I watched the Superbowl tonight, for the first time since I was a kid. Not out of snobbishness, it's just that I didn't grow up in a football house. My mother, who has little patience for the English language, could never get past the name or the incessant time-outs. "They don't kick it with their foot, so why is it called 'foot' 'ball'? And what are they doing, hitting that man like that? They should call it 'pile of meat'".

The last time I watched a Superbowl was in the fifth grade, when I volunteered to write the game up for the school paper. It was probably a reckless thing to do, since I had no understanding or interest in the rules, and had to deduce everything from empirical observation. I guess the allure of seeing my name in print was too much to resist (now I have the Web), so I plonked myself down for almost an entire quarter.

Football is hard going when you are ten and can't drink beer, and have no one around to explain things to you. I made it through about thirty minutes (the game clock said seven), and then went back to reading about the Loch Ness Monster. I was a big fan of the Loch Ness Monster, much more than of football. I made sure to catch the news before bed to find out the score, and the next day submitted a jaunty paragraph of historical fiction, describing the heart-stopping excitement of the contest. I didn't know how to describe plays or use words like 'down' and 'conversion', so I went with more of a human-interest angle (roar of the crowd, nail-biting suspense) and spent some time describing the halftime show. The teacher in charge of the school paper loved it, which taught me an unfortunate and extremely useful lesson about the role of BS in student writing. Soon I was falsifying science fair projects and writing book reports about imaginary books. Now I write on the Internet.

I got to watch tonight's game all the way through, eating platters of nachos and listening to an increasingly incoherent John Madden trying to fill dead air as the Oakland team sank deeper and deeper into the mire. Whatever medication John Madden is on needs to be given to him at a higher dosage, because it wears off by the third quarter and he begins to report from a dimension beyond time and space. Al Michaels, the other sportscaster, held a pen in his hand for much of the game, and you could tell how bad things were by how he played with it as Madden talked. By the fourth quarter he had that thing spinning like a propeller.

The musical acts were fun to watch, even if the actual game itself wasn't (Oakland, dammit, what happened?) Celine Dion started things off with a pre-game "God Bless America", and as she hit her final note, the camera pulled back to reveal a huge wall of fireworks engulfing the stage. For one blissful moment I thought Celine Dion had blown herself up, in a kind of masterful finale. Then I saw the overflying fighter jets, and thought it might be another affaire canadienne, thanks to our fighter pilots and their little red pep pills. But when the smoke cleared, she was still standing right there, unscathed as the Terminator, flapping her eyelashes at the crowd.

They had Shania Twain on during the halftime show. She came out dressed in a Barbarella outfit, clearly intending to prove that no other Canadian android could match her, fiery explosions or no. Her robotic masters actually had her segue from a tired old hit into a new song form her album, "Up!", medley style, finessing the rule about one song per act in the halftime show, but they forgot to make her lip-synch. For her own finale, Shania climbed on a little crane platform and had herself lifted high above the crowd, which again raised my hopes that she might go out with a bang, and take some of her fans out with her. But if it happened, they didn't show it.

Thankfully, the next act on the stage was No Doubt, with the lovely Gwen Stefani, followed by a surprisingly spry Sting, looking young. Sting let Gwen sing along to a song he wrote back before he sucked. It undid a lot of the damage.

And the game itself? It was a real nail-biter, a classic for the ages. First one team had the ball, and then the other. You could hear the roar of the crowd, and the suspense kept you on the edge of your seat. Hell of a halftime show. You really should have seen it.

Our boat trip started from Chongqing after nightfall. The day-long tour of the city I described earlier ended in mild pandemonium on an embankment some two hundred yards from the river, a steep descent down a gravelly path to where a variety of riverboats floated off of a large pier. Our bus pulled up at the top of the slope and disgorged us all into the inevitable crowd of hawkers selling maps. If cartography is your thing, go straight to China. Mixed in with the map and Rolex crowd were wiry porters carrying big wooden dowels, yelling for the chance to sling our bags on down to the ship.

The boats were lit up and gorgeous down in the inky water. There were food stalls lined up along the pier, some of them quite extensive, and the cooking fires lit them with a devilish orange glow. The boats themselves were tricked out in neon and floodlights, reflecting in the murk and looking very cheerfuly seaworthy. There was all manner of bustle and commotion near the boats, but on the gravelly beach it was dark and quiet, and for a few minutes we crunched along in welcome silence. It was cool and still.

