Fearless Travel

Pipi and I like to think of ourselves as brave, independent travelers but sometimes we break the faith. For instance, when we went to Cuba, not only did we do it completely legally, we also went as part of a tour group. And recently, we booked a cruise. So I’ve been worrying lately that while I may feel like a youthful backpacker at heart, my vacations may be entering middle age.

So imagine my relief when I opened the travel section of the San Francisco Chronicle last Sunday and found an article about traveling safely in Mexico. Part of the article was a graph suggesting Mexican destinations based on the reader’s preferred level of activity and required level of safety. “Totally Spooked” travelers who self-identify as “Sun & Sand Seekers,” for example, were directed toward the heavily guarded havens of Cancun and Puerto Vallarta. And “Objective But Cautious” vacationers who might be described as “Culture Vultures” were urged to visit places like Guadalajara and the nicer neighborhoods of Mexico City.

I myself have been to Mexico three times in my life. The first two visits were short stops in Ensenada while on weekend-long cruises out of Southern California. Ensenada is not even mentioned in the travel article, probably because there was no room for a category of traveler called “Chronically Inebriated” whose interests include “Eating Anything with Cheese on It.” Both times, the ship only docked for a few hours in port, and I can only assume that this stop in the itinerary was an archaic throw-back to the days when sailing ships could not make a three-day loop out of San Pedro without running dangerously low on viruses and tequila. I was onshore just long enough to ingest quite a bit of both, apparently, and both times spent the rest of the trip in a miserable gringo heap on my bunk, cursing agave and wondering if the seas were really heaving or just me.

So that barely counts as travel to Mexico, but the third time, I was with Pipi and we saw a lot more of the country. We did some whale-watching at San Ignacio, and then flew to the mainland where we boarded a train that took us through Copper Canyon, in the states of Sinaola and Chihuahua.

I’m perversely intrigued to report that the Chronicle not only used the word “deadly” to describe these two very states, but that they also prescribe a Copper Canyon visit to those who fall under the “Fearless” heading. And it’s not just for “Fearless” travelers; it’s for “Fearless” travelers whose tastes run toward the “Adventure Lover” end of the interest spectrum.

So I guess there’s no need for me to worry. Nearly 41 years wise and still traveling like an American idiot.

Sports Tourism

Pipi and I are doing our best to pioneer a form of travel we call sports tourism. This is exactly what it sounds like: Traveling around the world following our favorite sports teams and events.

It started in 2003 when we flew down to Los Angeles for a family visit, and then rented a car and drove from there to San Diego to watch that year’s WUSA professional women’s soccer championship. I’m glad we did because the league folded shortly thereafter, and so that match turned out to be the very last WUSA game ever. We’re learning that with sports, particularly women’s sports, you have to jump at opportunities to see games because in spite of what people say, there isn’t always a next year.

Our biggest trek so far has been to China for the 2007 Women’s World Cup soccer tournament. It would be hard to top that, in terms of both distance and adventure. The only idea we have that even comes close is that we’d both love to go to Melbourne for the Australian Open tennis tournament someday. (See, it’s not all soccer, although we are a little obsessed.)

The idea that we’re working on more seriously is going to Germany this summer for the 2011 Women’s World Cup. (Hard to believe it has been almost four years since China!) Actually, my hope is that by writing this, I will spur myself into action. Soccer is a big deal in Germany and I can’t count on tickets and hotel rooms being available at the last minute.

Part of what’s making me think of all this is the news, breaking this morning, that Canada has been awarded the Women’s World Cup in 2015. I’m a little relieved, although not surprised, that Canada won out over the other finalist, which was Zimbabwe. Women’s World Cups appear to be getting easier and easier to get to from my perspective. The United States has already hosted twice in the short history of the tournament, so I don’t expect to be able to drive to a game any time soon, but a trip with no time-zone crossings (hello, Vancouver!) will be nice.

Everybody Think I Goofed

The bad news: There’s a typo in paragraph three of my article. The good news: There is none in the seventh. It just looks like there is.

