We needed to leave for the airport in an hour, and it seemed we were ready to go. I warily sat down, turned on the television and feigned relaxation from the trip we’d been planning for six months.

The phone rang. My mom.

“We have a major problem. A major problem.”

“What?”

“They won’t let Dad on the plane.”

My father’s passport would expire in two months; Iceland requires visitors to have at least three month of padding on their passports. Mom said they’d called the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik to confirm this, and they’d answered, no, he may not come into the country on a passport that expires in two months.

“What do I do? I can’t just leave him here. That would be horrible.”

Yes, that would be horrible. Jeremy and I leaped into action. He got online and called the regional passport office in Chicago (my folks are in St. Louis) and sat on hold repeatedly. I talked to my mom and tried to figure out what to do. Could he run up to Chicago to renew his passport? Could he catch a flight tomorrow? I called our travel agent. I called Mom back. I paced uselessly and exhaled audibly.

Suddenly, it was time for us to leave for the Denver airport (“Are we still even going?”). On the way there, Mom called.

“I left him. We had to, or we would miss our flight. It was awful.”

I pictured my mom and my little brothers heading away from the ticketing desks, waving goodbye to my father, who stood there with his luggage, maybe fishing for the car keys in his pockets. We’d have 10 days on a fabulous trip to Iceland — already paid for — and he’d have 10 days alone in their suburban St. Louis home.

I hung up and turned to Jeremy. “This sucks.”

Dad was going to try to figure out his passport problem and catch a flight in the next day or two. We were staying in Reykjavik for three nights, so if he could get there soon, he’d only miss a little bit of the trip. After that, though, we’d rented a car to drive ourselves south along the coast, and it would be much tougher (and more expensive) for him to catch up with us.

Jeremy and I boarded a flight to Minneapolis, where we would meet up with my mom and brothers for the flight to Reykjavik. We had high winds on the Front Range that day, but somehow our plane didn’t drop out of the sky during the take off into 50 mile-per-hour winds — it just felt like it would. By the time we dragged ourselves into the international terminal at Minneapolis, which, by the way, there are absolutely no signs for in the main terminal, I was crabby and morose.

“Ah, the infamous Fields family is here. I’ve heard a lot about you,” said a chipper blonde woman behind the IcelandAir counter.

“I don’t know how your mom is holding it together,” said another woman, who was checking us in. “I’d be sobbing.”

Apparently our travel woes had preceded us.

“Yeah,” I said, “She’s pretty amazing.” Then I said something off-handed about hoping my dad could make it in the next day or two.

“Oh, don’t worry,” chipper blonde said, “We’ve got him on my flight tomorrow.”

What? My Charlie Brown rain cloud lifted instantly. Chipper blonde had made a few phone calls and somehow eliminated my father’s passport problems.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s magic,” she said, throwing her hands into the air mysteriously.

Boarding passes in hand, we breezed through security to embrace my two brothers and my mother, who looked like she badly needed a stiff drink. I was in better spirits, but she still wasn’t convinced that Dad would get through two sets of ticketing agents — not to mention passport control in Reykjavik — free and clear.

We flew out of Minneapolis at 7:30 p.m. and landed in Reykjavik at 7 a.m. It was gray and misty, just like I expected it to be, and as we rode on the shuttle from the airport to our downtown hotel, we saw a black volcanic landscape everywhere our tired eyes rested. It was amazing, but I was too tired to feel elated. After breakfast and a short nap at Hotel Fron, we ventured out for coffee and a walk around the city center.

My brothers, ages 11 and 13, had never ventured outside of the U.S. So a stop in a foreign grocery store just down from the hotel was a trip for them. They searched for cookies they thought they’d like and Dr. Pepper. (Mom tried to order one of them a root beer one night at dinner, which is a drink they just don’t seem to have in Iceland, so this was quite confusing to our server. She did succeed in ordering Shirley Temples for the boys, minus the cherry, with minimal instruction.) Jon sought out potato chips that resembled those at home. Mom sought toothpaste; Dad had hers. Matt sought any form of sugar that looked edible to his picky sensibilities.

That night we ate pasta and pizza at Little Italy, which was close to the hotel, and got a taste of Icelandic dinner prices. This was a fairly causal restaurant, but prices were around $30 to $40 each. We went to bed exhausted, full of expensive Icelandic Italian food, and wondering whether Dad would arrive in the morning. Little did we know, but Dad was having a nice meal of his own.

