Greg Wesson's Esoteric Globe

As many of you are probably aware, in August of this year, Beijing is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics. It has certained caused a boom of construction there. When I was over in Beijing in 2005, there was a lot of new buildings, subways, highways, etc. being built to manage the hoards of atheletes, administrators and tourists that will be decending on the city.

The Chinese government is going all out to present a great face to the world, which includes getting the locals ready and excited about the event as well. For taxi drivers and tourist guides, that means learning English. For the rest of the folks, that means seeing a lot of Yao Ming. Yao Ming is a very tall Chinese man, and plays basketball for the Chinese national team, and also over in the United States in the NBA for the Houston Rockets. In Beijing, I saw a ton of flat surfaces (bus shelters and building walls) covered with Yao's likeliness.

Seeing Yao all over Beijing wasn't unexpected at all. What was unexpected, though, was seeing the number of Chinese people in Houston how had travelled from somewhere (some as far away as China itself) to see Yao play. I went to a game on January 15th, when Houston played the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers aren't very good, so there weren't a lot of people at the game. However, of those that were there, probably 70% were Chinese. They had Chinese signs, which I couldn't read, but I'm sure said stuff like "Go Yao Go!", "Yao, Beat the 76ers!" or "Hey ESPN China, Put Me On TV" because those are the kinds of things people write on signs at sporting events.

I was pretty bored by the game, frankly. I'm not a big basketball fan, and other than a couple games I saw in St. Louis for the start of the NCAA (USA College basket) March Madness tournament, usually find myself only doing on thing at basketball games. Watching the cheerleaders!

Er... I mean Dance Squad. They, like the basketball players, are professional atheletes, you know.

You can't really see them very well there. I should have brought my camera along I guess, instead of counting on my cell phone to get the good picture. But trust me, the dance squad women were very pretty.

When one thinks of Texas, one thinks of heat, of dusty desert landscapes upon which tumbleweed rolls along. Texas is a big place, though, and Houston offers a tree-filled view, a lush river delta leading into the Gulf of Mexico. However, with a latitude of 29 degrees north, 45 minutes, a latitude further south than Cairo, Egypt, one would expect Houston, Texas to be warm, even in the January.

In fact, average temperatures for Houston in January tend to be in the high teens Celsius. That is why it was so surprising that the weekend I choose to tour the city, Houston would be experiencing a high of 10 Celsius. Unprepared for the cool weather, I had to wander down to a Target store and buy myself a sweater. Local Houstonians were wandering around in heavy jackets with scarves and gloves.

Decked out in my new sweater, providing one of the 4 layers I was wearing, I headed out from my Hotel near the Galleria on the west side of Houston, and headed East towards San Jacinto Bay.

The battlefield at San Jacinto, near the San Jacinto River and San Jacinto Bay, was the site of a very important battle in 1836 that gained Texas their independence from Mexico. In the 1800s, Mexico stretched from Columbia (modern day Panama) in the south to a northern border that included parts (or whole pieces) of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Texas. Mexico gain independence from Spain in the early 1800s during the Mexican war of Independence, and soon that large swath of land found itself under the control of president General Antonio López de Santa Anna (a man who would hold that office a total of 11 different times over a 22 year period).

In 1835, Texas declared independence from Mexico, forming the Republic of Texas. Santa Anna was not impressed, and soon dispatched troops to bring Texas back under Mexican control. Santa Anna swept up into Texas, defeating Texan troops at the The Alamo in San Antonio and later at Goliad.

General Sam Houston, on the Texans side, retreated his troops from Santa Anna’s advance. Santa Anna, feeling confident, divided his troops into multiple columns to pursue both Houston and the Texan government. This gave Houston his opportunity, and Houston set up camp on a point of land where the Buffalo Bayou met the San Jacinto River.

On April 21st, Houston attacked the Mexican camp, with a regiment of troops lead by Sidney Sherman advancing from the northern tree line, and the main bulk of the army coming up from the south. The Mexicans, unprepared that day for battle, retreated to the east, where they were cornered. 600 Mexican soldiers died that day with a loss of only nine Texans. Santa Anna was captured the next day, April 22nd, 1836, and forced to sign a treaty giving Texas it’s independence from Mexico.

