Bo Bigelow's Blog, page 13
February 14, 2014
Outlast
"Hi," the voice said, "I will be out of the office from December 20th to January 6th. Please leave a message after the tone, and I'll respond after I return."
Booo. It's February 10th. I am trying to get answers about Tess's weekly therapeutic swimming lessons. The fact that the person I'm calling hasn't changed her voicemail in some seven or eight weeks is not exactly reassuring.
Working the phone is part of my life now. Before moving to Maine, I worked for ten years as a litigator in New York City. Most of my cases were in the consumer protection field, specifically fraud claims. These cases mostly looked like this: a car dealership charged my client an extra $9,000, never disclosed the charge, and instead buried it in the sales documents, so we sued the dealer in order to get the nine grand back. In every single one of those cases, the dealers dug in their heels and refused to pay. Until, that is, it became clear that neither I nor my client were ever going to go away. Accordingly, I used to work the phones, sometimes calling every day until I got what I wanted.
That job trained me for this one.
So now, when our insurance company abruptly stops paying for my daughter Tess's physical therapy, I pick up the phone. By this point, I've called so often that I know the customer service rep's name, email address, and extension. Let's call him Dave (not his real name.) During every phone call, I type notes of what Dave says and what I say. When the call ends, I email myself those notes, and just like that I have a searchable journal, for use in future calls.
Dave doesn't take notes about me or Tess. I know this because he begins every call with me by reading from a script, telling me how we need to meet certain deductibles with respect to Tess (we've already met them, as I explained to him in a call a few months earlier.) The company puts up roadblocks. As many as they can. They want me to get tired and give up, so they don't have to pay. So that I'll just eat the cost.
But I am not tired. Not even close. With my notes, in under a minute I can breeze through every roadblock in Dave's company script: "This service is definitely covered by our policy, your company has eventually paid it every time, we've met our deductible for the year, the provider is in-network, and when this has happened before, in March, June and October 2011, March and July 2012, and August 2013, you've assured me that you would pay my daughter's PT and make sure this doesn't happen again." And Dave pays.
PT is only one of the services that Tess gets. There are lots. She doesn't have one or two medical visits in a year, she has twenty or thirty. The complexity multiplies exponentially, especially when each visit could result in a no-pay or other glitch that I have to then sort out myself.
Once, in a different no-pay situation, Dave tried to leave me on the hook for thousands of dollars of testing that Tess had undergone. "I can't put it through," he told me, "because I haven't gotten the right paperwork from her doctor." Hmmm. I had just gotten off the phone with that doctor's office, and they had assured me that they had sent the paperwork to Dave weeks earlier. "No problem," I told Dave. "There's obviously some confusion on this, so let's just conference that doctor's office in, should we?" Dave really doesn't like when I do this. He protests every time. But you know what, Dave? You need to make this happen today. And the best way I can force you to do that is by getting everyone on the same page right here and now. And lo and behold, Dave realizes that yes, he does have the right paperwork after all. And Dave pays.
I'm not looking for handouts. I just want what Tess is entitled to, and what our insurer agreed to provide. That's all.
I hear back from the woman who went away for the holidays and didn't change her voicemail. Apparently swimming has not been on Tess's education plan since May of last year. The lessons are crucial for Tess and a lot of other kids with disabilities; she has low muscle tone and hip dysplasia. But if swimming's not listed on her plan, then it won't get paid for. So the pool provided weekly lessons to Tess from June 2013 until January 2014, and kept billing Child Development Services and not getting paid, and no one told me this until now. If this was New York, lemme tell ya, my phone would have been ringing like crazy all those months. But even now, the pool seems pretty lackadaisical about collecting the cost of all those lessons. Don't they care? I don't get it.