The unidentified man with drug-resistant tuberculosis arrived in Denver this morning, and more details have come out about the information he had before leaving for his European wedding and honeymoon.

When this story broke, all we knew was that some dude with a highly contagious disease had been through several countries on several airplanes, and my first reaction was:

“What an A-hole.”

But now he says doctors suggested to him, don’t travel. He says he had (and still has) no symptoms and the doctors hadn’t confirmed what was wrong with him when he left for his wedding.

At the end of Joe Versus the Volcano, Meg Ryan’s character demands to know why Joe (Tom Hanks) didn’t seek a second opinion for such a dubious diagnosis as a brain cloud.

If you’d planned a wedding and honeymoon in Europe and some doctor told you that you could have this bizarre form of tuberculosis, but you felt fine and had no symptoms, what would you do?

Or, WWQLD?

Tomorrow, the CDC will probably come out with a statement that they expressly told TB man not to travel, throw in a few other contradictory statements, and the journalists will all have to scramble with this new information and deal with it. But in the meantime, I think Queen Latifah would go on her honeymoon, and everyone knows she is not an A-hole.

The scars of my last cycling adventure are starting to fade, so I’m thinking of venturing out again today — but I still fear the mark of the moron.

I rode to Jamestown on Friday. It’s a popular ride in Boulder County, and even on a weekday dozens of cyclists hammer up the canyon and fly back down. Pre-graduate school (pre-fat), I used to ride up from our home in Gunbarrel once a week. Post-graduate school, well… I haven’t been up to Jamestown in a while.

Friday was a gorgeous Colorado day, warm and sunny, not too much wind. I was inspired. I was ecstatic. Sure, I’m out of shape, I thought, but the best way to get faster on a bike is to ride. So I slathered my face in sunscreen (had an unfortunate incident recently involving a sunny day, a snowfield and sunburned nostrils), filled some water bottles and set out for Jamestown on my sleek carbon steed.

It was one of those rides where it’s so gorgeous out there that you can’t wipe the dumb, giddy grin off your face. But it was also a ride where the insects are out, and they’re quite alive and smacking your bare arms and face and helmet, so do yourself a favor and grin with your mouth closed if you go out on one of these rides, okay?

When I arrived at Jamestown (after being passed on the way up by a very old dude wearing a very old Italian cycling team’s jersey and cap, no helmet, no panting) I crashed in a lawn chair, took my shoes off and sucked down water like a fish. Another cyclist came over to chat while others headed back down the hill or kept heading up. A woman who’d just finished her first year of law school at CU rolled up, and she was more ecstatic to be out riding than me. We talked a while, too, and eventually I decided it was time to coast down the hill and find my way home.

The last few miles home were rough, but I told myself it was worth it to suffer a bit. Cycling has always been about alternating suffering and joy for me. For the pros, I’m sure the extremes of emotion are far worse; then again, they’re mentally and physically so much tougher. So little old me, out of shape, exhausted on my afternoon ride — please. I need it, and besides, I’ll be eating cookies at home in 10 minutes, I told myself.

And I was. God it feels good to lay on the floor after a good ride! I ate, I sat, I ate, I sat. Eventually I got in the shower.

Oh no.

Cyclists typically look ridiculous naked. They have hard tan lines on their thighs and shoulders and ankles. My olive-skinned husband gets so dark he keeps his year round. I don’t. I’m fair. I burn.

I was burned.

My deltoids were throbbing orbs of red. On my wrists were little pink glove lines. My legs rarely burn, but a hot red stripe crossed my quads. My face, carefully sun-screened, flushed with anger. This was the mark of the moron — a nasty sunburn on a dumb girl who knows better. I could forgive myself for the legs, because this was an oddity. But my magenta shoulders staring back at me in the mirror? Never.

So aside from a class we took with the Colorado Mountain Club up on St. Mary’s Glacier (nowadays more of a snowfield) the next day, I’ve been cowering indoors ever since, hiding the mark of the moron.

But what a lovely ride. I’d do it all over again — just with more sunscreen. Maybe tomorrow.

I met the mala lady today.

