Colorado Camper

Blank Slate: 2012 Chevy Colorado, full size bed

When I way lying on the floor of my hut in Senegal and counting straws in my grass roof during the hottest part of the day, I used to daydream about ways I could maintain my nomadic lifestyle once I moved back to America. How am I supposed to travel in a country where biking from one border to another isn't a practical option and camping on the side of the road is frowned upon at best, and in most places illegal? The solution I came up with was to buy a truck and turn the bed into a livable space. In the last month my dad has been helping me turn my daydreams into reality, and we've been building a platform that has plenty of storage space underneath, and plenty of sleeping space on top.

I did a lot of research on the internet before we started construction and stumbled across someone else who had done something similar to what I was imagining, but with a Toyota Tacoma. Their pictures gave me a good starting point, but we made a few changes in order to accommodate the different design of my truck as well as my own preferences. I figured now that I've got my platform built I would share the process for anyone else interested in becoming a vagabond. All of the materials cost me about $140 and construction took about three days. I'll put a list of materials at the end of this post, but for now lets get to the fun stuff.

Vertical supports

Step 1: Install the vertical supports

We used five 1x12 pine boards (two down the center) to build a frame to support the plywood deck. Everything is anchored with 1.5" L brackets to the board sitting flush against the front of the bed, which was trimmed to make a very tight fit into the available space. This divided the bed into six storage compartments, two long bays and four smaller ones to the front and rear of the wheel wells.

Measuring the exact space needed for
my storage drawers

Step 2: Finding storage options

Once I had the frame installed I went shopping for some sort of containers that would fit my exact dimensions without wasting any valuable storage space. I settled on a set of stacking drawers, rather than a conventional tupperware, so I won't have to do any unpacking when I get wherever I'm going. I can just slide them out and stack them up! I slid them into the cargo bays so that we could block off the length of the rear compartment to fit them exactly.

Horizontal supports

Step 3: Installing the horizontal supports

To support the forward compartment doors we installed four 2x4s horizontally across the space where the front and back of the doors would rest. Since the supports lower the height of the storage space by 2" they also serve to keep my storage containers from sliding all the way to the front of the truck without entirely blocking off the separate compartments. That gives me the option of storing something longer such as ski gear or a dead body if I remove the containers. We used the leftover pieces of 1x12 as supports for the outer edge of the decking, one in front and behind each wheel

Deck and doors installed

Step 4: Installing the plywood deck and access doors

For the decking we used two pieces of 3/8" plywood, cut to fit the contours of the bed and lined with a piece of pipe insulation to allow for a tighter fit.  The deck is secured to the framework with 1 1/16" wood screws, and the doors on each side were cut wide enough to allow access to the two small compartments in front of the wheel. The doors were installed after the deck using two 12" piano hinges

Indoor/outdoor carpet installed

Step 5: Installing the indoor/outdoor carpet
We purchased an inexpensive roll of grey indoor/outdoor carpet that complements the interior of the truck and the headliner of the camper shell and installed it with standard carpet adhesive. We also put a row of heavy-duty staples around the edges for good measure. The carpet was laid as one piece and we used a box-cutter to cut out the doors once the adhesive was dry

Rear Access Panel

Step 5: Rear Access Panel

Using some of my leftover plywood we cut a board to fit over the end to act as a rear access panel. It isn't hinged, instead it has holes drilled to fit over two small pieces of hardware that protrude from the vertical supports and a lock or carabiner is used to hold it on. I liked the pattern of the grain in the plywood so I opted to stain the wood rather than carpet it, and I'll probably end up covering it in stickers as I travel.

Testing out the space in the left compartment...
perfect fit!

To finish everything off I've ordered a Leer mid-rise cap to keep me and my things out of the elements. I went with the model 180 because it offered a bit more headroom, and opted for the Adventure Sports package which includes a Thule locking roof rack for my bike, a ceiling mounted gear net, a 3 outlet 12 volt power block, two interior dome lights and a grey carpet headliner. Its not here yet, but once it arrives I'll be ready for my next adventure...driving out to Telluride, Colorado for my winter job.

List of Materials:5 Pine boards 1x12x6
2 Sheets plywood 3/8" *
2 Piano hinges 12"
16 L brackets 1.5"
Wood Screws 1 1/16"
2 Foam pipe insulators 6ft
Ribbed indoor/outdoor area rug 6'x8'
1qt Carpet adhesive

* I weigh 130lbs and the plywood sags a little bit at the rear of the deck if I sit directly over the open space. I would suggest a thicker piece of plywood if you weigh over 150.

