Travel&Vacation

What better time to resurrect the Hot Topic – on a steamy August day. A time when we might think of just getting away somewhere else – somewhere with a large pool, hard-bodied cabana boys, (or girls) and a frosty umbrella drink. So, to that end, this Hot Topic is devoted to the concept of travel and getting away either to escape the heat, the cold, or to start a new adventure. And one of our own dear Mondo-ites is doing just that – Sir Mathew Brewster and his lovely wife will leave for China within the week.

We know that mainland China is not a wasteland, and that Sir Mat will have electricity AND Internet access – but how much and how often remains to be seen. So, we are giving him farewells and the like while we ponder the concept of hitting the road.

Godspeed, Brewsters.

Mary (AKA Sir Mary or just The Gurl)

Nearly 20 years ago I got married. (And still am married, which is a funny thing). Now, my martial bliss/woe is wholly separate story, but the honeymoon was special because it was my first time traveling anywhere outside of New England. We were headed not only to exotic Florida (don’t laugh), but would also embark on a four-night cruise to the Bahamas.

Heady stuff.

The day after our wedding we arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport. I had been there a couple of times, but had never flown on a plane. I was so freakin’ excited I can’t even tell you. I swear I was like a little kid. My husband, who had caught a cold on the wedding day, was feeling pretty draggy. But there I was practically running through the airport in my excitement.

And there was our first married fight. Not fight exactly, just harsh words.

“Slow down! There’s no rush.”

“Oh, sorry.” And I’d slow down. For about a minute. I’d just look around me and nearly squeal with the thrill of the impending trip. And pretty soon my little feet were on the run again.

“Slow DOWN! I FEEL LIKE CRAP!”

And then came the tears. Mine, not his. But overall it was a fantastic trip. We met another couple from Long Island, NY that remain dear friends to this day (although they are now divorced).

There's been quite a few great trips with him, and with our two sons, mostly to Disneyworld in Florida. But there’s been a couple times that were just plain (no pun intended) scary. The first time it was my husband that was traveling, and I was at home. His flight out was fine, without incident. Oh, I forgot to mention the day he left Massachusetts for this business trip was Sept 10, 2001. Yeah, his trip was to New Jersey, too. About a half hour from all the hellish action. I’ll tell you right out, this was one of the suckiest times we’d ever been through as a couple. I’ve written more extensively on this event, how his trip was supposed to be a short stint for disaster recovery testing, but turned into the actual recovery part. I didn’t mention the nightmares both me and my younger son had: his, of his dad crashing in a plane somewhere, and mine, of soldiers of unknown origin patrolling our street.

The second crappy travel event was on the heels of 9/11, I was headed to Sacramento, California for a MACS convention/seminar three weeks later. The flight out was fine, but my travel companion and I were pretty nervous. The fact that we were both martial artists was just a small comfort. Neither of us relished the idea of trying to fight potential terrorists. We certainly didn’t feel as brave as Todd Beamer and his crew. Anyway, we met our friends at the hotel and proceeded with the events of the weekend. Everything was going real well – until Sunday morning the seminar leaders interrupted our training to gather us together and announce that our military had just invaded Afghanistan.

Shortly afterward I was joined by the others in our group. We might cancel our flights and rent a van and drive back to the East Coast. We might do nothing. It was nerve wracking and I never wanted to be home with my family as much as I did that day. We ended up not changing any plans, salvaged the rest of the weekend including some hard training (nothing like some bad news to make you want to beat up your friends) and some hard tequila.

Mark Saleski

I'm not much for traveling. In fact, you could say that I hate it. It's my introversion run amok that keeps me from considering, much less enjoying, new and distant physical situations. No, I spend my time exploring the inner reaches of my gray matter through words and music. That's far enough.

So Sir Brewster is moving all the freaking way over to Shanghai, something I would never do. This is great news, as the Brewsters will get to expand their cultural horizons and I can benefit from the stories that will be sure to filter their way back across the Internet. That Mat may have to climb to the top of a telephone pole with his laptop and dial-up modem is no concern of mine.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I'd like to relate my one grand travel story.

Umm… except that I don't really have any.

Wait, how about the time I took a road trip through the mountains of New York State to audition a pair of speakers? Or, or…the time I drove all the way up to Bar Harbor and back (in a single day!) for a case of Bar Harbor Real Ale? No, wait…there was also the fourteen straight hours in the car from Haverhill, Massachusetts down to northern Kentucky to attend an audiophile get-together. That was a good one!

Ah, forget it. No matter what I come up with, it won't come close to Sir Brewster's future adventures. Good luck Mat, we'll miss you… even though we've never met you.

Josh Hathaway

All day long I've been repeating in my head, "In the land of China…" and going through the whole Forrest Gump carry-on in which Tom Hanks helps John Lennon write "Imagine." Maybe it's because I'm sitting behind a desk in Huntsville, Alabama and our own dear Sir Brewster is about to head out into the great unknown.

I've never taken off on a worldwide tour, but twice in my life I've packed a car and headed off across country with a few foolish dreams and a hope of finding myself in the rubble of someone else's backyard. Neither time yielded much more than a broken heart, a broken car, and a whole lot more debt on my credit cards.

The cynical bastard in me fears Sir Brewster will find that China is much like Sir Duke's description of Ireland in the very first BC Radio Podcast: a nondescript place overrun by the same box stores selling the same shit you can find anywhere. The closet poet, romantic, and dreamer in me hopes Sir Brewster and his ever-patient bride will find the meaning of life, the muse that sets the writing guts ablaze with brilliance and beauty, and memories that sear the brainspooge until it turns unnatural colors.

