Cross-Country Road Trip in the COVID-19 Era

The past few months have been trying, to say the least. What was supposed to be a joyful, optimistic culmination to our two years in Ann Arbor became an uncertain, abrupt and bizarre end to our time in Michigan. Without a clear “what” and “when” to our next steps, Marisa and I (and Zoe) decided to pack up and move back to Portland. 

This is my account of the drive across the country. If you are planning a move and/or road trip during the COVID era and/or just want to read about two people and a dog cramming into a Mazda and driving through the heartland, you might enjoy this post. I will take you through the planning and execution of the ~35-hour drive (it’s shorter on the empty, coronavirus roads), which we completed yesterday. 

Heads-up that we might come across as neurotic and that that is a fully accurate description of the Bell-Zimmerman crew en route to Portland. 

The Planning

The first major debate was whether to drive or fly across the country. Cost implications (shipping a car, moving more things, etc.) were considered, but we really were just hoping to not get infected. 

Like all of you, we have been glued to COVID-19 Twitter. COVID-19 Twitter is a scary place. Don’t visit it. In the month leading up to our departure, I saw posts of empty planes, posts of completely full planes, posts excoriating people for complaining about full planes while contributing to a full plane, and posts responding to posts about people complaining about planes. Flying seemed like a crapshoot and, since our rescue dog is a little high strung and has never flown, we weren’t sure if there was enough Xanax in the world (for her and for us) to fly without crippling anxiety. 

So, we decided to drive. Our goal was to minimize contact with people, stay in places with low human turnover in the days preceding our arrival, and just truck across the country as fast as we possibly could. My brother put the fear of god in me just before we left, asking if we had researched which bathrooms would be open along the way. Marisa and I have both taken our fair share of long trips, but we have always used gas stations. The rabbit hole I got into of reports of gas station and rest area closures in certain areas of the country made my head and bladder spin. Truckers were revolting in the Northeast!

My dad did some research as we packed up the house and reassured us that the highway rest areas in all states, especially the ones we’d pass through, looked to be open. That gave us some relief (get it?). 

Thirty five hours is also an awkward amount of time, in that a two-night drive is really ambitious but a three-night drive feels like criminal laziness. I was personally committed to making the trip in three days, because, I don’t know, maybe COVID wouldn’t be able to match our pace? Marisa, noted break lover, eventually relented, and we planned just two stops. 

The first was in Grand Island, Nebraska, in the heart of flyover country and, as we learned today but not two days ago, a newsworthy town home to a fully infected meatpacking plant. The second would be somewhere in Utah or Idaho, depending on our endurance. The third night would be spent in Portland, where we could begin to get reacclimatized to a life of coastal elitism. 

Intermission: Rest Areas, Ranked

We are now connoisseurs of blue sign, highway rest areas. Each state clearly has a unique budget and commitment to its public facilities, and we put a lot of effort into analyzing, dissecting, and discussing each stop. 

Here is how I would rank states on I-80 and I-84, from best to worst. 

Elk Mountain Rest Area in Wyoming. One of the country’s premier rest-inations.

1. Iowa. With shocking attention to detail and cleanliness, Iowa’s rest areas blew every other state’s out of the water. Take an extra pee as you drive through the Hawkeye State, just to get your money’s worth.

2. Oregon. I am biased, but the I-84 rest stops, although not glamorous, are nestled among some of the most beautiful highway scenery in the country. Once you enter the Columbia River Gorge, you’ll want to start guzzling cold brew for the excuse to get out and snap a few photos.

3. Wyoming. Similar to Oregon, you’re peeing in Wyoming for the scenery. The facilities are clean, but the real value can be found on the rest area nature trails. Hit the stall and then hit a quick stroll. 

4. Utah. A bit disappointed by ole’ Utah. Although the setting is much more appealing than the prairie, the prairie dog infestation during our stop lit my actual dog’s prey drive on fire. 

5. Idaho. We were listening to a thriller on tape (it was really bad) and it was getting dark. The speed limit was 80mph, there were deer corpses all over the road, and it was beginning to rain. Idaho believes the best way to pee in these conditions is far removed from the road, where nobody can see you. We were ready to be a chapter in the thriller. Also, there was no soap at a stop near Boise. 

6. Nebraska. I don’t even know where to begin. We should have just worn diapers through Nebraska. Part of me wishes their rest areas were closed. I am not sure anyone has ever written this sentence or will ever write it again, but they should really follow Iowa’s lead. 

(I started paying attention after Michigan and Illinois, but I would guess that they fall in between Utah and Idaho.) 

The Execution

Things went mostly as planned. I drove all but one (1!) hour of the trip, but I actually enjoyed it because it kept me engaged. 

Marisa was a front seat wizard. We packed supplies, and Marisa would find a way to make us lunch, while we were driving 80mph, in an extremely cramped space. That eliminated all potential lunch stops. Same thing with snacks, as we were essentially traveling with a mini mart in our car. 

Hygienically, we had copious amounts of hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, which we used religiously after pumping gas, frequenting the aforementioned rest areas (shoutout Iowa once more for the hospitality), and when entering our accommodations at night. 

Now, we also had masks. In Ann Arbor, this was not notable. Almost everybody had masks. In Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho, this was very notable. I remember Marisa going into a Casey’s in Nebraska to get some coffee, and she looked like she was about to steal $1.09 of caffeine. It was a weird encounter with a different part of the country. Infection rates in most places were relatively low, and we understood why residents of the smaller towns didn’t feel like they could be impacted by COVID-19. But Marisa and I, in a strange sense, were the exact vehicles that could bring the virus to their small towns. 

I’m about to break in and sanitize your door handles.

Did we get looks as we rolled up to gas stations and rest areas with our Michigan plates and got out in our black masks? Yes, every single time. Did some dudes scoff when they saw me taking a leak in Nebraska? Definitely. Did we care? Sure, but not enough to not cover our faces. Like I said above, we were trying to minimize the potential of spreading the virus as much as we were trying to protect ourselves. Not all heroes wear capes. 

Masks were optional in virtually every state we went to. When we checked into a La Quinta, a massive, Wyndham-owned chain, in Idaho, the front desk staff were not wearing masks. Guests were swimming in the pool! Some fast food and Starbucks workers (you thought I could drive 35hrs without any fast food?) weren’t wearing masks. It just was what it was, and we tried to be as careful as possible, given the conditions.

Beyond the sanitation routine, the BYOF/B, and the minimal stops, the drive was fine. Generally, we felt safe, although we definitely were exposed at times. There was zero traffic, which was insane, and we made pretty incredible time. We left Monday at 8am EST and reached Portland on Wednesday at 4pm PST. 

I never want to drive again. 

Bonus: Favorite Town Names

1. Montezuma, Iowa

2. Normal, Illinois

3. Persia, Iowa

4. Grand Island, Nebraska

No Sports Chronicles: Day 33 (Running)

Because I enjoy rotting my brain, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter lately (lately meaning the past 10 years). One of Twitter’s favorite topics during the COVID era is a discussion of the two paths people can choose during quarantine. Apparently you can either develop bad habits and eat and drink yourself into a coma or you can work on self-improvement projects that you’ve never had time for in the past because you were too busy eating and drinking yourself into a coma.

This is the face I make when I’m leading a serious discussion about reality television.

I have a (previously discussed) YouTube addiction, my wife loves baking pies, and I am a Grade A napper. I am a runaway train down the first path of degeneracy. The mission for me, therefore, is finding a way to mix a little bit of the good with the bad. This blog and our reality TV podcast (watch The Challenge and subscribe) are good, creative outlets that have caused me to dream about #content. Check out at this picture of me with my new podcasting mic.

I love my mic.

But by far the most shocking development is that I started running during quarantine. This is notable because, historically, I have always hated running.

This aversion doesn’t make a ton of sense. My parents used to run marathons with me in the baby jogger, which must have been a delightful experience as a one-year-old in Los Angeles. (It is currently snowing in Ann Arbor [it is April 15] and I would pay $1,000 to get pushed 26 miles in the California sun.) You would think that early exposure would get the legs turning, but I always gravitated toward the water as a kid.

My college roommate, now a professional runner, was one of the best high school and college distance runners in American history. When we were moving into the dorms, I joked to Chris’s mom that, because he was a Stanford athlete, he must be pretty fast. Turns out, he was really fucking fast. I loved going to his races, but I was personally more concerned with inhaling preworkout and throwing around weights with horrible form than I was with trying to become a runner. It is no coincidence that this was the period in which my body began to morph into the shape of a toaster.

Now, knocking on 30’s door and with a global pandemic causing some serious introspection, I felt like it was time to give it one more shot. I hurt my back lifting and decided that universal gym closings were a sign to move on to another fitness pursuit. I am happy to report, nearly 40 miles later, that I think it’s finally caught on.

Here are my very pedestrian stats:

• Longest run: March 23, 2020: 8 miles at 9:34/mile

  • Key takeaways: a blister and a better understanding of why people tape their nipples during long runs. I had never run more than three miles before starting in mid-March, so this felt like a herculean effort.

• Fastest 5K: April 10, 2020: 24:20

  • Key takeaways: Chris broke the American Junior record in the 5K as a freshman, when he posted a time of 13:29. I’m coming for that ass (if you provide me a 10-minute head start).

• Fastest mile: April 5, 2020: 6:57.

  • Key takeaways: Hurt my achilles and learned about lactic acid. New goal is to run a sub-6.

• Pounds lost: 6

  • Sent some of my friends a shirtless progress pic today and promise not to do that again, I’m sorry.

Generally, I feel better on days that I run and my baseline mood is more positive than it likely would have been under similar conditions. I am still sort of shaped like a toaster, but the running has made me more religious about stretching, which has actually helped my lifting and led to some physical improvements. I doubt I will ever join a running club (no offense) and I don’t feel like a cheetah or whatever meditative shit some people tap into when they’re running. But overall, this has been a nice if not surprising addition to my life.

What I watched today on YouTube

Obviously running. I am deep in the hole of comeback videos, and this one was possibly the most insane. I don’t love that USC is the protagonist, but I can make a one-time exception because I consider myself a bit of a running underdog (not to brag).

I suggest you watch the entire race, but here is the context. It’s the 2018 NCAA Championships. Kentucky has Olympian Sydney McLaughlin. Purdue gets out to a big lead. And USC’s first three laps are horrific.

Here are three key moments from the race:

• [3:33]: We dive in at the start of the final lap, which essentially turns into a mosh pit. Two women bump into each other, USC bobbles the handoff, and then USC and Kentucky get into a shouldering match about 20M into the final 400M.

• [3:54]: We get our first look at the gap between USC and first-place Purdue (the thumbnail of this video). I am not an expert, but I would describe that separation as “a lot.”

• [4:14]: Just an all-time announcer jinx. One commentator says “I just don’t know if Purdue can be caught” and the other suggests that the only way that could happen is if they “drop the baton.” Right as that happens, Kendall Ellis, the USC anchor, goes into some wild hyperspeed mode and just dusts the Purdue runner. Look how far back she is going into the final stretch:

More like Purdon’t count your chickens before they hatch. What a fun race. Can’t wait to get outside today and run about 10x slower than every athlete in that clip.

What I listened to today

I saw Doso as part of a Sofar show this summer in Chicago. This song deserves more than 765 views, 300 of which are mine.

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I’d love to hear from fellow runners in the comments about what got you into running, the music/podcasts you listen to if you’re shaped like a toaster and want to be distracted, and your best running achievement(s) (as long as they aren’t too much better than mine).

Hang in there. Sports will be back soon(?)

No Sports Chronicles: Day 20 (Mailbag Pt. 2)

Well, that was fun. Thank you for all of the reading, liking, commenting and roasting at our expense that came from Pt. 1 of the mailbag. Ray Clark told us that “this endeavor is some wild hubris,” and he’s absolutely right.

We promised that the second edition would feature non-sports questions, but it turned out that most of the non-sports questions would put us on federal watch lists. I am trying to find a post-MBA job in a tanking economy and made the executive decision to avoid discussing robot sex.

So, we present to you a hybrid. But before we do, we’d like to shamelessly plug an upcoming podcast/video series that we’re launching this week. I somehow convinced Pat and a few others to fill their sports void by joining me and watching the new season of MTV’s The Challenge, of which I have been a closeted fan for 15 years. Not only did they agree, but they have spent he past week watching multiple seasons and breaking down tape. Pat even slid into a cast member’s DMs.

This could be an unmitigated disaster, but our plan is to record and release a Zoom call where we break down each episode in a podcast-style format. (I once hosted an AM football radio show in high school with an estimated audience of 33 people, so I definitely know what I’m doing.) Assuming it is not a total train wreck, we’ll hopefully post the first episode, which will also feature a live draft of our Challenge fantasy league, by Friday. (The season premiere airs tonight.)

Let’s get to your questions.

