Dave Fox's Outbursts!

The Scariest Halloween Costume Ever!

[Note: Due to a technological meltdown of epic proportions, I am unable to upload anything to my main website tonight. Therefore, I am posting this month's humor column on this blog. By the way, have you ever wondered why people often begin notes with the word, "Note?" I mean, we can all see what it is.]

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Every year at Halloween, my friends have costume parties, and every year, I insist on going to those parties as myself.

"Where is your costume?" my friends ask me, and I tell them that costumes are for people who like costumes. I am not of that tribe.

I'm not sure what turned me into a Halloween Scrooge. When I was a child (which I no longer am, in spite of rumors to the contrary), Halloween was my favorite holiday. And I am still pro-candy, but dressing up as a ghost, or a monster, or the Dear Leader of North Korea just doesn't have the same appeal to me today as it did when I was five.

But this gets awkward. When you show up at a Halloween party without a costume, people think you are a loser and give you wedgies, which I am getting too old to enjoy. So I have come up with a solution. This year, I am still going as myself, only I am making a costume. I am taking a picture of my face, printing it out, and making a mask out of it.

This is an extremely versatile costume. For example, my friends Austin and Patty are not only requiring that everyone at their party wear a costume, but each year they choose a theme, and this year's theme is superheroes. So I am going as Superdave.

The awesome thing about the simplicity of the Superdave Costume is that Superdave is so super, he don't need no stinkin' cape! All he needs is a beer in his hand and his super powers are activated!

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "Yeah, right! What super powers could you, Dave Fox, mild-mannered travel geek, possibly have?"

Well, for starters, I can drink tall beers in a single bound. But wait! There's more! My beer-guzzling super powers are so super, I once prevented an airplane from taking off.

It was a snowy, post-Christmas-holiday weekend at O'Hare Airport, and I was flying back to Madison, Wisconsin, where I was living at the time. My connecting flight had been delayed so many times that I had consumed multiple tall beers in a single bound at various adult beverage establishments throughout the airport. Finally, it was time for my flight to board, and although I needed one last trip to the men's room, the gate agent was telling us to please hurry and take our seats before they closed the airport again. So being the mild-mannered travel geek that I am, I did what I was told. I figured I could hold it another 20 minutes until we were airborne.

I fastened my seatbelt and we taxied out to the runway. As we waited behind a long line of other aircraft, my bladder began to swell. "Hold it, hold it, hold it," I meditated. We had just three more aircraft in front of us. Two more aircraft. One more aircraft. "Ten more minutes before the seatbelt sign goes off," I thought. "Hold it, hold it, hold it."

Then the pilot made an announcement. A very bad announcement.

"Because of the expected turbulence, we will not be providing drink service on this flight. I am asking all passengers and flight attendants to remain seated for the duration of the flight."

There comes a time in every superhero's life when he really has to urinate. Really. I had two choices. Disobey the captain or wet myself. I was young. I was tough. I could handle being throttled against the lavatory walls a lot better than I could handle the alternative embarrassment. I concocted a plan. I would slither back to the bathroom and relieve myself while we were taking off. The flight crew wouldn't even know. It would be an adventure.

Complicating matters was the fact that I was in a window seat. I looked at the two gentlemen next to me. "I'm really sorry, but I need to get up," I said.

Apparently, my face was filled with superhero charisma, because the two men did not argue. They dove out of my way, realizing I was on a mission.

I hobbled toward the back, now in considerable pain, when… curses! A flight attendant foiled my plan. "You can't stand up right now!" she yelped. "We're about to take off!"

But I, Superdave, was having none of that. "This is an emergency, ma'am," I said. "Please step aside."

"I'll call the captain and tell him to wait."

There is something intimidating about the fact that two hundred airline passengers, who have already been delayed several hours, are now being further delayed because of your need to urinate. I don't quite know what took over, but in spite of what was now an excruciating pressure in my loins, nothing was happening. I stood there, as guys do, but nothing was leaving my body. The pressure within me was no match for the external pressure of 200 irritated passengers hoping I would hurry up. I stood there for a long, long time, knowing I could not return to my seat before accomplishing my mission, because if I did, the urgency was only going to grow worse once I sat down.

