April 28, 2008 by dunny.

”The joy of suffering.” That phrase has passed through my ears countless times, never quite meaning the same thing twice…the Christian view on the constructive aspect of suffering for Christ…the Buddhist thought that to live means to suffer due to attachment to transient things (joy being the cessation of such suffering)…the capitalist way of deferred gratification…athletes’ motivation to punish their bodies in order to be the best…the emo notion that, wait there’s never joy in emo…

In any case, the idea that satisfaction and fulfillment can be found through suffering has its merits. The ability to conceive and quantify mental and emotional suffering is a unique ability of humans, or as the great Elbert Hubbard said, “If you suffer, thank God! — it is a sure sign that you are alive.” I’d like to offer a slightly different version, though, a more optimistic alternative if you will: “Joy due to suffering, among other things.”

Although one could interpret both phrases exactly the same, there is an element of should in the former. We as people feel pain, anger, frustration, disappointment, heartbreak, rage, sadness, and any other emotions in the spectrum of suffering. We all endure times of hardship. The key is not to rationalize these experiences through self-induced guilt. Too often we try to dissolve our suffering as quickly as possible, saying “It could be worse, I should just suck it up” or “I should just think about all the good things in my life instead” or “I should just get high.” Rather, the key is to accept and process these sufferings, experience them fully, and naturally come back to a state of calm and contentment, all the more appreciative of the present because suffering was overcome in a comprehensive, healthy manner.

Start with the emotions that rise and fall so quickly that one might not even remember them minutes later…frustration in traffic (honk honk!), anger over loss (cheaters!), resentment of strangers (douchebag!). It’s so easy to shrug them off that often times they become a natural part of our persona. Sit back and consider, though. Was it the traffic that actually caused that frustration to boil over, the loss that actually caused anger to take shape, the stranger doing something strange that actually caused judgment to materialize…or were they just triggers for something already there? Were these quick reactions to the unfamiliar simply the evidence of deeper issues that have been impatiently brushed aside?

Then what of the deeper issues, the negative energy accumulated through emotional and spiritual hardship? If hateful reactions to uncomfortable situations become the natural way of things, then suffering truly has taken hold of the life itself. The supposed “joy” is no more than the assumption that hardship is the only reality and always “could be worse,” the following rationalization that destructive thoughts are acceptable because they are in keeping with that reality, and finally a mindless walk through day after day of emotional turmoil and spiritual torment. Sure there will be fun times, but contentment will be rather short-lived.

The second phrase, on the other hand, implies that tragedies cannot be scaled against other tragedies. Rather than finding inherent joy in suffering or even the ability to perceive suffering, it finds joy in making suffering a completely subjective and independent experience, processing it as such, and overcoming to the extent that the mind is cleared of those distractions to the present. The “joy” is the pride and satisfaction that comes from overcoming such hardship, and the associated contentment that comes from creating a mind open enough to recognize the infinite beauty the world has to offer (thus the “among other things”).

Bottom line…we experience suffering on a daily basis on varying levels. If we can strive for “Joy due to suffering, among other things,” the process of accepting, processing, and healing that suffering can become a natural part of our lives. Ultimately, we will cease to call our suffering trivial or dwell on it unnecessarily, consciously or unconsciously, and reach levels of clarity in our minds and hearts we never thought imaginable…and dare I say, suffering will give way to contentment over and over in our lives as love and tolerance abound.

Here’s to it folks.

(I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!)

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November 28, 2007 by dunny.

Go here:

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=7420633

The video link is in the top left corner of the story.  Hopefully this is the first of a series of media coverages.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

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November 27, 2007 by dunny.

For yall Austinites, watch the 6:00pm news tonight on NBC.  You might see some interesting footage of bearded Texans making noise in Central Asia.  How exciting!

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

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September 21, 2007 by dunny.

For starters, thanks to all you loyal readers who are still keeping posted.  I hope you’re not a fence by now!

My glorious reentry to Austin, which somehow worked out to be ACL weekend, has passed.  In some ways, though, I still haven’t returned.  I’m here in body, and I’m certainly here in spirit.  I just tend to trail off from time to time.  I get lost in conversations about simple things…not because I lack interest or feel it’s below me, but because too many small things trigger concrete or spiritual memories without me even realizing it.

