The Blog of John Patrick Larson

Tracy and I have a theme for this year: World Tour.  The gist is we’ll be finishing out our lease at our current place at the end of April, and setting ourselves up to live abroad in various countries as we make our way around the world for the duration of a year.

I’ll no doubt have plenty of tales to tell about this experience, but before it falls to far into the shadows of memory, I’d like to first recount the origins of this vision which has steadily morphed into a “wow, this is not just a cool idea, we’re actually doing this.”

It was June 8th of last year when a friend forwarded me a notice put out by one of his associates:

I’m converting my million-dollar+ mountain-retreat in Breckenridge, Colorado back into a members-only club for entrepreneurs.
…
We’re going to open the doors in September, so I’m looking for a host-couple (husband + wife) who would like to live
there rent-free as entrepreneurs come and go / hang out.
…
This is the perfect opportunity if you are either retired of if you have an internet business.

The ideal couple would have one person with entrepreneur experience and the other person who’s a friendly people-person or host.

I was struck by how good a fit Tracy and I would make, and that afternoon we spent an hour exploring if we’d actually be game to do something that cool and adventurous.

We ultimately agreed that we were.

I reached out to the fellow looking for his couple, proudly throwing our hat in the ring.  Four minutes later I got a reply that he’d already found someone, but appreciated my contacting him all the same.

Easy come, easy go, right?

Lucky for me, my fabulous wife had developed a certain affinity for doing something that cool and adventurous as a product of our lengthy consideration of the opportunity.  That evening she broached the subject directly: “So all this talk about living in Breckenridge for a year got me thinking: I want to do something cool like that.”

“Go on,” I replied.

“Well, we’ve been thinking about a trip to Thailand, right?  And we wanna make it long as possible, since it’s super cheap once you get there and already paid for the flight.”  “Yep.”  “And there’s a lot of countries we want to go experience, pretty much all of which come with that overhead of a flight to get there and back, making each pretty expensive.”

“I’m with you.”

“What if we took a year and just lived everywhere we want to experience, without having to fly back to the US between each country?  We could sell most of our stuff, put the rest in storage, have the kitty stay with my parents, and just travel and live abroad for a year, without all the carrying costs of having a place in the US.”

(I don’t know if her words went exactly like that, but that was the gist: it all sounded immediatly so clear, simple, and above all affordable.)

“Holy shit, that’s awesome.  Yeah, we should probably do that.”

(I don’t know if my words went exactly like that, but that was the gist: I was immediately sold, and stoked.)

The rest of the night we discussed in animated fashion the vision and logistics.  We further explored the feasibility of it all.  It felt like we were somehow cheating or forgetting something important: surely there must be some loophole we were exploiting or some pitfall we were failing to consider in order for this large-scale dream appear so doable.

But no, with our mutually entrepreneurial careers, my ability to do work and earn money abroad with just laptop and wi-fi (as battle-tested in Argentina), our lack of a mortgage (fuck yes), and Tracy’s super supportive in-town parents whom we then (rightly) assumed would take the cat, this dream was our for the living if we were so bold as to do so.

We were/are.

Today, over six months later, plans are coming along swimmingly.  Everything is falling into place, and for how much of an upheaval in lifestyle this is it sure doesn’t feel stressful.  Our intended plan around the world keeps evolving.  To track it, last week I made a map with pins and string detailing the plan, which you can see here.

Super big thanks to Tom Schaff with his simple email forward that sparked all of this.

This year the family (the in-town family, meaning my wife’s family plus spouses/soon-to-be-spouses) all converged on a new way to do the Christmas gift exchange.