Santa Cruz

A few pictures from my visit with Goza in Santa Cruz. I stopped by at the end of my road trip down from Alaska and spent a week enjoying the California sunshine before I flew back home. I had my bike with me so I entertained myself exploring and shopping downtown while Jessica was at work or school. On her day off we packed in the fun activities...visiting the redwoods, walking on the beach, tasting jam at Swanton Berry Farm and taking nice long walks and drives.

If your friends jumped off a bridge would you?

Guess that answers that question. 200ft. bam.

Chilkat Glacier Helicopter

A new perspective on Skagway

 A few days before leaving Skagway for the summer I got a chance to see the town and the mountains from a completely different vantage point. Randy and Patty, two of the best people in town, had a pair of tickets for a helicopter tour (that Patty won for making the worlds most amazing macaroni and cheese) and they weren't going to be able to use them before the end of the season so they let Steve and I take their place! The morning of the flight we had some of the most amazingly clear weather I have ever seen in Skagway, so the pilot was able to take us up to the Chilkat Glacier which is one that they  normally can't visit because they don't have the visibility to fly that high. The flight up was about half an hour and we spent 45 minutes exploring the glacier before flying back to town. We passed over the mountain that I worked on all summer, and I was finally able to see what lies on the other side...more mountains. Nothing but peaks and glaciers all the way to the horizon! I never realized just how isolated Skagway really is. It was the perfect way to see the area one more time before saying goodbye to Alaska.

Crevasse!

Mountains beyond mountains beyond mountains...

Two Years of Peace Corps: The Numbers

25 months

764 bucket baths

121 hours of language instruction

127 hours of training

34 latrines built

2 well covers constructed

38 vacation days taken

6 games of softball

26 murals painted

6 mystery fevers

107 books read

3 pockets picked

4 gardens started
6 snakes killed

2 wells covered

13 pairs of flip flops broken

2674 kilometers biked

31 new family members gained

1 cell phone stolen

3 hot seasons

1 scorpion sting

4 countries visited

1 flesh-eating skin infection

4 grants written

18 vaccinations received

4 turkeys butchered

3 home haircuts

387 trees planted

60 days of Ramadan fasted
10 reports written

3 American visitors

2 bottles of shampoo

6 rounds of antibiotics

111 blog posts

1 unforgettable experience

Vacation Part Deux: Kedougou

Everything I need on the back of my bike

The Three Sentinels of Pela Kindessa

 After arriving back from Mali with just $4 to my name, traveling back to Kaolack was completely out of the question, so I found myself waiting in Kedougou for my next living stipend to arrive. Fortunately, if you have an alternate form of transportation, four dollars can get you pretty far in the region of Kedougou...so Eric and I hopped on our bikes and he gave me the grand tour of the region. We spent our first two days back relaxing at the regional house drinking cold Coca-Cola with cracked ice, doing laundry and planning the logistics of our next adventure. On Wednesday we caught a ride with a Peace Corps car out to the village of Kukuji, where Eric is working to set up a new site for a future health volunteer. After a rather lengthy meeting with the two separate chiefs of the village and all of the elders we biked the last 7 kilometers to his village of Palel Kindessa, which is right on the Guinean border. Since I was still recovering from a mystery fever, sore throat and ear infection that had been plaguing me since we returned to Senegal we took the rest of the day off, listening to the BBC on his shortwave radio and pretending we were watching TV.

Eric, just 5 feet in front of me on the "trail"

Eric gave me the abbreviated tour of his village in the afternoon while we greeted his work partners and some of his favorite neighbors. He took some time to meet with his counterpart to discuss his own latrine project while I pretended the Tsetse flies had given me African Sleeping Sickness and dozed on the sidelines. We pulled water from his ridiculously shallow well for our evening bucket baths and then tuned back into the BBC to catch the latest goings on in the world. I can't get any English news stations in my village so I've been pretty ignorant as to what is happening outside of Senegal for the last two years. It was nice to feel up to date on current events, even if it was just for one night.





