Dear Friends, Readers, and Friendly Readers,

Looking back, 2011 proved to be an extraordinary year for me, filled with writing, travel, and the completion of my MFA at Chatham University.

As a growing photojournalist, I’ve endeavored to produce a wide-ranging portfolio of portraits and landscapes, photographing Pittsburgh personalities, Aruban desert, Mexican beaches and the Laotian interior. I am very proud of the results, and prouder still to share them with you. This “best of” compilation showcases some of my favorite work in 2011.

Happy New Year,

Robert Isenberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the most enjoyable histories I’ve ever read — largely because of the subject, but also because Herlihy tells such a gripping, romantic, mysterious story. His research is impeccable, and the narrative pedals along as steadily as a bike on rough roads. Although his story is tragic, Frank Lenz has become a new hero of mine, for his humble Pittsburgh origins, his tenacious “globe-girdling” venture, and his martyrdom in the name of anthropology of adventure. I wanted to begrudge his rivals (old-money New Yorkers who never had to raise a nickel for their three-year trek), but they were also a delight to read about. It’s heartening to know that, even during the Victorian age, a clique of young men could travel the world and embrace its diversities.

Should you have a similar fetish for history, photography, long-distance cycling, early journalism and adventure travel, “The Lost Cyclist” absolutely must be found.

View all my reviews

Ten years ago, I biked the Great Allegheny Passage, from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD. It was a difficult time: The world was reeling from 9/11, the U.S. had just invaded Afghanistan, and the newspaper I had lovingly freelanced for had just folded. Desperate to escape my troubles, I pedaled into rural Pennsylvania with limited supplies, little training, and no idea that the trail was incomplete.

My friends Bill and Lee recently biked the entire Passage and C&O Canal, from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. In celebration of their achievement, and to commemorate 10 years since I took my own strange journey, I present this essay, first published in Pittsburgh Magazine in 2004. Photographs taken on the trail in November, 2001.

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From the start, I knew it was a terrible idea – to bike 150 miles through the woods, from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD, in fewer than three days. My deadline was Thanksgiving, which meant biking at the onset of winter, braving sub-freezing temperatures and rifle season in one of the most aggressively hunted regions in the country. I knew that every campground would be closed, the towns were scattered, and I’d have to subsist on my meager provisions for long stretches.

But the Great Allegheny Passage was too enticing to ignore. Nearly completed and billed as the megatransect between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC, the Passage winds along the meandering Youghiogheny River, forming a level, continuous trail through the rolling wilderness of southwestern Pennsylvania. As part of the Rails-to-Trails project, an endeavor to convert retired railroad lines into bicycle paths, the Passage has few rivals for length and panorama. I’ve always been an avid cyclist, traveling with my parents through France and Germany back in high school, and the thought of another lonely Greyhound ride to Washington’s overpacked bus station was less than thrilling.

So I called my parents, who graciously volunteered to pick me up in Cumberland, and I gathered my gear: My Trek hybrid bicycle, two saddlebags my Dad had fashioned for long trips, a waterbottle, a book, a portable radio, a few Snickers bars, a Salvation Army blanket, and a road atlas, in case I lost the trail. I lacked a great deal – a bunjee cord to attach the bags, a flashlight, a cell phone, a Swiss Army Knife, a tent, a book of matches, and, most importantly, spare tires. One false move could mean getting stranded in the forest, miles from the nearest house, with no passing traffic and no means of calling for help. But for a recent college graduate stuck in an office job, the deadly challenge was worth it.

First Day

After a pit stop at Bruegger’s Bagels, I wove through the streets of South Side and headed for McKeesport, where the Passage begins. It was a warm day for November, and I was sweating by the time I reached the first bridge. Driving through Pittsburgh is often confusing, but for cyclists it’s far worse – restricted highways and dangerous underpasses force riders to cross bridges, stick to sidewalks, and huff over dilapidated, glass-strewn side-streets. I later learned that the bus to McKeesport bears a handy bike rack, and I could have skipped the small factory neighborhoods in-between, but few riders ever came out this far, and I was grateful for the sunny views of the homes and warehouses along the Allegheny riverbank and the scruffy hills looming above.

The entrance was hard to find; the signs announcing the trail zigzag through McKeesport, and I spent nearly an hour talking with locals, who shrugged their shoulders and said they’d only heard of the trail, but didn’t know where to find it. I crossed a final bridge, cut through someone’s yard, and staggered into it; joggers bounced past me, along with other bicyclists, most of them older and nodding distantly as they passed. Spoiled by shorter trails in Vermont and Minnesota, I was surprised to find the trail composed of finely ground gravel, not street pavement, and I was grateful for thicker tires – the narrow treads of a road bike would have flattened within hours.

