The very last day.

The point spreads are such that nothing that happens today will change the position of the top five teams. That said, the top three teams have to participate today because a team cannot place without handing in a scavenge sheet for every leg.

Vi is on it. Cream cheese bagel and coffee for fuel and a walk to the UN. There we count the flags flying at the UN (only the UN flag flies on weekends, who knew). Then we catch a taxi to the Brooklyn Bridge to walk across it. Our taxi driver rounds up a 17$ fare to 20$ even though I can see the meter and I realize we’ve traveled around the world to discover some things are the same everywhere.

I do my best Spider-Man along the cables of the bridge. Tourists are snapping photos at my leaping, swinging, web-spinning mastery. Although the booklet doesn’t have it, this city is the perfect setting for a Superhero Challenge…Batman and Superman also frequent here. And look at this gothic church across from our hotel – this is Ghostbusters material.

After our mandatory scavenges we spend the next few hours visiting friends. Sitting in a restaurant eating a calzone without planning our next eight steps feels like a vacation but it also feels like we are slacking. Despite just eating a calzone, Vi can’t resist the opportunity to try to squeeze in a trip to a Five Napkins Burger before getting back to the team rendezvous point. I send our Ringmaster a text, “Does the admission price of the trip include therapy sessions to help reintegration into society now that the scavenging is over?”

He says “no” so I’ve come up with an alternative. I’ll make weekly scavenge booklets. Walk dogs (25 points). Clean dog doo (75 points).

She won’t be able to resist that one.

Back at the hotel we have a rewards ceremony. It’s Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you) so I was hoping for a Princess Leia lookalike to put the bronze medals on us while the theme song blared. No such luck. However one of the other teammates went to a baseball game and brought back a Star Wars themed Bobblehead for me.

I can’t figure out how she knew I was a closet Star Wars fan. The Sith Lord really does work in mysterious ways.

We have a goodbye dinner and Vi and I take some time to talk to the Ringmaster and his wife (a classic case of the woman behind the man who makes it all happen – she deserves an ovation for managing the nuts and bolts). We realize they know the game isn’t perfect and don’t really want it to be. The game is what the players want it to be, not what they force it upon you to be.

I can’t help but make a comparison to WestWorld. The architect creates the game, but what you do within it is entirely of your choosing. Does he wish more teams would compete the whole way through? Yes. Does he expect it? No. He stresses that the game makes you look in the mirror to see you for what type of traveler you are, what type of competitor you are, and most importantly, what you think you know about the world.

I wouldn’t say that Vi and I learned much new about each other. If anything, I can get away with being even more of a goofball. I find her giggling at random times when she reminisces about me being the annoying-mime-juggler-street-performer. 10 minutes for 75 points! And I find myself wondering how any of her patients survive if she hasn’t had her coffee. I can just imagine her traipsing in to work at 7am without her coffee and the nurse calling down to the morgue to ensure they have plenty of space ready.

But Vi and I did learn that the world is changing. People are optimistic and kind even in places recently ravaged by genocide (Myanmar). As my friend Sean says, “materially poor but rich in spirit.” The New Yorker who took a minute to set us toward the Clark Street station without us even asking was a positive experience to offset the evening before. Go Brooklyn!

We confirmed Vi has no circadian rhythm and mine could be broken! Sweet. And 9am is the ideal time for karaoke.

Vi noticed the world is becoming more homogeneous. There is a Western influence everywhere. There’s an increasing acceptance of other cultures that manifests in women in the Middle East not always needing to cover their heads. Their were so many English speakers who admitted they learned the language from movies. We learned the US isn’t that special – there are plenty of places that are just as nice, if not nicer in both cleanliness and modernness. The World Wide Web really is World Wide. We are all linked. The opportunities to learn and connect are abundant – a chance to see people as people rather than countries (we’ve been trained to think of huge areas of land as having an identity, such as “North Korea, Vietnam, Middle East, etc.”). Traveling makes you meet individuals and none of them seem much different than us.

Shove me in the shallow water before I get too deep.

The emails and texts have already been coming in. “Would you guys go again?”

Does Darth Vader wear a funny helmet?

