Jump

By Bob Jonas

Between these pages: the scintillating, sometimes hysterical, life of Bob Jonas—traveler, trucker, librarian, and storyteller. From his earliest memories, all Bob ever wanted to do was put as much distance between himself and wherever he was. Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl, his early adulthood started him off in a semi-truck, where he logged over a million miles in eleven western states, then continuing his journey overseas in forty-seven countries. His lust for adventure was more than a call to travel, but a sacrosanct mission, finding his roll as a school librarian, and storyteller, the perfect platform from which to spread his beliefs in seven schools on four continents, where he was able to motivate, inspire, stimulate, stir, cajole, provoke, and do whatever was necessary to get kids to read. With his unbound passion for books, stories, and literacy, he's been able to guide his charges on the same path that led him to discover the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Jonas
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215104811

Bob Jonas

Bob Jonas has been a school librarian for twenty-one years; four in Beaverton, Oregon and seven in China–Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. In South America he worked for three years in Santiago, Chile, and then three years in the in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After completing his final post in Erlangen, Germany, Bob decided to retire to continue doing what he loves to do best—write action packed novels for young adults.Using experiences from his work with kids overseas, he employs an extensive knowledge of expatriate living to write about these kids and their frontline exposure to political intrigue, revolution, overthrow, and war. ChinAlive, his first action thriller for YA kids involved a student at an international school in Shanghai, swept up in a plot to overthrow the Chinese government. Imposter, his second action thriller–soon to be released in January, 2016–follows an angry, pissed off American student in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia trying to reconcile his western sensibilities with the new life his parents have forced upon him. Equipped with a Teflon coated, can’t touch me attitude, he transgress basic rules of living in a foreign country and finds that he has put he and his whole family in great danger.Bob’s travel and writing obsessions began after reading Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki when he was he was ten. His storytelling obsession began with his dad–the greatest tale teller, BS artiste, mesmerizer, and raconteur the younger Jonas would ever lean on for inspiration. His first fifteen years of adulthood found him living the travel adventure in a semi-truck where he logged over a million miles in twelve western states. Unfortunately, the road stint lasted about twelve years too long. After too many speeding tickets, too many run-ins with angry weigh masters, bad, bad, and double bad winter weather, not to mention a real bad back, he knew it was time to find his old college degree and get himself somewhere else. School librarian, perhaps? A very strange tale indeed.As a storyteller, writer, and librarian he has motivated, inspired, stimulated, stirred, cajoled, provoked, and done what was necessary to instill a love of reading in kids on four continents. Through his writing he hopes to continue the work he has been doing for over two decades.

Book preview

JUMP

Bob Jonas

Vagabond Librarian Publishing

Portland, Oregon

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Author’s Note

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Author’s Note is provided to keep reader confusion to a minimum. Jump contains seventy-three chapters, most, chronicling events in the order in which they happened, over twenty-five years, told in a variety of ways. Things to keep in mind:

Acting much like a diary, thirty-four chapters rely on original emails to tell the story, starting with a Hotmail account in 1998, changing to Yahoo two years later.

All other chapters are inspired by journal notes committed to a variety of surfaces throughout the years, most too long to guarantee an email reader’s attention.

Flashbacks—appearing at times out of order—are found throughout the book, spontaneously resurrected in the authors freewheeling mind, easily recognized by the way they are set off.

There are numerous letters—told to or by the author—a few poems, songs, and a short story or two to aid in capturing a moment best told in these formats.

As a work of nonfiction, you might be thinking, because it is nonfiction, all of it is true. As the characters in this work are mostly real, so is any resemblance or similarity to actual events, entities, or places, and is definitely more than a coincidence. However, there might be a slight embellishment or two. Keep in mind, this memoir is told by a storyteller, about a storyteller.

One of the most mentioned characters, my partner in all of this, and the first and last to edit the book, swears to have tied up all loose ends, corrected any lies, misrememberings, and anything that would bring shame or embarrassment to the author, and especially to herself.