Then there's the stroller guy. As Tess got heavier and still wasn't walking, we ordered her an adaptive stroller--think wheelchair, but with more padding, and able to recline. A few weeks after we got it, a piece broke off while it sat the back of my car as I was driving. As a result, there was a jagged plastic edge on the chair, right next to Tess's hand. Not exactly safe. I still had the card of the guy who worked for the manufacturer, so I called him. We met, he looked at the stroller, he gave me some tips about how to pack it into the car, and then he ordered a new part to replace the broken one. "Shouldn't take that long," he said. "You'll hear from me in a few weeks." When two months went by without a word, I called him again and left a voicemail. "Sorry," he said in his sheepish reply voicemail. "I didn't actually order the part you needed, but I'm definitely ordering that for you today. Shouldn't take that long." I mean, come on! In the meantime, should I just push Tess around in the broken stroller and wait for her to cut her hand on the edge? And what if I hadn't called? Would he never have ordered the part? Does the stroller guy have some kind of system in place, other than writing stuff down on the bottom of his shoe?
I called the stroller guy again today and left a message. He'll get back to me. I'll make sure of it.
I am not tired, stroller guy. I am just getting started. I will outlast you.
Booo. It's February 10th. I am trying to get answers about Tess's weekly therapeutic swimming lessons. The fact that the person I'm calling hasn't changed her voicemail in some seven or eight weeks is not exactly reassuring.
Working the phone is part of my life now. Before moving to Maine, I worked for ten years as a litigator in New York City. Most of my cases were in the consumer protection field, specifically fraud claims. These cases mostly looked like this: a car dealership charged my client an extra $9,000, never disclosed the charge, and instead buried it in the sales documents, so we sued the dealer in order to get the nine grand back. In every single one of those cases, the dealers dug in their heels and refused to pay. Until, that is, it became clear that neither I nor my client were ever going to go away. Accordingly, I used to work the phones, sometimes calling every day until I got what I wanted.
That job trained me for this one.
So now, when our insurance company abruptly stops paying for my daughter Tess's physical therapy, I pick up the phone. By this point, I've called so often that I know the customer service rep's name, email address, and extension. Let's call him Dave (not his real name.) During every phone call, I type notes of what Dave says and what I say. When the call ends, I email myself those notes, and just like that I have a searchable journal, for use in future calls.
Dave doesn't take notes about me or Tess. I know this because he begins every call with me by reading from a script, telling me how we need to meet certain deductibles with respect to Tess (we've already met them, as I explained to him in a call a few months earlier.) The company puts up roadblocks. As many as they can. They want me to get tired and give up, so they don't have to pay. So that I'll just eat the cost.
But I am not tired. Not even close. With my notes, in under a minute I can breeze through every roadblock in Dave's company script: "This service is definitely covered by our policy, your company has eventually paid it every time, we've met our deductible for the year, the provider is in-network, and when this has happened before, in March, June and October 2011, March and July 2012, and August 2013, you've assured me that you would pay my daughter's PT and make sure this doesn't happen again." And Dave pays.
PT is only one of the services that Tess gets. There are lots. She doesn't have one or two medical visits in a year, she has twenty or thirty. The complexity multiplies exponentially, especially when each visit could result in a no-pay or other glitch that I have to then sort out myself.
Once, in a different no-pay situation, Dave tried to leave me on the hook for thousands of dollars of testing that Tess had undergone. "I can't put it through," he told me, "because I haven't gotten the right paperwork from her doctor." Hmmm. I had just gotten off the phone with that doctor's office, and they had assured me that they had sent the paperwork to Dave weeks earlier. "No problem," I told Dave. "There's obviously some confusion on this, so let's just conference that doctor's office in, should we?" Dave really doesn't like when I do this. He protests every time. But you know what, Dave? You need to make this happen today. And the best way I can force you to do that is by getting everyone on the same page right here and now. And lo and behold, Dave realizes that yes, he does have the right paperwork after all. And Dave pays.
I'm not looking for handouts. I just want what Tess is entitled to, and what our insurer agreed to provide. That's all.
