Wants vs. Needs: Guest Post by a 1960s Traveler

One of the unanticipated joys of writing a book about recent history, it turns out, is hearing from people who were active participants in the cultural moment--individuals for whom the now-legendary triumphs and travails and watershed moments are not merely the stuff of books but were once day-to-day reality. 

I've been getting quite a few letters and emails from 1960s travelers like my mother, Grand Tourists from that initial, influential wave of budget travel. Many of the emails come with stories or questions--I used Frommer's book for real; I stayed in the same hotel in Rome; Do you know if this restaurant in Amsterdam is still open? 

I particularly enjoyed the story I received from Ron Dunn, and I'm grateful that he has given me permission to share it here on the blog. 

Athens,  Kolonaki Square, 1895. Via Flickr Creative Commons, photo by Martin Baldwin-Edwards.

Wants vs. Needs
By Ron Dunn

The early March weather of 1967 was pleasantly warm and sunny as I sat down at a table in Athens’ Constitution Square, just across the street from my hotel. My visit was for three days so I had bought enough Drachmas to cover my needs and left my traveler’s checks in my hotel room. A band was playing bouzouki music as I placed an order for a beer from a wandering waiter. This was a dramatic change from the bleak winter I recently left in the Midwest.

When the beer was served and paid for, a girl who was very distractingly dressed sat down beside me and asked, “What airline are you with?” I was surprised at her comment, but, Olympic Airways was offering airline personnel a weekend in Greece for $49.99 and Athens was flooded with airline people. I must have looked the part—and I was. My situation was with Sabena’s 30 days in Europe for $100. I may have looked like a wealthy American—but I was not.

She ordered a drink and continued to talk in fairly good English about the city, then to my disgust, turned to more personal issues. My finances were limited; I wanted to experience as much Europe as I could. Girls are expensive, especially her type. Her cleavage caressed a pearl necklace with each lusty breath—and captured my gaze and attention. In spite of that I showed no interest in her advances; advances that went from verbal to physical. I chased her away with surprising ease and was enjoying the rest of my beer until the waiter firmly demanded payment for her drink—a very expensive drink. When my hand went into my pocket I discovered a stomach churning, stunning, emptiness. She was a professional pick-pocket, and the waiter was part of the scheme. I’m sure he told her where the money was and that there was a lot. The waiter insisted on payment and convincingly threatened me. A brief thought of trying to flee entered my head, but left when he took me by the arm and told me to go to my hotel and cash a check. His thumb ground painfully into my right bicep as we crossed the street and entered the hotel. He made note of my room number as I claimed my key and reminded me that I must return—or else… Return I did, cashed a check and paid him off. He ran out the door and away from the square.

When I cashed another check and explained to the clerk what had happened, he told me to go to the tourist police, which was nearby. The police interrupted my story and told me what happened. The man was not a waiter. He went to a café, bought the beer and set me up with the girl. Their only help was to advise me to beware of the company I keep. Their cavalier attitude was discouraging, but I held no grudge against the Greeks. This could have happened anywhere, even at home.

It was time to recalculate my finances. My library copy of Arthur Frommer’s Europe On Five Dollars A Day listed some very inexpensive hotels in the remaining cities I would visit. None cheap enough to allow me to also eat or drink, my per diem was now down to about three dollars a day. My personal checking account was as empty as a pick-pocket’s victim and my only credit card was with Standard Oil. I could have gone home but the thought never crossed my mind. The Siren’s Song that led to this turn of events would not keep me from Holland, France, Monaco, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland. There I was, thousands of miles away from home with the only sure source of food coming every three or four days when I changed cities. Every change involved flying back to Brussels and then going to the next destination. That was a little inconvenient, but had nourishing fringe benefits; food and drink was served on each leg.

