was still on October 2003. Even mentally in my mind, I wasn't phased or changed. The only reason for it that I could come up with was that perhaps I had just become so oversaturated with so many experiences around the world that it was all just clumped into one pile of mush in my brain, too complicated to be sorted or remembered.

Thank God I kept a Blog.

And so, I had made it full circle after a hectic day -- after a hectic sixteen and a half months -- with not much hoopla at all. I guess that was okay for the time being, because the real ending, the real full circle, would come on Day 503: The Return To New York -- Manhattan was just a hop, skip, and a train ride away under the river...

The Return To New York

DAY 503: New York, New York. The city so nice, they named it twice. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere -- unless, of course you were in my situation and it's vice versa.

New York City has been the stage of many significant milestones in my life. It was in NYC that I was born in 1974 and raised in my early childhood years. It was there that my college film, The Man In The Refrigerator, was featured in an international film and video festival. It was there that, during the day of the 1998 World Series Championship ticket tape parade, I bought the NY Yankees baseball cap that went around the world with me -- and helped saved my life in Brazil. It was there that I lived the rise and fall of the internet bubble, and where I was on that fateful Nine Eleven day (as well as on Nine Fifteen). Yet again, New York City would be the stage for another big milestone in my life, the final day of The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World.

As the self-proclaimed "Capital of the World", with Times Square, the self-proclaimed "Crossroads of the World" (picture above), New York City couldn't have been a more fitting place to start and end a sixteen month global trip, covering over 95,000 miles across thirty-seven countries in South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Home of the United Nations' World Headquarters and final contender in the 2012 Olympic Games, New York is truly a international city, a melting pot of people and their respective cuisines from just about every country on the globe, who come to work, play, and occasionally give each other the finger when a cab cuts them off. Despite that, I still believe it is the greatest city in the world -- even after everything that I've seen -- a place I like to call home.

THE RETURN TO NEW YORK started in my old Harsimus Cove neighborhood in Jersey City, NJ (home of the Statue of Liberty) just a five-minute train ride under the Hudson River, where apartment prices were significantly cheaper than in Manhattan. Since I had abandoned my bachelor pad in 2003, the once working class riverfront neighborhood of brownstones and bodegas had gone through leaps in gentrification (just like most of the surrounding neighborhoods of Manhattan). Once a community of mostly Latino and Filipino immigrants, I had moved in when it was "up and coming" and being taken over by artsy and bohemian-types. Since my departure, the neighborhood went from "up and coming" to "came;" from the looks of things, it was now going the yuppie route as many trendy neighborhoods go, with even more metrosexual bars and even a Chili's.

Some things didn't change though; my good friend since childhood Maurice (a.k.a. Blogreader Moelicious) still lived across the street from my former apartment and it was with him that I returned to New York with. It was a quick trip on the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train into downtown Manhattan, but in that short period of time I was already bumping into an old acquaintance, Henry, an art director at St. Martin's Press (parent company of the Let's Go guidebooks).

"Hey, are you back?" he asked.

"[Yeah. I got back last night. This is it, my ride back into New York.]"

We rode to the World Trade Center stop that had been shut down after Nine Eleven and re-opened since I'd been gone. Surprisingly, the train brought us directly into the pit of Ground Zero, where construction of the new replacement building, the Freedom Tower, began on the Fourth of July 2004. I've read that upon completion, it will be the tallest building in the world (of course) and that the top third of the building won't be occupied, but contain wind turbines to capture high winds and generate power for the office and retail space below.

I WAS STILL IN "TOURIST" MODE, even at the end of my global trip, which was okay, because New York was a tourist destination in itself anyway; I had the advantage of already knowing my way around. With a tourist NYC Subway Fun Pass (unlimited subway travel for a day for $7), Maurice and I started the afternoon casually going wandering the chilly New York downtown sites: City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the outskirts of Chinatown. For my welcome back meal, we hightailed it up to Greenwich Village for Two Boots Pizza on Bleecker, which still, in my opinion, had the best pizza in Manhattan. (It's cajun pizza from the two boot-shaped places of Italy and Louisiana.)