 

One of the Sentinels

The next morning we packed up our bikes and took the trail from Palel to Dindefelo to start the next part of our adventure. We went on a scavenger hunt from boutique to boutique collecting ingredients for a picnic lunch and then hiked out to a waterfall tucked back in a deep niche in the cliffs. The day wasn't too warm and the water was positively freezing, so we had the whole place to ourselves. After the obligatory swim and shower under the falls we spent the rest of our time constructing our signature "rat trap sandwiches" (bread, mayo, mustard, cold chicken spam, and a hard boiled egg) and lounging on the rocks trying to get warm. Around three in the afternoon we hiked out and loaded up two backpacks for a 45minute stair-master-esque death climb up to Dande, a village on top of the escarpment.

Freezing at the waterfall in Dindefelo

Once on top of the plateau we veered away from the village and set out to find a campsite near the edge of the cliff close to a rock formation known as "The Teeth." The trail wound through endless meadows of golden grass before depositing us at the world's most perfect camping spot close to the forest. We made a bed of straw to pitch the tent on and set up a fire ring on a bald patch of rock before Eric wandered off to collect firewood and I went in search of two perfect seats. The wind was so strong and the meadow was so dry that we opted to keep the fire small, just enough to scare away the boogie man and cook our "Rat Trap Pasta" (vermicelli, powdered milk, vache qui rit, onion, tomato bullion and chicken spam). We had a peaceful nights sleep despite the strong winds, but woke up shortly after dawn to some unexpected visitors. A troop of about 30 very rowdy baboons crested the ridge just as we were getting ready to make breakfast, so we decided to postpone the morning meal in favor of breaking camp and moving on. Eric took down the tent while I banged sticks together and threw large rocks at the largest males when they got too close.

Campsite on the plateau near Dande

 

A short 10 minute hike brought us to The Teeth in time to catch the tail end of the sunrise while we ate our breakfast of bread and hard boiled eggs. On a clear day you can see straight across the valley to the mountains on either side, but that morning it looked as though the valley was filled with fog thanks to the Harmattan winds that have been plaguing Senegal for weeks now. The winds blow south from the Sahara desert, bringing along a haze of dust that has been all but blocking out the sun and dropping the humidity so low that it dries out the inside of your nose and makes it bleed.
Once we finished breakfast we hiked back through the meadows to the village of Dande to refill our water bottles at their new hand-pump and check out the waterfall from another vantage point. In the rainy season the waterfall is fed by a stream of rainwater that forms on the plateau, but at this time of year the water mostly seeps out from the layers of rock below the ground so we were able to walk on almost dry land all the way to the very top of the waterfall.

Les Dents de Dande

 

We hiked back down to Dindefelo before the sun climbed too high and spent the day at Eric's friend Lily's house showering, washing clothes and reading in the shade. We met up for drinks in the evening with two other volunteers who ended up in the region after trying to get into Gunea for three days and getting rejected at every single border crossing because of tightened election security. Since their vacation plans had been put on hold we invited them to go camping with us the next day at a different waterfall and they gladly accepted. We met the next morning to buy provisions for more rat trap sandwiches and pasta and then biked the 5 kilometers to the town of Segou and another 2k to the campsite next to the river in the midst of a bamboo forest.

Amber waves of grain

After setting up camp and situating our drinks in the river to cool we hiked along the trail to a swimming hole and then continued another 30 minutes to the waterfall. First order of business for us dirty Peace Corps volunteers was to get cleaned up, so we broke out our bars of soap and bottles of shampoo and took advantage of natures shower. If you've ever watched a Garnier Fructis commercial and wondered who the heck would ever be conditioning their hair at a tropical waterfall....now you know. When we got back to camp we started a bonfire to get warmed up and spent the evening cooking, chatting and killing small scorpions that came out of the undergrowth to share the warmth of our fire. In the morning we biked all the way back to Dindefelo before using the very last of our money to buy a seat in a car back to Kedougou. Not a bad vacation for only four dollars!

View of Dindefelo from the teeth....you can just barely make out the town
with all the dust in the air.

Celebrety Guest Blog: A Visit from the Other Half

"Are you crazy? Your first trip outside of the US and Canada, and you picked Senegal!?" - more than one of Jennie's fellow PCVs

When I arrived in Senegal, nearly unable to communicate with anyone for lack of local language, in the midst of a transportation strike that almost led Jennie and I to walk 3 or 4km from the airport to the Dakar Peace Corps Transit House, and dead tired from lack of sleep on a 9-hour overnight plane ride, I thought that this remark was a quaint joke. 12 days later, I realized that every time I heard this statement (and I heard it loud, and often), it was said with an appropriate mixture of disbelief, indignation, and admiration. 

