Paleo no more! (Pt. II)

Quick follow-up to last week's catharsis. First, a clarification:

Lest there by any misunderstandings, my feelings about what is healthy and what is unhealthy remain unchanged.  What has changed is my approach to life and my relationships with other people.

I would like to share a quote from C. S. Lewis.  It comes from Mere Christianity, a book which I think everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, should read before trying to express an opinion on Christianity with anything like authority.  I have Mere Christianity on my iPhone as an audiobook, and I listened to it last week while driving to Daphne, Alabama to pick up a BOSU ball that I bought for a record-setting low price on Craigslist.  After spending last year frivolously haranguing people for consuming everything from gluten to seed oils, this passage came like a punch to the face when I heard it over the speaker:

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

As previously stated, I lost track of my original goal, which was to lose weight, and wasted seven months being a pedant and a food nazi.  In my defense, my experience and research allowed me to help several friends lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I have come to the conclusion that I could have helped many more people if I had been less vindictive and more relaxed in my approach.  I denied indulgences to myself, and in the spirit of misery loving company, I wanted everyone else to do the same thing.

Which brings me to the fun part...

I want to burn through the last bit of body fat that is hiding my abs.  As such, I'm giving the Slow-Carb Diet (SCD) a try.  Followed to the letter, it is billed as a sure-fire method to reach sub-12% bodyfat.  Based on my prior experience and a year of personal study on the subject, the science looks sound.  Nothing else has worked so far in my goal to eliminate stubborn fat, so I have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.  In addition to a specific exercise protocol (in my case, kettlebell swings and a couple of unique core exercises), the SCD eliminates dairy, sugar, starch and fruit from daily intake for six days.  The seventh day, however, is a dedicated cheat day, also known as "reverse Lent."  Anything goes.  The purposes behind devoting 12-24 hours to eating any and all "forbidden foods" are both biological and psychological:

• Physically, "planned overfeeding" spikes the metabolism and actually results in a net fat loss over the following 48 hours.  Doing this once every five to seven days after strictly adhering to the rules of the diet is important to keep the metabolism from falling into a rhythm and downshifting.
• Psychologically, it is healthy to take a day to enjoy all your favorite foods.  The routine of "just a little bit" of fruit/sugar and dairy every day over the course of a week, always left me with the nagging fear that my sugar and starch consumption was growing insidiously each week, and I find that my mind is much more at ease on the new schedule.

My first cheat day was truly a personal coup.  For the past year, I was so caught up in the fantasy of living a "perfectly healthy" lifestyle that I neglected to enjoy some of the foods that make life...well, fun.  The prescribed system of reserving any and all treats (even fruit) for consumption only once a week makes them even more special.  After eating a steady diet of vegetables, lentils and animal protein for six days, the shock and awe of tasting something sweet really blew me away.

Unlike most people, my cheat days do not and will not include wheat products like pizza, pasta or pastries.  Gluten gives me cramps, and I've learned a little too much about the other properties of wheat for me to ever incorporate it back into my lifestyle.  However, I made up for this by having some ice cream quite a bit of ice cream.  I used Sunday as my day to sample some green tea ice cream at a local sushi restaurant after lunch, and at the end of the day, I made myself an enormous sundae.

Do you want to know how long it's been since I made or ate a sundae?

A year.

I used to be "the sundae guy" at my house, dipping up masterpieces every Friday night.  Then I became "the health guy" and stopped.  For my return to form, I made sure my first sundae was a good one: dipping up vanilla ice cream onto a bed of shredded coconut and covering it with chocolate chips, Heath bar crumbles and chocolate sauce.  After not tasting such a concoction for a year, the experience was transcendent.

For yuks and giggles, I logged everything I ate on my cheat day, and if you want to see proof that I still no how to have a good time, you can see the full set here.

If all you want are the visual CliffsNotes, enjoy these "best of" photos:

As either Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde (I can't find a consensus on the source) famously said:

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I understand that now.  For whatever it's worth, I can do full compliance with a whole foods, paleolithic diet.  But without a "day of rest" here and there, my social life and quality of life in general go down the drain.

Sunday was fun.  But, as prescribed, I turned a one-eighty on Monday morning and went back to my regularly-scheduled diet of meat, eggs, lentils and vegetables.  This "clean" diet, which leaves my blood sugar comfortably level, will continue unbroken until next Sunday, at which time I will partake once more in the fun stuff.  Ben and Jerry's, anyone?

Paleo no more!