You can float down the Chang Jiang (more borrowed pictures) at any desired level of comfort. At the top of the top end are the foreigner-only custom liners, a gorgeous deluxe riverboat in the shape of a giant dragon, or one of several sleek wedding-cake cruise ships without even a hint of scary Asianness to it, an oasis of Western comfort for the terrified luxury traveller. A rung below are the Chinese luxury boats, with Astroturf sun decks and ornately lit dining rooms we would occasionally glimpse across the water through our own windows in the night. And at the bottom are the countless banana-curved coal and cargo barges, motoring upstream with a sooty crew and a wire hamper full of sooty vegetables out behind the crew quarters.

hors catégorie is the Soviet-built hydrofoil that would regularly zip pass us, going up and downriver both, shrouded in a cloud of mist. I think it was called the "Proton", but knowledgable third parties disagree.

Our own boat was in the middle-to-high category, modest but seaworthy, and so well stocked with kind people that it would be rude to try and find fault with its amenities. There were little decks at the bow and stern for watching the river, as well as a snack bar, restaurant, and a karaoke lounge upstairs. When you opened the front doors to go out and look at the river, there was a great wind tunnel effect all down the center corridor of the ship. The restaurant was Spartan but wonderful. I wish I had had the courage to enter the karaoke bar.

We missed the first event of the cruise, the five AM trip up to a landmark that was apparently worth getting up at five AM to see, and had to spend several anxious minutes explaining to the round-cheeked tour guide that we did not hold him to blame. There was this kind of ruckus whenever we missed a scheduled event - urgent explanations in sign language that we had missed a deadline, great helpless arm-wavings and apologetic smiles. We tried to convey, through our nuanced use of the word 'hao' (good), that we weren't going to call the embassy, and promised not to ignore future early-morning commotions, particularly when people stuck their heads in our cabin and yelled at us in Chinese to get up. We promised ourselves we wouldn't miss any more attractions.

All the rest of the day was spent in dutiful sightseeing, hopping off the boat to climb tall Taoist crags and wander through little villages, getting back on to float further downstream in the chil air. By the time night fell, and the boat pulled up to another spot, we had a hard time getting out of our bunks to go see. But the map said this was the White Emperor. It sounded important. My girlfriend could not endure the thought of more cold night air, but her brother and I decided it had to be done.

Bundled up, shivering, we hopped out onto the pier with the other Chinese passengers, many of whom seemed to have hit the rice wine pretty hard at dinner. Our guide was up front, waving his guide flag, and distributing tickets to everyone in the group. When he got to us, he held out the tickets, then rapidly pulled them back and shook his head. We didn't get it. He did it again. "How much?", the brother said, pulling out his wallet. More head shaking, then rapid Chinese. The guide Shanghaied a tall, affable man who had been with us on the original bus tour in Chongqing to be his translator. The man knew a very few words of English, and after listening to the guide for a bit, turned to us with an apologetic smile.

"This place," he said affably, "Not for foreign friend."

The guide confirmed this with vigorous nodding.

I was baffled and suddenly dying to find out what was being kept from us - the White Emperor! But the guide was adamant. We were not to go. Our translator friend seemed content to remain on the pier with us, along with some other people we recognized from the bus tour. He himself was a stately business type in his late forties, a big man in a good dark suit, chain-smoking brand-name cigarettes. He seemed to be in a great mood, a little bit tipsy and content with the day, perfectly happy not to trudge up to see the White Emperor. It was clear he wanted to make us feel better.

"This place", he said, gesturing up at the mountain. "This place very important in Chinese history. Chinese emperor [Emperor's Name] stay here. White Emperor. Very important for Chinese people. Not for foreign friend." His gaze took in the majestic peak, lit up in the night.

Off in the mists we could see the hints of a high wall, and hear the loud chatter of the group making its way up the mountain. The air was thick with history. Our companion waved his arms broadly as he spoke, trying to convey to us the vast importance of what lay before us, the glory of it all.

He pointed to his friends, who were chatting on the pier nearby. "You stay because you are foreign friend. My friends and I, we stay because there is very much Chinese history. My friends and I, we are not interested."

I liked this man very much.

For all my recent posts about China, I never actually wrote about the Three Gorges. Regular readers will remember that the Chinese government has built a gargantuan dam on the Chang Jiang river, which means that the spectacular gorges behind it will soon be mostly underwater. You're still not out of luck if you fancy a river cruise - it will take a good ten years to raise the water level by nearly 400 feet. Still, the reservoir is filling.