Texas’ independence was short-lived, however, and a few years later they joined the USA. Following the defeat by the Texans, much of the rest of Northern part of the Mexico fell during the Mexican-American war. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded to the United States approximately 1/3 of the present area of the USA, including in whole or in part the present-day states New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The point where the battle took place is now a state park with a large monument to the battle and the Texans victory over the Mexicans. The Art Deco obelisk is the tallest free-standing column in the world at 570 feet tall, 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument. Leave it to the Texans to outdo even their own government. In addition, a number of boulders are scattered around the grounds where important parts of the battle took place, including the spot where the majority of the 600 dead met their ends.

The park is also home to the 300 acre San Jacinto Marsh, a tidal wetland that has recently been undergoing restoration. In the 1970s and 1980s as the petrochemical industry and shipping grew in the area, much the marsh lands along the San Jacinto River were converted into open water. Started in 1997, the San Jacinto Marsh Restoration Project has been working to convert the area back into a marsh. More on the project can be read on the Department of Fish and Wildlife website, or on the University of Houston / Clear Lake website

Speaking of Clear Lake, that was my next destination, to the south of the San Jacinto Park. Clear Lake is a pleasure boaters destination, with from 19 marinas and over 7,000 boat slips in Clear Lake area, the third largest concentration of pleasure boats in the United States, apparently.

My reason for going to Clear Lake was not to go boating (a little cold to be out on the open water this past weekend). Rather I was there to head north from Clear Lake and back over the city boundary into Houston and NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, which sits just over the border from Clear Lake in Houston.

The Johnson Space Center is mission control for all American Space Shuttle missions, activities aboard the International Space Station, and is the training facility for all American astronauts. No rockets or space shuttles take off from Houston (for the most part, that happens in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center). The control facility in Houston is separated from the launch facilities in the event that a disaster occurs (rocket explosion or what have you) to ensure that you don’t lose both facilities.

The visitors’ center at Johnson Space Center has an interactive museum which would probably be fun for kids, but I found a little dull. I did, however, quite enjoy the opportunity to do the NASA tour, where a tram takes you around the grounds of Johnson Space Center. We saw one of the three mission control rooms in the facility, the training center where astronauts train and a few rockets and rocket engines from past programs like Saturn and Apollo. The training area was interesting, as it included full size training models of the shuttle and International Space station, a couple of shuttle flight simulators and two models of the Canadarm, the robotic arm made by Spar Aerospace in Canada. Yay Canada! To simulate using the arm in a zero-g environment, the astronauts train by pushing around balloons and other light weight objects with the robot arm.

In addition to controlling missions and training astronauts, the Johnson Space Center is also home to the development programs for the next generation of space travel, which includes new space craft, a lunar base and a trip to Mars. In addition to the over 17,000 full time and contract employees working at the Johnson Space Center, there are more than 70 aerospace firms in the Houston area. The Bay Area (as the area around the Johnson Space Center complex is called) Bay Area Houston is home to 92 percent of Houston's aerospace jobs and 4.5 percent of Houston's total employment.

As the tour group was leaving building 30, where the mission control rooms are located, the guide motioned up to a flag atop the building. “Whenever an American is in space, the American flag flies on that pole. As there is an American at the International Space Station, the flag is flying at this point.” Looking up to the flag pole, I noticed off to the right that the moon was rising in the blue sky over the building. There it was, NASA’s next destination, the moon, just above the horizon, so close and yet actually 380,000 kilometers away. Houston is right there, at the edge of space.

Due to its important place in the Aerospace industry, Houston’s NBA team is called the Rockets, though I learned while attending a game last Wednesday that originally the team was from San Diego. In San Diego, the team was also called the Rockets, in honour of that city’s large aerospace industry. Luckily for the NBA, the Rockets moved from one capital of aerospace to another. After moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, the Lakers of the NBA never changed their name, even though there isn’t much in the way of lakes around the Los Angeles area.

Heading south from NASA down highway 146, I noticed that my gas gauge was getting low, so I pulled off the highway in Texas City to fill up. Buying gas in Texas City, besides for being a practical concern of not running out of fuel, was also a strong metaphor. I recently read the outstanding book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, in which the author examines the question, “If somehow the earth were depopulated of humans overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished?” In the book, the author spends a chapter in the Houston area, and specifically Texas City, to examine what would happen to all the petrochemical processing plants that we have created.