I find it ironic that the adventures I’ve had that led me to such discovery of the beauty to be found in the present are the very things that pull me away from the moment.

Even this past weekend, with all the music and people I had looked so forward to seeing on my return, was full of obstacles to my mindfulness.  I would constantly overhear people around me talking about what show to see next or about plans for that night or even (heaven forbid) work, and I would take it as a reminder to just enjoy the place I was in.  All of a sudden, though, I’d be staring at the sky and my mind was back in Mongolia.

One conversation in particular comes to mind.  We had a house party Saturday and I was chatting with some cats I’d just met (by the way, it’s so much easier to talk to new people when they speak the same language as you).  Out of nowhere this van pulls up and out pops a British dude who turned out to be the drummer from Muse.  They stuck around for a while and our discussion turned to what it means to be extraordinary.

It would seem to include challenging oneself constantly, and that’s the direction our talk went, but it wasn’t long before these hypothetical challenges were being materialized into the same cliches we’re all accustomed to…set goals, work hard, set up retirement, have a family, etc.  I couldn’t help but fade from the conversation.  Again, it wasn’t because I lack respect for those who strive for these things in their lives.  They are completely noble pursuits.  They just don’t give me that weightless feeling in my chest, that sudden restoration of faith in humanity.  I was off in Neverland before I knew it.

Then it hit me.

An extraordinary life is one that refuses to be measured by material or concrete things.  An extraordinary life is one that maintains a positive frame of mind, fosters optimism and peace, and exists in constant mindfulness of whatever moment or situation it happens to be in.  Those other things will come.  All the hard work gets just a little easier.  Family comes naturally when you’re smiling.

This by no means is an excuse to be lazy, or to forget the past, or to ignore the potential future.  It’s simply a way to bring all those feelings and experiences and plans back to the mind of the present.  I tried out an exercise that night, and I’d like to share it.  At different times during your day - whether you’re busy or tired or relaxed or excited, whether your telling stories from the past or talking about plans for the future - force yourself to notice one aspect of the moment your in that stands out to you.  Maybe you’ll be telling this great story about something you did years ago, but you’ll still manage to notice that giant spiderweb or even the feel of the chair/ground around you.  Maybe you’ll be making important plans with someone close to you, but you’ll still manage to notice the look on his/her face as yall made them.  Maybe you’ll be wildly busy with something, but you’ll still manage to notice that first breath of morning air.

The important thing is you had something to bring all that energy back to now.  It will multiply.  Think about it…how many times do you set your keys down and forget where they are immediately…or lose an interesting thought you had because something else distracted you…or reach in the wrong pocket and try to pay for a beer at ACL with Kazakh money?  These are all things you suddenly become aware of when you foster your own mindfulness.  You just never know what you might encounter when you’re awake every moment of every day.

That’s super.  Wow wow wee wah!!

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

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September 11, 2007 by dunny.

The last yall heard things were moving along flawlessly and we were waiting on the sleeper bus from the border to Beijing. Let me tell you something folks. Although we had no major issues, the Chinese sleeper bus is legalized torture. They jam you in this half-reclined non-adjustable seat that was designed for a 4 foot tall person. There’s a compartment for your feet in the seat in front of you, but there’s no storage so that’s where our bags went instead. I was on the top bunk in the middle row so I couldn’t really roll to either side either. The other riders fart relentlessly without shame. The Mongol dude behind me snored so loud I could hear him even with my Ipod on full blast, and every 20 minutes or so he’d throw his legs over and kick me in the face.

Oh, and there was a 6-hour dead stop traffic jam on the highway that prompted the drivers to just lock the door and go to sleep. There’s no windows so that bus was basically a fart fermenter for the better part of the night until Wolfy and I woke them up to let us out and just laid down right there on the highway.

It was an awesome experience though. We got to stop at a little hut for food and mix with locals. We buddied up with other folks on the bus who were forced outside by the rising fart steam. Hell, I even made nice with the fella who kept smearing his feet on my forehead. In a way it was a microcosm of China…shameless people, crowded places, strict organization broken only by catastrophe…we loved it. Even the delay was a blessing in disguise b/c we rolled into Beijing around noon instead of 4am and got to go straight to our hostel and start the day.

