Her face said Chinese, but her demeanor shouted Russian.

“People try to talk to me in Mandarin all the time,” the 30-something-year-old Moscow resident told me. We were in my room in Chiang Mai. It was February, Chinese New Year, so the northern Thai city was full of Chinese tourists.

“I can’t respond because I have no clue what they’re saying,” Nona said, not laughing, but not frustrated either. It was just a fact of life she’d accepted long ago. She knew she looked Chinese. But she identified as a Russian raised Russian by Russians in a rural village in Russia. (Say THAT five times fast!)  After school, she’d moved to Moscow where there were more opportunities for work.

Angel of Queens;)

Nona, that’s not her real name, looked like Lucy Liu meets Lisa Ling meets Yao Ming. She was more than six feet tall. My Facebook sleuthing did in fact prove that she’d worked as a model. But those weren’t the photos she showed me on her phone as we sat on my hotel balcony in one of Chiang Mai’s less fashionable districts. (My “balcony” was really just a short outdoor concrete entryway to my windowless bathroom where I could sit on the toilet, shower and brush my teeth all at the same time—under the watchful eye of the resident cockroach.)

The photos she showed me were action shots of her surfing in Bali the week before. Like me, Nona escaped her home country’s harsh winters by escaping to Southeast Asia. The fact that Nona sort of blended in because she looked Asian, was just a coincidence. If you could hold up a mirror to her mind, you’d see Russian.

My en suite hosted social hour for the local cockroach community every night.

The mirror was actually the reason I met Nona in the first place. I was tired of seeing the two furry caterpillars slowly, but surely, approaching one another on my forehead. Yes, I own a pair of tweezers. But these caterpillars looked like they’d need something from the power tool family—not a hedge trimmer (I’m not that dramatic) but at the very least, the tool my mom should buy my dad to trim his nose hairs. The only way tweezers were going to work is if they were wielded by someone with experience. Someone like Nona.

Much like some people use the Internet to find their mail-order Russian brides, I used it to find my mail-order Russian browmaster. A quick search of “eyebrows Chiang Mai” brought up a recent post in an expat forum. It read something like this:

Hi, my name is Nona and I am visiting Chiang Mai from Moscow. I will be here for about a month. I specialize in eyebrows. Message me if you’d like more information.

I messaged Nona, requested “more information” and was shocked by her response. Her fee for a pair of brows was 700 baht!

If you’re not familiar with Chiang Mai’s cost of living, here’s a snapshot of what I was spending:

• Room at Banilah Guesthouse WITH AC and private bathroom: 300 baht ($9 USD)/night
• Weekly blowout at the hair salon across the street: 60 baht ($1.80 USD)
• 32-ounce fresh smoothie at the temple gates (i.e. tourist prices): 40 baht ($1.20 USD)
• Chicken curry entree in old town (again tourist district): 60-80 baht ($1.80 – $2.40 USD)
• 60-minute massage: 200 baht ($6 USD)

My tattoo in Thailand cost about $25. And was less painful than the brow sesh.

By Chiang Mai local standards, I was ballin’. Still, I wasn’t about to drop 700 baht on my brows. That was $22! I can get my eyebrows threaded at a dozen places in Manhattan for $8. So why the heck would I pay three times that much in a city whose consumer price index is 53% cheaper than Manhattan’s? Granted, Nona was making a house call and coming to my place (maybe a 10-minute commute on foot), but still, she was charging Reykjavikian prices!

It was so absurd I had to know why. Was she the brow whisperer? Were hers the fingers responsible for Brooke Shield’s money-making fringe? No, she was too young. Could she be behind Kylie Jenner’s sky-high arches? Nah, that person had blood on their hands.

Nona’s high price meant she had to be good. But like an idiot, I tried to talk her down. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to negotiate with a Russian before, but I, for one, was not successful. Ultimately, Nona told me that she wasn’t an “eyebrows God” but she was worth 700 baht, I was desperate so, “Deal” was what I messaged back.

The next day, I invited Nona into my hotel room where we decided it was too dark to set up shop. The windowless bathroom didn’t have sufficient lighting either so we wound up on the open-air “balcony.” It was barely big enough for the both of us so Nona used my desk inside to lay out some of her instruments and materials. Imagine Bob Vila’s tool belt collided with Bob Ross’s painting supplies and you’d have half of what Nona was pulling out of her bags.

My entire desk was covered with tools, measuring instruments, paintbrushes, a color-mixing palette and paints. I reached for my phone but before I could take a photo, Nona put her hands over her stuff like a mother bird protecting her nest.

“You can’t take any photos,” she said, instinctively using an arm to shield her arsenal. “The salons back in Moscow are trying to figure out how I do it. They’re jealous I’m able to charge as much as I do.”

After assuring her I wasn’t a spy sent by the KGB of facial hair, Nona relaxed, a little.

To make small talk, I asked her how long she’d been doing brows. It wasn’t long. Maybe a year or two. She’d only recently left her corporate career. She was the manager of a prominent bank in Moscow—responsible for too many employees and feeling stifled creatively. So naturally, she left that industry and ended up in eyebrows.

I couldn’t get much more out of her because she was an artist and most artists don’t like to talk while they work. So, I sat there, on a hard, wooden chair, while Nona towered over me, tweezers in hand and eyes squinting. You know it’s bad when Asian eyes have to squint. In this case, “bad” was what I had done to ruin my brows’ natural shape. Years of over and under tweezing in all the wrong places she told me. I felt like the kid who goes to the dentist, and after an hour of having metal tools poke, prod, spray, drill and scrape the inside of her mouth, has to sit through the floss-or-die lecture.

I don’t know how she did it (I had my eyes closed half the time) but Nona assessed and then attacked. One minute she was two inches from my face, her hot breath on my nose. The next, she was two steps back, judging her pluck from all angles. It went on like this for two hours. TWO HOURS! I’ve gotten perms that have taken less time. My butt was painfully asleep, my stomach was rumbling and my friend who I had been messaging with when Nona showed up was wondering if I was still alive because I hadn’t responded in two hours. TWO HOURS!

Nona, however, didn’t seem to notice the time. She was in her element, rifling through a pile of colored brow pencils that all looked like brown and black to me and mixing the brow paints. Or were they dyes? At this point, I felt like saying, “Paint them purple. Just take this 700 baht and leave.” But I was polite. I nodded when she said, “Don’t you think this is too dark?” and lied when she said, “This looks warm-enough right?”

After my brow paint had dried, it was finally time for the big reveal. Nona had not let me look in the mirror for the two-hour session. Naturally, I had to take a bathroom break halfway through and she made me promise I wouldn’t try to see myself in the cloudy mirror above the sink.

I wish I could say the big reveal blew me away. That my new arches accentuated my high cheekbones. But I don’t even have high cheekbones to begin with. I wish I could say that the new color brought out the green in my irises. But truthfully, my brows seemed the same shade of brownish black they’d been for 27 years. I wish I could say my caterpillars had turned into butterflies (metaphorically of course), but they just looked like junior varsity versions of their former furry selves.

That said, I didn’t hate them. The end result was definitely better than what I’d started with. I said something to that affect and Nona laughed.

Back when thin was in!

“This is not the end result. You’ve done so much damage to your natural brow line by overplucking in the wrong places. It’s going to take months for some of the essential hairs to grow back.”