Why associate the petrochemical industry with the Houston Area? As the interesting article on the Houston Ship Channel called Amidst a Petrochemical Wonderland: Points of view along the Houston Ship Channel points out, approximately one quarter of the refining capacity of the United States is located along the ship channel, at over 20 petrochemical plants in the channel area. They are linked by pipelines, selling streams of liquid product to one another, and bringing in crude from hundreds of platforms in the Gulf, as well as heavier, cheaper crude from Mexico.

Texas City, south of Houston, is home to three refineries: Valero, Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, and British Petroleum (BP). The BP refinery can process over 450,000 barrels per day, making it the third largest refinery in the USA. In addition to the refineries, there are a number of other petrochemical plants that use all that refined oil to make a number of products. With all those petrochemical plants, Texas City has from time to time, blown up. The most significant of these, known as the Texas City Disaster, happened in 1947, when a fire aboard the French ship Grandcamp ignited the 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) aboard, causing the ship to explode. The resulting set of fires and explosions through-out Texas City killed more than 500 people and wounded over 5,000.

I left the gas station just as the sun was sinking in the sky, and drove through town and past the chemical plants. The lights on the pipes, stacks and processing equipment were just coming on. Looking at this stainless steel maze light up against the blackening sky, with spouts of fire shooting in bright orange and cool blue flames from venting stacks, I couldn’t decide if the scene reminded me more of a post-apocalyptic landscape ala Mad Max, or a futuristic city like something from a Japanese manga cartoon.

Later that evening, when driving north back towards Houston from Galveston on highway 45, looking at the row of petrochemical plants in the distance definitely put me in mind of that futuristic city. From across the water of Galveston Bay, it looked like a very distant city of skyscrapers, all lit up with shiny glass. It’s truly an impressive site, though once you get closer to the Texas City industrial complex, the vision of future cities fades into the stink of chemical processing.

But prior to heading back to Houston, I drove further south to Galveston. Galveston sits on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, and is now probably best known as a town with a number of tourist attractions. Back in the late 1800s, however, Galveston was the biggest city in the area, surpassing even Houston. However, in 1900 a hurricane struck the area, killing between six and eight thousand people and destroying a good chunk of the city. After that, many of the residents and businesses moved north towards Houston, and the city never really recovered. One can’t help but draw parallels between Galveston and New Orleans, and wonder if Galveston is a glimpse into New Orleans’ future.

I didn’t see too much of Galveston though, as I arrived pretty late in the day and needed to head back to Houston that evening. I took a quick drive around the historic Strand district, and then headed to a restaurant for dinner. It was a busy night in Galveston, and I had to wait for a table. Soon my name was called, and I was shown my table, overlooking the the tall ship Elissa. Launched in 1877, the Elissa was restored in the 1970s. As I was at a restaurant called the Fisherman’s Wharf, I figured I should get seafood, and as I was just steps from the Gulf of Mexico, I decided on an entry with three different preparations of Gulf Shrimp. The shrimp are caught wild in the Gulf of Mexico, where they live. For all I know, the shrimp could have been caught by Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan. Who can say?

I finished up with dinner, and soon was back on the road, heading north along highway 45 back to Houston and my hotel room. The day started with the history of San Jacinto and ended with the historic center of Galveston, and in the middle featured space travel and the futuristic landscape of the petrochemical alley. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all in one day.

I am working down in Houston now, staying at the Marriott West Loop By the Galleria, which seems an unnecessarily long name for a hotel. The hotel is decent - soft beds, good selection to TV channels, decent room service selection. It's nothing to sneeze at.

In the bathroom, they provide you a nice range of toiletries to use. There's mouthwash and skin cream (which is good, because hotels are notoriously dry and you can soon find your skin cracked and flaking in the dry atmosphere of a hotel room). In addition, there are three items for the shower - shampoo, conditioner and "invigorating body wash."

I've been using the body wash all week, but have found myself stepping out of the shower and still feeling sluggish and tired. It is not invigorating me as I would have hoped. I only find myself really invigorating once I get my first dose of caffeine via a Diet Coke.

The shampoo and invigorating body wash look very similar, both yellowish liquids in a clear bottle. Today, I accidentally washed my hair with the invigorating body wash. I hope there are no long term side effects, like my head becoming confused and thinking it's part of my body. I'd hate for my head to suddenly morph into an arm or something. While an extra arm extending out of the top of my neck might make it easier to reach canned food on the top shelf, without a mouth I wouldn't be able to consume it.