It is my intent to respect all faiths, religions, communities and races, beliefs, feelings, sentiments of any person, gender, society and its culture, customs, practices and traditions. It is not my intent, in any manner, to disrespect, insult, impair, or disparage those things—so help me, Bob.

There are at least two triggers in this book, maybe more. If you

feel the need to cancel me after being injured by their inclusion, any publicity is greatly appreciated. Please let me know so I can thank

you properly. I’ve been advised to put my lawyer on speed dial after the book is published. Sadly, as he spends most of his time at an OTB establishment, and never remembers to charge his phone, this might be problematic—fingers crossed I have not sinned beyond my quota.

Any opinions and descriptions contained within, none of which are cited or proven, are personal opinions of the author and often, when possible, presented in a humorous light.

Copyright © 2023 by Bob Jonas

All rights reserved. Published by Vagabond Librarian Publishing.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic of mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

If you would like to do any of the above, please seek permission first by contacting us at:

http://www.vagabondlibrarian.com

First edition

ISBN 978-0-9892744-3-2

Front cover art by: Guy Billout

Used with Permission

For the Lovely Susan

ALSO, BY BOB JONAS

CHINALIVE (2013)

This is a fine tale, and the author's experience living in East Asia gives it valuable authenticity. Ho yeh (good stuff) as the Chinese say."

Nury Vittachi

Bob Jonas has written a fabulous novel. This fast-paced adventure novel for young adults is filled with fascinating history, non-stop action, and thrills that will keep you up late at night. I couldn't put it down.

Roland Smith

IMPOSTER (2015)

Current, relevant, compelling, insightful. Zach's voice is clearly heard; his ideas and humor spot on for a 16-year-old boy. Oh, that we could all learn to live where you are.

Deb Franzen

"I'll be on the lookout for more books by Bob Jonas. I thoroughly enjoyed this story as well as ChinAlive! Both are YA novels I would recommend to adults as well as young adults. I thoroughly enjoyed both books.

Imposter, real page-turner, is a timely novel set in Saudi Arabia, where the reader learns what it would be like to be a young, tech-savvy American youth whose computer skills gets him in trouble with the Saudi religious police." Bob Jonas is a YA author to watch.

Rick Bird

"Too often, Third Culture Kids are forgotten in stories of adventure and fantasy. Bob Jonas involves this growing group of world citizens in this adventure novel flawlessly! An excellent portrayal of an international experience captured with fast-paced non-stop action that forced me to stay awake finishing the final chapters before I could fall asleep. Another fantastic novel written by Bob Jonas. A budding author with an incredible gift to tell stories."

Josh Hatt

DEATH BREW (2017)

Loved this book! Loved the way that Bob Jonas wove the continuing adventures of Zane & Phoebe Walker into some of the history of Erlangen, Germany and also managed to cleverly include the wonderful annual beer festival known as The Berg in this fast-paced adventure. I hope we hear more from Zane & Phoebe!

Elaine Smith

I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. Over and out. 

~George Carlin

He’s got shpilkis.

~Lotte Jonas

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.

~Lewis Carroll

A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.

~Oliver Wendel Holmes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Shpilkes

Chapter 1: Truckin’: the Glory Miles

Chapter 2: Flexibility & the Little Things

CHINA: SHANGHAI(D)

