Mat and Mo's Birthstory: Our Homebirth in a Hospital

Disclaimer: This story is long... our baby is too good for Cliff's Notes! If you're one of those people that only look at the pictures anyway, then head straight to our Picasa albums. Enjoy!

Part I: The Waiting Game

The due date of August 30th came and went with little fanfare. We celebrated the eve of the due date with a gourmet, home cooked meal with friends and toasted to the eminent arrival of our new baby. Wow, were we wrong!! The days kept ticking by and we kept trying to keep ourselves rested and occupied. The first milestone was the full moon – certainly baby was waiting to come out into the glow of the mama moon, certainly Mo's cervix was hoping the extra tug of gravity would open it up. And then, even though we know it's not related, we figured Labor Day on September 7th was going to have to be it. After that, 9-9-09 was looking better and better (and what a rad birthday to have!!!) What? This coincided with the Saturn transition into Virgo? Perfect! Let's get this party started!!!

Throughout the week our midwives Mollie, Mason, and Megan (working with Mat and Mo – can you see why we didn't choose another "M" name?!?!) were gradually ramping up the natural induction methods to get this little one out. Mo went to acupuncture almost every day, took herbs around the clock, endured marathon sessions of nipple stimulation and more sex than it took to get us into this mess. We walked the stairs at the Rose Garden, walked the stairs on Vine street, set up our "oxytocin cave" complete with non-stop rom-coms, candles, and mellow chanting cds. Finally, on Saturday morning September 12th, after a night of bizarre lighting and thunder storms in the Bay, we resorted to our nuclear option – castor oil.

We slightly feared the castor oil, but having survived years in India also figured really, how bad could it be. She awoke early at 7 AM like a champ and swallowed three ounces of the vile stuff mixed in an "I am Grace" raw milkshake from Café Gratitude (you can't make this stuff up!). Excitement ensued – it was a little bit like India all over again – and we just tried to keep her hydrated with electrolyte drink and keep the super soft Charmin' stocked. The worst settled out by about noon and we sat around our house waiting for the contractions. We played backgammon (Mat won!), walked around the block, and finally called Mollie to tell her we were heading to the hospital for our prescribed Non-Stress-test to make sure that at 41 weeks and 6 days the baby was still doing okay.

On our drive to Walnut Creek we started emotionally coming to terms with the fact that our birth might not be at home as planned. We had already gotten a non-reactive stress test the day before – the results weren't terrible but they weren't great either – and our midwives had prepped us for the fact that if we had another one on Saturday they would recommend induction in the hospital.

We checked into labor and delivery and were greeted by the nurse midwife Deb, who did our intake in the exam room while our NST was running. After our terrible experiences with care at Kaiser Oakland we were honestly blown away by her receptiveness, willingness to listen to our hopes for the birth, and professionalism. She left to end her shift with us after only 20 minutes saying "We're going to try to give you a homebirth here in the hospital."

Things were a bit chaotic during the shift change – the NST strip was coming up unreactive again and Mo's blood pressure surprisingly skyrocketed up to 150 / 100. We opened our hearts more and more to birthing wherever and whenever we could, and in a worried call to our midwives they confirmed that we shouldn't come home and that they would have transferred us to the hospital already with her blood pressure like that. A few nurses came in and started pimping the pitocin – "just a whiff, just to get things going…" At this point Mo had to get on the floor to comfortably make it through one of her first strong contractions, paused to vomit in a little barf bag, and plunged into labor.

Part II: Labor and Delivery

They transferred us to a beautiful, large, and open birth room with hardwood floors, colorful walls, and an ample picture window. Mo was in full labor now, on her hands and knees on the floor hugging a birthball during contractions, no longer questioning or wondering what they would feel like. We started manifesting the mind set of a natural, present labor as Mo breathed through contractions and let her soul relax during the breaks. A blood test came back positive for pre-eclampsia, which explained her unexpected elevated blood pressure, and we were informed that we would need to be transferred from the nurse midwives' to the doctors' care. They left us alone – Mo continued to labor and we were waiting for our midwives to come for some needed backup.

Mollie and Megan rolled in just before Doctor Cohen came in for his first examination. He looked like a dark haired, slightly quirky Doogie Howser, and swaggered over to check out the situation. While Mo remained oblivious to his entrance, our anxiety increased as this was the guy who would "technically" be calling the shots all night long. He observed Mo's breathing pattern, checked her cervix, and confidently pronounced that she should keep on doing what she was doing. He told us that if there was continual progress there would be no need for pitocin and that there was still a large hope of doing this thing naturally. That was the only time any sort of drugs were mentioned for the rest of the night.

Doctor Cohen left and the race was on. We had three hours to make significant progress in his mind and immediately focused on supporting Mo however we could. As her labor progressed she deepened in her out-of-body/totally-in-body experience. She uncannily found moments of utter relaxation between contractions as her whole body dissolved into rejuvenating bliss. Her blood pressure dropped back to normal levels as she relaxed and surrendered to the natural process. We breathed together through every contraction, moaning deep, primal, guttural noises and holding hands while the midwives applied pressure and ice to her lower back. Mollie made, err… strongly suggested, that Mo switch laboring positions about every hour, and she was on the floor, then on the bed, then standing, then on the toilet (clearly her least favorite – "I hate the toilet!" Believe it or not this was as vulgar as she ever became). Mollie ordered nipple stimulation between the efforts, and Mo graciously accepted, knowing that it would make the next contraction that much more intense but that the alternative was worse.

The hours passed, the doctor came and went, leaving us totally alone in the room with our midwives and the baby. Every two hours he came in, applauded her breathing patterns, updated us on the dilation of the cervix, and left us to our laboring again. Strangely enough, this young, male doctor that spent his time doing trauma deliveries and things much more complicated than natural birth, believed in the process and was perfectly fine leaving us alone to make it happen.

The next few hours blurred together as Mo labored through to the early morning. Around 4 AM she was 9 cm dilated and we all began visualizing and willing the baby further and further down, down, down, down…. At one point she begin inquiring about what it would feel like to push – saying that she didn’t know what to expect as she didn't think the baby could get any lower. At this point, Mo was on her hands and knees on the bed and Mollie looked behind her to check the situation out. Sure enough, the baby's head was just starting to poke through her labial lips. "Oh," Mollie said in her utterly calm, professional midwife voice, "I'll go get the doctor!"

Suddenly the flood lights in the room came on and a delivery team ten deep rolled in, led by Dr. Lee, who was filling in for Dr. Cohen who was now in the ER. She introduced herself to Mat and before he even gave her his name he asked her if we could turn the floodlights off to keep Mo calm. She complied and we all sort of looked at each other, thinking, hey... this might not be so bad after all.

Dr. Lee assumed the position behind Mo's butt and didn't even ask her to get off her hands and knees, simply stating that we should start "getting this baby out." Mo pushed naturally with the next contraction, made a little progress on the head, and then took a breather as Mollie positioned herself at the head of the bed right by Mo's face. By this time everyone in the room was all telling her to do something different, and yet she blocked all of them out and focused on Mollie's face and voice, knowing that Mollie would tell her if she had to do something other than what felt natural. On the second contraction Mo started pushing again and the baby's heart rate dropped considerably and didn't come back up, which wasn't a great sign but really just meant that we needed to get the baby out of there. Mollie zoned in on Mo and coached her through the next contraction, telling her that she needed to push for a 10 count, take one breath, and then push like she had never pushed before. With that effort the baby crowned and its heartbeat began to stabilize. One push into the next contraction and baby slithered out, let out a majestic cry and Dr. Lee immediately placed him (It's a boy!) on Mo's chest.

In another example of Kaiser's amazing cooperation with our wishes and wants they exactly followed our birth plan that we had been anticipating with our homebirth. They didn't cut or clamp the cord until the placenta was delivered; they didn't wash, inject, touch, or mess with the baby, and they left us alone almost immediately after the delivery. What followed was two hours of pure bliss and the single best moment of our life together, watching him bond with Mommy and Daddy in a spiritual, primal, and deeply instinctive way. We all stared at each other for a couple of hours and then bid goodbye to our midwives with hugs, kisses and love while we began the somewhat mundane process of transferring to Kaiser New Mom and Baby Care.