When I first read the phrase “everyone come here,” I thought that was a mistake. Turns out it’s not, at least not in Australia, which is where the new Curve editorial regime is from. Australians, like the English, treat collective nouns as plurals. So it’s correct to say, “Everyone come,” because Australians think of “everyone” as a group of individuals, and use the same verb form they would use in the sentence, “One hundred thousand people come every year.”

Americans, on the other hand, think of “everyone” as a monolithic group, so the word gets a singular verb, the same form used in the sentence, “One person comes every day.”

Yes, you can certainly make the argument that I am an American writer writing for a primarily American audience, and so Australian words should not be put in my mouth. But what’s done is (are?) done. And I have to admit, the Australian way of thinking does kind of make sense. Isn’t “everybody,” by definition, more than one person?

This is my story, and I’m sticking to it, because I would rather you know that I’m a grammar dork than suspect that I don’t know how to conjugate.

Published!

That Australia article I wrote last summer finally saw the light of day. I’m a Curve subscriber and just got the issue that it appears in in the mail, so it should be on newsstands soon.

The article is on page 64, if anyone’s wondering, and no, the two women pictured are not Pipi and me. I don’t know who they are. I think it’s a stock photo.

Why Bother?

I went to this trouble because I recently got a gig writing blog entries for Travelocity.com, and they require all freelancers to have a business license. I was very excited to get the job, because, for one thing, it pays pretty well. (Well, more than this blog, anyway.)

Travelocity is also the last company that employed me full-time before I started freelancing. I knew even at the time that this was one of the most fun jobs I would ever have, and it was hard to walk away from the people there, who were mostly my age and who for the most part shared my love of travel and writing.

I’ll be working at home, so I won’t see that crew every day (and of course a lot of my co-workers have moved on as well), but I’m still pleased to be associated again with a company I enjoyed working for in the past and of which I now have nothing but burnished happy memories.

Almost Done

The following Monday, I was able to turn in the zoning permission form, and they instantly gave me a permit number, which was the one missing piece I needed to fill in the last form, which was the actual business license application. With that done, I headed upstairs to the tax division at the recorder’s office and submitted the application, and one last check. (Actually, this office took credit cards. Nice. Who writes checks any more?)

I won’t have the certificate in my hand for another month, but my understanding is that at this point all my ducks are in a row and I am the proud sole proprietor of Clause and Effect writing and editing services. (And I have the sudden urge to see the movie Brazil again.)

The Paper Trail Lengthens

The naming paperwork was just the first step in setting up an official business, although it turned out to be the most expensive and complicated part. The second thing I had to do was to get zoning approval, essentially permission to run a business out of my home. This is really easy for a business that doesn’t involve food or people coming to the house to shop, but turning in the form still required one more check and one more trip downtown.

I almost got this task completed on the same day as the business name approval, but the zoning office is several blocks from the fictitious name bureau, and closes at 4pm. So at the end of my first administrative day, I had a name for my endeavor, but no legal place to do business.

The Jig is Up

I know you all would have eventually read the legal notice in the Oakland Tribune, because nobody can get enough of administrative arcana printed in six-point type in regional newspapers. So I might as well let the cat out of the bag and tell you now: The new business name I registered is Clause and Effect.

This is a name that I have been using informally for a long time, but I thought it was time to make a going concern of it. It’s a little silly, but it made the woman at the County Recorder’s office chuckle, and she must see a lot of new business names.

Not as Exciting as it Sounds

Applying for a Fictitious Business Name sounds like asking for permission to lie on your tax return, but it’s just an odd formality required if you establish a business and give it anything other than your own name.

Last Friday, I got my made-up name approved, although there is one more hoop to jump through: I have to take out a legal notice in an Alameda County newspaper and run it once a week for four weeks in a row. This is the part I really don’t understand. What’s the point of having a fictitious name if you’re going to take out an ad to reveal your deception to the world? I guess I have a lot to learn about subterfuge.

Guess Who Has a Fictitious Business Name?

Or will, once the paperwork goes through? Yes, me. I am so pleased at this development. I’m now one step closer to my ultimate goal of being a mysterious woman.