That was when she dropped the bombshell that I’d have to routinely check in with her.

“I usually consult with my clients at least once a month,” she said before telling me that I was not to pluck a single hair that would grow in until I had gotten the green light from her. We would communicate via Facebook and meet in person if we were on the same continent. The quest for perfect brows would take at least a year, assuming I didn’t go rogue in the meantime and remove any strays, or what I perceived to be strays, without her permission.

It was an admirable quest, albeit one I abandoned the second I hugged Nona goodbye and handed her 800 baht (not tipping an aesthetician is pretty much asking for a breakout). Telling me not to tweeze was akin to telling me not to touch the puppy.

Still, I have a lot of respect for Nona and her commitment to helping the human race bring a stronger brow game. It was refreshing to meet someone who was a master of such an obscure craft. It was inspiring to meet a woman who knew, and demanded, her worth. And yes, it was kind of funny to meet a Chinese-looking Russian.

If you want to bring my blood dangerously close to its boiling point, say this: “You’re so lucky; you get to travel.” I hear it almost every time I tell people where I’m from or what I do for work. It’s not that I’m mad for me, because I’m not. I’m mad for the person asking. In a way, they are robbing themselves of the same “luck.”

To quote a RHONYC, “There’s a reason your windshield is bigger than your rearview mirror.”

It’s not luck that has me writing this from a black sand beach on a Spanish island the British revere as paradise.  In fact, when I look at my life’s events, I think, for a white, American woman, the odds of becoming someone who lived out of a suitcase seemed stacked against me.

Preface: Spreading of the broken wings

I had every reason to stay in Montana for college. As a high school sophomore, I was finally diagnosed with OCD, something I think I’ve had since at least 5^th grade when I kept a ridiculous spreadsheet chronicling all of my movements and encounters. If you so much as looked at me back then, it was documented in Excel. Why? Well, because I was convinced I was going to be kidnapped of course. Monk and Howie Mandel have an irrational fear of germs. Well, I had an irrational fear of kidnapper vans. OCD manifests itself in millions of ways.

I became so obsessed with couponing one summer that I had FOUR issues of the Sunday paper delivered to our house and it drove my boyfriend to the brink of threatening to drive over my couponing scissors. Yes, they were SPECIFICALLY meant for couponing. I got them at a couponing course I PAID to attend. How’s that for ironic?

My OCD was more than an impeccably organized sock drawer. In fact, it was so severe I almost ended up in-patient (think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).  To show me what my future could hold, my parents and therapist actually arranged for me to do a supervised meet and greet session with a graduate (although I don’t know if he’d call himself that) of an in-patient place on the East Coast that treated his extremely severe OCD. It wasn’t quite Shutter Island, but it scared me into abandoning some of my most crippling compulsions.

During my worst episodes, I moved into my closet where I could set up camp and control every element. So, the idea of moving to New York City, while I was still seeing my psychiatrist regularly and hadn’t completed my cognitive therapy workbook, where I wouldn’t be under the watchful eyes of my parents, was preposterous, at best.

I had another reason to attend a school close to home. My senior year of high school, during baccalaureate and the Senior picnic and more Senior Week events which I had to miss, I was getting my first colonoscopy which would diagnose me with Crohn’s disease. I’d spent way too many months, and now that I think about it, years, silently suffering. It made sense to stay within a three-hour’s drive of home where I could have my parents take care of me if I had a flare-up. But, I didn’t. I went further east than everyone in my class except David Chen who ended up at Amherst.

Sophomore in high school, first ever visit to NYC. I knew no one when I moved there. I had a house number for a place in Brooklyn where my grandmother was born, but that was all.

I didn’t “get” a full ride scholarship

I earned one. No guidance counselor, friend, family member or mentor encouraged me to apply to a school In New York City. I watched a 48 Hours Mystery episode (again, my obsession with true crime) about a Ohio girl who moved there to pursue her dance dreams. I CHOSE to. I chose to log on to the St. John’s website, request an application, and then fill it out, along with a personal essay I spent hours agonizing over. It worked. I didn’t “get” good grades in high school. I earned them or when needed, avoided bad grades. For example, when my near-perfect GPA was in jeopardy, I quickly dropped AP Physics and enrolled in Art Class. RIP Mr. Borgreen. You were the best.

I didn’t “get” to spend my summers in the Hamptons

Try waking up at 6 a.m. six times a week during your summer break and helping manage a celebrity-ridden (i.e. high stakes, high expectations) yoga studio in the Hamptons all while cleaning up after a two-year-old and chasing after her older brother who was way too smart, and fast, for his six years. Yes, I got to do all of this in one of the poshest zip codes on the planet, but I, like many of the wealthy people who own homes behind hedges there, earned my place there.

After spring semester, I could have gone back to Montana where I had free room and board and a car at my disposal. But no, I sacrificed that to cycle from Hampton to Hampton, from bayside to beachside, even in the rain. My second summer there I went through Lululemon’s almost cult-like application process, got a job in retail (where I folded more pants in one week than most people fold in a lifetime) AND interned, unpaid, as a nightlife and social reporter for the largest newspaper in the Hamptons.

View from Lily Pond’s VIP booth, sitting with the DJ and a Hilton or two…

Did I mention I didn’t have a car? Yes, even on the afternoons when the summer thunderstorms rolled in, I’d have to ride my bike ( a hand-me-down hybrid, not the fancy one I have now) all seven miles from East Hampton (where I worked) to Sag Harbor (where I shared a basement room with my cousin who I brought out from Montana to nanny). The only other people in the Hamptons who seemed to be biking out of necessity, not for sport, were the Mexicans, who may or may not have “earned” their way…

I didn’t “get” to backpack across Europe with my best friend

Over Christmas break 2009, I met with my best friend in a hometown coffee shop. Instead of gossiping or talking about boys, we hatched a plan to backpack across Western Europe.

No one handed us tickets to Dublin or paid for our Eurail passes. Instead, we divvied up the research—each of us responsible for specific cities and spreadsheets—and pinched our pennies. For the entire spring semester I packed lunches of Trader Joes-brand food while my classmates ate out and shopped at Whole Foods. I even trekked to Brooklyn a few times to make babysitting money while the parents had a Saturday date night and many of my classmates were probably at a bar.

Once we were in Europe, no one was waiting for us at every train station, ready to carry our backbreaking Keltys and take us to our rooms. No, we had to learn how to communicate with the strange older Italian man in the Cinque Terre who told his room for rent had AC. So we took it, only to learn later that to him, a fan =’s AC. Just like mistakes didn’t happen to us, we made them, we didn’t “get” to backpack across Europe. We put in the time, sweat and a few tears needed to spend 80 days touring more than 10 countries.

In the Cinque Terre, roughly 60-ish days into our trip. We had no cell phones the entire time. Just a pair of walkie talkies!

I didn’t “get” to help hand out 550 bikes in Costa Rica

Bikes for the World didn’t email me or hand me a flier on a street corner asking me to contribute to its cause—collecting and donating used bicycles to rural communities in developing countries. I Googled something like “bicycle non-profits”, ended up on its webpage, and scrolled down so I could click on the “Contact Us” button. Even after responding to my inquiry and saying that yes, I could help with the next distribution, no one from Bikes for the World offered to pay for my flight down to Costa Rica or drive me to the distribution site, a few hours from San Jose on a barely passable dirt road. Instead, I went on craigslist and then met a stranger in Chipotle where I traded him my netbook (remember them?) for his Jet Blue voucher. Then, I reached out to a friend’s sister’s ex-boyfriend who I had never met in Costa Rica and asked if he’d take me to the rural village. Thank God he said yes (and today he’s one of my best friends).