So I closed my eyes and did some superhero deep-breathing exercises until finally, a great sense of relief flowed out of me. Finally, I returned to my seat. We took off and landed without further incident. At the baggage claim in Madison, I could hear people talking about me, asking each other, "Did you see that guy as he flew down the aisle? His face was pretty red."

Yep. Just like the Incredible Hulk, only a different color.

But here is the thing: Can you name one other superhero in the history of the world who has ever stopped an airplane from taking off… with his own urine?!?! No! No, you cannot!

So I am going for Halloween this year as Superdave. And I realized, my idea of creating a mask out of my own photograph is so brilliant, everyone should do this! Even you! Yes, you too should go trick-or-treating this year as me! Which is why I am pleased to offer you, free of charge, this Superdave Halloween Costume Kit. (Some assembly required.)

To create your Superdave costume, you will need the following:

• A computer printer, and, ideally, some heavy-duty card stock
• A pair of scissors
• A thick rubber band
• A stapler
• Beer
• A drinking straw

Once you have assembled these items, please follow these instructions:

1. Print the image to the right. You may need to adjust the scale of the photo to fit the size of your own head. (You may click for a larger version.
   
2. Cut out around the face part so it is the shape of a mask.
3. Cut holes in each eyeball, and also a small hole in the mouth, large enough to insert a straw through.
4. Snip your rubber band so it is just one long piece of rubber. (Alternatively, an elastic band or a mangled coat hanger will work.
5. Staple the rubber band to the back of the mask - one staple on each side, next to the ears.
6. Put the mask on your head in the usual mask-putting-on manner.
7. Open the beer.
8. If you are not yet of legal drinking age, pour the beer into an empty Coke can so you do not get in trouble.
9. Insert one end of the straw through the hole in the mask's mouth.
10. Insert the other end of the straw through the hole in the top of the beer bottle or can.
    

Congratulations! Your Superdave Halloween Costume is now ready for use! Just please drink responsibly, and if you need to fly anywhere, remember that after the aforementioned airline incident, Superdave now always asks for an aisle seat.

Jet Lag Wonder Drugs? At Least the Hamsters are Happy.

I was about to delete the e-mail. "Dear Dave," it began. And everybody knows that these days, most e-mail that begins with "Dear Dave" is spam.

Like, this one time, my mother sent me an e-mail, and it started with, "Dear Dave."

I was all like, "How sweet. My mother is e-mailing me." But then her message continued:

"I am Miriam Mbuto Kfaswane, the beautiful and wholesome widow of Malcolm Herman Eugene Tiger Mbuto Humpenstein Kfaswane XII of Spamistan. And if you do not come home and clean your room and pick up your dirty underwear off the floor before dinner, you are not going to get the 64.8 quadzillion US dollars I have been instructed to deposit into your Swiss bank account."

I immediately picked up the telephone and called my mother. "Listen, Mom," I told her, "I am 40 years old. I do not live with you anymore. I will leave my dirty underwear on the floor if I want to. Besides, your name is not Miriam Mbuto Kfaswane!"

At this point, my mother reminded me that she doesn't really understand the Internet, or own a computer, and probably was not the person who sent me that e-mail.

(You can read the rest of this column on my mail website at davethefox.com.)

Fluzilla Zaps Tokyo

March 24-25 – Flying over the Bering Sea, Somewhere around the International Date Line

I'm looking at the in-flight video map right now en route from Seattle to Tokyo, and I can't help but notice that in the north, around the Bering Sea, the International Date Line is really an International Date Zig Zag. My theory is that the Date Line People must have started in the south, and once they hit the upper quadrant of the Northern Hemisphere, they got a little  woozy. I don't have a theory as to whether this wooziness was caused by drunkenness or seasickness. I am just making an observation.

I'm not sure if it's Tuesday or Wednesday right now. Looking at the diagram on the screen, our plane is actually straddling the Date Line, one wing in each day. Also, according to the screen, our plane is roughly the same size as Korea.

What I know for sure it is not is Monday. This is unfortunate. Monday is the day I was supposed to leave Seattle. I was supposed to fly to Tokyo, hang out for 24 hours, and write an article about how ridiculous it is to go to Tokyo for just 24 hours. I was going to take in the cherry blossoms, which are rumored to be blooming, and attempt to score some sake in Ueno Park. I was going to sleep in a capsule hotel, described by one American expat on Twitter as “coffin-like.” I was going to seek out Tokyo nightlife, and shopping mayhem in the electronics district. I was going to push through my jet lag, albeit with a whimper or two, and get completely disoriented in a culture I know little about.

