Risk Tolerance.

I’ve been walking to work this past week, leaving the marble floored comfort of the Palace for the dust and dirt of downtown Cairo. It takes about 40 minutes, door to door, more or less, with a comparative minimum of life threatening street crossings.

I’m so crisp as I pull shut my hotel room door. Creased trousers. Freshly laundered, starched and pressed shirt. Perhaps a tie and jacket. Quite a change from the end of the trek, when I’m dusty, tired and in a full body sweat. Fortunately, the office tea boy has learned to bring me a cold half liter of water as soon as I get in, so the recovery isn’t so long.

Today, the walk was markedly cooler, but through an incredible haze of humidity and smog, reducing visibility to under a kilometer. The lungs felt the sharp and heavy air almost as soon as I left the building, as there are three flights of stairs just after the first busy street crossing to get me up to the elevated approach section of the bridge over the Nile. There’s not too much traffic on the intersecting ramp, so my second street crossing is almost non-harrowing.

I usually stop briefly mid-span to look up the Nile watch the boats and reflect. Yesterday, I watched an egret for a time, floating his way to the Sea atop a jumble of reeds and trash.

On the right bank, there’s another three flights of steps, past competing shoe shiners, then under the bridge and to the north, between the river and the river road, stepping down and under another ramp to keep the river immediately on my left. The underside of Cairo bridges smells exactly like the underside of most urban bridges – a pungent, piquant mixture of filth and urine.

I like the walk next to the river for a number of reasons starting with my love of moving water. Then there’s the fishermen, some with poles, some with barbs on their hooks, trying to catch something fishlike (and likely inedible) from the ancient Nile. Sadly, the sidewalk becomes blocked after a while by a large sheet steel fence taking up all of the space between top of bank and back of curb so I get a choice – walk out in the street into opposing traffic for the last half kilometer or cross the road.

So far, I’ve always chosen the latter and have (so far) lived to tell the tale (enshallah).

Crossing the street in Cairo is probably the most dangerous thing you can do and this particular road, the Corniche El Nil, while not the busiest in town, is still pretty dang busy at 0830. First, it’s a high curb, so you need to step off, as opposed to walk off of it. Next, there could be three lanes of traffic you need to cross, or is it four? With no pavement marking or lane discipline, the offending vehicles are in a constant state of weave, so it’s hard to judge where they might be at any time. Worst is that there are no pavement signals upstream that would work to force gaps in the traffic. The result is a mass of continual traffic morphing heavy to really heavy to somewhat less heavy but always heavy with very few instances where a gap extends across the entire roadway and for a sufficient time that would allow an unimpeded pedestrian crossing.

Ever play Frogger?

Ever play with real cars?

It’s kind of like that, but you only get one life. What works to my advantage is local law/custom, which has the driver of a car that kills a pedestrian pay the bereaved the princely sum of about $1,200. Since most Egyptians don’t have $1,200, they try not to kill pedestrians (too much). Still, there are 80 million Egyptians, and it seems that most of them survive walking.

This is little comfort. But a minute’s wait, a small gap, and some internal time/distance calculations, and I make it to the median, where the same considerations play out, then I’m on the other side. So, with three crossings under my belt, I’m starting to think I might get to the office.

But first, there are a couple of busy side streets to traverse, and the blocks in between. The in between blocks, by the way, rarely have sidewalks. Sure, they used to have sidewalks, but you can’t see them today because that is where all of the cars park (backed onto the sidewalk with their noses taking up half a lane), forcing pedestrians out into the remaining portion of the street, this time with traffic approaching from the rear. There’s a few more pedestrians on this side of the street, though, so the odds of me, specifically, getting nailed are reduced. Plus, there’s a lot of bus traffic, so when they stop to take on or disgorge passengers, traffic is diverted away from the roadside to pass them.

Half a block to go, and I pass by one of these poorly parked cars, making eye contact with the driver who’s standing in the crease of the open door. As I pass by the hood, I catch him in the periphery, slipping into the driver’s seat, then feel the advancing bumper skim by my right leg and my right hand brush across the accelerating hood.

Well, it was a glancing blow. No harm done this time. Read More......

Taxi!

