Today, at 10:05 in the evening, three hours from now, we will finally fly to Beijing. From the moment I got up this morning, fourteen hours before the flight, I didn't know what to do with myself. I showered, got dressed, and realized our morning affirmations had been left unsaid, our daily meditation not done.
It was as if I were looking forward, living in the future, from the first rays of sunlight that illuminated our hotel room, rather than that we had a day of leisure, to do with as we pleased, with nowhere to be until after dinner. There has been such anticipation for this trip to begin that the last few weeks, let alone days, have flowed by like molasses, and I have found myself in the state of suspended animation I wrote about in my last entry.
The real trip doesn't actually even begin for another week, once we arrive in Xi'an, unpack the bicycles, and set out on the road west. The Beijing visit will be interesting, but not too much of an adventure, as we spent about a week there five years ago, at the beginning of our last cycling trip in China. We know how to manage a city trip fairly well, with all of the Asian cities we've visited in the last decade. So there will be unexpected pleasures, surely, but I already have a feeling for the contexts in which those pleasures might appear. The totally unknown bits will begin on my birthday, May 12, at the start of the Silk Road on the outskirts of Xi'an, on two wheels.
Today, I managed breakfast, a cafe with Internet, and a visit to the Auckland Art Gallery, before Tali and I looked at each other, even though it was only 2:30 in the afternoon, and decided that we might as well wait at the Airport, as long as today was going to be a day of waiting, rather than a day of leisure. All went well and speedily with our check-in, and here I am in the Koru Club Lounge, passing the hours, living less and less in the future, as the present approaches, preparing to claim my full attention.
Wednesday 4 May 2011
Monday 2 May 2011
A State of Suspended Animation
Another in the seemingly interminable rainy days we've had, at first in the Hokianga, and now in Auckland, at least a week straight of stormy days so far. Everywhere I've traveled in New Zealand feels as if the lights don't come on, on rainy days - just a dull, grey twilight all day. And then, when the sun does make an appearance, it's as if Someone has turned on the lights, and all looks new, bright and charming. But not today...
I am sitting in a Gloria Jean's Cafe, right off Queen Street, a regular stop for us on our walks up and down the CBD. The restroom here is still not working...I think it's been "Temporarily Out Of Order" for more than a month now...in a State of Suspended Animation...just the same, no sign of any progress.
I have a tendency to live in a State of Suspended Animation, too. No progress, waiting for repair...in anticipation of something that's going to happen, but hasn't happened yet. In this case, the cycling adventure in China, which begins with the flight to Beijing tomorrow evening, hangs over both Tali and I, a lot like these storm clouds are hanging over Auckland. Independently of one another, we both find ourselves looking at travelogues on the Internet, written by previous cyclists on the Silk Road and in Tibet, to get a context, a feel for the trip we are about to undertake. Just how challenging will it be? What condition will the rural roads be in? Like a gravel washboard, as I read in one account?
Looking ahead or glancing behind all the time, I find that too often the present, which is the only time I can actually experience, seems to get lost. Ruminating about things I could have done better, or looking ahead to things that haven't happened yet, I don't derive enough pleasure from my moment to moment living. For example, the past two nights' restaurant dinners have been dreadful, because I didn't feel like putting in the energy needed to get to an excellent place to eat...too tired, it was raining, not that hungry anyway, and so on, through the litany of excuses that allows me to take the positive edge off my present. We've at least put some effort into tonight's dinner, so maybe we'll break that pattern, at the least!
I'm hoping that the upcoming two months of travel will keep me focused on living in and really feeling the present moment. Wait...the sun is starting to come out here...maybe it's time to get going!
I am sitting in a Gloria Jean's Cafe, right off Queen Street, a regular stop for us on our walks up and down the CBD. The restroom here is still not working...I think it's been "Temporarily Out Of Order" for more than a month now...in a State of Suspended Animation...just the same, no sign of any progress.
