The ghosts of Bodie

I wouldn’t want to be in Bodie tonight. If restless spirits do roam the earth on Halloween, then the graveyards and saloons and dirt streets of this eerily preserved ghost town at the end of a wild dirt track in California’s High Sierra will be hopping with the kind of bad action that could get a ghost killed all over again.

Bodie had its heyday as a gold-mining town in the 1880s. Today, the mine sits abandoned on its mountainside, and nearly 200 wooden structures -- the hotel, school, shops, homes -- lie frozen in time and layered in dust. Bodie, once home to 10,000 souls and California’s third largest city, is one of America’s greatest ghost towns.

When they weren’t mining gold, Bodie’s residents were wheeling, dealing, conniving, carousing and killing each other. After a dirty day digging for gold and before heading out for their evening recreation, Bodie’s less than perfect gentlemen could spruce up with toiletries from the general store. You can peer in the window today and see the store’s inventory. Cans and crates, boxes and barrels, tubes and tubs lie, dirt-covered, where they were when the shopkeeper locked the door for the last time. Clear a round spot on the window glass and look inside. Imagine leathery, mean-eyed baddies in boots and packed holsters roaming the shop, floor boards creaking, stealing bottles of the Denta-Vita Tonic ToothPowder and the Scientific Powder for Men, touted as “Absolutely Undetectable – For the Man Who Realizes That a Shiny After-Shaving Face Detracts From a Well-Groomed Appearance.”

Bodie evenings didn't include opera or chamber music, rather, high stakes billiards duels in the Bodie Hotel bar, whiskey-fueled shootouts, or romps with Rosa May, Bodie’s premier party girl. (Townsfolk made sure Rosa May was buried outside the fenced confines of Bodie’s haunting, weed-filled cemetery. Sinners of good repute only, please.)

If Halloween is what ghosts live for, then it should be a hot time in the old town tonight. Maybe a few of those sallow-pussed Bodie sinners will sneak out of their iron-fenced graves and hop on over to visit Rosa May’s. Maybe the keys on the Bodie Hotel piano will move wildly, sending bawdy drinking songs out into the purple Sierra night. Maybe the ghosts of Bodie will scare up a stockpile of rusty pistols and stage some shootouts for old time’s sake.

A young girl, told by her parents over a hundred years ago that the family was moving to Bodie, uttered a statement that's been variously interpreted. Some heard her say, “Good! By God, I’m going to Bodie!”

Those who knew the town had made an eternal pact with the devil heard, “Goodbye, God. I’m going to Bodie.”

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Boo from Bolivia: Spooktacular souvenirs at the Witches' Market

To find some truly ghoulish Halloween decorations – stuff that none of the neighbors have and will scare the face paint off the trick-or-treaters – head to the Witches’ Market (Mercado de las Brujas) in La Paz, Bolivia and pick up a few dried llama fetuses.

From the Plaza San Francisco and its massive colonial cathedral, I headed up steep Calle Sagarnaga and found Calle Linares, where “witches” in wide, bell-shaped taffeta skirts and bowler hats sat at stalls and tried to entice me into buying sacks of amulets and talismans to repel evil and attract good fortune.

Piles and stacks of neon-colored soaps and candles shaped like stars, birds and alpacas; soapstone figurines of Inca gods and goddesses; unlabeled bottles of homemade aphrodisiacs.

And heaps of deep brown, dried llama fetuses that looked like the skeletons of giant, prehistoric birds.

The witches explained that nearly every Bolivian household buries a llama fetus, a sullu, under its house, often at the threshold, to keep evil from entering and taking up residence. Workers at Bolivian construction projects want assurance that a llama fetus, complete with a witch’s or soothsayer’s blessing, has been buried at the site before the men will pick up their tools. I watched a vendor wrap a fetus for a Bolivian customer. She blessed the sullu, laid it on a cloth atop a pile of bark and plant material, and tied a thick strand of dyed llama wool around its thin, brittle neck.

I asked permission to photograph the fetuses. The vendor, switching from witch to businesswoman mode, made me a deal. I could photograph anything at her stall and her neighbor’s provided I bought something from each of them.

I thought I might have some trouble with the customs agents when I reentered the U.S. at Miami if I were toting a bundle of South American llama DNA, so I opted for a fetching stone carving of Pacha Mama, Mother Earth. Before handing Mama to me, my witch blessed a magenta and cobalt cord of twisted wool and tied it around the statue’s neck. The yarn enhances the figurine’s power to bring me luck, and I will never remove it.