We met up with Blogreader Michelle (who, to continue her on-going gag, was now Michelle in NYC), who had flown in from Michigan with her friend and fellow Blogreader Ali. While Ali spent time with her folks, Michelle came with us to continue our touristy hometown tour. I was excited to finally meet her in person because she too had gone around the world while writing a Blog, and had come to similar conclusions about independent travel as I did. Plus, she had already gone through the inevitable series of hackneyed homecoming questions and coached me on how to deal with them. For example, if someone asked me, "How was it?" -- forgetting that I'd already invested a lot of time on the Blog to tell them already, they just had to read it -- I should simply say something to the effect of, "It was okay, could you pass the salt?"

The three of us went from the Empire State Building to Central Park, where the much publicized art exhibit "The Gates" was still on display, a 23-mile-long series of 7,500 orange vinyl banners along all the walking paths of the park. The realized vision of Bulgarian-French couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who had also once draped Berlin's Reichstag in silver fabric), "The Gates" was approved by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg not only to improve his image to the art community, but to generate the estimated $80 million in tourist dollars for its two week run. Coincidentally -- and I'm sure it was someone's intention -- the collection of 16-ft. square orange banners was put up very conveniently around the same time as the orange subway poster campaign promoting the grand opening of The Home Depot on 3rd Avenue.

Nearby was the Central Park Wollman Ice Skating Rink -- correction, the Trump Wollman Ice Skating Rink -- bought out and renovated by Donald Trump since the last time I had been there. With "The Donald's" renovations up, so were the admissions prices, and so the three of us skipped out on it and walked down the trendy scene of Fifth Avenue: The CBS Morning Show window, FAO Schwarz toy store, The Plaza hotel, Trump Tower (and the corner the contestants of The Apprentice sold lemonade), Playboy World HQ, the newly remodeled Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the ultra-trendy stores like Tiffany's, Prada, Fendi, and Gucci. Before walking passed the window of The Today Show and Good Morning America in Times Square, we hung out for a bit to watch (and laugh at) the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, focusing on this one kid who kept on falling down on the ice. I swear we laughed at (and ocassionally cheered on) that kid as he went around and around, down and down and down... and down again.

Michelle went off to meet up with Ali, leaving Maurice and me to grab some burgers at the nostalgic Gramercy Cafe diner that we had gone to on Halloween 2002 when we dressed up as nutsacks for the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. It was about 8:30 when we got there, and I was hoping to leave by nine to get to Slainte, the venue of the hyped up DAY 503 party, to be fashionably late from my 8:00 announced arrival time. However, we hit some bad train luck (some things never change) when we missed an F train to the Lower East Side and had to wait about fifteen minutes for the next one -- that one was only delayed even more, stuck behind a slow E train using the same track.

TEN MINUTES PASSED TEN WAS BEYOND "FASHIONABLY LATE" but it was better than nothing, especially since a whole lot of people were waiting for me in the reserved back section for my arrival. Before I reached the big group in the back I had already bumped into familiar faces who had also come in more-than-fashionably late: the Citigroup from Hong Kong, Meg, Moe, and Aviva, with her sister, Blogreader El Zee, followed by friends and Blogreaders at the bar, Yvette and Udz.

"There are a lot of people waiting for you back there," Yvette told me, happy to see me.

Once I stepped into Slainte's back area, I saw what she was talking about. I was greeted by the applause of perhaps sixty people (more people came later on that night), so many that throughout the night I barely had enough time to spend with one group or individual for a decent amount of time, but I guess that was the only way it was going to be. Whenever I was talking to someone, I'd be pulled over by another, only to be pulled over by another -- I was pretty much bouncing around like a molecule in a hot-air baloon all night. (A hot-air baloon with beer thankfully; most of the night I was double-fisting drinks.) Fortunately for me, I wasn't required to tell anyone "how it was" because with the Blog, I had been telling them almost everyday since I'd been gone. And thankfully Elaine ("she's jealous") volunteered to take photos for me.