Some of the bicycles we sorted and helped distribute to a very poor district in rural Costa Rica.

I didn’t “get” a Leonberger

Leonbergers are rare and expensive. Anyone who knows that tends to say, “You’re so lucky you got one.” Except, I didn’t. When Zeus’ owner dropped him off at the Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter, they didn’t call me.

I had to learn about him from my mom (who found him online) and make a trip to visit the shelter (you had to show up in person for a supervised visit to get approved to apply). Once I was approved to apply, I had to drive back to the shelter to pick up the paper application, which I completed and handed in. A few dozen (I seem to remember the number 100) applied for him. I didn’t “get” Zeus because I was the lucky one. No, the shelter chose me because I’d done my homework and I had stellar references.

For at least three years, I’d wanted a Leonberger and anyone in my inner circle knew how passionate I was about them. Even people who weren’t in my inner circle! For example, a few years before meeting Zeus, I emailed a reporter at the Associated Press who wrote about my obsession with the breed. That story appeared in newspapers across the country. I also reached out to a national Leonberger club, eventually visiting the home of a Montana representative (who I reached out to online) who would later vouch for me at the shelter.

Finally, I CHOSE to go against my mom’s advice (she didn’t think adopting Zeus was a good idea at the time) and I accepted him when I was told I could adopt him—something I credit my AP article and association with the national club for.

Zeus’ shelter photo.

I didn’t “get” good genes

Okay, so that’s not entirely true. I do have some good genes. BUT I also have Crohn’s disease (which runs in women of Eastern European Jewish descent) and strictly vanity speaking—I had to wear braces, get glasses and suffer through years of people either making fun of my freckles or telling me they were adorable. I was confused af. But I want people to know—for their sake—because they can do it too—that I didn’t “get” a good body.

I make choices that result in being healthy and lean. I.e. I’ve never gotten bigger than a size small ice cream (my parents used to make us split SMALL Blizzards when Dairy Queen was open). I never get extra toppings, unless they’re fruits or vegetables. And who needs stuffed crust when the cheese is already on top of the pizza? I don’t look at appetizers unless I’m eating them instead of an entrée and I NEVER NEVER I-don’t-care-what-the-occasion-is* day drink.

The choice is yours, are you going to have my dad’s & brothers’ pizzas on the left or my mom’s and mine on the right?

Similarly, I don’t bingewatch anything or spend Saturdays sprawled out on a couch. Nor do I take an Uber if it’s within walking distance. Walking is cheaper anyway. And the elevator? I only use that when it’s more than 6 stories and even then, when I lived on the 9^th floor of my apartment in New York City, I took the stairs most of the time. So, I challenge you, if you want to be leaner and perhaps, probably, meaner, to make similar choices and see if you “get” a body closer to what you want.

And finally, I don’t “get” to travel

No one fired me from the 9-to-5 realm and said you are simply not cut out for the corporate world. Nor did a genie magically appear and grant me a wish of being able to travel as often as I’d like. No, what really happened is I made a series of conscious choices. Sometimes, with the consent of my friends and family. More often, without it.

When I was at my sickest, very weak and around 100 lbs., I got an email offering an all-expenses paid trip to South Africa if I was able to secure an assignment. Granted, not only was I too sick to travel anywhere, according to my parents and doctors, but it was also 2015: the year of the Ebola scare. I.e. if I had a $1 for every editor who told me there’s no way they’d assign an Africa story right now and even $1 for the editors who didn’t bother responding to my request, I could have paid my own damn way. But I didn’t. Instead, I chipped away at every editor and outlet whose contact information I could find until one finally gave me a letter of assignment.

And then, I ate as much as I could, put on some weight, and convinced my parents that I was healthy enough to travel abroad. Two months later, I was in Africa. Furthermore, I didn’t just stay in South Africa. I’d reached out to Rwanda’s tourism board and convinced them to agree to host me, if I paid for my flights, so I flew there. This was despite being told by my doctors that visiting Central Africa wasn’t in my best health interest. I’m on a biologic which weakens my immune system and doesn’t allow me to get live vaccinations such as the Yellow Fever vaccination required for visiting most, if not all, Central African countries.

No one called and asked me to ride with Rafiki, one of the professionals for Team Rwanda. I read about him online, emailed to see if it was possible and less than two weeks later he was taking me on one of his favorite routes.

The rest of my trips in the past few years have been similar. Yes, I do get a ton of emails offering “free” trips to exotic destinations. BUT, no trip is ever free. Nor do I “get” to go on them. I’m working: from responding to that initial email to handing in my assignment. I work to secure an assignment in advance, I hustle and suffer through boring, drawn-out press trip dinners, and when I get tired of having to play by their rules, I keep traveling by paying my own way. If this means I still drive a 2006 CRV, my bike seat is held together by duck tape because I can’t drop $100 on a new saddle and I can only afford to eat out during happy hour or on my birthday when I eat for free, then so be it.

The goods news is that because I don’t “get” to travel, neither do you NOT get to travel. If you wanted to quit your job tomorrow, I don’t think you’d have to walk over any dead bodies stopping you.

If you wanted to buy a ticket to Thailand and check riding elephants (although you will learn you shouldn’t ride them) off your bucket list, no one at the airline or elephant sanctuary is going to stop you. Nor is your bank account going to not approve the payment (unless you don’t have the funds in the first place).

But just like no one is going to stop you from booking a flight, reserving a week at an all-inclusive resort or whatever it is, no one is going to hold your hand when you sit in your boss’s office and ask for the time off. Unless your parents are as generous as mine, no one is going to volunteer to watch your dogs or your kids while you’re away. Also, no one is going to pat you on the back when they see you’re saving up for your trip by doing without a month’s gym membership and riding your bike for cardio (rain, wind or shine) instead.

Walking with lions, while supervised, is OK. But remember, when food is around there’s NO such thing as friends or family…

At the end of the day, you are pretty much responsible for what you “get” and don’t get. Sure, sometimes bad things happen to good people, but genuinely good people usually don’t become bad people just because they’ve had some misfortune. They dictate how they react and they don’t let circumstances define them.

If you see something you want, don’t expect to “get” it. Expect to earn it. Most importantly, expect to savor the satisfaction that comes with knowing you earned it. Listen to any Ted Talk by a successful person or read the biography of a celebrity and most of it won’t be about what it’s like to live life at the top. It will be about the choices they made, and the hours they put in, to get there. The journey is NOT the destination. But more often than not, it’s just as pivotal.

“You’re at peace because you know it’s okay to be afraid.” – Mulan

*I do partake in the blood of Christ at communion

“From here on out, we’re committed.”

With those six words, my rapidly beating heart sank even further. Ben, our canyoning guide, had already spent an hour leading us through a marshy maze winding through mysterious shadows cast by high canyon walls. Hadn´t we been committed since first wading into the murky water I´d joked was the sewage runoff from Siam Water Park?

