Off The Beaten Track: Karsten Horne and the Emerald Nuts at Midnight

Karsten and Chelsea

Our guest this week is Karsten Horne, king of adventure. Traveling has been in Karsten’s veins from a young age. He followed the overland trail to Europe with his parents then backpacked solo through South America as a teenager. Karsten runs the highly successful Reho Travel in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, catering to a mostly corporate clientele. He is currently working on expanding the company’s retail offerings with a new brand and through rehope sponsors those less fortunate. He manages to combine his love of writing and photography with his travel enterprises, having visited 75 countries and finding inspiration on every journey.

We start sprinting down the hill toward the noise and the lights, as we get closer chanting starts. 30, 29, 28. We push our way through the crowd and as we leap the fence, it gets down to 3, 2, 1. We cross the start line amidst the deafening roar of fireworks, people screaming and hugging, and get pushed in a sea of runners that are all heading into the darkness. I look across at Chelsea and yell out, “Wow, imagine a night Australian Rules Football Grand Final” just as a massive round of fireworks illuminates the sky.

The pace is fast, I mean, seriously fast. Last time I ran like this I was being chased by a security guard at Western Oval (the home of my beloved football team, the Bulldogs). I still feel bad about that as I think he tore a hamstring. It was worth it though, especially when you look closely at the pictures of Doug Hawkins* being carried off on his last game and you see my hand on his arse. 

For the first mile I stay with the group and am really proud of myself. Given it comprises of Chelsea (who has been secretly training for this with daily crossings of Brooklyn Bridge), her marathon running, wholefood eating friends and me, the old man. Central Park at this time of the year is so beautiful, the air is clear and crisp and the path is lined ten deep with well-wishers. Every chance I get I divert off my line and put up a high five. I feel like king of the world, dressed in several layers of fancy running gear proudly topped off by my Bulldog’s jumper, which always keeps me one step ahead of the fashion police. Several times my mind drifts off and I imagine what would happen if I accidently turned off the path and in the morning the team from CSI New York discover yet another frozen bundle in Central Park. Or have visions of Hugh Jackman on a horse leaping across the path in front of me.

As I reach the half way mark I start to question what I am doing here. Three hours ago I was comfortably locked away in a pen at Broadway and 51^st St with a million of my closest friends ready to welcome in the New Year by watching the ball drop in the traditional style. It was quite simple really; you stop drinking liquid around midday, stock your pockets with energy snacks and wait and wait in the sub zero temperatures. A few hours in we discovered that although we could see Times Square way off in the distance, there was no sound. That is correct—over 1,000,000 people are prepared to stand around for nine hours with no entertainment. What? I decided to take on the role of entertainment coordinator by playing and singing along to We Will Never Get Back Together on the iPhone, which amused the crowd for about 30 seconds. Especially the way I sang “I hate you, we break up, you call me, I love you” with such conviction. Some Kiwi’s then donated Better Be Home Soon which got us all huggy but I knew it was over when a bunch of Koreans started playing Psy’s lesser-known works. After climbing the world’s largest sand dune and completing the Inca Trail for recent New Year’s Eve celebrations, New York was threatening to become a real flop.

Times Square way off in the distance

Then I remembered Chelsea’s invitation to join her on the Emerald Nuts Midnight Run in Central Park. “It’s a really easy run just for fun, not competitive at all” were her exact words. I looked at my watch and had just enough time to get across town register and line up at Strawberry Fields for the start. I managed to register as runner number 5281 only minutes before closing but almost didn’t make it to the start when I got caught on a downtown train and emerged in the middle of a pen at 48^th St, 20 blocks in the wrong direction. One of New York’s finest took one look at my outfit, wished me luck and waved me through the barriers and I ran the 20 blocks, dodging strange looks and weaving between drunk partygoers in 2013 glasses and giant Nivea Uncle Sam hats. Hardly the right preparation for a run with my mind racing—torn between finding my way and wondering what giant furry hats have to do with skin care.

Approaching the half way mark of the run, I’m really starting to struggle. In the first mile I feel like I’m passing people but the trend is reversing and I know I’m in trouble when I get passed by a smurf who looks to be doing it easy. It was hard to tell though as his expression never changed. He ignored me as I yelled out at him to slow down, as it was only a fun run! Clearly nobody told the smurf! I pull over for a breather at the drink station, plug some music in and resolve to catch the smurf. Ahead I see him pause at the cider stand and disappear around the next bend.

In plugging in the music I’ve somehow selected my daughter’s trash metal mix and some idiots screaming at me. Determined not to stop again I remember back to the time I wandered into the Panamanian President’s compound and was chased by his machine gun toting bodyguard down a jungle path, the same screaming only in Spanish. No Karsten, you need to relax, get in the moment. Think of something positive, like Katie Holmes smiling at you yesterday, now that was a New York moment.

