based on a true story

We do not always recognize each other during the winter. We are wrapped deeply in jackets and masks that hide our shape and faces from the chill and sometimes I can't identify an old friend until I've passed them and I can see their bike. Still, we nod at each other as we cross paths - a stoic fraternity of masochists riding to work, to school, to home -- and even the strangers look familiar after a while.

There's this fellow whom I've seen from time to time -- wiry kid, hard shell BMX helmet barely capping a wiry tangle of black curls, hook nose, stubbled cheeks and camo shorts with black tights pedaling a silver Swobo fixed gear. I'll pass him in Kendall Square, he'll catch up on the Longfellow and we'll race through downtown until he runs a red and I stay behind. We're running about even-Steven on which one of us gets to the light first.

A few weeks ago, as I'm setting out from home, crossing the Watertown-Cambridge line near Mt. Auburn Cemetary, I see a familiar silhouette to my left, and it's the silver Swobo riding on the sidewalk before the rider hops the curb and merges into my lane. We look, we nod, and we sprint the length of Brattle St. The sun is out, we're wearing shorts and it's glorious. Brattle leads into Harvard Square and the lights go green for us as we cleave through stalled traffic into the rotary, then it's the curved descent into the underpass, and I'm dimly aware of him behind me, merging left. I check over my shoulder and the Swobo is in the left lane, taking Cambridge St. while I opt for Broadway. We nod as we part ways.

I cruise down Broadway to the western edge of Kendall, where Hampshire comes into merge and I see the Swobo again. We make eye contact and we laugh. Two solutions deriving the same answer. He runs the next set of lights into Kendall, and by the time I get to the Longfellow, he's over the crest and gone.

Later that day, in the evening, as I'm approaching the Cambridge-Watertown line, the sun has set and the headlights come on. I see my silhouette lit up by the cars behind me, and then I see a shadow crossing behind me, round BMX helmet, wave of curls. I turn around and I see a silver bike turning down the street that I just passed, hand raised in farewell as the rider disappears into the crepuscular light.

I never remember anyone with whom I've shared a T commute. The windshields on the highways of my past are faceless to me.

Ride to work. You never know who you might meet.

MsThing: "wow, an ex-coworker just updated their facebook saying that they've just been quarantined by the company after she got back from Mexico City."

DuncanDonuts: "what do they mean quarantine?"

cris: "Is it, 'excuse me, ma'am, can you come with us? We have a leper colony treatment area to show you.'

DuncanDonuts: "yeah, more like an old derelict cruise ship moored off the coast of Cabo."

cris: "Filled with bewildered tourists, immigrants and unfortunate airline stewards connecting from Johannesburg..."

DuncanDonuts: "... subsisting on a barter economy of suntan lotion, Cuban cigars and duty-free bottles of Patron ..."

MsThing: "Welcome to Bartertown. Bust a deal, face the wheel."

cris: "Thunderdome built up over one of the cruise ship's old pools."

DuncanDonuts: "... no one actually knows what's been going on in the ship for the last five years ..."

cris: "Until Air Force One crashes off the coast of Baja ..."

DuncanDonuts: "... and what are the chances that the President's escape pod lands on that ship..."

cris: "... and you need Kurt Russell, who's also the only man to have suffered from swine flu and lived; though he came back a little different."

DuncanDonuts: "could you ask your ex-coworker if Julianne Moore is on the cruise ship, and if she's the only one immune to swine flu?"

MsThing: "No, you guys, they just told her to stay at home until things calmed down."

well, then, that's just too bad.

I had not seen Don Podolski since my crash on D2R2 last year when, with a busted arm and broken teeth, I shook his hand and thanked him for putting the ride together. I had no hard feelings over how I crashed and freely admitted that such risks were part of the course, and it would've been folly to pretend otherwise. So it was that I dropped by his shop again in late March at 6am, for his early spring 200k, and his first words to me were,

"Cris! I see you've been to the dentist!"

"Thanks, Don. I almost forgot what it was like to frighten small children with my smile until you brought that up."