Until the next generation of little people comes along, we’re all adults and thus we’re all apt to get whatever physical stuff we want on our own.  So there’s a generally not a lot of things we need or could get excited about which we don’t already have, which makes gift giving tricky.  So we came up with a few rules to make it interesting this year:

• Stuff is out: experiences are in.  The gifts you give are to be experiences for the recipients.  An experience that you can share with the recipient is encouraged, but optional.
• Quality over quantity.  Everyone randomly picks two people to get gifts for, so it’s like Secret Santa doubled.
• No picking yourself or your spouse/spouse-to-be.  Keeps things interesting by requiring cross-couple creativity.
• Just to throw back in a dash of material goods (and to make things tastelessly teeter on the brink of over-complexity), everyone brings one gift valued between $20-50 for White Elephant exchange.

How did it work?  Really well, methinks.  It took a few tricks of logic to do the drawing of two names each where self and spouse weren’t allowed, all whilst one couple was missing (we sealed the remaining un-drawn 4 names in an envelope for them to draw from later, and had to concoct an elaborate ruse by which we could be certain they wouldn’t be stuck with a mis-draw, forcing a full do-over).

The gifts we all came up with really good–things like a weekend getaway, a snowshoeing adventure, a ride in a sail plane, a Cirque du Soleil show, and membership to the Botanic Gardens all marked the creativity put in to the theme.  What’s more, each of us left Christmas with 2 experiences to look forward to, making the fun of the exchange way more long lasting than it usually would have been.

All in all, taking the time to call time out on the standard model and inventing a new one was a big win, worth doing again both in the sense of using those exact rules, because they worked so well, as well as inventing another set of rules to mix it up yet again.

Which is good, because I think we’ve got a few more years before the little people come and make gift exchange simple again.

My father-in-law and I have a ritual that is now marking one year of faithful execution: Sport Coat Night.

Sport Coat Night is when Glenn and I get dressed up in sport coats, go out to some nice lounge (or restaurant) befitting of such attire (really good appetizers are a vital qualification for venues), and talk for between three and five hours about whatever suits our fancy: politics, science and technology, business, innovation, books, philosophy, ambitions, dreams and family rank among the most common topics.

This monthly event has been the backbone my getting to know and bond with the father of my wife.  There’s a strong stereotype of having bad in-laws and the attendant malaise that comes with, so I figured there might be some serious joy and workability in being closely related to really kick-ass in-laws.  I’m delighted to report that experience has borne this out.

Sport Coat Night arose largely from chance, stemming from my lax approach to getting a suit for my wedding.  I put the task off for a few months, until finally getting around to it on Columbus Day weekend.  (Those armed with a 2010 calendar will note that that has me first seeking my wedding attire about one month prior to the event: I confess, not entirely responsible).

As good fortune would have it, the Men’s Warehouse was then having a sale named for the holiday: buy a suit at full price, get a sport coat free, and another suit for $100.  I took advantage.  While recounting the apparent karmic reward for my delayed approach to vital apparel acquisition, my father-in-law chimed in to say “Hey, I just got my suit there!  Same deal, I stocked up as well.”

What a fun coincidence.  In that moment I somehow had the stroke of brilliance to name a fabrication.  “Really?  Well heck, whaddaya say you and I go do Sport Coat Night sometime?”  I asked with such conviction even I thought that was a real and well established thing.

“Sport Coat Night, what’s that?”

Improv flowed: “Well, that’s when you and I get all dressed up in sport coats, go somewhere nice, and have great conversation over smart cocktails.  Sport Coat Night.  Whaddaya think?”  In essence I’d just invented a catchy gimmick, shorthand for “Hey, let’s hang out sometime.”

Delighted was I as the incipient son-in-law to have my offer so quickly agreed to: we would do the first ever Sport Coat Night the following Monday, and I would be surprised and delighted by how quickly 3 hours passed in one-on-one conversation.  I’m pretty sure he felt the same way, and a tradition was born.

Now, one year later, we’ve had 12 such occasions and it has been a consistent treat.  I don’t know how or by what means we’d have been able to bond without this simple structure.  It’s been the perfect excuse for getting to know my father-in-law.  Now I just gotta figure out some reason to hang with my mother-in-law (I know you’re reading this, Cindy :).