For those of you who want to hear this same voice in a medical setting, I wrote a book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009IS06YU/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_b009is06yu

We left Seville on a morning bus for Faro, Portugal. Mysteriously, this little town is worth over 500 points. There is a chapel made entirely of human bones and one thing this trip has been missing is human femurs. For reasons I can’t explain I’ve always considered our skeletons to be the real us, like take off all the window dressings and this is what you are left with. Perhaps because it is the most permanent element of us. Plus there is something satisfying about knowing that under all the mushy stuff we are tidy, white pieces with smooth curves like marble sculptures. Skulls are art!

One of the rules of this game is that every scavenge must be completed as a team. That means for every moment of the day for the last three weeks, Vi has been at my side (and vice versa). One of the unsaid benefits of the Global Scavenger Hunt is that you get to learn what it is like to have a Siamese twin. Our Ringmaster prepared us for this by supplying us with a box of (warning: product placement) Altoids. They were real lifesavers. Vi shoved wads of them into her ears when she was sick of listening to me say things like “we’d totally be winning if we could teleport.”

The trip also teaches you the subtleties of communication and efficiency. When Vi asks, “Do these clothes smell?” It means, “These clothes reek but if you say they don’t we can leave now instead of me figuring out something else.”

When we went to the top of a hotel for Vi to enjoy a coffee, Vi snapped a photo of a stork on a pole. But what was in the background of the photo? Lawyers Without Borders traipsing through town completing missions. No doubt following us, but from 20 steps ahead somehow.

We managed to get in a quick kayak before hopping on a train to Porto. It pained us to sit on a train for six hours but we have to get in some scavenges by tomorrow morning. No time to slack, we can do that back home at work.

Vi wants to pick up Porto points the moment the train rolls to a stop. I make my case to drop our bags at a hotel, but proof that this trip changes you, she says we are going restaurant hopping with backpacks and a roller bag.

We catch a lot of stink eyes and side glances but we hit up gelato! And a restaurant for a stack of sausage, ham, steak, bologna, fried egg, a sauce made of Crisco and beer all atop a pile of French fries. They call this Francesinha.

Suffer a coronary (50 points)

We see some graffiti and head to bed at midnight.

We woke up in the Blue City at dawn and headed up to Tangier. Tilda Swinton was in a vampire movie filmed there last year. Unfortunately we didn’t see any vampires, or Tilda’s. We had to split from Lawyers Without Borders. It was a sad moment because no one else will call me idiot with the frequency of Rainey…I loved it.

We got a tea by the seaside for points before hopping onto a ferry for Spain. Our Ringmaster made Gibraltar a mandatory stop so we head to the rock. It is an impressive stony protrusion and I can understand how wanderlust travelers could come upon it and feel a compulsion to climb it. I have no such desire, so a six minute cable car ride to the top is fine for Vi and me. We have a quite tasty fish and chips at the diner on the top and I realize that only America takes pride in serving the lousiest food at tourist destinations.

Oh, did I mention that The Rock is inhabited by rhesus monkeys? Vi could watch them all day long, she says it helps her understand me. That upset me so I refused to pick the nits out of her hair.

The monkey pressed his face against the window of the restaurant like a starving homeless man. But rather than pretend he didn’t exist, the tourist snapped photos like crazy. This disturbed me. I realized I should do more to help the poor. I’m going to donate ape suits to the homeless so they’ll get the attention they deserve.

If my spot in Hell wasn’t secured, it is now.

We get down from the top of Gibraltar and it strikes me this tax shelter pseudo-country is a gimmick. No matter, we only have another half hour before the bus leaves to Seville. We walk to a taxi stand and there are no taxis. We start walking to the entrance of the island 1.5 miles away. And no taxis! How can this tourist trap suddenly dry up of taxis? Did I mention we have all of our luggage? I am now jogging with 25 pounds on my back and Vi is dragging her roller bag over brick paved sidewalks. The clacking of the wheels sounds like a machine gun.

This is a three week trip that continually comes down to minutes. Missing a museum because it closed a few minutes earlier, or running like mad across Gibraltar because your bus is about to leave. If we miss it we are screwed. This is our ride to Seville, no taxis allowed on this leg, and Vi won’t hitchhike because no one will stop to pick her up if she’s with a mutant like me.

Shove old lady out of the way at border crossing (15 points).

Sweat is pouring off me. Vi even glistens. We race up to the bus and get on. The driver closes the door on my butt and away we go. About a half hour into the trip I realize that we are back in the Western world. The radio is playing classic rock. This is the first time we’ve heard American music since Canada. It must be the bus driver’s mix because no one besides me would follow Stevie Wonder with Muse.

