Kirk Kittell

The sun had set when I saw someone walking up the canyon along the remains of the old road to Panamint. It wasn't dark enough for artificial light, but it was getting close. I was on the front porch, cooking dinner. I was not expecting visitors—not up there, no, not in that corner of the world.

(Charlie Manson's last hideout, where he was captured in 1969, is in the mountains just a few miles south of Panamint. Helter Skelter, indeed.)

We were somewhere around Machell Hollow on the edge of the forest when the pain began to take hold.

(Shortcut to just sponsoring.)

Hello, friends. In my spare time, I volunteer as a tutor at 826 Boston. They're a wonderful group. Primarily they support students in learning to write--an important adjunct to both reading and understanding--but as the resident engineer (nominally) I also help tutor in physics. And Spanish.

Last Saturday, I took the train down to Boston to catch the Naked Cabaret.

Yes, now I've got your attention...

Some people just never question it

Well, not totally naked, but... Harvard Book Store hosted Chris McDougall, author of one of my favorite books, Born to Run, and a cast of crazy people [1] at the Boston Public Library to talk about barefoot running. These people are nuts--and good thing, too. Normal people aren't interesting to talk about.

A few astute observers noted: hey, wasn't I supposed to return next week? Indeed. The plan was changed a little, and I'm already home. Let me tell you a story.

The Jaipur Half Marathon... I shouldn't have run it. But here I am, three weeks later, and the bastard hasn't killed me yet so I'm going to post this before the Auroville Marathon finishes me off.

One of the going away activities from my 2005 X PRIZE internship in the Mojave Desert, California, was a chance to eat lunch with Burt Rutan, Mike Melvill, and a few of the other rocket men of the Scaled Composities SpaceShipOne team. Midway through lunch, a gray-bearded man came in. He had been cycling across the desert, at midday in May, and wanted to show Burt his invention, a remarkable thermal material that could help the boys in Kuwait. ("Or Iraq," Burt corrected.) It was aluminum foil. He also had an older invention: Braille candy. ("You can taste the colors.")

The 2011 Jaipur Literature Festival is over. Walking past the jampacked final panel--the standing easily outnumbering the seated 3-to-1--with Vikram Seth, under the colored banners, and through the gate of Diggi Palace a final time, I was a little melancholic. What next?

Day 2 of the Jaipur Literature Festival was slammed. Packed. Jammed. If you wanted to get your Indian experience of moving in colossal crowds, well, there you were. I'm not sure what made Day 2 so much more dense. People coming for the party that the festival is? Loads of schoolkids? I don't know. The days of hosting the festival at Diggi Palace are numbered. All four speaking venues were overflowing.

Day 1 of the Jaipur Literature Festival (http://www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org) is over. It was my first ever day at the festival, and I had an enormously good time. Thanks to Supriya for suggesting it.