Instead, I got the flu.

The flu hit a week ago. My doctor had reassured me I'd be fine by Monday. But “fine” is a relative thing. I found myself, Sunday afternoon, wanting nothing more than to snore for about 38 hours.

Reality hit Sunday night around 9 p.m. when I realized I had about six hours worth of stuff to do, and my body was screaming at me to go to sleep. If I wanted, I could delay my trip a day and skip my Tokyo stopover.

“Don't decide now,” my girlfriend, Kattina, said to me. “Go to bed. Wake up early. You know how to pack fast when you need to.”

I slept fitfully. By 4 a.m. Monday, my mind was made up. Running around Tokyo in 50-degree drizzle with the remnants of the flu was not going to fix the severe fatigue that had kept me down all week. I didn't want my fever to relapse in Vietnam. Tokyo could wait for another trip.

Of course, that is also what I said 20 years ago about Eastern Europe after I came down with a nasty cold in Turkey and decided to scrap my planned train ride north via Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Poland. “Eastern Europe isn't going to change overnight,” I wrote in my diary, thinking I could come back and see those countries in a few years and they'd be exactly the same.

Four months later, the Berlin Wall toppled.

So here's a personal message to the good people of Tokyo: Please don't change. No revolutions or diseased cherry blossom epidemics or Godzilla attacks until after I can come visit, okay? It's going to feel sad, a few hours from now, changing planes quickly in your airport and zipping straight on to Vietnam. But sometimes when we're traveling and we get sick, we have to change our course.

Maybe that's what happened to the guys who were plotting the Date Line.

Kowloon Typhoon

Hong Kong

Vietnam was 95 degrees Fahrenheit and very humid. That was fine with me. I grew up in the swamplands of suburban Washington, DC, where a similar climate prevailed in the summer. But yesterday, I looked forward to getting back to Hong Kong, where temps were a more comfortable 80 degrees.

Nobody warned me about the typhoon.

I first learned of the typhoon in the South China Sea on the flight from Saigon yesterday. The pilot announced we'd be deviating from the usual flight path and flying over the Philippines to reduce our chances of crashing into the sea, or having a monster appear on the wing, which, as you know if you watch “The Twilight Zone,” can happen while flying through storms.

So we flew around the storm and landed in Hong Kong, where people seem to take typhoon warnings quite seriously. “Typhoon Signal Level Three is Hoisted,” say signs around the city. This, local residents are assuring me, is totally normal. Death is not imminent until you reach level eight.

I've tried to learn about Hong Kong's typhoon warning system in the last 24 hours. Since I have arrived here with no rain gear, and there are heavy downpours and gale force winds outside, it's been the best way to amuse myself. It's a mysterious system. According to signs at the airport, where I am now, level one means the storm is out at sea, days away from killing you. Level three, where we have been ever since I landed in Hong Kong yesterday morning, means the weather is really really bad, but you should be glad you are not in America where in similar weather conditions, you would have to endure Quintuple-Mega-Doppler StormTracker Team Coverage from your local television affiliate.

Level eight, everybody tells me, means death really could be imminent. There are also levels nine and ten. Level nine means the monsters have donned parachutes and left the wings. Level ten means they have landed on the Kowloon Peninsula and are beginning to gobble up random residents of Hong Kong, and possibly an innocent tourist or two, in a sweet chili pepper sauce.

The big mystery, however, is that while everybody talks about levels one, three, and eight, I cannot find out anything about levels four through seven. Even the official information posted at the airport ignores these numbers. They are apparently similar to the US Department of Homeland Security's terrorist threat levels lavender through turquoise.

Whoa! This is live reporting, folks, and as I sit here in the Singapore Airlines departure lounge, they have just announced the Hong Kong government has now declared a “rainstorm black warning" due to severe downpours and winds, and we are all supposed to take cover in a safe place.

I'm staying by the bar.

So I am supposed to fly out of here in three hours, but I'm growing skeptical that our flight will leave tonight. I'm hoping it won't. I'm told Seattle is expecting snow all weekend.

