Rental car return

After 1,023 kilometres on the roads of California (and more than a couple stops at Chipotle), it was finally time to return our Genesis G70 to Hertz. As Hyundai’s premium brand, the white Genesis was a pleasure to drive on the mad highways of L.A., but slightly less suited to our desert adventures. In any case, we made it back without a scratch, and that is what counts at the end of the day.

Now checked in with Lufthansa to Munich, I wonder whether snow will await on the other side, as it did twenty years ago when my flight from Hong Kong landed in Bavaria. After the upgrade bonanza on the way over, I am still happy that Lufthansa accepted my upgrade bid to Premium Economy, which I think will be more than enough on the spiffy new Airbus A350-900.

3x San Diego

Washboarded

Driving along dirt roads into Cleveland National Forest, Johanna and I had ample reason to research the phenomenon known as “washboarding”: the series of regular transverse ripples that develop on unpaved roads and make them resemble laundry washboards. With squirrels constantly crossing the road and breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains, taking it slow was, in any case, the right approach.

Once at the trailhead, we started our hike down to Three Sisters Falls, which still had plenty of water after the winter rains. We saw lots of lizards, but the rattlesnakes, despite plenty of warning signs, were luckily nowhere to be seen. With a few other hikers around, we skipped a swim in the ponds, which was probably wise given the existence of brain-eating amoebae and other entertaining microorganisms in California’s waterways, though the risk, in all fairness, is extremely low.

As so many times before, California simply blows one’s mind with its natural scenery and wildlife. Leaving the mountains behind, we drove down to La Jolla for some beach time, which almost felt cruel after reading all the weather reports from Sweden. Jumping into the Pacific, we then finished the day, all salty, at our motel in Point Loma.

Ranchita

With Guy Clark singing “If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway / Without gettin’ killed or caught”, we checked out of The Fig and followed the I-10 into the Inland Empire. Stopping for an Impossible Burger and one more iced americano somewhere south of Riverside, the dizzying midday heat made the scene feel picture-perfect as the coastal mountains gave way to shrubland and then the salt flats of Borrego Springs.

Now in our A-frame house, waiting for the stars to come out, this trip has already exceeded our wildest expectations. With two more days left to explore Southern California, and with storm “Dave” ravaging southern Sweden, it has been worth every dollar, even if it means instant noodles for the rest of the month.

Breakfast at the Griffith Observatory

Hotel Figueroa

Colloquially known as The Fig, Hotel Figueroa first opened in 1926 as a space for professional women travelling alone. With its Mediterranean Revival architecture, I instantly fell in love with it when I discovered it a few months ago.

Staying for two nights on the twelfth floor, the hotel has truly been an oasis here in downtown LA. While the nightly rate itself was surprisingly affordable, the now familiar trend of adding arbitrary “resort fees” and prohibitive parking charges makes it less of a steal, to put it mildly. In any case, it was absolutely lovely to go for a refreshing swim in the saltwater pool after yesterday’s race, followed by a few more laps this morning under the fig tree.

Sky Duster

Jumping up at 3:30 a.m., Johanna and I hit the I-5 south, leaving the city behind as we made for the mountains and our long-awaited trail race. Unlike in 2023, when I ran the 50k Diablo Trails outside San Francisco, today’s race was only 27 kilometres, which felt more than enough as we drove into the imposing Silverado Canyon.

Running into the sunrise, we climbed “The Motorway” up to Bedford Peak which, at 3,760 ft, offered expansive views across Los Angeles, with the Santa Monica Pier clearly visible in one direction and the Inland Empire in the other. Just as on Gran Canaria, uphill running proved to be my true strength, and I soon found myself in the leading pack. With aid stations every five kilometres, the race felt superbly organized and, with the sun rising higher and higher, I needed every centilitre of water I could get.

Passing the half marathon mark in 2 hours and 35 minutes, I still felt strong, but the last fifth of the race turned into a true quad-buster, with hundreds of metres of descent for every kilometre. Ultimately, finishing fourth among the men, I was very happy with my performance, even if I was an unbelievable forty minutes behind the winner and twenty minutes off the podium.

Having forgotten my phone in the car, I was grateful that Johanna stopped to take photos along the course. Sadly, she did not happen to cross paths with the grey fox I had the good fortune to say hello to. Once we had both finished, we were shuttled back to our car in an iconic green 1974 Toyota Land Cruiser and, in no time at all, were back at Hotel Figueroa for a Sky Duster West Coast IPA by the pool.