I met the mala lady because after taking apart my mala (prayer beads) and re-stringing the beads — like many stories I’ve written — I couldn’t finish it off nicely. The frayed ends of the string stared at me. As a former rock climber, I am well versed in tying knots, so this was especially vexing. As a writer who has trouble with endings, this was fitting and expected.

So I dug out a page I’d saved from the Shambhala Center’s newsletter back in the fall, when I was a religion reporting intern for the Daily Camera. It had an ad that read:

ANTJE’S MALA STRINGING with great tassels/JEWELRY REPAIR and custom-made malas/jewelry. One-day mala stringing, so you don’t have to miss your practice.

Although I didn’t have a mala problem months ago when I decided to save this, I couldn’t help being curious about what my mala would look like strung by a pro with a “great tassel.” I’ve always had a frankenmala, cobbled together by yours truly with a little help from my friends. I got caught in the rain with it once and the string shrunk, sucking the beads too close together. I used to be kind of proud of it, but last night I thought I could improve its homemade, crafty feel. Well, good thing I saved that ad, because I just couldn’t knot it up without having it look like I’d hog-tied my prayer beads.

If there’s ever been a lesson on not being attached to appearances, this is a good one. What does it matter what a mala looks like? To some extent, it should be treated as an object of reverence. But a mantra’s potency doesn’t depend on whether a practitioner’s mala is made of amethyst or sandalwood or plastic, and I doubt a sturdy, if ugly, knot will undo the good intention of my mantras.

Even so, I didn’t want to be that girl with the hog-tied mala the next time I go to a retreat (I’m a slow learner), so I called the mala lady, Antje. I could drop it off at the store she works at, she said, but it would really be better to bring it to her house so we could meet. That way she could get a better feel for what I needed, what would suit me.

“I’m a visual person,” she said with an unidentifiable accent, “and this is important, these are your prayer beads.”

Just after noon, I dropped by her home in North Boulder, which had a realtor’s “For Sale” sign in the yard. Now, my house was a total disaster when we moved. If you’re moving, you just can’t help it. But when I walked into the mala lady’s house, I was still overcome with the feeling that I was back in St. Louis’ South City in my great-grandmothers tiny bungalow stuffed with everything she’d ever owned since the Great Depression. The mala lady gave my great-grandmother a run for her money.

Among all the stuff (oh, the stuff!) was what appeared to be the mala lady’s work area. She moved quickly, whipping out thread for my custom tassel (“Blue? Do you want navy, or a more royal blue? Or more purple? Because the navy will give it more of a gray feeling.”, counter beads and string (“Would you rather have fishing line?”).

I cleared a place to sit as she fired off questions. If I didn’t answer fast enough, she moved on to the next one.

“How much space between your beads? Half a bead?” she asked.

“I don’t know, uh, not too much space, I don’t want them loose. What do you think?”

“Here, this one is no good for a counter bead, it is too close to the size of your other beads, I think we need smaller…which string do you want?”

“Umm…”

“These beads look like horn or bone or something.”

“Actually, they’re made of yak horn.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not traditional, but that’s okay. How close together do you want your beads? Half a bead apart?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I have no idea.

“Do you want a new guru bead? Because this one, it looks like what you’d find in the seat of your car.”

“Yes, I want a new one.” Finally, I had a definitive answer for something. She dug around in the multitude of plastic trays for a guru bead, which is the big bead at the start and end of the mala. A traditional Buddhist mala has 108 beads, plus one guru bead, and apparently is not made of yak horn. I chose two counter beads and an angular guru bead — $3 extra to drill into it — made of lapis lazuli (traditional?) and several hues for my custom tassel, which will hang from the guru bead.

I know I could have ordered something online, but that’s not the same as meeting the mala lady and getting a custom “great tassel.” I can’t wait.

“Okay, when do you need it? Thursday night okay?” she asked when we were done. Once again, I’m going to leave you with a lousy ending — at least until Thursday night.

UPDATE:

The mala is lovely, and the tassel really is great. The mala lady found two wooden beads on my mala that didn’t belong, so she removed them, substituting with the counters, but forgot to bring them with the mala when I came to her store to pick it up. (She is moving soon, and she was out and about on moving errands, so I picked it up late in the day from the store she where she works rather than her house.) I told her not to worry about the two extra beads, but she was kind enough to call me the next day and double check when she found them at home. The mala lady gets two thumbs up, five stars, six Buddhas (my own new rating system), etc.