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I have been watching Tiger King on Netflix and while the show inspires many different trains of thoughts, one thing that amazed me is just how large these Tigers and Lions are and just how dangerous it would be to get into an enclosure with them. Not only do they average 300-400lbs, years of evolution have given them significant advantages over the average human (claws, teeth, body of pure muscle). Without an advanced weapon, it would be impossible to kill one of these animals 1-on-1 with your bare hands. However, these large felines are obviously out of both of our weight classes. So my question is, is there any animal that is in your weight class that you think you would stand a fighter’s chance in a ThunderDome style, two creatures enter, one creature leaves scenario? Obviously all aquatic life does not qualify and assume the animal is aware this is a life or death situation so they all have the same level of aggression. I did some research and found this website that lists average weights for species. Weight class can range + or - 10lbs as you prep for the match. (https://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/adult-weight.html)

Sean Ratchford from Oakhurst, California

Zach: Very few pieces of modern art have caused Americans to think as creatively and critically as Tiger King. I’ll be honest and say that my biggest takeaway from a series about illegal animal breeding, murder, suicide, a protagonist named Joe Exotic, rampant drug use, FBI snitches and redneck “libertarian” political campaigns in Oklahoma was not a theoretical 1-on-1 battle with an animal, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The biggest issue with this question is that the provided list is in kilograms and is forcing us to do math, which Pat claims to be good at but neither of us can do well. My weight, 178.6lbs (sup?), converts to approximately 81kg. I’ll use a +/- 5kg rule. 

I almost chose the Javan pig but learned that it was a critically endangered animal. I am not a monster, and Tiger King has nudged me closer to the PETA side of the spectrum. The only other realistic animal in my weight class is Ibex, an herbivorous mountain goat. I was definitely worried about those horns, but the article says they stay up all night trying to fade predators when they’re not eating plants. That sounds like a soft, defensive animal that does not look for contact.

YouTube begs to differ. Look at this move off of the top rope at 1:45. And this is a mating ritual, not a fight to the death. I sympathize with the lucky lady. 

The answer to your question is: no. Every animal within 15-20kg would definitely kill me. 

Pat: A truly Shakespearean question posed by my friend Sean. I especially like the qualification of "advanced weaponry." If anyone was going to send me a link to every animal on earth and their corresponding weight, it was going to be him.

 To answer your question directly and succinctly. No. Absolutely not. I weighed 175 pounds (79ish kilograms) before this Covid fiasco. I'm just gonna assume my muscle atrophy has been matched by my trash diet so I'll peg myself at about that. And my 175 pounds is not 175 pounds of D1 wrestling. It's 175 pounds of "once was nationally ranked in Halo." I'm taking a massive L to everything plus minus 10 pounds.  Not that you need it but I'll walk you through it. My non aquatic options are:

• Ibex: That thing is stabbing me with gusto. Like, it is going to enjoy killing me.

• Lesser Kudu: Luckily not the greater one, because those will fuck you up. This is probably the animal I have the best chance at killing and it will still accidentally stab me to death.

• Jaguar: Lol

• Javan Warty Pig: This thing is facing "a very high risk of extinction in the wild." I'm pretty sure it's ready for this. Also it has sharp ass tusks. I've seen Game of Thrones, I know how this goes.

• Nilgiri Tahr: Gains the high ground and horns me real good like. Also facing extinction. We should probably work on that climate change thing.

Honestly, I don't think I have a shot at killing anything on that list until we get down to Aardvark, and even that's probably spotty. 140 pounds of Aardvark isn't going down easy. 

What is the most satanic animal?

Trevor Stengel from Cincinnati, Ohio

Pat: To really hammer home how bad of a place I'm in right now, the first thing that came to mind is this picture which my coworker sent me a couple years ago when Pokémon GO was taking over people's lives.

Just, why? Getting back to the question, I think the answer is goat, right? Isn't that thing that satanic people sacrifice? And they wear the goat horns? I feel like Googling this ruins the sanctity of the mailbag so hopefully I'm not making all of this up or people are going to have serious questions.

Beyond just parlaying what Satanists use for their blood sacrifices, I'd probably say a vulture. Those things have faces made for radio, look mean as hell 24/7, and have talons that wouldn't be out of place on a lion. And the whole savaging on things that have died for their entire existence is about the bleakest possible way to survive. I'll take the rotting corpse devourer for 800, Alex.

Zach: Super weird that you took “satanic” so literally, Pat. Are you okay?

I grew up in Florida, which is America’s Australia. We have every satanic animal that could make this list. I routinely saw venomous snakes and alligators. My brother was bitten by a squirrel (in Georgia, not Florida, but there’s no difference). My friend’s dog was attacked by an otter in a retention pond. We had spiders, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, and virtually everything in between in my house on a routine basis. I don’t say this to brag but to add some credibility to my answer and to discredit Pat’s, which comes from a life of privilege. 

The most satanic animal is the raccoon, and it’s not even close.

Raccoons are fearless and rabid. They will eat your trash, make a giant mess, and then try to alpha you into submission. I prefer animals that have come to understand their place in the food chain. There’s no other land rodent that fails to comprehend the dominance of humankind. Raccoons think they’re dinosaurs.

Get the fuck away from me.

I was walking home late one night in college and got startled by a raccoon that was nose deep in a dumpster, looking like a synchronized swimmer with its little raccoon legs kicking around while it sniffed for some rotting fruit or whatever they eat. I minded my own business and kept walking, but the thing did a somersault and vaulted out of the dumpster and started chasing me. I did all the things I thought you were supposed to do with aggressive animals (loud noises, made myself look big [tough to do my freshman year], kicked my legs, etc.), but it kept pursuing. I ran at least 100 yards before it got distracted by what was probably the scent of feces. 

And then there are those demonic eyes. A raccoon always looks like Pennywise from IT hanging out in the storm drain, except Pennywise sticks to himself most of the time and targets very specific people. Raccoons are equal-opportunity harassers. They do not discriminate.

What player is significantly better than his stats and why? 

Jacob Jaffe from Huntington Beach, CA

Zach: I feel like this question was an attempt to bait me into waxing poetically about Markelle Fultz and what could (COULD) go down as the most lopsided trade in NBA history. Some people are saying he looks like a young Jason Kidd. 

This is kind of a random answer, but it’s Carolina Panthers WR Curtis Samuel. In the 2019 season, Samuel had 54 catches for 627 yards and 6 TDs. The year before, his rookie season, he had 494 yards and 5 TDs. That is Breshad Perriman territory.  

I was a repeat visitor to this Twitter thread, which was diligently updated throughout the course of the NFL season. It just contains clips and light commentary of Kyle Allen missing a very open Curtis Samuel 12(!) times. I went through the exercise and couldn’t think of many teams that would have failed to get him to 1,000 yards, let alone 627. Patrick Mahomes would turn this guy into prime DeSean Jackson.

My other answer is Jarrett Allen of the Nets, but people are really sick of me talking about Jarrett Allen. I just want to say, truthfully, in case this sweetens the deal, that I would physically carry him from Brooklyn to Orlando to replace Vuc if that’s what it took.

Pat: Curtis Samuel is on my dynasty team so I am also familiar with that Twitter thread. As for the question, I'd start this by pointing out that we don't have adequate stats for the majority of football players outside of the skill positions. Can you name the top 10 offensive linemen or even the top 10 corners? I can't either. So the answer is probably some dope offensive lineman wasting away on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who is quietly getting paid $15M a year.

But my answer is Mike Trout. And I'm sure this will be met with, "but Pat, he has incredible stats, that's a terrible answer." And my response is, you're right and I don't care. This is my (Zach's) mailbag and I can write about whatever I want. And in this answer I want to write about how the MLB has the greatest baseball player of all time and is completely wasting his awesomeness. I'd ask when the last time you went through his stats was, but I'm guessing the answer is never because he is wasting away in purgatory on the Angels. Look at this shit:

It's preposterous. He already has the 86th most WAR in the history of baseball and he's 28. He's barely into his prime. It's a travesty that Trout isn't more celebrated. And while part of this is his fault for re-signing with the league’s most blah team, most of it is on the MLB who gets more offended at people posting highlights on twitter than teams who cheat their way to World Series wins. Please stop killing America's pastime.

The Olympics have two other sports besides tennis with the same concept of using something (racket/paddle) to hit an object back and forth over a net. They are badminton and table tennis. Between those two, which sport do you think requires more skill/harder to play?  Which would you prefer to go pro in?

Brian Howell from Cincinnati, OH

Pat: I am legitimately torn by which one is harder. I've seen comical rallies in both ping pong and badminton and they are equally ridiculous. I know I’ve never been hornier for sports than this very moment, but these sports are being extremely slept on from a spectator perspective. Anyway, it's possible I am swayed by being a somewhat proficient ping pong player but I'm going to have to go with badminton for a couple reasons.

• I remember it being quite a bit harder than it looked in high school PE.

• I'm pretty sure the shuttlecock (heh) can travel over 200 mph or something like that.

• There's way more running and the rallies consistently last a long time. Not a ton of running. But definitely more than table tennis. Look how tired those guys are.

• Did I mention the object goes 200 mph.

As for the second part of the question, I would much rather go pro in ping pong. If my entire life is centered around a somewhat obscure sport, I would at least want to be able to show that skill off semi regularly. Not a lot of badminton courts posted up around the states outside of family BBQs, and I'm not trying to go Meet the Parents on someone's aunt just to prove my life's work was worth it. That being said, I'd amend this statement based on potential salaries of each sport. You'll be shocked to hear I have absolutely no concept of what these players are making.

Zach: I would still prefer to go pro in something other than sports.

Table tennis or, if you aren’t a narc, ping pong, is one of the more humbling games out there. You can be king dick among your group of friends and then get completely embarrassed by somebody with a small amount of formal training. I once watched a VICE video about a 16-year-old table tennis prodigy, and the kids go to school at ping pong academies and spend hours working on their footwork. I can’t remember the last time I played without drinking. 

I still believe table tennis would be harder to play professionally, but some research led me to some interesting facts. Google estimates that 300M people play table tennis around the world, but 220M play badminton. That is a lot of badminton. Still, 80M fewer people means there’s less competition to make it to the big leagues. I just assume I’ll be poor either way and that I’m in it for the glory and the chance to represent my country at the Olympics. Also, the movement of the shuttlecock and the length of badminton rallies are mesmerizing. It’s like playing a game exclusively made up of Tim Wakefield knuckleballs. 

Finally, in the one thread I found on the Internet that addresses this exact question (shoutout MyTableTennis.net), I got this answer:

Hard to argue with The Shakehander. This guy must be swimming in it.

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Thanks again for reading and sending questions. There will be a part three, so keep them coming.

We’d like to once more plug the upcoming Zoom/podcast/video of our fantasy draft and first episode recap of The Challenge. Tune in tonight so you can kill your brain cells and understand what we’re talking about.

No Sports Chronicles: Day 12 (Mailbag Pt. 1)

My buddy Pat is one of the few people I know who also regularly sends their friends 3,000-word manifestos about their personal suffering. He had the idea of teaming up for a No Sports Chronicles mailbag. Here we are.

Pat is a born-and-bred Michigander. He suffered through Michigan sports as an undergrad and again as an MBA student. He has suffered through Detroit sports his entire life. He has suffered through his 30s for several years now. I’m losing count.

We sent a request for mailbag questions to a lot of friends and family, thinking that at least our siblings would respond and our closest friends would neg us. What we got were too many questions to fit into one post (thank you to everybody for your participation), so we’re going to divide this up into a series. The first post is dedicated to sports-related questions, but feel free to drop in any question you’d like us to answer in the comments. We will likely not answer if eyebrows are facial hair (they are), but that is a question that has been received.

Anyway, Pat wanted walk-up music before we got started. Here we go.

If you were a 5-star high school football recruit, which college would you choose to play for and why?

Cal from Arlington, Virginia

Zach: Great, thought-provoking question from Cal. I have an unconventional answer, but you have to follow my logic. Here was my process:

• I am a quarterback and I want to chuck the ball. It is my scenario and I can play whichever position I want. 

  • We have eliminated the triple-option schools (I’m not a runner) and most of the Big 10. 

• I believe I will play in the NFL, even if most of us will go pro in something other than sports. I did not sign up for an education. 

  • We have eliminated Duke and Stanford. Notre Dame was not an accidental omission from this short list. 

• I’m just going to keep it real and admit that I love competition but I don’t love pressure. 

  • We have eliminated Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State and Notre Dame. I don’t want their message boards to threaten members of my family. 

• I am a players-coach player. I don’t want to play for Saban or Leach, even if it would optimize my stats or chances of suiting up on Sundays. I don’t want to be locked in a shed for my mistakes. 

  • We have eliminated a lot of coaches. 

• I’m really, really into video tours of new football training facilities. I am a sucker for on-site barber shops and gyms with branded platforms and “PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY” on the walls.

  • We have eliminated zero programs because boosters are sickos. 

• I don’t do well with humidity. “But Zach, you’re from Florida!” My ancestors are from Ukraine. 

  • We have eliminated the SEC, most of the ACC and the Big 12.

• I don’t want to fight for popularity. I want to be in a college town that has nothing else to do but become deeply invested in my success. It sounds selfish, but if the local elementary school teachers aren’t having their kids finger paint portraits of me behind center, I’m not interested. 

