Being back in Austin feels like I just popped into the bathroom and wandered back out. It was a year, but everything looks and feels basically the same. Some wonderful people who were together are even more together by marrying. A few have replicated themselves. Life rolls on. There are a few tweaks around the edges of things. A new swanky restaurant or bar in the once poor part of town. A few more ultrahip people who, apparently, can’t afford jeans big enough to fit them.

A small southern town in China changes more in two days than the last year in Austin. Maybe it’s just that my sense of scale has been completely thrown off by buildings that go up in fifteen days and restaurants that turn into clothing boutiques in one.

Learning to nap

The odd thing about returning to a familiar place is that the completely different world I inhabited for a year now seems so far away that my experiences there can’t possibly be real. Then I step into a Chinese restaurant and find myself talking to the owner in Chinese. Suddenly I can’t deny the reality of having been in China, and my time in China seems like the real reality… and who are all of these strange people around me?!

Correction

Since posting this next section, I’ve had a lot of worried phone calls. I edited it a bit to be more clear but I thought I should also say upfront that everything is basically fine, I just have to take it easy and not overdo things the way I used to. Lisa also pointed out that my complaints are essentially that I’m no longer able to stop bullets with my chest and fly!

The CO Brain

I haven’t been able to be as crazy active as I’d like. I did really well the first few days but then started getting tired while talking to people in the intense way I love. The CO brain is still doing its best to slow me down. I cancelled all of my meetups (two-three a day) for the rest of my time to take it easy and make sure I was getting enough recovery rest. I’m now trying to schedule a maximum of one event every day and take one day breaks in between.

I’m also trying to learn how to nap, but failing miserably. How do you people do this?! When I get tired, I can’t do anything but lie around bored. If I do fall asleep it’s for several hours and I’m an irritating grump as I crawl through the wake up process. (That part is perfectly normal!)

The result of all of this is that despite being in Austin for some time now, I still haven’t seen many people or do all of the things I love to do. I managed to make it to one Tango class and a writer’s group and then couldn’t power up for the Milonga (Tango dance) that night. Fail. I’ve barely begun the giant list of people I’d like to see, although couch surfing has helped make some of that happen.

Hilariously, some of my friends are getting to like this new version of me. When I showed up a little wound down to meet with Lisa Kaselak, she thought I had a marvelous gravitas and loved that there were pauses in our conversation and fewer simultaneous topics roaring along at ninety miles an hour. As a conversational speed freak it drives me nuts, but perhaps bodes well for my future as a 道教 (Daoist) monk.

I’ve extended my time in Austin a bit to see if I can work more in gradually. I do appreciate time with friends when I get it and access to Yoga and Tango. 慢慢来。 (Màn man lái : go slowly).

You can punch me. Kick me with combat boots. Beat me with rods. I’ll gladly bleed before letting a needle touch my skin. I once made my friend Ori pull over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and wait, silently, barely breathing, while I dug a splinter out of my hand because I couldn’t take it any longer. There’s something horrifying about a sharp object breaking the barrier, piercing through from what is not me into what is me.

In hospitals I give a little speech each time. Then I sing loudly, staring at an opposite wall and gripping the chair arm for dear life while the hapless nurse giving me a shot struggles not to laugh. Or doesn’t bother struggling. I keep explaining that it’s not the pain. There isn’t much these days beyond a quick pinch but that little sting tells me all I need to know: something sharp and manufactured is now a part of me and out of my control.

And now there I was: in a room full of needles. It was worse than a room full of cats.

OK, ok, a room full of cats when you’re as deathly allergic as I am. Maybe you cat lovers can imagine cats brandishing needles. Not knitting needles! OK, skip that, moving on.

Joanne showed me how simple the acupuncture needles were. Tiny. Wobbly. It didn’t help. “Just go for it,” I told her, gripping my knee and casting around the room for something to stare it. I started deep breathing and extended my right arm. I was supertuned to the slightest sensation, and so the moment of puncture was like a bone snapping. “Gah!” I winced and held my breath for a second, then remember to go back to deep breathing. “Did it hurt,” she asked, genuinely amazed. “No,” I breathed, “I can’t even feel it. I just know it’s there.”

Then I started the process. Just a peek at first. I could see it, a metal flag of the enemy having staked a claim. I was going to turn that into my victory flag. But first, I had to look away again as fast as possible and keep breathing. Bit by bit, minute by minute, I built up the courage to look longer and longer. The needle just sat here, in my arm on the couch. It was right in one of the points I’d learned to use when grabbing and throwing someone to the ground in Kuk Sool Won. That was so much easier.