I have a tendency to live in a State of Suspended Animation, too. No progress, waiting for repair...in anticipation of something that's going to happen, but hasn't happened yet. In this case, the cycling adventure in China, which begins with the flight to Beijing tomorrow evening, hangs over both Tali and I, a lot like these storm clouds are hanging over Auckland. Independently of one another, we both find ourselves looking at travelogues on the Internet, written by previous cyclists on the Silk Road and in Tibet, to get a context, a feel for the trip we are about to undertake. Just how challenging will it be? What condition will the rural roads be in? Like a gravel washboard, as I read in one account?
Looking ahead or glancing behind all the time, I find that too often the present, which is the only time I can actually experience, seems to get lost. Ruminating about things I could have done better, or looking ahead to things that haven't happened yet, I don't derive enough pleasure from my moment to moment living. For example, the past two nights' restaurant dinners have been dreadful, because I didn't feel like putting in the energy needed to get to an excellent place to eat...too tired, it was raining, not that hungry anyway, and so on, through the litany of excuses that allows me to take the positive edge off my present. We've at least put some effort into tonight's dinner, so maybe we'll break that pattern, at the least!
I'm hoping that the upcoming two months of travel will keep me focused on living in and really feeling the present moment. Wait...the sun is starting to come out here...maybe it's time to get going!
Monday, May 2 - the adventure starts off a bit damply
Auckland is a wonderful gateway city for travelers. It sits right on the water, and many of its main avenues, like Queen Street, run from the hills on the outskirts of the CBD right down to the harbor's edge. When the wind is blowing fiercely in Auckland, as it is today, it feels like the whole city might just sail away, along with the hundreds of vessels moored in the harbor.
Because so many tourists come into town on boats and cruise ships, the restaurants, bars and coffeehouses situated at the water's edge, on Custom Street, for example, are packed with tour groups speaking German, French, or U.K.-accented English. They enter these small shops en masse, temporarily wreaking chaos with dozens of orders, their suitcases and backpacks everywhere...and then, just moments later, their group leader gives the signal, and they are all gone, leaving only tables-full of empty cups, saucers and glasses. If you're not a tour group member, as we are not, it's like swimming in the ocean...a wave comes in, washes over us, then recedes, leaving us in relative peace and quiet.
We are here today, the first of a couple of days in Auckland, before we take our flight to Beijing. We left our home in the Hokianga during a storm with gale-force winds and driving rain, and here, almost five hours by car south, the storm is just as powerful. No matter, we are officially on our way on a two-month journey that just begins in Beijing, and I confess to being excited... in fact, wicked excited.
Today, wet and chilled from the storm, it's easy to remember our biking trip through the Connemara, in Ireland, several years ago. We were there for about two weeks, and it rained, sometimes gently and more often rather violently, for all but three days. There were times the winds off the waters, as we biked along the coastal roads, were so powerful that it was a challenge just to stay upright on the bike, let alone to make any progress. Several times, we were forced to give up the struggle, and call for a taxi to pick us up and drive us to our hotel for the night. After a good meal and a rest, we would get going the next morning, in the rain, once again.
For our China trip, we will have a back-up vehicle, so we won't have to call for a cab...he will be there, behind us by no more than an hour or so, most likely smoking hacking, and spitting, to pass the (for him) boring days waiting for us to reach our biking limits, so he can pick us up and take us to our evening's destination, where dinner and a stiff drink of the local liquor await all of us. But what makes it easy to remember Ireland today is that the challenge of these months of biking is largely unknown at this time, as we've never biked in Northern China before. Will the trials come from the air pollution and haze, or from steep mountain roads, or hot and dusty deserts? Tali has just told me that the worst sandstorm in nine years has just hit Lanzhou, Xinjiang Province, which is directly on our route, destroying over five hundred houses. So I know it won't be easy, however the conditions are when we arrive there, and I just hope that I will be able to participate joyously in the task at hand.
