After a decade of paying
dues for the name, LaughLane.com has begun to grow!
These days my life has many
lanes in many directions but the Laugh Lane weaves through all of them.
Whichever country I’m in, everyone smiles in the same language. A sense of
humor is necessary for sanity while traveling, but my sense of adventure and
compassion is why I’m in Asia. Sometimes I’m a tourist, but most days I just live
here, wherever here happens to be. Several stories are in the works, but
experiencing today keeps getting in the way of recording yesterday!
NEW!!!
Life in
the Laugh Lane: The Column
Personal goal: write Life in the Laugh Lane - The
Book. Now I have the deadlines to do it if I have
discipline to match. One chapter per week, 52 per year makes
one book. Follow its progression and my mental regressions
weekly in the Column section online at Chiangmai Mail. Here’s the
latest one and
links to the rest.
Only in Thailand. I can’t remember all that
happened, no matter how hard I try…
the exact opposite of my home state of North Dakota where
parties were so dull
I can’t forget them, no matter how hard I try.
NEW!!
Life in the Laugh Lane
Columns They Would Not Print!
Danger Area! Religion or politics! You have to push the envelope for humor while still
keeping an eye on the audience. Chiangmai Mail is a “family
newspaper.” I expect more to
come, but so far they’ve
only rejected one for timing reasons and one for religious
reasons:
Merry Buddhamas!
It gets confusing when people mingle, cultures blend and messages mix. Friends visiting a village in the hills asked about their beliefs. Their host said, “We worship Jesus,” and to verify his devotion, led my friends into the temple/church/sacred space/club house/whatever. Above the animist icons and Buddha statues hung a large, framed photo of the pope.
NEW!!
Chiangmai
Mail Newspaper: Local Personality
This is a fun article written by a true renaissance man
Dr. Iain Corness: an official newspaper editor, writer and
professional photographer who writes the medical column
The Doctor’s Consultation, the motoring racing 4-wheel
whatever column
Auto Mania, the restaurant review
column (alias Miss Terry Diner) and the Local Personality
column every week. I don’t think he sleeps. Sleep writing?
This was a man who
had to be practically nailed down
before I could get him to stay still long enough to talk
through some subjects.
Bike Heaven or
Hell?
You can’t imagine the traffic in Vietnam if you picture
anything you’ve ever seen in the USA. Downtown Manhattan is calm in
comparison. The Midwest is motionless.
Bike, moped, motorbike, scooter, motorcycle, whatever.
If it has
tires, engine and a horn, it's road-ready.
Updated! Ecstasy to
Catastrophe (Good Morning Chiangmai
News)
Two years ago today I wasn’t sure
if I’d live two more minutes. Who’d have thought I’d be on the cover of a
magazine in Thailand, writing a feature series of articles about that
experience and touring the country on a ZX-10 motorcycle? (Don’t worry.
I’m not writing while riding the bike.) The articles are in English
and Thai!
(No, I didn’t translate the English, but I’m pretty good at ordering food,
gently declining to buy flowers from hill tribe ladies and understanding
directions to the toilet.)
It’s a seriously edited version of the entire story with much of the seriousness edited out: the articles I always imagined writing for the public, unlike those written for family and friends. Part One [ English ] [ Thai ] and Part Two [ English ] [ Thai ] and Part Three [ English ] [ Thai ].
Why
Chiangmai? (Good Morning Chiangmai News)
One
night while playing music at The Hug Restaurant
in Chiangmai, the sound of the ivories drifted next door to The Writers
Club. Bob the Owner brought over David the Editor and soon an article was
in the works, in the magazine and on the web. Read the words to one of my
new songs “Ain’t It Grand in Northern
Thailand.” Better yet, come over and
hear it live. (Article in English or in
Thai)
I love Chiangmai’s blend of local and international flavors. Tall, sturdy, tank-topped, Viking girls with backpacks the size of water buffalo, but weighing a bit more. (The backpack, not the girls. Well, maybe.) Timeless, smiling, smooth-skinned Thais at the train station. (“Sawadee. I’m 105. I come to get my grandmother.”)
Update is in the
works!! Give and
Live: a nonprofit corporation
The latest goal of the Laugh Lane is to help
less fortunate folks in Asia with money raised in America:
from private donations, from grants, from live concerts,
from future sales of a photo/story book this web site has
inspired. Lots has been going on and there will be some fun
things to buy in a couple of days.
To love just means to
give
Give all you can if you really want to live.
Asian Oral Adventures
Entertainment for a meal is often reading about all the menu items I don’t dare order. I had no idea there were so many things I didn’t eat until I got to Asia, mainly because I had never really considered certain things could be food. Charred Rice with Fried Chest was in the same category as a fire hydrant.
In Asia we eat anything with four
legs except a table
and anything that flies except an airplane.
Chiang
Mai: The Thai That Binds
For years I’ve had an elusive goal: I want to live where I would
vacation. Instead of planning, organizing and stressing for a couple weeks
traveling to the relaxed beauty, why not just live there, where it’s
right around me everyday? The beauty is here. I would vacation here. Why
not live here?
By
morning I was smitten. I wasn’t visiting anymore. It
was crystal clear that I live here.
I headed back home to Chiang Mai.
One Day on the Delta
Tour options on the road are endless. You can spend a few dollars and tromp around in
a gigantic gaggle of tourists,
simultaneously attracting attention and driving the local culture away. My
maiden Asian tour had 16 people: great scenery, all friendly
folks, a few soul mates.
Our boatswain is a lean, energetic, Tom-girl woman with a smile that leaps off her face into your heart. Her name is Fun and so is she.
Motorcycle Lifecycle: Chapter One
Some moments change your life forever. Some are terror. Some are joy.
They’re all here. From the best parts of my life to the worst, this story
chronicles events that set my current journey in motion.
It is a perfect afternoon. Cotton ball clouds cruise the Carolina Blue sky.
Crape myrtle blooms shout purple, pink and white along the road.
The curves widen as the country gives way
to the city of Winston-Salem ahead. All is good.
Ecstasy to catastrophe instantaneously.
Motorcycle Lifecycle: Chapter
Two
Healing certainly takes time but there was definite fun along the way.
Sinister things that go crunch in the night in the bedroom. The runaway
handicapped sticker. Black toenails at a North Carolina baseball game. And
in the Pathetic Lane, a day in court with hit-and-runner Julie and the
large guards that almost didn’t let me in..
The guards discover my Swiss army knife in my fanny pack. One security officer, who looks like an official taster for every batch of Krispy Kremes coming out of Winston, yes, he was big, soft and round with a hole in the center where his brain wasn’t, says, “Sir, we can’t allow you beyond here with this knife. You’ll have to leave it outside.” I say, “But it took me three years to get here from the car. The trial will be over and you’ll all have retired by the time I get back.”