Fulla, the Muslim Barbie.

After spending five anxious days in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, hanging out in a Bedouin tent with an international fugitive who’s wanted as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”—a character who figured prominently in a story I was reporting about a Muslim charity in southern Oregon with purported links to al Qaeda—I was relieved to finally be en route to Portland, albeit standing at the tail end of a line that was advancing glacially toward a distant security checkpoint at Frankfurt Main Airport.

As the final boarding call for my connecting flight home echoed through the cavernous hall, I thrust the shopping bag that I’d been lugging onto the conveyor, and waited anxiously at the end of the X-ray machine for my bag, growing increasingly agitated the longer it failed to appear. The scanner technician motioned for his superior, and then a security guard, toting my bag, asked me to follow him into another room, where he asked me to empty the contents of the bag onto a table. First I pulled out a silk black abaya and boshiya (traditional Saudi dress and veil) for my six-year-old daughter, then a white thobe and red checkered ghutra (robe and headdress) for my eight-year-old son.

No problem there. Then I remembered the toys.

On the way to King Khalid International Airport, my Saudi host made a detour at a toy store, and had picked out two dolls for my kids that he insisted were all the rage in Riyadh. So out came “Fulla,” the Saudi version of Barbie, robed and veiled in black, accessorized with a prayer rug. The guard pressed the button on Fulla’s back and looked at me quizzically when the doll called out to Allah, praying in Arabic. He stiffened when I presented him with a Saudi G.I. Joe, a bearded, chamo-clad airborne ranger toting an automatic rifle, bandolier, grenades and dagger. “Fur die kinder!” I said lamely, as the guard, registering his disapproval, swabbed the toys and ran the sample through a mobile mass spectrometer.

For a few tense seconds that ticked like minutes, I wondered if I’d been set up by my host. Then the explosives detector spat out its reading: Negative. And I was on my way. My daughter has never played with Fulla, whose muffled prayers sometimes sound when she’s jostled in her resting place at the bottom of the toybox. But that plastic Saudi warrior stands at attention on a prominent shelf in my son’s room. A gift that traveled all the way from Arabia.

He calls it his “Jihad Joe.” —Ted Katauskas is a former magazine writer currently based in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Here’s a yarn from the writer Bill Gifford: Eight friends went hot-air ballooning in the Poconos on a perfect spring day. What could possibly go wrong?

      I’ve done plenty of stupid stuff that could have killed me, everything from backcountry skiing after a snowstorm without avalanche gear (or knowledge), to riding a moped on the island of Mykonos after consuming some sort of blue drink, without lights and late at night. Bad ideas, all. But the worst it ever got, the closest I’ve ever come to starring in one of those two-inch stories buried in the back of the New York Times, happened in the Poconos. In the basket of a hot air balloon.

If you’ve ever been ballooning, then you know that there’s basically nothing less extreme—and nothing more peaceful. You ascend silently, borne up by the power of warmed gases, and then you drift along with the wind, in perfect relative stillness, high above the world and its busy little tangle of people and problems. Cars slow to watch, the people inside pointing and going, “Look! A hot-air balloon!” Many people seem to get engaged on balloon rides; perhaps you did, too. This is the story of a balloon ride gone wrong. (more…)

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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it seemed like a good idea at the time

THE ACCIDENTAL EXTREMIST and LOADS OF PROSE LLC PRESENT: 

THE DIRTY LAUNDRY SERIES 
Volume 18: True Dirt from Far and Wide 

We’re joining forces! On Thursday night, May 21, please join us in New York’s East Village as we officially launch the H.M.S. Accidental Extremist into the stormy seas of new media.

We’re grateful to Emily Rubin and her much-loved reading series for the invite. Previous readers include Roy Blount Jr., Rob Brezsny, Will Leitch, Susan Shapiro, and too many others to list. They’ve got an illustrious past we can only hope not to tarnish forever. 

We’ll have a reading (about one hour, tops) in a very special location (keep reading), then relocate to a nearby bar to keep the stories going strong.