Because so many tourists come into town on boats and cruise ships, the restaurants, bars and coffeehouses situated at the water's edge, on Custom Street, for example, are packed with tour groups speaking German, French, or U.K.-accented English. They enter these small shops en masse, temporarily wreaking chaos with dozens of orders, their suitcases and backpacks everywhere...and then, just moments later, their group leader gives the signal, and they are all gone, leaving only tables-full of empty cups, saucers and glasses. If you're not a tour group member, as we are not, it's like swimming in the ocean...a wave comes in, washes over us, then recedes, leaving us in relative peace and quiet.
We are here today, the first of a couple of days in Auckland, before we take our flight to Beijing. We left our home in the Hokianga during a storm with gale-force winds and driving rain, and here, almost five hours by car south, the storm is just as powerful. No matter, we are officially on our way on a two-month journey that just begins in Beijing, and I confess to being excited... in fact, wicked excited.
Today, wet and chilled from the storm, it's easy to remember our biking trip through the Connemara, in Ireland, several years ago. We were there for about two weeks, and it rained, sometimes gently and more often rather violently, for all but three days. There were times the winds off the waters, as we biked along the coastal roads, were so powerful that it was a challenge just to stay upright on the bike, let alone to make any progress. Several times, we were forced to give up the struggle, and call for a taxi to pick us up and drive us to our hotel for the night. After a good meal and a rest, we would get going the next morning, in the rain, once again.
For our China trip, we will have a back-up vehicle, so we won't have to call for a cab...he will be there, behind us by no more than an hour or so, most likely smoking hacking, and spitting, to pass the (for him) boring days waiting for us to reach our biking limits, so he can pick us up and take us to our evening's destination, where dinner and a stiff drink of the local liquor await all of us. But what makes it easy to remember Ireland today is that the challenge of these months of biking is largely unknown at this time, as we've never biked in Northern China before. Will the trials come from the air pollution and haze, or from steep mountain roads, or hot and dusty deserts? Tali has just told me that the worst sandstorm in nine years has just hit Lanzhou, Xinjiang Province, which is directly on our route, destroying over five hundred houses. So I know it won't be easy, however the conditions are when we arrive there, and I just hope that I will be able to participate joyously in the task at hand.
Tuesday 26 April 2011
Here are some Fun Facts about the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are two of the world’s most beloved cartoon foes. This dueling duet made their cinematic debut in Fast and Furry-ous on September 16, 1949. It was almost three years before the next Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner film, Beep, Beep would appear.
Over a span of fourteen years, their creator Chuck Jones, would direct a total of twenty three short films (1949 – 1963), showing that the food chain isn’t what it’s cracked up to be…at least not for this bewildered coyote. The cartoon Beep Prepared was nominated for an Academy Award in 1961.
Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese created Fast and Furry-ous as a parody of chase movies that were popular at the time. Unwittingly, their chase parody was better than the rest and they became the model for chase films of the 20th century.
In his book Chuck Amuck, Jones writes: “I first became interested in the coyote while devouring Mark Twain’s Roughing It at the age of seven. I had heard of the coyote only in passing references from passing adults and thought of it – if I thought of it at all – as a sort of dissolute collie. As it turns out, that is just about what a coyote is; and no one saw it more clearly than Mark Twain.
Jones also writes: “The author’s (Mark Twain) description of a coyote went like this: 'The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton with a grey wolf skin stretched over it…he is a living, breathing allegory of want. Who could resist such an enchanting creature?’"
As for the Road Runner’s trademark sound, “it came from a background artist named Paul Julian,” says Chuck. “One day he was coming down the hall carrying a lot of background paintings and couldn’t see where he was going, so he just went ‘Beep, Beep’. When I heard it, I realized that’s the sound the Road Runner should make."
In animation, it’s important to maintain a consistency with each character. For the Coyote-Road Runner series, Jones and his staff were always cognizant of the following rules:
RULE 1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “Beep-Beep!”
RULE 2. No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of ACME products.
RULE 3. The Coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic. “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim” – George Santayana.
RULE 4. No dialog ever except “Beep-Beep!”