Part III: Falling in Love

What we experienced in that 14 hours was the most perfect birth that we could have ever asked for. During the pregnancy and especially the last week of attempted induction we had unfairly tied many of these feelings and wishes for the birth to its physical location. Yes, we would have loved to have been in our home through the whole experience (hey – a good reason to have some more babies!!!), but even though we weren't, we were able to manifest a loving, caring, and supportive environment to welcome our baby into the world, with the help of our amazing midwives and the incredible staff at Kaiser. The doctors at Kaiser believed in us and the natural process of labor enough to leave us alone in the birthing room for hours on end, naturally progressing toward the birth. Our midwives believed in us enough to give us the strength, guidance, and direction to have a transcendental birth experience within the physical confines of a hospital room. Sage believed in us enough to bide his time and kick it into gear the first time he seriously heard the mention of a hospital induction. Mat believed in Mo enough to get on the floor with her through every single contraction, grunt and moan, breathe in and out every single breath, and transfer all of his possible energy during the labor straight to her. And Mo believed in herself enough to think we could do this crazy thing together in the first place.

We've spent the past four days falling in love with our little baby boy. People told us this would happen and we had no understanding of what it meant – how do you fall in love with a new baby? Well, you spend every single moment of every day with him, not even thinking about leaving for errands or groceries or reading the newspaper. You gaze into his eyes when they are open and bathe him with love when they're closed. You wake up in the morning to see him sleeping and fight to hold back tears of joy. You listen to the same music he heard in the womb, sing to him as you pace back and forth across the house, and hand him around to friends, family, and neighbors only to see the divine exuberance on their faces. You giggle like a child when you discover a new dimple on his face, or see him cringe his eyes in his best pirate scowl. There's really no other way to explain it - you simply stare at him and fall in love.

We spend extra time cuddling and hugging, enjoying the new found freedom and body contact without a pregnant belly in the way. We count, catalogue, and investigate poop and pee in a way that we didn't know was possible. We wake up refreshed and alert after 3 hours of solid sleep. We destroy our house with dishes and laundry over and over only to be cleaned up by an angel of a grandmother. We plow through delicious food that neighbors bring, eating with a voracity that gives us the sustenance we need to go on. We relax, laugh, smile, dance, do the crossword, walk outside, and do it all over again. He sleeps, nurses, pees, poops, and does it all over again. And all of the sudden, just as quickly as the first contractions of labor came on, just as quickly as he cried his first breath outside of his mom, just as quickly as he falls asleep on your chest after a nursing session, life seems perfect.

Fired Up and Ready to Go!!!!

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the planet.... yes, we have been terribly negligent in updating our blog even while exciting stuff has been going on. We might even be guilty of having an already written post in limbo on the hard drive somewhere...but we'll get to that later.

We're exhausted, run down, and still juiced and pumped with adrenaline after spending a crazy weekend in Vegas all in the name of HOPE. In a typical Mat and Mo last-minute spontaneous adventure we rented a car, kidnapped three friends, and hit the highway after work on Friday at 6 PM headed for Sin City - we pulled into the parking lot of Coronado High School in Henderson Nevada around 2:30 AM to be third in line for the Obama rally scheduled to occur at 9 AM. Too excited to really sleep, we chatted with other Obamanauts in the chilly desert air and waited for the time to pass... a little before 7 AM we were let into the football field, and soon enough we were front row, riding the rail directly in front of the podium. The sun came up, we saw Obama speak, shook his hand, and got his autograph in a completely surreal course of events that left us dazed, awed, and inspired. Pictures and more commentary to follow once we get some rest!

After some recovery and fun the rest of Saturday we hit the streets early Sunday morning for a full day of canvasing - door knocking and general get out the VOTE. They must of thought we were tough, because we were assigned to the hardest "turf" around, some low-income housing complexes in the Northwestern quadrant of Vegas. Being from such close-proximity to Oaktown didn't hurt, and we proved our mettle as we navigated the projects and talked to the residents, who were (mostly) extremely friendly and eager to support Barack. Besides one lady who was voting for McClain on Monday (which was fine with us) our mission was successful and we saw an interesting cross section of Vegas that we hadn't seen before.

Anyways, it's Monday night, we drove back today and are almost too tired to even type - what else can we say besides get out there and VOTE in this historic election tomorrow! And if you're in Cali, please vote NO on PROP 8!!!! There's no reason we need to take rights away from people in this state.

We love you all and promise more updates and photos(!!!) soon!!!!

See no evil, hear no evil

Mo's due back tomorrow from a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat that she left for about, well, 10 days ago. In true Mo style she had put herself on the waiting list and was called the night before the retreat began with the good news that she had gotten in through a cancellation. She had told herself that if she made it in she would go, and sure enough she packed up her bag and took off the next morning.

In truth, although I was sad to see her leave, I was excited for her to go as she has wanted to do one of these retreats for a very long time now, and the Universe had never been aligned properly enough for her to make it. In my mind I'm comparing it a bit to our trip up El Cap, a meditation-driven retreat in its own right; it's something that will be entirely uncomfortable for the complete duration, and yet a worthwhile life experience that you can never know exactly what it's like until you jump in and do it. While I was fairly sure that I could do El Cap, I really am not sure I could do a 10-day retreat like this. For the whole thing you have to observe "noble silence", which means no talking, writing, singing, gesturing, smiling, or even really looking at anyone else in any form - even the two other people you are sharing a room with. I'm such an extrovert that I don't know if I could shut up long enough to last, not to mention that fact that I couldn't deal with the physical pain of sitting in meditation for 10+ hours per day. One of the things I've always admired most about Mo is her bravery, strength, and lack of hesitation to jump into the unknown. Many people today are so afraid of what they don't know that they never seek the truth. - a fairly easy way to live your life, but is that what we're really here to do?

Anyways, I really don't know how she's going to react when she gets home tomorrow, but I am certainly excited to see her. Will she walk right by me, silently, and sit in the corner for a few hours before getting up and going for a run? Will she be talking at 9 times her normal rate, packed to the gills with things to say, express and communicate? Or will she eat a big meal and go right to sleep?

Stay tuned!

Mat

Regression

Teaching high school can often be a lesson in being a high schooler all-over again, and at the end of my longest, hardest days, I still find myself thinking back to the highlights of the past 6 hours, when i was laughing my hardest or blown away by a student's incredibly higher level thinking that came out of left field.

I survived my first two weeks at Berkeley High and I must say that I'm really enjoying the experience so far. I have two 11th grade classes which I absolutely adore - so far, at least, they are mature, as responsible as one can expect a 16 year old to be, funny, talented, and a pleasure to be around. My 9th grade classes are a bit more of a struggle. In one, I have 34 students, and thank goodness they are 34 relatively mellow students, or I would never make it through 5th period. 34 kids is too much to have in a classroom, especially when some of them are mainstreamed special-needs kids that require more attention, and when you are expected to delivery "differential learning" lessons so that all of them can achieve at the same level of "rigor". With 34 freshmen you're just trying to make it through the 55 minutes and hope that some of the knowledge you throw at them sticks somewhere inside their cranial cavity.

I must admit, my 6th period, freshmen class is a bit on the crazy side. So crazy in fact that the teacher across the hall from me pulls up a chair and sits outside his room during his 6th period prep just to watch my kids come in, for sheer entertainment value. One kid, in particular, comes in every day as if he's just done lines in the boy's bathroom, literally shaking and vibrating with excitement and energy. In the few spare minutes he has before the bell rings he runs laps up and down the hall, as if he's preparing for the 100 m Olympic dash, revving his adrenaline sky-high so he can "sit" for a little less than an hour in my classroom. Today, the teacher across they way observed him running out of my classroom only to embrace a concrete pillar in a full-body bear-hug, only to explain to the teacher that "everybody needs hugs sometimes" before running up and down the hall hugging the rest of the available inanimate objects. Yes, he sits in the front, and yes, I have called his parents, and yes, he still jumps around and jitters like a crack baby without his daily fix. I can't help but love even him, however, as he turned in his "Science as Art" visual art piece today, and it was an incredibly complex photo mosaic collage describing the buoyancy of a fishing boat - it must have taken him hours at home, and really displayed an amazing amount of artistic skill. Perhaps I should sit him in the back and have him cut pictures out of magazines every day.