"Good to see you back."

"Good seeing you, too."

"You know," he continued, "after D2R2 I got a couple of emails from folks asking how you were doing after your crash, and I wrote back to them ... 'I'm not sure, I think he's in the middle of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro right about now.' and they both wrote back with something like, 'wait ... what?' "

( yeah, that's how we roll. )

I spent my teenage years in Canada living in the city of Vancouver, on the northeastern shore of the Pacific, and from time to time on weekends, my school would place us on a ferry to Vancouver Island, to play on muddy rugby fields against the discarded scions of wealthy Canadian families who had been exiled to isolated boarding schools until they had earned a proper education. Once every year, on the cold side of spring, we would be sent to the island again, to camp, kayak and rock climb in Strathcona Park. The first year that I went on this exercise, I was returned to my parents with a scab that ran across the right half of my face, from nose to ear, after I ran into a rope line while playing tag at night in a forest under a full moon.

There is an award in randonneuring circles known as the R-5000. It is an award that you can earn if you have ridden 5,000 km worth of brevets, and have completed every category of event in a four year time span. You must have done a 200k, 300k, 400k, 600k, 1000k, a fleche and have completed Paris-Brest-Paris. It is basically a "congratulations, you've cleared the level and unlocked all of the content" award.

( The only event I have left to complete is a 1000k. Every year, there is a 1000k that is run on Vancouver Island. )

so, Pandora users ...

do you use that "don't play this song for 30 days" feature because you're too wishy-washy about giving a song the thumbs-down judgement? Are there dreadful days in your month where the 30 days expires and you are once again bombarded with requests to judge all of these songs that you maybe like to listen to but just not right now, please?

Oh, "Lovefool" by the Cardigans, I think we need more time away from each other. Maybe someday I will listen to you again without wincing, but that day has not yet come.

I sometimes think I owe it to you to say that I do not like you that much, but I think Pandora will take it the wrong way and think that I actually don't like songs with a subtle use of vocal harmony and mild rhythmic syncopation.

It was in the year that I listened to my first Pixies song, that I had developed a fondness for British men's magazines. The magazines were my sister's, and she had purchased them on a semi regular basis from newsstands in Vancouver, where such things were relatively easy to procure. Issues of The Face, i-D and Arena would lay strewn about the corners of her bedroom, available for me to borrow and glimpse into a dynamic culture an ocean away, all about Ecstasy and the future, house music and punk fashion. It was in The Face that I would first read about underground dance parties called raves, and it was i-D's 80's retrospective volume A Decade of i-Deas that formed the basis for my early cultural literacy, educating me about how B matched to Bauhaus and T stood for Tank Girl.

( a history of reading and news of a death greatly exaggerated )

I was laid up for part of the weekend with a cold, the sort of sniffly, oozy mess that ruled out Sunday plans for surprise birthday parties and just left me on the couch, channel surfing as snow fell outside and the day remained cloaked in late afternoon grey. Fortunately, West Side Story was on, and renewing my schoolboy crush with Rita Moreno seemed like a perfectly valid way to pass the time.

And, really, there's more to the movie than Rita Moreno -- there's the crazy, fabulous ballet knife fights, the bebop dialog, the litgeeking game of spotting all of the nods and all of the departures with Romeo and Juliet, and there is, of course, the mambo scene. Twenty years before breakdancers abstracted gang rumbles into dance battles, Jerome Robbins was doing the dancefloor-as-street-war metaphor and it was about as awesome then as it is now. But, over and above it all is Moreno, who steals the entire film with sass and presence. She's the one in purple who shows up at about 1:28.



( watching it now, watching it then )

It's going to be 5pm back in the home office.

It's approaching noon at the client site.

The client has Veteran's Day off.

The home office does not.

I believe that means it's ok to have wine with lunch.

We caught dinner down at the Side Street Inn, digging into platters of kim chee, chinese fried rice and marinated tuna as CBS and CNN played on the TVs above us, reeling off election projections and analysis that subsumed themselves into the white noise of pau hana, the local tradition that literally translates to "stop working, start eating." We talked about everything that wasn't work, and for a while, even managed to stay off the election.