RULE 5. The Road Runner must stay on the road – otherwise, logically, he would not be called a Road Runner.
RULE 6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters – the Southwest American desert.
RULE 7. All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the ACME Corporation.
RULE 8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
RULE 9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
Over a span of fourteen years, their creator Chuck Jones, would direct a total of twenty three short films (1949 – 1963), showing that the food chain isn’t what it’s cracked up to be…at least not for this bewildered coyote. The cartoon Beep Prepared was nominated for an Academy Award in 1961.
Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese created Fast and Furry-ous as a parody of chase movies that were popular at the time. Unwittingly, their chase parody was better than the rest and they became the model for chase films of the 20th century.
In his book Chuck Amuck, Jones writes: “I first became interested in the coyote while devouring Mark Twain’s Roughing It at the age of seven. I had heard of the coyote only in passing references from passing adults and thought of it – if I thought of it at all – as a sort of dissolute collie. As it turns out, that is just about what a coyote is; and no one saw it more clearly than Mark Twain.
Jones also writes: “The author’s (Mark Twain) description of a coyote went like this: 'The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton with a grey wolf skin stretched over it…he is a living, breathing allegory of want. Who could resist such an enchanting creature?’"
As for the Road Runner’s trademark sound, “it came from a background artist named Paul Julian,” says Chuck. “One day he was coming down the hall carrying a lot of background paintings and couldn’t see where he was going, so he just went ‘Beep, Beep’. When I heard it, I realized that’s the sound the Road Runner should make."
In animation, it’s important to maintain a consistency with each character. For the Coyote-Road Runner series, Jones and his staff were always cognizant of the following rules:
RULE 1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “Beep-Beep!”
RULE 2. No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of ACME products.
RULE 3. The Coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic. “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim” – George Santayana.
RULE 4. No dialog ever except “Beep-Beep!”
RULE 5. The Road Runner must stay on the road – otherwise, logically, he would not be called a Road Runner.
RULE 6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters – the Southwest American desert.
RULE 7. All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the ACME Corporation.
RULE 8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
RULE 9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
Gardening, the Roadrunner, and Being There
There are two famous characters in American cinematic history who are able to defy the so-called "laws" of gravity, as long as they don't worry about the position they are in, of being there, suspended in space, with no safety net.
The Road Runner is one, of course, of cartoon fame. He constantly leads Wile E. Coyote, who is always trying to catch him, over the edges of huge precipices, or into giant train tunnels carved through mountainsides.
On the mountain roads, the coyote, who always worries just a little too late about his position in life, sees that he has chased the roadrunner to the point that he is momentarily suspended in space, panics, and then immediately crashes to the earth, hundreds of meters away, usually ending up as flat as a pancake (through cartoon magic, I mean that quite literally!).
In the train tunnels, Wile E. Coyote chases the roadrunner in, only to find, not a great meal of roadrunner gratin, but instead, an oncoming train, leaving him even flatter than a pancake.
The Road Runner, who never worries about his position, watches the coyote approaching a disastrous end for a second or two, then races to safety without a care in the world.
I never get tired of watching these two go at it...Wile E. Coyote has got a lot of personal tools - he's persistent, he's quite creative in coming up with an endless variety of foolproof schemes to catch the Roadrunner, he's quick, he's strong, he's almost there...but the Roadrunner, he is a master of living in the moment, of being there...he uses his body as a tool to attain his ends, without regard to gravity, trains, or foxes...
And someone who is almost there just can't match up with someone who is truly and fully there, although together, master and pupil, they can produce cartoon magic for us onlookers!
The other character who defies gravity in the movies is Chance the Gardener from the 1979 movie "Being There," starring Peter Sellers. Chance lives a simple and monastic existence as the lifetime live-in gardener for the wealthy "Old Man" who is his employer, never leaving the grounds of the estate where he passes the days by attending to the landscape.