Chapter 3: China Landing

Chapter 4: Deal with the Devil

Chapter 5: Computer Shopping Domestic Help Death by Taxi

Chapter 6: Signs of China’s Emergence

Chapter 7: Turtles Crushed and Boobs Biggied

Chapter 8: Bald and Adored

Chapter 9: Hong Kong: 427 Square Miles 7 Million Souls

Chapter 10: Christmas with Chinese Characteristics

Chapter 11: Bar Mitzvah at the Ritz

Chapter 12: The Cops and Me—Part 1

Chapter 13: The Cops and Me—Part 2

Chapter 14: The Cops and Me—Part 3: The Basketball Game

Chapter 15: The Cops, and Me—Part 4: The Zhang Letter

Chapter 16: Coal, Hocking, Shopping Strategies, Sunday Market

Chapter 17: Keep on Shopping in the Third World

Chapter 18: Culture, Culture, Everywhere Yu Garden, Street Auctions, Nanjing Lu

Chapter 19: Floods & Snakes

Chapter 20: Rice Fields, Pig Farms, French Med Living

Chapter 21: Massage Rubbed to Perfection

CHILE: SANTIAGO

Chapter 22: Good Bye China, Hello Chile

Chapter 23: Pinochet, Cowboys, Lip Synching & Strategically Enhanced Moms

Chapter 24: Move’ Um Out

Chapter 25: Don’t Cry for Me, Santiago

Chapter 26: Health Care: Kidney Stones, Colonoscopies, and a Banshee Hygienist

BACK TO CHINA: BEIJING

Chapter 27: Chinglish Anyone? Right Here in Capital Purgatory

Chapter 28: First Day Blues, Again the Bus Blockade

Chapter 29: Ladelizing the Liberian

Chapter 30: Motorcycle Hellions

Chapter 31: Government Testing Baby Steps

Chapter 32: Intersection of Death

Chapter 33: Good Bye Beijing Hello Hong Kong

TRANSITIONING: BEIJING>GAP YEAR>HONG KONG

Chapter 34: Rose Colored Distortions

Chapter 35: Dad

Chapter 36: Bread, Cheese, Wine, and a Following Wind

Chapter 37: Cruising the Mediterranean

Chapter 38: A Bus that Slaloms, a Sun that Shines

Chapter 39: Pickpocketed in Rome How the Bastards Got Us

Chapter 40: Eastern Europe Surprises

Chapter 41: Tourists, Tourists, & More Tourists

Chapter 42: Back on the Road—To Asia

HONG KONG

Chapter 43: Hopes and Dreams

Chapter 44: One Sunday Morning: in Manila?

Chapter 45: Crowds, Food, & More Food

Chapter 46: Rugby in Hong Kong

Chapter 47: Oh No, Not Again

ARABIA: RIYADH

Chapter 48: Into the Desert We Roam

Chapter 49: Intro to Saudi

Chapter 50: Getting There Wandering and Wondering Nomads

Chapter 51: Good to Be Here?

Chapter 52: Schwarma King, Executioner, and Jimmy (Carter, That Is)

Chapter 53: Too Much to Do

Chapter 54: Guns and Guards, the Outer Limits, Shop Fast or Else

Chapter 55: Drifting in, Drifting Out Men, Men, Men

Chapter 56: Travel Failures

Chapter 57: Looney Toons, Road Warriors, etc.

