Introducing Ghostwheels

Meet my new track bike. For reasons that will soon be apparent, I am calling her Ghostwheels. I bought the bike mail order, putting buying a mail order bicycle on the long list of things I said I'd never do but did.

Bike, out of the box. Assembly time: 20 minutes.

Here's the story:

Heading back to Portland post-Belize, I started researching prices on cheap fixies.  Maybe it was amid-life crisis thing. I mean, what does a former NYC bike messenger who hates cars and lives in America's hipster HQ get to feel 18 again? A Sports Car? Not likely.


Anyway, I was researching the idea of buying a fixie second hand off  Craigslist when  I stumbled across the webpage of a company called Solara Bicycles. I liked the looks of their single speeds, which - at under 300 bucks with shipping thrown in - fit the cheap category. I called their number and the owner took the time to answer my questions about the company, always a good sign.  A few other things I liked about the bike besides the price:  Steel frames guaranteed for life, flip freewheel / fixie rear hub, and - this was the kicker for me - one of the models on their website actually glowed.

As in: Dead Alien in Repo Man's trunk Glow.

My Specialized Rockhopper, tricked out for long distance hauling, is jet black, and even with a couple of reflectors and helmet lights I still feel like a Ninja riding at night.  Not a bad thing in certain circumstances, but hardly safe on a rainy Portland evening.

Riding a fixed gear bike at high speeds at night is inherently a bit risky. So I figured having one that glowed in the dark would be a good compromise between the gods of danger and safety.

And glow it does. This is a blurry shot, but demonstrates the glowey-ness of the Ghostwheels sitting in my apartment, lights off, after being ridden for a couple of hours before sunset.

GhostWheels in Pitch Black

The frame has slight glow - it's actually more intense in the first couple of hours of twilight after a particularly sunny day than it is in the above shot.  On the first twilight ride I took I watched with great pleasure as the Yellow frame and white wheels both shifted slowly to a near-uniform greenish glow that the above picture doesn't quite capture for the frame.

The wheels, however, glow like a slot machine for hours, retaining a slightly eerie glow late into the night.  In the wee small hours Ghostwheels sits in my hallway. It is my nightlight.

Aesthetically the bike's a looker, day or night, her good looks marred hardly at all by the inner tube I've wrapped around the top tube, which serves the dual purpose of protecting the paint job during lock-up and keeping tidy the cable for the rear brake I installed (another nod to the Gods of Safety, especially if I ever decide to flip the hub to freewheel).

Hipsters who run Grill Cheese Grill food truck are not impressed.

She a joy to ride as well. (And really, how often can you use that sentence in polite company?) The steel frame, deep-dish wheels make for a stiff ride on the road, the gear ratio strikes a good balance between long ride practicality and short sprint feasibility, and the parts are all more than acceptable for an inexpensive bike. At some point I may swap the current bars for dropouts to make for a wider variety of hand positions, but I'm in no particular hurry.



My experience with the whole mail order thing was pretty positive,  despite a bit of damage during shipping. The plastic thing that protects the fork dropouts broke during shipping, and the front fork came with a slight but noticeable bend in the drops.  Long story short: I emailed Solara, and 72 hours later I had a brand new one that took ten minutes to install.  (I straightened out the old one, so I now have an extra fork, or maybe a glow-in-the-dark helmet rack. Either way, I've come out ahead.)

Anyway, big shout out to the Solara Bicycle Company.  Check out their website here.

Now if I can only knock out a thousand words of the novel before six I can ride to Saint John's. I love riding over that bridge.

Pictured: Not the Saint John's Bridge, Portland.

Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei hits the stands!

Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei co-authors JSB & CB

Have all X-thousand copies of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei - the book on which I spent a good chunk of last year in Asia working on three chapters  - been printed backwards? Of course not. Do you think for a minute that Lonely Planet, the world's foremost travel authority would fall prey to some bizarre printing error? Nonsense. We are stone cold professionals.