In Seville we grab our first gelato of the trip. About time! I put some in my pocket for later and then we attend a flamenco show put on for suckers…err, tourists.

Flamenco is a lot more fun if you imagine that when the man is dancing alone he is showing off fight moves before a brawl. We are all used to the beefy meathead who cracks his knuckles or flexes his biceps but how about the guy who struts back and forth like a rooster while slamming his heels into the ground? He stops to pose like Daniel-san’s crane kick and then transitions to Michael Jackson with his invisible butterfly knife in”Beat it.” The only problem is that the guy goes on a little too long. He’s giving away his best moves. Like don’t get entranced by that spastic finger-snapping-over-the-head move because next thing you know he’ll be tap dancing on your nose.

The women in the front row of the crowd are swooning. The only way I could make a woman drool like that is if I paralyzed her lower lip with Botox. A woman whistles at him when he pauses during his high-stepping toe-tapping solo. At the end women are throwing bras and panties on stage. I take note, some of the lingerie looks cleaner than the granny panties Vi’s been sporting the last few days.

I get where she’s coming from, we are at that point of the trip where we are so close to home that no one wants to do laundry. Sticking a dryer sheet in a bag of dirty clothes makes them fresh enough. After all, the last hotel we did laundry at charged us more than the items are worth. Wash a T-shirt for $7? I could buy two on the street for that. Needless to say, we exited late to score a bunch of slightly used undergarments. Vi gave me the ones too big for her. Reuse Renew Recycle.

Vi has a better ear than I and thought the guitarist had sloppy technique. All those years of flamenco guitar lessons worked (no joke). Maybe this adventure will get the six string back into her hands.

We had a wonderful dinner of grilled fish and eggplant “fries” along the river running through the city. They charged us 2 Euro for “cutlery” on the bill. Had I known I would have eaten with my hands. We managed to make it to bed by midnight.

Tomorrow morning we leave Seville for Portugal. Too bad, I was hoping to visit the barber.

This multi day scavenge has some land mines. There is a boatload of scavenges in Morocco and in Portugal. We can’t do everything but we must hit Fes, Gibraltar, Seville, and Porto in the next 72 hours. When we return to work it is going to seem so slow paced that we will likely die of ennui.

At the same time, we want to see Morocco minus the minarets. I think our Ringmaster puts in these easy scavenges just to see when we will break. I’d rather look at a decapitated camel head in a narrow alley than see another minaret. (For the budding author, that is some heavy handed foreshadowing).

We are in the car by 6am (if you get more than 6 hours of sleep a night you are just being selfish) and leave Rabat for Meknès, just over halfway to Fes. There we see a mausoleum and a meat market way grosser than Athens. Hunchbacked men buckle under dinosaur sized slabs of meat bringing in the day’s catch. The air is thick with flies and odors. Cats creep in and out of shadows. I am talking about the meat market and not the mausoleum. Better cats than rats…right?

We leave Meknès for Volubilis but realize it is a trap. It will add and hour and a half we don’t have to an already hectic day. Had the city taken my recommendation and changed its name from Volubilis to Voluptuous I’m sure they would be overrun with tourists despite their off the beaten path location.

We get to Fes by 11:30 am and meet a city guide. Without Abdul Malek we would still be wandering the city center. By now you are sick of hearing about labyrinthine old souks, so just imagine how we feel traipsing through them. I do appreciate that many of the goods there are for locals; silk thread shops, honey alley (sampled a bunch from giant vats, given to us in a way that tests the antibacterial properties of honey), stone chiselers, wood workers, embroiderers, etc. The leather worker district gave us a glimpse into the process of creating leather from a hide. Men sloshed skins in vats of liquid. Fun fact: Pigeon poop is used for making white leather. Remember Myanmar? Pigeon blood was used to make rubies…I’m sure of it.

I was assured that nothing but the most natural products were being used in the safest of ways. Assuredly, the men standing in pools of chemicals were fine, yes those chemicals can strip the hair off a cowhide in minutes, and yes, those men standing in it are totally healthy…they all just choose to not have kids and they glow in the dark from the thighs down by choice.

We see some other goods and then…wait for it…a butcher selling camel meat with a freshly decapitated camel head to advertise his shop hanging from a hook in the alley. The modern advertising world must look at this sort of thing to justify their existence and stoke their egos.

