How strange, then, to be in a foreign land where not only do I not know the language, but the alphabet itself is foreign. Though the people here in Israel generally speak at least some English, most signs do not have English versions (why should they, of course?). I am left puzzling over random squiggles that are not associated with phonemes in my mind yet, trying to consciously identify the couple of sounds that I know. It amuses me to feel so intensely how much our civilization depends on the written word just to function, and to wonder what life must be like for illiterate adults for whom the constant stream of written information, at once intellectual lifeblood and distracting noise, is non-existent.

Hearing spoken Hebrew is just a hair better, as here or there I recognize one of the words in my micro-vocabulary: “yes,” “no,” “water,” “please,” “thank you,” “peace.” (Hmmm, that would make for an interesting plot outline). I find it weirdly fascinating to be able to almost automatically tune out others talking, since their incomprehensible gibberish does not cause mental static like it would if they were speaking a language I know. Ironically, one of the mental games that I like to play is trying to think without words—a very hard proposition (try it!). Being in a setting where the language is so foreign provides a good approximation, I’m guessing, to what that must feel like.

Every morning I run on the boardwalk by the Mediterranean. On my “weight-lifting” days I join the random strangers (young and elderly, athletic and not) at one of these gym areas and do pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and that exemplar of classic beach calisthenics, body-weight squats. It’s a perfect way to burn off the sumptuous Israeli breakfast, and there’s enough inspiration around to keep one motivated…

• Big Climb: successful, not anywhere as grueling as it sounds
• Eastern Washington state: The Potholes are amazing, the rodeos are thrilling
• Consider participating in The Day of Silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools
• On a lighter note, check out how to get from New York to Dublin; you may want to have broadband access

This is Vinny. A noble steed with an independent streak, Vinny was one of the highlights of my weekend at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Knox and I took it easy this year: we swam a little and socialized a lot, I learned to ride horses and he learned to fly fish. And we danced. To Madonna.

It was fun.

Now, alas, Knox is traveling back to Seattle and I am focusing on work, biking, and reading.

The Desert Tour was everything Knox and I could have hoped for, and more. After our little hotel fiasco-cum-windfall, we spent the first few days sightseeing around San Diego on foot and running last-minute errands to get our bikes ready for the trip. We walked along the waterfront, visited the arboretum in Balboa Park, and walked in Coronado. San Diego struck me as a blandly pleasant city: the streets were wide and clean and everything seemed nice enough, but the parts where we were seemed to lack a certain vitality, a certain je ne sais quoi, during the day. To be sure, at night the Gaslamp District came alive with partyiers and revelers, all the more so because it was St. Patrick’s Day.

The biking part of our trip began on a Sunday: we took the street car to the neighboring town of El Cajon to avoid the hassles of city traffic. From there, we immediately began a steep, arduous climb, after only fifteen miles of which we decided to call it a night at the town of Alpine. We were off to an inauspicious start: we had a heavy rain shower shortly after we began, and had to buy giant Ziplock bags to protect our tent and sleeping bags, as we had purposefully not packed wet-weather gear; this was Southern California, after all! The reality was that, in spite of our visions of cavorting in Souther California shirtless, the area was in the middle of a cold spell the likes of which had not been seen since 1991. In fact, on the second night of our actual biking, as we were crossing the mountains through Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, we were surrounded by snow. The park and its campgrounds were closed, but the volunteers manning the welcome center made a few phone calls and obtained authorization to open up a cabin for us, and near the bathrooms at that. Yep, we were the only ones there, in a little hut with a wood-burning stove (which we kept lit throughout the night). It was all very Brokeback, what with the isolation, the camping, and Knox’s neo-cowboy hat.

The morning held even more surprises for us: a fresh inch or two of snow covering our path out of the park, and sleet and sludge on the main road. We hitched a ride to the town of Julian, locally famous for its pies, with some San Diego chiropractors in the area for the first time. It was all downhill from there (literally, certainly not figuratively!). A hailstorm accompanied us on our departure from Julian, and my fingers were seared by the cold that rendered my biking gloves thin wet rags. As we lost elevation, however, the weather turned gradually warmer and drier, and we were amazed at how quickly our surroundings changed into spectacular mountainous desert views. During one of our stops, in fact, a fellow bike tourer with four Ortliebs to my two passed us with a fleeting greeting.

Our stop that day was Agua Caliente state park, a natural hot spring in the desert. We soaked in both the indoor and outdoor pools with fellow vacationers, most of them elderly folks, until closing time (5pm most weekdays, unfortunately). We pitched our tent in the sand among the not-so-shy cotton-tail rabbits and got an amazing view of the mottled sky after the sun fell.

After an equally spectacular sunrise, we got on our bikes and pedaled on to the Yuma Desert. We passed through Plaster City, a giant drywall manufacturing plant, and a multitude of plowed fields made possible by the wonders (hah!) of irrigation. Though we were considering biking up to the Salton Sea, we decided to spend the night in El Centro, where we stuffed ourselves with Mexican food and enjoyed the motel hot tub.

The last and longest cycling day found us on an the worst roads of all: cracked, abandoned pavement running parallel to the highway. Though we were tempted to spend some time at an alluring hot spring oasis by the side of Highway 8, we pedaled on. What few irrigated fields there were had been abandoned, and before long we came to the sand dunes that could easily be the set of any Saharan (or Star Wars!) epic– save perhaps for the helicopters that seemed to hover near us every so often, probably an immigration patrol trying to convince itself that latex-clad bikers were probably not undocumented foreign nationals. In the midst of this isolation, no less, my bike broke down: the vibration from riding the warped pavement had sheared off one of the screws holding up one of my front racks, and right as I fixed that, my front tire went flat (no visible puncture, perhaps it there was something loose in the bent valve). We persevered, and at 5:14, after 194 miles of biking, we crossed the [not-so-mighty] Colorado River into Yuma, Arizona.