But if we did, you'd still be able to read the damn thing - with the aid of a mirror, also useful for a host of other activities, detecting vampires not being the least.

Nope. I just can't figure out half the functions on the new second hand Macbook - a gift from my friend, author Sarah Byam -the Iphoto or Icamera or Iphonebooth or I-whatever it's called, is supposed to work.

The thing heats up, too. Is this a Macbook thing? All my Macfriends - you know who you are. You've been trying to get me to use Macs for years, now I am and the keyboard radiates heat. The thing is made of freaking aluminum...but I digress.

Yes, the highly anticipated Lonely Planet Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei, of which I wrote the east coast chapters, has just reached my door - along with a noise complaint, but that's another story.  You can buy it here in both print and E-book format.

It was a fun book to research. I did about half of the book traveling with my old pal Astrid, who earned her open water certificate while I trudged the sand on both of the Perhentian islands and joined in a sadly-less-than-successful quest for the perfect meal (a quest which I finally completed after she'd left in the town of Raub, where I discovered a small shop that made a fish head curry that I long for to this day.

So, Top Meal: Raub Fiish Head Curry.  Top Beach: Juara Beach, Tioman. (Two places Astrid, alas, did not make it to. Sorry old friend!).  Best place to ride a fixed gear track bike: Pekan. Strangest natural sight: Fireflies blinking in pure synchronicity, Penarik Firefly Sanctuary.  (The Terrapuri Heritage Village? Sublime!)  Best snorkeling: Pulau Kapas. Random -est: Weirdest yet not terribly interesting museum: Kompecks Muzium Negeri Terengganu.

The photo is of me and fellow Lonely Planet "Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei"
author Celeste Brash gloating over our latest book conquest after bagels. I am wearing a pair of glasses I got in 2009, which I had made for me in Shangri-la, China.  I was researching my chunk of the Lonely Planet: Greater Mekong book, and my eyes had been bothering me due to the altitude. The optometrist asked me what kind of frames I wanted. "The ones Zhang Zhemin wears," I answered. True story.

Back to work, Spuds. And sorry for the lengthy time between blog posts. Time is too much butter spread over too little toast for your Chrono-Synclastic-Infundibulum-ized narrator. 

The Worst Place in the World

I'm often asked to answer some variation of the question "what's the best place in the world?" 

I am, after all, a travel writer. I've been an awful lot of places. 

But I've also been to a lot of awful places, and this essay concerns the most awful of these, a place so awful I've decided (in good superlative form that the industry has made a fetish) to honor this place with the title

         The Worst Place in the World

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting...
    SNARKY TOFU'S WORST PLACE IN THE WORLD AWARD .........
                                 
                     IKEA!

One of my regrets from my former life as a hardcore hallucinogen abuser is having never given PCP a fair try. Angel Dust was popular among certain circles in my youth, and my friends who were into it often described the experience of getting dusted as one of total hellish dissociation.  To the individual high on Angel Dust, everyday items have a twisted appearance, and situations that should be normal take on an extremely menacing demeanor.  Reality becomes a grotesquely exaggerated nightmare from which only the passage of time offers release.

Much like a shopping trip to IKEA.

Once you enter IKEA there is no turning back, as surely as if you'd just smoked a bag of angel-dust laced weed with a psychotic skinhead on Avenue D. The world you thought you knew melts away, replaced by an endless maze of Swedish products, things that seem on first glance familiar, only to take on horribly twisted, strangely sinister hues as time wears on. What appears to be a three legged chair has an inverted seat, and is tilted at an angle almost certain to cause the sitter to slide.  

(The Stöövk retails for $49.49, and would look equally awful in either kitchen or living room.) 

You turn a corner to inspect a pile of garishly colored dinnerware looking like something found in an Oompa-Loompa break room.  It's a seemingly reasonable deal at $17.23 for a set of five - until you realize the plates are made of a wavy plastic-glass hybrid and whose shape would make cutting anything placed upon them impossible.  

(A sign tells you these items are called Svünköm, and a picture on the box shows a family of blue-skinned pygmies happily enjoying what appears to be a meal of gigantic grasshopper heads.  You back away nervously.)

