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2007 July August Summer Travel Issue

Metabolize Me

Carbs are essential for sports performance, but women should take care When he’s not in the lab, Gareth Wallis can be found on the rugby field. The Integrative Biology Department postdoctoral fellow has learned from experience that top conditioning is essential for surviving the fast tempo and brutal hits of Bay Area club rugby. Off the […]

Image source: Shebangdesign.com

Sweet Little Liars

Teens deceive parents on “moral” grounds Fatima didn’t want to deceive her parents but knew if she told them she’d be dancing with boys that night, she’d be in trouble. So the 17-year-old chose her words carefully, not exactly lying but not telling the whole truth, either. She explains via email, “Not every guy I meet […]

Glad You Asked

Q: Why do you hear the sound of the ocean when you hold a seashell to your ear?—Nicola Ward, San Francisco A: This “sounds” like an answer: Just cup your hand in front of your ear to expand its size and you will hear the same thing—although it probably won’t be as loud. A drinking […]

Image source: Sarah Pollock

My Norwegian Wood

“My first winter here had become something of a challenge to see if I could acclimate myself, and perhaps better understand the man I have married.” My husband, daughter, and I had been living in southern Norway for several weeks—since mid-February—when the sun emerged for the first time. Two weeks of record-breaking snowstorms had, overnight, begun […]

Image source: Diego Giudice/Archivolatino/Redux

The Island Of Waiting

With or without Castro, Cuba’s revolt won’t stop. Ronald Reagan was preparing an invasion that was going to rescue the whole island next week. Fidel was about to be airlifted to a new home in Miami, the guest of his secret patrons and supporters, the U.S. government. The soldiers were already lining up for Bay of […]

Inheriting Mexico

Following migrants deep into Chiapas, the author discovers the ghost of her Jewish abuelito. We were abusing our little Mexican rental car by clattering vigorously up a potholed road in southern Chiapas, where somebody had told us to get breakfast at a place called the Casa Grande. Around us stretched the coffee plantations, which were deep […]

What a Time It Was, It Was a Time

Forty years later, the Summer of Love’s unrequited romance. It seems like hundreds of years and it also seems like not too much time at all,” Jerry Garcia was saying in 1976. He was reminiscing about the Summer of Love, the evanescent phenomenon that swept the Bay Area a decade before. It took shape, certainly, in […]

Image source: Martine Franck/Magnum

The Road Finally Taken

Chile recalls the life I thought I wanted. I once imagined starting my life as a world traveler in Chile. I was in college then. Vietnam was climaxing beyond my comprehension—so much bigger than I was, a girl without brothers. It was a time of portentous possibilities in Latin America, both good and horrific, and I wanted […]