Maybe I wasn't meant for such ambitious things. When the final scores were tallied I wound up pretty much where I started, but in my resignation a chain of events unfurled that led me to TheWifeToWhomI'mMarried, a college degree, and a group of fabulous Sirs (and a gurl) who like to fling fucks and talk about Ryan Adams. My cup runneth over, and it was here all along. Maybe I just had to leave to find it.

May China impact you in some magnificent and meaningful way, Sir Brewster. May it lead you to what you've always wanted, what was missing, or to reassess what it is you've already got in a way that causes greater joy. If it turns out to be the latter, lie about it so you get a better story. It worked for James Frey, other than the part where the First Church of Oprah Winfrey put a fatah on his ass.

The Duke

In a dream I saw a gargantuan glass-tailed Chimera arise from out the waters of the Yangtze River, painting the airways with reels of fantastical Sino-Tibetan oration, holding atween its jaws the heads of a thousand folks shoved out their homes for to make way for another couple dozen running tracks or trampolines or swimming pools or whatever (Frenzied yelps -“Jesus Christ Almighty, we’ve got less than a year! Shift! Fuck your windowsill, y'hear, and your bastard conservatory!”) and clasping in electric hoof-hands two hundred and nineteen bloggers all writhing in ropes of state-enforced silence.

From the window of an apartment some nineteen miles away, a young man with the most sublime jawbone / eyes / torso / six-pack etc sits clickity-clacking on a laptop, looking up now and then for to note the texture of the fire careering out the arse of yon colossus in the distance, flicking through a phrasebook lain open on his knee for to decipher this or that terrible pronouncement.

Spying this from my position top the Hilton Hotel in Belfast, some 8174 kilometres to the right, I let loose a cheekful of whistle at the breeze all scuttling past.

“Breeze!” says I, “Would you carry for me a message to yonder fella in thon apartment in China?”

“What is it?”

“Just tell him for me to keep makin’ those notes and keep the hell out of the way of that Chimera and also take photographs of the cities and the alleys and the forests and the mountains and the wee men stood reading papers in the parks and the wee women stood arranging daffodils or marigolds on their doorsteps, and for the love of dear God Sir Brewster take care of yourself and tell us all how you’re doin’ every chance you get and know that we’re all thinkin’ of you in your travels and out our minds with anticipation for the tales you’ll tell when you get back.”

The breeze gives a ghost of a nod, makes off then o’er the Lough en route to the ocean. Watching it go, I’m thinking – I’d very much like to take myself off that direction too, one of these days, on the coat-tails of that breeze. To the Wisconsin I have in my head, maybe, that’s all bollock-high snows and whiskey-cragged-faces and women with cattle-prods throwing rocks at passing trains and men chasing Jesus up and down the long-tilled fields. Or maybe to the Rural South I been crackin’ ones off over since I first heard Jimmy Rodgers singing about "Oh Merciful Mother o' Fuck I've the wild time of it, so I have, with this auld TB" and all his other hits. The Rural South reeks of old wagon-wheels buried in dead men's heads and chewed-cud and dirt-roads and moonshine and madness and song. Where a man can crawl into a cave and find seething in the shadows the ghosts of all the folks he was and all the folks he’ll one day be. This kinda stuff.

One of these days. Aw but it’ll be the blinding time of it altogether, much like what Sir Brewster will find awaiting him far-side of that plane / train / automobile. Take care of yourself and Mrs Brewster there and keep notes, are my only requests. And also, bring me a wee stick of rock or a t-shirt, would you, or maybe a shut-down Starbucks out the Forbidden City if you find one in the markets.

El Bicho

As the only member of the Mondo family that has been to China, let me be the first to say goodbye forever to the Mat Brewster we all know because he is not coming back. Oh, sure, eventually there will be a man that returns to America that calls himself “Mat Brewster,” will take up the same space that Mat Brewster's body occupies now, and we will all recognize him, but it won’t be the same man who boards that plane eastward. There’s no way to spend any length of time in China and not be transformed for the better.

Not to scare you, Mat, but to help prepare you for your journey let me inform you that almost everything you now know is wrong: the rules of the road, the way you shop, when Monday Night Football is on. You will try different foods, different medicines, and different ideas and might even embrace them. You’ll learn that what our government told you about the Chinese people is wrong and you’ll teach them what their government told them about Americans is wrong. You are becoming an ambassador without having to pay off any politicians.

Leaving America you leave behind the notions about the importance of the individual, being number one, thinking you are singular and special. Here, you can isolate yourself pretty well from the world, keeping the ego gorged and bloated with delusions from a false sense of self-worth and distracted from your potential by a great many things.

Not to imply there won’t be moments of uniqueness on your trip. Many times you will be the tallest guy, the only white guy, the guy who doesn’t know what
people are saying. However, in China you are only one person out of 1.3 billion, a grain of sand on the beach, a tiny piece of the puzzle we call the cosmos. Your awareness of your place in the universe will be forever altered. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

It’s been a pleasure knowing you. Can’t wait to meet you.

Aaron Fleming

Author’s note: Sir Fleming has been swamped (or should I say "ticked") with other projects, but he managed to croak out the following sentiment:

And I agree, this Brewster-goes-to-China incident has really brought out the best in the Mondos, my eyes have suddenly turned to liquid at the thought of the tender words spoken by the poets of Mondo.