I hear back from the woman who went away for the holidays and didn't change her voicemail. Apparently swimming has not been on Tess's education plan since May of last year. The lessons are crucial for Tess and a lot of other kids with disabilities; she has low muscle tone and hip dysplasia. But if swimming's not listed on her plan, then it won't get paid for. So the pool provided weekly lessons to Tess from June 2013 until January 2014, and kept billing Child Development Services and not getting paid, and no one told me this until now. If this was New York, lemme tell ya, my phone would have been ringing like crazy all those months. But even now, the pool seems pretty lackadaisical about collecting the cost of all those lessons. Don't they care? I don't get it.
Then there's the stroller guy. As Tess got heavier and still wasn't walking, we ordered her an adaptive stroller--think wheelchair, but with more padding, and able to recline. A few weeks after we got it, a piece broke off while it sat the back of my car as I was driving. As a result, there was a jagged plastic edge on the chair, right next to Tess's hand. Not exactly safe. I still had the card of the guy who worked for the manufacturer, so I called him. We met, he looked at the stroller, he gave me some tips about how to pack it into the car, and then he ordered a new part to replace the broken one. "Shouldn't take that long," he said. "You'll hear from me in a few weeks." When two months went by without a word, I called him again and left a voicemail. "Sorry," he said in his sheepish reply voicemail. "I didn't actually order the part you needed, but I'm definitely ordering that for you today. Shouldn't take that long." I mean, come on! In the meantime, should I just push Tess around in the broken stroller and wait for her to cut her hand on the edge? And what if I hadn't called? Would he never have ordered the part? Does the stroller guy have some kind of system in place, other than writing stuff down on the bottom of his shoe?
I called the stroller guy again today and left a message. He'll get back to me. I'll make sure of it.
I am not tired, stroller guy. I am just getting started. I will outlast you.
February 13, 2014
Totem Poles
The laws of nature are different in a car, on a trip. If coffee can spill, it will. If the spill can be in your lap, it will be. Without question, there are travel gods, and sometimes they can't be appeased.
Today I took Tess to Boston Children's Hospital for a doctor's appointment. I hadn't realized that New Hampshire had changed its state motto to "We Only Pass on the Right." Evidently it narrowly beat out another suggested motto: "Always in Your Blind Spot."
On Route 1, just outside Boston, I surprised all the drivers around me, flipping a lever on my steering column and baffling them with a blinking yellow external light, which I used to indicate that I was changing lanes.
In the car, I kept thinking of the weird malady I've developed over the past year, the one that has tightened my upper body, from my neck all the way down to my fingers. It makes me weak. There's some numbness. I can't hold onto things. It's infuriating. I've consulted a chiropractor, three massage therapists, and a physical therapist in order to get to the bottom of it. The problem has features of carpal tunnel, but could be thoracic outlet syndrome. The latest advice I've gotten is: "Open up." I tend to instinctively curl down and inward like a potato bug, and I need to focus on doing the opposite--spreading my arms, pulling my shoulders back, and stretching my pecs. Driving is, of course, the enemy of opening up. So is holding Tess, who doesn't walk and now weighs nearly 40 pounds.
The car's GPS had me arriving at the hospital parking garage at 10:51, making us late for Tess's appointment. At one point, I ignored the GPS directions and took a different way, and the arrival time changed to 10:39. Why didn't the GPS recommend the quicker way to begin with?
Before long, Tess began yelling from the backseat. She likes to do that when she hears nearby voices, like when I'm on the phone or trying to listen to a podcast. I gave her a snack and her yelling continued, at the same volume. So I resorted to my repeater track. See, I choose one simple tune--usually electronic, no vocals, slow beat or none at all, tons of synthesizers--and then put that song on repeat for approximately one month. In the car? The song is on. Making dinner? The song is on. Doing dishes? Yep, the song is on, from morning to night. Until I get sick of it, anyway. Previous repeater tracks have included:
- "Old Pirate," by Velours Perfect- "A Walk," by Tycho- "Snowflake," by Trentemoller- "Treefingers," by Radiohead
These days my repeater track of choice is "Rapture at Sea," by Eastern Sun and John Kelley. It had the desired effect, and Tess chilled out slightly. So did I.
