Travel | Kelsey Timmerman

How to travel the world with your iPhone and not pay $11K in charges

By Kelsey

Yes, that is an iPhone in my pocket, but I’m also glad to see you.

No matter where I go in the world these days, my iPhone goes with me. My iPhone is my alarm, recorder, video camera, camera, calendar, notes, currency converter, translator, texting device, map, and, yes, sometimes even my phone.

I’ve recorded audio with it that has aired on NPR and taken photos that have appeared in shiny magazines. I know it’s not the optimal tool for any one of these things, but it’s the Swiss Army knife of my storytelling/traveling gadgets.

(This is why when a friend asked me if I would buy another iPhone after the recent Foxconn revelations, I told them YES.)

But if you step off the plane in Timbuktu and don’t prep your iPhone ahead of time and it starts downloading all of your emails, voicemails, and facebook notifications, your data roaming charges could equal hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Heck, Adam Savage, the guy with the goatee on MythBusters, simply traveled to the faraway nation of Canada for a few hours and got hit with $11,000 of charges!

Here’s what you need to do to prepare your iPhone to travel the world:

1) Turn off data roaming: select Settings > General > Network > toggle “Data Roaming” to Off

You can still make and receive phone calls, but you’ll want to check with your carrier about the cost of answering the phone when grandma calls. Sorry, grandma, I’m ignoring your call, it’s like $4/minute in Kenya!

AT&T international rates

Note: If you have an iPhone 4s on Verizon or Sprint you may be able to buy a local SIM card wherever you are and not have the expense of international roaming. Since I have AT&T my phone isn’t unlocked so I travel with a cheap unlocked phone that I buy local SIM cards for wherever I go.

2) Turn off your email: select Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > toggle off “Fetch New Data”

3) Turn on International roaming: Initially an AT&T iPhone is locked from all international roaming. In order turn it on call 1-800-331-0500 if in the United States and +1-916-843-4685 if outside the United States

4) Check for international text packages: With AT&T I pay $10 for 100 international texts/month. If I’m only going to be in a country for a few days, I don’t buy a SIM for my cheap unlocked phone, instead I just text my local contacts.

For more information about rates and traveling with your iPhone visit:

Traveling with iPhone4s on Verizon / Sprint International Service / Verizon International Service:

Next up: How to hack the iPhone map while traveling the world

Travel

In memory of George Whitman, legendary bookseller at Shakespeare & Co

By Kelsey

In 2001 I visited Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Yesterday the store’s legendary owner, George Whitman, died in his apartment above the shop. When I heard the news, I couldn’t help but think of what I had written about him after my visit:

The old man was nowhere in sight. I figured that when the clock struck noon he dissolved into a billion dust particles, coating many spines and pages, the star of the Twilight Zone episode that would be named the “Keeper of the Books.”

Here’s the full, perhaps a bit cliche, story about my 2001 visit.

The twin black towers of Notre Dame rang in the eleventh hour. The great brass voice gave life to the monstrous cathedral and called to mind the disfigured creature of fiction for which it would forever be linked. I crossed the street seeking sanctuary from the cold.

“You must be here for the Library?” The thin gray hair of the old man fluttered in the wintry breeze blowing across the Seine as he spoke with a strong English accent. He wore a neat bow tie and a dark gray suit. He unlocked the door to the bookstore with a steady hand.

“Hmmm…uhhh… I wanted to look at some books.”

“I’ll be open in twenty minutes. You can go upstairs until then for the…Library.”

I stepped through the worn wood and glass doors and shuffled between two shelves on wheels that further narrowed the entranceway.

“The stairs to the Library are in the back.” I followed his directions winding in and out of narrow aisles of books. Books bowed the shelves from floor to ceiling. The aisles were too narrow to allow bending over; to reach or browse books on the bottom shelves one would have to lay on their stomach and slither around. The top shelves required a ladder. One’s height determined what shelves were available for viewing. I could view shelves four thru eight without suffering any indignities; if I jumped I could glance at eight and if I slithered those below four.

Panic and claustrophobia began to set in and reddened my cheeks as the staircase eluded me among the chaos of the books. I spun around hoping to catch a glimpse of the stairs- nothing but books. The entire room was swollen with books. One more added and surely something – the floor, the walls – would have to give.

“Over here.” He put his bony hand on my shoulder and led me to a staircase camouflaged in books.

I walked up the flight of stairs to the Library. I took in a deep breath. The place reeked of dusty leather and pressed paper aged to a yellow hue. The smell of knowledge belittled me. I’m sure I was on the edge of some profound thought or revelation when I received two short pokes into the back of my shoulder.

