The hero of this story is a purple bike traded for a can of lager.

NIŠ, Serbia— So this Finnish guy ‘rescues’ a broken purple bike in Innsbruck, Austria and proceeds to ride it 1,200 kilometers to Guča, Serbia where I just happened to be preparing a reportage for RFI. He was thirsty and needed a beer; I’d been hitchhiking since Kosovo and was desperate for a bicycle. In a few minutes we had a deal: a can of frosty Nikšićko for the purple 5-speed girl’s bike.

It’s no secret I have a storied tradition with purple girl’s bikes from Austria. But that’s another story.

Back to Guča. In Serbia the trumpet is king and each year its crowning glory takes place in the town of Guča nestled in the hill country where hundreds of thousands flock for a week-long bout of drinking, dancing and, well, trumpeting.

At better writer than I could describe the drunken intensity of throngs of Serbian teenagers, French brass music aficionados, gypsy musicians and other Balkans rednecks converging on a small town for six to seven days of unbridled revelry.

Given the size of the crowds and the amount of homemade plum brandy that feels the frenzy, it’s a pretty positive scene. But there is a darker side: Take one cabbage soup stall: in a bid to drum up business one featured coked-up table-top dancers shaking their double DD accessories while men (and their wives and children) sipped triple-priced espressos.

If the floorshow isn’t your thing (and I swear, I was concentrating on the soup) there are the 6-year-old Roma gypsy girls making the rounds with toy-sized concertinas squeezing out tunes for tips.

That was the last evening and I was glad I had a purple bike to make my escape.

As luck would have it my friend “Velja,” a freelance translator who made his radio debut last May translating Family Radio’s doomsday predictions across Serbia, was also on his way home to Niš .

We decided to ride together.

We ride!

A word about Velja. Like me, he’s a tall, lanky 30-something starting to thicken in the middle. He has a penchant for talking to strangers (which comes easier to him in these parts as he’s a native Serb speaker) and ride fast enough to get where we’re going but not too quickly that he misses the scenery. It was a good pace. His English is impeccable with a dry, staccato delivery. A true Balkan athlete he was constantly forgetting to refill his water bottle but never allowed himself to run out of cigarettes.

Velja takes a break after conquering yet another mighty Serbian peak.

Setting off through the pastoral, rolling countryside, my heavily laden bike with its skinny tires held up well until we decided to stop for a lunch refreshment. Velja knew of a certain brand of beer whose bottles are an extra tenth of a liter, and both of us being the thrifty sort, couldn’t pass up such a bargain. Seated in front of the shop were a half-dozen men who also knew a bargain (such as $0.30 shots of homemade plum brandy).

After an hour of bullshitting with these friendly types in which Velja assured them I was a “pro-Serbian journalist” (whatever the hell that means) we set off. For about 30 meters. I had what would become a theme: one of many breakdowns. I’d stupidly left the bike in the sun and the front tube had burst in the heat.

No sweat. I had a spare tube. In minutes we were back on the road.

The friendly Finn was a generous lad. Not only had he given me the bike and a full set of tools (foreshadowing), he also threw in a powerful Nokia speaker that was loud enough to blast music as we rode. This being rural Serbia and pastoral farmland with cornfields, cows, sheep and geese the only choice was American countrywestern and blues.

I had Credence Clearwater Revival to get me up the hills, and when there was need for speed, Fred Eaglesmith. There was Gil-Scott Heron for moments of reflection and Steve Young for the straightaways. Life was good – these Serbian villages weren’t used to seeing purple bikes blasting American country music as they wobbled through their town.

We were making ridiculously good time. The purple bike performed admirably, cresting hills even though it only has four (working) gears. The brakes were soft and with the weight it was a terrifying going down. Its skinny tires made for a fast ride and I did my best not to careen out of control. But the road surfaces are pretty good in Serbia and you can really fly if you want to. I didn’t want to and my hands screamed in painful protest bearing down on the brakes as we switch-backed down through forested mountain roads.

A pitiful example of the scenery. But then again, I don’t take many photos on my travels.

It was on the first day that I realized this purple bike was magical. After the rear axle snapped and we had to take a lift with an extremely inebriated farmer, we stashed the bike in the back of a bikeshop whose owner (told us on the phone) he’d have a look at it in the morning.

Bivouacked in the headquarters of the local chapter of the mountaineering club in the town of Trstenik, we awoke the next morning with a phone call from the bike mechanic who said the bike was fixed and waiting for us in a nearby coffee shop. We met the young Marlon Brando lookalike. At first I was nervous, there had been no discussion of payment and I wasn’t sure how this would turn out. After he paid for our coffees, he casually mentioned he doesn’t charge travelers and wished us well on our journey.

The guy looks a bit like Marlon Brando, doesn’t he?

It was on Day 2 on the road when I had blown the sidewall of the rear tire and popping tubes like they were going out of style that things became desperate. Despite the best efforts of a resourceful 12 year old who tied my tire up with plastic cord, the bike was going nowhere.

A 12-year-old tried to mend the bike. It lasted for about a half-mile before blowing the tube.

I limped into a village where we received a hero’s welcome at the local shop from the beer-swilling natives. The shopowner insisted we drive with him and his (sober) friend to a nearby town to find a new tire. The new tire was about 10 euros and he insisted on paying out of his own pocket, drunkenly dropping wads of Serbian dinar notes on the ground and slurringly warning me off from protesting.

Embarrassment came when half way back to the village I realized I’d left my bag with laptop and every other valuable electronic item I own back at the bike shop. But they took us back to retrieve the bag which was untouched in the dust.

Some beer-swilling saviors. Note the busted tire on the right.

Having lost an extreme amount of time we were worried we wouldn’t make Niš by nightfall. The last 20 kilometers were ridden on a straight stretch of road in total darkness. We had one pathetic flashing red light and I juggled my flashlight as semi-trucks overtook us.

At the next town we had to admit our defeat and rode a bus for the last 30 kilometers in to Niš .

The bike changes hands yet again for a single-serving of beer.

Back in Niš the bike passed hands again – this time to Velja’s girlfriend. It was traded in a solemn ceremony in which he traded me a single bottle of Niško. I’ll miss that magic bicycle but he promises I get visitation rights next time I find myself in southern Serbia.

Jaco out

Historic Port of Murmansk with Soviet-era high rises visible in the background.

MURMANSK, Russia — As the train rumbled north the corpulent Russian sergeant and I drank another toast of cheap cognac. His wife, lying prone next to him, mumbled something in protest as our drinking session progressed to my bottle of vodka.

“Of c’mon, honey — it’s Women’s Day,” he pleaded. For March 8 is International Women’s Day, a socialist tradition still alive and well in the former Eastern Bloc as well as leftist circles in the United States.

This apparently mollified the stout young woman; she rolled over to sleep.

My destination was Murmansk, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. With 300,000 souls at 68°57′N it’s a significant northern settlement, coming into its own during the Second World War as the destination for the transatlantic convoys during Lend-Lease. Today it’s a hulking, if not completely unattractive, port city that bustles from trade in ore, coal and other heavy industries. It’s the lifeline for many northern Eurasian settlements along the polar coast and – some project – a future major port connecting Europe with Asia via the Arctic Ocean as polar ice recedes.

It was this phenomenon that I was interested in. I’d met the usual friendly NGOs but had been stonewalled by the state agency that operated the venerable fleet of atomic-powered ice breakers that were the pride of the Soviet Union and are being bolstered by President-for-Life Vladimir Putin.

****

I’d had the pleasure of witnessing first-hand just how much reverence the good Russian people have for their strongman-in-chief. On the eve of the election I arrived in St. Petersburg (née Leningrad) to cover the elections for some obscure European news outlet.