I shot half a roll of Fujichrome, then moved to the next stall to finish it off. As payment, I purchased a small glass bottle, sealed with tar and tin. Inside swam bits of brightly colored plant parts and snail shells -- and a tiny, rusted charm depicting the Virgin Mary. My witches had covered all the bases.


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Finks and other ancestors

October brings Oktoberfest, but it also brings German-American Day, “a great opportunity,” according to German Life magazine, “to take a moment and celebrate your German heritage."

I have English ancestors on my mother’s side, German on my dad’s, and there are some interesting cats on both. One of my British forebears was a young deckhand on the HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar. His boss, Admiral Horatio Nelson, fell to a French sniper’s bullet on October 21, 1805, the battle’s first day, but my ancestor survived and went on to beget a line of Cornwall tin miners. They migrated to Pittsburgh, mined coal, and begat more Navy men, including my grandfather, Steele Pille. At 16, underage but eager to join the service, he assumed a new birthdate and a new name and served his country as Harry Doubleday.

We visited Germany recently (Wurzburg, above) to give the kids some perspective on their Bavarian roots, planted in the Black Forest, the Schwarzwald. My dad’s mother was born in the spa town of Baden-Baden. (“So good they named it twice,” says the city’s official website. “The place with the license to thrill.”) With its thermal baths and opulent casino, Baden-Baden has long been a magnet for the elite and privileged. European royals and nobles, Napoleon’s family, literary luminaries like Tolstoy, Twain and Hugo all played here.

My family, the Finks (a name that appears on the “Most Wanted Ancestors” list of the Black Forest Genealogy Site), weren’t members of the upper class. My great grandmother did go to the casino every day – to clean it. She was a maid.

The Finks emigrated to America, entering at Ellis Island and settling in Brooklyn. There, one of my great-aunts, Evelyn Fink, met and married George Fink. Can you imagine having the chance to use marriage to escape the name Fink only to have a Fink steal your heart?

One of my German ancestors was a real fink. During Hitler’s rise to power, he embraced National Socialism and wore his political and racist fervor on his sleeve and flew the party’s flag from a pole fixed to the front of his brick tenement house. His neighbors were not amused.

He worked in a Manhattan high-rise. One day, he fell down an elevator shaft and was killed. “Accident” was the official report. As far as we know, it’s the only murder in the family.

Tatopani: Balloons and boiled potatoes

We'd been traveling across the Tibetan plateau for some two weeks. Tibet, the raw, rugged roof of the world, is one of Earth’s remotest and most exotic destinations, but travel there is physically punishing. Tibet fills you up and saps you utterly, all in the same moment. Our journey was nearing its end, and we all looked forward to crossing the border into Nepal. In Kathmandu there’d be hot food and hot water, and we dreamed of these. We had savored our trek across Tibet, but we were spent.

We’d had our share of broken roads and landslides. We’d helped Pinzo, our strapping driver with his thick shock of black hair and patient twinkle in his eyes, push our little bus out of countless mud holes and swollen streams. We’d dodged rabid dogs. We’d been eating cold stewed tomatoes straight from the can for days, sucking down the juice to relieve our dehydration and to take in every possible gram of vitamin C we could get our lips on. We couldn’t remember our last shower or change of clothes.

At Zhangmu, Tibet, we made our way down a mountainside to the Friendship Bridge that links China to Nepal at Kodari. The hike was too steep and grueling for a few older members of our group, so they hired nimble-footed porters to carry them across the border on their backs. Our itinerary called for a bus to meet us in Kodari and take us to a site where helicopters would ferry us over a wide, severe landslide area. Once over the slide, another bus would meet us and take us to Kathmandu. That was the plan.

But plans go awry. We had inept tour guides who squabbled amongst themselves and failed to consider that helicopters don’t just appear from thin air to pick up tourists. Somebody has to call them first. And nobody had. We’d end up walking over the slide the next day, a challenge that would take 10 hours.

But first, we had to find somewhere to spend the night. We were driven to Tatopani, Nepal and left in the middle of the town’s dirt main street. Trekkers on Nepal’s Annapurna circuit use Tatopani as a rest stop, and when we arrived there weren’t enough rooms in the town’s few basic lodges to house us. We were filthy, frustrated, hungry and exhausted, and there was no room for us at the inn.