Disbelief, that I seriously would choose to go to Senegal before traveling to any other more desirable destination. Indignation, that I seemed to be enjoying myself in a location that most of these PCVs have been languishing in for at least six months. Admiration, that the bonds of my friendship with Jennie would bring me there, no questions asked. Looking back, on one hand, they all were right. I am crazy.

On the other hand, this trip was an opportunity I wouldn't dare trade in for a trip to any nicer, more accommodating, friendlier foreign country. I had many cultural shocks, the kind that come with traveling in a country where women are not equal to men (and are objectified beyond Western comprehension), where foreigners (specifically caucasians) are discriminated against, and where being both white and female is quite precarious. I also had many experiences that I consider priceless - I've been retelling them over and over for weeks, and have the punchlines all figured out so that these tales sound as far-fetched and surreal as the most ridiculous fisherman's yarn. All of it has provided me with a renewed sense of gratification for living in a civilized, modern country.

My first day in country was a strange experience, riddled by an overwhelming sense of disbelief. I couldn't communicate with anyone. Jennie was speaking three languages at some points to communicate with locals. We spent much of the day at Liberté Six, Dakar's Peace Corps Transit House. For me, that was a blessing, as I was recovering from dehydration, jet lag, and general exhaustion. For both of us, it was a smart option, as it was the first day of a country-wide transportation strike, protesting the rising price of gasoline. We were lucky to get a cab to Six from the airport (and only got one because it was 7am, and no one else was around). When we decided to go to Marché San Daga, a local street market, we jumped in a clando, a private car that just happened to be heading to the same place. The marché was overwhelming, and we didn't stay too long. Instead we went back to Six, took a nap, and then I had Jennie open her suitcase of goodies that I brought her - and gave her a true prize - a Chipotle burrito. Yum!

This is what a PCV looks like having her first Chipotle burrito in two years.

Luckily, the transportation strike ended by the next morning, and we were able to escape from Dakar, and be on our way to a camel-riding campement in the desert wastelands outside of Lompoul. However, even getting there would prove to be a challenge, by Western standards. First, a taxi to the Dakar garage:

And this is a good looking taxi.

Then, a sept-place (French for seven-seat) taxi to the garage outside Kebemer:

Imagine a driver, seven passengers, and all their crap squeezed in there.

Then, a two kilometer walk into Kebemer, followed by a wait at the local ceeb shack for the one lunch service. (Close to a two-hour wait, because we got there at noon, Senegalese lunch is at 2, and they only serve one thing until they run out.) I did get to try ceebu jën, the national dish of Senegal - marinated fish cooked with vegetables, over rice made with tomato paste. The vegetables were carrot, Chinese turnip (weird), bitter tomato (disgusting, but if you don't eat it you're a witch), sweet potato, cassava and cabbage. After lunch, we headed to a local taxi stand, and waited another two hours or so for our mini-car to fill up with people headed out toward Lompoul:

Ours wasn't painted so pretty, but it was just as full of people!

Of course, just as we thought it was full, with just our two wooden benches lining the inside, enough people showed up for the drivers to decide to cram in a third bench. Then we had to wait for that to fill up, too. Finally though, we made it to Lompoul, and caught a campement-provided toubab car (Peace Corps slang for any car that is less than 30 years old, still has shock-absorption, and the seats all match) out to the campement.

A view of the tents in their dune valley.

We hung out for the afternoon and relaxed (after traveling from 9am to 4:30 pm, we deserved it!), had a beer, and took some fantastic pin-up shots on the dunes. The campement dinner was fantastic, and we spoke to the guy in charge about riding camels first thing in the morning. However, it just was not meant to be! When we got up and went to track down our camels to ride, the campement manager had forgotten. He got on the phone with his camel-herder, who hadn't gone out to the dunes to find them yet. A half-hour later, the herder called back to say that they were missing. Um, what kind of camel campement loses their camels? The manager apologized a bit, but we didn't really care. I still got a photo with a camel for my mom though.

It was as close as I could get!