The campaign fever had broken – largely because of a law that forbids electioneering in the day leading up to polling. Everyone knew Putin would win, largely due to the government machinery behind him, but mostly because the opposition were from central casting as others who may have been real contenders had been barred from the contest.

So everyone knew the winner but no one was quite sure how people would react.

St. Petersburg is Putin’s hometown but it’s also a relatively affluent city that prides itself on its connections to western Europe and struggles to shrug off the shackles of powercentric Moscow. Its citizens are blessed in that they are easily granted European travel visas from the Finnish consulate and so those who can afford to are able to travel abroad.

So even though this is Vlad’s hometown, the hometown hero he’s not.

The day after the election people poured into the streets to shout down the Central Election Commission. Russian police SWAT units — OMON — were out in force to disperse what, under Russian law, was an unauthorized rally.

They didn’t wait long to strike the pissed off — but largely peaceful crowd — and I saw as people were run down by riot gear-clad cops who came out swinging. Shouts and jeers of “Pozor!” (shame) and “Putin’s a thief!” rang out. I hastily intervewed a few people who said they felt they had to turn out even if they knew it wouldn’t matter on iota in the grand scheme of things.

Suddenly a cheer went up in the crowd. Riot police in buses were leaving the square. But I knew the crowd’s elation was misplaced. More likely they were repositioning to attack from the rear and I wasn’t about to get caught up in the melee.

We ran down a sidestreet. Less than three minutes later a thousand or so people were at our heels for the cops had indeed launched their attack. We ducked into a side alley as the crowd passed us with armored riot police hot on their heels.

Screw this; let’s get out of there, I said. We ducked into a metro. The wire agencies were reporting between 800 and 1,500 people with scores of arrests. The next morning it was about 300 people knicked. The police must’ve spent the evening trawling the center and picking up whoever they could from the demonstration.

****

With Putin’s re-election in the bag, I felt my work was done in Russia’s second city so I headed up north. That’s where I’d met our aforementioned sergeant as we drank into oblivion — after all it was Women’s Day! — as the 27-hour train thundered forward. One of our drinking companions was a very fat Ukrainian who said he was a helicopter pilot and a veteran of the wars in the North Caucasus. He seemed a bit disturbed about it all although he offered to show pictures of his family he kept on his phone. He flicked through daughter, niece, nephew, woman-likely-a-prostitute-with-big-fake-tits-taking-her-top-off, cousin. He blushed a deep scarlet at the penultimate image and put the phone away.

****

Making the rounds in Murmansk, I was researching the ice breaker fleet. Local NGOs were more than happy to be interviewed and share what information they had. But when I approached the state-owned company that manages the fleet I was told I’d need to undergo a thorough background check from “our security services” (read: FSB, née KGB).

Now this is Russia and I am used to everyone assuming I am a spy. The friendly train attendant had told people I was a spy, I learned secondhand. I mean, what else would a Californian be doing in Russia during the winter months? But as I say: wouldn’t the U.S. at least send someone who speaks passable Russian? I speak Russian like a four-year-old with a head injury.

But I digress.

This logic I couldn’t understand. Journalists by their nature don’t keep secrets. I don’t, I can’t. Which is why I became a journalist. So what would it matter if one was a journalist or a foreign agent? What would you tell a journalist that you wouldn’t want a foreign agent to know? There is no logic. But still, despite traveling to the Arctic I was told that it would take 7-10 days for processing before interviews could be granted.

I was deeply disappointed, though, to their credit, they offered to answer questions by email. So all may not be lost.

****

Now it’s off southward toward Russia’s city-of-power. There’s a stopover in between to break up the 37-hour rail journey. But I approach Moscow with trepidation. Everything people said about New York City in the 1980s they say about Moscow today.

It should be fun. We shall see.

Jaco out

We made it from Barcelona to Tbilisi with a little help from the Real Automóvil Club de España.

TBILISI, Georgia – The Greek border guard’s unibrow contracted in consternation and then annoyance as he thumbed through my well-worn blue passport. “What is this? This isn’t a passport! This is shit!” He spat out the words as he held the threadbare document with the tips of his fingers as if it had some communicable disease. I tried a friendly smile and stifled a laugh. The seven-year-old passport is in pretty poor shape and I’d been prepared for a few hard questions.

“Don’t laugh! It’s not funny!” the Greek barked. He was really working himself into a lather at this point. “I am sorry, mister. I am sorry. If I came to your country and showed this – would they let me in?”

The source of his rage was perplexing. I wasn’t trying to get into Greece. Rather, I was trying to get out and over to Turkey. Perhaps that’s what he found so infuriating. For we were on the last third of our journey, overland, over water from Barcelona to Georgia. The country Georgia. We weren’t piloting a 40-year-old Volkswagen across the Atlantic. Though at times the 3,000-plus mile slog seemed no less foolhardy.

****

It all began in Barcelona. The 1972 VW Super Beetle had been garaged for years and had a musty odor. Fortunately it was a convertible and with the top down and wind in our hair the old car smell dissipated. But it was in northern Catalonia, just a few miles shy of the French border that we we were forced to call for rescue: the starter failed and we were parked precariously making it impossible to push. We didn’t make that mistake again and were careful to park perched on slopes or at least roads with enough runway to push-to-start.

It was in northern Italy that mechanical problems became dire. Driving down the motorway just north of the ham capital Parma, the oil pressure suddenly dropped to zero. We swung into a rest area and found to our horror that the oil pan was gushing though we managed to cut the engine before blowing the motor. To my delight the Spanish Auto Club not only dispatched a tow truck but put us up in a four-star hotel for the evening while the car was being repaired. More than five hundred dollars later we were back on the road, though still pushing-to-start.

Such was the image of me pushing the Volkswagen around the ancient city center of Bologna shouting at poor Maria Jose who sat hunched behind the wheel. “Pop it! Pop it!” The Bolognans watched with amusement as I huffed around the block pushing the small car in circles as it sputtered yet the motor failed to catch. Of course in front of a professional mechanic it purred like a house cat and the mechanic advised us not to linger in his presence lest we start racking up billable hours.

Just a couple of days in Italy and the attitude was beginning to rub off on me.

****

The ferry from Ancona, Italy to Ignoumenitsa, Greece went without incident. But in Greece the first thing that struck us was the lack of reliable road signs. Pointing ourselves in the direction of Turkey we began motoring up the brand-new highway. After about 30 miles the car began losing power – we suspected the alternator – and we managed to pilot the Super Beetle into the corporation yard of a hydro electric plant before the engine died altogether. Another ride in a tow truck – our fourth, but who’s counting? – and we found ourselves on a desolate clifftop auto shop. Shepherds drove their sheep past as I counted more dead cars than living in the auto yard – an ominous sign.

Maria Jose mugging for the camera as await the ferry depature from Italy.

The shop owner referred us to an electrician who sourced the problem to a bad circuit box and in less than an hour – and about forty five euros (65 bucks or so) – we were back on the road. We spent the evening getting extremely lost. It probably would have been a good idea to pack a map but to be fair, a sign or two pointing the way to Turkey would’ve been useful.

Another bit of help from our friends from the automobile club.

****

The next day brings us to the Greek frontier. We’d expected this border crossing to be tense, Greek/Turkish relations being what they are, but the Greek’s anger was nothing short of puzzling.

“I am sorry, mister – I am sorry!” he kept repeating. I was sorry too. We had about a dozen bottles of wine hidden in the car and no proof of insurance. I didn’t want small things like a tattered passport to complicate our crossing into Turkey. After a few more reproofs in which he held up Maria Jose’s immaculately new Spanish passport in which he praised: “Now this – this is a passport!” and a few more “I am sorry, mister” and a few “This is toilet! Bacteria!” aimed at my travel document, we were free to cross into Turkey. The successors to the Ottoman Empire didn’t even raise and eyebrow, pointed us to the kiosks where we bought our visas, and we were through.