A brief interlude from my India recap.  I'm editing photos like crazy to get them ready for the blog, but I wanted to get this entry off my chest before going any further with the travelogues.

Backstory:

A little over a year ago, I was about 230 pounds.  The stress of college and multiple moves exploited all of my weaknesses for food, especially "comfort" foods like pasta and sweets.  And I had no sense of portion control.  Lasagna in the house?  Two bricks please.  M&Ms?  I would fill a soup bowl full of them after every lunch.  By my senior year of college, at the less than remarkable height of 5' 10", my neck and my chin were becoming a little too similar.  It was time for a change.

Several factors pushed me toward a decision to reverse the unhealthy trend and lose some weight:

First, I had practiced karate for five years.  It was getting harder and harder to keep up.  And my uniform size had gone up; a tangible reminder that my gut had expanded considerably.  I was teaching kids how to be healthy, but I wasn't living it out.  I felt like a hypocrite (I was).

As a further kick in the pants, a very specific quote from a teacher inspired me to action.  While on a school trip, I heard that the professor leading the trip had lost forty pounds.  One of my classmates asked him if he had more energy, and his reply stuck with me.  "Um, YES I have more energy.  My kid weighs forty pounds, it was like carrying him on my back all the time."

In that same year, I made my first mission trip to India.  There, I saw real poverty and want for the first time in my life.  Long story short, after I arrived home, my lifestyle of excess felt very ill-deserved.  I knew that if I was going to make any enduring improvements to my health and body, it would require just that: long-term lifestyle modification.

I began with a series of incremental changes in late June of 2011.  First, I stopped drinking soda, limiting myself to one or two per month when I would order a frozen Coke at a movie theater.  Second, I cultivated self control over my portion sizes.  I also quit partaking in massive desserts after every meal, and when I did have dessert, it was a glass of Ovaltine.  For fitness, I started swimming once or twice a week, in addition to my usual regimen of karate and kickboxing.  These common sense changes were easy, and startlingly effective.  The weight came off fast, and the success drove me to make more changes.  Like a skateboarder on a smooth grade, I had momentum, and I wanted to increase it.

By September, I had drastically reduced my carbohydrate and grain intake, and I had lost forty pounds.  I didn't eat chips or potatoes any more, my rice intake was limited to sushi on the weekends, and I only ate grain products when I had my weekly Subway veggie delite or a baked dessert on a special occasion.  With so much already cut out of my diet, the extremist in my decided to make one more change.

I had read Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint, and I knew the strong case against grain products.  Gluten, gliadin, empty carbs, systemic inflammation--there was a laundry list of grievances to be laid at the feet of wheat, and I was finally ready to accept them and act accordingly.  The Primal Blueprint advocates a return to "ancestral health," a diet based on whole foods (meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds), no legumes and absolutely zero grain products.

I went completely grainless as a thirty-day experiment, going a month entirely without bread, pasta or flour-based desserts.

The results?  I lost ten more pounds and made it through October without encountering my yearly seasonal allergies.

I was sold.  T'was a primal life for me!  Mine became a life sans wheat products, legumes and most forms of sugar.  I based my diet on animal protein, healthy fats, an absolutely irresponsible quantity of vegetables, some fruit and dark chocolate (90% cacao content or higher) as an indulgence.  Then I drifted toward a more hardcore, strict paleo point of view, cutting back on dairy and sourcing grass-fed meats.  None of these things were wrong in and of themselves, but in pursuing this lifestyle, I made a huge mistake.

Today.

Originally, I just wanted to lose some weight to look and feel better.  But I turned my diet into an obsession.  I made being "the healthy guy" my identity instead of just something I did.  I became a food nazi to the point where people apologized to me for eating sandwiches in my presence, without my having spoken at all.  I gloried in what I perceived as enlightenment and superiority.  While everyone around me continued to eat their "healthy whole grains," they were sick all winter and I wasn't.  While others yo-yoed up and down the scale on their low fat diets and bemoaned inevitable weight gain over the holidays, I lost another ten pounds over my Christmas break.

All the while, I expected some kind of social return on my obsession.  I don't know what I expected.  Applause?  A mass conversion of Pop-Tart-popping college students into svelte Crossfitters?  I don't know what kind of castle in the air kept me going, but it never materialized.  And now, the whole experience has left me hollow.

