That’s New York City, not the Silk Road…

This adventure began on a whim, in a way, for me. No surprises there. I was in 5:30 am boot camp at the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, California in late April, (now there’s the surprise — that I could be up at 5:30 am and running!! doing push-ups!! Jumping up and down!! cursing the instructors!! hating those martinis I’d drank the night before!!) and realized that the woman next to me, doing jumping jacks and push-ups way more vigorously than I was, was a producer who had been planning on accompanying and filming researchers from Fuller Theological Seminary’s Center on Research in Child and Adolescent Development, on a trip to study and document thriving in the youth of the Asia Silk Road. She mentioned to me that they were going to be leaving in the middle of June for a 5 week trip; and, because I was still a little sleepy, I asked if they were looking for any luggage handlers. Since I’m trained in risk management (which involves both identification of risks AND opportunities), I thought this opportunity to see a part of the world I’d never seen could be at least as good as buying a lottery ticket, which is something that several of my banking colleagues and I have traditionally thought of as a perfectly rational “Plan B”. Now, after having picked up some really cool camera equipment and loading up on memory on my laptop and, of course, resigning from my job (unfortunate, but hey, sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do), I’m packing.

And I’ll let you know, when I can, given all the anticipated traffic and road repairs of the various technology highways I’ll be traveling, where I am, and what it looks like and what it feels like. That way, you don’t have to listen to my stories if you don’t want to when I get back (cause I’ll feel like I already told you); you can ask me questions about some of those stories, if you want; and you can tell me, in five years or so, when I talk about the night that a herd of yaks invaded my yurt and ate all my German airport chocolate, airline tickets and passport, forcing me to subsist on sheep eyeballs and hitch a ride with a camel caravan heading to Beijing…that I’m just making all that stuff up. But don’t expect a whole lot…after all, I’ll be out of the country, and I gotta save some of the good stuff for when I get back. Gotta have some story in your back pocket that you can pull out at the bar to impress, well, whoever; or something to make people laugh when you’re in the nursing home, can’t speak, and have to act it out, charades-like, in the common room. Which raises my question of the day — is Xian, or Xi’an, or Xianfang, (all versions I’ve seen) one syllable or three? Life is short, wanna be ready.

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~ by mimi on June 4, 2008.