We “head” to a nice restaurant for a cooking class. This is how the Chaos half of the team works: Vi was supposed to book a reservation at a fancy restaurant but somehow accidentally booked a cooking class despite not even knowing they offer classes. This scores us a wad of points. To add to it, the class wasn’t supposed to be offered but someone messed up removing the option from the website. Blind squirrels finding nuts.

Vi subjects herself to a Hammam scrub down despite my cries of warning. Apparently she will sell the outer six layers of her skin for next to nothing (just points).

We exit the city via streets along the edge of the souk. They are so narrow that shop owners have to guide us through so we don’t knock over their wares. Our drive through northern Morocco to the Blue City shows us a lush farming land that makes us wonder why anyone lives in the rocky desert. It’s like the Sahara Desert was slapped down next to Napa Valley and the majority of people said “I hate cutting grass, but I love building sand castles.” And then stuck with it.

The Blue City comes off sounding like one of those drive by Midwest attractions like Wall Drug or The Corn Palace. All they did was take an old city center and paint everything different colors of blue. But they pulled it off. I’ll let the pics speak for themselves. That said, they could have just handed out blue tinted glasses on the way into town and saved on a fortune in paint.

We crash into bed at 11:30pm with the alarm set for 5:15am.

Rise and shine! No shine, the sun won’t be up for over an hour.

We started the day with a drive north of Marrakech to do a hot air balloon ride. Vi and I had never done one so it was exciting just to watch them inflate the balloons with giant fans and a flamethrower only otherwise used in first-person-shooter video games. Being novices, we didn’t know if it was normal for a balloon to inflate 3/4 of the way and then drag the basket and all the men holding it across the stony field while we all stood by and watched. Men raced around, pulling on cables, and gave us a quick primer on Moroccan expletives to add to our experience but not our confidence.

The four of us hopped into the basket of the first ready balloon and took off. The ascent is as smooth as an elevator even as the wind sweeps us southbound at a good clip. I’m impressed by our pilot – this is the first time I’ve seen a young woman with a job other than selling goods or food or henna in the marketplace. For the most part, women are markedly absent. I’m used to them hiding from me, but a whole country?

We watch the other two balloons below inflate and deflate like they are taking giant breaths. Neither manage to fill. Our pilot tells us that the winds are complex today so she will be the only pilot. She will take the next group up in this one.

When it comes time to land the wind has really picked up. She spins the balloon into position and throws a large rope over the edge. It is attached to the metal cage above our basket. At the other end is a large ring. It drags across the ground 30 feet below. A Jeep comes bouncing across the rocky fields kicking up dirt and its passenger is ready with a rope of his own attached to a tow ring on the front bumper.

Our pilot has us get into the crash, err, landing position with knees bent into a squat, facing windward, and holding rope rings attached to our basket wall. She blasts the burners and jets of flame blast out of them with the ferocity of an angry dragon. The heat feels good on my skull but barely slows our descent.

The Jeep’s passenger, a tiny spry man with a reasonable vertical jump, leaps off the moving vehicle and grabs the dangling rope. He clips his end on and we are now attached to the Jeep. Our basket skids into the ground and the strong wind wants to keep carrying the balloon somewhere far away. Our basket starts to tip over. The Jeep’s tether is our only hope. Its brakes are locked yet our momentum drags it across the field with ease, the balloon is moving the Jeep like it is a plastic toy and our basket is still leaning! Tipping. We are now all leaning towards the Jeep and the best moment of the day (so far) happens.

The catcher of ropes, a little man about 90 pounds soaking wet, races up to the side of our basket to tip the scale in our favor. Never mind that the Jeep is still dragging, this powerhouse of a twig, digs in his heels to stop us like Superman stopping a speeding train with the same jaw-clenching, eye-wincing determination. It was one of those glimpses into the human spirit that would inspire most people, but I just found it hilarious.

We actually stop and the basket settles into the ground and off we go to the next scavenge.

We drive up to Casablanca for a wholly different experience. Casablanca is an ugly old woman who used to be something in her heyday and now just bears the pretty name as a reminder. Paint peels, balconies sag, feet drag, and the colors faded. The buildings are sad, the bartenders dilapidated, but the mosque reaches the sky.

The second largest mosque in the world! It really is proof that their God is bigger than your God. You will be intimidated if you ever visit.

