le Tour de France

It was a man from Bossost who picked me up off the side of the road early Wednesday morning for no reason other than the fact I had a Spanish flag pinned to my back. He had a wife at home and a child's car-seat in the back but I did not learn more, other than his desire for the calm and quiet of the Pyrenees. From Vielha to Bossost we went, and then about ten minutes further on winding roads to the top of a mountain. Where the road becomes flat, Spain ends and France begins. I shut the door with a thank you and when he was out of sight I walked across an invisible line. An old French cyclist greeted me with bonjour. I smiled and said in Spanish that we are in France now. He said oui and smiled also and then turned and descended without anything else. Shortly I followed him and this was my start to the Tour de France.

The Tour de France lasts three weeks and occurs in many cities and in countries outside of France itself. Most of it is in the remote countryside and so to spectate the Tour, at least any large amount of the Tour, is very difficult. It is because of this most people find themselves picking sections, times, routes and stages to which they will make the Tour a part of their lives and it is in this place a found myself from months ago up until the day of. It was the same strategic orientation of Bagneres-de-Luchon that brought me and thousands others to this small skiing village in the middle of the French Pyrenees for stages 16 and 17 of the 99th anniversary.

In Luchon, the Tour ends one day and begins the next - the only time this happens. It is the last two mountain stages before the entire race finishes in Paris. It is probably the best place in all of France to see what I wanted to see.

Stage 16 is one of the most grueling of the entire race, lasting 197km over four horrific climbs. I was situated on a downhill, 3km from the finish and when the peloton flew by it was not one but many and Cadel Evans had lost 5 minutes with a stomach bug. I still told him I loved him and waved my Australian flag but he probably had other things on his mind. The Frenchman continued to dominate with an impressive win, almost too good. What happened with Cadel, as one spectator put it, is what you would expect of someone who was not on some sort of performance enhancing drug. He is human. He is not perfect for three weeks straight.

Stage 17 was shorter (less than 100 miles) and I placed myself on a large incline, 15km from the finish. Cadel was doing better but it was a Spaniard I saw first, and he remained first until he crossed the line. That gave my Spanish flag value. These are the shortened technicalities of the Tour, and I will keep those at a minimum.

I camped out in Luchon with two Americans. We found a trailer park full of spectators and put down blankets and sleeping bags and talked for a little while until everyone was silent and I just looked up at the big sky that was very dark and full with stars. It was not very cold and when I woke up sometime early in the morning the stars were gone and it was very cloudy and a little colder but still not as cold as I expected. A French family in a nearby trailer gave me an extra blanket the night before and another one in the morning gave hot coffee and a cup. There was nothing I could say but merci and nothing they could say but cafe but I smiled and they smiled and I think we all knew what we meant.

The clouds remained that morning into the afternoon and the mountain stages felt much more like mountain stages because there was always a peak shrouded in mist. I saw Cadel Evans very closely that second morning before the race. Gilbert and the rest of the team also, as they descended BMC's bus and got on their bikes to warm up and do interviews. I saw Cavendish get driven to the starting line through the window of a Jaguar. Wiggins rode by at one point. I was ten feet away from a face of Australian sports television I remember seeing when I lived there but still cannot give a name. There were other important people too. There were thousands of dollars worth of beautiful bikes, tuned to perfection. There were buses with tinted windows. Police officers looking intimidating and some not so much. There was a lot. But the crowds remained very collected and calmly watched from behind the lines. Occasionally someone would yell something out and sometimes the riders would turn and look over and give a wave. My Australian flag joined me with lots of happy Aussies who were happy to have me join even though I do not speak like them.

Walking up a particularly difficult stretch of road, an Australian girl from Melbourne asked me if I had been following the Tour much. It seemed a strange question. I had traveled hundreds of miles to see the Tour. Of course I was following it. But I wasn't really, because one of the innate qualities in coming to these remote places is that you will lose track of the Tour at some point. Waiting hours on the side of the road, your favorite rider could have crashed out and you wont know. The riders could be ten kilometers or thirty and the only way you know it's coming is when a helicopter emerges from behind a mountain and you know it is close. Every major move of the stage passes by completely unnoticed to the people quietly lining the roads, standing poised and ready with flags and signs in hand.

Maybe not if you are like that man from Belgium, satellite television and all inside your trailer, but that is not me now and I would not want it to be. Maybe it will be in a different time. When I glanced at the flatscreen quickly and saw 50km to go, it was however, a little helpful.

It was a running joke among numerous others. We are standing in beautiful scenery that people all over the world watch on television every year and say to themselves how great it would be to see the Tour de France and meanwhile, we have no idea what the hell is going on. But it didn't matter anyways. We were there and people saw us somewhere in the middle of all the rest. And it was the thousands of other connections and conversations, not just the cyclists streaming by, that made the days what they were.