The hospital parking garage was almost completely full, so we were forced to park on the roof. I had a handicapped placard, but all of the handicapped spots were taken. There are only 15 of them in the entire garage. Why should there be more? It's not a hospital or anything.
Tess didn't cooperate as I carried her from the garage roof down to her appointment. She kept arching her back and wanting to get down. When we arrived at the office I was sweating. Eventually we saw her doctor. A few weeks ago she had surgery on her hips and then developed a post-op infection on both sides, but by today they had both cleared up, thanks to antibiotics. Her doctor gave her a clean bill of health and said we wouldn't have to come back for six months.
We zipped out of town. After three Boston trips in three weeks, I was jubilant to be going home. As always, to get out of Boston I took Route 1. I usually encounter bad behavior on that road, and come close to having accidents. But I never fail to think about the road and what is around it.
The part of Route 1 that I drive stretches approximately 16 miles, from the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (over the Charles River), across the Tobin Bridge (over the Mystic River), all the way north, to where it connects with Interstate 95.
After the Tobin Bridge, signs crop up for the cities of Chelsea, Revere, and Malden. In Revere there's a beautiful salt marsh reservation visible from the road, but most of the landscape is dominated by a mix of fast-food places, tanning salons, and auto shops. Finally, however, the road straightens. Not long before I-95, the road passes through the city of Saugus.
It is Saugus that fascinates me the most, because of three ludicrously large restaurants: Kowloon Restaurant, Hilltop Steak House, and a Chinese pagoda-style restaurant known as Weylu's. I have never been to any of them.
Kowloon is a Tiki shrine, a Polynesian behemoth. I know it's a restaurant and cocktail lounge, but its roof is so wide and so tall that I imagine a fleet of ten or twelve cargo jets parked inside. Under the roof's peak is a cartoonish red logo that makes me think of a Disneyland ride. It has 1,200 seats inside, and is open 365 days a year, 7 days a week. I want to go inside and order eight kinds of Asian food. I want to eat sixty shrimp. I want to drink rum drinks out of a gigantic, bejeweled horse trough. Something tells me I can.
Down the road is Hilltop Steak House, marked by a giant neon cactus nearly 60 feet tall. A sign on the cactus bears the name of the restaurant's creator, Frank Giuffrida, in ornate cursive. The cactus is a throwback, a relic. It reminds me of Las Vegas, but the Rat Pack and the Sands, not the new strip. Like Kowloon, it's open 24/7/365. They say on a typical Saturday it serves almost 8,000 meals.
At a bend in Route 1, on a gentle slope, is Weylu's. It has been closed for years, but its gates and pagoda are still standing. It is modeled on the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace. It is 51,000 square feet, slightly larger than a football field.
I can't say why I love these three places. I haven't even been inside any of them. The food might be terrible, for all I know. They are excessive and opulent. Even the shuttered Weylu's, long seen by some as a white elephant, has just been bought and will reopen soon; it's literally too big to fail.
It was Saugus where Tess and I stopped for a diaper change, with a split-second turn into a Dunkin' Donuts. My deceleration was like a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. We were practically within sight of Hilltop's giant cactus when I climbed into the backseat to get her. As I unbuckled her from the carseat, I accidentally kneeled on and burst open a leftover coffee creamer, which, though small, contained a staggering amount of liquid. The F word was said, multiple times.
While I changed her, she bucked and spread the diaper's contents everywhere. She found this quite amusing. I was glad I had put down a changing pad. When I picked her up, she spit out the toy in her mouth, and it rolled into the lot, not only under the car next to us, but under the car after that one. I was tight in the shoulders. I was the opposite of opened up. I put her in the carseat, grabbed the toy, drove through the drive-thru, and got a large coffee.