Knox’s parents were waiting for us on the Arizona side of the bridge. After introductions (and an all-too-public change of clothes) we had dinner and headed back to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, where they are stationed. We were able to stay in our own guest trailer, and were treated to good home cooking and friendly ribbing during our stay. We went on several hikes at the refuge and in the Kofa Refuge, during which we were able to see barrel, saguaro, prickly pear, and agave cacti, as well as ocotillos, palo verdes, wild honeycombs, lizards, bats (and bat caves), and endangered frogs. The highlight, though, has to have been the rattlesnake that Knox and I stepped over one night and which was only pointed out to us by Knox’s nephew (who joined us with his mother toward the end of our stay).

Though I enjoyed meeting Knox’s family and we all got along really well (even Miss Whitney, the slightly spastic new family dog which one night ransacked the home while we were away), it was all too soon time to part. After a brief visit to the Yuma Crossing museum, we boarded a bus back to San Diego. We got a brief glimpse of Calexico and got carded by immigration authorities. As we suspected, there were a lot of border crossings and border patrols during our whole trip, in part because of geography and in part because of the political events in Washington.

We stayed just one night at the Hotel Solamar, enjoying a fancy dinner and all the accoutrements of luxury, before departing on our respective flights– Knox to Seattle, me to Boston. The time has just flown by, but we consider ourselves pretty lucky to have the type of life where we can take such crazy, wild vacations– and we’re already thinking about the next one.

My USAir flight was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve been on: I was in a middle seat, and there was no food on board, in spite of what the gate agent in Boston had told me. Knox arrived at a different terminal, and we were trying to find a cab large enough for both of our bikes. We finally did, but the driver was clueless and we had to help him find the address. When we unloaded everything and went to check into the Park Manor Suites Hotel, a gay-friendly establishment on the edge of Balboa Park that had been recommended to us, we were told they were overbooked and there was no room for us. By this time it was about 1:00am PST, or 4:00am EST, and I was livid! “Do you know how hard it was to get a cab? Did we not tell you we’d be arriving late? Did we not give you a telephone number? I’m gonna blog about this!!” So here I am, with a warning to all travelers: the Park Manor Suites, apparently like other hotels in the area, will overbook rooms and not tell you that you’ve been given the boot. Funny how they get you: if you reserve and don’t show up, they take your deposit; if you reserve and show up, you don’t get a room.

The receptionist said they would put us up at another hotel (they even have a form “walk letter” prepared for these situations), and he spent the next half hour calling and failing to get a van cab to take both our bikes. We finally got two regular cabs and went to the Hotel Solamar, an upscale establishment on the edge of the Gaslamp District (food!). In terms of amenities, we got the better deal, I suppose, but we had really been looking forward to settling in with no hassles and being close to the park.

At any rate, since then things have been looking up. We’ve been walking all over San Diego and stocking up on the essentials we need for the bike trip. We’ve already had fancy meals, a quick dip in the pool, and many pictures. And now, we must stop dilly-dallying and start biking east.

Our ultimate goal: Yuma, AZ, by way of Joshua Tree National Park.

Yes, we’re taking our bikes. Yes, we’re biking in the desert. Insane? Perhaps. Intense? Most definitely!

Lest you worry, we expect to be in cell phone range and Knox’s parents (whom I’ll finally meet!) will pick us up from Joshua Tree, or earlier if we wimp out… It would be great to bike all the way from Joshua Tree to Yuma, but there isn’t enough time.

The adventure awaits… as does my cab.

Knox and I decided to spend Christmas weekend in New York City. While we took the cheap Greyhound to get there, we splurged on a king-bed suite at the Murray Hill East Suites. We walked a lot around the city. Sight-seeing highlights included:

• The New York Public Library, where we saw “The Splendor of the Word” exhibit on illuminated medieval manuscripts; the detailed workmanship is just amazing. We also saw the “I am with you” exhibit celebrating the sesquicentennial of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

• The Sea, Air, and Space Museum on the aircraft carrier U. S. S. Intrepid, where I got to meander the flight deck and to walk through a British Airways Concorde. To be honest, the rest of the museum was too martial for my taste

• Bodies: The Exhibition at the South Street Seaport Complex, one of several corpse shows making the rounds where we got to see plastified real corpses with various systems, organs, diseases, and malformations clearly displayed. Most ethereal of all were the displays of the human circulatory system: the blood vessels were preserved while the surrounding tissue was removed chemically, creating ghostlike impressions of human beings.

• The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, where we saw the exhibit “Fashion in Colors,” in which every room was dedicated to examples of a given color in fashion. We also saw a smaller exhibit, “Yinka Shonibare Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection,” which included new pieces by Shonibare in his signature style depciting two of the museum’s founders.

• The American Folk Art Museum whose permanent collection of art-by-the-masses has some curious and touching pieces. Most eye-catching, I thought, were the anonymous painted and ornamented insects made out of soda cans, which the museum picked up at a yard sale; a crocheted rug made entirely out of Wonder Bread bags and found in an old woman’s house upon her death; and a quilt made out of condom containers. One of the temporary exhibits, “Obsessive Drawing”, consists of works by people dealing with traumatic life events or just their own OCD.

We had excellent food as well (not even counting street vendors!):

• A fancy meal at Le Bateau Ivre, a delightful little French restaurant
• A Christmas Eve dinner at a wonderful Mexican place, Zarela, where the dulce de leche pancakes were to die for
• A fancy organic lunch at Le Pain Quotidien
• A wee bit of European-style hot chocolate at our most favorite haunt of all, Marie Belle