360 Degrees Longitude

by John Higham

  The elephant’s handler asked, “Do you want to sit on the bench where it is safe?” There was something in the way he framed the question that suggested weakness if I were to retreat. It’s a guy thing, but after making a big deal out of sitting on The Big Guy’s shoulders, I couldn’t give up so easily, and remained on The Big Guy’s shoulders for the next couple of hours.

  We approached a river. The Big Guy stood at the edge of the river-bank, giving me a bird’s-eye view of what it was about to do—step off what seemed to me a cliff and into the river. As he contemplated his best path, I quickly reviewed my options, which were limited to jumping off. I considered that, then consoled myself that my will was in order.

  When The Big Guy stepped off the bank and into the river, I was thrown forward. I once again searched the elephant’s smooth and broad head for anything to grab onto. No handle materialized and I stayed on purely by divine intervention.

  Once we were in the river, the elephant directly in front of us decided it was time to relieve itself and we were given a demonstration of the sheer volume of material of which an elephant needs to be relieved. A small mountain was laid there and as the water began backing up behind it, I recalled that I had “showered” in this very river the previous night. I was overcome by the urge to drive to the nearest Wal-Mart, buy a case of Evian, and bathe in it.

  Unfazed by the fact that his buddy had just pooped in the river, our elephant paused to get a drink. After four or five long drinks The Big Guy’s trunk came up to my eye level and I braced for an instant fire hose.

  The Big Guy wasn’t done toying with me. For the next hour or so, it seemed all The Big Guy wanted to do was remind me that he was bigger than me and that I was highly annoying. As we trundled along he kept pausing to uproot some small tree and then chew it, when suddenly a large branch thick with foliage came directly at me.

  “Your elephant is trying to kill me!” I asserted to his handler, who was sitting comfortably on a bench next to September.

  “His head itches, that is all,” the handler assured. “He uses the branch to scratch.”

  The Big Guy also liked to sneeze on me. I could feel him gather a tremendous breath of air, then his trunk would come up to my eye level and I would be hit with a hot jet of air mixed with dust and droplets of goo.

  Meanwhile, Katrina, Jordan, and Granny were hundreds of yards ahead of us on The Cute One and I couldn’t see them any longer. When September and I finally caught up with them, I was relieved to see that Katrina and Jordan had not been reduced to the thickness of a sheet of paper and had already dismounted. Had I known what to expect, I don’t think I would have agreed to the elephant trek, and I certainly wouldn’t have subjected my kids to it.

  As we dismounted, Katrina came rushing up to September and me. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “can we do that again?!”

  “How’s that? I am so glad it’s over. Did your elephant try to knock off the trainer who was riding on its shoulders?”

  “Oh, he didn’t ride there most of the time,” Katrina replied. “Jordan and I took turns riding on her shoulders. It was really fun!”

  I was dumbfounded. I would never have allowed them to ride up there if I could have seen what was going on.

  “Didn’t you nearly get thrown off every time your elephant stepped off the bank to cross the river?”

  “Oh no,” Katrina said. “The Cute One held onto me really tight by pressing her ears to my thighs. It would have been scary otherwise.”

  What was this all about? The Big Guy seemed determined to dislodge me one way or another. The Cute One was holding on to Katrina.

  “Didn’t your elephant keep sneezing on you, or uproot a tree and try to knock you off with it?”

  “No,” Katrina confessed. “I made friends with her back in the village before we started. I gave her something to eat and a bouquet of flowers.”

  “How’s that? I thought I told you to stay away from the elephants.”

  “Gee Dad. I didn’t want to get on a big animal like an elephant without knowing it was my friend first.”

  John’s Journal, January 15

  We found ourselves traveling for a few days with two young women from Denmark. They had been working their first job out of high school as letter carriers for the Danish postal service for a whole four months. Four months of work can be so demanding mentally, it is little wonder they were taking a one-month leave of absence to travel around Southeast Asia. They had a week remaining and wondered where to go next. I suggested Cambodia.

  “Where is that? What is there to do there?”

  Though the girls were in a neighboring country, they weren’t sure where Cambodia was, had never heard of the genocide there, and were only vaguely aware that there was once a war in a place called Vietnam.

  On the one hand these were still just kids, but they were also recent products of a rich country’s educational system. They were up on current world events and certainly knew much more about U.S. politics than I do about European politics. I have little doubt that the average recent U.S. high school graduate would also know very little about Cambodia.

  Speaking of Cambodia, we went to church in Chiang Mai and met a local family who showed us around town. The father was an ice cream vendor. We learned that one thousand baht (US$25) bought all of his capital needs for a day. He considered it to be a lot of money.

  I couldn’t help but to compare my situation relative to my new ice cream vendor friend, and then to Prak whom I had met in Phnom Penh. To me, $25 per day was trivial, and while it was a significant sum in Thailand, it would have been an unthinkably large sum to Prak.

  We reached a village, very much like the one we stayed at the night before. As the sun was setting, we were greeted by a toddler who acted like he owned the place. He quickly won the hearts of the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls, who showered him with all the affection they had tried to give to Jordan.