We had a long way to trek - we needed to get from the campement to Kaolack, about 140 miles. Again, for Western travel, not such a big deal. But for Senegalese travel… this would be an exercise in patience. We took the toubab car back to Lompoul, and somehow managed to catch a ride to Kebemer almost immediately in a Peugeot minitruck full of logs. Think this thing, but full of logs instead of luggage: 

The front seat wasn't terrible...but the back was ridiculous!

Halfway to Kebemer, however, the engine stalled out. No amount of banging on engine parts with wrenches would fix the damn thing, either. We managed to snag a ride on a new minitruck, this one full of cabbages and people. We were hanging out the back of it (Jennie more so than I - I'm still not sure how she didn't fall out) for a good 12km or so, into Kebemer. Instead of walking to the garage, this time we took a lovely charrette:

Ours was actually hitched to a donkey. Also, not quite so picturesque.

And at the garage, we couldn't find anyone going directly to Kaolack. So we were going to be routed through Thies first - on a mini-car. A gutted out and retrofitted bus with more seats that it should humanely have, these things are uncomfortable, crowded and stop at just about every road town they pass. PCVs lovingly refer to them as Alhams, after the phrase 'Alhamdoulilah!', which is painted on the front of every single one:

Alhamdoulilah! This bus made it 85k to Thies without breaking!

We rode the Alham towards Thies, stopping nearly every kilometer to let someone off. And at one point, the driver pulls over into a small road town and just says, "We're not going all the way to Thies anymore, because I don't want to drive a half-full bus." Luckily, when he had his change of heart, there was another half-full bus in the road town. So we jumped on that one, and this one stopped every half kilometer, all the way to Thies. We had left the campement around 9:30am, and got to Thies around 5pm. A full day's work, this business of traveling in Senegal. After a quick bite to eat at a toubab restaurant named Big Faim, with real, Western toilets, and toilet paper, and hand towels, and soap, and wi-fi, and beer, and the Senegalese equivalent of hoagie sandwiches, we needed to get to the Thies garage to grab a ride to Kaolack.

We headed out into the street to flag down a taxi, but every one listened to where we were going and said no. What the hell was going on? We could see a bunch of people walking toward the direction of the garage, and no cars heading that way. Sirens were blaring though, and it didn't sound good. Finally when we got a car to take us, Jennie got an answer: the president Abdoulaye Wade, was giving a speech, and most people heading there on foot were going to protest. The gendarmes and the police were there en masse, and if a riot broke out, the taxi drivers didn't want to be anywhere near it. Well, luckily this guy took his chances and delivered us safely to the garage. We grabbed another sept-place to Kaolack, and spent the next three hours crammed in a third seat that had no business being in that station wagon to begin with.

We got into Kaolack late, and spent some time with Jennie's good PCV friends before passing out in our lovely roof-top mosquito netted bed. The next day, we tried to exchange money, and got turned away since we didn't have our passports on us. Then, we headed to the indoor Kaolack market, the biggest of its kind in West Africa. A veritable maze of stalls covered in corrugated tin roofing, with only unevenly floored, narrow alleys as passageways between them, we got lost in it, turned around, and generally took three times as much time to find things as necessary. But we did some great souvenir shopping, as well as trying local beignets, and picking up some wonderful looking ribbonfish to bring home to village. We also stopped by the vegetable market for 15 pounds of vegetables, and the artisan village to put in orders for some pieces from Jennie's leatherworker. 

In the afternoon, we took a taxi down to Keur Sossé, the road town closest to Jennie's village. From there, her host mom sent out a charrette to get us and all of our stuff. Sambande is a village of 500 people, and after the overwhelming first four days of my trip, I was ready to just chill for a while. And so chilling is all we did. We read on the Kindle I had brought from America, preloaded with a hundred books. We talked and caught up on the past two years of each other's lives (letters don't always cut it). We sat around and lazed and vowed not to travel for the next couple of days, unless it was by walking.

Outside of hut

Inside of hut

The days in the village passed by kind of quickly. We had Jennie's brothers and sisters help us make a pinata for a handwashing demonstration the next day. I taught the kids how to play five-hundred with a frisbee before the handwashing demo, and took lots of photos of them making silly faces. At the demo, Jennie used glitter to show how les microbes get transferred from person to person through hand-shaking or not using soap to wash hands.