I turned expecting to see the well-dressed clerk, instead, before me a man in pajamas stood barefoot with bed wrangled hair, and a face shaded in stubble. “What are you doing Hhhhhere?” The letter “H,” when pronounced, is a powerful cannon that launches the deadly chemical weapon halitosis. And Bed Head was well armed.

“Hmm…uhh…I’m looking at books.” I was surrounded by billions of words and I found myself unable to find any. “Uhh…the man down stairs…”

“There are still people waking up,” he said, cutting me off. “Shut the gate at the bottom of the stairs on your way out.” His demeanor was every bit as sharp and rotten as his breath.

Unwittingly I had stumbled upon a gem of literary history. In the early twenties a young Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce frequented the original Shakespeare and Company. The store was shutdown during WWI, when Paris fell to the Germans, after the shop owner, Sylvia Beach, refused to sell to a German officer. It was Hemingway in 1944, at the front lines of the Allied forces that remembered the bookstore and officially freed it from German control.

In the fifties George Whitman, my bow tie wearing friend, opened up the Shakespeare and Company from which I had been exiled. Completely unaffiliated with the original store, Whitman’s store soon took on the same charm as Beach’s. On the second floor of the shop he placed several beds, which aspiring writers could stay if they read a book a day, and put in a hour of work at the shop. George estimates that over 10,000 travelers have come to spend at least one night amid the dusty shelves, most notably Allen Ginsberg and Henry Miller.

I returned an hour later to find a completely different cast of characters haunting the shop. The old man was nowhere in sight. I figured that when the clock struck noon he dissolved into a billion dust particles, coating many spines and pages, the star of the Twilight Zone episode that would be named the “Keeper of the Books.”

I browsed for an hour and I was about to settle for Harry Potter when Victor Hugo grabbed my attention. On the cover of Notre-Dame of Paris was the cathedral and out the window of the bookstore was the same cathedral; it was surreal.

A young man reclined on a wooden desk chair. His long curly brown hair framed his smooth face. He was sporting a pair of glasses that must have increased his IQ by at least thirty points. He spoke with an intelligent English accent to a smartly dressed girl. She handed him a gift wrapped in newspaper. It was a bicycle pump. They laughed and used big words.

I waited patiently, unnoticed, to purchase my book. In a lull in the conversation I cleared my throat.

“Is that it for hhhuuueee?” I nodded and handed him the book. The glasses and the shave were new, but I recognized the breath. He looked at the title, shot a glance over to his friend, and chuckled to himself about my unoriginal purchase.

In the midst of stone-throwing snooty scholars and torch-carrying tormented writers I could have stayed, feigned a more handsome intellect by saying little and brooding a lot, but I felt intellectually ugly and unrefined in their company. There was no sanctuary for me among the books.

As I walked along the cold streets of Paris I felt a strong urge to stick my tongue on something metal, like any good outcast or buffoon. In the distance the Eiffel tower pierced the gray sky.

Travel

2 strangers, 6 years, and 1 moment

By Kelsey

Six years ago I met a worker outside of the Delta factory in Villanueva, Honduras, that changed my life. It wasn’t so much what he said or what happened when I met him, but all of the unanswered questions I had about his life and the life of other such workers around the world.

I met him shortly after I posed for the above photo in front of the factory he worked at in 2005. I’ve been in Honduras now for a week and the questions many of you who’ve read “Where Am I Wearing?” and/or heard me speak about Amilcar and all the other workers I met is, “Have you found Amilcar?”

Sort of.

What I can tell you right now is that I know that he didn’t remember me at first. It took some convincing. He doesn’tremember my name or much about me at all, but he does remember some crazy gringo showing up and giving him the shirt said crazy gringo was wearing.

I’ve always been ashamed that I gave him the shirt I was wearing and posed shirtless beside him. It’s something that I thought if I could go back I wouldn’t do. It aptly reflected the shallowness of my false start. But if it weren’t for the complete silliness of me giving him my T-shirt, he likely wouldn’t have remembered me at all and I wouldn’t have an amazing, AMAZING story to share with you in the near future.

What I find particularly interesting is that a moment that changed me was

barely even remembered by the person who I shared it with.

Have you ever had an experience that changed the course of your
life, but it left no impact on the lives of those whom you shared it with?

Here’s me six years later at the same factory.

Note in the 2nd photo that the Delta sign has been removed from the factory. I wonder if I had something to do with that?

