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Later this summer, I will explore the Silk Road for 25 days. When a friend asked me why, I said, "Because it is there."

Smart aleck!

Later, I examined the question seriously, and I'm going to pass along some answers. If you, like me, often wonder why you do what you do, you may laugh, cry, tear your hair or do all of the above.

Now the Silk Road runs from Xi'an in eastern China all the way west to the Caspian Sea and Europe, but the stretch I find most exotic wends its way through Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

Whence this fascination? From "Ali and Nino," a colorful novel by Kurban Said (a pseudonym) about a Christian and Muslim in love in Oriental Russia. I read it perhaps 30 years ago.

But, wait: Conrad Veidt's evil face flashes before my mind's eye. Veidt - portrayer of Nazi Major Strasser in "Casablanca" - was chilling as the villainous vizier in "The Thief of Baghdad," an "Arabian Nights" movie starring Sabu, a giant genie, and flying carpets. In Technicolor, too! I was transfixed when I saw it in 1940, at age 8.

Can you make out the minarets and markets, glistening curved scimitars and dark-eyed beauties? I saw them just the other day, when KHFM-FM radio aired an excerpt of "Scheherazade". I guess my feudal fantasies borrow from Rimsky-Korsakov, too.

Romance aside, my Silk Road expedition rests on logic, too. The universe spoke loud and clear when I turned 75 in April.

"Move, Arthur," it said. "It's now or never. You won't get younger or stronger."

I hope I haven't waited too long. When I taught English outside Nanjing, China, three summers ago, filthy air and heat made it hard to breathe. I have enrolled at a gym to toughen up, but thus far the exercise has produced only aches where once (I swear) there lived muscles.

In truth, the physical challenge - and State Department warnings about bad guys in Uzbekistan - have spurred me. Childish defiance, I guess.

In "The 300," the recent movie about Spartans warring against the more powerful Persian Empire, the Spartans teach their boys not to feel, so as to be exemplary warriors. In my head I disapprove, of course, but emotionally I'm a traditional, backward male.

So I will enjoy (minor) challenges, such as riding a camel and sleeping in a Mongolian tent, but I want to learn stuff, too. What does this fabled thoroughfare look like? Who lives on it? What do they make of me, us?

I've begun the learning experience by reading "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World," by Jack Weatherford - seems I had Genghis all wrong - and "Life Along the Silk Road," by Susan Whitfield.

Finally, my Silk Road adventure is an escape from politics, a retreat to personal pleasure, from which I hope to come back refreshed, the better to appreciate Washington's weird and crazy guys - like our vice president, whose passion for secrecy has him contending his office isn't in the executive branch. That's inspired humor, of an excellence Jon Stewart of the "Daily Show" never achieves.

Hmm. Maybe I'll explore the possibility of a Cheney-Stewart job swap here next month. That's before I board my magic carpet to exotic climes, test my (ancient) manhood and, maybe, walking in Marco Polo's footsteps, stumble on a new perspective.

Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Reach him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com.