I turned off the music. I pulled through the DD lot and waited. At a break, I floored it back onto Route 1. Before long, the coffee had cooled enough to drink, and the caffeine coursed through me. I eased my shoulders back and began the process of opening up again.
I simultaneously cursed and thanked the travel gods, who are fickle but not heartless. In front of us was the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge and the Piscataqua River Bridge, beyond which lay the state of Maine. Behind us, the hospital, the pagodas, the tiki hut, and the cactus.
Today I took Tess to Boston Children's Hospital for a doctor's appointment. I hadn't realized that New Hampshire had changed its state motto to "We Only Pass on the Right." Evidently it narrowly beat out another suggested motto: "Always in Your Blind Spot."
On Route 1, just outside Boston, I surprised all the drivers around me, flipping a lever on my steering column and baffling them with a blinking yellow external light, which I used to indicate that I was changing lanes.
In the car, I kept thinking of the weird malady I've developed over the past year, the one that has tightened my upper body, from my neck all the way down to my fingers. It makes me weak. There's some numbness. I can't hold onto things. It's infuriating. I've consulted a chiropractor, three massage therapists, and a physical therapist in order to get to the bottom of it. The problem has features of carpal tunnel, but could be thoracic outlet syndrome. The latest advice I've gotten is: "Open up." I tend to instinctively curl down and inward like a potato bug, and I need to focus on doing the opposite--spreading my arms, pulling my shoulders back, and stretching my pecs. Driving is, of course, the enemy of opening up. So is holding Tess, who doesn't walk and now weighs nearly 40 pounds.
The car's GPS had me arriving at the hospital parking garage at 10:51, making us late for Tess's appointment. At one point, I ignored the GPS directions and took a different way, and the arrival time changed to 10:39. Why didn't the GPS recommend the quicker way to begin with?
Before long, Tess began yelling from the backseat. She likes to do that when she hears nearby voices, like when I'm on the phone or trying to listen to a podcast. I gave her a snack and her yelling continued, at the same volume. So I resorted to my repeater track. See, I choose one simple tune--usually electronic, no vocals, slow beat or none at all, tons of synthesizers--and then put that song on repeat for approximately one month. In the car? The song is on. Making dinner? The song is on. Doing dishes? Yep, the song is on, from morning to night. Until I get sick of it, anyway. Previous repeater tracks have included:
- "Old Pirate," by Velours Perfect- "A Walk," by Tycho- "Snowflake," by Trentemoller- "Treefingers," by Radiohead
These days my repeater track of choice is "Rapture at Sea," by Eastern Sun and John Kelley. It had the desired effect, and Tess chilled out slightly. So did I.
The hospital parking garage was almost completely full, so we were forced to park on the roof. I had a handicapped placard, but all of the handicapped spots were taken. There are only 15 of them in the entire garage. Why should there be more? It's not a hospital or anything.
Tess didn't cooperate as I carried her from the garage roof down to her appointment. She kept arching her back and wanting to get down. When we arrived at the office I was sweating. Eventually we saw her doctor. A few weeks ago she had surgery on her hips and then developed a post-op infection on both sides, but by today they had both cleared up, thanks to antibiotics. Her doctor gave her a clean bill of health and said we wouldn't have to come back for six months.
We zipped out of town. After three Boston trips in three weeks, I was jubilant to be going home. As always, to get out of Boston I took Route 1. I usually encounter bad behavior on that road, and come close to having accidents. But I never fail to think about the road and what is around it.
The part of Route 1 that I drive stretches approximately 16 miles, from the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (over the Charles River), across the Tobin Bridge (over the Mystic River), all the way north, to where it connects with Interstate 95.
After the Tobin Bridge, signs crop up for the cities of Chelsea, Revere, and Malden. In Revere there's a beautiful salt marsh reservation visible from the road, but most of the landscape is dominated by a mix of fast-food places, tanning salons, and auto shops. Finally, however, the road straightens. Not long before I-95, the road passes through the city of Saugus.