Creative provisioning became the order of the day. Breakfast really did break a fast every day. Going toward the end of the serving period just as most were leaving allowed me to pick up leftovers to give to my very “best friend,” my tote bag. Hot chocolate was the beverage of choice, it has nourishment. Mountains of jams and jellies covered rolls and bread from crust to crust. Lump sugar was available for coffee—but not after I left. My pockets were filled with the contents of the bowls. It is a bad source of energy, but it helped to keep me going. The inventory of fruit stands was often reduced as I walked by. Flight attendants passed through the cabins with baskets of hard rolls. My “best friend” captured them for later banquets. Sometimes we would deplane through the galley and the horn-of-plenty bread basket provided even more feasting items. Cheese and wine were very cheap, so I bought those from time to time with spare change I could not trade in at a currency exchange.

The hotels I stayed in during the rest of the journey were all family owned and offered little more than shelter, breakfast, and a toilet down the hall. Business and personal travel of later years provided exceptional accommodations on three continents, but none provided the comfort of the old-world lodging of this trip.

Public transportation and the “shoe-leather express” took me to places the average tourist would never see; I was a traveler, not a tourist, especially not an American tourist. The bus line from Nice, France ended at Menton, France, about a mile from the Italian border. A short walk by European standards placed me at the border where I was thoroughly cross-examined by the border guards. They could not understand why an American would walk from one country to another. They were suspicious of my “best friend” and its contents. After a lot of dialog and enough gesturing to create “Italian Elbow Syndrome” they finally let me pass. After several hours I was back at the French border and was subjected to the same treatment. I asked them to check with the Italians, but there had been a shift change and the Italian guards knew nothing about an American on foot. With a reluctant “bon voyage” I was allowed to pass. Years later, I laughed as I saw an I Love Lucy episode that was staged at the same crossing—with similar problems.

The highlight of my trip was to be a week of skiing in the Swiss Alps. Captain Bert Jensen who I knew from a previous Austrian ski trip was in the Regina, a five star hotel in Grindelwald, Switzerland. He was leaving the next day, but made arrangements at his hotel for me to cash a personal check for one-hundred Swiss Francs, about forty dollars, that I hoped would arrive home after I did. He also referred me to a nearby economy hotel of questionable stars.

Frau Moser, the owner of the Bel Aire Eden didn’t want to rent me a room with breakfast only. She preferred to provide half or full pension service and made some comments about cheap Americans. When I told her my story she softened a little and let me in, but I had to pay in advance. Ski rental and lift tickets would put me back to survival living again.

The next morning I noticed Frau Moser watching over her “Inn Mates” like a prison warden watches in-mates. Creative provisioning was out of the question. I listened for my native language and targeted Anthony Atkinson from England. As we talked over breakfast, I discovered he was on limited finances too. One could take only a small amount of money from England at that time. His full pension included a picnic lunch, which was more than he cared for. We struck a deal, I would buy two beers for us, and he would share his lunch.

Tony and I walked into the hotel and the lovely aroma of the evening meal as we returned from each day’s skiing and parted company. He went to a nice dinner; while I suffered a double dose of caloric deprivation. I went to bed with hard rolls (there weren’t any fruit stands in the Alps) and tried to stay warm. Frau Moser was very stingy with her heat. This was the start of a “love affair” with the area that lasted over twenty years. I returned to the Bel Aire Eden for a few years until I had a family and rented a chalet. The half pension service was wonderful, and there was heat when Frau Moser’s son took over.

My month in Europe came to an end in Grindelwald. Three trains, five airplanes, and about forty hours later I arrived in Kansas City. My “best friend” was empty, my stomach was full, there was a dime in my pocket, and I was happy to have a treasure chest of long lasting pleasant memories. Memories that make one understand that what is really important is what one needs—not what one wants. I came to fully appreciate this while sitting on a hotel room balcony on the French Riviera enjoying some airline, by then, very hard rolls, cheese, wine, stolen fruit, and fascinating scenery. Earlier in the day I had stood visually devouring a pizza being made in a storefront Trattoria and felt sorry for myself because I was so poor that I could not go in and enjoy the simple comfort of a good hot meal. The water from my drip-dry shirts was playing a tune on the newspapers I gathered to quell the flood. I took inventory of my situation and felt a wave of delight sweep over me. I had shelter, clean clothing, food, wine, and much more exotic surroundings than Kansas City—I was a very wealthy man.

