The best things in life are ... $3

I'm a frugal fellow. More than that, I believe in the value of things money can't buy. The experience of Mother Nature's beauty, the taste of a wild blackberry, the honesty of a true friend. But even I have to admit, there are some great things you can buy for just 3 bucks! 

- Froyo for an awkward first date

- Coffee for a productive day

- A concert ticket in the 1950's

OR

- A trip around the world

Think of how far 3 bucks a day would go after say, a year...geez that's a grand. After three years, well that's enough to keep you going for a long while abroad. And with that treasure, you'll be happily welcomed by locals around the world who want to share in the good ol' American value of making dough.

4 months and 8 currencies into my trip, later I learned a few lessons to make that travel money stretch:

1. Ditch the capital fast.

There's plenty of culture and much better prices out of town.

2. Plane tickets are for layovers. Make the most of your trip's biggest cost. It's easy to arrange a multicity flight for the same price. You're probably going to be stick with a stopover anyways. Might as well extend it to a week or so to really see the place.

3. No taxis. At all. Make arrangements to avoid them, like finding when the transportation the locals use is available, or giving yourself more time to get somewhere.

4. For cheap options consider meeting new cityslickers (Couchsurfing.com), volunteer farming (WWOOF) or bringing a small tent. Hostels are a good backup and usually have good kitchens to help you save on food.

In the end, every penny you spend is a donation to a growing wannabeAmerican economy. Good on ya.

Sifting thru 8 currencies in just 4 months taught me the art of nomadic penny-pinching

P.S. If at the end of the day you find yourself in some weird scenario of having saved enough, but not having the guts to git going, make a deal with a friend to kick you in the arse if you stick around. Thanks for the help Timbo! Glad you didn't have to keep your side of the deal :)

Potomac Jazz

After than heart-stopping soul food brunch, the perfect welcome to Washington DC was some freshly washed greens. I rolled up to my cousin Jeni's place and was greeted by my aunt. It was so good to kick back and catch up with my little cousins after 10 hours driving on the road. They had meanwhile spent years drifting around the world after leaving South Africa, with no true home to go to. After a decade of efforts, DC had finally welcomed them, green cards and all.

We took advantage of the multicultural metropolis by taking a nature walk on Roosevelt Island, just a horn's honk away from the capital. Dreamy boardwalks twisted between yellow irises and drifting butterflies. e walked down a dreamy boardwalk as we approached the tribute to the conservationist president. Next we visited a tropical greenhouse, free of charge, and later the holocaust museum. On the banks of the Potomac, with kayakers rowing from under the bridge to Georgetown, I felt the collision and gathering of people and nature, both struggling and cooperating at once.

In Baltimore, a dear friend Helen was attending a Jewish farming conference and I was stoked to see both her and the fields in bloom. The road kept winding North, and it was just my luck that a fellow nature lover Adam had shacked up in rural Pennsylvania and was in need of a Toyota Camry to really keep his bluesy toes swinging at Philly get togethers. I swung into Avondale to check out his gorgeous water research station and enjoyed a late evening of fresh blueberies, homemade pickles, freshly baked pizza and latenight banjoed jams. The last time I was in New York I was a wee bleary-eyed 7, so I couldn't pass up a crisp bite of the Big Apple. Adam bought the Camry and I boarded a megabus, which fired me North again and soon I was in the subway, riding next to my dear ginger amiga Ionie. Since I'd last seen her, this fiery MexiJew had managed to tear into the New York music scene and was filming a music video...Hot October. Damn girl! I loved the vibes, and we met lots of chill New Yorkers as we shopped for props like records and lingerie. 

After my dose of Manhattan I buzzed off, snare drum in hand, for some city nature time. I ended up at a park in Chinatown where, beating on ny drum, I made friends with some chinese kids and played tag with them. All that running and I was sweating, so I went for a swim at Brighton Beach, where a Russian couple was having a proper fight, spitting and hitting and everything. Almost got some flem on me but, some salty seawater to float in and I was right as rain. As I got out, I passed by the apartment where my grandma had grown up, the daughter of Polish immigrants, before moving to little cowtown Davis, CA. With the glum buildings right before my eyes, I still couldn't make out the connection between the two places besides the constant motion west over land and sea.

Back in DC my Aunt and I went on a jazz hunt. We hit a luck at the Bohemian Caverns, a speakeasy built underground at a time when alcohol was prohibited, which apparently just inspired the musicians' creative juices more. This place was built like a cave, with dim lighting and plastered, rounded walls, and they packed a 17 piece band, a bar, and an audience of forty into this tiny space. The improv sax solos were unbelievable. It was a wonderful time to share with my Auntie.

From one coastal populace to another, these American cities seemed like empires in their own right, drawing up needy immigrants into somethhing mighty. Even Chicago on the great lakes seems to benefit from being at the water's edge, whether that is because that is where the land ends, or where the trade begins. We Americans also need to keep pulling in the needy who already are one of us.

I couldn't leave the country without one more musical note and in my favor, a live Brazilian Jazz band was filling the halls at Dulles Airport. On the evening of the last day of July, I boarded a plane and crossed the Atlantic.

Cheese to please! Nepalese shopkeepers were quite slim - lactose intolerance has its perks.

Rising South

Mighty Mississippi, even more glorious at sunset. It's so wide in parts, it seems like a sea.

Some may call me an African-American, because of where my Dad is from (though they might also be jealously referring to his gorilla-esque bounty of hair). Now this is a bit confusing for a relatively pink and freckly mongrel like me. But three years ago I looked myself in the mirror and admitted it, "Damn boy, you white!" And with a map in hand, I knew that the remedy was called Mississippi. Still today, nearly two centuries after the end of slavery, this state still has highest percentage of people of African descent and sadly is the poorest. Although the region was graced by the likes of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., its people are still struggling. I knew all I had was stats, and I wanted desperately to see what the place was really like.

