I Do Not Offer the Old Smooth Prizes, But Offer Rough New Prizes

Climbing is hard.  Often, it downright sucks.  At high elevations, you don't feel like yourself.  Your body doesn't really respond properly to your brain's commands.  This even though you are decently acclimatized from living in Quito at 2,800 m/9,500 ft, and find yourself on mountains regularly.  The weather almost never cooperates, and still in the best of conditions you consistently find yourself too hot and yet freezing cold at the same time.  Comfort does not, as a concept or a reality, exist here.  So, a very natural and very difficult question that I have both heard from others and asked myself many times is 'why on earth do you do this?'

On Imbarura, our idealism would soon be shattered.
Photo courtesy of Jamie Bacigalupo.

First of all, I am not a masochist; there is no pleasure in my pain.  The pleasure comes when the pain ends at the summit.  The summit comes after having cursed for hours, loudly and frequently, about my life choices that brought me to that mountain. Due to low oxygen levels, it's possible that the cursing is only in my head, and all that escapes my mouth is an exaggerated, communicative pant.  This is how I climb.  Based on this very unromantic reality of dragging my ass straight up an unrelenting slope of a mountain for hours on end, I can only conclude that one of the primary reasons I continue to climb has to do with the limitations of memory.  We are simply not capable of remembering pain, be it physical, emotional, or both.  We of course remember THAT something hurt, but we cannot conjure the actual feeling that we experienced.  We can imagine it a bit, but we do not really remember.  And this is a good thing; otherwise, think of what cowering and panicky creatures we would all become after a few decades on this planet.  Anyone who could remember these things too vividly would almost certainly remain always at home as a vegetative, fetal lump, and therefore unlikely to pass on their genetic material.  Because this is not the case for most of us, we are the beneficiaries of our imperfect memory.  We continue to do irrational and probably harmful things, like living in Kazakhstan during the winter, or cooking bacon in our underwear.  Or falling in love.  Or climbing mountains.  

Stopping on the slope to take in a view

But this alone cannot explain my motivation to climb mountains.  What is the appeal?  There are two reasons I have been able to come up with:  the challenge and the discovery of it.  I am not convinced that this is a comprehensive description, but hey, we all live with uncertainty.  Deal with it.  

The obvious physical challenge of climbing is appealing as someone who has always played sports, enjoys the outdoors, and likes to stay in shape.  The psychological element, however, is less understood.  Am I conquering nature by reaching the top of this ancient and savage pile of rocks?  I don't think so.  The knowledge that at any point I can just stop, turn around, and walk home can become seductive.  I think that conquering this impulse to stop when things get hard is a more accurate view.  I also feel it is a way to both create and address a problem that can be solved.  Just get to the top.  In normal life, the solutions to our problems tend to be more complex.  Or perhaps we cannot find a good solution at all.  The mountain becomes a simplified effigy of these problems, and one that can be overcome with the single-minded, straightforward method of putting one foot in front of the other, and throwing all of our energy into the task at hand.  It's a little like making a list of the things we have to do, and including 'eat pancakes' along with more formidable tasks, such as 'find a job.'  Even though it is a small act, there is great satisfaction that comes when you can cross it off of your list and say 'Hey, I'm halfway done!'  Come to think of it, maybe I should stop climbing mountains and eat more pancakes.  

Cloudy days offer their own beauty

These mountains are also about discovery.  You know, in the Christopher Columbus sense; you discover them for yourself (unlike Columbus, please do not try to rename landmarks in your honor, claim the mountain for Spain, or participate in genocide).  There is no replacement for experience.  Reading about places and listening to stories have given me countless hours of enjoyment, but it is just not the same as going somewhere.  If it were, there would be no difference between travel blogs and traveling.  This impulse to discover things for myself has had both positive and negative manifestations, and the jury is still out on its overall utility.  Regardless, I am living in South America because of it, and by extension, climbing mountains because of it.  Pushing myself to my physical and mental limits has resulted in a good amount of self-knowledge as well, when I can reflect honestly on the experience.  There is also something else...something more basic that comes with going out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere.  I've always failed at putting this part into words, but this may be what Walt Whitman was talking about in Song of the Open Road:

Walt Whitman Photo Credit

"The earth never tires,

the earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first,

Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well-envelop'd,

I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell"

I wouldn't say that I am looking for spirituality on mountains.  But when I can pause and look around and see the world below mixed in with the clouds, when I can smell the earth and hear only my own two feet shuffling through the knee-high grass in an otherwise silent world, when I find that my constantly racing mind has for a moment stopped trying to figure everything out, I feel very much at peace.  