An American Tourist's Guide to London--in 1963

Ye Olde London, with Ye Newe London Eye slightly visible.
Photo from Flickr user Jr.ge. Used via Creative Commons. 

I didn't go to London during my Not-So-Grand Tour. It seemed too easy, too familiar. I'd been there before—less likelihood of getting lost. I knew the culture—less likelihood of accidentally insulting someone's mother. I spoke the language, or at least something resembling it—less likelihood of all of the above, in addition to all manner of other communication embarrassments.

All in all: less likelihood of the sort of awkward, out-of-my-comfort-zone moments that are agonizing and frustrating and even dangerous at the time, but which later make for hilarious, revealing stories (that is, books).

But lately, I've begun to regret skipping it, because the world's eyes have turned Thames-ward. I hear there's an event happening over there soon. Something involving various muscle-bound individuals showing off their athletic prowess in the name of country and competition and product endorsements.

A few months ago, the incomparable AA Gill wrote a piece about London, his hometown, for the New York Times, ostensibly in the service of Olympics-bound visitors. Embracing the city's evolution, in the past few decades, into a cultural tapestry without peer, an “amazingly polyglot and variegated” world capital, Gill shuns the classic stereotypes.

You want stiff-lipped men in bowler hats and cheeky cockneys with their thumbs in their waistcoats and fish on their heads.

I’m sorry, but they’re not here anymore. No city’s exported image lags so far behind its homegrown veracity than London’s, so let’s start with what you’re not going to find. We’re all out of cheeky cockneys, pearly kings and their queens, and costermongers. You’re not going to find ’60s psychedelia and the Beatles in Carnaby Street. There aren’t any punks under 50 on the King’s Road; there are no more tweedy, mustachioed, closeted gay writers in Bloomsbury, no Harry Potter at King’s Cross. There aren’t men in white tie, smoking cigars outside Pall Mall clubs and there isn’t any fog, but you can find Sherlock Holmes’s house on Baker Street.” 

… London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren’s churches and ushered in the Georgian city. London can see the dead, and hugs them close.

Let's say, for the sake of argument and—ahem—convenience, that you're interested in unearthing some of those ghosts. Not the Ye Olde London variety, Gothic and grim, but the more recent past, the Beatles' era, fresh enough in our collective cultural memory to feel like it's still relevant, even for those of us who weren't yet born when John Lennon died.

I happen to own a guidebook from back then. Europe on Five Dollars a Day, 1963 edition. I've been leafing through the London chapter of late and making some some notes about early-1960s London, Arthur Frommer-style. And by the way, if anyone wants to do some on-the-ground Frommering (Lee's term for the scavenger hunts we undertook every day in our attempts to use the guidebook in other European cities) and report back on how things have changed or have not, drop me a line. I might know a guy who can send a PDF.

Frommer on London

Frommer begins:

London, to some, is an imposing place, to be respected rather than enjoyed. To me, this city is as unpretentious as the smallest country hamlet. When London is known and absorbed, it remains in the mind not as a memory of monuments and museums, but of utterly simple and sympathetic sights: the galleries at Covent Gardens filled with students rapt upon a Sadler's Wells ballet; the calm and smoky innards of a corner pub; the clusters of children in Kensington Park; the cheese-and-ale parties in the one-room skylight flats of Chelsea.

All you've heard to the contrary, Londoners are among the friendliest people of Europe, and London itself is an inviting town.

