Wildlife Refuge

That works only until the political situation in the Middle East gets all screwed up, or an oil tanker runs aground on a wildlife refuge. In the same way, it behooves wired people to know a few things about wires - how they work, where they lie, who owns them, and what sorts of business deals and political machinations bring them into being. In the hopes of learning more about the modern business of really, really long wires, we spent much of the summer of 1996 in pursuits such as: being arrested by toothless, shotgun-toting Egyptian cops; getting pushed around by a drunken smuggler queen on a Thai train; vaulting over rustic gates to take emergency shits in isolated fields; being kept awake by groovy Eurotrash backpackers singing songs; blowing Saharan dust out of cameras; scraping equatorial mold out of fountain pens; stuffing faded banknotes into the palms of Egyptian service-industry professionals; trying to persuade non-English-speaking taxi drivers that we really did want to visit the beach even though it was pouring rain; and laundering clothes by showering in them ...»