Ben, our fearless French guide.

Back then I was in good spirits. Now, I was wet, spent and ready for a snack. But Ben had no intention of breaking into the waterproof bag carrying the crisps from the concessions stand at Siam Water Park and my apple. It was like we’d played our hearts out for the entire first half of the game only to be told it was just the warm-up.

I wanted to warm up. The temperature was 80 degrees 25 miles away at Tenerife´s popular beach resort, Los Christianos, home to Siam Water Park, the world´s best water park according to TripAdvisor. But here in the bottom of the Los Carrizales gorge, I was constantly curling and uncurling my wet toes to maintain blood flow. Although the four of us—Ben, myself and a couple from England—were all in wetsuits and water booties, we were as permeated as a sea of sponges.

Canyoning, in this context, meant traversing a chilly trail of spring runoff. There was never a current to worry about, but the water was often up to our necks. I thought about a book I once read where the recent jail breakees attempt to avoid leaving a trail for the cops by wading in a creek. This particular trail we were on was not visible, unless you were on it. Even then, you felt like you trespassing into a world humans had no business being in.

“I feel like we stumbled onto the set of Jurassic Park,” said Imogen, the English girl who I took an immediate liking to. Like me, she´d never been canyoning, and like me, she was willing to vocalize her fears.

We´d first bonded an hour earlier when we´d started this journey.

“Find a bush,” Ben said. Knowing it would take us 10 minutes and at least a dozen four-letter words to get our wetsuits on, he wanted to make sure we emptied our bladders in advance. Imogen and I headed in the same direction, in search of a bush suitable for squatting.

As I peed, I wondered what I´d gotten myself into. In my mind, I saw the words from Ben´s email when I’d first reached out to Canyon Tenerife a week ago.

“Los Carrizales Canyon is an aquatic canyon with slides, jumps and abseils,” he wrote. Then he went on to describe the hike back up to the car. “Steep, vertigo (sic) and quite intense.” It´s like he was trying to talk me out of it. I basically replied NBD, I’m from Montana.

Masca, the nearest “town” and our meeting place for Los Carrizales.
Photo: Trover

The last time I´d grossly underestimated the difficulty of a physical activity was when I went coasteering in Portugal in August. Now, I’ve never been to Navy Seal Hell Week, but I imagine they have a coasteering day. Even three days after completing the course—rock climbing, cliff jumping and rappelling our way along four miles of steep Atlantic coastline—I couldn´t squeeze a bottle of toothpaste without grimacing. My arms were as useless as T´Rex´s.

Canyoning, on the other hand, doesn´t require as much upper body strength. At least it didn´t in Los Carrizales where were constantly going with gravity. There was no jumping into a pool of water and climbing back up the rock walls to do it again. In that sense, canyoning was less physically demanding than coasteering. However, it more than made up for that with its increased toll on your mental state. In coasteering, I was jumping, sometimes from heights of more than 30 feet into the ocean. In canyoning, our target was far less forgiving. I.e. you had to carefully calculate where to jump to avoid colliding with rock.

“Bend your knees,” Ben would say before a jump where the water below was shallow. The canyon we´d entered, upon “committing” was now characterized by a series of sudden drop-offs. We’d walk 100 feet to the next edge, sometimes staring down at 65 feet of sheer, slick rock. Naturally, my thought process worked like this: if it´s so shallow we have to be concerned about breaking our legs, why are we jumping into it? I think Ben´s thought process worked like this: “If it looks dangerous, do it.” (And don´t forget to turn on the GoPro.)

Ben following me down an abseil.

As much as I questioned his sanity, I felt safe with Ben. He´s a certified EMT in his native France where he works on a helicopter ambulance. When we asked who he rescues, he didn’t even bother lying. “People out canyoning,” he said before going on to talk about some Japanese men whose bodies he had to retrieve when they tried to sled down a mountain. Ben´s seen more blood and bones in one season than most people see in a lifetime of Halloweens.

But Ben was a pro. When he canyoned, he came prepared. He made us carry three waterproof packs filled with supplies. Technically, we threw them down the canyon for much of our trip. I came to hate the sound of their echoes bouncing off the canyon walls.

“SPLASHhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Ben had thrown his big yellow pack down into the pool below and was now waiting for us to catch up so he could coach us on the jump, slide or abseil down. It was unspoken, but unanimous. Rob, Imogen´s cardiologist husband, would always go first. Like us, he´d never been canyoning, but unlike us, his legs didn´t shake uncontrollably. We all may have had the same amount of courage, after all, we completed the same jumps, but Rob didn´t take nearly as long to summon his.

Ben literally talking Imogen off a ledge.

“SPLASHhhhhhhhh!”

I never saw the look on Rob´s face when he hit the water. Just his helmet bobbing as he swam to the water’s edge to make room for me to jump and join him. As a seven-year-old, I didn´t hesitate to climb the ladder up to the high dive at the city pool despite hearing about how my mom had done it when she was four or five, breaking her neck or something like that in the process.

Heights have never scared me. But heights combined with enclosing rock walls and pools of sketchy depths made me wonder how they´d mark the place where my body would shatter and splatter. For car accidents it’s white wooden crosses and for cyclists, white ghost bikes. Perhaps canyoners use pictographs?

Fortunately, I did not meet my demise* in Los Carrizales Canyon. Although, in a way, parts of me perished. Don´t get me wrong, I still have a lot of “I can’ts” in me. But after every leap—feeling the shock of the cold water followed by the burning sensation of what I´d sucked up into my sinuses (it´s nearly impossible to have an impact like that and not take in water up your nose)—I realized every “I can’t” I’d told Ben as he tried to cajole me into jumping had turned into an “I did.”

That´s not to say I was a good sport for the entire three hours of canyoning. There was at least an hour where I didn´t say anything unless it was absolutely essential. I.e. “Where do I put my left hand?” or “Oops, I undid my carabiner.” I also demanded a complete tutorial for the slide where it was essential we kept our heads pressed against the rock we slid down.

One of the slides. It’s faster than anything at Siam Water Park!
Photo: Canyon Tenerife

At this point, my feet were numb enough you could hit them with a hammer and I wouldn´t flinch. My legs were so sore they wobbled worse than the town drunk´s. I tried to turn off my thoughts, to conserve energy and to stop myself from going down the dangerous road of ruminating on things like the blood splatters on Ben´s helmet.

“I thought it was blood too,” Rob said later on when we found out it was just a spray of reddish brown paint. The only blood I saw while canyoning was the bright red pin pricks on my arms and hands. Often, to avoid slipping on the wet rocks, I reached out to grab a hold of the nearest bush, not realizing said bush was covered in thorns, or worse, a cactus.

Between the three of us, Rob, Imogen and I must have fallen at least 20 times. Our reinforced ¨Singing Rocks¨ nappie shorts over our wetsuits offered some padding in the bum area, but not enough that Imogen didn´t say, “It will be funny to see all of our bruises in the light tomorrow.”

A geologist’s wet dream.

Imogen, afraid of heights but hiding it under a semi-dark English sense of humor, always made me laugh.  “It would be much easier to jump during the dark when you can´t see how high up you are,” she noted after one particularly jarring jump. “Sure,” I said, “The jumping would be easier but the landing would suck.”

