Travel and culture
It seems crazy to say it in hindsight, but I really did wonder if I might see him. He lives in Hawaii and Cape Cod — makes a point of mentioning it in the little bios that appear under his byline, alongside a series of mugshots-through-the-ages in which the increasingly elderly author tries to convey his… Continue reading Paul Effing Theroux
It’s been three years since I last went home. Three long years in which my own blissful little life — romance, marriage, friendships, a loving family-in-law, testing the limits of “working from home,” outdoor adventures in the paradisiacal Pacific Northwest — has shone in ugly contrast with a plague-ridden civilization that feels like it’s shutting down, turning in on itself.
Early in the spring, H and I spent some time on the coast in northern Oregon. We did this every so often during our time in Seattle, and especially during the pandemic. We’d sneak our names onto the schedule and avail ourselves of the famous beach cabin. We’d drive down in the night, bringing work… Continue reading Take A Moment On The Oregon Coast
Friday Afternoon A sliver of a river slides beneath the rails and then we’re in Queens, floating over a great plain of brick row houses and tessellating backyards, little boxes of space framed by high fences. I love the train for its glimpses at unseen places: rooftops covered in broken glass, a hidden tag from… Continue reading Portals: Cycling From NYC to Boston
...And it knows it.
It took us eight days to cross the United States from end to end, speeding over prairies in our lozenge-shaped craft, floating inches above the tarmac of Interstate 90 on four rubber-bound air cushions. Washington was a rolling brown farmland they call the Palouse. Idaho was a brief, gorgeous jaunt across the panhandle: sapphire lakes… Continue reading Eight Days Across America
We kick off a new series of blog posts, which will ultimately form a complete guide to bicycle touring. First up: why would you go bicycle touring in the first place?
Alright, let’s get this out of the way. This time the excuse is this: as we neared the far reaches of Australia’s east coast and with it, re-entered the orbit of my family and the last weeks of the trip, I had less and less time to sit down and punch out a post. When… Continue reading The Red Centre
Australia’s Northern Territory is shaped like a tombstone, its base lodged deep in the red central deserts and jutting up to touch exotically-named bodies of water like the Timor Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The state’s human population mostly congregates along the Stuart Highway, a north-south spine of bitumen that links Darwin in the… Continue reading The Top End
I really, really wanted to like Esperance. This was our first proper town in Western Australia, a lonely outlier on the state’s southern coast. The name had a nice ring to it, a hissing rhythm when pronounced in Australian English. Esperance – it’s French for “hope,” named after a ship in the same expedition that… Continue reading Little Gnomes and Big Trees in the South West