Last weekend Tracy and I did a Century Ride, the culmination of a summer of training on our new fancy road bikes.

I really don’t have much of a story to tell about the 100 mile-long ride that Tracy and I undertook.  To be honest, a blog post about this is mostly for posterity: a reminder to myself that I did it.

Also a reminder to myself how, at this moment, with the physical sensation of biking miles 60-100 still fresh in my memory, I’m quite content to mark this off the list of things to do in this lifetime and be done with it. :)

My heartfelt gratitude to the party of three who stopped to help when I was pulled over with a safety pin lodged firmly in my rear tire: to the dude who took over the tube swapping operation and volunteered up one of those groovy compressed air cartridges to get me back on track, I thank you for enabling me to finish and thus be able to cross such a long distance ride off my list!

Tracy and I recently returned from a week of camping in Wyoming.  Just her and I, we stayed one night in a lodge outside Jackson Hole, 3 nights in the Grand Tetons, 2 nights in Yellowstone, and 1 night in an off-the-highway camp site named “Windy Valley Creek”.

Here are 13 observations which nicely capture the feel and flavor of the trip:

1. Our ability to fill 8 hours on the road with lively and fresh conversation (among other things a lot of waxing hypothetical of our parenting style and game plan) is damn useful, and bodes well for the seven more decades we plan to spend together.
2. The local beer should be enjoyed while you can–there’s no telling which ones ship out as far as your home town (for example, the quite tasty Snake River Lager cannot be found tucked away in the liquor stores of Denver, whereas the vastly inferior Trout Slayer can).
3. A 200 square foot A-frame cabin might make a fine place to hole up and write a book for the span of a winter, provided access to the a lodge 100 feet away serving aforementioned tasty lager.
4. Hiding dry and snug from the rain in a tent you pitched 15 minutes earlier is more satisfying than it rationally should be.
5. Piles of bacon, fruit and pancakes from the buffet quickly mollify the shame of visiting the restaurant in the first place due to morning campfire starting difficulties.
6. Peeing outdoors is more satisfying than it rationally should be.
7. Turns out campfires are way easier to start when it’s NOT the morning after a rainy day, so it’s ok to have enjoyed aforementioned piles of bacon, fruit and pancakes.
8. When camping, dinner is a roughly 4-hour ritual of food prep, fire starting, beer drinking, fire roasting, food eating, dish cleaning, and s’mores making.  The expense in time and effort is a joy, not a problem.
9. S’mores are just as delicious at 32 as they were when I was 8.  I’ll take 4, please.
10. There is no one I would rather spend an extended stint of one-on-one time with than Tracy, and it is so nice to have that fact laid so bare during a week like this.
11. Having 2 sleeping bags which zip together to make one big one is a setup for primo snuggling.  Useful in general, doubly so when the temperature dips to 28 degrees Fahrenheit at night in the early September of Yellowstone.
12. A place like “Windy Valley Creek” is apt to be named so for good cause: choose this as your campsite for the night with caution.
13. Our honeymoon in the Philippines lasted 3 weeks and cost around $5,000 in total.  This camping trip lasted 7 days and cost around $800.  To the extent that it is expedient to be content with less, I’m thrilled by how much I preferred the camping trip.

I was the production supervisor for a Landmark Forum last weekend (volunteer gig–a useful exercise in leading/directing a team plus I’ve a soft spot for getting a refresher on the material).

It’s such a good course.  And even though I had some pretty kickin’ things happen as a direct result of doing it back in ’04¹, I typically do a shite job of conveying to anyone else why they should want to.

But I think now, with a few years of perspective since then and a few years of practice with the tools and concepts they teach, I’ve got a simple way to break it down, to illustrate what the Landmark Forum does.