Sure, now I have a can of beans, but I can't enjoy it!

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Sharp-eyed readers will notice at the bottom of the right hand menu there is now a section for links. In addition to a link to the Travellerspoint site that hosts my blog, there are two other links (at this point).

The first is to a public google calendar that I keep up to date with my most up to date travel plans. It's probably complete arrogance for me to think that anyone cares where I am, but in the event you ever think to yourself, "hey, it's Tuesday, I wonder where Greg is," click on the link to find out. If you see white space, it means it's one of the rare days I am actually in Toronto.

The other link is to a site called TravelBlogs.com, which is a site that collects some of the best travel writing on the internet, and for some strange reason, the little corner of silliness on the internet that I call my travel blog. If you ever get sick of reading about chickens or people with arms for heads and want to read some serious and interesting travel tales, I would suggest checking it out for sure. There's some pretty interesting stuff on there, including a dude who is trying to travel from London to Sydney without using a plane. Cool, and much more interesting than me washing my hair with bodywash...

I am sitting at a high-top table in the Dirty Dog Bar at 505 East 6th Street in Austin, Texas, just a mere 10 blocks from the Texas state capitol building, sipping on a pint of Dos Equus and watching the University of Texas Longhorns Football team playing the Rice University Owls. Off to my left, a band is preparing to play a set once the game finishes. I look around at my fellow patrons. Beside me, a couple beautiful blond co-eds from the University of Texas are watching the game intently. At the end of the bar, a guy in a button down shirt works on his laptop, probably one of the many high-tech or bio-tech workers in the region. Closer to the stage, a few metal heads are chatting and drinking, waiting for the Dave Evans and his band to get started. Just then, three guys with Mohawks walk into the bar. None of the other patrons bats an eyelash.

“Man,” I think to myself, “Austin IS weird.”

Now, you may be saying right now, “Gregory, why do you feel the need to insult the fine city of Austin, Texas, by calling it weird?”

However, I’m not the one that called it weird, at least not originally. In fact, the citizens of Austin like their weird reputation, and some years ago started plastering their cars with bumper stickers imploring everyone to Keep Austin Weird. This weekend, while perusing the local free paper while eating breakfast in one of the many Mexican run restaurants in town, I read an editorial that was lamenting the covering of a local “non-commissioned outdoor art piece,” (i.e. graffiti) and how this was just one more move away from Weird Austin and towards the “Dallasifaction” of the city.

Austin is a very diverse place. If people know Austin, most likely it is because of the University of Texas in Austin. The University is one of the larger ones in the country, and is situated on a beautiful campus north of Downtown Austin.

The most famous building on campus is the huge tower attached to the main building. Architecturally beautiful and visible from most places on the campus and in various places across the city, the tower is also site of one of the more infamous campus shootings in American history, when on August 1, 1966, architectural engineering major Charles Whitman barricaded himself in the tower with a rifle, killing 14 people and wounding 31 others. The stand-off ended 96 minutes later, with the police storming the observation tower and killing Whitman.

The incident notwithstanding, most North Americans would know the University of Texas from watching college sports. The Longhorns basketball team is a perennial contender in the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament. The big draw though, is the Longhorns football team.

On Saturday, September 22, the Longhorns faced off against the Rice Owls. The game was not expected to be much of a match. Rice is an “Ivy League” school, more known for its academic achievements than its sporting traditions. Rice is, however, proud of the fact that all of the team doctors are Rice graduates and former football players.

The likely uncompetitive competition was not enough to deter the Longhorn fans from coming out to support the team. Even though the game wasn’t scheduled to start until 6 PM, the fans started arriving early in the morning, soon filling up every parking spot and patch of grass within 2 miles of the stadium, and preparing for the American Football tradition of “tailgating.”

The tailgate party is the pre-game ritual of football fans across the United States. In Texas, they pull up in everything from small cars to massive RVs, usually with a few bumper stickers declaring that they “Bleed Burnt Orange” (the colour of the uniforms that the University athletes wear) or beseeching the Longhorns to “Hook ‘Em High” on the horns of the bull that is the University of Texas’ mascot. The tailgate party can be as simple as a charcoal barbeque and a cooler to beer, up to satellite TV dishes, flat screen TVs and massive BBQ smokers to slow cook ribs all day well prepping for the game.