Pinata making

Playing 500

Makin' faces

Using glitter to demonstrate how germs travel from one person to another.

We got our feet hennaed and went to greet the elders in the village, and had a sabaar dance party that Jennie's neighboring PCVs came to. 

Henna

Greeting elders

Jennie dancing

Villager dancing 

Un photo Senegal of all the toubabs dressed up

I got sick, Jennie got sick, and we continued on with our travels anyway. After 5 blissful, simple days in village, we moved on to more touristy pastures. We hopped a taxi back to Kaolack, finally exchanged money, picked up my leather pieces, and self-medicated Jennie so that she could travel somewhat comfortably.

We went to Mbour, an oceanside city south of Dakar. The ride was uneventful, though Jennie was really out of it from whatever she had taken to help with her illness. From the Mbour garage, we took a minibus to Toubab Dialao, where we would stay for a night. Right on the beach, this touristy town was full of people trying to sell cheap goods to foreigners. However, we took an awesome walk on the beach at sunset, and I was able to get a lot of beautiful photos of the not-quite-right vacation home architecture, the sunset over the Atlantic (how strange!), and a gazillion people playing soccer.

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean

Pretty coastline

Ski chalet beach house??

Mural at our campement/inn 

Misty soccer game

 Taking a shower at the hotel we were staying at was blissful - even without hot water; at least it was running - and once again there was a Western toilet, although you had to fill up a bucket and pour it in the bowl to flush. Also, the hotel flat ran out of water around 5pm. Awkward.

Nonetheless, it was beautiful and quiet and we slept okay on the really crap foam mattress. The next morning we had a hotel breakfast that wasn't nearly as nice as the village ones we'd been enjoying. The machine bread baguettes really didn't live up to tapalapa, at all. However, we were able to get out of Toubab Diallo relatively early and move on back toward Mbour; we took a cab to the local town on the Route Nationale, then a minibus back to Mbour garage, and grabbed a taxi to head down to Warang, where we visited the ex-pat Belgian liqueur distillery, Liqueur de Warang. On the way there, I took this video of what the outskirts of Mbour looks like - a typical scene in Senegal.

At Warang, we tried all of their samples - 5 different flavors, yum! and bought a bunch. I bought Passionfruit, Mint and a Triple Citrus one (lemon, lime and grapefruit, I believe). So delicious!

Distillery building at Liqueur de Warang

Outside tasting bar

From there, we headed back to Mbour's garage, and then took a sept-place to Dakar. It was the beginning of the pilgrimage Magal, where every male travels to Touba for this specific Muslim holiday. There were guys hanging on the top of minibuses, and running along behind them to jump on at the last second - it was crazy, but at least all the crazy was going the other direction. The trip into Dakar was relatively boring, and I think I even got a nap in. From the Dakar garage we were able to get a quick taxi back to Liberte Six (where I started my adventure!) and collapse onto the couches to laze for the rest of the day.

The following day, my second to last, we went to Goree Island, where the French colonialists based their slave trade operations. Only accessible by ferry, the island is a haven of 18th century architecture, fun tourist souvenirs, and small coastal restaurants. We walked around, I took about 500 photos, and bought a couple of souvenirs. 

Ile de Gorée

Ile de Gorée harbor

Our ferry boat was named Beer!

View back toward Dakar

We headed back to mainland Dakar so that we could go to the Marche San Daga again, but nearly every shop was closed because of Magal. So we stopped in N'ice Cream, for some nice ice cream, and then headed back to Liberte Six to relax again. It was almost eerie, seeing how empty Dakar was during Magal, compared to my first days in the same neighborhoods. In comparison, it was overwhelming and uncomfortable, whereas during Magal it was more like any Western city (except maybe New York). 

We went to bed early, so that in the morning we could finally get Jennie to the Med Hut at the Dakar Peace Corps Office. We did that, and got to spend most of our day recuperating in air-conditioning, watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on endless loop, and checking email on super fast interwebs. Jennie got about 10 different medications, and when we went to dinner with Goza in the evening, she was almost her usual self. Finally we were counting down the hours until I would be leaving, and both of us spent much of the time napping. But finally it was time to go. To the airport I went, and we had a goodbye that was quick and painless so that I could keep grabby hands off my luggage. Ten hours later, I was back on American soil, being collected by my parents to get a thoroughly American breakfast sandwich, and retelling this tale for the first time.