Travels With Charlie
Looking for America
I’m a hopeless wanderer.
Tonight I am sitting in my beautiful Bangkok townhouse listening to old music from the sixties and seventies. As I am typing, Mick Jagger and the Stones are killing it with Muddy Waters in my earbuds. I have a hot yoga studio on the second floor where four times a week I practice, and teach friends, yoga. On the third floor my girlfriend’s three children — age nine, thirteen and fifteen — are doing their homework. They’re nice kids, respectful, studious, well behaved Buddhist kids. My girlfriend is slim, half my age, cute, does yoga with me four times a week, likes to cook, keeps the house looking good and is very affectionate and sexy.
Bangkok is a magnet for Western ex-pats like me. After four years living in Bangkok, I have become friends with some interesting like-minded guys from around the world. My close circle of friends consist of an Irishman teaching middle school in Bangkok; a Swedish high-end chef and entrepreneur; a British top executive of a crypto currency company; a Polish consultant; a Lebanese investor and a former California surfer now making a living as a YouTube creator. After a recent five-week trip in the United States, when I returned and visited my favorite Bangkok coffee shop, mere steps from my house, the staff and owner seemed genuinely happy to see me; they missed me.
I’m bored.
Danm! Even I’m confused as to what it is that will keep me satisfied.
My recent trip to the States began in Mountain View California, the heart of Silicone Valley. Mountain View is nice, if you’re rich. I wrote a story about Mountain View and Google, Mountain View’s well known resident hive mind. Not many people are reading the story. It’s kind of boring. The remainder of my American sojourn through Santa Fe, NM; Colorado Springs, CO; Cheyenne, WY; Sheridan, WY; Bozeman, MT; Jim Thorpe, PA and Brooklyn, NY is where I uncovered some inconvenient truths about myself.
Life’s patterns and influences have installed a fairly simple software of traditional values in me: hard work, family, honesty, fairness, stuff like that. But somewhere deep underneath my humanistic hard drive lies a Dantesque back door of some sort, my inner Hobo.
I flew from Mountain View to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The second leg of that flight from Denver to Santa Fe was on a small, regional jet made by the Brazilian company Embraer. There are a number of Embraer models. The jet I was on holds about fifty passengers. There are three seats across in each row of seats, one seat on the left side of the aisle and two on the right. Tall passengers have to walk with their head bowed because of low ceilings. If you have a large carry-on, they gate-check it. The overhead compartments are not that big. I flew these type of jets often back in the early 2000s when I was consulting with Pharma companies in the States. They are fast and versatile aircraft. I presume they are a lot more fun for pilots to fly than the larger jets. They seem to land hard. I’ve experienced a few bone jarring landings with them. I’ve come to accept that as not being unusual.
As we approached the Santa Fe International Airport I was enjoying the beautiful scenery of the snow capped mountains we were descending between. It was bit windy, blowing the plane around a bit, as often happens on turbulent, less stable, airport approaches. I am an experienced traveler and have come to enjoy a bit of turbulence. It spices up the ride a bit.
Suddenly, the plane banked hard to the right, nearly forty-five degrees. I was looking straight at the ground now less than two thousand feet away. I could see the sparse desert brush which was, oddly, green. “Spring snow melt” I thought. It’s funny what goes through my head when I might be seeing my last worldly sights. The plane then banked hard left, but not with quite as dramatic of an angle. Now I’m thinking: “this is a controlled maneuver, albeit really fucking unusual”. I heard a few gasps from other passengers. The plane then re-centered on its glide path landing normally, with a typical Embraer thud.
As we exited the plane the lone, smiley flight attendant was saying something about avoiding a bird. One of the gasping passengers from the left side of the plane said she saw the bird.
Try that with an Airbus A 300!
I thought the whole experience was kind of fun.
I was a Lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department where I worked in some of the world’s busiest fire companies. I retired from FDNY in January of 2002. I’ve always been athletic and discovered hot yoga in 1999. Yoga became a lifestyle and a fun retirement gig. I teach Bikram Yoga, a rather distinct and challenging style of physical yoga. You’ll not be contemplating some Hinduesque, pseudo-spiritual, ethereal notions as you bust your butt in my 104 Degree (40C) ninety minute class. You will work, hard. But you’ll feel great afterwards. In 2010, I agreed to teach for a high end studio in Singapore. I signed a four month contract. I’ve been in Asia ever since.
I spent nine years in the military and twenty years working in the world’s busiest fire companies. In “retirement” I taught the world’s most challenging yoga routine in insanely hot rooms in The US; Mexico; Singapore; Australia; The Philippines; Vietnam and Thailand where I’ve now lived for four years. It is reasonable to conclude I am a bit of an adventurer.