Stereotypes linger, of course, and these remain the classic tableaus that populate our modern daydreams of London, even if the haze of those corner pubs dissipated with the nation's initiation, a few years back, of an indoor smoking ban. Still, though: the pubs, the gardens, the young artists and bohemians and tight-trouser-wearers holding informal salons in unfinished lofts. Gill was right.

Not-so-fiery Colorado

Greetings from Daniels Park in Colorado. 

Flew into DIA on the 4th of July and the air color matched the ground: a hundred shades of brown. The air smelled brown, too, that heady wood-burning smell that makes you crave s'mores and want to tell ghost stories. Except those Proustian memories of summer camp were more than a bit tempered by the knowledge that vast swaths of the state were ablaze, and the damage was considerably more traumatic than a charred marshmallow or two. 

But over the weekend, the clouds moved in, and the weather felt more like Seattle than Denver. Sheets and sheets of rain.

One thing that you miss when you live in a flat place like Minneapolis is not just the views of mountains--majestic enough in their own right--but the way that rolling topography enhances the depth of light, the tangible texturedness of a place. From the top of this hill, we could see other hills and the rain and fog and clouds between them, delineating the distances and making the horizon not just a point on a two-dimensional scrim but something more layered and elusive and coy. 

Photo by Maren.

This just in: Washington Post, Die Zeit, etc.

So one day you wake up and you get an email from a friend saying there's a big piece about you and your book in The Washington Post. And that is a very good day. (I mean, seriously, holy crap, The Washington Post!) Bonus bit of awesomeness: photo credit for Maren.

Note to anyone in DC: If you want a copy (or two or ten), I believe there are still some signed books at Hill's Kitchen, where I did a reading back in April. (And it's a fantastic store worth checking out even if you're not buying my book.)

Other recent press: Lee's mom wrote a very nice review for the York Sunday News, Die Zeit newspaper in Germany did a big ol' interview (in German; they translated it, so don't be too impressed by my foreign language skills), and the delightful Paul Lasley and Elizabeth Harryman had me on their radio show, On Travel. And, amazingly and awesomely, there's been lots more media coverage beyond that, including radio and TV and print; if you want the full list, click on over the "Press and Praise" section of the book site, or head over to the Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day Facebook page.

AND. Poop Strong Update. I recently blogged about my friend Arijit, a stellar fella who is battling cancer with humor. I noted that he's having a raffle, and one of the items is a travel/writing consultation with yours truly. The raffle is now live; the tickets are now for sale; the action is happenin'. So: Going on a trip? Let me help you plan--especially if you're heading to Europe. I know that place. Wrote a book about it. But I've got plenty of general travel tips and tricks up my sleeve, too. Or I'd love to help you with your writing/blogging project. Need someone to look over your short story or to give you tips on the process of finding an agent? I can help with that, too. In short: travel writer available for consultation regarding both parts of that job title. The more tickets you buy, the better your odds. Just sayin'.

Other raffle items include a beautiful mola from the San Blas Islands of Panama, a VIP ticket to a Tenacious D concert (including a backstage pass--meet Jack Black!), and primo tickets to a Yankees vs. Red Sox game at Fenway. Buy raffle tickets and get more details here. And thanks. Thanks so much for supporting Arijit.

Book postscript: Sidekick makes good

If you've read the book or kept tabs on my trip as it unfolded, you know Lee. Here's the first mention of him in Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day:

Allow me to introduce my friend Lee. “Friend” might be stretching it, actually, because the truth is, I barely knew him. We had spent a grand total of perhaps three or four hours together in person, at a writers’ conference in Key West, where we’d met two years earlier; since then, we’d kept in touch via email. Lee’s a novelist, bartender, and freelance scribe whose beats include nightlife and the singles scene. He lives in Baltimore and looks a bit like the actor Ryan Gosling. He has a quick, broad smile and, always, a wry gleam in his eyes. From what I’d gathered from our limited interactions and the man- about- town tone of his writing, he was the very definition of dashing and rakish—in other words, an appropriately inappropriate sidekick for someone who is, as the Dutch say, kindofaneuroticintrovert.