Imagine a spectrum, and everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum.  On one end you’ve got a view of the world that sounds approximately like this:

people around me are idiots, I’ve got to do the best I can with what fate has laid out for me, that’s just the way the world is, life is far from perfect…but I’m working on it

On the other end of the spectrum there’s a view of the world that sounds approximately like this:

people around me are awesome, it’s up to me and only me how my life turns out, I’ve got a say in how things are and how they go, life is awesome and I’m free to play as I please

Visually, the spectrum looks something like this:

You know people who fall far on one end of this spectrum or the other, and if you look you can probably place yourself somewhere on it with relative ease.

So here it is.

The Landmark Forum starts with people wherever they are on this spectrum, and over the course of 3 days, nudges them towards the blue side.  Maybe a little, maybe a lot.  But always towards the blue side of that spectrum.

Looking at it this way, I understand why doing the course (i.e. moving towards blue on the spectrum) doesn’t always seem like a good idea for people.  There is some serious comfort to be found towards the purple end of things: knowing that certain people simply are bad or beneath you, shrugging off lackluster circumstances as out of your control, and being able to point to this or that as cause for what’s not working.

It’s all good and comforting stuff, at least in small doses.

By a similar token, I understand why people often say to me that others should do it (even if they themselves can’t be bothered): it’s great to be around folks who complain less and love more, even when it’s hard work to do that yourself.

So that’s why do the Landmark Forum, in a grossly simplified nutshell: to move further towards the blue end of that spectrum.  Though there are no doubt juicy comforts of dwelling closer to the purple end, life on the blue end is wickedly powerful and enlivening–once you get the hang of it, you’ll never look back.

Notes:

The journey back home was long but largely uneventful.  Peaceful.  Given the tail end of our trip we were ready to return.  During the layover in Seoul’s gorgeous Incheon airport I rejuvenated myself by doing full fledged yoga poses in my jeans and New Balance sneakers in front of the massive windows that look out to the air fields, taking full advantage of the right to be weird when you’re a stranger in a strange land.  Before we knew it we were touching down in LA.

It was in the international terminal at LAX where we met my friend Doc, and bleary-eyed and jet lagged from our recent 13 hour flight across the Pacific, I said whatever it was that came to mind then and there in answer to our first state-side inquiry about how our honeymoon was.  What exactly did I say?  I don’t know.  But as you may recall from the prelude to this tale, it was soon paraphrased as “The food sucked, we got majorly sick, and John went to a strip club.”   That surprised me, but I suppose now it could be an accurate description of my bleary-eyed blurting.

Back at Denver International we were punctually picked up Tracy’s parents, Chipotle burritos in tow made precisely to our preference.  (Cindy, my brand-new mother in law, had taken jotted down our order on a piece of paper at her desk back in October–have I mentioned how awesome my brand-new parents in law are?)  During the drive to their place we happily recounted tales which much more fairly represented our trip than my first account at LAX, including the strip club.  Soon we would be winding down in their Christmas-adorned living room (as I learned last year it’s a treat to return to the states with the Christmas season already in progress–so many decorations without any feeling of excessive build up!), and then retiring for a good 12 hours of sleep in their comfy and cave-like guest room.

It was so good to be home.

The touchdown of Zest Airways flight Z2-171 into Manila marked the beginning of the end to our wanderings in the Philippines.  Darcy’s driver picked the five of us up and made the rounds though the bewilderingly dense traffic to drop us all off at our respective destinations about town.

Tracy and I were plopped right in front of the Somerset Millenium Makati, which Darcy was good enough to recommend and have his staff make us a reservation.  We checked in and quickly got settled into the relative luxury of our room with its stellar 18th floor view of the city, and foraged out to the nearby swanky mall complex known as Greenbelt 1 through 5 for a nice sushi dinner.

Back at our room Tracy was spent and so passed on our invitation to join Darcy and his peeps out at a bar he owned nearby, Heckle & Jeckle’s.  In the interest of camaraderie and raising a beer to the man whose resort and hospitality made such a difference for us the last 3 days, I set out myself into the warm Manila night.