Chapter 58: Saudi Gaudi

Chapter 59: Pink Toe Nails: a Lecher’s Dream

Chapter 60: One Last Time

GERMANY: ERLANGEN

Chapter 61: Getting Out:  Easier than Getting In

Chapter 62: Thank You, Brothers Grimm

Chapter 63: Late but Great Start

Chapter 64: Intrepid Bikers

Chapter 65: Strange Contradictions: Even Here

Chapter 66: You Flunk, Dumbkoff and Other Licensing Fiascos

Chapter 67: But We Just Got Here

USA: VASHON ISLAND, WA

Chapter 68: Fear Factor—America

Chapter 69:Pure American

Chapter 70: Four Years Later, After Our Longest Layover

NORWAY: STAVANGER

Chapter 71: Trolls, Vikings, Bob, Susan

Chapter 72: Norwegian Briefs

Chapter 73: End of the Road

Author’s Note

Chapter 74: The Journey Back

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note on Images

Afterword

PREFACE

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IF EVER there was a memoir I was destined to write, I always thought it would wait until I’d logged my last mile—a naïve excuse at best. What if great memoirists like Bill Bryson, Bruce Chatwin, or Paul Theroux had waited? Being late to the game, my mind and fingers still nimble, this memoir needed a push. I was in the middle of a six-month research binge for another book when the clock struck seventy. In the blink of an eye, seven decades, gone. I never intended to write an autobiography, everything from beginning to end. Just a twenty-five-year snapshot, about my travel years, hoping this still qualified as a memoir. Would my efforts now seem cliché: growing old, counting on the memoir muse—the one that had bugged me off and on for years—finally come alive? I had no intention of leaving my wife in the lurch, relying on the services of a medium to collaborate from the way beyond.

After painstaking exploration and research—digital dumpster diving in dozens of lost, aging, or forgotten storage drives—the resurrection of a thousand hazy memories began to emerge. In somewhat chronologic order, these rememberings stretched over a million miles on American roads, thousands more through the jungles, deserts, back alleys, oceans, and beer gardens of the world, and soon began weaving themselves into narrative compost piled higher than I had ever imagined. Travel insights and observations filled every email, blog post, social media platform, journal article, notes and letters. They were chronicled in short stories, essays, poems, feature stories, and songs; scribbled on every imaginable surface in tablets, notebooks, and even a barf bag or two. In time, they were replaced—though not completely—by electronic tools.

Finally, it was time to stop the research and the digging. I had way more than enough. Little did I realize how many personal triggers would be buried in story after story, pushing me to keep searching. I had to put on the brakes. As one forgotten memory after another tumbled out of my brain, all I could do was ask Susan, Do you remember this, or that? And she would say, is that in the book? and I would say, no, and she would say, why not? Big help.

Nevertheless, it was time to begin, no more excuses. Travel adventures, along with insights and reactions to each, couldn’t be that difficult to mold into an interesting, mostly true, nonfiction narrative, even if I still thought something was missing. I had no idea what it would look like, but after laying it all out, I realized what I had written was not nearly as insightful, clever, or accurate as remembered or imagined. And maybe that’s not the point. More than anything, it appears to be a story, a better description than nonfiction narrative. After all, I am a storyteller, much more so than a nonfiction narrative teller.

While other publishing efforts had met with minimum success over the years, they eventually proved useful in completing this, my magnum-ish opus, with one glaring exception. Everything I’d gathered, reviewed, edited, laughed at, cried and cringed over, continued to beg for greater context, perspective, and inclusion. A good story is a good story is a good story, but still needs to be told with a beginning, middle, and end. After rekindling all these long-lost memories, the joys of storytelling never let up, but there was always something else, lurking, to keep me wondering: about travel as a means to discover how I fit into the world—not an uncommon goal for budding or even famous memoirists. However, this had never been a conscious goal. Stories, no matter the form, had always been therapeutic, including those told on any platform or classroom setting. They poured out of me over the years, a means to stay sane and entertained, especially when it came to teaching, travel, and writing.

The most challenging, yet unanticipated question, after evaluating everything before me, was why: why the overwhelming need to move, to travel, to get myself gone, out of the neighborhood, down the road, to no place in particular—far away as possible, for no reason as noble as discovering new worlds or heading to where no man had gone before. In the beginning, it didn’t matter. It, being the constant restlessness, inexplicable to parents, teachers, or myself. What about now, decades later, to me or anyone else? I knew I could eventually deal with the piles and piles of material, the editing down, but the unceasing challenge to discover the roots of a lifetime’s obsession was unrelenting. It wouldn’t go away. How important would it be to share these adventures? To keep a storyteller’s sacred trust, to experience, and learn, and pass on?