You want to retreat, but you've lost the path. Why didn't you lay a trail of breadcrumbs?  Too late for that. At IKEA the only direction is forward! Forward! Forward!    

Cut through the living room section. If Ingmar Bergman directed a film based on the short stories of HP Lovecraft, you'd find this furniture on the set: A pink beanbag chair called fnärf, seemingly made from human skin. 

(There are still patches of hair, and a crudely done tattoo.)  

A black-framed metal futon whose bars are spaced too far apart to offer support for the ghastly brown cushion that nonetheless beckons you to lie down, to take a rest from the endless maze of nightmarish home furnishings in a consumerist dungeon designed by M.C. Escher. 

That shower curtain isn't half bad, despite the outlandish pattern, a child's scrawl that, with enough squinting looks like the distinctive zig-zag shirt of Charlie Brown (stripped from a corpse found beaten to death in a rock quarry).  

The curtain is labeled quisp and is only $2.97, an additional buck for the not-quite round curtain rings called ülkvites in the neighboring bin.

You grab ülkvites and quisp and smile nervously in the hopes that public display of intent to purchase something, anything, will appease the mad deity in charge of this place.  Perhaps something is watching you, something living (if that is the right term) in a secret control bunker in a dark recess deep below the Stockholm Metro? 

You move forward, or what appears to be forward, past bins filled with strange utensils. 

You try to avert your eyes from Qvüll (a malaise-gray soup ladle looking thing with hinged handle and single Euro-coin sized hole in the spoon part) and fail.

Your consider purchasing a Sömätz (best described as an inverted corkscrew with a plastic puce handle) and a set of  Gügönäpüög (It's purpose is a mystery. Perhaps it is designed for grilling meat, or for performing tracheotomies on  choking waterfowl). The latter is lime green and a bargain at $1.09.   

Following a glowing arrow painted on the floor indicating hopeful exit you turn a corner only to find yourself back where you'd started, the Stöövk looking strangely less impractical than it had at first glance (now an even greater bargain at $34.12).  

You are famished suddenly, craving horse-flavored meatballs. A steaming bin labeled köttbulle  appears before you. You stick debit card into slot labeled "äta" and face into trough, feeling the caress of warm, moist tentacles on your skin as a voice in your head whispers....Din själ är vårt !

Ghastly hunger sated, you continue on, desperately trying to find your way to the checkout line, basket of ülkvites and quisp hanging limply from one hand as the other drags the Stöövk you can't remember picking up. You think you feel a breeze, fresh air coming from somewhere up ahead, promising exit.  Finally you see it, a row of checkout counters, beyond which stands an exit to the world you once knew.  

Does time seem to slow as you move towards the checkout counter, or does space itself elongate? 

A haggard, aged face stares back at you from the stainless steel surface of a row of items labeled Förtvivlan 

(Blenders? Stereo speakers? You don't care. You'll take one, hoping that one will be enough.)  

You stare in mute recognition at the reflection before realizing that the face looking out from the förtvivlan is your own.  After an eternity you reach the checkout counter. 

"Did you find everything you were looking for today?"  

Asks a chipper clerk with a single, pierced eyebrow in a voice dripping with deep fried corn syrup. 

"I don't remember." 

You want to reply, but are physically unable.  You have no mouth, but you must scream. 

Mutely you pay for the ülkvites, the quisp and the stöövk, as well as the förtvivlan and gügönäpüög you do not remember picking up (yet lack the will to resist purchasing).  

"Have a nice day." 

Suggests the clerk, his voice a dentist drill coated in saccharine.  Pushing preternatural purchases, you stumble-crawl across the parking lot,  imagining yourself free from Ikea's awful fugue.  

Somewhere deep below Stockholm an unearthly thing watches from unseen camera and giggles in delight. 