The gorges are spectacular. I had wanted to wait until I had some photos to post, since it seems a little reckless to rely on just my breathless prose style. But the pictures have been slow in coming, and time is passing. Thank goodness for the Internet: there are other people's photographs of the Three Gorges to look . at, and I can vouch for their verisimilitude.

Part of the allure of going to see the Gorges is the roundabout trip itself. Most people do like we did, and float down the river from Chongqing. It's like going to see the Grand Canyon from Denver - it takes two days to reach the first gorge.

The Chang Jiang is a silty and dark river, a huge dark snake of water from the Himalayas, and the passage through Chongqing doesn't make it any clearer. Even this far inland the river is prone to tremendous floods, so the houses and towns along its steep banks are built high above the water. This makes the place seem remote and gives you a weird impression of impending doom, as if the locals knew something you didn't about getting too close to the river.

Throughout our journey there was a persistent haze or mist on the water - some combination of November fog and industrial smoke - and it lent a dreamlike mood to the journey. You could look down at the water breaking against the prow of the boat and really know that it had come from the remote uplands of Sichuan and Tibet. Though the river is far along in its course, there is still wildness left in it at Chongqing. For now.

The people on the boat were wonderful. Apart from a Dutch couple in third class, we were the only foreigners on the boat - all the other passengers were Chinese, on vacation. There were probably a hundred people on the cruise with us. We had a second class cabin, with four bunks and a tiny bathroom that featured (against all hope, against all expectations) a Western-style toilet. The fourth bunk was occupied by a mysterious figure who arrived late at night and left before dawn - he later turned out to be an exquisitely considerate member of a larger group of travellers, leaving us to our own American ways except to sleep.

In addition to a sit-down toilet, our miniature bathroom also featured a shower, or rather a showerhead, mounted directly in the ceiling. I had to admire the economy of it - it seemed like something you would find in a microscopic European apartment, the kind of place with a refrigerator that doubles as a hot plate. To take a shower, you had to walk into the bathroom naked, close the door, and turn on the tap. Water would rush from the ceiling, cleaning you and the bathroom at the same time. When you were done, the water would seep out of a hole in the bottom of the floor, down into the third-class cabins below.

I wish I had had the courage to try the shower out, but I didn't. For one, it was November, and the boat was cold and drafty. For another, I had a sneaking suspicion about where the shower water came from (the water from the sink tap had a certain Chang Jiangness to it), and I didn't particularly want to test my theory. I also didn't want to lock myself in to a Chinese bathroom naked, while water poured from the ceiling. In short, I was chicken.

This is the worst time of year for a lot of people in New England; even though the days are getting fractionally longer, for some reason it's in mid-January that the seasonal blues kick in the hardest. Part of it is having to drive home from work well after dark, with the steering wheel all freezing cold. I have a hunch that two thirds of "seasonal affective disorder" has to do with having a cold steering wheel. The remaining third comes from getting snow in your sneakers.

Driving back home in the pitch blackness today, I heard a fun interview with the outgoing governor of Maine, Angus King. I have always had a soft spot for the man, who ran as an independent and was a very popular governor. A lot of people in the tech crowd may have heard of his biggest project, giving every middle school student in Maine a laptop (iBook). Whatever your politics, King is a thoroughly likable human being, so I was delighted to discover his plan after leaving office is to circumnavigate the United States in a big RV with his family. How many ex-governors are out on the open road, I wonder? Can't you just picture Bill Clinton driving down the back roads of Arkansas in a Camaro, slowing down for the ladies?

King's daughter Molly has started a website to chronicle their travels. There's not much on it yet, but it's worth a click just to see the floor plan of the massive land yacht they purchased for the trip (no doubt paid for by kickbacks from Apple). These babies are turning into real rolling hotel suites - you notice it most in Vermont in October, when RVs converge on the state to catch the leaf season, which for me coincides perfectly with road rage season, six weeks spent looking at the back panels of Winnebago trailers doing twelve miles an hour. A sticker for each state they've visited! And look, a Jesus fish! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM...

The real miracle is that King's rolling palazzo actually gets ten miles to the gallon, which is considerably more than my house can do. And I envy him the ability to just roll into nicer weather.

Our own ex-governor, Howard Dean, is taking the more conventional route and running for President. He's a good guy - wish him luck, and think about supporting him if you're a Democrat.