  • We have eliminated the remaining Pac 12 schools near big cities.

• I want to have a guaranteed cakewalk to the conference championship game because I play in a brick of a division and want to be in the playoffs.

  • We play in the Pac 12 South.

I first want to thank my family, coaches, teachers, and girlfriend who will no longer be my girlfriend in two weeks. I also want to thank all of the coaches who recruited me, especially Coach O. If you didn’t play in a swamp, I would be there. I find you mesmerizing.

With that, I have decided to join…

Coach Whittingham and the Utah Utes. 

Pat: Wow, I did not expect my criteria to be so different from Zach's. Not totally sure how you square "I am a quarterback" and "I want my town obsessed with me" with "I don't love pressure" but I guess that's for factiously athletic Zach to figure out. That being said Utah's campus is gorgeous and you will definitely be ignored by the rest of the country, so good choice. Anyway, my answer is conventional, but I’ll lay out the logic:

• I'm a cornerback. It's the only position I've wanted to play since watching Charles Woodson graced Ann Arbor with his presence. That and my body is allergic to weight and tall corners are the future. White ones are not, but we are suspending a lot of reality at this point.

• I also believe I am NFL bound. If I get to pick my college, you better believe I'm a top 50 recruit. As such, I didn't come to play school.

  • We've eliminated basically every school outside the top 25ish.

• I'm going somewhere warm. I've made that mistake once (Editor’s note: twice,) I'm not doing that again.

  • We have eliminated half of the remaining schools.

• I'd like to be adequately compensated for my services

  • We've eliminated everyone but SEC teams, USC, Texas, Florida State and Clemson

• I want a good coach who is a players coach. Specifically I don't want Nick Saban screaming at me in my dorm at two in the morning prison style. And I put the good qualifier in there because I realized Clay Helton, Tom Herman, and Mike Norvell were still on my list.

  • We've eliminated Alabama, USC, Texas, and Florida State

At this point, I'm down to Auburn, LSU, Clemson, Georgia and Florida. Of those five I'm eliminating Auburn and Florida off the bat. Tim Tebow kinda ruined the Florida thing for me and I don't want to go play in Alabama's shadow for three years. The final announcement would have three hats, Georgia, LSU, and Clemson. So pretty much the same choice that 95% of recruits are making. My decision is…

I avoid Zach's mistake and go to play for Coach O in the bayou. I'll happily be a frontrunner on this. And a reminder that this video exists, and likely swayed my decision:

This is for Zach, the big baseball opinion-haver. In 1974, Lou Brock nearly doubled his previous personal best single season SB by stealing 118 bases, ranking him 4th all time. Brock was 35 (!) that season. I have two questions. 

Given that speed is supposed to deteriorate quickly and you can't "experience" your way to a stolen base, is this the greatest 35 year old athletic feat of all time? 

Justin from Wilton, Iowa

Zach: Asking me baseball questions was a common theme, because, hand up, it’s not for me. The Astros’ cheating scandal is by far the most exciting thing to happen to the game since the steroid era, which is definitely, completely, unequivocally over. America’s Game is once again pure. 

I was actually a die-hard Atlanta Braves fan as a kid because Chipper Jones was from my home county and got a lot of run in the local press. Rumor has it that if you test the waters of the Halifax River, it will come back as 3% Chipper dip juice. 

What Lou Brock did in 1974 was absolutely wild. I once pulled a hamstring in a company softball game running from first to second on a routine single. I was 24. Stealing 118 bases in professional baseball at 35 shouldn’t be possible, but Pat is more qualified to speak to athletic performance in one’s 30s.

I hit the lab a bit to find other notable performances at 35+. Here’s what’s at the top of my list:

• LeBron’s current(?) season, where he is averaging 25.7/7.9/10.6 with a PER of 26 and 9.5 win shares. He’s also doing it in a real sport, unlike Brock

• Nolan Ryan pitching no-hitters at ages 43 AND 44

• Abby Wambach becoming soccer’s (men’s or women’s) all-time leading goal scorer

• This guy, who taught himself how to dunk with “small hands” (his observation, not mine) at age 41. 

• asdjhiasdhtajhsdtjTomBradyasouugashgasng

• Vince Carter, generally

• Pat maintaining a sub-15 body fat percentage despite his age and diet

Pat: That’s a damn fine list (I just got back from a six-mile run, NBDKBD.) Beyond my obligatory mention of Justin Verlander’s 2019 Cy Young and Nick Lidstrom’s four (!) Norris trophies after turning 35, the only thing I would add is Serena Williams winning a Grand Slam while two-months pregnant. I’ve been informed that producing a child is taxing. 

Ah, and pretty much all of the dogs that have won the Westminster Dog Show.

Rank Big 10 football coaches (I'll help you start: 1. PJ Fleck .....)

Nate from Mankato, Minnesota (real place)

Pat: With that advice, I'm sure my rankings will elicit calm consensus and not general outrage.

1. Ryan Day

2. Jim Harbaugh

3. Paul Chryst

4. PJ Fleck

5. Kirk Ferentz

6. Tom Allen

7. Jeff Brohm

8. Pat Fitzgerald

9. James Franklin

10. Scott Frost

11. Greg Schiano

12. Mel Tucker

13. Lovie Smith

14. Mike Locksley

This was an awesome reminder that Michigan State had to fire Mark Dantonio (sorry, agreed to part ways amicably.) Equally awesome, I couldn’t remember the name of their new coach. Other musings as I was putting together this list:

• Scott Frost is 6-12 in conference (IN THE WEST) and just got a two year extension while making top 15 coaching money. That's the reason I ranked him 10th, not this incredibly dumb football play.

• Keeping Indiana near or above .500 in the Big Ten East is remarkable. Doing it at a school that refuses to acknowledge your existence is Tom Allen.

• Google “James Franklin Timeout.”

• I hate Pat Fitzgerald's face, let's just get that out of the way. But he's had a winning record at NORTHWESTERN 8 of his 14 years there, with four others being 5-7 or above. Have you been to Evanston? Not for me.

• I had no idea what to do with Kirk Ferentz and neither do you.

Zach: I don’t really have an opinion beyond looking at that list and never wanting to attend a Big 10 Media Day. 

Is Jim Harbaugh overrated, underrated or properly rated?

Brian from Plymouth, Minnesota (also real)

Zach: Jim Harbaugh is the bond between Pat and me that can never be broken. For me, Harbaugh is single handedly responsible for resurrecting the near-dead football program of my small liberal arts alma mater in the Bay Area (it’s Stanford). For Pat, Harbaugh is a true Michigan Man, one who is perfectly fit to lead the Go Blue faithful to 10-win seasons and annual post-Thanksgiving depression. For both of us, he represents dominance and hope, until it comes time to win a must-win game against Chip Kelly or Urban Meyer.

Currently, Jim Harbaugh is underrated. The Ohio State games are horrific and exhausting, but he is still an elite recruiter who keeps Michigan in the hunt for most of the season. Being frustrated is fine, but I am a solutions guy and always try to use the “who else?” test before demanding a coach is fired. I can’t think of another gettable coach who could take the program to the next level.

You may not know this, but Jim Harbaugh wears khakis.

Michigan might not win a title in the near future, but there are essentially four teams in the entire country that can. Three are southern, bag-throwing schools that Michigan will never emulate and the other is a criminal enterprise that unfortunately sits in our division. I’m buying Harbaugh stock right now, but I’ll revisit this answer on November 28.  

Pat: I was going to start mine with, “I’m not sure anyone finds him underrated,” so thanks for that breath of fresh air, Zach. 

My answer is properly rated. He is a great coach, Michigan is consistently good again, and everyone needs to shut the fuck up. Yes he can't beat Ohio State. Only seven coaches have beat Ohio State in the past EIGHT YEARS. The people who think he is overrated are Clay Travis, Paul Finnebaum, and those who don't understand recruiting dynamics. That and Michigan fans who are completely delusional about their football program's standing and/or what year we currently live in. I hate this question, I hate Brian for asking it, but mostly I hate our fanbase.

Detroit Pistons over/under playoff series wins in the next three years: one.

Miles from Sacramento, CA

Pat: Oh god, hammer the under. Let me walk you through the next three years of Pistons basketball. Blake Griffin's knees go the way of half the population in Avengers and he's simply unplayable the next two years. But don't worry Pistons fans, this offseason we are going to WAY overpay Christian Wood, give Luke Kennard a comical extension, and sign whatever overpriced free agent that hates himself the most (Hey DeMar DeRozan!!) to create a team that will once again … be the 7-seed.  

The only possibility that the bet is a push is if Sekou Doumbouya turns into little Giannis, but that's assuming something good happens to my sports team, and the smart money is not there. Honestly, it seems more likely he pulls a Calvin Johnson/Barry Sanders. That and we are going to mismanage our salary enough that we won't be able to keep him in 2023 anyway. Anyway, cancelling sports was actually good.

Zach: There is no limit to the amount of money I would pile on the under. This is a fan base that has convinced itself that Christian Wood is David Robinson. Blake is already asking the team for permission to quarantine in Los Angeles for the next 24 months, “just to be safe.”

The only way this changes is with a big free agent acquisition. I just lived through my first two Michigan winters. No meaningful free agent is coming to Midwest Siberia. 

If you could have one specific team’s season from some point in your life canceled before its conclusion and never resumed, which team, which year, and why?

Will from Newton, Massachusetts

Zach: 100% the 2008-09 NBA season, canceled just before the 2009 Finals. Here’s what I know to be true:

1. The Orlando Magic were the best team in the NBA in 2009

2. Absent of your (or my) feelings about Dwight Howard as a human and a player post-Orlando, Dwight was the MVP

3. There was absolutely no way we were going to beat a Kobe-led Lakers in an NBA Finals

4. In the future, I will be on my deathbed thinking about that season as the closest Orlando came in my lifetime to winning a title

I was at the series-clinching Game 5. I rushed home from my first year in college and paid way too much money to sit in the literal worst seat in the NBA’s worst arena and have Kobe and Pau and Lamar take a giant dump on my feelings. 

Now, it’s just a race to see if the Magic can relocate before Florida sinks back into the ocean. 

Pat: I will say, this is a pretty funny year for possibly cancelling seasons. Liverpool is two games away from winning the first Premier League. The Lakers probably would have won the NBA Finals. The Bruins have the most points in the NHL. All these teams are awful, and I am not mad that their impending achievements are on hold.

As for my answer, I was very torn. The only team that was positively affected by Covid-19 is the Astros. We should be a week away from watching Jose Altuve very effectively dodge 95 mph heaters (that's a short joke) and that was taken from us. No team in recent memory deserves a cancelled season more than they do.

But I would obviously use this power selfishly, and I would use it on Louisville basketball. Specifically I would use it on April 7th, 2013. I've (we've) had a lot of time the past two weeks, and I used some of that watching Michigan's 2013 run to the Final Four. I'm pretty sure the Kansas win was my favorite Michigan game ever. Nik Stauskas bombing Florida with six threes in the first half is up there as well. We had six future NBA players but also featured a person named Spike Albrecht. And it was ruined by two pump Pitino and an extremely dirty Louisville team. Considering they eventually had to vacate the championship for "arranging striptease dances and sex acts for prospects, student-athletes and others," I feel pretty justified in this usage. Additionally I would like to re-add Louisville to my recruiting list.

—

We hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. Part 2 will be released soon. Don’t forget to drop new questions in the comments and listen to our sweet outro music.

-Zach & Pat

No Sports Chronicles: Day 11

My MBA program concludes on May 1, but, for very obvious reasons to everybody except a few students who are willing to risk it all for an $80 cap and gown combo from Jostens, we will not have a formal commencement ceremony. As somebody with a last name beginning with Z, I am personally relieved that graduation is cancelled. You really don’t have an appreciation for how many Smiths exist in the world until you’re two hours into the festivities and there’s still a quarter of the alphabet left between you and lunch.

I recognize that this is not a universal opinion and I am certainly not trying to diminish the moment. There are just so many people with reasons to celebrate who are being deprived the opportunity to do so and who are certainly more deserving of recognition. First-generation college students, recently matched residents, and Olympians are just a few of the groups that come to mind, but there’s nothing that I can really say that will do their accomplishments justice.

However, there is one person worthy of praise who I feel compelled to acknowledge. One person who deserves more than a career-ending quarantine. One person whose skill, athleticism and prosperous, cultured hometown of Daytona Beach (my hometown) deserve a proper farewell tour.

That person, is Vince Carter.

I went to Vince’s basketball camp as a kid. I ate at his (no longer functional, but that’s neither here nor there) restaurant. I played at a table near Vince in Daytona’s finest poker room. And I watched Vince grace Orlando with what I thought was the first of his post-prime years but with what really was the beginning of his second prime because the guy is 43 years old and still hooping.

If Paul Piece warrants a nationwide tour de kissassery, so does Vince Carter. He likely won’t get it, so we’ll do our best to give him the above-the-rim celebration he deserves.

What I watched today on YouTube

A metric shitton of Vince Carter highlights.

