If you go on a trip, if you can do it, go by boat.
If you can't go by boat try to go by train.
Only fly if there is no alternative.

Flying is increasingly uncomfortable and inconvenient. I think the security screenings are a propaganda device to make us feel that there is a "war against terrorists" and they might strike at us. Screenings abroad are quite a bit faster and less intrusive and apparently just as effective. Be that as it may, having to get to the airport 2 hours before the flight, and then take off your shoes, your belt etc. takes a good deal of the incentive to fly out of the trips for me. If air transportation is not quick then what is it? It is certainly not comfortable, it is in no sense luxurious, increasingly it is not cheap either.

If you go by boat, and you can make a selection, select the boat most recently built. Standards for passenger vessels are evolving rapidly and the newer ships (boats?) are much more passenger-friendly. On the smaller ships this has to do with viewing decks, on the larger ships it has more to do with a layout that does not cause bottlenecks or lines.

Probably the best tip I can give you is get a cell phone that will work where you are going. Most of the world uses a different system for cell phones than we do in the USA, naturally. Their phones use a SIM chip good for one country, or group of countries. Go to another country? Get another SIM. I think there may be a more or less universal SIM also. You can buy additional time almost anywhere in China, from street vendors, so I would imagine you can do so in Europe as well.

I never used up the initial time block I bought for the China SIM. But I was certainly glad I had the phone. I only needed to make 5 or 6 calls, but each of those was important, and I would not have been able to find a phone, much less use it, in China. The phone cost me about $150, which is a lot of money, but I still have it, and it prevented problems that would have reduced the benefits of my travel considerably (like by missing connections with guides). If I go abroad again, a new SIM, and the phone is useful there. Since I intend to travel extensively, the phone is more of a capital asset than an expense - if I may get into accountancy speak for a minute.

It was nice to go on a trip in summer and return home in the fall. I take the dog for a walk in the morning - lasts about an hour. We see things. Turkeys, deer, quail, racoons, and a squirrel right by the house giving everyone a lecture. The dog and I have different responses to these wildlife viewings. For me they are an intellectual pleasure, for the dog they are a chance to bark and chase things - or they would be if I would let go of the leash, which I will not. The dog has the unfortunate habit of taking off when the lease is loosed, and running off the property to visit friends. I'm always afraid she'll get shot again, or hit by a car, so I try to hang on to the leash when I can remember. Why would I forget? How about eating blackberries, or clipping back the encroaching brush, or daydreaming after stopping to pull up my left sock?

Split some wood this morning. Not by hand. Hope this doesn't dispoint the purists but I got a hydralic log splitter and I split my logs with that now, and it has taken my ever growing stack of unusable logs and gone right through it. Some inventions are novel, some never achieve usefulness, but the hydraulic log splitter is right up there with the chain saw and the power mower as a wonderful thing to have on the ranch. I try to keep a face cord of firewood by the front door. Not very tidy but very handy on these cold and rainy nights - when they start. Right now its just cold, 34o last night.

Mary Alice has given me the compost bucket to dump in the garden but I'm putting it off. I always get sprayed by the water from the hose when I clean it out and I'm waiting for the heat of the day....or something. I always put off dumping the compost in the garden. It seems so far to go - 100' or something.

I had a motion to file and thought co-counsel, who is in San Rafael, would do it for me once I wrote it. I'm sure co-counsel would have, but co-counsel went on a week's vacation. So up at 2 a.m. to make some of those revisions in the motion that wake attorneys up at 2 a.m. and then up again at 6 a.m. to drive to San Rafael. Left at 6:30 a.m. Beautiful drive in the fall. Lots of color in the trees and little traffic. It was 36 degrees at the house, but in Laytonville it was 30. The Volvo has a red light that comes on when the temperature near the road is below 36, because there is danger from ice on the road, and it was on much of the way there. By the time I got nearer to San Rafael it was later (its a 4 hour drive, one-way) the red light was just a memory and the temperature was in the 50s. Traffic was heavy from about Santa Rosa on. I thought I'd be in San Rafael by 10, but the traffic held me up and I got there at 10:30 after using a couple of maneuvers I learned in China to get from Southbound lane 4 to Southbound 1 and exit.

The courthouse in San Rafael, as you probably know, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is a striking building, and I got a passer-by to take a couple of pictures of me with the spire in the background to send to China TV for the show they did with me. "Who are you?" she asked when I told her what was up. "Just an attorney who went to China" I said, modestly, and truely. Still, if you want to be lucky you've got to smile.