These shenanigans ended the day which I started with two of my second period students extending the 30 second version of the funk song "Brick House" that was piped over the pathetic PA speakers system with an extended 3-minute remix, consisting of beats hammered out on their desk, a two part vocal harmony, and intricate accompanying dance routine while wearing aviator shades, spotless ball caps, and shaking their dreads. I really couldn't help but laugh, as their energy is so pure, and so uplifting, that one can't help but stop life and watch these kids dance and have a good time for just a minute or two while being cheered on and encouraged by their classmates.

Because really, if you can't laugh and take yourself less seriously in 11th Grade, then when can you do it?

-Mat

Finishing What We Started

First, an apology for the lack of blog updates recently, which can only mean one of two things: either we've been off having too much fun to write about our lives in cyberspace, or we went off and did something crazy, like settled down and re-joined the working class. Believe it or not, it's been so long since we've written that we've gone off and done both.

Knowing that we were headed back to Berkeley and Mat was going to jump into his first year of real, credentialed teaching, we decided to make the most of the end of our summer, which turned out to be a highly successful endeavor. Manipulating our time between new teacher trainings, meetings, and HR appointments, we spent a good chunk of August in one of our favorite spots on the planet - the Yosemite High Country. Some of you may remember that about one year ago we started this crazy trip with a 30+ day through-hike of the Sierra, following Steve Roper's "Sierra High Route", a mainly off-trail route that stays as high as possible while following the Sierra Crest from South to North. Last summer we completed about 80% of the route, from King's Canyon to Tuolumne, and had it in our sights to finish up since last September. August seemed the perfect time to do it, and we set out from Tuolumne Meadows on a six day trip that would take us North along the crest, around Conness and up to the Matterhorn, and then back down to the Meadows to meet the Cane family for a first-ever (almost)-full-family camping trip.

The hike itself was amazing, and a wonderful way to finish the High Route. What the Northern section lacked in good fishing and desolation it made up for in stunning scenery and clean granite. As we never strayed too far away from an easy East Side entry point there were quite a few folks back there, but only two other souls doing a route similar to ours, and always plenty of places to camp far away from the crowds. We gained an appreciation for how the massive Mt. Conness and her satellites dominate the area by circumnavigating the peak, and discovered an absolutely beautiful off-trail gem in Spiller Canyon as part of our route back to TM. We loved Spiller so much that we dropped our packs at 2 pm on a day that we intended to walk much further, and instead made coffee, swam, fished, and read until the sun set - ahhh, the mountain life.

We rushed out of the backcountry to get in line on Monday morning for a campsite in the TM campground for the arriving and ever-growing Cane clan. Using our charm, humor, and bargaining abilities we scored the two absolute best sites in the whole 200+ site campground - a secluded corner of the A loop right along the river, with beautiful views and vistas right from the camp. The family rolled in, and a hectic yet entirely fun 3 days followed before they packed up and went home. Jean-Paul and Elena surprised us all with an announcement of their engagement around the campfire the second night, and we celebrated and felt blessed to hear the good news in such a magnificent locale.

We packed up Edric and Wyn's car and headed back to Sacramento with them, as the Eurovan was stranded in Bishop after towing it down the pass with Jason's well-timed AAA Plus card. The story around the van is another blog posting in itself, but it turns out that absolutely nothing was wrong with the van - it was just an idiotic move Mat made with the key that caused the engine security immobilizer to become active. Unfortunately we had to tow it all the way to a VW specialist in Bishop to figure out the issue, and after he asked Mat "How long has the key been like this" we immediately knew that it was our fault. It turns out those little batteries in the keys actually run a bit more than just the LED light. Who knew? After a few quick days in Carmichael we washed our bodies, washed our clothes, and got ready to head to our old/new home of Berkeley for the start of the school year.

Pictures of our hike are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser

Oui, we Wii

We spent the past week at Mat's parents' house in South Carolina, basking in the heat, sweet tea and boiled peanuts of the South. We always experience a bit of culture shock leaving "the island" (as Mat's mom refers to California) and Mat's translation skills in southern drawl were put to the test multiple times during our stay. We hadn't been there in the heat of summer for quite a while, so we combated the stifling temperature and humidity by spending as much time on the lake as possible. The highlight of the aquasports was a day full of high speed (and impact) tubing off the back of the boat with Mo's brother JP and his girlfriend who drove up from nearby Clemson for the weekend.

We also used the week to catch up on all the new-fangled technology we had been missing on the island as we broke in Mat's parents' newly-purchased Wii and Wii Fit. To be fair, we supplied them with the Wii Fit device, after purchasing it from a 16 year old Vietnamese kid in San Jose whom we found on Craigslist. Not knowing we had one of the hottest consumer items since the Cabbage Patch Kids in our hands we were a bit surprised to field all of the comments that we got as we carried it through the airport - had we had more of them we could have paid for our plane tickets in the time it took us to walk between Terminal A and D. We're very rarely ahead of the curve when it comes to things like this, so we were eager to check it out and find out for ourselves what all the Wii madness was really about.

We were a little skeptical that something so seemingly cheesy could be so much fun - let's just say they've come a long way since the Power Glove. The technology is honestly pretty amazing, and through some magic of gyroscopes and infrared transmittal the Wii senses every single move you make, your motions fueling such family-friendly games as golf, bowling, and even boxing. The Wii Fit was pretty rad as well, and while it's not quite the same workout as hauling all your stuff up El Cap and back down again, one could see how it could develop into a fun and easy fitness routine. While the yoga poses were not always 100% accurate, they were straight forward enough to do, and having some feedback regarding your center of mass was actually quite helpful in certain positions. We definitely got hooked on a few of the balance games and the sight of someone frantically hula-hooping an invisible hoop and gyrating their hips with reckless abandon in your basement is almost worth the price of the system.

When we could drag ourselves away from the Wii we also caught up on our movies. Wanting to check out all the hype around the new Batman venture we bought tickets for the local IMAX online and rented The Dark Knight's predecessor, Batman Begins, to watch on Mat's dad's big screen TV. We were quite impressed by the first one, even without the depth of comic knowledge that many fans might have, and our excitement for the new one on the big, big screen rose with every day. We filed into the IMAX dome theater at the Charlotte Discovery Center and then sat reclined in our chairs, teeth cleenched, fists gripping to the arm rests for the next two and a half hours, trying to keep our lunch stomached and the vertigo at bay. In short, it was a bit much - the wraparound screen so large that much of the action sequences were just a blur accompanied by super-loud gunshots and kabooms. We felt like we missed more than half the movie as we just couldn't focus on anything going on, and Mat was literally covering his ears with his hands whenever he anticipated an explosion. From what we did gather from the movie, Heath Ledger turned in an amazing performance, and if you didn't know that he killed himself shortly after the filming it would have been one of the most amazing feats of acting in a long, long time. Knowing about the O.D. and how twisted his life had become somewhat put a damper on his performance, as the lines between his acting and actually being a bit crazy became blurier and blurier. We haven't given up on it yet, however, and might try to catch it in regular screen format or eventually rent it when it comes out - chances are we'll be able to handle it a bit better on a 15" laptop screen.

All in all it was a great trip back to the East Coast full of excitement that can only be found in the Carolinas. We're set to enjoy the last remaining days of summer, although we're both currently battling nasty colds. Hopefully we'll be able to head to the mountains for a bit between Mat's trainings and meetings, and soon enough we'll be settling into our new home in Berkeley.

Charming, Sunny, and Quiet front half of duplex

One of our biggest obstacles to overcome as part of our move back to Berkeley was finding a place to live in a city that is famous for the tenacity of its rental market and the hoops one must jump through in order to find a decent place to live. We knew all about it from our student days, having survived the skanky carpeted basement apartments of yesteryear and become stronger people because of it. We were determined to find a nice place to hang our hat in Berkeley, and our list of prereqs was long and thorough. We wanted it all, at a good price and a convenient location.