Over a year later, I'm fifty-something pounds lighter and look a lot better in a tshirt, but I still don't have a six-pack.  I don't have the bodyfat percentage I desire.  But far worse than these cosmetic details, I realized the other day that I have severely alienated people.  I made them uncomfortable with my constant yapping about how all their favorite foods were going to kill them.  I lost track of my original goal.  Instead of sticking to my original plan of getting in good shape, I drifted into pedantry and demagoguery.

Lately, several things have brought me back down to earth.

First, I started to notice how many headlines get recycled on Mark's Daily Apple.  The information is always sound, and MDA is one of the best searchable resources on the web for good nutrition information, but after a year of reading every article, it is apparent to me that there is only so much information that Mark or any other guru can give for the first time, and beyond that, any and all articles will be declarations of theory confirmation with the end goal of selling more books.  Speaking of the "paleo blogosphere," it has turned into a nasty place.  As the "paleo movement" becomes less of an underground health movement and more of an established faction among the various fitness dynasties, all the blogs look increasingly alike, and I think the authors are aware of this fact.  They all have the same interviews, they all have ebooks for sale, and the in-fighting and pettiness gets ridiculous.  As a community, I never sense support as much as judgment from the paleo crowd if my beef isn't grass-fed or my vegetables organic.

Second, I feel like sports nutrition is not taught properly by most paleo writers.  Caught up in the fervor of "defying conventional wisdom," preaching the doctrines of intermittent fasting and "eating fat to lose fat," the importance of protein is neglected.  Eating healthy, natural fats is the best way to lose weight (I'm walking proof of this), but for muscle maintenance, protein should be the highest priority.  It wasn't until I read Timothy Ferriss' book The Four-Hour Body that I was made aware of the full importance of protein--not just as a catalyst for building muscle mass, but for cutting fat instead of just losing weight.  My personal experiments in intermittent fasting suddenly felt like monumental wastes of time, because it hit me like a ton of bricks that when I was fasting sixteen hours a day to increase insulin sensitivity and production of human growth hormone, I wasn't eating enough protein during my "eating window" to obtain the results I desired.

Coming back to my food nazism, my burgeoning epiphany of my relationship ineptitude was further hammered home by J. Stanton's article "Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty," which ranks as one of my favorite pieces of writing that I have ever read on the internet.  As he always does, Stanton put the attitudes within the paleo movement into their proper context in his article, and recognized the fact that eating for health in a serious way, ala the paleo lifestyle, is very hard psychologically.  In the US, we grow up with PB&Js, Snickers bars and birthday cakes, and in breaking ties with these familiar foods we don't just give up the taste, we give up the feelings attached to them.  Stanton's article helped me to be totally honest with myself about the effects of my lifestyle on my relationships with other people.  Who was I trying to kid when I insist that Lindt's gourmet, 99% cacao bar is superior to a Butterfinger?  They are both delicious, simply in different ways to different people.

For those of you who were hoping to see a total recant of my principles and a video of me gnawing on a French loaf, I'm sorry to disappoint you, because despite my new attitude and grievances with the paleo blog culture, I still agree wholeheartedly with the tenets of paleo nutrition.  But I have some modifications to make in my own life.  I used my most recent trip to India to test my body's responses to different foods, and the results were interesting:

• A plate of noodles, given to me by a host who was under the impression that Americans live on pasta and french fries, confirmed my suspicions that I have a gluten sensitivity.  It was the first time I had eaten any wheat product in almost a year, and within minutes of eating what I was given out of politeness, I experienced harsh stomach cramps and diarrhea.  Gluten problems are real, even if you don't have celiac.
• For weight loss and weight management, there is no such thing as a "safe starch."  When consumed on a daily basis, rice and potatoes will increase your waistline as much as any other starch or grain.  I gained a lot of weight eating a rice-based Indian diet for the first few weeks of the trip, and it was very uncomfortable.
• Natural fats and proteins are STILL the best fuel for the human body.  For the above reason (and others, see below) I requested my last host to cook me nothing but eggs and vegetables while I stayed with him.  Most of the photos in this entry are of the delicious egg scrambles he cooked for me.  On that meal plan, I lost four weeks of rice weight inside of four days.  My host even commented on the visible change in my appearance.  I might add that my food was cooked in ghee (clarified butter), and I was always given huge portions--my record was fourteen whole eggs in one day.  I don't recommend that as an everyday practice, but nevertheless the weight still fell off quickly and my muscle tone reappeared.  It is confirmed: low fat diets are, and always will be, the hard and unnatural route to weight loss.
• Counter to what many paleo talking heads will spout, legumes are not all bad.  To avoid rice, I would sometimes fill my bowl with dal (boiled and seasoned lentils or mung beans) instead.  In the primal/paleo world, legumes are often vilified along with wheat as a source of lectins and phytates, which, long story short, can contribute to leaky gut syndrome (feces leaking into the bloodstream) after long-term consumption.  However, in my more recent readings, I have learned that an overnight soak kills 97% of the anti-nutrients in lentils.  That is acceptable.
• Industrially processed vegetable oils are legitimately harmful.  For reasons of cost and availability, most Indian homes cook their food in mustard oil, palmseed oil or soybean oil.  These oils are filled with extremely high volumes of Omega-6 fatty acids.  When your body's ratio of n-6/n-3 are out of balance, the result is interior inflammation, which I felt in spades due to the amount of oil used in most authentic curries.  I will save you the graphic details, but sufficed to say that my nightly "green apple quickstep" was yet another reason I went on a recovery diet of eggs and veg (boiled in water or cooked in clarified butter instead of oil) late in the trip.
• The occasional indulgence will not destroy health or weight maintenance.  On one occasion in India, I consumed somewhere between twenty-four and thirty ounces of sweet lassi (a yogurt drink) combined with fruit juice and chopped banana, inside of an hour.  Contrary to my old fears [paranoia], I did not balloon back to an unhealthy weight.  I'm not saying this was the healthiest thing to do, but at the time, my Indian host and I felt compelled to judge the merits of several competing lassi vendors.

So where does this leave me?  Well, my opinions about what makes up a truly healthy diet remain largely unmoved.  I still believe that some foods are best not consumed by humans (modern wheat, most forms of dairy, anything from McDonalds), but after a year of making myself miserable about it, I have decided to resign my position as the community food nazi.  The following list represents my new paradigm, which, like everything else, is subject to change with new data:

• I will never budge on the subject of wheat.  I saw a shirt once that said "the road to hell is paved with gluten," and I agree wholeheartedly.  Some research has speculated that as many as a third of Americans are gluten sensitive, but are so used to the symptoms (sinus inflammation, IBS, etcetera) that they never even consider possible dietary causes.  On a broader level, I also I firmly believe that wheat and the concomitant bread and snack food industries are responsible for the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes in America.  Read any label, and the only praise you will find for "healthy whole grain" products is the fiber content.  Fiber can be obtained through vegetables, along with many other vitamins and nutrients absent in wheat.  Balanced against the problems of gluten, I maintain that there is literally no need for grains in the human diet.
• I am incorporating legumes back into my diet, albeit judiciously.  Lentils are kind to blood sugar levels and an effective way of filling out meals while reducing grocery costs.  And with some some of my recent, post-India stomach trauma, I needed the extra fiber to restore some regularity to my GI tract.  On a more recreational and positive note, cashews are back in the mix, too.  I had the chance to eat fresh, raw, locallyg-grown cashews in India...I had forgotten how good those little buggers are!
• Systemized intermittent fasting, ala Leangains, is overrated, and the way most people talk about it right now, it has become a fad for most people.  Unless you are already well-muscled and sub-12% bodyfat (sub-20% for women), I believe that the visible results are marginal at best.  Spontaneous meal-skipping, for weight loss or to aid in cell autophagy, on the other hand, is something I think is healthy to do once or twice a week.
• There is only so much nutrition you can get from whole foods.  Supplementation is important.  Omega-3 (fish oil, flaxseed oil), vitamin D and acidophilus are all supplements which I take daily now.
• Protein is the new king.  Yes, a tall smoothie of coconut milk, nuts and berries is paleo-approved, filling and healthy, but it is not the ideal lunch when you want to cut the last five pounds of fat and build new muscle, which is my goal.  I don't believe in counting calories, but I believe firmly in macronutrient ratios.
• I will no longer call myself a devotee of the "paleo diet."  I have developed a strong dislike for the groupthink and the tendency toward confirmation bias and anecdotal arguments.  The very definition of "paleo" as a set of dietary guidelines has yet to be standardized, but every Grok and Grokette with a blog seems to think that his or her personal definition is the universal standard.  The arguments that arise out of the lack of mutually-understood terms are hilarious in the insipidity.  In the end, it doesn't matter if "paleo" means high-carb, moderate carb, low carb or ketogenic, the argument of "well, I don't think ancient man would have eaten ____" is always used too often and too lightly.