                                              *** Fin ****

If this is the sort of travel writing you enjoy, why not have a stab at this one? 
         A Journey of Unspeakable Horror through Quaintest Vermont

Off the Road: Dream

Five am and I am sadly awake atop an air mattress with a slow leak. The attic is peaceful, but I cannot sleep because in five hours I'll be signing a lease for a semi-swank apartment in Portland that will need to be furnished and vacuumed to boot, signing a lease in a ceremony ceremonious only to myself, signifying that yes, for the next period of seasons I am, to invert in meaning if not title Keruoac, i.e.,  off the road.  I settle back, palms in triangle between some chakra or another, mattress deflating imperceptibly, breathing slowly and drift, not uncomfortably. Sleep finds me in motion again, on a bus traveling some unknown place, drowsy and drifting to sleep as if drugged in the seat. I wrap my legs around my pack for safety, press my forehead into the top of the empty seat before me, crushed blue nylon, feeling pulled under, pulled under, drugged. Not safe to be this relaxed in motion, in public in such strange, untrusted lands I jerk eyes open,out of comfort, again on sagging mattress thinking damn, time to get off the road.

Universal Healing Retreat

...So I don't normally do the whole "testimonial" thing, but on my last trip to Belize I wound up spending a week at Universal Health Retreat in Cayo and feel motivated to write something about the experience. It was late December, 2012, and literally and figuratively I'd bitten off more than I should.  

Stressed out from having taken on too much work in too short a time, I was also in the midst of a hideously painful gout attack caused by a combination of bad genetics and unwise dietary choices. I can think of few experiences worse than having a massive gout attack while on the road. 

A week of salad and water did not help, nor did an extended break from work.  Two new friends made on Ambergris Caye told me of a place called Universal Healing Retreat in Cayo, run by a couple called Yosiah and Linda.  As I was heading west anyway to cover (however impractically, being barely ambulatory) the end of Bak'tun festivities at Caracol, I decided to make my way to their retreat.

Yosiah and Linda were incredibly accommodating. Though we practiced yoga together in the morning, they  pretty much left me alone to write inside the beautifully furnished and fully screened-in duplex cabin I dubbed "the writer's cottage.  Meals were amazing, three glorious farm-grown, gluten free, vegetarian feasts daily,  interspersed with a variety of medicinal herbal teas that to facilitate healing. My days were productive and serene, my nights magnificently quiet and restorative 

Over the course of a week, I managed to simultaneously finish a good chunk of my project and purify my system to the point where I was able to walk without pain.  

Though I came to Universal Health Retreat limping and stressed, I walked away straight and filled with slack.  Thank you, Linda and Yosiah!

Cliff Heller Dreams of Maya Pricing Schemes

I am in a taxi with Clifford Heller, a dead friend about whom I've written before. We are with an Asian woman, identity unknown, presumably of the Han family.   We are going to some sort of a rock festival. We are in Mainland China I think, or maybe Taiwan. But I think China. It feels rougher, less gentle than Taiwan. Cliff and I are having a conversation about death, specifically life after death, though at no point in the dream do we speak of his being dead. Instead, we talk about the idea of re-animation, though not in any serious way. Cliff tells me that it's likely that he'll die following the festival.  But it doesn't seem to be a big deal to either of us. There is a plague happening, I think. We will all be dead soon enough. We got to the ticket booth, and the woman walks through, let in for free.   I cannot make heads or tails of the complex admission scheme, but it is maddening. Cliff is being very patient. "Two student tickets" I say to the guy in Chinese.   "Where's your student Card?"  He asks, shaking his head. He has heard it before. That ruse will not work. "Fine. How much are tickets?" He says something indistinct, in muffled Shandong accent.  There is a line forming behind us. Though no-one seems to be in a bad temper, I am feeling pressured. "Can you tell me how much we need to pay?" Again, the ticket seller replies indistinctly. The only thing I notice is that the prices differ from his last quote. Of this I'm sure. I pull some money out of my pocket, different currencies, some very old, small bills that I recognize as belonging to another time. Chinese Republic. Manchurian. Japanese.  The man behind the counter says something to Cliff that I perceive as "Students:190, Mayans 220, Everybody Else 300." I push Cliff gently out of the way to get closer. "He doesn't understand Chinese." I say to the man. "Say that again?" He does. The line behind me is getting longer. A girl next to me is counting a bundle of long-obsolete currency, which I suspect she has stolen from me. He pushes a price list in my direction. It is in English. "Students:160, Mayans 240, Everybody Else 360." "Mayans?"  I say, proud that I know the word "Mayan" in Mandarin. The man behind the counter grunts. I wonder why a rock festival in China would have a special price structure for Mayans, and why the prices change from minute to minute. I attempt a feeble joke in Mandarin. "All the Mayans died in 2012, when the world ended, don't you know?" He doesn't laugh, and I wish I had said "gone into space" instead of "died," death not being a joking subject in Chinese culture. Old currencies fall from my pockets. Cliff seems amused. The man waves us in. "Go in, I don't care." He says. I get the feeling my money is no good here. Cliff and I wander into the fairgrounds. I am puzzled.   A friend's voice awakens me.