The crowd of 503ers included faces new and old, from near and afar. Noelle (Cambodia, later Thailand) had flown in from L.A., Michelle and Ali flew in from Michigan, tjw and Bill (a former stranger who had recognized me in Barcelona) from Ohio, Jack (Spain) and company from Miami. Even Shelle and Deann (who had rescued me in Zambia) drove up from Georgia to be there.

Aside from the Blogreaders from home I already knew about -- wheat (Rio de Janiero), Rozzie, Christy, Alice, to name a few -- there many others that showed up that I've never met before: dogger, Dhaval, Alyson, Alex and simf2p, who came up from Virginia. Unfortunately the 1981ers and Canadian Blogreaders were not represented since Td0t (whom I've never met, but had been commenting even before I left in 2003) was a no-show due to a "snowboarding accident." (He was just one of many people I was looking forward to meeting that, to my chagrin, ended up as no-shows.)

No matter, the night was still a fun one of inebriated merry-making that I don't really remember too good, but that should go without say. I do remember it being sort of like the show This Is Your Life, not just because my parents who gave me birth were amongst the revelers, but because the room was filled with faces from former lifetimes: my friends from my dot com years; Christy from my Prentice Hall days; my college/designer friends (LovePenny's the one in the cap), and, to my surprise, "Mrs. O," a former, but never forgotten favorite high school teacher who had found my Blog at random at one point, remembered me, and followed along with the rest of the world. News of her appearance spawned some other guys from high school I hadn't seen in years, one I had known since the second grade.

Rounding out the surprises was the unexpected appearance of Travelers' Tales author and editor Jen Leo (who I had once worn a bra for in Montreal to promote her book Sand In My Bra), who knew about the party and just so happened to be in New York for a travel expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. It was great to catch up with her -- until I was pulled away again by another person wanting to buy me a drink. Jen Leo happily mingled and bought drinks for my parents, who had already amassed a following of their own for simply being my parents.

As I said before, I don't remember much of the details of the night. I just remember having a good time. But if a picture is a thousand words, then here's a gallery with 324,000 of them ("words" that is).

And so, after sixteen months, covering over 95,000 miles, across thirty-seven countries, The Global Trip came to an end -- on a high note. Another milestone of my life had passed again in New York City -- and it's a shame I was too drunk to remember most of it. Thank God for cameras, huh?

To all the attendees of DAY 503, thanks for coming! Special shoutouts to the photographers who shared their photos for the gallery: Elaine, Alyson, Shelle, markyt, and Moelicious!

Songs Of New York

Probably the most frequently asked question people ask me back home in the greater New York City area is, "So, how's it feel to be back?" Often my response is, "Great! I'm actually excited about being home. It'd be different if I went home to Ohio or something, but this is New York City." (No offense to you readers in Ohio of course.)

AS FRANK SINATRA SINGS IN "NEW YORK, NEW YORK," "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere." There is a lot of truth in that line; New York City represents the acme of American progress in the arts, theater, media, fashion, nightlife, journalism, literature, and business -- nowhere else on the planet does it all come together in one place as it does in The Big Apple. With that said, New York is hardly a boring place to be -- it's no wonder it's a tourist destination for foreigners and other Americans (and seagulls too, picture above). In fact, the few days after DAY 503, I continued to be a in "tourist mode" as Maurice and I brought out-of-towners Shelle and Deann to the touristy sites around town while Shelle was killing time before her New York interview with Doctors Without Borders, in hopes of landing an assignment back in Africa.

Since the girls' departure back south, I began the gradual process of getting my life back, integrating myself back into metropolitan New York society. This of course is just a fancy pretentious way of saying "hanging out and drinking with my friends and trying not to pass out on the train or bus before my stop." This is hardly counter-productive though; from my experience, booze sessions and parties often result in prospects for freelance work, which is a good thing since freelance video, design, and writing work is what I plan on doing for the meantime to get back on my financial feet again. (As much as I can help it, I am trying to prevent myself from "entering The Matrix" of a 9 to 5 job again, for as long as I can.)