"Hey, look," came the shout from the corner, "McCain's conceding!"

And then it seemed that conversation in the room stopped as everyone looked up and listened to history. Hawaii had voted overwhelmingly for Obama, but there was a nice sense of respect in watching McCain's graceful exit. He may not have run the cleanest or most admirable campaign, but at least he stepped back from all of that tonight, and encouraged his supporters not to view the outcome as a loss, but a victory for the country as a whole.

By the time Obama gave his acceptance speech, nobody was paying attention. I think perhaps for Hawaiians, the sense was that this was just the world coming around to their view -- of tolerance, hope and community. This was the natural order of things.

"Where do you think he'll vacation?" someone at our table mused.

"He's not the Kennebunkport type, yeah?"

"I want to see him bring Putin over to Chicago for a block party. Or maybe take him here for some mai tais."

"Putin isn't the head of Russia anymore," I pointed out.

"That's good. He didn't seem like the mai tai type of guy."

Some of you probably haven't gone and voted yet because you can't be bothered and you don't think it will change anything and you think that this whole experiment in democracy is a panacea to deceive the masses from enacting violent revolution. Perhaps you're right.

Still, you have the privilege of going out today and getting a sticker that will entitle you to a free Starbucks beverage and free ice cream. And you get to pick the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Think of how many other people on this planet would like to have a free coffee or cup of tea. The news services of dozens of nations are fixated on your polls, salivating over the citizens-only bonanza of Ben & Jerry's.

I don't think that most folks on the planet care whether you drink dark roast or decaf. However, I think that everyone would like to believe that whoever leads America has risen to their position because they were the selection of a majority of the nation's citizens, and because that leader is a reflection on the nations wishes and dreams.

It's a preferable vision to one where the leader of the US is just a leftover choice from those who bothered to give a damn.

Now excuse me, I have to go and buy myself a cup of coffee.

As we finished up with our safari drives, silentq and I were driven back to the Moivaro Lodge, shuttled through the crowded jumble of Arusha's streets on a market day afternoon. Children waved at us from the roadside, as they always did when we drove past, and I wondered if they waved at every car or if they knew which ones held the foreigners. Maasai tribesmen ambled by with their cattle and walking sticks. Truckers and minibus drivers sat on the margins of the road, idling from the traffic and congestion. Ceaseless crowds on foot, bikes and motorcycles filled in the gaps, bearing baskets and plastic bags filled with their day's shopping, and for a moment I felt tempted to dive into the swirl of it all; to get out of the two weeks of a planned itinerary, of being driven from place to place and of only meeting paid guides, hotel staffers and fellow tourists. But, I was also tired, worn out and still lacking in any functional knowledge of Swahili. I leaned back in my seat and let the temptation pass.

Still, the restlessness stuck with me, and while there was a certain, undeniable appeal to wrapping up our Tanzanian visit with eight idle hours by the pool, I still felt a little trapped in this bungalow compund, six kilometres and a long hike from Arusha itself. I brought up the idea of splitting a taxi with silentq and heading out for lunch. There was a road sign for an Ethiopian restaurant on the way here, and it had piqued my curiosity. Still, silentq felt under the weather, and the prospect of navigating the chaos that we saw yesterday was intimidating.

I was getting settled into a book on the deck chair outside our bungalow, when silentq stepped outside and offered me her share of the taxi fare.

"I don't want to feel like I'm holding you back from an adventure," she said, "consider this a loan, and you can pay me back with stories."

( I have mentioned that I love this woman, right? )

We had looked forward to our two night stay in Tarangire Park, less for the park itself and more for the fact that it was two whole nights spent in one place. We had been migrating without stop for the last ten days, sleeping somewhere different at every night, and never getting a chance to feel settled. Yet, now we had a base, where we could catch up on all of the affairs that we had been postponing lately. I had set myself up at the bar with a stack of postcards, a pen and a bundle of untold stories. The lounge itself was a sleepy affair, with me as the only one at the bar, and the only other patrons being a booth of college-aged Americans swapping notes over whether they were more suspicious about the water quality or the protectiveness of their mosquito netting. The bartender asked me what I would be having, and I appraised his domain to see what my options might be.