Too Long in One Paradise

In the Placencia airport, preparing to leave this Paradise for a brief stopover in another to finish the last leg of research for both Lonely Planet Belize Five and the Belize Chapter of Central America on a Shoestring, after which, my work here done, I will be returning to the place where my traveling life began, the city in which one day 19 years ago a woman in a Taiwanese restaurant called Golden Pond Dim Sum advised me not to go to Japan but instead to set my sights on Taiwan.

I like circles. So did Darby Crash. Hooray for us both.

I leave Placencia after six weeks, six weeks of write-up following seven weeks of in country research. So if you want to know what goes into updating a guidebook for a moderately small country like Belize, that's pretty typical. I like to be thorough.

Honey, the Burmese cat who I've been taking care of in her master's absence, gave me a going away present in the middle of the night. She took a crap on the bed I was sleeping in. I have cared for many pets in my illustrious gypsy career, and they always know when I am leaving.  If they don't shit or piss on something sometime in the 24 hours before I take off I take it as a sign that they didn't like me. So Goodbye, Honey. You are a good cat. Psychotic, but fun.

Placencia is a beautiful town for beaches, slackers and dreamers. For sober people, not so much. This town rewards sobriety like the crew of a pirate ship does good grammar. As a collective entity, Placencia is an Enemy of Bill. 

I did not smoke the reefer I found in the kitchen drawer, but it did call to me more than once. In the end, I think that Honey must have eaten it.

Onto other subjects, the Pope has thrown in the towel. I am not a fan of Pope's in general, but this one even less. My alter-ego Yahuda Bangs had him pegged all along - perhaps you'll enjoy his fine reportage from way back in 2005. It's called Seig Heil Mary.

Anyway,   the 12-seat plane to Belize City has just landed, so this small and fairly meaningless blog post comes to a close. The secret to a long life is knowing when it's time to go, eh?

More from down the road...

I have a new girlfriend.

curvybabejuices574:  heyy
 Sent at 10:36 AM on Friday

 me:  howdy. And with whom am I speaking? Someone known or unknown?

 curvybabejuices574:  have we chatted before? 23/female here...you?

 Sent at 10:37 AM on Friday

 me:  Do we know each other?

 curvybabejuices574:  Just got out of the shower...long day been kind of busy! but i'm feeling naughty! so what's up ..... want to have some fun?

 me:  I'm always having fun. I'm a famous travel writer. My life is made of fun.

 curvybabejuices574:  I need a man that can make me squirt......have u ever made a girl squirt? lolz

 me:  once, with a meat thermometer....I mean, she was a turkey. But a girl turkey. Can i count that?

 curvybabejuices574:  gonna change my clothes ... want to see ?  