I followed the river for nearly five hours, catching glimpses of human life – a man, strapped into goulashes, fishing in the water, some nature walkers ambling by, and the occasional house. The old mills gradually vanished, replaced by occasional water-towers and rock faces. As the sun melted through the trees, I got anxious for a place to stay.

In the lonely dark, I could make out the lights beaming on the horizon, and though I couldn’t see any signs, I guessed the next town was Connellsville. At last the trail broke into even streets, and as a freezing breeze whistled between the old houses, I tracked down the highway and a vacancy sign. The woman smiled she handed over the key, and I slept until six the next morning.

Second Day

The mist lifted by late-morning, and as I pedaled away from Connellsville, the landscape become lonelier, more isolated. The hills no longer supported radio towers or secluded houses; the river, I finally realized, was flowing against me, which meant I was riding up an imperceptible incline. I rode for hours without spotting another cyclists, instead hearing the pops of rifles echoing through the naked limbs of trees. As I reached Ohiopyle, the favorite state park for vacationing Pittsburghers, I wondered when I would find an open visitor’s center, or even a restaurant with an open door. I filled my waterbottle with the hillside run-off – the tiny trickles along the rocks – and ate the last of my food. My legs and back ached terribly, and I swore to look into the latest ergonomic bicycles.

By mid-afternoon, a light hail was falling, and the gunshots had died away. The forest parted for a half-hour as I ventured into the Allegheny Highlands, riding over isolated wooden bridges and a graveyard for retired school buses, wedged into a forgotten valley.

Sunlight was precious, and when I found one of the tunnels closed for construction, a treacherous detour burned a lot of valuable time. My wheels clunked over exposed rocks and broken sticks, threatening to pop the innertubes at any moment; as I finally circled the small mountain, noting the other boarded-up entrance to the restricted tunnel, dusk had nearly descended. I fished out my atlas, disheartened to find the next town lay over 20 miles away.

At last, exhausted from two straight days of biking, I lost my balance from vertigo and crashed into the gravel. I lay there, breathing hard, as my wheel still spun, then stopped. I unfolded my blanket and wrapped myself up, shivering in the dark, and considered staying there. My muscles burned fiercely; I hadn’t eaten a full meal since breakfast. This seemed as good a place to sleep as any.

The howls from the woods changed my mind. Coyotes, I decided, and lots of them. I’d run from coyotes before, but in the dark, they had the upper-hand, and a slumbering biker was an easy target. I grumbled and set my bike back up, summoning the last of my energy, and biked the last 20 miles, where the trail abruptly ended.

In Garrett, I asked a gas station attendant where I could find a hotel. “Well,” he said, “you’ve picked a hell of a place to get lost. You might find a place in Meyersdale, but I don’t know if anybody’s open this time of year.”

Left without options, I followed the unlit highway, coasting at breakneck speeds down the long, curving shoulder as rigs flew past me, throwing debris into the air. After two days with only the occasional freight train for company, snaking along the opposite side of the river, the sight of Meyersdale’s lights over the hills was overwhelming; I found a bed and breakfast downtown, begged the proprietor for a room, and thanked her profusely. I slept for five hours, waking an hour before dawn.

Third Day

Nearly paralyzed from exhaustion and down to my last $30, I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and found a payphone in a windswept shopping outlet parking lot. My parents were happy to hear from me, and my Dad started the four-hour drive from Washington to Cumberland, where we planned to meet. The Passage hadn’t been finished, and the remaining 20 miles were made up of labyrinthine country roads and steep highways, which are technically off-limits to cyclists. Left without options, I biked over mile after mile of multi-lane highway until I hit Frostburg. I called my Dad’s cell phone and implored him to meet me there, but he said to press on; Cumberland was only a few miles away.

The last leg between Frostburg and Cumberland was all downhill, a relieving surprise after so much climbing. I pressed my pedals sparingly, floating down long hills and whizzing into the town center, where I met a maze of streets that all shared similar names. At last, using the last minutes on my calling card, my Dad found me at a fruit store wedged between Cumberland’s famous cliffs, just a few hundred feet from the C&O Canal, where heartier bikers continue their journeys through Maryland. As for me, I was spent.

An egregious stench wafted off my clothes, and I slept in the passenger seat, all the way back to my grandmother’s house. A turkey and stuffing awaited us, and though my calves throbbed, I was left with only a couple scratches. My brakes were worn to the nubs, but otherwise my bike was still in working order.

Which meant I’d be ready to traverse the Passage again – maybe in summer, this time.

An excerpt from my manuscript, One Million Elephants, about a journey through Laos that will begin at the end of November. I will serialize two chapters throughout the month, so that readers can learn about my interest in this little-known country. Check back for regular updates. Photograph taken during my 2000 sojourn in Vietnam.

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You could say I threw a dart at a map. Except for the dart.