For the first time in my life, I am going to follow a structured diet.  I mentioned The Four-Hour Body earlier in this entry, and I am intrigued by the "Slow Carb Diet."  The whole first chapter on the subject is available to read for free, but what I like the most about it is that it brings me back to my original reason for changing my diet in the first place.  I wanted to cut fat and build muscle.  In my zeal to be perceived as a holistic know-it-all, I drifted away from that stated goal, and as such I never reached it.  It's time to return to my original purpose.  The Slow Carb Diet is designed out of sound nutritional principles, solid data, and is specifically designed not just for weight loss, but for reducing body fat and maintaing muscle.

The SCD approach includes a weekly "cheat day" for reasons of metabolism and social well-being.  I originally had mixed feelings about cheat days.  The old me always considered "cheating" to be a sign of weakness and inability to make lasting changes, but lately I realized that my monk-like consistency made me a social pariah in most arenas.  Taking one day off from dietary restriction not only prevents metabolic downshifting, but it gives the individual a day to be "normal" again.  Even one of my favorite paleo fitness blogs (one of few that is truly well-adjusted in its presentation of information) advocates cheat days wholeheartedly.  John Romaniello, one of the most stacked fitness coaches I've ever seen, has written extensively about using planned cheat meals effectively.  Good enough for me.  For my own first designated cheat day, I plan to indulge heavily in sushi, Nikki's Coconut Butter and perhaps a big cup of chai or creamy turmeric tea for a nightcap.  I'm looking forward to it.

So there you have it.  If you are one of the people whom I harangued in the past year for what you ate, I apologize.  It wasn't my place.  I changed my lifestyle at a time when I had little control over anything else in my life, and I allowed myself to be consumed by the idea of controlling both my own diet and that of others.  I will not pontificate any more.  If asked, I will be glad to share my experience and help other people improve their lifestyle, because I do have good advice to offer on the subject.

But!

Unless or until that happens, I am no longer the "paleo" or "primal" guy.  I'm just Steven, and I eat a certain way.

And I really, really love breakfast food.

India, Day 1 - Goodbye is always the hardest part.

This is part one of my recap of my forty-day journey through India.  Some entries will be short photo essays, others will be more prosaic, long-form narratives.  This first one is more along the lines of the latter.  Enjoy.

"So, when do you leave for India again?"

"In about four hours."

Every trip is bookended by goodbyes, first to the people you leave at home, and later to the people you meet while traveling.  I hate goodbyes, and this day was to be full of them.  I love traveling, but only in the middle.

The night before I left for India, I didn't sleep well.  Even though my day's schedule began early, I got up several hours earlier than was necessary, because I simply wasn't resting well, and laying in bed rolling back and forth seemed a greater waste of time than getting up and pacing back and forth on my feet.  As there was a marginal possibility that my family would finish construction on our new home in my absence, I rose up and got dressed amidst a landscape of stacked boxes containing all of my worldly goods, which I had packed in anticipation of the possible move.  The environment drove home every aspect of the idea of "leaving home," and for a brief moment I felt like I wasn't coming back.  Once I had my clothes on, I had nothing left to do.  My bag and check box were both packed, double-checked and by the door.  Yes, I packed six weeks' worth of clothing in one backpack, my Monsoon Gearslinger.  I pack light and travel light.  I anticipated the inevitability of my buying gifts or a some new shirts along the way, and a packable duffel bag, reduced to a six-inch disc of fabric when collapsed, dangled from the clip of my backpack.  Sadly, my own efficiency had left me with too much time on my hands; the morning dragged on forever.  I was also experimenting with intermittent fasting at that time, and as such I didn't even have breakfast to kill a half hour.

I did a lot of pacing until I called my dad to say goodbye.  He was out on a business trip to Washington D.C., and I wouldn't see him again until I arrived home.  Afterward, I left at 7:00 to meet my friend, Jeff, for coffee and a book swap.  He had lent me Lucifer's Hammer, and I wanted to return it and loan him my copy of The Four Hour Body before I left town.  We only had about forty-five minutes to chat, a restrictive time for two people with a tendency toward motored-mouthing, but we did the best we could with the time we had.  But upon saying goodbye and exiting the Drowsy Poet, my next stop wasn't the airport; far from it, in fact.  An associate pastor at my church had passed away that week, and I wasn't about to miss his memorial; international flight be damned.