It is Saugus that fascinates me the most, because of three ludicrously large restaurants: Kowloon Restaurant, Hilltop Steak House, and a Chinese pagoda-style restaurant known as Weylu's. I have never been to any of them.
Kowloon is a Tiki shrine, a Polynesian behemoth. I know it's a restaurant and cocktail lounge, but its roof is so wide and so tall that I imagine a fleet of ten or twelve cargo jets parked inside. Under the roof's peak is a cartoonish red logo that makes me think of a Disneyland ride. It has 1,200 seats inside, and is open 365 days a year, 7 days a week. I want to go inside and order eight kinds of Asian food. I want to eat sixty shrimp. I want to drink rum drinks out of a gigantic, bejeweled horse trough. Something tells me I can.
Down the road is Hilltop Steak House, marked by a giant neon cactus nearly 60 feet tall. A sign on the cactus bears the name of the restaurant's creator, Frank Giuffrida, in ornate cursive. The cactus is a throwback, a relic. It reminds me of Las Vegas, but the Rat Pack and the Sands, not the new strip. Like Kowloon, it's open 24/7/365. They say on a typical Saturday it serves almost 8,000 meals.
At a bend in Route 1, on a gentle slope, is Weylu's. It has been closed for years, but its gates and pagoda are still standing. It is modeled on the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace. It is 51,000 square feet, slightly larger than a football field.
I can't say why I love these three places. I haven't even been inside any of them. The food might be terrible, for all I know. They are excessive and opulent. Even the shuttered Weylu's, long seen by some as a white elephant, has just been bought and will reopen soon; it's literally too big to fail. It was Saugus where Tess and I stopped for a diaper change, with a split-second turn into a Dunkin' Donuts. My deceleration was like a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. We were practically within sight of Hilltop's giant cactus when I climbed into the backseat to get her. As I unbuckled her from the carseat, I accidentally kneeled on and burst open a leftover coffee creamer, which, though small, contained a staggering amount of liquid. The F word was said, multiple times.
While I changed her, she bucked and spread the diaper's contents everywhere. She found this quite amusing. I was glad I had put down a changing pad. When I picked her up, she spit out the toy in her mouth, and it rolled into the lot, not only under the car next to us, but under the car after that one. I was tight in the shoulders. I was the opposite of opened up. I put her in the carseat, grabbed the toy, drove through the drive-thru, and got a large coffee.
I turned off the music. I pulled through the DD lot and waited. At a break, I floored it back onto Route 1. Before long, the coffee had cooled enough to drink, and the caffeine coursed through me. I eased my shoulders back and began the process of opening up again.
I simultaneously cursed and thanked the travel gods, who are fickle but not heartless. In front of us was the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge and the Piscataqua River Bridge, beyond which lay the state of Maine. Behind us, the hospital, the pagodas, the tiki hut, and the cactus.
July 19, 2013
3 Ways to Get Your Summer Mojo Back as a Parent
My latest post on Playground Dad: http://bit.ly/1ap2vA8
November 22, 2012
Turkey, Travel, and the Trilogy
It's 1980. I'm 6. The phone rings. I have no idea how much this call is going to suck. My post on @playgrounddad: http://bit.ly/UUSrVz
November 18, 2012
What if you could record another person's memories, and then play them back?
It starts today - page one of my graphic novel webcomic, The Loop, about a man and a machine that can record people's memories. http://bit.ly/QlzdNe
November 13, 2012
The 3-Step Workout for Dads
Is it just me, or is this time of a year an energy-sucking black hole of errands and insanity? Well, I'm here to help. Here's my latest post on Playground Dad: http://bit.ly/RUUPwK
September 26, 2012
Formatting: a special kind of hell.