Eventually I was able to get myself swept up in conversation. The needle got smaller and smaller. After about an hour I could look right at it. At last, I owned it. It was part of me.

This was round one. I have a ways to go. There’s something so invigorating about facing fears. In fact, my new fear is that I’ll love facing this one too much and soon enough you’ll see posts of me in suspension… Gah! I just looked at that site. Maybe not.

images always link to photographer’s site

At Norman Alger’s memorial service this weekend in his hometown of Mantua, Ohio I thought a lot about what would make someone choose to be a farmer. My dad grew up on a farm but turned to physics. Despite this, he and my mother churned up the soil surrounding every house we ever lived in to make space for food to pour up from the ground. My friends used to laugh at the fact that my father worked with a particle accelerator all day and came home to drag a huge homemade wooden plow through the mud. He told me there was something about the magic of seeing things grow that was hard to explain, and for a farmer that used to also mean the independence of running your own business and playing directly with the forces of nature.

While it’s easy to imagine the thrill of the wind in your hair and walking your own land, plenty of people remember Norman as the guy dozing off on the lounger because he’d already been working hard since four in the morning. The neighbor across the street remembered Norman yelling at the cows when he got frustrated, cows he’d named after his ex-girlfriends. Being on a farm you can’t put off your chores or wait until later. There are animals that need your constant care, and crops that have to be harvested at the precise moment they have the most nutritional value but haven’t been soaked by the next rain. You learn to get out and get things done, and that work ethic can carry you your whole life.

When uncle Norman was carried away on a submarine in World War II he kept a collection of pictures in his pocket. It’s not hard to imagine those guys curling up in their bunks at night and trying to make a connection with home by looking through the window of a photograph. There were no phone calls, no email, no sights or sounds for months at a time; just a black and white image of a couple of your brothers or friends grinning around a tractor, waiting for you to come back and help them out.

Now the farm is quiet. The silos were pulled down a long time ago, and the storage bay that replaced them is cold and barren, nothing stored for the next year. Eventually the innovations ran out and there wasn’t any oil or gravel left to sell to cover the costs and keep farming. Norman, like so many that worked so hard for so long, had to close down despite all he had accomplished. He had gathered local farmers together in a milk coop, and was even able to get everyone healthcare, but these days there are forces bigger than individuals, families, and collectives. As in America, now in India and China, factories are replacing personal connections with the land and farmers are packing up and moving away.

And yet, here in America there is a little green sprout of a movement. Couples unleash chickens to roam their back yards. Gardens are appearing in unlikely places, on rooftops and in two foot wide yards. Guerilla gardeners sneak into alleys and onto the edges of constructions sites and leave kale and tomatoes. Somehow each of these unlikely farmers caught a little of the sunlight, the warm glow of seeing something green break through the soil. Somewhere in each of them is a bit of what lit up my uncle Norman’s smile.

On the road I collect stories. Countless fellow travelers lost their phones to pickpockets. Others simply forgot them somewhere, never to be seen again. One had a phone snatched from his hand, while he was chatting, by a guy riding by on a motor scooter. (This is actually a common technique in a lot of southeast asian countries.) I myself almost left it behind when it fell behind a seat, almost dropped it countless times, and may have avoided any number of pickpockets. Why almost? Because I heard enough stories before I started that I thought up this ridiculously simple solution. I didn’t lose the phone behind the seat because as I got up go, it tugged on me. The dropped phone swung down towards the ground and then lazily, and safely, swayed back and forth eight inches from the ground. I never even noticed the pickpockets and didn’t have to.

Easy for Me – Hard for Pickpockets

I thought about clips and locks but I wanted to be able to easily pull it on and off. This way I can quickly and easily pull the phone in and out of the loop, but for someone else to make the same gesture they’d have to get the thing out of my pocket, pull at my waist and yank a line way out, then slide the phone through… if they figured all of this out and then managed to execute it without my feeling it or knowing, I’d be amazed. Yes, they could use a knife (I never did find a good chain) but 1) I’d probably notice someone hacking at my waist with a knife AND digging into my pocket and 2) much more likely, and the most important rule of keeping your stuff safe as a traveler: you only have to be more annoying to steal from than the people around you. Just like running from a hungry bear. You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your hiking partner.

