Adventure of the month

With an average rainfall of 18.29 inches per year, it is unlikely that you will get rained out in Honolulu. For comparison's sake, my hometown of Miami clocks in at 58.53. This was repeatedly pointed out to me, a couple of years ago, as I sat indoors watching it pour during the time that I should have been sipping mai tai's on a sunset sail. I had done all of the the research before arriving on the island and had sold about a dozen people on the idea. Based on both their price ($30 including unlimited drinks) and excellent reviews, I had booked all of us aboard the Na Hoku II . On the given day, I had taken "it's only a passing cloud" as my infallible mantra. I may have done an anti-rain dance.  It did no good. In the end, we were all left sodden and minus one dazzling sunset (but not exactly thirsty, luckily, you can still get those mai tai's on land).

Last Tuesday, I was relaxing at home.  I had just popped in a yoga dvd and was about to go into downward facing dog, when suddenly the phone rang.  It was work.  They wanted to know if I could be at the airport in an hour and the only info they could provide was that I was going somewhere with the airport code KTN.  It was google that told me I was going to Ketchikan, Alaska. Out went the dvd as I quickly tossed a couple of sweaters into my bag. By early evening, I was on the ferry that connects the Ketchikan airport to the mainland.  It was dark so I could not fully appreciate the vista before me, but having been here once before, over a decade ago, I knew it was going to be good.

This summer presented a new and unwelcome challenge. For the first time in seven years, I would not be spending July and August in Amsterdam. The sweltering corollary to this fact was that I would be spending those months at home. In Miami. Where the climate is only a few degrees cooler than that of the sun and the humidity is such that it has been known to provoke a man into trying to chew off a stranger's faces. Seeing as I have been a vegetarian for over twenty years, chances are good that I would have trouble digesting human flesh so an immediate solution was necessary. That's where the opportunity to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico for three weeks came in quite handy.  Sure, it is still hot as a mofo down there, they have no canals, tulips or quality cheeses to speak of and the opportunities for international weekend getaways are non-existent but we were walking distance to a beach (as opposed to the onerous 15 minute drive I would have to undertake at home), cold Medall...

A couple of things I learned during a recent extended stay in Boston: DO:  Get the hell out of Boston. There are only so many times you can do the Freedom Trail and all 99 flavors of Sam Adams beer start to taste the same after a while. DON'T:  If you're Bostonian escape plan involves Martha's Vineyard, don't assume you can just show up and get on the next ferry. This applies even if you have researched the itinerary (and printed it out), mapquested the route and timed it just so in order to arrive with sufficient time to purchase the tickets. You (or more precisely whoever is driving the car) will get hosed. The reason for said hosing is that the parking for the ferry is nowhere near the actual ferry, a fact that is conveniently omitted from most travel sites. Therefore the driver will have to drive back from whence they came to park the car (or seeing as we are in Massachusetts to "pahk da cah") in a remote lot and board a bus that will return them...

Fourteen days and seven cities later, I was back where I started, in Tehran. Only now, I had vanished most of the preconceived notions I had arrived with. I no longer expected authorities to check my paperwork on every corner. I did not stress over whether or not my head scarf remained firmly in place. If it fell off, I simply replaced it, no harm, no foul. I had grown comfortable enough with navigating the streets and bazaars (even the treacherous crossing of major streets) that I no longer felt the need to have a guide around to keep me out of trouble. This last one came in the most handy as Yasna was now scheduled to do another tour and I was assigned to a local guide. The new guide, who shall remain nameless, seemed like a nice enough guy and he was certainly trying. Unfortunately, as good a person as he may have been, as a guide, he was worth 0 riyals. He spoke next to no English, had no sense of direction and had the uncanny ability to answer each and every question t...

FAQ #9: You're a vegetarian. Will there be anything for you to eat? A: According to Lonely Planet and many of the sites I visited, not really. According to my own experience, yes, but (there is always a but) it helps if you like eggplants. Most restaurants, even in the more remote villages, have large multi-item salad bars, which are intended as starters, but usually have a sufficient variety to allow you to make a substantial meal out of just the salads. If you want a hot meal, then a penchant for that omnipresent purple vegetable does come in handy. There must be a hundred different stews devised around the eggplant and I believe I tried most of them. One myth that was quickly vanished for me was that I was going to have no trouble finding falafel, hummus, tabouli and other foods that I routinely associate with the Middle East. Apparently, these things never really made their way onto the Persian table. The one exception was in the bazaar in Tehran, where one lone ...

FAQ #8: Will you be able to access your email? Do they even have Facebook? A: I am noticing that none of the questions I am presenting here have a straight-forward answer. It is always "Yes/ No but..." This was not by design. I think it is more a result of the complicated reality for the Persian people. Their lives are lived with an asterisk. There is the official line and then there is the reality and the two can vary wildly. With regards to the internet, it is available (except for when its not) but many sites, Facebook included, are restricted. One of the most baffling things for me was the capriciousness of the restrictions.  I expected social media sites (ie Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) to be blocked, particularly a month before a presidential election, and they were.  However, Whatsapp and Skype were available.  I was sure the NY Times would be blocked.  Yet as I sipped my morning tea, I was able to read an article about the clerics' marginalization of P...