Then we ran around through its central market only to return to our car to find a yellow metal boot on it. I thought that thing was only for college kids.

We shared that sinking feeling, a sick mix of hours lost, serpentine, maddening bureaucracy, and outlandish bribes. The locals on the street laughed at our expense. A man came out of the neighboring shop with a grin like he just sat on his little brother and ripped one.

He told us to call the number on the yellow sticker on our car. Before Vi could dial the number (and her phone was surgically implanted onto her hand months ago) the guy turns up the street and gives a whistle. I started to get that There’s A Hustle Coming On feeling.

A lanky young man with his face lit up like there was never a better day in his life strolled up to us. He wore a loose T-shirt and jeans, not really the Meter Police uniform I expected.

We asked, “How much?” A dreaded question.

“30 dirham,” he said.

30 dirham! Three dollars. Just like Dr Evil asking for only 1 million dollars when he held the world for ransom, this was a joke. This was the best parking fine ever. We high-fived each other in celebration, paid the man, and hightailed it out of there for Rabat.

Get boot off your car in less than ten minutes (25 points).

Rabat is the young beautiful woman with a name that makes her sound like a toad. But she’s going places and she’s got the brain to get her there. You have to wonder how two cities, right next to each other, could be so different. It might help that the King lives there. The streets are clean, the buildings crisp and proud. The art museum has an Impressionism show, whereas Casablanca had an impressive display of cobwebs.

I felt underdressed in Rabat, a chronic condition those around me are forced to suffer through. Now you know why Vi makes me walk ten feet away from her.

We visited a necropolis. I was disappointed that there wasn’t a single zombie there. But maybe that was my fault, we were there before the sun went down. The place was overrun by giant white storks. Then we went to the old city, a charming little maze of sidewalks (no mopeds even), and enjoyed a mint tea (a glass of mint leaves with some tea filling the spaces between) while overlooking the coast.

Final review: 4 thumbs up.

Bam!

After being allowed to sleep in and eat breakfast we were hit with the biggest scavenge our Ringmaster has ever created. It started Sunday 11am in Marrakech and doesn’t end until Friday 11am in Porto, Portugal. We must visit Gibraltar and Spain on the way, no flights, and can only rent and use a car in one country (no borders crossed). The booklet has 150 scavenges going all different directions. We were tempted to drive an hour west to see some goats that live/climb/eat in trees because seeing bad-ass tree-climbing goats would be a fantasy come true for me.

We were allowed to team up for one country so we chose (a synonym for begged) to join Lawyers Without Borders in an attempt to drag down the current leaders. The second place team is to deliver a suitcase of unmarked bills to us in NYC if the plan works. Vi and I are usually as successful as Boris and Natasha when it comes to nefarious plots. Stay tuned.

Morocco has always been on our Go-To list and it did not disappoint. I’m not a shopper but I love winding through the narrow maze-like souk with all the strange wares. The ancient Moroccans clearly planned for the influx of future tourists and labored tirelessly to create items to be sold as antiques.

Vi couldn’t resist photographing colorful displays of spices. And I couldn’t resist buying a trilobite. Morocco is known for their fossils, both from the Cambrian period (ended 250 million years ago) and dinosaurs from the Cretaceous (died 65mya). Okay, I’ll stop nerding out now.

I love a country that only serves fresh squeezed orange juice. Orange trees sagged with fruit were wedged between buildings as if it were the city’s solution to feed the homeless. A Moroccan urban planning fact: to save time designing the street layout a plate of spaghetti and sauce was flung onto a wall and whatever stuck became the city map. The cellphone map feature is mostly worthless as you magically teleport from one street to another in the app. But don’t worry, for a few dollars any local will show you where you want to go, and what luck, his brother’s shop is along the way! What divine coincidence, you were just checking eBay for a pair of fuzzy slippers that make your feet look like Chewbacca’s and here they are.

Our Ringmaster jinxed us that morning when he mentioned it hadn’t rained our whole time overseas. Dark clouds blotted out the sky and tried their best. The strong sun evaporated all the little drops before they hit the ground so only the plumpest managed to splat onto us at infrequent random times. The first one that hit me scared me because I thought a bird had bullseyed me.

We ducked into a scavenge restaurant and ate four things off our list. Vis food of the day was a roasted chicken in a jus seasoned with garlic, turmeric, and some secret green stuff. My favorite was a mellow yellow curry and a grilled naan. General rule: Chances are it isn’t good food if you can’t eat it with your hands.