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck wrote, every American hungers to move, reflecting that Americans descended from those who moved: from Europe, in search of a better life, and the logical extension we call the westward migration. I was blown away when I realized how much my need to move was related to his observations and to many of my favorite memoirists—Jack Kerouac, William Least Heat-Moon, Hemingway, Hunter Thompson, Mark Twain, Tom Wolfe, Robert Pirsig, and so many more. Their writings, observations, and soul searching of what it means to live between Maine and Oregon, Florida and California, kept hitting home. I never would have guessed that my country’s rootless heritage would be related to my own question of movement: first inspired in books and dreams, and further enhanced by years behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler. Thankfully, the stories that started to unlock this inexplicable question did so, only after years and years of working and traveling, not only in my own country, but in countries a long way from home.

INTRODUCTION

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SHPILKES

MOM was always tough on teachers, especially at parent teacher conferences. While most parents looked for reassurance, many teachers were looking for help. My teachers usually came away empty handed. Though Mom considered these evening turnstile-type evaluations a waste of time, she never missed one, always hopeful. I didn’t mind. Most of the time Dad stayed home with me, fingers crossed. A fly on the classroom wall would have noticed a few strained smiles, a few kind words about my academic abilities, but then, as Mom would relate, the meetings turned blasphemous: giving way to her professional parent pulpit. Her retellings of these get togethers might have been hilarious if they’d been about someone else’s kid. After listening, year after year, to the same familiar rehash of my misdeeds, whatever defense I could muster, remained quashed under Mom’s withering gaze.

When my leadership qualities were tossed out as a bone, her mama bear instincts reared up, sensing something wasn’t kosher.  "He’s a natural leader, Mrs. Jonas. . . long pause . . .but he never sits still. . . long pause. He’s always up, always on the move. . . longer pause, teacher reaching for Xanax dispenser.

His behavior keeps getting in his way.

"Leader, schmeader. He’s a boy, he’s got shpilkes."

Spilled what?

Shpilkes, Yiddish, means ants in the pants. Mom always relied on this tried-and-true explanation; succinct, righteous, irritating. Thank goodness this was a long time ago because today, using the current touchy-feely approach to these mandated evenings, I would have been invited to participate in something called a student led conference. This marvelous addition to educational pedagogy, involves tag teaming parents, locked in with teacher and child, to carefully assess what needs to be done with a kid like me. There were other strategies, some more drastic than others, but when all else failed, number one in a teacher’s grab bag was medication—the modern go to for any child with ants in the pants. This was also big pharma’s wet dream, a marketing stepping stone to future generations where millions were invested with the hope that someday, adults would need to medicate to combat the big people version of shpilkes, using the schools and these introductory meds as a springboardto whoopie pills for decades to come.

But I digress.

Every time mom used the euphemism, he’s an active boy, teachers cringed. They knew what that meant. After Mom’s blow-by-blow post-mortems, filled with her typical hellfire to me—knock it off, you’re making me mashugana—I had to lay low for weeks. While Mom always saw through any of my well-thought-out explanations, Dad often tried to lend support. Unfortunately, his loyalties always wound up going to the wrong family member.

Listen to your mother.

They should have seen it coming. By the time I was three, I had tricycled around our block more times than I could count. While most parents might have been worried over my reckless approach to life’s early dangers, for some reason, Mom wasn’t one of them, never worrying enough to consult Doctor Spock, or any of the experts in her canasta klatch. Did she love me less than other parents? Did she choose to stay in the dark, with more important things on her plate?

For whatever reason(s), I now appreciate how she was way ahead of her contemporaries and future generations of helicoptering parents and their overprotected kids. I never knew, and maybe she never realized, just how good her parental instincts were. Along with this long-delayed appreciation, I have no doubt that Mom was an ardent follower of George Carlin—the only other possible explanation:

If you want to know how you can help your children: leave them the f—k alone!

Thanks Mom. Thanks George.

My reading habits might have been another source of worry—one I’m sure George would have supported—but again, mostly ignored. A kid whose head was constantly buried in a book, wasn’t as weird as it might be today. But a travel book? Always a travel book? Although Dad often wondered about my reading proclivities, they never worried Mom. A book is a book. . . is a book. Reading is good. How much trouble can he get into reading a book, or at the library? 