****

After a two days in Istanbul spent with friends old and new it was time to cross into Asia. The city is divided between the two continents (that is, if you consider Europe to be a bona fide continent – which I don’t) and there’s a bridge spanning the Bosporus.

We pulled up to the toll plaza. Other drivers were waiving their pass cards at us but I was too thick to take the hint. With no pass card in hand, the toll taker pointed at the sign that demands 50 Turkish Lira ($27USD) to cross. We scoffed. Nearly thirty bucks to cross a bridge?! A driver behind us leaped from his car and swiped his pass card. The gate lifted for us and we sped onward. Saved by Asian hospitality.

****

The roads through Turkey were straight and true. Two days later we were crossing into Georgia. The city of Batumi had changed in the past two years. Bucketloads of money had been shoveled into erecting monuments and all kinds of gaudy lights. Imagine Monaco, after 50 years of Socialist-Realism development, 15 years of benign neglect and then renovate what remained in the image of Branson, Missouri and you get the idea.

We wandered around in disgust looking at empty-looking cafes and restaurants that had been designed as playgrounds for the rich. Finally we came across a basement restaurant with cigarette smoke billowing out the entrance. The stairs led to a dimly lit eatery with very drunken looking clientele: perfect. I made a point of catching the eye at one of the nearby tables. As we sat down we could hear them practicing a few English phrases. Several minutes later the waitress brought us a liter of wine, courtesy of our neighbors and things descended from there as our new friends slid into seats next to us.

A triumphant Maria Jose gloating that we'd made it as far as Georgia.

In no time at all there were toasts to friendship between Georgia, Spain and the United States as we found ourselves happy prisoners of Georgian hospitality. It was good to be back.

Jaco out

Barbara from Poznan, Poland was one of the few kind souls to give me a lift.

GOTHENBURG, Sweden – I’d been warned that hitchhiking in Scandinavia would be no picnic. Despite expensive buses and trains, wide roads with plenty of traffic and lots of empty cars it’s simply not in the culture for people to solicit rides from strangers. In Denmark it had been relatively easy to hitchhike with a (partially disassembled) bicycle in tow and that emboldened me to try and make a run up to Oslo and back.

After stashing the bike with some generous CouchSurfing hosts near the southern city of Lund, I began my attempt to work my way up the E6 that connects some of Sweden’s largest cities with Norway’s capital. An early lift with a Swede of Persian extraction gave me a moral boost – but when he left me on a lonely junction with hardly any traffic, that’s when I began to realize it’d be a long haul. There were smiles, shrugs and other gestures from drivers indicating their sympathy but few seemed willing to actually stop to offer a lift. Add to the fact that there’s rarely much shoulder so that when cars would stop they’d nearly cause a four-vehicle pile up.

Eventually after several small lifts to equally quiet junctions I began to lose patience. The coffee and novelty was wearing off and I’d barely made it 100 miles and half the day had passed. Eventually a string of luck – an engineer who said he was developing an economically feasible battery for electric cars, a courier who let me help him deliver hot food to an office in Gothenburg and a Finn who I helped prep for his job interview in Norway, helped me reach Oslo in time for some revelry with friends.

But these friendly faces seemed a rare exception compared to the cold indifference most drivers seemed to give to scruffy vagabonds holding cardboard signs by the roadside. So it was with some trepidation that I set off three days later for the return journey. On the southern edge of Oslo I stood with my “GBG (S)” sign (Gothenburg – Sweden) with what I imagined to be quiet dignity that would make me an attractive passenger in one of the many empty Volvos and Saabs that accelerated onto the highway.

I began to wonder whether a trick of the light had rendered me invisible as most Norwegian motorists didn’t even acknowledge my presence on the onramp to the E6 highway. More than an hour passed with only two offers of lifts going barely 30 kilometers – both of which I’d refused lest I be stuck again on some lonely junction with surly local traffic.

***

After just shy of 90 minutes and aged Volvo stopped. Its equally aged driver who spoke a clipped English he’d cultivated from several years in the UK told me he was on his way to give a lecture on the Kabbalah. But upon questioning he admitted he couldn’t read Hebrew and my my attempts to pull some of the finer details of these mystical texts led him to change the subject to lighter topics. As it became clear that 5,000 years of mystical tradition and ritual magic wasn’t going to be revealed in the time it took to drive 30km, I went along and talked about the weather.

He left me at a fuel station with a healthy amount of car and truck traffic. A long semi-truck pulled up with a blonde middle-aged woman driver. Female truck drivers aren’t uncommon in Scandinavia, I’d noted. I flashed my sign and was given the sign to climb aboard. The first question was whether I was Polish. This surprised me, but not as much as the fact that the woman was one of only a handful of commercial truck drivers from Poland.

The driver, Barbara, told me in her clear German that she’d been driving for seven years and I was only the second hitcher she’d taken. She said when she read the sign she felt like giving me a ride, even though as a woman alone she’s usually wary of strangers. We covered the usual topics – job, family, traveling, the idiocy of other drivers; she had two sons in their early 20s, one of which drove a truck as well.

At the Swedish frontier we stopped to file paperwork with customs and drink the free coffee. A clerical error delayed us a couple of hours but we finally got it sorted and were back motoring down the road at 80 km/h (50 mph). She kindly dropped me in Gothenburg where a friendly gas station attendant gave me a free map and thorough directions so that I reached my destination with minimal fuss.

Now what was I complaining about again?

Jaco out

A rare hint of blue sky over Tvøroyri in the south.

TÓRSHAVN, Faroe Islands – Provided you’re not a schizophrenic sociopath, those little nagging voices should be heeded. For every so often there’s a nagging voice in my head goading me to head in a certain direction, usually defying common sense and logic. Often I am rewarded by following this advice, other times it’s folly and I end up sleeping under a bridge or worse.

It was a soggy Sunday in Tórshavn , the attractive capital of the Faroe Islands, that semi-independent group of islands that lie just north of Scotland but belong to Denmark. I’d spent the previous evening in an unmarked pub of dubious reputation where self-proclaimed metal musicians, boozy Bohemians and middle aged drunks whose lifestyle made them appear as octogenarians, welcomed me into their hovel of a beer joint. There was some initial awkwardness: I had to first assured them that I wasn’t “one of them;” them being crew members of the anti-whaling Sea Shepherd boat featured in some “reality” television show that I’d never seen but have seen lampooned on South Park.

So it had been a good evening though the following morning I was worse for wear. The protestant Faroes shut down at 2 p.m. on Sundays and there’s little to do save reflect on what one presumably learned during the sermon.

So add to the fact that a storm was blowing in and most businesses were shuttered, my options looked limited. A fierce wind, coupled with dark clouds had appeared on the horizon and I didn’t look forward to spending another night in a soggy tent in a deserted campground.

Not that this town is without charm and its inhabitants, the Faroese, had proved to be among the friendliest I’d ever encountered as a stranger. The previous day I’d nearly toppled from my bike when the bolt fastening the seat snapped as I was riding. With the broken piece in hand, I approached an older gentleman fixing a piece of garden machinery and asked about a hardware store or bike shop. He insisted in driving me around until we found a bike shop where the manager sawed me a new piece, didn’t charge me for it – and then when I did insist on buying something, told that cashier to give me the employee discount.

But as previously noted, Tórshavn was settling down for a rainy Sunday and I’d feel like fool if I didn’t get my lazy ass out of town and see the countryside. So I stopped by the ferry terminal to check schedules. I’d long ago lost the handy tourist guide and had no map. A youth with a duffel bag sat nearby. I struck up conversation and he allowed that the southern island – a two-hour ferry ride – was a good place, provided the weather was agreeable. I was resigned to be rained on but wanted some new surroundings in which to suffer in.