That evening we attended a belly dancer show. Strange to see a half naked woman gyrating like she is suffering a seizure in a religious world that otherwise keeps women wrapped up like mummies. I’m suspecting ageism and sexism when it comes to hiring belly dancers.

We walked out through the market and it struck me that Marrakech is a roller coaster of odors. Cumin, grilled meat, fresh mint bring you higher and higher until you plunge into raw fish, body sweat, and cat urine. Sandalwood, roasted vegetables, and the sharp smoke of a fresh weld fill their niches in the souk and every few feet offers a surprise.

Vi had a slight cold so she took in the colors more than the smells. The souk had a dyers district for cloth makers, a vegetable market, and trinkets galore. Plenty of photo fodder for the budding photographer.

Overall, we were charmed by old Marrakech. So glad we came!

April 27

We woke up at 7am after a late night and rushed out of the hotel to get to the Acropolis before it got too crowded and hot. Vi has never been here and I was here 25 years ago. Sorry to say, things are still in ruins.

I promise that won’t be my worst pun during this adventure.

The ancient Greeks were amazing. They built giant temples to a panoply of gods. They invented philosophy, coins, cranes, cement, and the octopus. Well, the word, which is why the plural is octopuses and not octopi (it isn’t a Latin word).

They weren’t perfect, but they were productive. A day stomping through the stone streets of Athens on passages barely wide enough for a car and crammed with tourists wore us out. Vi had over 11 miles on her pedometer. Our lunchtime souvlaki was hard earned. One restaurant made this lightly grilled, thick cut, homemade bread with olive oil and seasonings (salt, garlic, oregano) on it. So tasty!

Our Ringmaster likes us to do scavenges in central markets so we headed to the Agora to price out some olives and herbs. I was slightly disturbed by the whole skinless lambs in the meat market. Mary had a little lamb, Dimitri had some dinner.

The unexpected scavenge of the day involved finding three different Olympic venues from three different centuries. The Greeks started the Olympics in 1896 because they were all gaining weight and needed a way to promote exercise. The 2004 Games were in Athens and I did not recall that Santiago Calatrava had been the architect for the buildings. His giant sweeping arcs and suspension cables all in bright white create something that is both science fiction in a clean Gattaca way and at the same time organic, like an exotic bird or insect. If you aren’t familiar with his “Eye” building in Valencia, here’s a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences

Some of the Olympic sites are abandoned and decaying. Others have been repurposed. I wonder what the Greek government got back out of the 12 billion they poured into the project.

The we went on to see the Temple of Haephestus, Hadrian’s arch, the Temple to Zeus (just a bunch of giant columns reaching pointlessly towards the clouds), and the Tower of the Winds. The ruins are one thing, but I like that parts of the ancient city are still alive, sticking out of the ground in random places along walkways or even incorporated into the walls or floors of restaurants. Vi got that glazed eye templed-out look but I dragged her to Aristotle’s lyceum anyway. Aristotle’s School of Philosophy had a gymnasium. Who knew that the word gymnasium meant ‘naked’ and that men did all of those events in the nude? And why would a philosopher want a gymnasium on the school grounds? That wasn’t usual. But then I saw Vi in dreamy reverie while looking at the little piles of stone ruins and realized that just the idea of buff naked men could put someone deep into thought. I wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth and we moved on.

We had to go to the airport at 7pm. So long, Greece and see you in Marrakech, Morocco! Time to cue up Crosby, Stills, and Nash on your playlist for the few people who know the song.

April 25 – sorry, thought this posted days ago

How can any day follow Petra and the Dead Sea?

When we woke up and looked out the hotel window we could see Jericho across the Dead Sea. Vi started the day with a memorable quote, “I’ll be ready as soon as I’m done blow drying my socks.” Vi also picked up a tip on drying clothes from another traveler. After wringing it dry, wrap it in a towel and roll it up and stomp on it.

I’ve discovered a new medical ailment I call Hypertravel Disorientation, HD for short. This is the phenomenon of waking up in the morning and having no idea where you are, which side of the bed to get out of, whether the bathroom is to the left or right or straight ahead. This must happen to rock stars on tour, and maybe those hard-working folks who make a living off of their promiscuity. HD isn’t a joke, one traveler got a good shin bruise from forgetting there was a bench at the foot of the bed, another walked into a wall and whacked his forehead.