The road took me through East Texas, across upper Louisiana and into the bayou. I hit Natchez, Mississippi at sunset, the river's girth splayed out like a placid bay. As the moon rose, I rushed to domed Temple B'nai Israel where I learn that Jews had been in Natchez since the late 1700's. My feelings were mixed though, when I read that some members of the community easily joined the ranks of superfluous and hierarchical white Southern society. In the Jewish community, in every place, there always seem to be leaders struggling for political goals at both ends of society. Before I pitched my tent, I insisted on a cleansing dip in the mighty river, but it turned out to be slimier than I could take and I bustled off to the campsite in the dark of night.

When I woke the next morning, I might have been in a jungle. Green light filtered through the leaves onto my tent screen, where a hand-sized spider was perched. Lord have mercy! Where water flows, life grows and boy had this creeper grown! Before I became its breakfast, I hustled onto the road in search of a local lunch. My car rolled between a cascade of white magnolia blooms, flourescent teal butterflies, and the radio's endless supply of heavenly gospel music. Jackson, MS, the state capital, impressed me with its handsome moulded architecture. And since it was Sunday, I was just in time for an endless soul food buffet brunch at Two Sisters. Okra, creamed corn, buns, sweet tea, fricasseed chicken, chicken fried steak, fried fried fried, sugar sugar sugar. Damn, it was good! I got to talking with a local bruncher, Brenda Mathis, whose best friend was an elderly Jacksonite and a Belgian Jew. She was enthralled with her life and her wisdom and filled my ears as much as I had filled my stomach. I promised that if in Belgium, I would greet her friend's loved ones.

Satisfied in belly and soul, I sped over to the next state capital, Montgomery. I have to say I have a thing for dark women, what with their sunblock-free superpowers, and I found myself hitting on a receptionist at the motel. It just hurt me to know that I might be the only one swimming at the pool, because I was the only one who could! I desperately tried to persuade her that I would give her a lesson, but she was scarred like so many are from a near-drowning experience of a loved one. No degree of humor could convince her that what she knew as such a dangerous place could actually be relaxing. In the morning I strolled around the city. For a place I had heard to be racist, it was easy to get along with people regardless of color. I was even impressed to find a self-guided sidewalk tour of Dr. King's marches. This educational homage to the great man convinced me further that in a segregated city, the segregated parts are the racist parts, but people always find a place to mix.

I had to run some errands, like going to prison. It was the only place where I could get my fingerprints stamped to become a true African-American, a South African Passport holder. I passed through some bars, sat on a metal stool and had an awkwardly tender moment with a gruff giant holding my hand, wrestling the ink onto the page. Across more bars another man sat, jailed. I'd never seen it before, and I grimaced at the deflated look on his face. It was back to the street for me, and I turned on the radio to be soothed and caressed by the cool voice of radio host. After he was done honeying up us listeners, he switched on THE TUNES WERE B^@$H F&$%ING S*@% loud. Praises! That hip hop was real. Good beats too.

Ahead lay a night in the Great Smoky Mountains with its chuckling crystal streams and belligerent touristy billboards. The road North.

Magical Drink Will Make You Grow!!

To my surprise, I'd felt most at home in the Mid-West. But as a liberal Californian, I couldn't have such high hopes for Texas. How would I survive? Despite my woes, the Lone Star state was smack dab in the middle of my cross-continental drive, and there was no missing it.

Luckily, I had someone familiar waiting for me on the other end. It was great to see my techie cousin David from hyper-liberal Davis, Berkeley's edible and political pantry. This smart guy had found a summer home for himself as an intern in Austin, and we had a good time touring Dallas's butter-heavy food scene together. Soon enough I'd found that this rival metropolis was actually darn close to my coastal hometown.

Turns out that San Diego and Dallas both have massive populations of nearly 2 million people, and both are positioned on either end of the arid Southwest. What was once a drab agricultural pitstop on the Friar's mission trail is now San Diego, the 8th biggest city in the U.S.. That's a lot of thirsty gullets to quench on the edge of the desert. Let's take a rough glance:

• 1870's 2,000        thirsty people
• 1900   20,000      thirsty people - an order of magnitude!
• 1940   200,000    thirsty people - another order!
• 1970's 750,000    thirsty people - 3x national growth rate!
• Today 1,500,000 thirsty people - doubled again!
  

(Rough #'s from San Diego History Center)

Yes indeed, every time another Texan moved to the beach, Diegan mayors and tycoons went hunting for water. Or was it the other way around? Either way, San Diego is water-limited, and its growth is water-induced.

Texas cruisin' babe! This country is BIG country, from its twangy radio to its open plains.

All of that thirst can really put a slice of stress in your piña colada; in drought years our stressed beachgoers have gone a bit wacky for rainmakers, inviting soothsayers like sewing machine salesman Charles Hatfield. But the real results seem to come from water projects. The most recent growth spurt in 1960 flowed in tandem with the construction of an aqueduct to the Colorado River. Today the Colorado River, in the desert on the other side of the mountains, is the lifeline of the city, from which the vast majority of San Diegans drink. Now that sounds like a crockpot idea to me too.

And since I'm from a city of sunburnt crockpots, I'll be dammed if I don't think outside of the pipe. Why don't we try catching our rainwater or coastal fog, and recycling the runoff from our lovely lawns? We could take a hint from the Israelis or the Namibians, who can't really ignore the fact that they live in the desert and have been relying on drip irrigation and wastewater recycling for decades. I may not be dressed in suit and tie, but all this desert wanderer wants is water, please! No ice :)