Reading that, and the rest of the book, you probably wouldn't think of Lee as the settling-down-and-getting-married type, at least not in the remotely foreseeable future--except, perhaps, to the Contessa we encountered in Munich. And in any case, by the time we got onto our respective airplanes back to the States, it was clear that there would be no Hollywood-worthy enchantment, no perfectly-scripted tales of European romance, ending with Alpine castles and the words "Happily Ever After" in a filigreed script.


Now, throughout the book, I tweak some of the tropes of travel memoirs, particularly the ones with sub-titles like How I Dropped Out of the Corporate Rat Race and Went to a Traditional Village and Herded Goats and Found Love and Meaning and Happiness.

If I'm to be honest, though, I have to confess that even though I was staying on the beaten path, and even though I roll my eyes at the paint-by-numbers epiphanies of so many travel books, I was secretly crossing my fingers for some of that myself. I mean, that is how it's supposed to work, right? Every passport stamp brings you closer to Total Happiness™? Especially when you're traveling with a vintage travel guide that you  like to imagine has some sort of old-fashioned magical powers?

But, no, it didn't work out like that. (And I spoil nothing about the book, I hope, by mentioning this fact.)

Of course it didn't. You can't script life.

But there's a twist. Always.


When Lee got back to Baltimore, he had a first date with Angy, a woman he'd met only briefly before. He mentioned to her that he'd just been in Europe, and she casually said, oh, that's interesting, tell me more. They started dating and she soon confessed, to Lee's amusement, that she'd been following our exploits through my blog—she knew all about the trip. As I was finishing my manuscript, Lee e-mailed me to say that they were engaged. I know it's naïve, wishful thinking to imagine that our trip had anything to do with that, but even so, I like to hold out hope that perhaps my guidebook had some residual supernatural properties after all.

My book tour in April ended in Washington, DC. The destination was intentional and the timing was intentional, because the following night, I had a commitment just up the road, in Baltimore: Lee and Angy's wedding. 

CONGRATS, LEE AND ANGY!

The morning after the wedding, over a late brunch with Lee and Angy and a small group of their friends, the story of Angy's blog-stalking came up again, in the context of introducing me. Lots of raised eyebrows and knowing grins in my direction: "Ooh, you're THAT guy!" 

I've gotta tell you: they're perfect together, not least because Angy shares Lee's kindness and spirit of adventure and, yes, that wry grin. I'm looking forward to hearing their own tales of journeys together. (For example, they just moved from Baltimore to Salt Lake City, where they are the resident cocktail experts and worm-keepers. You can read all of their exploits and findings, including the differences between "magic dust" in Baltimore and Utah, on their aptly-named blog, BmoreInUtah.) 

I'm also looking forward to traveling with them someday--a happy anticipation that is tempered with a dash of terror at hearing not one but two different people urging me to do something by saying, with matching wry grins, "Come on, Doug ... Spirit of adventure!" 

Actually, make that three people saying that, because I recently got engaged. And my blog inadvertently helped woo my globe-trotting fiancee, Maren. 

And ... well, that's another, longer story. 

The Brief Wondrous (and Salmon-Scented) Life of Professor Yeti

Once upon a time, I worked for an erudite yeti. Ghostwrote an advice column for him with my friends Teague and Alex. (Hard-core E5WTD fans may recognize those names as the guys with whom I did the Doughnut Quest a couple of years ago.)

Alex got married about a week ago (mazel tov, Alex & Alissa!). He asked me to tell a story at the rehearsal dinner, and the one that immediately came to mind was the tale of Professor Yeti, a web site that he, Teague, and I started shortly after we all graduated from Carleton College in 2003. The site is down--after we stopped publishing it, we accidentally let the domain name expire.* But you still can peruse the archives thanks to the borderline-creepy magic of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

PY logo. Bear in mind that
we're writers, not artists.