Chance's only entertainment is the small television in his room ("I like to watch" is one of his memorable sayings), and he has adapted the forms of TV advertising slogans to his life's work of caring for his neatly landscaped world. Chance speaks and thinks in gardening metaphors that are part advertising, part growing advice. They are brief, a bit cryptic, and easily understood as profound, such as "Spring, summer, autumn, winter...then spring again.".
When circumstances conspire to bring Chance out of his enclosed world into the society outside, he is mistakenly renamed Chauncey Gardener, because he wears the expensively styled clothes of his employer, and doesn't look like he could possibly be just a gardener. Chauncey's brand of sloganized thinking is so popular among the wealthy and influential friends of the "Old Man" that he quickly becomes an unofficial advisor to the President of the United States.
Except...it's not just the simple slogans of a recluse...Chance, just like the Roadrunner, truly lives in the now that he has created for himself, and at the end of the movie, he nonchalantly walks out onto the surface of a lake, bends over, and sticks his umbrella down into it. He is suspended there, walking on the water's surface, with no safety net, and no expectation that he will fall in.
All of this came to mind after I finished gardening the other day. In the wet and fertile environment of New Zealand, everything grows...and grows...and grows, weeds, flowers, and grass alike. And since I am here to tend to the property on a part time basis only, there is always much to do.
And I do almost all of it by hand, sort of like "slow-cooking" as applied to landscaping. The power tools sit in the garden shed for the most part, serving only as colorful homes for the spiders and other insects. I enjoy quietly being there with my tasks of the day, focusing only on what I'm doing at that moment, without the sounds and smells of my gas-powered mower and weed trimmer.
I know that many people love to garden because it gives them time alone to think over whatever is bothering them at that moment...it might be a fight they just had with their partner, or a health issue they are facing, or the troubled state of their finances...
But I just garden when I garden, nothing more. I try to be as mindful of my actions as I can be, and as the hours go by, I usually become more aware of the plants and weeds I'm pruning and cultivating, rather than being off in my mind somewhere.
I can tell when I get tired...I begin to think of how I can do a task easier, instead of how I can do it more mindfully.
I know then that it's time to go inside, and to call it a day.
The Road Runner is one, of course, of cartoon fame. He constantly leads Wile E. Coyote, who is always trying to catch him, over the edges of huge precipices, or into giant train tunnels carved through mountainsides.
On the mountain roads, the coyote, who always worries just a little too late about his position in life, sees that he has chased the roadrunner to the point that he is momentarily suspended in space, panics, and then immediately crashes to the earth, hundreds of meters away, usually ending up as flat as a pancake (through cartoon magic, I mean that quite literally!).
In the train tunnels, Wile E. Coyote chases the roadrunner in, only to find, not a great meal of roadrunner gratin, but instead, an oncoming train, leaving him even flatter than a pancake.
The Road Runner, who never worries about his position, watches the coyote approaching a disastrous end for a second or two, then races to safety without a care in the world.
I never get tired of watching these two go at it...Wile E. Coyote has got a lot of personal tools - he's persistent, he's quite creative in coming up with an endless variety of foolproof schemes to catch the Roadrunner, he's quick, he's strong, he's almost there...but the Roadrunner, he is a master of living in the moment, of being there...he uses his body as a tool to attain his ends, without regard to gravity, trains, or foxes...
And someone who is almost there just can't match up with someone who is truly and fully there, although together, master and pupil, they can produce cartoon magic for us onlookers!
The other character who defies gravity in the movies is Chance the Gardener from the 1979 movie "Being There," starring Peter Sellers. Chance lives a simple and monastic existence as the lifetime live-in gardener for the wealthy "Old Man" who is his employer, never leaving the grounds of the estate where he passes the days by attending to the landscape.
Chance's only entertainment is the small television in his room ("I like to watch" is one of his memorable sayings), and he has adapted the forms of TV advertising slogans to his life's work of caring for his neatly landscaped world. Chance speaks and thinks in gardening metaphors that are part advertising, part growing advice. They are brief, a bit cryptic, and easily understood as profound, such as "Spring, summer, autumn, winter...then spring again.".