There was a ferry due to leave in about 45 minutes. That wouldn’t work. I’d have to break camp and the tent was about a mile away. I had the bicycle, but still… I wasted 10 or so hemming and hawing when that little voice started its nagging and a strange feeling of resolve overpowered me.

I pedaled as quickly as I could on studded winter tires and a badly mangled rear tire with broken spoke – repairs will wait for Denmark – toward camp.

Camp was broken in record time as I haphazardly stuffed the panniers with soggy dirty laundry and worn out gear. I kicked it into high gear and rounded the downhill curve that brought me to the quayside. The ferry was loading and I was able to wheel in just as the boatswain was finishing loading the cars. I collapsed into a booth on the sizable ferry as we steamed out of Tórshavn , destination: Tvøroyri.

The clouds had darkened, the sea roughened and the 300-something-foot-long ferry was tossed to and fro as we headed for the southern island of Suðuroy. We came into port and the wind had kicked up. Rain was falling heavily now as the ferry’s main front doors opened to belched forth a parade of cars and that sole cyclist in partially shredded raingear.

Fighting the wind and the rain I headed for Tvøroyri, the main town of about 1,500 people or so. A nasty headwind and persistent rain caused me to achieve that state that transcends wet. Only bicyclists know what I am talking about. The kind of wet that’s inside you; the type that can grow mildew in one’s being.

As I pedaled into the brightly painted town, I noted it was closed down and streets deserted as storm drains struggled to swallow the torrent. I asked a gaggle of teenagers if there was a hostel. Their English was limited but they pointed toward a whitewashed house. When I arrived it had been rented out completely. I carried on to a shop and explained my situation. Shoppers waited patiently in a queue as the clerk abandoned the till and found a number of a bed and breakfast. The conversation was in Faroese but I made out the word “foreigner” and likely “pathetically wet” though I’m not sure.

The accommodations were plusher than I could have imagined and surprisingly affordable. I was left alone with three small dogs and a pot of lamb stew as the proprietor and her sister – both in their late 70s – went off to a birthday party where they stayed out past 2 a.m.

After filing a freelance radio piece for some European news service, I wandered to the local pub. It was about 10 p.m. and completely deserted. “Am I too late or too early?” I asked the barmaid. She tittered. “Too early!” People don’t come out until 2 a.m., I was informed.

I returned a few hours later and indeed the place was hopping. Beer and akavit was bought for me and hilarity ensued.

Faroese, like the Icelandic, stay up late.

The following day the B&B owner and her 79-year-old chain-smoking sister took me on a driving tour around the island. The place was socked in by fog but I got a lot of photos of proud-looking sheep which I take to be the king of the jungle in the Faroes.

Upon my return the affable sister who lived in Tórshavn took me on a driving tour around the main island with her son and his Kenyan wife. I was treated to beer and snacks at their home before they took me to meet the gigantic M/V Norröna ferry which had just arrived and was disgorging a bewildered horde of passengers fresh from Denmark.

My three-day visit to the Faroes had run its course.

Jaco out

A day ride near Dalvik, Iceland.

SEYDISFJORDUR, Iceland – My approach to travel is to keep minimal expectations. However with Iceland I couldn’t help myself: I wanted to idyllic natural hot springs carved out of rock populated by supple valkyries. Nothing less! So after spending too much time on a work assignment at a fish festival seeking out these natural treasures became priority one.

After spending way too long in a fish processing town for a freelance radio piece, I bivouacked in a geothermal hot springs town on Myvatn Lake where a gaudy contemporary health spa complex has recently been constructed. It didn’t appeal and I instead contented to dip myself in 114°F (46°C) water in the caves of Grotagja, a fissure that runs along the great divide between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Still, I thought there must be something better though the few locals I spoke to were tight-lipped about any better pools.

My luck broke when after a young woman picked me up hitchhiking and told me of a place where the water isn’t as scalding or populated by camera-wielding tourists who don’t go in the water but photograph those who do and then proceed to cackle in their native tongue (usually Italian or German).

She went as far as offer to show me the place herself. I’d found my valkyrie! Not surprisingly she had a change of heart and stood me up. Probably she realized the folly of showing a loud-mouth foreigner like myself the sacred pools that local people are able to keep for themselves and away from the madding crowd.

Fortunately she was careless enough to give me fairly specific directions and I set off the following day to find these forbidden springs without a guide. I went through a gate marked “PRIVATE” and found myself in the midst of a gaggle of Germans (they are always the first foreigners to plant the flag!) splayed on the grass by a camper van. They seemed lethargic as if – as if they’d been soaking in a hot springs. I approached cautiously, walking my bike, affecting a humble demeanor. I asked after the hot springs.

There was an awkward silence. They looked at each other – it was obvious they didn’t want to show me. I held my ground and returned their stare.

Finally one of them broke the stony silence: “You want us to divulge a secret?”

Well, yes!

The staring contest continued until one of the females cried out: “Oh come on guys, tell him…”

I was shown a narrow path and a plank of wood leading down to a fissure containing the pools. The lead German asked if anyone knew I was here, presumably I thought, measuring whether he should kill me and throw the body down into one of the volcanic caves. But no – he said he was concerned about the steep climb. He had a point: there places where one could plunge to their death or at least cripple themselves and it’d be a long wait before someone found you. But I managed not to slip.

Inside was a deep narrow ravine filled with hot water. Concrete had been poured in places to facilitate lounging but in many places it was deep. The water wasn’t as hot as the cave fissure and pleasant enough to loaf.

These healing waters made me forget that I’d been spending most of the trip cycling narrow, steep roads and fighting headwinds by day on an overloaded mountain bike with studded winter tires and freezing in near-freezing temperatures in an inadequate sleeping bag atop a leaking air mattress by night.

What a place. After nearly three weeks in Iceland I can say I found all that I was looking for – and then some.

Jaco out

This plan was hatched after an earlier scheme to catch a ride on ex-French navy tug boat from Alaska to eastern Russia was frustrated by Soviet-esque red tape. So with a Russian visa burning a hole in my passport and having already quit the job in Alaska I’d have to go the other way to get to Mother Russia.

The three-week canoe trip was hardly uneventful: screaming mosquitoes, bloodthirsty leeches, breached dams and low-water were just some of the challenges in what proved to be a very enjoyable slog. I’d go into more detail here but these exploits will soon be made into a major motion picture to be released next spring.

So, after resting a couple of days in Maine, I shuttled a car to Fort Kent, Maine where the canoe trail ends and my intrepid friends would be taking out of the water.

From Fort Kent, I crossed the Saint John River to Clair, New Brunswick. After pedaling the 25 miles to Edmundston I had settled in the bushes to wait for one of two daily eastbound hotshot freight trains to take me to the Maritime province of Nova Scotia.

Having a bike in tow complicates things as there are very few kinds of rail cars that have enough room for both bike and rider. Trying to stay hidden as I have a history of running afoul Canadian National on this very route, I hunkered down in the rain just west of the yard. Dumb luck put me right in the path of some CN workers but one of them told me (in French, then English) to watch out because they’d be switching cars and didn’t want to run me over. I assured him I’d stay out of the way and they left me alone probably thinking I cut a pretty pathetic character in soaking wet rain gear bivouacked in the tall grass as the rain poured down.

After more than 10 hours of waiting along the tracks where I had long conversations with myself, I heard the rumble of a heavy train thundering up the Saint John River Valley. Trying to keep from hyperventilating from over-excitement I clutched the overloaded bike and got into position. A long, sleek train with stacked shipping containers – no doubt bound for the Port of Halifax – slid up the single-track and into the yard for a crew change. To my dismay most of the containers were on long rail cars that I find unsafe, exposed or uncomfortable to ride. Near the back of the train I spotted a lone 48-foot container known for having a large well that in past experience is perfect for bike-and-rider.