Vince went to Mainland High School in Daytona Beach. This is where a teenage Zach Zimmerman first attempted the SATs. From the clip above, you will see that Vince’s performance at Mainland was much more impressive than mine.

He is the best athlete to ever come out of Volusia County. That is not up for debate. Look at the clip at 0:13. This is a high schooler with bionic arms. Look at 2:05. No. 40 is now buried under the court, unable to find his peace. If you can ignore the Star Trek synthesizer time machine music, this is in contention for my favorite high school mix tape on YouTube, and I have watched A LOT of high school mixtapes.

There are plenty of in-game highlights to properly capture his somewhat polarizing stint in Toronto, but the most memorable event was the 2000 dunk contest that lit the world on fire. Dunks have evolved since 2000. The naysayers in the comment section can miss me with their links to some Instagram dunker who performs on Venice Beach. This was and will forever the defining moment of the modern dunking era.

Vince made every single dunk on his FIRST ATTEMPT. He used cousin and future Orlando Magic great Tracy McGrady as his primary assist guy. The announcers called the fight halfway through. It was a spectacle that my generation of basketball fans will never forget. I never believed that I would see a better dunk, until…

I need a cigarette. Vince Carter’s dunk over Frederic Weis in the 2000 Sydney Olympics is the greatest in-game dunk of all time. The French announcers just add a little je ne sais quoi to the moment. I just learned from Weis’ Wikipedia that the French media called it “le dunk de la mort.” That is so French and beautiful.

This dunk ended Weis’ career. Weis, a true 7’2”, was drafted 15th overall by the Knicks (lol) in the 1999 draft, but he refused to come to the US and play in the NBA. I, too, would be hesitant to see the guy responsible for the “mort” in le dunk de la mort ever again.

Before you ask yourself why I didn’t know about the Jordan logo at age 9, this was me, circa age 9.

Fun story. Shortly after this dunk, I was in Las Vegas for my uncle’s wedding. I was nine years old and really wanted to get an airbrushed tattoo on my calf, because nine-year-olds are creatures. Anyway, I settled on a very temporary tattoo of the Jordan logo because I thought it was an image of Vince Carter dunking over Weis. The tattoo, unlike this dunk, was an abomination, but I wore that thing proudly as we walked to Circus Circus to play $20 carnival games.

The other very overlooked part of this highlight was Kevin Garnett’s brief flirtation with death. If Vince had landed that post-mort punch, KG’s entire livelihood may have been at risk. Would have been a real shame if Vince had connected and inadvertently stopped the Celtics before the Big Three got together and ruined my life for half a decade.

I am placating myself with this clip, because nobody else really reminisces about the Vince-Orlando era with any level of fondness. But, at the time, I really talked myself into believing that this trade was the trade that would get the team over the hump.

The Magic traded for Vince and Ryan Anderson the year after their finals run, which ended tragically in Orlando with a tearful Zach Zimmerman in the nosebleeds of Amway Arena. Vince replaced Courtney Lee in the starting lineup and was expected to add some serious heat to an already dominant franchise.

I vividly remember his 48-point game as the moment when I aggressively started talking shit to everybody I knew, especially Lakers fans. This was it. The NBA was cooked.

Except, it wasn’t. Let’s bring in YouTube commentor Rel Boogie to summarize the results of the season:

I hope the magics win one before I die.

There is no singular dunk from this reel worth highlighting. The main point is that Vince Carter is/was still effortlessly dunking in his 40s against NBA competition. The fact that he finished career on the Hawks and has been on the fringe of retirement for years has caused us to take him for granted. But before we fully move on to Zion, we cannot and should not forget the specimen that is VC, the four-decade dunker who shattered the ceiling of NBA athleticism.

Vince, here’s to you, your career, and Daytona Beach, Florida, the land of dreams.

What I listened to today

Daytona used to be THE spring break spot. Sometimes, I get deep into the live-beach-performance rabbit hole. I spared your ears with my favorite Blink 182 show from the Bandshell. Instead, you’ll get blessed by Naughty by Nature, live from Daytona Beach in 1993.

—

Let me know which Vince highlights I missed or what other videos I should explore in the comments below.

Hang in there. Sports will be back soon(?)

No Sports Chronicles: Day 10

My friend Pat has about two years of life on me, which has given him and his college group a 24-month head start in finding new, innovative ways to waste time and gamble on sports. One of their greatest inventions is a yearlong pool that they’ve named Champions League.

The concept of Champions League is pretty simple. Eight players collectively agree on 20 categories, each of which is an event that will/can occur over the course of a full calendar year. Categories can range from something as straightforward as the Super Bowl or WNBA champion to something as unpredictable as the home country of the winner of Miss Universe. The world is truly your oyster.

At some point in August, the eight participants are randomly assigned a draft order, and then a snake draft proceeds over the course of several days/weeks until all players have picked a “champion” in all 20 categories. Each time a chosen champion is crowned, all other members send the winning contestant a predetermined prize. If no champion is crowned, which happens more frequently than you’d think (e.g. Joe Burrow going No. 1 in the NFL Draft), nobody wins.

Below is a look at my league’s matrix for 2020-21:

Names blacked out in order to preserve anonymity for the person who picked Shea Patterson for Heisman and No. 1 pick (it was me).

The timing of our inaugural Champions League was not ideal, as this concept typically works better in years without global pandemic and mass cancellations, but we still managed to have a few exhilarating matchups. The first non-weather caution flag at the Daytona 500 was delayed more than 24 hours because of rain. I invested 45 minutes in August researching races of the past 30 years before settling on laps 1-25 with my No. 1 overall pick. The first caution didn’t occur until the 51-75 lap group. A colossal upset.

The Women’s US Open came down to a final between Serena Williams, one of the first picks off the board, and 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu, who none of us had ever heard of but ended up supporting like she was a relative.

But nothing got us going like the most contentious showdown of the year: the Westminster Dog Show.

What I watched today on YouTube

Let’s get a few things out of the way. I am not a dog show judge. I have no idea how the rib cage of a prototypical Great Pyrenees should feel. I can’t tell you the first thing to examine when it comes to the gait of a Yorkshire Terrier. I did, however, have plenty of opinions.

{Not Shown) The head judge gets the festivities going with a tearful thank you to the true, forgotten heroes of America: breeders. I politely ask this question as the proud owner of a rescue dog: what?

(0:12) Stella the boxer, one of X Champions League finalists and the winner of the working dog group, gracefully does her lap. In my mind, the prototypical boxer is the one that chased me on my bike when I was a kid, and Stella seems a lot nicer than that boxer. The biggest issue is her handler’s bright purple socks. This moment isn’t about you, buddy.

(0:25) Fan favorite Daniel the golden retriever is up next. Knicks’ fans finally get the star in Madison Square Garden that they deserve. Trevor Lawrence is the Daniel of quarterbacks.

No Sports Chronicles: Day 6

Just the classic mistake of clicking on an adult dodgeball match. Happens to the best of us.

I thought it would take us at least a week to move past mainstream sports and into some weird, underground spaces, but my buddy Greg went foraging yesterday, and boy did he find some treasure. 

Greg is one of the smartest people I know. He has a master’s degree in engineering from an Ivy League school, loves history, and was my high school valedictorian, which is definitely not something I think about regularly 12 years later. He has no shortage of intellectual curiosities to explore. The fact that he is this deep in the internet on Day 6 is serious cause for concern.

Anyway, I’m not going to not watch a YouTube video that one of my friends recommends. That would be rude. There are only so many pieces of fan fiction about Shaq and Penny staying together for one person to write, and I needed a break.

I wasn’t prepared for World Chase Tag and suggest you sit down before clicking the link below. Here’s some helpful context that will enhance your viewing pleasure:

• World Chase Tag is literally just playground tag but played by adults who are really good at parkour on some sort of obstacle course/jungle gym. It is insane. The “Godfather of Parkour” is on one of the teams. I would get tagged immediately.

• In each round, there is one Chaser and one Evader. The goal for the Evader is to evade the Chaser for 20 seconds. We like the Evaders because they’re effectively trying to practice social distancing. The goal of the Chasers is to tag the Evader within the 20-second window. The Chasers are the college kids at Señor Frogs tonight with a fake ID.

• If a Chaser wins the round, they become the Evader. If an Evader wins a round, they remain the Evader until they are tagged, king-of-the-hill style.

• Each match consists of 20 rounds, and each successful evade gets one point. The team with the most points after 20 rounds wins the match.

Okay, strap in.

What I watched today on YouTube

So many highlights to unpack:

• (0:09) We start with a bang. Charles on United falls victim to the moment of Quarterfinal 3 at WCT 4 (I’m sure WCTs 1-3 were electric) and doesn’t move when the buzzer sounds. Weird play. Might be the ole’ tag rope-a-dope, but I’m a novice viewer and haven’t dug into advanced tag strategy. He somehow manages to tag his opponent in 9.7 seconds, which says a lot more about his opponent.

• (1:12) I’d like to introduce you to Caryl, one of my favorite taggers. My guy always has a smile on his face and is the first person to dap up the other team at the end of the round. However, I learned from future videos (I watched about 50 minutes of WCT last night) that Caryl has an interesting backstory. He used to be a member of Blacklist, which is the Monstars of tag. He didn’t make the team this year, but (SPOILER ALERT) is a critical part of United’s win vs. Blacklist in the next round. If it’s not clear, I am a big United fan.

• (3:14) We have what looks to be our first point of the game. Ugen’s Dayne is flying all over the course and Clement can barely keep up. Just when it looks like it’s in the bag, Clement risks his body and does a desperation slide with his arms raised. He grazes Dayne just as he crashes into one of the strangely positioned metal poles. You need guys like Clement on your team.

• (3:53) Michael Jordan has five MVP awards. Serena Williams has won 23 Grand Slams. Even with 0 goals scored, Wayne Gretzky would still be the NHL's all-time leading scorer. But no athlete of our time compares to Haroon. Haroon has never successfully been evaded. Ever. The commentators unapologetically fawn over him, and for good reason. He’s the best to ever do it.

• (4:25) BUT WAIT, are we about to witness history? We have our first DTR - Disputed Tag Review. There’s some controversy over Haroon’s alleged touch. Fortunately, the six(!) replay experts huddling around the monitors are able to sort through the footage and correctly award Haroon with the tag. There was never any doubt. Nobody will ever escape Haroon.

• (5:25) At the halfway mark, Chase 10, we get our first and only point of the game. Loic successfully evades Alberto by making incredible work of the “Tilted Cue/Queue/Q(?)” Phenomenal footwork by Loic, but your heart has to go out to Alberto. You hate to concede the one and only point of the match in the freaking WCT 4.

I encourage you to watch the rest of the match and then every other match on YouTube.

What I listened to today

I needed a way to mellow out after the adrenaline rush I got from grown man tag. I really love this entire album from Lane 8, even if it makes me a little sleepy when I’m working from my bed.

Today’s Sports Hero

It’s Tom Brady. What an incredible career in New England, he deserves nothing but the best in Tampa—

Just kidding. It’s Haroon.

—

Hang in there. Sports will be back soon(?).

No Sports Chronicles: Day 5

Friends,

I want to preface the first of what might be many entries in the No Sports Chronicles with a message: Coronavirus is an actual pandemic. It’s not the flu, it’s not a conspiracy and it’s not an excuse to go to Kid Rock’s shitty restaurant or wherever it is that you spend your time. I have been banging this drum loudly since we became aware of the potential fallout, and I feel fortunate that my friends haven’t booted me from every group chat for bombarding them with grim news and projections. Take this seriously and stay at home. It will get worse before it gets better, but we have the power to determine just how much worse. 

With that out of the way, we are on ~Day 5 of no sports. If you’re like me, you’ve severely underestimated your sports-viewing habit and are now realizing just how large the gaping hole in your life really is. The irony of the situation is that we now have more time than ever to watch March Madness, early-season baseball, and our (my) Orlando Magic limp into an inevitable first-round playoff massacre (Giannis can’t sweep us if there’s no basketball). We now have to find other ways to fill our uninspiring and sedentary lives. 

I’m too washed to reteach myself how to play sports video games. In my prime, there were like four buttons you needed to master to beat your roommate. Kids today are studying 4-3 defenses and VR’ing themselves into Gruden’s QB Camp to become mediocre Madden players. I don’t have the patience or fine motor skills to handle that pressure. 

Instead, I’m going to feed my YouTube addiction and write a bit until sports are back. They will be back, right?

What I watched today on YouTube


There are three key takeaways from Steph Curry’s 40-point performance vs. Gonzaga in Round 1 of the 2008 NCAA Tournament.

1) Steph’s 2008 run has not been replicated. I was born in 1990. My meaningful basketball memories, excluding a weird obsession with Detlef Schrempf’s name, started in 1998. I personally cannot think of a more exciting and dominating individual performance than Steph’s in the 2008 tournament. Look at his teammates. At the 2:34 mark, with 1:11 left in a 74-74 game, No. 14 (refuse to look up his name after this shot) bricks a three that I will have nightmares about tonight. Gonzaga picked Steph up at 35 feet in a college game and he still scored half of his team’s points in a first-round upset. Jimmer and Kemba and Adam Morrison and Zion and Derrick Rose were all thrilling, but Steph’s run was wild.