The reflections from this blog post were brought to you by Imbabura, a giant, extinct volcano near Otavalo in the very north of Ecuador.  If you are in Quito and want to start exploring the surrounding mountains a bit, I highly recommend booking with Paypahausi.  They provide guides, transportation, and some high-energy snacks (though you will probably want to pack something more to eat) for $45.  The schedule they follow resets every couple of months, and is designed to prepare climbers for Cotopaxi.  However, you can join for as few or as many trips as you want.  It is also a great way to practice Spanish and to meet fellow climbers!  

Photo Credit

Warren Buffett Disproves the Possibility of Time Travel

Wait, how much?
Photo Credit

As many are aware, Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert (through Berkshire Hathaway and Quicken Loans, respectively) offered $1 billion to anyone who could correctly predict the winners of all 63 games of the NCAA men's basketball tournament this year.  Before the first weekend was over, however, no perfect brackets remained in any of the online tournament challenges.  This guy was the last to fall when Dayton defeated Syracuse in the 37th game, and he wasn't even registered for the billion dollar challenge.

On one level, this simply shows what most people already knew: correctly predicting the outcomes of 63 games during a chaotic, emotional tournament with increasing parity among teams is simply borderline impossible.  What does borderline impossible look like as a ratio, you ask?  According to the rules set out by Quicken Loans, it is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1.  I can't even pronounce that.

On a deeper level, however, this challenge and its failure to be accomplished tells us much more about the universe itself.  Namely, that time travel is not possible.  If it were, or if humanity were at any future point able to invent a means to do so, it would have just been used.  Trust me, my reasoning is flawless here.  And yet there has not been a single sighting of Biff, Marty, or Doc running around with a 2015 sports almanac.  Not one.  There are exactly zero new billionaires as a result of this experiment.  We can therefore finally put this nagging question of science and science fiction behind us, and stop over-complicating and often ruining our films with logical fallacies and major plot holes (yes, this is the most important implication of the discovery).  I'm not saying it's never been done well; I just mean that these movies normally aren't well thought-out, and don't make any damn sense (I'm looking at you, Timecop).  But hey, you take the good with the bad.  At least the "Back to the Future" hoverboard is real...

...I digress.  Since it seems we are stuck on this particular plane of existence and must experience linear time together, why not head to G-Spot/Mexicali in La Mariscal to watch the rest of the NCAA tournament unfold in its proper order?  Your brackets may be soaked with tears and the blood of those who mocked you, but the tourney is just getting started!  For expats living in Quito, this is a great place to get your fix of US sports, pub food, and good beer.  Their burgers and tacos are cheap and delicious, and they have some of the best wings in the city (not quite as meaty as Ala Brava, but I think tastier).  They also have micro-brews on tap: Stout, IPA, and Hefeweizen.  You know, for the unlikely contingency that you somehow grow tired of skunky Club Verde and nearly tasteless Pilsener.  Best of all, they are currently streaming all of the March Madness games, and for the rest of the year they have NBA League Pass and NFL Game Pass.  But if the suggestive name and my glowing review aren't enough, you don't have to take my word for it.  Check out their awesomely bad adverstisement that I found on YouTube:

It is on Diego de Almagro in between Jose Calama and Mariscal Foch (one block south of Plaza Foch).  See you there!

Tell Me, Show Me, It Does Not Matter

Come, be honest with me.
We are strangers,
we can tell each other anything.
Tell me, show me, it does not matter.
We are the best parts of husband
and wife right now.
Tomorrow we'll be lost again,
but tonight give me your secrets.
Give me the things you do not speak of,
for fear that you are right;
I will set them aside so you
may look at them fairly,
and then leave.
Let them become a memory;
the faded feel of a cold night;
the rumored pain of someone else.