When: Thursday, May 21st, 2009, 8-9pm, followed by an after party

Location: Avenue A Laundromat (yes, really.)
97 Avenue A between 6th and 7th Street, NY, NY

AFTER PARTY: ARROW BAR, one block south on Ave. A. 9PM - very late.

http://www.arrownyc.com/

Drink Specials and actual DJs, which may or may not include members of AWESOME DUDES, GENIUS STEALS, and THE FOGGY MONOCLE 

FEATURING the READERS:

KATE DAILEY’s travels have taken her to Dublin, Ireland, where she wrote for The Dubliner magazine; Berlin Germany, as part of a Gordon Grey fellowship in international reporting; and to a very shabby motel room in Cleveland, Ohio, for a long weekend involving a bottle of tequila and a male stripper (but not the way one might think, she assures us). She’s written for numerous publications, including Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, MediaBistro, NYMag.com, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. She now works for Newsweek, where she runs the Human Condition blog.

JAED COFFIN is the author of A CHANT TO SOOTH WILD ELEPHANTS (Da Capo, 2008), which chronicles the time he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother’s village in Thailand. As the 2008 Resident Fellow of The Island Institute, Coffin researched his next book, ROUGHHOUSE FRIDAY, which documents the year he spent as a the middleweight champion of an Alaskan barroom boxing circuit. From Brunswick, Maine, he teaches at University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing.

A New York-based writer who grew up on a hazelnut farm outside of Portland, Oregon, CHRISTIAN DEBENEDETTI founded The Accidental Extremist in early 2009. Previously he has worked on the staffs of Outside, National Geographic Adventure, and Men’s Journal magazines. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, FOOD&WINE, and others. A Contributing Editor to National Geographic Adventure and a Correspondent for Outside, he once spent an entire year traveling alone to study ancient methods of making beer in 14 European and West African nations, a journey which resulted in—among other things—malaria, a fall into a Togolese drain ditch, bribery at gunpoint, and an arrest for defiling the musical legacy of Bob Dylan on Prague’s Charles Bridge without a permit.

PLEASE COME, and SPREAD THE WORD!

MORE INFO:
http://dirtylaundryreadings.com/html/main.html 
http://www.theaccidentalextremist.com

This event is funded in part by Poets and Writers, Inc. and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with public funds from the York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

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There's nothing like a long flight with a beautiful lady.

I’m from the Northeast, so the term ‘river trip’ doesn’t resonate as much as it does out West.  When I agreed to meet a guy friend for one of them on the South Fork of the Salmon River in Central Idaho, I could only imagine what I was in for.

To get there, I flew into Spokane, Washington on a little puddle jumper from Salt Lake City.  This was after I didn’t get on my original flight out because I was too heavy and my luggage was too big (I’m 121 pounds and a light packer). We finally landed at 10 at  night.  I met my friend in the airport, grabbed my luggage, and then it was a five hour drive from Spokane to the sleepy whitewater rafting town of Riggins.

We arrived in Riggins at three-o-clock in the morning and set up our tent for three hours of (ahem) sleep.  The next morning I looked far from my best—okay let’s face it—completely beat-up, and we met all his friends at the town’s only diner for a hearty breakfast.  I brought my make-up case along so I could sneak into the bathroom and attempt to look halfway decent, but it was so obvious what I was doing and embarrassing to think about now. 

We got our gear in order and headed off to the put-in, a three hour drive.  We stopped at the local Sate Recreation Center to get a map and directions, but what was supposed to be a quick break turned an hour-long debate among the seasoned kayakers on our trip.  Forest fires were burning very close to our put-in. The patroller warned us to turn around, and that because of roadblocks we wouldn’t be able to get to the part of the river we needed to. 

We didn’t listen. We found an alternative route to avoid the section of blocked-off road, and started down river.  Paddling through freshly burnt forests, we were inhaling  acrid smoke.  Not good for the eyes, nor the lungs for that matter. But we had plenty of whiskey and beer to keep us hydrated.  And I needed the alcohol to calm my anxiety about how dangerous this all was… (more…)

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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A friend from Outside Magazine, Senior Editor Jeremy Spencer, reminded us of this excellent collection of misadventures he edited four years ago. Featuring the likes of Jane Smiley and Jon Lee Anderson, it’s a ghoulish gallery of murderous hitchhikers, lightning strikes, and worse. A little something to inspire your own submissions here. The article was paired with a classic travel disaster reading list, and a rundown of the 10 worst adventure disasters of the last 200 years. Enjoy—CDB

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Come fly away to exotic locales!