Curve Goes Paperless

Even better news about Curve is that they are on a quest to make their office paperless. This means that payments, among other things, will be handled electronically. In other words, they will deposit payment for articles directly into a bank account. This is great news for me. The ritual of waiting around for a paper check to arrive in my mailbox is not one I’m going to miss very much.

Good Publishing News

I’ve had an article about Australia in limbo for so long that I was beginning to lose hope. Curve accepted it months ago, but then there was a change of ownership at the magazine. The new editors told me they’d still like to use it, but I never got anything in writing.

Until today. This afternoon I got an email addressed to all the writers whose articles are appearing in the March issue. Even better than being included on this list is the fact that the email was asking us to send information to help us get paid. I was not exactly planning my retirement around the fee, but this is a happy ending to the story nevertheless. Watch for it on newsstands soon!

Would This Be a Bad Time to Talk to You About the Heifer Project?

I’m nearly done with my North Oakland survey. I’ve already covered the roughest parts of this ’hood, and now my last two walks have taken me into Rockridge, which is actually one of the tonier parts of the city. Nevertheless, I still managed to have an unpleasant interaction with some of the locals.

The two people who accosted me didn’t have any of the hallmarks of what I’ve come to recognize as North Oakland trouble. They weren’t both conspicuously wearing the same colors. They weren’t working on cars, or flagging down slow-cruising automobiles. They weren’t shaking hands at idiosyncratic intervals with people they’d just met, and they weren’t waving around money clips.

This was worse: These two, a man and a woman who both looked as though they need to seriously consider re-admitting fish, or at least dairy into their diets, were loitering outside a pet food boutique. They had clipboards and perky attitudes, and they were clearly after my money. Well, my charitable donation, anyway. I could just tell that if I said (truthfully) that I didn’t have any cash on me, they would steal something even more precious—my time—and probably shake me down for a signature on a petition, as well.

When the confrontation went down, it was far weirder than I imagined it would be. They both stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk, blocking my way. I had headphones on, but I could see that the woman appeared to be gesticulating grandly, and perhaps actually singing. When I got closer, I could hear that she was chortling in a faux-operatic voice, “YOUUUUU have the power to save WHAAAALES!”

Now, I’m not going to say I am blameless in what happened next. But I will say, in my own defense, something that I really thought everyone knew already, which is that it’s a really bad idea to bring up the subject of whales with overweight people.

Honestly, I can’t believe I even have to say this, but if you ever see a person of heft huffing and puffing her way down the street, and she’s minding her own business, just trying to keep her heart rate in the zone her trainer recommended (because, see, she’s working on the situation), please don’t get in her way. And whatever you do, do not invoke the image of an enormous mammal too ungainly to survive on land. Because believe me, this woman already has blubber on her mind, and now she knows that you do, too.

I didn’t really have time to explain about the heart rate needing to stay up, so I just barked that I needed to keep going, and dodged around them, in a manner that was perhaps a little more brusque than was called for. As I passed, I could see the two of them exchange an eye-rolling glance at each other, and I heard them snicker a little, as if to mockingly say, “Well, I guess Miss Thing is too busy for the whales today.”

Now enraged at these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed creatures, both 20 years younger and 30 pounds lighter than myself, I turned around and muttered, “I can hear you, you know!” And by “muttered,” I mean, “yelled at the top of my lungs,” because I was still listening to music and honestly could not hear anything well, least of all myself. And then I stormed off, because what else can you do when you’ve just created an almost entirely unnecessary scene in the middle of an upscale shopping district four days before Christmas?

All this is a fairly long way of explaining that I’m somewhat relieved to have the meanest streets of North Oakland behind me, but not as relieved as you might think. Because at least the drug dealers don’t make me feel fat and utterly depleted of my youthful idealism.

Cakeland

I’m still working on my exploration of Oakland on foot. Right now I’m in north Oakland, a rough neighborhood that, like every other part of town, does have some nice surprises.

