Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

Antiperspirant is up to no good. Behind its happy-go-lucky holocaust on sticky pits, there is danger. Namely aluminum. Which leaches right into your blood and shrivels your brain cells. So I have put my lingering smells in the hands of your standard old-school deodorant. Not without its own challenges but I would choose stink over drool any day of the week. Cluelessly, I attempted to go about deodoranting with an antiperspiranting approach. Kerry set me straight: The key to successful deodorant use is the reapplication. Keep some in the car. Keep some in your desk drawer. Hide some under the sofa cushions in the homes of your relatives. Wear undershirts.

To: Agency Staff From: Stacey Subject: I'm BACK! Got in at 4:30 am last night after two late flights and one missed connection (arrgh!!). Needless to say, after 35 hours in airplanes or sprinting around airports, combined with some magnificent jet lag, Tom and I are in slug mode today. I'll be in tomorrow. To: Stacey From: Eric Subject: I'm BACK! Barry and I noticed that the Def Leppard/Whitesnake tour kicked off in New Zealand last week – hope you were able to get tickets!

Buscot Station Lodge is the love child of a cozy retreat for backpackers and the aspiring set of a horror film. Check it: An isolated homestead packed with stuffy furniture covered in doilies, a collection of fragile china tea cups, thick oriental rugs and a lot of tiny blood-sucking insects. The proprietor, a deep-voiced sixty-something slow talker heavily into monotoning 24/7 political discourses and snapping at his house boy. The house boy, a skinny Jewish (but not from Israel) high-pitched switch-hitter twinkling about in short short shorts and dark sunglasses asking all the girls what games they played as children and surreptitiously taking time-lapse pictures of his favorite ladies while they ate dinner. People taking really long showers. Rusted scythes and heavy farm machinery strewn around a decrepit garage. The midnight drone of immense harvesters tirelessly circling the farm house. A dormitory above the garage overflowing with pubescent teenage boys in their perpetually damp...

The whole New Zealand experience locks down a simple truth : Humans are wee little cocky ass pantywaists. What kind of idiot fucks are we to presume our tyranny over Mother-Earth? Carelessly polluting, eroding, mining, draining, paving, killing. Papatuanuku will squash us with a glance. She has pulled towering black mountains from the depths of the sea. She has yanked entire continents asunder. She has strewn billions of white-hot stars into the milky way, hurling them across distances our tiny crazy brains cannot comprehend. She reigns at the speed of light; dominates with infinite time. Our entire species is lost in the trace of a single teardrop. Moss and ferns and milky white ice will cover our selfish dead bodies, strewn over the poisoned planet we begat.

We're freshly back from Middle Earth. Land of the Kiwi. In sum, I have never seen anything like it.

After a frenzy of wild activity, I shut my office door and whisked myself away for a two week vacation. Right before I took off, I went into our corporate fridge to empty out my motley assortment of foodstuffs. Unthinkingly, I carried a container of take-out fish back to my office. I tossed it out in the garbage can under my desk. Do you think it will still be there when I get back?

Sethie was a lifty at Mount Baker back in his long-hair days. He and his ski-rat black-diamond daredevil amigos usually rigged out in mismatched skis and duct-taped jackets. It is a universal truth. The more decrepit your equipment looks, the cooler it is when you get out there and show 'em how it's done in prime time. So same goes for backpacking. Sethie was kerkuffled that Tom and I would destroy the family reputation if we showed up at the trailhead with the price tags hanging off our spanking new backpacks and hiking boots. Especially if we had no game. Which is likely since I haven't been backpacking since maybe 1984 and Tom is a nubile camping virgin. Sethie advocated leaving our new gear out in the rain or maybe seeking out mud. Aside from that topline tip, he also recommended: Hanging twist ties off various clips on the backpack exterior. Sethie says twist ties come in handy on the trail, plus they make you look like you know what you're doing. Line all your stu...