The train came to a halt and I checked my watch figuring I’d have about 10 minutes to clamor aboard. It’s a narrow stretch of track and the gravel was slick from the rain as I pushed the bike up toward the 48-foot container. I kept slipping but managed to reach the rail car. I tried to lift the bike but – and I knew this would happen – I wasn’t strong enough to lift it over my head with the pannier packs still attached. I started to unfasten the bags when I heard the train’s air brakes pressurize. It was ready to roll.

Somehow I managed to lift the bike high enough to pitch it over the side where it landed heavily into the well of the rail car. I soon followed landing hard on the cold steel floor. The train pulled and accelerated quickly through the twilight. I checked my watch: four minutes had passed since coming to a stop. Not much of a window-of-opportunity but just enough when you’ve waited 10 hours in the rain and don’t want to wait another 10 for the next eastbound.

The train moved quickly through the darkness barley slowing as we rushed past small Acadian towns. About six hours later we pulled into Moncton’s rail yard. The air went out of the train and I was sure I’d be stranded. The mosquitoes moved in to feed and I hid in the bottom of my sleeping bag. Two hours later we pulled out of the yard as dawn was beginning to break. A little more than six hours later the train was slowing to a crawl in the outskirts of Halifax. That’s where I dropped the bike overboard and landed next to it with a heavy thud so as not to end up behind a barbed-wire fence in the city’s port.

The past few days have been spent fine-tuning the bicycle for the trip around Iceland. The first order of business will be to try and put the bike back together and head north for a festival in the fishing town of Dalvik where this remote northern Iceandic town treats more than a hundred thousand people to a free fish buffet.

A lot of trouble for a free lunch? Hardly.

After reaching the lowlands we came upon an animal close to death, panting with its eyes closed in the middle of the trail. It was a red fox, with no visible wounds nor drag marks. We marveled at its pelt before heading down to the roadway and hitchhiked to the U.S. Coast Guard base to relieve our hunger.

But that fox had lit a fire under my dad’s ass. He wanted the pelt. Back in town he retrieved the large cardboard box that had shipped my guitar from Saranac Lake, New York and with barely a word we returned to the woods.
***
I didn’t know what he had in mind as he marched purposefully back up the trail with cardboard box under arm toward the dead or dying fox. The afternoon sun was setting. We had nothing but a folding knife and length of rope to dispatch this wild animal. But my dad seemed purposeful in his mission. There was no arguing. In fact we hardly spoke as he marched ahead.
Rigor mortis had already set in. I was relieved that the poor thing had expired in the time it had taken us to eat a large pizza. We scooped the cold, dead mammal into the large cardboard box. Now what? Having lived in Kodiak for little more than a month I had very few bonafide skinners on speed dial. But this being Alaska I had no worry that the few people I did know would have a long list of folks who would queue up to skin this boxed up creature.
I was wrong.
We chased up every number given to us, staked out the parking lot at the local sporting goods store, all for naught. My father cursed himself for not accosting an especially Davey Crocket-looking guy he’d spotted in a parking lot. Finally we found one who would skin it but there was a catch: we’d need a valid hunting or trapping license. Now we’d neither trapped nor murdered the beast – it was dead when we found it (the second time) but rules are rules. I resolved to get a license the following day.
Alaska is one of those states that prides itself on its low-tax base. It raises money from oil and gas royalties and rich Texans that land in float planes to bag trophy game. Hence the two-tiered license regime. An in-state trapper’s license is $15; non-residents pay $250. Now I can legally vote in this state but trap an animal as a resident? Not until I’ve been here 12 consecutive months.
***
“How long have you lived in Alaska?” The blonde sporting goods clerk asked me as she filled in the form for my trapping license. I felt silly for needing one, I hadn’t exactly “trapped” anything. It was already dead – I’d merely help scoop it into a cardboard box. But there’s only two types of game licenses: hunting and trapping. Scavenging isn’t a recognized option.
“About a year,” I mumbled.
“So… you’ve lived in Alaska for 12 consecutive months?” she clarified.
“Well… I was in Bristol Bay for the summer, I won’t get a (dividend check) but kinda…” I trailed off. She rolled her eyes and wrote “12 consecutive months.”
That night the fox was skinned for $20 bucks by a friendly taxidermist My dad was pleased and he hung it outside in a plastic bag where the freezing temperatures promised to keep it from spoiling.
The following morning my confusion with TSA regulations cause my dad to be denied boarding his plane. I’m used to showing up 20 minutes before takeoff. But this being a jet, it required the full rigamarole. This gave my sulking father another 24 hours in Kodiak.
That day the Alaska State Troopers paid a visit to my office. I wasn’t there at the time but found the Wildlife Trooper’s card when I returned from lunch.
***
“So tell me about this fox,” said Trooper Sands after I’d sat him down in a conference room, away from the curious stares of my co-workers. Doing some quick arithmetic I realized that plausible deniability wasn’t an option. Especially after he produced some print outs of this Dispatches from Elsewhere blog. It clearly shown that this time last year I was in Bangladesh having similar interviews with law enforcement.
I told him the whole story. He laughed and thanked me for my “honesty.” I corrected him that I was indeed guilty of perjury so wasn’t exactly “honest” but he said it seemed an “honest mistake” even if he was gonna write me a ticket.
“It gets so tiring getting lied to.” he said. “But I will have to write you a ticket – and it’s quite spendy.” The last word a particularly Northwestern word that the trooper – originally from Texas – must’ve picked up in Alaska.
A few weeks later I got an email from a former colleague in Dillingham, Alaska. “Sooo… when’s the court date?” He asked. I’d made the statewide trooper blotter.
Then reading further on, I came across this:
————————————————————— Location: Kodiak
Case Number: 10-109661 Type: Take Deer Closed Season / Shoot From Roadway
Text: On 11/19/10 at 2100 hours, Alaska Wildlife Troopers, Kodiak Post,
issued a summons to Byron Peter Kashevarof, 27 yoa of Kodiak, in Kodiak
for Taking a Deer in a Closed Area, and a citation for Shooting from a Roadway.
An investigation by Troopers revealed Kashevarof shot a doe Sitka Blacktail Deer
on 11/19/10 at 1721 hours from his stopped vehicle on the Chiniak Highway near
Dragonfly Lake while the deer season along the Kodiak Road Zone was closed to
the taking of Sitka Blacktail Deer. Bail was set at $310.00 for Shooting from
the Roadway. A mandatory Court Appearance is scheduled in the Kodiak District
Court for December 10, 2010 for taking a deer in a closed area.
Author: SDS1 Received Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:28 AM and posted Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:39 AM

————————————————-

In other words, a guy shoots a doe from the road, out-of-season, and gets the same fine? Wait – he has to go to court too. But still. I’m no poacher. Just a cheapskate scavenger.

Jaco out

So when I saw the job ad for a fisheries reporter for Bristol Bay, Alaska my imagination went wild. I was sitting inside the fortified compound, a whitewashed colonial affair of a mansion that belonged to the family of my new friend and ally, when I came across the want ad: “… will require some in-region travel to remote fishing communities to bring our listeners firsthand accounts from the fishing season as it unfolds from the entire Bristol Bay region. We are looking for the adventurous candidate with at least one year of…” The deadline was the following day.

One month, nine flights and seven countries later I had arrived in Dillingham, Alaska the largest community on Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest wild salmon fishery. Really it’s the last great run in a world where salmon across the globe have been dying out from overfishing, runoff from farms and development, climate change and general poor stewardship on the part of humans. Bristol Bay is different. Following some over-exuberance in which the fishery was nearly wiped out in the 1940s, the state of Alaska has been closely managing its salmon runs on a day-to-day basis that ensures that enough salmon escape the salmon slaying gill net boats and set nets to ensure there’ll be a run the following season. Alaska Department of Fish and Game technicians literally count the fish as they swim by – I watched them – and that’s recorded as escapement. If enough fish don’t get upriver to be counted as escapement – where they’ll eventually spawn – they shut the fishery down. No ifs buts or what-the-hells. People understand what’s at stake even the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on their catch of the season.