Then something remarkable happened. The people of Tatopani opened their hearts and homes to us. A handful of farmers and herders and merchants found space for us in the lofts of their wooden houses. They rolled crude mats onto the straw-covered plank floors and told us we were welcome.

After we’d all laid claim to a mat somewhere, we gathered in the street. We hadn’t eaten since morning, so we made plans to buy and share whatever meager edibles were available on the dusty shelves of Tatopani’s few tiny stores.

But before we could start shopping, a man called to us from a narrow wooden house. He opened the door and windows as wide as they would go and invited us all inside. A woman stood over a kettle that hung on a tripod over a wood fire. Steam billowed from the pot, and something smelled fresh, hot and wonderful. The man had set up a few tables in his front room, and we all sat down. After a few minutes, the woman set a huge platter of boiled yellow potatoes on each table. And a bowl of salt. We had no plates or cutlery. Just fingers, beautiful, round, creamy, butter-colored potatoes, and salt. We picked up the hot, skinned potatoes, dipped them into the salt, and ate the best meal of our lives. I will never forget how those Tatopani potatoes tasted, coated with healthy chunks of salt, as they slid around my mouth in that dark, smoke-filled room turned into a makeshift restaurant just for us.

Sated to our bones, we thanked the family and moved outside. By now, everyone in the village knew of us and our unplanned overnight stay, and they smiled and nodded as they passed us in the street. A group of children, some with tiny brothers or sisters in bundles on their backs, stood studying us. One of our fellow travelers reached into his pack and pulled out a bag of yellow balloons. He began blowing them up, and the children moved closer. Within a few minutes, nearly every kid in Tatopani held a yellow balloon.

Some of the balloons got away and bounced down the dusty road. I watched them roll away, like giant, magical, yellow potatoes, and thought how lucky we were to be stranded in Tatopani.


Where shall we go next?

Kyoto: Autumn on the Pathway of Philosophy

The leaves are turning here in New England. My daily runs are now outings into a golden-scarlet world, magnificent leaves fluttering along my route like thousands of crimson and yellow butterfly wings. Living colors like ripe cranberry and carrot, deep peach and succulent orange move above my head and lean to touch me from the side of the road. Here, autumn embraces you.

I remember another autumn when the rich hues of Kyoto, Japan’s maple trees colored my walks through that ancient capital city, home to Japan’s emperors for 1,100 years and peppered everywhere with centuries-old Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. In Kyoto, where cherry trees blossom in spring, maples burst into full fall plumage in November. There is, perhaps, no more glorious time than autumn to wander Kyoto, when even the sky that kisses the heads of old monks resting on the Togetsu-kyo bridge (above) is the color of a golden harvest.

Kyoto’s blaze of autumn color wrapped around me as I made my way from one remarkable shrine and travel experience to the next. As I stepped under Heian Shrine’s beautiful torii gate, a uniformed schoolgirl tapped me and said, “Hello, lady. Picture?” Before I could respond, an entire class of girls in blue skirts and blazers and knee socks had surrounded me, and somebody snapped a photo. I bet everyone in the class got a copy.

At Nishihongan-ji and Higashihongan-ji, two temples of the Jodo Shinshu sect of Japanese Buddhism, people rode bicycles through the courtyard, and visitors to the temples removed their shoes and left them in neat rows along an outdoor staircase. I stood outside in the crisp air and considered the awesome dimensions of Higashihongan-ji, one of the largest wooden structures in the world.

At Sanjusangen-do, ruby-orange leaves quaked in the trees surrounding the nearly thousand-year-old temple that holds 1,001 gold-leafed statues of Kannon Bosatsu, the Japanese Buddhist goddess of mercy.

From Sanjusangen-do, I found my way to the Path of Philosophy (Pathway of Philosophy, Philosopher's Walk), a two-kilometer wooded trail that follows an old canal. The walkway, Tetsugaku no michi in Japanese, is named in honor of Nishida Kitaro, a philosopher and professor who used to meditate along the trail. Kitaro's 1921 book, Zen no Kenkyu (A Study of Good) outlines the basic tenets of the Kyoto School of Philosophy, which he founded. I saw few people meditating along the path, but I did see scores of laughing high school kids, all in uniform, enjoying a midday break under the giant red umbrellas of an outdoor teahouse.

The pathway ended at Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, its Zen garden with elegant red maples and wondrous formations coaxed from raked and sculpted sand an irresistible backdrop for the dozens of couples and families that planted themselves in the midst of the peaceful landscape and took endless group photos.