We spent the previous week craigslisting and looking for updates every five minutes, packing our weekend days full of appointments around the East Bay, and assembling our "Rental Packet" to present to prospective landlords upon introduction. In a procedure perhaps only rivaled in such real cities as San Francisco and Manhattan, each individual Berkeley landlord has a time-tested methodology to ensure that they will somehow pick a tenant that will be amiable in their place and not stiff them on the rent. We saw the whole gamut, from the sticklers who demanded full credit reports, resumes, letters of introduction, rental references, and background checks, to the hippie-dippie leasers who just wanted to scan your aura and take a quick look at your palms. In the end, we put on a clinic for the students and the newbies to the game, as we showed up with sparkling clean auras and a rental packet to match, complete with an irresistibly cute color picture of us grinning ear-to-ear in front of Half Dome.

To tour the Berkeley rental circuit is quite an experience, as many of the landlords are lonely, somewhat bizarre, and want to talk quite a bit. When you drop in on someone's place to interview for their abode you get a unique snapshot into their lives - one somewhat eccentric man showed off his 1880 Victorian Mansion and bombarded us with past, present, and future improvement and remodeling plans, all fit into an exceedingly unrealistic timetable while also complaining about the hormonal changes of his 13 year-old son. Another old salty-dog-sailor-traveling-hippie-artist type took us through his gorgeous Berkeley Hill four-plex while telling us about past mushroom trips and karmic cycles of his life. When Mo mentioned she used to work for Greenpeace he quickly directed us to a photo of him painting the mural on the side of the Rainbow Warrior "back in the day". It really is a small world sometimes, especially inside the Bay Area bubble.

In the end, the smiling color photo must have sold them all, because we were offered all the places that we wanted, including an absolutely beautiful front half of a duplex in North Berkeley. It was definitely at the upper range of our price scale, but has a stellar location near BART and on the bike path through the park, beautiful hardwood floors, and a Chef Ramsey-worthy kitchen sure to be the site of many a delicious feast in the next 12 months. Book your reservations now!

Life in the Vertical World

Check out pictures of our El Cap trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser

After 5 days of climbing and 4 nights on the wall, schlepping more than 200 pounds of water and an equal amount of food and gear, countless hours of extreme discomfort and unbearable hard work punctuated by times to relax and contemplate life more than a thousand feet straight off the deck, we sent El Cap.

The dream of climbing one of the largest and steepest walls in the world is one that many climbers of all abilities share. Resisting its draw is futile, as the wall is steeped in tradition and lore, to the point of obtaining an almost mythical status. Tourists and climbers alike spend days basking in the sun of El Cap meadow, staring upwards towards the top, following the progress of scurrying monkeys sending enigmatic lines towards the summit. For the past week we stepped out of our usual role of gawkers and fans and became those monkeys climbing through the days and nights.

Mo's brother JP was the instigator for the trip, having successfully been up the Captain twice already and ready to take on a third attempt. He had the aid climbing experience necessary to keep our progress moving upward, and invited his coworker Sequoia (AKA El Tigre) along for the adventure. Their background in rope-access work, rescue skills, and general belay management was invaluable to the team. We snuck in on the family card, having enough climbing experience to feel comfortable up there, comprehend the systems, and hopefully provide some brute force and positive energy.

It took us two days to lug all of our gear, water, and food up to the base, and on Tuesday the 22nd we blasted off and began climbing the 16 pitches of a "moderate" route called Zodiac. Our progress was slow, especially the first few days as our freight was heavy and we were all still learning our systems and becoming efficient. After spending the majority of the first day fighting a rat's nest of ropes and a belay organizational nightmare at the top of the first pitch, our morale was dropping a bit and we were starting to wonder if we could indeed make upward progress. Piton Pete, an (in)famous local big waller on an insanely hard route next to us looked over and saw our challenges as he was heading down back to the valley and yelled some words of encouragement. "I'll see y'all later - whatever you do, don't f*cking bail!!! It's amazing - if you keep going up, and don't go down, you'll make it to the top!!!"

As we fought our way closer to the summit, sometimes only climbing two pitches in a day, our systems got more streamlined, we all became more efficient, our load got lighter as food and drink was consumed, and things started to get a little bit easier. It was still probably the hardest thing we had ever done in our life, but for different reasons than we initially predicted. Neither of us were scared of the height or exposure, the things that petrified JP on his first ascent and that most people associate as the main difficulty of the climbing. We have climbed enough to trust the ropes and found that as we got higher and higher off the deck we felt strangely comfortable soaring with the birds 1500 feet off the ground. At some point you have to force your mind to turn off the fear and deal with the situation at hand, whether giving a belay, leading the next pitch, or hauling your gear to the next station. The main difficulties for us were found in the extreme discomfort of the situations - hanging from your harness for hours at a time, never having solid ground to stand on, move about, or stretch, and setting up and breaking down camp while swinging from a rope and performing acrobatics to assemble the portaledges.

In general, taking a team of four up the Capitan is something that doesn't happen too often, as the logistics and organization required increase exponentially with every new person. Our team was amazing, and we worked together almost seamlessly, the majority of the time all of us being at their physical and mental limit. Being up on the wall was a beautiful and transformative experience, like clawing your way towards spiritual enlightenment one inch at a time. And while the discomfort was extreme and the physical demands intense, the line was beautiful, a joining of cracks, features, bumps and minuscule ledges that ran uninterrupted from bottom to top, passing through the huge gray circle on the eastern side of the face. We flew up five pitches the final day, being pulled by the inexplicable energy of topping out, fueled by adrenaline and the excitement of being able to throw our sleeping bags in the dirt and sleep in luxury, taking our harnesses and shoes off and not having to pee in a nalgene bottle. We topped out at 10 pm on Saturday night, met by the two guys who had been climbing an adjacent route next to us, ate as much food as we could fit in our stomaches, and crashed.

In big walling, the majority of your experience is incredibly hard, smelly, uncomfortable, testing, and trying - Sequoia related how he had been training for the adventure by climbing, running and working out, and really he should have just "dug a hole and sat in it for 12 hours at a time". All big wallers can tell you about the numerous times they had been at the end of their mental and physical limits, coming apart while thousands of feet of the ground, miserable, hurt, broken, cracked, and crying - and yet, after you get off the wall, there is a mystical, magical, unreasonable tug to go back. A tug to test yourself again, to see if you could make it on an even harder route, to climb up with the birds, to fly to the top. As the days advance from your last trip, this tug becomes bigger, and pain becomes more distant, and pretty soon you find yourself heading up a wall again, wondering if you can make it this time, and questioning what you have gotten yourself into.

This may very well be our first and last big wall, but even after one ascent we were able to catch a glimpse and feel a splinter of that magic that radiates from the Capitan and permeates beautiful Yosemite Valley. Sitting in El Cap Meadow and staring up at that imposing, more than vertical cliff will never be the same.

Blasting Off

We've got tons to write about, but we've been out in the wilderness far from the interweb and have packed our adventures too close together to allow us ample time to elaborate. In short, we had an absolutely fabulous time during the remainder of our stay in Utah, remaining based in Zion long enough to really explore the area and do some amazing canyoneering around the park. We knew we had most of the technical rope skills and navigational experience to jump into the water-filled slot canyons of the West, and while this was mostly true, we still encountered a steep learning curve. The skillset from climbing crossed over very well in most regards, as canyoneering involves lots of repelling and rope work, however we did encounter some novel predicaments that made us think twice.

The simple act of rappelling becomes more complicated when performing what canyoneers call a "floating disconnect" - that is, rapping into an icy (45 degree F) pool of water, floating to keep your head above, and removing yourself from the rope, all while keeping things untangled and remaining calm. In fact, the swimming was the main thing that surprised us with its difficulty as we had multiple opportunities to jump into the freezing water with full packs and clothes on and dog-paddle/swim across to the (not always evident) other side.