“Aim for that dark green spot,” “tighten your bum and core” or “cross your arms over your chest” Ben would say when coaching us before a jump. After six years of leading five-hour tours here, he probably could navigate it at night.

My method-down of choice was always abseiling. Whereas I didn´t trust myself to jump at least two feet out, so as not to hit the rock shelf between me and the pool below, I was confident I could hold onto a piece of rope.

Me on one of the final abseils.

“Do people ever think they´re helping you out and toss the rope bag over into the next pool without realizing it´s one that requires abseiling?” Rob asked. We´d all taken turns heaving the bags ahead, 20 feet below and forward, down the canyon. But if we’d accidentally thrown the rope bag down, we´d be royally screwed.

“Yes,” Ben said cringing, “But that´s why I have two ropes and they´re in separate bags.”

Never make the mistake of tossing the rope bag while the rope is still in it.

After three hours of traversing the canyon, via water, Ben told us this would be our last jump. He didn’t need to coach me on this one. I´ve never jumped so fast in my life. I think I flew off that ledge. I just wanted to be done, dry and fed.

A few minutes later, we stripped off our wetsuits and broke into our snack bag. The crisps were crumbs so fine you could snort them, and the apple I’d painstakingly picked out at the market was brown and bruised. We ate them anyway. Ben said we’d need the energy for the hike back to the car.

The “hike” turned out to be more of a scramble along the sides of the gorge. We must have climbed a couple thousand feet, under the hot sun, surrounded by cactus, lava rock and the occasional curious lizard or mantis. My mantra became “Don´t look down.” I allowed my eyes to only look at my next step and the next handhold for my hands. Looking down at the depths below and realizing how high we were and how there was no handrail, tree line or harness preventing a fall was akin to sanity suicide.

The hiking terrain here be like…
Photo: Canyon Tenerife

Finally, after an hour and a half of “hiking”—most of it spent not talking since we were all of out breath—we were back at Ben´s red Peugeot. He took a cooler out of the car and opened it. We grabbed cold cans of Schweppes like they were winning lottery tickets and said cheers, not even taking the time to ensure eye contact.

After crushing his can, Rob went to the car to retrieve his bag. He returned carrying a pack of smokes.

“Wait a minute,” Ben said, “You´re a doctor!” He was voicing what the rest of us were thinking.

Rob lit it anyway. “I’m on holiday,” he said, taking a drag to Imogen´s horror.

I didn´t dare to judge. After completing something like canyoning, I don’t think you should be too concerned about a celebratory cigarette.

*Although I´m still not certain I have contracted a flesh eating bacteria.

Double blade razors are like tandem bicycles. They should exist, but for comfort’s sake, they should never be used. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for the toiletries kit the Delta employee gave me when we both realized it could be a few days before I saw my lost luggage. I’ve managed to squeeze 10 uses out of the tiny tube of Colgate, and the miniature deodorant is kind of soothing on my razor burn.

Beggars cannot be choosers, but still, TWO blades?

Still, I’d prefer to have my luggage. My beloved duffel bag was last seen on the morning of Sunday, April 30 at Billings International (because apparently it has flights to Canada?) Airport. I was supposed to reunite with it in Newark later that evening. Despite a two-hour delay in Minneapolis, where I already had a generous layover, my bag did not make it onto the plane to Newark. If it was held up by drug dogs, I understand. If it was simply lost in the shuffle, I understand. If some luggage handler has his feet propped up on it right now and is taking a nap, I also understand. That’s a tough job.

See how much thought and planning I pour into the packing process?

Jokes aside, it’s been five days and three countries since I last laid eyes on it. Two of those days were spent in Iceland being the village idiot because A. I wasn’t dressed for the rainy weather and B. I tried to compensate for that by buying an umbrella. As I found out, Iceland is where good umbrellas go to die. Fortunately, I have the receipt, so I will submit it and hope Delta reimburses me for it.

As much as I loathe throwing things away, there comes a time when you realize someone is going to lose an eye.

I also hope Delta reimburses me for the rain jacket and dry pants I had to buy after my umbrella lost its short-lived battle with a wind that took no prisoners. For Katie vs. Rain & Wind Round II, I opted to invest in armor, even if it was going to cost a few hundred dollars. Iceland is expensive. As I told a friend, expect to pay room service and mini bar prices, at fast food joints and grocery stores. I’ve been to Iceland before, in late January, so I know you should pack warm clothes and not plan on buying them in Reykjavik unless you want to take out a second mortgage. That’s why I dedicated 25% of my duffel bag to bringing my proper gear. Which was/is sitting in a lost & found somewhere. I hope.

That’s right. $15 gets you a meal at Micky D’s.

Anyway, my new water-resistant pants? $200. My waterproof rain jacket? $200. And those weren’t even the higher end items I was looking at. Fjallraven had a neat anorak for about $600. Slap a kangaroo pouch on something and TADA! The price triples.

Fortunately, the hotel receptionist in Reykjavik noticed I was leaving puddles in my wake when I checked in. He also noticed that I had no luggage. Taking pity on me, and before he left the desk to fetch a mop, he said he wouldn’t charge me for the buffet breakfast.  Mind you, I was staying at a low-cost hotel (twin-sized bed, practically touching three walls) but it still saved me $14 USD. In Iceland, that gets you the equivalent of a Days Inn continental breakfast sans waffle maker and miniature boxes of cereal. This hotel bought its puffed rice in bulk and just poured it into a big bowl. The hot part of the buffet was the thermos of water available for mixing with the instant coffee packets. $14!

Cost of a one-star hotel in Reykjavik. That’s like the equivalent of a Motel 3 in the U.S.

By the time I left Iceland for Spain, I was dry, fed and looking forward to reuniting with my luggage in Tenerife. The Delta employee at Newark had taken down the address of my apartment in Tenerife and my phone number. Delta’s convenient online missing bag tracker informed me my bag had arrived in Europe, via Amsterdam, and I was told it would be delivered to my apartment in Tenerife. That was three days ago. Since then, I’ve called Delta’s baggage number in Spain several times a day. The first two days I was connected to a friendly operator who was able to locate my bag (I think) and assured me someone would call me when it was en route. My apartment is about 10 minutes from the airport in Tenerife. I gave them my local Spanish cell number, and even though I was planning on rationing my data usage, I’ve left it on 24/7 in the hopes a Spanish delivery man would ring.

He hasn’t. In fact, this morning, when I tried calling the Spanish number for Delta, I got an automated message that ended with a dial tone. Almost as if it was disconnected. Either that, or the friendly employee I spoke to is on holiday. I can’t tell because I can’t understand the recording. I know enough Spanish to order a seven-ingredient omelet, but I can’t understand it when it’s spoken 200 mph into a bad connection.

Tweet hits the fan.

Also, Tenerife is hot. So despite trying to save money by washing my Sunday clothes (which I wore on the flight to Newark and every day since), I’ve had to buy more clothes which I will have to charge to Delta. The apartment I’m staying at does have a small washer, no dryer; however, the electricity situation here (I’m staying in a ghetto of sorts) is iffy at best so last night I blew a circuit. On the bright side, I finally met my neighbors who had the audacity to accuse me of trying to blow dry my hair while running the washing machine. I don’t even have a blow dryer!

The view from my front porch. My apartment building is definitely more finished, but I think the electrical guys cut out early or they lost financing at that point or something.

