The Insulin Express

by Oren Liebermann

  We were ready for our trip. We banked $17,000 from our wedding and $23,000 more over the year, leaving us a tidy $40,000 in our savings account. I just had to get through the last few months of work. Some live shots, a bit of breaking news, a smattering of crime stories, and storms to cover. No big deal.

  Then I nearly forced us to cancel the trip.

  Early in the summer, I signed up for an ultimate frisbee league with Cassie’s brother. I’ve played ultimate frisbee ever since high school, progressing from friendly pick-up games to organized tournaments. I figured I would play one last league to get in shape for the trip.

  Halfway through our first game, my team was on defense, trailing 5–4, when the guy I was covering ran deep. He sprinted straight for the end zone, and I was right behind him. The frisbee went up. It was coming in behind me and to my right. I jumped and twisted in midair to intercept the frisbee or at least knock it out of the air, when I realized I had mistimed the jump. I knew instantly the disc would sail about a foot beyond my reach, and my guy would score. Instead of paying attention to the ground toward which I was now rapidly accelerating with the usual 9.8 meters per second squared that gravity exerts on a falling object, I focused on the disc and the player I was chasing.

  My right foot touched the ground first, and I was blinded with pain. I knew what happened in the brief but interminable instant before I collapsed on the field. I had blown out my ACL. The sickening snap, the shock of pain, the unnatural twist. It couldn’t be anything else. A player on my team fifteen feet away from me heard the tear, almost like a cartoonish pop. I had never torn my ACL before, but I’d heard enough people describe it to be fairly certain that’s what happened.

  My first thought was, “Holy shit, this hurts.” My second thought was, “Holy shit, I might’ve just ruined our trip.”

  An ambulance took me to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, covering the half-mile in forty-five minutes, horns blaring and lights flashing the entire way. At the hospital, a resident had me put weight on my right leg. When she saw I could stand on one foot, she concluded that I hadn’t torn my ACL.

  “It looks like you just sprained it,” she said.

  She was wrong and I knew it, but I didn’t argue. That was a mistake. Because she didn’t approve an MRI on the spot, it took me two weeks of yelling at my insurance company to have one approved. The MRI confirmed what I already knew. I had torn my right ACL. And I needed surgery, followed by months of physical therapy. Unlike other parts of the body, the ACL can’t heal itself. A torn anterior cruciate ligament will stay forever torn unless it is surgically repaired. You can forgo surgery and live without an ACL, but then your list of allowable athletic activities shrinks dramatically since the ACL is the major stabilizing ligament in the knee. No, I would need to go under the knife.

  You generally have three options for a new ACL tendon. You can have a piece of your patella tendon cut from the front of your knee and attached to your ACL. You can use a piece of your hamstring tendon from the back of your leg. Or you can go with option three. You can have an Achilles tendon taken out of the ankle of a cadaver and put into your knee as your brand new, sort-of-used ACL. I chose option three. My new ACL came from a dead guy I didn’t know but to whom I am eternally grateful. If the zombie apocalypse ever comes, I consider myself immunized since I am one percent undead.

  I thought tearing my ACL would be the great medical challenge of our trip. Man, was I wrong.

  Between physical therapy and all the doctor’s appointments, I missed most of my last three months at work. I was in a locked leg brace for six weeks, an unlocked brace for one more week, and had to learn to walk normally again after that.

  I asked my doctor and my physical therapist if I could still travel. They both gave the same answer.

  “Yes, but no jogging, no jumping, no running, no sports, no doing anything but walking wherever you have to go.”

  Okay, I thought. Simple enough. I could manage that.

  I have only five weeks of work left when I’m finally able to return, and I have a severe case of professional senioritis. I do everything I can to avoid major stories, volunteering for light fluff to cover.

  In my eight years in the industry, I have seen more dead bodies than I care to remember, talked to more grieving mothers than I can count, knocked on enough suspects’ doors to always feel unsafe, been to enough crime scenes to believe the world really can be a bad place, and stood in enough thunderstorms and hurricanes to feel perpetually wet. I even witnessed an execution.

  Local news reporters too often make a living off the lowest rungs of society, profiting just a bit more each time someone pulls a knife or a gun and uses it to add a little more chaos to this world. I am more than happy to step away from that, even if it means emptying my savings account and starting over when I get back.

  So, it is no surprise to me when my final story in Philadelphia is about someone stealing football supplies from a high school. At least it’s easy, and we find all of the elements we need within a few minutes of showing up.

  Many of my closest friends at work plan to join me in a few hours for a drink at the bar we all use as the post-shift pub of choice for consumption of alcohol. I pack up my final few belongings—not much considering how little time I spent at my desk—and make my way to the exit.

  I look back one last time at the doors I have walked through every day of my professional life for the last three years. I will certainly remember this place, and, for a brief moment, I think it will remember me too. Then I look at the video monitor that hangs by the entrance.

  It says, “Bon Voyage, Owen!”