In the end, we enjoyed exploring the canyons more than we could imagine, and our technical skills allowed us to access superbly pristine and geologically astonishing spots in the desert. As the days got hotter and hotter we become more and more comfortable in the coolness of the canyons, and ended our trip with a three day backpacking effort down the Right Fork of the Great West Canyon in Zion, which was quite a test of our hiking, technical, and most of all route finding and map-reading abilities. We didn't see a soul for the duration of the trip and the only evidence of other people where the few footprints of a party that had descended a few days before us. The setting was splendid as the full moon lit up the towering sandstone walls and we were serenaded (loudly!) to sleep by the echoes of the mating frogs.

Our life has been a blur since we got home as we have been preparing to go the other direction with an ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite, one of the largest and most beautiful pieces of granite in the entire world. We will be joining Mo's brother Jean-Paul and one of his coworkers heading up the Captain, on a route that we will hopefully complete in five days (and nights) of climbing and work. We'll be spending the night way up in the air, hoping to get some sleep on our portaledges, and hoping that the sun is somewhat merciful in its heat and a cool breeze is blowing off the deck. It is probably one of the most challenging things we have ever attempted, and we are entering it with a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety for the unknown, not exactly sure how our bodies and minds will adapt and react to a completely vertical world. We can only hope that we will have strong bodies, even stronger minds, and a whole ton of fun.

Needless to say, in a week's time we will have stories to tell and pictures to share - off we go!

Rainbow Sandstone

Our life is often about contrasts, and on the first full weekend in June we traveled to Springdale, Utah, just outside of Zion National Park, for the wedding of one of Mo's best friends from high school. One of the brides herself was billing the wedding as the last illegal same-sex marriage ceremony for California residents to be performed outside of the state before the June 17th kick-off, and the shabang went down in the heart of Mormon country, with the officiating being taken care of by one of the bride's fathers, a retired Episcopalian priest - only in the good ol' US of A. As most of you know, it doesn't take much to get us motivated for a trip to the desert, and the opportunity to be a part of this joyous celebration was more than enough. We finagled some mountain bikes from our well-equipped friends (thanks Witt and Alyse!!!), filled the Eurovan to the brim with desert toys, and took the scenic route which included parts of the "Extraterrestrial Highway" across Nevada and into Utah while stopping at some killer hot springs along the way.

Being part of the larger circus traveling to Utah for a gay wedding in the midst of the landmark California decision got us thinking along those legal lines that become a bit convoluted when you start rolling across state borders. Some of the most interesting state laws in Utah have to do with their policies toward beer and liquor - the whole state is limited to 4.0% ABV beer, and to drink you must either be also eating food in a restaurant or a member of a "private club" that is licensed to serve the demon rum. We emptied out our car of contraband at the Arizona border after hearing about horror stories of out-of-state visitors being harassed for a few bottles of 6% moonshine that they trafficked across state lines. This got us thinking about Federal law, and we seemed to remember from our high school US Government classes that Federal Law superseded State Law in most cases, especially those involving interstate transport.

Being that we do live in the progressive State of Callie-fornia, we couldn't help but compare this conundrum to a legal battle constantly being waged in the Golden State over medical marijuana. Yes, a majority of the state authorized a proposition legalizing the medical use of marijuana, but of course this is only in effect statewide and not on a federal level. Consequently, in liberal bastions like San Francisco and Berkeley, pot clubs are constantly being raided by the DEA and shut down, denied their state-given rights due to the power of the Feds. If the Feds can raid Oaksterdam on a routine basis, shouldn't they be protecting our right to bring California microbrews into the fine state of Utah? Where's the ATF when you really need them?

When it all came down to it, the legal nuances were just that, and we had a grand time in Springdale. The wedding ceremony was easily the most aesthetically stunning and beautiful ceremony we have been to, with the couple being joined and blessed beneath the towering sacred sandstone peaks of Zion. The party was bumping until well past midnight, accompanied by perhaps the hardest rap music ever played on the main street of Springdale since N.W.A. came through in 1994. And the special Utah liquor laws were actually a blessing in disguise, as the strict adherence to alcohol standards has forced creative Utah microbreweries to specially design some incredibly delicious recipes for their local concoctions while spicing them up with names like Polygamy Porter ("Why have just one?") and Provo Girl Pilsner.

So yep, we survived the wedding, Utah survived a gay marriage, and now we're posted up in campsite #9 of Zion's South Campground trying our best to make use of the toys we brought and be thankful for these looooong days to run around outside. It's getting hotter every day, but nothing a dip in the Virgin river can't take care of, and we're cruising around on bikes and running through canyons each day until we can barely walk.

Wooo-hoooo summer!!!!!!

POP! goes the tympanic membrane

While Mo was playing tour guide to my parents, who flew in from the East Coast for a lightning fast trip to Vegas and the Bay, I was left in Berkeley attempting to cram for the Physics CSET test that I was scheduled to take on Saturday. After seeing everyone to the airport on Thursday morning I was ready to settle in for a couple days of quiet, focused studying when my left inner ear canal began inexplicably filling up with fluid Thursday night. The pain kept me up all night on Thursday and drove me to the doctor on Friday, who prescribed antibiotics and said that I had quite a royal ear infection raging in there. Argck.

Unfortunately the doctor didn't send me home with any pain killers, and I was forced to alternate between Tylenol and Advil in an attempt to stave off the ferocious, sharp, awl like pain going straight into my skull. Friday evening I laid in the fetal position on the couch as I didn't think the pain could get any worse, trying to keep my body as still as I could as every single movement jostled the pressure in my ear and caused it to intensify. I began wishing that my ear drum would just burst and I was imagining the immediate theoretical cessation of pain as the fluid found its way out of my skull. And then, while I talked (or really moaned and complained grumpily) on the phone to Mo in Vegas, it happened - my ear drum ruptured, the pain immediately stopped, and fluid began oozing out of my ear canal.

While it was a short-term solution to the indescribable pain I was experiencing at the time, if I had to do it all over again with the hindsight that the last week has provided, I probably wouldn't have wished quite so hard that my eardrum would pop. While the pain and pressure immediately dispersed, so did my hearing, as well as many other senses and neurological nuances that are evidently connected to having an intact tympanic membrane. For over one week now I have not been able to hear anything out of my left ear, and most of the time there is an annoying ringing taking place where audio input should be. My sense of balance is getting better, but for the first few days it was nearly impossible for me to close my eyes and remain standing without falling over. And one of the most annoying repercussions of my condition is the inability to audio-locate where noises are coming from. In order to determine the location of a source of noise, our brain uses an algorithm that compares the gap in reception time between our two ears - put simply, if the right ear hears a noise before the left ear, then the brain can figure out that the source of the noise must be on our right size. When the brain is only receiving data from one of the ears it can't work its magic anymore, and thus I have no idea where noises are coming from. This in itself is extremely disorienting and annoying, and combined with the ringing it is hard for me to stay upbeat, positive, and not grumpy.

Just a week of this experience has given me a whole new perspective and sympathy for a) young children that have ear infections and go through all this painful mess and b) people with life-long hearing disabilities or loss. My grandpa always complained about how stressful it was for him to go out to dinner in a crowded restaurant, or attempt to hold a conversation in a crowded room, and now I have a glimmer of understanding of what he meant. Without both ears working I have lost all ability to filter out the normal din of a populated space, and it requires a lot of brain power to separate what people are saying to you and what is just background conversation around you. I've always put hearing towards the top of my list of most valued senses, and this little medical ordeal has only reinforced that fact.

Mo is back from Vegas, my parents made it safely home to the Carolinas after seeing everything from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, and we are still playing a bit of a waiting game on the job search. The High School in Berkeley has officially offered me a position, and the school in Watsonville is still lagging big time. We hope to come closer to a decision as to where we want to live this weekend, and are excited about working out our summer plans which hopefully include a trip to Zion for a wedding and fun, and there is talk about a possible family ascent up The Capitan(!). Meanwhile, the Interweb says healing time of anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a popped ear drum, so I am hoping recovery comes sooner rather than latter, although in truth I might miss the convenience of selective hearing loss when this is all over.

What?