One that I discovered recently is a storefront on Shattuck Avenue that I at first took to be a bakery—from across the street, I could see that it had a sign saying “Cakeland,” and there was what appeared to be an enormous cake in the window.

Closer inspection showed Cakeland to be an art installation by a local artist named Scott Hove, who specializes in large-scale pieces. The gallery is open by appointment only, so I didn’t go in. The part I could see through the window looked like what would happen if Louis IV and the Marquis de Sade had opened a patisserie together. There’s a lot of pink, a lot of rococo accents, and lots of little sets of fangs poking out of blobs of frosting.

I’ve said before that I like to give my thought process a little something to gnaw on when I’m walking, and I got it that day.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my patient readers! I have not fallen off the edge of the earth, just out of the routine of posting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a very happy and healthy holiday!

Plato Would Not Approve

When I go for a walk, sometimes I like to use it as an excuse to get some sunshine, listen to music, and empty my head for a little bit. Sometimes, though, my brain wants a little something to chew on. Often this is something I’m working on that needs to percolate in my subconscious, or else it’s something non work-related that’s on my mind.

Sometimes something presents itself to me while I’m walking. This urban koan is a good example. Not a quarter of a mile into a recent north Oakland stroll, I found this stump, which someone had taken a chain saw to and made into this pentagonal form. That’s intriguing enough—why would someone go to all this trouble to transform a dead street tree?

What really kept my mind turning during the next half hour or so was the graffiti on the stump, saying that, “Plato Would Not Approve.” What does that mean?

I took exactly one philosophy course in college. I didn’t really enjoy it, and didn’t give the readings as much attention as I did, say, lunch, which came right after (and sometimes during) this particular class. Consequently, twenty years later I tend to confuse what I think I learned in school and what I really learned from the Monty Python Philosopher’s Drinking Song . Which is a long way of saying that I don’t really know what Plato thought about much of anything except maybe whisky.

This didn’t stop me from trying, although like any good koan, there is probably no right answer, just possibilities.

City Limits

Yesterday I had a good walk that took me through parts of three cities in 45 minutes. This probably won’t happen again, although if it does, it will be in the next week or so, while I’m exploring the extreme northwest corner of Oakland, where it meets the irregular borders of both Berkeley and Emeryville.

North Oakland is known to be rough, and it can be, but there are some good things happening in this part of town. I am right now typing this in a café that I really like on San Pablo Avenue, one that I never would have discovered if I had not been on foot in the neighborhood.

I’m also pleased to report—well, maybe “pleased” isn’t the right word; “secretly smug” is probably closer—that yesterday I noticed a distinct change when I crossed the border from Oakland into Berkeley. The Oakland side was fine and I felt perfectly safe and at ease there. As soon as I was in south Berkeley, however, I noticed a number of large men on small bicycles going nowhere and people working on cars on the street. I also witnessed one man ask another if he could buy a single cigarette from him. I see all these as signs of if not actual illegal activity, then at least a strong gray-market economy. I was relieved when my route took me back into Oakland, and the people out on the street all seemed to be on their way somewhere.

Elusive Tim Tams Spotted in Northern California

Word has it we’ve entered that most wonderful time of the year (October-March) when Tim Tams (Australia's gift to snackers) are available at U.S. groceries. So get down to your local store right away, but maybe not so much the little Farmer Joe’s conveniently close to my house because I think those ones are poisoned? You should leave them right where they are.

Naughts and Crosses

One of the many churches in north Oakland has been maintaining this display for several years, but I only just now discovered it for myself. Starting in January, the church puts up a cross for every Oakland homicide victim. It’s pretty sobering to see them all visually represented this way, and somewhat nauseating to realize that they’re actually a little short—I counted forty-some crosses but the most recent OPD count is sixty-seven murders so far in 2010.

Shockingly, this is a slight improvement over last year, when 89 people had already died violently before Halloween.

Seeing this doesn’t really make me feel much less safe because the majority of these crimes are drug- and gang-related--they occur on the same streets I walk on but in different worlds. But it sure gives me something to think about while taking a walk on a nice fall day.