The building is beautiful. The recent security measures are a drag. You can't get to the court floor now except for one mysterious way, and then you go through a complete screening (except for shoes). At least they could move the traffic fine and criminal filing window to a different floor and avoid all the hassle for most people. But screening is trendy now, it means "something important is happening here" even if it isn't. I don't know what could be going on routinely in the Marin County courthouse that is so important that security screening is necessary.

Be that as it may, the building is beautiful and striking inside as well as out, and Marin county has put some money into maintenance and the grounds so the place is attractive. In fact it not only has an excellent cafe on the top floor with a good view, but it has a gift shop. Top that you other lawyers. What other county courthouse has a gift shop?

So, I file and serve the motion in about 10 minutes, getting more photos shot inside the building as I wait. (Thanks to my fellow waitee for clicking the button). Then, after a nice lunch, its off to court in Willits. Traffic is light and I got there with minutes to spare. More photos for China. Court takes about 10 minutes, and its back on the road again. Two hours to home.

We went to China on a cruise ship. It took 15 days from Anchorage to Beijing. We flew home on 3 airplanes: one from Xi'an to Beijing operated by Air China, one from Beijing to SF operated by United, one from SF to Arcata operated by a United company. My advice: if you can find a seat on a foreign airline, take it. United over the Pacific is not as bad as domestic flights, but it was very cramped, there were no individual seat monitors so we had to watch the main cabin video screen - when we could see it - with no control over what it showed (Garrison Keeler's movie, pretty good; two others which I can't remember). It was difficult to use even a small lap top because the seats were so close together - then the guy in front of me leaned his seat back to go to sleep. Food was scarce and not notable. We had noodles for breakfast, which was welcome but odd. Air China gave us one of those asian box lunches which are filled with interesting and tasty food. Several of the other legal team members in Xi'an said they had flown to China on non-US airlines which they prefered to US lines. I thought there was an Airlines Passengers organization somewhere, but if so it's not doing anything.

Its a bit much to complain about a miracle such as flying from Xi'an to Arcata in less than a day, I suppose. But I'm up to it. For not much more expense or effort the trip could have been much easier on us. Old folks have problems with cramped seats and long periods of enforced inaction. The advice is to walk around the airplane to prevent blood clots but that's absurd. If everyone did it we'd be walking like they do on zen retreats, very slowly in a long line. Or, given tourist behavior, walking against each other.

Anyway we're home, its fall, and I'm glad I went and glad I came back.

We arose at 4:50 a.m. Sunday October 22, 2006 in the Sino-Pearl Hotel just outside the old city walls of Xi'an, China. By 4:50 p.m. October 22, 2006 we had endured more than 12 hours in the air, customs officials of two countries, 4 airports, and a 2 hour drive and we were at last at home. Read those dates and times carefully then ask yourself how this could be.

The journey of 6000 miles begins with a single alarm clock. Altho I had learned to get up at 6 a.m. for those 7 a.m. team breakfasts, getting up at 4:50 a.m. was still a body shock. When I was young I could miss sleep with less sense of loss, but I firmly believe that was due to the inability of youth to recognize physical and mental truths rather than a diminished adaptabilty. In other words when I was young I didn't realize how tired I was after a night without enough sleep. I am now more attuned to my body and my psychic being. No doubt.

We were packed, bathed, dressed, and downstairs by 5:20 a.m. This was largely due to advance preparation, like paying the hotel incidentals bill (cokes and internet largely) and doing almost all the packing the night before. We owed the Sino-American Friendship Foundation for 3 extra nights in the hotel (we came early, and stayed one day later, primairly because I could not clarify the exact dates they wanted us there, but fortunatly since those extra days were our main time to wander the city) and I had to pay Lily.