There’s something I absolutely love about wandering about in an active city by myself at night.  The lights, the flow of people and the architecture all have a certain vibrancy that calls to be observed in an unhurried way that you just can’t do as well in daylight or with others around wondering why you’re smiling at everything with maw agape like some enchanted 6-year-old.  Conditions are perfect to wander aimlessly and be distract-able by shiny.  I found myself in a triangle-shaped park nestled among sky rises, faced on one edge by a slew of open fronted eateries with hoards of happy people enjoying things like late night ice cream, and throughout with bushes and trees strewn with elaborate strings of lights that put the typical Christmas yard decoration to shame.  Add in the summer evening perfume of the abounding plant life and you’ve got a faint sensation of magic in the air.

Eventually I made my winding way to Darcy’s bar.  It was a bustling joint with pool games being played, darts being thrown, and three Filipino women joining vocal forces to do a pretty darn good set of Alanis Morrisette covers.  I ordered a trusty Red Horse (by this time my well-established local brew of choice), and found Darcy in short order.

“Red Horse, eh?  That’s the beer of the poor people!”  For real?  I thought all along it was the good stuff… it was more expensive back in Boracay!  “Yeah, it’s a cheaper way to get drunk because it comes in those bigger bottles and is a higher percent alcohol.”  Ahhh… yeah, that makes sense: I started to notice the tendency for it to come in these jumbo-sized bottles of liquid fun back in Sagada.  It reckon the whole scenario was like some hapless Brit coming to the US proudly drinking Budweiser, the King of beers, presuming that we Americans somehow held fast to a reverence of monarchs.  Whatever, it tasted alright and facilitated a talented dance exhibition to Lady Gaga.

It was now at this point that I was invited to the strip club as referenced in the preface to this whole saga.  It was the next stop of the night for Darcy and his crew, and since we were all getting along so swimmingly I was a welcome tag-along.  At this point I did indeed have presence of mind enough to remind my new chums the vague inappropriateness that this would be, what with this being my honeymoon and my new wife back at the hotel sound asleep.  “Right on,” I was assured: “this one will be pretty mild, so it’ll be fine.  Now, the second one we go to, that’s gonna be inappropriate for a man on his honeymoon.  You should probably skip the second one.”

“Oh, and if the DJ announces he’d like to welcome back Darcy and his friends when we get there, he’s talking about some other Darcy.”

Fair enough.  In the interest of having experiences that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to confess to either my wife or the world, I happily joined the gang as they hopped into the Range Rover of fun bound for our next destination.

There the crowded smokiness to the cheesy choreography reaffirmed for me that, yep, strip clubs even in this part of the world aren’t really my thing for anything above, say, 20 minute doses of novelty (even if the men’s bathroom was bemusingly wallpapered with naughty cartoons).  That, and contrary to the observable taste in about 60% of the older white men we’d seen during our trip, I don’t really have a thing for Filipino girls.

With my confidence again bolstered about my recent decision to take a wife of pasty-white European descent, I finished my beer, called it a night, and gave thanks to my new friends for having me along and the fun times.

Darcy walked me out and awesomely summoned his driver to give me a ride back to the Somerset, further cementing his role in my memory as a bad-ass host.  Despite my earlier ramblings about loving to walk city streets at night, by this time it was after midnight and the tropical rains were falling in force.  Back at the hotel I stripped out of my smokey t-shirt and gave the report of my evening’s activities to a sleepy Tracy, who just chuckled.

My wife is so awesome.

Soon to sleep, for tomorrow we travel.

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

We met the surfing district of the Philippines late at night after a long day of busing about, and were a bit weary for it.  It was on this night that we sat beside the South China Sea, three stories up, contemplating the recommend-ability of our current country.  Despite the starlit beauty of that night on the balcony the jury was still out on the matter.