Crossing the Line

Over the Pacific Ocean at the International Date Line

[Over the next couple of weeks as I'm traveling, some of these entries may be posted a few days after I write them, depending on when I have Internet access. The time stamps on each post reflect the time I originally wrote the messages, not the time I uploaded them. All times are listed as US Pacific Time. Hong Kong is 15 hours ahead. Vietnam is 16 hours ahead.]

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Don't be fooled by the date at the top of this message. Where I am, it is already April 7.

I have just crossed the International Date Line on this arduous journey. I have been craning my neck, looking out the window, trying to see the dateline, but it's too cloudy.

Wow! I wish I could have 24-hour-long airplane journeys every day! And lucky me! This one will now be more like 27 or 28.

They had a little problem at San Francisco airport. Just as it was time to board, somebody at the airline figured out that the cabin lights and video monitors were not working on our aircraft.

Solution Part One: Make an announcement telling all of us to stand around and wait for ten more minutes, at which time they would have more information.

Solution Part Two: Repeat that announcement every ten minutes for the next three hours.

They did eventually come up with an ingenious solution. My flight – flight 569 to Hong Kong – was scheduled to depart from gate 97. Flight 857 to Beijing was scheduled to depart from gate 95. What they did was move flight 857 to gate 94, and move us to gate 95. Meanwhile, flight 900 to Frankfurt, which I think was originally scheduled to depart from gate 94, would now depart from gate 97. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about.

Yeah, so anyway, here's the thing: For reasons known only to the wizards who make airline rules, all of this required not only gate changes, but also -- according to rumors circulating at gate 95 -- that we swap planes with the Frankfurt flight. The hope was that our original aircraft might be repaired in time for their now-delayed Frankfurt departure.

But apparently, you can't just swap a plane to Hong Kong with a plane to Frankfurt. For reasons of cultural sensitivity, meals on the two flights are different. You can't serve udon noodles on a flight to Germany, or wienerschnitzel en route to Hong Kong, It violates the Geneva Convention. Solution to that conundrum: Delay both flights more, remove the entire galleys of both airplanes and bring them over to the other plane. 

So we waited, and the announcements continued – telling us they would soon be announcing a new departure time, and to please wait in the boarding area for further instructions. Also, to allay confusion, it was announced every three minutes for several hours that if you were originally supposed to board at gate 95 to please move to gate 94, and if you were originally supposed to board at gate 94, please go to gate 97, and if you....

What they did not consider mentioning is that swapping the entire galleys between two airplanes takes a lot of time, and it would have been perfectly safe to leave the gate area for a couple of hours and go sit in a happy place, such as the bar. Instead, they kept us in suspense and made us wait at the gate.

Now, I'm all for cultural sensitivity. Really I am. But at some point, I started wondering, would it kill a few passengers from Hong Kong – passengers who had already been in the US – to eat some non-Asian food on their flight home? I'm guessing most of them would have been happy to if it would have meant avoiding a two-and-a-half hour delay.

The most quizzical part of the ordeal did not come, however, until many hours later. Ninety minutes before landing, we were served dinner. After all that, our culturally-sensitive, Asian-friendly choices were... (drum roll please...) a toasted turkey-and-cheese sandwich... or lasagna.

Adventures in Sleep Deprivation

It's 5:30 a.m. here in Dayton, Ohio -- home of the Wright Brothers, Erma Bombeck, and the Erma Bombech Writers' Workshop, where I've been for the last three days. I arrived Thursday evening, horribly sleep-deprived. I'm departing early this morning, horriblier sleep-depriveder.

It was a good conference this year. The fish hat lady did not attend.

It's inevitable that when you put 300+ people together in a room, all of whom consider themselves humor writers, a few weirdos are going to be in the mix.

The fish hat lady came to the last conference, back in 2006. She wore a hat that made her head look like a giant stuffed fish. At one point, she raised her hand to ask a question of Dave Barry, the keynote speaker. Dave looked at her and asked -- not in a nice way, I don't think -- why she had a fish on her head. She explained to Mr. Barry that we were all at a humor writers' conference -- which was lucky for him, because he would have been ou of place at a urology convention.

Garrison Keilor was the keynote speaker this year. I think he was funny, but having gone approximately 76 hours with no sleep prior to the conference due to a book deadline, I'm not really sure.