The rest of this post is adapted from the piece I wrote for the rehearsal dinner.

This is the epic tale of the short but glorious life of a world-renowned publication called Professor Yeti. Motto: “The missing link in online journalism.” Alternate motto: "The online magazine of elusive news, astute views, and questionable advice."

Teague, Alex, and I had all been interested in writing and had each worked on the school newspaper at Carleton, and I think we all had that classic restlessness of the recently-graduated.

So we started an online publication. Now, I should note that this was in 2003, still the early days of the internet. Blogs weren't really a thing. Quirky essay-filled sites like The Awl or The Morning News weren't around. We had no real template, just the naive ambition of youth.

The plan was simple: one new edition every two weeks, with seven or eight articles and reviews and, the signature piece, an advice column penned by Professor Yeti himself, the world's only bigfoot with a PhD.

For purposes of this story, I want to focus on that advice column, Ask Professor Yeti.

Because, really. It is amusing and endearing but most of all amazing for me to think back to the hours that Alex, Teague and I spent sitting around their Uptown apartment—I can still see the wood floors and the orange chair—honing that voice, trying to figure out what a pedantic yeti would sound like and would want to talk about.

We settled into a groove of absurdist pompousness garnished with a healthy helping of woodland wisdom, as befits an eight-foot-tall primate who pairs a fine port with freshly uprooted juniper bush and wears a three-piece suit while ruminating on a fallen tree.

In response to a question about dealing with obnoxiously noisy coworkers, the good professor said:

I understand your plight. When I was a young yeti, I was visiting some friends in British Columbia, having a lovely champagne brunch on a tranquil beach, when a family of birds landed nearby to practice their calls. Bird songs can be melodic and charming, to be sure, but it is my experience that they offer up such sweet music only in the vicinity of humans. It’s part of a scam to keep birdwatchers enthralled — a friend of mine, a sparrow who asks that I not use his name, says that bluejays in particular are known to be major stakeholders in companies that manufacture binoculars.

In any event, birds, you should know, are less soulful in their singing in remote, wooded locals. There, they screech and rasp and chant dirty ditties. And so it was that my lovely brunch was utterly destroyed by a large group of birds squawking off-key.

I threw a stick at them, and they quickly dispersed.

Sincerely,

Professor Yeti

 All three of us had day jobs that were not exactly our chosen fields, and doling out questionable advice couched in esoteric woodland metaphors wasn't exactly what we had gone to school for, either. But for me, at least, it was actually a good transition to the real world of collaborative projects and concrete deadlines and accountability. It gave me a sense of duty and of purpose, in an off-kilter sort of way.

And in that early-adulthood time when the world was overwhelming in its burdens and potential, and full of conflicting advice from my well-meaning elders … well, it started to feel entirely natural to dole out my own confidently-offered but not necessarily useful advice, like spicing up a Super Bowl party by hiring a marching band to play on the front lawn or trying to woo a woman by adopting a salmon for her.


Or here's my personal favorite, from April 2004:

Dear Professor Yeti,

Doctor Seuss would have been a hundred this year. In honor of the occasion, I have been trying to find mathematical messages in his work; in fact, I am writing my master’s thesis about this. I’m convinced there’s some sort of algorithm that explains all the rhymes and explains all the allegorical themes that run throughout the Seuss canon. So far, though, I’m stuck on “one fish, two fish.” Have you given this any thought?