-Mat

The Secret Interview

We've been temporarily grounded in the Bay Area for a bit while Mat continues his job search and his parents come into town for a brief spell. He has been wrestling with the red tape and bureaucracy of the education hiring system for quite a few weeks now and is ready for it all to be over. It took him a few weeks to really understand the whole process, as most schools and districts love to tell you that all of their jobs are posted on a centralized website, edjoin.org, and that's the best way to apply for positions. What he came to realize, however, is that once the job is up on Edjoin it's already too late. The district, admin at the school, or department involved with the subject have most likely already selected their candidate by that point, and the posting online is merely a formality. So, he was forced to do what everyone else was evidently doing - try to line up a "secret interview".

Luckily he had been keeping in touch with a bunch of his contacts from his grad program and was tipped to a position at a school outside of Santa Cruz as well as one in the Bay Area. Through various emails and phone calls he was able to confirm the possibility of said position, and he arranged a secret interview with each of the schools in question. They both started as an informal chat between himself and the faculty, and eventually progressed into a full on, hiring committee-style round-robin interview. The secret interview at the school in Berkeley led to a personal introduction to the admin staff involved with hiring and a physical handover of his application packet. They were calling for a first interview within hours that afternoon, apparently eager to get their hands on a qualified, young, and thus cheap science teacher. A second interview followed shortly thereafter, and the hiring committee included one woman whom he taught with at Sarah's Science Camp way back in the day, and another who proclaimed "I've never met anyone else who has been hiking in Ladakh!", in reference to a somewhat non-professional but interesting line on his resume.

And now comes the sticky situation, or what Mat's dad refers to as "leaves in the pool" (because your problems aren't real problems when you're complaining about the leaves in your swimming pool). The principal of said school in Berkeley left a positive sounding message on the voice mail tonight, with instructions to call him back as soon as possible, and the school in Watsonville hasn't progressed past the secret interview step yet, despite assurances from moles inside the department that they really want to hire him. To make matters a bit harder, there are numerous factors that together add up to make this one of those semi-difficult real life decisions. The Berkeley position pays a good deal more, would be teaching Biology, could be bike-commuted every day, and is nearly signed, sealed, and delivered. The Watsonville position would be teaching with friends in a smaller school, although teaching physics, with a (short) car commute, and the hiring process seems a bit sketchy at best - but my gosh it's beautiful down there. So what it really comes down to is where we want to live and spend the next few years of our life!

Leaves in the pool, I guess, but we really just want to go swimming!

Stimulated

Mo and I woke up to the pleasant surprise this morning of more money in our bank account. Yes, we had been stimulated, as part of the $152 billion stimulus plan passed in Congress last February. And, try as we might, despite knowing deep down inside that this is a terrible idea, thinking about how many teacher pinkslips could have been avoided with that $152 bill or how prison overcrowding could have been reduced, or how this money is meant to fuel the consumerism that our country is already hopelessly addicted to, we couldn't help but be pretty happy with the money.

It turns out that about $600 each is enough to buy us off after all. :)

Thanks, W.!

Photos from our SE Asia trip

We decided that if Google really is taking over the world, we better be on their side. We put some of our better pictures from our bicycle-touring trip to Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam online at Picasa. Check them out when you can!

http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser

Adventures in Babysitting

The first two weeks back in the states after returning from SE Asia was complete hecticness. Before we were even over our jetlag we helped throw a bachelor/ette party, drove down and back to LA, participated in and helped with a wedding, and babysat Mo's sister's three children for 7 days while they went to Hawaii.

What? You might be thinking "Did you lose some kind of bet?" Believe it or not, the answer is the same as the one Mat gave the high-school clerk at Rite-Aid when asked the identical question in regards to why his beard was a bit more grown-out than usual. No, we didn't lose a bet, but instead graciously volunteered to watch Andre and Matthew, our 15 month and 6 1/2 year old nephews, along with Jordan, our 4 year old niece and a newly-adopted stray dog Calvin so that Maureen's sister and husband could take a much overdue (10 years!) vacation to Hawaii. Perhaps it was a way to ease some guilt on our part for being able to fly to Asia on a whim, perhaps it was a bit of temporary insanity, or perhaps we just wanted to spend some quality time with the kiddos.

Three kids and a dog! It was quite an experience. With three kids it's pretty much a guarantee that one of them didn't sleep the whole night, which kept us up and kept them cranky the next day. Add on to that a nasty cold that they kept passing around between themselves and we were definitely in for some adventure. Luckily their schedule was packed and we spent the majority of the time shuttling them from school to storybook cottage to swim practice back home and stuffing their faces with snacks in between.

After a few trying days and long nights of boundary testing, we all settled into the routine and Mat started making the morning coffee a wee bit stronger to counteract the sleepless nights. Matthew got major points one morning after we kicked him out of our bed and told him to "go play with your Legos" and he returned with special "Breakfast in Bed"; toast (actually made in the toaster - scary), brie cheese complete with a knife, some tangerines, and "Tea" made out of hot water from the tap. With kids this cute, how can you really get mad at them?

By the end of the week we were regular Supermom and Superdad, chillin' with the Moms and Dads at the school Jogathon event, comparing notes on strollers and Mac & Cheese brands, and sleeping when we could get it, which was usually during their naps or "quiet" playtime. We waged daily battles for the small assignments; Mo got stuck with reading "The New Dog" book every single night to Jordan, while Mat got to delve into a new chapter of Harry Potter instead. In return, he got to get up early and make the kids breakfast while Mo caught a few more minutes of shuteye.

Yes, we managed fine, and actually did a pretty darn good job. We got a little scared about the prospect of having children when we realized that we both had no work to go to and absolutely nothing on our schedule, but were still so exhausted we could barely move at the end of the week. Mat alikened it to Substitute Teaching; when you walk into someone else's routines, patterns, and schedules, it really takes a lot of energy to figure it out and keep the kids under control until you do. When you are teaching in your own classroom, you get to set the rules and habits from the first day, and hopefully can be a little more efficient with day-to-day happenings. Every time we held the little guy in our arms we wanted a kid right away, and every time the two older ones went berserk (which wasn't often, but enough) it made us think twice. In the end, we had a blast with our niece and nephews, and found ourselves having to repeatedly answer their question of "When are you guys going to have kids??? We want cousins!!!!"

Our tour of duty ended just in time to avoid the stomach flu that took over the kindergarten class and the projectile vomiting that ensued in the mini-van. Whew!

A Final Run Through Laos

We were so relieved to be back in Laos that we didn't even let two days of unpaved road bother us. In truth, we were expecting much worse, as an American couple on a tandem had warned us that this stretch was "not even a road, just huge boulders and steep drops down a jungle ravine on the side." It turned out to be a beautiful, semi-graded dirt road with occasional softball-sized rocks that wound its way up and down through dense, thick, and unpopulated Laos jungle. The two day stretch after the border was definitely the most remote area we had encountered so far, and we deliberately took it nice and easy after realizing that it would be a really bad idea to crash out here. We only saw two or three vehicles each day, one of them being the bus that ran three times a week to the border with Vietnam. So we took our time, enjoyed the light rain and river crossings, and found ourselves sleeping in some villages that probably won't see another falang for a few months or longer.

After two days and about 100km on the dirt road we came to the village of Muong Khoua, situated on the scenic Nam Ou river. Our circle was becoming complete as this was the same river that shared its confluence with the Mekong in Luang Prabang, where we were almost a month earlier. We briefly toyed with the idea of pushing on from Muong Khoua that afternoon, but made it to a small cafe just in time for a huge thundershower and instead decided to push on through a few cups of Laos coffee and enjoy the busy river scenery. We met a Basque couple also traveling by bike, and they gave us the good news that the next 100km to Oudamxay was on a beautifully paved road and not too difficult. By this point our butts couldn't have ridden much more off road so this was a welcome relief.

The ride the next day to Oudamxay was near perfect and definitely one of the top three days of our trip. It followed the river the entire day, gradually gaining elevation through sometimes steep, never-ending rollers. There was near zero traffic and the pavement was ideal. For lunch we had one of our first truly authentic Laos meals of sticky rice and various grilled animals; jungle deer, water buffalo, and river fish. Rats and small birds were available as well, but we shied away from those. We were excited to get to Oudamxay as one of the Laos guides that worked with the American tour group we met up with lived there. We went straight to his shop and chatted a bit before making plans for dinner at 7pm. He would come by our guesthouse with his wife, and we would go to one of his favorite local restaurants.