We ended up in our hobo suits in Hu Hai (the party district). We took one step out of the cab and were grabbed by some chick who dragged us to a “good bar” that turned out to be a “lady bar” where women force you to buy them drinks and pay for their company, neither of which we did. The kung fu almost made an appearance. We made it to some nightclub with just enough time to tell a couple Russian girls that we were famous back home and wanted to interview them for MTV. Radge.

The next day was the bittersweet separation of the last two Ralliers, the wildest of the wild, the radgest of the coonts…Wolfgang Shultz and the newly donned Dirk Bifschtik. I hopped a sleeper train to Shanghai while Wolfgang stuck around in Beijing to wait on a Tokyo flight. I’ve been preaching all through this trip that Baku, Azerbaijan was the worst place on Earth, a land with no redeaming qualities…but as it turns out it may have been the best place because it’s where we met those rowdy Hobos, our kindred spirits and brothers in awesome. I’ll see you boys in a month…I already miss conversation that never manages to extend beyond food, alcohol, women, and bowel movements.

I managed to spend the early part of the day in central Shanghai, which is completely different from Beijing. Both are amazing cities, and like so many places we’ve been through, I’m dying to go back for a longer time. I made my way to the airport, threw on Pinky, pretended to be famous, and flirted my way into a first class seat. After travelling from London to Shanghai by way of bumpy jeep, dirty trains, and steamed up farty buses, I think I earned it.

That one took me to Chicago where I had a standby flight back to Texas, but it turned out I was #140 on the list so they sent me to Columbus first where I then waited all day for a Texas flight…but hey, would any other end really be fitting?

I’m here now, body and belongings intact, having circled the globe in 72 days. As much as possible was done on the ground. All in all I can say that the limits of my patience and resolve were recalibrated, my abilities to sleep anywhere and eat anything were refined, and my faith in humanity was completely restored.

I haven’t shaved since June or cut my hair since God knows when. I’ve been gawked at by more people in more places than I can remember. I’ve seen deserts and mountains and seas and steppes, sometimes all in the same day. I’ve smiled. I’ve screamed. I’ve cried. I’ve laughed. I’ve bargained. I’ve bribed. I’ve fallen in love. I’ve lived. I’ve seen generosity and brotherhood to levels that made my chest and neck swell nearly to the point of exploding. I have goals and dreams for the direction of my life that were previously unimaginable.

It’s one lesson from all this that really matters though.

It doesn’t matter what you do in life. All that matters is how and why you do it. You can travel around the world or around your street. If you do it with the intention of fostering love and peace, and you stay calm, keep you wits about you, and take a genuine interest in the people you encounter, every day is a new adventure.

What if we all spend our days accomplishing things with our time rather than spending our days finding new ways to waste our time? What if we automatically assume the best in people, despite their appearance or background or beliefs? What if we offer our homes and ourselves to people in order to learn about each other rather than to make some extra cash? What if every moment of our lives was its own reality, independent from time and full of beauty and potential?

I’d say we’d all be pretty content with ourselves and each other…and dare I say, that’s when we’d start to learn and fully experience the brilliance of humanity.

Here’s to it, my friends.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S. Keep checking in. We’ll be putting up a big recap and what pictures and videos we manage to dig up from other teams, and possibly even end up in the media. Hey, I have to atleast try to back up all my stories about being famous

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September 6, 2007 by dunny.

Left UB last night along with Wolfgang Shultz, but in radge fashion.  We had to catch the 8pm overnight train to the border, but certainly not without a proper send off from the locals.  We hit a bar for a quick beer and were supposed to head to the station around 6:00…we left the bar at 7:15 and showed up at the station 5 minutes before the train left (rides are damn near impossible to get around then…we ended up jamning Wolfy and me along with Enkee and Togoo and all our luggage in the backseat of a junker car to get there).

Then we got on car 10, when we were supposed to be in car 5.

So after a lot of wandering and flirting we managed to get the attendants to show us to our beds and had the first decent rest in days, and trust me it’s needed.  The bumps and screeches and sand blowing in the window couldn’t even stop our slumber.

The train arrived at the border around 8am, and we found a Mongol fella who said he’d take us over the border by Russian jeep (don’t get me wrong though, this is actually the way it’s done, not winged) for 80 yuan.  Great.  We made our last border crossing (from Zamyn Uud, Mongolia to Erlianhot, China) after a couple hours and then dumbed our way out of an extra charge to get to the bus station, where we have to be back in a couple hours to catch our sleeper bus to Beijing.  Piece of cake.