Just when I think I’m a huge waster of time, I see stories stuck in the 24-hour news cycle like:

• Rosie v. Donald (both “disgusting losers?” You decide.)
• The D.C. Madame (not exactly a licensed massage therapy service)
• Richard Gere (kissing Bollywood stars)
• Paris Hilton (going to jail, but probably upgrading to a Hilton-esque rich-kid prison)

And the list goes on and on. I guess I’m not the only one wasting time. Maybe I should have gone into broadcast journalism…

Anyway, this is why the famed Dr. Ajari (I’m doing research for a book on him) used to yell at his students to go pound sand into a rat hole if they were irritating him. Apparently during the Black Plague, folks actually pounded sand into rat holes to keep them in there. (Better than bathing? You decide.) So if a student was driving him mad, this was his way of telling them to go do something useful with themselves and leave him alone.

Maybe tomorrow morning, instead of watching the Today Show, I’ll go pound sand into a rat hole.

This bumper sticker, often spotted on the backs of Subarus in Boulder, is desperately needed by my dear friend Lib in Milwaukee. She’s reached a level of frustration with the city’s parking situation (and meter maids) that rivals my frustration with the Today Show.

Perhaps she just needs to start a venting blog. Coincidentally, www.milwaukeeparkingsucks.com is available.

H.H. the Dalai Lama was in Wisconsin this week, so we wondered what His Holiness would say about her parking frustration. In other words, WWDLD? Some of you might remember my What Would Queen Latifah Do? posting. This is a different take, but really, I suspect in most situations you’d get the same answer. For example, what would Queen Latifah do if her homeland was invaded (she is a queen, so this is a valid example)? You know she’d escape, continue her government elsewhere and fight for her people diplomatically on the international stage, or at least in those Cover Girl commercials.

See? Same answer.

But in light of H.H.’s recent trip to Wisconsin (who knows when QL was there last?) we’ll stick with the question:

What would the Dalai Lama do if he couldn’t ever find parking, had to pay through the nose for parking everywhere he went, got parking tickets on technicalities and didn’t want to take the bus home from his job that kept him in the newsroom until two or three in the morning, especially because he is single and living alone in the city?

Okay, so that last part is a little weird, but it applies to Lib, who is also, I might add, surely gorgeous even after a long, late-night shift at the paper. She probably doesn’t even have circles under her eyes at 3 a.m. I mean, if I saw her on my bus at 3 a.m., I would start stalking her, and I don’t even go for tall people. Or women.

Moving on, I have a feeling the Dalai Lama would just abandon his car entirely. Who needs it? It’s causing stress to the driver and the environment, he would say. It would be healthier to walk or cycle. It would cost less, in gas and ticket fees and meters. Yet we cannot seem to get rid of our cars, he would say. We are attached to the individual freedom they offer us. But are we free if we’re cursing meter maids and crowded streets as we circle the block looking for a place to park?

No.

(As an aside, if we were to ask WWPD?, well, the Pope cannot abandon his car, because what would he do with the Popemobile? It’s not like anyone else can ride around in something formerly known as the Popemobile. I suppose the Vatican could auction it off for charity.)

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I think the Dalai Lama would do. WWJFD? First, cry over my parking tickets. Next, fume. Third, dust off my bike. Fourth, drive anyway, because I was running late and didn’t have time to ride, but I had to park so far away because there were no spots that I was even later and might as well have ridden my bike. Fifth, fume more, chastise myself for being a lousy environmentalist, then be good and ride my bike for at least a week before resorting to my car again, which, now that it’s summer and gas prices are up, costs me a bazillion dollars to fill up with gas. Then fume again.

And that, friends, is one of many American middle-class versions of the First Noble Truth — all life is suffering.

Now, what would Lib do? Hopefully she’ll answer here and let us know. No pressure with the Dalai Lama comparison, Lib. I mean, we can’t all win peace prizes and have compassion for people who drove us out of our homelands and killed and tortured our countrymen and whatnot. Well, we could, but it sure isn’t easy for us non-lamas. Some of us deserve a peace prize simply for not saying something nasty to the next meter maid we see.

http://www.dalailama.com/