Throughout most of our hike up Kilimanjaro, I'd make the effort to pick up the pieces of trash that would cross my path. It is an unfortunate side effect of organizing an expedition with more than 50 climbers, porters and guides that some scraps would fall out of hands or pockets, but one of the bits of packaging that I would encounter with frequency were discarded plastic labels for Konyagi. At first I thought that it might be some form of tobacco, because the labels said that it came in cartons, but I would later see the porters drinking bottles of the stuff at camp; obviously something to keep the cold at bay. Earlier in this trip, we had visited a museum for the Chagga, one of the dominant tribes of Northern Tanzania, and our guide had told us about the indigenous practice of brewing beer from fermented bananas. There were no commerical banana breweries in Tanzania, but it still sparked a curiosity for the native alcohols. So, when I saw a bottle of Konyagi at the bar and I had to ask the bartender.

"That bottle ... what is Konyagi?"

"Oh, you mean this? It is Tanzanian gin."

"Gin? Do you have juniper berries in Tanzania?"

"What is the juniper? What does it look like?"

"Nevermind. Can you make a martini with it?"

( we both learn something new everyday )

At some point on our trek, I had been plying the Irish honeymooners, Philip and Julie, with questions about safari. They had just completed a circuit of the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro and Olduvai Gorge before starting their Kilimanjaro trek, and I was hoping to glean tips from them, while also giving them an opportunity to talk about what they enjoyed most.

"We saw all the animals that we wanted to see," Philip said, "-- the Big Five. More zebra and wildebeest than you'd know what to do with. Birds everywhere. It was amazing."

"The only thing we missed," Julie added, " was a kill. God, I would've given anything to have seen a kill."

I was thinking about her words as our driver parked the Land Rover on the edge of a small river gully in the Ngorongoro Crater. A herd of zebra grazed above us, and a few metres away, we could see a lioness camouflaged behind brush, waiting in ambush.

( Lions, zebra and elephants ... oh my! )

Once silentq and I had returned to Kibo Huts, we had a half hour to pack our things, attend to lunch, then walk another 7 km to Horombo for our last night on the mountain before descending to the Marangu Gate. The mood in the mess tent was one of relief and fatigue. I don't think we had the energy to celebrate. Instead, having just finished a 12 hour trek with a grueling midnight climb, the prospect of another 3 hours of walking seemed daunting. Yet, it's amazing what a bit of food and a downhill trajectory can do for projecting you forward. As we set out, now on the heavily trafficked Marangu Route, we crossed paths with clusters of hikers headed upwards, getting ready to take our places at the base of the summit. Best wishes and congratulations were exchanged, and we sauntered with our newly acquired senses of accomplishment. Now, unleashed from the rigorously slow pace required for altitude adjustment, the Swiss bolted down the trail, rapidly disappearing into the horizon, while the rest of us were content to amble merrily on our way. silentq and I spent a fair bit of time talking with Philip and Julie, trading stories of travelling in Vietnam and Japan, while comparing experiences of bike commuting in Boston and Ireland, and later on, I walked with Sophie and Juliet, comparing notes on the BBC, PBS and CBC, of all things.

( inside: finishing up, tipping etiquette and Kilimanjaro's other face )

As we left the summit and returned to Gilman's Point, we felt giddy and relaxed. We had done it! Summitted the mountain and taken pictures to prove it. We'd pass the Group of 10, on their way to Uhuru, and shout encouragements to them like others had done to us before. In the meantime, we were passed by the assistant guides and porters, each of them helping carry one of our compatriots. Patroquet had Sophie in the same left arm grip that he had practice on me. Musa was bearing Philip's wife, Julie. We followed in their wake, and when they stopped to rest at the halfway mark between Gilman's and Stella Point, we stopped as well. It was around 10 am and the sun had warmed us up, so we had taken advantage of the break to shed some layers and tuck them into our bag. We didn't have much time however, as Gerard appeared and told us to keep moving, and that nobody should stop until we got below Gilman's Point.