I’ll give you a taste of this mysterious Wolfgang of the Hobos.  The two of us manage to out-party even the local Mongols (with stories not suitable for public knowledge).  Just now we figured we’d hit the internet here while waiting for the bus and he asked if I wanted a coke, then came back with 2 huge beers and a grin and said it’s all he could find.  Radge koont as them Hobos say.

We’re actually surrounded by about 14 local kids right now.  If any of them read English they’ll be happy to know that they’re awesome, what with all the fireworks they keep setting off outside with the police station next door.

Right, so Beijing tomorrow where we plan to stuff ourselves with cheap delicious Chinese food and meet up with some Mongols we met in the countryside and, you know, keep puttin up awesome.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S.  To Enkee (Enkbashi), Togoo (Casper), Gans (Toothy Pizda), Sam, Ogi, Meg…we miss yall already.  We’ll be back soon to get more VIP tables by saying we’re famous back home and party ourselvse ragged.  Thanks for everything…it was by far the highlight of the trip of a lifetime.

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September 3, 2007 by dunny.

Many thanks to the gods of Awesome that Andy’s made it back…if anyone can find a way to merge the experiences and realizations of this trip with the grind of law school, it’s him.

I’m still here in Mongolia though…just returned from a trip through the countryside, where faith in love and humanity is fully restored.  I can’t begin to describe the hospitality and friendship that pours from these people, who have nothing and want nothing beyond land, animals, and family.

There’s obviously many stories from the 7 nights with Master Enkee, Wolfgang from the Hobos, and Sophie from Miss Daisy (and the 30 bottles of vodka that went down along the way), but I’d rather break from our normal pattern of giving the events without the details and tell one story in particular…

We’d made our way through Hahorin in Central Mongolia and on up to Lake Khuvsgul to visit my family there and deliver the blanket Ma made for them.  We managed to find their place and drive up in front, but the main man Batjargal had already left to lead some tourists on a horse-ride.  I’d remembered the way to the ger so Enkee asked if I could grab a horse and ride off to catch him before the group left…and next thing I knew I was on a brown horsie riding off into the woods on my own.

I got lost immediately.

Nevermind the 30 minutes or so I needed just to get my bearings on the land, it’s been a while since I rode Mongol style.  In all my glory I managed to lead the horse into a steep mud-soaked cliff and spook the daylights out of him.  He yelped, he reared back, and he freaked, as I held on for dear life.

I didn’t fall though…even managed to calm him and jump off for a rest.  I knew the general direction of where I was supposed to go and had a vague idea of where I was, so I stopped.  I listened.  I reached a moment of peace with both the land and the horse and after 20 minutes or so heard the good sounds and realized exactly where I was.  I found an alternate path down to the main road and let the horse take me the rest of the way (lesson learned, he probably would have taken me the whole way if I’d just let go from the start).

He galloped in, and after two hours lost in the woods I found the pops and gave him Mom’s blanket.  It was perfect.

It’s an experience I’d hoped for and an experience I’ve been waiting for…a concrete reminder that the only sure thing we ever have is the moment we’re in.  So often our lives become a muddy hillside in the forest, when we’ve ventured off alone and overconfident and find ourselves lost and frustrated.  These times of struggle are not to be fought or feared, though.  They are a blessing.  These are times to stop and listen…to relax and relish the opportunity to truly find peace in the present…to perhaps find an alternate path.

Take some time to slow your lives and quiet your minds, my friends, even if it’s only for a minute.  You’ll find that there’s peaceful energy and loving people all around you at any moment, and ultimately you’ll find contentment.

That’s all reality is, after all.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

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August 19, 2007 by dunny.

Life in Ulaanbaatar recallibrates your awesome scale.

We woke up yesterday and sent Andy off, then Anth from the Pandas, the Yaksi Taxi chicks, and me grabbed some Mongol grub and went off to the black market.  If you’ve never seen a Central Asian black market you’ve never really experienced organized chaos.  I have no idea where they get the goods but it’s basically a long line of huts that all have the same shit and will bargain to the bitter end to eek out one more dollar.  Anth’s bag got picked.  The Yaksi’s got their bags slashed open.  We were poked and prodded and pushed and yelled at for the whole 3 hours.  The only way we figured we would triumph was to just be cocky annoying white devils and act like we owned the joint.

