Bandon Dunes

Bandon, Oregon
August 25, 2001


"The first tee is yours." Said the golf club pro, a moment later I stood at my car changing into long pants and my spikes.

Two minutes and I stand on the first tee of Bandon Dunes, a 357 yard par four, dogleg right. The sun hangs about three-fourths of the way along its path, maybe two more hours of light left.

Without any warm up, I stroke a four iron into the fifteen mile per hour breeze. Thwack! A crisp shot as I relax and swing smoothly, but the ball balloons into the air and lands a mere 160 yards out, but in the fairway. I shoulder my bag and walk off the tee box. There seem to be no carts here; and I did not ask at the pro shop.

I debated whether or not to play Bandon Dunes as I drove down Highway 101 from Portland. Over the five hour journey, I finally decided to go for it, despite the $175 green fees.

When my car turned the final corner into the compound, where a two story wooden lodge, in modern Ikea style, overlooked the true links style course, I hopped out full of excitement.

The course lies adjacent to the azure blue Pacific Ocean, ranked #3 by Golf Magazine for Top 100 Courses in the US. I can see why.

A little haggling gets me on for $60 and a $270 room for $100. Nice to see how sympathetic people are to someone driving and golfing across the continent.

I play smoothly, hitting crisp iron shots and a couple wayward fairway metals, but the low cut gorse makes balls easy to find off the banged up, thin links fairways; true to form with not one level lie.

On the eighth tee, the lengthening and orange shadows vanish as the sun dips behind some low lying mist, coloring the sky an iridescent pink. Finishing my nine in graying twilight, a silver sliver of a crescent moon appears, hovering over the silhouettes of the wind bent trees.

I retire to the dining room for a nice cabernet and Cohiba, looking forward to a full round of 18 holes tomorrow morning.

Y10K

Jackson, Wyoming
August 6, 2001


Y10K! My car has 10,000 more miles on it now. It rolled over to 52,000 miles in Las Vegas. I retreated to the glitzy, kitschy, cheesy, yet mesmerizing land of excess a couple days ago. I left New York 62 days ago, much longer than the 45 days I expected it would take me to cross the country.

I stopped in Vegas when the trip became a mission of checking off blocks, rather than enjoying each moment. Something known as vacation or travel burnout; something rarely experienced for me when working since it takes at least a week on the road to enter this state. I found that two days in Vegas reset my fun meter and allowed me to once again wonder and marvel at things.

The days blended together with so many meals consisting of fast food consumed while I steered with one knee, rushing to the next destination. Most names ring familiar: Dennys, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendys. Others not so familiar: Shoney's, Waffle House, Golden Corral, and egregiously non-PC, Bojangles (only in the South, of course).

Also, cheap hotels do not exist in the US for the most part, Motel 6, Comfort Inn, Hampton Inn (not down the L.I.E.) and Super 8 run minimum $40 per night and average $55-60. What happened to the gonzo cheap days of Hunter S. Thompson-esque road trips (and the trunk full of psychedelics).

Jackson, Wyoming, lay next on my path, the trans-US trip now two-thirds complete. Here, further recharging took place in a wonderful log home near Teton Village, where my friends family built a house and guest house. I played golf today at Teton Pines, guest of the CEO of AT Kearney (friend of my hosts).

My second shot on the par-4 18th, a 8-iron pushed right, thwacked off a tree and kicked hard right another 15 yards, landing in the rough near VP Cheney's house. Just in the shadows of a tree, a Sercret Service agent sits in a golf cart, watching the fairway bordering Cheney's backyard.

I wonder if I can go hit the ball. Do I need to ask permission? Should I leave it? How do I look like a hapless golfer (not too hard)? I decide to tromp thru the long grass looking for my ball, consciously ignoring the armed man twenty feet away, no doubt some sniper's crosshairs also locked onto my Titlelist cap. I find the ball and pitch it on the green. "Nice shot," says a Secret Service agent.

My car will probably see another 4000-5000 miles before I arrive home in San Jose in late August. But I feel an important lesson has been assimilated. Travel's ultimate purpose is to see things in a beginner's mind and be touched by what we see. When this does not happen, one needs to stop and rest for a while so as to remain in the present and not just go through the motions.

