In which The Author, armed with one carry-on laden with books and another bursting with Adult Diapers, and having out-maneuvered the Transportation Security Administration by checking all Toothpaste And Other Highly-Explosive Liquids/Pastes with Ken’s baggage, and having patted Himself on the back for being such a Smooth Operator, finds out What It’s Like to travel from Redmond to Portland to Chicago to Sao Paulo to Brasilia to Cuiaba with one (1) eighty-year-old.

I am now a wheelchair expert. The last 27 hours have methodically trained me to be able to calculate the width of a wheelchair seat to within millimeters, all from a worthy distance of 25 feet. The point of this exercise, obviously, is to determine whether or not said chair is spacious/gracious enough to accommodate the derriere of my ward. I made Redmond get us a golf cart. Portland was acceptable, but Chicago was absolutely not. I took one long, critical look at the diminutive assemblage of wheels and plastic that was produced to transport us all the way across O’Hare International Airport and couldn’t help but wonder if it was the sick lovechild of some long-ago affair that a skateboard had with a shopping cart. I cleared my throat, looked Chanelqua (our porter) in the eye, and confessed that I had been hitherto unaware of the existence of “wheelchairs” that actually fit down the aisles of a Boeing 737. Were they, I queried, designed to transport passengers piece-by-piece? They brought us a new chair.

Notwithstanding the hassle of overseeing wheelchair auditions at every single airport, there is at least one fantastic advantage to traveling with someone who requires wheeled transport. Our flight from Chicago to Sao Paulo was completely full, yet Ken and I magically cleared customs in about four minutes.

And I’ve invented a new language. I’m going to call it Portspanglish©. As the name suggests, my new dialect incorporates elements of Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Central to the efficacy of this idiom, however, is a fourth dimension: that of highly-animated gesticulation. (I left it out of the name because “Gesticuspanglishuese” sounds a bit like an infection that sailors might get after months at sea without a fresh change of underwear.) In all fairness, Portuguese is a mesmerizingly beautiful language, particularly when the speaker is one of GOL Airlines’ flight attendants.

Anyway. We got picked up at the Cuiaba airport by Ken’s brother David and off! we sped to David’s house where a dinner of chicken pie, rice, beans, fresh bananas, and authentic Brazilian coffee awaited us. And now, time for installment one of our show, “Life Lessons with Jack!”

• Jack’s rules to live by, #759: Never, ever give Brazilian coffee to an 80-year-old who has just been on 27 consecutive hours of flights. Just don’t.

And now back to our regular programming. Actually, that pretty much concludes the show for today. Stay tuned for more fun stuff, and click HERE to see a little video from today.

In which The Author, being beset by a Mighty Urge to travel the planet, and ever eager to do so on Someone Else’s Dollar, agrees to accompany An Octogenarian to Brazil and Bolivia.

Just to bring any of you who aren’t paying attention up to speed, I agreed to accompany an elderly man named Ken down to various and sundry exotic, tropical, and subsequently mosquito-infested locations in South America.

For three weeks.

Now that you’re up to speed…

I’ve traveled to quite a few places on this little green and blue speck we call Earth, and in my opinion, there are few areas that rival southeastern Oregon.

The crystal clear blue skies over the barren Alvord Desert make the distant horizon seem almost within arm’s reach; the inky night sky, pierced by the brightest stars you’ll ever see, is one of the darkest in the country, affording extravagant, exceptional stargazing; three miles away, the bright white flash of a nervous antelope’s tail strobes like a lighthouse, warning his brothers and sisters of danger.

And what might that danger be? These days, he’s most likely afraid of you and me, but he still has to keep a wary eye out for coyotes and mountain lions, just like he’s been doing for thousands of years.

And what about those strange paintings on the rocks around Petroglyph Lake? Those were left there by the Paiute people, who have also been here for thousands of years.

And what of that column of steam coming out of the ground? That would be the perennial hot waters of one of dozens of hot springs that dot the landscape with boiling pools of sulfuric water, spewing water vapor into the dry desert air. Just like they’ve done for thousands of years.

And it’s all in my backyard.

June 5-8 of this year, I’ll be sharing that backyard with ten people, all accommodations, food and transportation included.
If you’d like to be one of them, click here or give me a call at 800.962.2862.