This recent trip of mine to the States was part yoga sojourn and part consideration of repatriation, maybe moving back to The States. Old friends and colleagues who own Bomitra Yoga in Mountain View, CA and Bikram Yoga Santa Fe in New Mexico prompted my visit to those cities. Next on my itinerary of yoga stops was Bozeman, MT. Bozeman is a thousand miles north of Santa Fe on a route that runs along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. Railroads and airline routes are predominantly east/west routes causing annoying, circuitous and expensive options for travel to Bozeman from New Mexico. I had never explored the region just east of the Rockies and thought a ground based trip, a road trip, would afford me an opportunity to see what life is like at the eastern edge of the Rockies. Renting a car would have been expensive. However, Greyhound busses go north from New Mexico. And walking from bus terminals to the Airbnb places I rented would give me a ground level, walking perspective I wanted. I planned a bus journey that would take me to Colorado Springs, CO; Cheyenne, WY; Sheridan, WY and then to Bozeman.
Have you ever traveled much by Greyhound Bus?
I do not wish to disparage, or speak in an unflattering way about a group of people, even if the only circumstance that causes this collection of oddballs to be considered a group is their presence on a bus. But Greyhound passengers are a sketchy collection of humans. I felt as if I were visiting a drug rehab. One hyper talkative fellow about three seats behind me was loudly reminiscing about his not long ago release from prison. He seemed to be bragging. The driver of my Albuquerque to Colorado Springs bus was an intimidating madman. He made it clear, several times, very loudly, that anybody smoking anything, or ingesting intoxicants of any kind, would be thrown off the bus immediately, even in remote, dangerous regions during bad weather. The driver made it seem as if a remote, rainy, snowy area would be his preferred location for ejecting said miscreants.
It was a long journey to Colorado Springs, about nine hours. The rest stops the driver chose were in cahoots with Greyhound, refusing to sell beer or spirits to bus passengers. Greyhound is clearly serious about sobriety. The driver — embracing his role as ship’s Captain — warned passenger at the rest stops that he had better not smell any marijuana smoke near his bus either, or the offending pot-head would be denied re-entry. At least one of my fellow Greyhound travelers appeared to me to be in early stages of some kind of withdrawal symptoms by the time I climbed off the bus in Colorado Springs. But my seat was comfortable enough, the scenery was nice, and I declared the odd, authoritative, temperance demanding environment to be kind of colorful, and necessary, no doubt, given the rabble I was now amongst. What I did not like was the condition of the bus.
Our driver, referred to henceforth as Captain Ahab, kept complaining about a voltage meter that was not showing a desired reading. At every stop Ahab would mention our vehicular vulnerabilities with a promise to get us to Denver if he could. I disembarked on the last stop prior to Denver. I hope they made it. But I was quickly learning why I had never met anyone who travels on Greyhound busses.
Colorado Springs is a prosperous looking small city at the foot of Pikes Peak, a snow capped, nearby mountain imbued with lots of local folklore harkening back to the days of gold and silver mines, nomadic Indians, covered wagon trains of prospectors, and cowboys. The town is nice but expensive. There are also lots of street people, vagrants, mostly young guys under forty, bloodshot eyes peering from behind cardboard signs.
Unlike Captain Ahab’s Greyhound Bus Universe, the State of Colorado is okay with marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms, having recently made the use of such intoxicants legal. Pursuing the mind altering joys of cannabis and psychic fungi was happening regularly in these parts long before the State of Colorado saw the light, so to speak, and legalized the stuff. When John Denver was singing Colorado Rocky Mountain High in 1972, he was not singing about the altitude. One of the several tourist oriented boutiques I passed on the town’s main street sported a sign saying “Sorry We’re High”. That pretty much captures the Colorado Springs zeitgeist.
The weather was nasty when I got off the bus in Cheyenne, WY: gray and windy with a light, cold rain blowing on an angle. The bus trip from Colorado Springs required a transfer in Denver, meaning we drove into the center of Denver from the South, endured an annoying transfer to another crowded bus and then traveled north from the center of town. Big City traffic is not fun even if the snow capped Rockies are visible in the distance. By the time I got to Cheyenne, whatever scenery was nearby was occluded by the weather. The bus stop in Cheyenne was a gas station just off an interstate highway with a small convenience store. My trek to my Airbnb from the bus stop measured just over a mile along a windswept golf course. And I was hungry.
I had prepared well for my trip. Walking was in the plan and I was averaging six miles a day walking, as measured by my iPhone Health app. With a medium sized back pack, quality gear, and a brand new carry-on size American Tourister wheelie bag with high quality wheels, I was trekking around without trouble, unless you are annoyed by the thump of the bag wheels against sidewalk expansion cracks. I didn’t even notice the noise until I listened to and watched a video I made of me walking through Mountain View: thunk, thunk, thunk. But now in the unusually cold, mid May weather in windy, rainy Cheyenne, I discovered my weak point, my shoes.