As I turned from the trail onto a tiny street lined with old, wooden two-story houses, a pair of middle-aged women dressed in navy and russet kimonos, wooden sandals and cream-colored socks came toward me carrying plastic bags filled with the season’s produce. They stepped into the woods and took up the philosopher’s pathway. They walked a bit, then sat down on a bench and gazed up at the fall trees. A little post-shopping meditation.


Going leaf-peeping in the U.S.? Use these sites to help plan your fall foliage tour: www.intellicast.com/FallFoliage; www.fs.fed.us/news/fallcolors; www.yankeefoliage.com; www.foliagenetwork.com



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Nairobi by degrees

The security guard and the official building information officer both quizzed and vetted me before handing me to Daniel, a janitor at one of Nairobi’s skyscrapers. I’d asked permission to ride the elevator to the roof for a panoramic view of the city. We agreed on a price, “to be paid later,” and Daniel was tapped to be my guide.

Daniel stashed his broom in a corner under a stairwell and smoothed his bright red cleaner’s smock, torn under both armpits. He led me to the elevator, crowded with workers making their way to the offices and cubicles nested inside the tall building. Daniel gently pushed them aside to make room for me.

We rode to the last stop where the elevator door opened to reveal a ticket booth of sorts. I handed 50 shillings to two giggling Muslim girls in gray headscarves half-hidden behind the opaque Plexiglas of the makeshift kiosk. In unison, they nodded an OK to Daniel. He grinned, said, “This way, please,” and bolted up a concrete staircase to the rooftop helipad, round and high and open to the blue-purple African sky.

Daniel became a bird, his cotton smock feathers and his arms wings as he moved around and across the helipad, mouth laughing, eyes dancing, soul savoring this release from pushing his broom. He jumped from one thick neon-yellow landing sight line to the next, arms outstretched, whirling like a top, canvassing the 360 degrees of Nairobi splendor and squalor laid out below and beyond.

When he came to rest, his arm pointed like the arrow on a board game’s spinner toward Mount Kenya in the northeast. Serendipity or stagecraft? He began my 360-degree tour with this jagged exclamation mark – wild, raw, powerful, like Africa itself. “On a clear day, one can see both Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro from this point,” said Daniel as he tilted his head to the right to find Kili’s snow-capped top.

Over the next hour, one of wonder for me and freedom for him, Daniel moved me counterclockwise around the roof, degree by degree. Each new eyeful triggered talk and tales. The more he could say about the beauty and baseness, majesty and mud, coffee and corruption, the longer he could leave his broom under the stairwell.

Daniel, once a teacher, reveled in the immense embrace of his land. Sharing it gave him great pleasure. He spoke of its problems and possibilities with equal passion.

From the terra cotta roofs of City Hall and the precise walls of the Anglican cathedral, we looked northwest toward the rich, purple Ngong Hills. Daniel talked of the vast tea and coffee plantations there, flanked by wealthy white suburbs. We took in the expanse of Nairobi National Park, whose location hard by the sprawling airport and industrial sector belies its role as a key migratory corridor for big game.

Directly below us a mass of people made its way from Uhuru Park to the office of Kenya’s president and, with a booming collective voice, they asked for an end to the corruption and violence that plague the city and country. Tourists in bathing suits stood at the railing of a luxury hotel’s rooftop pool and watched the scene.

I looked down on the place where the American embassy had once stood. A park now marks the site of al Qaeda’s depraved handiwork. Daniel remembered the day of the terrorist bombing with horror. He sighed deeply and spoke of the “hundreds of Kenyans who will not be there again.” Thousands injured, some left deaf or blind. A passing bus lifted 10 feet in the air, killing all on board. “A noise I never want to hear again,” whispered Daniel, as echoes of the blast seemed to roll through his bones.

Before we came full circle and again faced Mount Kenya, Daniel’s arm swept over the teeming slums of east Nairobi. Land dominion in the north, west and south is held by wealth, wildlife or commerce, so Nairobi’s poor spread eastward. Daniel guided my eyes to the city’s cruelest slum.

“That is where I live,” he said. “With my two young daughters.” He talked about the realities of slum life. His neighborhood has no running water. His daughters are in school, and Daniel struggles to keep them there, learning. Some of his 200 shilling per month salary goes to corrupt teachers and school officials for fake fees and books that never appear. If Daniel doesn’t pay this “money for nothing,” his daughters pay consequences meted out by people a link above him in the food chain. People with just enough power to make a poor family’s difficult life harder.