Engaged Consumer, Travel

Big News: The Adventure Continues

By Kelsey

I’m on a flight to Dallas and I hope to God know one asks me about the book I’m reading. Why? Because of all the millions of books I could be reading, I’m reading the only one I wrote. Of course, maybe if I cover up the author photo, laugh really loud now and again, and pepper in a few hmmm’s of interest, it would be good marketing.

“You’ve just gotta read this book! This dude named Kelsey goes to all of the places his clothes were made….”

But this isn’t why I’m reading my own book.

My publisher, John Wiley & Sons, has asked me to do an update and revision. When Richard my editor called me with the idea he asked, “Do you think you could do a revision? Have any ideas for new chapters?” Boy, did I.

Between you and me, I’ve always felt like “Where Am I Wearing?” was incomplete. I went to Honduras because my T-shirt was made there, met a worker named Amilcar, didn’t ask him the questions I wanted to, went home and it bugged me that I knew so little about Amilcar’s life and, for that matter, all of the lives of the people who make our clothes, so then I went to Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China. What about Honduras?

What about Amilcar?

Next week I’m heading to Honduras armed with an 8X10 photo of Amilcar taken nearly five years ago and the location of the factory he worked at. This time I intend to ask Amilcar the questions I wasn’t prepared and deep down really didn’t want to know. Does he have a family now? Does he remember me? Does he still work at the factory? Has the job made life better for him and his family? Does he still have the Tattoo T-shirt that I gave him? I have so many questions for him.

I also want to share with him how he changed my life – the way I see the world, the way I shop, the way I give, the way I volunteer, what I do for a living. I’ll tell him everything.

I’m anxious to find him, worried that I might fail, and excited to bring my “Where Am I Wearing?” journey full circle.

What’s new?

In addition to the new chapter which will cover my search for Amilcar, I’ll …

… share my experiences visiting the soleRebels factory in Ethiopia

… include end of section updates on Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China. I will try to get updates on the lives of the workers I met, but it hasn’t been easy keeping track of them. In some cases I might have to write a general update about how life for garment workers has changed in each country. The financial crisis and increase in food prices have made things even more difficult for workers around the world.

… a discussion / activity guide for classes and book clubs.

If you’ve read Where Am I Wearing? what would you change? What updates would you want me to include?

Living the journey

I can’t believe I’m still living the Where Am I Wearing journey and that I’ve been able to share the stories of the workers I’ve met on the level that I’ve been able to.

It has been and it is an absolute honor. Thank you all for being a part of it.

Engaged Consumer, This Writer’s Life, Travel

An Open Letter to the Parents of Daughters Who Wish to Travel the World

By Kelsey

I hope Annie and I raise a daughter with the confidence to take on the world, but thinking about my kid – especially my daughter Harper – traveling as far and wide as I have, scares me a little. I’m not proud of thinking the “especially my daughter” thoughts. It seems wrong thinking that Harper would be any less capable of handling traveling solo than my yet-to-be born son, but I feel like there are just more challenges out there for girls. I sent a note to Rachel Friedman, author of The Good Girls Guide to Getting Lost, asking her to set me straight. She does so in this guest post.

Ladies and gentlemen, moms and dads, and girls, I present to you Rachel Friedman.

An Open Letter to the Parents of Daughters Who Wish to Travel the World

Dear Parents:

It’s me, Rachel. We haven’t formally met. I am not a licensed medical or psychological professional. I’m only a writer – a profession that requires little in the way of legitimate qualifications. Still, I hope you’ll hear me out. I’ve heard that your daughters – young women in their late teens and early twenties – have of late been considering the idea that they might be of the constitution and comportment to have some adventures. Maybe your daughter is a new high school graduate or in the middle of her college years or just graduated from some ivy-covered university where she spent hours poring over literature and philosophy and debating gender performance. Your daughter is educated and free-spirited and full of wonder, thanks in large part to the opportunities you have provided her.

Now, I know, parents, you wish for your daughters’ happiness. And what better way, you might be thinking, to secure her happiness than to secure her, well, her security. A good, steady job. A nice boyfriend or girlfriend. Early entry into a 401K plan. You might want these things for her. We are nearing graduation time after all and after graduation comes “real life.”

But your daughter has different ideas. She has developed a mind of her own during her studies, has gotten ideas from books that lead her to believe that perhaps another kind of education awaits her after graduation – the kind that involves leaping into the great unknown, of setting out on a journey. She has heard talk of cheap student fares and raucous hostels, whispered rumors of Incan ruins at dawn and dingoes at dusk. And she is intrigued. More than intrigued. Dear parents: brace yourselves: your daughter wants to travel the world.