Back in the Dirty Dog Bar, the game comes to half-time, and the sound is turned down so that the band can do their sound check. Tonight, the Dirty Dog is presenting Dave Evans, the “originally lead singer of AC/DC,” famous Australian Rockers who went on to success after dumping Dave Evans in 1974 for Bonn Scott as lead singer. I laugh quietly to myself as a line from AC/DC’s Thunderstruck comes to my mind, “Went through to Texas, yeah Texas and we had some fun.”

Dave Evans and his band are not the only musicians playing in Austin this evening, though. In fact, Austin is the self-declared “Live Music Capital of the World,” with more live music venues per capita than any other city in the USA, including famous music cities like Nashville or Los Angeles. Many of these venues line Sixth Street, offering music lovers the opportunity to hear many types of music. The band selection is very diverse. A bartender at the Jackalope, another bar along Sixth Street suggested I go and see a band of his friends that sounded like “New York City in the mid-seventies, you know, like Iggy.”

I listen to Dave Evans warm up for a bit, but decide to head out into the night air. I’d been walking all day and in addition to my Dos Equus, the bar has been handing out orange Jello shots each time that the Longhorns scored, and against the porous Rice defense, they were scoring a lot. All the vodka was going to my head.

I head out into the night, and wander over to Congress Avenue. I look to my right, and perfectly framed at the end of the street is the Texas State Capitol building. Austin is the capitol of Texas, the history of how it became the capitol I covered (most likely with incorrect and inappropriate details) in a blog entry on my last visit to Austin in 2001 called 38 year old grandmother strippers and American Born NHLers. If you scroll about half-way to the bold title “Capitol Music,” you can read about how I surmised that moving fatigue is what landed Austin the title of Texas capitol. The capitol being in Austin, though, means that the city is home to many government workers, not to mention the politicians.

Turning right, I see some shiny glass buildings, and am reminded that back in 2001 this area was called the “Silicon Hills.” Austin is in Texas Hill Country, a lush and rolling area of Texas that is nothing like the image of endless cattle ranches or dust farms that we often see on TV. Back in 2001, over 100 high tech companies had set up shop in Austin, including IBM, Tandem, Schlumberger, Motorola, AMD, Apple and Texas Instruments. Even though the Internet Bubble has burst since I was last in town, there is still a presence here of technology, from computer circuits to genes, the companies range from computer equipment manufacturers to bio-technology companies.

I watch a couple of goth kids wander by me, on their way to catch some band no doubt doing covers of My Chemical Romance, and think what a strange mix of people that inhabit this city: Frat Brothers and Sorority Sisters from the University in the same bars as the alternative rock fans; Mexican service workers enjoying a drink after their shifts, sitting next to bio-tech professionals drinking away the stresses of the day; country musicians grabbing a smoke before going on to perform for a crowd of government bureaucrats; smarmy politicians coming into town on occasion to sleep through sessions of state legislature; and all of it in a downtown core that doesn’t take more than 20 minutes to cross on foot.

Austin is weird, in the best way possible. Hopefully they do keep it that way.

Northern California. Truly a land of milk and honey sandwiched between the blue Pacific Ocean and the majestic mountain ranges of the Sierra Nevadas, with beautiful scenery and gorgeous weather, assuming, of course, you don’t mind the stop-and-stop-some-more traffic, totally unaffordable housing prices and killer earthquakes. I have loved Northern California since my first trip here back in 2002, when I was working south of Oakland in the sunny Livermore Valley to the east of San Francisco Bay.

I was back in Northern California again for a training course, south of San Francisco in Mountain View, sandwiched between Palo Alto, home to the prestigious Stanford University, and San Jose, California, unofficial capital of the Silicon Valley, the name given to the concentration of high tech companies that inhabit the cites and towns in the southern San Francisco Bay area.

At the end of my three day course, I pulled up my tent pegs and moved north to San Francisco for a weekend of R&R. Mostly the first R (assuming that’s the one that means Rest), as I am recovering from a cold and during the week had to get up at 5:00 am local time every day to take 3 hours of conference calls from the east coast of the USA before my classes started. I mostly slept and napped for a couple days in San Francisco, with a few quick trips out to the fantastic seafood restaurants that flourish in the city by the bay.