After exploring the town a bit, we rushed home to make it back by 7 in time for Boonyang to meet us. As we sat on the front porch, our stomachs turning and legs exhausted, the time kept ticking by. 7:30....8:00....8:20....8:30... finally Mo insisted that Mat call him up. We dug up his cell phone number and found a phone, and Boonyang answered right away. Mat explained that we were tired and going to bed - Boonyang didn't seem to mind, and wasn't apologetic or didn't even acknowledge the fact that it was an hour and a half past our meeting time. He wasn't being rude - it was just another example of how relaxed and foreign Laos time can seem to our hectic western minds.

Mat was laid out sick for a day after some potentially sketchy street food that we munched on the night before. Mo used this day to make friends with the local teenagers at the restaurant next to our guesthouse and help them practice their English. When one of them was packing up to leave the restaurant, Mo inquired as to his destination, and was invited to go to their "Finance School" and sit in on the English class. Instead of sitting in she took over the whole class of students, some of which had only had three days of English lessons thus far. She was offered a Beerlao immediately on arrival, which she professionally declined, and the students were able to practice their English such as "What is your favorite Lao food?" and "What is your good name?". On her way out, they asked her if she could come back and be their teacher everyday.

Mat made a quick recovery and we headed out of Oudamxay bound for Luang Prabang. We were expecting two days and a bit more than 200km of riding through some big mountains, but were feeling strong and motivated to get back from Bangkok. As we rode out of Oudamxay and down some gradual descents we wondered if we felt especially good, or if the road was not as rigorous as we expected. After consulting a map we realized that we had missed our turn to Luang Prabang and were instead headed down the Nam Beng river to the Mekong much further north. Not willing to turn around and backtrack again, and enjoying the easy, descending rollers, we decided to change our plan and head to the town of Pak Beng, the previous site of our one-night stayover on the slow boat to Luang Prabang.

It turned out that this choice was a good one - there was hardly any traffic on the road, and we rode through some tiny weaving villages full of local colors and flavors. Mo found a few excellent shopping opportunities at markets along the way and stocked up on the beautiful local textiles, and we met two other falang (in the true sense of the word) from France that were doing a similar route on a motorcycle. We took two days to get to Pak Beng and they were incredibly enjoyable, with gorgeous scenery, easy riding, and lots of friendly people. We rolled into Pak Beng in the early afternoon, hours before the tourist boat got in, and were able to appreciate the small village for what it was without the nightly influx of Westerners clammoring for hotel rooms and food.

Our time in Asia was coming to an end and we had to get back to Bangkok. There was only one real way out from Pak Beng, and that was the slow boat on the Mekong. We hopped on and headed upriver for our third full day on the mother river, this time in a boat with only about 10 other people. The extra room was much appreciated and we actually enjoyed the scenery and the lazy trip up to Huay Xai.

We only a few days to get back to Bangkok and catch our flight, so even though we wanted to hang out in Laos some more we had to start moving back. We crossed the river back into Thailand the next day and took a bus to the city of Chiang Mai - Thailand's second largest city and a popular tourist destination that we had never quite made it to. In Chiang Mai we splurged a bit on a nice hotel with a swimming pool and enjoyed a couple of relaxing days of shopping, eating, and drinking coffee before hopping on an overnight train (another Thailand first!) back to Bangkok. A final hectic morning in BKK found us packing up our bikes, doing some last minute shopping, and then taking a cab to the airport for our flight back home.

Return to the Full Taste of Happiness

The Golden Tortoise got us successfully way out of Hanoi, but unfortunately it forgot to pave the 200 kms of road leading into our destination of Dien Bien Phu. We were semi-warned in the universal language of sign language as we checked out of our guesthouse in Son La that the road was "very bad and very bumpy". Like anything that we had experienced in Asia so far, we had to check it out for ourselves.... the road was terrible the second we got out of the city limits and continued that way for the next two days all the way into Dien Bien Phu.

The road was under some kind of "construction", although in reality all they had done was completely ripped up and destroyed any semblance of a paved road. The conditions varied anywhere from inches of wet, sticky mud, to stripped pavement with marble sized pebbles on top (the worst to ride on!) to about .01% of the surface that was actually resealed and was like riding on a cloud to heaven. Needless to say, the riding was difficult, but thankfully Mo impeccably timed the acquisition of some trendy dust masks with the conclusion of the paved road. We rode most of the way with our dust masks on, as the dust from passing trucks and vehicles was too thick to breathe without the masks on. To top it all off, we had two of the hardest climbs of our trip, and upward progress was slowed even more as we fought to keep traction and keep ourselves upright. The combination of steep road and SPDs toppled Mo over once and drew some blood on her chain ring, but she recovered quickly and kept on trucking like a pro. While we were collecting ourselves on the side of the road, a kind Vietnamese motorcyclist stopped to check on us and offered us the international gesture of peace - a cigarette. I respectfully declined but really did appreciate the offer; we would probably be doing a lot better in Vietnam if we were smokers. :)

We met an American couple cycling the other way on a beautiful Comotion mountain bike tandem and stopped to swap information and tips. They had come in from Laos over the border that we were headed to, which was very good news as they were the first real-life people we had met that had come across the border. Supposedly it was open for foreign travelers, but the opening was so recent that none of the guidebooks mentioned it and no one really knew for sure. They assured us that they had no problem crossing, although still didn't know if we would be able to procure visas on arrival. We mentally psyched them out when we told them that the next 150km were just as bad as the 50km they had just crossed, and were glad that we were at least nearing the end of the rough section.

We took a rest day in Dien Bien Phu, one of the larger cities in Western Vietnam and the site of a famous decisive French military routing by the Vietnamese. The local museum had a very interesting display of wartime relics and memorabilia, and we spent part of the day chatting with a group of four US marines that had come back to Vietnam to relive and rehash their experiences in the 60s. Hearing them talk about how they had found their old combat positions in the middle of destroyed battlegrounds made us just begin to contemplate how intense the situation really was some 30+ years ago.

We left DPB and headed towards the border of Laos, really not knowing what to expect... we were way off anything that was in a guidebook at this point, and were a little nervous about what to expect at the border crossing into Laos. The climb up to the border was a 18km monster and, while the road was finally sealed, we were getting into some super remote jungle. As we climbed for a couple of hours we barely saw any cars, and began to worry that the border wasn't actually open. Finally we arrived at the Vietnamese exit post and tried to figure out if we could get a visa-on-arrival in Laos. No one that new anything spoke any English, so we processed our visas, checked out of Vietnam, and headed into no man's land.

The 1km ride between the border posts was a bit nerve racking as we began to contemplate what we would do if we were stuck in international limbo in the middle of no where. The best that Mo came up with was to bushwack our way through the jungle a few hundred meters away from the border post, sneak in, hopefully not get shot, and deal with it when we had to leave the country. Confident that we at least had a plan B we were pleasantly surprised that the Laos border post had recently been awarded the "most laid-back landlocked border crossing in the universe" award - yes, they had visas on arrival, and while it took us about one hour to get through (see: Laostime) they let us in for just a few dollars extra in baksheesh (hey, it was Sunday). A wave of relief immediately swept over us - not only did we firmly have both wheels in a country, we were back in Laos... no traffic, no hurry, no problems.

With the Luck of the Golden Tortoise

We tried, we really did.... we tried to motivate and keep riding through the rain, leaving our palatial estate in Hoa Binh and climbing, climbing, climbing into the mountains of Vietnam... Perhaps the rain would clear, the sun would come out, we would get out of this infernal mud, and the road would finally dry off. Perhaps...

Or maybe not. About 100km outside of Hanoi we turned around and headed back for the city, the first time we had backtracked on our whole entire trip. It was a tough and trying decision, but we were tired of being wet, and a bit tired in general after a flurry of traveling and few too many nights without a good sleep. This time we caught a bus from Hoa Binh, opting not to ride the crazy stretch of road again, and navigated our way through the Hanoi motorbike frenzy once more, to a nice, quiet, and peaceful guesthouse in the old quarter.