With news of my return, everything came to me in a New York Minute. Within days of being back, projects for freelance work and prospects for publishing and video gigs with a number of respected media outlets were suddenly put in my lap -- so many at the same time that it was a bit overwhelming and made my head spin. While this sounds all exciting, the reality of it is that it all translates to a shitload of work that takes away from my "me time" of actually digesting the trip, sleeping, and instant messaging -- and all for leads that may or may not end up into something lucrative. In short, a lot of doors of opportunity are open for me at this point, and it's up to me to pick one and put the time and effort into entering it. So far I've started at the beginning by upgrading to a new PowerBook, thus phasing out (but not completely) my iBook (and iClamp) that went around the world with me.

AS DON HENLEY SINGS IN "NEW YORK MINUTE," "In a New York minute, everything can change." While there is a lot of truth in that line, I still feel like I never left. In fact, I've intentionally left my wall calendar on the last page I left it, on October 2003, because that's what it still feels like. I'm in a time warp. "I know, it's so 2003 of me," I joke to friend and Blogreader Dtella. "[I'm The Guy From 2003.]"

Sure many changes have occurred in the past sixteen and a half months since I'd been gone: this friend broke up with that person, that friend hooked up with this person; my brother got engaged, another friend got pregnant; one couple that was expecting before I left had their child already, while another couple that wasn't expecting conceived and had their second kid. But for the most part, everything back home had remained the same. Most personalities of my friends hadn't changed at all, and I still listen to the same music and wear the same clothes as I did in October 2003. "You haven't changed one bit," friend and Blogreader Koetke commented to me when came to visit wearing my old jacket and Chuck Taylor sneakers.

Sean Keener, president of Bootsnall.com, host providers of this Blog, called me up one day to touch base with me and to see how I'd been dealing with what many travelers refer to as "Re-Entry Syndrome." "[So, you must be a changed person now, after all that you've experienced,]" he said.

"[Actually, no. I don't feel any different. I'm still the same guy,]" I told him. This usually isn't the answer he gets I assume; usually long-term travelers returned home are transformed and enlightened or something. Then again, The Global Trip 2 was never about escapism or "finding myself," it was merely a mid-life break to satisfy a burning wanderlust. I guess if there's any transformation I'd gone through on my trip, it's that my wanderlust is completely tapped out -- at least for the time being. Otherwise, I'm still my same old self, just back in New York -- not that that's a bad thing; I was pretty content with my life before I left. Friend and Blogreader Dunlavey said that I'm probably unchanged because I had a strong personality before I left to begin with.

Whether or not that's true, the fact of the matter is, my brain is oversaturated with experiences, and I barely have time to digest it all with everything I have going on now. In fact, the entire trip was so full of experiences that it's turned into one big blur in my mind. "Unless you remind me of something I'd done, I'd probably forget about it," I told friend and Blogreader Robin one day at lunch. And yet at the same time, I'm ready for more.

"[It's because in your head,] New York is just another stop," Travelers' Tales editor/writer Jen Leo said to me when we went out for dinner the night after DAY 503.

Whether the Metropolitan New York Area is just another stop in a continual lifestyle of a nomad, or merely another stop in the grand trip of Life, I don't know yet. I just know that in the meantime, it will be where I hang my hat for a while to re-gather myself and work towards entering those doors of opportunity that are open for me. Traveling around the world was fun, but for me, now is the time to make something of it. To quote some lyrics from a famous Billy Joel song:

It was so easy living day by day
Out of touch with the rhythm and blues
But now I need a little give and take
The New York Times, The Daily News

It comes down to reality
And it's fine with me 'cause I've let it slide
Don't care if it's Chinatown or on Riverside
I don't have any reasons
I've left them all behind

I'm in a New York state of mind