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It was a sunny morning in 2010, and I was looking at a map of the world, which hangs on my living room wall, a gift from my girlfriend’s mother. This is a colored political map, elegant and heavily framed, and the surface is pricked with several dozen pins. Each pin represents a place we’ve visited.

There’s no better way to start a day. Looking at this map gives me enormous satisfaction and pride. The United States is a forest of little red pinheads, the Caribbean a sparse woods, and Europe a crooked row, from Reykjavik down to Naples. There are four pins in Africa. One in South America.

As I absently scanned the pins, sipping my morning coffee and strategizing my workday, my eyes drifted to the pins in Vietnam and Malaysia, countries I had visited a decade before. My gaze floated up, and there it rested on a name both known and unfamiliar: Laos.

A country the shape of a keyhole, or maybe a palm tree. I had never really noticed it before. Never traced its borders, never tried to pronounce its capital. “Veen…” I murmured to myself. “Veen… tee-ahn-eh?” I focused on the word, realized it was probably a French spelling, and tried again. “Vee-en…tee-ann.”

And in a flash I realized, to my chagrin, that I knew literally nothing about Laos. Not one solitary fact. No names, no dates, no past or present. What did they speak in Laos? What was their major religion? No images came to mind, no stereotypes or exports, not even an eye color, a traditional outfit, a musical instrument. I couldn’t think of a flag or monument, an artist or celebrity or national hero. Nothing. A blank sheet. A big empty.

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I was alarmed. How had an entire country escaped my notice? I knew at least somethingabout Bhutan and Bahrain, countries smaller than Nevada. But here was Laos, which bordered nations I had personally visited, and still I didn’t know a smidgen about it. So I went to the computer. This had to be redressed.

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Point one: Laos is not pronounced “Louse.” It’s pronounced Lowh, rhyming with “cow.” The “S” is a French addition, and therefore is silent.

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Point two: Laos is a Communist country. I gawked. Really? A one-party Communist regime? How did I not know this? I had visited four Communist countries before, and several former Bloc states, and I’d never known that Laos was Communist, or anything else, for that matter. For all the disdain Americans harbor for socialist nations, how had this one slipped our minds?

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Point three: Laos is mostly Buddhist. Which made sense, surrounded as it was by devoutly Buddhist nations. Different types of Buddhism, sure, but variations on the same theme. Theravada Buddhism in particular.

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Point four: Laos is the most heavily bombed country of all time.

I reread this statement, unable to fathom it. I double-checked with other sources. Triple-checked. Most heavily bombed country of all time? More than Great Britain? More than Germany and Russia? More than Japan, for crying out loud? The fact kept popping up, confirmed and re-confirmed. Most heavily bombed, measured on a “per capita” basis.

That is, more bombs per person. The most bang for your buck.

But who? Why? When? What had Laos done to deserve so many tons of explosives? And what war had they fought—for surely only an official, declared war could warrant so much gunpowder? My mind reeled. Because when it comes to military history, I can hold my own. I grew up on history books, war movies, plastic soldiers. As a kid, I’d paint figurines and send them into battle, day in and day out. I knew every uniform of every army. I knew every detail of Bull Run and Waterloo. And now, as a peace-loving adult, I still carried a vast arsenal of military knowledge, from ancient Assyria to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and if there was a conflict I didn’t know, it had to be obscure.

Laos didn’t ring any bells. I shook my head at the computer screen. I ran a search. I needed to know who dropped so many bombs on Laos.

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The answer: We did. That is, the United States. And not just once, or over the course of a few months, but for nine years, from 1964 to 1973.

I had never heard of this, never even conceived of it. Nine years of bombing runs? In Laos? Instantly I corresponded the dates to the conflict of the era, the Vietnam War. I knew about Vietnam, I had been to Vietnam, and I had even visited the American War Crimes Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. I had crawled through the Cu Chi Tunnels, which once housed and concealed Viet Cong soldiers. I knew the Vietnam conflict backward and forward. I knew about Cambodia and Lieutenant William Calley, and I’d read a dozen books and seen all the movies. I’d talked with Vietnam vets. A Vietnam sniper taught my mother to fly a plane and shoot a pistol. A Vietnam ex-marine taught my Earth Science class. I knew plenty about it. Didn’t everybody?

But Laos was a complete shock. A Pandora’s Box, bursting open. Nine years of protracted bombing. I was blindsided by this news.

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And this is how it all began. One line, blandly written in an online encyclopedia. A single jot of trivia. Yet ever since, I have thought of little else. Laos has become my obsession. Laos haunts and magnetizes me. My days are colored by Laos, chilled and burned by Laos. The most heavily bombed country in human history, and I had no idea. Not even a hint.

Virtual Poetry Reading

A li’l podcast action, celebrating the release of Wander.

