Back on the Road

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Back on the Road

Pitiful Earthlings! Hurling yourselves out into the void without the slightest idea of who or what is out there!

-from the movie

Flash Gordon




Each phase of The Great Freedom, as I have named these two years, starts with less preparation than the last. This makes sense because it is much easier to pack. I know what I need to bring and I already have it. It’s not much either. A bag full of travel-size bathroom supplies, clothes, a few medicines, emergency provisions, and four different electronic appliances (Q: When did I become a gadget geek? A: When gadgets got so awesome.). With the exception of the clothes (which I change each segment mostly to make my pictures more interesting), all of these wait in a corner of my bedroom from the day I get back to the States until the day I begin packing to leave again. On top of this, the first weeks of this third segment were to be on an organized tour, so I hadn’t had to deal with any logistics either. That all makes sense and is good. What I hadn’t anticipated is that less time preparing practically means less time preparing mentally.

Home is comfortable. I made a promise to myself 15 years ago during my journey through the American west that comfort would never be one of my top five priorities. Fifteen years ago, living up to that goal didn’t require an effort. I don’t think it does now. I don’t know. At this point, comfort has certainly cracked the top 10.

I spent two months in the States and the first was a blur. I took three road trips, so I was home less than half of the time. The second month, I fell into old patterns—seeing friends, late nights, chasing women. “Fell into” isn’t fair, because it implies that I do not like these things, or that I try to avoid them. It was a great month. I would have been in no rush to leave were it not for the likelihood that The Great Freedom will only happen once. When I booked my flight to Cairo on line, traveling was well in the back of my mind. Then before I knew it, it was just a couple of days before the flight. As Paul Theroux said: “Home had become a routine and routines make time pass quickly.” These are words to live by. I rushed to see some of the people who had e-mailed me while I was away and whom I had promised to see while I was home. On my last night out, I was having dinner at a sidewalk table with my friend Tanya, her husband, and their daughter. A woman’s voice called out my name. It sounded a bit tentative, perhaps surprised. I looked up and it was my last girlfriend, Robyn. She was with her new boyfriend, whom I had learned of through a friend a couple of nights earlier. Some part of me is happy for her. I wish it were a bigger part of me; no one is perfect. She was happy and relaxed. I stammered, and was shaken the rest of the night.

My electronic gadgets make flying more agreeable, and my trip from Kathmandu to Tampa a few months ago was a 50 hour odyssey. In comparison, the 18 hours to Cairo seemed like nothing, but the combination of my recent late nights and crossing six time zones resulted in my layover in Munich beginning only two hours after I had fallen asleep. As I boarded my flight to Cairo, I received the most appreciated random seat upgrade I ever expect to receive. The Middle East has the best airlines, and a business class seat means a completely horizontal bed to sleep on. Moments after boarding the plane, I fell into a deep sleep and I had a vivid dream. I was in the kitchen of a house that felt like home but wasn’t. Robyn was there, but before long, she left. Through a side window, I could see her car on the curbside, and I watched her get in the driver’s seat. She didn’t’ drive away. She sat in the car, and I wondered how long she might be there, because I wanted to go with her. I was in the kitchen, cooking something. I felt like I should finish this, even though I knew it was inconsequential. I looked out the window several times and her car had not moved. She was looking forward. As I worked on my petty chore, I wondered if she might come back inside. Maybe she had decided not to leave. Then the car glided forward and away from the curb. For a moment, it was out of view. I turned to the front window, thinking she might reconsider, park the car again, and come back inside. But she drove past, gaining speed as she went.

The intercom woke me up—we were beginning our descent into Cairo. I pulled off my eyeshade. It was two in the afternoon—5AM to my body. I had no energy, but I didn’t want to miss some fantastic sight like the Pyramids from above. I slid down the window shade, still disoriented. We were passing over coast. The land was a vast plain of green and tan geometric shapes—a quiltwork of farm land that was gashed four times. The first gash was a long snaking line; a river not so giant as to be unmistakable, but I knew I had to be seeing the Nile, the longest river in the world, feeding into the Mediterranean Sea. The three other long marks scarring the pattern were smoke trails. They were long and slightly expanding in width as they were blown southward, and they emanated from random points on the delta. As we approached the city, the Nile Delta became a sea of green. Townships made of tight clusters of clay-baked buildings stood scattered in sharp contrast.

And then Cairo, which gives a single overwhelming impression—beige. When a place is this beige, it is more than a color; it is a state of mind. Most Cairo buildings are made of beige stone and concrete, and those that aren’t beige already are made so by the powerful sand storms. Dozens of sand-coated satellite dishes cover each building’s roof, crawl up their corners, and smother their balconies—like a desperate case of beige mumps. Even the smog, whether because of sand particles or because the sun is reflecting the city, is not gray, but beige. A beige glow over the beige city.

Outside the airport, the cabbies were less of a hassle than I had anticipated. I shared a taxi with Patrick, a Canadian who was at the last stop of a seven month world tour. We went out that night and learned how different the social world in Egypt is from a Moslem country. To put it mildly, there are no roving bachelorette parties. In fact, we couldn’t find one bar that catered to both men and women. We found a good restaurant, though, and smoked apple-flavored tobacco from a shisha. Around 10PM, as I finished my meal, the travel caught up to me. I was beset by a desperate need for sleep. Patrick even commented on how rough I looked. We decided to meet at 10AM the next morning. I slept through for eleven hours. The first four or five rings from his phone call were incorporated into my dreams. By the time I woke up, I had missed the call. I looked at my surroundings. Where the fuck was I? Some hotel room, dank with shards of sunlight coming in through the blinds. Not until I saw my trusty orange backpack in the corner by the front door did I have any idea where I was. “Back on the road,” I thought, “Here I am, back on the road.”

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