The next morning presented us with a challenge: Tracy had fallen ill and so I tasked myself with finding a suitable detox center for her condition.  This is a place known for its beach-side surf resorts, so I took a jeepney ride up the coast line to their place of concentration in my quest for recovery luxury.  The first place I tried after being dropped off was full, so I scouted further on foot.  It was then that I happened upon a place unbeknownst to my trusty Lonely Planet, a swank and rather new place of sharp looking cabanas called the Kahuna Resort.  And they had an infinity pool that looked over the surfer-laden sea.  Score.  With just a swipe of the credit card and a drop off my backpack we had a new home base.

Proudly I returned to the hotel we were at, peeled my ailing-yet-lovely new wife off the bed, and proudly took to chaperoning my marital cargo to our shiny new digs.  This was a place to recover in, and good thing, too.  For whether it was an matter of solidarity or my having imbibed the same cause of ailment, I too proceeded to fall ill in exactly the same way.  For the utility of my forage for such paradise accommodations, I am grateful that my illness came those precious three hours later.

What a pair we were, taking turns in the bathroom while watching 80’s movies on our in-cabana flat screen TV.  I refer to this as the “Honeymoonal Celebration of Intimacy and Closeness,” for it was a wonderful testament to our love and acceptance of one another to have that love endure with us both in such a sorry state.

All things do pass, in time.

(I of course mean here the sickness, not the love.)  By the next day our appetites were reasonably restored, and we were content to enjoy our surroundings for more than their “nice place to detox”-ness.  While bobbing about merrily in the infinity pool the afternoon after our second night there, a fellow the western persuasion did a cannonball some 15 feet from me, and after he surfaced we exchanged brief glances: the sort of smiling, mutual acknowledgment that yes, it is nice to be in the pool.  And that’s how I met Darcy.

Darcy is the second delightfully influential Canadian to grace our trip.  With his hearty accent, penchant for playing hockey, and fondness for The Kids in the Hall he also lent fuel to my baser self to presume that I do indeed know all there is to know about Canada (I’m not committed to this presumption, by the way).  Turns out Darcy owned the place, too.  This was useful for a number of reasons.  One of which was that, by this point, I’d been wanting someone on staff I could make known the fact that the perhaps yet under-trained staff (this was still a new resort, after all) seemed apt to gracelessly interrupt naked time with their schedule of delivering 2 measly bottles of water to each cabana in the early evening, and not go away when you tell them to do as much in presumably muffled words through the door.  Strategic rantings aside he was all kinds of enjoyable to talk with, from topics of local culture, doing business all around Asia, and what it’s like to live swankily in slightly cesspool-ish Manila.

Later that night I joined Darcy and his business contemporaries for a bite.  My order of food arrived on two plates: on one a big heaping slice of chocolate cake, and on the other a sad little scoop of rice.  For this not exactly being the model of balanced nutrition, I fetched some odd looks from the gang.  In a striking example of how the universe is not, in fact, necessarily fair, I explained how the former was for me while the latter was for my wife, who in a state of still diminished appetite remained on a strict BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Apple juice and Toast).  In a gesture of good husbanding I did however bring some cake back to our room, a few bites of which Tracy was able to enjoy as punctuation to her otherwise bland starch.

In the morning Darcy’s hospitality really shined.  It was time to head back to Manila in preparation for our next-day flight home, and while Tracy and I were planning on another marathon bus ride to do so, Darcy had the good sense to suggest we take a flight back–from this relatively remote region there are only 3 such flights per week, and today was one of those lucky days.  (And luckier still, he and his associates were also heading back and could give us a ride both to and from the airports.)  At $35 a seat the deal couldn’t be beat.

His staff set everything up and that afternoon, with a car ready and waiting to take us to the airport, we were on our way.  Crestfallen though we were to not do any of the surfing we’d set out to do, our time in San Jaun was about the nicest way I can fathom to spend getting through a rough 24-hour bug together as husband and wife.  Such romance!  …did I mention the blaze-orange sunsets?