The clock says 00:30, that means I’ve been running for nearly half an hour. Can’t be far now. I remember reading the course notes and noticed that most of the last mile is downhill so I pick up the pace and ahead of me notice that the smurf has stopped for a rest. I attempt to high five him but clip the back of his head by mistake. Poor thing, he looks stuffed. The last few hundred yards seem to go on forever, my music’s gone instrumental, spectators are yelling some thing out that sounds like a marketing slogan. I think it was “Every person counts” and I try to high five anything that is not moving but don’t connect once. In the final straight I look for someone holding a flag, anyone would do just like in the movies—so I can cross the line holding it above my head but to no avail, instead I raise my arms which won’t go above my shoulders and end up looking like a goose.

I look up my time is 39:40 and look behind me to see the smurf shuffling down the hill with Santa Claus, Superman, and Catwoman. At least he is amongst friends.

Karsten with Seth Godin

Somebody thrusts a bagel, an apple, and a bag of nuts in my direction and that’s it. All over, no fanfare. Yeah…um…that was fun!

24 Hours later, I sat in front of a Seth Godin lecture and this is what he said:

“Your art is vitally important, and what makes it art is that it is personal, important and fraught with the whiff of failure. This is precisely why it's scarce and thus valuable—it's difficult to stand up and own it and say, "Here, I made this.”

This is my art.

4 Miles

40 Minutes

48 Years of preparation

* Doug Hawkins is a famous Australian Rules Football player

Barbie Wears a Chador

Fast food restaurant on Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran

By Heidi Noroozy

When I tell people I visit Iran every other year or so, two questions always crop up: “But don’t they hate Americans?” and “Do you tell people you’re Canadian?” My stock response: “If I were Canadian, I’d tell them I was American.” It’s not that Iranians have anything against Canadians. The fact is, to paraphrase Sally Field, they really, really like Americans.

In the 1970s, my Tehran-born husband spent much of his free time watching Farsi-dubbed John Wayne films at the local movie theater and Batman cartoons on TV. To this day, his dad is hooked on James Bond, especially the older versions with Sean Connery in the title role. And my mother-in-law will happily spend an idle afternoon giggling over I Love Lucy reruns. In the old days, the shah of Iran was America’s best buddy in the Middle East; Americans and their culture were everywhere.

You might think that all these cultural influences vanished after 1979, when the Islamic Revolution put an end to the monarchy. You’d be wrong. From the wide-eyed stares I get strolling down the street in Tehran, it’s clear that Americans like me have become a rare, endangered species. But we’ve left more behind than just a ransacked embassy.

You won’t find a McDonalds or Starbucks on every street corner, but the bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite are the “real thing.” They’re bottled under license in a plant in Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran. And if I get homesick for a burger and fries, my choices are nearly endless.

One of the most popular fast-food chains is Superstar, which is best described as Carl’s Jr. meets Pizza Hut. The logo even looks suspiciously like the American burger joint’s shooting star. Inside, you order your hamburgers, fries, and very cheesy pizzas at a counter, choosing menu selections from a neon sign on the wall (in Farsi, of course). You give your orders to a team of young servers in blue and yellow uniforms, complete with baseball caps.

I rarely get fast food cravings, though, even here at home. So in Tehran you’re more likely to find me at the Blue Duck, a restaurant in the upscale Tandis Center that towers above Tajrish Square. On weekends (Thursday and Friday in the Islamic Republic), they serve an east-meets-west brunch buffet, where Iranian adasi (lentil soup) and aash (a bean, grain, and herb stew) share space with American pancakes, waffles, eggs, and hash browns. The syrup is made from dates rather than maple, but the man with the spatula at the end of the counter is happy to cook you a French omelet to order.

Food isn’t the only American influence in Iran these days. Hollywood movies and TV shows are readily available, everything from Midnight in Paris to The Simpsons. Most of these are pirated and sold under the table (often quite openly on the street—just roll down your window while stuck in traffic and a black market vendor is sure to sidle up to your car). One winter trip to Iran, I happened to mention that we’d be returning home just in time for Oscar night. The next day, a relative brought over a DVD of every movie that had been nominated that year. Knowing that most of the films hadn’t even hit video yet in the States, I nevertheless watched them all—a guilty pleasure.

In the 10 years that I’ve been visiting Iran, I’ve watched the American (and other western) influences grow. On my first trip, a decent cup of coffee was rare in tea-sipping Iran. If I ordered one in a restaurant, chances were I’d get a cup of hot water and an orange packet of Nescafe. Now you can buy an excellent espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, or even a café americaine, at one of the many coffee bars that have sprung up around town.

Ad for the iPad 3 in Velanjak, Tehran

On our latest trip to Iran last April and May, I noticed a new trend: the Apple brand is everywhere, even the iPad 3, which had been released in the States only a month earlier. And is there anyone in Tehran not carrying an iPhone? Although the United States bans these products for export to Iran under the recently imposed sanctions, once they reach the Islamic Republic, they are sold legally.

The Iranian authorities are not overjoyed by these trends. Earlier this year, police closed down shops selling Barbie dolls, claiming that they were a corrupting western influence with their skimpy clothes and brash makeup. Instead, authorities introduced an Islamic version: twin dolls named Dara and Sara, who were dressed much more modestly than the Barbies (hold the lipstick). The new dolls didn’t exactly fly off the shelves.

I don’t think these western influences are going to go away. Not in the age of satellite TV and the Internet. Still, I’m curious to see what new trends will surprise me on my next trip to Iran.