Part of this high speed travel is that my circadian rhythm is as broken as my sense of musical rhythm. My pineal gland has thrown in the towel. Sleep is when there is a bed around, my body has given up on any sense of actually trying to overlap fatigue and sleep. Finally, I understand what it is like to be Vi, who has the amazing ability to sleep on command and never once has suffered jet lag.

We traveled up to Mt. Nebo, where Moses was buried. We snapped photos of highly detailed mosaics in a church up there. Nowadays people spend years clacking away at computers, but don’t have anything to show for it, whereas centuries ago people worked their fingers to the bone and created art that lasted for the ages. I’m thinking this blog might spark a neo-Luddite revolution…

We went up to Jerash, the site of a large Roman ruin. Jordan is rich in history and the fact that the country and its antiquities survive while surrounded by countries hellbent on destruction is impressive.

Just when we started to figure this place out we learn we are leaving the next morning at 7:15am. Athens – switching from Roman ruins to Greek ones. And thank Zeus that we’re going from shawarmas to gyros. Globetrotting carnivores rejoice!

April 23

We woke up early for a 6:30am bus to Petra and find many of our group on the same bus. We are allowed to use Uber on this leg, but just not for the 3.5 hour drive to Petra. The bus leaves an hour late and we arrive around 11 am only to find more of our group arriving too. Petra is Jordan’s big attraction.

Indiana Jones fans eat your heart out – a secret city carved into stone walls along slot canyons. It’s almost as if the ancient Nabataeans knew the future would need a backdrop for a swashbuckling archeologist in search of the Holy Grail. A walk through a narrow sandstone canyon, like those in Utah, only heightens the sense of mystery and magic in a way that would fill JK Rowling with envy. Small horse carts pulling tourist couples at $50 a pop fly down the rocky path, leaving sightseers plastered to the wall. Their breakneck speed makes me wonder if a giant round boulder (not Golden) is rumbling down the canyon after them.

Not five minutes after we enter do we see a pair of bus mates leaving on such a cart. They raced in and snapped the iconic photo for a buttload of points and are now on to the next mission. Vi and I share our disbelief. This is one of the modern wonders of the world, and a dream come true to see. We aren’t going to squander our opportunity to soak it in for a higher score. The beauty of this adventure is that it is loaded with things to do, many of them things you might never otherwise do. But the competition also means time is points. I can tell our Ringmaster has struggled with how to control the balance between rushing and enjoying. It doesn’t help that this sort of trip might select for people that get a satisfaction, even true enjoyment, from checking off boxes on a list. Not that Vi would know anyone like that.

Back to Petra. We wish we could see it in all its grandeur when the carvings were crisp and the corners sharp. I’d love to experience the awe a horseback traveler must have felt when coming across an entire city carved into the sandstone. How long did it take to make these houses?

An American woman walked by wearing a tight blue tank top and shorts and a local worker dressed in the typical Muslim garb muttered something that I was able to interpret to mean “Holy Cannelloni, that’s a lot more skin than the eyeballs and ankles I’m use to.” I speak fluent catcall.

I will say this, if you are a woman and you are single, or divorced, or don’t feel as sexy as you used to, or maybe just don’t want to put any effort in finding a man, then Jordan is for you. Vi wasn’t wearing a wedding ring – her bare hand was essentially a flag-waving, trumpets blaring proclamation that hunting season was open. If she got a dollar for every proposition flung her way we wouldn’t need to win the global scavenger hunt, much less work again. She turned around and smacked me when she realized half the whistles were coming from me.

After Petra we hired a taxi to the Dead Sea. The only thing I knew about the Dead Sea was what I read in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not book when I was a kid: the water is so dense people don’t sink in it. That is the main reason the Italians gave it up. What would they want with a Sea where a body won’t sink? There aren’t any fishes to sleep with either.

Floating in the Dead Sea gives you the same buoyancy as balancing in the water with a kickboard under your butt (PG version for Emory) except no worry of falling off it. You can lay back with your head, both hands, and both feet out of the water and not sink. This is because the Dead Sea is so dense with salt that the water weighs more than humans per cubic meter. The high salinity also means that anywhere raw will sting, you are literally pouring salt in your wounds or your diaper rash.

Back to the density of water…if there was a place where Jesus walked on water this must be it.

“Hey, Jesus, what are you doing with those snowshoes on? You loco.”

