Adventure Travel
June 8th, 2010
There must be a lot of people considering doing the Precipice Trail in Acadia National Park again this summer. From our New Bohemians.net stat numbers it is the most popular outdoor “hike” in America. We loved it. It’s easy as long as you don’t have a fear of heights. Go for it! While you are at it, check our links (left) for adventures of a couple who found Precipice Trail very easy: across the Silk Road, Around Australia, In Search of Shangri-la etc., all by tandem bicycle, 40,000 miles worth.
Photos from this blog have appeared before on the New Bohemians (.net) site, and are presented again here for people who have searched for the term Precipice Trail in Acadia National Park. Most of the posts on this trail paint it as difficult, almost dangerous. We home base in Arizona, and travel the West mostly in the U.S. , and we found it quite easy, but really fun with a spectacular view from the top. We have a similar short steep trail near our home base in Tucson, Arizona, Picacho Peak in Picacho Peak State Park. The park, along I-10 is a great place to camp with a summit hike reasonable similar to the Precipice Trail, and spectacular, and a figure of eight hike a little longer. The spring blossom is fantastic.
April 9th, 2010
 This is not the Buddha. The complexity of religious imagery in Southeast Asia is staggering to the Western mind. As we meandered the region at twelve miles per hour on our tandem bicycle, we saw so many depictions of religious beings that we will be years sorting them all out, if we ever manage the task.
Our idea before traveling there by muscle power, was that various forms of Buddhism was the dominant spiritual force. We spent twelve days in Bangkok in 2000, after our tandem tour around Australia, visiting temples, and missed the complexity of spiritual life in Southeast Asia. In Bangkok, Buddhist is the dominant religion, and the other forms were decidedly muted by the fantastic representations of the Buddha. Outside of the large centers, religious symbolism is much more complex matter.
The photo above is one of many very large stone statues at Buddha Park a dozen or so kilometers outside of Vientiane, Laos. In the middle of a long hot day on a dirt road, we spent an hour or more wandering this fantastic few acres near the Mekong river. Although called Buddha Park, it contained representations of numerous spiritual beings, figures in a complex mythology of Asian historic spiritual practice.
I post this because Claire is now finishing up her first magazine article, illustrated with both our photos from this tandem trip, The Many Faces of Buddha. We will announce when the article ,and post a link to the magazine’s site.
If anyone has any interest in the complexity of Southeast Asian spirituality, and wishes to share experiences or knowledge about it, we’d love to hear from you. Post a comment below.
There will be more photos in later articles.
March 22nd, 2010
It has happened before. It can happen again.
 This is a republication, with changes, of an earlier post.
It appears the volcano in Iceland is not going to go back to sleep without causing mankind to take notice of the disruption possible. Thousands of flights have been canceled by the the ash cloud ejected from the eruption under a glacier. The ash is even more destructive to air traffic because some of it may be turned to glass by the ice before being ejected high into the air.We’ll just have to wait and see if this will last for weeks and cause major economic disruption in North Atlantic and European transportation, or fade away quietly. I wouldn’t bet on either.
We rode mountain bikes across Iceland one spring and learned just how unstable a place it can be. No, not the banking system, that might be another post, but the land itself. Iceland is part of the Atlantic Ridge, where Earth’s crust is being ripped apart as the tectonic plates slide on the molten mantle. In the first picture, Claire is straddling the North American plate and the European plate.
All this volcanic activity so close to the surface has been both a blessing and curse to Icelanders since settlement times. Steam from vents warms homes, produces electricity and draws tourists for their short summer. But where there is steam, there is fire, and water. With lots of precipitation, and just bussing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is and land of fire and ice, and roaring powerful rivers. Iceland has the third forth and fifth largest ice sheets on Earth, quite a distinction for such a small island nation.
Powerful rivers with thundering waterfalls carry the rain and glacier melt to the sea, along the away, often harnessed for electricity to smelt aluminum from ore shipped from all over the world. In recent years this has been a major contributor to the Iceland’s economy, replacing the fishing industry facing increased competition in the North Atlantic fishery. The harnessing of their rivers is a contentious issue with Icelanders; they like the money, but aren’t so sure about the environmental consequences. The also fear the consequences for the unprecedented purity of their gene pool, from the importation of foreign smelter workers.
 This beautiful lady we met at a national park in the far north. She is pure Icelandic, lovely and nice too. She is studying to be an opera singer in Europe, and works summers as a park ranger. For years, scientists have been using Iceland as a place to study the genetic makeup of humans; their line goes back to the 9th century, and they are isolated halfway between continents and far north. With new gene sequencing methods, it won’t matter so much if science looses that pure strain, but it seems to be still important to the people of Iceland. I wouldn’t call it racism in this case, more cultural pride.
 Should you be concerned with a small volcano on a tiny island nation far away? Possibly. Activity in the current location has always been a precursor to large eruptions under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland. In 1783 an eruption killed a fifth of the population by famine, and created severe climate disruptions in Europe. A large, ash producing eruption, could cause rapid climate change in many parts of the northern hemisphere. Geologic evidence points to many such events in human history.
So, are you ready for a winter all summer next year? You might want to watch tiny Iceland for the foreseeable future.
 Claire and her mountain bike in the center of Iceland.
For more photos and story about our tour across Iceland, click here
March 10th, 2010
 Hai Van Pass in Vietnam This view is probably familiar to many in my generation who served in Vietnam in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It was taken, looking north, from a headland jutting out into the South China Sea, forming a barrier to weather, and no doubt troop movements, between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. The two Vietnams are now officially one country, but we found, as we pedaled from the DMZ south, two fairly distinct cultures. In Hue, the former Saigon where Claire was born, is called Ho Chi Minh City, south of Hue it is still called Saigon, even on train schedules.
The Vietnamese people are increasingly entering the world economy, and will challenge many other Asian economies in coming years. They are incredibly industrious, and highly intelligent. Economists should keep their focus on China, but watch Vietnam out of the corner of your eye. They are not far behind.
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