When Steve Jobs passed away last week, I was astonished by the global grieving that followed. I never expected such outpouring of emotion, because I had always knows Jobs as a mirror-image of Bill Gates—both wealthy, both innovators in the computer business, both immeasurably powerful. But people seemed to really feel his passing, on a scale I couldn’t remember since the death of Princess Diana.

Jobs wasn’t perfect. Unlike Gates, the man was famously un-charitable. Jobs liked to unveil new toys, with the magical flourish of a David Copperfield, but he seemed to have little interest in, say, global poverty or health issues. I am, like nearly every plugged-in American, somewhat biased as I say this: I am a regular contractor for Microsoft, and my laptop runs on Windows. That said, I am typing this on an iMac, and I plan on taking an iPod on my run this afternoon. Apple would never give me a job or support causes I care about; but Jobs helped steer this technology into existence. He also helped make Pixar and Apple some of the most remarkable brands in corporate history.

The mourning struck me as symbolic, since most people don’t know anything about Steve Jobs, but they respect his vision, and they felt he faced mortality much too soon (at 55 years old, Jobs reminds me of Jim Henson, who died unexpectedly at 54).

Passing an Apple store in downtown Chicago, I was astonished by the monument that had risen there: Hundreds of sticky-notes with handwritten eulogies quilted over the storefront. Flowers lined the sidewalk, and people stopped to take pictures and gaze at the glass. I was heartened that Jobs, who had worked so hard to digitize our existence, could be commemorated in such a simple and timeless way. This memorial has no app.

Because of my loyalty to The Sphinx Café, I was reluctant to frequent HKAN—at first. Later I learned that shisha culture in Pittsburgh is extremely tight-knight, and proprietors went so far as to help each other out. The Sphinx is more authentic, HKAN is more like a lounge that happens to serve shisha.

Photograph of shishas for sale, Khan al-Khalili, Egypt.

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HKAN is like no other place in the city: The brick walls, the tasteful Arab-fusion paintings, the bar offering strong teas and coffees – it’s like walking into a secret Middle Eastern speakeasy, where college kids and young professionals gather in smoky antechambers to discuss life, the universe, and their favorite flavors of tobacco. HKAN is the first major hookah bar to hit the city, and boasts packed tables long into the night – even after the bars have closed. The family-run business was an instant success, dedicating its fifty brands of tasty tobacco and its wide array of tall, elegant-looking shishas (the proper Egyptian word for hookah). The place harkens back to the streets of Cairo, where businesspeople of all classes gather in small shisha lounges and enjoy a siesta in their billowing clouds of sweet-smelling smoke. A relaxing late-night alternative to the anarchic drinking binges of Southside, HKAN demands that you arrive early: Come midnight, the waiting list is daunting.

This description is about the original Sphinx, in South Side. The revamped Sphinx, in Oakland, is far more interesting: It’s built into a converted church. Photograph of the original Sphinx during a “son et lumière” show, Giza, Egypt.

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Stepping into the Sphinx Café is like stepping into the Giza bazaar: With its small tables, cushions on the floor, colorful wall hangings and traditional Egyptian art, the Sphinx is like a crash course in Mediterranean culture. There isn’t a Starbucks brew in existence that could rival the warm rush of Arabic coffee; and the teas, both cold and warm, are delightfully bitter, and even more delightfully sweetened with a squirt of honey. But baklava and imported juices are mere aperitifs to the true connoisseur: The real deal is the authentic Egyptian hookah – or shisha – flavored with rose, cappuccino, strawberry or mint tobacco. Groups of friends gather on the floor to converse, sip a glass of warm milk, and relax in the haze of incense-like tobacco smoke. This family-owned establishment is a key gathering place for shisha fans and novices, far away from the crowded HKAN hookah bar, and Friday nights often yield Middle Eastern pop music and authentic belly dancing.

Photograph of my one-man show, based on The Archipelago, which took place at Future Tenant as part of its Trespass Series. Taken by Don DiGiulio.

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The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has boomed in recent years, and Downtown is now flooded with galleries. The most unique specimen is Future Tenant, a dusty, cave-like arts space that bears exposed ceilings, punched-through walls, and no restroom. Working in an office that looks much like a bomb shelter from the London Blitz, the Future Tenant staff attracts dozens of artists a year to its rugged space, showing paintings, murals, installations and live bands – an ambitious revue for a gaggle of twenty-something MBA students. Future Tenant’s odd gimmick is its temporiness: If another proprietor promises to rent the space, then Future Tenant will vanish. But until someone decides to pay the hefty rental fee, the gallery remains, under the guidance of the Cultural Trust. Now a requisite stop during the Downtown art hops, Future Tenant is a hospitable host, serving wine and crackers to anyone who ambles in. The gallery has also broadened its artistic scope with the Future Ten Play Festival, and more ambitious theatrical events are pending.