The loss of Pastor Mike Dekle was a blow to our church and the community at large.  Mike wasn't just a gifted administrator, he was a devoted husband and father and a great friend to many people.  He and I weren't very close, but I saw all four of my grandparents succumb to terminal illness, and I was very sensitive to Mike's own battle with cancer, and I wanted to support his wife and son during the service.  In addition to supporting the family, the service allowed me the unforeseen opportunity to see the members of my church one final time before I left town, as well as a number of other old friends from other churches in the area.  The service was a celebration of a well-lived life, and the reception gave me a chance to say a few final goodbyes and pray with friends.

After the service, my mother, sister and I went to one of our favorite restaurants, Siam Thai.  It might sound funny, eating Thai food before going to India, but I honestly love Asian cuisine, whichever region it hails from.  Siam Thai is also a family favorite, and I wanted one last opportunity to splurge on something familiar and well-loved before leaving home.  Several plates of chicken and bamboo shoots later, my mother and I had coffee at a The Bad Ass Coffee Co. while my sister attended her voice lesson.  When the lesson was over, we regrouped and the three of us went to the airport together.

In the airport restroom, like a scene out of Burn Notice, I changed out of my jacket, trousers and tie and put on a lightweight khaki shirt and a pair of Magellan cargo pants, emerging from the lavatory looking, well, like someone bound for India.  India was (and at the time of this writing, is) in the throes of monsoon season, and I had purchased several new athletic shirts and a few pairs of fast-drying pants for trip, all in accordance with a self-imposed rule of "pack no cotton."  I would love to travel the world attired like Indiana Jones or Josh Bernstein (I even have the hat), but practicality often dictates otherwise.

Clothes changed, there was still time to kill before I needed to go through security, and I re-entered the limbo of the early morning.  I sat with my mother and sister in the terminal, and we passed a few minutes in uneasy silence.  There really wasn't much to say.  We're an emotional bunch, and I didn't want to cause any unnecessary strain by speaking too much.  In the context of a year, seven weeks isn't a terribly long time, but it's still a respectable period of time to be apart from loved ones, especially when I would be making so much of the trip alone.  We talked a little bit, here and there, but I was honestly relieved when the time finally came for me to put dignity on hold and pass through security.

The actual goodbye was still hard.  I hate leaving people at the airport; it reinforces the separation before it even begins.

After the last hugs and kisses were exchanged, I shouldered my Gearslinger and went forward.  The exact protocols of TSA screenings change a little bit each year, but I stay one step ahead by keeping all of my change, toiletry carry-ons and phone in plastic bags in my pockets until I'm through the screening area.  It's a practice that saves me the trouble of rummaging around in my backpack while ill-tempered fellow travelers urge me to hurry up.  As much as possible, I like to design my circumstances to stay relaxed.  It works pretty well, so much so in this case that a female flight attendant, seeing my buzzed hair and single, compact bag, asked me if I was military, because she was unused to seeing any other group of young males be so polite while going through security.  Plus one for Southern manners.

Once through security, I boarded the plane.

The plane flew.

The plane landed.

I found myself in Miami International Airport, with a long layover and, again, very little to do.  I wandered through the terminal, marveling at the sameness of every shop.  I made a few phone calls home, speaking once more to my dad before I crossed the threshold into the realm of international phone charges.  My father runs his own business, and with the added pressure of handling a lot of his own contracting in the construction of our new home, he had been unable to see me off at the airport himself, and it was important to me to speak to him one more time.

When dad and I were finished speaking, I hunted down a coffee shop and bought a cup of green tea to chill out with while waiting for my flight.  It was a long trek--the international terminal in Miami rambles on interminably.  On the way back, I passed a heavyset black man on the concourse, and he hailed me in a thick Caribbean accent.  It turned out that he was from Haiti, and was passing through Miami on the way to visit family.  He was having trouble finding his gate in the massive terminal.  It so happened that I had seen where his gate was located on my way up from my first flight, so I walked with him for a while and took him to where he needed to go.  He summed up the airport with a single sentence: "Miami's just too big, man."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

My Haitian friend at his gate, I made the hike back to my own gate (tea still in hand!) and gave Jeff a ring to tie up the loose ends from our abridged conversation of the morning.  Jeff has also served in India; that was actually where we first met and became friends, and that left us with plenty to talk about before I left to go back for an extended period.  Anyone who has been to India will testify that it is a hard country to adjust to, between the cultural differences and the sheer frenzy resulting from a population of 1.2 billion people, and Jeff and I enjoyed a few good jokes as to the challenges facing me upon my return.  As we spoke, the call came over the loudspeaker: it was time for my section to board the plane.

I finished with Jeff, shouldered my bag once again and boarded the plane.  It was late.

Next stop: London.