Adam Gardner

Doesn't that name just rollll off the tongue? Adam, aDaM, ADAM, adam, aDam, adAm...

I'd like to take this opportunity tonight to respond to an email that I received from Mr. Gardner concerning my blogging habits - apparently there is a problem with the frequency with which I post on my blog.

Mr. Gardner,

If I may, I would like to start off by saying that I enjoyed your blog this summer. It was well-written, witty, and contributed to making my day not as boring as it could have been, all while while providing an insight into major league sports - specifically baseball, the quintessential American sport after lacrosse - that the typical sports fan simply can not hope to ever achieve from a lifetime of ESPN servitude. For that I commend you.

Now, where you have left off, I have picked up. I do not try to write well-written posts, nor witty ones. My goal is to brighten the occasional day for the millions of readers out there with eye-catching photos, not forcing, but enticing the viewer to question his or her place in life, and what impact they have had on the world outside of their immediate community of family and friends. While Adam may have done this with Pomona words and baseball (again, well done Adam), I attempt this feat with a camera phone and crappy work laptop (and more often than not a digital Canon Rebel XT with Sigma DC 18-125mm zoom lens). Who is the better man, eh? Who is more erudite, eh?

Ok, I'm tired of trying to be 'whitty' as Mr. Froman would say, so I'm just going to post some photos of my recent trip to Sanaa, the well-known capital city of Yemen (plus, I know that Adam's response to this will far surpass anything that I have in my verbal repertoire, so I'm just going to shut up). Adam, I will do my best to post more often, though I'm doing a lot of travelling these days and the internet in some of these places in Mesopotamia aren't quite the same as the broadband experience we've gotten used to in the West.


For those of you that didn't take geography in school, Yemen is on the south-eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, next to Saudi Arabia and Oman (Dubai is to the northeast, across the Persian Gulf from Iran and next to the Straight of Hormuz). Here's a map for y'all to take a gander at:


Pretty cool region, isn't it? So far I've been to the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, and Qatar. Next on the list is probably Bahrain, and then Saudi, and who knows after that (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are up to bat sometime soon too).

Yemen was an intriguing place, first off due to the fears I've heard people express about traveling in the country. I found it safe, without any fear of harm or kidnapping (a few French tourists have been guest-napped, as they call it, to use as collateral in securing government concessions in some of the unruly areas). I'll write more about the city later, but here's my last one for now, standing on top of the old city gate, with the old city behind me, while chewing qat (this is also the same vantage point that the World Bank uses in their Yemen pic).