Content freedom, fury about formatting, and print-on-demand: I told this book club about my publishing process. http://bit.ly/UUZOiW
September 25, 2012
Mark Your Calendar for My Reading Next March -- Local Author Series, Portland, ME
Hey, mark your calendars, folks: I'll be reading from CONCESSIONS at the Portland Public Library on 3/15/13 at noon, as part of their local author series. (That's Portland, Maine.)
September 19, 2012
The Worst Kind of Villain
I spoke at a book club recently, about which villains are the most evil. http://bit.ly/SAY2ir
September 12, 2012
George
In October 2002, my girlfriend and I traveled by car to Ai-Ais, a hot springs resort in Namibia. She drove. The stop at the hot springs was midway through a long trek, beginning in Cape Town, South Africa, up to Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, and back to Cape Town. Over the two-week trip, there were multiple days of driving for 14 hours straight. I couldn't tell you how many total miles or kilometers we drove; if you try to look up driving directions from Cape Town to Etosha, Google Maps doesn't know what the hell to do.
Now, nearly ten years later, the woman I traveled with is my wife. We refer often to that trip. The place we mention more than any other is Ai-Ais.
We don't call it Ai-Ais, though. That's mostly because we had no clue how to pronounce it when we went there. Was it "aye-ayes," like the plural of a first mate's affirmative? Or was it "eye-ice"? (Turns out it's the latter.) We'd found it in a guidebook, located it on a map over several beers while still near Cape Town, and resolved to do whatever it took to get there on our way to Etosha. Not knowing what to call it, we called it George.
The name Ai-Ais is from the Nama language and means "burning water." I believe, however, that those Nama words have a second, lesser-known meaning, which is, "Enjoy the hot springs all you like, but we don't sell any food here, so you'll have to scrounge whatever you can from under the seats of your car." Despite calling itself a "resort," Ai-Ais offered nothing to eat, nor did it have a grocery store or so much as a cafe. In fact, we hadn't seen any food at all since entering Namibia 75 miles and two hours earlier. If you try to look up "Middle of Nowhere," there'll be a picture of us, in a purple Honda Jazz, under the vast Namibian sky. The roads we'd traveled from Namibia's border with South Africa weren't so much dirt as rock, made up of fist-sized rocks that I was sure would destroy our tiny purple Jazz. We saw nary another car, person, gas station, or even any animals.
Nor could we ask anyone where to buy food. Almost no one we met spoke English. The South Africa-Namibia border guard, for example, knew virtually no English words. Nevertheless, when he saw my passport, he laughed an echoing, full-teeth laugh. "Bigalow?" he cried. "Deuce Bigalow? Haha!" The movie "Deuce Bigalow" had come out in 1999, and everyone on the planet--including border guards in Namibia--had seen it, found it hilarious, and associated it with me, even though I spell my name differently. That Rob Schneider! Curse his oily hide!
I cannot stress enough how extremely hungry we were during this phase of the trip. In our house, the phrase "Fish River Canyon" has become an adjective, signifying a state of hunger that not only renders impossible any physical activity, speech, or simple decision-making, but goes well beyond that, making you hopeless and sort of wanting to die. It's a dangerous condition. And we were in precisely that condition ten years ago, gazing into nearby Fish River Canyon, which is bigger than the Grand Canyon. If you try to look up "Fish River Canyon," I'm sure you'll find inspiring pictures, with majestic plateaus and buttes and so forth. But my wife and I confessed to each other hours later that we'd been so hungry looking down into the canyon that the only thing we kept thinking of was hurling ourselves into it.
Thus, immediately upon our arrival in Ai-Ais and discovery that it was foodless, the meal of George was born. It signifies an impromptu meal, derived from whatever happens to be around at the time. But to be clear: it is not simply leftovers.
There are two simple rules of George:
Rule 1: Silverware and dishes are optional but discouraged. Eat with fingers, on a napkin. It honestly makes the food taste better somehow.