We took a hotel taxi to the office one morning. We had a day off from the Army, and wanted to see the local digs. Hotel taxi was fine, essentially a scheduled fare from Mirage City to downtown. Once we got close, I could direct the cabbie as to where to stop. Fun traffic as always. Twenty Pound tip. Straight to the door.

Heading back, we were, by necessity, going to take a local taxi. These are called Black and Whites because, regardless of brand or marquee, they’re black and white. As my Arabic is somewhat limited to “yes”, “no”, and “god willing”, we instructed the office boy to hail us a cab, ensure that he knew our destination, and negotiate a fare (“fixed fee”, in consultantese).

So we head to the street in front of the building and Ahmed hails a cab. Cab #1 knows nothing of our destination, or something (I don’t speak the language), and he’s rejected for Cab #2. Cab #2 knows where the Hotel is, but won’t budge on the price, so he is rejected for Cab #3.

[Briefly aside, as Ahmed starts to work on Cab #3, Cab #2 honks loud and long to try to lure him back for another round of negotiations. Unsuccessfully.]

Cab #3, from ten feet away and entirely in a language punctuated by sounds I’ve never learned to make, *appears* to understand the question, appears to recognize the solution, and appears to agree upon the fee. Great! We’ll need all of the next hour to make it back for our next meeting with the client.

The instructions we’re simple enough, and included plenty of hand gestures. So much that I think I figured out the route. Head along the Nile to the u-turn past the blue Eiffel Bridge. Turn around and head south along the right bank to the Ring Road. Get on the Ring Road towards Heliopolis. Turn right into the hotel when the consultant tells you to turn right into the hotel. Simple. Maybe.

First off, I put Zachariah in the front seat. Zach's young and so new to this sort of adventure that he sits up straight enough to brush his head on the liner of the cab and scans the surrounds continuously. This makes me feel like a big shot with security. As well, I’m not so obligated to engage the driver but, when I do, it’s from a position of command. So I’m a doofus. Whatever.

Cab #3 heads off, and makes the u-turn in spectacular fashion, but I start to sense, after a couple of kilometers, that the cabbie is getting uncomfortable with his knowledge of the route. I'm also starting to sense that the cabbie has never traveled beyond the three or four square miles around his birthplace. Soon, I’m also starting to sense that this taxi is incapable of traveling at highway speeds safely. For one, it’s of Pharaohic design. There’s a peculiar smell to the thing. There’s a fur on the dashboard, it well could be goat. There are no working seat belts – or gauges - and, with increasing speed, the rattle in the floor turns to a full chassis shimmy.

He misses the sign to the ring road. I saw it. I think I saw the ramp, too. But he realizes too late, that the monster road we just went under was where he needed to be so he turns down a side road and stops at the first taxi he sees.

Then the Arabic starts and there’s a mess of gestures and the driver appears to gather more information and we’re off and, eventually, we find the Ring Road in the right direction. Hey hey.

Then the real adventure starts, because the full chassis shimmy turns into a gut rattling shake at highway speeds and then I know, with out any doubt, that this cab is not safe at any speed. Onward, then! Gods willing, we’ll live through this day!

A few more kilometers, and the cab begins to slow, and we approach a lone Egyptian standing by the side of the highway in the shade of a nearby billboard. "La, la, la!", I blurt, not needing another passenger, but he stops anyway to ask directions it seems. The Arabic and gesturing begins, and the driver shakes the piece of paper he had received from Ahmed at the stranger. The name of our hotel is written on it, and the stranger has no clue as to where the hotel might be.

Off we clatter, the driver becoming more animated, obviously convinced that we were now halfway down the road to Suez. He tries to pull off of the next exit, but I convince him to continue forward. I have less luck at the next exit, and he pulls off to find the nearest taxi to ask directions. He can’t find one, so we head off down a not quite parallel side street looking for someone who may know something about this god forsaken western hotel that’s obviously past Suez now and likely halfway across the Sinai Peninsula.

There’s a gas station attendant. He doesn’t know. The dude getting gas. He doesn’t know. The security guard at the materials factory. He doesn’t know.

Finally, a taximan, except he doesn’t know.

