A bunch of professors and grad students (me included) are going rappelling. First, we cross a sedate looking river surrounded by denuded trees. I notice swimmers and kayakers calmly navigating the waters--as well as one drowning person desperately clinging to a sinking maroon pleasure yacht.
Then the river abruptly ends. With a maniacal grin on his face, one of my advisers shouts, "Hold on tight!" I look down. In one hand, I'm holding the rope. The other, I'm holding a white trash bag (barf bag? white flag?), and before I know it, I'm barrelling down the mountain with silver arrows and aggressive SUVs coming the opposite direction.
Somehow, I reach the bottom without getting shot at, run over, or falling to my death. We go into a shack that has a dirt floor and a mysterious metal door. But it's not so mysterious when some people open it and take out a trunk containing lunch trays that bear a suspicious resemblance to ones they occasionally have after seminars.
While everyone is eating, I notice some papers left in the trunk. I take them out. It's a map of Afghanistan with fiery icons indicating where all the fighting is going on. A black squiggly line connects all those icons. Another grad student looks over my shoulder. "Hey," he says, "that's the next part of our route."