Horton Sneech, San Diego

Dear Horton:

Of course I’ve thought about it. Here’s the formula:

The theme you can gauge
From the third-to-last page
Just add your age
Invert your wage
Subtract a finger
Add a toe
(Or two point five
if your cousin’s named Joe)

Divide by the eye
Of a scrambling newt
Double the sine
Of the size of Beirut

Does he use the word “wry”?
If yes, give a toot,
And then you must try
With all might to compute
The log of the number’s
Inverted square root

Now return to that page
(The third from the back)
Tally the Ts
And each comical yak
Add two for all drawings
Of fleas in mid-sneeze
Subtract every adverb
And all anxious young bees

A prumvid means war
A blooznit means peace
A grimble means famine
A trinkle means feast

Compare all the numbers
Observe every word
Now get out your slide rule
(I assume you’re a nerd)

Count it all up
Write it all down
All will be clear
Sure as my fur’s brown

If you’re still stuck
Perplexed with a frown,
Just send it to me
With Prince William’s Crown,
The key to the town,
A ham of renown
Plus a parrot named Prout
… And I’ll figure it out

Cheers,
Professor Yeti

Eventually, of course, actual adulthood set in, which broke up our band. But we had a good run of it: fifty issues, more than two years, and something like a hundred fifty queries for the good professor. Sometimes other people even wrote us letters. One was in Latin. Professor Yeti also responded in Latin (and man was that a pain for his ghostwriters).

Over the last few days, I've been going back through my Professor Yeti files. And I have to confess that more than once, I teared up. Because I never would have guessed it, but it turns out that I really miss channeling the spirit of a haughty, erudite, three-piece-suit attired yeti.

 --
* THIS JUST IN: Just checked to see if the domain name was available again, and it was--so I bought it. Which means someday soon, I hope, we'll put the site back in full public view, where it belongs. 

Poop Strong: Goofy Name, Great Cause

*UPDATE: It is with the heaviest of hearts that I update this post to say that Arijit Guha died on March 22, 2013. I miss him so much. But please keep reading to see why he was such a wonderful guy.*

This is my friend Arijit (pictured with his wife, Heather). He's one of the funniest, kindest, flat-out coolest people I know, the type of person for whom the term "full of life" was invented. We went to school together at Carleton College (hail the maize and blue!).

You know that guy (or woman) at your college who organized all the class activities and served on the student government and always seemed to be involved the coolest organizations on campus--and might even help found an organization if there was a void? For the Carleton class of 2003, that was Ari. (And that much-needed organization was the Gender Neutral Cheer Boys, an absurdist take on cheerleading, about which much more in Note 1.)

But what's most impressive to me--and this part is most important and just truly, incredibly rare--was that Ari filled that role without having any ego about it. Big man on campus, sure, but also big-hearted. He was simply nice to everyone, even the socially inept among us (hey, the world would be boring without some of us around, right? RIGHT??)--and, therefore, beloved by everyone, too.

He's awesomely goofy in all the right ways. After college, he grew his hair out and then subjected himself to the most ridiculous haircut possible for charity, raising nearly $4,000 for Doctors Without Borders and other worthy causes, and ending up with a Krusty the Klown hairdo.

Now, Ari needs some help from the rest of us. At the ripe old age of 31, he's battling Stage IV colon cancer and, due to the high costs of treatment, potential medical bankruptcy. 

This is the point in the post at which three-quarters of you are about to tune out. Don't. Please, please. Don't. This is not gonna be some Hallmark Channel sob story. 'Round these parts, we use humor to fight the crappy parts of life.

Case in point: Ari has set up a web site about said battle with colon cancer, a web site titled Poop Strong. Among the various items you can purchase there are brown "Poop Strong" bracelets (you know, like those yellow bracelets some guy named Lance made popular a while back) and various incredibly fashionable and deliciously offbeat t-shirts.

The man's been ravaged by cancer, blasted with radiation, had his abdomen sliced open and his colon yanked out, at the ripe old age of just 31 ... and he's laughing in the face of it all. That's bad-ass. (Um, no pun intended there.)