So we bought pink suits.

The Rally “black tie” never saw such glorious assholes.  The site for the nightclub is http://www.mongolia-nightclub.com and I think they have pics of the party.

Managed to find Gans and Enkhe last night.  It’s amazing how every moment in this town is OK.  Everybody knows everybody.  There’s no planning or worry, they just knew the Rally party was happening and wandered in to see if I’d showed up yet.  They wanted to do lunch today to make some countryside plans and Gans just said “Dave’s place around noon.  It’s Mongolia so it’s probably between 11 and 1.  We don’t have solid time here.”

Oh, and whoever sees Andy first tell him to mail the Chariot keys back here so I can sell her instead of leaving her in the middle of Sukhbaatar Square to be molested.

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August 19, 2007 by dunny.

Alright folks, unfortunately we haven’t had any internet (or phone, shelter, good food, or civilization) in the last week so this will be a long post.  But holy shit it will be awesome.

Last yall heard we were in Almaty and that time’s were good.  Here’s what really happened…

We were stuck in stop-and-go traffic, which the Chariot has never enjoyed, trying to get to the center of the city.  Carl Tuvan of the Hobos needed to stay overnight and sort out his Russian visa then fly to Semey where we would pick him up.  The Chariot was a little pissed about this delay though.

She was running out of gas and starting to overheat.  She finally decided she’d had enough and blew the reserve tank off the radiator completely off and started smoking.  Then the alternator started to die and the battery juice ran low.  It was like the last stand of the Chariot of Awesome and we were just into Kazakhstan.

Well we decided to just milk her along until something died and fix it.  We managed to drive her through a good portion of the desert and crash on the side of the road with optimism peaked.  Got a jump from the Hobos in the morning and kept on truckin.  This is where the adventure started.

Basically we couldn’t stop driving or she stalled and needed another jump.  Starting the night before we had been changing drivers while going 40mph down crap roads in pure darkness…not because it’s a good/stupid stunt but we thought we had to.  We inched along like this until we were about 100 miles south of Semey in the middle of absolutely nothing when the alternator bit the dust.  Dead.

We weighed options for a while (scrap the car and catch a bus, look for abandoned cars to gank an alternator, trade it for donkeys, etc).  Finally I took off with the Hobos to test out the nearest town while Andy took off the dead alternator and lubed it up for one possible final push.  This was kind of similar to the water pump in that we knew exactly what was wrond and how to fix it, but much much worse in that we didn’t have a replacement and there was no semblance of civilizations for miles.

Great.  We got one more jump and just booked it.  Keep in minds the roads in Kazakhstan are like a pice of Swiss cheese and we couldn’t ever take gas off (brake or clutch and it stalled immediately).  So there we were going 50 in constant life-before-your-eyes style with moments or airborn glory and skid-outs and heart attacks.  We still stalled 7 times.  It was raining and none of the accessories worked b/c the battery had no charge, so I had to manually wipe the windshield with the spare wiper blade as I drove.  I had to pass a truck on the shoulder and ended up in the grass for about a half km.  Somehow we got her to a town and pulled into a gas station.

There we found a kid who spoke a little English who found a guy who took us to his random friend’s shack right there in the middle of nothing.  We pulled up and stalled in the back yard of a chubby Kazakh named Donabek, who was busy rebuilding his humble home with his family.  He had a huge smile and and equally huge gut.  We liked him immediately (we kind of had to b/c we were separated from the Hobos at this point and completely relying on the man).

We pointed to the alternator.  He took it off, fished out a file and some wrenches, then went into his shed and pulled out an alternator brush from a motorcycle engine that was the same model as ours.  Luck?  Nah, just awesome.  Together the 3 of us rebuilt that alternator and got the Chariot humming like new.  We gave the family some gifts and were off.  What a difference 4 hours can make.

And Master Theobald, you have some competition.

Right, so we decided to get to Semey and make a gameplan, but the last stretch of road was still like driving on a cheese grater, so finally we just crashed on the side of the road again.  We woke up a few hours later about 10 feet from the Semey welcome sign

We filled up and decided to rally on to the homeland.  It took about 5 hours to get through the Kazakh-Russia border.  All the legends of bribe-seeked Russian border guards never took form and we slipped right on through.  We pushed on to Barnaul, exchanged some cash, and talked to a few truckers to find out the route to the Mongol border crossing (about 3500 km away!!).  So we were off, first for Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, with no map or compass or convoy.