  Chapter 4

  September 15, 2013

  52°45’01”N 35°30’58”W

  Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, North Atlantic Ocean

  Any well-thought-out plan for the first day of our trip, factoring in the overnight flight, the early morning landing, the physical rigors of walking around a city and sightseeing all day, and the meeting of our host at night, would mandate that I be asleep right now. But then again, any well-thought-out plan for my greater adult life would mandate that I not quit my job to travel the world with my wife for a year with no prospects for professional employment upon our return, so I think such machinations in general can be liberally ignored and safely discarded, no matter their scope.

  We are halfway into the first flight of our trip, US Airways Flight 718, departing from Philadelphia International Airport at 1615; arriving at Roma Fiumicino Airport at 0850, currently 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. A quick check of the GPS on the nine-inch screen in front of me—or whatever the metric equivalent is since we’re headed toward Europe—shows a cartoonishly large airplane.

  The nose of the plane is somewhere south of Greenland while the tail of the airplane is still over Massachusetts. Average that out and we must be nowhere near our destination. If they zoomed out any more, it would show a giant plane covering all of North America.

  We are one airline meal away from Italy. A hermetically sealed, roughly twelve-by-eight-inch container of yogurt, cheese, water, mixed fruit, and a vegetable du jour separates us from Rome. We savor every bite, knowing that this four-course meal—five if you count the water—will be our most luxurious feast for a while. From the very beginning, we planned on small snacks from grocery stores and half-sandwiches from corner bodegas to get us through the trip, so we try to enjoy every morsel of vacuum-packed US Airways goodness while ignoring the inevitable staleness that inherently comes with anything served six miles above sea level. With each minute, more of my neighboring passengers turn off their lights—it’s getting to be evening in Philadelphia as our plane inches toward dawn in Rome.

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting here listening to Walk off the Earth on my iPod and trying to figure out how few hours of sleep I need to get through my first day and night in Rome. Regardless of what the correct answer is, I suspect we’re about to find out how well two hours will suffice. My internal calculus noti
fies me that, on multiple occasions, I have stayed up many more consecutive hours with far more complex and unquantifiable variables mixed into the equation. Of course, all of those occasions were in college, which, to my ever-growing dismay, was nearly a decade ago. But all of that is currently and forevermore irrelevant.

  Even now, halfway through our first flight, it’s impossible to comprehend our trip. There is nothing certain ahead of us. Plans change as quickly as they are made, and one unforeseen event can alter our journey dramatically. It doesn’t make us nervous; it excites us—that sense of the unknown and the stimulus of adventure hidden within each day.

  Today is almost exactly our one-year anniversary. I say “almost” because it is officially six days after the anniversary. Our goal was to leave on September 9, but we postponed our departure to celebrate the Jewish high holidays with my family. Yom Kippur ended last night. Spiritually cleansed and hungry as hell, we broke the fast at my brother’s home in northern New Jersey, bade farewell to my family, and spent the night with Cassie’s parents in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

  Our final day in the US is a blur. We knock out our last few tasks in the morning, pack our final few belongings into our backpacks, and head for Philly. By 1:30 in the afternoon, we’re at Molly’s Philly apartment in Brewerytown, dropping off our cats, who are so shell-shocked by the new place they hardly notice we’re gone. Molly is Cassie’s best friend and maid of honor who volunteered to care for our two rescue cats in our absence. There’s Ria, our tan female cat, and her black cat brother, Inigo, named after Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. Cassie named Ria; I named Inigo.

  A final lunch with friends consists of hot wings and a turkey burger, washed down with a Bloody Mary and a champagne toast to our health and safe travels. Then to the airport and a final farewell to Cassie’s parents. Cassie’s mom snaps one last picture of us as we hoist our backpacks and head for check-in.

  Cassie’s dad is smiling. “You should remember this moment. It’s the most you’re ever gonna weigh!”

  Neither of us know how true those words will become in a few months. For now, we enjoy the moment, short though it is.

  We breeze through security, always a pleasant surprise when the TSA is running things. Boarding is painfully slow, but we grab our seats early, and I begin the notes that will eventually form this book.

  There is a moment of calm on board before the floodgates open. Suddenly, people stream down both aisles on our Airbus A330. The quiet is gone. What’s left in its wake is a conglomeration of human faces, smells, and emotions that are the natural consequence of 291 people shoved into a pressurized aluminum tube for eight hours. There is no escape, especially not through the overweight passenger to my right who has sandwiched me into seat 23E. There is denial first, then resignation, and finally acceptance.

  I find myself canting slightly to my left to maintain my rapidly shrinking personal space. Around me, people are smashing oversized bags into undersized luggage compartments, fiddling with lights and air vents, and generally trying to get comfortable in a space where the population density is 350 times higher than that of the US.

  I had imagined what it would be like to see American soil for the last time as our flight from Philly International arches out over New Jersey and then the Atlantic. I would see the light of the cities—first the City of Brotherly Love, then the Big Apple. I would see the crooked line of the Jersey Shore, inching its way north-northeast. And there’s my home, or at least an approximation of where my home should be, since we would be nearing our cruising altitude when we passed it.