To make matters worse, my skin is flaring up. My $175 Rodan & Fields skin care regimen is, you guessed it, in my missing duffel bag. In the same toiletries kit, I have a five-blade razor and a month’s worth of medication. For starters, I’m on 80 mg Prozac/day for my OCD. That’s like enough to make the entire state of Texas happy. For two months. To say my anxiety levels are high would be an understatement. Which is probably why I’m getting stomach pains too. Although, that could be a result of not having my azathioprine which is collecting dust in my duffel bag. In addition to my Remicade infusions, I take azathioprine every day to help with my Crohn’s disease.

So basically, yesterday, I was at the pharmacy in Las Galletas (ironically, it translates into “the cookies”) trying to figure out how you say “second coming of puberty” in Spanish because I’m pretty sure that’s all the pharmacist needed to know to help me. I ended up leaving with some green foam, blue moisturizer, herbal capsules that smell like urine and these cheap plastic sunglasses which I will also charge to Delta. My polarized Ray Ban’s and SMITH cycling sunglasses – about $400 worth –are keeping my Prozac company.

When you try to run your errands after lunch and the entire town is napping.

Since I came here to cycle, I also had to drop about $100 on a cycling kit. Sorry, Delta, but I’ve paid my dues of riding without padded shorts. If you think razor burn is bad, try chafing on top of it.

What’s really frustrating, however, is that my cycling pedals and shoes are in my missing bag. So, the bike shop had to put on pedals with cages and the cages are so big they drag on the ground if I don’t have my feet in them just right. I’ve already had a few near-accidents because they’ve gotten snagged on the ground. I would hate for the white cross on the side of the road to be because I tripped on my cage and got hit by a British tourist in a Fiat Punto who was simply trying to escape the rain and enjoy some sun for a change.

Have you ever heard the Cumbrian accent? It’s English, but harder for me to understand than Spanish. Also, the only difference between Iceland and Tenerife? About 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Speaking of sun, it’s bloody hot here in Tenerife so everyone goes to the beach to swim. My swimming suit, is in my luggage, so today I had to do something most women wouldn’t even wish upon their worst frenemy. I HAD TO TRY ON SWIMMING SUITS. The fitting room mirrors don’t care if you’re a size 0 or a size 14. They are designed to make you think your thighs need their own zip code and your belly has no business even being in the same store as a bikini.

Alas, I did buy a bikini. Which I will have to charge to Delta. I should be excited. I have a new swimming suit that I didn’t even have to pay for. Except I’m not. I’m terrified about the prospect of using that damn two-blade razor to get me bikini-body ready.

You’d be surprised at how little “Good Coverage” gets you.

P.S. As a brand ambassador for RedOxx, I should be the last person making the mistake of checking a bag. Their best-selling bags are designed to comply with the standards of any airline’s carry-on policy.

The sun very seldom sets before I’ve consumed at least four servings of fruit and double the recommended servings of vegetables. Despite, or perhaps because of, my proclivity for healthy choices, I am a Coke addict. 

A first for the Favorite Food question…

There are several gas stations within a five-mile radius of my house. They all advertise fountain sodas—any size—for only $.99. Ever the opportunist, I reach for the cup so big it makes my car’s cup holders look laughable. In fact, the cup’s contents would barely fit in a blue whale’s bladder.

When I travel at sea, however, my access to Coke drops exponentially.

Two Septembers ago, I found myself sailing on a 104-foot-long wooden gullet off the coast of Turkey. On day one of our voyage, I searched the tiny cabin like a drug dog with a nose for narcotics. Unfortunately, I found no evidence of Coke or even an off brand Turkish cola. I did learn, however, that fridge space was reserved for beer reserved for the Turkish men manning the ship. Port stops were few and farther between. In other words, it was the perfect time to quit my habit, cold turkey.

The red marker is Marmaris, a popular spring break destination for the U.K. The grey marker is where I imagine the island to be.

After about six days of soda sobriety, I snapped. On that fateful day, we dropped Muhtesem A’s anchor off the coast of a small island off the coast of the Turkish Riviera. In my mind, it had been weeks since we’d seen dry land. In reality, it had probably only been a day. But when you’re suffering from withdrawal, an hour can seem like eternity.

Ali, the captain and a boatswain or two.

“Who wants to snorkel?” asked Ali, our Turkish guide. The four other girls making up Muhtesem A’s guest list dug through the bin of snorkel gear—searching for masks that were clean and didn’t leak—before plopping into the turquoise abyss. “Let them look for coral,” I thought to myself. “I have something more important to find.”

Five minutes later I was also in my bikini, leaving little to the imagination of the Turkish men who, if they were particularly observant, would have noticed my left breast was slightly larger, and richer, than my right. Stashed in a plastic bag stashed in my bikini top was 20 lira—enough to buy at least four overpriced cans of Coke. In the distance, on the shore we had no plans of visiting, I could make out a shack-like structure and a small dock. Surely whomever they belonged to had a cooler full of my fix. I don’t speak a lick of Turkish, but I reckoned lira talks.

How I normally entered the water when I wasn’t on covert missions to find Coke.

Foolishly, I didn’t tell anyone on the boat that I was swimming to shore. I would have been too embarrassed to answer truthfully when they asked why. And I’m a terrible liar. Quietly, I slipped underwater and began to breaststroke my way toward the shack which seemed forever and a day away. If being sober makes an hour seem like eternity, then it makes 200 meters seem like a mile.

Finally, after 20 or so punishing minutes of swimming, I surfaced. Through the fog in my goggles, I immediately noticed a peculiar face attached to an even more peculiar body peering down at me. It wasn’t the fog distorting his features. His features really were distorted. Even in my exhausted state, I could see he was physically disabled from the way he held, or rather, didn’t, up his hands. My instincts told me to slip back under the water, to swim away from this strange man and return to the safety of my gullet. My cramping muscles told me that wasn’t an option.

He giggled nervously as I emerged from the water.

“Hi,” I said, nervously, wondering how long he’d been watching and waiting for me.

He blushed and looked down submissively. He didn’t speak a word. Instead, he half-gestured, half-fidgeted toward the shack. Because I had nothing better to do, I followed him, past a small wooden dory and an orange canoe tethered to a no-frills dock. I was silently praying he’d lead me to a cooler stocked with Coke. Instead, he led me to a small rickety table—the shack’s al fresco dining room. Several mismatched decrepit chairs were haphazardly scattered around it. My eyes were immediately drawn to one chair in particular. It was on wheels.

There are things you simply don’t expect to see on a remote island of rock in the Mediterranean. One of them is a wheelchair. Especially, an occupied wheelchair.

His unshaven face told me he was a man. But his inability to keep his spine upright and the drool on his chin told me he was a baby. Unlike the blue-eyed, fair-haired man who had led me here, he was definitely Turkish. From the euphoric look in his eyes, I knew it had been a long time since he’d seen a woman. He blabbered uncontrollably and restlessly squirmed in his chair/vehicle as though there was a knife-wielding murderer behind me and he needed to warn me. His intentions were there, but his lips refused to form words.

“Hallo!” At least the shack was talking.