The Sino-Pearl hotel is a 4 star hotel. Tour groups from America usually stay in 5-star hotels which are expensive, but provide a level of cultural security and guaranteed Western toilets, that make it almost irresistable to us. Mary Alice and I stayed in Beijing at the Grand Hyatt, the most five star hotel in that city because I had no way of checking out less luxurious and less expensive alternatives before arrival. I liked it, but as it turned out I could have saved considerable money by staying in a four star like the Sino-Pearl. Japanese and Australian tour groups knew this evidently because they poured in and out of the Sino-Pearl for the two weeks we were there. Between them and a seemingly endless series of Xi'anese wedding banquets in the main restaurant, the lobby was often a sea of bewildered people with luggage or gifts in their hands, wondering where to go next. But the hotel had the things an aging Western couple would want: good beds, nice view, friendly and attentive staff, free bottled water delivered to the room, mini-bar, Western toilets, two restaurants and a sundries shop in the hotel (not to mention a barber, foot masseuse, sauna, exercise room and discoteque. ) It also had hot water in the room that came from deep thermal springs and was considered to be very good for the skin, and absolutely undrinkable according to signs posted in every room. It made for yellow waters in the bathtub - not a welcome sight. Toilets were western but plumbing was not, so toilet paper was not to be flushed. A waste basket by every toilet was for disposing of used toilet paper - I don't recall this in the five star hotel but it might have been true. Takes a bit of getting used to.
The A/C was largely ineffective throughout the hotel, and given the very high level of polution in the Xi'an air, an air-filtration system would have been a better use of money.

It appears that the Chinese are not big on maintenance of buildings. Cars get washed frequently, the streets and sidewalks are constantly being cleaned by an army of people with carts and interesting looking brushes and brooms, public spaces are well landscaped with flowers everywhere - even on freeway on-ramps. But everyday fixing up is not a habit. Our hotel room's bathroom door had serious paint chipping, the new Shaanxi Provence Art Museum had sidewalk damage from ground subsidence - this when the landscaping was still being completed - the Tang Dynasty show theater we attended had a beautiful marble lobby with tiled bathrooms - but the tiling was broken where the urinal pipes went in to jagged holes in the wall - and NW university's old campus looked like the set from the Blackboard Jungle. To some extent the make it and don't fix it policy is economically sound. NW University has one new campus now, and a second one is in the works so the old buildings will be torn down in the next few years. What's better: spending the money fixing the soon to be demolished buildings or building the new ones? I'd vote for the new buildings, and so, it appears, would the Chinese. I don't think that logic applies to the hotel, however, so I fall back on diverging cultural values. Saying this I look around my home law study where I'm typing this and see water damage to the walls, probably from last winter. Perhaps I have some similar concepts about maintenance myself.

So we're in the lobby in this discursive posting, and when I hand Lily Y936 (about $40 a day for the 3 days) she says "No, you owe me for 4 days." I'm sleepy but I know how many days I've been at the hotel, so we check their records. Sure enough, 3 days. Lily shows me her text message from Hu Di, it says "u need to collect 4 the extra days...." I explain to Lily about the two English words "for" and "four" and all is well. I would think learning standard English would be enough of a problem for the Chinese without having to add in text-message English, but we don't choose the world we live in, right? By the way tour group tourists, including Mary Alice and I, routinely pay several hundred dollars a night for Chinese 5-star hotels so you can imagine what a wake up call the $40 rate was considering that the hotel was acceptable to us.

Have I mentioned Chinese driving customs? They can be unsettling, and on the ride to the airport the unsettlement reached a creshendo. The new roads are excellent in design. In the center are 4 traffic lanes - 2 going each way, separated by the familiar double yellow line, and the two going each way separated by the familiar broken white line. Looks normal. Then there is a raised divided with trees and landscaping on each side of the road separating the traffic lanes from a single lane used for bicycles and local vehiclular traffic. A broad sidewalk borders that lane. its a better city street design than I've seen anywhere else. However....

Traffic is unusally varied by our standards. There are Chinese trucks, busses, and automobiles just as we have here, and in considerable numbers - more busses than we are used to I think, but it looks like normal city traffic so far. There are also 3 wheeled bicycle trucks, some pedaled, others running on two-stroke motors like lawn-mowers. Motorcycles and motor scooters are common, and bicycles are everywhere. Its a health-conscious evironmentalists dream. Except that the cycles of all sorts are exempt from traffic rules. They drive in the bike lane, in the traffic lanes (hugging the right hand edge) and go in both directions in the same lane. At corners they do not stop for lights acting either as vehicles when that's convenient, or pedestrians when that is. So look both ways when entering a bike lane. And at intersections anything goes.

China, like California, and for all I know the rest of the 50 states, allows right turns on red lights. We stop first, I think. They don't. So crossing the street in a pedestrian zone at an intersection, with the light, is a trap for the unwary. First you get past the bikes stopped for the light but staying part way into the intersection so that they have a jump on traffic when the light changes, then you watch for right turning bikes and motor vehicles from the lanes you are crossing. Finally you reach the relative safety of the center of the street. Now you need to watch for left turners from the cross street, then right turners from the cross street lanes going the other way, both of whom mix together just about at the point where the pedestrians walk across the street, finally just when you think you've made it, you are in the bike lanes. The only thing I can say that relieves the constant tension and sense of impending collision which accompanies street crossings is that very few bikes ride on the sidewalk. You can more or less relax when you've reached that point.