For some reason, I had interpreted that as saying that we were on a busy, narrow trail, and for the interest of keeping traffic flowing, we should just change our layers at Gilman's, where the trail had widened and allowed silentq and I to sit and rest while we repacked our heavy winter clothing into our packs. I had succeeded in stowing my jacket and waterproof pants, and silentq had been removing one of her layers of socks when Patroquet walked past, bearing Sophie, and silentq called after him to stop for a moment so that she could get to her pack. That was when Gerard just snapped.

"No!" he yelled, "you cannot have your pack right now. Do you not see? You are on the Crater Rim! You are at more than 5000m. This is dangerous! Minutes count. Seconds count! Do you want to watch someone die?"

At this he waved at Sophie and barked at Patroquet to continue bringing her down.

"You should not change clothes, here," he continued before disappearing over the precipice, "Descend now! Change clothes later."

( ... somebody did die on the summit that day )

It didn't take long for silentq and the rest of our group to get to Gillman's, but by then, Justin, Musa and the rest of the main group had departed, headed for the summit at Uhuru Peak, leaving me, Jonas and Jeremiah to meet the others as they came up. It was still a relief to see silentq, and to put my hand on her as she wept gently at having finally made it up to the Crater Rim. Still, our moment of glory would not last long as Gerard began performing triage.

"You," he said pointing to Fay, "should go down as soon as possible."
"You," pointing to Russell, "can go to the peak."
"You," pointing to silentq, "down."
"You," pointing to me, "can go on."

"Hey," I said, "waitasec. I think she can keep going."

I don't remember if we ever told him that this entire climb was silentq's dream. That the whole reason why she and I were here was because she wanted to have summitted the mountain right before her birthday; like how I completed Paris-Brest-Paris shortly before my own. All the same, this decision wasn't his to make alone.

"You have to understand," Gerard replied, "that she is needing to go slow. It might be three hours before you get to Uhuru, longer to get down and who knows? Maybe you won't get lunch at Kibo because we have to break camp to make way for others."

"Is the path to Uhuru steep?"

"Not very." He pointed at the crater rim and its jagged peaks and valleys. There seemed to be one stretch with a bit of a climb, but aside from that, it actually looked to be rather flat. I knew from the guidebooks that the stretch from Kibo Huts to Gillman's Point was the toughest part of the climb. The main challenge between Gillman's and Uhuru is psychological, deciding to go on after being shattered by the midnight ascent on Kibo, and altitude-related, gaining nearly 300 more meters to be nearly 6km above sea level. Fay had opted for herself to go down, realizing that she was at her limit for operating at altitude, and going any further would've been drastically unsafe. Russell wanted to make a go at the summit. It was just up to us now.

"I know she's only slow when it's steep," I reasoned. "If it isn't steep, then we'll be ok."

Gerard turned to Jonas. "What do you think?"

"He is strong. He got here ok and he can go to the summit. Her, I do not know."

"I can go," I said, "but I'll stay with her. If she wants to go down, I'll go with her. But if she wants to go on, I'll go with her there, too."

silentq took a sip of her tea, and seemed to assess herself silently before taking a deep breath and saying, "I want to go on."

( aww, hell, yeah )

A lesson that I had learned from randonneuring is that, if you are on a schedule and if you aren't going to get a full night's sleep; then sleep in the clothes that you'll wear tomorrow. In high school I was taught that, in Canada, you are not responsible for any crimes committed while waking up because you're going to be disoriented, groggy and stupid. You don't want to have to decide, remember or try to find anything when you wake up. That's why I rolled out of my sleeping bag at 11pm, already wearing two layers of wool and thermal underclothes, one pair of wool pants, a fleece jacket, a wool toque and two pairs of wool socks.