Things were lively in the hotel bar last night, which is why I again only slept about three hours. I'm at the airport now. My flight to Chicago boards in 10 minutes. That flight is followed by a flight to San Francisco, which is followed by a flight to Hong Kong, where I am scheduled to arrive in 24 hours and 25 minutes. Somewhere along the way, I might take a nap.

And the Winner is...

Deanna in Los Angeles, California, was the extremely clever first person to guess where I'm going on vacation next month. After six arduous plane rides (actually, only one of them will be arduous), I will touch down in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Why so many plane rides? As I said on Day One of the contest, I'm taking a circuitous route to get there, and it'll be a week before I land at my final destination. The first day's clue was a list of how long each flight would take:

Flight 1 (4 hours): April 2 - Seattle to Chicago
Flight 2 (1 hour): April 2 - Chicago to Dayton, Ohio

Q: But Dave, what kind of idiot flies from Seattle to Vietnam via Ohio?

A: Me. I'll be in Dayton for four days attending the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. Moving right along....

Flight 3 (1 hour): April 6 - Dayton back to Chicago
Flight 4 (4 hours): April 6 - Chicago to San Francisco
Flight 5 (14 hours - eek!): April 6-7 San Francisco to Hong Kong

(Two-day stopover in Hong Kong)

Flight 6 (2.5 hours): April 9 - Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

So the detour via Dayton threw a few people off. My Day Two clue was also a bit of a decoy: "A song about this city made Billboard's Top 40 charts in the 1980s." The song everybody thought of was "One Night in Bangkok," which was recorded several times by different artists. (The 1984 version by Robey peaked at number five on the Billboard dance charts. And here's some totally random trivia for you: The song was actually written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from Abba!)

So what song was I thinking of? "Ho Chi Minh City" hardly rolls off the tongue when you're writing lyrics. But in 1982, the Charlie Daniels Band recorded an ode to Vietnam veterans using the city's former name. "Still in Saigon" hit number 22 on Billboard's pop charts and also ranked on Billboard's country charts. Deanna tells me when she guessed (after Day Three's clue about the country being a former French colony), she was actually thinking of a different song, which I had forgotten about -- "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel, which topped out at 56 on Billboard the same year as the Charlie Daniels tune.

So... congratulations Deanna, and thanks to everybody who entered! Deanna has won a copy of my forthcoming second book, Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip), which will be published this summer. (I am putting the finishing touches on the manuscript this week.)

About my itinerary: I'll be traveling with my girlfriend, Kattina. We're spending two days and nights in Hong Kong before flying on to Vietnam. We plan to spend a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City before heading off to smaller towns in the Mekong Delta. Due to vacation restraints, Kattina flies home after six days in Vietnam. I've got four more days when I don't yet know what I'm doing. Possibilities include more Vietnam, more Hong Kong, Cambodia, and mainland China. I'll be blogging along the way as much as time and technology permit. (Including reports from exotic Dayton, Ohio.) Stay tuned!

How I Write

Still somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

When I blog, I type. Why? Because I can backspace. If I write in ink, all the Whiteout messes up my monitor.

But when I am traveling, I blog on paper. I carry small notebooks with me everywhere. If I’m at a café somewhere, I might write an entire blog entry, verbatim, to be retyped later. If I’m out on the street, about to get mugged, I just scribble brief notes to jog my memory. Then I get mugged.

I recommend this to people in my travel journaling classes: Always carry a small notebook with you when traveling. What I neglect to tell people, however, is to also carry a pen.

Yes, that’s common sense – which is probably why I forgot to do so myself.

So here I am, in hour six of an eight-and-a-half hour United Airlines flight from Chicago to Paris, seized by inspiration, when all of a sudden, panic washes over me. I have no pen. What is a travel writer to do?

I make my way back to the galley. I ask the flight attendant if she has a pen I could borrow. I honestly do mean “borrow.” I have every intention of returning it. I can steal one from my hotel in a few hours.

Noticing me standing there patiently, waiting for her to finish what she’s doing, she looks up with an annoyed expression. “Can I get you something?” she asks.

“Would you happen t have a pen I could borrow?”

“No.”

She answers definitively, mere milliseconds after the question has left my mouth. She does not check the area around her. She does not look in her pocket. No.

NO!

NO! SHE DOES NOT HAVE A FUCKING PEN!!!!!!