I know you want to encourage her in this endeavor. You do. But you’re worried. Fair enough. It’s a daunting prospect to watch your daughter strap on a backpack and strut off to Europe or Australia or maybe even South America. First off, you’re worried she might get hurt. You’re good feminist parents who have raised an independent young woman who believes she can do anything. And she can. So maybe you’re feeling a little guilty for fretting more about her than you do would a son, who might get hurt, but who does not typically have the additional prospects of bodily violation. It would be naïve not to acknowledge that men and women move differently through the world. When I was with a man in South America, no local looked twice at me. When I was alone or with my female friend, my every move was catalogued with a series of whistles and whispered comments. Only once in my travels did this talk extend into anything physical, when I was groped on a street in Bolivia. I won’t lie: this was scary. Did it traumatize me? No. Did it upset me? Yes. Did it ultimately make me stronger? Absolutely. Your daughters are smart and they are capable. They will be cautious when necessary, just like they would in the U.S., and they will be okay.

You might be worried that if you let your daughter go abroad, she will never return home. Well, statistically speaking, most of us do come back to our home countries. It’s true that once your daughter is a well-seasoned traveler, the idea of residing in other countries might become more appealing to her. She might, as I did, meet a partner from another country and decide to navigate a life between two places, which is a rich and complicated life. But even if she decides to stay abroad, this will be her choice. It will be what makes her happy.

You might fear your globe-trotting daughter is “lost.” Your daughters’ friends who are staying in the U.S. already have great jobs in finance or as assistant teachers or they are entering graduate programs. But your daughter has chosen the life of a nomad. She is wandering aimlessly (at least, this is your impression) instead of settling into a career and utilizing her very expensive education. She’s falling behind her peers! No, she’s not. She’s getting a valuable second education whose importance cannot be overstated. If she comes home and gets a job at 25 instead of 22, she will only be better equipped with a diverse set of experiences and the marketable ability to interact with diverse sets of peoples. It is also less likely that she will wake up at 30 or 40 and realize she has spent decades at a job she hates. This is because in her early twenties she will have taken the necessary time to explore the world and herself, so her decisions about the direction of her life will be more thoughtful – less about what she should do than what she desires to do.

You want to keep your daughter close, to protect here. If she’s abroad and something goes wrong, you worry that you won’t be there to rescue her. You’re right. Travel in general, and the gap year(s) in particular, are about independence and self-reliance. You have done all you can to nurture and prepare your daughter. Now you have to let her go, out into the wide, wild world – out into her own glorious life.

Sincerely,

A Daughter Who Has Traveled the World

—–

Thanks Rachel! I’m sure I’ll re-read this over and over in the years to come. To all the traveling girls out there, I salute you.

If you liked what you read here, definitely check out Rachel’s new book The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost.

Travel

Runners of Iten on the World Vision Report

By Kelsey

My new piece on attempting to run a half-marathon with world-class Kenyan runners at 8,000′ is hitting stations around the country this week. Listen to it now or risk never learning if I live through the experience.

I’d love for you to share your thoughts on the piece, the runners, or running in general over at the WV Report’s site.

Glocal, Travel

Why more people will care about the earthquake in New Zealand than the revolution in Libya

By Kelsey

About 200,000 thousand Americans traveled to New Zealand last year. Total tourist arrivals to the country were more than 2.5 million.

In turn, Libya saw a grand total of 50,000 tourists. Few were from the United States because the Libyan government had a ban on American tourists until June of 2010.

Been there

My reaction to the quake in New Zealand was much greater than that of when I heard about the chaos and the violence in Libya. I know that it’s silly to compare a natural disaster with political upheaval – the acts of men vs acts of nature – so why is it that military aircraft (reportedly) gunning down civilians doesn’t leave me as concerned as an earthquake?

I spent two months in New Zealand in 2002, hitchhiking thousands of miles and landing hundreds of rides. When I think of New Zealand I think of a Kiwi farmer, a rafting guide, a window deliveryman, a single mom, and many others who let me into their lives. My adventure began in Christchurch, so it has a special place in my New Zealand experience. Seeing crumbled building after crumbled building in Christchurch on the news moves me.

