pedestrian saga

It’s early afternoon, a Monday. I haven’t showered in over two days (and haven’t removed the jeans I’m wearing since that last shower). I’m sitting in the observation lounge car of an Amtrak train winding through the Cascades into the southern Willamette Valley, and I’m listening to World Without Tears and Real Gone, idly circling items of interest in Amoeba’s Music We Like booklet…

Bliss!

Oh, I could keep riding the rails, play hooky a little longer…

But I detrained at Albany Station, caught a pair of buses home, to spring the pups from their kennel digs and to get back to work. Let’s see. Uh, where was I?

La chance, c’est comme le Tour de France. On l’attend longtemps et ça passe vite. Quand le moment vient, faut sauter la barrière sans hésiter.

[Luck is like the Tour de France. You wait, and it flashes by you. You have to catch it while you can.]

-Monsieur Dufayel in Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

Once again, I’ve let the Tour de France flash by without catching it. What’s up with wanting to follow the Tour de France anyway? Well, I figure I fancy cyclists (Scott, Tamao and Sue, the Robert-Barry-Montana triple threat, the bike cooks of Los Angeles, the king of New York, the cutters of Bloomington…) and bicycles (the sleek and sexy Bianchi, the adorably tuckable Bike Friday, the robo-dynamic torque coupling Co-Motion, the tough and exotically elegant Bambucicletas…) so maybe I could get into cycling? And the Tour de France is, like, cycling with a capital “C.” Plus I have a vague notion that it’s an event rooted in myth, passion, and drama, set against beautiful landscapes, and while I’m not really into sport, I’m a total sucker for myth, passion, drama, and beauty.

Anyway, this year, I came closer to catching it than ever before: the relevant BBC Sport page remained open in my browser a good couple of weeks, patiently waiting for me to peruse it, and I actually called a local sports pub to inquire about commandeering their TV. The doping scandals that dominated the news, however, proved an insurmountable barrier to entry for someone just trying to pick up the lingo and figure out how the dadgummed contest is supposed to work.

Instead I enjoyed following my mum’s very own 2007 tour de France. A passionate secondary school French teacher, she won a fellowship and planned an entire summer of intensive language and culture studies. Next thing you know she’s blogging about her adventures and Skyping me from across the Atlantic. Shucks, I’m proud! I made this map for her.

La Danse en Rond: Sylvie’s 2007 Tour de France

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(Hi. I wrote the following at the end of June, shortly after returning from a 10-day tour of Indiana and Ohio with Scott. I saved this draft intending to continue writing about all our other adventures on the road in loving detail. With kick-ass prose! Words worthy of the experience, expressive of my deep gratitude to everyone I met along the way! And photos too! Welcome to my world of good intentions gone nowhere. The land where blog posts go to die. [RIP, reports on my 2004 L.A. Sewer Tour, my passionate 2005 reunion with The Passenger, last fall's landmark Hardesty Mountain climb...] Anyway, please enjoy this narrative fragment and check out my pretty extensive photo collection for other pieces of the story, like meeting my first niece for the first time, consummating my Troupe Taleeba fandom, and more.)

Last week Scott and I went on a tour of Indiana and Ohio, during which we had the pleasure of reuniting with familiar souls and getting acquainted with new folks too. (more…)

Late last month, I had really let the Man get me down, and all the petty voices in my head, and my left eye had developed a twitch. Mum and Aunt Mary swept in, scooped me up out of that nasty bog of angst, and took me camping at Crater Lake National Park. (more…)

Well, I’m back from helping my little sister get hitched. The wedding seemed to go off without a hitch. Good thing those creeps Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson didn’t show up though, or I might have been forced to take them out with my thunderous, emasculating, maid-of-honor peri-blossom slam– you know, to wipe that shit-eating smirk and pompous pout right off their smug little mugs.

Oh, that reminds me that the first song the deejay played at the reception was Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.” Thank you, deejay friend of the groom! It made me do a happy dance. Or maybe it was the champagne and riesling and pinot noir.

Hmm. You know, come to think of it, I’d have welcomed that wacky Christopher Walken. Shucks, you think he’d have danced with me? Anyhoo…

My sincere congratulations to the newlyweds! It was indeed an honor to participate in the celebration of your marriage! And in such truly amazing company!

It was a unique honor to be invited back to school by my kid sister earlier this month. Indeed, it was the chance of a lifetime to witness firsthand Em in her element at the finis of her undergraduate career. That weekend I slurped my way through an inebriating cocktail of nostalgia and, well, edification. Dorm living, for example– I remember you well, but co-ed, co-op, shared-meals-and-chores dorm living? Definitely new ground. (more…)

Early this morning I traveled all the way to Portland and wandered the cozy labyrinth of Powell’s City of Books. Rounding the end of an aisle I ran into Neil Gaiman who engaged me in conversation most warmly and graciously. I expressed my appreciation of Coraline and he pitched his forthcoming sequel, Coraline Goes to–. So, she would have a series of her own and find her place among adventuring girls like Alice and Olivia and Madeleine and Nancy Drew, I thought. And I told him that Coraline would surely be my favorite such character.

I felt somehow compelled to mention my own adventures in Italian Studies at UC Berkeley, and he was terribly impressed by this. Internal barometer sensed that familiar storm of self-denigration brewing in the mind of my dream self. She was on the verge of mumbling some lame description of perceived grad school failures, when that knot of tension simply unraveled and fell away. I guess I figured if Neil Gaiman is digging it, I oughta accept the compliment and bask in its light a while.

Jumping from a simple platform 109 meters up, free-falling 60 meters down to swing through a gorgeous New Zealand river canyon (peaceful and still but for my choked scream and the quiet whoosh of my body rushing through the cool air at 140 kph and the murmurs of a dozen spectators), harnessed to a few bungy cords by a set of carabiners…And I did it TWICE! (more…)

Vic James, our friendly Red Carpet Tours leader, e-mailed me just after I returned from his fantastic tour of New Zealand to say that the New York Times Travel section was doing an article on movie location tourism and needed more Lord of the Rings -related photos. (NB: The NY Times site requires free registration - grrrr - before you can access the article.) Thanks to my grandpa (whose awesome Nikon D-100 digital camera I used on the trip), my mum (who was very efficient about transferring all the photos to CD-rom), and my enthusiastic Aunt Mary and Uncle Steve (who kept after me and helped me select the best ones), I submitted via e-mail 12 photos, highlighting recognizable Lord of the Rings locations and taken with love by an amateur photographer-tourist and pretty big fan. Would you believe that one of these made the first draft of their layout? How exciting it would be to tell my touring companions that they’re walking like Rohan refugees across the pages of the New York Times! Alas, in the final round of editorial decisions, my photo lost to the gorgeous (but ubiquitous) promotional still officially distributed by New Line Cinema back prior to the release of The Two Towers. How can I possibly compete with the trilogy’s official photographer, Pierre Vinet?

I picked up a copy of today’s NY Times to keep the article in which I was almost published. But to read more about my adventures in New Zealand, check back to this here blog - hooray for self-publishing!

The New York Times Travel editors considered my picture for their January 25 article on movie location tourism.

>>My tour companions (Steve, JD, Vic, Kristin, Alane, and Mum) walk back along the trail of the Rohan refugees on Deer Park Heights near Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand. The Remarkables in summer form the background.

Alas, they gave in to the beauty of Pierre Vinet’s promotional still photo of the Rohan refugees reflected in the lake and the Remarkables under fresh winter snow. Can’t compete with that!

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