***

Dillingham is not a scenic place. In fact little of the Bristol Bay region could be described as such. It’s low country, mostly tundra with scrub brush and withered conifers that grow on a thin band of soil that covers the permafrost. The community itself has about 2,300 souls or so and much of the buildings are of the corrugated metal modular school of design. What does make it interesting is that it’s predominately Alaskan native – Yup’ik – to be more specific. The native language can be heard in the supermarket aisles and post office. It’s a difficult sounding language to the English ear. It is very guttural with back of the throat sounds and clicks, but it has a lyrical rhythm like one hears in Norse.

***

My employer was the local school district. The radio station KDLG. I’d hit a home run with my cover letter in which I’d cataloged my experiences as a small-town reporter where – and I quote – “most of my life living in very small towns where everyone is in everyone else’s business. It can be challenging as a hard news reporter because accountability is immediate and self-evident when your audience are the very same people that sell you groceries or pour your beer. That’s why it’s important to temper one’s tenacity with a healthy dose of humility and a sense of humor in order to gain confidence and ultimately serve the community.”

For little did I know that just a few months prior KDLG‘s news director had made the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for her personal blog in which she mocked the tragic death of a young woman and accused a good portion of the community of being a bunch of incestuous alcoholics. She’s no longer welcome in Dillingham.
But this town is not the horror show detailed in the woman’s blog titled Chilly Hell but it does have its challenges. What saddens me is that as news director of the only news organization in the region this woman was in a unique position to play a positive role in shining a spotlight on the social ills that plague much of rural America and ‘Bush Alaska’ in particular. Instead she chose to belittle her own community and mock her audience. To paraphrase a Russian proverb, one should never spit in a village’s well – for you may one day need to drink from it.
***

Arriving in mid-May there was little color to be seen – the snow had only recently thawed and the sky clouded up and always seemed threatening to open up. In many cases it followed through on its threat and about 80 percent of the summer was a steady drizzle with a brisk wind to back up its bite.

A word or two about Dillingham’s nightlife. Unlike the surrounding villages alcohol can actually be bought and sold – though not on Sunday. Alaska has what is known as the ‘local option’ in which its citizenry can – through referendum – enact or repeal specific liquor laws. Many villages are dry, damp or wet. One can be jailed for even possessing booze in a dry community. You can’t buy drink in a damp town but neither can you be jailed for it and where it’s wet– well, you get the idea.
That’s not to say there aren’t bars in Dillingham. There are exactly two and they are crap for different reasons. Toward the airport is The WillowTree Bar, where the beatnik poet Gary Snyder once wrote these lines in its honor:

Drills chatter full of mud and compressed air
all across the globe,
low-ceilinged bars, we hear the same new songs

All the new songs.
In the working bars of the world.
After you done drive Cat. After the truck
went home.
Caribou slip,
front legs folded first
under the warm oil pipeline
set four feet off the ground –

On the wood floor, glass in hand,
laugh and cuss with
somebody else’s wife
Texans, Hawaiians, Eskimos,
Filipinos, Workers, always
on the edge of a brawl –
In the bars of the world.
Hearing those same new songs
in Abadan,
Naples, Galveston, Darwin, Fairbanks,
White or brown,
Drinking it down,

the pain
of the work
of wrecking the world.

(Probably © Gary Snyder – used without permission).
The Willow is pretty dull. Its main attraction are the $3.50 cans of Keystone Ice and discount shots of Black Velvet (a guaranteed hangover-inducing combination in even the smallest doses). There’s little crowd, little combination and the bandstand remained perpetually underutilized.
In contrast, the Sea Inn (“where you drink so much ’till ya can’t see out”) is likely the only nightspot from Goodnews Bay to Naknek. There are a few, basic elements that make a watering hole enjoyable. In each category this bar goes the distance in being anathema to all.
Expensive drinks, surly service, bad music, patrons that swing from confrontationally friendly to coldly indifferent to outright hostile. After clearing the door check (the Sea Inn has more black t-shirt wearing “greeters” than my hometown bars usually had patrons) I looked across the pulsating mob to the stage. Sitting on a folding chair was a grinning youth with a backward baseball cap receiving a lap dance from an inebriated woman in her 40s that was pushing 300 pounds. It’s an image that’ll be indelibally burned into my subconscious. The sad part was that it was downhill from there. Never again did I see such unabashed hedonism, rather it would be just as loud, just as heaving but never so light-hearted as seeing a 22-year-old being pleasured by a gyrating walrus.

***

But more about the job. As the fisheries reporter it would be my role to keep tabs on the efforts on the bay and file radio reports from the various communities that play host to the legions of fish slayers that pilgrimage each summer from their homeports in places like Astoria, Oregon and Seattle. It’s a short salmon season – the fish sometimes complete the bulk of the run in a 10-day period – so getting access to the fishing boats can be a challenge. The best way we could deduce would be to get aboard a larger “tender” these are 60-120 foot vessels that often work as crab boats in the winter or fish in deepwater when they’re not servicing the smaller salmon boats. They anchor themselves in central locations and the fishing boats deliver their catch after they’re full or the fishery temporarily closes to allow for more fish passage – “escapement” – where the salmon is stored in a refrigerated hold.

Some of these boats are the very same vessels featured in that idiotic ‘reality television’ serial known as ‘The Deadliest Catch.’ My first assignment was on such a boat, the Arctic Dawn, which due to its crew’s rabid Maoist politics (“kill the fatcats!”) we decided to rechristen the ‘Red Dawn.’ As we would anchor off in a sheltered cove waiting for boats to bring us fish, I suggested we commission our own reality TV show called ‘Easiest Catch’ as we sat anchored waiting for boats to bring us the fish.
***
On most of these assignments the fun was getting there. The communities of 300 to a 1,000 people are all off the road system and only accessible by boat or aircraft. The airline Pen Air has a virtual monopoly on air traffic unless you want to hire a bush pilot as a charter. My station KDLG is given a $20,000 annual grant that comes from an organization funded by the fishermen themselves so I had a generous travel budget. Why it costs the same airfare to fly 30 minutes (60 miles) as it would to fly from Anchorage to San Francisco (nearly 3,000 miles) is a question I can’t answer. But then again I’m not an economist and can’t grasp the rationality of the free market.

My first assignment involved touching down in Egegik (population 300) and then literally begging fishermen and whoever would listen to take me out on their boat to deliver me to the Arctic Dawn, the tender that had given me permission to park my overpaid journalistic ass and interview the fishermen as they made their deliveries. That night the tender would steam back to its home port and it would be a mere 25 mile hitchhike back to the airport (I am too good for taxis) and I would be back in Dillingham to file my report for the weekly Bristol Bay Fisheries Report.