Pedestrians, however, do not stick to the sidewalk. They feel totally free to walk in the bike lanes, and to some extent hugging the curb, to walk with traffic in the vehicle lanes. Crossing the street, which seems to Westerners like an all or nothing proposition - ie you either can get across in one go, or you wait until you can - is a more nuanced proposition for Chinese pedestrians. There are several safe stopping points in a street like the one I've described. First you can stand in the traffic lane by the curb with relative safety. No one even honks. Secondly there is a safe point on the broken white line separating the two same-direction lanes. People often will advance that far if they see the opportunity. Third there is the relatively larger safety zone of the double yellow lines. Getting to the double yellow lines without stopping once you've left the curb is a real coup. Now that you're there you watch on-coming traffic for a chance to get to the next broken white line, or better yet, the curb across the street. Drivers know that pedestrians will stop in these zones, and they just go around them. That's made easier by the fact that lanes are much more flexible for drivers in China than here. It is not at all unusual for the cabbie to straddle the white line waiting to see which of the two lanes he is in will offer the best opportunity in the next minute or so. It is not unusual for the straddling cab to be passed on the left or right while he is making that calulation. It is not out of the question for vehicles to drive across the double yellow lines briefly and go into the lane for on-coming traffic. Since the lanes are flexible, it is not unusual or troubling to swere around pedestrians, or even people walking bicycles who have stopped in the middle of the road while crossing. I suspect that Chinese driving patterns make for more effecient use of the roads and thus prevent what would be gridlock if Western traffic laws were enforced. Of course there seems to be a higher accident rate in China than the West.

Anyway now that you can visualize a busy Chinese street I would like for you to imagine traffic using these patterns of going on the street, but in the dark. Imagine that none of the non-motorize vehicles have any lights or reflectors on, and on this drive you are going to the airport so you quickly leave city street lights behind. Now imagine no moonlight, and very dense fog. Visibility with headlights about 20-30 feet. You are in a private car with a driver who shows unusual caution for a Chinese driver, your guide and interpreter is in the front seat, and you are sitting, exhausted from getting up very early, in the back seat. As the car moves through the fog and darkness suddenly figures loom up alongside or in front of the car, appearing out of the dark as if in a video game. Here is a three wheel bicycle truck carrying vegetables to market in the same lane your car is in, but over to the right edge so your car moves to straddle the white line and avoids it. Now a motorcycle, cyclopian headlight appearing in the fog a few seconds before it does. It is going against traffic, also on on the right edge of the lane you are in. Here is a pedestrian crossing the street - almost got him. Horn blaring making a doppler effect as it passes you, a large truck with more confidence in fortune, passes on the right going considerably faster than you. Quick, get into the left lane behind it and follow until its tail-lights vanish into the fog. You know it is either going to collide with any obstacles or show you a clear path. What now? A traffic circle. Even in the daylight with no fog these are the chanciest bits of the Chinese traffic system because whatever restraint the lane markers give to traffic are lifted in circles. You will go clockwise if you are in a 4 wheeled vehicle. Bicycles will not necessarily go in a predicatable direction but larger vehicles will. But the straightest path thru the circle for everyone but right turners is across the lanes to kind of bounce off the central circle's wall and out into the roadway you are using to leave the circle. Everyone wants to be in lane 2 which requires crossing lane 1, and then recrossing it to get out of the circle. We did this in the dark with the thick fog. It was scary.

We drove through a small town. Possibly we were lost. Our guide and our driver were speaking to each other increasingly loudly, seemingly about the sign naming the street. At the edges of visibility sidewalk shops were opening their doors and you could see people cleaning the floors, eating, starting the day. At one point a large truck was being repaired on the shoulder of the road, using flashlights for illumination. We seemed to turn around after the loud talking subsided, and then turned into what was surely a dead-end. The road was dirt, there were barriers before us. Behind us were two taxis and a bus, doubtless lured into this cul-de-sac because they had been following our tail lights. Suddenly the driver swung into the left lane, past some more construction, and we were on the freeway. A toll gate loomed up before us. Lily, our guide and trusted companion, looked back from the front seat and said "Good.". We agreed.