[Here's an amazing yarn from our first octogenarian contributor, Bob Nielson, age 86...we're not worthy! —Ed.]

Back in 1960 the Toronto Star sent me to South Africa to report black-white violence.  I boarded an American Airlines 6-propeller plane in New York, which crossed the Atlantic and stopped briefly at a few East African cities while heading south.  I had a window seat over the right wing and saw the nearest engine catch fire, shooting flames 30 feet high.  Called the flight attendant who ran to the cabin.  Turned off, that engine glowed like a red-hot coal.  We were over the jungle with no place for an emergency landing…

(more…)

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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I just feel so safe with you.

On Valentine’s Day 1998 I decided to surprise my new boyfriend with what I imagined would be a romantic and unforgettable helicopter tour of the Mile High City.

It was on the way to the airport that I learned of his terrible fear of heights. What should have been an amorous 35-mile limo ride from Boulder to Denver became nothing short of a ledge-talking scenario, but I did my best to reassure him while he nervously chugged champagne from the bottle.

Our pilot, a sweet man in his mid-50’s, assured us that he would give us a night we wouldn’t forget. As we ascended, I glanced furtively at my boyfriend only to notice his white knuckles clutching both knees. We circled downtown Denver for 30 minutes before our pilot took us west towards the lights of Golden and Central City. By the time we reached the foothills, we were met with winds so fierce that our pilot radioed to his supervisor to request permission to land at a nearby airport. No sooner had he done this than all of the lights went out in the cabin, the engine cut off, and we started to fall for what seemed like an eternity.

I always thought if I were ever in an accident that I would be a screamer. But instead I was silent—we all were… (more…)

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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After the wedding, all we want to do is relax by the beach.

Here, excerpts from an entertaining piece by writer Rob Story which recounts his action-packed honeymoon throughout Asia—and some of its more memorable catastrophes. —CDB

              We’re a funny couple to watch. She, all of five feet and 99 pounds, blithely swings her skis down steep mogul runs with apparent amnesty from the laws of gravity. Trying gamely to knit near misses and miraculous recoveries into a line that at least looks intentional, my 200-pound carcass hurtles down slopes with the subtlety and grace of the Hindenburg. She never, ever biffs on a mountain bike. Me, I’m attempting to become the first human to be constituted completely of scar tissue.

             I guess the sea kayaking session in Thailand presented the most interesting realationship dynamics. When M’Lissa emerged wearing an XL life jacket on her petite frame, I said something along the lines of: “Whoa, looks like Tattoo got in Mr. Roarke’s closet again.” (It was quite a clever remark, as we were in a gorgeous marine national park dotted with all manner of Fantasy Islands, but she didn’t care for it. Apparently, California kids like M’Lissa frequently grow up in an environment polluted with sports and activity, suffering from dangerously low levels of TV exposure.)

            Things only got worse on the water, because our vessels were tandem sea kayaks…. (more…)

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Your fault.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’re gathering stories about romantic debacles while traveling. Who could possibly not have one to share? A good friend once prefaced a shocker of his own with the sage advice, ‘Never go to Europe with a brand new girlfriend.’ Now, just maybe, you’re wincing in recognition. This is good. Tell us why.

Names can be changed. Names probably should be changed. Send your story of 300 words or less to: submissions@theaccidentalextremist.com.

(No Ratings Yet)

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In 2007 the writer Kevin Fedarko got himself all the way to Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to take khat, a chewable, psychoactive diversion shared by 99.9% of the male population. Here’s his amazing, hilarious account, from Esquire, November, 2007. 

Excerpt: So if you ever happen to find yourself skimming through the troposphere high above the Horn of Africa, the engines of your cargo jet clawing at the currents of sub-Saharan air rolling off the lip of the Ethiopian plateau and down toward the Red Sea, there will come a moment when you’ll have to admit that the cockpit of an aging DC-8 with a broken oil-pressure gauge and a washed-out picture of a Ugandan mountain gorilla emblazoned on the tail offers a damn fine view of the most wretched place on the planet…

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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