Why belt level

The belt loop lanyard is the way to go. I wanted it attached to my belt (instead of my neck) because it’s a lot more comfortable. No weight. The distance is also just right for getting to my ear, but just short enough to not hit the ground when it’s hanging after I’ve been stunned by a text message and dropped it. This also makes it really easy to drop into my pocket after I reel it back in.

iPhone Otter Box Lanyard Hack

In my case, I modified the already super tough Otter Box Defender case for my iPhone 3. (Link is for newer case.) You can see from the photos that by shaving a little slot in the edge of the clip on the bottom half of the case (using a leatherman file), I was able to put a keyring through the clip. This makes a really solid connection and I’ve, er, tested it in the field many times. Blundering for science.

I’ve actually gone a little crazy with this idea. I’ve leashed all kinds of things to my day bag or pockets. I love never having to worry about theft, drops, or forgots and it clears my mind to worry about other more interesting things. What if a tsunami suddenly sent a massive tidal wave over that row of trees and on top a huge blue whale was surfing towards me… could I get airborne fast enough as the wave slammed into me to catch a piece of driftwood and surf next to him?

Like Superman in his icy Fortress of Solitude this frozen land keeps me from the distractions and dangers of humanity. The solitude in this distant wilderness of the suburbs protects me as I am nursed back to health. My only visitors are passing deer, pausing to look up into windows, holding for a moment before moving on, knowing we are alone and safe from the hunter’s sight. The snow falls gently, filling their tracks behind them.

Like Huo Yuanjia in Fearless, the seasons pass quickly here as I recover. The thick snow and cold of winter blankets the earth only until the sun’s return brings the warmth and melting of spring… which is suddenly replaced again by winter who’s grey clouds rush back in before suddenly springing away again into… What the..?!

Like Linghu Chong in the Smiling Proud Wanderer I find strength in the study of music, and study Kung Fu alone atop this small hill.

On even days I awake to breathe my way through Ashtanga yoga. My balance grows steadily stronger. My headstands smoother and longer. I am, for the first time, beginning to feel myself float as I glide and exhale between poses.

On opposing days I run the elliptical. At first my knees could only handle five minutes before the pain returned. Slowly that number has grown and my breath grows more steady. I get ever closer to making it through a complete Chinese Pod lesson.

Each day I add a little bit more of my chosen Kung Fu style, Ziranmen‘s, 身法。（Shēnfǎ : Body method). For now my upper body briefly rolls and flows through the movements, a little bit each time. As my knees grow stronger I’ll be able to add more and more of my body, completing the ripple from heel to fingertip.

There was one thing I was told more often than any other in China. I heard it from teachers, fellow students, Kung Fu brothers, my master and even people I met on the street: 慢慢来：(màn màn lái : go slowly). I got frustrated with my Chinese language progress. I pushed my body to the limit every day in Kung Fu training until I broke. My 师父 （Shīfu : master) says each day of training is like laying down a piece of tissue paper on a slowly growing pile. Progress is the weight of it over time.

Màn màn lái. Go slowly. Now I am stacking tissue paper here, day by day. 谢谢为汤妈妈和爸爸。(Xièxiè wèi tāng māmā hé bà ba : Thanks for the soup mom and dad).

The number one reason to spend time in China is something that cannot easily be put into words. I’d love to find some foreign word that we don’t have in English like, “Fahrvergnügen” or even “Je ne sais quoi” (ironically) that perfectly describes it, but I want something that fits a little better, something that gives a real sense of the buzzing, buoying energy of the place, that magical charge that infects some foreigners for life.

Huángshān

Years ago my friend Vince Zappa and his wife (Americans) spent the first half of their honeymoon visiting some fellow Americans who were teaching in a small village in China. She had a decent time, but when the second half of the honeymoon arrived she was ready to head down to the resort in the Philippines. He was, however, entranced and had no interest in leaving a dirty little town to go to a fancy resort. Vince couldn’t get enough of just being in China. He got ripped off at a restaurant he liked and decided he didn’t care enough to stop going, that instead he’d just be more careful. He was willing to put up with hardships in this weird new place because something captured his heart.

When I first visited China many years ago, it was only for a few weeks but that was enough to trap me. Before we went I liked spending time around my Chinese friends in college and being around Weíshí’s parents and relatives. Weíshí’s second aunt taught me how to play Májiàng and I learned the numbers and directions. I liked the sound of the language, the beautiful characters, and the endless (and I do mean endless) “old Chinese sayings”. But something different happened when I arrived in Běijīng and later visited Xī’ān and Huángshān. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of the beautiful mountains, the scrappy street venders, the peach orchards, and above all the endlessly chaotic nature of everything around me. The magic hook is somewhere in that chaos and the way that people are so energized to make things happen. The Chinese people of today don’t bother with safety or laws or aesthetics: they charge ahead and build and make and haul and try.