Getting the Travel Bug

In 2008, my then-girlfriend Lisa and I took a massive trip around the world.  It went something like this: Ireland, Scotland, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, and Fiji.  Discounting a trip to Niagara Falls, I had never before traveled outside of my home country (no offense, Canada; it was lovely, but not so very foreign).  Sixty-some days and 3 continents later, I returned home to Maryland with the experience of a lifetime.  More traveling and a plan to leave the US for a longer period ensued, and by 2010 I was living in Ecuador.  My traveling has become less intense and more localized to South America of late, but a recent three week trip to Hong Kong made me reflect once again on the highs and lows of large-scale international travel.  And, because it is never too early to rehash old material, I would like to share a few of my thoughts on traveling from 2008, as I stand by them now, almost six years later:

Hey Barcelona, see you again soon!

You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and are incredibly confused? You don't know where you are, how you got there, or what time of day it is? This is what happened to me the very first morning that I had returned from my trip around the world. For 2 months of traveling, I was fine; it took coming home and sleeping in my own bed to feel lost. This may have been because I didn't go to sleep until 3 AM and woke up at 7 AM to go to work. Or, it could have been because I was on Fiji time, and therefore the sun had inexplicably risen through the window at what was 11 PM on my body and mind. But I think the real reason was that for the first time all summer, I was able to let my guard down completely and not worry about my surroundings. That is one of the many true comforts of home. As a result, I awoke from the deepest sleep in months...to go directly to work. Oh well.

My sister, Ethel, met us along the way!

Traveling is equal parts motion and waiting. Whether we were waiting at the train station, airport, or hotel lobby, we found plenty of time on our hands, but only when we didn't need it and couldn't use it. Sometimes we were in motion and still waiting, such as waiting for the train to finally reach its destination. The point is that all of this idle time on my hands allowed for a wandering mind, and I would like to share some of these inner ramblings with you now. 

Anonymous train ride to somewhere

Apparently, the peaches in Rome are the best things on earth.

At any given point in time, the entire human race is mere hours away from starvation. Not deadly starvation, mind you, but certainly severe and crippling hanger. Food consumes a traveler's thoughts far more frequently a traveler actually gets to consume food. Because food can be expensive and because it is not always conveniently available, this at times becomes a very limiting nuisance. We were working inside of 5-6 hour windows to explore a city before having to worry about food again. In the course of 7-9 foodless hours, Lisa and I were reduced, on several occasions, to single-minded, zombie-like scavengers who stopped caring about cost, taste, and/or personal hygiene until we had something in our stomachs. Due to budgetary constraints and the ridiculous cost of living in Europe, we tried several tactics to combat our impulses. First, we tried to drink a lot of water to trick our stomachs into feeling full, but that only delayed things for an hour, tops. We then tried to gorge ourselves and eat as much as we possibly could in one sitting whenever we found a cheap restaurant or grocery store. The idea here was that we could store up on energy for a prolonged period of time, but the reality was more urgent and violent trips to the bathroom. Our final strategy before giving in to nature was to try to sleep late, miss breakfast, and eat only 2 meals a day. This was an act of pure desperation and resulted in really big, accidentally expensive lunches, not to mention the lost time. The only realistic thing that we could do was to ransack convenience stores for unsatisfying little snacks and buy spaghetti as often as we could because we got 2 meals out of one box. But even when we found food and were pleasantly full, there was still a little bug in the back of my head telling me, "Okay, you just bought yourself some time, but don't get cocky; in a few hours you'll be nothing more than a walking digestive system again." As a result, Lisa and I spent some of our airport waiting time assembling a detailed grocery list for when we got home. Aside from family and friends, the most exciting part of being back has been the refrigerator.