Clouds began to hug Mount Kenya. Daniel made a last spin around the helipad, his red smock flapping. He tilted his beautiful face upward and smiled at whatever god had granted him this hour’s relief from mop and bucket. I handed him a tip, a janitor's monthly salary, money likely to become money for nothing, and we rode the elevator down to the building lobby.

After a few minutes, I left the building and walked across the plaza, heavy with sober law courts and massive statue of a robed Jomo Kenyatta. I looked back toward the tower. There was Daniel, outside in the sun, smiling softly, sweeping the cobblestones.

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Another Phoenix family reunion

We're off to Phoenix to visit family and celebrate my father-in-law’s 76th birthday. I don’t love Phoenix. Its sizzling, sprawling monotony grates on me after a few days. But Phoenix is where my husband’s dad and siblings live, so we go when we can. Family trumps all.

When our Arizona visits last more than a long weekend, I look for escapes and road trips that take us out of the flat, congested desert metropolis and into older, wilder places. Like the ancient cliff dwellings at Tonto and Montezuma Castle National Monuments. Or Jerome, a mountaintop gold-turned-ghost town that’s now home to artists and artisans and the boutiques, galleries and restaurants that blossom in their wake. Or the Apache Trail, one of the country’s great scenic drives (a fair stretch of it near Roosevelt Lake [above] on narrow, thrilling, cliff-hugging dirt). The road runs between Globe and Apache Junction, where, less than an hour from downtown Phoenix, you can hike in the Superstition Mountains or hunt for gold and ghosts in the Lost Dutchman Mine.

Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun it sits in hold treasures, too. A hike along trails in White Tank Regional Park brings you face to face with desert hills and their intriguing flora and fauna. Elegant, red rock Camelback Mountain and jagged, scrub-peppered Squaw Peak (recently renamed Piestawa Peak) rise from the valley floor, powerful visual antidotes to the city’s low, dry tedium. If you’re looking to meet fit, active Phoenicians, plan a hike or run up Squaw. Between Phoenix and its Sky Harbor airport sits Tempe, home of Arizona State University. Tempe’s a vibrant, funky place where rare, leafy trees line the oldest neighborhoods and the city center pulses like all good college towns.

But family’s why we go. Perhaps you have your own Phoenix. A place that won’t win any touristic beauty contests and isn’t at the top of your getaway hit parade, yet you visit and revisit to connect with family. And with memories. I wrote a story for Reunions Magazine that shares some of ours:


The Belanger Open

by Lori Hein

As my husband’s mom’s multiple sclerosis worsened, my father-in-law moved her and his younger children from Massachusetts to Arizona’s gentler climate. Once grandchildren started to arrive, my mother-in-law, Bertie, longed to spend time with them all, both the Phoenix and Boston contingents. My father-in-law hatched the idea of an annual event that would have the Boston relatives spend three days each winter enjoying the Southwest sun and grandma’s company. To make the event irresistible, he built the reunion around golf. This was a masterstroke, as the family is full of avid golfers who love a little competition on the links. Bobby, my father-in-law, raised the interest level by constructing a whole tournament, complete with trophies and peppered with friendly wagers. The first Belanger Open was a hole-in-one and the next nine were just as perfect.

Planning for each golf reunion began about nine months before the tournament, with a Phoenix-area golf course located, inspected and nailed down as early as possible. Total costs were calculated and each family chipped in their share. Foursomes were established. Each tournament’s winner was responsible for booking the next year’s venue, with Phoenix relatives helping out, should the winner not hail from the Valley of the Sun. In the early years of the Open, only the golfers went to the course. The post-tournament party was held in grandma and grandpa’s backyard, with kiddie pools set up on the patio, and lines of little ones waiting for burgers and dogs. In later years, as finances allowed, we booked courses with private, kid-friendly function areas and had catered buffets. Litchfield Park’s Wigwam Resort, Superstition Springs in Mesa and Goodyear’s Palm Valley Golf Club all have function facilities. We’d gather there for about five hours, from the first foursome’s return to the early evening.

The Belanger Open grew over the years to include relatives from Florida and Pennsylvania. Golf was the big draw, of course, with one year seeing five foursomes tee off.