Picture taken in 2002 because I forgot my camera, but you get the general idea

Mostly, though, my mind was on sports. More specifically, it was on professional sports.

It’s natural to think about sports when in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the 10th, 14th and 44th largest cities in the USA (San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland, respectively) within an hours drive of each other and a total population of 7.2 million people in the area, there’s a lot of money out there for professional sporting franchises. That’s why there are a total of 7 professional, tier 1 sporting teams in the area. The Bay Area has two professional American football teams with the Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers, two major league baseball teams with the Giants and the A’s, The Golden State Warriors of the NBA in Oakland, the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League and the soon to be reinstated Earthquakes of Major League Soccer. In addition, the cities have teams in the USL Soccer League, two professional Lacrosse teams, an Arena football team and a minor league baseball team. None of that even counts the numerous collegiate programs with University of California at Berkley and Stanford leading the way.

The other reason my mind was on sports is with the arrival of autumn, a number of sports are starting up their seasons. The NFL American football league started their season a couple of weeks ago, NHL hockey is about to get underway soon and the NBA basketball season will soon be in full swing. Those sports that have been running through the summer, like Major League Baseball, MLS Soccer and the Canadian Football League are gearing up for their season ending playoffs soon. Autumn really is the best time for spectators of professional sports.

More than just watching sports, though, autumn is the time to think about betting on professional sports. I’m not talking about calling up the local bookie and putting money down on games, but rather the traditional “office pool,” where friends, co-workers and occasional sworn enemies sit down over a plate of chicken wings and a pitcher of beer and make selections for a season long opportunity to gloat to your friends how much you know about sports. (Or, conversely, spend the season as the goat in last place taking all the ribbing).

During my time in California, I completed an NFL draft, where I selected 16 players from across the league in hopes that the 16 I choose get more points than the 16 players the 10 other friends of mine chose. Of course, given that I was in California, I didn’t have a plate of wings in front of me, but rather a computer, as the draft was run online via Yahoo Fantasy Sports, one of the many websites that have sprung up to feed the estimated $6 billion dollars that is bet in office pools in the USA alone every year. In between my picks in the football pool, I was online researching my upcoming hockey pool. After the pool, it was off to the bar to catch a few of the last baseball games of the season as teams try and make the playoffs.

It’s been a tough few years for professional sports, though. The NFL is currently under a lot of fire, with star player Michael Vick recently arrested on charges of running a dog-fighting ring, former star O.J. Simpson arrested for a break-and-enter at a Las Vegas hotel, players like Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson being suspended for off-field thuggish behavior, and star coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots being fined for stealing opponents sideline signals. It’s hardly the image of heroic on-field deeds and role-model behavior that most sports try and portray.

One of the joys of my travels has been the opportunity to see sporting events live at the places they take place. From watching the Chicago Cubs in historic Wrigley Field to catching a Sumo Wrestling match in Japan, watching sports has connected me to the places I have been. It’s a connection that I share with the locals, who in many places feverishly and devoutly follow their local teams every move. I know what it is like to be in Busch stadium in October, wearing a red t-shirt and praying for the St. Louis Cardinals to take the lead, because I have been there. I’d hardly call myself a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but I was that day. While I may not understand the sport any better (I certainly can’t talk intelligently about Sumo or Cricket), I have felt the power of watching it with people who do.

The other connection that watching sports has with travel is thanks to the multiplication of TV channels that came with the introduction of cable and satellite television. With so much time to fill, sports that otherwise would be unknown to the world are beamed into our living rooms 24 hours a day. I find myself watching kite surfing or rock climbing shows, not so much because I have an interest in the sport, but because they end up being half travelogue. These are sports that take place in beautiful and natural settings in far flung locations, and watching a group of Swiss youth tackle the mountains of Malaysia ends up piquing my interest in a trip to the Malay Peninsula.

Two of the sports I have started following, though I’ve never seen live, are Formula One racing and the Dakar Rally. Partially it is because I grew up with my parents being involved in car racing, so the appeal of cars going really fast was bred into me at an early age. The other reason, though, is that they hold their races in far-flung, exotic locations. Formula One just finished up the Belgium Grand-Prix after swings through Italy, Turkey and Hungary, and then they are off to Japan and China before ending the year in Brazil. The Dakar Rally runs from Lisbon, Portugal to Dakar, Senegal, though the Atlas Mountains and Sahara Desert.