Saw it on the news

Besides that I’ve been there, those pictures on the news play a part too. More of us will be moved by the protest in Egypt than the one in Libya because we saw it on TV. I criticized reporters like Lester Holt and Anderson Cooper for becoming part of the story, but if they were on the ground in Libya capturing stories and faces, we’d all care a lot more about what’s going on there.

I also think that Muammar Qaddafi would have been less like to order Libyan aircraft to gun down protesters if there were more reporters on the ground. When the world is watching, less people die.

It’s only natural to care more about a place more when you’ve been there, but that doesn’t make it right.

What recent news story has hit closest to home for you?

Mad World, Travel

My near-death SCUBA diving experience in Key West

By Kelsey

I wrote this a while back as part of a piece on the lobster divers of Nicaragua who suffer many dive-related injuries. Legend has it that the divers’ injuries result from an encounter with a pale-skinned mermaid known as the Liwa Mairin. It is said that she haunts the depths and punishes those who take too many lobster. The victims of the Liwa Mairin, the wheelchair bound and the zombies, are what drew me to Puerto Cabezas. A few years ago I almost became one of them.

I hope other divers can learn from my experience. Nitrogen Narcosis nearly killed me. It’s no laughing matter.

–

Bubbles burst forth from my regulator – the sound of distant bowling pins falling over, a cry for help. And with each cry, I was one breath closer to my last.

Suspended in limbo, 130 feet from the surface and nearly 100 feet to the sandy bottom, I watched the bubbles. They playfully danced around each other expanding, breaking, conjoining, chaotic, but always up. The ever-changing surface glimmered above – where air meets water, where life meets death.

From the beginning this day was different from others I had spent working as a SCUBA instructor in Key West. Aboard the Island Diver, technical dive gear pitched with the rolling of the Atlantic. Back-up plans for contingency plans were discussed. We were hosting a dive event sponsored by Skin Diver magazine. The magazine had recruited a group of beginner divers to train, advance, and transform into “Tec-Divers” – divers certified for depths exceeding 100 feet and breathing special mixtures of air. This dive was a culmination of months of training.

With double tanks, large lights, and a spider web of hoses, the divers had claimed the majority of space on the boat. My equipment on the port stern looked shabby and overly simple – one tank, half as many hoses. It was hard to believe we would be diving on the same shipwreck.

My job was to tie up to the wreck, The Kurb. I had done this two days previously and I had had no trouble, but, again, this day was different. On my first time I had jumped in with a line that I hooked to the wreck and then swam back to the surface; I had completed the task with ease. On this fateful day I hopped in with nothing but a lift bag. I was to swim to 130 feet where I would find the exhaust tower of the ship with a line already connected to it. I was to fasten the lift bag to the line and fill it with air from my regulator, causing it to float to the surface. The Island Diver then would see the bag, pull up the line, and clip into it.

Five minutes before arriving above the ship I started to feel a bit anxious. Normally, I didn’t dive deeper than 90 feet. I could swim the shallow wrecks and reefs off Key West with my eyes closed, but the Kurb was still new. And deep.

The air in a SCUBA tank, like the air we breathe is 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen, but our bodies don’t use nitrogen and, under the increased pressure of being underwater, nitrogen accumulates in the tissues of our body. The deeper divers go and the longer he stays the more nitrogen bubbles accumulate. When a diver is at depth, this isn’t a problem, but sooner or later he has to ascend.

Most dive instructors use a bottle of soda to demonstrate this process. The bubbles in the soda are invisible when the cap is on and its contents under pressure. When the cap is twisted off – or the diver ascends – the pressure is released and the gas comes out of solution to form bubbles. In soda the bubbles give our soft drink bite, but, in diving, bubbles can accumulate around joints and the spinal cord. Pain in the joints, unconsciousness, paralyzation, and death can all result. These types of injury are known as decompression sickness and are commonly referred to as “the bends.”

I was not afraid of the ocean or its creatures, but bubbles worried me. I nervously drank water till my stomach and bladder were full and then I drank some more. Each drink of water was a safeguard against bubbles. When a diver is dehydrated, bubbles accumulate more readily.

The boat slowed to an idle and I donned my gear and stood on the dive platform at the stern, staring up at Captain Roy. When he gave the signal I took one giant step backward and began the descent.

Sky diving in space – that’s what it’s like to sink as quickly as possible with no bottom and no wreck in sight. Down, down, as I fell through the water my eyes searched for something on which to focus. Head first I aided gravity with a few kicks of my fins. It was important to find the ship before the current blew me off its location. The water from the depths rushed up to meet me, growing colder and darker with each passing foot.