Datoga men in Tanzania

A self-reinforcing cycle of smiles in Tanzania

Comfort is a seductress. This was especially true in Cairo, Egypt when Lisa and I enjoyed the lovely home of our friends Jill and Terry after our hobo-like existence through Europe's hostels and train stations. After a month of longing for a hot shower and clean bed and often finding neither, we were flung into the unequaled luxury of a huge, fully stocked apartment. All of a sudden, we had our very own bedroom, kitchen, computer, laundry room, and living room complete with a big-screen TV and broad selection of DVDs. Our plans for all the places we wanted to see during our five-day stint in Cairo eroded into the 3 basics of the pyramids, the museum, and the Khan al Khalili marketplace. Even for the wonders of the world, it was a struggle to bring ourselves to leave the air-conditioned bliss for the smothering heat of Cairo's July sun. Every morning we stayed in bed just a little longer than planned. We hit the snooze button three, four, five times before giving up and resetting it for an hour later, letting the warm arms of sleep pull us back down under the covers. Every movie we started was a little too good to turn off or pause before the end, and the afternoons dissolved away. Every evening while eating our dinner delivered to our door by Chili's (don't judge us), we discussed how the next day we would get an early start and actually leave the apartment. We knew we were in Egypt and we knew that it would be a long time if we ever got back there, but after over a month of traveling, our most compelling desire was for a small dose of normalcy while it was for the taking. Just a little bit of comfort. We didn't know when we'd have it again, as we still had a month before returning home. Comfort can certainly be a trap if allowed to consistently decide one's actions, but sometimes it's as necessary as food (see previous paragraph).

Coast of Simonstown, South Africa

Traveling gives the peculiar sense of slipping through parallel universes. People and the basic rules that govern life are the same everywhere you go, but all of the little things change, as if the fabled butterfly had flapped its wings just a little differently. This is compounded by the fact that when traveling nowadays, people don't experience this shift gradually; they get into some kind of moving, mechanical apparatus, lock themselves in for a few hours, and when they get out, things are different. You get into an airplane and five hours later, people have accents (or perhaps more accurately you have one). You board a train and four hours later there's a different face on the money and some ludicrous number like 10,000 next to it that buys you a tube of toothpaste. Another airplane and a few hours and men wear skirts and women shave their heads. But in each place, the people remain essentially the same. A laugh is a laugh. People congregate around food, whether it's a restaurant, a marketplace, or a barbecue. They flirt.  They wheel, deal, and hustle. The differences are mainly in the how, not the what. What people do, say, want, and need, all remain the fundamentally the same.

Sunrise over False Bay, South Africa

Life is all about routine, even while traveling to places you've never been before. Our routine was to settle ourselves into our new surroundings and learn the new ways of saying hello, thank you, and goodbye. I must know that series of salutations in 8 languages now. We would check into our room, lock up our valuables, and consult either our map or the locals to get ourselves a good meal. We would then explore the town, city, or wilderness for what was left of the day and then return to our dwelling at nightfall. We would sleep. We would wake up, repack our bags that we had tried our best to keep intact, and then say goodbye to the place we had just met in whatever dialect we had just learned. Even as we moved on to the excitement of the next place, there was always a pang of sorrow as we took a last look around us, wondering if we would ever make it back. Some places we felt certain we would. Others became that much more beautiful in our last moments because we suspected we wouldn't. Routine. Done and on to the next one. We are back in the US and almost settled into our home routines, so for now we must say hello, thank you, and goodbye. Or in Tanzania, jambo, asanti sana, and kwaheri.

Climbing Rucu Pichincha

At the beginning of the hike

One of my favorite things to do around Quito is to take a day to climb Rucu Pichincha.  The fact that a 4,696 m/15,406 ft mountain lies so close to my home is often too good to pass up.  Within about 20 minutes, I am no longer in a city of over 2 million people, but in the Andes mountains, trying to pretend that I am much further away from civilization than I really am.  To reach the beginning of the trail, just follow these simple steps.  Feel free to modify and/or personalize:

1) Leave your apartment and get into a taxi.  State that you wish to go to the Teleferico, and allow the driver a few moments to declare a price that is at least twice as much as it should be.

2) Depart this taxi, amicably if possible, and repeat this process until one uses the taxi meter, one names a price you know to be reasonable, or you become too fed up with the inane process and say screw the whole thing.