 Sent at 10:44 AM on Friday

 me:  Boy howdy, do I. But I'm blind. I'm actually having my guide dog type this, but he can't see color. Because he's a dog.

 curvybabejuices574:  wanna play on cam?  

 me: Bad idea.  My parole officer is coming over in ten minutes to make sure I'm still feeding my dog.

there was an incident...very unpleasant. Now I have a new dog. I call him "Emilo Rigwald", The old dog, Molly Estevez, was the one that died. We were all very sad. There was trouble.

curvybabejuices574:  http://y.ahoo.it/XXXXX click the green "accept invite" button on the left of my profile.....k, now fill out ur info ....give it a second to load ..when you get in , I'd love for you to join me in private  ....k?

 Sent at 10:46 AM on Friday

  
me:  Ahhhh!!!! The bees are back!!!! the bees!!!!! They're stinging me something awful. Shit, I think they're wasps....Ow ow ow ow ow!!!!

  
curvybabejuices574:  i use this site to play on cuz i don't want to be recorded !...this site doesn't allow users to record my webcam! you know?

  
me:  FUCK!!!! One crawled into my urethra!!! WHY DID YOU MAKE ME TAKE OFF MY PANTS!!!

IT BURNS!!!!!

  
curvybabejuices574:  credit card is just to prove your an adult, you'll get in for free thru my page but you need to verify that you're an adult ...can't show ass and pussy to minors .. u know?

 Sent at 10:50 AM on Friday

  
me:  OH GOD!!! THERE'S BLOOD NOW....LEAKING....

  
curvybabejuices574:  let me know when you're done or if you need help ...i'll be gettin' ready for you ..K ?

  
me:  please, Curvybabejuice574....please.... I need medical help....now!

  
curvybabejuices574:  brb.. 1 second ... got to restart my cam ...u coming?

  
me:  please...blacking out....why am I jerking off with TIGER BALM....it only makes it worse...

help...

 curvybabejuices574:  k ur good let me know when you're in babe..

 me:  everything getting dark....

 curvybabejuices574:  are you in yet?

 me:  I just want to die....please...help me...

 curvybabejuices574:  well hey ..you better give me some "gold" when you're on the site lol..it's like a flirt and I'd love some from you ..k?

 me:  are you there god? it's me, Margret.

 curvybabejuices574:  k

 Sent at 10:55 AM on Friday

PROGRESS REPORT 8

A month in Placencia turns into six weeks. Babysitting a naughty Burmese cat.  Finishing Belize 5, editing and mapping by day, kite flying when the wind is up, preparing for the next phase of my existence. 44!  Studying before bed through digitally recorded university courses. Last month:  "The Story of Human Languages" with Linguistics professor John McWhorter, an expert in Creole languages. Am currently going through Robert Solomon's "No Excuses - Existentialism and the Meaning of Life". Last night: Camus.

My life is very exciting, isn't it?

On Sunday I will leave this languid excuse for paradise for Caye Caulker, the last stop on my book research trip. Missed it in December owing to the gout. It's all better now. I will also take kite to board and write a story about it, if I don't die in the process.  After that, Several islands in Mexico and then, the big bird to a home I knew before the internet even existed.

This is all. Also, Dr. Strauss says I don't have to write "Progress Report" in the title of my blog anymore.  

The Frenchman Recalls Old Friends

The Frenchman wore a long sleeve shirt in the tropical evening heat, black and white stripes, horizontal. There was no mistaking him for a mime despite the garb.  He  spoke rapidly, bursts of excited chatter interjected with variations of the word fuck-  "Fuck zis fucking weather.." etc.  

He was sitting in front of Rumfish, where I'd come to see a friend. The Frenchman just happened to be there, an incidental player in scene 7-B, "I visit John." I didn't get his name. 

He drank red wine out of a highball glass. His face was strangely familiar. Small dollop of hair on an otherwise smooth skull. Bone structure, the roundness of his nose. The blue-in-the-gills common to men of a certain age with five o'clock shadows. He turned his head, presenting profile.  A near spitting image of an old friend, long not seen. Fallout from an ill-advised romance.  

I blinked, wondering if it was my imagination. He remained a near doppelganger of my old friend.  I wished briefly for a camera, but in the end was glad not to have it. Some images are best let pass.