The first half of the drive through Russia was pretty sweet…nice highways, no traffic, Chariot running well.  A couple days of drive, cook on the side of the road, sleep on the side of the road, drive, drive, honk, drive had us pretty confident.  We pulled over at sunset one night (forgive me for not knowing days, they all ran together after a while) to cook and a trucker pulled up to see if we needed help.  Great guy…ended up giving us biscuits with fresh Siberian honey and some tea…but then he broke the news that soon we’d come to a 200km stretch with “road no exist.”

My friends, that is a complete understatement.  The M53 motorway through Siberia is the worst road on the planet.  There were potholes bigger than the car and 5 feet deep.  There would be good pavement spots for about a half km, then there would be a hole the size of Rhode Island.  Plus, it was pouring rain.  The Chariot really came into her own over the next few days…popping into 4 wheel drive and following a truck in pitch blackness in a thunderstorm through mud as high as our tires, all while trying to avoid debilitating holes.  It took 2 solid days to drive this stretch and get to Irkutsk and we took about 12 gigantic wallops in potholes.

We got to Baikal at night and had a look…it’s beatiful but we had no time to stop.  We were working our way through town and by stroke of awesome ran into a couple other Rally teams (Bad Idea from New Jersey/California and Prancing Pandas from UK/South Africa).  They had come down from Scandanavia and were pushing for the border that night.  Hello 3rd convoy, the best yet.

We drove through the night and were approaching the Mongol border at sunrise.  The scenery was brilliant.  It was really amazing.  The Chariot had started making some noise that night but we were so close we didn’t care.  Then, with the border in sight, something exploded.  OUR DRIVE SHAFT SHEARED COMPLETELY OFF.  It spun the broken piece around so hard that it cut through the floorboard.  Had I had my left foot on the clutch and not propped up on the seat, it might have been cut off.  We were smoking.  We almost killed the Panda with metal parts flying out from under the car.  The Chariot was dying.

She was taking us to Monoglia though, dammit.

We tied to the Panda which pulled us the last few km to the border, where we pushed her up to the Russian gates.  Here, we spent the next 6 hours sitting and waiting for “many many documents” that the Russians insisted we had to have.  They prepared whole packets of papers with cover sheets and everything that, after all that time, we just handed back to them and drove through.  Well, we pushed the car through.  But still.

On to the Mongol border.  They knew we were in the Mongol Rally.  They had a list of cars with all of us on it.  They saw our papers.  Seems pretty straightforward that we could skip on through and head to UB, huh?

We were there for 30 hours.  First, they decided they’d close customs early so we’d have to stay the night.  We all took turns arguing or yelling or laughing or making fun and finally just walked into town for a hotel and a bar (we could go into Mongolia, just the cars couldn’t).  We turned it into a killer party, though, so no worries there.  Just another border adventure…the 20th so far, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We woke up and after 5 hours of document processing were through.  We found a tow for the Chariot and jumped in with the other cars (Andy in the Panda, me in the Micra).  It was a 300km drive full of drinking and screaming and 70mph hand-offs and even and off-road demolition derby in which both cars lost their doors, headlights, and a semblance of quality.  Andy jumped out at one point and rode a bull.  Well, he jumped on and fell off.  Then he chased another one around for 10 minutes and jumped on, but the bastard just sat there.  It was awesome, to say the least.

So, where are we now?  Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  The Chariot is resting at the finish line.  We made it.  Andy went to the airport this morning for his trip home, and I’m headed off to the countryside in a couple days with a Discovery Channel cameraman.

What, yall expect anything less?  Here’s to being awesome.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S.  Andy will put up his recap at some point, and I will keep blogging.  The drive may be over, but the adventure is definitely not.  Mongolia, here comes awesome.

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August 11, 2007 by dunny.