"Running to Stand Still"

Moab, Utah
August 6, 2001


Me relaxing at a riverbank cafe in Vietnam...finally!


The chicken Caesar salad still sits on my table, only half-done after 20 minutes. I feel like a cow chewing its cud. My first meal after fasting for three days.

I decided to chew real slow, savoring each nuance of flavor and each subtle change in texture of my food. I feel like the kid whose mom tells him to chew 100 times before swallowing. Mastication seems close to masturbation.

My tongue must be forced to push the sludge back to my teeth and cheeks, away from the ravenous esophagus, always trying to suck the food away. Not swallowing takes practice, like at the dentist.

Chewing and working takes focus. Resistance to our ingrained chew -swallow - next bite takes discipline.

My meals in NY resemble a meat processing plant, with its never-ending chain of animals humming along. Knife, fork, spoon, chopsticks dance at our plates. Sea bass, lentils, and garlic mashed potatoes disappear in moments.

We rush our meals.

Actually, we rush everything. I rushed to finish my 18-holes of golf today, although alone with no-one behind me. People blaze past me on the highways at 80 MPH. I drum my fingers while pages load on a T1 line, frantically alt-tabbing through three pages of Netscape to see what loads first.

My friend's t-shirt bears the zietgiest of our times: "Instant Gratification is not Fast Enough."

We try to squeeze in events between the ticks of the clock, always fighting time, our most precious commodity. Too bad we cannot buy some at the CBOT.

I do not know why I feel rushed most of the time; even though my life has no concrete goals for the next two years. Maybe an answer will make itself known.

But, now I have to run, my Palm is chirping, my cellphone ringing, and I am late to get...somewhere.

Well, at least my Mom will be happy...I chewed my veggies.

As Pink Floyd says in their lyrics:

"Every year is getting shorter;
never seem to find the time;
plans that either lead to naught;
or half a page of scribbled lines."

Cave Diving

Bonne Terre, Missouri
August 2, 2001


I step off the wooden platform and splash into the clear water below, like a layer of smooth glass. The frigid water penetrates my booties, gloves and hood, jarring me awake. My buoyancy vest holds me on the surface, ripples bouncing off the cave walls send light reflections to and fro like a frenetic disco ball.

I wiggle my body, encased in a 5mm wetsuit, two layers in fact bind my torso and discomfit my crotch. I kick my legs a bit to try and loosen the suit in all the right places. Wince.

To distract myself, I glance down below me and see twenty feet down the odds and ends of this once active lead mine: pick, ore cart, timers shack, railroad tracks; all submerged here 150 feet below the surface.

My past dives took place mainly in warm ocean water and I hardly wore a wetsuit, let alone two 5mm layers, a hood and gloves. Now I know what an astronaut feels like, layers of protective clothing and critical life support equipment. A constrained view of the world through a mask, this requires me to constantly turn to and fro to see around me as peripheral vision is impossible.

The other five divers and two guides form up and we submerge to 50 feet under the frigid water. Swimming slowly down a vertical shaft we round pillars of rock, five feet in diameter which run from the unseen bottom past us to the surface of the water, which looks like a layer of plate glass above us.

Lights suspended in the cave above cast surrealistic shadows on the wall, yet the light leaves everything in shades of gray, a colorless world of only light, dark and nuances in between

We swim through a 3-D system of tunnels, sideways, up & down, and diagonal, I get disoriented and find myself breathing heavy, which I never do. The air hoses tangle in my vest, I pull at hoses to find my air guage, my breaths come in shallow gasps. I check my air, fine; but suddenly I look up at the guides who signal me to move up with a flashlight. My bouyancy turned negative during my thrashing and I sank deeper into a verticle shaft. Adding air to my vest, I rejoin the group.

The dive seems like an endless struggle of bouyancy control, breath control, trying to unbind the wetsuit in my groin; and in-between all this, taking in the ghostly world of the Bonne Terre Mine.

The Mine is located in Bonne Terre, Missouri; the name meaning good Earth. After the lead mine closed in the early 1900's an enterprising husband and wife team bought the mine and turned it into a deep earth dive site in the early 1980s. National Geographic Adventure magazine rates the mine in the top ten of US adventure travel destinations.

My second dive goes smoother as I adjust my lead ballast weight during the break. The cold remains difficult to adapt to; but at least the wetsuit binds no more.