2) Curry genes remain undefeated. I don’t know if you knew this, but Curry’s dad, Dell Curry, played in the NBA and was also a shooter. I also don’t know if you knew this, but his mom, Sonya Curry, is attractive and comes to his games. What we now all know for certain is that Steph, Sonya, and (sort of) Dell look the same 12 years later. I want to punt my phone into the ocean every time I see a picture of myself from five years ago. 

3) Short length. When I was six, my mom bought me a pair of basketball shorts for camp that just reached my knees. I was mortified. I thought I looked like a go-go dancer. Steph probably weighs a buck fifty in this game and is wearing XXL shorts. He looks like a kid playing basketball dress-up. There are times where I can’t tell if he’s wearing Davidson shorts or a Davidson-branded kilt. 

This put me down a rabbit hole of my favorite big basketball shorts-wearers. (Let me know who I missed.)

A good cross-draft would have blown all of these guys out of the arena. Steve Nash could fit an MVP Trophy in each shorts leg and still have enough fabric left over to craft a headband.

Today’s Sports Hero

Bill O’Brien. Coronavirus was really getting us down, and, as Americans, we needed someone to do something silly and irrational so we could occupy a full media cycle. Thank you, Coach O’Brien, for stepping up to the plate and trading a generational player out of the blue for pennies on the dollar. We tip our caps, which we are wearing indoors because we are not showering. 

--

Hang in there. Sports will be back soon(?).

Edit: Forgot TJ Ford. Too good to omit. (H/T Justin B)

A Day with the Elephants

Of all the Thailand suggestions we received, visiting an elephant sanctuary was at the top of most lists of things to do in Chiang Mai. Elephant Nature Park (ENP) was the best known in the region and arguably one of the best programs of its kind. It seemed like a no-brainer when we booked a half day a few months ago, and it did not disappoint.

The shuttle picked us up at our hotel around 8:45. It was already about half full, and we collected two more parties along the way. Our group was pretty diverse: a pair of guys from Paraguay (heh), a mother and son from New Jersey, two young women from Argentina, and two couples from the US and Germany (I think). The drive to Elephant Nature Park was about an hour, but our time was occupied by a video about the sanctuary created six years ago (now featuring outdated stats) and a few words by our group leader, Ten. We were run through the dos (be chill, stroke their trunks and shoulders, take pictures) and don’ts (stand directly behind them, pick up food that they’ve dropped, ignore your group leader), which several people in our group immediately ignored as soon as we saw elephants.

We arrived a little after 10 and were given some time to use the bathroom before our first elephant encounter of the day. Right before we were about to walk over to the feeding station, some idiot in our group informed Ten that he forgot his cell phone in the shuttle, which had since driven away from the dropoff point. Ten was pretty agitated, but he was gracious enough to arrange for him to pick up his phone from the shuttle driver near the feeding station. Given that everyone paid a lot of money and just spent an hour in the van to meet the elephants, this was a pretty aggravating delay. It is exactly the kind of thing that annoys me about tour groups.

Except this time, I was the idiot. My bad.

Anyway, now that the crisis was averted and I could post lots of things to Instagram, we made our way to the first feeding station, which wasva wooden platform with a pretty clear “do not cross” line that virtually everybody crossed. We were given bananas, watermelons and pumpkins to feed a family that happily greeted us. It was fun watching the picky eaters fling watermelons over their shoulders, as well as the differences between elephants that picked favorites among the visitors and those that systematically spread the love, moving back and forth along the platform and taking food from all comers.

The elephants at ENP are Asian elephants, which are different (obviously) from African elephants. Asian elephants are a bit smaller and grayer, have a two-domed (humped) head and are generally more friendly than African elephants. They also have a one-finger trunk tip, which is surprisingly adept at picking up food.

Now a little about ENP and why it exists. In Thailand, private citizens are still, somehow, permitted to own elephants for the purposes of “work.” Despite ending the ivory trade in 2014 (2014!), there still hasn’t been much progress when it comes to their legal protection. Work, in this case, is always bad, frequently horrendous. From their use in the lumber trade to their inclusion in circuses and tourist traps, domesticated elephants are subjected to pretty intense abuse in order to be, well, domesticated. But in a poor country, their use generates some monetary value, which the government sees as a net positive.

At ENP, elephants have been rescued with conditions that include broken legs, emaciation, ear loss and, as perhaps the shittiest example, complete blindness caused by whips from an angry human trainer. If that made you cringe, good. The positive news is that ENP is leading the way in elephant protection and awareness, and now have over 70 elephants on several hundred acres of land. (For the record, they also rescue dogs, cats and water buffalo.) The project is wholly funded by donors and ecotourism, so your money is doubly beneficial.

This is Jenpeng. She's 80, loves bananas and enjoys getting blinged out with an ear corsage. 

Back to the day. We stepped down from the platform and walked along the grounds toward one of the elephant stations. A pair of female best friends, aged 80 and 60, eagerly accepted another banana offering and some trunk stroking. Elephants apparently can live past 100 and have an average life span of 70. We saw multiple octogenarians during our brief time there. Also, although some of the elephants were rescued as family members, many form their own families and friend groups or adopt new elephants into their own.

After a few more meet-and-greets, we had lunch, chatted with our groupmates, and prepared for the afternoon stations. Here’s another thing I have in common with elephants: they tend to get cranky after lunch. There’s a strict no-petting policy in the afternoon, because the elephant behavior becomes a bit more unpredictable and they prefer to chill with their friends/family and have a nap, which they do either standing up - using their trunk for stabilization - or lying down on their side. This is totally fair. Don’t touch me during nap time.

The rest of the afternoon was spent meeting different groups of elephants. Toward the end, we looked across a narrow river to see a group of tourists riding elephants at a neighboring attraction. NEVER RIDE AN ELEPHANT. This is bad. It hurts them. A lot. And the training required to make elephants rider friendly is, again, really bad. I like to think that most people who still do this are just ignorant, but I’m sure there are still folks who just really do not give a shit. Those are bad people. If you are one of these people, stop riding elephants.

We peppered Ten with a few more questions before it was time to leave. I picked up a fanny pack at the gift shop (all proceeds go to ENP) and we hopped in the shuttle back to the hotel.

Ten forgave me enough to take this picture. 

A quick thought before I close. Before we rescued Zoe (our dog) a few years ago, I used to think that people who obsessed over their pets and attributed human affect to them were really weird. I have always liked animals, but not to the point where I fully understood the deep emotional connection that I’ve heard described. That changed as soon as she came home with us. Now, I feel like a father to her.

I say this to mention that elephants are way smarter than dogs, and their love and appreciation for (good) humans is just as strong. The way they positively responded to their new keepers and the perpetual stream of new visitors was incredible to watch. It’s obviously not as good as a life in the wild, but knowing that they are receiving world class treatment and rehabilitation, especially in a developing country, is heartwarming.

Overall, this was one of the best experiences of my life. If you ever need some random elephant trivia, I'm your guy. And if you’d like to learn more about what you can do to help protect these gentle giants, please check out this site.

Tuk Tuking in Thailand

(I had this blog post written and finished a few days ago, but my Chromebook crashed and I lost everything. This is punishment for being a shtity travel partner who spends time blogging. But here we are - sorry for the delay.)

Toward the end of last week, we were beginning to feel some vacation fatigue. The temples were starting to blend together, we were feeling a little fluffy and, worst of all, Marisa was getting really sick of my jokes. 

Our last day fixed all of that. From the period of noon to midnight, we:

• Had gyoza for lunch

• Had second lunch at a sushi train

• Received a funky but effective Japanese massage from a man with what seemed like a sinus infection

• Had dinner at that "modern kaiseki"

• Had second dinner at the Izakaya we visited the night before

This final day was a microcosm of our full 10-day trip. Good drinks. Exciting culture. Kind people. Endless eating. 

Leaving Marisa was tough. We travel really well together, and it's fun getting to explore a new place with someone who can (usually) deal with me and is equally into food. I am a big advocate for traveling with a partner early and often in a relationship. At least in my experience, we've always grown quite a lot during our time away, as it forces us into compromises and uncomfortable situations that we normally wouldn't face in our daily lives back home. She is and probably will forever be a better traveler than me, but it's fun to observe how in sync we can be while exploring a new place.

Our view from Giro Giro Hitoshina. 

But now I'm with Steve.

My flight from Narita to Bangkok was 6.5 hours, about as long as it takes for me to fly from New York to Portland. When I arrived, I was met by a surprisingly nonexistent customs line. I barreled my way through the airport, picked up a mobile WiFi (had one in Japan as well; highly recommended), headed outside, immediately started sweating in the humidity and proceeded to catch a cab.

Now, I didn’t do much research before this trip, but I did read about how to deal with taxi drivers in Thailand. When you arrange for your ride, you’re supposed to kindly request “meter, please,” signifying that you want to pay by the meter, not by a negotiated price. Normally the drivers are cool with this, but some will give you a hard time. If that’s the case, you can ask to leave the car and grab a different cab. 

So here I am, confident travel blogging guy, walking up to my cab driver and asking for the meter. He said yes, put my bag in the trunk, and then started the car. He did not, however, start the meter. We begin driving off and I ask again, “meter, please,” and he says “NOOOO 800 Baht.” I know this ride is supposed to cost in the vicinity of 400 Baht, so I again say “no, meter.” I then ask him to let me out of the car, but he continues to drive. I ask one more time, and he yells at me in Thai before turning the meter on. 

Apparently I was also supposed to pay for the highway tolls, but I couldn’t understand what he was asking. What followed was a tense, five-minute negotiation in our respective native languages where neither person understood the other. Finally when we got to the toll, it made sense. I’m not in Japan anymore!

I finally got to the hotel after midnight, where I met up with Steve, one of my good friends from college. He took the world’s 27th-longest commercial flight (16 hours) from JFK to Guangzhou (China), where he switched planes before heading to Bangkok. Steve arrived earlier that morning. Guess who was more tired? (Me.)

Steve could only lend a week to this trip, which meant we had to pack a lot in a little. (A week is definitely not long enough in Thailand. I know this because everybody likes to tell us when they find our we’re spending a week in Thailand.) Anyway, our research led us to believe that we only really needed a day in Bangkok to see the big sites. This proved to be true.

A tuk tuk. I stole this from Wikipedia. 

Some late night Googling led me to a service called Tuk Tuk Hop, an on-demand, hop on, hop off tuk tuk service that brings tourists to nearly 50 different temples, markets, and more. Think of it as Tuk Tuk Uber, but with unlimited rides and a daily rate of less than $10. In just a few hours, we were able to see Wat Trimitr (Golden Buddha), the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, Wat Pho (home of the Reclining Buddha), the Flower Market, the Marble Temple, and the Democracy Monument. 

Bangkok was definitely a change of pace from the past 10 days. While Japan is very orderly, Bangkok features controlled(ish) chaos. The first few minutes on the tuk tuk involved bracing myself for impact from any combination of cars, scooters or humans. But once you realize that there’s a bit of a method to the madness and your tuk tuk won’t get t-boned by a Chinese tour bus, it’s really fun to watch people just weave in and out of each other like it’s second nature. 

"No, you hang up!" (Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho)

Oh, and have I mentioned that it’s hot in Thailand? It is really fucking hot in Thailand. The combination of heat, humidity and relatively no breeze is my weather nightmare. I walked around looking like I just played a few hours of basketball, but luckily for me, everybody is sweating. As long as I avoid wearing white and becoming a one-man wet t-shirt contest, I can deal with it. 

That evening, we took a one-hour domestic flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second biggest city located in the north. This is a city famous for its food, more temples and an interesting mix of locals and expats. Our hotel was just around the corner from one of the famous night markets, where we went for a late dinner before passing out. 

The next day was similar to the one before, as we kicked things off with a self-guided tour of Chiang Mai’s temples. These were also gorgeous, but after seeing so many in such a short period of time, they began to blend together. I do wish each site had a bit more historical information available to its visitors. At a minimum, it would give a little more context to what we were seeing. I could also just look this up on the internet, but it’s a bad look to be inside of a shrine while staring at your phone. 

At that point, it was time for our first real Thai lunch. We found a place called Huy Phen, which came recommended by the hotel. We were the only foreigners in the place, which served delicious Khao Soi (Chiang Mai’s most famous dish) and other types of curry and spicy* salads. Spicy gets an asterisk because it wasn’t that spicy, even though we were warned. My guess is that we got the gringo treatment, as this became a trend at a few more restaurants. 

Steve at Huy Phen. I told him I'd overeat spicy food if he didn't smile for at least one picture. 

That afternoon, we took advantage of the hotel pool, which was very welcomed in the sweltering heat. Dinner was at another restaurant, although this one was definitely more tailored toward tourists. Regardless, it became one of our favorite in Chiang Mai, so much so that we ate there twice. It was either at lunch or dinner that I made a comment about how well my stomach was holding up after blasting it with thai food for 48 hours. This trip was beginning to make a man out of me… until later that night. I won’t go into details, but I made my bed and I was forced to lie in it. The things I’ll do for Khao Soi. 