A white-haired, white-bearded shirtless man poked his head out of the narrow doorway. “Have a seat,” he continued without hesitation. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” I said, somehow knowing now was not the time to ask for Coke. After a few minutes he came out with a pot of hot water and a jar of Nescafe. No milk. No sugar. No creamer. But, he did have a fancy, delicately wrapped Swedish chocolate for me. I wondered where the heck he had gotten it. I wondered where the heck I was. And who the heck was I there with?

“Do you want to see my pet baboon?” the old man asked while we waited for my coffee to cool. I looked at the two handicapped guys squirming in their seats and ogling me from either side of the table.

“Yes please,” I said without hesitation. 

The old man led me on a short wooded path behind the shack. We eventually arrived at a chicken-wire enclosure. In it, as promised, was his pet baboon. “She’s about 25 years old,” he told me while juggling a handful of boiled eggs that had somehow magically appeared. The baboon, who had a name I cannot recall, eyed the eggs hungrily and ignored me. Unlike the two guys back at the table, she wasn’t amused by an unexpected visitor.

Five minutes later, over a cup of bland yet bitter Nescafe, I was finally introduced to the island’s human inhabitants.

The old man, who appeared to be in his 70s, was from Sweden. It didn’t surprise me. Like the younger man, his irises were so blue they made you uncomfortable because they left you with only two options, to stare or to look away. The younger man, albeit in his 30s or 40s, was his son, Yusan. Without going into detail about Yusan’s disabilities, the older man told me he was not normal. I believe the word autism came up. If Yusan could talk, he’d tell me about his love for boats and dogs. As if on cue, a pair of dainty golden spaniels of some sort yawned from underneath a nearby tree.

The older man’s eyes sparkled as he told me he had another son, David—if I remember correctly. David was Yusan’s older brother. I looked at the raven-haired, dark-eyed, hunched-over-mass-of-humanity twitching in the wheelchair. Surely, this could not be David.

He wasn’t. David was in Sweden. This fact I learned from the fading Swedish newspaper clipping the older man fetched from the shack. I couldn’t read the words, but I could see from the photos accompanying the article that it was a wedding announcement. Or rather, an article. It took up two pages, not the normal length of the news of someone’s nuptials. The bride-to-be was beautiful. The man next to her vaguely resembled Yusan, but instead of wearing shorts and a childlike hat that tied underneath his chin, he wore a tailored suit.

“He’s friends with the King of Sweden,” the old man added with a surprisingly authentic air of nonchalance. The woman David married, in front of the King who attended the ceremony of course, was one of the most famous journalists in Sweden. Not only had David made a fortune with his business (the old man said he was one of the wealthiest men in Sweden) he had also procured one of the most coveted blondes in the country. Just as I was asking if they had any children, the old man interrupted me. 

“Did you know you’re sitting in the same seat Princess Diana sat in when she was here?” Again, the nonchalance was astonishingly authentic.

Had he not presented the newspaper article as evidence of his affiliation with Swedish royalty, I would have thought he was as crazy, albeit more articulate than, as his companions. I shifted uncomfortably in the seat. I was already uncomfortable, 75 percent naked in front of three foreign men. But the idea of sitting my still wet commoner butt in a chair once occupied by Lady Di seemed sacrilegious, at best. 

(Later, when I had WiFi, I fact-checked the old man’s furniture claim to fame. Indeed, Prince Charles and Princess Diana had yachted through these very waters on their honeymoon in 1981. Who’s to say they didn’t wind up on this island, much like me?)

After discussing Princess Diana’s mischievous side and her penchant for swimming, the elephant on the island was finally addressed.

“He was an orphan,” said the old man, talking about the man in the wheelchair as though he was not sitting two feet away. The old man had been visiting the port city of Marmaris when he found the young boy, alone, afraid and afflicted with something I assumed was cerebral palsy. There was no question. The old man would take the discarded boy home to the island where he would raise him as his own. If I was surprised to hear that, then I was even more surprised to hear that he wasn’t the first disabled orphan to be reared on this otherwise seemingly deserted island.

“I’ve taken in several orphans with special needs,” said the old man as if he was telling me he had a weakness for stray cats. I wondered how someone could be so nonchalant. Meanwhile, Yusan nodded and grinned as if he fondly remembered each and every face who had once sat at this table.

Yusan wasn’t a talker like his father. He also wasn’t a blabberer like his adopted brother whose mouth moved uncontrollably, still futilely attempting to express something you and I could spit out in seconds.

No, Yusan was silent. But he was coherent. Aware of, but not disheartened by, his disability. I knew he knew he was lucky to not be in a wheelchair. He had seen worse. What was sad, however, was that it had been years since he’d seen his blood brother, David.

“Their mother was a stunning Jewish woman,” the old man said wistfully. “But she made the mistake of marrying a Lutheran.” In the eyes of the woman’s family, the old man was not even worth mentioning by name. The fact that their second son, Yusan, came out of the womb with obvious disabilities, was seen as further proof that the old man was an abomination. (David, a healthy baby and technically Jewish because his mother was, was deemed OK.)

As the old man continued the story, I watched his striking blue eyes turn into deep pools of sorrow. I began to wonder how many decades of heartache and pain were weighing down his already frail, tanned frame.

After Yusan’s birth, the woman took David and moved away where she could raise her barely acceptable son, alone. She left Yusan with the old man and refused to let them see their firstborn and brother. In fact, she told David his father was dead, and she never mentioned Yusan. (David wouldn’t learn the truth for about 20 years.) The old man, heartbroken and unsure of how to care for a child with special needs, did the only thing he could think of.

He moved to Turkey. With full custody of Yusan, he settled on an island that no one but cartographers and ship captains had ever heard of. Every few weeks, for more than three decades, the old man left his beloved tribe of unwanted boys on the island, along with his pet baboon. Not knowing if he’d come back with another orphan, he would empty his boat before heading to the port city of Marmaris to stock up on supplies.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that stocking up on essentials was why I had swum to his island in the first place.

When the final dredges of my Nescafe had dried and formed a stubborn crust in the bottom of my cup, I looked out at the wooden gullet in the distant cove. The old man read my mind and gave instructions, in Swedish, to Yusan. Like a dog obeying his master, Yusan jumped up from his chair and whistled. The dogs at his heels, he half-ran down to the dock to untie the orange canoe.

“You’re sending me out to sea in that?” I silently asked. “With him?” Up until this point, I’d put all my faith in the old man. He could talk. Despite the subject matter of his stories, and the fact that he had a pet baboon, he seemed rational. I knew Yusan could walk, but could he paddle and steer a canoe? With me and two dogs?

He could. Gracefully and with a grin that would make the Cheshire cat proud, he paddled me out to Muhtesem A. When we reached the boat, the Turkish crew and the girls peered down at us from the top deck. One of them took photos of Yusan and me with her cell phone. They had no idea who this strange man was. And why was there a dog in my lap?

Photo by Jennifer Dapper. Because I didn’t have my camera with me, I have no photos of the others.

To be honest, I didn’t know the answers to their questions. All I knew was I had desperately wanted a Coke. But despite my pure, albeit pathetic, intentions, I didn’t find one. Instead, I found a cast, and combination, of characters I could never dream up. Not even if I was high on real coke.

I won’t even try to lie and say that my visit to that island made me kick my habit. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll die in this same, sorry state of relapse. But, I did learn something from my time with the old man, Yusan and even the wordless orphan on wheels. When you go to extraordinary lengths to get something, even if you don’t end up getting it, you set yourself up for encounters with extraordinary people.