Of course, it helped that it was -15C celsius outside, and I had to wear that entire lot just to feel warm anyway. I had also tucked my ski jacket, waterproof pants, gaiters, gloves and balaclava into the sleeping bag, just so that I wouldn't have to find them in the dark tent. Before sleeping, on Justin and Gerard's advice, we had emptied our packs and transferred most of their contents to our porter bags. We were going to be climbing with the barest minimum of gear, to keep everything light -- first aid kit, snow goggles, food, two liters of water, camera. Working under the illumination of our head torches, silentq and I grabbed our packs, tucked our sleeping bags and pads away, then proceeded to our mess tent for tea.

Outside, the night was crisp and clear under the blue-white glow of a full moon. Behind our tent, we could see the early risers on their way up Kibo, the incandescent white light of their head torches bobbing and floating above us in the darkness, like angels fumbling their way to heaven.

( Even with two layers of socks, my feet were cold. )

"There is no source of fresh water at Kibo," Justin said in our Day 3 evening briefing. "We will take 120 litres of water with us across the Saddle. It will be enough for tea, lunch and dinner; as well as for your own drinking during the trek and the push for the summit. However, you will not have enough for washing before meals."

In the grand scheme of things, skipping one day's wash wasn't a big deal, but there was something clarifying about this onset of privation, which brought focus to the day's journey.. Up to this point, everything that we had done was rather casual -- a literal walk in a park. The trails that we had been climbing, while persistently upwards, hadn't been steep or daunting. Water, though sandy and occasionally suspect, was readily available. Short of slightly more frequent maintenance of the bucket in the toilet tent, and an atmosphere with a slightly higher oxygen density, we didn't go for want of much. But, now as we prepared to cross the desert plain that lay between the twin peaks of Mawenzi and Kibo, the rationing served as a reminder that this had all been prelude and the real climb was about to begin.


"But guess where we are going to be in 24 hours?" Natacha asked everyone. "On the summit!"

For the last couple of days, we had been walking steadily towards Mawenzi, Kilimanjaro's junior eastern peak, traversing gently to acclimatize ourselves to life 3000m above sea level. Now, we would head west, crossing the Saddle and camping at the base of the Kibo cone before lunch. Rest for a bit, have dinner, then sleep through the first half of the night. At 11pm, we'd wake, take tea, then start out at midnight, aiming to make the crater rim by dawn.

( sounds like a plan )

The view from our tent on the third day, of a puffy carpet of cloud hovering below our view, seemed unreal and magical; like we were a floating island sailing on ether and gliding over the East African steppe. It helped my mood that the Diamox seemed to be working and my altitude headache had vanished. Everyone else seemed to be a touch better and we all soon departed for our next leg, a 6 km trek to the base of Mawenzi, gaining 700 m with an overnight camp at a small pool, known as the Mawenzi Tarn, 4300m (nearly 13,000ft) above sea level. The next day, we would climb up to the Saddle, the alpine desert that stretched between the twin peaks of Mawenzi and Kibo, and would then sleep at the base of Kibo in preparation for a midnight push to the summit.

( Read more... )

Our days on the mountain have quickly settled into a routine. Wake up at 6am, when porters drop by your tent with mugs of hot coffee and tea. Bowls of hot water are brought over to wash your face and hands at 6:30. Breakfast at 7. On the trail by 8. Lunch around noon. Stop when we reach the day's camp. Evening wash at 5. Tea at 5:30. Dinner at 6. Sleep by 8. Start all over again at 6 am.


In my toiletry bag there is a bottle of shower gel bearing the logo of the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo. It has been with me for the last two years, rationed out in small doses in motel stays and camping trips where shampoo was scarce and comfort sometimes scarcer. It is empty now, the last of it used up in the morning washing at camp in Kilimanjaro and on safari; and that seemed like a fitting end. Squatting over the plastic bowl in dusty clothes on a cold morning, it was sometimes enough to inhale the fragrance of the lather and if not forget where I was, at least remember where I've been.

And also, perhaps, forget all of the flatulence; for there was so much of it.

( so, so much of it )