Also bad-ass and amazing (and, yes, more than a bit heartbreaking) is the fact that he's doing all of this large-scale fundraising and event coordination--not a small task for anyone--while he's battling really seriously major cancer and also, you know, trying to live a normal life and do normal-life things. Seriously, ponder that. (2)

If you want to know more about his story, keep reading. But here's the point:

(Here, we'll make this brown, in honor of Poop Strong):

1. Arijit Guha is awesome human being. He is precisely the sort of person the world needs more of.

2. He needs our help to continue being awesome. Because, man, FUCK CANCER. And medical bankruptcy, too.

3. You can help him AND get some sweet stuff at the same time by buying said sweet stuff on PoopStrong.org: a goofy t-shirt, a brown bracelet, a poopstrong.org email address (and you know you want that). Or ...

Another thing you can get to support Ari is to buy a raffle ticket. You can win some fantastic books, courtesy of Hill's Kitchen, signed and adorned with the Poop Strong rally cry by authors like celebrity chefs Mario Batali and Spike Mendelsohn--or you can get a copy of a Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day signed by yours truly. Or a signed Hold Steady album. Or lots of other cool stuff.

Ahem: http://store.poopstrong.org/products

Oh, and, in about a week, there'll be another item added to the raffle: an hour of my time to provide travel or writing consultation by phone/Skype (or in-person if you're in the Twin Cities area). Going on a trip? Let me help you plan--especially if you're heading to Europe. I know that place. Wrote a book about it. But I've got plenty of general travel tips and tricks up my sleeve, too. Or I'd love to help you with your writing/blogging project. Need someone to look over your short story or to give you tips on the process of finding an agent? I can help with that, too. In short: travel writer available for consultation regarding both parts of that job title.

But the only way to get it, aside from giving me a round-trip plane ticket to Paris and a private car to Gerard Mulot, is to enter the raffle. Buy a ticket over at PoopStrong.org, once it's posted on June 1st.; and for now buy a ticket for other cool stuff.

Thanks! And ... Poop Strong!

--

Okay, you want more of Arijit's story? Here, check this out. Further proof of his stellar sense of humor and all-around excellence as a human being:




And now, let's turn things over to the man himself: 

Last January, my wife and I returned from a trip to India and soon after our return, I was beset with intense pain in my abdomen. After numerous visits to the ASU student health clinic failed to uncover what was going on, I eventually headed to a gastroenterologist, who did a colonoscopy and discovered I had a 6-cm-wide growth in my colon that was nearly completely obstructive. I soon learned the tumor was malignant and then, when in surgery to remove the cancerous growth, my surgeon discovered that the cancer had spread well beyond the colon and small tumors had metastasized throughout my abdominal cavity. The extent of the disease meant my colon could not be re-connected and I emerged from surgery with a colostomy. In a matter of weeks, I went from thinking I had a bad stomach bug to learning I had metastatic colorectal cancer.

Fortunately, in part due to my young age and the extraordinary care I have received at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, I’ve been able to cope quite well so far despite the difficulties of treatment. Unfortunately, cancer treatment is quite expensive, and recently the ASU student insurance plan stopped covering my cost of care. The Aetna student health insurance plan provided by ASU caps the lifetime insurance benefit paid out at $300,000, which the high cost of treatment used up in less than one year.

--
NOTES


(1) The Gender Neutral Cheerboys filled the role of absurdist pep band and athletic boosters for our liberal-arts college's endearingly inept football team. Listen to the story on NPR's "Only a Game" back in 2002 (skip to about 15:00 for the story). Ari's comments to the reporter: "The first word I'd use [to describe us] is 'incompetent.' ... Pretty much, we make sure that the Carleton fans are louder than the opposing teams' fans, because a lot of the time ... the Carleton fans will actually be outnumbered by the visitors, so we still want to make that Carleton presence felt. At a school this size, it's not just these random football players you don't know, but your friends, your classmates, the people who live down the hall from you. So as incompetent as we are and as ridiculous as we may seem out there, the real reason we're out here is just to cheer on our friends and show support."


(2) I'll spare you my own rant about how how messed-up the American health care system is, but if you really want my two cents, you can read my post "The American Dream and the freelance writer." Obamacare really can't get here fast enough.