When circumstances conspire to bring Chance out of his enclosed world into the society outside, he is mistakenly renamed Chauncey Gardener, because he wears the expensively styled clothes of his employer, and doesn't look like he could possibly be just a gardener. Chauncey's brand of sloganized thinking is so popular among the wealthy and influential friends of the "Old Man" that he quickly becomes an unofficial advisor to the President of the United States.
Except...it's not just the simple slogans of a recluse...Chance, just like the Roadrunner, truly lives in the now that he has created for himself, and at the end of the movie, he nonchalantly walks out onto the surface of a lake, bends over, and sticks his umbrella down into it. He is suspended there, walking on the water's surface, with no safety net, and no expectation that he will fall in.
All of this came to mind after I finished gardening the other day. In the wet and fertile environment of New Zealand, everything grows...and grows...and grows, weeds, flowers, and grass alike. And since I am here to tend to the property on a part time basis only, there is always much to do.
And I do almost all of it by hand, sort of like "slow-cooking" as applied to landscaping. The power tools sit in the garden shed for the most part, serving only as colorful homes for the spiders and other insects. I enjoy quietly being there with my tasks of the day, focusing only on what I'm doing at that moment, without the sounds and smells of my gas-powered mower and weed trimmer.
I know that many people love to garden because it gives them time alone to think over whatever is bothering them at that moment...it might be a fight they just had with their partner, or a health issue they are facing, or the troubled state of their finances...
But I just garden when I garden, nothing more. I try to be as mindful of my actions as I can be, and as the hours go by, I usually become more aware of the plants and weeds I'm pruning and cultivating, rather than being off in my mind somewhere.
I can tell when I get tired...I begin to think of how I can do a task easier, instead of how I can do it more mindfully.
I know then that it's time to go inside, and to call it a day.
Thursday 21 April 2011
My Times Square
Bill Clinton was 18 in 1964, a freshman at Georgetown University, when he first visited Times Square in New York City. Times Square, for those of you not familiar with the City, is located in the area of Broadway and 7th Avenues, between 42nd and 47th Streets. He remembers having a steak at Tad's Steak House, overhearing an argument between a man and his partner over a gift gone wrong, and watching a hooker approach a man in a grey flannel suit. The experiences he had as an impressionable Arkansas teenager in the center of what made New York "New York" obviously had a big effect on him, because he still remembers that day in perfect detail, forty seven years later!
I also visited Times Square as a youngster, but I first began walking its streets and avenues at a much earlier age than Bill, when I was perhaps nine or ten years old, back when Dwight Eisenhower was still the President. I used to love to come into the City to go to work with my father, at his jewelry manufacturing plant in the garment district, and it was always a huge treat when he agreed to take me with him, on a Saturday when he felt he had to go into work.
We'd catch the Long Island Railroad from Long Beach, where we lived, to Jamaica Station, where we'd change trains to the one that went to Penn Station. From Penn Station, we'd take the free subway shuttle to Grand Central Station. The whole process, even with the two train changes, took only about an hour to get there, just enough time to munch on a bagel or a bialy, smothered in butter and cream cheese, that we'd pick up at the newsstand on the way.
We'd then walk through Grand Central's gorgeous glass-vaulted lobby, filled with hundreds, if not thousands of commuters scurrying to catch their trains, and emerge from the revolving doors into a New York City morning, at about 5th Avenue and 48th Street. We'd walk to the West Side, crossing The Avenue of the Americas, to Seventh Avenue, and then downtown, from 48th Street down to the low 40's, where my father's showroom and manufacturing plant were, between 8th and 9th Avenues.
That means we'd walk together right through Times Square, and I could always tell we were getting close because that's when Pop would grab my hand and hold it tightly as we walked. To this wide-eyed youth, it was like entering a much more exotic parallel universe, one that had different sights, sounds and smells from the rest of the City, where different rules and laws applied...I saw and heard things there, despite being pulled along at a quickened pace by my dad, that were only to be seen and heard there, in Times Square.