Over time, she must have known I was up to something, never quite catching on until it was too late. Her question should have been, how much influence could a book have on the wee small brain of a kid desperate for excitement and adventure? During those years, long before the Internet, the travel section of the library was my escape, Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki, my longest lasting influence. Who at the age of ten couldn’t imagine him or herself sailing the Pacific, Peru to Polynesia, on a balsa wood raft, scanning the horizon for the next adventure? Kon Tiki became my life raft, the one to which I remained bound, never knowing how, when, or where Heyerdahl’s inspiration would kick-start my journey. By the time I reached adulthood, the pages of my copy were worn, yellowed, the cover falling off, but the promise to myself never faded. Mom would never appreciate how, if I’d tied my fate to Long John Silver instead of Thor Heyerdahl, I might never have made it to adulthood—rrrrrrr.

She always thought my posse’s euphemism, out exploring meant a trip to the park, the store, or the library. Sad to say, our neighborhood was a wasteland of traditional, boring, sameness. It was up to me and my two best mates to focus our efforts on the furthest horizon, far, far, away. Small kids, pint sized bikes, one speeders, foot brakes, riding and riding, until one day Mom got a phone call from a friend who saw us crossing the Columbia River into the state of Washington, miles and miles away. She never told Dad. She thought she could handle it, me. And she did, kind of. I was a good son, in many ways. I might have thought she was no match for all those times I’d pulled the wool over her eyes in my first decade of life, only to find out years later how wrong I was. Her mama bear instincts missed nothing—not Heyerdahl’s inspiration, or my never-ending travel research. Embryonic indicators of my far-flung dreams were always in plain sight, ready like a rocket sled, to take me out of the neighborhood and someday, around the world. Only after discovering her quiet support of my dreams, was I truly able to appreciate her influence on my life.

CHAPTER 1

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TRUCKIN’: THE GLORY MILES

Eleven Western States

One Million Miles

1973-1992

Ultimately, I survived childhood, as did Mom and Dad—barely. I didn’t end up in jail, a lawyer, or politician, though Mom and Dad—or so I thought—would have settled for doctor. But truck driver? Though no one had ever taken the time to browse my bookshelves—or so I thought—they foretold, with extreme accuracy, a less conventional future—what mom’s friends would consider a phase, something I would grow out of. But I never did, and after four directionless years at university, at the end of the sixties, I was nowhere—no clear path, no money, no job. At the State Unemployment Office, looking for something temporary, I jotted down three entries from the State’s database, then took a number to present my findings to the next available agent. Looking over my completed form, he said they’d already sent the maximum number of applicants to one of my listings. His phone rang, and while briefly turning away, I scanned his screen and saw the company and address of the one he said was off limits. I went anyway and got lucky. The dispatcher at this manufacturing plant turned out to be a first cousin I hadn’t seen in years.

Rob, do you know how to drive a twenty-two-foot straight truck with a two-speed rear end.

Piece of cake, I said. He looked worried and excused himself to the dock area where trucks were loading. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the dock foreman’s response was loud and clear.

I don’t give a flying fuck who he is, or how you’re related, we need him. Now! I was hired. To my great good fortune, the drivers had recently joined the Teamsters Union so if I survived, I’d be making a decent wage. 

After knocking off a mirror in my first week, I kept as low a profile as possible, spending part of each day teaching myself how to shift a transmission I’d never used before. To keep the sound of grinding gears to a minimum, I drove far enough away using gears I could find, able to smoothly shift them all by the end of the week. A year later, as the company continued to grow, the operation required much larger trucks. At first, fellow drivers were reluctant to take me under their wings, but my winning personality, strong work ethic, and tremendous desire to learn, convinced them I was worthy.