Neither event is without controversy though. As global warming and climate change grow as key issues in the public’s minds, the environmental costs of moving the large amounts of equipment required to support these events, in additional to the carbon thrown off by the vehicles themselves, become of greater concern. In addition, the Dakar Rally, racing through the towns and villages of some of the poorest countries in the world, exposes the local population to some danger, and in 2006 a 10 year old boy was killed when trying to cross the path of the race, the fourth documented case of a local being killed, though it is assumed that more have died during the race and have gone unreported.

The “international” sport that I watch that is under the most fire is the Tour de France. The Tour was riding high back in 2004 when I first started watching, with Lance Armstrong on his way to winning what would be his sixth of the seven consecutive races he would win. I started watching mostly for the travelogue aspects of seeing the French country-side, and in 2005, after my first trip to France, it was an opportunity to relive that trip.

Then, in 2006, the day after American Floyd Landis won the Tour, it was released that his blood sample showed increased levels of testosterone, and he was stripped of the tour win. 2007 has been even more disastrous for the tour, with 1996 winner Bjarne Riis admitting to using the banned substance EPO throughout his career, including during his win, and fellow 1996 rider Erik Zabel admitting using EPO as well when he won the Green Jersey (the points leader). Within the tour itself, riders Alexandre Vinokourov and Cristian Moreni were caught doping, and their respective teams dropped out of the race. Then the race leader Michael Rasmussen was fired for lying about where he was training.

The French media decided to kick the tour while it was down - Liberation, the national newspaper, announced "La Mort du Tour" - The Death of the Tour - on its front page and said the race had been “emptied of all sporting interest”, and France Soir ran an obituary notice announcing the Tour's death at "the age of 104, after a long illness".

All this talk of dope brings us back to San Francisco, and America’s pastime, Baseball. As I stated earlier, two Major League Baseball teams are in the San Francisco Bay area, including the San Francisco Giants. The Giants most famous player is Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds just this year surpassed Hank Aaron as the all time leader in home runs, and currently has 762 home runs. Barry’s chase for the record has been mired in controversy, and many people in the media and the general public have been very negative towards Mr. Bonds.

Back in 1974, when Hank Aaron was close to surpassing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run mark of 714, there was a lot of controversy as well. The controversy in 1974 though, was the question of whether an African-American should break the home run record, and Mr. Aaron even received death threats. Barry Bond’s chase is getting a negative reaction due to the accusations of using banned substances like Human Growth Hormone and steroids. There have been accusations that the “witch-hunt” against Bonds is racial motivated, as other players like Mark McGuire or Jose Canseco who likely took banned substances didn’t have negative reactions when they were banging out the homers, but I’m inclined to think that it’s more a matter of timing and the visibility of the home run record that has brought the negative reaction down on Barry.

Barry Bonds isn’t alone in being tarred by accusations of steroid use recently, though. Most recently, Toronto Blue Jay Troy Glaus has been accused, as has Rick Ankiel, previously 2007’s baseball feel good story of the year. Ankiel was a pitcher who after flaming out, refocused himself on hitting and became a home-run slugger for the St. Louis Cardinals. It was a happy story about a boy who, despite setbacks, worked hard and got to live his dream. Then Ankiel was named in the same report that named Glaus to have received human growth hormone, and the previous feel-good story became another black mark on baseball.

The public hasn’t turned their backs on baseball yet, and hopefully they won’t. There is something really special about the relationship between baseball and America. Football and NASCAR may draw more fans and sell more merchandise, but I love going to see baseball games when I am down in the USA. There is a feeling, when sitting in a ball park on a sunny afternoon, eating a hot dog and drinking a beer, of connecting with over 100 years of American history (which is almost all of it, when you consider how young the country is). The slow pace and the smell of the grass remind me of picnics. The jovial chatter between fans is like a Sunday dinner. The national anthem playing as a slight breeze lazily wafts the Stars and Stripes out in center field call to mind a gentle kind of national pride.

Baseball is America, and it is a sport that is connected deeply to the spirit of that country. Watching a game, live and in person, is an experience is the essence Americana. As a traveller, I can think of no better way to connect with the American psyche then sitting an uncomfortable chair on a cool night and listening for the crack of the bat.