But the true main event was spending time with my mother-in-law: mom to some, Bertie to others, grandma to an ever-growing group of future golfers. Bertie was queen of the Belanger Open, delighting in the activities and the company of her grandchildren. The kids discovered grandpa’s golf cart wasn’t the only treat on wheels. Grandma’s wheelchair moved pretty fast, and her lap made a great passenger seat.

Each three-day reunion opened with a barbecue and horseshoe tournament at Uncle Tom’s or Uncle Rick’s. Cousins rediscovered each other, and we all caught up on family news. One year, a rented karaoke machine provided hours of great fun. We did some family-friendly local sightseeing on day two, taking Bertie in her wheelchair whenever possible. The Phoenix Zoo was a popular outing. Dinner at a restaurant on the second night gave us a chance to dress up. Fun, colorful Mexican restaurants worked great with kids.

Early on the third day, the golfers met at the course and took to the links. The non-golfers spent a leisurely brunch with Bertie. We gathered in the clubhouse function room in the early afternoon to toast the winner and roast the rest. Bobby would pass out Belanger Open t-shirts to all the kids and the final party would begin. My father-in-law loved passing out the trophies: Best Score, Most Improved Score, and Horse’s Behind for the golfer voted most deserving of that title.

After dinner we danced to music from an uncle’s portable boombox and the kids played with toys and trading cards from the stocked backpacks they’d brought. A professional photographer came by and took a group portrait that would be enlarged and mailed to each family. Bertie always sat proudly in the center of the front row.

After my mother-in-law succumbed to cancer, we put the Belanger Open on hold. We’ve begun getting together again, with some changes, but there’s always golf. And we’re sure Bertie is with us each time we gather.

Simple gifts: Acoma Pueblo

This is St. Esteban del Rey, the mission church that sits 400 feet above the New Mexican desert and crowns thousand-year-old Acoma Sky City, sacred heart and spiritual epicenter of Acoma Pueblo.

Scroll to the post below (Oct. 7) and listen to an excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America. We learn about the Acoma people's deep faith and rich culture from Dale Sanchez, great grandmother, family matriarch and tribal leader. Enjoy the journey.

India: Pipe cleaners and public shaving

After I did my laps in the pool this morning I headed for the steam room, my post-workout reward. A sign hung on the door’s fogged glass: “Per Order of the Board of Health Shaving is Not Permitted in Public Steam Rooms. Thank You For Your Cooperation.”

“People shave in here?” I asked Kateri, the lifeguard. (Kateri, a petite girl from a large family, is named for a Native American Catholic saint. “My parents named us all after saints.”)

“Yes.” She wrinkled up her nose. “We found a disposable razor in there.” I muttered a “gross” and headed for the shower where I’d look for alien stubble stuck to my skin. Shaving in public. Yuck.

If I find out who the secret shaver is, I’ll recommend he or she try India, where you can do that sort of thing. In fact, you can have someone do it for you, along with other personal grooming tasks like ear cleaning. And, to satisfy your inner voyeur, you can watch other people being groomed – on dusty streets, in parks, on riverbanks or on the quiet grounds of centuries-old Moghul monuments like Delhi’s Purana Qila (above). Like China, India is a very public place, and that publicness takes some getting used to. If you’re set down into the midst of it immediately after a draining global circumnavigation, it can knock you for a loop. It did me.

Mike and I landed in India 24 hours after leaving Boston. We flew to London, then to Kuwait, then on to Delhi. Our exhaustion was complete. We’d arrived five hours too early for our hotel’s noon check-in, so we left our duffel bag behind the front desk and went to rest in a public park.

The scene made rest impossible. The light, gray fog of an early Delhi morning hung heavy in the air. On the streets abutting the park, people rode bicycles and three-wheeled yellow and black pedicabs, and the air pinged with the chinks of their handlebar bells. Bamboo scaffolding covered myriad cinderblock construction projects like yellow ivy, and thin workers hammered and pounded and climbed and carried and sweated. Near us, legs tucked beneath him in the lotus position, a holy man with a beautiful, brown, peaceful face, shock of white hair and a long white beard sat chanting, eyes closed, under a tree. A string of eight graceful, dark-eyed girls floated through the morning mist, jugs on their heads, down a riverbank to collect water.

Welcome to India. Whirling, swirling, pressing masses of humanity. Soldiers doing a drill with shouldered rifles. Beggars, nut sellers, street cleaners, cart haulers, firewood carriers. Welcome to India! Bright saris and sandals and baggy white trousers and vests and foreheads with red dots and babies and cows and pretty girls in party dresses with bows in their hair and stoop-shouldered grandmothers. And people polishing other people’s shoes and cleaning their fingernails and shaving their faces.