And so the Tour de France moves North while I go back South. The clouds have lifted a little with a few pockets winding through the passes. It was sure something to see. It was sure an experience. Next year I will probably be in a warm little house watching highlights each night, maybe alone and maybe with good company. I will think about the whole thing very differently. I will think about France differently too. I do hate the language gap. It still kills me. But when people are exceptionally and needlessly kind, that neither matters nor exists.

What's Happening Lately

When I arrived in the United Kingdom I had 50 euros in my pocket and I walked up to a stand run by three rather striking girls and exchanged it for 40 pounds. I always like the feel of a new crisp currency in my wallet. I look at the artwork and examine the coins I will fumble with later. It is exciting, like when a plane flies over a city and nothing makes sense yet but you know it will. Four days later at a different airport, I again had 40 pounds in my pocket and received 50 euros from an older woman not nearly as striking or pleasant, and this was the beginning and end of my visa run off mainland Europe.

My mother came to Spain, and it was her first time overseas, and that is where the fluid line began. It is special to be around someone during this time, and I remember often getting off a plane in Melbourne, feeling different air, the accents of people on the streets, the changed orientation of the stars at night, and the realization that entire little world's exist that we would not have known about or give a single thought to before. This is what traveling does the first time, and still the many times after, but never quite as profound as the first, and I was lucky to be there to witness it in another.

In Spain she met the family I had lived with for all this time, and teared up when they said goodbye. We watched a soccer game and she wore a red scarf that would later be defined by the little family who had made up and filled so full the last few months. We went to Granada and walked around the Alhambra, those haunting towers at night, the beautiful gardens during the day. It is a place that keeps you mesmerized and quiet. I stumbled across a beautiful poem one night in a dimly lit square, surrounded by balconies and draped in vines.

Y vosotros dormís siempre,
Y la muerte está lejana.

Then it was on to Toledo, that old mid-evil slow moving town built above the river and filled with shops selling old armor and axes and swords. Then walking out into the countryside, higher and higher for a better view of Don Quixote's la Mancha. Then back on a train up to Madrid to say goodbye.

And then I had days to myself in Madrid that were not really to myself because I was in a very large cheap hostel full of very large personalities that grew larger when they drank. People drank because they were in Madrid for its parties. There were pub crawls every night and people stumbling into the rooms every morning before the sun was out and there were large bathrooms with many showers and odd smells. You felt dirtier after those bathrooms than you did before, but Madrid was good too. I saw the best artwork I had ever seen at the Prado. Picasso and Goya and the rest were close enough to touch. Under Hemingway's advice again, I went to a Madrid bullfight in its beautiful plaza. I went alone and sat up front and talked bullfighting with the old Spanish man who had been going the past thirty years. The young Spanish girl behind me also was impressive with her knowledge and her tenacity, yelling at people for standing and other people for other things I did not quite get. It was as edge of your seat as I'd seen, especially when the third matador was gored and rushed off to an ambulance.

And then, for the first time in six months, it was all behind me. A plane took me out of the Iberian Peninsula and into Manchester and a train took me across to Liverpool. What a strange transition that is, when a country speaking your first language natively feels as foreign as one that doesn't speak your language at all. I was upon first instinct talking to taxi drivers and sandwich makers and people in the street in words they did not understand. And then a few additional things messed with my head, that I imagine will still cause me to put my face in my palms in shame for quite some time. I will remember walking down the rainy streets of Liverpool hand in hand with a girl from Seville, laughing and switching in and out of languages with great happiness. But life still has its moments of excess unfortunately, and the entire thing it retrospect feels something like a regression. That's vague, I know, but I can't write about these things anymore after thinking about it too much. It's not something to plead about out loud. It is something to man up and fix about yourself.

Later it all still hurt, going up in the plane and watching the buildings of Liverpool I came to know falling away in the clouds. I could follow the streets up from the cathedral and see where she was, probably sleeping, though maybe stirring in bed as the world lightened outside. Later there were more clouds and ocean and nothing and then I was in Barcelona around people who never knew a damn thing about me in Liverpool. As the heat returns along the roads in Catalonia, a hope a few other things return with it.

A Few Afternoons of Art

I got the sense, after hours around art in Toledo and Madrid, that this is what it means to live forever. Some people cement their legacies with medals and wealth, and that's fine, but to leave something like this for generations to see, that is what it means to leave something -- some of the best stuff ever made -- behind. Books too; to have your novel on every shelf, read by every pupil, then you have led a meaningful life. I think that before my life is said and done, I need to have written some equivalent to Picasso and Goya and the rest, and then I can die and say I did it all very right. With all this talk of careers, to have done something else seems like to have just gotten by.

Stranger Than Most

After five years without a break, today I walked out of my last exam ever as a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin. I am also in Spain and have been for a very long time and that is a long way from Texas and Austin. What a sentence to be able to write.