Moments later.

“Whoa, dude, you are like walking on water.”

Getting out of the water leaves the slightly slick, somewhat slimy feeling of mineral oil on your skin. The water evaporates and you are left with a gummy salt caked to your swimsuit.

The beach comes equipped with a shower for immediate desalinization.

I feel sorry for the poor saps of history that journeyed across the barren land to finally find water and took that first gulp of this nearly poisonous brackish water.

One last bonus, the Dead Sea resides at the lowest place in Earth, over 400m below sea level. Hopefully the lowest point in our lives.

More adventuring tomorrow!

April 22

Our flight to Jordan from Abu Dhabi was uneventful. The rest of the evening, however…

Our first impression of the people of Jordan came from a taxi driver who said he accepted credit cards. His mission was to drive us to a local coffee shop/ bookstore so we could knock off a scavenge and get info. He started driving without knowing where we were going and handed me a phone to speak to someone who speaks English. We got about four blocks before we realized this relationship just wasn’t going to work out. It was him, not us. He started yelling at us and tried to say the taxi ride was $20 (should have been $2, at the most) and then refused to take credit card. We negotiated a lower price and then I figured karma would take care of the rest. I’m sure his toes turned green and fell off by now.

It was nice of our Ringmaster to take us from the upper crust Middle East to the blue collar workers – the latter seem far more real and relatable. This trip shows all sides of life in rapid succession like an alien anthropologist made a flip book of Earth culture for the Martian kindergarteners back home.

At the coffee shop we shared a lemon mint hookah. The smoke was so smooth it didn’t make either of us cough. It didn’t make us high either so we went back out to the streets to smoke some crack for 50 points. (I’m joking,mom. Relax.)

Then we went by a mosque and walked through a shopping district. How so many stores stay in business selling the same black burqas is a mystery.

What do you think women want to wear this year?

Let’s go with black, it’s timeless.

For more points we had to eat some falafel. Twist my arm. This country knows how to make hummus more addictive than the aforementioned crack.

Lastly we had to go to a Turkish bath. I offered to sit this one out still scared from Olga the Killer Masseuse back in Vietnam. I am uneducated when it comes to the dark web of sadism, but appropriately fearful. When we arrived we learned that women aren’t allowed after sunset. Vi would have to wait outside while I go in, alone.

The main room was a domed cavelike structure with arches of brick and concrete. In the center was a large green hot tub, bubbling, but no one in it to cook. It appeared I was their only guest. It was hard to confirm as every side of the room had little alcoves or doors and the lighting emanating from hanging bronze lamps threw more shadows than photons. It didn’t escape me that the lamps were stellated dodecahedrons. If I were going to choose a religion based on geometry then it would be Muslim hands down. I’ll take a hexagonal tessellation mosaic over a bleeding Jesus painting every time.

They handed me a fruit flavored slushy in a plastic cup and sent me into a room so thick with steam I couldn’t see two feet. I sat down and closed my eyes because my contacts were melting. After a few minutes I learned that perspective is everything and I had World’s best Slurpee in my hand to prove it. I savored every shard of ice, sweating them out faster than I was drinking them.

Then came a quick shower before I was brought into another alcove with a single stone slab like the top of a sarcophagus. A young shirtless man instructed me to sit on it. He removed a new white cloth from a bag and slipped his hand into it and dunked it into a stone tub of soapy water. Remember the car washing mitt fad?

The mitt was not a sponge but rather a low grade sandpaper, not even 60. If God wanted to wipe the Rocky Mountains off Earth in one swipe, this would have been the sandpaper of choice. He scrubbed at my arms while I screamed “No, Olga, no.”

He assured me he was only going to take off the outer 1/8 inch. After my arms came my legs, back, and belly. Silver lining: at least I didn’t have an outie belly button.

Then into the hot tub to soothe my raw, freshly-peeled-blister skin.

Last stop, massage. This guy was into massaging muscles and not bones so it was a lot more tolerable. I was relaxed enough that when he massaged my forearms my fingers danced like I was playing an invisible piano.

A final shower and I exited to find Vivian has made friends with the owner of the establishment. We sat with him for snacks and asked him questions about Jordan. His generosity and friendliness erased our rough start. He even insisted on driving us back to the hotel and invited us to his house for dinner later in the week. His kindness didn’t earn us any scavenge points but we felt like we scored.