  The chief of the village had many wives and they were going to dance for us later that night. At the appointed time we sat around a fire that took the chill out of the night air. The same toddler came out to greet us and was instantly drawn to the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls.

  Little kids can get away with anything, because they’re so cute. This little guy went right up to his new Danish girlfriends, pulled down his pants, and started to pee. Smiling at the dumbfounded Pin-Up Girls, he maintained eye contact the entire time he drained his bladder.

  I couldn’t help but think that he was marking his territory now that others were nearby. The chief had his gaggle of girls, darn it, and these particular ones now belonged to a two-year-old. While most of the village was chanting and dancing around us, they were oblivious that their youngest was making the statement that he was the alpha male.

  Jordan was aghast. “Look what that little boy is doing! Don’t his parents know any better? Why don’t they teach him better?”

  I wanted to tell Jordan that his parents had probably taught him exactly what they should have, and he was now doing it. But Jordan just wouldn’t be able to grasp it, so I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

  19.

  Busted in the Ladies’ Room

  January 18–January 19

  En Route over the Pacific

  Leaving Chiang Mai, Thailand, we started a sequence of events that would include one overnight train and three long-distance flights, culminating fifty-one hours and thirteen time zones later in San Jose, Costa Rica.

  I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  After the overnight train, we arrived at the airport in Bangkok when it was still dark and waited for our afternoon departure for Taipei, then onward to Los Angeles. From there we would catch our flight to Costa Rica. It was time for Granny to go home and we watched her board her plane. We wouldn’t see her for another six months. When it was finally our turn we found that China Airlines gave the herd in economy class a wide selection of movies to choose from, everyone having their own personal screen to view it on.

&nbs
p; Predictably, Jordan zeroed in on a recent release superhero movie. The flight was long enough that Jordan watched it twice. The moment we stepped off the plane in Taipei, he proceeded to explain the plot in detail. “Mom, will you watch it with me on the next flight? Will you? Say you will!”

  “Why I’d love to!” September said, in desperation to keep Jordan from boiling over.

  “The next flight is a red-eye,” I said. “You sure you want to stay up and watch a movie?”

  “Even if that movie is on the next flight, Jordan has been up for twenty-four hours. He’ll be unconscious before we leave the tarmac.”

  We were all starting to get a little ragged and ripe. With six hours before our flight to LAX we were getting restless.

  “Hey, did you see that?” I asked September. “There’s a picture of a showerhead next to the door of the restroom.” A shower sounded divine, but our luggage was checked through to L.A. and none of us had soap, towel, or a change of underwear in our carry-ons. But that wasn’t about to stop us.

  “You guys stay here and read your books,” September said to the kids. “We’re going to take a shower.” Katrina and Jordan had earned a fair amount of freedom during our travels. For example, we felt just as comfortable leaving them alone in an airport departure lounge during a shower as we did in a hostel while we did laundry.

  “Together?” Katrina asked.

  “Not as far as you know.”

  No towel required only a bit of improvisation. Using a handful of soap and a wad of paper towels from the men’s restroom, I was able to shower, using the paper towels to pat myself dry. Bliss. It was one of the best showers I have ever had.

  Feeling refreshed, I really didn’t want to put on the same underwear that had accompanied me since the morning of the previous day, so I did what any semireasonable person would do—I washed them in the sink. Hey, there’s a hair dryer, I thought to myself. September sometimes dries the laundry with her hair dryer!

  Imagine my surprise when the hair dryer just didn’t work. What does one do with wet underwear when there isn’t anything else to wear?

  September was in the ladies’ shower across the hall. It seemed logical that there would be a hair dryer over there, and that she could dry my underwear for me. I slipped on my trousers, damp underwear in hand, and walked over to the doorway and called out to her.

  “September… ?”

  No one echoed back, “October!” so I figured she was alone. I called again, this time with a wee bit more volume.

  “I’m just getting started!” she replied. I told her want I wanted, and she replied back, “Just come in and use the hair dryer yourself. There’s no one else in here.”

  I timidly slipped one word the ladies’ shower room, glancing over my shoulder every other second, expecting a giant hand to suddenly appear and point an accusing finger at me. The giant hand never appeared and after a few moments I started to get somewhat comfortable in my surroundings. I started to blow-dry my underwear, always wary of any movement in case the Restroom Gender Enforcement SWAT team came swooping in.

  Even though I had my guard up, the next thing I knew someone of the female persuasion was standing next to me giving me an incredulous look.

  Pretending not to notice, I went about my business as though I dried my underwear there every day. As the seconds ticked by, I could feel holes being bored into my skull as this woman was staring at me in disbelief.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I couldn’t stand the tension any longer, so I turned to her and smiled. With that gesture, she looked a tad panic stricken and vanished as suddenly as she had materialized.

  I decided that my underwear was dry enough, went back to the men’s room, changed, and returned to where the kids were reading their books.

  The Restroom Lady was nowhere in sight, nor was the Restroom Gender Enforcement SWAT team. Mission accomplished.