Tummy troubles were a good excuse to go to bed, as the next day we had an early wake-up call to head to the Elephant Nature Park, one of the best elephant sanctuaries in the world. That trip deserves a post of its own, which I promise to do soon.  
 

Pace and Space

The internet is your best and worst friend while traveling.

On the one hand, Google Maps is extremely dependable in Japan for all public transit information, down to the time it takes to walk to a bus stop, the number of the bus, the number of stops you'll pass and the cost of the ride. We have never been truly lost, despite having no idea of where we are at any given time. RIP physical maps (6th century BC - 2018). 

On the other, the internet is extremely overwhelming when it comes to making decisions. There is so much to sift through, and separating meaningful insights from cyber trash is difficult. Then there's TripAdvisor, which, despite being the most visited travel site in the world, is a cesspool of bad taste and competing opinions. "I found God in the Ariahiyama bamboo grove." "The Arashiyama bamboo grove is great if you don't value time or fun." (The Arashiyama bamboo forest had a 1:1 ratio of people to bamboo. Skip it.) 

Morning tea. Not pictured: the hole I ripped in the crotch of my pants that makes sitting cross-legged pretty awkward for everybody involved. 

No matter where you go or how long you stay, the fact is that you'll never truly have enough time to see everything. And that's okay! Everyone has a different version of an "ideal trip," from their activity levels to food preferences. Some folks really emphasize experiencing as much as they possibly can, even if that comes at the expense of sleep or relaxation. Others get to know a place through the conversations they have at the bar. Both are fun, neither is wrong. 

What is important is that you don't get psyched out by Instagram or a TripAdvisor comment by John from San Diego. Fuck John from San Diego - you probably wouldn't get along with him anyway. Travel at a speed that makes sense for you. If you need a minute to chill out alone, chill out. To steal a strategy from modern basketball, traveling is all about pace and space. The more I've accepted that, the more I've gained from my time away.

Marisa and I will leave Japan in a few days knowing that we'll have missed some of the key sights, which would likely get us ostracized from the TripAdvisor community. We didn't fed the deer in Nara, eat at the robot restaurant in Tokyo or bathe at an onsen. But we won't lose any sleep over it, because we'll hopefully be back and we've had an amazing time stumbling upon amazing places that weren't on the must-see lists. 

So now that I've successfully eliminated any chance of being sponsored by TripAdvisor in the future, here are a few updates and observations from the past few days:

-After reaching a bit of a tourist boiling point, we've been hellbent on starting our days with visits to serene and uncrowded temples. Yesterday began with Myoshinji, which came highly recommended by Marisa's parents. We walked around the vast grounds, visited a beautiful garden, had tea and even did a short meditation. This was my first time practicing without Headspace, and it actually went pretty well. We were virtually alone. It was calming. 

Myoshinji Temple.

-The respectfulness of Japanese culture is so refreshing and illuminating. There's a lot of hostility in the States that we just accept as normal. A great illustration of this is any time we rage on the sidewalk because somebody is walking slowly. I am 100% guilty of this; I am the Sidewalk Sheriff. But here, people genuinely go with the flow, as to not be disruptive or aggressive. They also respect the rules, and I love me some rules. They wait in line. They don't run for trains. They stand on the correct side of the escalator.

-Some may scream recency bias, but I again think we've had two of our best meals in recent days. For dinner last night, we had shabu shabu, which is the boiling of meat (usually beef and pork) or tofu in specialty broth. It was an all-you-can-eat affair, and we got our yen's worth. And then today, we waited an hour at an udon restaurant that we just came across while meandering near the Philosopher's Walk. This was my favorite dish of the trip, despite it not being very photogenic. 

Curry udon. If it looked as good as it tasted, it wouldn't be fair to other food. 

-We've gotten more comfortable using "Osusume wa" (What do you recommend?) at restaurants and bars. It's a nice way to break the language barrier and experience the best offerings. Normally this is good. It was slightly less good when I accidentally ordered a $50 shot of Japanese whisky. 

Tomorrow, we're wrapping up our trip with a two-hour massage and dinner at one of the more popular modern restaurants here (Giro Giro Hitoshina). My next post will come en route to Thailand, where I'll be meeting up with my friend Steve for the week. 

(Let me know if you're enjoying the blog in the comments. I would love to answer any questions and/or take suggestions for future entries. I'm having a lot of fun doing this. Thanks for reading.)

Vacation with a Purpose

"What are you going to do with all that time?" That was the question I fielded most often in the weeks before my final day of work. It's also a question that I've asked myself repeatedly, knowing that in order to have a good answer for you, I need to have a good answer for myself. "Traveling" is insufficient in my case, because I've had and will have opportunities to visit some really exciting places. Plus if I just treat the next four months as a long vacation, I'm going to have a pretttty rough time readjusting to all of the stress that I recently escaped. 

Instead, the cheesy but honest reason for this time off (besides eating) is to improve. It hasn't even been two weeks since my final paycheck and I already look and feel and think so much healthier. I'm a high-strung guy. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, can be stubborn as hell, don't always make the perfect decisions under pressure and can really get better at coping with stress. This improvement shouldn't require an extended period of unemployment and reflection in front of Japanese shrines, but, in going back to the first post of this trip, I'm really fucking lucky. 

So how can I make the most out of the next few months and truly develop as a human without sacrificing the fun that I can and should be having while traveling? 

Let's get the easiest one out of the way first. This is long overdue, but I'm going to actually try to practice mindfulness on a daily basis. I've been doing some #millennialmeditation through Headspace each morning. Just a few minutes of guided practice where I try to redirect my thoughts away from getting trapped inside of a train station (more on that in a minute) and sushi and where I'm going to do laundry. We're still in the finger painting stages of meditation, but I do feel like I'm getting slightly better. 

Just in case you're getting bored with the philosophizing, here's a pic of some fire curry udon. Bury me on a bed of udon noodles. 

Next, I want to constantly push the boundaries of my comfort. I'm a pretty risk-averse dude, and it would be pretty easy to travel with training wheels. Instead, I'm forcing myself to have uncomfortable conversations with people who don't speak my language and buy tickets for trains in characters that I don't understand.

A few days ago Marisa and I got trapped inside of a train station in Osaka. She lost her metro card, so I bought her what I thought was a one-way ticket. Turns out I bought the wrong ticket, and she couldn't get out. So I got out to look for help, then re-entered when I couldn't find any. Turns out both of us were now stuck because I think I violated some sort of one-in/one-out rule. Why am I telling a story about a nothing problem? Well, historically, even something this simple would have really stressed me out! But this time, we just laughed about it. It took some searching and patience, but we found a conductor-looking fellow who took us upstairs and gave us a freebie. 

The lesson in all of this is that, for us anxious folks, things are never as bad as they seem. Most big problems are really just a collection of tiny problems that can be solved one at a time (shoutout my old boss for this insight; it's again very basic but equally profound). So yeah, I want to get stuck in train stations and reinforce this lesson over, and over, and over again.

Lastly, I want to discover and explore things that truly give me joy. I feel that when I'm barreling through life, I seek refuge in a comfortable but limiting routine. I get up, I go to the gym, I go to work, I eat dinner, I mess around on the Internet, I get depressed reading the news on the internet, and I go to bed. There are other things that I love doing - writing, for example - that are sacrificed in order to avoid straying from the routine. I want to use the next four months, both at home and on the road, to prioritize those things and add a few more to my list. 

I hope that answers the "lol ur just traveling?" question a little better. Maybe that entire explanation got a massive eye roll. And maybe this will just turn into an extended vacation absent of true self-improvement. I can't make any promises, but I'm going to do my best. 

"Just tell us about the fucking food you ate." - everybody. 

Here's the cliff notes version of what's happened in the past few days: 

-We spent the last two days in Osaka, where we stayed at the Imperial Hotel Osaka (I got a ridiculous deal). The hotel was right on the river, which had a riverwalk adorned by the sakura (cherry blossoms). It was beautiful. It also had a bar near the top floor with allegedly the best view in the city. During our lone drink in said bar (cheapest drink was $14), we saw a sumo wrestler arrive with a posse of four guys in suits. I'm not sure if he was famous, but I'm going to tell people he was. 

-We visited most of the neighborhoods in Osaka, from the heavy tourist areas (Dotonbouri) to the more hipster spots (Nakazakicho). The one downside to our hotel is that it wasn't centrally located and was about .7 miles from the closet metro. Again, champagne problems, but we walked a lot. 

-We ate so much good food. I gave you a little sneak peek above, but I've had two udon meals in the past three days that have been unbelievably good. Our first stop in Osaka was at a tiny, locals-only, 12-seater restaurant. We both had the restaurant's staple, which was udon with beef in a beef broth. The broth was the richest and most flavorful beef broth I've tasted. 

I would sell my soul to this bowl. 

-We also had our first yakitori (chicken on skewers) experience. It was pretty good, but not as memorable as our other meals. Additionally, we had ramen, sushi and yakiniku once again, so we've essentially completed our second lap on the Japanese cuisine circuit.

-We did a little shopping. I bought a hypebeast shirt that I really like but is way too cool for me.

-We stumbled into a random motorsports themed bar, full of 10 people who seemed genuinely shocked that foreigners walked in. But they greeted us warmly, gave us a few seats at the bar, and were nothing but amazing to us as we pretended to enjoy motorcycle racing on TV. The bartender was also thrilled when I told her I was from Daytona (she had visited for one of the races). I told somebody I was from Daytona and it wasn't embarrassing!!!

Vroom vroom, bitches. 

-We are now in Kyoto, where we arrived this morning via train. I again messed up and stuck us on the local train, so we made about 20 stops instead of four. We spent the late morning/early afternoon eating and walking to a few different shrines. Kyoto is a beautiful contrast to Tokyo in Osaka, with most of the urban sprawl giving way to forest and shrines. It is once again slammed with tourists, but there are pockets to escape to. If you aren't hellbent on seeing the cherry blossoms, I would actually recommend coming when they aren't in bloom. It may not be as pretty, but it's worth the sacrifice to avoid the swarms of people. 

In front of the weeping cherry tree in Maruyama Park (Kyoto). 

Thanks for reading. By the way, follow me on Instagram (@zbzimmerman) for pictures and videos of our trip. I'm posting to my story regularly, much to the dismay of Marisa.

Sushi, Shrines and Shibuya

We are not the only visitors in Japan. I guess the spreadsheets and by-the-quarter-hour itineraries I received from several friends in the months leading up to the trip should have tipped me off.

On that note, Marisa and I didn't really put together a detailed itinerary or, really, any itinerary. We booked lodging in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, saved some must-eats on Google Maps, and have generally structured our days around eating and the guilt-filled walks that immediately follow. The nice part is that every neighborhood seems to have a handful of key sights that make the post-meal stroll purposeful and enjoyable. 

Not to brag, but we walked something like six miles yesterday. We didn't quite get piss drunk in Piss Alley the night before, although we did do a few quick field sobriety tests in the apartment to make sure there wasn't a delayed hangover on the horizon. We passed and, at 9:30 a.m., made the decision to head to the Tsukiji Fish Market. You've probably heard stories about visitors waking up at 3 a.m. to make their way to the market, sit in a cold waiting space for a few hours and fight off sleep in order to watch the famous fish auctions. We were profoundly not about that life, and instead heeded the advice to go in the late morning and eat at basically any of the sushi restaurants on the outer market. 

This is Shou. This is where I had the best sushi of my life. Don't tell anyone about Shou. If I see Shou on TripAdvisor I'm going to be upset at you. 

We made it to the market around 10:30, and quickly identified the shops with the highest TripAdvisor ratings. Instead of the hour-plus wait, we hopped in a small line outside of Shou, a 12-seat shop that looked promising. A friendly hostess/server took our orders (the eight-piece tuna special), gave us some miso soup while we waited and smiled through an American couple behind us audibly debating if they should eat at Shou since it was "obviously not as good" as a neighboring restaurant with a massive line. *Watches Chef's Table once* 

I love you. 

Twenty minutes later we were at the counter and being served our first piece of tuna. The entire experience was incredible. Every piece of tuna was the best piece of that type of tuna that I had ever had before. The marbling and texture on the fatty pieces was unlike anything we had seen or tasted. And, I hope you're sitting down for this one, I even had a little bit of morning sake to top it all off.

Since yesterday was our last full day in Tokyo, we knew we had some work to do to check off some additional boxes on our culinary list. The sushi left us satisfied but not completely full, which is often my intention but rarely my reality. With that, we headed to Shibuya in search of second lunch 

We exited the train station and found ourselves in Shibuya Crossing, a famous scramble crossing where a high density of pedestrians cross the street from all directions. It was fun to do once and really epitomized the TV-version of Tokyo that I grew up with. Tall buildings, overstimulating billboards, and tons of shops and restaurants.