In the 3 days since you heard from us last we have crossed two countries, one of which is by far the most amazing place we’ve been so far.  We’re in Almaty, Kazakhstan…here’s how…

We left Bukhara shortly after the last post and set a goal on getting here as fast as the Chariot would go.  We made it up somewhere near Tashkent and stayed a night then kept moving…stopped in for breakfast and thought we’d found a Junior Awesomeite (a 12 year old boy who spoke great English and gave us tours of the restaurant and fish tanks and told us all the waitresses were in love with us).  He translated the orders and made things as easy on us as it’s been since we left Baku.  Then when we were leaving he asked for $10 for the “memory.”  We said no, so he asked for sunglasses.  I drew him a picture instead.  So he stole my tennis ball.  Little grifter.

We managed to cross the Uzbek-Kyrgyz (Osh, Kyrgyzstan) border late that night and were just going to try and make it as far as we could on our way to Bishkek.  The border guard had told us the road we wanted was good but had “one problem.”  Well about 50 km from the border we found the problem.  The road disappeard.  Completely.  So we turned around and wandered through southwest Kyrgyzstan fighting extreme sleep deprivation and a lack of roads or people to ask and finally ended up at a different Uzbek-Kyrgyz border crossing. 

Wolfgang from the Hobos went up to ask directions and as he made his way to the door a rabid dog went apeshit on him and he tuck-tailed and ran as fast as a fart in a frying pan.  Good wake up call I guess.  It turns out that the guard was napping…he woke up and basically told us that when that road had disappeared we needed to keep driving on the rock-track until it picked back up.  So we did.

When it finally did pick back up we managed to get lost again so we decided to pull over and catch some sleep there on the side of the road (2nd time in 2 nights).  Now, the Chariot has a lot of magic, but sleeping room it does not.  My legs fell asleep somewhere around 4:30 so I climbed out on the hood to stretch out and fell back to sleep.  As the sun was coming up, I was in a nice slumber until I heard a little whistle and a tap on the shoulder.  Ever seen Deliverance?

I rolled over and sat up and looked out at about 40 Kyrgyz locals (most on foot, some on donkey-pulled carts) staring at me with wide-eyed bewilderment.  I said hello.  They kept staring.  One of the donkeys started hee-hawing.  One of the kids hissed at me.  So I climbed back in the car and told Andy we might ought to get a move on.  Then we went back to sleep, using the tapping at the windows for meditative purposes.

Anyways, whenever we all got up we finally found the right road and started our journey to the mountains.  Along the way we stopped at the base of a giant lake near Toktogul and basically found the Barton Springs of Kyrgyzstan.  Cold river water running past nice rock shores, so we swam and were wet for the first time in 4 days.  Competely awesome…worth every baby leech we had to pick off.

We made our way into the mountains and discovered what has to be one of the most pristine, gorgeous lands in the world.  Rolling green mountainsides with nomad yurts and animals scattered all throughout…a sky so big it felt like another planet…cool winds for the first time in weeks…a clear sunset at our backs…

It’s my biggest regret we didn’t have time to stop.  I can’t describe the feeling of peace and tranquility in that countryside, it left us all so moved we almost said “Hell with it” and camped there.  Had to keep moving though…

We made our way back down the mountains through old Soviet tunnels and winding roads and more psychotic Central-Asian mountain drivers and on to Bishkek.  We got pulled over by some locals who were having a bachelor party and talked with them for a while, then they dragged us off to a grocery-store parking lot and drank vodka with us.  Sweet.

We made it to the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border around 3am and it was like walking into a rave.  There were huge arches and roughly 800,000 people milling back and forth…apparently it’s an open border and people go to and from Bishkek and the neighboring Kazakh border town on the weekends…we were stars to say the least.  All in all though, the last 2 borders have taken a combined 2 hours with no fees and lots of help.  Eat me Turkmenbashi.

Headed north today and trying to get to Barnaul, Russia as fast as possible.  If you have a minute do some research on Kygyrzstan…it really was the most surprising gem of this entire journey, one that left us all begging to come back some day.  As with every story from this trip, we only have time to write the most essential details, so ask us about it when you see us.

Also, be sure to scroll down a couple posts…we got hold of Andy’s Turkey recap and posted retroactively.  That, and keep puttin up awesome folks.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S.  They wrote about us in the main Turkmenistan newspaper.  No names or anything, but I’m not sure what level of celebrity that puts us at…here’s the link…

http://www.turkmenistan.ru/?page_id=3&lang_id=en&elem_id=10725&type=event&sort=date_desc

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