“Okay,” I say. “Sorry.”

Yes. I really do say, “Sorry.” Why do I apologize for my question? I have no clue. But I do – as if I have just asked her for a kidney.

“Doesn’t anyone around you have a pen?” she asks.

It’s 11 p.m. Chicago time. It’s 6 a.m. Paris time. The people around me are sleeping fitfully. She wants me to wake them up. It is easier than her spending seven seconds to see if there might be a pen somewhere in the galley.

I sulk my way back up the aisle, back to my seat, and fire up my laptop. The glow of the screen wakes up the guy next to me. Sorry dude. (And, hey, stop reading over my shoulder.)

I tried to use frequent flier miles to upgrade to business class, but business class was full.

I bet if I were in business class, the flight attendants there would have spent seven seconds trying to locate a pen for me.

Worse than Sanjaya

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

You know what annoys me? I mean really annoys me – even more than war, famine, pestilence, and Sanjaya?

What annoys me even more than all of those things is airplane lavatory sinks.

I have written about this before. My dedicated readers are probably yawning, saying, “Stupid reruns!” Sorry. But there are things in the world I just can’t get over no matter how hard I try. And airplane lavatory sinks are one of those things.

Why don’t they drain properly? You have to use the plunger thingy to drain them. Their default is to fill up with water. What’s with that?

The only time I fill my bathroom sink with water at home is to wash some delecate article of clothing. Do airlines think people are going to go into the lavatories to wash out their skimpy underwear? Rinse out their leopard-print thongs and hang them to dry from the overhead bins?

Seriously.

Another thing I hate is the word “lavatory.” Does the fact that it’s on an airplane make it special? Why can’t they just call it a bathroom?

Is that Osama Bin Laden in your boxer shorts, or are you just happy to see me?

After I've been sitting on airplanes for 12 or more hours, my favorite thing to do when I touch down at SeaTac Airport is to go stand in a very long line behind all of the other people from two or three different international flights, all of whom, like me, smell like they have been sitting in airplanes for 12 or more hours.

What usually happens in these very long lines is every child under the age of six who has been strapped into one of these flights simultaneously throws a tantrum of epic proportions, which is what I want to do myself. The only thing that keeps me from doing so is a fear they might not let me in the country.

When I get to the front of the line, a nice man or woman usually asks me a few basic questions. Then they stamp my passport. I collect my bags, assuming they have not been accidentally routed to Ghana. I pass through customs, surrender my bags, which, for security reasons must now be rechecked and sent to a different baggage claim on the other side of the airport, catch the nifty airport train, re-collect my bags, and voila! Just six hours after landing, I can finally go home.

That's how it usually works, but on this particular journey, things didn't go so smoothly.

When I got to the front of the passport line, I got the usual questions as the customs officer scrutinized my declaration form. How long was I gone? (Six weeks.) What kind of business was I on? (I'm a tour guide.) Was I transporting any weapons of mass destruction. (Yes. My socks were overdue for the washing machine.) But this particular man was squinting at me in a way I wasn't accustomed to being squinted at. He seemed suspicious.

Finally, he scribbled a code number on my declaration. "Welcome home, Mr. Fox," he said, waving me to the baggage claim.

I retrieved my bags. Now all I had to do was stand in the customs inspection line, a short line where routinely, they ask you a couple of more questions, then send on your way. On this day, however, that did not happen. I got sent to the special line, the line where they send you if they think you are smuggling heroin, or explosives, or a pineapple.

I waited in this new long line. In Seattle it was 5:45 p.m., but in the time zone in which my brain was operating, it was now the middle of the night. My knees were burning from too many hours in economy class. I just wanted to go to bed.

After 20 more minutes, it was my turn. I've been through customs in lots of countries. I knew the drill. Smile politely, answer their questions, and all will be well, unless, of course, you really are attempting to smuggle a pineapple into the United States.

"What kind of business were you on, Mr. Fox?" the man asked me.

"I'm a tour guide."

"A tour guide?"

"Yes."

"Well then where's your tour group?"

"I left them in Norway several days ago."

"You left them there? You didn't come home with them?"

"Our tours all start and end in Europe," I explained. People are on their own to come home whenever they choose. Most of them survive the journey without me.

Next came more questions about my job. Where did I guide? Who did I guide for? Did I guide all year long?