The next stop was Ichiran Ramen, which usually has a long line during peak hours but had available seating for our early afternoon lunch. This place, like many ramen spots in Japan, requires patrons to order at ramen vending machines. You punch in your requests, grab your small paper ticket and head to your own private slurping booth, which is semi-enclosed by a small wooden partition. The ticket is placed in front of a small window before it is taken from a member of the Ichiran staff. After just a few minutes, a fresh bowl of ramen appeared at my window. Once again, efficient, delicious and requiring minimal interaction. 

If you thought the explicit English instructions were enough to make this easy on me, think again!

I am going to say something incredibly elitist but let me rock. This ramen was very good, but it was not as good as Marukin Ramen, a restaurant that only exists in Tokyo and (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Portland. A special tip of the cap to Marukin in Pine Street Market, which out-ramens some of the more popular Tokyo ramen. 

Two lunches deep and I was feeling a bit squishy. While in Shibuya, we decided to do some light shopping before walking to Harajuku and making our way down Takeshita Dori. Folks, this street was packed. I didn't really understand the appeal, but I am not a teenage girl and that, I am told, is the target demo of this area. 

Needing a cleanse from crowds and consumerism (give this guy a Pulitzer), we kept up the walking theme and made our way to the Meiji Shrine, which neighbored the beautiful Yoyogi Park. The shrine was gorgeous, as were the forested pathways that led to it. I love how easy it is to quickly escape the dense city streets and find some tranquility. Tokyo is definitely no less busy than New York, but I do find escaping the chaos to be much simpler.

At this point, it had been two hours since our last meal. There was an important decision to make: eat at a well-known tempura restaurant (Tempura Tsunahachi) and risk the consequences or go home and rest our hogs. We chose tempura. 

There was a strict no-phone rule, so I couldn't take photos of the lightly battered fish and vegetables. I know I'm a broken record, but I promise I will tell you if the food isn't good. This was really fucking good, and put into perspective how bad much of the American tempura is. Like all Japanese styles of cooking, this is an art. There is more involved than throwing a piece of broccoli into the deep fryer. 

I mentioned potential consequences above. We didn't make it back until about 6 p.m., and, after a nap, knew there was no chance in hell we could stomach any more food or drink. So we called it a night, with three neighborhoods, three full meals and six miles of walking pushing us to bed. 

We are traveling to Osaka today and got off to an early start. I know I was cocky about how easy it was to navigate the train system. That was before I went to Tokyo station and had to take an intercity train. 8:45 a.m. on a Sunday is apparently not early for Tokyo station, but after purchasing the wrong tickets and overcoming a strong language barrier to correct our mistakes, we got on the bullet train for Osaka.

I'm hungry. 

*CLICKBAIT* I QUIT MY JOB TO TRAVEL THE WORLD

Hi, dedicated reader of my blog. It has been 270 days since my last post. If you assumed that I had been killed by that enchilada plate in Santa Fe, you were partially right. However, I did make it back from New Mexico, and I've had a pretty unbelievable stretch since then:

• I applied to business school

• I got into business school

• I proposed

• She said yes

• I chose a business school (Michigan; Go Blue)

• I quit my job

• I flew to Japan

On all of these points, I am extremely lucky. I am lucky to have the opportunity to go back to school. I am lucky to have a partner willing to marry me and move to Michigan. And most of all, I am lucky to be able to quit my job and travel. I've watched my fair share of YouTube videos and read numerous blogs of various young people romancing about their "wanderlust" and encouraging others to leave everything behind and explore the world and find themselves and try exotic foods and marry an Italian. 

But no matter how cheaply you travel, it is a luxury. The amount of good fortune that has come my way over the past six months has given me even stronger perspective than I had before. Specifically, that I am lucky, and that what I write between now and the first day of graduate school - no matter how weird or inane or (wannabe) funny it is - will be with tremendous appreciation for everything that made these past, present and future experiences possible. 

With that caveat out of the way, we are off on the first trip of the extended summer. 

Days 1 - 2: Vancouver and Tokyo

Our trip to Tokyo was broken up by a five-hour layover in Vancouver. If you've never been there, Vancouver is a larger, more Canadian version of Portland. The city is worth a visit regardless of where you live or what you're into, but my favorite part is the best dim sum in North America (sit down San Francisco). 

My Japan reading led me to believe the train system there was the most challenging escape room in the world, so we decided to get some light practice in and take the train to Richmond, a heavily Chinese neighborhood just outside of downtown Vancouver. After walking around for a bit, we stumbled into an authentic dim sum restaurant on the second story of an exclusively Chinese shopping center. We were the only two people of a large and completely full dining room speaking English. This meant that we definitely found the right spot, but also that my chopsticks anxiety was peaking. 

Nothing says I'm ready to fly for 10 hours like ingesting a kilogram of MSG. 

We took the train back to the airport, and after a short wait boarded the flight to Narita. This was my first time traveling this far west, and since our flight left in the early afternoon, we were chasing the sun the entire way. Tough to sleep on a 10-hour flight void of darkness, but it did really help the jet lag. 

After crossing the date line (shoutout Flat Earthers), we arrived in Japan the next day at 4:30pm. We took a 90min bus into Shinjuku, one of the more popular areas of Tokyo, where our AirBnb is located. On the way, I got really tired on the bus. And listen, there are few times that I get this tired, but this was "you are going to have to pry my unconscious body off of this bus" tired. But I looked at Marisa. And she looked at me. And she gave me the look that I wasn't allowed to go to sleep, because we hadn't had sushi, and she said for weeks that we were going to have sushi the night we got into Japan. So after unloading our things and showering some life back into my body, we found a small and delicious sushi restaurant just a few blocks away. 

Night 1, Blowing through our yen. 

Then we fell asleep for 12 hours. In separate beds. I love being engaged. 

Revived and hungry, we dedicated today to eating in Asakusa, which is about a 35-minute trip from Shinjuku. Tourists best know Asakusa for the Sensoji Temple - which was nice if not very touristy - but we were there to eat. We began the day at a soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant that featured a long line of locals. Although the language barrier in Tokyo thus far has been pretty significant, everyone has been nothing but kind to us. (I am very good at saying thank you and can count to four, but that's about it.) The staff sat Marisa and I, cross-legged on cushions, and gave us our cold soba noodles with tempura shrimp and a warm dipping sauce. I forgot to take a picture, but that would have blown my cover as an American anyway. This meal, from the food to the experience, was exactly what we were so excited about leading into this trip.

One beautiful aspect of these restaurants is that the seat turnover is very quick. You are there to eat, and then to pay, and then to leave. I get a little aroused by efficiency.

We left and began our street food tour. We had sweet deep fried cakes (age manju), pork steam buns, gyoza and a warm bread filled with matcha ice cream. It was after the ice cream that I was recruited to a local sumo academy, but I politely declined. Needing a break, we popped into Don Quijote, a chain super market-type store that carried a lot of the Japanese cosmetic products that Marisa had spent a lot of time researching. She found what she was looking for, but the store was overstimulating. Each product's display case had a small monitor playing an ad. Combined with the lights, it felt like I was at a makeup casino. 

We wrapped up our afternoon with a walk through Ueno park, where the cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom. Then it was back on the train and back to Shinjuku, where I am wrapping up this blog while Marisa naps away her jet lag. Again in separate beds. 

Hanging out with a few of my friends at Ueno Park. 

Dinner tonight is still up in the air, but we plan to hit Memory Lane aka Piss Alley for a special Friday night in Tokyo. 

Santa Fe: Days 2 - 3

Day 2:

Thursday started early. It had been unusually hot, and we wanted to get a short hike in before things got ugly.

We did a small portion of 22 miles of trails in the foothills above Santa Fe. The path was mostly shaded, save for a few nice views of the valley. More importantly, I did some cardio at altitude, meaning my Portland coworkers will finally accept me.

Hook me up to an iced matcha latte IV. 

Our hike was capped off by breakfast and a few iced matcha drinks (shoutout matcha) at The Teahouse, one of our favorite cafes that happens to be close to where we’re staying. The Teahouse is on Canyon Road, which features Santa Fe’s famous stretch of art galleries. We’ll get to those eventually, but I have to mentally prepare myself before making a commitment to viewing art.

A two-hour nap and some reading split up breakfast and a late lunch on the plaza. We had about 45 minutes to burn before the day’s grand finale, so we grabbed a couple of margaritas on the rooftop of La Fonda (Spanish for ‘The Fonda’), the old luxury hotel in the center of town. They always say that the best thing to do before a massage is drink sugary alcohol in the sun.

Then came Ten Thousand Waves. We were there for three hours. It was amazing. I wasn’t able to smuggle my cell phone in this time, so here’s a doctored stock photo from the website.

Gotta keep the glasses on and eyes wide open for full effect 

My favorite part was the salt glow, which involved being covered in hot oil and viciously scrubbed with generous amount of salt. It felt great, but I got a little ticklish on the stomach portion of the treatment. I am a child.

Day 3:

Last time we were here, we saw lots of people trekking along the side of the highway as part of a religious pilgrimage toward Chimayo, a holy site about 30 miles outside of Santa Fe. Chimayo is well known for its healing mud, which is claimed to have rid people of ailments stemming from bad backs to cancer.

Chimayo. 

The actual grounds were relatively small, and the healing mud was in a small hole in a cramped room in the church. As you entered, the walls were lined with crutches allegedly ditched by those cured on site and photos of loved ones in need of healing. 

We stopped at Chimayo on our way to Taos, another popular artists town about 70 miles away from Santa Fe. To get there, we took the High Road to Taos, a 56-mile scenic byway that takes you through Carson National Forest and past several small villages.

Taos was a bit uneventful, mostly because people were forced inside due to the heat. We walked around for a bit, got some lunch, looked at leather goods we couldn't afford, and took the low road back into town. 

Dinner time. Here's a little secret about the first meal I posted: it was bad. But tonight was Tomasita's night, and Tomasita's is not bad. We both ordered the blue corn chicken enchiladas and split about a pint of the house margarita. I had to request that we stop and sit on a few different benches on our walk back from the restaurant, but the chili was worth the suffering. 

Zach vs. Food Rd. 2. 

Tomorrow is art day. Time to get cultured. 

Santa Fe: Day 1

Day 1:

"I'm going to write so much after this trip.” - Me, circa September 2016, after my most recent post.

It took nine months of writer’s block, regret/surprise from the auto-renewal charge from Squarespace and half a year of sitting on my PTO, but I’m back. This time, we’re off to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The people I’ve told about this vacation fall into two groups.

• The first thinks I’m going to Mexico (I’m not) and makes jokes about how tan I’ll be when I return (I won’t be)

• The second tends to call this decision random and doesn’t understand why I’m going to New Mexico and not Old Mexico

*goes to the gym once*

The takeaway from this is I didn’t do a great job describing my experience after the maiden voyage to Santa Fe.  Aside from getting eviscerated over a shirtless Instagram post at Ten Thousand Waves, there wasn’t a lot of discussion around that trip. Here's why I went back. 

I’m not a very spiritual guy. I’ve never commented about the energy of a particular area. There are places that have made me feel better than others, but it’s always been more of a surface-level “I’m on vacation” feeling than anything else.

Santa Fe was different. There is something so unique and truly indescribable about the town and the surrounding landscape. I can’t articulate why, but I can confidently point to that trip as several of most peaceful days of my life. And since my anxious mind isn’t always so accepting of peace, making a tradition out of a short, annual pilgrimage seemed like a good idea.

This was the fourth take. For some reason, she didn't think this was a picture occasion.

So how did I kick off my peace pilgrimage? By forcing us to get to the airport two hours early so we could take advantage of our sweet new credit card perks. Marisa and I both found a way to rationalize getting cards with expensive annual fees so we could travel like assholes. Just look at the happiness caused by free sparkling wine in an overcrowded airport lounge.

One-thousand combined dollars (annually) well spent!

We arrived in Albuquerque around 7:30 p.m., and decided last night that we would grab traditional New Mexican food nearby before the one-hour drive to Santa Fe. And if we’re being very real with each other, I actually planned out exactly when I would allow myself to eat New Mexican food during our stay.

Why? Look at this plate:

RIP my stomach. You would have to stretcher me out of bed if I didn’t set some limits.

Until tomorrow.

Eastern Europe: Days 10-11. Sept. 12-13, 2016

If there's one extremely valuable takeaway from this trip, it's that you can never trust a weather forecast in this region. We expected four days of pretty dismal conditions, and have instead been blessed in Kotor by near-perfect skies, save for a quick shower or two.  

Yesterday, with talk of our post-trip diet heating up, we decided to burn off some of the shame with a hike up the city walls. The full loop is 4.5km but  is a vertical ascent of 1,335 steps. Marisa thought it would be a good idea to go a fast as we could, which would have been a phenomenal suggestion had we not binged on sweet breakfast crepes made by our hostess just an hour before. 

The peak of the city walls was Kotor's version of Srd. The view was almost postcard worthy, but was partially tainted by the massive cruise ship parked in the bay. This has been an ongoing theme during our stay, with as many as three(!) cruise ships docked at any given time. Predictably, this floods Old Town with the same crop of cruise ship tourists as Dubrovnik, making daytime in the heart of the city pretty unbearable. Fortunately for us, our apartment is on the other side of the bay, so we have a nice refuge from, what we have begun dubbing, "the bullshit."