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

From bumpin’ Baguio we took a 7 hour bus ride to remote Sagada through the winding, mountainous regions of North Luzon.  Unlike our relatively cushy ride from Manila to Baguio, this one took some courage and concentration.  Courage to not think to hard about the winding roads and how far there would be to fall were our bus to find itself but 2 feet to the left of it’s current position, and concentration on said winding roads to avoid motion sickness from all the bumps and turns.  (I tried to neglect the latter, but a mere 10 minutes of watching Penn and Teller’s Bullshit on the iPod-of-fun had me distinctly nauseous.)

So there was a balancing act to be done.  And really, once you wrapped your mind around having faith in the driver as truly an expert in his navigating his native terrain, the views were quite breathtaking.  It was a rainy day with lots of fog and clouds rolling through the hills and valleys, and a look down from the bus into a nebulous gray mass gave a certain awe and reverence for nature, not unlike the Cliffs of Insanity.  Also etched into the hills everywhere were step-like terraces for farming such uneven land.  These weren’t necessarily the ancient Ifuego rice terraces, but never the less a treat for the eyes and a remarkable display of ingenuity.

During our bus ride there were two stops in little villages for snacks and restroom breaks.  At the first of these was where met Peter, a friendly fellow from Canada who was exploring the country with his girlfriend Kate from Korea.  It’s great how fast you can make a friend while comparing how the flan in little plastic cups which you both just bought tastes (it tasted good, by the way–a nice remedy to iPod-induced wooziness).  A good thing, too: Peter and Kate would turn out to be instrumental in making our time in Sagada awesome.

When the bus arrived after nightfall in Sagada us back-packer types all dispersed to find lodging, with an agreement to meet Peter and Kate for dinner.  After a nice dinner at the Log Cabin (during which Peter reinforced Canadian stereotypes by tending to the un-staffed fireplace like a pro–he also admitted to indeed keeping an ax in the back of his truck), our foursome went back to their room for what was perhaps the greatest throwback to collegiate days that I can remember.  In their dorm-like room (you know the style: you enter and there’s a bed on the left, a bed on the right, and not much more) we partook of the bounties that Peter had so wisely procured in one of the small bus-break villages: a bottle of reconstituted brandy from Spain, and a loaf of freshly baked banana bread.  I assure you that the latter well complimented the former between shots as we passed the bottle: there’s nothing quite like cheap booze and minimal furniture to foster good times and camaraderie.

In our inspired state caused by bread and brandy we plotted to the next morning all do the 4 hour cave tour, because why not?  Seems cooler than the 2 hour version, and apparently part of it calls for swim trunks.

We were rewarded for our outstretched curiosity: what we got ourselves into we probably wouldn’t have done with full knowledge of it up front, and we are more hardcore and experienced for it.  This was serious climbing around and through some big rocks and slippery formations, with ample opportunities to misstep and fall a good 20 feet.  The whole experience was probably nothing you could ever get away with in a litigious society, and I’m glad we were where we were so as to enjoy it.

Our guides were nothing short of bad-ass.  While we were at times crab walking along with butts touching down every foot or so for stability, they were walking along casually in flip flops while brandishing the large kerosene torches which provided our only light, and carrying our backpacks to lighten our load.

For this, and other feats pertaining to expertly having our lives in their hands, we tipped them well and eagerly so.

After 4 hours of climbing through crevices, balancing on boulders, wading through water, and finagling footholds we were finally greeted by sunlight at the cave’s other entrance some 2 miles from where we initially descended.  We were sore, tired, a little damp and a lot muddy, but all the better for it and feeling triumphant.

Rest and recovery sums up the remainder of our time in Sagada, which suited.  There’s a certain stillness of the tiny, remote mountain town that is hard to describe yet easy to recall.  Within 48 hours of our underworld adventure we were on the bus back to Baguio, and on to the surf district of San Juan.