"Only in the summer," I said in response to the last question.

"Well what do you do the rest of the year then? You can't make a living working three months a year."

"No sir. I have a humble, yet lucrative, side business in the form of a crystal meth lab. It's part of a small but growing franchise."

That's not what I said. What I said was, "I'm a freelance writer and speaker the rest of the year."

"A freelance writer for who?"

"For whom," I wanted to say. But I did not say that because by the very nature of this man's rapid-fire queries, I was beginning to get edgy. Edgy and jetlagged enough that I was blanking on the names of every single publication and business I have ever written for.

"For anyone who wants to pay me," I said.

"It sounds like you travel a lot," the customs officer then said.

"Yes sir."

"Well since you... [dramatic pause] say that you are a tour guide, and you... [second dramatic pause] say that you travel internationally a lot, then I assume you understand the importance of being truthful on your customs declaration."

He was clutching my stamp-filled passport. If there were any question about how much I traveled, all he needed to do was open it.

"Yes," I said. "I understand."

"You do understand that?"

"Yes sir."

"Well with that in mind, is there anything on this form you would like to amend before I inspect your bags?"

"Oh, you mean that carton of Cuban cigars I forgot to write down? And the steaks I bought in the 'Mad Cow Disease Bargain Bin' on my way out of Europe? And the Anthrax? Oh yeah, I forgot to declare the Anthrax! Silly me! May I please borrow your pen for a moment?"

I told him no. I had nothing to amend.

"Well which bag do you think I should inspect?" the officer asked me.

"You can inspect them both if you like," I said, doing all I could to sound cooperative and innocent. I really, really wanted to go home and go to bed.

"Should I inspect this one?" he asked.

"Ummm... sure."

"Is this your checked bag?"

"No. That's my carry on. I checked this other one."

"Oh! Well maybe I should inspect this bag then." He stared deep into my eyes, searching for a glimmer of deception. I had no such glimmer to offer.

"Okay."

So he began. As he rifled through my bag, I overheard a more jovial inspector laughing it up with another traveler. He was telling a story about when he had to question Bill Gates. "I looked at him," the inspector was saying, "and I said to him, 'I'm embarrassed to have to ask you this, Mr. Gates, but I'm required to: Can you tell me what you do for a living?'"

I wanted that inspector. He was having a good laugh with the inspectee. He sounded like the kind of guy I could go have a beer with when this was all over. But I was stuck with this other guy, who was now pawing through my unwashed boxer shorts in search of Osama bin Laden.

"So you say you do a lot of work in Norway?" he asked after a fruitless search.

"Yes."

"You must know Norway pretty well then."

"Yes."

"Then can you tell me where the fjyooeerds are?"

That is the best way I can spell the word that left his mouth. It contained a vowel sound that does not exist in English. Or Norwegian. It was the kind of sound one makes when one is trying to sound like one speaks a foreign language that one does not really speak.

I couldn't take it anymore. My submissive good manners were getting me nowhere. "Do you mean the fjords?" I asked.

"Yes. The fjords."

"There are hundreds and hundreds of them – all over the entire Norwegian coastline. You will also find fjords in New Zealand, Chile, and Antarctica. Is there a particular fjord you were interested in?"

"Oh. So they're kind of everywhere, huh?"

"Yeah. Kind of."

"Well do you know where they do the base jumping from?"

"No I do not!" I wanted to screech. "I don't even know what base jumping is! There! You got me! Send me to Guantanamo if you must, but can we please just get this over with? I really, really, really want to go to bed!"

But I did not screech that. Instead I just told him I wasn't exactly sure what base jumping was.

He explained that it basically was parachuting, only without a plane to jump out of. He had heard it was popular in Norway. "Me and my buddies want to go there next year and check it out."

"My buddies and I," I thought.

"So where would be a good place in Norway to go base jumping?" he asked.

I didn't know. I didn't care. "Probably on the west coast," I said.

"The west coast, huh?"

"Yeah. Western Norway has the best fjyooeerds."

"Cool."

Cool. We were pals now. He set me free.

I went home. I fell asleep. I unpacked my bags when I awoke early the next morning.

I never did find Osama bin Laden hiding in my dirty laundry, but just to be safe, I washed everything in hot water, with extra detergent.