Austin Part II

I went back to Austin in June of 2009 to visit some friends and got to go hiking and biking on the Greenbelt trail in Texas Hill Country. With 3 drivers on rotating shifts it took us 16 hours to drive from Iowa City to Austin, stopping only to refuel and buy fireworks. Highlight of the trip was when my friend Andy showed up to a Texas bro pool in a extra skimpy speedo. He got some looks, and a sunburn on the side of his butt.
The motorcycle photo came from a Texas size biker rally in downtown Austin. In a parade of bad-ass biker dudes on snorting Harleys there was this one bespectacled guy on a red scooter wearing sandals and carrying a pomeranian who rode right in formation with the 1%ers then parked his scooter with them.

Our Hotel in the Himmys

Nice thing about Mussorrie is that a lot of the local buildings say, "Property not for sale" over the doors. Good to see that the locals aren't selling out to big business. Our hotel is a 100 year old English Cottage. We pay about $10 or Rs. 500 a night. Our room is quiet and faces the valley. The shower is freezing cold but the bathroom is private and westernized. After the debacle in Delhi and the annoyances of Hadiwar we almost gave up on the Himilayas, but I'm glad we didn't. -November 9th, 2008

New Day Himalayan Happy Time

Most Indian beds are designed for a man no larger than 5'10". I am 5'11".
Should I ever go back to India I'm going to make sure the Himalayas are my primary destination. The town we're in is basically built on the side of a cliff, with hotel balconies hanging over the edge. Mussorrie is the town's name. It was built by the Brits 150 years ago as a refuge from the summer heat. It is so temperate here that people are wearing down jackets and mittens. Though because I have just come from Iowa in November, I am wearing shorts and am quite pleased about it. The bus trip was insane. Switchbacks so tight, taken at such speed that you could spit, come around the switchback, and have it hit you. On almost every turn our three-ton fully loaded city bus tripoded when a wheel lifted off the ground with the lean of the bus. Opposing traffic came within inches of our bus and judging from the scars on the side panels there have been a few side-swipes; a scary thought considering there are no guard rails on this pot-holed, two meter wide car trail on the edge of a mile high cliff.
The town before Mussorrie, at the foot of the Himilayas, was called Haridwar, or Hadiwar, or Hadwar, or however you want to spell it, each of the previous examples was taken from a local sign. It is the Holiest village in India due to its proximity to both the Ganges and the train lines. Tori and I ducked down an alley and touched the Ganges, garnering us some dirty looks from the locals. Hadiwar is an unfriendly, noisy, expensive town with two redeeming features: nobody on the street bothered me or tried to sell me shit, and our hotel room was the "honeymoon suite" complete with framed baby pictures on the walls. Man alive, you should see the size of the rats around here. They shake the walls when they run by. Hasn't anybody ever heard of a cat?

Delhi Kidnapping Scam

I've pretty much put off this story for a year. It made me mad just thinking about it. But I'm over it now and think it's kinda funny. We begin during the night of the previous day then abruptly switch to the next. There's lots of time travel in this blog, you'll get used to it.

Today I was to organize a day-adventure of Delhi. We met two dudes in a Cafe Coffee Day who suggested a travel agent who hooked us up with an english speaking tour guide and a car.
...a few hours later
Right now, we just bought a vacation in Kashmir for the low low price of $200, including airfare, from the travel agent who helped organize our Delhi adventure. Tori is busing herself reading horror stories about the area. Apparently Clinton named Kashmir the most dangerous place for Americans in 1994. This should be fun. I am a little worried about the way we met our travel agent. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps the guys we met in the coffee shop were planted there to lure tourists. Seems unlikely though.
...The next day...
Not unlikely. Turns out the Kashmir thing was a big scam. Next morn Tori and I wake up at 7AM and checked out the Embassy and they said it was probably cool, but who knows (lot of help our government is). Tori went back to the travel agent and pressed him for more info. By the time I got there he had given up on trying to sell us to Kashmir, and hadn't given any further info. He tried booking us to other places, but we just wanted to leave. I saw that we weren't getting out of this situation for free so I suggested to Tori that we take leave to the Cafe Coffee Day and roll over some things. While there, the travel agent sent his lackeys to spy on us from the window. I told Tori my plan to let the dude keep $40 in exchange for a refund of the rest of our $200 each. When we got back to the travel office, located in a urine-river back alley where young hoodlums parked there mopeds and got in fights, the travel agent had all his posse waiting in the office. There were about 8 men, two of which being the guys who initially met us at the coffee shop, and they all said they were part of the agent's family. So, with the utmost care and tact, using our sweetest, most sickening midwestern manners, Tori and I negotiated a $308 refund out of our combined $400. You better believe we ran for the hills after we got our credit card receipts. Tori went as far as to cancel her cards.
...An hour later...
We went to the Gov't travel office, directly below our hotel it turns out, and they told us how the scam works: somebody makes contact with us at some neutral location like a bar or coffee shop who most likely gets a little side cash. They lead the unwitting foreigner to the office where a slew of workers make offers, some of which really are amazing deals, in order to soften the victim up to purchase one of these big Kashmir vacations. Once the vacation is bought the foreigners are wisked away to Kashmir where they become totally at mercy to whatever town they get stuck in. The town places the victim in a houseboat where the only transport is by taxi boat. All excursions to land are planned and require constant payment. There are few doctors and lots of guys with guns. And there are no American embassies or means of escape until the town has bled you dry and your plane comes to take you back to Delhi.
Guess we should have known better when the travel agent didn't ask for our passports or emergency contacts or even our names. Close one, eh?

Long time, No write

Here's a picture from the bike shop I work at in Iowa Citay, World of Bikes. I break chains like that all day. I am kick-ass.