It was a top notch crew with good stories, fiery politics and capable cooking that whet my appetite for the tender life. The rest of the season I tried to finagle my way onto the water as much as possible and was successful in many cases. Being deskbound meant phone interviews with seafood economists or biologists which while informative, didn’t have the same pinache as being fed steak dinner on a 120-foot boat adrift in Bristol Bay.
***
It was at the end of the season and the travel budget was running low. My saintly news director had given me the green light to visit the village of Togiak where there was some late fishing. The manager of the main seafood processor was my new buddy having hosted me there before. A Czech who had been coming to Alaska the past half-decade on a student visa, he was a wise cracking, fast-talking Slav that I could relate to. Neither of us could quite figure out what twist of fate had delivered us to the stark, windswept wasteland that is Bristol Bay but both were making the most of it. This guy wasn’t doing badly. He had befriended a number of local families and the cultural exchange between the young Central Europeans and Yup’iks was edifying to behold. On my first trip to Togiak we’d been invited to a traditional sweat lodge called a muk’ee though I still can’t pronounce it properly. On our way up to the muk’ee which is a wooden hut with a woodburning or gas furnace powered sauna we watched as the Togiak Volunteer Fire Department sprayed water on the smoldering wreckage that was all that was left of a neighborhood muk’ee. They’re a bit of a fire hazard, these muk’ees.
This would be my second proper visit to Togiak. No visit to the muk’ee time unfortunately. It was a shame – I had enjoyed hearing stories from the shriveled elders whose pain threshold was exponentially stronger than mine. There’s a macho element to the muk’ee where one conditions themselves as to how much heat they can stand. It isn’t just the air – boiling water is poured over the coals and the scalding steam is something many people can’t bear for long. I for one couldn’t and had to constantly excuse myself to cool off in the cold midnight sun that would stubbornly refused to set properly until mid-July.
***
The fish processing plant was in full swing and run by 40-odd efficient Czech university students working side by side with Togiak locals. These hardworking Central Europeans work hard all summer in Alaska so they can blow it in a weekend in Manhattan. They come from Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Russia and Kazakhstan to name a few and they are the main labor force in the canneries of Bristol Bay that a hundred years ago had imported labor from China, many of whom rest in shallow graves protruding from eroding hillsides on the bluffs around Dillingham, victims of a particularly virulent strain of influenza that displaced the entire settlement of Dillingham about 90 years ago.
My goal was to get back on a tender to interview the skippers of fishing boats. The 18-year-old sister of the seafood plant’s office administrator was going out to a set net site the following morning with her father and after making a nuisance of myself they agreed to drop me off at a tender I’d reached on the radio. They were to pick me up before the next tide.
Fishermen are by nature a superstitious lot. They don’t like to tempt fate. So it was with some trepidation I learned the name of the vessel: the Fate Hunter. Strike one. It was only later that I’d learn that they’d changed the name – a big no-no according to fishermen lore and a sure-fire way to fall out of favor with the sea gods. The original name, the skipper told me, “was something Catholic – Mary-something…” This wouldn’t be good. I suppose the third strike would be the curse of having a woman aboard – the captain’s girlfriend – which is also reputedly bad luck though that superstitition is rapidly falling out favor in these more enlightened times.
So when the set netters ditched me and returned to Togiak without me I wasn’t all that surprised. I was on a cursed vessel and might as well see where this hunter of fate would take me.

The upshot was that the tender soon received order to return with its fish to Dillingham. Rather than a 45-minute skiff ride and a 30-minute flight, it’d be a 20-hour journey. But hey, sea travel is the most elegant form of transportation and we had plenty of movies and fully stocked galley. So I’d be a little late for work – roll with the punches.
Also aboard was a 31-year-old Tanzanian whose business card recently boasted his recent graduation from Columbia University. He was on a fact-finding mission to Alaska as his family ran its own seafood operation in eastern Africa. He was an interesting chap so I tried not to resent him for having already claimed the extra bunk.
It was 4:30 a.m. A crew member and I were on watch in the wheelhouse. Actually we were watching some schlocky romantic comedy. All around us was the stark windswept treeless shores across the boiling dark sea. But to escape these harsh realities and relieve their eventual boredom, these grizzled seafarers spend hours watching and rewatching soppy romantic comedies on DVDs. They seemed genuinely hurt when I failed to appreciate the poignancy of Avatar and kept making cracks about a Starship Troopers-meets-The Smurfs saga.
Up in the wheelhouse, we were engrossed in some schmaltzy romantic comedy and the lead blonde was fretting about something that would certainly be resolved in the next 80 minutes.
The Fate Hunter lurched violently to the right and we stopped moving. This wasn’t good. Looking at the GPS we realized we’d strayed off course and had hit one of the many sand bars in the narrow channel.
The captain appeared in the wheelhouse, his hair askew, and immediately tried to set things right. We were on a flood tide – so the water was rising – but he gunned the engine repeatedly in a desperate attempt to free us. One of the lower ranking crew members muttered the folly in this as he could do more damage to the rudder but knew better than to open his mouth. After some time we were free from the sand bar and drifting but had no steering. A cable had snapped or bolts had sheered off – the crew couldn’t be sure – and had no choice but to drop anchor in the middle of the bay and await rescue.
***
The “three hour tour” ended up into a 36-hour saga as tide times and commercial realities meant we’d have to be towed by two separate vessels. One good thing about commercial fishermen as they are always ready to lend each other a hand. On a previous trip a tender towed a fishing boat whose motor had failed and they had been fishing for a competitor; it didn’t matter.
Coming into port that evening I was relieved feel my rubber boot hit land. I couldn’t complain this crew had spent the vast majority of their time being pitched around in that rusty tub since the middle of June. To compensate I made a booze run in a borrowed truck so they could find solace while waiting to see if their boat could be repaired.
***

It was this week that one of the biggest stories in the nation broke twenty miles away and I could do little to cover it. Filling in as the morning host I was tied to the operating board from 6:30 to 9 a.m. I awoke at 6 a.m. to hear something on NPR about a plane lost near Bristol Bay. Crap! I high-tailed it to the station. Just days before KDLG had canceled its membership to the Associated Press and we no longer had the wire. We did have the internet and I tried to scan for information while doing the normal chores of the morning host, compiling the weather, local bulletins, etc. All I knew was that a plane was missing – there were little details but former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was thought to have been aboard.

Instead of reading the weather, I filled my normal 30-second spots with what was on the wires and careful to attribute the information. I was fielding calls from bureaus of national networks looking for information but there was little I could say. It was hours ahead in Seattle, Chicago, Washington – the nation had already had its coffee and wanted answers. I’d been awake 45 minutes and was scrambling frantically to get some kind of local report. At about 7 a.m. a fire department member called and gave me some sketchy details. The next phone call was from a Fish and Game biologist to remind me to turn my microphone off – I had been broadcasting myself talking on the phone to the fire department guy.

Thirty minutes later the news reporter and normal morning host Adam arrived. “Ted Stevens isn’t gonna die on my watch!” he proclaimed. He has a car and was able to get out to the airport. He was chased off by surly airport officials but not before getting a quick snippet from an NTSB investigator that had arrived and we were able to do a live 2-way at 8:30 a.m. which made me feel like we were at last covering the story.

As the living were extracted the story moved to Anchorage. The governor was to make a statement at 11:30 a.m. – which in an election year I took to mean the senator was dead and Gov. Parnell wanted to sound gubernatorial and make the somber announcement. The Stevens family preempted him by about an hour and the governor was denied some cheap political points.

The frustrating part came as we called around to local people involved in the search-and-rescue. They either wouldn’t talk on tape or didn’t bother to call back. Only later would I read their named in national newspapers or attributed in national networks. So much for the homefield advantage. But this is not a community where people relish hearing their own voice on the radio. Not even me, but the difference I suppose is that I get paid.

As the media frenzy died down that afternoon and as soon as the names of those aboard were released, I figured the story would move to where it really had been center all along: Anchorage and Washington. Those are the financial and political centers of Alaska and the U.S. and it was only by fate that the crash had happened so close to Dillingham anyway. None of those aboard had strong local connections even though many people here do I have a story or two they can relate about meeting the late senator.