The tower, first a ghostly dream, became more defined as I closed the distance. The line was attached on the support beam between two stacks. A current ran from the bow to the stern of the wreck; I kicked against it to stay in place as I began to pull the ends of the line up. The line from the towers ran down onto the deck below where it snaked in and out of wreckage. When I tried to pull up the line, it became ensnared. I jerked it and cursed through my regulator when it didn’t come free.

The tops of the stacks were at 130 feet. At that depth I could stay down for around five minutes without being concerned about “the bends”.

What should I do? Abandon my duty and return to the surface, to the boat full of newly trained tec-divers and one Skin Diver magazine writer, in shame?

A certain machismo exists in the diving world. I blame Sea Hunt and James Bond with their underwater wrestling matches. Divers often brag about how deep they’ve been. I had never been deeper than 130 feet and to kick down to the deck at 150 feet, where the pressure was five times the surface pressure, was a foolish thing to do, and would be giving in to a whole other kind of pressure – peer pressure.

Against my better judgment, I swam to the deck as fast as I could and freed the line. Back at the stacks I recovered both ends in my hands and attached the lift bag. I filled the bag with air and watched it rocket to the surface – triumph – before jerking to a halt well below the surface – defeat. I looked down at the deck of the ship and saw the line caught again.

That’s when my brain stopped.

“Nitrogen narcosis,” I always remember to bring it up to my students since the topic is good for a few chuckles. “It’s like being drunk…a feeling of euphoria. If at anytime you feel this during a dive, ascend slowly until you are at a depth where you no longer feel it.” Jacques Cousteau referred to it as the “rapture of the deep,” elevating the phenomenon to boogie man status. Like the boogie man, stories circulate in the diving community:

“I heard of a guy who had been diving for thirty years that got “narced” really bad; the poor fella didn’t know which way was up and swam into the abyss to his death. His body was never recovered.”

“Did you hear about the guy who had a few too many nitrogen cocktails and forgot to keep his regulator in his mouth? He tried to give it to a fish. Can you imagine that? He drowned with half a tank’s worth of air left.”

The exact cause of nitrogen narcosis is not known. Scientists believe that it is the result of nitrogen’s increased partial pressure at depth interacting with neurological processes. The effects can be greatly enhanced by a build up of carbon dioxide, which happens when you exert yourself by doing things like kicking against a current. Euphoria, unexplained fixations, anxiety, unconsciousness, can all be a result of narcosis. Small problems can quickly become big ones.

I hung on the line near the tower. Minutes passed and I did not move or think.

That’s when she came – my very own Liwa Mairin. She was fat and ugly, a Volkswagen with fins that divers in their right mind would recognize as a goliath grouper. With a menacing grimace on her face, she swam to within a few feet.

Then she talked, “Bark! Bark!” Her words were felt as much as they were heard.

My consciousness crept out of its silent prison and I looked at my gauges.

“Where had the time gone?” I thought. My dive computer started to flash things I had never seen before. It was telling me that since I had been so deep for so long, I should immediately ascend to a certain depth for a certain amount of time. This is referred to as a decompression stop.

“Where had the time gone?” The computer’s reports were not good. My estimated amount of air left was less than the amount needed to make the necessary decompression stops.

My conversation with myself continued.

“This is not good.”

“Calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Breathe nice and easy.”

“I am.”

“What should I do? I need more air.”

Thoughts came slow and were interrupted by minutes of blackness.

I clung to the rope and stared up at the surface. I could muster no solution and with a calm resolve, I pondered my death. I would run out of air spit out my regulator, and my lungs would fill with salt water and I’d sink. My grip would lessen on the line and finally let slip. The current would carry me away.

My gaze went from the surface toward the wreck. The bright orange lift bag floated in mid-water and gave me an idea. I pulled out my knife and cut the line that prohibited the lift bag from surfacing. Upon reaching the surface it would signal my location to the boat, and that there was a problem. It rocketed up like an out of control balloon. Before reaching the surface it flipped, releasing its pocket of air and sunk to the bottom. I watched it fall, slowly spiraling, drifting like a limp body forever lost in the ocean’s current.

“Go up or you’re dead. Go up!”

The eerie part was that death neared and I wasn’t afraid. I knew I wasn’t in my right mind, but there was nothing I could do about it. I thought about how the narcosis was my ultimate curse, yet my altered mental state was a sort of blessing. I would die, but at least I would die peacefully.