It is something very profound to me and I suspect that will sink in at some point but probably later and not today or tonight. As I opened a door and entered into the sunlight I asked myself what I wanted and I first thought I wanted to walk a little and than thought I wanted a beer and perhaps a pizza to go with it and so I walked to Orsinis by the river and sat down and had all three. I might want some ice cream later but I won't know that for awhile.



Five years is a long time. Some people never lived five years and others will not live five years more. To sign up for a five year program is assuming a lot. It was also expensive. The amount of money that went in to five years of school is more than many will make in their entire lives once you start venturing out in the world. It also took time. I invested time that many cannot have or simply choose not to. The last five years are as much a gift as they are an accomplishment and it is apart of more characters than I.

I remember driving down to Austin for the first time and asking someone carrying books where the tower was. I remember changing schools because I discovered I hated chemistry but maybe liked business. I remember the night I lived in a common room on campus because I had to and I would fall asleep at home. I remember very well studying for a finance exam and thinking how much more beneficial to my career the New York Times would be over the time value of money and deciding to read the Times for a little and that ended up affecting my grade but that would not matter much in the end. I remember Austin too. I almost forgot about Austin.

I also remember long nights at work before an early class and going for swims between other classes and getting on a plane for Australia that summer and a plane for Spain that winter where it would all end in style. And today I was surrounded by Spanish students and not Americans. That was strange. And after ten Spanish questions it all ended very suddenly like it began.

My diploma will arrive in the mail in a few months but I do not know when. I missed my graduation by over a month and will miss the next one too. It is possible I will miss my third chance to walk if I am where I expect to be. I do not know if that bothers my parents but I think it does not if it does not bother me. We all know what happened and my mother and I will cheers with a glass of Spanish wine very soon and my dad and I will do something similar come the fall and these things I much prefer to sitting and watching myself and others get recognized for something that was supposed to happen.

No one entered this agreement expecting not to graduate and if they did that was very silly. What I feel now is not surprise and it should not be because there is an expectation that to accept and to finish are synonyms. Therefore to recognize someone as special is like patting a teenager on the back for arriving on time to his first day on the job. When I am eating with my mother in a week I will feel a level of mutual acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that I worked hard and did well and was lucky enough to be given that chance and came out very different than the person that went in. I am very different now than I was before.



So what now. What happens now. In my youth I often brought up extravagant ideas to my parents about cruises and roadtrips and they responded saying that was the kind of thing people did when they graduated and I hated that phrase than but love it very much now. I have almost three months of my life free. That is another wonderful sentence to write. I might see the Tour de France in July. I might see the Olympics in August. I might do neither and go to an isolated island with a hammock in Greece. I might not even leave Spain. It is a good country and a big country and I speak well now and feel very fine here. I am writing something big and that could be nothing or everything and we will see on that too.

After that. What about after that. I sure get asked that a lot. I could be on three continents and the opportunities are there and I can feel them very well and I am not too worried because things have always flown like they should and they flow very well now and there is no reason to think they will not continue to.



Who am I. How is this possible. When will I wake up and see a light at the end of a tunnel which is hopefully just me being born again.

Orsinis is very quiet at this hour and myself, the bartender and the cook are the only people present. Earlier there was a girl working and when I walked in her eyes were red and she had been crying. She tried to pretend and smiled when she brought me a beer and I asked if she was okay but she said she was fine. She left and I will never know why she was crying. It is funny how the world does not change much though we might feel very differently.

I watched the new bartender pour a beer just now and I see myself, but myself in a different time. We are now in a much different time.

Morning Time

I awoke this morning in dim light around 7am. I had a small spasm in my leg and the small parrot in the kitchen made occasional noises, but other than that it was peaceful and I lied there watching the fan spin overhead. It was confusing, because I had nowhere to go, no reason to get up, and I sat back without any covers thinking of years going to bed as the sun came up and waking up well into the afternoon with errands to run. It seems strange and distant in the morning light, on the eve of a graduation. It feels strange to think of objects I no longer have and errands that would not make sense to run anymore.

I was tempted, as I sat there, to feel some sort of guilt, because I could be doing something. I could be out meeting someone or walking another dark corner of Seville or practicing Spanish with that bartender who knows my name, or taking in my last few weeks by the river or reading at my coffee shop, or shuffling through today's newspaper or running out the beers from last night's soccer game. Yes, there are lots of things I could do today, but I am going to lay in bed a bit longer and pretend if I have to that doing just what I am doing is a reward after all those tough years. Before too long there will be plenty of early mornings to go around, plenty of things to do, and I will do them all well. By the time I wake up I hope that parrot has shut up.