  Turning to the kids, I said, “There’s a lovely shower in there. The water is warm, most likely void of elephant poop. You don’t have to keep putting coins in it to keep it going. Don’t you want to take a shower?”

  “Grmmph. Can’t you see we’re reading?”

  I forgot to advertise it as a mud waterfall, warning them not to get dirty.

  As I sat in the transit lounge, people kept giving me these awful stares like they knew I had a dark secret. Did the Restroom Lady come out into the transit lounge screaming that there was a man in the ladies’ room drying his underwear, and now everyone was trying to get a look at this demented pervert?

  I looked around for the giant accusing finger pointing at me, but it wasn’t to be found. I felt uneasy, burdened with my dark secret.

  After what seemed like an eternity, September emerged from her shower and came out to join us.

  “Ick!” she said. “What’s all over your face?”

  “Huh?”

  “You have this grayish fuzz all over your face. What have you been doing? Eating lint from the dryer?”

  It turns out that I had paper towel lint all over my face. The kids have always said that my beard stubble was like sandpaper and the paper towels were no match for it. September spent the next few minutes grooming me, monkey style, picking tiny bits of towel fuzz off my face.

  • • •

  Hours later, we were boarding our flight from Taipei to L.A. It was already after midnight in Taipei and we had been on the move for more than 30 hours. I felt as though someone had harvested my eyeballs. September looked about how I felt. The kids were as perky as ever.

  Jordan had the in-flight magazine out before the cabin door closed.

  “Hey, Mom! Guess what! That same movie is playing on this airplane, too! You promised you’d watch it with me. Remember Mom? Remember? You want to watch it? Remember what it was about?” Jordan proceeded to rehash the plot. I gave September an I-told-you-so look.

  “The in-flight entertainment won’t start for at least an hour,” September whispered to me. “Surely he’ll be asleep by then.”

  As soon as the flight was airborne, I donned earplugs and was off to a blissful chemically induced sleep. It isn’t as though I pack around 20 pounds of clueless with me just for conversational purposes, but hours later when I regained consciousness somehow I was in a fair amount of trouble.

  “Hey, I didn’t promise him I would watch it. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” This comment did not boost my approval rating.

  September proceeded to enlighten me as to how Jordan would pause the movie and rewind it so that he could explain the implications of what was happening in the plot. I did my best to furrow my eyebrows in a concerned fashion and occasionally make an empathetic groan at a critical juncture. It seemed to help, but sometimes I wish there were a guidebook on women I could refer to.

  • • •

  Two hundred thirty-two days. It had been way too long since I had had a decent burrito. Even though we were only passing through LAX with a two-hour layover, I had been counting down the days for a very long time. LAX had to have a Chevy’s or at least a Taco Bell.

  You can imagine my disappointment when all I could find was a measly burger joint that also sold burritos. Worse, I swear the cook had trained in England.

  • • •

  After our second red-eye in a row, we arrived in Costa Rica, checked into a hotel by the airport, and turned in for the night. It was 8:00 a.m. When we woke up it was dusk outside. We went to the mall up the street hoping to find breakfast. To my delight, we were greeted by a Taco Bell in the mall’s food court. And there was free Wi-Fi!

  So, I had been reduced to getting excited by a Taco Bell. Maybe I was just excited about the Wi-Fi. I pulled out my e.brain and looked at the empty browser window and wondered where to go. It finally struck me as pathetically ironic. I didn’t need to “go” anywhere.

  During our travels, September and the kids loved to tease me for my obsessive searching for open Wi-Fi networks so I could scan the headlines. It had been my way to keep my finger
on the pulse of the world. Over the last dozen or so weeks, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that the world as viewed through the lens of the media was a different one from the world I was experiencing through our travels.

  It isn’t as though I completely gave up going online for an information fix, but my compulsive behavior of searching for open Wi-Fi networks to satiate my morbid fascination with the post-9/11 news died in a food court in San Jose, Costa Rica.

  I stuffed my e.brain back into my pocket, and turning to my family, said, “I love being in a new place and discovering what makes it tick!”

  HOME IS WHERE YOUR STUFF IS

  20.

  Danger! Banana Crossing!

  January 19–February 9

  Costa Rica

  Anyone who has dealt with real estate in California knows that every “Planned Unit Development” has a cutesy made-up name with an alternative spelling, like “Chardonnay Parque.” This is to make it sound exotic even though it is just some place next to the BART Park-N-Ride. So it was with a healthy amount of skepticism that I went to a Costa Rican “Cloud Forest.” I was blown away. Really. The wind really blows.

  Costa Rica sits between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, the two coasts being only a few hours’ drive apart. Between the two coasts is an impressive mountain range sporting no fewer than seven active volcanoes. One of the volcanoes, Volcan Arenal, has been active almost daily since 1968, when it wiped out an entire village.

  The two coasts and the high mountain range in between create a veritable cloud factory. In the Cloud Forest you watch clouds whiz by, propelled by the impressive velocity of the wind. I have watched clouds from a 747 that don’t go by nearly as fast. And the clouds are so low it seems that you can reach up and touch them, creating a kind of Timothy Leary effect.