It took me at least a year, maybe two, okay three, before I gained enough confidence to drive the winter months without a stash of Rolaids. I had my foot in the door of a semi-skilled profession that many folks looked upon as a legitimate job for life. At least for now, I could manage the weather. While truck driving as a career had never been a goal, I started out like a kid on a carnival ride, loving every minute, thrilled to be on a new, unexpected road to self-reliance. My acceptance into this blue-collar brotherhood seemed sudden and a surprise in many ways, especially after four years at university. Dad’s job never required he know the difference between a slotted screwdriver and a Phillips, but I did now, and soon I’d know how to squirt ether into an engine manifold to start the damn thing when the temperature was twenty below, chain a truck down in a snowstorm at the foot of a slippery mountain pass, and hee haw with the best of the them on the CB radio. In short order, I gained encyclopedic knowledge of the best chicken fried steak dinners in a number of western states, another unexpected fringe benefit. Never had I dreamed of being in a position to see and experience so many extraordinary things so early in life, soon realizing that these would be the first serious stepping stones to fulfilling my boyhood dream.

Sadly, the enchantment only lasted a few years, as the long hours of isolation gradually replaced the initial excitement. I became anesthetized, white line fever, as good excuse as any in the face of a shitload of adult responsibilities that at times seemed almost cliché. Listening to Janis Ian’s lament in her song, At Seventeen: married young and then retired, or Springsteen’s ballad of loss in the The River, all those things that seemed so important, they just vanished right into the air, struck a frightening chord. Fortunately, chroniclers of my generation’s dissatisfaction, or in any previous generation’s—told in any story format—weren’t writing about me. Life after thirty-six still held promise. As the gear jamming days ground on, something in my psyche, under my skin, like a virus, tingling—wouldn’t stop. I had to find a way out, to the next chapter.

As the miles rolled on, in a job I had never imagined for myself, life continued in a haze of conventionality—mortgage, kids, unhealthy marriage. Despite my initial reverence for the road, the deadening effects of being strapped to an air-suspended seat continued to create a boredom in me I had never expected or experienced. Over time, I grew used to the slightly scorched smell of brake pads, and the strangely narcotic effect it created when blended with roadkill, burning asphalt, and farmland byproducts. Not a dire threat at first, but over time, I couldn’t shake the dread that something was having a permanent, numbing effect on my future. The one good thing, especially for a guy whose imagination did summersaults at traffic lights, was the unlimited time to think, and ponder, and plan. Up high, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, the mind-liberating freedom of the road allowed me to keep dreaming. In the end, I was able to quit, allowing pieces of my mixed-up life to sort themselves out, paving the way to the freedom I had dreamed about for years.

Unfortunately, the sorting out took another six years, much longer than expected. I might not have known it, but I still needed to find the love of my life and travel partner, and a new piece of parchment—one that would open doors to the world. Blessed by cosmic luck, the fates took me under their wing, and in one fortuitous stroke, guided me to her in a college classroom, and the official looking document—an MS in Educational Media (school librarianship)—I needed. When I look back, the story of this bizarre transition, from trucking to school librarian, makes perfect sense, but only after a very long-winded explanation, so here’s the short version: my love of reading and libraries, my volunteerism at my kid’s school, my great interest in emerging technologies, my need for a new direction, especially one that required a return to university—a place where I always found comfort and inspiration. Meeting the love of my life in my first class didn’t hurt, and truly cemented my direction from that moment on.

Next up: forty-seven countries, four continents, nine schools, including, China: Beijing and Shanghai. Hong Kong, Santiago, Chile, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Erlangen, Germany, then back to the US, to Vashon, Washington, an island off the coast of Seattle, and finally, Norway. Never would I have guessed that these next twenty-five years would be spent, not only as a traveler, writer, and storyteller, but as a school librarian.

CHAPTER 2

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FLEXIBILITY

&

THE LITTLE THINGS

FROM FAMILY, friends, fellow travelers, and even colleagues, one of four questions that always comes up in any conversation about our life: what was your favorite post, country, trip, or experience. Over time, we’ve developed a standard, succinct, answer: There are challenges and rewards with each of these experiences. Some countries we loved. Some jobs we loved. Some school communities we loved. Some colleagues were wonderful to work with. But never, in any of our posts, did we find all these elements together.