When Weíshí and I visited the Great Wall we walked the whole length of the top of the restored wall. As we reached the far end, we heard grunting and whispers somewhere on the other side of the large stones that surrounded us. The sounds continued and got closer. The section of wall we stood on was a huge distance from the ground. We walked over just in time to see a hand grasp for the top. I leaned over and saw a series of people standing on each others’ shoulders and the person on top struggling to pull themselves up. Mystified, I grabbed onto his arm and helped him over the wall. He breathed heavily for a moment, then reached inside his jacket as a few more people pulled themselves up behind him. He fumbled a bit more and then, like a magician pulling flags from his sleeve, began heaving out pile after pile of “Great Wall” t-shirts. He immediately tried to sell me one. Apparently there was a fee to sell things on the wall, and they were either too poor or too scrappy and cheap to pay it.

Of course in the midst of this scrappiness and chaos there is still a swirling undercurrent of ancient history spinning through the signs, bricks, buildings, language and culture. It’s all still there, like the old tent that holds the circus. Something in the beauty of this whole mess is the China magic, the magic that entrances, lures, and captures the hearts of people like me.

This is another very simple but extremely useful system, especially when keeping all of your things in bags or a backpack. In my case, after lasik I still sometimes get very dry eyes in the morning. I have to fumble around in the dark, or in a bag, and somehow manage to find a bottle and pour whatever’s in it into my eye. It would generally be better for my happiness and the sleep of those around me if it wasn’t a bottle of shampoo or glue. The cool hack is to wrap the bottle in tape, and put a predetermined set of folds into the tape. You can easily grab bottles and, by feeling for the folds, know by count if it’s a bottle of shaving oil or the lifesaving drops.

But the image of two young lovers leaning into the wind isn’t what stuck with me about my experience. Walking through China I felt like I was climbing on board the Titanic as the nose was plunging into the dark ocean. Every person I talked to was running past me, trying desperately to find a way off the boat. There I was, strolling around with my head up and an inflatable life boat under my arm asking, “hey, where’s this great band I’ve heard about”?

I asked about wéi qí (Go) playing. Some people had heard about it, but almost no one knew how to play. Traditional music? Maybe I could try the big theater in town. Kung Fu? I am training with an absolute treasure of China. Master Lǚ has incredible skills earned over a lifetime of intense practice and he’s one of the only heirs to a fascinating branch of Kung Fu. These skills can only be passed down orally and through direct instruction. The small group of people I train with, the people who will carry this knowledge to the next generation if it is to survive at all, are almost all foreigners: American, Canadian, French and Japanese students. His old Chinese students, from a time when his school was huge, are running businesses now. No one in China has any time to mess around with anything that doesn’t make money. They are running for the lifeboats.

It disappointed me greatly, but I can’t blame the Chinese people. Their lives have been wrecked by revolution, violence and starvation for decades. Now that they have a chance to get out, the air is thick with poison and the food and water are equally questionable. Money is the life boat that can literally save the lives of their family and they will stop at nothing to get it.

Fairness

But pollution and poisonous food aren’t the only reasons people want to escape. Even more so is the sense that there is a complete lack of fairness. No matter how hard you work, if you don’t have the right connections it means nothing. The people I talked to felt that in Germany, Canada or the US they would have a fair chance to earn a living through hard work without having to be related to someone in power. They felt like the laws would be fair. They felt like things that weren’t working could be fixed because they could gather with people and make change.

I grew up in a place where I’ve been taught to believe that if I don’t like something I can work to change it. That ideas is deeply, deeply ingrained in me. It’s still difficult for me to think about being completely paralyzed, as many feel they are in China. I’m not talking about petitioning a Senator to make big change, I’m talking about feeling like a street is dangerous and should have a stop sign, and knowing that I can get the community together to get that fixed. Or that I can get a group together and get some land to start a small community garden. If you can’t talk to the people in power (or they don’t have to listen) and you can’t form or gather in groups, there is nothing you can do that won’t get you shot or imprisoned.

In the end, I don’t think China will sink. Many will die in the icy water. The fortunate few will escape to western countries and live out the last days of prosperity there before those places sink. Ultimately China, like the US before it, will slowly make efforts to clean up the disastrous mess they’ve made while building the empire. In a couple of generations, the children or grandchildren of the people who escaped will be looking for a way to get back on board. If I’m still alive I’ll be happy to teach them all of the culture, kung fu, and wéiqí I’ve been saving for when they are ready.