WPSA 2026

After a history of epic highs and lows, WPSA 2026 is off to a fantastic start as our morning panel on “Green thinking: Ideologies and Environmental Political Thought” went really well. Overlooking the Pacific from the 32nd floor of the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, I presented the chapter that Jon and I started drafting last summer when I was in Stockholm. Briefly mentioning nuclear energy in my presentation, it was fascinating to see how many in the audience were nodding along, and how fundamentally the discourse has shifted in favour of a more science-based approach.

Then, determined to defeat the jet lag monster head-on, I traded the conference lunch for kayaking with Johanna and dozens of sea lions in Mission Bay. With pelicans wheeling overhead, I got a lot of exposure to our nearest star, so I suspect I will look plenty guilty of mischief at tomorrow’s panel, where I will be presenting my aviation article.

Twice

Just as I had more or less given up on airline status, and with my Star Alliance Gold with Turkish Airlines about to expire later this year, I was upgraded not only once, but twice in the same day. Moments after I published my post from the lounge in Frankfurt, Johanna and I were given complimentary upgrades all the way to business class for our nine-hour flight to Chicago.

Considering that we bought these basic economy tickets for 4,500 SEK roundtrip and had only bid a couple of hundred euros to upgrade to Premium Economy, the value was obviously exceptional, briefly making me reconsider the wisdom of jumping off that infamous hamster wheel.

Anyway, walking up the stairs to the upper deck of the Queen of the Skies, for the third time in my life, we were treated to nuts and Larson Le Black Reserve champagne as this majestic aircraft prepared for its Atlantic crossing. Flying above the North Sea, the main service began with Grüner Veltliner “Hund” from Niederösterreich and tuna tataki, followed by halibut and prawn in shellfish sauce, before ending with cheese and port, as tradition has it.

After turning my seat into a bed, I fell asleep somewhere south of Iceland, only to wake up above Greenland as my internal body clock once again expressed its strong dislike for daytime naps. Ordering a cup of black coffee, I decided to turn my inability to sleep into some last-minute conference preparations, and with a couple of hours left until Chicago, I could not be more excited for the adventure ahead.

Der stille Amerikaner

Just as in Locarno, the idealism and foregone hopes of the past continue to pull me. I find myself returning to The Quiet American, fittingly in German translation, on the upper deck of Lufthansa’s Boeing 747-8 “Schleswig-Holstein”, as we leave Europe behind.

Torbjörn Elensky, writing in Svenska Dagbladet, put it well: in Greene’s novel, the old empire’s man is the British cynic – worn down, clear-eyed – while the new empire sends Pyle: Harvard-educated, crew-cut, catastrophically sincere. Pyle does not cause harm despite his good intentions. He causes it because of them. He is, as Elensky notes, the inverse of Mephistopheles: where Goethe’s devil does good through the evil he pursues, Pyle does evil through the good he strives for.

What reads differently now than it did in 1955 – is the endpoint of that trajectory.

A couple of weeks ago, Fareed Zakaria reminded his viewers of the Iraqi Revolt of 1920 – how an overextended Britain spent the equivalent of its entire education budget fighting a peripheral war, losing a thousand soldiers, to little long-term gain. Empires rarely fall in a single dramatic moment; more often, they dissipate through a long series of misallocated priorities – each perhaps defensible in isolation, each compounding the last. What is lost is not only blood and treasure, but the futures deferred – the social investments never made.

The pattern feels familiar now, as Trump’s “little excursion” into Iran unfolds and the familiar arguments circulate. What is striking is that these arguments are no longer even dressed in Pyle’s language. There is no talk of a mission, no third force, no bright theory imported from a think tank. What has replaced the quiet American’s idealism is something Fowler, Greene’s narrator, might not have anticipated: war as entertainment, or even as rambling absurdity, with the White House publishing endless memes inspired by Call of Duty and Gladiator while promising different speculative timelines to satisfy the stock market.

Greene’s novel ends before Pyle fully understands what he has done. The reader understands before he does. Perhaps that is the most unsettling thing about rereading it now, flying west, the continent shrinking behind us: the sense that we are no longer at the beginning of the story, but that we may already be well past the point where understanding changes anything at all.