If I found them on a remote island of rock, somewhere west of Turkey and east of Greece, who knows where else they’re hiding? 

Muhtesem A, she means “magnificent” in Turkish.

“It’s okay, he’s a limo driver.”

That was the line I told myself when a stranger offered me a ride one dark December night in New York City. I was an 18-year-old college freshman, fresh off the farm. I was also freezing cold and running late to a housewarming party in Harlem. As I was speedwalking to the subway, a glossy black sedan pulled up next to me. The driver’s window slid down and a handsome face leaned out and asked where I was going. Without wondering why it was any of his business, I told him.

“What a coincidence,” he marveled. “I’m headed to Harlem to pick up a client. Care for a free ride?”

Now, I was no dummy. I knew not to take the gypsy cabs in Queens. But this was a limo. And I was in Manhattan. Plus, sharply-dressed, clean-shaven limo drivers aren’t crazy. Unless their name is Lloyd Christmas…

I practically dove into the backseat and once I had thawed out enough to peel off my gloves, texted my friend Josh.

“I’ll be there in a few. Guess who’s getting a free ride in a limo???” If emojis had been invented, I  would have included the one-open-eyed smiley showing too much tongue.

My “free ride” turned into a terrifying ordeal. About 10 minutes into the ride, I noticed my chauffeur kept heading west when he should have been going north. Before I knew it, we would be in Jersey. I said something to that effect, and the next thing I knew, the driver had pulled into a parking garage. It was dark, deserted and miles away from the Harlem couch I was supposed to be sitting on, playing Guitar Hero.

My memory is clouded with adrenaline and fear, but I do remember going into fight-or-flight mode. My instincts were telling me one thing: FLEE. And fortunately, my driver’s were telling him the opposite: FIGHT.

That’s right. The only reason I escaped that night was because my driver, who made it clear he didn’t have good intentions with me, was engrossed in a fight he was watching on his phone. It was December 8, 2007: the night Floyd Mayweather Jr. returned from retirement to take on Ricky Hatton in a highly anticipated boxing match.

I couldn’t care less about boxing, but as I bolted from that car, I silently thanked Mr. Mayweather.

Later, when I reported the incident to New York’s Finest, the cops asked me how I could be so trusting. “I’m from Montana,” I told them. They looked down on me with pity, as if thinking, “She’s not going to last long in this world.”

But here I am, nine years later. And despite that harrowing incident, and a few others that I won’t go into here, I am still so trusting. In fact, I’m fascinated by the concept of social trust. The more I travel, the more I agree with the Pew Research study that found the following:

Whites are more trusting than blacks or Hispanics. People with higher family incomes are more trusting than those with lower family incomes. The married are more trusting than the unmarried. The middle-aged and the elderly are more trusting than the young. People who live in rural areas are more trusting than those who live in cities.

Most studies on trust find that Americans rank very high in social trust, while countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia rank the lowest. In a New York Times article from earlier this month, Stephen Heath writes that his Taiwanese in-laws call Americans “gullible” simply because we trust strangers.

In this context, if being gullible is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. Why? Well, here are a few rewarding experiences I’ve had because I’ve trusted strangers, and more importantly, strangers trusted me.

• Biking up the Beartooth Pass

A couple weeks ago, I posted on Facebook asking if anyone would let me rent or borrow their bike to ride up the Beartooth Pass—one of the top five climbs in the U.S. according to Outside Magazine. In other words, I wasn’t asking for a Walmart Huffy. Cyclists have a reputation for being aloof, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to respond. But within an hour of posting, there was a comment from a man, Brent, who was willing to lend me his Bianchi road bike (i.e. $$$$). Now, Brent has never met me in person and I don’t know that he could pick me out of a lineup,  but still, he was willing to let me borrow, not rent, his carbon horse for a serious ride. To top it off, he offered delivery and pick-up service! This is the perfect example of social trust, and it started with a social media post.

• Falling in Love with A Dog and His Family 
  

  I thought he was big for Brooklyn. Until I met a man who lived down the street with 9 mastiffs. Try breaking into that place!

Several years ago, while still in college, I was riding my bike through Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Racing down East Drive, I dodged, and silently cursed, the pedestrians in my way. Then I saw Apollo, aptly named because he was as magnificent as I imagine a sun god to be. Attached to the other end of his leash was a couple pushing a toddler in a stroller. I didn’t care that they had their hands full and were crossing a street. I violently squeezed my brakes and stopped them. Apollo was a Great Pyrenees, the breed I grew up with in Montana. To make a long story shorter, about two weeks later, Apollo’s family gave me the keys to their Brooklyn apartment and I got to spend my spring break under the watchful eye of this furry pillow with four legs and a tail. When his family returned from their travels, they even paid me! Apollo has since passed, but I am still in touch with his family, which has grown by two babies and one puppy, since that spring day I met them in the park. A few years ago, I even had the pleasure of visiting them at their home in Martha’s Vineyard where they kindly hosted me for a Memorial Day weekend.

• 

  Me and some random German dude named Jul.

  Couchsurfing Across Countries

“You gave some random German dude keys to your apartment?” my mom asked incredulously. “Pretty much,” I replied before adding, “and I left behind a lot of valuables, like my laptop.” I was in the Catskills at my cousin’s cabin, making maple syrup over spring break. My room in Queens would otherwise have been sitting empty. Why not let a tourist visiting from Europe sleep in my bed?

Jul reached out to me on the website, Couchsurfing.com. I wanted to meet him before agreeing to let him crash at my place, so we spent an afternoon walking around Manhattan. He gave off a good energy, so I had no hesitation when I handed over my keys. Several days later, when I returned to my apartment, all was exactly as I had left it except I found a bouquet of flowers waiting for me.

About a year later, I reached out to Jul. My friend Merrick and I were backpacking through Europe and we needed a place to stay in his hometown, Hamburg. Jul wasn’t in Germany at the time, but he arranged for us to meet his father and stepmom who graciously gave us the keys to their apartment and recording studio in downtown Hamburg. We stayed several nights and our tour guide of the city was none other than Jul’s brother, Foeb.

• Co-signing with a stranger

It was the last two-bedroom unit in the luxury apartment building I’d had my eye on moving into for months. Obviously, I didn’t make 40 times the rent (about $3,500) so I needed someone to co-sign with me. I posted an ad on Craigslist and received responses from dozens of interested potential roommates. Time was of the essence, so I basically said whoever can meet me at the leasing office at 5 p.m. gets to live with me. I was hoping that whoever would be another 20-something girl. But all is fair in love and leasing, so I had to sign with the first person who showed up, even if she was a he. Erez was a 33-year-old Jewish guy from Jersey. On paper, we didn’t have much in common, although I’m slightly Jewish. But in person, I’d like to think we were a match made in Queens. He taught me how to make challah and homemade hummus. I put a creepy porcelain doll I found in the trash room under his comforter and sabotaged most of the dates he brought home. We even fostered a Shiba Inu together. We weren’t the best of friends, but he was a pleasure to live with—even when he ditched me during Hurricane Sandy. He did, however, leave me a care package. It was a suitcase filled with wine and condoms.

Sometimes I wish I still lived here with Erez. He had a claw machine. I.e. we had a claw machine.