When I heard the boat, I watched its dark shadow on the surface as it passed over and paused before motoring away. A small portion of its shadow remained. It moved, had arms, and legs. It came down, grabbed my arm and led me to the surface.

It wasn’t until I reached the surface and saw the fear in the eyes of the divers and of Captain Roy that I became afraid. I had been to 150 feet and my total bottom time was near 30 minutes, about 25 minutes longer than I should have been down. As the narcosis subsided, my thoughts turned inward. I imagined the nitrogen bubbles floating around, piling up around my spinal cord. At any moment I might lose consciousness forever. I might die. I grew pale and began to shake. My right foot went numb.

The Island Diver met the Coast Guard back on the island and I was transported to the naval station where I spent six hours in the hyperbaric chamber that would crush the bubbles until they had been exhaled

I emerged from the chamber bubble free, but bubbles leave a mark. My left elbow ached for weeks – a scar left by nitrogen gas. Occasionally to this day when I am nervous, stressed, or exhausted, my elbow will ache.

I had training. I had top of the line equipment. Yet I still found myself in a situation in which, if I had not been treated properly, I faced death or paralysis.

But I was lucky.

Each year countless Miskito divers aren’t.

What’s the closest you’ve been to checking out?

Travel

The 3 most sacred words a traveler can utter: “I’ll come back”

By Kelsey

I was held hostage by Nepalese monks. The weapon they used against me was hospitality.

They forced four meals down me a day. The first time I tried to leave, they consulted their scrolls and decided that the date wasn’t a good one for departure.

I was blessed by a bulletproof monk and may or may not be bulletproof myself now. (Note: if I am bulletproof I’ve totally wasted my superpower not fighting crime.)

Khenpo Sange, the head lama, sat next to me on my flight from Bangkok to Nepal where I planned on trekking, but instead got a really infected foot and held hostage. Khenpo invited me to stay near the village of Pharping (south of Kathmandu) at his lamasery, which was part orphanage.

When anyone asks me my favorite travel experience I think about playing Aerobie with the saffron-clad boy, about their smiles and laughs, as they ran after the disc. I remember the farm sounds rising up from the valley below, the baritone chanting that woke me in the morning, and the smell of the campfire cooking our lunch. I remember the tiny sandals piled up at the door to the room that acted as the dining hall.

Nepal was a wreck in 2001. The Royal family had been murdered by one of their own and Maoist rebels were moving in on Kathmandu. When the bombings and fighting escalated Khenpo Sange, after holding me hostage with hospitality for three weeks, decided it would be best if I left. So I did. But not before promising to come back and do a stint as an English teacher.

“I’ll come back,” I said. But I haven’t. A decade has passed since then. My guilt grows by the year.

I’m reluctant to make such a promise any more to the friends I meet traveling, but I’ve said those three words since Nepal. I said it to the lobster divers of Nicaragua. I said it a friend in Bangladesh. But I’ve said it to myself many, many times.

I’ll come back with malaria medication and Norma’s neighbors won’t have to die.

I’ll come back and help this girl who earns 25-cents per day collecting recyclables. I’ll put her through school and give her the chance she deserves.

“I’ll come back.” The words haunt me. They are the three most serious words a traveler can tell someone.

Now I have this dream of revisiting Khenpo Sange’s orphanage with Annie and our kids. While Annie and I teach English, Harper and yet-to-be-born-son-who-we-won’t-name-Voldemort will toss the same Aerobie that I brought so many years ago.

Conor Grennan went back

The main reasons why I’m so passionate about Conor Grennan’s new book Little Princes and why I’m allowing the Little Princes to hold my blog hostage:

1) Conor went back again and again. The subtitle of his book is “One Man’s Promise to the Lost Children of Nepal.” Conor kept his promise to the orphans of Nepal, and I’ve yet to keep mine.

2) I love Nepal.

3) I’m a dad and can’t imagine making the difficult decision to send my child away because it was the “best thing for her,” only to learn later that I gave her to a child trafficker.

Little Princes is at the convergence of my “I’ll come back” promises as a traveler, my love for Nepal, and my love for my own children.

And Khenpo Sange, if you’re reading this, I’ll come back. I promise. Or to put it in the words of legendary rock-n-roller Bob Seger, “If I ever get outta here, I’m going to Kathmandu!”

There’s still time to help free my blog

I’m letting the Little Princes take my blog hostage until 100 people report in the comments of this post or report back via facebook, twitter, or email that they’ve done one of the following:

1) Buy little Princes from Better World Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, your local independent bookstore, or wherever. A portion of all sales go to support Next Generation Nepal;

2) Donate to Next Generation Nepal;

3) Like Next Generation Nepal and Little Princes both on facebook and then tell all of your friends about it;

4) Blog about Next Generation Nepal.