Briefly, as a Critic

I have been doing a large amount of reading lately, more than I ever have in my life. I read by the river with new baby ducklings and in a bar drinking red wine, and later in my bed with the air conditioner running. From Hemingway's bullfights to Cervantes and La Mancha to Spain's role in an ever progressing Euro-crisis, I have managed to make a lot of it compliment the Spain outside my door. It makes you appreciate the world around you, and makes you literate. Who doesn't want to sound cool at parties.

Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451 and hundreds of other short stories, just died. He was 91 years old. I watched a short video of a speech of his, given late in life. He looks plump and old, but happy and fulfilled. He said people often complain about not being able to afford an education. He says that's bull, because as a kid he walked to his library and spent hours and days writing and reading. Everything we need -- enough to absorb in a lifetime -- is free to us; we just aren't willing to work for it. I liked listening to him talk. People's voices always more inspiring after death.

What we choose to read is everything. You know a lot about someone by the book resting in their hands, because we have lives and jobs and families and the time we can spend alone with a book is precious and deliberate and our only connection with the candlelight flickering rooms of the past. I criticize how people use their time these days, and what they even decide to read, because it's all so limited, and they do such wasteful things. What's to our lives if we don't make them better.

Electrico touched the 12-year-old Bradbury with his sword and commanded, "Live forever!"

"I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

The Canary Islands

Roughly 100 km off the coast of Africa, next to Morocco and Western Sahara, sit the Spanish Canary Islands. There are seven of them, all volcanic, and all very different. They are close too, and you can see some from others if you are high enough and if it is clear. The weather is perfect and the same no matter the season; the relaxed lifestyles that draws 12 million tourists a year make it hard to imagine the destructive magma flows and eruptions and landslides that created such an extraterrestrial landscape not even that long ago. The big one erupted last in 1909. Columbus saw, "a great fire in the Orotava Valley" as he sailed past Tenerife in 1492. The small island of Hierro was active in 2011. Thoughts like this as you stand 12,000 feet on Teide's peak, seeing everything in all directions, are like thoughts about Jellyfish while swimming in the ocean when you cannot feel the bottom. Every bubble starts to look hostile and you feel very out of control.

Months ago I decided to come here because I had never been to an island and had never seen a volcano. There were volcanos in Spain, and I didn't want to leave Spain, so it all worked and I passed on Mallorca. The German beaches and the discotecas of Ibiza are for another time, and it's better that way. I was drawn out into the Atlantic for nine days for some reason and I am glad I went.

I spent the first few days on the beach in the capital city. It was nice to unwind and swim and run along the water, but the coasts within las Palmas were far too easy and what most people would do. I needed to get into the mountains, because they were there, so I climbed higher than anyone else, to the highest municipality, and saw ocean on all sides and Tenerife in the distance.

The days in that small hostel on the side of the cliff were as simple as I have ever had. I cooked easy meals and at night I sat under an amazing set of stars, next to a delightful girl from Bavaria. A Swedish machine keen on escaping the terrible winters of his country took me on a two hour run one afternoon, up to the many places you cannot reach by car. I love the views you must work for, and we certainly worked for this one. The people at the top are in a common sort of bond, fit enough and wanting it badly enough to make it all happen. When I will not climb for a view, you know I am withering away.

An early morning bus took me off the mountain as the sun just started peaking above the clouds. I got on a ferry and went three hours across the ocean with the tall volcano on Tenerife beconing forward all the way. The next chapter, the next island, had arrived, but would quickly depart a few days later on a plane back to Seville.

A girl I know complained about the Canary Islands when she returned. She said she was expecting waterfalls and lakes and colorful parrots -- tropical Hawaiian paradises. Instead she got a dry and barren landscape that could be mars or the moon. For me it was exactly why I fell in love, and thats typical of me to like what other people hate.

My Swedish friend told me one night how much he hates seeing places. He lived in London and never once went to see Big Ben. He hates crowds and noises and cities, cathedrals and bridges and all the things you are supposed to see. He was not antisocial -- he just didn't need it -- and as we ran in silence, burning under the sun, I think our minds wandered to the same simple places alone on the trail.

I took a bus to Teide my last day in the Canaries, high above the clouds of Tenerife. It's the highest peak in Spain, and the third highest volcano in the world; it was the highest I had ever been in my life, really. The last 30 minutes of hiking to the crater was prohibited without a permit, so I hiked around to the other side where there were no people, left the designated trail, and crawled up until it got too steep. I sat back and closed my eyes and listened to how absolutely still and quiet it was and when I opened them I could see the curve of earth before me. My dad uses the word humbling a lot, and I think it was a good time to use it. I hugged the side of the volcano, slipping on volcanic rock, watching it descend into the clouds and islands and oceans below.

My cab driver said Teide is only sleeping. He made the motion with his hands and pretended to snore. Some say it could be another Vesuvius or Etna with all the small cities below. Humans flirt so much with disaster, but it is accompanied by the best of things. We make our choices in a great balancing act, or maybe we don't think at all.