A lot of planning went into this trip which included much thinking and consideration about footwear. Shoes take up a lot of room in luggage, so I wanted only one pair of shoes for the entire five week, seven state trip. I knew the high altitude towns I would be visiting could get fairly cool in May. But I did not think the temperature would drop below forty degrees Fahrenheit (4.5C). I had already experienced a minor snow squall in Colorado Springs. But it was short lived with big wet Spring snowflakes, more like white rain. Now as I walked along the windy golf course I could feel the cold rain seeping through the top part of my carefully chosen Sketchers walking shoes. Just as I was letting my mounting discomfort get me down, I spotted a taco joint, got some food, and was in my Airbnb shortly afterwards with a smile and my positive attitude renewed.
The next morning I stepped out of my Airbnb lodging into 28 (-2 C) degrees and a foot of snow. I was pretty committed to my plan. A little bit of hardship was part of the adventure. Greyhound’s Captain Ahab, chatty convicts, faulty voltage readings, Denver traffic, annoying transfers and winter-like weather in May, all did not deter me. However with snow up to my ankles, the Sketchers did me in. I called Uber and had them take me to Hertz Rent a Car. Screw busses.
During the week my trip began, there were news reports of climbers who had died on Mt. Everest because of too many climbers, traffic jams at the summit. There are abandon vehicles on the Moon. There are really not any unexplored places left. I came to Wyoming with visions of cowboys and wranglers. I found an impressively busy, and efficient, Starbucks in Cheyenne.
Driving was fun. Zipping along an empty interstate highway at the posted speed limit, eighty miles per hour (129 km/hr) through a snow covered landscape is exhilarating. Wyoming does indeed have some wide open spaces. Curiosity drew me to an old US Army Calvary outpost: Fort Phil Kearney. The outpost was created in 1866 to protect migrating prospectors traveling along the Bozeman trail to gold fields in Montana. Resident Cheyenne and Soux, nomadic Indians objected to the incursion on their ancient mountain pass and hunting grounds. The settlers and Indians did not play nice together, hence, an Army outpost.
As I stood on a bluff overlooking the harsh, unforgiving, windswept landscape — covered with snow on May 22 — surrounding the re-created fort, I tried to imagine what life would be like here in 1866 for the soldiers. And the calvary men’s lives were made more miserable by tribes of folks who had lived there for centuries.
There really are not any unexplored places left. But still, there exists within me and many others an urge to explore, go see new places, take in new sights and imagine the hardy souls who came before without airplanes, trains, busses, cars and wheelie bags.
In Montana I was marveling at the effects of soaking in the “healing waters” of Yellowstone Hot Springs, about an hour’s drive east of Bozeman. I am skeptical of new age healing claims. But I happily went to the hot springs with my yoga buddy Carol, the woman I purchased my first yoga studio from in Northampton, MA in 2005. Carol, a chiropractor, continues to teach our crazy hot yoga as well, now in Butte, MT. I guess she likes snow. Within ten minutes of getting into the hot water of Yellowstone Hot Springs, my achey shoulder felt better. Damn, who knew?
My shoulder pain is probably arthritis. I reached that self diagnosis because when I work out, exercise, my shoulder feels better. Movement usually helps reduce arthritis pain. Now the hot springs experience was nearly eliminating the pain all together. And I was with a chiropractor. I got Carol to move my shoulder around a bit in her chiropractic way. It all felt marvelous. Okay, I’m a believer. What’s in that water?
Yellowstone Hot Springs is a clean, well run facility. Carol tells me it is owned and operated by a survivalist cult. Amusing!
Survivalist are folks that live in places like Montana so they will be around after the apocalypse, you know, like Mel Gibson in Mad Max. I see a problem.
Earlier in my travels I discovered Cheyenne, Wyoming’s economic base: The US Air Force. There are about twenty-thousand Air Force personnel in Cheyenne. The main mission of the Air Force in Cheyenne is maintaining Cheyenne Mountain, a huge underground bunker adjoining lots of inter-continental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. I am presuming the most likely cause of an apocalyptic event would be nuclear war. Cheyenne Mountain, you gotta think, is an attractive target in such an event. The nukes in Wyoming are about four hundred miles from the survivalist living around Yellowstone Hot Springs. They may or may not be vaporized in the the first strike; although I think survivalists would have a better chance in The Bronx.
Bozeman Montana turned out to feel more like Williamsburg, Brooklyn than a frontier town: lots of millennials, hipsters and such. It is a prosperous and attractive town. But you better like snow. Bozeman winters are brutal.
After flying east to visit my family in Brooklyn, NY and Pennsylvania, I found myself appreciating a beautiful, natural vista in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. I was standing at the edge of a Walmart parking lot. Just because a place has been explored and settled does not mean one can not appreciate the beauty of our natural surroundings. The people of Walmart in Lehighton, PA, if they take the time to look, can immerse themselves in nature when they park their car. Link to a short FB video of the Walmart vista.
My inner hobo? I guess he’s not really a hobo. I fly business class when I visit the states twice a year. And I do have a pretty nice lifestyle here in Bangkok. I’m staying put. I failed to find mountain men, cowboys or wranglers in the Rockies. I think on my next trip I’ll visit the Antebellum South in America and see if I can teach a few yoga classes to rednecks.