We were always greeted first by a smell, in fact... Coming out of Tad's Time Square location was a heady scent born of grilled steak, garlic and butter, so powerful it could knock you over, as well as make you salivate, even though it was still way too early for lunch. A steak, garlic bread, and a huge baked potato, all for $1.99 - how could you go wrong, as my dad used to say!
But the smells of the world's first and only fast-food steak joint were far from the only experiences awaiting this eager boy... Times Square at that time was filled with people of color, not only African Americans, but also immigrants from far-away countries with strange sounding names, in contrast to the mostly white Europeans who were walking its streets.
And the businesses! Absolutely astonishing, at least to me at the time...There were sex shops of every description, ranging from movie theaters showing relatively chaste Russ Meyer movies featuring impossibly big-breasted women who solved crimes or saved the world, to peep show parlors and "dirty" book stores that were fully x-rated, to live strip and burlesque shows. There were fortune tellers, skee-ball parlors, pickpockets, Greek and Italian places to grab a quick bite, and of course, plenty of streetwalkers plying their trade while their pimps leaned on their Cadillacs parked at the curbs.
There was also, just below the surface sights and sounds, an air of danger, a feeling that you could easily get robbed, beaten up, or worse if you made a bad decision on the streets of Time Square...not at all like the Disneyland that Bill Clinton makes reference to in talking about the current sanitized and cleaned-up version of this area. No, back then, the exotic, the unknown, and the dangerous were all mixed in with the garlic and steak smell of Tad's, to produce an intoxicating visual and sensual experience.
For this sheltered boy from the Island, visiting Times Square, even if he was walking hand-in-hand with his dad, it was the first glimpse of another world out there, one just waiting to be explored.
If you'd like to read the CNN news story about Bill Clinton's recent visit to Times Square that inspired this post, here's the link: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/13/clinton-remembers-old-times-square-crime-hookers/?iref=allsearch
Welcome to my Blog!
Welcome, and thank you for stopping by here, and having a look at what I'm currently doing! In early May, I will be beginning a sixty day adventure following the Old Silk Road in China, for the most part by bicycle!
I will be starting out in Beijing for a few days, then taking the train to Xi'an, which is the historical beginning of the Silk Road. From Xi'an, the bike west will begin, with help and support from our friends at Bike China (www.bikechina.com), all the way to Xinjiang Province, which is the westernmost province in China.
From there, my partner Tali and I will take the train to Lhasa, to begin a fourteen day exploration of Tibet, also by bike. Then in early July, we will fly to Shanghai for a few days of wonderful food and culture, before returning to New Zealand.
Because there are severe restrictions of social networking sites in China, I will be using this blog, rather than my Facebook page, to post my daily memories, memoirs and travelogues during this China adventure. My posts might be triggered by an experience, a vision, a dream, or perhaps someone I've met while biking, exploring, daydreaming, or sleeping during this trip.
Thanks so much for being a part of this adventure, and please check out my Facebook pages if you'd like!
I will be starting out in Beijing for a few days, then taking the train to Xi'an, which is the historical beginning of the Silk Road. From Xi'an, the bike west will begin, with help and support from our friends at Bike China (www.bikechina.com), all the way to Xinjiang Province, which is the westernmost province in China.
From there, my partner Tali and I will take the train to Lhasa, to begin a fourteen day exploration of Tibet, also by bike. Then in early July, we will fly to Shanghai for a few days of wonderful food and culture, before returning to New Zealand.
Because there are severe restrictions of social networking sites in China, I will be using this blog, rather than my Facebook page, to post my daily memories, memoirs and travelogues during this China adventure. My posts might be triggered by an experience, a vision, a dream, or perhaps someone I've met while biking, exploring, daydreaming, or sleeping during this trip.
Thanks so much for being a part of this adventure, and please check out my Facebook pages if you'd like!
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