The oils that naturally keep your head and hair healthy are replaced when you remove them. If you strip away all of the natural oil with shampoo, that wonderfully efficient little machine you live in (your body) responds by pumping out more. It takes a while for it to recognize that not stealing the oil isn’t a one time thing and you’re serious about letting your head do its job. In the transition, about 3-4 weeks, it’s gonna get thick up there as the little pump keeps running at the same high speed.

Washing with water every day I’ve had no trouble. My hair feels thick when I wash it, but it doesn’t smell or feel dirty. Some people worry about that, or experience small amounts of itching, and they resort to a baking soda wash to remove some of the buildup. I’m guessing that this only slows down the process as your head says, “see, see?! I knew you didn’t really mean it! I’m not cutting back the oil supply!”

At the same time… I was fascinated. What would happen? I kept putting it off, wanting to let my head know I was serious. Today I caved in. I had to know. I mixed up a little cup of baking soda and water and brought two half lemons into the shower. I poured the baking soda in my hair first and let it sit for a few minutes. I massaged it in and then rinsed it out. Immediately my hair was twice as light. Terror gripped me. I’d gone too far! Wasted two weeks! It did, however, feel really nice and soft.

The next step is recommended so that your hair doesn’t smell like baking soda, although I’m guessing it’s also because you need the vinegar, an acid, to neutralize the baking soda, a base. I couldn’t find vinegar fast enough so I grabbed a lemon, also very acidic.

Now, here’s the trick with lemons in the shower. It turns out that picking up lemon seeds off of a wet floor is like wresting a greased pig. With your thumbs. They kept creeping closer and closer to the drain but I couldn’t get a hold of the feisty little critters. I finally slid them, ever so carefully, all the way up the shower wall until they hit the soap dish. There was a tiny lip, and my hope was that… if I just barely tipped them over the edge onto my waiting thumb… I could just… and with a yelp of triumph, I popped them off the wall! …and back onto the floor. The third time was the charm and I managed to wrestle them into their original plastic bag.

The comb was the finishing touch. I ran it through my hair briefly and then looked down in horror. There were thick chunks of something coming off of my head! Was it globs of grease? Chunks of skin?! What disgusting or terrifying thing was happening to me?! Then I looked a little closer. And took a taste. Mmmm! Zesty! It was chunks of lemon peel.

And so here I am, smelling zesty and feeling good. My hair feels great. I hope I haven’t backpedaled too far. I’ll keep you updated.

So my amazing and daring new scheme for ultralight travel has apparently been kicked around for a while already.

The Extreme

These are the people who are playing like I am: lets see how hardcore we can be.

Neverending Voyage
Some dude named Eslevy
Karol Gajda Ridiculously Extraordinary
One Bag Manifesto
As We Travel They’d be lightweight without the heavy camera gear
Wilderness version (There has been a lot of work on wilderness ultralight travel, this is just one riff on it)

The Moderate

These are sites dedicated to sane, normal humans who might need to look respectable at some point in their travels.

Wiki How 1 Bag Travel
One Bag

We’re All One Big Brain!

But as I pointed out in my encouragement to blog, every contribution to the pool of experiences gives us all more options and data. The first few people who refuse to use shampoo are freaks, but after you can find hundreds of people telling their stories, it seems more realistic and the collective data points draw out a real path for less extreme humans. The kinks get worked out collectively and we all win!

The New System

I’m keeping this in mind as I develop the next version of my ultralight backpacking system. I’m trying to find light new ways to handle more cold, as I’m hoping to make it up to Korea on this next round and the winters in the southern Chinese city of Fuzhou were in the high 30s F (3 C). While not freezing, those temps are a whole other thing when there is no heating. Anywhere. And you have to sit in a classroom for hours on end without moving.

Gear Reviews

In the process of researching new gear, I found some decent reviews, but also a lot of useless complaints like, “This medium sized shirt fit horribly. It was a disaster. I’m 6’5″ tall and weigh 420 lbs…” I also found a lot of people listing their gear without talking about why they made certain choices and, more importantly, how did that work out? I’m going to make an effort to nerd out about the features of things I’m reviewing and talk about how I got to my final packing list, and then post an update after I’ve suffered with it for a while.

Coin Funnel

From reading all of these other sites I’ve also learned that, hey, I should be using affiliate links to gear so that if enough people try the things I like in the end, Amazon will sprinkle some coins on my head and I can buy a bowl of noodles on the road.

I’ve set up a scale. I have a spreadsheet. Let the reviewing begin.