3) Provided you reach the Teleferico (the cable car that takes you to the trail head at about 4,000 m/13,000 ft), you will buy a round trip ticket for $8 and change.  If you are lucky enough to have been in the country for at least 3 years, you can present your expired Censo card that can still get you half price.  If you are really lucky, the photo for your Censo card will have been taken at the beginning of a misguided "Movember" experiment, and you will carry around something that looks like this for several years:

Congratulations!  You have reached the trail head.  Many people come up here for the views, while others march on.  To approach the summit, you follow a ridge line for about 1 - 1.5 hours to reach the rocky outcrop that marks the highest point.  This part of the hike is when you tend to work up a sweat, so I wear a light-weight shirt that I change out of at the end.  The temperature will often drop dramatically as you reach the rock, so be prepared.  From this point until the summit is about 1.5 - 2 hours for most climbers.  The most difficult and disheartening part is crossing the scree field just before the rock scramble to the top.  Trying to climb directly up this loose sand and rock will result in sliding back 1 step for every 2 you take forward.  Side effects of this at high altitude include holistic self-doubt, uncontrolled sobbing, and the total loss of hope.  So don't.  I recommend cutting diagonally and to your right across this part and finding a sturdier route further up to cut back to the left.

This part of the trail is easy to follow when you can see the peak in good weather, but it is not very well marked and the mountain is a bit of a cloud magnet.  If you've never been before, it's a good idea to find someone who knows the way.  On weekends, there are a lot of people on the mountain and you can usually follow the lead of other climbers, provided that they know what they're doing.  All in all, just remember that although this is one of the easier climbs in the country, it is still a massive, towering, extinct volcano and can be dangerous if the weather turns or if you're not paying attention to where you're going.  There is a rock scramble situation at the top that does not require ropes, just caution, but this can be difficult for people with a fear of heights.

A view of Quito from the top of the Teleferico as the sky tries to make up its mind

The ridge line to to the summit 

One of my favorite things about climbing Rucu Pichincha is that although I have done it many times now, I always see it in a new light.  At its most stunning, the hike affords views of the surrounding glacier volcanoes: Cotopaxi, Cayambe, and Antisana.  More commonly, however, it is somewhere in between scary fog and beautiful mist.  Today, I was able to climb during the weather pattern that most closely resembles a multiple personality disorder.

The clouds can roll in quickly and disorient climbers...do not underestimate this mountain!

At the halfway point with Mike, with the grey void in the beyond

When I started out this morning, the mountain was so engulfed with storm clouds that my taxi driver laughed at me, very hard, for a good 45 seconds.  This may not sound like a long time, but really any strong laugh unassisted by others becomes disturbing after less than 15 seconds.  That's science.  But I am glad I persevered, because despite being rained on at the end, it was a very rewarding hike, and the first in a series that I am planning this spring in order to train for the two highest peaks in Ecuador: Chimborazo and Cotopaxi.  Besides, a little rain never hurt any one (says the guy who sat down in a piping hot shower immediately upon returning home).

print ('hello world')

To be an expat is often to be a divided soul.  On the one hand, I love what I am doing, and plan to continue doing it.  I have been teaching in Quito, Ecuador for the last four years, and I have just signed a new two-year contract that will take me to Barcelona, Spain beginning this August.  To explain the excitement I feel about moving to a new city on the Mediterranean or the staggering impact of the people I have met along the way thus far would be way beyond the parameters of this particular blog post.  On the other hand, I also have strong ties to family and friends in Maryland.   I miss them.  I am compiling nieces and nephews that know me mostly as a floating head on a laptop.  The lives of my childhood friends go on, and I become the oddball they think of less and less as these years go by and they see me only a few times each summer.  And because I identify so strongly with both of these aspects, I can be defined by neither.  That truly becomes the lot of the expat: one who does not fit into either of their worlds very neatly anymore.  I suspect that many of us felt like misfits from the start, which is why this strangely appealing lifestyle suits us so well, and why we don't readily leave it.

This blog may be a way to bridge the gap; we will see.  At the very least it will provide a way to better share my experiences with those back home, to dislodge festering thoughts from my mind, and to hopefully give helpful information to any fellow travelers or expats who may want to poke around South America (and soon, Europe).  See you around.