  That, as it turns out, was a pipe dream. Bereft of both the pipe and the necessary herbal ingredients to place within its hollowed out interior, I have only my view from the middle seat. The window shade to my left, with four people and an aisle between us, has already been closed by an elderly woman who seems to be in complete denial of the fact that she is on an airplane that is about to leave the relatively safe confines of Philadelphia, never mind the fact that you’re almost always safer not being in Philadelphia. The window shade to my right is open, but all I can see past my rotund companion is a section of wing.

  To prepare us for our flight to the ancient city of Rome, US Airways has decided to play a loop of outdoor scenes called “HDenvironments.” Corporate must have concluded that the best video for this flight is what I’m pretty sure is Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, where Cassie and I recently spent a week on a family vacation. Not that I have any way of incontrovertibly verifying my opinion, but I suspect people heading for Italy have very little fascination with the geysers and bison of Montana and Wyoming.

  A quick glance to my right reveals my neighbor, who has a pamphlet on scripture. For him, this trip is probably a pilgrimage. I consider bursting into Hebrew prayers—the Shema, the Kaddish Shalem, the Birkat Hamazon—but he or some other nearby passenger might confuse Hebrew with Arabic, which I feel would be detrimental to the rest of my trip and the likelihood of the TSA ever allowing me on a plane again.

  As we start taxiing, the emergency video launches into its cheery instructional spiel. Everyone is always smiling in these, even though they’re preparing for a crash landing. We’re taxiing for so long I begin to wonder if we’re taxiing to Rome.

  And that’s when the baby behind me, whom I somehow hadn’t noticed to this point, erupts. Volcanic bursts and magmatic spittle in newborn Italian. The woman behind Cassie, perhaps the mother of the baby, announces she doesn’t like that she can see the wing out the window. I note this down as the dumbest thing I have heard on this flight so far—and we’re still taxiing. There’s an “Are we there yet?” to my right. Something garbled in Italian at my 8 o’clock. And more of said shrieking baby.

  Our journey is under way.

  This flight is the first aerial passage of thirteen we already have booked on our itinerary. Philadelphia to Rome to Ethiopia to Kenya back to Ethiopia to Israel to Thailand. Then a bit of land travel through Southeast Asia to Beijing before flying from Beijing to Tokyo to San Francisco to San Salvador to Lima to Santiago to Toronto back to Philadelphia. Arranged in two long run-on sentences like that is probably the best way to get a feel for our trip. It will be extensive, a bit chaotic, and will almost certainly require us to pause somewhere in the middle to catch our breath.

  When we started planning a year ago, we looked at major regions we wanted to visit: Europe, Israel, Southeast Asia, and South America. From there, we picked countries within those regions that interested us.

  In Europe, we figured we could sneak five countries into ten weeks. Even though Cassie’s been to Italy, I’ve never been, so that was at the top of our list and the country we would start in. We would make our way north and west into southern France and southern Spain—our next two countries—before looping back through Madrid toward Paris. From Paris, we would book a short flight to Ireland, where we would spend two weeks exploring the various pubs in which to drink Guinness and Murphy’s Irish Stout, as well as the people with which to drink them. Our last major country in Europe would be Hungary—both Cassie and I have Hungarian blood.

  Israel is our next major stop, with a trip to Jordan to see Petra.

  Then we leave the Western world to explore Southeast Asia. A flight into Bangkok and three months of trains, buses, and tuk-tuks through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. North from Vietnam into China, then east through China to Beijing, and a flight to Tokyo. A quick stop to visit friends in San Francisco and step foot on American soil for the first time in nine months, then to South America, where we would visit Peru, Chile, and Argentina, with possible side trips to Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay. And finally, home.

  Laid out on paper, it all seemed so simple.

  We just needed to find the gentlest way to impart our desires to travel for a year upon my parents, who were, in my opinion, likely to register more than a few complaints against our trip.

  What about your jobs? Who will take care of your cats? How will you mak
e money? What about your safety? What about all the holidays and birthdays you will miss? Why travel for so long?

  We visited my parents on a random spring weekend and broke the news to them during dinner at the Houlihan’s on Rt. 35 near Monmouth Mall. We sat in a booth and ordered variations of the same generic fare that you find at all of the chain restaurants aspiring to be something greater than what they are or will ever be. A waitress had just brought over the stuffed mushrooms (“with herb and garlic and cream cheese”) when I decided it was time.

  “So, we’re thinking of traveling the world for a year.” I made it sound like it wasn’t a done deal. I would hold off on that bit of information to see how the conversation progressed. Nothing in my thirty years of existence had prepared me for their response.

  “Tamar is moving to Kenya.”

  “Wait, what?!”

  Tamar is my sister, ten years older than me. Her husband, Cam, and two young daughters live in a beautiful house in Upper Middle Class Suburbia north of New York City, where she is as protective of her daughters as she was of me and my twin sister growing up. Of all the members of my family, I would vote her “Least Likely to Move to Africa” and “Most Likely to Overuse Hand Sanitizer,” if there were such familial balloting.

  “Cam got a job in Africa,” explained my mom in her thick Israeli accent, “and they’re moving to Kenya in July.”

  Cassie and I looked at each other. This newfound knowledge could mean only one thing.