I know, but the driver not listening to me. Zack knows. I’m sure Zack knows, but Zack’s never been overseas before. He never been in a totally ratty cab before. He’s never been in a situation where all of the players didn’t speak English before. To me, this is another adventure. To Zach, I’m not so sure.

Then we approach four dudes drinking tea in the shade in some apartment development five kilometers off of the highway. They send us back the way we came and towards the Ring Road. I hear them say “Mobil”, so I’m looking for a Mobil station, which I see, but the taximan doesn’t want to believe me when I tell him to take the Ring Road away from the City. He’s pretty sure that the hotel he’s never been to is back on the road we just came from. So I let loose with the grunts and gestures and get him going in the right direction.

And the rest of the way back to the hotel was a struggle between our taximan and Zach, who has now decided that he will point the cab in the correct direction by force of will alone, plus some very powerful gestures.

At one point, we were immediately behind an overloaded gravel truck, which hits a bump and looses a volley of rocks, which impact the tattered old cab, and crack the windshield from top to bottom.

Finally, the hotel, and I double the fare, just because, hoping that he can find his way back to old Cairo. Read More......

Ali Baba

Sort of pissed, I suppose. I was being shuttled around various parts and quarters of Cairo by our local guy, hitting a couple of errand spots on the way to my new swank hotel. We returned from a stop at the office, down into the bowels of the secure and covered parking, when I noticed that a couple of flaps on my luggage were open, exposing the empty space beneath.

Ali Baba had struck, moving through the shadows, thwarting the best Hyundai locksets. My iPod is gone now, and a very nice set of ear buds, and my phone, and my toilet kit, and whatever else I can’t remember.

I for the iPod and earbuds, I hope he likes heavy metal, as there was nothing twangy and oudy on the thing. The Phone? It won’t even work in this hemisphere, so good luck with that. Also, best of luck with my toiletries, moron. The razor was dull and the toothpaste was almost gone and the hotel will bring me new stuff upon request.

And the expensive laptop computer and accessories, fully loaded with an easy $10k in software? Idjit didn’t touch it.

So,… what have we learned? Some Egyptians are criminals. Some Egyptians are stupid asses. Some Egyptians are not devout, regardless of their religious tendencies.

What haven’t I learned, but will fairly soon? That I’ll just figure a way to expense the loss. That the flight back will be longer without musical entertainment. That this loss is just the excuse I need to score a Company Global Phone.

That weeds grow and flowers fall, despite our desire to the contrary. Read More......

Beef

Any hotel I stay at anywhere should be somehow obligated to place their best English speakers behind the bar.

As is typical, I'm less than a week into this particular adventure and I'm about ready for some company that is *not* the client or my traveling companions. Sure, they're all fine and all, but (by the gods) all we have is work.

For me, I like a little banter unencumbered.

Sadly and for now, it's simply, "Ahmed, more nuts!" Read More......

Kaboom

So, our first day of meetings with the Egyptian Army go well enough. Snowed or no, the Brigadier seems to like what we're doing for them thus far. Anyway, it's hot, 35 C if it's a degree, it's late in the afternoon, and I'm a little dehydrated when we get back to the hotel. My bag goes on the belt and I walk through the detector, which commences to beep in that annoying way of its. My expression must have been a clue to the attendants that I did not want to be bothered by the process so they asked,

"No bomb?", clearly expressing both b's.

"No bomb," I replied, concentrating on the b's.

"Thank you, sir. Have a good afternoon." Read More......

Fair Warning

There's some travelogues in the can. These should probably be out on the WonderWeb. They might appear here later (or sooner), but the dates won't be current (or maybe not), so to the casual reader it may (or may not) seem that I'm moving through time and space at a pace that would generate hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles.

This is not the case. It's only thousands of frequent flyer miles.

Shit, I am lagged this morning. Read More......

Cairo

Came back to Cairo.

Rather *sent* back to Cairo. Hell, it's not so bad. There's plenty of worse places nearby.

And the hotel's big swank. Nice Lebanese place in the basement next to the hundred dollar steak joint. Tasty messah. Tasty steak. Costs more than an Egyptian makes in a month. Costs about what the client will pay without thinking about it.

Lucky you. Read More......