Rule 2: No cooking, by any heat source, including microwaves. It's a series of small bites, really, and they're one hundred percent raw: bread, cheese, some dried meat if you have it--we had some biltong, which is basically African beef jerky--and it's also good to have a bit of fruit. As I recall, we managed to unearth some softened clementines and a passion fruit from the bottom of a backpack. You can improve your George experience by enjoying it on a table, rather than on the bedspread of a hotel room.
If you try to look up George, you'll find nothing about the impromptu meal. But I'm hoping it'll catch on.
Now, nearly ten years later, the woman I traveled with is my wife. We refer often to that trip. The place we mention more than any other is Ai-Ais.
We don't call it Ai-Ais, though. That's mostly because we had no clue how to pronounce it when we went there. Was it "aye-ayes," like the plural of a first mate's affirmative? Or was it "eye-ice"? (Turns out it's the latter.) We'd found it in a guidebook, located it on a map over several beers while still near Cape Town, and resolved to do whatever it took to get there on our way to Etosha. Not knowing what to call it, we called it George.
The name Ai-Ais is from the Nama language and means "burning water." I believe, however, that those Nama words have a second, lesser-known meaning, which is, "Enjoy the hot springs all you like, but we don't sell any food here, so you'll have to scrounge whatever you can from under the seats of your car." Despite calling itself a "resort," Ai-Ais offered nothing to eat, nor did it have a grocery store or so much as a cafe. In fact, we hadn't seen any food at all since entering Namibia 75 miles and two hours earlier. If you try to look up "Middle of Nowhere," there'll be a picture of us, in a purple Honda Jazz, under the vast Namibian sky. The roads we'd traveled from Namibia's border with South Africa weren't so much dirt as rock, made up of fist-sized rocks that I was sure would destroy our tiny purple Jazz. We saw nary another car, person, gas station, or even any animals.
Nor could we ask anyone where to buy food. Almost no one we met spoke English. The South Africa-Namibia border guard, for example, knew virtually no English words. Nevertheless, when he saw my passport, he laughed an echoing, full-teeth laugh. "Bigalow?" he cried. "Deuce Bigalow? Haha!" The movie "Deuce Bigalow" had come out in 1999, and everyone on the planet--including border guards in Namibia--had seen it, found it hilarious, and associated it with me, even though I spell my name differently. That Rob Schneider! Curse his oily hide!
I cannot stress enough how extremely hungry we were during this phase of the trip. In our house, the phrase "Fish River Canyon" has become an adjective, signifying a state of hunger that not only renders impossible any physical activity, speech, or simple decision-making, but goes well beyond that, making you hopeless and sort of wanting to die. It's a dangerous condition. And we were in precisely that condition ten years ago, gazing into nearby Fish River Canyon, which is bigger than the Grand Canyon. If you try to look up "Fish River Canyon," I'm sure you'll find inspiring pictures, with majestic plateaus and buttes and so forth. But my wife and I confessed to each other hours later that we'd been so hungry looking down into the canyon that the only thing we kept thinking of was hurling ourselves into it.
Thus, immediately upon our arrival in Ai-Ais and discovery that it was foodless, the meal of George was born. It signifies an impromptu meal, derived from whatever happens to be around at the time. But to be clear: it is not simply leftovers.
There are two simple rules of George:
Rule 1: Silverware and dishes are optional but discouraged. Eat with fingers, on a napkin. It honestly makes the food taste better somehow.
Rule 2: No cooking, by any heat source, including microwaves. It's a series of small bites, really, and they're one hundred percent raw: bread, cheese, some dried meat if you have it--we had some biltong, which is basically African beef jerky--and it's also good to have a bit of fruit. As I recall, we managed to unearth some softened clementines and a passion fruit from the bottom of a backpack. You can improve your George experience by enjoying it on a table, rather than on the bedspread of a hotel room.
If you try to look up George, you'll find nothing about the impromptu meal. But I'm hoping it'll catch on.