Wait! I need a slower introduction! My brain screamed. Overload! Overload! I need to rest, to get my bearings, to establish a mental and emotional toehold, to have this India seep into me more slowly!

But it isn’t possible. India doesn’t introduce itself slowly. It greets you with crushing intensity and doesn’t let go. You are pushed in whole. Experiencing India for the first time is like taking your first swimming lesson by jumping into the Atlantic from the deck of an ocean liner. You are swallowed. You gasp for air. You push and pull to find the surface and pockets where you can breathe.

Just when I felt my brain reach its limit and every fiber of me yearn for noon so I could escape to the sanctuary of a hotel room, the ear cleaners arrived. A group of ragged young men carrying pipe cleaners who clean people’s ears for a living. One approached us, sitting there shell-shocked and jet lagged, backs against our packs. He asked us if he could clean our ears.

That is India. A thin, coffee-colored man appearing out of the mist wanting, needing to clean your ears.


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Cyclist's guide to the galaxy

I've always used biking as a cross-training sport, logging the most miles in the saddle during weeks or months of healing from intermittent running injuries. Cycling’s never been a passion, just a means to an end, a way to retain cardiopulmonary and muscle strength during a prolonged running layoff. When you build that stuff up over years, it’s depressing to lose it. I’ve always looked at time on the bike as nothing more than an investment in being able to run well once the pesky bone, joint or muscle of the moment had bounced back.

That view of cycling changed this summer. I’d climbed back on the bike in May, victim of a stress fracture, gloomily pedaling my way through rehab. It’s not that I hated being on the bike. I just didn’t love it. I looked at every road I pedaled down as a road I should have been running on.

Then July brought the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. I watched every stage and studied the strategy, tactics and nuances of long-distance road cycling. By August, I’d embraced it as a more-than-half-full experience rather than a less-than-half-empty substitute for something else. I bought a new bike (whose gearshift combinations I’m still learning to finesse), brought my mileage up to as much as 50 in a single outing, kicked my top speed from 12 to about 17 miles per hour, learned how to pop wheels off and fix flats, and read every Lance Armstrong-related article or book I could find, including “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” which Armstrong wrote with Washington Post sports reporter, Sally Jenkins. I’m going to have my kids read it, not for what it says about sport, but for what it says about hope, our only real antidote to fear, which can paralyze. Hope keeps us moving.

Armed with a new attitude, I’ve been out exploring surrounding towns and cities on two wheels, and I ride almost as many days as I run. It’s wonderful, but biking one’s way through a car-centric society is also dangerous.

I’ve concluded that most drivers resent slowing down, putting cellphone conversations on hold, and giving cyclists a little extra berth. They defiantly resist this anti-American behavior and do what they can to send the message that yes, in fact, they do own the road and they’re not happy about sharing it. (I was careful when choosing my bike. I was more careful choosing my helmet. And I installed a big, oval rearview mirror at the end of my left hand grip and ride in the brightest, wackiest neon colors I can find. I make a beeline for any clothing rack that has screaming yellow or hot pink hanging on it.)

There are places in the world where bicycles get more respect. Like Belgium, which boasts bike paths than run the length and width of the country. When we were in Bruges (Brugge) (above), we explored the medieval canal city's heart on bikes provided free by our hotel, the Adornes, a budget gem with a killer breakfast included in the price. All over the city, people rode bikes, and cars were expected to yield and adapt.

But if you go to Bruges, take a helmet. I saw most people riding without, a decision that no doubt contributes to the city’s cyclist fatality rate. And ride smart. Don’t stop in the middle of a bike path to take a picture, or you might cause a bicycle pile-up.

Which would make you fodder for a post on a blog I found today: Unpopular Blog – The Filipino Twink Blogs Too. In his October 1, 2005 post, “Something Funny Happened On the Way Home,” the blogger, a Filipino expat living in Bruges who bikes to his job at a chocolate factory, used his keyboard to tsk-tsk the “stupid tourists” on bikes who don’t know the rules of the road. Here, the problem is drivers with cellphones and lead feet. There, the problem is cyclists with cameras and hands that can’t lay off the brakes.

Along with whatever skill and wisdom you bring to the rides of your life, a balance of fear and hope seems key to surviving and making it home, no matter what road you’re on.

www.LoriHein.com