That ship photobombed every picture from every angle. 

After the hike, we stopped at the closest grocery store and grabbed food to make a few meals. It felt good finally abandoning meat and going with a plant-based alter-- just kidding, we made beef stir fry because that was our only option. The lone thunderstorm of our trip hit in the afternoon, and we used it as an excuse to read, recharge and hang out. 

This morning, we finalized our last-minute plans to take a four-hour, semi-private (not that rich) sail around the Bay of Kotor. The morning was sunny and warm, so we took a dip off the dock directly in front of our home. We began the walk over to the Old Town docks right as our neighbor, Goran, was going into the apartment with a handyman to fix our broken hot water heater, which was dripping all over the bathroom floor and may have led to low toilet water pressure. I don't want to get into details, but the last thing you want on an Eastern European diet is low water pressure in the toilet. 

In Old Town, we grabbed a few beers before meeting our Russian skipper Yuri and hopping on his ship, the Virtus. We were joined by a British couple, Jane and George, who were the perfect company. They shared their two bottles of sparkling wine, gave us fun conversation, and split time between mingling with the full group and keeping to themselves. Let me know where I can find people like that in the US. 

I am still the captain now. 

Yuri's English was good enough to explain things at a high level, but we didn't necessarily have a full narration of the tour of the bay. Still, it was a really therapeutic, sun-filled excursion that we needed. It's truly a bummer that the water is so highly trafficked by cruise ships, because it is really one of a kind. 

After getting off the boat, we had dinner at a local barbecue. The food wasn't great, but we got a full chicken, grilled veggies, two beers and a water for 14 Euro. We then made the 20 minute walk home, and I went for a sunset swim before heading inside and taking a warm (thank you, Goran) shower. 

Getting in a sunset float off of the dock. 

Eastern Europe: Days 8-9. Sept. 10-11, 2016

Moments after I finished my previous blog post, I went to take a shower in the cramped bathroom of our apartment. If you've been to Europe, you know that most hot water heaters are not centralized like in the US, but rather in the bathroom directly above the shower. I was shampooing my hair, and accidentally hit the faucet to the left. It took me a couple seconds to realize that I had just launched a stream of near-boiling water onto the left side of my body. The pain and redness only lasted a night, but I now have a fear of European showers.

I hope that you'll continue reading, because if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best. 

Yesterday was our final day in Makarska. We downloaded the Makarska Beaches app (this is a real thing), and took a quick trip up the coast toward a beach that was at the base of a deserted hospital for children with asthma. It was definitely a creepy structure, with broken windows and graffiti, but it was reassuring that these kids just had asthma (no offense to asthma) and not something more lethal and ghost-inducing. 

Shoutout Crash Bandicoot on PS1. 

The beach itself was nice, but we continued to be haunted by the weather. We stuck it out on the cloudy bank for a few hours before the rain began to fall, and we had a quick cup of coffee at a nearby beach bar before returning home. I then took the nap of the vacation: a two-hour, dream-filled nap from which I awoke disoriented. If you don't know where you are when you wake up, that means you had a great nap. 

We then followed that up with our best dinner of the vacation (the bar is really low in this neck of the woods) on a small square off the beaten path in Makarska. This experience was neutralized by a vicious stray cat-on-leashed-dog attack that I saw unfold like I was watching a lion hunt on safari. To be fair, the momma cat was instinctually protetcing her nearby kitten, but the dog she went after is probably served kibble in a golden bowl. 

Anyway, with a pretty uneventful Makarska behind us, we said our goodbyes and made our way south toward Kotor, Montenegro. About 40 minutes from town, we once again stopped at the secret beach, where we finally got a few hours of sun. Our new favorite term is "FKK friendly," which means a beach is down with nudity. FKK stands for Freikörperkultur, which is a German word that translates to Free Body Culture. Today, there was a little Russian boy who was as FKK friendly as he was loud. He spent about 20 minutes yelling "NYET!" at his mom while standing on the shore with nothing on but his water wings. 

"Take a picture of me reading."

Our bodies toasted, we began the ~4 hour drive toward Kotor. The drive went by pretty quickly with the help of a This American Life podcast that made us both tear up. When we got near Kotor, we realized that there was a ferry across the Bay of Kotor that would save us nearly an hour of driving. We took it for four Euro, and got a really beautiful view of the new country.

The view from the Kotor ferry. 

We just wrapped up dinner in Muo, the small town in which we are staying. It's about a 15 minute walk from Old Town Kotor, but it is right next to the water. Our hostess offered to make us crepes with the honey harvested from her husband's bees, so I am going to turn up tomorrow at 8 a.m.

Eastern Europe: Days 6-7. Sept. 8-9, 2016

The sun was finally shining when we woke up yesterday, and we wasted no time getting ready to go to Kravice Falls. We pumped ourselves full of Bosnian coffee, which makes that shi-shi Portland cold brew look like water, jumped in the car, and began the (what we believed to be) one-hour drive toward the Croatian border. 

Google Maps once again took us along the scenic route, which exposed the bizarre layout of the country surrounding Mostar. Without rhyme or reason, random supermarkets and strip malls would pop out of nowhere, seemingly without anybody nearby. We learned a bit more about how the population is dispersed (and unfortunately segregated) across the country later in the day, but even that didn't explain why I could buy a La-Z-Boy on the hillside in rural Bosnia.

Side note: This is one of four identical billboards we saw along the way. I explain what it means below, but at the time I was low key scared of taking a photo. So I had Marisa do it. 

When we finally made it to Kravice, after a few missed turns and dirt roads, we discovered that this was far more developed tourist site than we had read. Still, it didn't take away from the beauty of this natural wonder which, again, is in the middle of rural fucking Bosnia. 

Had to install a Chrome extension that prevented me from making this caption "don't go chasing waterfalls."

We didn't bring towels, which was a bit of a buzzkill, but we managed to have lunch at the grill on the shore and watch tourists, most of them Spanish, get whistled away by the "lifeguards" from playing dangerously close to the rocky ledges of the waterfall. One thing that was novel to both Marisa and me, but which is common in a religiously divided nation like Bosnia, is the juxtaposition between women in in full hijab and those in more liberal attire. At the shore, we saw a woman tanning in a thong bikini next to a woman whose only visible skin was on the toes she was dipping into the water. This dichotomy was present all over Mostar and extended into the sites around the city. 

Feeling like our time had come, we toweled off and sped back to Mostar. After a quick nap, we walked into Old Town to begin the Death of Yugoslavia Tour, which was the No. 1-rated activity in Mostar according to Tripadvisor. Our guide, Dario, was a rare Bosnian-Muslim/Bosnian-Croat mix, had served in the Bosnian army, and honestly gave the best tour I had ever been on. For just more than two hours, he gave us a full history of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia under Tito. I won't go into specific details of the account -- if you don't know the background, you should absolutely read about it -- but it was a tremendously sobering yet fascinating experience.

We stopped in three different places: one of Tito's many secret underground tunnels/shelters, the city center of Mostar, and a now-neglected war memorial built by Tito in the 1950s that recognizes the many lives lost during the country's fight for independence. It's really hard to be funny when discussing the Death of Yugoslavia, because the people across the entire region, and especially in Bosnia, have endured so much shit over the past 75 years that it's visible in both the people and places we encountered. Even Dario, who has given this tour many times per week for several years, became emotional when recounting both his personal experiences and those of the entire country.

For a quick intermission, look at this picture of Tito's bunker. Village kids with sticks snuck into the tunnel to try to scare us. Dario told me to yell before they did so we could establish dominance.

Y'all don't know scary until your tour guide turns off the lights to his van in a bunker Tito built to shelter himself from atomic bombs and hide Russian planes he illegally bought with US dollars. 

The current government of Bosnia is unfortunately very corrupt. There are three presidents, each representing one of Bosnia's three groups -- Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs. Dario said the government takes 50% of each paycheck and generally keeps it to themselves. If you walk around Mostar, you'll see that there is rampant poverty and buildings in various states of deterioration. Which brings us back to the billboard referenced above. I asked Dario what that meant, and the loose translation is that it says "30 years of the current regime -- when will it end?" and uses North Korea as a symbol to represent what the people of Bosnia fear their government is becoming. The current regime, Dario says, gives them very little. But the one thing they do have, something they didn't during the time of Tito, is freedom of speech. Count your blessings in America. 

Feeling nice and uplifted, we had a Bosnian dinner and talked about our days ahead. Dario had been very candid with us about what we had left to explore in Mostar: nothing. So we managed to wiggle our way out of the final two nights in Bosnia, and made another change to our plans. I'm currently writing this post from Makarska, a Croatian beach town north of Dubrovnik and about two hours from Mostar. We'll be here for two nights before driving down to Kotor, Montenegro.

Along the way, we found a secret, locals-only beach. I'd show you a picture of it, but I'd be violating a centuries-old code of secrecy (I'll show you tomorrow; it's on Marisa's camera in another room.) 

Eastern Europe: Days 4-5. Sept. 6-7, 2016

Yesterday morning, we set our alarm early to check the weather and potentially take the single ferry out to Mlijet, a gorgeous national park/island about two hours from the coast. Marisa woke up for just long enough to hear a violent gust of wind, and grunted (I assume) to voice her displeasure with the plan. So back to sleep we went, accepting that our sunshine-filled Dubrovnik escape may have to wait for the few days closer to our departure.

Instead, we decided to climb Srd, the mountain behind Dubrovnik that overlooks Old Town and the sea. I'm a big fan of words without vowels, so I was down with the mission. From the top of Srd, you are able to see the entirety of Old Town Dubrovnik, Lokrum and a panoramic view of the Adriatic Sea. The hike is a series of 12 switchbacks, and at the end of each is a piece of art illustrating one of the 12 Stations of the Cross. My deeply religious background (I don't have one) enabled me to educate Marisa (I didn't) along the way. Unfortunately, Marisa's body began reacting to our bread-only diet, so we were a bit slower up the mountain than we expected. 

What an ab-Srd view. I'll see myself out. 

That evening, we ate at the restaurant Azur, which occupied the ground floor of our apartment building. On Tripadvisor, Azur is described as "European, Mediterranean, Asian, Asian Fusion, Thai and Thai Fusion." I like most of those things, and I wasn't disappointed. The hardest part was being accompanied by a cat that looked like our dog, Zoe. My dog is so bad and I miss her so much. 

This is cat Zoe. I bet she is a bad cat. 

We went to bed early in preparation for our drive across the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina. This morning, we picked up a rental car, said three Hail Mary's, and began the ~2 hour drive northeast. We had a beautiful view of the coast for the first half of the journey, and then trusted Google Maps to take us the rest of the way. What we got was remote, rural Bosnia, complete with remnants of the war, extremely narrow roads, and a Croatian radio station hellbent on playing Bon Jovi and Aretha Franklin. It was a refreshing albeit sobering experience to finally get away from the English-dominant confines of Old Town Dubrovnik and drive head on into very recent, very violent history. 

On the way to Mostar, we stopped at Počitelj, an Ottoman-era fortress destroyed in the 1990s and rebuilt to form a functioning yet humbling village. 

If there's one thing Eastern Europe loves more than meat, it's stairs, and Počitelj was no exception. Still sore from our trek of Srd, we climbed to the two highest points of the village, and took in Bosnia for the first time. It was nice to get some fresh (although humid) air, after escaping one-lane death on the rural Bosnian roads nearly a dozen times. Before we continued on to Mostar, I had to snap a picture of a satellite dish on a small home in Počitelj. I love pictures like these, and have tried to capture them ever since I attempted to take a picture of a monk eating KFC at the Frankfurt airport but left the flash on.

*Lives in a 16th-century Ottoman village; doesn't miss Bears football on Sundays*

Ready for a quick shower and some lunch, we proceeded to the Muslibegovic House, our home for the next few nights. The GPS only betrayed us three times, and we were greeted by the extremely nice receptionist. Somewhat surprisingly, she said she had a lot of visitors from Portland, in addition to NYC, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. She also told us that she occasionally got visitors from Texas, who were really hard to understand. She said that because the first Western movies that came to Bosnia were, in fact, Westerns, speaking to Texans was like watching a John Wayne film. I thought that was funny. 

We quickly rinsed off, and made our way into Old Town Mostar (we're team Old Town in case that wasn't apparent -- New Towns are for millenials). Mostar is most famous for Stari Most, the famous bridge that was also destroyed during the war but rebuilt shortly thereafter and renamed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the early 2000s. This bridge was swarming with tourists, but for good reason. It was absolutely gorgeous, and worth a day trip in and of itself.

Dudes ask for money and then dive from this bridge. You can get "lessons" from them for 20 Euro. Marisa won't let me do it. 

Tonight, we plan on grabbing dinner on one of the many restaurants overlooking the river. Tomorrow, we'll head to Kravice Falls where it will hopefully be sunny and warm enough to dip in and enjoy some of the natural beauty of the area.