At an initial gathering of new staff at our first post in Shanghai, the assistant superintendent summed up his best advice in one word: flexibility. Little would we have imagined at the time, that for the next twenty-five years, this advice would be our guiding light.

Would any school in our home country ever meet every criterion we might have hoped for? Never. But in the schools where we worked overseas, we could easily fly to Bali for the weekend. Or save enough money in our first year to pay off all student loans. Or take a year off to travel the world? Or travel in forty-seven countries without having to rob the piggy bank for any of our excursions. The rewards in every case far outweighed the challenges. It was only a matter of perspective if we ever had doubts about what we were doing, reminding ourselves how lucky we were.

One of the most unexpected surprises in researching this memoir was the unending memories of experiences long forgotten, not written down or documented, in any kind of visual media, or in a million notes to myself, triggered from a flood of recollections. They were little things: unplanned oddities, unpredictable experiences, interactions, deeply buried—but too good to ignore.

These do not include the viewing of the Sistine Chapel, or a stroll on the Great Wall, or even the 2,000-mile journey on the Trans-Siberian Express from Beijing to Moscow—all expectedly memorable. It was dozens of tiny brush-ups, not on anyone’s itinerary, or crowded in behind a tour guide’s flag-waving, sheep-herding efforts, where I’d like this memoir to begin.

For example: the old man who looked as old as the Yangtze. Gnarled up, wiry. I winced looking at him, my Chinese masseur, squeezing a loofa—about to scrub all parts of me, in a men’s only, bombed-out looking bunker in Tashkurgan, China. He smelled of garlic, sweat, and Tiger Balm. I thought I had signed up for a massage. What I was about to get was not a massage. He worked in silence, scrubbing every inch, including the undercarriage of my scrotum (heaven help me), where he carefully held up my nut sack with his forearm, expressionless, methodically leaving no part of my white American flesh untouched. This interruption to the daily cleanse of other bathers, was casually scrutinized by a roomful of old men, straining to see through the steam, as my body was roughed up to the same hue as theirs.

And then this, one of many frightening experiences: It began with a tickled feeling that came from a dozen tiny hands as they rifled around our waists, through our pockets, searching to score serious American bounty, on a jam-packed escalator during rush hour in a St. Petersburg subway station. Susan felt first and screamed. When I looked down at my fanny pack, there they were, hands rummaging a mile a minute. To keep a half dozen small hands out my pockets, my elbows began to fly. With no one coming to our rescue, the escalator arrived at an intermediate platform, where the robbers dissolved into the morning crowd. We continued on the second leg of the ride, no one concerned about what had just happened. They got nothing except our well-deserved fear, and a travel strategy to walk on the other side of the street when Romana families approach—they were everywhere on the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia. Police cared less than the people who witnessed our run-in, listening to our story with feigned interest.

And who would have imagined this episode, in a remote, edge of the world location: a screaming boombox and the sounds of AC/DC, third world renditions killing any possibility of sleep in our tiny houseboat, bobbing inches above the water, on rickety wooden flooring. The waves were slapping through the cracks, as suffocating humidity steamed the inhabitants to juicy, late night mosquito bait. As the dawn approached, we were supposed to have enough energy to go snorkeling at sunrise, in ten-foot swells, on the southern tip of Tawau, Borneo. All the other hung-over guests—low rent pseudo hippies, backpackers—the charming euphemism for the transient community of burnouts and would-be individualists—still stoned, looked surprisingly rested.

And finally, there was this pharmacy in Moscow, one where Susan would not accompany me. I had no language skills to adequately describe what I needed. Pantomime skills yes, but good enough to keep from getting arrested, or laughed at? No one at that time in Moscow, or