So with the day’s work done, I wandered into the Sea Inn to meet a fisherman friend. I felt like I deserved a diversion after early morning madness. A friendly local in town from his job away in Anchorage began buying us shots of Crown Royal. He was immensely friendly but as the conversation flowed his mood changed and he sat with his back away from me. I asked what was wrong. Apparently I thought I had made some slight against Native Alaskan culture. I was taken aback; I hadn’t, even in fun made any wisecracks on what is a very sensitive subject and was dismayed to have somehow hurt his feelings. He wouldn’t explain his anger and I didn’t want to press as I realized the whisky may have something to do with his darkening mood. I went to the toilets and came back to find my friend gone. “Your buddy left,” a observed a woman from down the bar as she saw me looking puzzled. His shot of Crown Royal sat untouched on the bar. My ex-Native friend still scowled. I retreated out of there – but not without shamelessly downing the whisky of the friend who’d done a runner. I fell into a deep sleep at 7:30 p.m. that evening.

***

Now my time in Bristol Bay – three months it’s been – is drawing to a close. Tomorrow I fly out to Anchorage and then California. But this fishy public radio is turning into somewhat of a career. For during my tenure here I managed to land my job as a full-time news reporter at a community radio station on Kodiak Island south of the mainland. It all starts in September.
Sitting on that mat in Bangladesh I’d never imagined that a hastily fired cover letter could set things in motion that might bring me back up to Alaska. But that’s why the name of the ship ‘Fate Hunter’ still doesn’t make sense to me. For we can’t hunt that to which we are already destined. For we are fate’s quarry, not the other way around.
Jaco out

And how did they get my number? I’d only had the phone for a couple of days. I had just wrapped up a meeting with the International Labour Organization, a UN agency given the unenviable task of trying to promote human rights and common decency for the country’s workforce. The ILO’s task in Bangladesh is not an enviable one. As the most densely populated country in the world, Bangladesh is hemmed in by India and Myanmar (Burma). It exists as a virtual prison for nearly 180 million souls hemmed in by the creation of East Pakistan when colonial India was split along religious lines. Since the “War of Liberation” in 1971 East Pakistan has become Bangladesh, a predominately Muslim nation of Bengalis while their Hindu brethren live across the border in India’s West Bengal with Kolkata (Calcutta) as its capital.

The ILO bureaucrats had all filed out of the conference room as I mumbled my replies to the inspector who wanted to know what exactly I was up to as a tourist in Bangladesh. There was no way in hell I was gonna tell them. For what drew me to Bangladesh was the golden goose of the country: the garment industry. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s this impoverished nation has become a massive sweatshop for international textiles and more recently for big name fashion brands like H&M, Levi’s and secondary brands like Wal-Mart.

As I said, I had been in the country a mere few days and had spent the bulk of my time sitting in Dhaka’s infamous traffic jams shuttling myself from one NGO office to the next meeting with smiling, good-natured self-proclaimed labour leaders that gave one the impression they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. For Bangladesh is the land of the NGO. As one of the poorest nations in the Asia, it is the place to be and be seen if you’re of the Oxfam, War on Want, CARE set. There are literally thousands registered all vying for foreign funding including some forty-plus labor unions that claim to represent garments workers. But when I would explain my concerns about garment worker health by these so-called labor leaders, I would be met – at best – by quizzical looks, cups of tea and promises to “look into the matter.” That said, the tea wasn’t bad.

***

The conversation with the inspector was brief. He had sounded surprised when I told him I was a tourist – something I took as an ill-omen as he’d probably been tipped off that there was a foreign journalist skulking about. I didn’t feel ill-at-ease until I looked at my phone and realized there was no record of the phone call in the log. A number had flashed on the screen – too quickly for me to jot down before I answered – but now there was nary a trace. Yet as a cocksure U.S. citizen I figured the worst thing that could happen is I’d be deported. I’d seen Midnight Express and (still) dismiss it as Greco-Armenian propaganda; I was interviewing registered NGOs, not wearing a girdle made of hashish. But I didn’t want to get my friends in Bangladesh in trouble – and therein lay the problem. I’d been staying with a very well-established and wealthy family who I’d been given a letter of introduction from through a mutual friend. Hosting a foreign journalist could prove a liability for the family and its business interests. Not wanting to attract undue attention from politically connected secret policemen which could bring retribution against the family, I immediately checked back into a hotel.

****

Not one to forsake a dinner invitation, I was was dining with my new friends at about 10 a.m. when a new number flashed on the phone. Special Branch again. Where are you now? They wanted to know. “I’m on my way back to the hotel,” I said. The reply was immediate: We’d like to meet with you. Tonight. I became the haughty tourist. “I’m about to go to bed. But I can meet you first thing in the morning – at my hotel.” That seemed to placate the inspector. Who was that? My host inquired. “Umm… that was Special Branch. Again.” The color drained from her face. She gave me a hug good bye as I left to meet my fate. Yet despite me being a political liability, the dinner invitations kept coming – secret police be damned – and was continuously plied with tea, sympathy and beef biryani.
***

It was pitch black as I motored back to the hotel. The power was out in the neighborhoods, not an unlikely occurrence as the temperature has been rising leading to air conditioner use, and the streets were chock full of desperate-looking internal migrants who had fled their villages seeking work in the sprawling metropolis of Dhaka, population 18.5 million. I was riding in what’s known as a CNG – it’s a three-wheeled contraption fueled by compressed natural gas – hence the acronym. Now a word or two on the CNGs of Dhaka. Several months back it was mandated – presumably for safety reasons – that all passengers be enclosed in a metal cage. The result is that the passenger is often locked inside a wrought iron grid and can only be let out by the driver. A friend told me a recent anecdote of a CNG tipping over in a flood – this was before the cages were mandated – and he and the driver were able to swim to safety. Had the cage been installed both would have surely drowned. So CNGs in Dhaka are not my preferred mode of transport. Some found the cage reassuring, others told me not to take them late at night as crooked CNG drivers could drive you to a back alley and you’d be at the mercy of the guy and his accomplices.

So we’re motoring through the not-so-deserted streets riddled with the day’s filth and debris with brown, grey and black high rises mostly built during the East Pakistan era. Just before reaching the hotel, a traffic policeman flagged us down. Fortunately the cage was unlocked and I was able to climb out to observe the proceedings. I felt that – as a foreigner – I may be able to keep the cop from shaking down the hapless driver for too hefty of a bribe. The policemen looked malevolent with their khaki uniforms, long bamboo whacking sticks and low-slung bolt-action rifles. Their eyes were afire with the power vested in them by virtue of the arms they carried and the impunity that a police officer operates in a developing country. In essence, they scared the shit out of me. I didn’t see any money exchanged but the look on their face told me that downtown Dhaka was not somewhere you wanted to be after hours.

***

As I walked into the lobby I knew right away something wasn’t right. The bellhops and front desk were eyeing at me strangely. I pressed the button for the elevator and as I waited for it to make its descent the stares were unabated. I couldn’t stand it and asked what it was all about. Men have been here. Asking about you, the desk manager told me. He seemed concerned. I asked if he had left his details. He produced a business card from a Special Branch inspector; I hastily copied down in my notebook in detail and thanked him.

***

When I got into my room I was not alone. With the flick of the switch, several poodle-sized cockroaches scurried – not to safety – but just this way and that. I am not normally a squeamish person but when an insect is larger than my thumb and has no outward fear of my presence… I’ll admit it, I lost it.

Trying to move my luggage to high ground I realized they were everywhere. I was ashamed to hear myself crying out audibly as I shook my luggage and one cascaded down to scurry up the wall. I drained what little I had left of my duty free scotch, left the light on and passed out in exhaustion.

***

The next day I emailed a fellow couchsurfer from the eponymous website explaining the situation. A fellow foreigner teaching at one of the international schools, kindly offered to let me stay in his palatial apartment in the diplomatic quarter. As I checked out of the hotel I could tell the staff were curious.

Was I a spy? Or just another stingy journalist? We all know the answer to that question.

Jaco out

An article on deadly fashion practices in Bangladesh appears in the July issue of The Caravan.