5) Ask your librarian to carry Little Princes.

And without furtherado, ladies and gentleman, Bob Seger:

Travel

I smuggled Anti-flatulence Underwear Past TSA

By Kelsey

I take out my laptop and set it in a bin. I slip my shoes off and smile at the TSA agent as if I have nothing to hide. As if I’m just another normal passenger. As if I’m not wearing anti-flatulence underwear.

My brow grows moist as I fight the urge to adjust my Gas Eaters while at the same time not letting my eye wander to the full-body scanner. No doubt a man wearing unisex, airtight underwear with a quarter-inch pad of activated carbon sewn in the butt would throw up a few flags. The “Underwear Bomber” really ruined it for the rest of us.

I try to walk normal. It’s not easy. I feel like I’m sitting on a bicycle seat. In fact, that’s one of the excuses I’ve decided to give if my underwear are called into question, “They’re just bike shorts.”

But that wouldn’t explain the placement of the padding.

I could go with the bike-short excuse or just tell the truth.

I’ve brought the packaging along as proof. There’s a drawing of the Gas Eaters with arrows pointing to the airtight fabric, the filter, and the “porous pocket material for escaping gas.”

Unfortunately, the Gas-Eater diagram looks like it was designed by a high school student and printed out on the latest $99 printer. At best it looks like a gag gift that you would buy at Spencer’s Gifts for that hard-to-buy-for uncle who lives in his sweatpants and claims to be able to fart the alphabet. At worst, it looks like I’m a terrorist harboring explosives in my drawers.

If I got caught, who knows what unspeakable pat-downs the TSA agents would perform on me.

I’m waved through the metal detector. I put my laptop in my bag, slip back into my shoes, and waddle off to my gate.

I’m relieved. But no one can tell.

—

Before I slipped out the door to catch my flight, I slipped on a pair of Gas Eaters. They go over your regular underwear because the material isn’t all that comfortable. Their air-tightness makes them a bit hot. In fact, they are kind of like those vinyl sweat jackets that wrestlers wear to make weight except they are underwear and they eat farts.

I don’t care if you are a 95-pound beauty queen, a prim and proper grandma, or a guy wearing a “Farting is just another way to say I love you” T-shirt, at some point in time you’ve been on a plane and felt the urge to off-gas a bit.

You considered those sitting around you: Will they know it’s me? Can I blame it on the guy in the fart T-shirt?

You considered your health: I am feeling really bloated from that airport burrito.

According to gastroenterologist Dr. Michael Levitt there are dangerous side effects from holding in farts, including headaches, dizziness, and becoming bloated.

We all face the decision: let it out or hold it in?

The decision is made easier if you are wearing Gas Eaters.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, I feel the urge. There is a seat between me and the casually dressed businessman in my row. In front of me is a baby, behind me a toddler. Any of the three could share the blame if the Gas Eaters don’t work. Reluctantly, I test them.

Consider this. On average homo sapiens flatulate a half-liter of gas per day, dispersed over ten individual periods of relief. Each fart is about half-a-cup in volume. As a pressure decreases, say like when a plane ascends, gas expands. A flight to Hawaii can take half-a-day. A 747 seats around 400 passengers. This means that on a flight to Hawaii there are about 119 2-liter bottles worth of farts floating around.

Unless they are held in, which mine was not.

A few moments pass. I wait to see what happens. Okay, maybe see isn’t quite the right sense. Regardless, none of my senses picked up anything new.

The Gas Eaters worked!

It’s a sort of freedom. No longer do I have to weigh the biological effects of “holding it in” with the undesirable social effects of “letting it out.”

In 2006 a woman on a flight from Washington D.C. to Ft. Worth, Texas farted and forced the plane to land. Well, it wasn’t exactly the fart, it was the match she lit to hide the fart that forced the landing. She has been banned from flying with American Airlines for a long time. And all because she farted and tried to hide it. If she would have been wearing a pair of Gas Eaters she wouldn’t have delayed the travel plans of her 99 fellow passengers.

In his essay, “Fart Proudly” Benjamin Franklin (yes, that Benjamin Franklin) wrote, “Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company, than they are in spitting or in blowing their noses.”

More than 200 hundred years later, thanks to Gas Eaters, we can fart proudly, even on a plane…if we get by TSA.

Travel