It was here that we recharged our batteries for a few nights, getting good sleep, finding some good food, and enjoying the quite charming Northern Vietnamese city. One night we spent a few hours walking around the central lake, which felt eerily similar to Lake Merrit but was the location of one of Hanoi's most famous folktales. Legend has it that magical golden tortoises live deep within the lake, ancestors of the O.G. tortoise that took the sacred sword from the king long ago and returned it to its rightful owner. We had vague ideas of what this legend was about, and were completing our second lap of Qi Dong walking and arm exercises when we saw mass hysteria at the far end of the lake. Motos were driving off the road and into the park area, which is strictly verboten in normal times, cars were parking up on the sidewalk, and people were running en masse to the edge of the lake. At first we thought they were enjoying the sunset, but unless they knew something we didn't, there was much too much excitement for an everyday occurrence. Police began impounding motos left and right and no one cared - they couldn't tear themselves away from the water. Realizing that we were of course in Asia, we did what any good soul would find themselves doing upon seeing such a huge crowd - we ran over and joined in. Peering in the water the excitement was contagious, even though we had no idea what we were looking for. And then, we saw it - the golden tortoise surfacing for air, and then promptly plunging under, startled by the deafening cacophony of gasps and moans from the anxious onlookers. People were almost falling in the water at this point, as they tried desperately to snap a photo with whatever electronic device they had. We asked one of the hundreds of onlookers whether it was good luck, as the mob ran clockwise around the lake, following a feint trail of bubbles beneath the surface. "I hope so!" she said, as she took off to follow the crowd, and perhaps grab more of that lucky turtle power.

We felt incredibly fortunate being able to see this amazing occurrence and not have any of our personal possessions impounded by the police. We only hoped that all the citizens who had a long walk home (and a lot of explaining to do to someone) would remember what a lucky event they witnessed. Feeling rejuvenated, we went to the 6:30 performance of the water Puppet Theater, which while incredibly touristy and packed with Westerners, dong-for-dong one of the best entertainment values in the whole world. It was a puppet and live music event, and the puppeteers did it all in a murky pond of water up to their waists. Jim Henson would have been proud.

With images of the Golden Tortoise in our minds we set out again, still determined to take the back road into Laos and start working our way back to Bangkok. We rode out of central Hanoi for the third time, finally starting to feel a bit comfortable in the traffic, and jumped into the madness of the bus station. Mo dusted off her incredible bargaining skills and got ourselves and our bikes on a bus headed West for a very reasonable price, only a bit more than the actual charges. This was quite a scene as the driver started almost triple what it should have cost, and the falang with bicycles bargaining immediately drew a crowd of Vietnamese, all looking for some good entertainment. After a full day on the bus, complete with locals absolutely fascinated by Mat's arm and leg hair (to the point of stroking it, pulling up his pants leg, and inviting people from all over the bus to check it out) we made it to the picturesque town of Son La, a few hundred kilometers out of Hanoi and well on the way to our final Vietnam destination of Dien Bien Phu.

Stuck in Hanoi with the Luang Prabeng Blues Again

After a few days of rest in Hue and some antibiotics (thanks Jennifer and Scott!!!) Mo was back in full force and we jumped on an overnight "sleeper" bus North to Hanoi. The seats were not normal seats, but rather some space-age pods that fully reclined while allowing your legs to extend to some degree. We managed to get a bit of sleep, more so than a regular bus but definitely less than your average room in a guest house. At 5:30 AM we awoke to being dropped off in the rain, in the middle of nowhere, outside the city center of Hanoi. Conveniently, there was a queue of taxis awaiting the bus, friends with the bus driver, who were waiting to take the passengers to a wonderful guest house nearby, for a hefty fee. Argh. Of course we couldn't load our bikes in the small cabs, and we weren't planning on staying in Hanoi anyway. We pulled a janky photocopied partial map of Hanoi and set to it, navigating the streets of the huge metropolitan city, on our bikes, in the rain.

At this point we realized why The Amazing Race didn't select us for their show - we would have demolished all other teams involved. Somehow we found our way to a hotel for breakfast, found the central part of town, and then got directions to the bus station that would take us to the start of our next cycling leg: a journey west from Hanoi, over the mountains, and back into Laos.

Riding around in the rainy madness we realized what the one piece of gear we wished we had most was: fenders! Somehow we neglected to bring these from the states, and had to improvise some for our bikes out of duct tape and plastic water bottles. They worked decently well, however the Vietnamese have a remarkable ability to stay completely free of dirt and mud while riding their bikes and motos through the street. It seems that in the culture it is very important to keep your clothes clean, even with our plastic fenders after a few minutes of riding we looked like we had just finished Paris-Roubaix. We literally became the laughing stock of every corner we stopped at, with people pointing at us and making disgusted faces at how dirty we had allowed ourselves to become.

We headed out of Hanoi towards our bus station and began to get a hang of riding in all the traffic. Hanoi has a unique per-capita income that allows nearly ever inhabitant to be able to afford a motorcycle, but not a car. So the streets are literally filled with thousands of motorcycles, zipping back and forth like some futuristic arcade game. Our pace was somewhere in between the slow motos and the fast local cyclists, which resulted in quite a lot of passing and getting passed. We finally figured out one of the main traffic rules which helped things go a bit more smoothly - as a driver, you are responsible for all traffic in front of you, but none behind you. So motos, bikes, and vehicles routinely merge from the right hand lane without giving as much as a glance over their shoulder - as long as they are a fraction of an inch in front of you, they have right of way. Riding actually became easier once we discovered this rule, as we knew when to hit the breaks and let people in.

Mat had the great idea of riding right bast the bus stop 12km out of town and riding to our starting point, 70 km away. He was not operating super clearly due to lack of sleep and mud in his brain, but this is what we did. Accordingly, he had a breakdown about 30km into it when the hundredth person pointed and laughed at our mud covered bikes and butts. We got some Pho and managed to salvage enough motivation to but on, and about 40 km out of Hanoi the traffic lightened up a bit and the scenery became gorgeous. If only the rain would stop.

Unfortunately, it didn't. We spent a night at a terrible value guest house in Hoa Binh after after an interesting meal full of all sorts of things we couldn't identify. We even gleefully accepted a bottle of what we thought to be water but turned out to be incredibly strong moonshine to drink. The bottle itself would have killed a man, but we had a few shots at the risk of offending the local spirits and called it a night. At least we were out of Hanoi and on the road back to Laos.

The Insanity of National Highway 1

Last time we left you we had descended highway 9 in Vietnam to the coast, cutting across the DMZ and a beautiful, albeit misty, mountain descent. Our intention was to continue along the coast riding south on National Highway One, the highway running the length of Vietnam. Nevermind the warnings we had heard from other cyclists met along the way, nevermind the warnings from seasoned Vietnam travellers; we were going to try it ourselves. And besides, it's the flagship route of our out-of-print Lonely Planet Cycling Vietnam book - how bad could it be?

CRAZY BAD!!! Think I-5 in California, but a mere 8 meters wide with only a painted line separating the two "lanes" from each other. Now eliminate all the other roads running up the length of the state - force all traffic from 101, 1, etc. onto the highway. Eliminate all semblance of traffic rules, through in 8 million motorbikes, cyclists, pedestrians, add a few thousand trucks and buses that have guaranteed right-of-way because they're bigger than you, and you might start to get a sense of what it was like.

Up until now the riding has been hard at parts, but we never felt endangered by traffic. Hectic and chaotic yes, but endangered, no. When the fifth bus swerved head-on into our lane and we had to jump off the shoulder of the road in a millisecond to avoid it, we both knew that our plans would be changing soon.

We finally arrived at Hue, and Mo came down with a stomach bug that had been pestering her all day. She wins the gold star for pushing through the madness and pedalling on despite discomfort. We got a nice hotel room in Hue, complete with English TV (it's still amazing to us how comforting BBC is in the middle of Asia), and we strategized our next moves and recovered.